Benighted (5 page)

“I’m glad to meet you, Ms. Galley, since we have a client in common.” His voice is not loud: rather, it’s quick and clear, you have to pay attention to it. I rest my chin in my hand, taking possession of the desk.

“Richard Ellaway. Yes. I understand you’ve been his lawyer for some time.”

“I have indeed.” Franklin gives me a beady look. “I must ask you, if you’ll forgive me—have you never considered passing up this case?”

The man has barely sat down yet! This comes so suddenly that I blink at him, astonished into forgetting who he is. “It’s a bit early in the meeting for you to be suggesting that, isn’t it?”

He looks at me, puzzled, then gives a little laugh. It’s a perfect laugh, urbane and restrained. It’s so good that I wonder how it can be natural. Then I take another look at him, and feel obscurely sympathetic. I don’t think it’s his fault that he’s so refined looking—well, he chooses his clothes, I suppose, but his manner doesn’t seem forced. He’s so much what I expected, cultured, well dressed, confident, and so different—I mean, he’s actually flesh and blood—that I’m at a sudden loss. I’m supposed to have an opinion on this man, that was how I was planning to get through this interview. Actually, I just don’t know what to make of him.

“I mean no reflection on your abilities, Ms. Galley.” Franklin sits back in his chair. His hands, broader than his wrists would suggest, rest peacefully in his lap. “Only that I believe you have a personal interest in this case.”

“You mean I knew the victim?” I say. “Well, if you can find me a DORLA adviser in this city who didn’t know him, then maybe I will pass it on.”

Franklin frowns. “I don’t doubt that many of them knew this John Marcos by sight. You, however, were well acquainted with him. He was your friend. Do you really think you can be impartial?”

I shrug. “Maybe not, but I hope I can be professional.”

“Hm.” Franklin nods; it’s almost as if he’s conceding me a point. Then he leans forward. “And in your definition, professional involves sitting back and watching two men assault your client?”

“Assault?”

“The day of his arrest, Ms. Galley, and please let’s not pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

I feel a little pulse of nerves inside my chest, and then it goes away. My bread and butter is winos and derelicts, so I’m not used to proper, expensive lawyers, but this must happen to people higher up the ladder than me all the time. “I’m not pretending anything, Mr. Franklin. You’ll find the records show it was me who ended that interrogation. You can check it.”

“I have. And you did. Fifteen minutes after you entered. I have the testimony of my client, too, which is not favorable to you in the least.”

I smile. “Well, he doesn’t like me.”

“My client states that not only did you fail to intervene when he was assaulted, but you refused to allow him to call me, although he specifically asked to. You arrested him on suspicion of murder, held him without charge, during which time he was subjected to actual bodily harm and denied access to a lawyer. I assume you know how many human and civil rights decrees this contravenes? If you were responsible to the Bar Council, Ms. Galley, you would be disbarred. Is that your definition of professional?”

He does it awfully well. Some kind of protective detachment has taken hold of me. By rights I should probably be cowering: after all, without even mentioning the Middle Ages, he’s just accused me of breaking the laws of the land, the continent, and the democratic world, betraying the principles of my profession, and being a disgrace to civilization in general. It’s quite possible I’ll find I’m shaking after he’s gone. Right now, though, all that’s left in me is an impersonal admiration for his delivery. Really, he’s very good.

“I’m not responsible to the Bar Council, Mr. Franklin. I’m not a member.”

“I know. I’m familiar with DORLA legal practices. How many years of training did you have—two? It seems you qualified at twenty with only a basic grounding in the laws that apply to your narrow field of interest. That’s less than an undergraduate degree. I’d hardly say you were qualified to represent my client.”

“That’s a little hard, Mr. Franklin. I had the standard DORLA training—I know it’s not up to mainstream standards, but it’s better than you imply. It’s only short because we’re so understaffed, we just haven’t time to train for a full term. And
our
client violated laws that put him within DORLA jurisdiction. He was always going to be given an adviser with my qualifications.”

Franklin puts his head on one side and considers me.

“Would you like some coffee?” I say.

“Coffee? Oh. Yes, please.”

I stand up and switch on my baby kettle. “It’s only instant, I’m afraid.”

“Thank you.”

I turn around and lean against the wall. He can’t do anything to me. I say this to myself several times, and then try an experiment. “Mr. Franklin, we do have a client in common. He may not like the way I’ve handled things, in fact I’m sure he doesn’t. And I doubt you do either. It isn’t the way I would have handled things if I had the resources. But in answer to your question, I think I have to say, yes. By the standards of my profession, by the standards of the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity, my behavior was professional.” I pour water into his cup.

“You really believe that it was fit behavior for a member of a government institution?”

I hand him the coffee. “DORLA’s an odd place, Mr. Franklin.”

“Not that odd, Ms. Galley. I’ve noted numerous cases where DORLA operatives were successfully sued. As I understand it, there are almost monthly demotions within your ranks. Please let’s not pretend DORLA isn’t accountable; I can produce a great many instances where your members were held responsible for their actions.”

My heart sinks a little; I manage not to sigh. “That does make us look accountable, doesn’t it. Mr. Franklin, I admire you, so I’m telling you this because it’s useful, not because I’m trying to get around you: those demotions are part of the system. People do get publicly punished here; it’s good for the government to make sure it happens. But they’ll never overhaul us. That would be too close to backing us up. Moon night’s too insoluble a problem, and we’re too good a scapegoat. It’s easier to punish us at intervals than to make us properly accountable.”

Franklin raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me straight out that you can’t be held responsible?”

I shake my head. “I can. Personally, you can go after me. But if you’re thinking of making this a landmark, shake-up-the-system case…well, I’d advise you to do it with a better client. Because Mr. Ellaway did maul someone. Look, the point is, I have no doubt your client has much to complain of. If I was in his position I’d be no happier than he is now. But the thing is, he needs a DORLA representative. You can speak at his trial if you want to, I’m quite happy for that to happen. But I have to as well. You could get him another adviser within DORLA, but truthfully, I doubt they’d be any more…aggressive in protecting him than I have been.”

“Then God help the country, Ms. Galley, because DORLA is the most unethical, inconsistent, and unprofessional institution I can imagine.”

I sit back down, and prop my chin up again. “Maybe. But we have our own problems. Look, Mr. Franklin, I can’t compete with you. I’m laying my cards on the table here. We have a client in common, and you can pursue his grievance against me, or we can both focus on acquitting him. Personally, I’d just like to get this case over with. Does Ellaway want to sue me?”

Franklin looks at me with canny eyes. “He has talked of it, yes.”

I’m starting to feel tired. I can’t keep this up much longer. “Please don’t let him.”

“Ms. Galley, why should I feel any obligation to be dissuaded, by you, from the interests of my client?”

“I don’t think it will be in his interests. He can sue me, and it’ll go through a lyco court and they’ll hang me from the yardarm. It won’t do him much good. I don’t have any money he can sue me for, and if he wants to ruin me, then—well, I don’t think he needs to prove anything. I know my place. Outside of this office, it’s nowhere. But inside it—ruining me won’t change DORLA’s practices. It’ll just prejudice the court against him when he comes up for trial. And he’s looking at life imprisonment as it is. DORLA’s a bottomless pit, Mr. Franklin, and injustices slip into it without a trace…” I trail off. I don’t want to be ruined. As I’m talking, I hear what I’m saying, and I realize more and more that Ellaway can destroy me if he wants to, and he probably does. And since I want him to spend his life in jail, I can’t pretend he doesn’t have justification. I’m lost. I shouldn’t have messed with a rich man.

I look up, and find that Franklin is still regarding me. “It is your opinion that suing you would be bad for our client’s case?”

“Undoubtedly. And I can’t change that, so please don’t blame me.”

“You don’t think that his chances of appeal might not be better if he could claim he was improperly represented?”

“What, with you on his side?” Franklin almost laughs. I raise my head. Is he going to let me off? “That’s how it would work in a lyco—excuse me, in a mainstream court. But even so, the fact remains that all the…incidents…he wants to sue me for happened after he was arrested for the original crime, after I had already had one session advising him, and given him no cause to complain of my conduct. I don’t think he killed Johnny Marcos. I don’t think so. But he doesn’t deny he maimed him, and we have the victim’s statement, medical evidence, and the testimony of Marcos’s partner that night to back that up. That’s the case I’m representing him on. Not that that makes it any better from his point of view, but my behavior on the case of DORLA versus Ellaway for GBH and attempted murder has been perfectly adequate. So suing me for his interrogation on another charge might not stick.”

“I think it would, Ms. Galley. In the normal world. But I believe we have to negotiate certain—prejudices is not too strong a word, I think—which make for a rather extraordinary way of handling this case.”

“Mr. Franklin, you’re dead right. So—by your leave—are you going to sue me?”

Franklin puts his hands together. “No. Purely on the grounds that this is an unaccountable judiciary, that must be handled as carefully as possible.”

“Ohh.” I let out a breath that I didn’t know I was holding. I throw a quick, nervous look across the table, but either Franklin hasn’t noticed, or he has and he’s too well bred to let on.

“Ms. Galley,” Franklin says. “I have to inform you, I find your legal ethics incomprehensible.”

I should come up with a dignified response. I spend a little time searching, and find that I can’t think of one. In the end, I just shrug. “I don’t blame you.”

“Your attitude is a little cavalier, for one who is responsible for a man’s freedom.”

“Yes.” I uncross my legs and sit up. “Yes, I can see why you say that.”

The expression on Franklin’s face is almost quizzical. “You’re a rather strange young woman.”

“No, not really. Not if you look at it through my eyes.”

Unbelievably, Franklin shrugs. I didn’t know that a chess-player’s body could make such a movement. “However, I suppose we shall have to work together as best we can. I have another appointment now. May we meet later on to discuss our client’s case?”

And he reaches across the table to shake my hand.

After he’s gone, I sit down and laugh in sheer relief. Somehow I’ve escaped. I’ve met Adnan Franklin and I’m still alive to tell the tale. How I escaped, I don’t understand.

FOUR

T
his moon night it’s my turn. Standing in a line for equipment, already suited up, I stretch myself as best I can in the protective clothing and try not to think. The collar stick weighs heavy in my right hand. I’m loaded up like a fisherman. Maybe if I concentrate on feeling ridiculous, I won’t get the fear.

I spot my trainee across the room, leaning against the wall. Sean Martin, his name is, though everyone calls him Marty; I’ve been teaching him for a few months. His shoes are usually undone, but he remembers everything I say.

I raise my hand to get his attention. He waves back, and I manage to get through the crowd that fills the room. As he straightens up, I am surprised, as I always am, at his height. He’s a slight boy, narrow across, with a way of stooping a little to one side so his cowlick falls into his eyes. You forget he’s tall, unless you’re right up next to him.

“Do I get to drive?” he says. His hopeful smile upsets me. I don’t want to have to watch it disappear.

“I don’t think so. Come on,” I say. We set out; it’s a lot easier to get through the crowd with Marty’s six foot one moving in front of me.

We’ve been assigned van thirty-two, which is the one with the crack across the windshield. Marty jostles my shoulder as we head for it; his breath billows in the cold.

“Ready to round up?” he says.

“Fight any lune in the house.” I say this mock-tough. My voice doesn’t shake at all.

“You can take them. Any lune messes with us is going to end up lining your gloves.” His voice is reassuring, which irritates me: no stripling gets to reassure me, however smart. I’m also disturbed that he sees through my joking that easily. At his age, it’s not natural.

“Keep my dainty fingers warm,” I say.

“I’ll cure the pelt. No sweat.”

His voice stretches tighter as he speaks. I toss the keys in the air to distract him, and miss them on the way down. Marty crouches and hands them back to me; once down, he stays crouched. I watch him for a few moments, then tug on his shoulder. “On your feet, kiddo. We’ve got dogs to catch.”

He rights himself. “Bring them on.” He says this without looking at me.

We settle into the van. Marty produces a flask of coffee; I take a pack of Pro-Plus out of my pocket, and use a swig from his thermos to knock one back. Marty shakes his head at the packet when I proffer it.

“You’ll be sleepy,” I warn.

He looks at me. An apologetic expression is on his face; the catching hood has squeezed it at the corners so it’s flushed. “I don’t need stringing out any further,” he says.

There’s a silence on these nights, which is like nothing you ever hear. It’s so quiet it’s almost musical. We sit in our van, the flood-lamps on top giving us a small circle of light. Lycos never see this. No one to run the power, no one to run the water, the gas, the telephones, the city. It all shuts down, the electricity grids go off, the world is black. Lycos lock their doors with bolts instead of coded security pads and hope nothing catches fire until morning. We run our shelters on generators and stock up on water and supplies, and the darkness outside lays siege. Our radios and tracking systems keep us reminded that there are other people in the world. We need reminding. First-aid workers at the shelters, skeletal staff at the DORLA offices. And no one else, no one else awake or tame. We dwell on the shelters, think about them a lot. It’s like knowing that down under the deep sea there is a bottom somewhere.

Our patrol tonight takes in Spiritus Sanctus Park and the area around it. Last time we had to do Kings, which wasn’t so bad; Kings is less densely wooded, so there’s a better chance there of finding a lune that’s kept out of the forest. Though not as much as any of us would like. Sanctus is small, forested, impenetrable. Too many trees, not enough open space. No one likes getting assigned there; it’s early in Marty’s training to be given somewhere so difficult. I wonder if this is a token of official approval of him, or of me.

Marty is biting his fingernails; I reach over and pull his hand out of his mouth without taking my eyes off the tracker. “Bad habit,” I say. “Light me a cigarette, will you?”

He makes a noise like one fragment of a laugh, and gets out the pack for me. “Nothing much on the tracker,” he says.

“Not yet. Best not to worry about it, though. Could just be a quiet night.” I turn the van left along the patrol route. As I do this, I wonder how I’ve become the grown-up. I’ve been catching since I was eighteen, and I still don’t know a damn thing about doing it safely. I think about the woman who taught me catching, my friend Bride Reilly, a big jolly woman with blond-by-choice hair who showed me all there is to know about a right hook. I share cases with her sometimes. She’s got a new trainee: a boy shorter than I am who boxes as well as she does, probably to make up for his lack of height. Bride used to sing dirty songs as we cruised, tell jokes and make me forget my fears. Poor Marty’s stuck with me, and I can’t think of any way to make him forget.

“How many—” Marty’s voice clicks in his throat. “You never told me—how many catches does this make it for you?”

I keep my hands on the wheel. “I can’t remember. You lose track after a while.” I am lying. I remember every single one.

Marty takes my lighter out of the pack, and as he does so, there’s a soft wail from the left. His hand jumps, and my lighter falls on the floor.

“Cool it,” I say, my voice snapping. This is tough enough if your partner’s calm, there’s no way I can keep my head if Marty starts panicking on me. “Check the tracker, will you?” I swing the wheel in the direction of the voice, and slow down.

Marty draws a deep breath, and lets it go. “About eleven o’clock,” he says. “Just one.”

He’s making an effort to brace himself. “Atta boy.” I say this very softly, and turn my attention to the road.

I stop the van and take a look: it’s small, smaller than it should be. “Might just be a stray dog,” I say. My nails dig into the steering wheel as I say this. There are days when I dream of driving around all night, ignoring all pickups and just staying snug inside my own van. My fantasies are going to have to wait, though.

This one is outside a park. Less common, more risky. We’ll have to fight it in the streets. I look at the map, and try to plan a route.

“Maybe it’s a juvenile,” says Marty over the sound of the engine restarting.

“You don’t miss much,” I tell him. “Or it could just be showing up smaller than it is, of course, that happens often enough. Or it really could be a stray. In which case, I’ll go to church tomorrow. You awake?”

He rubs his eyes. “Yes.”

“It’s past your bedtime, kid. Sure you don’t want any Pro-Plus?”

“No, thank you anyway.” His manners do him credit.

I look at the street ahead of us. Gray in the headlights, with no streetlamps burning, it looks rainswept, war-torn, faded. I turn at the junction, and try to stop imagining things.

“Okay,” I say. “I want you to do this collar. I’ll be right behind you. Remember, if this is a juvenile, it’ll be more likely to be panicking, so you need to be efficient. No missing its head and swatting it with the collar or anything like that. I don’t want to be chasing it till sunrise. Clear?”

“Yes.” He fingers his catcher. “What if I do miss?”

I think he’s just covering all his bases, but the thought still chills me. There was a time when I wanted to do every collar for him, to spare him the dangers of being bitten and me the risk of him missing. I can’t, I’d be doing him no favors. He has to learn sometime. “Then we trank it and take the consequences.”

“Is that bad? I mean, worse?” Marty chews his fingernail.

“It’s not good.” They ought to teach him this kind of thing in classes. I’m not too surprised they don’t, though—they usually leave the worse facts to be found out by experience. “People don’t like the idea of tranking children. So they don’t make child-sized darts. It would be like admitting we might use them.” No one thinks baby lunes can possibly be dangerous. No one who hasn’t seen them. “If we trank it, we’ll just have to drag it to the nearest shelter that’s got someone who knows a damn thing about first aid.” As I say this, I find we’re nearly at the right street.

I turn the corner and something sinks inside me. Not my heart, I think, that’s tethered into place, yet it still gives me a long second of dismay when I see that Marty was right. It’s a juvenile. A small one, not much bigger than a German shepherd, and it’s doing its best to dig through a pile of black garbage bags. Withered lettuce leaves and wet cereal boxes are scattered across the street; the smell of rot hits us at the same time as the sound of whimpering.

I take my trank gun out and watch how Marty handles the pole. When he first started, he looked like he was conducting an orchestra for some slapstick number; I didn’t dare let him carry it outside. I was impressed, though: two catches along, and he’d progressed to just awkward, and now he’s managed some perfectly competent collars. He’s a quick learner. And he’d better be as able as I think he is on this one, or we’ll end up rushing the juvenile to a shelter with a sedative overdose.

The yellow light of the van has turned everything pale, and the shadow of the pole looms black against the pile of trash. Then Marty’s foot comes down on a gray leaf. It only makes a little splashing sound: that little sound, then silence. The juvenile stops digging. It pulls its head out of the pile, and a waterfall of bags tumble down around it. It looks up, and it sees the pole.

The sound it makes is like something falling from a great height to smash at the bottom. A whimper, and the whimper rises to a screaming snarl, and then it leaps bare-toothed into the air. There’s a dull gleam as its jaws snap together just under the pole, and it circles around on the pavement preparing for another leap.

“Marty, hurry,” I mutter. “Catch it while you still can.”

The juvenile leaps again, up against the wall and back toward us, it’s fast as a cat. Marty swings the pole and misses, it knocks against the side of a building and it’s way out of line. The juvenile gives a high, grinding wail. In a minute, the whole street will start howling. Already there are several voices coming down, they blend and rise, coming down on us, and I press my hands against my head because I cannot afford to panic, whatever the noise I cannot afford to panic. Marty wrestles with the pole and swings again, way off-balance: the collar brushes the juvenile’s head and doesn’t catch it.

“Marty, in a minute it’s going to attack you.” My voice is as quiet as I can make it. “Catch it now.”

Marty reaches the pole out. It hangs in the air above the juvenile, and the juvenile cringes down, snarling at it. There’s a moment where there’s nothing but howling voices and the snarls below us, and then the juvenile springs. Marty makes another swing just as it leaves the ground.

There’s a thud and a shriek, and I see what’s happened. He hit it with the stick. Bad luck, bad timing, he missed and he hit this under-age stray on the head with a heavy ten-foot pole. The juvenile cowers on the ground, its head between its feet and its tail between its legs. Its howls shouldn’t make sense to me, every howl should sound the same. They don’t, though. This pitched, shaking wail may be lune-talk, and I don’t know how lunes think: all of that is true. It doesn’t matter, not just this minute. I know crying when I hear it.

I take the pole out of Marty’s hands and collar the weeping juvenile in one shot. Once it’s collared it fights, and we shove it, still sobbing, into the van, bruising its neck as we go. It lands a bite on my calf as we get it up the ramp, but its teeth don’t go through the suit. I’ll just have a mark there tomorrow. Marty holds it pressed against the wall.

“Hold it there for a bit,” I say. Lycos have chips in their necks inserted at birth, to help us ID: I scan the microchip in his neck with the chipper as I pass, and yank open a cage door. Marty harries him in, and I slam the door and lock it.

“Check this reading, will you?” I say.

“Toby McInley,” says Marty. “Seven years old.” Toby McInley curls up in the middle of the cage, shivering.

“What have we got?” I go to look over Marty’s shoulder. What we’ve got on him is nothing surprising. He’s on the at-risk list: a social worker, neglect, suspected abuse. They’re always the ones we find out on the streets.

I leave Toby sitting huddled on the floor and start the van up again.

“That wasn’t good, Marty.” This is a matter of fact.

Marty rubs his fists together and doesn’t say anything.

“Marty. You have to be quicker than that. You can’t just clout them with the pole, you could get done backward and forward for that. You’re lucky it’s a neglected child whose folks probably won’t sue.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he mutters.

“I know you didn’t mean to, it doesn’t matter that you didn’t mean to. You did. You’ve got to be more careful.”

“I know.” Marty glares at his fists and slouches down in his seat. I could go on in this vein for a while, and I probably should. There’s no excuse for that kind of mistake. The trouble is, it was a mistake. We all make them. There’s just no good way of doing this job.