Authors: Tim Davys
Tourquai (15 page)
A
nna Lynx lied about Todd’s age, and they accepted her, it was really no problem; anyone who wanted could be involved. But she soon realized that all of the other Parents In Town had cubs that were teenagers. Yet she wanted to make a contribution; it was important to keep cubs off the streets, and as a police officer she knew how severely constrained resources were at the department. Besides, Todd, too, would be a teenager one day, so it was important to understand a few things.
She went with a group from the neighborhood a few times a week. Compared to her job, the nighttime walks were mostly pleasant and social. You gossiped a little about and with each other, and if you encountered some overimbibing cubs you made them listen to reason in a friendly way. Most often no more than that was required. Sometimes there would be a passed-out drunk cub on the ground feeling nauseous who seriously horrified everyone, and Anna was often the animal who led the cub home. When Parents In Town encountered someone who was high on harder drugs and behaving aggressively in the way that Anna came in contact with daily on the job, the night patrol hurried away to call for reinforcements. It was simply not the idea that Parents In Town would do anything other than strengthen neighborhood unity, and at the same time get a little fresh night air.
This evening Anna was
walking together with a chameleon who worked as an accountant and lived in the same building as she did, although on the seventh floor, and a semifamous cricket player named Godot who always lagged a few steps behind. She was having a nice time with the accountant, who proved to be a passionate expert on Styrofoam balls, and who had a private collection that included hundreds of colors and forms.
The half-moon was on its way to becoming full, and the air was cool but not yet chilly. Before she left home, she’d had a few glasses of wine with her mom, who always slept with Todd the night that Anna patrolled. Anna also called Falcon to hear how his match had gone, but that was less successful. He sounded defeated in a way that caused her heart to ache, and she hadn’t been able to provide any consolation. For that reason, at least, it was nice to walk along the deserted, dark sidewalks and listen to the chameleon expound on the acquisition of Styrofoam balls. She did not give a thought to the fact that they were suddenly walking south on blue rue de Montyon.
The silence was restful. Not dense or frightening. They conversed quietly, not needing to drown out the constant drone from the cars on North Avenue. But when a doorway opened ten or so yards away, the sound cut straight into the stillness, and all three of them stopped, Godot a few steps behind Anna and the chameleon.
From out of the doorway came a sizable stuffed animal in a thick jacket. Anna knew immediately that she recognized him, but it took a few seconds before she could place the figure. He walked out quickly, then paused a few moments on the sidewalk outside the doorway. He looked around, discovered the three night patrollers as they stood in the shadow of a lantern post, and then walked in the opposite direction.
As he turned toward them, Anna Lynx had seen who it was. And a few seconds later, as she herself passed the doorway out of which he had come, there was no longer any doubt.
Larry Bloodhound had come out of the doorway of Claude Siamese’s building. The superintendent had been standing a few yards from the phone booth where the tip about Oswald Vulture had been called in. Called in to this same Superintendent Bloodhound.
Anna excused herself and quickly left Godot and the accountant alone in the night. Thoughts were swirling in her head, but so far they were incomprehensible.
I
n his paw he weighed his chips—only black counters—with an inward smile that no one could see.
A fortune is no heavier than this, he thought.
My life is no heavier than this, he thought.
Yesterday evening he had decided how he would bet, and since then, he had waited for this moment. He got up, excused himself to Raven, who was sitting next to him, and squeezed his way to the short staircase. Down on the cold cement floor in front of the screen he put his counters in the green tube. A murmur was heard from the animals in the grandstand. Everyone was there for the same reason, everyone was used to high stakes, but even so this was something out of the ordinary. Igor Panda himself felt a drop of sweat run down his temple as he returned to his place.
There was perhaps five minutes left until it was time.
During those five minutes, Panda lived more intensely than in several weeks at the gallery. This was his drug, the adrenaline was pumping out into his system, and he experienced the familiar feeling of becoming light as a feather. It was a kind of delirium, but a pleasant one.
“I’ll be damned,” said the raven as Igor sat down again.
But Igor didn’t hear a thing.
There was a stuffy odor of dampness and cold. They were seven stories below street level in one of the many parking garages that had been blasted out under Tourquai’s city center. The grandstands were set up across from each other and could be assembled in less than ten minutes; six rows held a hundred animals each. The operation was illegal, moving from garage to garage, and where it would turn up next week only the initiated knew. New players were seldom accepted and, when that did happen, it was only after extensive background checks.
“Green, is it?” said the raven in a fresh attempt at conversation.
They all handled the nervousness differently. The raven was obviously the talkative type, the kind who thought the grandstand seats were hard and who feared the moment when the wheel would stop.
It was the opposite with Igor Panda. He enjoyed it. He concentrated on the tension, letting nothing disturb him.
That’s why he remained silent.
The raven continued to babble, not caring that the panda didn’t answer, and he fell silent only when the Master of Ceremonies appeared.
As usual he arrived without anyone seeing him; suddenly he was simply standing there. Quickly the grandstands became silent. The Master of Ceremonies was wearing a long red mantle and large dark sunglasses. He walked slowly up to the wheel, which was placed on a small stage across from the grandstands, and raised his arms dramatically.
The wheel resembled a shrunken tombola wheel. It lay flat on a table and twirled at great speed. On a large screen hanging on the garage wall, images flickered past. They were replaced at the same rate as the wheel was twirling; it went so fast it was impossible to comprehend what they depicted. But tonight there were no novices in the grandstand; everyone knew what this was about.
Below the screen, six hollow Plexiglas tubes stood on the floor: one black, one red, one blue, one green, one yellow, and one gray. They were all filled with counters. Prior to Panda’s bet, red had been the night’s most popular color.
“One minute,” the Master of Ceremonies announced.
The most indecisive now shuffled down from the grandstand to place their bets in the respective tube. It was always the same animals who waited until last, the tacticians who wanted to be sure they knew what they were betting on. It seldom happened that a single animal could affect the odds, but tonight Igor Panda’s enormous bet had exactly this effect. It created a different type of behavior at the tubes; it was necessary to react to the fortune that had been bet on green.
“Half a minute,” the Master of Ceremonies called out.
The seconds ticked slowly by, then it was over. The tubes were sealed by the emcee’s assistant, and then all the bettors returned to their places in the grandstand.
Finally the Master of Ceremonies lowered his arms, and at the same moment a sharp signal was heard. The wheel slowed down. All attention was directed at the screen on the wall.
Live footage from streets around Mollisan Town were being shown. The rate was still so high that they looked like still photographs.
The wheel’s way of reducing speed was clever. It would take a few minutes before it stopped: an endless time, it seemed. The images on the screen lingered longer and longer, and at a given moment you suddenly saw that there was movement, a pedestrian, a car driving past.
It was called VolgaBet.
Who organized and ran the game remained unclear. No one dared investigate it. Before every game night a number of videocameras—some said there were ten while others maintained there were at least fifty—were placed in different parts of the city. They were positioned on building exteriors, on balconies and roofs, keeping their watchful lens eyes on the deserted streets below. Just as often as the gaming location was moved between garages in Tourquai, the cameras were relocated to different streets in Mollisan Town.
The slower the wheel twirled in front of the Master of Ceremonies, the longer the animals in the grandstand were able to observe the same street.
When the wheel finally stopped, the street for the night was chosen.
Once again a murmur passed through the audience.
Now it was only a matter of waiting. In the sealed plastic tubes were the bets. Igor Panda had bet his money that the first car that showed up on the screen tonight would be green. This was more than an impulse. It was the result of a careful strategy in combination with a calculation of the odds based on a statistically significant investigation Panda himself had made of the streets of the city. Green was an absolutely sure card on a night like this.
But it was also an intuitive feeling that it was time at last to win really big.
It took a while.
Sitting and intently staring at the screen where nothing happened was the part of the game that strained the nerves most. Sometimes it could take hours before a car drove by, depending of course on where in the city chance had chosen a camera.
Tonight Panda seemed to recognize the street. But he wasn’t sure, and he disliked players who always claimed to know where the camera was located. The sort who thought they could predict the locations and manipulate fate. Panda didn’t care to guess. That’s not what this was about.
Then.
At a distance they saw the car approaching. A muted murmur was heard in the grandstand.
It was still so far away that the color could not be discerned, but soon someone called “Red!” right out into the air, whereupon someone else called “Black!” at the next moment, and then the speculations were under way as the car quickly approached the camera.
They saw it at almost the same time.
More than half of the players fell silent, while a few continued to scream hysterically.
The car was red.
Igor Panda made his
way down from the grandstand as the Master of Ceremonies started the wheel going again. Panda heard the noise from the stuffed animals preparing to bet again, but he didn’t care about that. With heavy steps he walked on the cold, damp cement floor, away from the grandstands and into the shadows in the deserted garage.
The car was parked at a safe distance as usual. A reminder, but a reminder that was not overly insistent. The dark window in the backseat glided down even before Panda had approached.
“Stop right there,” came the order from inside the car.
Panda stopped a few yards away.
“I need credit,” he said.
“We need payment,” someone answered from the backseat.
Panda had never seen the face of the one sitting in the car, but he thought it was the same animal week after week; he thought he recognized the voice.
“You got almost all of it back this evening,” Panda replied. “Now I need another small loan.”
“You lost exactly everything you just borrowed.”
“That’s why I need another loan,” said Panda, irritated.
“Not tonight, Igor,” the voice replied. “You made a repayment, but it was too little. We want five hundred thousand. Six hundred thousand in three days. Seven hundred thousand in six days.”
Igor nodded. He’d been through this process so many times he didn’t even have the energy to argue about the unreasonable interest rate.
He turned around and went toward the ramp that, like a slithering snake, led up to the street. On the third level he could get reception. He called Jake Golden Retriever. After the fifth ring Jake answered. It was obvious that he’d been sleeping.
“I need another painting,” said Igor Panda. “Now. I’m coming by right now to get it.”
“I don’t have any paintings,” the barely awake dog slurred.
“Don’t play the fool, dog-devil,” Panda bellowed. “I know where you live. I’m coming now.”
It was a lie. Panda had no idea where Golden Retriever lived, but it couldn’t be very hard to find out.
“I don’t have any paintings,” Jake said again.
“Then you’ll have to scribble one together. Now.”
“I don’t paint myself, you stupid panda. I’m only the one who makes sure you have paintings to sell.”
Igor stopped. Perplexed. Was Golden Retriever only a go-between? A pimp?
“I don’t care which,” he screamed after a moment’s pause. “I want a new painting. NOW!”
S
creams and shouts were heard from far off, and Bloodhound quickened his pace along light brown rue de Cadix. The fog had just given way to the faint breeze, and the sky darkened gradually before the coming Morning Rain. Outside his own doorway the superintendent had stepped in something sticky and foul-smelling that he wasn’t able to scrape off his shoe, and the stench irritated him. He was not sure how many hours—or minutes—he had slept that night, and the anxiety over having left Cordelia alone far too long gnawed in his chest.
“One day,” he mumbled to himself, “I have to resolve all this with that monstrosity of a Siamese cat.”
But not today. And the one positive thing about the night’s cocaine rush was that the superintendent was certain that he had burned more calories than he had taken in.
Barely a block away from his office he heard a commotion.
At the top of the stone stairs just outside the entry to the police station there was some kind of disturbance going on. There were four or five uniformed police and two plainclothes officers. Arms were gesticulating, threats were hurled—Bloodhound could only make out fragments. But when he saw that one of the stuffed animals in the middle of the small group was Oleg Earwig, the superintendent jogged the final yards up to the stairs.
“What the hell is this all about?” he barked with his harsh, commanding voice.
The police fell silent, settled down, and waited. Even Earwig and his cohort turned their attention to Bloodhound.
“I’m only ensuring that my client gets out of here,” the cohort yelled, a well-dressed antelope Larry thought he recognized.
“This is a farce!” Earwig shouted. “A farce! This is going to cost you dearly. Dearly!”
The police officers waited. Bloodhound was up on the stairs, placing his broad, heavy body in front of the earwig.
“And what’s going to cost me dearly, you multilimbed laughingstock?”
“We have witnesses,” the antelope explained, turning toward the superintendent with a superior smile. “We have hundreds of witnesses. At the same time as your murder was committed, Oleg Earwig was standing on a stage at Marktplatz in Lanceheim, demonstrating an . . . an invention.”
“The Matter Processor,” Earwig clarified. “Balder Toad and I. In front of hundreds of admiring animals, who sensed that their lives would be changed forever!”
The police officers involuntarily took a step back. They realized where the conversation was heading.
“That invalidates the grounds for the arrest,” the antelope said. “The assertion that there is no alibi does not hold up. You have held my client overnight for no reason. And you know that! Don’t be surprised if this has legal consequences! Come, Oleg.”
Bloodhound didn’t move from the spot, and the antelope was forced to go around the considerable superintendent. Earwig followed his lawyer, and just as he was passing Larry he whispered in the dog’s ear, “This is going to cost you dearly . . .”
Larry closed his eyes. Self-control. He took a few deep breaths. None of the police officers around dared say a thing. When Bloodhound opened his eyes again, Earwig was gone. His unpleasant attorney likewise.
“Swine from hell,” the superintendent growled.
With these words he left the police out on the stairs and went into the station. He was boiling with rage. Lynx and Ècu had not done their homework. He didn’t know what had happened, but that much he understood. No one would have dared release Earwig if there wasn’t good reason for it. And it was him, the head of WE, who looked the fool, while the unpleasant insect was triumphant.
Bloodhound stationed himself by the elevators but didn’t have the patience to wait. Instead he jogged up the stairs to the fourth floor, but overestimated his physical condition and was forced to drag himself up the last stretch with the help of the railing. Before he entered WE, he caught his breath a few minutes, then felt extremely disappointed when he saw that Lynx’s and Ècu’s desks were empty. It was too early in the morning, and they hadn’t come in yet.
Panting and angry, he marched through the almost deserted morning office.
“When they get here,” he growled to Pedersen, who was at his place a few desks over, “send them in to see me. Right away!”
Pedersen nodded. He recognized the tone of voice.
Larry Bloodhound continued into his office, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Damnation!” he swore out loud.
He wriggled out of his jacket and threw it in a corner on the floor.
It would be another
hour or two before the falcon and lynx came in, but by then Field Mouse Pedersen had already been down to the jail and gathered enough information that he could tell Bloodhound what had happened.
Balder Toad had told the police the truth. On the other hand, he had omitted a significant detail. The demonstration at Marktplatz had happened last Monday. In the morning. The short visit that Oleg Earwig made to Oswald Vulture had been a final attempt to get Vulture interested in investing in the Matter Processor.
Earwig’s attorney had known the exact point in time when Vulture lost his head, and thus he had been able to prove Earwig’s innocence. No one could answer the question of how the attorney had access to the sensitive information from the technical investigation. Someone had leaked. It could be someone at rue de Cadix, but Bloodhound considered that unlikely. It was more likely one of the civilians in the laboratory at place St.-Fargeau.
While Field Mouse Pedersen expounded on the context of how he interpreted the situation that morning down in the jail, Bloodhound realized at last the lay of the land. Yes, it could probably be proved that Earwig was standing on a stage in front of hundreds of stuffed animals at the moment when Vulture lost his head. True, along with several dozen others, the inventor did have a motive to cut off the head of the capitalist, but that wasn’t enough to keep him in jail.
“I guess we have to realize that it wasn’t Earwig who did it,” Pedersen sighed dejectedly. “Was there anything else, Superintendent?”
“No, no, that’s fine,” Bloodhound growled.
“Then I’ll get back to the will,” Pedersen replied, leaving the room.
“Damnation,” Bloodhound sighed. “Damnation, damnation, damnation.”
Less than an hour
later Anna Lynx cracked open the superintendent’s door and stuck her head in. Outside, the Morning Rain had ceased, and on the fourth floor at rue de Cadix the large iron pillars cast their sharp shadows across the stuffed animal police working the day shift.
“You were looking for us, I heard,” she said.
Bloodhound looked up. At first he didn’t seem to recognize her, then he waved her in. Anna took a hesitant step across the threshold. Falcon Ècu, standing behind her, followed right after. They both thought they knew what was waiting; their colleagues had gossiped about the superintendent’s mood.
“I’d just like to beg your pardon,” Lynx begins.
“We’re so sorry,” Ècu says. “We’re so sorry. Superintendent, from the bottom of my heart I want to say that—”
“Bah, shut up now,” Bloodhound growls, waving his paw as if he were waving away cigarette smoke. “Let’s just turn the page.”
Anna and Falcon were shocked into silence.
“This investigation is shit,” the superintendent notes sourly. “We’re back to Cobra. And Squirrel. Did you get hold of the son, Panda, yesterday?”
“No, we . . . but we intend to make a new attempt this morning,” Anna says.
She realizes that she finds it hard to look Larry in the eye. It’s as if she is ashamed about having seen him come out of Siamese’s building last night. She tries to shake off the unpleasantness.
“This morning,” Bloodhound rumbles from his desk, “there’s a lot of shit I have to do. Organizational administration. Or vice versa. It’s pointless. Captain Buck has read some management literature and decided we should have ‘team building.’ I can’t ignore it again. When I come back—it will take a few hours at most—I want a folder on Squirrel. Do you understand? I want her background. Complete and exhaustive. I’m going to talk to her myself. After you’re finished with Squirrel’s background, I want you to find Cobra. And this time you don’t have to be nice to her.”
Falcon and Lynx nod in agreement and return in silence to their workstations. Anna has decided not to say anything to Falcon about Bloodhound’s nighttime visit to Siamese. She may sympathize with the pedantic, vain bird who can’t play tennis, but she knows where her loyalties lie. She has worked with Bloodhound so long that the only thing she can do is ask him flat out. What was he doing with Siamese? But it’s important to choose the right moment. And she knows for sure that now is not the time. She understood the frustration in her boss’s voice. He asked for a report, and it must be delivered. Sometimes the situation is critical, and this is one of those occasions. The leads are getting cold; Anna realizes that the urgency can’t be questioned.
The office up at WE is, as usual, only half-staffed; the day shift is already out on the streets again. Where police officers belong. A kind of expectant fatigue has settled over the department, as if everything is in the balance but has not yet decided in which direction it will tip. Over by the elevators Pedersen sits, talking on the phone. Anna doesn’t hear what he’s saying. She looks out the windows and lets out a deep sigh. She brought her own car to work today, to make it on time to her talk at the Crisis Center seminar in the afternoon. Females from all over Tourquai will be there to hear her. Anna has been working on the lecture for months, and she feels content. “If Gender Meant As Little As Biology” she calls it. A biting satire of how Mollisan Town would appear if the physical differences between a snake and a brown bear were to create the same chasm between species as the normative attitude creates between females and males.
When Falcon asks how it’s going, Anna tells him. She feels pressured by the upcoming lecture. Falcon immediately offers to look up Emanuelle Cobra on his own. Anna knows this is not a good idea, but intends to let him do it anyway. Certain obligations simply must be fulfilled, and she can’t say no to the Crisis Center.
During the hours that pass, the inspectors sit in front of their computer screens, working diligently. When one of them produces substantial information they briefly pass this on, and slowly a picture of Jasmine Squirrel develops between the desks.
The parents, Hubert and Nicola, get their cub late in life. Hubert is a deacon in one of Amberville’s smaller parishes, Nicola works at the large library in Yok. The new mother quits her job in connection with the delivery of Jasmine and never returns to professional life. To all appearances, Squirrel has a secure upbringing in Tourquai, to which the family moves when Jasmine is five years old.
In one of the Ministry of Finance’s many digital archives Falcon Ècu finds a lengthy medical record prepared in connection with Jasmine’s whooping cough. The doctor reflects on growing up in a clerical home—“never uncomplicated, an enormous need for liberation is built up which in the worst case explodes in puberty”—and about Nicola’s maternal concerns: “Seldom does one see the devotion that is found in Mrs. Hubert, and which with all certainty will give the young Jasmine the self-esteem in which to stand strong.”
“What kind of doctor is that?” Anna asks with surprise.
Falcon Ècu shrugs his wings and summarizes his impressions of the medical record.
“It seems as if the young Jasmine Squirrel has had all the usual childhood illnesses by the age of eleven, her schooling flows along without problems, and she dreams of becoming a surgeon.”
In the registry from the Ministry of Culture’s education division, Anna Lynx finds Jasmine Squirrel’s transcripts, which support the thesis of a goal-oriented stuffed animal on her way into the world of the natural sciences. Anna also finds confirmation, in another registry from the same agency, of Jasmine Squirrel’s admission to the Teachers College, indicating that Jasmine, if nothing else, has shown evidence of academic talent.
Then it gets harder.
The inspectors sit quietly in front of their computers and attack the keyboards, only to see one computer image after another flutter past without Jasmine Squirrel’s name showing up. There are no transcripts from the Teachers College, or from any other college, either; there is no income information included in the annual tax declarations. Neither Banque Mollisan nor the Savings Banks’ Bank has any entries on a Jasmine Squirrel. According to the tax forms, she is still living at her parents’ home.
They find Squirrel again in the data registries’ vast world of ones and zeros about ten years later, after a doctor’s visit at a health clinic in Lanceheim. A similar visit to an emergency room in Tourquai is registered thirteen months after that, only two years ago. In neither case is it possible to produce the reasons why Squirrel sought help; the records are confidential. Not even a warrant will help.
However, Falcon notes out loud, the costs of the medical treatments in both cases are paid by a health insurance policy taken out by a company, Domaine d’Or Logistics.
“I have to go now,” says Anna Lynx.
She’s forgotten the time and is suddenly in a hurry. She logs off her terminal.
“According to Squirrel’s tax return from the same year, she gets no salary from Domaine d’Or Logistics,” says Falcon without even seeing Lynx get herself ready.