Chapter Text
You- You said that you would get out of the bath two hours ago. You didn't say it to anyone in particular; your apartment is a sad and solitary place, and you are used to being alone here.
EMPATHY- Well. Not alone, exactly.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- You said it to us. You promised you’d be quick.
ENDURANCE- You said you were done with this girly shit.
You- But even though the water has cooled significantly since you got in and your fingers are puckered and waterlogged, you make no move to get out.
PERCEPTION- The bath bubbles have deflated enough now that you can see yourself in the blue-green tinged water. Your absolute regret of a body. Skin ruddied by booze, stretched tightly over the swelling of a fat-and-carb rich diet, sagging where your muscle mass has dwindled somewhat from disuse. It doesn't matter; you’re still a big guy. Strong. You were just even stronger before. Your belly, a hairy little island, poking out of the ocean. Your feet and your ankles are covered with the remainder of the white foam, sticking out at the tap end. Your arms have stark white goose pimples.
ENDURANCE- It’s really fucking cold now, Harry.
You- You can’t bring yourself to get out of the water now though. The bath bomb you used this time was blue on the outside and filled with fine gold glitter on the inside. It smells like lemon, patchouli and something herbal. The label on the bag says rosemary. When you first dropped it in, it mingled with the steam and the smell was so strong it made your eyes sting. It’s mellowed out now to something brighter and sweet and fresh.
DRAMA- There are little pieces of golden microglitter sticking to every inch of your pale and bloated flesh. Like you’re trying to turn yourself into an aquatic disco ball.
CONCEPTUALISATION- This is your home now. This is where you live. In the bath tub.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- You really need to head back to the gym. You’re getting so soft.
VOLITION- This is good for you, you know. Being on your own. Being kind to yourself. Being soft, as Coach puts it. It soothes the… furies.
You- Lying in the lukewarm water, you look up at the ceiling.
Chlorophytum Comosum ‘Vittatum’- You have a plant now, hanging in a macrame holder from a hook in the ceiling. It is called a spider plant. It has a true name, too, but you don’t remember it. You threw away the label. It is dying, maybe, just a little bit. It was dying when you bought it. You saw it sitting in the market place and felt bad for it so you bought it home like a stray. It has pale stripes on its leaves, green and yellow, but the tips are turning brown and wrinkled. It needs water; water and TLC. You think it is doing better under your care, but it is hard to tell.
CONCEPTUALISATION- It feels good to take care of something.
You- The sun was still up when you got in the bath, but the light from outside is slowly fading now, turning everything to grey. Whenever a car goes past on the street outside it paints its soft orange headlights over your walls and the square block of light from the window illuminates your face. It is soothing.
SHIVERS- The gentle acknowledgement of life beyond your own. People going home, going out. People existing; these beautiful crawling things all with rich and wonderful lives of their own. A million miracles. Twenty million, across the whole city.
INLAND EMPIRE- A woman, a mother, sat in the front seat of a beat up MC, something old and cheap to run. The kids in the back seat screaming at each other. The woman looking hassled, hair packed up in an unruly bun on top of her head and eyes beetling across her face frantically at the speeding traffic passing by. Waiting at a junction to pull out onto the motorway and get home, ready to be done with this awful day. The stream of vehicles is relentless. The younger kid, gap toothed and wailing, takes off their shoe to hurl it at their sibling. The older kid pulls an expression of stoic resilience and hurls it back. An ordinary life unravelling.
EMPATHY- She deserves a bubble bath too.
You- You dunk your head under the water. It is blissfully quiet in here. The sounds of cars passing by and the chatter of the radio milleaus from your downstairs neighbour’s kitchen are dulled down to a soft buzzing. Your head is quiet too, for a moment.
ENDURANCE- You should come up for air now.
You- It’s been a hell of a day. You’ve managed to close a case, not a complex one, but it was brutal and it’s really wormed its way into your brain. You nearly threw up just looking at the crime scene photos. A brother who murdered his younger sister for her share of their inheritance. He was a keen fisherman. The murder involved fish hooks, and braided line. So thin it cut through her skin like razor wire. It makes you dizzy- the extent of human cruelty when faced with money.
INLAND EMPIRE- She’d put plasters on his knees when he grazed them as a kid. She’d yelled at the neighbour for picking on him. She’d looked after him and he’d loved her. He’d loved her and loved her until he couldn’t keep himself afloat anymore and then she’d become an obstacle instead. She lay in the shallow water and bloated up, just like you’re doing now. She lay there for hours, days, in one of the many run-offs of the Esperance. The cold water kept her preserved a little longer than it should have done. Adipocere, waxy and grey, formed quicker over her skin than it would on land. Pale face wrapped with wire, skin full of water and starting to peel where the wire dug in, eyes bugged out like white jelly oysters. She swarmed with sea lice.
PAIN THRESHOLD- It makes your stomach turn again. The smell of salt and acrid death. The sound of the gulls wheeling overhead.
ENDURANCE- You really should come up for air.
HALF-LIGHT- If people do that to someone they love, imagine what they’d do to someone unlovable. Imagine what they’d do to you.
PAIN THRESHOLD- You feel your lung crunch with pain as you surface and heave in a deep breath. All the smoking has taken a toll. Your lung capacity is shit.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- You’d crushed down the desire to punch the perp in the face when you arrested him. The violence is in you, like the dermal papillae in your skin, like the foundations of your fingerprints.
EMPATHY- You’ve taken to visiting the library after work some nights, when it gets harder to live with the constant audio clutter. The library is quiet, two floors of dull grey carpet and yellow oak shelves. The walls are papered with primitive drawings from the kid’s holiday club. It isn’t very disco and they don’t like it much when you talk to yourself but they let you take books for free and they have a decent selection on politics. You’ve been reading about pacifism lately, in an uncomfortably low-slung chair by one of the upstairs windows, late into the night.
SHIVERS- The library is one of the city’s many unsynchronised hearts. Beating out of time.
ENCYCLOPEDIA- Pacifism, as a movement, is not a popular one. At least not in Revachol. The selection of available books is small but well formed. You read Tolkachyov first, a pre-revolutionary writer who argues that violence is woven into the fabric of society; conscription, taxation, surveillance. All of these constitute a legitimate threat of governmental violence. To uphold the law of that society, to serve the police force is inherently violent in and of itself.
RHETORIC- But how does he expect these violent systems to be removed, exactly? Violence cannot be eradicated with gentle conversation. If he refuses to see the need for the Mazovian Sausage Grinder then he is anti-revolutionary, an unwitting tool of capital.
ENCYCLOPEDIA- He is a conversational rambler, diving into discussions on peace ethology amongst city birds, their avian territorial conflicts, then leaping to talk about the innate nature of humans versus the cultivated nature that society instils in us. He is a Dolorian through and through, insistent that with true adherence to the teachings of the Dolorian church war and violence could be eradicated overnight. Love is a foil to violence. Love conquers all. He is an idealist.
EMPATHY- But so are you, Harry. Your mind longs for a world without violence.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- Your body wouldn’t know what to do with itself. It’s all muscle memory.
ESPRIT DE CORPS- It is not unusual for officers to struggle with maintaining appropriate levels of control over violent impulses. A pitfall of the job. Trauma splashes blood inside your eyelids, makes you see red all the time.
EMPATHY- It helps that you’re trying to be better, though. Self-soothing.
You really are trying. You arrested the miserable fuck without throwing a punch, even when he resisted. You threw up on your way home, replaying the crime scene over and over in your mind. Turning it over, stirring it up like a bowl of salty fleshy soup. Like the boot soup back in Martinaise.
INLAND EMPIRE- The briefest taste flashes on your tongue. Rot. Flesh. Vinegar.
PAIN THRESHOLD- You cannot think about that. Don’t do it, Harry. You were very sick back then.
HALF-LIGHT- The taste of death tinged with mental illness. It’s in you, now, forever.
You were sick by the video rental place on Becklow Street, one of the fancier commercial districts in Jamrock, opposite the hairdressers and the greengrocer. Then again a few doors down, leaning sweatily against a lamp post. It was a busy day and you didn’t eat anything until you got home. Nothing was really coming up except bile; toxic yellow on black tarmac. That was when it caught your eye. A pink-and-blue storefront, a few doors down from your vomiting post, painted freshly in a graffiti-esque style like it was trying a little too hard to be funky. A waft of something nice-smelling. Sweet and green, like an artificially recreated plant. It reminded you of Kim and his fastidious cleaning routine. A good smell. The window display was full of soaps and shampoo and bottled fragrances.
PERCEPTION- The golden glitter swirls in the water when you move your hand. It’s hypnotically lovely. A small pleasure.
Desperate to get the smell of rot and peeling skin out of your nostrils, you’d headed inside and began smelling everything you could get your hands on. The shop girl had greeted you with the endless patience of one who has already dealt with numerous lunatics in the last few hours of their shift. A placating smile, tense shoulders. She was blonde with red lipstick and neat black heels. Pretty. Not so young that you felt creepy finding her attractive. Can I help you find anything, sir? And your immediate answer- I need something to cleanse my filthy soul- didn’t help at all. Well, she said dubiously. People quite like the bath bombs. They’re the most popular thing at the moment. And she’d taken you over to a table laden with baskets. Each basket was brimming with these things, these crumbling colourful orbs. So many different scents, all clambering on top of each other to be smelled. Purple lavender and white-pink rose with real petals embedded in it. Soft yellow chamomile. Bergamot. Neroli. Half of these things you didn’t even recognise. Which are your favourites? You asked, too overwhelmed to choose, and then bought every one that she recommended. Patchouli. Orange. Vanilla.
LOGIC- Pricier than you would have liked, but you’re considering it a medical expense. It costs less to buy small luxuries than it does to have a full scale breakdown again.
Then, on impulse, you picked one out for yourself. A bright green one, something nearly grassy about it. It smelt deliciously familiar. Pine, maybe. This one is important , you thought, as the shop girl rang you up with impressive speed. A round green egg lying in the palm of your hand. The girl wrapped them all in brown paper for you and put sticky labels on them. She gave you a tired nod when you thanked her and turned to leave.
You went home and peeled off your clothes the moment you made it through the door. Suddenly discomfitingly aware of how gross they were; smelling of death and fish. You made yourself a triple-decker sandwich, cheese, ham, lettuce, tomato and a fried egg on top.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- Everything you eat has to have a fine film of tasty grease over it, or does it even count?
You crammed the food down too fast and made yourself choke a little, and then you ran yourself a bath and locked yourself in there. Dropped in the first bath bomb you drew out of the bag. Blue on the outside, light and dark, kind of swirled together in a pretty pattern. After a moment of fizzing and bubbling, the gold glitter poured out like a dragon’s treasure trove. You could watch it for hours, the way it swirls in the deep blue water.
RHETORIC- You have inadvertently chosen to bathe in royalist colours tonight. You will have to find one in communist colours too. Red and black. For balance.
DRAMA- Enough thinking. Enough politics. This is meant to be relaxing, my liege, even with the cooling water.
Kim keeps telling you that you need to relax. You’re jittery at the moment, always shaking a little like a nervous dog. Checking the exits. Your dreams have been worse the last few weeks and you can tell it’s visible on your face because you keep catching Kim looking at you with his brows drawn together in concern. It’s just been brutal case after brutal case lately, with no breathing space between, and you can tell he’s feeling it too. Clearing his throat more. Chewing at the inside of his lip. He is still excruciatingly patient with you, which makes you want to scream and commit acts of violence on yourself. There is something about his brand of kindness that drives you mad; it is calm and unwavering and so utterly beyond what you deserve that you don’t know how to process it. Sometimes he brings you a mug of tea from the break room. Not because he’s made one for himself and made you one as an afterthought like Jean would, or because he’s put something in it as a prank like Torson but just because he thinks you’d like one . You wish he wouldn’t. You wish he would spit in it, just to keep it a little bit mean.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- Oh. Oh, yes, you really do.
AUTHORITY- No the fuck you don’t. Don’t be disgusting.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- But you are disgusting, Harry-baby.
EMPATHY- It is hard for you to accept that you deserve kindness. Gentle acts of service make you feel deeply uncomfortable.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- It also doesn’t help that the idea of Lieutenant Kitsuragi getting mean gets you… interested. In a totally selfish and non self-flagellating way.
VOLITION- Stop it. You’re meant to be relaxing and enjoying the light floral fragrance in the air. Not torturing yourself over thoughts of coworkers who find you distinctly unappealing.
EMPATHY- But Kim isn’t just a coworker, is he?
DRAMA- He’s the centre of the universe.
The lukewarm water laps against your chin.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- This is overindulgent. Feminine behaviour.
EMPATHY- This is you taking care of yourself and your body. Not stinking is great. It benefits you and the people around you. This is you practising self love.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- Self love , you say?
Your hand wanders experimentally down your body. Through the grim wet forest of your chest hair. Over your mountainous belly. Your hand is on a quest, on a full-on Wirral campaign, to journey over the delta of your hip to reach your-
ENDURANCE- Yeah, no. Not happening. It’s fucking freezing in here. Sorry.
PAIN THRESHOLD- You really should get out. It’s been two and a half hours. Your teeth have begun to chatter.
You haul your great bulk out of the water with a huff and a groan. The cold bites into your sides immediately. It’s spring now, or at least it’s meant to be. The sun is setting later and later, the days brighter, but the damn cold never shifts.
SHIVERS- It’s always a little too cold in Revachol.
Your towel is threadbare and too small for you to wrap it all the way around you, but it’s better than nothing. You towel yourself off and throw on a t-shirt and scruffy grey jogging bottoms, curling into your bed. It is a double, but you’ve made it into a single by piling unfolded laundry on to the other side. You keep meaning to fold it and put it away but… there’s something intimidating about an empty double bed. A portent. It just reeks of loneliness to you, more so than anything else about your sad and empty apartment, heralding the return of Those Dreams again. At least the ones you have at the moment are just grotesque bodies of murder victims staring at you accusatorially. You’d take those over dreams of the apricot-scented menace any day.
You- Go to sleep.
It is peaceful. For now.
There is already another murder case on your desk when you arrive at work the next morning. You are thirty minutes early, a symptom of how terrified you are of upsetting Jean still. You’d been late once, in all your time since coming back, because of a MC crash on your bus route. Jean had yelled at you in front of the whole precinct while you tried to garble out your explanations and turned red. Jabbing his pointy finger in your chest, eyebrows drawn and voice thunderous. Everyone watching on in embarrassed silence. Later he had left a box of Astras on your desk as a silent apology.
EMPATHY- He’d assumed that you’d relapsed.
HALF-LIGHT: He always assumes the worst of you. Wants his chance to gloat.
INLAND EMPIRE- Sat at his desk watching the clock crawl forward and no sign of you. So, what’ll it be, Harrier? Which bar are you slumped outside of this morning? Which Jamrock alleyway is going to be your grave? You hauled him up the ranks in the RCM with you, always dragging him behind, and now that you're not pulling anymore he doesn't know what to do. He's defensive. Angry and bitter.
AUTHORITY: He can't talk to you the way he does. It's not right; you're his superior.
EMPATHY: You've been doing so well. It's not fair that he still always assumes the worst.
LOGIC: Not like he ever went to your apartment, either, that was always Judit. Pushing the door open against the tide of overdue mail and empty bottles or cans.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You see him, sometimes, looking at you funny. He wants the old you back, the fun you, the one who partied and solved cases like you were throwing back shots.
LOGIC: And how many of those cases solved were accurate, if you were closing them in that state? How many innocents behind bars because you were too fucked up to see something crucial.
INLAND EMPIRE- Argument after argument. He always caved eventually, always believed in your super-detecting ability. You wore him down. You dragged him into the blender with you and watched the pair of you spiral.
VOLITION: No. That's not true. Your memories are fragile and easily reshaped by external pressure but he was- is- just as much of a cop as you. You didn't drag him anywhere. He followed you. You took the burden for the both of you, the pressure, the strain, so that he could follow mostly unscathed. It didn't work though, and now he hates you for it.
EMPATHY- You feel awful about it, even so. Even more so, you are scared that you will do the same thing to Kim.
Neither of you mentioned it, after that. He’d tried to be more generous. More optimistic about your intentions. You see it all unfold whenever you do something unconventional, a visual journey across his face. Jaw tensing. Vein in his forehead jumping. For fucks sake, what’s he done this time? The suspicion makes your skin feel too tight against your body.
You open the folder on the desk.
A brown manilla envelope with a few sheets of paper inside. A transcript of the phone call. A basic description from the junior officers who went down to secure the crime scene.
A funky fresh corpse, found in the upstairs offices of a restaurant on Becklow Street, on your route home from work, and you narrow your eyes. A few doors down from the shop from yesterday. Death touches everything in this city. Can’t keep its grubby fingers to itself. The body was found, smelling of piss and alcohol, when the workers tried to cash out at the end of their shift and couldn’t get into the office to put the money in the safe. Door locked from the inside. One of them kicked the door down- impressive strength for a civilian. They found him- Remy Labrant- sitting there at the desk. Glasses on. A paring knife in his ribs and a santoku knife sunk deep in his shoulder.
INLAND EMPIRE- A sad lonely man on a sad lonely night.
HALF-LIGHT- The knife sliding inside him felt like bliss.
You are lost in your thoughts. You don’t even notice that the Lieutenant has come in through the big double doors of the precinct until you feel his voice at your ear, low and private even though the office is abandoned this early. He is standing close so that he can look over your shoulder and examine the file in your hands, but he glances askance at your face.
KIM KITSURAGI- “Good morning, Detective,” he says. “There is glitter in your beard.”
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- He’s challenging your masculinity, kid!
EMPATHY- No he isn’t. Don’t be a meathead. His tone is light, observational. He noticed your frown from half an office away and he wants to smooth it away.
ESPRIT DE CORPS- Lieutenant Kitsuragi lay for hours last night on his ruched up white sheets, sweating and staring at the ceiling, seeing the bloated wire-wrapped body of your last case every time he tried to close his eyes. His dreams are often lucid, another place where he refuses to lose control. He is worried about you.
SUGGESTION- Maintain an air of mystery. Of cool. Don’t tell him why there’s glitter in your beard.
“Morning, Kim,” you say and lean back in your chair so that you can look at him properly. He’s smiling, not trying to hide it. You’re the only two in the office this morning. Kim always comes in early. It’s the other half of your own reason for coming in early; you like this moment of privacy with him. This intimate little slice of your day. You are together a lot; you are partners after all. But you are not alone together so often. Kim maintains his veneer of professionalism at all other times. This is the only time of day where he won’t hide his smiles from you. You miss it all day when he brings his hand up to his mouth or feigns a cough. His tear-drop shaped eyes crinkle at the edges, the corners of his mouth turn up. “Got a new case.”
KIM KITSURAGI- “Hmm,” he says, plucking the envelope off the desk and pawing through the few sheets of information. “Think it’ll prove to be interesting?”
“Not likely,” you say. A pause. “It’s weird. I stopped off in the shop next door yesterday on my way home from work.”
KIM KITSURAGI- He frowns slightly, nodding. “That is… weird,” he says. “A coincidence.”
SHIVERS- Perhaps it is something to do with your preternatural senses, your tingling awareness of the city’s lifeblood. You sensed a case about to happen and were drawn to it. Like a moth, dirty brown and bedraggled.
CONCEPTUALISATION- Mothman. Revachol’s resident superhero. Superstar cop by day and murder-detector by night.
LOGIC- More likely, though, it is just a game of chance. Murders have happened on every single square inch of Revacholian ground. It stands to reason that one of those murders would cross your path eventually.
KIM KITSURAGI- He leans across to flick a little hexagonal fleck of glitter off your nose, and pauses, a frown puckering his forehead. “You smell… different,” he says, confused.
PERCEPTION- Lemon, patchouli, rosemary. A little bit of sweat because you jogged a little bit this morning to make it on to the tram.
EMPATHY- He doesn’t like it. His nose wrinkles a little bit, subtly. He prefers the usual fog of smoke and sweat.
LOGIC- Weirdo.
“I’m striving towards wellness,” you say, parroting the self help book that the library girl had added to your check-out pile without asking you if you wanted it. “Practising self care.” A few trashy detective novels, a dense book on communist theory, your Tolkachyovian book of pacifism and a book with a garish pink and blue cover. Your Body is Your Home , the title reads. How to live amongst the ruins .
RHETORIC- A uniquely capitalist problem. Wring out all meaning from life except the accumulation of capital, and then sell people books about coexisting with your trauma to make them feel like they’re getting better. A placebo. A nice little book of neatly folded platitudes to fortify you against the brutality of existence.
KIM KITSURAGI- “Self care?” he says questioningly. “Is that the new Oranjese psychobabble thing?”
You have read the slim pink volume all the way through twice since you borrowed it. The writer, Suzie Lamont, is cheerily obsessed with the abstract and idealised chalice of wellness. It is your duty, your role in life, to be well. It brings peace and prosperity. Wellness promises everything. Suzie describes unhealthy patterns of circular thinking, catastrophizing, and how they interrupt your daily workflow. Ruin your productivity. It stirs something in you. Makes you wonder how much time you’ve wasted thinking when you could have been working instead. You know this feeling well. You are very prone to ruminating. Her idea of wellness involves shutting down these thoughts, redirecting them into something productive instead. You have tried this, over and over again, until the attempt to redirect thoughts became the circular thought instead. It makes you feel like there is something missing in your brain. If it doesn’t work for you, it must be because there’s something wrong with you. But,well. You already knew that , right? And if there’s something wrong with you then you’ll never reach the pinnacle of wellness. You’ll be broken and unproductive, unprosperous and unpeaceful, forever.
HALF-LIGHT- Broken and unpeaceful. Sounds about right.
RHETORIC- Unprosperous. Unproductive. You’re seeing the problem here, Harry, right? Please tell me you’re seeing the problem. Framing your worth around your productivity, it’s dangerous, it’s-
EMPATHY- But there was one concept from the book that you liked. Self care. It made you think of taking care of a child. Structure and routine. Time for the important, the real-world worries, and time for being gentle with yourself too. It feels alien to you, the concept of being kind to your shambling corpse of a body. It feels decadent.
RHETORIC- It revolts you. You’re blindering yourself.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- It feels good, but not too good. Like a ration. Your daily dose of dopamine, metered out carefully.
It’s why you stopped to buy those bath bombs yesterday. Keen to get the smell of corpse soup out of your nose.
KIM KITSURAGI- He is looking at you oddly. This is not unusual; you spend most of your professional life being given odd looks by Kim. “Are you alright, detective? You’re zoning out again.”
“Better than I’ve been in a long while,” you say. It’s almost true. Maybe the wellness woman is right. The thinking doesn’t do anything but maybe the bath bombs are working.
KIM KITSURAGI- He huffs a laugh and hands you back the folder. Right, he thinks. Another thought project. “Shall we head over and take a look at the crime scene, Officer?”
You nod. Time to work.
You head over to the crime scene; Kim driving and you in the back seat. You like it this way. It means that you can stare at the little patch of skin visible at the back of his neck, the nub of bone visible in his spine, and he can’t do anything to stop you looking. It’s like a crack in a turtle’s shell, a sliver of vulnerability.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- You want to lick it.
VOLITION- The problem is, the lieutenant has already assured you that your attentions are not welcome. Understandably. But you keep on fixating, incapable of turning from your course once you’re set. You’re a gross old pervert and he is lithe and young and beautiful.
LOGIC- He’s only a year younger than you.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- He’s a skinny binoclard, balding, with serious intimacy issues.
EMPATHY- You’re idealising him.
INLAND EMPIRE- The third day in Martinaise. You’ve just spoken to Isobel, the old lady in the fishing village, and secured yourself free accommodations. You’ve spent the last eight hours on a Kim-based thought project. You can’t stop thinking about his little hidden smile. You’re drunk, the last time you’ll ever be drunk (you hope), and you’re trying and failing to be charming. Why not save yourself 20 real and a trek home in the snow? Stay here with me? And he genuinely considers it. Leaning back against the wooden board wall, smoking his one-a-day cigarette. God, he’s so cool.
HALF-LIGHT- So obviously you have to ruin it.
PAIN THRESHOLD- Let’s end the memory now, shall we? It’s only going to hurt.
INLAND EMPIRE- In the cinema of your memory, you lean across and stare at him intensely like some kind of weird sequence killer. You pin him with your drunken, clumsy hands; one on the wooden clapboard at each side of his head. You breathe your foul commodore red breath at him. He doesn’t flinch, just raises an eyebrow. What are you doing, detective? It is a challenge. So you kiss him. It is sloppy and disgusting, flavoured with rancid wine and the thick body-smell of your three-day-old clothing. He is surprised by your sudden onslaught- you can feel it in the tension of his body where your chests are touching- but he stills his reaction, forces his hands down to his side. His lips are pressed together firmly and you lick and suck at the seam, trying to coax them apart. He doesn’t pull away. He just goes stone-still. Like kissing a piece of art, an unmoving marble bust of some far-off Innocence. Somehow that feels worse than if he had jumped back and slapped you. When you give up and draw back, his lips are slick with your saliva and your own lips burn a little from the rub of his stubble. Are you done? He asks. Let’s just try and keep this professional, right? His jaw is clenched. Grinding his teeth. He is excellent at repressing his anger; you expect fireworks, to finally break his composure, to see the cracks across his perfectly smooth expression, but instead he just looks at you. Piercing eyes and mouth flattened. He wipes your slobber off his lips with a handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket. A carefully blank expression. I will meet you here tomorrow morning, he says, his voice clipped. Try to be sober.
VOLITION- So you tried. And you were. You are.
EMPATHY- This is why his kindness bites so hard.
HALF-LIGHT- You don’t deserve it. You’re a miserable old letcher, lighting yourself up on the memory of a non-consensual drunken kiss from over a year ago. It’s impressive you even remember it at all given the various substances coursing around in your body. He probably blocks the memory out, tries to forget it on purpose with that same rigid control that he exerts over everything else in his life.
EMPATHY- The lieutenant has some germaphobic tendencies under certain circumstances. You wouldn’t be surprised if he was bothered by the disgusting ghost of your wet mouth on him. The scrape of your unbrushed teeth.
VOLITION- God, Harry, you are utterly foul. I tried my best. But it’s what you are.
KIM KITSURAGI- The Kineema bumps suddenly against the curb and you feel the jolt send you flying forward. Kim is parking the MC half-on half-off the pavement. You have arrived outside the restaurant.
The restaurant is a small place, maybe eight tables inside and two more outside. It has a bold colour scheme, all blue and black and white. The sign above the door reads “Bianchi’s”. The ashtrays on the tables outside are overflowing with cigarette butts, making your fingers twitch for a smoke. It’s early morning still and the bin bags are laid out on the curb waiting to be taken. You itch to search through them, but it’s a little early for that.
A little bell rings when you open the door.
AnarchoWaitress- “Sorry, we’re closed-” a girl calls from behind the counter. A waitress, based on the little apron and neat black shirt. She has dark skin and a puffy bun of perfect ringlets. Yesterday’s makeup is smeared messily on her cheeks and she is leaning over as if she is too tired to stand up straight. There is a little pin on her collar, a red and black stylised spade. “Oh. Good morning, Officers.”
ENCYCLOPEDIA- The pin is an anarchist symbol. It makes reference to the Agriculturists, a group of Suresnian farmers who rebelled against Enclosure Laws put forth by the royal powers that prohibited public use of common lands. Lawns had become the fashion, gorgeous green expanses of chamomile or thyme so that when the ladies walked over it their heels crushed the herbs and released the delicate scent. A monoculture, subsuming everything else in its wake. The commons where peasant-folk had grazed their animals or grown some communal crops were seized and fenced off. The Agriculturists, with their spades and their seeds, had defied the landlords, defied the laws. No law shall govern us but the laws of nature. They had swarmed over the fences to sow the lands and bring practical use back to these ornamental spaces. It had ended in tears, of course, and blood. But modern day anarchists often use the spade symbol as a respectful nod to these long-gone forefathers.
It takes you a moment to adjust your eyes to the low light inside. There are dark blue curtains pulled down over the big windows, and it tints everything with an odd blue light. Makes everything look like it’s underwater. Sat around the room are several people; a younger girl, waifish and pale, with dark blonde hair that comes down to her waist in a thick plait; a bald man with broad shoulders and a broader stomach, in chef’s gear; a short older Seolite woman with her hair up in a net; a young RCM patrol officer in full blue uniform, who jumps to his feet when you come in and gives you a salute. You see Kim stifle a smile from the corner of your eye. He always enjoys these little displays of his authority. Everyone else eyes you with naked curiosity. An undercurrent of suspicion, too, maybe.
KIM KITSURAGI- “At ease, Officer,” he says with a nod. “You’re Patrol Officer Ilves, right?”
P.O. ILVES- He nods eagerly. “Yes, sir. I’ve secured the crime scene and kept everyone downstairs while we waited for you to arrive.”
You- “You’ve been here since the call came in?”
P.O. ILVES- “Yes, sir.” He turns to you. His gaze is adoring. He’s fresh meat, too idealistic and hopeful, not yet ground down by the relentless murder machine that is Jamrock. You have to bite your tongue to stop yourself immediately recommending that he transfer to a new precinct. “First on the scene, sir.”
You- “Good job,” you say, just to be nice, and turn your attention to Kim. “So, what’s first? Body or witnesses?”
KIM KITSURAGI- “I would like to gather witness statements,” he says thoughtfully. “The body will still be there when we’re done. But I imagine that these people would like to get home. They have been here for several hours now.”
You turn your gaze back to the gathered witnesses. They look drained, running on fumes. The call came in at about 3 this morning, you remember. They must have been waiting since then. “Right,” you say, turning to everyone and raising your voice a little. “Morning all. I’m Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor Harry Du Bois and this is my partner, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi. We’re going to need to ask you all a few questions.”
KIM KITSURAGI- He settles beside you, into his usual position. Notebook in left hand, blue retractable ball-point pen in the other. He has recently shaved; you can see a little bit of razor burn on his jaw. His eyes are narrow, focused, behind those ridiculously thick lenses.
VOLITION- Stop looking at him.
EMPATHY- You can’t. You’re a moth and he’s your flame.
AnarchoWaitress- “What do you need to know?” You’re relieved that she’s talking so that you don’t have to. She’s taking the lead. Everyone else’s eyes naturally fall to her. She is not technically the superior of the group, but she has that innate air of authority around her that makes people defer to her anyway.
You- “Let’s start with names first,” you say.
Violet, the AnarchoWaitress- She gestures to herself. “Violet. Waitress.” She points to the big guy. “This is Tiny, the chef-” She points to the Wirral-esque girl. “-and this is Mae. Also a waitress.” She waves towards the older lady last, who inclines her head in a polite silent greeting. “And this is Binna. Our manager.”
You- “Which one of you was it who found the body?”
Violet, the AnarchoWaitress- “We were together. Me and Binna. Mae came up when she heard me scream. Tiny was in the kitchen cleaning up. He didn’t hear anything.” Her voice is soft, smooth.
DRAMA- Too smooth. She has said all of this before. It sounds rehearsed.
EMPATHY- She already gave her story to Officer Ilves. She sounds like she’s repeating herself because she is.
You- “So you all knew the murder victim?”
Violet, the AnarchoWaitress- “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “He was the guy pulling the strings. The investor. He gave Binna the money to open the restaurant in the first place. For a cut, of course. He used to come by and check over our books, make sure we weren’t fucking him out of profits.”
You- Hmm. “You don’t sound overly fond of him.”
Violet, the AnarchoWaitress- The shutters go down on her eyes. She schools her face into a neutral expression. “I didn’t really know him well enough to have an opinion.”
Tiny- His huge shoulders shift. It is an announcement; he is about to speak. “He was quiet,”he says. He speaks slowly, carefully weighing each word choice before it leaves his mouth. “Kept to himself.”
DRAMA- He tells the truth, sire. A very exacted truth.
KIM KITSURAGI- He tilts his head. He’s spotted something; his eyes are on Mae. You can see the gears turning in his head, the mechanical way that he processes his thoughts. Every idea that the lieutenant has, he strips it down and reassembles it like it’s a part on the Kineema. His eyes flick over to you, briefly.
You- “And you’re all the staff that was working today?”
Violet, the AnarchoWaitress- “No. Darrien was here earlier, but he left before close.”
You- “And Darrien is…?”
Violet, the AnarchoWaitress- “The busboy. He’s not here now.”
You- “Right.” She is not exactly unfriendly, not exactly confrontational, but there is something territorial in the slant of her shoulders.
ESPRIT DE CORPS- She is unhappy about the RCM’s intrusion into her workplace. Her space . This is normal. Even outside of Martinaise, nobody likes the cops.
EMPATHY- No, that’s not quite it. She called you in. She wanted help. But now you’re here she’s on the defensive.
You- “You’re the one who made the call, right?” You ask. She nods shortly. “You don’t seem happy to see us.”
Violet, the AnarchoWaitress- “I’m not particularly happy that someone’s been murdered in my workplace, no.”
You- Hm. Change tack. “And you said on the phone that he was locked inside the office, right? Who else has a key?”
Binna, the Manager- She frowns. “I do. That’s it. But I couldn’t unlock the door because he left the key in the lock from the other side. Couldn’t get the key in. And we started freaking out a bit when he wasn’t responding. That’s when we knew something was up. That’s why we had to break down the door.”
DRAMA- She’s not lying, exactly, sire, but she’s not truthing either.
LOGIC- What even is there to lie about in that statement? It all seems entirely reasonable.
You- “And who did the door-breaking?”
Quiet Mae- There is a soft sound from the table that the elfin girl is sat at. She raises her hand, just a little.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- Now that is very surprising. The girl is tiny. Arms like spaghetti. You doubt that she could muster the force to break down a piece of paper, let alone a thick wooden door.
PERCEPTION- Actually, there is a definite layer of definition to her muscles. A core of strength running through her. It is entirely possible.
EMPATHY- Perhaps under circumstances of extreme stress?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- It’s like Kim. Skinny to look at, but he’s got excellent core strength under that bomber jacket. He could probably take you, if you didn’t fight back too much.
EMPATHY- But Kim would never want to physically fight you.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY- Who said anything about fight?
You- You turn your attention to Binna. “As the manager, you would have worked with Mr Labrant the closest, right?”
Binna, the Manager- She inclines her head slightly. “Sure,” she says. “When I had to.” She is not inclined to say anything more.
You- “What did you think of him?”
Binna, the Manager- “Not much. He was fine. Rich. Got a bit paranoid about not being given his share of the profits. Obviously I never cheated him, so he had no reason to be. But he would come and check the books every now and then. Never found a single mistake.” She is quietly proud about that. She likes to believe that she is a fundamentally honest woman.
You- “Know anything about his personal life?”
Binna, the Manager- A long pause. Then, “No.”
INLAND EMPIRE- These people are giving you nothing. They are closing ranks against an oncoming tide that they do not understand.
KIM KITSURAGI- He is not watching the witnesses. He is watching you as you ask your questions. You feel oddly self conscious, like you’re being examined through a magnifying glass.
You- You rattle off the rest of your questions and try not to seem like you’re distracted. Nothing useful is gleaned. You’re intimately familiar with this kind of response by now, communities instinctively clamming up around you. This is a knot that could take days to untangle.
KIM KITSURAGI- He glances at you. All done? You nod imperceptibly. It’s effortless now, these wordless conversations the pair of you have. It feels nice. The predictability. You can read him, now, better than most people. He’s still resistant to your attempts to can-open him. But you are both part of the same machine. “Right,” he says to the room at large. “Thank you for your patience.” He glances to Ilves. “Could you get everyone sorted with station call slips so that we can take official statements back at the precinct, please?” The immediate salute that he receives makes the tips of his ears flush. He turns to you. “Let’s go check out the body.”