Managing Death Read online

  ‘I don’t remember Mr D ever getting into this sort of trouble,’ Dr Brooker says, looking at me over his glasses. Brooker’s work as Mortmax Brisbane’s physician usually means the occasional bit of stitch work, a few prescriptions and a lot of counselling. He’s very rarely in Number Four – which is what saved him during Morrigan’s Schism – but he’s available most of the time. I’ve known Dr Brooker since I can remember, before memory, in fact. He was the attending doctor at my birth. Yeah, and I get about as much sympathy from him as anyone in my family would have given me. I suppose I could take that as a compliment. I called him the ‘good Doctor Brooker’ once and got a cuff under the ear. His mood hasn’t exactly improved since.

  I grimace. ‘Mr D had been doing this a century or two before you were even born. He’d gotten the trouble out of his system.’

  ‘Nevertheless … you really need to concentrate on your job, not this messing about with guns. People always get hurt.’ He jabs a gloved finger at my foot. ‘You’re an RM. You’re not about hurting people.’

  ‘He had a gun. I had a chair, and believe me, he ended up much worse than I did. Ouch!’

  Brooker harrumphs and pulls a stitch tight. ‘Keep still. You were much better when you were unconscious. You’ll be all right. Quite frankly, I don’t know why anybody even bothered trying to shoot at you. Waste of time – you can’t be killed that way.’

  ‘Maybe they just wanted to see if they could hurt me?’

  ‘Well, they can hurt you all right.’ He smiles broadly. ‘But not as much as me if you don’t keep still.’

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘Does this look like a party to you?’ Brooker rolls his eyes and finishes his stitching with a neat knot – he’s done an awful lot of those over the years. ‘They’re waiting outside, where I told them to wait.’

  Yeah, I might be RM, but in this room Brooker is king.

  I clear my throat softly. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  Brooker looks at me. ‘Shoot. No pun intended.’

  ‘Did Mr D ever talk to you about his dreams?’

  Brooker shakes his head; I can tell he thinks the question has come out of left field. ‘Steven, I hardly ever spoke to him at all. Don’t tell me you thought otherwise. He was a peculiar man.’ Brooker squints at me. ‘To be honest, I like you much more.’

  I don’t tell him that Mr D is still very much around.

  I remember how Mr D died. Bones crunching as the SUV rolled over him. He certainly ended up in a lot of trouble. But then again for the majority of us that’s all we can expect. Time and the world are hard and grinding. Bones and flesh are soft.

  ‘Now, these dreams … ’

  I sigh. ‘They’re nightmares really. Nasty as hell nightmares.’

  ‘Everyone has bad dreams,’ Dr Brooker says. ‘Particularly in your job, and mine.’

  ‘That’s not the problem,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just that I rather like them.’ My face flushes.

  ‘How much?’

  My face is burning. ‘A lot.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He squints at me like I’m some kind of thermometer. I don’t know what sort of reading he gets but after a while he turns away. ‘Don’t get caught up with dreams. Sometimes that’s all they are.’

  We both know that isn’t true. Brooker looks worried. ‘See me in a day or two – this really isn’t my specialty. Now isn’t the best time, you’ve been through a bit of trauma. And I’m sure that hasn’t helped.’

  ‘It’ll heal,’ I say looking at my foot.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about that. The way all this happened – the way you became RM, and the betrayals you faced – none of it was good. Steve, I lost a lot of dear friends that week. You lost more than that. It takes its toll.’

  But is that really a good enough excuse for the number of times I’ve shown up at work drunk? Or just not bothered to show up at all? When you don’t sleep there’s an awful lot of time you can spend drinking, even if it’s not filling up the hole left by all that loss, and the guilt that I’m letting those nearest to me, and equally wounded, down. Which, of course, leads to more drinking. It’s how I’ve dealt with all the major dramas of my adult life.

  Home and work, everywhere I look there are gaps. Reminders of friends and family gone, snatched away by the chaos of Morrigan’s Schism. And as for the work itself, I don’t know how to lead people. Where do you learn that? Where do you pick up all the arcane and complicated tricks required in the running of a business like mine? Despite Tim’s notes there’s no manual. I have Mr D, but I don’t know what questions to ask, and he isn’t that great at answering the ones I do. I’d suspect him of being deliberately evasive, except he’s always been that way.

  And Lissa. Where do you go after what we’ve shared? Surely happiness of the forever-after sort is deserved. I’d settle for a few years of it, but there’s no prospect of that. We’ve a dark god coming.

  Suzanne’s offer is looking very attractive. Maybe it’s not too late to fix this. To be what I need to be.

  Brooker works in silence for a while, cleaning then binding the foot. ‘All done,’ he says at last. ‘You’ll need to sit on your chair for a while.’

  ‘My throne?’

  ‘Don’t start putting on airs and graces. When I was a kid we called the shitter a throne.’ He sighs. ‘But that’s the one. It’ll heal you much faster than you can on your own.’

  There’s shouting outside. It’s an achingly familiar voice, an achingly familiar heartbeat, even if it is racing. My ears prick up. Dr Brooker grins. ‘I’ll just get her for you.’

  The door flings open and nearly bowls him over. Dr Brooker doesn’t even bother calling her on it. He knows better than to get between us. She’s in her usual black get-up: a Mickey Mouse brooch on one collar of her blouse. I don’t get the appeal of Walt Disney characters – give me Bugs Bunny any day – but I’m so happy to see her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Lissa asks. She grabs me tight enough that my ribs creak.

  ‘Yeah, I am.’ I groan in her embrace. ‘Well, I think I am.’

  Brooker nods. ‘He’s fine.’ He’s already packing up his bag: good doctors are always in demand. ‘As far as I know, nothing can really hurt him, just slow him down a little.’

  ‘Define hurt. My foot’s throbbing!’

  ‘Well, the glass was part of Number Four, I’d say that’s why it hurts you so much.’ He rubs his chin thoughtfully. ‘Or it could be that your body is still getting used to what it has become. The pain may just be old habits dying hard.’

  I wish they’d die a little more easily.

  Lissa pulls back, looks at me, and winces. Oh, I’d forgotten about the ear. It starts to sting, but now no more than a scratch might. The top of the ear is already growing back.

  Tim peers through the door. Dr Brooker delivered him as well. ‘He OK, Dr Brooker?’

  ‘Nothing a bit of rest won’t fix. He’s an RM: both wounds will heal quickly, not like the rest of us idiots.’ Dr Brooker looks at me. ‘Just be careful.’

  His phone chirrups, signalling another emergency, or a game of golf. He merely looks at it, grunts, and with a curt nod, leaves the room.

  I glance over at Tim. ‘OK, we’re six hours into the working day and I’ve already been shot at. I want to know why, and I want to know now.’

  ‘I’m already on it,’ Tim says, pulling his phone out. ‘I’ll call Doug at my old department.’ Doug Anderson is a good choice. The man has more fingers in more pies than anyone we know. He took up Tim’s role as policy advisor and head of Pomp/government relations. ‘The last time this happened … ’

  Call me a pessimist, but I have a terrible certainty that this is going to be worse.

  And why’s Morrigan in my dreams again? He’s gone, and there’s no coming back for him. As Mr D said, after the knife fight of the Negotiation, Morrigan’s soul was obliterated.

  I can’t be feeling guilty about that, surely?

  9

  Seems I’m stu
ck in my office. Despite her concern, Lissa couldn’t stay long. Her hand is bandaged again, another cut, another stir. And she’s always on the hunt for potential Pomps. That’s hard work. Like Tim said, we advertise, of course, but that’s not easy either. The job titles are deliberately vague, the interview process detailed and convoluted. None of us earlier generation Pomps ever had to interview for the job. Our families had all worked for Mortmax for generations, probably since the last Schism.

  There’s just too much work to be done. People never stop dying, and there are not enough of us to make sure the transition is smooth.

  For all its healing attributes, the chair itself really isn’t that comfortable. Not enough lumbar support or something. I’d rather sit in a recliner, but no recliner I know is going to knit me back together as quickly. A fella could go mad with all this sitting, Rear Window style. I’m used to being on my feet, out and about: pomping the dead, and stalling Stirrers.

  I keep having to remind myself that that is in the past now. The first thing I can do is check on my staff. Make sure I’m not letting them down anymore.

  I close my eyes; connect with all my Pomps, the 104 people that I have working around the country. My other Pomps, my Avians – the sparrows, crows and ibis – work as good eyes but they are hard to control and their ‘process’ in stalling a stir involves a considerable amount of pecking. I find directing them gives me a migraine which makes practice somewhat unappealing. Generally they’re left pomping the spirits of animals, those big-brained enough to cage a soul.

  The window’s already repaired, and the floor has digested the broken glass. I wonder what else it might just eat. The building is self-healing; the glass had apparently grown back within a few minutes of me blacking out. Looking at it, the glass appears thicker – dark filaments line it, some sort of reinforcement, I guess. Number Four has grown paranoid.

  A familiar face pokes around the door wearing a big grin that fails to obscure the concern behind his eyes.

  ‘Don’t people knock anymore?’

  ‘What a mess,’ Alex says.

  ‘No, this is what my office usually looks like bar the blood and paper.’ I glance around; the glass has already gone. ‘In fact it looks a little neater than usual.’

  Alex is dressed in his uniform. He is a Black Sheep but, unlike Tim, I couldn’t lure him back into the fold. He lost family like the rest of us in the Schism. His father Don saved my life and Alex kept up the tradition. He got me out of town when the worst of the Schism was going down. He saved me later, too, when I came back from Hell, thinking I had failed in my Orpheus Manoeuvre, and lost Lissa. Without his help, Australia really would have sunk into a Regional Apocalypse. I feel a bit guilty that I haven’t been keeping in touch with him nearly enough. But seeing him always reminds me of Don, and my parents, and Don’s girlfriend Sam. I can’t help wondering what he thinks when he sees me. He’s my link into the Queensland Police Force. I trust him almost as much as I trust Tim.

  ‘So this is the first time this has happened?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ I glance at Alex, we’ve been through a few bad times together. He knows that I’ve been shot at before. ‘Not since October, and the Schism.’

  ‘Two months.’ He shakes his head.

  ‘Yeah, no wonder I was getting used to not being shot at.’

  ‘You’re understandably shaky.’

  ‘No, I’m pissed off. It happens whenever people start shooting at me. Bloody hell, Alex, don’t pull this shit on me. I don’t need you telling me I’m all right feeling nervous. I need to know what’s going on.’

  Alex sits down. ‘I’m more worried about this than you could believe. People shooting at you tends to lead to scary places.’ Right now, the way Alex grits his jaw brings Don back to me. I miss the old bugger. I miss them all. ‘You’ve an alarming tendency to draw trouble to you, Steven.’

  ‘I’m trying not to make it a habit.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I want to help you with this but I’ve been told explicitly that this isn’t my area. They’ve got someone else in mind. The moment Tim called for help –’

  ‘What? Tim called who?’ He was only supposed to call Doug. I guess he’s just used to thinking for me.

  ‘Me, but once he did, I had to alert my bosses. Major incidents are flagged, and someone trying to kill the current RM is a major incident, now.’ Alex sighed. ‘I know you like to sort out your disputes inhouse. But after Morrigan … Well, you know, the rules have changed.’

  ‘So who are they sending in?’

  ‘A new group, federal not state. Still police, though. I hadn’t heard about them until about an hour before I came over here.’ Alex scowls. ‘They’re called Closers. Seem to know an awful lot about you.’

  So, another government department. I’ll get Tim to do some digging.

  There’s always someone poking around here. Unofficially, of course, because the work we do at Mortmax can’t be official. Unofficially we could tell them to piss off, but unofficially they could cause a lot of trouble for us.

  ‘I hate this,’ I say. ‘Bloody governments.’

  ‘They’re not too fond of Mortmax, either. Look, the paint hasn’t even dried on this department yet. None of them will have much experience in dealing with the things that are dumped on their desks.’

  ‘So why aren’t people like you involved?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘You’re regarded as compromised? Guilt by association.’ I frown. ‘Don’t they trust you at work anymore, Alex?’

  Alex scowls. ‘If you were doing your –’

  ‘What? If we were doing our jobs properly? Is that what you’re saying?’ I look at my ruined office, the blood, the paper blown everywhere. He kind of has a point. ‘I’m not here to bend over for every government department.’

  Alex grins. ‘Not every department, mate. Just one from now on.’ His face grows more serious. ‘Steven, be careful. People aren’t over the moon with what’s happening here. I’ve been hearing things.’

  ‘You can’t be serious. Morrigan was responsible for all of it.’ I fix him as severe a stare as I can manage. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Nothing specific. Just that no one was happy to have a Regional Apocalypse at their doorstep. They’re blaming you.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with it.’ I straighten in my throne, slam my foot down on the floor and remember why I’m sitting here in the first place. Fuck, that hurts.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, Mortmax did, and you’re running the Australian branch. You’re responsible as far as people are concerned. And they don’t think you’re doing such a great job.’

  ‘If they want to have a go at running death, let them.’ My bluster is just that, though, and Alex knows it.

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be so bloody glib, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got eight stitches in my foot, and a bit of my ear is missing. Inappropriate glibness is all I have.’ We glare at each other.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  A man peers through at Alex and me. An Akubra hat obscures his features. Most people can’t pull that look off, but he manages it, somehow. It’s the broad shoulders, the skin just on the flesh side of leather. He doffs the wide-brimmed hat, scratches his head. The hair beneath is clipped to within a breath of shaved; a band of sweat rings it. Dark eyes peer at me through thickish metal-rimmed glasses. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but his heart beats slow and steady.

  ‘Can I join the party?’ he asks, and smiles warmly.

  Alex glances at me, gives me a we’ll-talk-later kind of face.

  ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ I say. ‘There’s room for everyone. Once I know just who they are.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I thought you knew I was coming. Detective Magritte Solstice,’ he says. ‘I’ll be running this investigation.’ He shakes my hand. It’s one of those firm but slightly threatening grips that suggests a lot more strength could be applied – if needed.


  ‘Can’t say I’m pleased to meet you.’

  Solstice’s laugh is warm and deep. ‘No one ever is under these situations.’ He looks over at Alex. ‘That’s all for now, Sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ I say. ‘It’s time for the grown-ups to talk.’

  Alex nods, gives me a little (and very ironic) salute and gets out of there.

  Solstice shuts the door behind him. The smile slips a little. ‘Now, to get the shit out of the way before it stinks up the room, if you have any problems you call me. I know he’s your friend, but this isn’t Alex’s specialty.’ Solstice hands me a card with his name and number on it, and a symbol of three dots making an equilateral triangle. It reminds me of the brace symbol we use to block Stirrers. ‘My group runs these investigations.’

  ‘You’re the Closers?’

  Solstice blinks at that. I’m happy to wrong-foot him a little. ‘Yeah, it’s our job to close doors that shouldn’t have been opened in the first place.’

  ‘A bit poetic, isn’t it?’

  Solstice grimaces. ‘I didn’t come up with the name. Our job is to work with organisations like yours, off the public record, of course.’

  ‘Well, off the record, what do you really think you’re doing?’

  ‘Fixing your fuck-ups.’

  ‘That’s good to know,’ I say. ‘Puts everything into context.’

  ‘All right. So where did it happen? Scene of the crime and all that.’

  ‘You’re looking at it,’ I say, waving at the room. Solstice lifts an eyebrow.

  ‘I’m sorry, but the window’s self-healing. The body’s missing, too. It went back to wherever it came from. It was a professional hit, but it didn’t work out too well for the professionals.’

  ‘At least no one was hurt.’

  ‘Much,’ I say.

  He looks at me.

  ‘No one was hurt much,’ I say.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Solstice asks. ‘You look fine to me.’

  ‘Yeah, now I do.’

  ‘Stop your complaining.’

  I frown at him.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Stop your complaining, sir.’ Solstice walks around my desk and stares at ‘The Triumph of Death’. It was Mr D’s particular obsession: death at war with life, a vast wave of skeletons breaking over the world. Mr D said he found it soothing. I don’t know about that, but it is something. ‘Isn’t this a bit much?’