Christmas is a complete non-event in my house so I'll still be posting throughout the holidays.
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Parkthorne Avenue, Blüdhaven
It had taken him all night and he’d lost count of the number of fingers he’d had to break but Dick had finally located Two-Face’s base of operations. He was working out of Giuseppe’s meatpacking plant by Skunk Avenue. It had closed down almost seven years ago and had lain dormant ever since. Dent seemed to have amassed a small army of illegal immigrants to help him prepare Schizo within the plant. Every second that passed meant more of Dent’s filth on the streets. Dick had to act and he had to act fast. God knows how many more would die otherwise.
Dick stood in his apartment in front of the computer screen and made sure to memorize the schematic of the meatpacking plant. He couldn’t afford any nasty surprises. There was every chance the immigrants working for Dent were doing it against their wishes and Dick wanted to make sure there wasn’t any collateral damage. Once he was satisfied he hit a button and the computer dialed Hendrix on the number of the burner Grayson had given him that morning. After a few rings the old busker picked up.
“Run me through what I gotta do again, my man.”
Dick sighed.
“Exactly forty-five minutes from now you’re to call Blüdhaven Police Department and ask to be put through to a Detective Gannon Malloy in the Homicide Division. You tell him the man responsible for the two murders at Waterloo Docks is waiting for him at the old meat packing plant by Skunk Avenue. Tell him to bring backup and not to be late.”
BPD needed to apprehend Dent at the scene to link him to the drugs. There was no other way if they were going to nail him for those two vagrants over on Waterloo Docks. He might not have killed them with his own hands but the drug he had supplied them with had caused their deaths and that was as good as the same thing to Dick. Hopefully a court of law would see it the same way. At the very least Dick was sure Dent probably had twenty open warrants on him. Apprehending him would mean he’d be off the streets and in a padded cell somewhere. Everyone would be safer for that.
After a few seconds Hendrix’s voice came through. It was laced with doubt. “It sounds like you’re fixing to do something drastic, Officer Grayson, I hope you’re not planning on making me an accessory to something grievous.”
Dick laughed a little at that.
“Relax, Hendrix, I think Blüdhaven’s got enough dirty cops for one lifetime. This is all on the up and up. You have my word on that.”
Dick tapped a button on the keyboard that ended the call and shut the computer down with a swipe. He’d spent the best part of a year fighting Blockbuster and his men to no avail. The last thing he needed was Dent on his hands. If Schizo was allowed to keep growing Harvey would have a monopoly on Blüdhaven’s drug trade. It would lead to all out war on the city’s streets. Dick had to cut Dent down to size before that happened. He had to show him and anyone else with designs on Blüdhaven that the city was a no-go zone. Only then would he be able to take Blockbuster down for good.
*****
Skunk Avenue, Blüdhaven
Harvey Dent stood on a raised platform that overlooked his operation. He had at least forty people working round the clock producing Schizo and word had it that he’d have another twenty more within the night. They’d be able to increase production soon. Increased production meant increased profits, increased profits meant increased power, and increased power meant Blüdhaven would be his before long. There was just one problem. The latest shipment of nerve agent Dent used to make Schizo had been hijacked by Blockbuster’s men earlier that afternoon. If that freak had his wits about him, which Harvey had been lead to believe he did, he’d figure out for himself how to make the drug and cut into Harvey’s profits.
Knelt before Dent was the lone survivor of the team tasked with bringing the shipment off of the docks to the meatpacking plant. He was a fat man, in his forties, and he’d been with Dent’s crew for a few years. Harvey couldn’t remember his name. He could never remember their names. The man sobbed silently in the arms of two of Dent’s enforcers. Harvey flicked his silver coin up and down in his right hand as he prowled in front of the man.
“How much is he paying you?”
The fat man stared up at Dent with a bemused look. “P… P-paying me?”
“Blockbuster,” Harvey smiled. “Three of my men are dead and here you stand without a scratch on you. Am I to believe you’re so much of a specimen that you not only evaded capture but did so without so much as grazing a knee? Is that what you’re telling me here?”
“I work for you, boss, I’m… loyal to you, not that Blockbuster freak.”
Dent chuckled as he continued to pace around like a restless animal. “You can understand why I’m a little suspicious, I hope?”
“I… I can’t explain it… I guess I was lucky.”
“Luck, eh? That’s what you put it down to? I wonder if the next shipment is intercepted whether that’ll be down to another stroke of bad luck too?”
“I… I… don’t know, boss.”
“It was a rhetorical question,” Harvey sneered. “Look, this little expansion of mine is important to me, there’s a lot of money to be made in it for everyone, and I can’t put all of that at risk by choosing to take you at your word. I need to know for certain where your loyalties lie.”
Dent bent down towards the man and brandished his silver coin in front of the man’s face. One side was blackened with deep knife marks riven into it and the other was unmarked. The man stared into the ground, preferring not to make eye contact with Dent, something Harvey noticed people did more and more since his accident. The exposed flesh on the left side of his face seemed to put people ill at ease. Not that he could blame them. He turned the coin to show both sides to the man and flipped it to show him it wasn’t weighted.
“Heads you live and tails you die,” Dent said with a sadistic smile. “Does that sound fair to you?”
“W… w-what? P-please, boss, I sw…”
Dent flicked his thumb and the coin flew upwards. It had made it up to Harvey’s face when an object cut across it and sent the coin flying out of sight.
“What the…?”
Dent looked up to the plant’s roofing and there amongst the rafters stood Nightwing with a mocking smile on his face.
“You know, Harvey, you really need to think about brushing up on your interpersonal skills. If you keep going around shooting your men in the head you’re going to have a real hard time attracting work.”
Harvey's twisted, burnt face contorted with rage as he took aim at Nightwing and opened fire. With each pull of the trigger his roars grew louder and spittle ran down his chin. Nightwing pirouetted down from the rafters without breaking a sweat, undeterred by the bullets flying past his head, and as he landed in front of Dent reached for one of his Escrima sticks with a smile. Nightwing stood eerily still as Harvey fired the last of his bullets towards him. With a swipe of his stick the costumed vigilante deflected the bullet away from him and then smirked in Dent's direction.
"My turn."
Here's a question for you PoW lifers:
I've got a shit ton planned out for Britain, like twenty-twenty five posts ahead of where I'm currently at, and even though I find it helpful to have it all planned out like that I also find it stifles me a bit. For those of you that have been playing for years/since the game began, how far ahead do you plan? How do you stop yourself from feeling like you're just going through the motions?
I've got a shit ton planned out for Britain, like twenty-twenty five posts ahead of where I'm currently at, and even though I find it helpful to have it all planned out like that I also find it stifles me a bit. For those of you that have been playing for years/since the game began, how far ahead do you plan? How do you stop yourself from feeling like you're just going through the motions?
Wallington, London
Ray Newman’s head pounded and his temples dampened as he passed through into the small living room of James Oldfield’s childhood home. Newman had really tied it on last night. He’d spent most of the morning throwing up and had made little time to iron out the several sizes too small suit that clung to his body. It was a wonder he’d managed to make it to the memorial service that morning at all. Even seeing people move intensified his nausea and he stood with his back against the wall of the room to steady himself for a moment. Paul Winters nodded to him with a knowing smile from across the room. Unlike Ray he’d known when to call it a night and looked in far better shape than Newman this morning. As Ray moved to place a hand on his face he saw the form of a slight, grey-haired woman moving towards him. It was Oldfield’s mum. She placed a gentle hand on Ray’s side and smiled at him.
“Thank you for coming, Raymond. It means a lot to me.”
Alice Oldfield was young, far too young to be the mother of a dead son, and despite her grey hair there was still a youthfulness to her features. It was unnerving how much she looked like Oldfield. As far as Ray knew Oldfield’s parents had divorced when James was in his teens and his father lived off in Spain with a pretty young wife. Newman had thought he might have been here this morning. He’d thought wrong.
Ray smiled back at Alice feebly as he felt another wave of nausea sweep over him. “There’s no need to thank me. James was my partner, ma’am. It’s the least I could do in the circumstances.”
“Still, I’m sure what happened hasn’t been easy on you,” Alice said as she pushed a strand of grey hair behind her small ears. “Do you have family about you? A wife, children, things like that?”
Ray felt his cheeks redden with embarrassment and he shook his head as he stared down at the ground. “I’m afraid my wife and I separated some time ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Alice sighed. “A man should have people around him in times like these. It’s not good to be on your own. You know, James spoke of you often. He said you were a good man, Raymond, and that he learned a lot from you. You’re always welcome here. Don’t hesitate to stop by if you ever need someone to talk to or a cup of tea.”
Even through his nausea and embarrassment Newman felt his chest swell with pride at the thought Oldfield had thought him a good man. Ray wasn’t even sure whether he thought he was a good man or not. He’d lost his wife, his children wanted nothing to do with him, and he’d never seen a suspect he didn’t think he could punch the truth out of. James Oldfield had been natural police, the kind of guy the used tell stories about, over-prepared and always informed. He put Newman to shame. It was why Ray felt so guilty at the fact he was the one still left standing and not James. If Oldfield were stood in a room full of Ray’s loved ones, few and far between as they were, he’d be consoling them instead of them consoling him, he’d have found the words to make this seem alright. Yet here Ray was still steaming and sweating through his cheap suit from the night before.
Newman looked to Alice and was taken aback by the strength the mousy woman was showing. He cleared his throat and tried to put his feelings into words as best he could. “I feel like this conversation should be happening the other way around.”
“Nonsense,” Alice said with a gentle smile. “That person that pulled that trigger may have robbed my son from me but I refuse to let them take the happy memories I have of James. He was an inquisitive child, an excellent, diligent student, and a better man. If he were here he wouldn’t want me to cry or weep for him. He’d want me to keep living my life and that’s what I intend to do. What better way to get back at the people that took him from me?”
Newman stared at the picture of James Oldfield in his uniform at the front of the room. Scattered around it were flowers and other pictures of him. It mad Ray sick to his stomach that whoever had gunned James down was still walking around on the streets somewhere. They’d killed a policeman and gotten away with it. What was happening to this country that such a thing could happen? That the police, the government, that everyone wasn’t tearing the whole damn country apart looking for his killers. It was because they were coloureds. Ray knew that. Campbell was too soft on them and it trickled down into every home, every police station, and every school in the entire country.
Ray shook his head grimly as his silent vow found voice. “I’ll find the coloureds that did this, I promise you that much, and when I do I’ll make them hurt for it.”
He had expected a smile from Alice Oldfield, perhaps even a hug, but the second his sentence had left his mouth Alice’s face had contorted into a look of disgust that cut Newman to the quick.
“I am not comfortable with that word, Raymond, and neither was my son,” Alice said with a scornful shake of the head. “James did not believe in “us and them” and I won’t have you profaning his memory by speaking like that in my home. If you have any respect for what James stood for you’ll remove that word from your vernacular this second.”
Around the room heads had begun to turn in their direction and Ray could feel eyes boring into him as he took Alice’s words in. She was wrong. At least, Ray thought she was wrong. He thought back to that night in Brixton and remembered his discussion with James. A burnt out car on a council estate, probably burnt out to draw them there, and still Oldfield wouldn’t finger the coloureds until he had them bang to rights. If he’d listened to Ray and not trusted those animals to act civilly maybe he’d still be alive. Yet there was something there, a nagging thought at the back of Ray’s mind, as he thought about Oldfield. He thought highly of James. More so than he did Winters or any of his other colleagues. Maybe even more so than anyone else he’d known. How could someone right about everything else be wrong on this? What if… what if James wasn’t wrong?
Ray shook his head slightly and banished the thought from his mind as he glanced towards Alice. “I’m sorry… I spoke out of turn, I should have known better than to… I just… The person that killed James is still out there and there’s nothing I can do about it. They’ve put me on administrative leave and… I don’t know what to do with myself at the moment. I can’t remember a time before I was just… the uniform.”
After several seconds of silence Alice looked at Newman as if she could see through. At once Ray felt like she saw him, the real him, beneath all of this. She sighed sympathetically and stood against the wall with him. “Why did you become a police officer?”
“To help people.”
Alice gestured to the people around the room. “You don’t need a uniform to do that, Raymond. James helped people long before he put that uniform on and I’m certain he would have continued to long after he’d taken it off too. You can still help people.”
Given that Ray could barely look after himself the notion of his being able to help other people seemed alien to him. He looked to Oldfield’s mother tentatively as he asked. “Where do I start?”
“Why don’t you start with yourself?” Alice said with a gentle smile. “I’d hoped this service might grant the people closest to James some closure, that it might help them move on, but I can see that it’s not enough for you.”
Again it felt like Alice’s frosty blue eyes saw into him. Newman felt like they were the only two people in the room as she spoke to him in a tone so gentle, so tender that it was almost hypnotic. He was a grown man, the best part of a decade older than Alice, but he could feel her mothering him as she might have mothered James once. He wanted to be strong enough not to need her support and guidance but in truth he needed it more than anything. He felt his nausea clearing as she spoke and his shaking hands felt stilled by words.
“Go back there, Raymond, go back to where they took my son from me and make your peace. Don’t let my son’s death be in vain.”
Brixton, London
Keenan Gayle climbed the final few stairs of Moorlands Estate with Simone’s small hand clutched tightly to his. Keenan was covered in dried paint and dust from the afternoon’s work and his muscles ached but he sensed relief but a few paces away as they reached the top of the stairs. His daughter swung a lunchbox bearing a unicorn around by her side and it smacked her father’s legs with each step they took but Keenan was too tired to complain. All he wanted to do was rest. As they turned the final corner to their home Keenan stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted a portly middle-aged man in his doorway adjusting the locks on the door to their flat. He tugged his daughter behind him and approached the man cautiously whilst trying not to alert his attention.
When he was within a metre of him Gayle barked at him in a voice that forced the portly man to jump. “What the fuck’s going on?”
From beside him Simone looked up at him with disapproving eyes. “Dad.”
“Sorry,” Keenan sighed. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”
The man shouted into the flat and another man appeared. He was tall, standing six foot four at the very least, but impossibly thin. He wore a grey suit and a long black trench coat over it that reached almost halfway down his calves. His short black hair formed a quiff at the front of his head and his sharp features and inquisitorial eyes put Keenan ill at ease.
The skinny man reached for a clipboard and scanned it whilst cliking his tongue as he took in the details. “Mr. Gayle, I presume?”
Keenan nodded. “Yes, now tell me what you’re doing to my house?”
The man shook his pointed head without looking up from the clipboard. “This is not your house, Mr. Gayle, this house belongs to Lambeth Council and now that Mr. Clarke is deceased it will go to another tenant that needs it.”
It was unnerving to hear Errol referred to as Mr. Clarke. Errol had never been Mr. Clarke to Keenan or Simone, he’d never even been Mr. Clarke to his postman, he’d been “Uncle Errol” to everyone. The police had still yet to visit Keenan about Errol’s murder and he’d not heard a peep about any investigation into it. Yet here the council were trying to take their home away from them. If he wasn’t so exhausted he would have been inclined to lay hands on the man in the trench coat for his condescension.
“We need it,” Keenan mumbled as he tried to get his head around what was happening. “This is our home.”
“Was your name on the tenant’s agreement, Mr. Gayle?”
Keenan didn’t even know what a tenant’s agreement was and he was too tired to pretend. Instead he shook his head and tried to appeal to the man’s sense of fairness. “We’ve lived here for years and where I could I gave money to Errol here and there, he was like a grandfather to my daughter and a father to me. You can’t just come and take our home away from us. That’s not right.”
The tall man sighed as he placed the clipboard beneath the armpit of his trench coat and signaled to the locksmith to begin working again. “This home ceased to belong to Mr. Clarke the moment he illegally sublet the property to you, Mr. Gayle, so I’d be thankful for the time you did have in it if I were you.”
“What are you talking about?” Keenan spluttered as his eyes widened. He placed his hand in the doorway to Errol’s flat to stop the locksmith from resuming his work. “Where are we meant to live?”
The tall man frowned and placed one of his pale hands on Keenan’s arm to remove it. “Go to the housing office at the council building and they’ll place you on a waiting list for social housing. Given your daughter’s age I can’t imagine you’ll have to wait very long for a home. Six months, seven perhaps, eight or nine at the very worst.”
“This isn’t right,” Keenan said as he stood his ground. “This is our home.”
The tall man’s grip was vice-like as he pried Keenan’s arm away from the doorway with ease. Despite his slender frame there was a strength to the man that made Keenan seem like a gnat. “No, Mr. Gayle, it’s not. The sooner you get your head around that, the better for both you and your daughter, I’m afraid. As of this morning this home belongs to Lambeth Council again. Am I understood?”
He wanted to fight it. He wanted to throw down with the tall man, the locksmith, and whoever else they sent to take their home away from them but he knew this was the beginning of the end. There was no way back. The home was gone. No matter how many times he pleaded with him, no matter how he begged, the flat Errol Clarke had lived in since the day he’d arrived from Jamaica was gone. Losing his temper would only make things worse. Keenan had Simone to think about. The last thing she needed was to lose him too.
Keenan stepped back, shot his daughter an unconvincing smile, and then looked towards the council official with eyes like an open wound.
“What are we meant to do, man? Where are we meant to go? This is all we have.”
A heavy sigh escaped from the tall man’s lips and he rubbed his brow with one of his pale hands. He gestured towards the locksmith to stop working again and scribbled something on his clipboard impatiently before looking up at Keenan with a sympathetic expression that sat uncomfortable amongst his pointed features.
“Look, I’ll give you a night, okay? That should give you enough time to get your things together and find somewhere to stay for the time being. This time tomorrow I’m going to come back and I expect both you and your daughter to be long gone. Alright?”
Keenan nodded by way of thanks and the man took a glance towards the watch on his wrist. He gathered his things in silence and then moved from the doorway of Errol Clarke and Keenan Gayle’s flat. As he passed Keenan he glanced down at Simone and stopped in his tracks.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he muttered before nodding curtly and disappearing down the stairway of Moorlands Estate.
Cape Town, South Africa
Lieutenant Woolgar Donovan knelt for a moment to catch his breath. He was thirty-seven years of age and despite being in exceptional physical shape his insides were that of a man twice his age. He’d smoked heavily as a boy growing up in Sheffield. Eight generations of Donovans had worked in the steel industry in Sheffield but the Troubles had put an end to that. Woolgar was the last of them. He had taken no wife, fathered no children, and had resigned himself to that fact. If his blackened lungs didn’t kill him he was sure stepping on a mine would do. He’d volunteered for the Army at thirty-two, much older than the average volunteer, because he’d hoped in what few years he had left he’d find adventure. He’d found more adventure than he could handle in South Africa. They all had.
Donovan’s once pale white face was tanned brown and caked in dirt. His once platinum blonde hair was thick with the dirt too and looked more brown than blonde in this light. He was strong, stronger than he had any right to be given the state of his insides, and to his surprise he’d taken to leadership more naturally than he’d ever imagined he might do. His platoon looked to him for instruction at all times and did so without grumbling. Woolgar was almost ten years older than the eldest man in his platoon and at times he found it hard to relate to them. Some had wives back at home, some children, and all of them wanted to see Britain’s shores again. There were times when the Lieutenant wasn’t sure whether he did. Yet here he was helming a platoon of home-sick men, responsible each of their wellbeing, and returning them home to their families in one piece.
A familiar voice called out to Woolgar from amidst a row of shacks.
“Lieutenant.”
Nick Marsh, a young corporal from Norfolk, stood in the doorway of one of the shacks and gestured to Woolgar to take a look inside. Donovan stood up, brushed his hands clean off dust, and approached the shack whilst gesturing to the rest of his men to stay there.
The first thing Woolgar noticed as Marsh pulled the shack door aside was the stench. It almost was strong enough to knock him from his feet. Death. It was a smell he’d been familiar with even before coming to South Africa. An old man on Woolgar’s childhood road had died and been left unfound to rot in his home for weeks. When the ambulance had finally come the whole street had stunk of death for days. This was far worse than that. Whatever died inside had been able to roast in the South African sun all day long. Tears brought on by the smell trickled down Donovan’s cheeks and he wiped them away with the sleeve of his uniform. The dirt cake on them parted to reveal the pale skin beneath.
He muttered to Marsh to follow him inside and shut the door behind them. There were flies everywhere. The men covered their mouths with their sleeves and waved their hands in front of them to clear a way through until the source of the smell came into sight.
“Fuck,” Donovan muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Dangling from hooks in the corner of the shack were bodies. Their hands and feet had been cut off and the skin had been flayed from their flesh but they definitely were bodies. It was almost hard to tell from looking at them. The way they hung together made it hard to count them but Donovan made out at least six of them. From behind him Woolgar heard Marsh retching and felt the splatter of his sick splash against the back of his boots.
On the wall of the shack smeared in blood with a phrase that made Woolgar’s blood run cold.
Marsh wiped his mouth and then pointed up at it. “What is that?”
“Mulungus out.”
Marsh fought back another retch and then looked to Woolgar with a confused look. “Mulungus?”
“Whites,” Donovan muttered despondently as he prepared to call it in. “Whites out.”
The Strand, London
A nervous smile appeared on Joyce Campbell’s face as she spotted Thomas Moore waiting in the Savoy’s restaurant. He was handsome, even more than he’d been during their time at Oxford, and as well-turned out as any man Joyce had ever seen. He’d always been vain. His grey-flecked blonde hair was coifed to the side in such a way as to make him devil may care but Joyce knew better than that. Tom would have taken hours preparing for this. She imagined him stood in front of a mirror combing his hair back and forth and her smile grew somewhat. It was then that Moore spotted her and beamed in her direction as he stood up from his seat. Joyce returned his smile and approached the table timidly before taking the seat that Moore had pulled out. As she did so Moore had rested his hand familiarly on the small of her back to guide her into her seat. Once they were seated Moore poured glasses of champagne for the both of them.
“I must say, I was shocked when I received your call this afternoon. You have been less than receptive to my representations over the years.”
Tom had written Joyce more letters than she could count in the years after their tryst at Oxford. She had never returned them. They had come fewer and further between once Moore had married but on occasion they would still arrive. Once Fraser had come Prime Minister they had come to a halt. She thought of husband and the true reason she was with Thomas tonight as she gulped down a mouthful of champagne.
“Things have been very complicated, Tom. Between Fraser’s career and the children I didn’t have much time in my life for much else. Even if I did yearn for something more… There was no way I could have acted on those feelings.”
One of Moore’s eyebrows lifted with intrigued. “What changed?”
For all his vanity the Home Secretary was still a sharp, incisive man. Joyce couldn’t tell whether Moore really wanted to know or whether he was mining for information. It wasn’t enough that Joyce had agreed to meet him after all these years. He had to hear her ram the knife into Fraser’s back time and time again, to rub his adversary’s face in the mud even without his knowing, before he could be content. She took another mouthful of champagne and shrugged her shoulders.
“The children are off at boarding school and Fraser is more interested in his work than he is me. He hasn’t so much as looked in my direction in months. He’s been distant since he entered Downing Street and at first I put that down to the pressure’s that came with the job. Recently though I’ve started to wonder if… if the whole thing, everything we’ve built together, has been one big lie. If he sought me out because I was pretty and from a respectable family. If he knew even then that he’d need a piece of arm candy for him to drag with him to the top.”
Moore sneered.
“I hope you’ll forgive my saying so, Joyce, but the man is a fool. He’s always been a fool. He was a fool at Oxford and is even more of one in Downing Street. That he would have such a beauty in his life and neglect it speaks to that. You deserve better than him. You always have done.”
The Home Secretary reached across the table and laid his hand on top of Joyce’s with a smile. Joyce felt a flicker of guilt as he rubbed his thumb against the side of her hand and pulled her hand back with a coy look.
“You know I can’t leave him. The children… I couldn’t put them through that in front of the entire country.”
“You don’t need to. Fraser won’t be Prime Minister forever, Joyce. Eventually he’ll be summoned to the Palace and be given his marching orders by King William. All political careers are doomed to fail in the end. You know that better than I do. When that day comes you and the children can be free of him. You can have what you really want.”
Moore had no idea what she really wanted. He’d never had any idea what she wanted. More than anything Joyce wanted a Britain free from of all forms of tyranny and she’d do whatever it took to get that – even if that meant defiling her body and her marriage in doing so. Moore could never understand that, he came from old money and was chummy with the Palace, and if he did know he’d have turned Joyce in without a second’s thought. He was a monarchist, he’d been one since before their days at Oxford, and to him the King was Britain. Joyce had made Fraser in her image, made him everything that Moore could never be, and together they would tear the Palace down. Together they’d create the Britain they wanted.
First she needed to get through the night. Moore ordered food for the pair of them and they reminisced about their time at Oxford, spoke very briefly about Moore’s wife Daphne, before things quieted somewhat whilst they ate.
“The food is exquisite.”
“I knew you’d like it. You remember when I tried to make duck l’Orange for us all those years ago?”
“How could I forget? You burned the poor bird to cinders.”
A nostalgic smile crossed Moore’s face. “Those were good times, were they not?”
In truth Joyce could barely remember them. They felt so long ago that she had to strain to remember the months she’d spent with Moore. She had been a different person then, a girl, and sat before Moore this evening was a woman. She’d married, had children, and built a life for herself since then. She thought of them as she glanced down at her emptied plate with a despondent look. She knew what was coming, what this night was building too, and try as she might she couldn’t withstand this farce much longer.
Again Moore smiled at her from across the table. “Is something wrong?”
“Take me upstairs,” Joyce muttered as she reached across the table and placed her hand on top of his. “Take me upstairs and make me feel wanted again, Tom.”
Ray Newman’s head pounded and his temples dampened as he passed through into the small living room of James Oldfield’s childhood home. Newman had really tied it on last night. He’d spent most of the morning throwing up and had made little time to iron out the several sizes too small suit that clung to his body. It was a wonder he’d managed to make it to the memorial service that morning at all. Even seeing people move intensified his nausea and he stood with his back against the wall of the room to steady himself for a moment. Paul Winters nodded to him with a knowing smile from across the room. Unlike Ray he’d known when to call it a night and looked in far better shape than Newman this morning. As Ray moved to place a hand on his face he saw the form of a slight, grey-haired woman moving towards him. It was Oldfield’s mum. She placed a gentle hand on Ray’s side and smiled at him.
“Thank you for coming, Raymond. It means a lot to me.”
Alice Oldfield was young, far too young to be the mother of a dead son, and despite her grey hair there was still a youthfulness to her features. It was unnerving how much she looked like Oldfield. As far as Ray knew Oldfield’s parents had divorced when James was in his teens and his father lived off in Spain with a pretty young wife. Newman had thought he might have been here this morning. He’d thought wrong.
Ray smiled back at Alice feebly as he felt another wave of nausea sweep over him. “There’s no need to thank me. James was my partner, ma’am. It’s the least I could do in the circumstances.”
“Still, I’m sure what happened hasn’t been easy on you,” Alice said as she pushed a strand of grey hair behind her small ears. “Do you have family about you? A wife, children, things like that?”
Ray felt his cheeks redden with embarrassment and he shook his head as he stared down at the ground. “I’m afraid my wife and I separated some time ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Alice sighed. “A man should have people around him in times like these. It’s not good to be on your own. You know, James spoke of you often. He said you were a good man, Raymond, and that he learned a lot from you. You’re always welcome here. Don’t hesitate to stop by if you ever need someone to talk to or a cup of tea.”
Even through his nausea and embarrassment Newman felt his chest swell with pride at the thought Oldfield had thought him a good man. Ray wasn’t even sure whether he thought he was a good man or not. He’d lost his wife, his children wanted nothing to do with him, and he’d never seen a suspect he didn’t think he could punch the truth out of. James Oldfield had been natural police, the kind of guy the used tell stories about, over-prepared and always informed. He put Newman to shame. It was why Ray felt so guilty at the fact he was the one still left standing and not James. If Oldfield were stood in a room full of Ray’s loved ones, few and far between as they were, he’d be consoling them instead of them consoling him, he’d have found the words to make this seem alright. Yet here Ray was still steaming and sweating through his cheap suit from the night before.
Newman looked to Alice and was taken aback by the strength the mousy woman was showing. He cleared his throat and tried to put his feelings into words as best he could. “I feel like this conversation should be happening the other way around.”
“Nonsense,” Alice said with a gentle smile. “That person that pulled that trigger may have robbed my son from me but I refuse to let them take the happy memories I have of James. He was an inquisitive child, an excellent, diligent student, and a better man. If he were here he wouldn’t want me to cry or weep for him. He’d want me to keep living my life and that’s what I intend to do. What better way to get back at the people that took him from me?”
Newman stared at the picture of James Oldfield in his uniform at the front of the room. Scattered around it were flowers and other pictures of him. It mad Ray sick to his stomach that whoever had gunned James down was still walking around on the streets somewhere. They’d killed a policeman and gotten away with it. What was happening to this country that such a thing could happen? That the police, the government, that everyone wasn’t tearing the whole damn country apart looking for his killers. It was because they were coloureds. Ray knew that. Campbell was too soft on them and it trickled down into every home, every police station, and every school in the entire country.
Ray shook his head grimly as his silent vow found voice. “I’ll find the coloureds that did this, I promise you that much, and when I do I’ll make them hurt for it.”
He had expected a smile from Alice Oldfield, perhaps even a hug, but the second his sentence had left his mouth Alice’s face had contorted into a look of disgust that cut Newman to the quick.
“I am not comfortable with that word, Raymond, and neither was my son,” Alice said with a scornful shake of the head. “James did not believe in “us and them” and I won’t have you profaning his memory by speaking like that in my home. If you have any respect for what James stood for you’ll remove that word from your vernacular this second.”
Around the room heads had begun to turn in their direction and Ray could feel eyes boring into him as he took Alice’s words in. She was wrong. At least, Ray thought she was wrong. He thought back to that night in Brixton and remembered his discussion with James. A burnt out car on a council estate, probably burnt out to draw them there, and still Oldfield wouldn’t finger the coloureds until he had them bang to rights. If he’d listened to Ray and not trusted those animals to act civilly maybe he’d still be alive. Yet there was something there, a nagging thought at the back of Ray’s mind, as he thought about Oldfield. He thought highly of James. More so than he did Winters or any of his other colleagues. Maybe even more so than anyone else he’d known. How could someone right about everything else be wrong on this? What if… what if James wasn’t wrong?
Ray shook his head slightly and banished the thought from his mind as he glanced towards Alice. “I’m sorry… I spoke out of turn, I should have known better than to… I just… The person that killed James is still out there and there’s nothing I can do about it. They’ve put me on administrative leave and… I don’t know what to do with myself at the moment. I can’t remember a time before I was just… the uniform.”
After several seconds of silence Alice looked at Newman as if she could see through. At once Ray felt like she saw him, the real him, beneath all of this. She sighed sympathetically and stood against the wall with him. “Why did you become a police officer?”
“To help people.”
Alice gestured to the people around the room. “You don’t need a uniform to do that, Raymond. James helped people long before he put that uniform on and I’m certain he would have continued to long after he’d taken it off too. You can still help people.”
Given that Ray could barely look after himself the notion of his being able to help other people seemed alien to him. He looked to Oldfield’s mother tentatively as he asked. “Where do I start?”
“Why don’t you start with yourself?” Alice said with a gentle smile. “I’d hoped this service might grant the people closest to James some closure, that it might help them move on, but I can see that it’s not enough for you.”
Again it felt like Alice’s frosty blue eyes saw into him. Newman felt like they were the only two people in the room as she spoke to him in a tone so gentle, so tender that it was almost hypnotic. He was a grown man, the best part of a decade older than Alice, but he could feel her mothering him as she might have mothered James once. He wanted to be strong enough not to need her support and guidance but in truth he needed it more than anything. He felt his nausea clearing as she spoke and his shaking hands felt stilled by words.
“Go back there, Raymond, go back to where they took my son from me and make your peace. Don’t let my son’s death be in vain.”
*****
Brixton, London
Keenan Gayle climbed the final few stairs of Moorlands Estate with Simone’s small hand clutched tightly to his. Keenan was covered in dried paint and dust from the afternoon’s work and his muscles ached but he sensed relief but a few paces away as they reached the top of the stairs. His daughter swung a lunchbox bearing a unicorn around by her side and it smacked her father’s legs with each step they took but Keenan was too tired to complain. All he wanted to do was rest. As they turned the final corner to their home Keenan stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted a portly middle-aged man in his doorway adjusting the locks on the door to their flat. He tugged his daughter behind him and approached the man cautiously whilst trying not to alert his attention.
When he was within a metre of him Gayle barked at him in a voice that forced the portly man to jump. “What the fuck’s going on?”
From beside him Simone looked up at him with disapproving eyes. “Dad.”
“Sorry,” Keenan sighed. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”
The man shouted into the flat and another man appeared. He was tall, standing six foot four at the very least, but impossibly thin. He wore a grey suit and a long black trench coat over it that reached almost halfway down his calves. His short black hair formed a quiff at the front of his head and his sharp features and inquisitorial eyes put Keenan ill at ease.
The skinny man reached for a clipboard and scanned it whilst cliking his tongue as he took in the details. “Mr. Gayle, I presume?”
Keenan nodded. “Yes, now tell me what you’re doing to my house?”
The man shook his pointed head without looking up from the clipboard. “This is not your house, Mr. Gayle, this house belongs to Lambeth Council and now that Mr. Clarke is deceased it will go to another tenant that needs it.”
It was unnerving to hear Errol referred to as Mr. Clarke. Errol had never been Mr. Clarke to Keenan or Simone, he’d never even been Mr. Clarke to his postman, he’d been “Uncle Errol” to everyone. The police had still yet to visit Keenan about Errol’s murder and he’d not heard a peep about any investigation into it. Yet here the council were trying to take their home away from them. If he wasn’t so exhausted he would have been inclined to lay hands on the man in the trench coat for his condescension.
“We need it,” Keenan mumbled as he tried to get his head around what was happening. “This is our home.”
“Was your name on the tenant’s agreement, Mr. Gayle?”
Keenan didn’t even know what a tenant’s agreement was and he was too tired to pretend. Instead he shook his head and tried to appeal to the man’s sense of fairness. “We’ve lived here for years and where I could I gave money to Errol here and there, he was like a grandfather to my daughter and a father to me. You can’t just come and take our home away from us. That’s not right.”
The tall man sighed as he placed the clipboard beneath the armpit of his trench coat and signaled to the locksmith to begin working again. “This home ceased to belong to Mr. Clarke the moment he illegally sublet the property to you, Mr. Gayle, so I’d be thankful for the time you did have in it if I were you.”
“What are you talking about?” Keenan spluttered as his eyes widened. He placed his hand in the doorway to Errol’s flat to stop the locksmith from resuming his work. “Where are we meant to live?”
The tall man frowned and placed one of his pale hands on Keenan’s arm to remove it. “Go to the housing office at the council building and they’ll place you on a waiting list for social housing. Given your daughter’s age I can’t imagine you’ll have to wait very long for a home. Six months, seven perhaps, eight or nine at the very worst.”
“This isn’t right,” Keenan said as he stood his ground. “This is our home.”
The tall man’s grip was vice-like as he pried Keenan’s arm away from the doorway with ease. Despite his slender frame there was a strength to the man that made Keenan seem like a gnat. “No, Mr. Gayle, it’s not. The sooner you get your head around that, the better for both you and your daughter, I’m afraid. As of this morning this home belongs to Lambeth Council again. Am I understood?”
He wanted to fight it. He wanted to throw down with the tall man, the locksmith, and whoever else they sent to take their home away from them but he knew this was the beginning of the end. There was no way back. The home was gone. No matter how many times he pleaded with him, no matter how he begged, the flat Errol Clarke had lived in since the day he’d arrived from Jamaica was gone. Losing his temper would only make things worse. Keenan had Simone to think about. The last thing she needed was to lose him too.
Keenan stepped back, shot his daughter an unconvincing smile, and then looked towards the council official with eyes like an open wound.
“What are we meant to do, man? Where are we meant to go? This is all we have.”
A heavy sigh escaped from the tall man’s lips and he rubbed his brow with one of his pale hands. He gestured towards the locksmith to stop working again and scribbled something on his clipboard impatiently before looking up at Keenan with a sympathetic expression that sat uncomfortable amongst his pointed features.
“Look, I’ll give you a night, okay? That should give you enough time to get your things together and find somewhere to stay for the time being. This time tomorrow I’m going to come back and I expect both you and your daughter to be long gone. Alright?”
Keenan nodded by way of thanks and the man took a glance towards the watch on his wrist. He gathered his things in silence and then moved from the doorway of Errol Clarke and Keenan Gayle’s flat. As he passed Keenan he glanced down at Simone and stopped in his tracks.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he muttered before nodding curtly and disappearing down the stairway of Moorlands Estate.
*****
Cape Town, South Africa
Lieutenant Woolgar Donovan knelt for a moment to catch his breath. He was thirty-seven years of age and despite being in exceptional physical shape his insides were that of a man twice his age. He’d smoked heavily as a boy growing up in Sheffield. Eight generations of Donovans had worked in the steel industry in Sheffield but the Troubles had put an end to that. Woolgar was the last of them. He had taken no wife, fathered no children, and had resigned himself to that fact. If his blackened lungs didn’t kill him he was sure stepping on a mine would do. He’d volunteered for the Army at thirty-two, much older than the average volunteer, because he’d hoped in what few years he had left he’d find adventure. He’d found more adventure than he could handle in South Africa. They all had.
Donovan’s once pale white face was tanned brown and caked in dirt. His once platinum blonde hair was thick with the dirt too and looked more brown than blonde in this light. He was strong, stronger than he had any right to be given the state of his insides, and to his surprise he’d taken to leadership more naturally than he’d ever imagined he might do. His platoon looked to him for instruction at all times and did so without grumbling. Woolgar was almost ten years older than the eldest man in his platoon and at times he found it hard to relate to them. Some had wives back at home, some children, and all of them wanted to see Britain’s shores again. There were times when the Lieutenant wasn’t sure whether he did. Yet here he was helming a platoon of home-sick men, responsible each of their wellbeing, and returning them home to their families in one piece.
A familiar voice called out to Woolgar from amidst a row of shacks.
“Lieutenant.”
Nick Marsh, a young corporal from Norfolk, stood in the doorway of one of the shacks and gestured to Woolgar to take a look inside. Donovan stood up, brushed his hands clean off dust, and approached the shack whilst gesturing to the rest of his men to stay there.
The first thing Woolgar noticed as Marsh pulled the shack door aside was the stench. It almost was strong enough to knock him from his feet. Death. It was a smell he’d been familiar with even before coming to South Africa. An old man on Woolgar’s childhood road had died and been left unfound to rot in his home for weeks. When the ambulance had finally come the whole street had stunk of death for days. This was far worse than that. Whatever died inside had been able to roast in the South African sun all day long. Tears brought on by the smell trickled down Donovan’s cheeks and he wiped them away with the sleeve of his uniform. The dirt cake on them parted to reveal the pale skin beneath.
He muttered to Marsh to follow him inside and shut the door behind them. There were flies everywhere. The men covered their mouths with their sleeves and waved their hands in front of them to clear a way through until the source of the smell came into sight.
“Fuck,” Donovan muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Dangling from hooks in the corner of the shack were bodies. Their hands and feet had been cut off and the skin had been flayed from their flesh but they definitely were bodies. It was almost hard to tell from looking at them. The way they hung together made it hard to count them but Donovan made out at least six of them. From behind him Woolgar heard Marsh retching and felt the splatter of his sick splash against the back of his boots.
On the wall of the shack smeared in blood with a phrase that made Woolgar’s blood run cold.
Marsh wiped his mouth and then pointed up at it. “What is that?”
“Mulungus out.”
Marsh fought back another retch and then looked to Woolgar with a confused look. “Mulungus?”
“Whites,” Donovan muttered despondently as he prepared to call it in. “Whites out.”
*****
The Strand, London
A nervous smile appeared on Joyce Campbell’s face as she spotted Thomas Moore waiting in the Savoy’s restaurant. He was handsome, even more than he’d been during their time at Oxford, and as well-turned out as any man Joyce had ever seen. He’d always been vain. His grey-flecked blonde hair was coifed to the side in such a way as to make him devil may care but Joyce knew better than that. Tom would have taken hours preparing for this. She imagined him stood in front of a mirror combing his hair back and forth and her smile grew somewhat. It was then that Moore spotted her and beamed in her direction as he stood up from his seat. Joyce returned his smile and approached the table timidly before taking the seat that Moore had pulled out. As she did so Moore had rested his hand familiarly on the small of her back to guide her into her seat. Once they were seated Moore poured glasses of champagne for the both of them.
“I must say, I was shocked when I received your call this afternoon. You have been less than receptive to my representations over the years.”
Tom had written Joyce more letters than she could count in the years after their tryst at Oxford. She had never returned them. They had come fewer and further between once Moore had married but on occasion they would still arrive. Once Fraser had come Prime Minister they had come to a halt. She thought of husband and the true reason she was with Thomas tonight as she gulped down a mouthful of champagne.
“Things have been very complicated, Tom. Between Fraser’s career and the children I didn’t have much time in my life for much else. Even if I did yearn for something more… There was no way I could have acted on those feelings.”
One of Moore’s eyebrows lifted with intrigued. “What changed?”
For all his vanity the Home Secretary was still a sharp, incisive man. Joyce couldn’t tell whether Moore really wanted to know or whether he was mining for information. It wasn’t enough that Joyce had agreed to meet him after all these years. He had to hear her ram the knife into Fraser’s back time and time again, to rub his adversary’s face in the mud even without his knowing, before he could be content. She took another mouthful of champagne and shrugged her shoulders.
“The children are off at boarding school and Fraser is more interested in his work than he is me. He hasn’t so much as looked in my direction in months. He’s been distant since he entered Downing Street and at first I put that down to the pressure’s that came with the job. Recently though I’ve started to wonder if… if the whole thing, everything we’ve built together, has been one big lie. If he sought me out because I was pretty and from a respectable family. If he knew even then that he’d need a piece of arm candy for him to drag with him to the top.”
Moore sneered.
“I hope you’ll forgive my saying so, Joyce, but the man is a fool. He’s always been a fool. He was a fool at Oxford and is even more of one in Downing Street. That he would have such a beauty in his life and neglect it speaks to that. You deserve better than him. You always have done.”
The Home Secretary reached across the table and laid his hand on top of Joyce’s with a smile. Joyce felt a flicker of guilt as he rubbed his thumb against the side of her hand and pulled her hand back with a coy look.
“You know I can’t leave him. The children… I couldn’t put them through that in front of the entire country.”
“You don’t need to. Fraser won’t be Prime Minister forever, Joyce. Eventually he’ll be summoned to the Palace and be given his marching orders by King William. All political careers are doomed to fail in the end. You know that better than I do. When that day comes you and the children can be free of him. You can have what you really want.”
Moore had no idea what she really wanted. He’d never had any idea what she wanted. More than anything Joyce wanted a Britain free from of all forms of tyranny and she’d do whatever it took to get that – even if that meant defiling her body and her marriage in doing so. Moore could never understand that, he came from old money and was chummy with the Palace, and if he did know he’d have turned Joyce in without a second’s thought. He was a monarchist, he’d been one since before their days at Oxford, and to him the King was Britain. Joyce had made Fraser in her image, made him everything that Moore could never be, and together they would tear the Palace down. Together they’d create the Britain they wanted.
First she needed to get through the night. Moore ordered food for the pair of them and they reminisced about their time at Oxford, spoke very briefly about Moore’s wife Daphne, before things quieted somewhat whilst they ate.
“The food is exquisite.”
“I knew you’d like it. You remember when I tried to make duck l’Orange for us all those years ago?”
“How could I forget? You burned the poor bird to cinders.”
A nostalgic smile crossed Moore’s face. “Those were good times, were they not?”
In truth Joyce could barely remember them. They felt so long ago that she had to strain to remember the months she’d spent with Moore. She had been a different person then, a girl, and sat before Moore this evening was a woman. She’d married, had children, and built a life for herself since then. She thought of them as she glanced down at her emptied plate with a despondent look. She knew what was coming, what this night was building too, and try as she might she couldn’t withstand this farce much longer.
Again Moore smiled at her from across the table. “Is something wrong?”
“Take me upstairs,” Joyce muttered as she reached across the table and placed her hand on top of his. “Take me upstairs and make me feel wanted again, Tom.”
@The Kid Lantern I was just taking a look. I don't think this is for me but all the same I wish you the best of luck.
Yeah, people are just queueing up to go on adventures with Bat-Mite.
It's pretty cool that you tried to design your own. I'm usually too lazy to try even though I have Photoshop, Illustrator, and the like because I know there are probably two or three dozen logos on Google that would work as well.
Blüdhaven Police Department, Blüdhaven
Dick had spent most of the night searching for Harvey Dent. He’d listened in on police scanners, beaten on drug dealers, and even tried following Vinnie using the tracker he’d slipped on him in case he knew more than he let on. Nothing. If Dent was in Blüdhaven then he was doing a good job of keeping his head down. At least for the time being. It had troubled Dick to think that Bruce’s rogue’s gallery might be spilling over into Blüdhaven but it made sense. Bruce had taken losing Clark hard, as one might have expected, and from what Dick had heard he’d poured all of his energy into tracking Doomsday. Maybe Dent was emboldened by that, maybe not, either way Dick intended to have Harvey behind bars as soon as he could.
For the time being he would help Gannon with that double murder he caught over on Waterloo Docks as best he could without incurring Amy Rohrbach’s wrath. Dick stalked the halls of Blüdhaven Police Department in search of Gannon before heading up to Homicide. The first face he saw when he entered belonged to Detective Rohrbach. She rolled her eyes, pushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear, and then shot Detective Gannon Malloy an incredulous look.
“What is he doing here?”
“Ignore her,” Malloy muttered as he leapt from his seat to greet Dick. “She woke up on the wrong side of the bed this month.”
Dick smiled at that and followed Gannon as he lead him towards the small kitchen area in the corner of the office. Malloy fired up the coffee machine, poured out a coffee for Dick, and handed it to him.
“Have you heard back from the lab?”
Malloy snorted at that. “The lab? It’s been one day, Dick. The only people worse at their jobs around here than those humps down in the crime lab are IA. It’ll be a fortnight before we get the results back from the lab, maybe more, and that’s if somebody down there don’t accidentally misplace a sample or something. Funny how often samples go missing around this place.”
That was an understatement. Blüdhaven Police Department was famously corrupt. They made the schmucks in Gotham look like saints.
“Yeah, well, lucky for you I think I might have something for you to go on.”
Malloy’s eyes widened and Dick took an elongated gulp of coffee to draw out the detective’s anticipation. After a few seconds of pensive gulping Gannon punched Grayson in the arm out of frustration and Dick smiled mischievously.
“The residue around the victim’s mouths was from a drug called “Schizo” that’s been making the rounds. Word has it that Two-Face has decided to expand out into Blüdhaven.”
“Two-Face? Fuck, I thought we had it bad enough between Blockbuster and the Lagorio Family but if Dent has come to Blüdhaven the department’s really going to have their work cut out for them. The man’s a maniac. He should be in Arkham.”
Dick shrugged his shoulders. “Last I heard he was in Arkham.”
Grayson walked over to the sink, poured out the last few droplets of coffee, and rinsed it out before setting it down on the side. He wiped his hands on a hand towel that rested on the side and then set the towel down again.
“The drug drives people insane if they take too much, Gannon, makes them hear things, hurt themselves, and hurt the people around them.”
Dick could see the gears grinding in Gannon’s brain as he tried to take Grayson’s statement to its logical conclusions. They might have been grinding very slowly but they were grinding all the same. Finally a satisfied look appeared on the detective’s face and he nodded knowingly.
“You think they ODed on this Schizo junk and started whaling on one another until they dropped dead?”
Dick shook his head. “That would make sense if not for the lack of defence wounds. There’s nothing. No skin beneath the nails, no scratches or bite marks. I think… I think they killed themselves.”
A figure appeared in the clearing of the kitchen area. It was Captain Frank Redhorn. The captain was notorious within the BPD for being a hard-ass and from what Dick had gleaned from Gannon’s tales it was a reputation well earned. He was a heavyset man with a body like a brick wall and an immaculate crew cut.
“Grayson.”
Gannon stepped forward to defend Dick for the second time in as many days. “I can explain, Captain, Dick’s just here to h-”
“Save your excuses, Malloy, I need a word with your wunderkid anyhow,” Redhorn sneered.
*****
Redhorn’s office was adorned with pictures from his military service. Redhorn had been a Green Beret before he joined the Blüdhaven Police Department. Dick could have told you that much by the way he spoke. Grayson ran his fingers around the edges of his cap as Redhorn stared out of his window at the Blüdhaven skyline. After a few seconds he turned to face Dick and smiled at him.
“You’ve been making a lot of waves around here, Officer Grayson.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Suddenly Redhorn’s smile twisted into something more pernicious.
“Oh no, there’s no need to thank me, I don’t mean it by way of a compliment.”
“What?” Dick said with a frown. “I don’t understand.”
Redhorn let out an exasperated sigh and gestured towards the Division Room behind Dick. “How do you think it looks, Grayson, having some rookie that’s not even been on the job a year sticking his nose into my detective’s cases? Do you think that reflects well on this division? Do you think it reflects well on the ability of those detectives out there?”
Dick shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve just been trying to help, Captain Redhorn.”
A mocking laughed slipped out of Redhorn’s lips.
“You want to help? You either get your nose out of this division’s shit or you come help us out full-time.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’re a smart kid,” Redhorn muttered. The reluctance in his voice was almost tangible. “You know exactly what I’m saying.”
A broad smile appeared from Dick’s face and he stood up from his chair and offered his hand to Captain Redhorn. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me, Captain.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves here. If you’re going to come work for me there are a few hoops that need to be jumped through first. You can’t go from working a beat to catching murder cases after a year on the job. You know that, kid. That’s not the way things work around here.”
Dick retracted his hand slowly as he anticipated the words that were about to leave Redhorn’s mouth.
“Look, I’ve got a mortgage, okay? I’m not the only one. We know you’re Wayne’s boy, Grayson, there’s not a soul in the department that doesn’t know you’re Wayne’s boy. I’m guessing it wouldn’t take you too long to maybe scratch together a little offering to help expedite the process a little.”
Redhorn was a crook. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen it earlier in the captain. Maybe Dick hadn’t wanted to see it. All the talk of Redhorn being a hard-ass had made him want to believe he was one of the decent ones. The opposite was true. He was out to line his pockets. Even worse, he’d been able to fool Dick. If he could fool him, he could fool anyone, and that thought scared Grayson. He took a few steps back from the captain and shook his head in disapproval.
“That’s not what I’m about.”
A derisive snort left Redhorn’s nose. “What? You think anything in this department gets done without a few palms getting greased? It’s the way things are, kid, and it’s the way things have always been. It’s not like the movies around here. You gotta pay your way if you want something.”
The voice that left Dick’s lips was steelier the second time around. “Like I said, that’s not what I’m about.”
Redhorn threw his hands up in exasperation and then gestured towards the door of his office.
“There I was thinking you were cut out to do some real police work. I guess I must have been wrong. Get the hell out of my office, Grayson, and make sure I don’t see you skulking around these halls again.”
Ok, what did I do wrong with them then? In case it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, I'm asking with genuine interest as someone who doesn't come from a design background. I've got a layman's understanding of aspect ratios.
There are some pretty handy tools like online aspect ratio calculators that can be pretty useful.
You have to keep the ratios consistent when you resize something otherwise you end up making the picture distorted. Particularly in the text you can see that it's become distorted in the resizing. Also, it could be an idea (if you're really struggling whilst attempting to resize things) to add the text afterwards. At least then if you can't get the picture perfect the text won't be distorted.
I actually meant to replace it with a newer one I found online, but forgot clean about it when I was posting. I would have changed it eventually even if you hadn't mentioned it.
It's the aspect ratios that get me. Coming from a design background, when I see something where the aspect ratios are all wrong it makes me inconsolable with grief.
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