They had arranged their flat just as Gemma liked, backed by the consultation of a famous feng shui influencer, who they could tag to their home like a brand label. The tall breakfast bar Gemma had added by her own hands, allowing the gleaming kitchen to become its own space. In the lounge area, a corner sofa surrounded a coffee table of walnut - an excruciatingly rare material. Award-winning books were usually stacked neatly on it, but today they’d been meddled with, spread about casually as if without effort.
Gemma emptied her pockets into a porcelain bowl. The TV hear the tinkle and turned on. Lights dimmed in response. She frowned at the book pile - ruined by her fiancé - and rearranged them in a square pile ordered by size. A bottle of white - a crisp and acidic Sancerre - caught her attention. She had been saving it for a special occasion. After admitting today wasn’t a special occasion, she filled a glass up.
She sipped, enjoyed the warm hit to her throat, and exhaled. The debrief would have gone better if Luis had kept his temper in check. Now Morgan had sent them both to the naughty step. Gemma was thankful. She needed time for the Abbas tragedy settle; for reason to calm impulsivity.
“Wine on a work night?” her fiancé’s voice, floating from behind, “aren’t you supposed to be at war or something?”
Gemma narrowed her eyes at the figure propped against the bedroom door - a woman still wearing the statement-covered getup students wore to be ‘individuals’. Scarlett was on her PhD - as privileged as anything - but still found time for campaigns and protests, ever keen to feel angry on other people’s behalf. Gemma insisted nobody listened. And where Gemma needed her cropped hair neat for work, Scarlett saturated hers with garish dye and messed it with wax, though always exposing the childish jade eyes that made her look more innocent than she was.
She went to kiss Gemma, denied her at the last moment, and snatched the wine away.
“I had three homicides to deal with - well two and a half… not sure it’s online yet,” Gemma poured a second glass, “Luis kicked off at the boss so we’ve been dismissed.”
Scarlett fell on the sofa, downed the wine and messed up the book pile again. Gemma perched on the sofa’s edge and sniffed the air with suspicion. It smelt of red meat; a legal but frowned-upon luxury.
“All legit! Don’t panic!” Scarlett smirked, “we had one of those Chinese court-men talk to us about ‘forging a career in the empire’. It was reary boring. He did hand out some of that good Jinhua ham though. At least his concubine did; I assume that’s what she was.”
Gemma tutted and turned her attention to the TV. Pundits fretted about General Bryon’s declaration, reaching for every angle of fear they could stoke up for clicks. Panic buying was the current shit-stir.
Scarlett rolled her eyes.
“Must you have that on? I haven’t seen you for days!”
“Ah come on… We’ll be at war any minute and I’ll be camera fodder. All you’ll have to do is occupy a tent somewhere…” Gemma reclined back and frizzed Scarlett’s hair, “I’m not staying anyway. Once the boss leaves I’m heading back to the station.”
“Will you be safe?” Scarlett pulled her backwards into an embrace. Gemma wriggled into her.
“I don’t think our region is worth much to anyone but I’ve fought worse odds. So have you.”
“True. But let’s have an evening together for once. I'm worried one of these nights will be our last.”
Gemma grinned and pushed her away with a finger.
“Go and get changed.”
Scarlett rolled off the sofa with a groan. Gemma watched the TV streams from her peripheral vision and stared at the ceiling.
She loved Scarlett, and their shared history needed to be appreciated. It brought them affection and stability that a shrinking minority could enjoy. Despite the work it took to maintain a relationship, it was an easy preference over the hookup clubs designed to supplant them.
On days like today though she did wish Scarlett could be serious, even if irreverence was how she coped. Luis, meanwhile, was as irate as ever. Such was the curse of expecting justice in a job like theirs. Gemma made demands of herself. Luis, beneath his jaded disguise, expected decency from others. He was a great partner, but he needed to accept worse losses were coming. Sometimes the good guys lost.
She considered staying at home. A rare night with her lover, who so expertly distracted her in hard times. Yet, so many arguments against: the republic on the brink, the call to arms at any moment, the opportunities for competent climbers. The most likely place for her was Westminster, defending a parliament she didn’t care for, effectively unarmed, as the Chinese embassy watched from Buckingham Palace with machine guns on their laps.
She found herself at a rare point where she didn’t know what to do, and rubbed her eyes.
Scarlett called her to the bedroom.
“Oh! You saved some for me then,” Gemma stepped around the bed as if admiring an art exhibit. The smell of smoked meat lured her closer.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“If work found out about this I’d suspended.”
“Good,” Scarlett turned the bedroom lights red, “keep worrying about that while you get down to it.”
She pulled the doubting detective in, wrapping her legs around Gemma’s head to snare her, “and I could leak it online... the pervert police detective with a meat fetish, and right after strawgate... But you’d let me off like always, wouldn’t you?”
Gemma thought about work - the nightmares she’d witnessed today, and the storm approaching.
She decided to pretend she couldn’t get away, and did what Scarlett wanted.
* * *
“...so she looks at the drugs, then at me, and goes ‘tell me what I need to pay to get out of this’.”
“Aw yea? How much did you charge her this time?”
The constable lifted their fingers up in a ‘v’ and stuck their tongue through it. The officers roared with laughter and applause. They were in the control room, lost without orders and loitering between rows of terminals. A sprawl of wall monitors fed them views of the city.
“Poor girl! If it was your minge on offer I’d have taken prison,” Sergeant Webb shook his head and sighed, “bet it smelt like low tide…”
The constable sniffed deeply, “Laak Grimsbeh Docks Sergeant.”
More bellicose laughter. Beer bottles chinked. All too loud for them to hear the detective opening his door.
“Officers.”
That icy, disappointed rasp. It needled their spirits in an heartbeat. Luis stood over them, arms crossed.
“We’ve had tough times lately, and we each handle it our own way but I swear, if I find evidence you’ve sexually assaulted someone I’m sticking you in a violation club, and you’re not coming out until your hips are broken. Do you disapprove?”
The constable looked to their sergeant for the rescue. Webb looked at the floor. Luis pulled himself forward and paced around them; a shark circling a wounded straggler.
“Poor little policemen. Stuck with the one detective who just can’t stop putting principles first. I’m not having you hiding in here when R-B attacks, you’d look more dignified dying outside. So put the fucking alcohol down and watch the perimeter!”
The officers jumped from their chairs and scattered. Luis raised his coffee cup to their backs as they wrestled through the exit.
Alone at last. He spun around on a chair and glanced over the wall monitors. Most of their forces were on deployment, loafing about near potential revolution buildings. Southwark itself apparently merited no attention. He could only agree.
He swigged his foul coffee, forcing it down to stay awake. Kendi Estate refused to leave him alone. He was supposed to be able to cut corners in this job, but not all corners it seemed. Another lie of privatisation. Another thing he couldn’t fight. Two-tier policing, rich and poor, had claimed two more.
War would be called soon. He thought about Gemma. He trusted her to put duty first, if only for her own reasons, but nobody read people like he did. The ones who kept cool for too long didn’t just break, they detonated. What would set her off? Scarlett?
He scoffed and returned to the office, a room arranged to Gemma’s constipated middle-class tastes. He let it slide most of the time. She had however returned her obnoxious plant to the shelf over his chair, right where it could brush against him when he moved. He shut it in the filing cabinet and wished for it to finally die.
News bulletins ticked along the desk. He rested his effects on it - trilby, phone, digital aviators, pretentious platinum taser etched with lion and dragon. Since no one was around, he lay his vape out too. White noise washed through his phone in an attempt to calm him down.
His chest ached. Two innocents had been lost and he should have saved them. Instead he was here, trapped in this worthless system.
The alarm. Not the brazen R-B warning call, but one rapid and strained. The control room went berserk. Luis’s heart leapt up and carried him with it.
Opus Veda were out. Nearby. And yet no siren? He radioed the officers outside, smugly informing them terrorists were prowling this very district.
The alarm cut out, mid-flow as if forced. A message pinged on every terminal. A video. He tapped it open and saw the beaked mask. The doctor leered at him. Across two black eyes, burning bodies flapped like tattered flags.
Luis swiped his effects off the table, sending them flying into the wall, and hammered his fists down.
“You thieving cunt!”.
* * *
Above ground few heard the siren. For anyone on the tube, it wailed from every angle. For the Goldsmiths squatting the abandoned Jubilee line, it deafened. They scraped at walls for hiding places as Opus Veda turned their home into an underworld. Terrorists emerged, glaring with misshapen eyes, baying with ear-splitting shrieks, and overran them. With nowhere to run the vagrants bunched together, and the pack shrunk one mortal life at a time. Blades hacked at the crowd’s edge. Electric barbs tore parts of them away.
A jet of gas knocked the last of them out. When they came too, they found themselves tied up in a line, arranged like dominoes, with their leader at the end.
Spotlights illuminated the night’s lesson. Goldie squinted through his jewelled balaclava. Pacing before him he found the terrorist who had killed Rajesh Tomar - an event he had cheered on. Now he was the target, and like those before him, he never imagined he would be next.
The captors poured out cans of petrol. Goldie replayed his life. A young man with big dreams, who lived for the stage and took a chance on a career he was too lowbrow for. He had worn masks for audiences as Opus Veda did today, until he was undone by desire. He had followed his Muse’s every online move, late into each night, igniting as their conversations became intimate. Intimacy rewarded him with jealousy, and he pushed too hard. The lover’s messages went cold as lover’s messages did. All that remained of those evenings glued to his phone were screenshots, as theatre became poverty, poverty became substances, and substances became the streets.
The camera rolled. Fire took the first vagrant; the second scrabbled to break free and was slashed at the ankles before they could. Goldie waited, and remembered the day desperation took him over another line he promised to never cross.
He had taken three children, tagged by the secretive accomplices of a powerful buyer. Goldie had convinced himself the youths would be better off for it. All it took was the chance of another hit for the lie to hold.
Then the revolution had stuck their noses in, and when his delusional followers demanded revenge, the danger of losing their support led him to target one of the escapees. The boy, who he could most easily reach for.
He saw the last of his followers burn in the Veda’s bruised eyes. The flames turned on him last. Peace came over him, and he took them.