A Falling of Angels

By Martyn Kinsella-Jones

Ace Police interrogator and mind reader Paul Calvin is a man trying to keep his job, find kidnapped children, get some well earned rest and keep the peace with his ex-wife. Which is not easy when he has to help crack the multiple murder of child slave prostitutes. With certain unknown parties wanting you dead, and finding that the truth may well lie with an ultra libertarian organisation styling themselves 'Freemen'. He's not so sure he's on the right side any more.

'A Falling of Angels' is the second volume in the Cerberus Conspiracy series of novels. In a future when the lines between the good and bad guys are becoming increasingly blurry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312653924

Book preview

A Falling of Angels

A Falling of Angels

A Science Fiction Novel by Martyn Kinsella-Jones

The second Paul Calvin adventure in the Cerberus Conspiracy Series

Copyright:

Martyn Kinsella-Jones October 2014

First Paperback release via Lulu.com November 2014

ISBN: 978-1312-653313

First eBook released on Lulu.com November 2014

ISBN: 978-1312-65392-4

Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead and yet to be born or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover design and artwork by author August 2014.

All rights reserved © Martyn Kinsella-Jones.

http://martynkjones.com

Authors foreword:

What, yet another sci-fi psychic Detective?  Surely there's nothing new in the genre, and all the options have been thoroughly explored.  Or so says conventional wisdom.  So why write about a new one?  What is so different about Paul Calvin?

That's rather an easy question to answer.  Paul is most definitely not your run of the mill super sleuth with amazing powers of deduction and insight.  Mostly he's just an average guy with an oddball talent, who more often than not finds himself tripped up by the skeins of unthinking bureaucracy rather than bad guys. 

Living in a post-Ebola world of refugee camps, he finds himself fighting far reaching corruption whose murderous stain extends throughout the crumbling power structure of the European Union itself.  Where a complex web of corporate and political interests conspire to strip dissenters of their personal liberty, spiriting them or their children from their very homes without warrants or even the knowledge of local law enforcement.  Some would say this world is already here.

As I write about Paul, I'm painfully aware that the world he inhabits is already being created from the present day.  From the creeping loss of individual liberty due to an increasingly unaccountable State, to failure of power infrastructure and a new phase of prohibition.  All of which are forever bubbling beneath the modern day surface. 

Even the technology that resurrects my not-such-a-hero from near death has moved a significant notch closer in the last two years.  The first success in spinal nerve regeneration therapy points not only in the direction of nerve, but possibly even brain injury repair.

When I first conceived the Paul Calvin adventures in early 2003, stem cell nerve repair was only a dream.  Now the time when it is as commonplace as modern transplant technology is closer than anyone in the past few years would have thought.  If these new developments follow the timeline of Dr Christian Barnards transplant legacy, who knows what will be possible by the middle of the 21st Century?

Martyn Kinsella-Jones

Victoria BC

Canada

November 2014

One: Meanings

What is Death's true meaning?  If the halting of key human biological processes can be said to have any real reason.   What is the true significance of the cessation of the great Me?  What price entropy's victory?  An end to human electrochemical activity and tiny bundle of clenched anxieties?  An abrupt shift from the vibrant singing of alive, to most certainly and incontrovertibly not.

What remains of life when the body ceases function?  Are all that's left quantum shadows, drifting on the wind between the here and not here long after the body that sustained the Me is inoperative?   Where's the substance?  Are the dead only delusions in our dreams?  Do blessed souls truly find some everlasting Nirvana or Heaven for their conscientiousness and good deeds?   Do the less virtuous go from their tiny frightened little something back to the big dark nothing, or somewhere far, far worse?  Yeah, and why does it have to be me who always hears them?

Newly promoted Detective Sergeant Paul Calvin was pondering all these questions while holding his scene of crime team at bay with a single upraised index finger.  Pausing for thought was always a good idea while taking a first look around at newly dead victims.  Another hard to solve case in a list of dozens of case files on his desk.  From serial burglaries and street thefts through uncooperative witnesses to this one.  The freshest gangland casualty.  It carried all the hallmarks. 

A security guard had heard a shot and bustled around outside the old Ashmead Road warehouse.   At a safe distance of course.  Then waited ten minutes for all the perps to scatter before calling for police assistance.  After another half an hour, an unarmed two man response team had arrived and spent an unhappy hour keeping rats almost the size of Terriers at bay, exhausting their pepper sprays until the Coroner, Detective Sergeant Paul Calvin and his scene of crime circus could arrive.

The still oozing corpse, half her face a bloody crater, gave him his usual jolt to the stomach.  Then professional detachment took over, stepping back from the emotional edge. Staring as dispassionately as he could at the body lying face down on dusty concrete.  Female.  Mixed heritage and pale anaemic skin.  Electric pink dyed cornrow hair down the right side of the scalp, telling him she was a member of the Sandlanders.  One of the outlaw tribes who made a living, if that was what it could be called, scavenging and dealing in the SevernPort refugee area.  Twenty-five malnourished kilos wringing wet, if that.  Reddish brown blotches on inside of neck, both sides, from repeated and badly applied pressure injections.  So, a serial abuser then.  So young, but then they all are.

Entrance wound in nape of neck, execution style.  A puckered red circle ringed with speckled black powder burns and blood spots.  Now drying blood caked light brown dreadlocks and neck hair into blackened lumps.  Victim had been kneeling, blood marks and dust scrapes on knees from abrupt contact with cracked concrete warehouse floor.  Wrists roughly tied together behind her back with anonymous grey duct tape.  No visible muzzle bruising, so point blank but not contact.  Cheap but stylishly grungy denim jeans studded with chain and cheap studs, belt still fastened, so no immediate evidence of sexual assault.  Another one for the autopsy's more detailed intrusions.

Usual voiding of bowels and bladder at time of death staining the cloth.  Customary rich and foetid ammoniac stink of unwashed body.  Spray of brains and cerebrospinal fluid partially hidden in a stickily still spreading puddle of blood.  Remaining eye disturbingly wide open, dilated pupil staring emptily at the dusty ground. Cracked lips shrunk from badly bleached teeth.  Poorly made up face muddy with her last dried tears.  Just another dumb kid.

Weapon of choice looked like a medium calibre handgun or small bore shotgun from the wound.  Although he wouldn't know for certain until his forensic mavens had finished picking over this corpse for clues.

Not that old, maybe fourteen, maybe as old as sixteen, no more.  Nose and lip piercings with crude blue ink gang initiation tattoos on what was left of her face and neck.   From what he could tell, just another one of so many lost children from the travellers ghetto to the south of town.  Probably the disused Industrial Estate or 'displaced persons area' of SevernPort between Avonmouth docks and Severn Beach where Uniform only went armed or in full tactical.  A rats nest of the unwanted that made the notorious Sink look like a genteel care home for the elderly.  A place where much happened, but little got told.  Even surveillance drone cover had been withdrawn.

He could hear her tiny quantum shadow whimpering in the back of his head as it began to fade.  All she had ever been in her last seconds before the gunshot ripped through her head and took her from alive to not.  A small packet of poorly defined misery / shame / self pity about to be erased from existence.  Her fading essence couldn't even tell him her name.

Paul stared around for other clues, footprints that weren't Police issue footwear.  Cartridge casings, roach ends, injector tabs, lost jewellery.  Discarded anything that might give him a clue, a lead, anything. 

Or who the victim turned out to be.  He already had an idea who was behind the killing.  One of the local untouchables.  This was 'King' Vic s turf, and Paul knew where that particular sociopath would be at this time of day.  Holding court with his sycophants and servants down at the St Lucia club in St Pauls, a Quasi-legal drinking establishment in one of the older parts of the city.  Making sure he was seen a long way from here.  Establishing an alibi.  Not that he was ever here anyway.  Vic was a hands off kind of guy.  He had 'people'.  People who paid off favours, obtained credit, scored their daily pleasure for 'odd jobs' like this killing.

The scene of crime team watched impassively as the pilot jacket wearing Paul took a wide circle around the cooling body.  The Uniforms watching him, or more accurately what he was looking at very carefully.  All of Western Division knew about Pauls conviction rate, and the ambitious both envied and wanted to emulate him.  Although having a fifth of their brain destroyed and rebuilt might not be a price they're willing to pay.  Paul reflected idly as he picked up the fringes of their envious little thought fragments.

After a few long seconds, he stilled the anger that always rose in his soul and walked back to the scene of crime team, giving them the nod to get going.

The preliminary eCoroners report was already burning into his ePhones memory, the human Coroner reading off the remote data from the Drone feeds.  The only things that would take time was toxicology.  Everything else could be scanned remotely. 

Paul stood back to make a call.  Someone picked up almost instantly.  Jed?  He said.

Who wants him?  Paul immediately recognised the drawling, defiant tone which meant Jed had company of the 'wrong' sort.

An old mate.  Needs something good.

Cool with it.  Watcha got?  Jed's tone relaxed.  That was their code for 'I can't talk right now'.

'Kay.  Next Tuesday?  Another code.  Two hours, see you then.

Slap it.  Delivered with a chuckle.  Gang slang for 'Of course'.

Hike it.  Chill babe.  Paul said.  More code.  Safe house up in the 'burbs.  Jed knew the one.

Turning back to the waiting scene of crime crew, he said.  Okay.  All yours.  The photo drones buzzed over and began taking holographic coverage.  Already identifying the bloody little shot impacts and stray projectile fragments scattered across the stained floor, small items highlighted by low powered lasers from the little discs underside, scanned and logged ready for recovery.  Another had finished spectrographic tox scans on body fluids.  It was amazing what these little whirring discs could do. 

After the drones had finished, the orange and white band coveralled Scene of Crime team moved in to meticulously retrieve the identified samples for further analysis. 

Uniform had already flipped the one witness statement to his ePhone, for all the good it was.  No descriptions that would stand up in court, and a quick background check on the security guard flagged up a not guilty verdict on an unspecified sex offence charge.  Paul grimaced.  Even though it was probably for taking an ill advised public piss on a lads night out, there was no sense letting some gleeful defence brief chew the poor sod to bits on the witness stand.  Even if he had been found not guilty, the mere insinuation in front of a cyber jury would be enough to undermine the guards credibility.  Real evidence had to come from elsewhere.

Images flipped into his inbox, including a 3D reconstruction of the projectile.  Poorly made, crudely rifled slug.  Home made gun, then.  Another dead end.  Those things could be churned out by anyone with basic metalworking skills and enough nous to use machine tools.  Failing that, the specs might have been downloaded to a dodgy 3D replicator from the DarkNet and spun out as a cheap one off.  A favour done to pay off a drug debt.  Maybe.

No doubt the weapon in question was already rusting in pieces, sinking slowly into estuary mud.  Somewhere between here and whatever human sewer the hitters lived.  Because that's where they always lived.  Back streets, sink estates, and all the sly little corners of seen-better-times suburbia.  Killers, amoral takers of life.  The footsoldiers of gangland enforcement.

The media myth of the well heeled hit man was, at least every time he'd seen it, a myth.  The truth was that the real face of evil was a low grade banality.  The desperate or simply unscrupulous in pursuit of short term gain and a cheap fix.  Sure, there were the gang bodyguards and 'enforcers' who would happily break legs or even dispose of rivals if told, but nothing like a murder incorporated or guns for hire.  Real life ain't like the vids.  It's more complicated.

Fortunately the real hard men, and occasionally women, were few, and did more threatening than killing.  Normally another gang would pay off another by disposing of the stupid or simply unlucky.  Never outside the known and trusted inner circles.  Too many intelligence stings and undercover EuroPols to snag the unwary.

Just the gang members.  Loyalty was everything, and no-one refused or grassed on pain of exile, beatings, death, or sometimes all three.  The chief currency was favours, and whatever largesse pack leaders cared to dish out.  You could bet your life it was never credit or anything the Revenue could track.  Reputation and barter were king in the low rent district.  When you didn't have anything, favours were all you had to trade.  Everything else could be stolen.

Which is where we come in.  Even the thought wore a badge.

Two: Fallen

Two slow hours later.  Out past reliable Crime cam coverage, Paul shambled down a run down suburban street wearing a stained and badly rewaxed hooded canvas jacket, sweats and cheap imitation 'Sprinter' trainers.  He looked the part of one of the local unemployed, pounding pavement, looking for work, any work, to pay for a meal and shelter for the night.  Swinging with a feigned pigeon toed wide boy stride down a narrow, stinking walkway punctuated by broken plastic fencing, discarded and smashed bottles, dog and even human turds, he skipped through a gap in a fence under an overgrown rhododendron hedge and into an weed choked tiny back garden under a threadbare sagging rain awning.  The back door wasn't locked.

Checking the scan tagger he kept in his pocket for hidden surveillance devices, he entered the kitchen to the smell of highly illegal tobacco cigarillos.  A dark skinned figure, anonymous in similar waxed canvas jacket and sweats, hood still up, sat on the cracked and graffiti spattered kitchen counter smoking, idly swinging his feet.  Yo, bro.  His aura was mostly pale greeny blue with a shifting patch that drifted red through orange to pale yellow.  Jed was alert but confident of their safety.  A bitterly perfumed smoke ring circled out from under the hood.  Jed gave him a mischievous tombstone grin.

Hey, Jed.  Paul greeted undercover Detective Constable Jedediah Erasmus Carter.

The girl, huh?  Jed said non-committally.

Any news?

Not much.  The kid was a carrier, a runner.  Strictly small time.  One of Viktors.  Probably.  

Snuffing a runner?  Why?  That didn't make much sense, unless Vic wasn't as secure on his scabby gangland throne as he made out.

Bad news bunny.  Word is that Vic had her snuffed.  Don't know the hitters.  New guys.  White supremacists from East Brum.  Rage heads.  Bad news crazies.  The girl had handed 'King' Vic a dumpster full of bad news he hadn't wanted to hear, then talked back when he'd gotten mad at her.  So Vic had simply tasked some heavy guys with her 'disposal'.  'Rage' addicts from inside Birmingham's savage and tainted suburban sprawl.  Probably to pay off a couple of favours.  All hearsay of course, and no good as proof in court, but better than nothing. 

All the Police could do was break the links.  Disrupt the chain enough and evidence would surface.  It always did.  Whether it was usable or not was down to the lawyers.

Who was she?

Nobody.  Bad luck kid with an ego problem and poor parents.  Camp fodder.

We're all that.  Paul nodded ruefully, glancing reflectively at the graffiti scabbed wall with gaping holes where wiring and pipes had been stripped out for the copper.

Say that right.  Jed agreed.  So, what's the word?

From the top?  Paul sniffed.  No go.  Stats.  No budget.  Just another gang killing.  The higher ups didn't care, and Ben Wallace had already handed Paul the news with an apology in his eyes.  There were other, more important cases to crack.  They'd catch up with the hitters, they always did.  Eventually.  Maybe in a year or two.  Or ten. Fodder for the cold case unit.  When funding could be found.

Shit deal.  Jed sagged.  How 'bout from you?

A brick from the wall.  Another link in the chain that would eventually pull the gangland king off his soiled throne.  Cut the chain.  For a little while.  Until the next supplier moved in.

Business as usual, huh?

You got that.  Paul glanced sidelong at Jed.  Anything?

Chain of evidence?  Jed asked. 

Paul shook his head.  What was the bad news from the bunny?

Word is about some special deal.  New stuff coming.   All the heeled party kiddies want their thrills and Vic deals primo kit.  Word is, Revenue busted a shipment on a tip off and Vic had heavy cash running on it.

Shame.  Paul commiserated insincerely.  New stuff? 

Big new thrill.  Jed confirmed.

Tells me nothing.  Paul wrinkled his nose.

Implants.  Little gold pellets.  That's the gossip.  Sniff 'em up and instant party pants.  No hangover.  No guilt.  Your pleasure guaranteed.  Better than pills for any of your ills.

Shit.  Paul swore softly.  His eyes widened in annoyed surprise, half handsome features twisting into a scowl.

Rings a bell?

Big fucking Ben scale.

That's not so good.

You know that job I got involved in eighteen months ago.  In the Smoke?

The big secret thing?  Those weird political kills?

Yeah.  Implants.  Same thing.  Paul said cryptically.

What did they do?

Make people superhuman.  Make even a total psycho Rage-head look like a day old kitten.  Paul fed him the briefest details.

I missed that story.  Jed seemed startled by the news.  His eyes went wide, yellow lightning crackling soundlessly around him.

So did the press.  Oh, and you didn't hear it from me.  Official secrets.  EuroPol and SIS level only.  Do not pass on.  Paul added.

Double shit.

You got that.   Paul suppressed a nightmare shudder remembering the slight looking girl in that bare interrogation room.  How easily she'd surged out of secure K-strap restraints with murder glittering in her eyes. 

You know buddy, that sounds like super stuff.  Don't you need a serious lab and some heavy brain power to make it?  Tech like that don't come cheap or easy.  Jed remarked.

Yeah.  I'm going to talk to some people.  Wherever it's coming from, we have to shut it down, and fast.  Paul grimaced.   This was serious bad, the worst news of all.  Even if the implants simply carried highs, not mayhem, they were still only a few molecules away.  Maybe SIS hadn't 'deep stored' all those crazy Gaians like Hertford had indicated.  'Threat neutralised' my cute and furry arse.  The technology must be all over the DarkNet by now.

Met-heads?  Jed broke into his train of thought.

Paul shook his head.  Bigger friends.

Ah.  What makes you think they'll listen?

Because they owe me.  Big time. 

Jed half understood Paul's recent involvement with SIS.  He nodded guardedly.  Gotcha.

You said it.  Paul confirmed.

Hey!  Jed said softly, eyes looking upwards as a board stealthily creaked above them.  Paul reacted by half closing his eyes and letting his mind drift upwards towards the source.  Just a kid.  Paul whispered, rolling his eyes upwards until only the whites showed.  Then he opened his eyes properly again and nodded upwards.

How..  Jed said softly, his face screwed up in disbelief.  How'd he know?  Looks freaky when he does that.  Well creeps me out.

Trust me.  Paul whispered as he caught Jed's astonished thought, returning a crooked half smile, sidestepping as quietly as he could out of the tiny kitchens doorway.   Jed watched him cat foot across a gaping hole in the passage floor towards the remains of the stairs.  Catching Paul s 'keep talking' finger spin gesture, he glanced upwards again and nodded.

You got that right, bro.  Jed continued aloud as Paul stretched across two missing treads, trying to think himself silent and invisible.

As Jed monologued to keep up the distraction, ahead of him he could feel the little bundle of anxious curiosity focus on a hair thin gap between floorboards.  Another blob of anxious energy hid in the next room.  Ferals.  Runaways from a traveller camp by their foetid smell and primitive thought shapes.  They also had a dog with them, a frightened mutt, raddled with mange and half a dozen other canine ailments, owners desperate hand clamped over the poor half-starved animals muzzle to stop it barking.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Paul simply positioned himself in the doorway, leaning casually on the one side, watching their watcher with an air of affected amusement.  He stopped trying to think invisible and smiled openly at the ragged figure with one eye to the dusty cracked boarding.  Another figure looked up from the next doorway, eyes wide and startled from across the bare, dusty floor.  The dog whined and struggled.  Yellow flared and crackled across dirty brown auras.  The figure on the floor rolled expertly to its feet, the sudden gleam of a knife blade in its hand.  The gesture said threat.  The aura and trembling legs told another story.  He could smell the week old urine.

Fuckyer!  The ragged kid made to lunge.  Paul could easily see the colours of fright and indecision and didn't react.

Well, fuck you too.  He leaned casually against the door jamb and smiled back.  What you doing in my place?

S'ours!  Was the defiant comeback.

Like fuck it is.  Paul said amiably.  Mine.

We'zere fust!

My turf.  Behind him, he could feel Jed edging up the stairs.  Whose you?

The answer was sullen silence and the knife tip wavering between them.  Paul quietly wished he could do the projection thing like Megan.  Send this annoyingly defiant kid running, a nightmare on his tail, but hang on.  He craned his chin forward, opening up to the other presence.  The other, the one hiding just out of sight trying to keep the mutt quiet was sick.  Really ill.  Older sister with a broken leg, and worse.  How was she was staying conscious with that much pain? 

He kept his eyes firmly on the kid with the blade, calling over his shoulder.  Jed, call the Paramedics and get lost.  Give them my ID for callback.

No 'bulence!  The kid fearfully half shuffled a step towards him.  Knife wavering.

I'm gone.  Came Jed's reply.  Then his footsteps moved downstairs and the outside door rattled briefly.

No 'bulence!  Snapped the kid.

Paul straightened up and stared the little tyke down.  Hope he doesn't realise I'm bluffing, but so's he.   The kids aura flared fright yellow, but this time eyes and thoughts betrayed indecision.  He knew his sister was hurt, but didn't know how badly, but was determined to keep her out of the hands of 'the Soshal'.  They'd run away from, oh shit.  Paul's gorge rose as he saw the surface memories flicker with the stabbing brightness of pain, humiliation and hatred.  It must have shown in his eyes, because the tip of the knife drooped.  No Social Services.  Paul agreed with a small nod, meaning every syllable.  God alone knows how I'm going to fake that one out.  The Social are going to be buzzing around these two like flies around rotting bin bags.  Obviously physically and sexually abused.  The whole package.  Today just gets better and better.  He watched the kid standing his ground, waiting for the moment to strike.  Only I know exactly what you're thinking, you little sod, and you're not using that rusty piece of scrap on me.  Paul too stood quite still, staring the kid down, not giving any ground.  His ePhone vibrated, his earpiece auto answered.  Yo.  Not taking his eyes off the kid with the rusty blade, he