Chapter 20 : Murder at Sea

The habitat seemed absurdly hot and noisy after a day in Crystal’s cabin. The noise bounced around inside his head and made it hard to concentrate. At least here though, Crystal would be safe, and that was one less thing for Jack to worry about. After dropping her and her luggage off in his cell, Jack went on to the more salubrious SSS building.

“There is something you can help me with, Jack”, Tom said.

“We’ve had an incident on one of Scooter’s boats”. Jack was looking though some photos in the SSS notebook Tom had given him, they were gory, one guy had almost been decapitated. “The death of five men in some unusual circumstances. Read the findings before you go. And one other thing. Your co-pilot Hugo is up there. He may be involved too. Bring him in.“

Jack did not inquire as to whether Triple-S staffers might have taken the assignment. This might be a test to check that he was up to the job. So he just got on with it, that luxury villa in the green belt never far from his mind.

An unmarked SSS boat sped across a choppy sea, its engine spinning frantically, occasionally rising above the waves and flying for a few gut-churning seconds. The two agents onboard kept quiet, one at the helm, one looking inscrutably at the wash behind and keeping an eye on Jack, who sat reading from his new notebook. There was a lot to digest in Tom’s report. The scene of the crime was a boat just like this one, a Triple-S Type 32 patrol vessel, the only vessel anyone could acquire out here. For civilian use, it had a smaller engine and had been stripped of the usual surveillance equipment, with the exception of a wide-angled camera in the cabin. That gave a good view though, looking over the pilot and the controls back towards the stern, covering almost the whole upper deck. In the last minute of footage from the boat, all the crew were in shot. Four men worked at the rear, hauling up kelp and sliding it down into the hold. They were enjoying their last moments, laughing loud, breathing deep the sea air, with no shadow of doubt on their young faces. The pilot, unmistakebly, was Trax, busy at the controls as he edged the vessel through the underwater forest. He left the cabin and went out of shot towards the bow. Then it all started. The camera shook, there was the sound of smashing glass and the cabin was strewn with fragments of the windshield. Four fishermen turned around and for a moment they seemed confused. The killer then moved into view, wearing a long black raincoat, his back kept to the camera, swinging a kelp-cutter furiously. He was deadly accurate with it. The neck of the first victim was cut wide open and he collapsed onto the deck. The other three reached for their cutters but were forced to the bow in a defensive group by a slashing attack at their faces and arms. Two adopted a foetal position and were killed by blows to the back of the neck that severed their spinal chords. The last man crawled across the deck and tried to slide overboard under the ropes. The killer buried the cutter in the middle of his back and used it to haul him liked a speared fish into the hold. Then for a moment the murderer turned to the camera, his face hidden by the raincoat, a pair of eyes just visible in deep shadow. He moved out of shot, and again came the sound of broken glass, the camera spun and there the ship’s log ended.

Jack moved on to the rest of Tom’s report. Trax, the pilot, was found with his carotid artery severed, his head dangling over the side of the boat. After examining the wound Tom concluded that the murder weapon was the same cutter, but there were important differences as well. The incision was slow and precise, almost surgical, where the other victims were struck hard and deep. Tom’s finding was that Trax was the killer. He had cut his own throat, and the murder weapon dropped into the sea as he bled to death.

Jack was in a dark mood as the SSS delivered him to the mooring in Scooter’s cove. If Tom was right, this violent insanity might afflict others in the colony. If he was wrong and Trax was framed, then the killer was still at large. Either way, Jack now feared for his own safety on Greenshoot; but there was a more urgent problem for him to deal with. Hugo was shouting down at him from the cliff top.

“Jack ! Help me ! Shit !”

Hugo sounded hysterical, and Jack dashed up the path wondering what might be happening now. He waved for attention towards the triple-S agents, but they had already turned the boat and were heading back to the habitat as fast as they had come.

“Please ! It wasn’t me, I’m telling you it wasn’t me !”

Hugo, terrified, looked over the cliff, where below a jagged formation of rocks was beaten by the churning sea. One of Scooter’s pals held Hugo’s arms from behind and pushed him closer to the edge, toying with him. Jack made a quick assessment of the situation. He saw Scooter looking mean. Then there were five young, fit men that he didn’t know. The guy holding Hugo had a big, mad smile on his face; the others, though, looked uneasy. Jack reckoned he could floor a couple of them, and probably take the rest over the cliff with him - not the outcome he wanted. He decided to try diffusing the situation instead.

“I want to talk to you about Trax,” he said looking directly at Hugo’s tormentor.

“Yeah, well you ask him about that”, the young man said, throwing Hugo to the ground at Jack’s feet.

“I’m Jack Buffalo.”

“Well, you can call me Harris.”

Jack walked past Hugo, who showed no inclination to get up, and slowly approached Harris. The others turned away and left Jack and Harris to talk, and the group of angry men on that windy clifftop seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

“Did you know Trax well ?”, Jack asked.

“Of course I did. He was a fucking great guy. You know, I would have been with them if I‘d got here a few minutes earlier yesterday. I went on the second boat instead.” Harris choked up. “If he did that, if he cut the other guys up … someone was controlling him, that was insurgency. That was fucking insurgency!”

Harris’s tears made him look younger, the tears and the streaky blond hair that blew constantly around his big bony face.

“We were coming back into the cove, and we saw them drifting towards the rocks and we pulled alongside, we lashed the boats together, we tried to save them. There was so much blood, they were …they were still alive, still bleeding.“

“There wasn’t anything you could have done to save them”, Jack said.

“I prayed for them”, Harris said. “My folks were church-going people, you know. I used to laugh at that, we’d make fun of the preacher, we’d sneak into the church and mess things up. Then when I left home I forgot all about that religious stuff, I never gave it a second thought. But before I go out in the boat again, I need to put my faith in something. We’ve got terrorists here now, Jack. They’re out there, somewhere.” For a moment Harris turned to the sea and he seemed to be asking it a question.

It came as no surprise to Jack, that the men here assumed the insurgency was responsible. Not so long ago they were living on Earth, and there was a lot of killing there. A separatist group that wanted to make the news had to compete with a dozen other disasters for public attention, so they would try some novel act of depravity, guaranteed to generate revulsion and fascination and draw in the audience. But in this small colony such an atrocity hardly seemed necessary, and to Jack it seemed wholly out of place. Yet he had no better explanation to offer.

“Scooter found that little guy Hugo watching from behind a tree”, Harris said. “We know who he is.”

“What do you know about Hugo ?”, Jack asked.

“That he’s one of them.” “Where did you hear that, Harris ?”

“Scooter’s close to the Triple-S. They know about Hugo but they can’t prove anything. So they released him for observation. He was controlling Trax, I reckon, but we don‘t know how exactly. Scooter says he saw something on Hugo’s phone, like a body scan of Trax with buttons and stuff. But Hugo smashed the phone on the ground. We can’t prove that now.”

“Jack !”, Hugo shouted.

Jack looked round to see Hugo being bundled towards the compound. This time it was Scooter, gripping him by the neck. Jack chased them up the hill, but two of the fishermen grabbed Jack’s arms and held him back, as Scooter rammed Hugo face-first against a stone wall.

“Who are you working for ?”, Scooter roared. “What do you want with us, you little shit ?” He got hold of the middle finger of Hugo’s right hand and pulled it up to the back of his neck. “Who … are you … working for ?”

Hugo let out a high-pitched cry. He tried to say something but was unable to catch his breath.

Scooter repeated the question again and again, each time contorting Hugo further. His finger, bent back at an odd angle, looked to be out of its socket.

Jack wrestled to get free of the two men holding him, but they proved stronger than he expected. Soon Jack was breathing heavily and weakening. He could do nothing to help Hugo now.

“I’ve only just started with you”, Scooter shouted. “You’d better come up with some answers or I’ll fucking take you apart. You little …”

“All right … I’ll tell you … I’ll tell you … everything”, Hugo said between gasps of air. Suddenly released, Hugo fell to the ground, and shaped his whole body protectively around the broken finger. He looked up at Scooter with red, watering eyes. “I’m a member of the Milk Drinkers. The American Separatists. I gather information for Monty Griffin. That’s all. And I don’t know anything about your fucking boat.” Hugo, still cradling his hand, kicked out at Scooter’s shins.

At last the two fishermen let Jack go, and he strode up the grassy slope, his eyes fixed on Scooter, who took a few paces back.

“You’re with the Triple-S now”, Scooter growled at Jack. “What are you going to do about the Drinkers ?”

“We already know about them”, Jack lied. “They’re not the issue here. We’re investigating biological contamination as the source of the behavioral problems.”

“Bullshit !”, Scooter shouted. “This is a fucking paradise. We‘ve got everything here. Don‘t tell us we‘re contaminated ! You‘re trying to destroy us aren‘t you, you want to shut the colony down to save money. That‘s all. I know you, you fucking …”

Scooter kicked the wall in frustration. Hugo flinched and crawled to a safer distance.

“The medics are working on something”, Jack replied. He was making it all up, but his story had a grain of truth - he really did suspect a biological agent, and he certainly didn’t think Hugo was capable of mass murder. For once, Scooter seemed to doubt himself. His head dropped, and he was reluctant to look either at Jack or at his crew, who started to talk conspiratorially just out of earshot. At last they all drifted away, back to one of their huts, leaving Jack and Hugo alone. Jack knelt down and took a look at Hugo’s dislocated finger. Jack was no expert in this field, but memories of the Fleet’s battlefield training course were coming back to him. Before Hugo had time to argue, Jack held his wrist in one hand, and with the other took a firm grip on Hugo’s finger and pushed it back hard into its socket. Jack looked anxiously for a reaction from Hugo, who looked stunned but made no sound. Hugo bravely tried to get up, but he seemed unsteady on his feet.

Jack decided to make a call to the SSS, who, rather unfairly he thought, had left him to deal with this mess on his own. Perhaps this was their test of initiative for new recruits. “Busy” was the text on his communicator. He tried dialing the triple-S crisis number instead. A few seconds later a call came in, and it was Cyrus Colon. “Sorry Jack, we’ve got a situation developing here. I have noone else available.” Cyrus promptly terminated the call before Jack could enquire further. Jack packed the communicator away and looked out to sea, to the far grey horizon, as if that might have some answers. He shook his head and sighed quietly to himself.

Then, from somewhere in a cluster of wooden huts on the higher ground behind, he heard Scooter shouting again. Perhaps Scooter had realized he had been bluffing. The next encounter with Scooter might end badly, Jack thought, and roughly he pulled Hugo up and led him off around the cove. Surprisingly, Hugo proved quick on his feet, as if his survival instinct had finally kicked in. By the time Scooter and his crew got back to the cliffs, Jack and Hugo were safely on the other side of the water.

“What I said about Monty … the separatists … I was making that up of course. I had to say something. I mean, he was going crazy.”

“That was information obtained under torture”, Jack pointed out. “Not admissible in a court of law. But still of interest to the Triple-S.”

“But Jack … your not going to talk to them are you ?”

“I just signed up with them. I’m a RIP.”

Hugo stopped in his tracks and looked back, as if caught between two terrors; being unmasked as an enemy of the state; or being thrown off that cliff by Scooter. Perhaps, Jack thought, an honorable man might choose the cliff. But Hugo clenched his teeth and pressed on towards the habitat.

Jack was here to get the truth out of Hugo and he tried the false-friend tactic.

“Why don’t you just tell me the whole story, Hugo ... I’m on your side ... I can help you ... if you just come clean.”

“Fuck off.”

They walked on in silence, except for the alerts that kept coming to Hugo’s phone. That was the key, surely. Jack stopped him and pointed to the phone.

“Your phone’s not broken is it?”, Jack said.

“No, they’re almost unbreakable. That was an old trick. I just cracked the cover and switched it off. Those guys are morons.”

“Unlock it”, Jack said.

Hugo started to mouth another expletive but then he stopped, looking down at the device flashing blue and yellow, and then looking up at Jack with the wide eyes of a child.

In a moment Jack had his hands on the device that held Hugo’s secrets, released through an iris scan and a couple of passwords. Something caught his attention, an interface to the SSS scanner delivered to Greenshoot by the Beluga. Hugo had rigged something up during the flight, but it wasn’t just alerts, it was a control interface.

At last Hugo unburdened himself.

“What they’re doing Jack, it isn’t right. They don’t have a right to probe our minds.”

“You knew about this before we even got here?”, Jack asked.

“I had information from Monty. I had the time to set up some controls, working in the cargo hold. So I get an alert when the scanner is used, I can see the results, and I can delete the results before the SSS sees them, and they just get an error message. It’s simple really. I decide who the SSS can probe. I would have helped you Jack … if they had you in the scanner.”

“So you had Trax’s scan ?”, Jack asked.

“Yes”, Hugo said. “He had formed a mental connection, a sympathy, with the sea creatures. He was hiding it from the others. I knew what he was going to do. And I came up here to see it.”

“But … why ?”, Jack asked. “If he was going to kill someone, why not let the SSS stop him ?”

“But that would be a victory for the Triple-S. It would be a perfect advert for them and their new technology. They stopped a mass murderer … the SSS station on Greenshoot would have been heroes.”