Rayne - Ch.1

This has already made an appearance back on efx2, but it's since been slightly reworked and I've more-or-less finished the 2nd chapter, so have decided to restart it here:

1.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m having a really bad week.”

Strange as it may sound, I think a part of me actually expected him to respond.
I take another draw on my cigarette as I reflect on how bad a week it has been, but I can’t think of anything specific. I was just in a slump; one of those down moods where nothing in particular is wrong, but nothing seems quite right. Apparently, my kind are prone to such moods. The depressed genius: A sorry cliché.

Work was light; money was thin; my cigarillo case was now empty. Little things, I suppose, but it’s those little things that make me question the worth of it all.

Even as a kid it was no different. Pending homework; petty name-calling; missing last night’s Red Dwarf. Any one of them was enough to keep me awake through the night. If not for alcohol and nicotine, I’d probably still be an insomniac.

Not that I class a dead body sprawled across my bed as a ‘little thing’, but it’s certainly representative of my state of mind.

“Don’t get me wrong, I can see you’ve had a bad night, but at least you’re not wide awake at 3am.”

I finish off my cigarette just as the familiar flashing blue lights fill my bedroom। I wonder if they’d class this as smoking in the workplace… As if I didn’t already have enough to answer for.

“This is the police! Please remain calm. We are coming in!” A moment later a nervous pair of eyes peer into my room.

“I did hope the open door would be invitation enough that you wouldn’t have to announce yourselves to the entire building.”

Sgt. Colin Ambrose spies the body in the dim light and hangs up his gun. “Jesus, Rayne, did you have to.”

I give a non-committal shrug. “The knife’s his. He was rather insistent on me having it, but I had to forcibly decline.”

“So we’ll not find your prints on it, or find one missing from your rack?” I shake my head. “Fair enough,” says Ambrose. I’m not sure if he genuinely accepts my story or if he just wants to get out of there. “I’m still going to have to take you down to the station to make an official statement.”

“Yeah. Thought you might.”

I stand and stretch and my joints creak.

“You always sleep fully clothed?”

I nod towards the table behind him and he finds my pyjama pants already sealed up in a zip bag. “I hate those plastic overalls you lot give out.”

***

The next two hours pass dreamily by as I recite the same statement three times for three different detectives, all investigating a spate of robberies in the area. There seemed to be no connection between the victims and descriptions of the perpetrators differed greatly, but the modus operandi remained the same: Between 2am and 3am; in and out through an open window; not a single print, hair or fibre left at the scene; just enough taken to be carried by one person.

Until now no one had confronted the burglar. Considering how mine reacted, that’s probably for the best.

The door to the interrogation room opens and yet another detective enters, sipping coffee and carrying a case-file.

“Wow, they even dragged the boss out of bed for this?”

Regional Commander Bernhard throws the file down on the desk and takes a seat opposite me. “No rest for the wicked, right Aaron?”

“We’re not wicked, Johnny, we’re just bitter old men.”

“You’re thirty-two.”

“Yes, well, right now I feel old.”

“Hmm,” Bernhard says with a nod. “You want a drink before we get back into this?”

“Thank you, no. I’ve tasted the coffee in this place, remember?”

“You get used to it after a few years.”

“I never did.”

“No. But then, you weren’t exactly here long enough, were you?”

“It wasn’t the fault of the beverages, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Bernhard almost laughs. He really is tired, I think. He leans back in his chair with a deep sigh, looking me dead in the eye. “So, you gonna fill in the blanks for me?”

“Blanks?”

He leans forward and opens the file. “‘I woke up and saw the burglar. He lunged at me, brandishing a knife. I parried and the blade ended up in his chest.’”

“Pretty concise, if you ask me.”

“Aha… A seventeen year-old kid lunges at you with a knife and you almost break his wrist plunging the thing into his chest.”

I clear my throat and lean forward on the table, folding my arms in front of me. “What are you trying to say, John?”

John reflects my pose and makes an extra effort to speak as clearly as possible. “The last time someone attacked you with a knife, you took it off him and put it back in his pocket before you beat him unconscious.”

“You think I overreacted?”

He took a deep breath and turned his eyes down to the table. “I think there isn’t a court in the land that will see this as anything more than self-defence…but they don’t know you like I do, Aaron.”

I nod. “Yes, I nearly broke his wrist. I twisted his arm as far as I could and still he wouldn’t let go of the knife. I tried to force his arm up for a little extra leverage and at the same time, he dropped his weight on me…

“I didn’t know he was just a kid,” I ad, as if it will give some kind of reassurance.

“Then why didn’t you just say that?”

“I never used to have to explain myself to you, John.”

“You never worried me like this before, Aaron. Just tell me; you did try to disarm him didn’t you? You did everything you could not to kill him?”

I look Commander Bernhard dead in the eye again and try to give an automatic response, but the words won’t come…

Bernhard closes his eyes and stretches his neck left and right. “Get yourself booked into a hotel, Aaron. Do what you have to do to sleep until tomorrow morning and we’ll see if you can give me a straight answer then.”

***

Dawn has broken by the time I get out of the station. It’s early for a phone call, but I’m keen to get started. “Juliet?”

“Romeo?” the voice at the other end replies sleepily.

I manage to crack a smile. “Sorry, he’s probably still sleeping.”

“So was I,” Juliet says through a yawn. “What time is it?”

“It’s about dawn-ish. Listen, I need you to do a press check for me?”

“At dawn-ish?”

“Have breakfast first, then meet me at the office.”

“Yeah, yeah. What am I checking for?”

“There’ve been a bunch of burglaries recently. I want to know if there’s an official line on some kind of link yet.”

“Fine, I’ll have a look.”

“Thanks. Oh, and Juliet?”

“What?”

“Who’s this Romeo?”

“Piss off, Aaron.”

“Yes boss,” I say with a grin and Juliet hangs up without a reply.

I breathe the cool, morning air and feel it clearing my lungs and lightening the load on the back of my head. I already know it’s going to be a long day.