“Rent-a-cop. Pureledge hires out to keep real pigeons off of buildings, monuments, and out of the ground transit stations. Remember the old movie, To Catch a Thief?”
“Certainly. Hitchcock film. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.” I fought manfully for the date, but had to relent. “Released in the 1960s, yes?”
“Fifty-five,” corrected Shad. We were both old film buffs, but Shad’s knowledge of films was encyclopedic, as befits a dedicated thespian.
“Set a pigeon to catch a pigeon.”
“I’m going through Pureledge’s site right now. Pureledge has an office here in Exeter on Castle Street. It runs three wings of three hundred and twenty birds per wing—” Shad paused for a moment. “Ledge marshals is what they’re called.”
“Shad, did you get any fiber trace off the body?”
“Red fiber. Only one thread visible, the rest microscopic. All of the fibers are centered on the same impact point that broke all these bones. You have red fiber up there?”
“All microscopic. The impact pattern on the wall shows the bulk of the fiber trace considerably off center, though. Between that and the blood spatter, when the bird hit this wall his bones had already been broken and had already been bleeding. What’s your guess on the fibers?”
“It was wrapped around whatever killed this bird.”
“Shad, do these ledge marshals maintain continuous sync while on duty?”
“Their site doesn’t say and no one right now is answering the phone. Jaggs, did you know this was how they were keeping pigeons from nesting on building ledges?”
“I noticed a dozen years ago or so in London when they took down the pigeon netting from several of the buildings there. I never thought to question why. Pigeons still seemed the same. Fewer of them, perhaps. Buildings and walks were remarkably cleaner. Get in touch with Pureledge Exeter and have them check vitals on their stasis beds. What’s on the other sides of these walls? A computer establishment on the northeast side, right?”
“Dell Bio & Mech. It’s an AB tech gift shop. In the building on the opposite side is Madame Fifi’s Feather, Scale, and Fur. She’s an amdroid stylist.”
“The vic was killed elsewhere, Shad. Why dump the body on Parliament?”
“Say, Jaggs, how come this—it’s not wide enough to call an alley—how come this particular crack between two buildings is called a street?”
“I’ll have you know, Shad, Exeter’s Parliament Street holds the record as the narrowest street in the world. As it was explained to me on a tour when I first came to Exeter, it had to do with some act of Parliament in the nineteenth century. The burghers on the city council took exception to the act, but really couldn’t do anything in retaliation except deliver an insult to the body that passed it. Hence they named the narrowest thoroughfare in the city Parliament Street. Rather silly, really.”
“Not at all,” objected Shad. “I mean, here we are centuries later and Exeter still has a Parliament Street. That is vendetta-grade grudge.” Shad’s mech nodded. “This town is really beginning to grow on me,” he said as he streaked off toward High to release the scene to the FMEs. Despairing for Shad’s value system, I ascended to the roof, flew grids on each, but found no cameras, latents, trace, impressions, feathers, scales, nor fur.
I had just completed my examination when I was joined by Shad’s micro coming over the High Street edge. “Someone at Pureledge finally answered the phone,” he announced. “ID on the imprint is a six-month Pureledge rookie named Darcy Flanagan, eighty-seven, resides in a flat at Seventeen Hoopern Street. He began his shift at three this afternoon and he and his flight leader belong to 712 Squadron. The Seven-Twelve patrols the Cathedral Church of St. Peter.”
“Flight leader? Squadron?”
“That’s what they call them. The fellow on the phone said the scuttlebutt in the ready room at Castle Field is that Jerry got young Darcy.”
“Jerry? What is he talking about? Germans?”
“‘Hop in the old crate and tally ho! Chocks away!’ Jaggs, it was like talking to Fowler in Chicken Run.”
Fowler, the aged and absurdly militaristic dotty rooster in the old Nick Park animated feature—voice done by Benjamin Whitrow—seemed to think he was in the Royal Air Force rather than a chicken yard. Every AI, and particularly every amdroid, knew the classic Chicken Run almost by rote. Decades ago the beheading-of-Edwina scene on the telly and bio blogs in combination with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Grant v. Hudder helped put the AI Rights Act in Britain over the top. “What did he mean, ‘young Darcy’? You said the fellow was eighty-seven.”
“Average age of ‘the lads’ is ninety-three,” countered Shad.
“I see.”
“Ledge marshals maintain continuous sync between bodies and bios, which would be good for us except they checked what they call their barracks. Darcy Flanagan the human natural is dead.”
“Poor fellow. Did they say how?”
“Sudden massive heart attack according to the stasis bed readout. Too severe for the bed to maintain him and he was past revival by the time their medical mech reached him. Pureledge has a lot of really old pensioners as ledge marshals. They make a little cash and for a few hours a day they get to fly, serve a useful purpose, and feel young and pain free, according to the fellow on the phone, a Mr. James Duggan. Duggan says six to eight of the old coves cack out in the barrack racks every year.”
“Hard done by Flanagan’s demise, was he?”
“The poor guy could hardly butter his crumpet. Jaggs, the stasis bed recorded Flanagan’s death at eight minutes to five this evening. The pigeon bio died eleven seconds later. Unless Flanagan managed to bust up his own pigeon suit like that, it’s murder. That means media.” The duck tossed his next question around in his head a bit before reluctantly asking it. “What do we do about Parker?”
I thought on that. “To be perfectly candid, Shad, I’m not terribly sanguine about having our end of the inquiry represented by an incontinent gorilla with self-esteem issues.”
His micro swung around and looked deeply into the shadows. “Man, I can’t believe I’ve come down to this. When I was the spokescritter for that insurance company, I used to have staff, bill polish, ermine feather extensions, my own dressing room. You should’ve seen my apartment in New York, Jaggs. I had a fountain in my living room! Ledge marshals. Gorilla poop.”
“Those, Shad, are the challenging, exciting, ever-changing facets of a fulfilling career in ABCD law enforcement.”
He dropped a heavy sigh and shook all over. “Sorry about the whining. About Parker, the division doesn’t need any more bad air. Do we go to Matheson and take over the case?”
I pushed Shad’s suggestion around in my mind for a moment. Neither Shad nor I were there to hurt other cops, especially those who, like us, had been flushed down into ABCD due to mishap, misunderstanding, or murder. I’d already put a smudge on Parker’s record by refusing to work with him. The whole Parliament Street case was looking, however, like a giant slapstick aimed directly at ABCD Devon’s collective posterior.
“Back to the cruiser, Shad. We copy into our own suits, and secure our evidence. Then we report to the command post and see where things go from there.”
In the cruiser, copied into our own skins, Shad gave the cruiser instructions to come up on Broadgate by a circuitous route. By swinging out over Queen Street, heading southeast, and doubling back over St. Peters Cathedral, we might lessen our chances of attracting notice.