Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts innocently enough, as most addictions do. You bring him cake on his birthday.

It’s Jean’s idea; your colleagues are going to draw straws over who will be the one to purchase and collect Harry’s cake, but you volunteer. There’s a bakery on your route to and from the precinct, after all. The woman behind the counter asks if the cake is for a birthday boy and you nod.

‘Oh, how old is the lad?’

‘Old enough not to need a cake,’ you say, a little harshly. In truth, you are embarrassed to say, given you have only known Harry less than a year. The nights are starting to get cold again, the biting cold that reminds you of Martinaise. Harry calls it a ‘held breath’ kind of cold, like the city is bracing herself.

The patissier slips a candle into the box with the cake. The cake is dearer than you expect, but she gives you an almond croissant on the house; it’s good, really good, and you decide you’ll come back. The first hit is always free, you think to yourself.

Harry gets a cheesecake for his birthday. He stares at it blankly when you put it in front of him in the crowded C-Wing break room. Someone takes the lead on singing the birthday song, and the others follow suit, off-key and sans tempo. You’re resisting the urge to cringe as you light the candle for him, but he is welling at the eyes like it's the best day of his life. For all you know, it could be.

‘This is the best day of my life,’ he sobs.

‘Stop crying and make a stinking wish, birthday shitkid,’ Jean says.

Harry blows out the candle, and everyone claps. You’re in hell.

(Judit and Jean are the only ones who thought to give him gifts. Judit’s is a hand-crocheted forest green scarf and matching beanie made from alpaca wool, at which he starts to cry again.

‘I hope you like moss stitch,’ she says meekly.

‘I have no idea what that is, but I love it.’

He does not cry at Jean’s gift: a coffee mug that says “Wine improves with age. I don’t.”. Jean laughs as Harry reads it aloud. You think it's in very poor taste and not at all funny.

‘Very funny, Vic,’ Harry says with a gracious tact.)

Jean must sense your disgust, because he outs you for having volunteered to get the cake. Harry looks up at you with fresh pearls in his eyes.

‘I thought you didn't like gifts?’ he says, and you're surprised that he remembers such a brief remark.

‘I don't like receiving gifts. Happy to deliver.’

‘That’s deeply unfair of you, Kim. Fine, no cake on your birthday then. Got it.’

‘What did you wish for?’ you redirect him.

‘More cake,’ he says. Everyone laughs, including you.

-

The following Monday, on your way to the silk mill for paperwork day, you make a pitstop at the bakery for another one of those almond croissants. Parking your new MC is a pain in the ass, but you’re on the warpath now.

(Since transferring to the 41st, you’ve been driving a Verlässlich Taubewagen, an old Gottwaldian import model hearse, ballpark mid-to-late 30s, and a generous donation from the Faubourg morgue after it got defaced by vandals. At first you felt a hearse was unseemly for RCM use, but with some modifications to the back of the coach–namely, the installation of a cage–you’ve found it’s been useful for transporting other humans, whether they be in cuffs or bodybags. Or your partner in the passenger seat.

It was something of a welcome gift from Pryce, with the caveat that Harry never be allowed to set foot on the pedals. It drives like a backhoe, almost as wide as it is long, with an ass that makes parallel parking a point of pride for you. But it has some charms: leather seats, a flying buttressed gear shift, smooth rounded contours and pop up headlights. ‘Very Disco!’ It was teal when it arrived, and Harry wailed when it had to be painted blue, 41 stenciled on the flanks.)

You end up buying a half dozen croissants. You’re not entirely sure why, you know you’ll never finish them alone.

Don’t lie to yourself, you know why.

Harry (late) sits down at his desk across from you, and you notice him noticing your breakfast. And then he notices you noticing.

‘Can I have a bite of that?’ he says, not a whiff of shame about him.

You push the box toward him. ‘Help yourself.’

His eyes go wide as saucers. A smile tugs at the corners of your mouth like a green horse, and you pull the reins in on that one. Later, as you’re packing up to head home, you open the box to find not one, but only a half of one croissant leftover.

Harry looks out from under his mop of hair with white powdered sugar in his moustache and a sorry grin beneath it.

‘Really?’ you say.

‘You said help yourself!’

‘I did,’ you admit. ‘How irresponsible of me.’

‘I’ve got a sweet tooth,’ he says sheepishly.

‘Really? Just one, singular, tooth?’ you say with incredulity. ‘Which one? Surely, the other teeth in your mouth will suffer identity crises. Before they fall out, that is.’

He shrinks back into his blazer like a tortoise. ‘I’ll replace them, I promise.’

‘The pastries or your teeth?’

‘Both! The pastries first.’

You push the box across his desk. ‘I’m teasing you.’

‘Oh.’ He smiles at you, and you let yourself smile back, just a little treat.

-

Next week, you opt for a rolled chocolate sponge. It’s too big for you to finish by yourself. You eat a narrow slice of it and give the rest to Harry.

‘Careful, Kim,’ he warns you with a laugh. ‘This could become a habit.’

‘A habit of mine, or a habit of yours?’

‘Up to you.’

The following week, it’s a bee sting brioche. The week after that, a Mesque kumquat tart. Not even a week later, fat wedges of Schwarz Gottwald cake layered with cherries. At this point, you’ve stopped eating any of it.

It’s the look he gives you when you slide each box across his desk in the mornings: unbridled cartoonish lip-smacking glee, that’s what you’re really devouring. The high lasts all day, even through the shit jobs, the bodies and blood, the bullets and bludgeonings.

The one time you forget to stop at the bakery, Harry looks crestfallen. You don’t get the look, the delight, and that’s when you realise you’ve created an expectation, and not only for him.

You can’t help yourself, you’re back there no later than the following morning. You don’t even bother looking through the cabinets, you just ask the patissier (you’ve learned her name is Marlene) to pick one out for you. She reaches for an apricot turnover, and you balk.

‘Sorry, please, not that one.’

‘Don’t like apricot?’

‘It’s not for me.’ Marlene picks out a vanilla custard slice instead. She thanks you for coming back so frequently, asks which treat has been your favourite so far. ‘I’ll be honest: none of them have been for me.’

She gives you a sage smile as she boxes up the slice. ‘He must have a lot of birthdays, this lad of yours.’

Your ears feel warm. ‘I think he has been… under-celebrated in his life.’

‘It’s nice to have someone who indulges you,’ she says. She gives you another almond croissant. ‘Indulge yourself once in a while too, officer.’

-

You don't mind indulging him. A little sugar (let's be honest, a lot of sugar, these treats with caloric density that would make you sick if you ate even half as much as he does), it’s nothing compared to his previous vices, the ones he left buried in Martinaise.

Harry has put on a kilogram or several since last March, and at least some of it is muscle but not all of it. Another thing you don't mind, the sight of that. He certainly wasn't thin before, but there was a hollowedoutness to his body. The kind of weight loss that only comes of aggressive neglect, neglect that left behind a sack of sagging skin and hair. He’s filled out again now, from flab to chub, in no small part thanks to you. You think it suits him, makes him look younger even, but he doesn't share your thoughts.

One evening, in the C-Wing men's room, you catch him navel-gazing in the mirror.

‘Does this shirt make me look fat?’ he says while you're mid-stream at the urinal behind him.

‘Yes,’ you say without thinking. Idiot.

You look over your shoulder to see the carnage of a single syllable. His eyebrows are little pleats of devastation. He doesn’t say anything, just sighs at his reflection.

‘Try not to think about it,’ you say, more to yourself than to him, especially with your dick in your hands while he's hiking his shirt out of his pants to palm his own stomach. In the mirror, you see hair, more of it than you remembered, a lush trail made by an especially rotund snail from belly to belt.

‘But I’ve been jogging!’ he moans.

You zip yourself up before you can do any more damage, and wash your hands in the basin beside him.

‘You are fit, Detective. Even with a little… extra, you can still outrun me.’

‘I’ve got longer legs than you, Kim.’

The thought of his awareness of your legs makes you suddenly aware of your own thighs.

‘A fair point,’ you say. ‘I'm built for stamina, not speed.’

‘All of me is built for speed.’ He frowns at you through the mirror.

You fumble for resolve. ‘What I meant was–... that there's no need for you to feel self-conscious.’

‘A pity then that I’m really good at self-consciousness. I guess I should just accept it. That I'm a fat, aging addict. Practically geriatric. A geriaddict, if you will.’

He laughs, you don’t.

‘You’re not an addict. Not anymore.’

‘If only. The evidence is right here.’ He slaps his own tummy. The sound is nicely rounded, a little hollow, like patting a cat. ‘And all I can think about is my next hit.’

You stare at him, a slow shake of your head. ‘Harry…’

He laughs again. ‘Of sugar, Kim. Eclairs. Baqlava. Chocolate. I want it all. Fuck, maybe doughnuts?’ He mumbles something about cop stereotypes while the guilt hits you like a condemned tenement falling in on itself. You did this. This is your responsibility.

No, this man is responsible for himself. An addictive personality is not your doing, it’s not even his. This is normal behaviour for a recovering alcoholic. Actually, you're doing him a favour. Fucking noble. What's to say your little rations of sugar aren't the only thing standing between him and a relapse?

Please. At best you're pacifying addiction, at worst enabling it, and selfishly at that. Bringing him treats every other morning, what were you thinking? You weren't thinking, though, were you? You were busy getting your own fix: his favourite little dopamine hit. You wanted him addicted to it, to this petty ritual you do for him every Monday. You wanted him to associate you with sweetness.

And for what? Some homo-erotic fantasy where you feel the soft, warm weight of him bearing down on you, in you? Consumed by him. Dissolving on his tongue. You fucking degenerate. Don't kid yourself.

You get an urge to put a hand on his shoulder, but think better of it.

‘Perhaps I should stop bringing pastries first thing.’

‘No!’ Harry blurts. ‘I mean… maybe not altogether but…?’

‘Slow down some?’

It’s awful to watch: he's biting the inside of his lip, worrying a tiny piece of skin until it peels off and he’s licking blood from his lips. You get an intrusive wondering if his blood would taste sweet, and you’re instantly appalled at yourself. You should go.

‘Hey Kim?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you…’

Whatever it is, yes.

He shakes his head, as though he has changed his mind. On what, you can only guess. ‘Nevermind. Thanks for the pep talk, buddy.’

‘Okay.’ You feel something has passed, like a shadow over the ground. You make your feet move before you find yourself standing here in this men’s room until the end of the world.

That night, in the shower, the wondering intrudes again. Your mind is full with his hands palming his own belly, broad hairy knuckles and chubby waist. How would those hands feel on your skin? Would his fingers be rough and callused, or soft and clammy? Your own hands instinctively move across your stomach, your palms following the V-curve of your hips, downward. Your cock is already at attention before you so much as hold yourself. You close your eyes and turn your face up into the spray, listening to the hiss of the water so you don’t have to hear yourself breathing his name.

-

Jean brings a flu to work and you want to strangle him when you realise that you’ve brought it home with you, and yet you can’t help but feel this is some punishment for your self-indulgence. You decide to set an example about it, thanking Revachol herself for the blessing of a low active caseload (Something about the cold seems to slow everything down, violent crimes included.), nothing Harry can’t handle by himself for a few days.

Using the communal phone in the lobby of your apartment complex, you call Jules to let the precinct know you’ll be absent for a few days. ‘Thank you, lieutenant. I'll let your partner know directly.’ You hang up and wipe the receiver down as a courtesy. You find yourself imagining the phone is grateful for your respect, both of it and others who need to use it. You decide not to think too hard about where that delusion has sprung from.

You hunker down for the unending headache and the long snot. You make what you can of it, nap, finish a Dick Mullen (a guilty pleasure, one you'll never admit to, when you need a break from science fiction), listen to the radio for TipTop updates in the lead-up to Zéro Carrousel, nap again, repair a few hems on your shirts and pants, nap some more. By the third day, you are bored out of your goddamn fevered mind, and still no better off.

You look around at the hovel your apartment has become in just days: used tissues on every surface (your handkerchief was the first casualty in a long line of soldiers fallen to the snot), scattered blister packs of medicated lozenges and paracetamol on your bedside, empty takeout boxes (delivered) on the kitchen bench, bins waiting to be emptied, laundry basket spilling over the sides like the jowls of a bulldog.

The mirror shows puffy bags under your eyes, red nostrils raw from too much wiping, weeds of stubble on your chin and cheeks. You smell; you haven't showered in days, the effort too much. You haven’t allowed yourself a cigarette in three days. You look just as tired as you feel.

You’re just putting your head down to nap again when you hear your door buzzer. With a blanket wrapped around your shoulders, you drag your wretched corpus to the intercom.

‘Yes?’

‘Hey sicko!’ Even over the intercom fuzz, you can hear the relief in Harry’s voice. He’s glad you answered.

‘What do you want?’ you say, a little more abrasive than intended, as though compensating. (Your endocrine system has hit the ‘Harry’ button and your dopamine receptors are going wild about it.)

‘Are you gonna let me up or not?’ he says.

‘I’m ill, officer. You would be wise to stay away.’

‘Vic was coughing all over the mill and I haven’t gotten sick. Come on, just let me in, geez.’

You buzz him in, and for a moment you feel compelled to tidy up. It’s just Harry, you remind yourself, he’s seen worse. The moment passes, you hear his footfalls in the stairwell, and then he’s knocking at your front door. You unlatch, unlock and open the door, blanket armour still clutched around you, and there he is, standing on your welcome mat beaming at you like he hasn’t seen you in a month. (A thought chases you, and you wonder what the passage of time feels like to him.)

He stumbles over the threshold. An alarm goes off in your brain until you realise he is definitely not drunk but tired, the hasn't-slept-in-two-days sort. Despite that, he’s beaming at you.

‘Hey, pal.’ He has bags of groceries in one hand and a box in the other. He holds up one plastic bag filled with little green globes.

‘You… brought me grapes?’

‘For the sickie. And,’ he says with a cheeky grin, presenting the white pastry box, ‘a little treat.’

You open the box to reveal a pair of almond croissants. A muscle twitches in your throat and suddenly you have to fight back a coughing fit.

Harry lets himself in and leads you back to the couch with a hand in the small of your back. It’s not the first time he’s ever touched you without permission, but something in the command and force of it makes you feel like it is. Also without permission, Harry makes himself at home in the kitchen, filling mugs with tea leaves, setting the kettle on to boil.

‘Nice place,’ he says.

You look around at the mess, decide it’s better unacknowledged. ‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ you say despite yourself. ‘I promise this is not how I live ordinarily.’

‘It’s fine, Kim.’

He puts a mug in front of you, filled with a herbal blend, notes of chamomile and orange. He sets a second down for himself but doesn’t sit right away, instead grabbing one of the empty Frittte bags to take to task all your rubbish. He picks up your soggy tissues and greasy takeout boxes with bare hands. You’re mortified.

‘Stop that!’

‘Make me, snotbag.’

You can only watch in horror as he swans about cleaning your entire apartment. He laces up your bin liners, takes a week’s worth of trash out to the chute. He washes your dishes, the bastard. Even the laundry, and you daren’t even think of him handling your dirty smalls and socks. Finally, after thoroughly washing his hands, he takes a seat on the couch beside you and nurses his mug.

‘You didn’t have to do that,’ you sigh.

Something catches his eye, and suddenly he’s grabbing the Dick Mullen you’ve left on the coffee table. ‘ Dick Mullen and the Ghost Racer . Ooh, is this the new one?’ He casts you a sideways glance, ammunition in his gaze. He picks up your discarded bookmark–a clipping you took from a cover of MC Monthly showing MotorCorp’s latest sports convertible, the Saber Hirondelle. He does that thing where he disappears from existence for a moment, having some out of body commune with the object he's just touched, and then he comes back to himself. ‘No dog ears. Either you're about to start reading, or you've finished.’

You say nothing.

‘Finished, then. What other guilty pleasures are you hiding, hm?’

You blow your nose for the umpteenth time today. Deeply uncool. ‘Just show me the goddamn paperwork already.’

He looks confused. ‘Sorry?’

‘I assume Pryce sent you here to bring me up to speed. Show me the files.’ You beckon.

‘I think you got me confused, pal. No one sent me, and no one expects you to work in this state, least of all me.’

‘Then why are you here?’

He stares at you with… something. Absolutely unfathomable. He just shakes his head at you.

Harry stays well into the night. He makes you dinner: no lukewarm noodles or cold sandwiches, but a hearty chicken broth with potatoes, leek and mushrooms. Even despite your diminished appetite and lazy taste buds, it might be the most wholesome thing you’ve ever tasted. Something about sharing a home-cooked meal, it makes you sad but in a warm way. It’s soothing in that way that touches on an ancient, proto-human part of the brain, that early stage of social evolution that still persists, still gives some slow-release serotonin as though you're sitting at a campfire beneath a blanket of stars.

‘I didn’t know you could cook,’ you say.

‘Neither did I!’ He laughs, and you laugh, and that brings on another coughing fit. Drop dead already.

You don’t even try to stop him when Harry cleans up again after dinner. You’re laying on the couch, listening to the clink and splash of dishes being washed, to Harry wearily humming a tune that has had too much air time, to the distant groans of water pipes within the complex and the buzz of streetlights without, and you get this absurd notion that you could listen to these sounds for eternity. You don’t remember falling asleep, and you don’t remember Harry leaving; what you do remember is the feeling of a broad hand pulling the blanket up over you, or perhaps fingers brushing your forehead, the sensation of warmth around you as you float, weightless, gliding through the pale.

-

You wake up in your own bed and that mystifies you, but you don’t allow yourself to think about it. You roll over to put your glasses on and notice a full tumbler of water and fresh blister packs on your bedside that you definitely don’t remember leaving there. Getting up, you find you have the energy to do the triple S–shit, shower, shave–before breakfast calls to you. Appetite, you have that back finally.

In the fridge, you find the grapes, containers of leftover broth, and a white pastry box from Marlene’s. You open it to find two things: one half of an almond croissant, and a hand-written note. ‘Sorry, couldn’t help myself! Also I borrowed Ghost Racer. -H’

You sit at your little blowmould kitchen table, chewing mealy mouthfuls of cold croissant. There is nothing in your head, not a solitary conscious thought, but somehow you find yourself weeping, silently, aggressively.

On that Monday night in Martinaise, after you had debriefed with him, after he sagged his way into bed and you locked the door of your room in the Whirling, you slid down the wall that separated your rooms and sighed to yourself: ‘I don’t deserve this.’

You say it again now, and the words may be the same, but they’re fundamentally different now.

-

You don’t get time to go to Marlene’s on Monday. The sound of rain wakes you early, and you’re dressed and ready even before 6am, and a good thing too, when your door buzzes mid-coffee. It’s him, of course.

‘Detective?’ No relief, no smile in his voice this time. ‘Are you well? Triple homicide-suicide.’ He doesn’t even prepare you for it, just goes in raw, and you know it’s going to be a day and a half. No almond croissants.

You nod, mindlessly, before you remember he can’t see you doing it. ‘I’ll be down in five.’

‘Mhm. Bring your cloak. It’s pissing down out here.’

The site is well out of yours and Harry’s jurisdiction, across the tributary, beyond The Cycle, but apparently they, the 37th precinct, asked for you. A sensory assault awaits you on scene.

A lower middle-class neighbourhood. Sleet falls on an idling Coupris 40 with livery from the 37th, steam rising off the engine cage. A crowd of folks mill about cautiously on the sidewalk, behind freshly drawn !Arrêt! tape around the fence. You push through them, politely make yourselves known to the officers of the 37th, and step through the picket gates of hell.

When you enter the house, a familiar smell impacts you like a mime hitting an invisible wall. Harry takes one breath and dives for the nearest window sill. You hand him ammonia (you carry it with you now, specifically for him) but you just have to make do as you’ve always done.

The smell is, well it's The Smell, capitalised. Worthy of its own dissertation. Suffice to say, it's the kind of smell you can know intimately but never become accustomed to, a smell that grasps your entire consciousness and says ‘here I am, human, pay attention, this is it’ - it, being death. The olfactory alarm button of mortality. The last time you encountered The Smell this bad was in Martinaise, of course, and it sickens you more now knowing Harry has to experience this again.

It's his job, you remind yourself, he signed up for this.

Yes, but he has little memory of it still, even months after the fact. Everything he experiences now is just an inheritance of the choices made by a man he doesn't remember, a man who didn’t give a rat’s about him. The time it has taken him to recover is the same time it took you to really nurture a pity for him, an understanding of that duality about him, past and present. You still can’t imagine what that must be like, to have your autonomy stripped away before you’re even born, to be thrust into the wreckage of someone else's life fully conscious without consent. Harrier du Bois was a man who flirted with the idea of suicide, courted her, then fucked her into an ethanol-soaked stupor, and Harry is the man born of that unhappy union. Innocent, fresh, choked by the fumes of existence. Death by over-stimulation.

He handled it in Martinaise, he can handle it now. Still, you’re sorry for him when he pukes about it. He picks himself up, huffs the ammonia, and you press on together.

The scene itself is a fairly cut and dry play of Family Annihilation. The stage is a cramped living room of a modest townhouse. Its players: a woman in her mid-to-late forties, two prepubescent boys and a middle-aged man. Each of them have a world-ending hole in their heads, from which brains and blood have let into the furniture and the carpet; a thick soupy swamp of fluid has birthed an ecosystem of gnats and ants–the heater is still on. The corpses are all bloated, livid, on the cusp of active decay. The curtain fell days ago, and there was no audience. A home radio is still on, playing an endless soundtrack to an empty theatre.

You find yourself standing over the dead man first, observing. The murder weapon appears to be a murder-suicide weapon, evidenced by the fact that the gun–his work firearm, a common Kiejl A9–is still in his hand where he has fallen. You take note of what you can alone, but you're getting ahead of yourself already.

Harry looks to you, pale but stalwart, nostrils glistening. He nods at you, ready to begin the field autopsies.

‘Where would you like to start?’ you ask.

‘I don't care,’ he says, ‘I just don't wanna end with the kids.’

You nod with complete understanding. ‘Would you prefer to fill out the forms?’

He shakes his head. ‘I did it last time it was this bad. Fair’s fair.’

‘Are you sure? There was only the one body last time.’

‘I can do this,’ he says firmly, more to himself than to you, and you feel a swell of respect for him. He’s doing his best with the scaffolding of this life that’s been palmed off to him.

‘Perhaps we start with the one we know the most about.’ You nod down at the dead man, and Harry pulls on gloves and gets to work. He begins with the Stations of the Breath, of course. The dead man has already been identified by his colleagues and subordinates outside as Captain Abraham Durand, Officer in Chief of the 37th Precinct of the RCM, aged fifty-four, a Revacholian born and bred. He is the reason that you and Harry are here and not his officers outside. They couldn’t bear to do this job, not for one of their own.

Besides Abraham’s station, there’s nothing particularly notable about him. Well, nothing you're going to mention aloud, because he looks like Harry. Brown hair and beard, a slight but omnipresent greasiness about him, green eyes unseeing. Even through the bloat, you can see this man was tired. Of it all, it seems. Deep bags under his eyes have long preceded the time of his death, which, based on the insect activity and state of the body since-passed rigor mortis, seems to have been at least two days ago. You check boxes and write notes as Harry dictates until there’s nothing more to be recorded.

Then you move onto the boys, sitting side by side on the couch.

The first thing you notice is that they are twins, no older than ten at the most, and you breathe a sigh; identifying them independently of one another without a family member present may be a challenge. Regardless, one of the sergeants has told you their names are Cédric and César. How deeply unimaginative, you think. Was Captain Durand too tired even to give his sons unique names?

You watch as Harry performs the Stations with an anxious haste. He wants this to be over. The longer he looks at the bodies of these children, the more his own body will internalise this experience, digest and metabolise it so his brain can spit it back out at him in dreams. You can see the wheels turning in his mind, that if he gets through this quickly enough, he can be free of its torture, can simply regurgitate it and move on. You know the truth, that there’s no quick purging of these things. Policework is a war of attrition against the body, small doses of poison taken over years that build a tolerance, but never an immunity, and enough of such toxins will eventually kill you, as it seems to have killed Abraham Durand.

You squat down beside Harry and clutch him by the forearm. He’s clammy with sweat, both hot and cold, and you know this is neither the time nor the place to be aware of it so intensely, but you are, helplessly. You’re suddenly possessed with thoughts of running your hands down the slick of his back, anointing yourself with him like unholy water.

Good God, control yourself.

‘Detective,’ you whisper. ‘You mustn’t rush this. We need to be thorough, or we will miss crucial details.’

His eyes are swimming from the ammonia. He apologises and nods, and you let him go.

You take out a new form, and then another, and he is thorough with both. Amid all the particulars, you make your own notes. You deduce that, at the very least, Cédric and César did not suffer physically: a single bullet appears to have ended both their lives. Two birds killed in the same nest. You don’t see Harry crying, his face downturned, but you can hear it in the clipped cadence of his voice as he answers you at each turn.

Next, their mother, for it’s fairly safe to assume that’s who the woman is. Her body is found an entire room away from the boys and their father, which immediately stands out as unusual to you. You’ve worked one or two family annihilation cases in the past; the mothers’ bodies are usually found laying on top of their children, sheltering them in their last moments of life, crushing them in death.

This woman (Céleste Durand, the officers called her) lays slumped in the main hallway, against a bloodied wall and below a landline, the receiver hanging suspended off its cradle a foot above her. She was trying to call for help.

‘Well,’ you say, ‘that explains why the line was busy.’

One thing about Céleste that arrests your attention: a small tattoo on her inner right wrist, apple blossom. There’s something deeply familiar about it, and you get a wash of déjà vu as you take out the Trigat Sunshine Mini to photograph it. For a moment, you see ‘Lely’ again. After you finish Céleste’s field autopsy, Harry still has a look about him, that face he gets when his brain is still doing some mental gymnastics. He still hasn’t removed his gloves.

‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ you almost beg him.

‘It makes no sense. Why?’

‘Really? From what I’ve heard, Captain Durand was as hard-boiled as they come, but enough pressure will cause even the toughest shells to crack. The 37th is stretched thin. Perhaps not as thin as the 41st, but we have our camaraderie. The sergeants said Durand was a workaholic, and very private. So private, that few in the precinct had ever even met his wife or sons. A man who keeps an overwhelming work life separate from a demanding home life is bound to sabotage both eventually. Frankly, it makes perfect sense to me.’

Your own words sting you the moment you’ve said them, realising that Harry may draw a comparison to himself: a work life and a home life sabotaged in one fell swoop. Two birds again. But he’s barely listening to you, just waves your words away; you’d think it was rude if you didn’t know better.

‘No no no, not the motive.’ Harry moves into the living room again. He turns off the radio, as though it’s disturbing his focus. He reapplies ammonia and squats by Captain Durand again.

‘Why do it here?’ he says.

‘Where else do you murder your family?’

He looks up at you, a flash in his watery eyes, that huff of frustration that says he wishes you could see what he sees, and so do you. You wish to God you could see through the Harry lens.

‘Why kill himself here, in this particular spot?’ he says. ‘Next to the boys.’

You shake your head, not following him. ‘They’re his sons?’

‘A man who kills his sons has no desire to be close to them. Timeline with me. He comes home late on Friday night, leaves the precinct at 11pm–the last time anyone sees him. It’s his weekend off, so no one expects to hear from him until Monday. The killings have to take place between, let’s say, 11:15pm Friday night and Sunday morning. They’ve been dead too long for it to be any later.’

‘So far so good, that makes sense. Take me with you.’

Mere crumbs of encouragement have him smiling at you, and your chest clenches.

‘The radio was still on,’ he continues, ‘suggesting the killings happened either during the day on Saturday or into the evening. No mother lets her children stay up that late, or else they would have been killed in their beds. And why not?’

‘Why not what, detective?’

‘Why not kill them in their beds? All of them. It would have been faster, wouldn’t it? Neater. Especially with a muzzle-loader. Especially a Kiejl A9. He has to reload at least twice, and that’s assuming he used a single bullet for the twins.’

‘I suppose so, if this was premeditated.’

‘This feels premeditated.’

‘We can’t build a case around your feelings. Where are you going with this, officer?’

‘Look at the placements.’ He gestures at the bodies one by one, first Cédric and César, then Céleste, then Abraham. ‘He kills the boys, then he walks down the hall to kill his wife while she’s calling for help.’

‘How do you know he killed the boys first? I assume Durand is dictating to you as we speak?’

Harry flushes some. ‘No, he’s… he’s not talking, this one.’

‘Then how?’

He gestures to the boys again. ‘No sign of struggle.’ Then Céleste again. ‘And the phone. Dial tone. She was making a call, never finished.’

You can’t argue that. ‘I’m still not seeing your point.’

‘Well, if you’d let me fucking finish, Kim!’

You choose not to be bristled by his outburst. You wait.

‘He kills them here, he kills her there, and then he walks back down the hall to the living room to kill himself? Why bother? Why not just kill himself in the hall?’

You have to admit, something about it was bothering you too, only you weren’t consciously aware of it, and then you realise you were just as desperate to be done with this, just as anxious to close it out as quickly as you arrived. Something about Durand being RCM, even though you didn’t know him, it hits close to home. And if you are already making mistakes, there’s a damn good reason the 37th don’t want their own on this case. Not as cut and dry as you thought.

You sigh. ‘This is all extremely suppositional and circumstantial, but… I have to agree with you. It’s strange.’

‘All that, and it’s staring us right in the face.’ He holds up the evidence bag with Durand’s Kiejl A9 Armistice inside of it. ‘Four kills, and we haven’t found a single bullet.’

At once you feel foolish for not having seen it sooner. Blame it on your earlier distraction. ‘Shit.’

Harry stands up and you see some colour has returned to his cheeks. He begins to do that thing, that emu walk (less of the Jamrock Shuffle and more of his own signature dance with himself) led by his intuition. You decide not to follow him this time, he’ll do this with or without you, and there’s a sting in that too, that you’re not needed at this time.

After a few minutes of wandering through the house, he comes back with a piece of potential evidence in hand. It’s a picture frame.

‘Voilà,’ he says, and hands it to you.

At first glance it appears to be a family photograph, only you realise there are one too many heads in frame. Abraham, Céleste holding two infant boys, and a teenage girl standing, visibly uncomfortable and frowning, at arm’s length beside them all. You take the photograph from the frame, praying for a date, a name, anything on the reverse. Thank Revachol, she answers your prayers.

Céleste, Cédric and César, and Amelie. December, ‘43.

‘This girl, Amelie, she must be in her late twenties by now,’ you say.

‘Someone didn’t like your name,’ Harry says to the photo. You know by now there is little point in asking him to explain his cryptic ponderings.

The house, full of ghosts, does not give up any more of its secrets.

-

When you report everything back to the 37th, in person, there’s genuine surprise at the fact that their Officer in Chief had a daughter.

‘He only ever told us he had sons,’ says a former Lieutenant, now Acting-Captain Granger, the temporary officer in chief. She’s an older woman, in her early fifties, loose bun and flat lips, Gottwaldian accent. Her partner, satellite officer Cartier, is younger and paler but still seasoned, mid-forties; quiet and distant, she keeps her hands folded neatly in her lap and lets Granger do most of the talking, much in the same way that Harry lets you do the same.

Over coffee in one of the interview rooms, you give everything you can to Granger and Cartier, go over your findings with them. ‘In conclusion,’ you say, ‘Lieutenant Du Bois and I believe there is sufficient evidence, albeit mostly circumstantial, to suggest that this is not a family annihilation, and that Durand and his family were in fact murdered. There are leads that need to be followed up on.’

Cartier says nothing, and Granger nods gravely. It must be some small comfort to them to know that their Captain probably did not murder his entire family before ending his own life, but a very small comfort indeed. Granger sips her black rocket fuel and gestures for you to go on.

‘Regarding the initial field autopsies and inspection of the scene,’ you say to Granger, finding it easier to engage her directly, ‘I understand the need for objectivity. This is a sensitive time for the 37th, and you were right to bring in members of the RCM unattached to the deceased.’ You are deliberately non-specific about which members of the RCM. ‘You should be commended for making that call. Regarding the case going forward, is it safe to assume you would like us to continue handling it? Or do you feel the 37th should “look out for its own”?’

Cartier is still silent, fondling her mug idly. You imagine she must still be in shock. Granger is more present. She lights up a cigarette and ashes before she speaks: ‘I feel like the majority of the precinct won’t like it.’ You notice her glance, almost imperceptibly, towards Cartier. ‘But I’m of the opinion it should be handled by the 41st. Durand was well-liked, but he ran the precinct much the same way he ran his life: isolationist. Even when Durand and I were partners, he never gave much away. Dry Durand, we called him. I might be risking too much change too quickly, but if I’m to be Captain indefinitely, I’d like to see some more cooperation amongst other pockets of the RCM.’

You decide then that you like Granger, even if the jury is still out on Cartier. ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ you say.

‘Like you two,’ she says, nodding between you and Harry. ‘The RCM needs more of “The Coopers”.’

She has completely lost you. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not following you.’

Granger pauses mid-drag and suppresses a cough. She’s stumbled into something, something she thought was solid ground but now seems to be crumbling away beneath her. She looks to Cartier as if for help, but Cartier is yet to make eye contact with anyone in the room.

‘I’m sorry, I thought that joke would have found its way around to the 41st by now.’

‘Joke?’

‘Mr and Mrs Cooper,’ Granger says, with visible reluctance.

‘Excuse me?’ you say.

‘It's an in-joke - I don’t know who started it, or even which precinct it came from - about the inter-precinct partners who go around closing cases so regularly it’s like you’re harvesting crops.’

Harry leans forward, suddenly invested. ‘Explain?’

Granger folds her arms. ‘Look, it’s stupid. Someone started calling Lieutenants Kitsuragi and Du Bois the “co-operative cops”. It got shortened to “the co-ops”, then the “coops”, and then lengthened to “The Coopers” and then again to “Mr and Mrs Cooper”.’

‘I see,’ you say, with forced indifference. ‘Why Mr and Mrs?’

Granger goes a little ruddy around the ears, and you suspect that she is embarrassed by the joke, ergo it is definitely not of her making and she doesn’t find it funny.

‘Some officers like to perpetuate rumours,’ she says. ‘I try to discourage it.’

‘What rumours?’ Harry says, and you're relieved you don't have to be the one to press this issue. ‘What do they say?’

Granger sighs. ‘They say the pair of you have a relationship that is… marital in nature.’

‘Marital?’ Harry says.

‘You know, like an old married couple. In sync, despite obvious differences.’

You do not react. You knew this was coming, and you can tell by the tomatoes in her cheeks that there is more that she is not saying. She is giving you the censored version of the joke, omitting the explicit things that other officers have said, the real rumours. You’ve been in the RCM long enough to know what those rumours might be, despite your best efforts to curate a professional image. It smarts to know you haven’t curated thoroughly enough. Or maybe they can just smell it on you. Sodomite. Faggot. And now you’ve brought Harry down with you, pulled him into the swirling vortex of suspicion.

Harry, decorated wayfarer of the turbulent seas of human interaction that he is, simply laughs.

‘Well, of course we are,’ he says through a fit of tummy rolling. ‘Kim and me, we're chalk and cheese. Apples and oranges. We're a cornucopia of attractive opposites.’ The way he speaks, he may as well have an arm around your shoulder, and you’re certain it’s a deliberate tactic that he doesn’t. He’s implying cooperation without intimacy. Sometimes, this man is a genius of the stage.

He meets the joke with a joke and it instantly sets Acting-Captain Granger at ease, a visible drop in her shoulders. She chuckles tepidly. You think you even see a tug at the corners of Cartier’s mouth, but you can’t be sure.

‘Personally,’ Granger says, ‘I think you both set an example of what true RCM cooperation and camaraderie looks like.’

You give her your best professional smile. ‘Thank you, Captain. Lieutenant-double-yefreitor Du Bois and I have a rapport, something I feel is the foundation of a successful partnership, and efficient policework.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ she says.

Harry nods, long enough to be considered serious, and then he leans in conspiratorially to Granger and says: ‘I’m Mrs Cooper, by the way, in case there was any confusion. Kim wears the pants.’

It's like witnessing a master chess player deliver a coup de grâce. He has Granger in stitches, so much so that she spills her coffee and drops her cigarette, and suddenly there’s a whole commotion of apologising and paper towelling. With a single deft hand, Harry has simultaneously dispelled the rumour of sodomy and also ingratiated himself with the Captain of the 37th. For a brief moment, you wonder what your life would look like if this man had never picked himself up from the floor of room #1 in the Whirling-in-Rags, and you realise very quickly that you don’t want to wonder about that at all.

You're just about to leave when Harry has A Thought. His eyes glass over and you know it's only a short window of time before he a) says something weird, b) does something weirder, c) has a prescient revelation that no sequence of synapses firing in his brain could possibly conjure without outside influence, or d) he reminds you there's a good reason he's a cop.

He turns aboutface and approaches Acting-Captain Granger. Cartier observes him, and you see her shrink back some from his imposing height.

‘One last thing, Captain,’ Harry says. ‘When Captain Durand spoke about his sons–did he ever say how many he had?’

Granger gives him an odd look. ‘Three.’

Alarm bells go off in your head. If the same is happening to Harry, he plays it very cool.

‘Can you tell me their names, oldest to youngest?’

'Walther, Cédric and César.’

Harry glances back at you, just to be sure you're paying attention; you have your notebook out, and he needs no further confirmation than that. You nod at him, go on, you've got this.

‘Did either of you ever meet Walther?’ he asks both women.

Cartier shakes her head.

‘Only once,’ says Granger. ‘He took Durand to Zéro Carrousel when it was last held, but that was some years ago now.’

You can’t help yourself. ‘Mhm, the next circuit is this year.’

Harry looks at you, distracted, and you realise that, for once, you are the one veering off course. You lower your gaze, deferential.

‘Did Durand speak of Walther often?’ Harry asks.

Granger shakes her head. ‘Rarely. I don’t believe Walther was Céleste’s child, possibly he was Durand’s son from another marriage. We're assuming Walther is the next of kin, but unfortunately Durand kept his contact numbers in his head. For a Captain who made this precinct run as smoothly as he did, he has made this quite a challenge for us.’

‘Would we be able to look through his desk?’

‘Of course. If you think it will help the investigation.’

Granger leads you both to Durand’s office, modest but organised, and unlocks his desk for you. Harry immediately puts the Jamrock Shuffle into motion and starts pawing through the contents of the drawers; you think about assisting, but know you would only get in his way. When he’s on the warpath like this, you prefer to watch. Granger seems to share your attitude, just as fascinated as you are. Well, maybe not quite so much.

It doesn’t take him long, ferreting through the chaff. Amid case files, folders of payroll, leave, outgoings, and all the paper banalities of running a precinct of the Revachol Citizens Militia, Harry noses out a truffle. Another photograph, taken on an instant colour camera, it’s barely bigger than his hand. This one shows a young man, bespectacled and bearded, smiling broadly into the lens as he waves from a crowded grandstand.

‘TipTop,’ you say. ‘I know those flags.’

‘That’s him,’ says Granger, ‘that’s Walther. I remember him.’

‘Pass me the Awkward Family Photo,’ Harry says. You oblige him, already following the invisible path he’s laying with his mind.

You would have to be looking for the resemblance, or else you would never know. The same brown hair, Durand’s nose, strong cheekbones and a square jaw that Walther must have cherished even before his transition. This is the same child.

‘My apologies for misleading you, Captain Granger,’ Harry says, ‘it seems Durand did not have a daughter after all.’

‘But we now have a suspect,’ you say.

For some reason, Harry shudders, so visibly disturbed that he turns away from you, and suddenly you wish you hadn’t spoken.

-

By the time you both leave the 37th, it’s late. Even through the soft patter of rain on the steps leading down to street level, you can hear Harry’s gut grumbling at him. You look at him and nod toward the Taube.

‘Let’s get you home,’ you say. Like he’s a child, or a cherished pet, in need of escort and protection. He frowns at you, and again you regret yourself. You seem to be saying a lot of things that make him uncomfortable tonight. You resist the urge to touch him on RCM premises. Instead, you school your voice to be gentle with him. ‘Come on.’

He shakes his head.

‘Detective? What’s wrong?’

‘I… I can’t go home.’

‘Why not?’

He just stares at you, shreds of the frown still clinging. ‘Kim, do I really have to explain it?’

‘I suppose not.’

Nothing more is said, and you take Harry home with you.