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Thursday 27 October 2011

Sex Slave Murders

Inspector Stremalon worked in the Sex Crimes Bureau in Torture Mungus, a realm of existence which is to be confused with neither Heaven nor Hell. On the forty-first day of the month of Passionata, the day which was the deadline for the payment of the orgasm tax, Inspector Stremalon came to work and found that he had been assigned to the case of the naked succubus sex slave murders.
        "Why me?" said Stremalon.
        "I have no idea," said Captain Prim, whose office wall featured, not inappropriately, a Certificate in Official Deceit.
        "What happened to my request, then?" demanded Stremalon.
        He had requested a move to Accounting Crimes, a nice clean desk job suitably remote from the distastefully human world of lust, rape and sweating sex. He had been so very confident that - this time - he would finally achieve his purpose. What had gone wrong?
        "I have a right to an answer," persisted Stremalon.
        But Captain Prim had nothing more to say. Indeed, it seemed that he had forgotten Stremalon's very existence. Lips pursed, upper lip sweating slightly in the summer heat, Prim was once again busy working on his collection of crab lice, which were housed in cubes of transparent plastic.
        In his previous life, Captain Prim had been an entomologist. He hated police work, he hated humans, and he hated, above all else, the stresses and strains of management. But one of the torments of Torture Mungus (one of the characteristics of the place which had led generations of sufferers to misidentify it as Hell) was that you were not free to choose your own profession.
*


        "This is where the first one was dumped," said Capstan Huckster, the big cheerful lunk who was Stremalon's policework partner.
        There had been seven killings so far, with the bodies scattered up and down the banks of the Jizlam Ova, the Great River of Sperm which bisected Krantankertus, the Iron City which was the Seat of Order in Torture Mungus.
        The site was the Unicycle Park in Caprice Vaunting, an upmarket suburb inhabited by the city's elite.
        Today, the park lay deserted in the summer heat. A single hovercraft was slopping its way upstream on the river of sperm, stirring up the thick, clogging smell that Inspector Stremalon hated so much.
        "I was made for a monastic existence," murmered Stremalon.
        "What?" said Huckster.
        "I said, what's nearest?" said Stremalon.
        "High walls with big pockets behind them," said Huckster. "They won't even talk to us. We're the third team to break our bones on this one."
        Looking around, Stremalon saw what Huckster was talking about. Here and there, through the parkland foliage, you could see bits and pieces of walls. High walls. Guarded by dogs, cameras, guards and lawyers. Nobody living behind those walls wanted to talk to the cops.
        Stremalon lifted his eyes and beheld Lingus Gastle, the stronghold of Admiral Gizzard, the lord of the organization known as Spyglass. If they could get Gizzard's cooperation, then they might get access to his all-knowing files.
        Forget it. The way things worked in Torture Mungus, if your rank was high enough then the intrusions of the surveillance society didn't apply to you.
        "I've come to a decision," said Stremalon. "We're going to Poindexter it."
        "We are?" said Huckster. "Are you nuts? That Poindextering stuff's been totally discredited. Look what happened on the Child Sex Parade Case. And what about the Big Dog Lust Killings?"
        "It's no worse than consulting psychics," said Stremalon. "And, in any case, it'll at least make these rich bastards uncomfortable. One of them did it, I'm certain of that."
        "You'd better keep that rich bastard stuff to yourself," said Huckster. "The Department doesn't - well, you know how the Department is. And what makes you think someone here did it?"
        "What makes you think they didn't?" said Stremalon. "I remember when I was still a patrolman. This was part of my beat. Anyone on the sidewalks, we'd stop them, turn them around, move them on. Hereabouts, public space isn't public to the public."
        "Could be a chauffeur, then," offered Huckster. "You know. Got the use of a car, mobile. Could lure the victims to upscale venues, stop, wind down the window, hi, I'm your limo."
        "Yeah, that and a thousand other hypotheses," said Stremalon. "I can cook them up as well as you. But if nobody's going to talk to us then we don't have zip. We can't get to first base. I've made a decision. We will Poindexter it"
*


         Captain Prim caught up with Stremalon in the police cafeteria.
         "Where's Huckster?" asked Prim.
         "Getting some donuts," said Stremalon. "Why? You want to see us in your office?"
         "No," said Prim. "This is off the record."
         One of the Captain's little peculiarities was that, administratively, if it didn't happen in his office then it didn't happen at all. Inspector Stremalon didn't understand this kind of magical thinking, but he didn't argue with it.
         "Okay," said Stremalon, hoping to get this discussion over and done with before Huckster had a chance to get back, "what've you got to say?"
         Just then, Huckster came round the corner with coffee and donuts.
         "Sorry, only two servings," said Huckster. "You want me to go get some?"
         "No," said Prim. "I want to talk to the two of you about this Poindextering busienss. I don't want you to do it."
         "I see," said Stremalon, picking up his coffee.
         "Oh, darling!" murmered the coffee. "Oh, use your tongue, use your tongue!"
         Stremalon grimaced, then sipped. Considered as coffee, the coffee was not bad. The same could be said for a great many other things in Torture Mungus. The essence was adequate. It was the unnecessary extras which made the problem.
         "Oh, you were wonderful!" said the coffee. "Do it again!"
         "You know what the problem is," said Prim.
         "Yeah," said Stremalon. "It's class. One law for the rich, another for the poor."
         "These people are entitled to their privacy," continued Prim. "You can't have the whole world speculating about, you know, whether they - why are we even having this conversation? What's gotten into you?"
         "How are we supposed to detect if people won't even talk to us?" said Stremalon. "I don't expect us to Poindexter a solution. But what I do think is that it might get people talking to us."
         Prim made no reply. Instead, he sat there, trying to apply pressure with silence. Despite himself, Stremalon started to feel uncomfortable. Yes, Prim was right. The people who inhabited Caprice Vaunting were extremely powerful. What's more, some of them employed demons.
         "Some of them employ demons," said Prim, voicing Strelamon's thought. "This could get rough, you know."
         "So it could," said Stremalon, and picked up his donut.
         "Hi," said the donut. "My name is Mandy, and I'll be your hostess today."
         Stremalon didn't like donuts one little bit. They were far too mouthy. But he was hungry. Unable to stop himself, he stuck out his tongue and, childishly, licked off some frosting.
         "Eat me!" groaned Mandy. "Oh, eat me, eat me!"
        Stremalon grimaced and bit into the donut, which screamed in a mixture of pain and ecstasy. Once again, Stremalon indulged himself in his favorite fantasy. He was playing billiards. The room was totally silent. On the green baize, the lustrous perfection of the billiard balls. Silence. Grace. Dignity.
         "So," said Prim, wrapping up what he had to say. "So that's understood, then. Is it?"
         "Yes," said Stremalon, though, wrapped up in his personal fantasy, he had entirely lost track of what Prim had been rabbiting on about.
        "You mean we're quitting?" said Huckster, as Prim walked away. "We're quitting, just like that?"
        "No," said Stremalon. "We're going to go online. Today."
        "But we've hardly even got started!" protested Huckster. "We need another week, at least."
        "Prim won't give us a week," said Stremalon. "Let's go with what we've got. Today."

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