Conversation · Damaged Ledger

The ledger quivers in your hand. As it shakes the pages rustle. This pathetic mess suddenly afraid of you for some reason.

[Put the ledger away.]

Read a case file.

It takes about half an hour to piece one together, using the system you've devised. Which one do you want?

MURDER AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR

MURDER -- tam-tam-tam! -- AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR! was a case originally assigned to an officer called Joseph Mills, who is now dead. Of circumstances completely unconnected to MURDER AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR.

Right. On with the murder.

Joseph Mills was on this case that he just couldn't solve. Was doing it solo. Said it was a real nutcracker. A real brain-twister. Was on it for, like, a month -- the captain got impatient. Shit or get off the pot, Mills.

Mills didn't get off the pot -- not yet. He kept at it for a couple of weeks more, racking his brains, running with every theory, as outlandish as they seemed -- still couldn't solve the MURDER AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR. Tough case, he said. Toughest he's ever had.

Go on.

Okay, so the case is handed to you because Mills isn't getting anywhere. And you look into it. Here's the set-up: A young man is found dead in a hookah parlour. You know, those places where you go and smoke bubblegum-flavoured vapour all day.

Really stupid.

Yeah. So anyway -- young man, in his twenties, found with his skull busted open. Right on the floor of the hookah parlour. In the middle of the day. No one else is in there. Only client that day. In perfect health too, some kind of movie producer.

No one enters -- no one exits. He's just sucking on his watermelon hookah all morning, all noon, like he usually does. (He's a regular). No calls, nothing. Just sucking on the hookah, until 15.45. Then bam -- he's dead on floor with his skull busted open, blood everywhere. What happened? How can it be?

Mills has no idea. Invisible assassin. Movie deal gone sour. Girl at the counter did it. Nothing fits. Eerie. Man just dropped dead. So you go to the parlour. You see cushions around the table. Table's low, heavy, really sharp edge...

He sucked hookah, stood up, passed out, hit his head on the table and died?

See! You can't even read the thing without solving it. Yeah. It was that. Turns out hookah does do something -- it turns off your brain's oxygen supply. And you don't notice it until you get up to go to the bathroom.

He must have sucked a lot of it.

Yeah, he liked his hookah. Steven was his name.

And what was he doing there -- for six hours?

Smoking hookah. Didn't you hear? I don't know. Trying to come up with a movie script maybe. Anyway, that was MURDER AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR, Joseph Mills wasn't a good detective, and about 30 minutes has passed piecing it together. Next?

Can you get high off it?

No, it's soot and water vapour. It doesn't do anything.

Really cool.

Yeah, really lame. So anyway -- young man, in his twenties, found with his skull busted open. Right on the floor of the hookah parlour. In the middle of the day. No one else is in there. Only client that day. In perfect health too, some kind of movie producer.

Wait -- was Joseph Mills a good cop?

No, he was awful. Awful sense of humour too. The worst jokes you've ever heard. Really rapey. Still -- he'd been on it for months now. Said it was THE FINAL CASE. Said it was UNCRACKABLE. That the murderer vanished into THIN AIR. That goddamn hookah parlour was all he talked about.

Wait -- how?

Beaten to death by a throng of Villalobos gang-members when him and his partner J. M. (only initials mentioned) answered a call one night. It's a sad story and it isn't really represented in your case files. Stop stalling and get to the MURDER AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR.

I can revisit this. (Put the case files away.)

Not much has changed in the meanwhile -- a bunch of sodden papers still sags from the clipboard.

COLLAPSING TENEMENT

This one's bad. Not that far from Precinct 41 -- in Central Jamrock -- there is an eight story apartment building with two hundred residents inside. It's the dead of winter, January. Snowing. Someone's beating their wife. It's half past midnight.

You get a complaint -- no one's there to take it. So you do call duty. The beating is taking place on the eighth floor. You take the elevator up. The building's creaking around you. Cold as hell. It's a run down old place. Concrete panels, rats everywhere.

And it's not pretty in the apartment either. By the time you arrive the husband's left. His wife has got her lip busted, face swollen. Eyes shut. Can't leave him, they're a financial unit. Enjoying this beautiful life in this beautiful tenement.

So anyway -- you take a leak before you leave.

In the apartment I got the call to?

Yes, cops do that. While you're taking a piss, you see a big crack in the wall. In the outer wall of the building. You can feel the cold air blow in. You take the elevator down, look up -- a big crack runs on the outer wall of the whole building.

Right from the foundation -- up to the eighth floor.

Oh god...

No, no, no, no...

Fucking hell.

The tilt is beyond the point of maximum deviation from the gravity bearing perpendicular. This means that the building is falling -- and will fall no matter what.

That's right. They trained you for this in cop school. Everyone has to pick a civil specialization so they can keep the city running: fire safety, first aid training, and so on. You took building safety regulation. And it tells you that this one -- is coming down.

Maybe not tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow. Maybe not the day after, but it's coming down. In a matter of days. It is physically impossible for it not to. And the two hundred people in there? They are all going down with it. The woman with the busted lip, the husband who beats her, their kids in the other room...

The drunk in the hallway. The girl in the elevator when you were going up. The youths on the stairs, laughing, smoking. The couple next to the apartment -- who made the call. They're all going to die.

But, you see, it's freezing outside. And there is no municipal government in Revachol. Nowhere to put these people. Two hundred people can't go to their aunt's for a couple of days. And above all -- there is no one to tell the building is coming down. No authority but you.

I'm gonna have to knock on every door and explain them how load bearing perpendiculars work?

Bad, bad thoughts go through your head. So what you do is -- you call your partner. JV (only initials available) is up. He comes immediately. He didn't take building safety, but he believes you. He brings five more officers. Together you knock on every door and explain the situation.

The load bearing perpendicular. The maximum deviation. All of it... Some people believe you. Most don't. Some you have to forcibly remove. Some even pull guns on you. It takes 20 hours to evacuate the whole building. 200 people stand outside in the cold. Children cry.

Your captain puts them in a half-burned building 10 km South. It's got black mould and no roof, but hey -- it's better than death.

And then what?

And then the building doesn't come down. And it still hasn't. That was 52 days ago. BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT. The point is -- it will come down.

If it hasn't, it won't. I was wrong.

At the end of the day -- no one knows. The math says it must collapse. And the optics show that it doesn't. It's as if some kind of evil spirit is holding the tenement together, like the jaws of a trap. Luring the people back in. One by one. Already they're going... At least 40 of them are living there now.

As we speak. And you can't keep them from going back, because they all hate you. They despise you. They think you threw them out of their homes. Every day they despise you more -- and every day, more of them go back.

And every day is a day closer to the day the building will fall.

Exactly. These notes have been very clear. Seems you have been thorough with documenting this one. So -- which one of these do you want to read next? (Because there is nothing you can do about THE COLLAPSING TENEMENT).

And when it does, everyone in there will die.

Oh god, I don't know...