The Rules

Capitaine Elienne Desorlay rummaged around in the paper bag.  I’m sure there was one more … aha!  Triumphantly, she pulled out the last peshorky, still slightly warm, if a little soggy as the spicy meat began to seep through the crisp pastry. 

About to bite into it, she paused as her conscience stirred.  You don't eat in front of your partner. That's the rules. “Want half?” she asked.

“It’s all yours,” Lieutenant Charles Etay said with a faint smile, his accent making it sound as if he was trying to keep the words in his mouth even as he spoke, reluctant to give even that much of himself away.

“You sure?”  she asked suspiciously.  Turning down a peshorky, even a rapidly-cooling one, was grounds for a diagnosis of insanity in Elienne’s book.

“Sure,” Etay said mildly, not turning from his scrutiny of the street through the windshield of their Unmarked Surveillance Vehicle.

Elienne studied his profile with growing unease. “You’re not … you’re not a vegetarian, are you?” It would explain why he’s so damn skinny, at least.  Although skinny was perhaps the wrong word, she had to admit.  Still, my Robert would make two of him. A man should have some meat on his bones.

The corner of Etay’s mouth that Elienne could see twitched up slightly. “No,” he said, “I’m not a vegetarian.”

“On a diet?” More understandable, if still reprehensible.

“Not that either,” Etay assured her.

“Then …?”  Shit. He’s dying of something. That’s why they’ve stuck him with me, last year’s fair-haired boy of the Supreme Court Investigative Division parked in Crimes-Against-Persons with a partner two years out from retirement. Shit, that’s the last thing I need, just when I’m about to get Jules out of the house and off to college and have an easy few years run through to the pension. A dying partner. Shit!  “Are you …. ?”

Etay turned to look at her with his usual unreadable expression.  Elienne had tried over the past few days to work out if Etay regarded the world through eyes narrowed in scrutiny or by a perpetual amusement. Even money each way. “I’m not sick either,” he said. “I’m just not hungry. This case…”

“Ah.”  She bit into the peshorky with a clear conscience and a sense of relief, and added another item to her mental list titled Charles Etay: The Partner’s Manual.

It now read Plays handball; probably irons his underwear; doesn’t seem to know how pretty he is; possibly too 'sensitive' for the job.

The handball she’d learnt about from the office grapevine, the underwear was, she felt, a logical conclusion given the man had turned up for a stake-out in a suit rather than the comfortable sweats most plain-clothes investigators would choose, he made the jacket and open-collared shirt look as formal as a uniform.

And it was clear to Elienne that Etay was at least partially oblivious to his own good fortune in the looks department from the fact that he’d gotten through the first few days of their partnership without acting like a con.  In her long experience, men – and women, for that matter - who knew they’d fallen out of the pretty tree and hit every branch on the way down tended to carry themselves with an awareness of their superiority to the fat-assed, pug-nosed, gap-toothed rest of the world. Not Charlie. Not yet, anyway.

“Yeah, it’s a shit of a case,” Elienne said. Leshinna Grattotte, aged six.  “Kids … that’s the worst.”

“You seen a lot of them?” Etay asked, his husky voice even softer than it usually was.

“A few.” She licked the last of the juice from her fingers. “One’s too many. They stick with you.  Especially if you see the bodies.”

“This one’s missing, not dead.”

“Don’t go setting your heart on that, Charlie,” Elienne advised. “I did that, the first time. Then we found him, poor little boy. You go setting your heart on finding them alive, they won’t ever leave you alone.”

Etay looked out the window, the glass showing Elienne his eyes only in a shadowed reflection. For a moment she thought he was too young and green to know the rules of the USV, give and get, and he wasn’t going to speak.

Then he took a shallow breath. “The one that stuck with me was a live one,” he said. Unwritten rules. Truth for truth. “Bodies, well, you see them. The worst thing that’s ever going to happen to them is already over. One night patrol my partner and me got a call, woman screaming in an alley. We got there, she was on the ground, he was on top of her. My partner was putting him in the patrol and I was trying to tell her it was going to be all right, she was safe now." Etay paused and traced one finger over the window beside him.  "She couldn't work out whether to hang on to me for comfort or cower away. I could tell it was all tangled up in her head, that nothing was safe for her anymore.  I wonder about her, you know. How she's doing. If it got untangled for her, or not."

“Probably not,” Elienne said.

"Probably not," Etay agreed.

Elienne crumpled up the bag and tossed it over into the back seat, and let silence return to the USV. Etay was good with silence, that was something else for the manual and a point in his favour. Elienne let it stretch and stretch to see when he'd break it, but in the end she was the one to speak first. 

"So who did you shit on to get stuck with me?" she asked.

 Points for honesty, she thought, when Etay didn't try and pretend he was thrilled to be stuck in CAP with a partner who'd been stuck at the same rank for twenty years.  "The FIO," he said simply. 

"Shit." Elienne slumped in her seat. "So you're a dumb son-of-a-bitch, then."

He laughed, nothing more than a puff of air. "Guess I am. Or a stubborn one, anyway."

"Yeah?"

Etay shrugged slightly. "Cold case. Cloning station sabotage. Ran places nobody expected, FIO agent in the place at the time. We got warned off and I didn't listen."

"Yeah, well, I got two years to pension, so they warn you again, you be fucking smarter, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am." It might have been sarcastic. It might have been sincere. Elienne couldn't tell.

"Where are you from, anyway?" she asked. "Don't recognise the accent."

Etay kept his gaze on the street. "Caldari Prime, a dozen generations ago, if that's what you're asking."

"I'm old, but I'm not blind. I could see that. Where'd you grow up?"

"One world over," Etay said.  

"Ah, so that explains it. Luminaire boy, huh? Big city manners and big city style?"

He turned to face her for the first time. "I grew up on a farm."

"Oh well that - "

She bit the words off as Etay gave her the first unmistakeable smile she'd had from him. "That explains a lot? Yeah, it does."

Elienne snorted. "Yeah, farmboy, I guess it does."

  

He turned back to the window. "So where did you - he's moving. There he is. He's moving."

"I see him."  Average-height-average-build-brown-hair. "Hold on, hold on, he's heading for his car - "

Etay thumbed his comm. "SCIDCEN, this is USV 4-3, our target is moving. Request activation of monitor."

Elienne watched as Mr Average lifted the driver's side door of his 'car and slid in. "They have him?" she asked. "Charlie? They sending the feed?"

"No." Etay pressed the buttons to start the USV. "Feed's down."

"Again? Ah, baise moi, the fucking budget! Get across, cut him off - "

"No," Etay said again as the USV engine warmed up with a faint, ear-tickling whine and he sent it out into the stream of traffic.

"No? Then what?"

Etay pulled out into the traffic as Mr. Average reached his vehicle. "We're going to follow this son-of-a-bitch."

"Oh, no." Elienne shook her head. "A sniffer's one thing. If we fucking lose him - "

"If he's got her somewhere else what are the chances of him telling us once he's in custody?" Etay let a couple of cars pull in between them and their target. "We're going to follow him and see where he goes and if we're lucky he'll lead us to the girl."

Shit. "The girl's - "

"Probably dead, I know. I'd like her family to have something to bury, though, wouldn't you?"

"Fuck!" Two years off pension.  

But you backed your partner, that was the rules. 

Elienne leaned back in her seat as Etay punched a priority code into the Traffic Control System and sent the USV weaving through the traffic and thumbed her comm-link. "SCIDCEN, be advised, USV 4-3 in pursuit of suspect in green late-model Rosseche landcar licence Q-R-45-I-9-K-K-316, headed west on Rue D'Avourge, request traffic control monitoring, do not approach, repeat, do not approach the vehicle."  She clicked the comm off and braced herself against the dash as Etay took a corner hard and fast. "If this comes back on us you better know I'll be spending my impoverished old age with you, farmboy. Me and my husband and probably several of my damn kids with their useless degrees in art history and similar shit. I hope you realise th - watch it!"

Etay disengaged the feed from the TCS and sent the USV onto the wrong side of the road, the engine's whine rising to a shrill buzz as the old vehicle shivered in protest.  They shot past on-coming traffic as 'cars to the left and right swerved crazily, the TCS trying to track and compensate for their now 'rogue' vehicle. As Etay wrenched the USV back over the divider Elienne pressed a hand over her heart and tried to decide whether to look at the road ahead, the vehicle they were following, or Etay's calm profile.

She picked option B and saw their target turn into a smaller, less busy thoroughfare. "Charlie..."

"See him." Etay followed, slowing to leave a greater distance between the two 'cars.

They were a block or so back when the vehicle ahead came to a stop. As Mr Average got out and headed into the nearest building, Etay brought their own 'car to a halt. Elienne slid out of the door as the engine stopped, checking her mag-pistol automatically with one hand as she thumbed the comm again with the other. "USV 4-3 on foot in pursuit, request traffic monitoring of the area, maintain distance."

Etay was out of the vehicle after her but he overtook her easily before they reached the door of the rundown apartment block. Elienne wheezed as he tried to open it. Fucking teenagers and their damn athletic hobbies. The handle didn't move and Etay took a step back and kicked it hard by the lock.  Pressed fibreboard showered them both with dust as the lock tore free.

The door opened directly onto stairs. Etay headed up, Elienne panting behind him, and then stopped, hand raised. She stopped as well and in the silence could hear footfalls above them.

Etay caught her gaze, and jerked his chin upwards. She nodded. Go ahead. 

By the time she reached the third floor he was out of sight. She toiled upwards grimly, cursing silently, checking each floor for the sight of his blonde head above the residents coming and going.

He was there on the tenth floor, standing outside a door, his own gun in his hand.

Elienne paused long enough to tell a couple of curious bystanders to Go inside, right now!  and joined Etay at the door.

He put his finger to his lips and bent his head listening.

The voices inside were audible to Elienne was well. One deeper, adult, the other the piping treble of a child.

Talking.

Alive.

Elienne allowed herself one second of a relief so intense she could taste it like sweet honey on her tongue. Alive.

Then she let it go. Not home yet. Not yet.

Kid to the left, him to the right ...

She caught Etay's eye and nodded, lifting her gun. He took a step back, braced himself, and kicked.

The door banged open and Elienne followed it so fast the rebound caught her hard on the shoulder. Etay was right behind her, both of them shouting SCID, on the floor, on the floor!

For a minute Mr Average didn't move. Elienne could hear a child crying off to her left and felt her finger tighten on the trigger for the first time in more than forty years. 

Etay pushed past her, holstering his gun, and grabbed Mr Average by one arm, spinning him around and slamming him face down on the floor. Elienne tracked him down with the muzzle of her pistol, vision narrowed to his face in a sea of black.

"The kid," Etay said. "Elienne. Capitaine Desorlay. The kid."

Her sight came back and the buzzing in her ears faded. "Yeah."

Etay fished a Perpetrator Restraining Device from his pocket and hooked it around Mr Average's wrists as Elienne holstered her pistol and turned to look around the room. It was small and filthy, stinking of shit and garbage and stale sweat but it held the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

Leshinna Grattotte, aged six.

She made a quick call on her comm as she moved cautiously towards the child. Backup needed - medics - immediate, tenth floor.

"Hey there, cherie," she said, crouching down beside the bed where the little girl lay. "We're from SCID and we're here to take you back to your mama and papa, okay?"

The little girl nodded, tears leaking from her eyes.     

"I'm going to pick you up, okay, cherie?" When Leshinna nodded again, Elienne gathered her up and settled her on one hip, rising carefully to her feet. She felt warm liquid soaking through her shirt and wished she could believe that it was because Leshinna had wet herself.  The child was shivering. "Charlie, give me your jacket."

He slipped it off and draped it around the little girl's shoulders.  "Take her downstairs," he said to Elienne. "Send the backup up to bring this guy down."

"Yeah," Elienne said. "Wouldn't want him to have a slip and fall on the stairs."

As Elienne turned to the door, Etay yanked Mr Average to his feet. "You," he said, "are obliged to answer any questions put to you by authorised agents of the SCID. Anything you say without the presence of legal representation will be recorded and may be used in evidence at your trial - are you listening to me?"

Elienne glanced back.

Mr Average was staring at Leshinna. "Don't forget me, okay, cherie?" he said. "I'll see you again soon."

Later, when she was turning it into a story in her head, taming it so it was something she could share with Robert over a cognac after dinner, Elienne would tell herself that she'd been frightened by what she'd seen in Etay's eyes, or that there'd been something terrible in his expression. But the truth was, the truth that would stay in that little stinking windowless room that Elienne would never allow herself to visit again even in memory, the truth was she had no warning.

Nothing in Etay's face changed. He was looking at Elienne with his perpetual, maybe-amused, unreadable expression, and then there was a blur of movement and blood and Mr Average was on the ground, groaning.

Elienne looked down at him, and then at Etay, who was regarding the man whimpering on the floor mildly and steadily, unbuttoning the cuff of his left sleeve and staring to roll it up with careful, precise folds.

Later, Elienne would tell herself that it was a moment of decision. That she made a choice, for good or ill, that it was a turning point in her sense of herself and her definition of the job. 

That would be part of the story.  It wasn't part of the truth that would stay in that room.

Elienne turned and walked out the door with the girl without making any choice at all. It wasn't until she was three storeys down that her mind began to work again, and as soon as it did she knew she'd made a mistake.

Broken the unwritten rules. Left her partner out on his own, in a room with an arrestee. Anything could happen.

Someone could get hurt.

Someone was going to.

Her partner was going to step over a line there was no coming back from and she was walking away from him, step by step.

And, fuck, there's every chance it'll come out and I can bend over, put my head between my knees and kiss my pension goodbye.

Elienne hated herself a little for the thought. Hated herself a little more for keeping on climbing down those ten flights of stairs.

The medics met her halfway down.  When they tried to take Leshinna from her the little girl cried and clung, and so they let Elienne go on carrying her all the way down and out the front door and into the waiting medical transport.

SCID officers passed them on the way, heading up. Elienne gathered herself enough to tell them she'd left Etay with arrest in progress, leaving as much wriggle room as she could, leaving out the PRD and the fact that Mr Average had been down and bleeding when she'd left.

  

Leshinna didn't let go of her until they'd reached the hospital where the girl's parents were waiting. Elienne relinquished her, waved off colleagues who wanted to know What happened, how did you know?

Where's Etay?

She found herself a seat in the waiting room and settled into it, taking stock of her aching knees and sore feet to avoid thinking about anything else. Fuck the SCID health plan, anyway.  Need anything more expensive than a filling, like those fancy implants for an old woman's joints they're always advertising on the holo, and you're on your fucking own.  

When a trolley was rushed past her with a flurry of medtechs around it Elienne refused to look up.

A pair of shoes, good leather with thin, impractical soles, intruded into her field of vision, paused, and then came over beside her as the owner of the shoes settled into the chair next to her.

"Kid?" Etay asked.

"Okay," Elienne said. "Docs said she was drugged. Could be she won't remember much."

"That'd be nice."

"Yeah."  She looked sidewise at him, determined not to ask.  

Etay looked back at her with the same imperturbable expression he'd worn for three days. "So," he said mildly. "There’s something I have to tell you. And you’re not going to like it.”

Shit. Oh, shit. There had to be a way to keep it quiet. Save them both, well, save herself, Etay being beyond saving in anything more than the most strictly careerist sense of the word. Shit. Shit. "What?"

"Hmm?"

"What is it that you have to tell me?"

"Oh, right."  He gave her the second smile she'd got from him, sunny and warm.  "I'm sorry, Elienne. I know it's not something you want to hear from your partner, but ..."

"But?"

“I am a vegetarian.”

She stared at him, mouth ajar.

"And on a diet. Have to make weight for the departmental handball championships, you know." 

Elienne realised her mouth was open, closed it, opened it again to say: "You ...?"

"But I don't mind if you eat meat," Etay said. "It's a personal decision. So don't feel you shouldn't - "

Elienne took a deep breath. "And the suspect?"

"Oh, him." Etay shrugged slightly. "They're putting a stabilizer in his arm. Gluing up some cuts."

"But he's not ... dead?"

Etay shook his head. "Nope. So what do you think?"

"What do I think? About ...?"

"About me being a vegetarian. Do you want to put in for a new partner? I won't be offended."

"You..."

Elienne found herself laughing, tears running down her cheeks, tried to stop as a medtech glared at her and felt her breath hitch treacherously close to a sob.

"I know it seems funny," Etay said. "Choosing not to eat meat. But when you look at the scientific evidence - "

Elienne gasped for breathe, slapped Etay's arm, and shook her head. "You fils de putain de merde!"

"Now, come on," Etay said. "it's just a personal preference - "

"Oh, shut up," Elienne said. "You nearly give me a heart attack on your third day on the job, and you want to talk about vegetables?"

"Well, see, there's another reason to stop eating meat.  The effect on your arteries is - "

Elienne slapped his arm again and Etay subsided, smiling slightly.

"I," she said firmly, "am not going to give up peshorkies. And you, farmboy, are going to buy me a drink. A big one. Big enough to fucking swim in, in fact. That's what the rules say. "

"They do?"

"You better fucking believe it, partner," Elienne said. "You better fucking believe they do."