Author's foreword:
This is a stand-alone story (submitted for the Geek Pride event) set in the same narrative world as the story series,
Every Man's Fantasy
. The events occur about 15 years before the start of chapter 1 of
Every Man's Fantasy
and feature events in the earlier life of two characters from the series.
Erinaceous.
1 Murder on Capella Space Station
Arthur Jeffries smiled.
The report said 'murder'. Murder on Capella Space Station.
Arthur smiled because the idea was ridiculous. As the Constable of Capella Space Station, he was the only professional law officer on a jurisdiction known for its lack of crime. His incredulity at the report was understandable. It was also understandable (though less excusable) that he was excited because there would be a corpse, witnesses, clues and suspects.
In his two years as Constable, after five years on the beat in New York, one of Earth's over-populated crime-ridden cities, the most serious incidents Arthur had so far dealt with were drunken freighter crews fighting in the seedy pubs on the East Causeway.
Now there was a real crime to solve. And what a crime: the very worst. Murder! Its horror couldn't be properly appreciated until it occurred in a community that had never known a murder in the whole of its existence.
Commissioned ninety-eight years ago, in Earth-year 2441, Capella Space Station was forty-two light-years from Earth. On a complex orbit about the four stars of the Capella system, it looked like a giant gyroscope, with a spindle ten miles long and a wheel with four spokes three miles across, turning at a sedate pace to create an Earth-normal artificial gravitation for those on the inside edge of the great wheel's rim.
Most of the population of the station lived and worked on the rim, which was divided into four causeways. The West Causeway had posh shops and good hotels. The North Causeway had the homes of the permanent residents, a school and a hospital. The South Causeway had food halls and workshops for craftsmen who could repair any machine. The East Causeway had rowdy bars, casinos, pawn-brokers and brothels.
The East Causeway also had the police station, squeezed between a pawn-shop and a launderette, with Arthur's flat above. Despite the unwholesome reputation of the East Causeway, Capella Space Station was the most law-abiding place Arthur had ever lived. There were ten-thousand permanent residents: mechanics, shop-keepers, bankers, teachers, cooks, hydroponics farmers, gardeners and Entertainers (that is, prostitutes, who were legal, licensed and guaranteed disease-free).
There was also a transient population of space riggers, miners, freighter crews, military personnel on furlough and Planetary Prospectors (who risked their lives finding new planets for Earth to colonise). They all visited Capella for supplies, to look for work, to feel some gravitation (albeit artificial) underfoot or to gamble, drink, shop, trade and spend time with a friendly Entertainer.
Added to this diverse humanity were about a million settlers a year from Earth, who came to Capella to embark on giant hyperspace transports to distant planets. They spent their fortunes leaving an old, dirty and over-crowded planet for the chance of a new life in a pristine Outworld colony.
Now twenty-eight years old, Arthur Jeffries was of middle height, with an athletic build, a long face, fair hair, fleshy nose and naturally hangdog eyes. Wearing his clean and pressed police uniform proudly, with shiny shoes and shiny buttons on his tunic, he felt a thrill as he hopped onto the lift to the West Causeway and the Excelsior Hotel, in one of whose rooms was a corpse and a mystery to solve.
******
The dead man was called Ashmore Raleigh. He was well known as a rich and important industrialist. Born in America but with businesses across the Anglosphere, he lived mainly in the Caribbean with his wife and family. Raleigh was visiting Capella to start a long business trip to some Outworld colonies. He checked into the hotel with a female companion but the hotel didn't record her name and she wasn't in the hotel now.
The victim had severe bruising to his throat and ribs. Some of his ribs showed sharp edges through the skin, where they'd been broken. There was no other bruising or skin damage. Semen on the bed sheets showed that Raleigh was murdered in bed during or after having sex.
Arthur took photographs and bagged up the evidence, including a pair of skimpy women's panties and a bathroom towel with makeup stains. He released the body to orderlies of the space station's small hospital, where a doctor would verify the cause of death.
The evidence was ambiguous. Circumstantial evidence (the makeup stains, knickers and semen) made Arthur suspect the missing female companion, but Raleigh was fit and strong-looking. It would have been hard for a man his own strength to strangle him. There were no signs of a fight or any weapons. So how were his ribs broken? The breaks were where a woman's thighs might have been during sex in the missionary position.
When the video from the hotel lobby was relayed to Arthur's communicator, it showed Mr. Raleigh checking in with a young woman. Aged about eighteen or twenty, slender but curvy, elegant, amazingly good-looking, with deep-red chestnut hair, the woman wore a sombre knee-length brown dress and dark-grey high heels with ankle straps. Arthur doubted that this woman had the hand-strength to crush Raleigh's windpipe or the thigh strength to break his ribs.
The lobby video showed the same woman leaving the hotel alone about an hour later at 12.30. She was rushing and hadn't brushed her hair. It was possible that the death was an accident, after which she panicked.
A moment later there was a result from face-recognition. The woman was identified as Sharon Smith, aged nineteen, recently arrived from Earth, working as a licensed Entertainer and living on the East Causeway.
Arthur felt no need to hurry over to Sharon Smith's apartment to question her. If she was the culprit, then she would be on the run, though there was nowhere to run to on the space station. In any case, she would be found when she used her credit stick or her communicator.
Capella Space Station had strict privacy laws but, with a serious crime to investigate, the part-time Justice of the Peace granted Arthur a warrant to access Sharon's personal data. A licensed Entertainer would be easy to trace.
Arthur also requested to see video recordings from the businesses along the West Causeway. Shop-front video footage and street cameras might show where Sharon Smith had run to.
2 Coincidences
While Arthur waited for the videos to download and the doctor's report to arrive, he took the bag of evidence to a laboratory on the South Causeway for analysis. Then he returned to the police station because his communicator showed a message that someone was waiting for him.
It was three o'clock and his visitor had been waiting for some time. She was a woman in her middle twenties: middle height, middle weight with mid-brown hair of a middle length and mid-blue eyes. She was pale, homely and a little dowdy. A pointed chin and a ski-jump nose were the only distinctive features of her face. A handkerchief stuffed up the sleeve of her light-blue woollen cardigan reminded Arthur of one of his schoolteachers.
"Constable Jeffries?" the woman asked as he arrived at the station and opened the door to let her in.
"Yes, Ma'am?"
"My name is Mary Wetherall. I'd like to report a crime."
"Very well, Ma'am. What's the crime?"
"My suitcase was stolen. A woman bumped into me in the street, knocking me down. When I got up, I saw my suitcase was gone and that she was carrying it away. I chased after her but she was too quick and I lost her."
"Was there anything of value in the suitcase?"
"Yes, my spare clothes. What has their value got to do with it?"
"I have to prioritise my time, Ma'am. Although thefts are very rare here, if it's only clothes, which you can replace easily, then I have a more important crime to solve."
"More important? I arrived on Capella Space Station today to start a new job. Except for my suitcase, all my belongings are in a container in the docks. But before I could check into a hotel, the only spare clothes I have were stolen from me. Doubtless your lost puppy or jay-walker is important to you, but allow me to think my suitcase is important to me."
(Definitely a teacher, Arthur thought to himself.)
"I beg your pardon, Ma'am, your clothes are important to me, and I will certainly make them my priority after I've solved the murder that was committed about three hours ago."
"Murder?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
Mary was shocked. The frustration of waiting outside the police station had made her irritable. She was about to apologise for her brusque attitude when another young woman came into the police station with a bright happy step and a cheerful smile.
"Constable Jeffries?"
"Yes, Miss?" Arthur answered, staring at her.
"I've received a message on my communicator to say that face-recognition has been used on me, against my right to privacy. It told me to report it to the police, so here I am, reporting it."
The young woman was between eighteen and twenty, slender but also curvy, elegant and amazingly good-looking, with deep-red chestnut hair, large dark-green eyes, high cheekbones, a bow-shaped mouth, straight nose and a perfect complexion.
Arthur was still staring when Mary broke the silence.
"It's her!" she exclaimed. "The woman who stole my suitcase."
