*** Extracts ***

This is the opening of "Pirates of the Cumberland Basin", a short story of mine which appears in Colin Harvey's "Future Bristol" anthology.  The anthology also features stories by Gareth L Powell, Nick Walters and Liz Williams, among others, and is available to buy now from www.amazon.co.uk.

Pirates of the Cumberland Basin

By Joanne Hall

The woman’s body splayed against the glass dome of the abandoned shopping centre. Sliced from throat to pubic bone, flaps of skin stretched out on either side of her torso, throwing a silhouette like a gigantic bat against the glass. Looking up, Harry saw where she struck the dome, a spider web of cracked glass, and a long smear of blood as she slid to her final resting place.
“Berkley, can you get closer?”
His partner said nothing, overwhelmed by the grim spectacle of the Circus. He lowered the paddle into the murky water, propelling them forward. The only sounds were the soft splashing as the dinghy inched through the Circus, and a persistent dripping from all around, echoing in the stillness.
Harry fixed his eyes on the dead woman, preferring that macabre sight to the half-submerged, abandoned shops around him. As Berkley swung the torch, he could still make out some of their names, faded and water-ruined. He tried not to imagine what they might have sold. That was a world long gone.
The dinghy struck something underwater and came to an abrupt halt, the stern swinging round sharply. The woman’s body loomed twenty feet above, pale and distorted in the wavering torchlight. “Now what, Harry?”
Harry wasn’t sure. He had to take a sample so InfoCon could find out who she was, tell her family. If she had a family, if she wasn’t an illegal, travelled thousands of miles for a better life only to end up as a gory window display.
He was surprised the fragile dome had survived this long. If he was careless he could bring the whole roof crashing down, and Ub-hot would have two extra bodies to deal with. But as Berkley swung the torch, Harry noticed a missing pane, barely five feet from the corpse.
His eye-pod vibrated, a fluttering under his lashes like a tic. Victoria’s image appeared, hovering just beyond the end of his nose. Even at two inches high, she radiated irritation. “What are you two doing in there? You‘ve been ages!”
“Just getting the sample,” he assured her. “We’ll be back in ten minutes. Any trouble?”
“Not yet, but the locals are getting very interested in the cruiser.”
“Back off for a while. I’ll buzz you when we’re finished.” He broke the connection, and the image dissolved.
“Is Victoria all right?” Berkley asked. It was bad manners to Podshare without permission, but even though Berkley would have turned up his music to drown out her voice, he had still seen her hologram.
“Nothing major.” Harry took the drone from his backpack, a sleek black sphere the size of an apple. Using his controller, he steered it towards the missing pane, careful not to brush against anything. It was delicate work, and he hoped Victoria wouldn’t buzz back until the operation was complete. The drone vanished behind the filthy glass, but the proximity warming on the controller beeped loudly as it touched the corpse. He manipulated the buttons, and a series of bleeps told him the sample had been collected. Relaxing, he ordered the drone to return, following the same path.
“Are we done?” Berkley asked, as Harry caught the drone and returned it to his pack. “Let’s go; this place is weird. What is a Circus, anyway?”
“Somewhere people shopped, I guess.” Harry tried to imagine the aisles of the Circus thronging with life, but it was impossible. There was only the cold, the musty reek of mould, and the endless water.
Berkley paddled quicker as he headed towards the entrance. Harry didn’t blame him; the oppressive atmosphere was getting to him, too. Pushing through the ivy that trailed over the entrance, he caught a welcome glimpse of blue sky, and quickly buzzed Victoria to pick them up.
Berkley stowed the paddle, sighing in relief. “Being in there makes you appreciate how good it is out here, doesn’t it?”
Taking in a deep breath, Harry agreed. The calm water threw back reflections of sky and clouds, disturbed only by the occasional gull. They floated above what was once the main entrance to the Circus. On either side, the tops of sunken buildings emerged from the water like bizarre geometric islands. Brightly coloured lines of washing flapped bravely from the roofs, and every zealously-tended window box was a riot of blooms. The city rooftops were a garden, lovingly tended by these upper floor dwellers who had stayed behind when the water rushed in. Their gardens were bright, their clothes garish, but their faces were dour as the little yellow dinghy bobbed past. Conversations hushed, and every eye turned to watch with quiet, futile resentment.
“Where the hell is Victoria?” Berkley muttered, tightening his grip on the oar.
“She’ll be here.” Harry kept his gaze locked straight ahead. Making eye contact with the roof dwellers invited trouble.
He heard the low throb of the police launch before he saw it. The rooftops emptied, as the long, low cruiser emerged from behind the old House of Fraser building and skimmed up the Haymarket towards them.
Safely aboard, Harry strapped himself into the passenger seat. Victoria smiled. “Did you get what you wanted?”
“A sample. I had to leave the body to the gulls.”
“Where to now, then?”
“Ub-hot. Let’s see if we can find out who the poor bitch was, and how she ended up there.”
The scientific division of the city police department occupied the old museum building, all marbled floors and Roman columns. Now it was a labyrinth of flimsy bamboo partitions and signs in three different languages. Harry turned up the music in his Pod to drown out the high-pitched electrical whine that filled the air, but he couldn’t evade the hum of the generator, pulsing behind everything like a massive heartbeat. He could feel it in his own chest. It made him nauseous, and he increased his stride, hoping InfoCon would identify the dead woman quickly so he could get out of here.
His metal-tipped heels clicked on the sweeping staircase. On the first floor the greasy, fried-potato smell of the generator was much stronger, making him feel simultaneously sickened and hungry. Opening the double doors, he found himself eyeball to chest with the stuffed gorilla. It was sporting an old-fashioned fedora, the kind archaeologists used to wear. He gave it a nod, and the gorilla nodded back, with the slow wheeze of dying animatronics. Its eyes, replaced by security cameras, followed him as he crossed to Magda’s cubicle.
Magda’s cubicle was a bright monument to her drowned homeland. It was painted lurid orange, and little Dutch flags jostled for space with the stuffed ducks on her desk. It was like stepping into the heart of a tangerine, and it made Harry’s eyes water. Magda was a striking woman, pale, with hair so blonde it was almost white, but her orange mini-dress leached away what little colouring she had, making her look like a ghost. She sat hunched over her machine, swearing at it in Dutch, and only looked up when Harry cleared his throat.
“Hey Harry! What’s up?”
He held up the drone. “Sample for you.”
“Your mystery body from this morning? Pass it here.” She inserted the drone into a slot in the machine. “It’ll take a moment.”
“I don’t mind waiting.” He liked hanging around Magda, despite the relentless orange. Her cubicle was interesting, with its fading pictures of long-dead Dutch footballers and pop stars. There was always something new to see. This time it was a newspaper cutting heralding the 2018 World Cup winning Dutch football team. Their smiles were as faded as their strips. “Where do you get all this stuff?” he asked her.
Magda shrugged. “Around.” On the black market, of course. Dealing in items from the Drowned Countries was lucrative. People like Magda would pay a premium for memories from their lost home.
She changed the subject. “You’re looking peaky, Harry. Are you eating your two portions of meat?”
He snorted. “I don’t care what the government says, who can afford two helpings of meat a week?”
She leant forward conspiratorially. “I’ve got some seal, if you want to barter.”
The thought of seal, combined with the smell of the generator, made Harry’s stomach gurgle. “Where did you get seal? No, don’t tell me, ‘around’, right?”
“Right!” She winked. “I’ll bring you a portion tomorrow.” Her computer bleeped. “Your sample’s done. Let’s find out who your mystery woman is.”
She shifted her chair sideways so Harry could get a proper look at the screen, though the symbols and Dutch text meant nothing to him.
“Her name was Cornubia Penhallow.”
“That’s quite a mouthful.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll give you a printout.” She caught his expression. “And it’ll be in English, if you insist. I don’t know why you Brits can’t learn other languages.”
Harry resisted pointing out that Madga, despite her Dutch heritage, was born in Bristol long after the Netherlands were swallowed by the sea, and was as British as he was. Why trample on her romance?
Madga peered more closely at the screen. “That’s interesting,” she said. “She was registered as living on the Great Britain. Her sample tells me she’d recently had a baby - hormones in the blood - but there’s no baby registered here.”
“Maybe it died.”
Magda shook her head, tight lipped. “It would have been registered anyway,” she insisted. “There’s a note on her record that she was pregnant, so she must have seen a doctor.” She looked up, lines furrowing between her almost-invisible eyebrows. “We can’t have unregistered children running about. You’d better find out what happened to that baby, Harry.”
“Will do!” He mock-saluted her as he grabbed the paper chuntering out of the printer. “Do you know when she died?”
“I’m not a detective, Harry. I’d worry more about the baby. I guess you should start by looking on the Britain. They might tell you something.”

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