Free Acts of Violence by Ross Harrison

disappeared. Under suspicious circumstances. Blood was
found.’
    ‘Traces.’
    ‘She left no note
and contacted no one about leaving. Not even you, apparently. She didn’t catch
any flight off the planet or to anywhere else on the planet.’
    ‘Maybe she took a
cab.’
    ‘Just…disappeared
into thin air.’
    ‘And what does that
have to do with a dead barmaid ten years later?’
    ‘Not very much at
all. What confuses me is that you were booted from the academy around the same
time. The same day, in fact.’ What the hell was he talking about this for? ‘Now,
it would make sense to remove you because you were under investigation. But
maybe that came first. This is a badly put together file, like most of them in
this place. Hard to tell what’s what from it. Maybe you were kicked out of the
academy and decided to take your anger out on…’ he checked the datapad, ‘…Lucy.’
    ‘That’s an
impressive skill. Scanning over a file and knowing the ins and outs like you
were there. Now I’ll try to work out something relevant. You brought me in
after my so-called “escape” and dragged me straight back to this room. Not a
cell. Not out to Anshan. Here. To sit and wag your chin at me. Lawrence already went through as much questioning as any court would need to convict. So my
guess is: you’re not as sure as you were this morning. Something’s happened.
Something’s changed. Suddenly no one knows what to think. Is Jack Mason the
killer…or not?’
    ‘Not bad for
average.’
    ‘So what happened?’
    DeMartino just
looked at me for a while. He didn’t want to tell me. Didn’t have a lot of options
though. ‘We have a girl in the next room who swears blind that Richard Webster
killed the barmaid. She says she saw you go out and him go in. Then he came out
quick, covered in blood, and got into his father’s car. She has…pictures.’ He said
the word carefully, almost as though he didn’t believe it.
    I thought about it.
Had Little Dick been in my apartment? I’d already considered the possibility.
But I’d also dismissed it on the grounds that even he wouldn’t be stupid enough
to steal whatever daddy Webster wanted from the girl. For the third time that
hour I wondered if Little Dick was working on something behind Webster’s back.
Maybe he was working to move the old man out of office.
    ‘What girl?’ I
asked. ‘What pictures?’
    ‘I can’t divulge
that information, Mr. Mason.’
    ‘We’re back to “Mr.
Mason” again, are we?’
    I didn’t know of
any girl living close by me. I liked that street because it was full of old
people. Less trouble. Besides, old people could be as good as security cameras.
They watched everything. If anyone ever came snooping around my place, they’d
never think some fragile old coot would be a threat to them. But that old coot
would pass on what they saw to me. The real threat. But that hadn’t worked this
morning. I’d left at pretty much the only time of the day that not a single one
of my neighbours would have been watching. Which meant Little Dick, or whoever
it was, had got into my apartment also without being watched. Except apparently
this girl was watching. But why?
    ‘Who broke you out
of custody, Mr. Mason?’
    ‘People with guns
and masks.’
    ‘I think I’m
beginning to like you, Mr. Mason, but you’re not very bright. There’s a very
slim chance that you might actually beat a murder rap, but you’d rather play
coy. You need to tell me everything you know if you want that slim chance.’
    ‘A second ago, it
was a very slim chance. Seems my odds are increasing by the second.’
    ‘So you don’t want
to tell me who helped you?’
    ‘I wouldn’t say
they helped me. They tried to teach me to swim, but I never much liked the
water. And it’s real hard with your hands tied behind your back.’
    ‘So someone broke
you out to kill you. Who? Why?’
    ‘They wanted
something I couldn’t give them.’
    ‘And what was
that?’
    ‘I don’t