Rule 34 - Charles Stross [85]
You sit behind your desk in a haze of mild dread for a couple of hours, a cup of tea cooling by your hand as you try to distract yourself by chasing naughty pictures on the Internet. But your heart isn’t in it, and in the end you give up and stand, meaning to go in search of water to pour on the endlessly dying rubber plant, when your mobile rings.
Your heart sinks as you recognize Bibi’s face: It’s most unlike her to phone you from work. “Hello? What is it?”
“Anwar? Praise Allah, it’s you! Please, can you go at once and look after my mother? She just called. I think she’s having another of her funny turns—”
Sameena lives with her husband Taleb and Cousin Tariq and assorted grown-up children, their spouses and descendants in a stillslightly-ramshackle town house Ali bought back in the nineties. You weigh Bibi’s plea momentarily. It’s an imposition, and it means closing the office, but on the other hand, it means early release from the cone of silence. “All right, my love. Just for you I’ll close the office early and—”
“Please, Anwar! Just go, right now. You might need to call in help—I can’t leave the shop, but—”
Five minutes later, you’re on your way, heart singing and feet light. Bibi has not only forgiven but, in the urgency of her call, has forgotten to be angry at you.
It doesn’t last. The hairs on the back of your neck begin to rise as you turn the corner on their cobbled side-street on the wrong side of Bruntsfield Place and see two—no, three—police cars sprawled across the parking bays. Coincidence, you tell yourself, and anyway, even if Tariq’s got himself into trouble, you’re here with the best of intentions, to give aid and comfort to his mother, who is doubtless—
Their front door is ajar. As you approach it a fourth police car turns the corner, lights flashing, and double-parks a couple of doors along from you, and as you reach up and ring the doorbell, you hear sobbing from inside, the sound of your mother-in-law losing it wholesale in the kitchen.
The cop who opens the door is instantly suspicious. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” he demands, scanning you with a small forest of cameras. His free hand twitches in the direction of a beltful of handcuffs. “You can’t come in.”
Your shoulders slump. “My wife got a call from my mother-in-law,” you say. “Is she alright? Has there been an accident?”
“What’s your name? What’s your mother-in-law’s name?” He looms over you, overbearing.
“I, uh, I’m Anwar Hussein. My wife’s mother, Sameena Begum, is she alright?” You blink at him, trying not to cringe away. Your stomach is churning again. The rozzer’s eyes twitch behind his head-up shades, fingers twitching on some kind of air keyboard, then his shoulders relax slightly.
“Who else lives here?” he demands. “Do you know them?”
You blink rapidly. “My mother-in-law. And my wife’s brother and sisters. My father-in-law, Uncle Taleb—”
He shakes his head. “Are you next of kin?”
Ah. “Yes. What’s happened—”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Now that he’s pigeon-holed you he switches to the next-of-kin script; unfortunately it’s not the good-tidings one. He’s got that oh shit do I have to tell the family look on his face. Your knees go weak. “I’ll have to ask you to wait here for a few minutes while we finish securing the, the scene. Your mother-in-law is unhurt, but I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.” So who . . . “My colleagues may need to ask you some questions.”
Footsteps behind you. You look round and see a man and a woman, both in suits, with something about them that screams “cop.” And now it takes all your will-power to keep your knees from collapsing completely because you recognize the woman; you last saw her face over a video link to the sheriff’s court, laying a comprehensive