Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

“Who was he?”

“I haven’t looked yet. I want to get the evidence back to my office.”

Markel huffed air through his mustache, but stepped aside to let me pass. “Can we move him?”

“If you want.” I called it over my shoulder; I was already on the way to the crew-only door at the far end of the passageway. Beyond it: a cramped corridor, pipes jutting out at odd angles and dim bulbs lighting the way with a weak yellowish glow. I felt my skirt pulling where blood stuck it to my boots; I’d have to change before I went anywhere near the passengers.

My office was a pocket-sized cabin a few yards aft of the bridge. I kept it as clean as possible, but inner rooms like this always smelled of mildew and used air. Markel had told me, when I’d boarded for my first tour aboard the airship Ozymandias , that beggars couldn’t be choosers. At least I was on the king of airships: four levels of passenger berthing and entertainment, multiple dining halls, even a theater for the showing of moving pictures or the acting of plays. It certainly rated more than a single constable, but I was all the Great American Airship Company cared to employ.

I didn’t care much about that anymore, but I still would have appreciated not paying for my own supplies — including the bright bulbs I’d had to install in my office lamps. They cast sterile white light that brought Marianne into sharp relief where she sat in my one guest chair, the only dirty thing in the pristine room.

“I’m sorry,” I said, dropping into my chair behind the desk. She reached for me and I took her hand.

“What happened?”

I squeezed her fingers. “One of the passengers was murdered. Someone cut his throat.”

Marianne made a face. “That’s awful.”

“You have no idea.” I didn’t say it sharply, though; after dancing around each other for the better part of half a year, we were finally together, and I didn’t want to push her away. “Now I have to find out who he was, search his cabin, and then bring everything to Saint-Pierre.”

She pursed her lips. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“You have duty—”

“What I have,” she said, pale eyes glinting under chestnut-brown bangs, “is Chief Engineer Frederickson eating out of my hand. I only need to ask.”

I seriously considered it for a moment. But in the end, I shook my head. “I’ll be all right,” I said. “The last thing he needs to know is that you and I are anything more than shipmates. He’s not stupid.”

“No. Just an ass.” Marianne’s fingernails were cracked and dirty but her palms were soft and her lips softer as she raised my hand to her mouth and kissed my fingers. “I’ll see you after-shift?”

I smiled; there was a hopeful note to her voice. “This figures to be a long night,” I said; her hands tensed, and I stroked her cheek with two fingers to try and soothe her. “I’ll try not to be out too late.”

“Please don’t.” She kissed my hand again, then pulled away gently and left my office.

It took me a full minute before I could concentrate enough to lay out the evidence on my bare wooden desk. The room and wardrobe keys told me the man had resided on the lowest level — the most expensive, most exclusive, with windows curving downward along the edge of the hull. I piled the change at one side, then opened the leather folio.

“Well, then.” The man’s driving license proclaimed him to be Ignatius Robins of Boston, Massachusetts. “Who were you, Mr. Robins, that someone should hurt you so?” I rifled through the dead man’s cash — more than three hundred dollars in assorted bills — and placed it near the change. It was expensive to fly Ozymandias , to be sure, but passengers bought their tickets in advance. I couldn’t imagine needing more than one hundred dollars. But then, I’d never paid for the privilege of the journey.

Robins had kept a bank identification card in the folio, a photograph of himself with his arm around a similar-looking man — perhaps a brother — and a sealed paper envelope half the size of a dollar but thick enough to hold at least five. “Drugs, Mr. Robins? Really?” With a small, sharp paper knife, I slit open the envelope.

It wasn’t drugs I shook out into my palm, though. It was sheets of what felt like rice paper, covered in tiny writing. I looked at one through a magnifying glass.

Then I let out a hissing, dismayed breath.

Cyrillic lettering. Russian words. I read a few lines, feeling blood drain from my face.

Mr. Ignatius Robins of Boston had been engaged in espionage.

I stopped at my cabin on my way to Robins’s. It was getting on to eight o’clock, but I had to change. The room was far smaller than anything I’d had working ground-side; space was at a premium even on a luxury liner. Still, I had a private bunk, as befit the ranking security constable, and if I had to sit on my bed to open my wardrobe, or sleep pressed up against the wall to share the space with Marianne, at least I had that much. The tiny washing-up cubicle wasn’t so terrible, either — the entertainers had their own quarters on another level, thankfully; those twittering birds were the last thing I needed after a long night walking the decks.

I changed into a fresh maroon skirt and rubbed a cloth over my boots until the blood was gone. After a brief stop in the crew lavatory to wash my hands, I went to the lowest level and located Ignatius Robins’s cabin. It wasn’t the most lavish, but it was close. I put on gloves and reached for the door handle.

The polished wood swung open before I could even try the key. I reached into my jacket for my baton, which lived in a pocket along my spine. The metal rod was warm even through my glove; I held it at the ready and stepped into the doorway. “This is Constable McDonald. Identify yourself!”

Something crashed, out of view, probably in the private washroom; I closed the door behind me to protect the other passengers from seeing anything potentially unpleasant before moving through the stateroom, baton raised. “Step out with your hands up!” I snapped in my best stern-teacher voice. “Do it now!”

“All right!”

A woman. I hadn’t expected that. She sidled out of the washroom, hands at shoulder-level.

“Sit down, please.” I gestured to the bed with the baton. She did as I said, curling in on herself a bit as if afraid I’d hit her. Or worse. A man might have — probably would have — taken advantage, but I didn’t believe in unnecessary violence or forcing myself on a suspect. Even an attractive one — and this one was very attractive. “What’s your name?”

She blinked huge green eyes at me. “Katya,” she said, her voice flavored European but not quite Russian. “Katya Iyarina.”

“What are you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be…” I made a vague motion toward the upper decks. I’d recognized Miss Iyarina’s name from the manifest as one of the dancers in the questionably tasteful revue that ran mid-days; while wives visited the health spa or played cards, their husbands crowded into a small, dark theater to stare at Katya and the other women.

She swallowed. “Ignatius. He…” She had the decency to look ashamed. “He hired me. Last night.”

I tried not to look as though I’d tasted something unpleasant. It was against contract to do what Iyarina had done, but management unofficially asked constables to overlook the activity. “How did you get in?”

“The door was not locked,” she told me. “I came for what I left last night.”

“And that is?”

Now she did blush, gesturing to her very short skirt. “All right, I get it.” I sighed, putting the baton away before sitting in the room’s one chair. “Have you seen Robins today?”