at 2.5 times your payroll rate, or1000 a day in order to meet your target. Not interested in the job? Pitch unrealistically high. You never know…
“Done,” says Mr. Pin-Stripe, staring at you expressionlessly. And it is at that point that you realize you are well and truly fucked.
SUE: Gaining Access
It’s Monday morning, and you are semi-officially PO’d.
Thursday was bad enough—you didn’t wrap up until Liz Kavanaugh and her firm were well installed, grilling the MOPs one-on-one. Before you clocked off, Liz took you aside for a little off-line time. “Sergeant Smith? Mind if I call you Sue?”
You nodded cautiously, because you always found it hard to tell where Inspector Kavanaugh was coming from. (She looks like she’s heading for politician-land, with her law degree and tailored suits, but what she wants along the way—who knows? She’s still a bloody sharp cop.) Whatever, pissing her off was a very low priority on your check-list, and if she wanted to be friendly, that was fine.
“Nice to know.” She smiled briefly, more of a twitch than anything else. “I’m short-handed, and you were first on scene, so you’re already up to speed. I’ve got a feeling that there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye because I’m getting a ton of static already. Holyrood is really rattled, and a whole bunch of interested parties are about to descend on this bunch. And I’m going to lose Sergeant Hay and DC Parker to the Pilton murder enquiry tomorrow. So if you’ve got nothing more urgent to do”—which translates from inspector-speak into this is your number one priority as of now, sunshine —“I’m going to ask you to stick around for the time being.”
To which all you could do was shrug and say, “Could you clear it through Mac first, Inspector? He’s my skipper, an’ I wouldn’t want him to think I was deserting the ship.”
Kavanaugh nodded briskly and book-marked your request, and that was your Friday case-load blown out the water, not to mention your monthly clean-up rate: Jimmy Hastie would just have to wait until someone else could collar the little gobshite for something. But at least you wouldn’t have to tell the skipper yourself.
Friday was worse than you expected. You turned up at nine o’clock sharp, frazzled from a breakfast argument with Mary over who was going to fetch Davey after school—with the wee scally himself making a bid for beer money by offering to take himself down to Water World if only you’d give him the readies—only to find that Mac might have detached you, but he was hanging on to Bob. So you headed over to the bunkerful of crazies on your lonesome, only to find a very inspectorly Liz Kavanaugh briefing a reporter from the Herald outside the bunker doors, and a couple of suits from X Division skulking around out back for a quick fag. They were very old boy’s club, and you barely got the time of day from them: arseholes . So you went inside and buckled down to interviewing the help, except you couldn’t get a handle on whatever it was they were speaking: It sounded like English—they were all southern transplants—but the words didn’t make any sense. After the third shot at getting Sam Couper to explain how he knew the Orcs were Pakistani Orcs (and not, say, Japanese Orcs, or your more reliably radge subspecies from Dalhousie), and getting a different reply each time—culminating in your having to ask him how to spell “multiswarmcast minimum-latency routing”—you excused yourself and went to find the inspector.
“I don’t understand these folks’ tongue, Liz. They’re space aliens from the planet IT industry. Maybe someone from ICE can talk techie to them? It’s like the joke about the post-modernist gangster who makes you an offer ye canna understand. More to the point, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for, an’ that’s a wee bit of a handicap. I mean, with your average wee ned, it’s pretty clear what’s gan on,
“Done,” says Mr. Pin-Stripe, staring at you expressionlessly. And it is at that point that you realize you are well and truly fucked.
SUE: Gaining Access
It’s Monday morning, and you are semi-officially PO’d.
Thursday was bad enough—you didn’t wrap up until Liz Kavanaugh and her firm were well installed, grilling the MOPs one-on-one. Before you clocked off, Liz took you aside for a little off-line time. “Sergeant Smith? Mind if I call you Sue?”
You nodded cautiously, because you always found it hard to tell where Inspector Kavanaugh was coming from. (She looks like she’s heading for politician-land, with her law degree and tailored suits, but what she wants along the way—who knows? She’s still a bloody sharp cop.) Whatever, pissing her off was a very low priority on your check-list, and if she wanted to be friendly, that was fine.
“Nice to know.” She smiled briefly, more of a twitch than anything else. “I’m short-handed, and you were first on scene, so you’re already up to speed. I’ve got a feeling that there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye because I’m getting a ton of static already. Holyrood is really rattled, and a whole bunch of interested parties are about to descend on this bunch. And I’m going to lose Sergeant Hay and DC Parker to the Pilton murder enquiry tomorrow. So if you’ve got nothing more urgent to do”—which translates from inspector-speak into this is your number one priority as of now, sunshine —“I’m going to ask you to stick around for the time being.”
To which all you could do was shrug and say, “Could you clear it through Mac first, Inspector? He’s my skipper, an’ I wouldn’t want him to think I was deserting the ship.”
Kavanaugh nodded briskly and book-marked your request, and that was your Friday case-load blown out the water, not to mention your monthly clean-up rate: Jimmy Hastie would just have to wait until someone else could collar the little gobshite for something. But at least you wouldn’t have to tell the skipper yourself.
Friday was worse than you expected. You turned up at nine o’clock sharp, frazzled from a breakfast argument with Mary over who was going to fetch Davey after school—with the wee scally himself making a bid for beer money by offering to take himself down to Water World if only you’d give him the readies—only to find that Mac might have detached you, but he was hanging on to Bob. So you headed over to the bunkerful of crazies on your lonesome, only to find a very inspectorly Liz Kavanaugh briefing a reporter from the Herald outside the bunker doors, and a couple of suits from X Division skulking around out back for a quick fag. They were very old boy’s club, and you barely got the time of day from them: arseholes . So you went inside and buckled down to interviewing the help, except you couldn’t get a handle on whatever it was they were speaking: It sounded like English—they were all southern transplants—but the words didn’t make any sense. After the third shot at getting Sam Couper to explain how he knew the Orcs were Pakistani Orcs (and not, say, Japanese Orcs, or your more reliably radge subspecies from Dalhousie), and getting a different reply each time—culminating in your having to ask him how to spell “multiswarmcast minimum-latency routing”—you excused yourself and went to find the inspector.
“I don’t understand these folks’ tongue, Liz. They’re space aliens from the planet IT industry. Maybe someone from ICE can talk techie to them? It’s like the joke about the post-modernist gangster who makes you an offer ye canna understand. More to the point, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for, an’ that’s a wee bit of a handicap. I mean, with your average wee ned, it’s pretty clear what’s gan on,
Similar Books
