Night of the Animals(94)
He was what Astrid considered an animal fanatic. She adored animals—but she wasn’t a nut. Still, Atwell’s point was procedurally correct, she knew. The man knew his specimens.
“I’ve heard he’s difficult,” said Atwell.
“Yes,” said Astrid. “The zoo’s his babs to take care of. But he’s not going to be right chuffed about tonight.”
“I’ve heard he takes the animals very seriously and all.”
There were two torches in the boot of the pandaglider, along with muscle-slowing batons and extra sets of invisible handcuffs (they weren’t actually invisible, but used magnetic force to impel hands or feet together).
Astrid rummaged through them while Atwell used the comm to make sure Beauchamp and his small team were en route. For a moment, Astrid set the cuffs to reverse polarity and “floated” one cuff piece a few inches above her hand, amusing herself. She kept the torches and batons, and put back the cuffs—what was she going to do, lock up the jackals?
When Atwell came around to the back, she said, “I actually spoke to him. He’s coming. He sounded, erm, whipped up. He said we need to move quickly.”
“He’s whipped up all right, I’m sure.”
“He wants to seal off the zoo. He was beside himself, actually, guv. I told him about the man who claimed to be the watchman and he scarcely seemed to hear me. He wanted to know if we’d established a perimeter. He said it was ‘dead urgent.’ He was rather definite about that. I quote, ‘It’s the last line of defense against tragedy.’”
Astrid gritted her teeth. Had things really progressed into such a grand arena as that—tragedy? Wasn’t this more a mishap?
A few new scattered animal noises began coming from the zoo. This time, they sounded like monkeys or apes shrieking hellishly. It unnerved Astrid badly.
“Jesus f*ck,” she said. “OK, let’s do our best to find out what’s going on. We sure as hell can’t establish a perimeter with two officers, can we? We’ll do what we can.”
She handed a torch and a baton to Atwell, and Atwell reminded her about the terribly distressed man who claimed to be the night watchman, whose mother was somehow still in the zoo—they wouldn’t forget about him, would they? She assured her they would look for them, but she thought it a waste of time. The real danger lay in Beauchamp’s appearing. He was such a fool. Then Astrid realized something.
“Oh Jesus, Atwell. We’re in for it tonight. I tell you, mark my words. I’d forgot something—you know Beauchamp’s going to have us at his disposal? That’s the reg. Crown property and whatnot.”
“Maybe it won’t be so bad, ma’am,” said Atwell. “Least it’s not the Watch as gaffer.”
“True.”
Atwell flipped the torch on and it shone up into her face. It gave her a sinister look with a moonglow brow and icy-looking cheeks.
They decided to walk down toward the place where the jackals had been. Astrid felt charged. Here she was in the midst of interesting police work. It was rare for Parkies. But there was something more and more frightening about the night, too, a sense of things flying out in broken pieces she could neither catch nor fix without getting hurt. The feeling back at the FA meeting, and Atwell’s jumbie, and the terrifying sounds in the zoo—there was something baleful afoot.
“You know,” said Astrid. “I think we’d better freq Omotoso. But I can’t imagine the old man’s going to be happy.”
Astrid waited as Atwell glanced down to prepare a new orange-freq.
“It’s done,” she said. “Omotoso knows a thing or two now.”
finding the head of satan
THEY WOULD FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE ZOO, Astrid decided, and inspect the fence. Meanwhile, they would also keep on the lookout for the alleged watchman—and, perhaps, of all people, his poor mother.
The two officers—one an addict in extremis, the other an unwell rookie—stayed on the Broad Walk, which, in the constricting darkness, hardly lived up to its name. The beams from their torches waved back and forth over the edges of the pink pavement like the antennae of a giant, blind beetle, and the night seemed to have grown unusually murky; Astrid thought this was due to some trick of the torches on her digitalized retinas, or perhaps because of the security lamps jumping on and off and on inside the zoo, to their right, as they patrolled forward. They passed a small tea kiosk, little more than a whitewashed hut built around a big gas-operated kettle. Beside it was a folding chair, apparently forgotten after closing. The chair had been knocked onto its side.
Atwell seemed rapt by the strange, melted-looking granite of the contemporary statues in the large children’s field to their left. They were all elephants. “See that, Inspector?” she said. “They sort of come to life in the night. They’re like hearts, folded up on themselves and all gone gray. I don’t know if I see elephants, per se. But I see loads of feeling. It’s nice, ma’am, yeah?”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”
In truth, Astrid didn’t see indrawn hearts—she saw insufficiency, the grayness of indecision, an ingrownness of old dreams. This art didn’t move her. They walked on.
But there was that comet somewhere, Astrid thought, the one all over the WikiNous. Something brighter and more cutting than this world—now that would speak to her. The “most widely observed comet in human history” visible and she was stuck chasing wild dogs down. Urga-Rampos—it would really be something to see.