“Compassionate leave my ass. We barely even knew him.”
“He was a cop,” Daisy said, her face blank and inscrutable. “Same as us. It could’ve been any of us, partner, so just take the damn leave, huh? Go be thankful it isn’t you.”
Basira snorted. “Come on. You know that’s just so they figure out what the official story is.”
“Yeah. But it’s not like we can talk about it anyway.” Daisy shrugged into her coat. “I’m going for a drink. You coming?”
“No,” Basira said, after a moment’s pause. “No, I’ve—there’s something I need to do.”
Daisy stared at her for a long moment. Then, without another word, she turned and slouched off. Basira watched her go, then headed in the opposite direction. She might’ve been able to get there on the Tube, but maybe the walk would help her clear her head.
It didn’t. By the time she reached her destination—which she’d only half-realized was her actual destination—she was still as keyed up and muddled as ever.
The place seemed deserted. It was only when Basira shrugged her way past the empty desk and headed for the steps that it occurred to her that it was Saturday. Police work meant she didn’t have consistent days off, exactly, and it was easy to lose track of what day it was if you didn’t have anything to ground you in the linear flow of time. Still and all, she’d been able to get into the building, so that probably meant someone was here.
She headed down into the basement and opened the door, exposing a single occupant, who looked up with a smile that immediately morphed into a look of confusion and concern. “Basira?”
Basira grimaced and made a helpless gesture that even she didn’t fully understand. “Sorry. Forgot what day it was.”
“It’s fine. I mean, I’m here.” Blackwood rose to his feet, looking uncertain—and also, she noticed, not making eye contact with her. “Are…are you okay? Do you want a cup of tea or—or cocoa or something?”
“Tea’s fine.” Basira wasn’t particularly thirsty, but she recognized that she probably needed something. “Where is…everyone else?”
“We don’t normally work Saturdays. I just came up to do some reorganizing. These shelves are a mess, honestly, and we don’t always get time to sort during the week if we’re not also investigating.” Blackwood hesitated. “Jon’s supposed to be coming by, but not until later. For now it’s just me…hang on, let me go get you that tea.”
Basira sat, rather hesitantly, at the desk and watched as Blackwood walked away. Martin. If she was here as a civilian, if she was going to…she needed to stop thinking of him as a suspect. He wasn’t, hadn’t been for a long time. She still didn’t know who’d killed Gertrude Robinson, and frankly at this point she didn’t care. Let it be another cold case. There were hundreds of them on the books; statistically speaking, if a homicide wasn’t cleared within a week of its happening, the likelihood went down every day. Maybe someday someone would find the answers, but for now, she could just wash her hands of the case and be done with it.
Her dad would’ve had a fit over her thinking like that. Stick to a task until it was done, that’s what he’d always taught her. Don’t give up just because it’s hard. She could hear his voice now: Do the job not for respect of the person who gave you the task, or respect of the person at the heart of the task, but for respect of the task. Any work worth doing is worth doing all the way. It was why she’d become a cop in the first place, never mind why she’d stayed. Yet here she was, not only giving up on a murder case, but seriously considering why she was still wearing the badge at all.
She looked around the Archives. It was the first time she’d really…looked at it, as something other than a crime scene; even when she’d been here before, she’d been focused on finding Blackwood—Martin—swapping out the tapes, and getting out before anyone noticed her. Now, though, she took in all the details she’d previously dismissed as irrelevant: the cardigan tossed casually over the back of one of the chairs, the framed photograph on another desk of the dark-haired assistant grinning cheekily as he dangled from a climbing rope, the messy collection of flyers and memos tacked to the bulletin board. Idly, she skimmed her eyes over them. It didn’t look that different from the board in the station, actually—the memos were about different things specifically, but there were still references to file numbers, requests for follow-ups, and reminders about procedures, typed on official Institute letterhead or scrawled on sticky notes or torn from a notebook. Interspersed with the official, or official-adjacent, memos was everything from the menu for a nearby takeaway to a picture of a kitten dangling off a branch with HANG IN THERE written above it to a crumpled picture of a sign she couldn’t quite read from where she sat. The place was still kitted out for Christmas, in a really over-the-top way; that, and the fact that it was dead silent save the faint hum of the climate-control system rather than jam-packed with uniformed cops answering phones, badgering witnesses, and arguing, was really the only difference between the Archives and the police station, where the few holiday decorations the captain allowed came down promptly on the twenty-sixth.
Suddenly, it wasn’t a repository of creepy things and spook stories, or the site of a murder, or the aftermath of an infestation. It was just someplace to work.
Basira kind of liked it. And kind of resented it at the same time. When had the station stopped feeling like that?
Martin came back into the room with a mug in each hand. Because she was a cop and trained to spot those kinds of details, she noticed that one of them was the same mug that always seemed to be on his desk when she came by, an oversize blue and green striped one that looked like it had been done at one of those paint-your-own-pottery places. The other was a matte black with a flat grey silhouette of a forest, complete with a deer standing alert. He handed it to Basira, still not looking at her. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” Basira wrapped her hands around the mug and stared at it for a moment, then back up at Martin. He, too, was staring into his cup like it held the secrets of the universe. It suddenly irritated her, and she couldn’t help but snap, “I’m not going to arrest you or anything.”
“I know you’re not going to arrest me,” Martin said, sounding surprised. He looked up at her, just for a moment, then flinched and redirected his gaze again. Before she could call him on it, he gestured vaguely in her direction and added, “It’s just you—your—the scarf came loose.”
Startled, Basira reached up and realized Martin was right—the pins had come undone and her scarf had slipped back, exposing her hair. Even if she wasn’t as devout these days as she’d been growing up, there were some things that were still important to her. And it kind of surprised her that Martin knew enough, and was respectful enough, not to look at her when she wasn’t wearing hijab.
“Thanks,” she said again, pulling the scarf back in place and pinning and tucking it with movements that were more than half mechanical. “Okay. I’m good now.”
“Are you?” Martin asked pointedly, but this time he looked her directly in the eye and she knew he wasn’t asking about whether she was decent.
“No,” she admitted. “We lost Altman. Just…wasn’t…paying attention. Don’t know what they’re going to tell his family.” She took a long swig of her tea. “Guess it could have been worse, though, if I hadn’t talked to you first. So…thanks.”
“Glad I could help,” Martin murmured. Something flickered in his eyes, just for a moment. “At least they’re not making you do a lot of paperwork.”
“If I have to fill out one more form, I am going to scream.” Basira kind of wanted to scream anyway, but she held it in. “They’ve given us all a few days of ‘compassionate leave.’ I think they just want us out of the way while they figure out the official story.”
Martin hesitated, then frowned at something on the desk before looking back up at her. “Do you…want to talk about the real version?”
Basira did. She desperately did. That was why she had come here, she realized. You could only talk about Sectioned cases with other Sectioned cops; any cops who’d been on this case probably didn’t want to talk about it, and most others wouldn’t want to hear about it. Really, most of them wouldn’t swap stories unless they absolutely had to for a new case. The Magnus Institute was the only place she’d ever gone where she could talk about it, and Martin was the only person she’d ever felt like listened to her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Where do you want me to start?”
Martin took a deep breath. “You said it started with a kidnapping case?”
That was as good a place to start as any. Basira exhaled—and began to talk.
Just like last time, when she’d made her official statement, everything came pouring out, little things she’d barely registered at the time and the way she’d felt. No dispassionate report, this, she was telling him things she never could have admitted on an official form. There was no place for these things, literally or metaphorically speaking. And just like last time, Martin listened, his attention fully on her, his eyes understanding and sympathetic. He prompted her when she got stuck, asked a question here or there, but mostly he just…listened. It was honestly a relief to tell someone all of this, and have them listen without judging, without condemning, without interrupting. And something about Martin—maybe it was the sincerity in his eyes, or the stillness in his bearing, or the fact that he reminded her of nothing so much as all the pictures and videos she’d seen of capybaras—made her want to tell him everything. He’d have made a great cop.
No, she thought with a moment of sudden clarity. He’s too good a person to make a great cop. He’d have been drummed out of the force ages ago.
"All in all, there were five people killed in that building, including Leo Altman,” she concluded at last. “Aside from Rayner and the woman, who was identified from an old report as Natalie Ennis, two more were shot and killed when they attacked some of the officers. Three more were subdued and arrested, but as far as I know they haven’t said a word. God knows how they’re going to process them with all the secrecy around the operation, but thankfully that’s not my problem. I think they were connected to that cult group from way back, the Church of the Divine Whatever.”
“The People’s Church of the Divine Host,” Martin said quietly. “You’re right. I know the report you’re talking about—the one that identified Natalie Ennis—we have a statement from the man who made it, he was her roommate’s boyfriend. I should…probably reach out and follow up with them, let them know she was involved. I presume it’ll be in the news in some capacity, at least.” He took a breath, then looked back up at Basira, his gaze steady. “What are you going to do now?”
Basira was, admittedly, taken a bit aback. “Do?” she repeated. Was he asking her what the police procedure was at this point?
“I mean you, personally. Not the police,” Martin clarified. “What are you going to do after your ‘compassionate leave’ is up? If I understood you right when you made that first statement, once you’re Sectioned, you get called out on all the…weird cases you’re available for, right?”
“Right.”
“Do you want to keep doing this? I don’t mean walking into dangerous situations and rescuing people. I’d imagine that’s not the part you mind. I mean the part where the ‘dangerous situation’ is something no amount of police training can prepare you for. Because I’ll be honest, Basira, you keep doing that, you’re going to end up on the wrong end of one of these statements. Either you’re going to end up as a victim, or you’re going to end up as a monster.” Martin held her gaze. “I should know.”
Basira blinked.
She was a good cop. She knew the law forward and backwards, she applied it more or less evenly across the board, she followed procedure and did her duty. She’d been commended by her superiors and relied on by her fellow officers. People took her word for things and trusted her instincts. But by whose standards was she good? Did it mean she was doing the right thing, or did it mean she was toeing the line? She thought about what she’d realized about Martin, how he would have been either broken or discarded rather than allowed to continue to be the kind of person he was now if he wore the badge. What did it say about her that she was still on the force, still in line for promotion, still considered to have a future in this career?
Either you’re going to end up as a victim, or you’re going to end up as a monster.
“I’m done,” she said decisively. “With the police, with Section Thirty-One, all of it. I’ve given you my statement, and that’s it. I’m walking away.”
Martin sighed and nodded slowly. “Good,” he said, surprising her. “Wait, hang on.” He leaned over to reach into a drawer on another desk, pulled out a small leather object, and handed it to her. “Here. Tim stopped using this weeks ago, he’ll never miss it. It’s not the strongest thing in the world, but it’ll at least keep you safe for now.”
Basira studied the small folded bit of leather. “You think I’m in danger.” It wasn’t a question.
“These things don’t like people breaking their toys. And they usually only let you think you’ve got away.” A shadow seemed to come over Martin’s face, just for a moment. “I don’t know if the Dark will be after you for sure, but it certainly won’t be happy if it figures out you talked to us. Just…be careful, okay?”
“I will.” Basira hesitated and studied Martin for a moment. “You should quit, too. This place…it’s not right.”
Martin shook his head. “I’ve tried before. Didn’t work. It’s far too late for me.”
“Any advice on how to keep from getting that far?”
“Stay away as best you can,” Martin said seriously. “Which means not going anywhere near people or—or things that have been Marked by…all this. The Institute. The bookstore. Me.” He pressed his lips together for a moment, then met her eyes. “Detective Tonner.”
Basira stiffened. “You’re saying—”
“Why do you think I got so nervous around her? She’s been part of this sort of thing—not the same aspect, but a different kind—for a long time, maybe as long as I have. Maybe longer, I dunno. She told Jon she’d been Sectioned for fourteen years, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have some experience from before that. I’ve been mixed up in this since I was a kid.” Martin took a deep breath. “But she’s like me—too entwined, too deep into it to be able to walk away. So yeah, Basira, if you don’t want to ever have to deal with this again, and I don’t blame you in the slightest, you’re going to have to stay completely away. I might leave London if I were you, so you’re not even tempted.”
Basira stared at Martin for a long moment. Finally, she said, “I’ll think about it. Goodbye, Martin.”
“Goodbye, Basira,” Martin said quietly. “Stay safe.”
Basira stood and walked out of the Archives, for what she hoped would be the last time.
Part of her—a surprisingly big part of her—regretted that, actually. She liked Martin. Not like that, he wasn’t her type—she wasn’t even sure she had a type, if she was being completely honest, she genuinely couldn’t remember ever having a crush or anything like that—but he was a good guy. They’d deemed him the most likely suspect in Gertrude Robinson’s murder, but even then she’d been reluctant to believe it. And while their conversations during the tape exchanges had been brief, she’d found she looked forward to them. She’d never really been one to make friends easily; even in places where she was part of the majority, she’d preferred being on her own, immersed in a book or working through a crossword puzzle. Mostly she’d found people to be ignorant or cruel or just plain stupid, not worth her time. Sure, maybe there’d been times she’d wished…but on the rare occasions she’d reached out, it had never been worth it. The only people she’d ever really been able to get close to had been…well, Daisy, and now Martin.
And if she wanted to keep out of the crap she’d dealt with under Section Thirty-One, she would lose them both.
Standing at the foot of the bridge across the Thames, she clenched her fists and tried to think rationally. She couldn’t just…walk away, not like that. It wasn’t that easy. She had to put in her notice, and they’d probably want her to finish out the pay period at least. Probably she’d have to do the whole two weeks thing. Which meant she would almost certainly run into Daisy again, which…wouldn’t be a bad thing. Basira was a bit skeptical of Martin’s claim that Daisy was in it too deep to walk away, or maybe she just wanted to be skeptical of it, but either way, she needed to tell her to her face that she was quitting. She’d be on her own with Gertrude Robinson’s murder, and even if it wasn’t a case she relished—Daisy was the sort of person you wanted by your side when you were tracking down a murderer or chasing a fugitive or going through a door, but she wasn’t one for sitting and sifting through evidence when she could be out in the field—she at least deserved to know that it was wholly hers now.
Did she really want to quit? For just a moment, Basira stood torn with indecision. She’d got into police work to track monsters, and then she’d found out there were literal monsters that she could take down, and there were aspects of the job she enjoyed.
Either you’re going to end up as a victim, or you’re going to end up as a monster.
No. No, Basira wasn’t going to do that, she wasn’t going down that route. And even if she wasn’t worried about becoming the sort of cop that got smeared by all the papers—and she wasn’t stupid, she was a woman and a Muslim, she’d absolutely be the first person the higher-ups threw to the wolves if they needed a scapegoat or a sacrificial lamb—there was the other aspect of it. Whatever her doubts about his opinion on Daisy, she believed Martin when he said the more she dealt with these things, the less likely it would be that she could walk away from them. She didn’t know what her purpose in life was, but it wasn’t to die at the hands of a spook. She was not going to end up like Altman.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she began walking again. First things first. She had a few days off. She needed to head back to the run-down flat she’d been living in since her dad died and start typing up her resignation letter to hand in when she was back. The sooner, the better.