Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre Read Free Book Online

Work it out. Inside your fortune cookie with this particular meal, it just says “Deal with it”, okay?’
    ‘Okay sir.’
    It was more a statement of resignation than committed intention.
    ‘And for Christ’s sake lighten up about it. I know you ain’t been down here long, but I also know that in your time on the job you’ve survived gang warfare, the mob, earthquakes and mass riots. Suddenly you’re antsy about a parking lot full of Bible‐
bunnies. Jeez. Everybody in this town’s so goddamn edgy these days, it’s like fuckin’ New York.’
    Larry couldn’t help but laugh, watching the chief get steamed. It was like looking into a mirror, seeing him chase his tail and snap at himself. Thank God he still found the sight of it ridiculous.
    ‘Understood sir,’ he said, and turned to grip the handle on Bannon’s office door.
    ‘Know what you need, Freeman?’ Bannon asked, putting down his cup and leaning across his inflammably cluttered desk.
    ‘No sir.’
    ‘You need somethin’ real to be worryin’ about. My guess is the Bible‐
bunnies wouldn’t get allocated too much brain‐
time if you had more meat to chew on. My fault, partly, I guess. Been ridin’ you light until you got used to the place, just lettin’ you get to know all the main faces and places down here at the beach.’
    ‘Believe me, sir, I was happy to pass on the AmTrak thing.’
    ‘Yeah, well, let’s see what else we got.’ Bannon looked down at his desk. It was impossible to determine what he was focusing on, how many layers down into the paperwork strata his gaze was penetrating. ‘Woah!’ he said, eyes widening, face grimacing. ‘You’ll be glad that one’s already allocated. Movie time. “Honey I shot the kids because I was piped high as the ozone layer and I thought they were trying to eat me.” Yuk. Rankin’s treat, that one.’
    He picked at the growing nest in front of him, tossing some faxes towards the coffee‐
spattered bin behind him where he’d no doubt be angrily searching for them half an hour later.
    ‘Oh yeah, here it is,’ he said, holding up a hand‐
scrawled note. ‘Movie time again. “One of our submarines is missing.”’
    ‘What?’
    ‘No shit. Coast Guard called. Some kind of scientific research boat, based out of Santa M. Found abandoned and drifting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Entire crew MPD. Coroner’s office needs an official police once‐
over for the fatal‐
accident report.’
    ‘I don’t know anything about boats, sir.’
    ‘Don’t sweat it, neither does the coroner. You haven’t “liaised” with the Coast Guard yet, have you?’
    ‘No sir.’
    ‘Well now’s the ideal opportunity to introduce yourself, don’t you think? Take a spin down there this morning, see what the deal is. And don’t make any gags about their shorts, they don’t like it.’
----
    Once again, Bannon was right. The whole town was wired. It wasn’t like paranoia, which was what you got in New York, a constant state of heightened alertness like mainlining caffeine, whereby the moment you closed the front door behind you and hit the street everybody had to be treated as a hostile threat until they could prove otherwise. An outgoing personality and a trusting nature would be filed as contributory negligence on an NYPD homicide sheet. It was like a sustained vibrato note in the symphony of a city: high, discordant, always audible but sometimes dampened in the ear by its very familiarity; and the pitch was determined by how many people were crammed into the city’s limited space. In New York or Chicago, for instance, it was a piercing note indeed.
    LA was different. The conurbation spread so far and wide that the note was low and bassy, but occasionally it built up, gradually, powerfully, irreversibly, like a wave. You felt it grow around you, noticed it in people’s attitudes, noticed it in yourself, even the off‐
duty self that wasn’t purposefully taking the city’s temperature every