Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Miller's Rest had several police stations, but the largest of them was Precinct 12, which covered the large, prosperous business area of the city centre. The station was a large, expensive looking concrete building with a vast entrance lobby, a desk permanently manned by five caterpillar officers and three aphid officers,²¹ and a vast, multi-storey, motor pool, with more squad-cars, bikes and personnel than any other precinct in the city. In front of the entrance lobby, a caterpillar in a black trenchcoat stood talking to an aphid police officer.
"We've called you in under rather strange circumstances," Sergeant Clarke said to Remiel, "Gentleman found in the entrance lobby early this morning, bound, gagged, and with a note tied around his neck, saying 'Please Arrest Me'. On the off-chance we checked his face against a certain security video we have as part of an investigation, and, as luck would have it, it's an exact match. Normally, a standard legal aid solicitor would handle something like this, but due to a bizarre coincidence, no-one seems to be available at the moment. You're still on the books because of your time with the fledgling Justice Department, so we figured maybe you'd help."
"So," Remiel said, going along with the act, "What's this fellow been brought in for?"
"Murder. The video shows his part in the death of Cornelius Brandt."
Remiel stood silently for a moment, as a faint shudder passed through his body, this was going to be tough, even compared to what he went through to get Gali in the first place. "You'd better let me see him." he said at last.

Gali was beginning to fret. Originally he had thought that getting out of here would not prove to be too difficult. His "Cover Money" - wealth amassed through a front of legitimate businesses, and set aside to cover eventualities such as this - had paid for the best lawyer that money could buy, and an alibi was to have been swiftly arranged, but things had started to go wrong. First, his lawyer, a respected caterpillar from the firm of Marr, Morrissey and Smith, had been arrested for a traffic violation, and complications in the case meant he had to be held in a station in the suburbs, and so could not make it. Next, the vicious Miller's Rest Tax department had raided his headquarters, and all occupants were taken into custody, therefore he had not been able to speak with Rodriguez to arrange an alibi. He was also unable to use any of the funds either from his real criminal organisations, or from his front of legitimate outlets, as all of his wealth was under the strictest of supervision. Finally, the police had appointed a lawyer for him, due to the absence of his own legal team, but they had not even appointed a fully trained lawyer, due to a difficulty in the legal aid situation. Gali had instead been given what was termed as a "Legal advisor", in other words someone with little or no actual legal training, but an academic background, and previous experience with the justice department. After being informed of all this, Gali had been led into an interview room, and had been left there on his own for slightly over two hours, with the doors locked. It would be futile complaining about this, however, as if he had, someone would have apologised profusely, said it was an oversight, and it had been thought that no-one was in the office, and that it would never happen again. Then the door would have been locked again, just to show him that he shouldn't try to piss about with the police department. Gali decided that it was not worth complaining about this, and that the best thing he could do would be to wait it out and hope that the Balance was in his favour this time.²²
The door creaked its way open, and in walked a female aphid, wearing sergeant's stripes on the arms of her uniform.
"Mr Gali," Sergeant Clarke began, "We have, with some difficulty been able to find you a legal representative for your interview. You do not have to listen to what he says, but he will be present at all times, and can be turned to as an advocate, should you need anyone to talk to. As he has been given only the most basic of briefings on your case, I'll leave you to fill him in on your side of the case."
Sergeant Clarke turned her head to face a figure standing outside the room,
"Come in, Mr Remiel." Sergeant Clarke called to the figure standing outside the room. Remiel entered, on cue.
The change in Gali was instant, and total. Instead of the sneering above-it-all face he had presented to the police before, confident upon getting out quickly and never being seen again, Gali's eyes were filled with fear and hate for the caterpillar facing him.
"You!" Gali spat out, and leapt up from his seat, backing towards the corner of the room, and shouting to Clarke, "Get him away from me!"
"Sorry, do you two know each other?" Sergeant Clarke feigned a spectacular lack of knowledge of this matter, and simulated a surprisingly realistic look of innocence and confusion, "Oh well, can't be helped, there's no-one else to fill in. You'll just have to make do I'm afraid. I'll give you some time to brief Mr Remiel on the case." Sergeant Clarke smiled sweetly and left the room, managing to make the click as the door shut sound somehow smug.
Remiel walked up to Gali, sat down across the table from him, and pulled a pen and pad from his black trenchcoat.
"We don't have much time," he began, "So we'd better get started, you'd better tell me what I need to know."
"Fuck you!" Gali began, "I don't talk to kidnappers. I'm not saying anyth-"
Remiel shot across the table and grounded the aphid with a punch that nearly caused Gali concussion. "Shut up!" Remiel yelled at him, enraged, and aware that the interview room was soundproof, "I'm sick to death of your whining little voice, you snivelling little shit! The next thing you say had better be helpful to me, or I'm going to walk right out of here. With me on your side, and you saying exactly what I want to hear from you, you'll go to prison for a very, very long time, but things won't be quite so bad. If I walk out of here, and I think you ought to know I'm very close to doing just that, then you'll be in deep shit. They'll throw the book at you so hard you'll be confessing to anything, just to get them off your back. They still have the death penalty for aphids in Miller's Rest, you know."
Gali, who had been a tough, smart customer to all of the officials he had met in the station, and who had, since forming the gang, stood up to anyone who had crossed him, was now very, very scared. The information was beginning to permeate that it did not matter which expensive lawyer he had hired, or how much money he could put up for bail, he was not going to walk out of this station. The only place he would go from here would be prison, then court. After that, it was up to him, he could either go back to prison, or out to Charbranch23. Gali turned his face to Remiel, a sudden, unanswered question on his lips.
"Who's this guy that died, that it means this much to you, anyway?" Gali asked, expecting another torrent of abuse, but instead being confronted by an exhausted voice, emerging from the throat of an emotionally drained caterpillar.
"'This Guy', as you so delicately call him, was my best friend, the finest caterpillar alive, and definitely one who did not deserve to die like this. The reason he attacked you was because he could not stand any abuse of power, even one as small as a mugging. If necessary, he would have fought twenty times your number, and got himself angry enough to take a good few of them with him, just to say that it wasn't right for you to behave like that. Another reason was that you hadn't just threatened him, you had threatened his friend."
"Ha!" Gali sneered, "Some friend."
"Remiel paused, unable to continue with what he had been about to say.
"What do you mean by that?", he finally managed to say, after several long moments of awkward silence.
"I mean that your friend was left completely in the lurch by the guy who was with him. He was no fool, he understood what was going on and got his sorry ass out of there within seconds"
"I know that," Remiel started, testily, "I've seen the tape, Cornelius shouted at Luther to go, he saved his life."
"Yeah, granted, your friend did tell him to leave, but this guy was in no hurry to hang around anyway," Gali continued, "We're going off the point here, what I was going to tell you happened later. I don't think this Luther guy really left, because later on, as your friend was laying it on thick with my glove, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A caterpillar, and before you ask I couldn't tell you which one, you people all look the same to me, leaned round the corner with some sort of gun in his hand, and just after he pulled the trigger, your pal collapsed to the floor. I was a bit groggy at this point, I'd been pole-axed and wasn't really in the mood for movement, so I didn't see where this guy went. Later, when I was dealing with your friend, there was a syringe on the floor, just where he'd fallen, but it looked a bit different from the ones that were used by the junkies who turned that street into a shooting alley. This syringe wasn't from anyone's works, it was from a dart-gun, like they use on escaping mental patients. Most people couldn't tell, but I've been in the business a long time. You could see from the markings on the side that it had been filled to maximum. When I tasted the droplet of liquid inside the end of the needle, the end of my tongue went numb. The syringe had been filled with some form of anaesthetic, I'd guess at cocaine or morphine, but if the drop I tested was any indication of the strength on what was in the rest of the syringe, then this was a dose that was designed to kill. Even if the gang and I had run off the moment the poor sucker went down, he'd probably still have died."
Remiel allowed Gali to finish what he was saying, and then sat in silence for several minutes, thinking long distance thoughts.
"So, you suspect Luther of doing this?" Remiel asked, after pondering over his own thoughts for long enough to make Gali feel very uncomfortable, "You think it was his intention to kill Cornelius, and he'd somehow arranged the meeting?"
"I wouldn't have put it like that," Gali replied, explaining what he was trying to say, "And I don't know about arranging the meeting, but I'd stake my life on the fact that it was him who pulled that trigger, and landed that dart in your friend's neck."
A smile crept onto Remiel's face at the sudden irony of what Gali had just said.
"You just have." He replied, the smile on his face expressing no humour at all. Remiel got up from his chair and left the interview room.

Outside, Remiel engaged himself in conversation with Sergeant Clark as quickly as possible.
"Hillary," he began, "I've talked with our friend in there, and he's given me a new lead. I didn't think the trail ended with him, so I'm going to check out what he said. If it pays off, then I think charging him with Grievous Bodily Harm, or at most manslaughter, plus anything you can pin on him from raiding his building. If the lead doesn't pay, I want him charged with murder."
With that, Remiel left, to find the truth.

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