Project Gemini (WATTYS 2016 WINNER!)

Chapter Eight - White Widow

THE AIR IN Braybury Manor held an almost toxic touch. Artificial medicated air blew through the vents in the ceiling, and did nothing to dispel the smell of dying roses and sweat in the air. The private study that they'd resigned to for the investigation felt like a crime against humanity itself. The walls dripped with the family's wealth. Jewels adorned the fireplace, gold painted on the ceiling, and smoky Cuban cigars lay wrapped on the side table, imported from whatever Pariah slave farm in the Mediterranean.

Eva felt sick sitting there, her stomach clenched with hunger as the faint dizziness of Kingsley's drug wore off in the back of her mind. The hot summer's day rolled beads of sweat down her back and against her shirt sticking it to her skin. All she could think about was those twenty-four hours given to her. Those, dwindling, draining, twenty-four hours that she had left. The Chancellor wasn't playing games, and she was damn sure that he wouldn't give her a second chance either.

And yet every second she wasted here was a lost chance.

Mrs Wickers answered every question fluidly, mechanically, the way a politician's wife should. Offer no suspicions and favour no party except from her own. Despite her husband's death, she wore that almost flawless politician's smile, something Eva guessed she'd learnt from him. Only with each and every question her smile faltered even more, fragments of the not-so-perfect wife shining through, and Eva couldn't shake the falseness of the scene. Everything felt wrong. Hollow and empty like a television set.

She couldn't take much more. Her head pounded. The sooner this was over the better, and judging from the thin firm line of Mrs Wickers' lips that shrunk and curled at every question, she thought the same too.

Kingsley scratched his pen against the notepad. "Mrs Wickers, did your husband ever receive any threats? At work or at home?"

"No." Mrs Wickers barely blinked. "Of course not."

"And did he ever run into any trouble?"

"Trouble? What sort of trouble?"

He hovered his pen above the page but didn't look up. "Trouble, as in, Pariah or Void."

Shit.

Eva tensed, but slowly shifted her weight on the cushions as his eyes flickered towards her: relax, they read. But it was already too late. Mrs Wickers stared at her, leaning away ever so slightly, as the corner of her mouth twisted. Her mouth went dry.

Dammit, Kingsley. Of all the questions to ask while I'm in the room.

He cleared his throat and slowly Mrs Wickers peeled her gaze from Eva to him.

"Mr. Kingsley—"

"Call me Detective, please."

"—I don't think you fully appreciate his line of work, he was the Minister—"

"—of Agriculture, correct?"

Mrs Wickers snapped her hands together, "Yes, but my husband dealt with crops, not criminals."

"Very well—."

"Zone-B." Eva looked up, meeting Mrs Wickers' icy gaze. "The people are starving out there, if he controlled crops and livestock then wouldn't that make him a target?"

Jackpot.

A sour, almost bitter look reappeared on her face, and Mrs Wickers' upper lip curled back. People starved out in the Badlands, it was no lie. Zone-B was the country's last ditch production zone, if it could grow in the British climate and you needed workers, then there was a surplus behind the Wall. Yet Voids starved in the cities too. If you weren't in the right Section and knew the right people at the right place and the right time, then you were forced to steal for your food. The only reason she wasn't underfed was because of her parents.