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Here's story 272, of 288 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

Despair was the gun

It was an obnoxiously beautiful day, trite and insulting.

Blue, hazy skies in a complex and fading gradient. A few streaks of lazy cloud dusted in for visual interest. Birds desperate to tell anyone and everyone who would listen. Heat making the tarmac seem to writhe. The kind of day where nature gives the middle finger to all human affairs, and people are still grateful for it.

The analogue clock on the dashboard of the old grey Mercedes Benz pretended that elegance compensated for inaccuracy, and Morris pitched a barely-started cigarette out of the already open window. The pack lay on the passenger seat beside him, with the brand name in small print, and, much larger, Smoking causes fatal lung cancer.

“Thanks for the fucking reminder,” he said aloud, then pocketed the pack anyway before switching off the engine and getting out of the car.

The area was very upmarket. Immaculate greenery lined the broad avenue that was set back from the main road, on a curve that ascended towards the midpoint. Most of the vehicles that occasionally rolled by cost more than his annual salary before tax, and Morris was pretty sure that their owners would be amused at the idea of giving the government any money in the first place. His own tired and grubby Merc was a takeout-delivery runabout in comparison, as it sat there ticking in the late morning sunlight like a patient on life support.

The cigarette was still burning on the ground, and he knew it would be the only tobacco for a mile. Rich people didn’t smoke anymore, at least not anything you had to light on fire. Here, the drug of choice was money, and it was a hell of a lot more dangerous.

Morris didn’t have to check the address on his phone against the buildings, because there was already a patrol car parked up on the kerb beside the open gates of a private residence. The parking was unusually conspicuous for around here — the rich preferred to keep their drama behind high hedges and walls, and typically shooed police vehicles through their gates as soon as possible — but Morris could readily guess the reason. In the house that no doubt lay at the end of the long driveway, there were no rich people left.

It took a minute or so to walk up the gravel path, and lo and behold, a tasteful mansion that had probably cost eight figures when it was first built, and had five times that much spent on it since. DI Blane, his right-hand man in the force, was waiting just outside the sheltered entrance, standing in the turning circle with his hands in his pockets.

“Let me guess,” Morris said; “ten bed, twelve bath, two pools.”

“And one dead body,” Blane replied. “Morning, sir.”

There was some kind of absurd vehicle lurking in the sole open bay of a three-door garage building; something fast but big, in a vivid turqoise colour that Morris associated with tropical birds, poisonous insects, and children’s soft drinks laden with E-numbers. He scowled at the machine.

“It’s some kind of electric Porsche,” Blane offered, following his gaze, and Morris nodded slowly.

“That sounds like an insult,” he replied. His training immediately noted that the car had been re-parked, its position shifted slightly after an initial poor attempt at reversing in. It had also been recently cleaned with a pressure-washer, but the windows were dusty on the inside. Morris filed it all away for future reference, turning again to Blane.

“Head of the household that passed away? How long ago?”

Blane nodded, then paused for a moment to consider his next words. “There’s a staff member that works here too, like a manservant or butler. Yesterday was his day off. Came in this morning, found the body. Our guys say it happened about eighteen hours ago. Doesn’t look like foul play. The butler is in the kitchen with a couple of our uniforms, but I doubt there’s any more to get from him.”

“Let’s see it then,” Morris said, gesturing for the younger man to lead the way, and they went inside.

The first few hallways and chambers felt more like a museum than a home. The photographs and paintings could have been of some long-dead industrial magnate, building steamships and bridges and libraries, except that they were manifestly too recent. The rooms further back in the house, though, were different. They spoke of a recent inhabitation that was more like a confinement, with items placed haphazardly, and the unmistakeable signs of male introspection and sorrow.

“Guy’s wife left him a couple of months ago, apparently,” Blane was saying, filling in details that were already obvious. “Two kids, but grown and away. One is still in the country, down south. We’ve called and left a message asking them to get in touch.”

Morris could smell the expected bouquet now. A whiff of decomposition, a hint of human waste, the ash of a log fire that had burned out some time ago, and of course ethanol, in at least two or three of its pricier forms. Morris could picture the scene with a sharpness that felt like prescience, and he saw the wingback armchair in his mind only moments before the real one came into view. He sighed as he walked into the room that was their final destination, and which had also turned out to be that of the house’s owner.

“People really need to be more careful about becoming clichés,” he said, drawing a glance from Blane which was studiously devoid of any particular expression.

The dead man was sitting in the inevitable chair, well-enough dressed but about a week late for a shave, and stinking. His posture was slack, his face was white, and his lips were blue. Sitting in his lap was an empty bottle, and there were a few more scattered around. Morris was fairly sure that the final tipple had been absinthe, and the ones on the floor were cognac, rum, and two kinds of sherry.

“Would have been a damned sight easier to just use that thing,” he said, inclining his head towards the hunting rifle mounted on the wall above the fireplace, noting that it was illegal. “But I suppose this way the carpets don’t need cleaned. Daft bastard.”

Blane couldn’t help himself. “Did you kiss your mother with that mouth, sir?” he asked, and Morris huffed in dark amusement.

“Who kisses their fucking mother these days?” he replied, stalking over to the dead man and taking in the rich aroma of spirits and everything else. Open and shut indeed. No signs of struggle. Blood screen would show an alcohol level through the roof. Acute alcohol intoxication leading to respiratory depression and cardiac arrest; death by misadventure. A socially-acceptable euphemism for offing yourself the slow way.

“Booze killed him,” Blane said, unnecessarily, and it wasn’t a question. But Morris shook his head before reaching up to scratch his own chin.

“Despair was the gun,” he said. “Booze was just the bullet.”

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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