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  Strike a Match 5

  Thin Ice

  Frank Tayell

  Reading Order & Copyright

  Sometimes, we can change the world. Sometimes, we can only change ourselves. Sometimes, all we can do is search for greener grass in the next valley.

  Strike a Match 5: Thin Ice

  Published by Frank Tayell

  Copyright 2022

  All rights reserved

  All people, places, and (most) events are fictional.

  Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novels

  Work. Rest. Repeat.

  Strike a Match 1: Serious Crimes

  Strike a Match 2: Counterfeit Conspiracy

  Strike a Match 3: Endangered Nation

  Strike a Match 4: Over By Christmas

  Strike a Match 5: Thin Ice

  Surviving The Evacuation / Here We Stand / Life Goes On

  Book 1: London

  Book 2: Wasteland

  Zombies vs The Living Dead

  Book 3: Family

  Book 4: Unsafe Haven

  Book 5: Reunion

  Book 6: Harvest

  Book 7: Home

  Here We Stand 1: Infected

  Here We Stand 2: Divided

  Book 8: Anglesey

  Book 9: Ireland

  Book 10: The Last Candidate

  Book 11: Search and Rescue

  Book 12: Britain’s End

  Book 13: Future’s Beginning

  Book 14: Mort Vivant

  Book 15: Where There’s Hope

  Book 16: Unwanted Visitors, Unwelcome Guests

  Life Goes On 1: Outback Outbreak

  Life Goes On 2: No More News

  Life Goes On 3: While the Lights Are On

  Life Goes On 4: If Not Us

  Life Goes On 5: No Turning Back

  Book 17: There We Stood

  Book 18: Rebuilt in a Day

  Book 19: Welcome to the End of the Earth

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  Synopsis

  Twenty years after the apocalyptic Blackout, steam-trains and the telegraph have replaced smartphones and satellites, but while some still fear technology, many dream of its return.

  In France, winter has brought the terrorist insurgency to a frozen stalemate. On the home front, people act as if victory is inevitable. Thoughts turn to spring and the dream of a more peaceful future. The Houses of Parliament are finally relocating to a new permanent home in Highcliffe Castle on the British south coast. In the far north of Scotland, a new national gallery is set to open in Thurso, displaying re-discovered paintings looted from Edinburgh just after the Blackout. In Dover, despite the curfews and rationing, pubs, bars, and clubs are thriving, but the re-opening of the cinema is put on hold after all its seats are stolen for firewood.

  Ten years ago, Henry Mitchell chased the gang known as the Loyal Brigade from the ruins of Sandringham. A decade later, the gang has returned. After his arrest for arms dealing and smuggling, the new leader of the Loyal Brigade has been confined to a prison hulk in Thurso’s frozen harbour. Despite being in isolation, he is still able to co-ordinate a wave of arson attacks in the new capital. Having rebranded himself as a cult leader, with each attack comes an apocalyptic warning of greater destruction to come. It is up to Ruth Deering, Anna Riley, and the Serious Crimes Unit to crack the code before more people are hurt.

  Henry Mitchell knows a direct line can be drawn between the apocalyptic Blackout twenty years ago and the insurgency in France that almost became an invasion of Britain. Thanks to evidence gathered during the Second Siege of Calais, he finally knows where the terrorist leadership is based. As he and Isaac head deep behind enemy lines, they have one chance to end this forever war. For their plan to work, they’ll have to do the unthinkable on a mission from which they almost certainly won’t return.

  The fate of the future is decided in Dover, Bournemouth, Thurso, Poland, and beyond…

  Table of Contents

  10th January 2040

  Prologue - The Investigation So Far, and the Mission to Come

  Part 1 - A Burning Passion for the Arts

  25th January 2040

  Chapter 1 - Showing Today

  Chapter 2 - The First Rule of Fight Club

  Chapter 3 - Concealed Guilt

  Chapter 4 - Even Scottish Clergy Enjoy Cocoa

  26th January 2040

  Chapter 5 - The Chained Minister

  Chapter 6 - One More Page Before Bed

  Chapter 7 - The Point of a Pentagram

  Chapter 8 - Baffling Belief

  27th January 2040

  Chapter 9 - An Unwilling Star

  Chapter 10 - Awake Aboard the Sleeper

  Part 2 - The Death of the First Loyal Brigade

  9th May 2029

  Chapter 11 - The Mystery of the Missing Moat

  13th May 2029

  Chapter 12 - Kelly

  Chapter 13 - Not So Clever at All

  Part 3 - Coded Messages

  27th January 2040 (cont)

  Chapter 14 - A Different Variety of Stupid

  28th January 2040

  Chapter 15 - The Beginning of the World

  Chapter 16 - Floating Purgatory

  Chapter 17 - People Watching People

  Chapter 18 - The Least Improbable Impossibility

  Chapter 19 - The Universal Similarities of Policing

  29th January 2040

  Chapter 20 - The Importance of Routine

  Chapter 21 - The Woman in Pink

  Chapter 22 - Seeking Greener Grass

  Chapter 23 - The Skating Copper

  Chapter 24 - Fight, Flight, or Freeze

  Chapter 25 - Goodbye

  Part 4 - Doing the Unthinkable

  1st February 2040

  Chapter 26 - Hidden Sailors

  2nd February 2040

  Chapter 27 - The Weeping Blight

  Chapter 28 - The Consequences of Our Mistakes

  Chapter 29 - The Moravian Gate

  3rd February 2040

  Chapter 30 - Good Salvage at Bad Pirawarth

  Chapter 31 - Beneath the Broken Tower

  4th February 2040

  Chapter 32 - Waiting for the Sun

  Part 5 - How Worlds Change

  4th February 2040

  Chapter 33 - Arthur

  5th February 2040

  Chapter 34 - Mutiny, Treason, and Coup

  Epilogue - The Final Suspect

  10th January

  Prologue - The Investigation So Far, and the Mission to Come

  Highcliffe Palace, Twynham

  Inspector-General Henry Mitchell sat on the rock-hard leather bench outside the cabinet office, dreaming of cushions. At the other end of the draughty corridor, an artist patiently changed a faded sign from Highcliffe Castle into Highcliffe Palace, Houses of Parliament.

  Despite twenty years in Britain, Henry Mitchell had never fully fathomed why some grand houses qualified as palaces and others earned the rank of castle. He had learned, with much disappointment, that it had nothing to do with moats, drawbridges, or dungeons.

  Highcliffe had been built two hundred years ago, high up on the cliffs, about five kilometres east of Christchurch. In turn, Christchurch marked the eastern suburbs of the ever-growing, smog-shrouded capital city that sprawled west through Bournemouth to Poole.

  Before the Blackout, Highcliffe had been a partially restored public museum. After the Blackout, the mansion had become a refugee camp, a hostel, and then a hospice, but the bu
ilding was deemed too draughty for the dying. A year ago, it had been bought by Araminta Longfield, ostensibly for use as a hotel. Following her exposure as a leader in the conspiracy to overthrow parliament, and after her subsequent death, her property had been seized. Again, the question of what to do with Highcliffe had been raised, and it had been answered by the politicians.

  Since the Blackout, parliament had met in a conference centre in Bournemouth, but only as a temporary expedient. Henry Mitchell had seen the fire-ravaged, partially flooded shell of the old Palace of Westminster with his own eyes. Too many politicians professed a hope of reclaiming London, though it was really the dream of old-world luxuries to which they clung. Ultimately, the increasing pollution from the war-industry factories had swayed even the most nostalgic fantasists.

  Twenty years. It had taken twenty long years of ice-age winters and furnace summers, of starvation and rationing, of mass graves filled by disease and despair. It was twenty years since a digital virus had crashed the global communications networks and brought an end to the old civilisation, and almost brought an end to the species. Twenty years, and Britain’s population had fallen to a tenth of what it once was. When combined, the old nations of continental Europe were peopled by even less, and many of those now lived in exile in Britain. But for a country that traditionally measured time in units of monarchical reigns, that it had only taken twenty years for parliament to officially change its address was surely progress.

  Perhaps he was being unjustly cynical, since his own country of birth was just as stuck in the past. The Americas had suffered similar devastation, and the old United States had split into three. The terms of reunification had long ago been agreed, but the election couldn’t be held until later this year in order to maintain the ancient constitution’s four-year cycle.

  He picked up a copy of the newspaper left on the bench, but a quick glance told him it was light on actual news. The debate on whether the new parliamentary district should be renamed Westminster took up seven pages. Even the recent spate of arson attacks, due to the absence of fatalities, had only received a five-paragraph update on page nine. The war still ran on page one, but today’s lead story was the two-nil victory by the army over the navy on a frozen football pitch in Calais. When journalists couldn’t find anything more gruesome to write about than stud-caused stitches, the world surely was on an upswing. But how long would that optimism last?

  Almost twenty-two years ago, Henry Mitchell had made the mistake of enrolling at university. It was the wrong course, the wrong place, and too soon after his father’s death. Knowing he was about to fail, he’d decided to quit first. Before he handed in his papers, he’d seen an on-campus job ad. A professor had needed a bag-carrier for a European trip. That professor was Maggie Deering. Her assistant was Isaac. In their bags was a presentation on how to create a truly sentient A.I.

  There was wealth in such an invention. There was prestige. There was power. In London, assassins had been sent to kill Maggie. When they failed, a digital virus had been unleashed. It had gone rogue. Across the world, computers had crashed. In self-driving vehicles, the crash was far more spectacular. Heat and speed regulators for domestic fans and industrial cooling systems were switched off, and so the infernos had begun. It took the combined electromagnetic pulses from dozens of strategically detonated nuclear warheads to disable the infected circuitry, but those same blasts also fried any unshielded electronics. The progress of a century had been undone in a matter of days, and that was only the beginning.

  Isaac had used the last few bytes of internet to broadcast a warning, instructing selected survivors to head to the south coast, and so had gained a modicum of credibility during the slow march south. When Isaac had introduced Mitchell as a police officer from America, people had accepted it. One of those people had been a junior member of the cabinet who, due to the disappearance, and presumed death, of her colleagues, had become prime minister.

  There’d been little policing, less law, and no order during those early months. Mitchell’s first job had been as bodyguard to the new prime minister, and then to the scavenger teams hunting for supplies. After harvest, and after the bullets ran out, he’d joined the farmers fighting with axe and club to protect grain silos from people they called bandits, but who were really just desperate refugees.

  Winter had arrived early, and didn’t leave for years. Plague came with it, and for a time, he was little more than a gravedigger, and too often a grave-filler. The nights were so long, and the days so dark, he didn’t notice his work gradually shift from protection detail to thief-catcher to detective. Survival became living. He’d adopted a daughter, Anna. He’d claimed a cottage and made a home. With crime on the rise, he’d had work to keep him busy, and his daughter to bring him joy, but he’d kept searching for a better life for himself and his daughter. He’d never found it.

  Anna had followed him into the police service. That hadn’t been his hope, but like many of her orphaned and unschooled generation, she was only otherwise qualified for a life of crime. Maggie Deering, the professor with whom Mitchell had first crossed the Atlantic, had similarly adopted a daughter. After the Blackout, Maggie had returned to her first calling, and taken work as a medic in the refugee camps of Kent. Just after a particularly virulent plague had swept through one of those camps, Maggie had found a girl, wandering alone. Ruth was around five at the time, though it was impossible to be certain of her age. Maggie had taken a job as teacher-physician in a resettlement camp on the outskirts of Twynham. Eleven years later, as Mitchell was contemplating changing to an agricultural career, he found Ruth a place at the police academy as a favour to his old friend. He’d even stayed on in the force so, when Ruth graduated, she could be placed under his command.

  Had that been a mistake? Should he have retired? Certainly, his growing weariness with his political overlords had led to his demotion back to sergeant. Yet while working with Ruth and Anna, they had prevented the prime minister’s assassination. They’d revealed the corruption within the Railway Company, and unmasked the industrialist conspiracy to overthrow the government. Along the way, they’d investigated murder, theft, and counterfeiting, and even saved a few lives. Anna was a beat-cop at heart, a local law-keeper in her local community. Ruth had a detective’s analytical instincts. Yes, both were good officers, good citizens, good people, and among the very best of the lost generation raised among the shattered ruins.

  Anna had been shot. She’d survived, but though she had returned to work, she was still wheelchair-bound. It was a hard price to pay, made worse by it not being him who was paying it. So had it been worth it? Should he have quit? In this new world, that didn’t mean a pension, but he could have farmed a vineyard in France. Maybe. The idea was little more than a fantasy, a possibility of love he’d briefly tasted but not had time to enjoy before the barbarians swept east. The farm had been razed. Jacques, and everyone else in that hamlet, had been butchered. Prideful bravado aside, had Mitchell been there, he’d have died, too. No, he couldn’t have changed that. Nor was there anything he could have done differently to change the course of history except, perhaps, never having left America.

  From the Blackout to the plagues, the consolidation of the terrorist-tribes in Europe and the failed coup in Twynham to the attacks on Calais: a crooked path led from Maggie and Isaac’s A.I. to him sitting on this bench in a semi-derelict mansion, waiting on a summons to brief the prime minister.

  The artist carefully placed the stencil back on her tray, stepped back, and examined her work before picking up a much finer brush with which she began adding curls and frills. It might, by parliamentary decree, be a recycled sign in a recycled house, but she was an artist, and this was parliament’s new home.

  The door to the meeting room opened. Commissioner Weaver came out.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Are they?” Henry Mitchell replied.

  The long and high-ceilinged banquet room had been truncated by a plain pin
e partition, currently unpainted, but dotted with annotated holes through which the new electrical wires were to be laid. For now, illumination was provided by a quartet of hanging lanterns, which cast a shadow over the room’s only two occupants. Even though the assassination attempt on the old prime minister had failed, she had still resigned. Atherton, her long-serving deputy, had been given the keys to Number 10 just before the war began. Opposite him sat Craig Woodley, the new deputy prime minister and the nominal leader of the opposition, though the country had been run by a coalition for so long, the only difference between the two old parties was the colour of their ties.

  “Inspector-General Mitchell,” Atherton said, his tone tinged by the same exhaustion which lay heavy across his face. He’d aged a decade in a month. “We are ready for your report.”

  “I know where our enemy is headquartered,” Mitchell said.

  “Well, now you have my attention,” Woodley said. His nasal voice created a shrill echo around the chamber “Where? Who?”

  “If I may?” Commissioner Weaver said. “Before the Blackout, MI6 called him Marr. He was more commonly known as Abraham Haymar, Ibrahim Ibn Amar, or Benny Omar depending on which country he was dealing with. His real name is unknown. Accessing old records is obviously difficult, but long before the Blackout, he destroyed all evidence as to his real origins.”

  “He’s a terrorist?” Atherton asked.

  “When judged by his deeds, yes,” Weaver said. “But he professed no creed except greed, no ideology but his own ego. Mercenary is a more accurate job description, but he also worked as a contractor employed by the British government, among others. We believe his father grew wealthy selling old weapons after the collapse of the Soviet empire. But it is possible that the father re-invented himself as his own son. Every record, photograph, or video in which he featured was altered or deleted. Thus, at the time of the Blackout, he might have been in his fifties, or in his seventies. He owned a stable of programmers who developed digital viruses, but his real skill was embedding those viruses into critical infrastructure. This often involved physical infiltration of places no British agent could reach. His profits were spent on the digitisation of consciousness and on human cloning. The work was notoriously controversial, frequently illegal, and ultimately fruitless.”