The Dying Fall

Chapter 27: If Music Be Life, Give Me Excess Of It

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Song for this chapter:

Chapter 27: If Music Be Life, Give Me Excess Of It

“Inspector Ashworth entering the room at 11.50 a.m..”

Carrie looked up from where her cuffed wrists rested in her lap to the door of the interview room. A woman in black jeans, navy-blue blouse and black blazer was standing just inside the room with a data pad under her arm. As she walked to the table, her chin-length black hair bobbed with her confident steps. The clack of her boots echoed on the concrete floor and around the walls, followed by the slow scraping of the chair as she pulled it out from the table so she could sit opposite Carrie. Up close, Carrie could see that Inspector Ashworth was a little older than she appeared at a distance, the first lines of middle age beginning to settle at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her expression was serious, but not stern; and her manner business-like but not cold.

“Carrie Rye, yes?” the inspector said as she placed her data pad on the table.

When Carrie didn’t respond, she raised her eyebrows, as if to prompt her.

“Yes,” Carrie obliged dryly.

“I’m Inspector Ashworth, from the Department of State Security. I have a few questions I’d like you to answer. But first—do you understand that you’re charged with a number of serious offences, for which we have sufficient evidence to convict and sentence you?”

Carrie nodded.

“And I understand you are currently denying all the charges,” Ashworth continued, tapping the screen of her data pad. “Which is a shame, because we could probably come to some sort of deal if you were prepared to admit your guilt.”

Carrie continued to give her a blank look. She recognised bait when it was dangled in front of her, and she knew that, however tempting it might be, biting would come at a cost.

Ashworth gave Carrie a mirthless smile. “Let’s run through the charges, shall we? Just to be sure.” She crossed her forearms on the table in front of her. “Number one: you’re charged with purchasing and using buds containing illegal highs.”

“I don’t own any buds,” Carrie said flatly.

“It’s true we didn’t find any illegal materials when we searched your home,” Ashworth conceded, “But we do have eye-witness testimony which identifies you as a regular customer to the bud-dealer known as Nano.”

“Eye witness testimony?” Carrie said. “”From whom?”

“I can’t reveal the identity of the witness. But they have told us that you have been seen at a residence on Florence Road. Number 36.”

Carrie swallowed back the lump in her throat.

“With the dealer, Nano,” Ashworth added.

“Nano’s a friend,” Carrie said, wondering how dumb she should play it if the inspector mentioned Dryce. “We hang out sometimes.”

“At Number 36, Florence Road?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you also sometimes hang out with Harry Dryce?”

“Harry Dryce?” Carrie repeated.

“He is the registered owner of Number 36, Florence Road.”

Carrie shrugged. The less she said, the better. Ashworth had said she had evidence of her crimes, but that could be a bluff and Carrie didn’t want to go handing the inspector something she didn’t actually have on a plate.

“So, you’re just friends with Nano? And you sometimes hang out at Number 36, Florence Street?” Ashworth recapped, her stare never faltering as she held Carrie’s gaze. “In the basement?”

Carrie’s heart jumped momentarily into her throat and then landed with a thump in her stomach that she was sure must have been audible to the inspector. Ashworth didn’t give Carrie time to respond, but pushed the data pad towards her and swiped a finger over the screen.

“Recognise this?” she asked mildly, eyes still fixed on Carrie’s face.

Carrie looked at the pad and the photograph of the table in the basement with Nano’s production equipment spread across it. She shook her head.

“Or this?”

The next photograph was of the handwritten notes for Vannah that she had copied from the journal.

“No.”

Carrie was surprised by how calm and cool she was able to keep her voice.

“I’d rather not incur the cost of getting a handwriting expert to compare these notes to your school record, but I’m certain that if I did, they’d testify that this is your handwriting.” Ashworth swiped back to the previous photograph. “I’m also certain we’re going to find your fingerprints all over this equipment.”

Carrie didn’t look back at the data pad. She knew the inspector was right and there would be no arguing with a fingerprint analysis.

“This leads me to the second charge against you...” Ashworth pulled the data pad back towards her and glanced down to tap the screen.

Carrie subconsciously held her breath as she watched the inspector, wondering what new, damning evidence was coming next.

“You’re responsible for this, aren’t you?” Ashworth said, sliding the volume up on the data pad.

The first few notes of Vannah floated into the air between them. Carrie felt her heart twist in response to the melody, as if it recognised itself in the song, sounding so small and powerless in the cold emptiness of the interview room. Ashworth let Rox’s voice reverberate around them until the chorus and then she cut the song off dead, as sharply as if she’d cut a throat.

“Do you understand the seriousness of breaking the Degenerative Recreational Drug Laws, Carrie?” Ashworth asked, sounding very much like a disappointed teacher.

Carrie couldn’t help scoffing. “Do you not know my family history?”

The corner of Ashworth’s mouth twitched. “That is what has me perplexed,” she said dryly. “You’re smart, Carrie—you know better and yet you’ve still thrown your life away on worthless highs. You and Nano—two lives wasted for nothing.”

“Music isn’t nothing,” Carrie replied.

There was a pause before Ashworth spoke. “That’s precisely what it is,” she said calmly. “It’s just a culmination of vibrations, triggering chemicals in your brain. A biological reaction. There’s nothing spiritual to it.”

Carrie leant forward a little. “Then why are you so afraid of it?” she asked simply.

“Because that biological reaction is dangerous.” Ashworth’s answer was blunt but softly spoken. “You know this, Carrie. Music alters the psyche like nothing else humankind has created. Yes, it can inspire and soothe—but it also stirs up the basest of instincts. It’s easy for addicts to have some ideal about a golden age of music, but the truth is that music has always been associated with some of the worst conditions of our society: underage sex, drugs, violence, dissent, prejudice, murder, war, pornography, and perhaps worst of all—consumerism. Music was an industry—a business interested only in making money.” She quirked an eyebrow. “And it still is. You don’t think Dryce distributes tracks like yours because he wants to bless people with the gift of moving melodies? It’s about the money—he exploits people like you to build his business empire.”

Carrie looked at Ashworth for an intense second, her head unable to argue with the inspector’s facts but her heart protesting at her logic. Music wasn’t wrong. It was natural and necessary. Carrie knew there was nothing more true in the world than that conviction. She just didn’t have the words to articulate it. But she tried anyway.

“You’re right,” she said, trying but failing to keep the earnest tremor from her voice. “Music is dangerous. It makes people feel what they’ve never felt before. It helps them to express what they can’t with just words. It makes them alive. I think that scares you—and the state. It terrifies me. But I’d rather be terrified than feel nothing at all.”

Ashworth became impatient for the first time since she’d entered the room. “This is what your track has done,” she said, pushing the data pad towards Carrie and calling up a gallery of images. “Look at it!”

Carrie watched the screen as the inspector scrolled through snapshots of the riot and Vannah graffiti, scrawled alongside the Dextinction logo.

“Violence, chaos, public disorder—all of it stirred up by your music, your lyrics.”

Carrie leant back in her chair with a cynical look. “I didn’t create that,” she said. “You did. If you don’t want people rioting then stop putting up quotas and extending curfews.”

Ashworth folded her arms on the table again, the impatience smoothed from her face. “So, you support the riots?” she asked.

Carrie tensed, wary of a trap. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you think they’re justified?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

Ashworth moved one arm, almost lazily, to brush the data pad screen with her fingertips so she could bring up the Dextinction logo. “Do you know what this is?”

“I’ve seen it around.”

“Do you know who this is?”

Carrie stared at the photograph of her father that appeared on the data pad. He had the same grey-streaked beard and was wearing the same woollen hat he’d had on when she’d thought she’d seen him on the street outside the undersound.

“Have you had contact with your father recently?”

The question made Carrie feel sick. “No,” she replied, the word sounding bitter.

“Did you know that he is a member of a Dextinction cell?”

“How would I know that?” Carrie replied wryly. “I haven’t seen him since I was six.”

Ashworth turned the data pad off and pushed it to one side. She interlocked her fingers on the tabletop in front of her and tilted her head a fraction to one side as she looked intently at Carrie. “Dextinction have cells all over the country but they’re particularly active in this region. We know Dryce and his brother-in-law, Gene Ramez, supply the group with resources, mainly technology and vehicles. In fact, we believe that up to sixty percent of their black market operation is dedicated to funding them. That includes profits from the illegal bud trade. We suspect your father and his cell have been transporting supplies to set up a new insurgent base.”

“I told you, I haven’t seen my father,” Carrie said, wishing this woman would stop talking about her father. In a perverse way, Carrie wished she could admit her father had reached out to her, but being reminded that he hadn’t—not once in thirteen years—was like having a bruise repeatedly prodded. “If he’s been in the area, he certainly hasn’t tried to get in touch with me.”

“I’m tempted to believe you,” Ashworth said. “In fact, I think I do believe you,” she added. “But let me pull all these pieces of evidence together for you, Carrie. You’ve spent a lot of time at Dryce’s home—”

“Not when he was there,” Carrie interrupted.

“You’ve spent a lot of time with one of his dealers,” Ashworth continued. “You produced a music track with that dealer, which has been distributed on a bud by Dryce and adopted by Dextinction as an anthem to the anarchy they are stirring up across this nation—threatening to destabilise the values on which our security as a society is founded. Whether you intended to or not, you have contributed to the funding and resourcing of insurgents.” The inspector paused for a second to check Carrie was paying attention. “In the eyes of the law, you are considered an associate of a group that is on the cusp of classification as a terrorist organisation. That means you are culpable and punishable for their crimes.”

Carrie gave Ashworth a sceptical look. “What do you want?” she asked slowly.

“Just one honest answer would be a good start.”

“You don’t need a confession to convict me,” Carrie said. “You’ve already said you have enough evidence for that. You want me to snitch.”

“It’s the only option you have if you want to avoid a sentence from which there will be no coming back.”

Ashworth’s sober words checked Carrie for a moment. Looking down at her hands, Carrie smoothed the jumper Mrs Giles had knitted for her. She inhaled and then released a soft breath before meeting the inspector’s gaze again. “You mean the death penalty,” she said, “For making a single song and being friends with Nano?”

“For everything, Carrie. For every undersound, every bud, every broken curfew. For every visit to Florence Road. For producing that song, for associating with Nano and any other employee of Harry Dryce. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—all of it builds an ugly, guilty picture.” Ashworth almost managed to look compassionate. “Even your old job at the Recycling Plant has to be viewed in light of all the other evidence. I have no proof you’ve ever taken anything from the Plant, but we know Dryce deals in electronic scraps from the tips and recycling centres, and, of the sixty people who work on the electronics line, you’re the one sitting here with a list of serious charges to your name. When this goes before the judges, it’s not going to look good. Not for you or Nano. And I think there’s only one verdict they’ll come to and one sentence they’ll hand out. Someone has to be made an example—but you don’t have to be that someone if you help me bring the real players to justice.”

Ashworth left her words to sink through the air in the following silence. And they did sink, right through to Carrie’s bones, like cold weights of lead. There was no escaping them. She was anchored under them—pinned like a butterfly. Ashworth seemed to think she was giving Carrie a choice, but there was no choice Carrie could make that would save her from a fate she couldn’t even bear to think about.

“I can’t,” she said softly, almost wearily. “I have nothing to tell you.”

“You know more than you think. You just have to tell me about where you’ve been, who you’ve met, what you’ve noticed. It’s the little things that build a picture—a single testimony can make a difference.”

Carrie wondered if Nano had been offered the same deal yet. She had been left in a cell on her own for a number of hours before she’d been brought to the interview room and Ashworth had joined her. How many other addicts, undersounders and wrong-time-wrong-place civilians had sat in this chair before her and been offered the same choice? What had Nano chosen?

For a second, Carrie wondered if he’d taken Ashworth’s offer, but that thought was quickly swept away by the memory of Nano dropping to his knees in front of her in the square and enveloping her in his arms, as if to protect her from the ready weapons of the Patrol and the anger of the rioters.

Carrie gave Ashworth a cool look and shook her head. “I have nothing to tell you.”

“Not even to avoid the same fate as your sister?”

“You’ll still give me neurosensory corrosion treatment.”

“It will cure your addiction.”

Carrie surprised even herself by sniggering at the assertion. “You can’t take music from me by making me deaf to it. Every song I’ve ever heard, every melody I’ve yet to imagine is in my head.”

“Then, by that logic,” Ashworth returned quickly, “You’ve got nothing to lose. I’m giving you the chance to save your life, Carrie.”

Carrie pressed her lips together to still the tremble that rose to them. When she spoke, after an expectant pause, she kept her voice low and steady. “It’s not the music at undersounds or on buds that I’ll miss,” she said. “It’s the music in everything else—birdsong in the morning, rain on the window… my mum’s voice.” Her throat caught on the last three words and she swallowed back the tears that suddenly rose to sting her eyes.

Ashworth nodded slowly and reached for her data pad. “Then I can’t help you,” she said, rising to her feet. “So, I won’t waste any more of my time.” She walked to the door with the data pad under her arm. “Any last questions?” she asked as she paused at the door.

“Is Nano okay?”

“I can’t discuss other cases.”

“Can I see my mum?”

“I’m afraid not.” Ashworth knocked on the door and raised an eyebrow at Carrie as it was opened from the other side. “”I don’t understand what it is about the song you created that has caused such a frenzy,” she said frankly, “But there is one sentiment that seems to stand out. How does it go…?” She tilted her head pensively. “ ‘If music be life, give me excess of it… until I die.’ ” The inspector titled her head back again with an unsympathetic air as she gave Carrie a last look and then walked out of the room.

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Next weekend: Chapter 28—The Dying Fall

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Author’s Notes:

Carrie vs. Ashworth. In your opinion, who won that debate?

Final chapter is out next week😱

Chapter 28: The Dying Fall, coming next weekend.

PJ