“No wonder he gave himself that nickname.” Lylith White commented as she trampled through the undergrowth, flicking aside sharp leaves with her fingertips. “With a name like John Tyler; you’d want to sound a bit exciting wouldn’t you?”
“I bet he’s dead.” Josiah Hartt stated; so simply it barely registered.
“I beg your pardon?” Lylith asked.
“It’s almost a certainty.” He quickly explained himself. “Why would Matthew McCoy’s killer let him live? If Iceman laid a trap at the same time the killers were replicating the scene themselves; how would that look to the Detectors? It would tell them instantly something was wrong days before the killers wanted them to, that they were looking for two men and one of them was a killer and a fraud. Murder Iceman too and the Detectors would be none the wiser that this wasn’t the dealers work; just believing Iceman was continuing to set up those who didn’t pay up until, miles too late, they’d realise the victims weren’t just paralysed at all.”
“Why didn’t you say so before we went trudging to all the way to Mugollen, and then back to Pollock to find him if you think he’s already dead?” Lylith quizzed.
“Because I have to be sure.” Josiah muttered. “If he’s dead we’re in serious trouble.” Like always he left the comment hanging and lurched ahead, testing the doorway excitedly. After a few hard yanks he found it was firmly locked and so he tried the wooden boards that were fastened across the window.
“You can’t just go breaking in!” Lylith snapped. “We’re not Detectors; we’ll get locked up....” She stopped her ranting as Josiah’s elbow broke through the panels. He glanced towards her a quick apologetic shrug but continued to place his foot inside the gap. Lylith followed, snagging her coat on a few shards of glass that remained in place.
“Why would you board up the windows instead of getting replacements?” Josiah asked himself aloud. “Looks like someone has broken in; and recently.”
“Yes okay...” Lylith groaned as her back hit the floorboards. “You’ve made your point. We’ll see.” She picked herself up and dusted herself down, wincing at the sharp line of splinters she found wedged beneath her skin. The room inside was almost as gloomy as the dark woods which shrouded the building. Four green wingback chairs sat in the middle of the room, hardened by time and cigarette butts. Surrounding the seats were large carboard boxes which slowly decomposed where they sat. The taste was horrid, deep and musty and masked in mould, lying heavy like old mushrooms on her tongue. The wallpaper that hung off the wall was old and jaded; once bold patterns of flowers and reefs now fading in the cold and peeling from the plaster. A couple more rooms led of from the living space; one which looked like a kitchen and another which remained shut.
“Nice place.” Lylith White muttered, covering her mouth with a glove.
“I’ve stayed in worse.” Josiah replied, diving towards one of the boxes, tearing apart the flimsy seal ontop and leaning inside. He pulled out a damp packet, wrapped in thin brown paper and tied together with string. Josiah tore it open, only to release a torrent of white powder which fell to the floor like fresh snow, thouroughly staining his coat in the process. Josiah dipped his finger in the mess and placed a drop of the substance on his quivering tongue. “Yep, thats the Slide. Thats definately Slide…” He shivered. “Brrrr… It feels like my brain’s going backwards...”
“Did you have to taste it?” Lylith asked, opening another box to check the contents, only to find it stuffed with another load of the packets. “I mean, isn’t it obvious, we’re in a drug dealers house.”
“I like to be thorough.” Josiah Hartt replied, suddenly leaping from where he stood and chasing around the shadows.
“I doesn’t look much like the home of a drugs baron.” Lylith noted, glancing around the near empty room.
“We knew from the start he wasn’t rich – he laid the traps bare footed after all, no one would just choose not to wear shoes, especially with lethal spiders scuttling about.” He opened another box. “John Price was a dealer, not a supplier. That’s where the money’s made. The Iceman was never going to get rich with so many clients failing to pay their tabs, no wonder he took such drastic measures in warning them.” Josiah Hartt turned to Lylith. “We need something that can tell us the wearabouts of John Tyler, his second home, where his mother lives, his favourite burger bar. If he’s still alive then he was helping the killers and so he’ll be able to tell us all about our killers.”
His friend nodded, allowing him to trounce across the floorboards. “And if he knew nothing about Inspector McCoy’s death…?” She asked
Hartt stopped. “Then he’s about twelve hours from the morgue.”
Lylith sighed and walked across the living room towards the unopened door. Pushing it to, she found a small corridor leading to a couple more rooms where the damp smell lingered even more persistently. She stepped onto the floorboards. It looked as if there had once been a carpet covering the floor but it was now torn from the staples that had fastened it down and had been rolled up at the end of the corridor. The light above her head blinked on and off; a sharp, blue, electric light snapping from brightness to darkness with the chink of shattered glass. The light illuminated the images hanging clumsily off the wall, swaying to and fro from nails jutting several inches from the plaster. The frames held photos; a boy with his family, with what Lylith presumed were his mom and dad grinning wildly while he knelt before them like a statue with an itch.
Lylith walked to the end of the hall, leaning breathless against a doorway. The smell was really overwhelming now, bitter in her mouth and lying heavy on her tongue, thick like old mustard. She absent mindedly stumbled onto the pale red carpet which was rolled beside her feet. She was surprised to find her toe stumping on something hard inside. She gently nudged it again to feel once again a lump residing beneath the fabric. She knelt down and carefully unfolded the material.
Josiah Hartt ran to Lylith as she emerged from the door, slamming it shut behind her; heaving breathlessly against it. She could feel her stomach churning, like something was pushing up from inside her gut. She shut her eyes, blinking over and over again in a desperate attempt to clean her mind of the image that was now truly embedded there. Ruby red and deep, deep brown; a lump of human wastage, mutilated beyond recognition with just two cold, dead eyes leering from the wreckage. She had to force herself still, to stop the image coming back to haunt her.
“What is it?” Josiah asked excitedly. “Was it him, have you found him?” He yanked the door open and the smell hit him like a swarm. At the end of the hallway he could just make out the shape. He swung the door closed. “Blimey.” He muttered, helping to Lylith to a seat. “It’s okay; I’ll get you some water.”
“Where from?” Lylith gasped.
Josiah paused. “The tap?”
“No…” She spluttered, holding her hands out. “No, I don’t want it; I don’t want anything from here!”
“Is this a bad time to say I told you so?” Hartt quizzed.
“Christ, yes!” Lylith spluttered.
“Shame...”
She turned around and looked at him with panicked eyes. “What did you mean?” She croaked. “Before we found him… you said if he was dead we were in serious trouble…”
Josiah nodded sincerely. “Can you smell that? Vinegary, acidic. The decomposition process has already begun; meaning that body was destroyed not today but last night and brutally, brutally murdered by the look of it. He certainly didn’t do that to himself. That means after he dropped those drugs off at the edge of the wood he was followed back here and jumped in that corridor, without even knowing it was coming. Whoever laid the scene where Matthew McCoy was stabbed never spoke to John Tyler, but replicated it almost perfectly.”
Josiah words started to calm her, and as she reasoned with his point she found the images beginning to become less vivid. “He didn’t have to speak to anyone to know what it looked like.” Lylith said. “He saw John Tyler setting his trap; th
e killer knew what it was supposed to look like…”
“Yes, but the details Lylith – the paint on the fingertips, signs of a scuffle, they were all precise features of the drug dealer’s attacks replicated around Matthew McCoy’s corpse. Just seeing the scene being laid wouldn’t tell the killer those things, they’d of happened after he’d left with the Iceman. There was only one way he could have learnt about the way the corpse would have looked…”
“You!” She exclaimed. “At the crime scene, you explained those details to us. So that means he was listening too…”
“Maybe…” Josiah stopped. “No, even that can’t be right; the killer had to cover up the body, he ripped up the whole carpet for Benjamin’s sake! That would have taken a while – the murderer saw John place the drugs and then followed him back here, and he wouldn’t have left until long after we’d headed back to speak to Roseanne Price…”
“But someone must’ve heard it from you. That means – no - none of them would, surely…”
“Yes…” Josiah Hartt winced “The killer wasn’t listening in; someone else was doing that for him. And whoever that was, whoever was remembering those details Lylith, they’ve spoken to me…”
She suddenly stopped panting and looked sharply at him.
“And I thought they were just being lax.” Josiah sighed.
“I’m sorry?”
“It was there all along, staring me in the face; if the killer had all the details from John Tyler then there should have been no imperfections, but if the person feeding the Modus Operandi to the killer was getting it off me they wouldn’t have known everything.”
“Why?” Lylith quizzed. “I was there; you listed every detail of the drugs trap in front of a crowd of people.”
“Except I didn’t.” Hartt explained. “The giveaway that the Matthew McCoy crime scene was a fake was the lack of pins in the wood and gap in the paint where the bag had been camouflaged. But I didn’t say that at the crime scene, I didn’t even know it then. We learnt that long after when we were interrogating Roseanne Price - the spy didn’t hear that from me, they didn’t pass it on and so it was missing from the replication...”
Lylith’s eyes opened wide.
“Don’t worry,” Josiah smiled reassuringly. “We can safely say it’s not you…”
“Why not?” She asked sharply.
“You were with me when she told us about the camouflaged paint, the only one – you’d of known those details. And I trust you.” Hartt paused. “It wasn’t you was it?”
“No!”
“Good, good…” He sighed. “It shouldn’t be hard to work out who’s leaking that information; in the past ten years the list titled ‘people I’ve spoken to’ is about ten names long…”
“And most of those were in the past two days I presume, so that means the man who’s been informing the killer is…”
“A Detector.”
They stopped in breathless realisation. Then the silence was sharply broken as the panels across the window broke and a body squeezed itself through the gap and fell clumsily onto the floor. It picked itself up and dusted itself off. Lylith backed away and took Josiah’s hand as Deputy Detector Rosin Ash stepped into the light.
A Visit from a Prince
Jessica dropped her worn down pencil and scampered over to the now ajar doorway, watching with blank eyes as the weedy man spoke to her Father, who seemed to be rather enraged by their discussion. The two figures were so far down the hall she could barely hear the loud chink of wood as the Patriarch lurched up from his seat. It was to her surprise, therefore, when her father’s booming voice filled her ears as if he was stood right next to her. She was only five years old, but Jessica knew well enough that a man standing as far away as her Father should sound to her no louder than a whisper.
Little Jessica turned back, her pink dress twirling around her knees as she dashed across the floor; an adventurous spirit chasing the rich tones of her father.
Jessica eventually closed him down in one of the living room’s corners. Her father’s voice wasn’t as sharp as usual; usually deep and rich was now sharp and raspy like that of a serial smoker. The sound’s origin wasn’t hard to find, and it certainly wasn’t Cedric’s lips. She leant down beside a small table, a few centimetres taller than her and cluttered top to toe in junk. Jessica dived into the pile and pulled out a thick black cuboid, vibrating as sound wafted from a circle of holes pinned through the plastic casing.
“How can he be here…!?” Boomed the panicked words of Cedric Baltazar from the box. “You have to go down there Thomas; you have to tell Michael Prince to leave, go back to the board, I don’t want his help!”
The girl turned sharply as another set of doors burst open and her mother walked through them. She saw the box in her daughters hand and she leant quickly over to her. “I’m sorry darling.” Lucy smiled briefly. “Me and your father will take this elsewhere.”
Before the girl could reply the first lady plucked the speaker from her daughters hand and marched back the way she came. For a moment Jessica stood there, stunned slightly. Then she just shrugged and smiled, leaping across the carpet and snatching up her pencil.
Senior Advisor Thomas Taser quaked before his Patriarch, weedy hands like sticks wrapped around each other, moving to and from their owner’s mouth as he hungrily chomped at his sallow nails. “I didn’t realise sir, it’s too late…”
“Then lie, lie for me Thomas! Tell me I’m out the building, I’m down in the valley or that, that my Nan’s in hospital, just… use some initiative, please!”
“I can’t sir. He’ll be waiting outside that door any minute now. He knows you’re here, all Patriarchs are grounded on the day of the meeting.”
Cedric stammered for a minute, then froze, jaw hanging limply open. Without moving a single feature on his face he leant sharply back on his heels and let himself fall down into his mottled leather seat. He sighed, running his hands slowly through his sweaty locks.
“I don’t see the problem sir.” Taser stammered. “You need all the help from the board you can get. Michael Prince is a nice man; he’s a faithful member of the Loyalist council, a servant of the law.”
“Do you know how this system works?” Baltazar shrieked. “There are people outside, people like you who mean nothing, while I and all the other hundreds of Patriarchs out there have been snatched from the battlefields where we belong to look after you, to keep you well. That leaves a tiny group of people to watch us. The men from the Board. Men like Michael Prince who with a well-placed word could take me back again, just as easily. The problem, Thomas, is him. Don’t you remember who he is? Lord, why did you think he’s coming here, why did you think out of all the people, out of all the places, Michael Prince is headed for me?”
“What’s up with your faces?” Deputy Detector Rosin Ash asked as he blinked through the new light, his sight slowly focussing on a stunned Josiah and Lylith who stood firmly clutching each other in the centre of the room. The blood rushed so fast from her skin he thought she was about to faint. “I would say you look worse than usual Mr Hartt, but honesty is part of my job description…”
“Oooh, very good.” Josiah muttered, running his sharp gaze down the length of the Detectors body. “It would help if you didn’t jump out of the shadows unannounced next time, jokes an’ all...”
“I’m sorry Josiah, but I hardly want to be here either. My job is not supposed to centre around chasing the likes of you. And you Miss White, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I think I was rather more afraid I might become one.” She murmured.
“Yes, and I’m not entirely sure those fears are unjustified – tell me Deputy Ash, how exactly did you find us here?” Josiah Hartt asked, his stare switching from intrigue to suspicion in an instant. “We told no one where we were going. The fact we’d be here, infact: we didn’t know ourselves until a few hours ago. Have you been following us?”
“Sorry, are you interrogating me no
w?” Rosin sighed. “I went to your little tower, inside on the table I found a book - I saw you’d been reading up on the Repo Glacialis spider so I made the connection…”
Hartt interrupted abruptly. “Wait: how on earth did you get inside? The panels behind those doors could hold a grenade blast at bay...”
“I’m sure it can, maybe less so though when you leave a window open.” The Deputy Detectors smile was stomach churningly smug. Josiah’s blood, however, suddenly boiled.
“Yes, well, I have Russian tulips fermenting in there – are you seriously expecting me to let them swelter?!” Hartt screeched.
The Detector blinked slowly, and then sighed; continuing unsurely. “So I was inside, flicking through the book and I thought to myself; you must be looking for the dealer; the Iceman. I used the local business census to find any exotic pet shops nearby and found one in Mugollen. Aled’s Amazing Arachnids?”
“Yes, that’s the one.” Lylith White croaked, falling back on the sofa.
“Bizarre place it was, and the shopkeeper, Aled; covered head to toe in cuts he was, the most odd looking hair cut I’ve seen in a long time. And when I first walked in he started quietly sobbing.”
Josiah cast a guilty look towards Lylith. “Maybe I should have just asked for the one.” He muttered, leaving Rosin pacing impatiently around the room for the nod Josiah eventually gave him, like he was waiting for permission.
“He gave me a list, poor Aled…” The Deputy continued. “…and on that list was a man looking for grubs that are quite popular with the Repo Glacialis spider. He said another couple were in the shop before me, asking about the same customer. Aled never said their names, just swore a little, but the man they’d got excited about was a shifty fellow on the list called John Tyler, and he had this address written beside his name.” He finished his ranting, stopping beside the door to the corridor.
Blood & Baltazar Page 11
