Blood & Baltazar

by Liam Inscoe-Jones

  “You are quite the rebel Mr Hartt.”

  Josiah snorted. “Well if banning a kitchen appliance is the highlight of his repertoire I hardly think we have much to worry about.”

  Lylith grinned, picking out the lumps of curdled cream and swallowing the drink in one. “So what about the drug case?” She queried. “Who’s handling that now, I mean, we’ve got to focus on protecting Cedric right?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything to handle Lylith.” Hartt shrugged. “We know who was dealing, who set a trap for Roseanne Price and Robert Acrimony with the Repo Glacialis spider: it was all John Tyler operating from his house on Costello Mount. With him dead there’s nobody to arrest, all that need be done is explain what happened to Robert if he ever wakes up. We’ve got much, much bigger fish to fry now there’s a murderer to catch. The only thing that linked these two cases was the use of the drugs as a cover for the killings, but if one of the Detectors is a leak for the murderer then they already know their disguise has been exposed, they won’t be able to use the Repo Glacialis as a cover for their victims deaths anymore. Now I have to work out exactly which Detector is helping them out… “

  “You still haven’t worked that out yet?” She quizzed.

  “Oh, you have an idea do you?” Hartt teased.

  She thought for a moment. “Fair point.” Lylith raised a finger. “Tell you one thing I still don’t understand…”

  “Astrophysics?” Josiah suggested.

  “Nooo-” Lylith corrected herself. “…Well, yes, but one other thing. You kept talking about the killer coming from Ashton Wood, like it was fact, like it was something we should all just know. I’m not sure if I missed something, I mean, you did fill my drink with Marijuana after all, but I can’t seem to remember you telling us exactly how you could be so sure Josiah. What if you’re wrong, what if we go looking in all the wrong places?”

  “I could practically send them a postcard. Trust me, I’m not wrong. You’ve lived in this valley almost all your life, you must’ve travelled between the towns dozens of times every year, you must have seen it in the dirt?”

  “Well obviously I didn’t…”

  Josiah Hartt looked at her in wonder. “What must it be like? All you people, you make the obvious seem so…mysterious.”

  “I think it’s called being human.” She replied.

  He grinned at her. “Then I’m disappointed at best.” He leant closer, excited to impress once more. “It became apparent when I first examined the scene around the body of Robert Acrimony. As we know there was blood on the ground, something you’d except at the scene of a murder, but of course we realised later he wasn’t murdered at all - infact the bite of a Repo Glacialis spider wouldn’t spill a single drop of blood. It was still wet as well, so that means it wasn’t spilt by the drug dealer but by the murderer that came and planted the first note beneath Robert’s corpse. He had tripped on his way there, not because he was clumsy but because the terrain was incredibly rough. Then there was the dirt. The foundations of the town are laid in clay, that’s why the settlement was first built here, because it was solid and strong. But mixed amongst the hard ground were speckles of soft peat rubbed into the mud meaning the murderer wasn’t local but from a plain just outside the valley walls. That rather narrows it down, somewhere with rocky terrain, away from the town. There are two places they could hide accessible enough for frequent use. Ashton or Enkland Wood, either side of the river. Now I observed that while the distance from these two places is short, the ground was as dry as the desert, nobody had to go near water to get from there to here and so the murderers secret little hide out, however many of them there may be, is somewhere in the tiny forest of Ashton.”

  “Maybe that is a bit obvious.” Lylith mused. “But then you need eyes like needles and my pair is knackered…” She swung her legs. “Unless you have a couple of spares knocking about…?”

  “Well, I’ve got a goose on the third floor if you’re asking-”

  She held out her hand. “No! No, that was a joke.” She dropped her palm and looked at him excitedly. “So then, Ashton wood, a gang of murderers and the two of us. What should we do? Shall we call the Detectors? They could get together, sniff out their hideout and drag them out at gunpoint…?” Lylith said it as if it were the most glamorous thing in the world. Josiah Hartt just tutted and leant back into the leather patchwork behind him.

  “That would never work. As much as I could walk in there and spot the killer instantly, anything I say simply wouldn’t stand up in the Justice Trails. In the eyes of judge and jury the evidence I observe is merely… the ramblings of a mad man. Well, maybe it is. The point is, nobody will go to jail for the murder of those men unless the words were first uttered by a Detector himself.”

  “Which will be never I presume.” Lylith White sighed. “No offence to them but so far they’ve discovered very little and according to you half of them are as bent as the towers walls... But I guess you know that already.”

  Josiah tapped his feet gleefully on the floor and rubbed his hands together. “Indeed I do Miss White, and so I have a plan. A marvellous one if I may say so myself. If a little foolhardy and suicidal.”

  He leapt from the couch and ran over to the closest wall, his hands around the edges as Lylith called him back. “Wait a minute, what do you mean suicidal? Josiah, what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing, well, not much. I’m going to go down to Ashton Wood, disguised brilliantly of course, and then I shall blend myself into their little society and equate myself with the murderer. When I know his plans and have gathered proper, solid evidence I’ll chuck my fake moustache in the river, come back here and save the day just in the nick of time presumably.”

  “Right and this is a good idea how? They’ll recognise you instantly, like you said, at least one of the Detectors might be down there…”

  “I told you, I’ll be brilliantly disguised.” A glint sparked in his eye. “I’m not just talking cloak, flat-cap and pipe either.”

  “How long will you be gone?” She puffed.

  “I don’t know; until whenever they plan to attack I presume. It could be a few days, a week, a month…”

  “Then you’ll miss Christmas!” She exclaimed.

  “Really?” He groaned. “That’s your greatest concern?”

  Lylith pulled herself up from the sofa and stood facing opposite him, looking at him the same scolding way a teacher looked at a misbehaving pupil. “Of course it’s not. My greatest concern is you.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  Four chimes shook the makeshift doorway.

  “I’ve told you twice now…” Josiah continued, ignoring the intrusive sound as another four followed. “…I have a disguise, I have a plan. I’m not a kid Lylith…” Another four, shrill, more urgent. “I’m going to…” More thumping, louder than ever before. “I…” He stopped, sighing at the woman beside him. “Can you get that?” He smiled fakely, dashing off before Lylith could protest.

  She scrambled across piles of clutter, knocking over a small bronze lamp on her way to the doorway. She stopped at the edge of the ditch and leant across as the gaps between the beats stopped and the rhythm became continuous.

  “What?” She snapped as she yanked the door open, finding outside Field Specialist Elisa Smith shaking on the step.

  “Can I come in?” She asked quietly.

  “Will it take long?” Lylith White asked.

  “Just a minute or so.”

  “No then.” She muttered. “Sorry, this isn’t my house, and I’m not sure Josiah looks upon you too favourably. It’s like you’ve got his dream job or something.”

  “Fair enough.” Elisa Smith winced as she pulled out a file from under her coat. Her scarlet scarf fluttered in the breeze. Lylith almost felt sorry for the woman, her body battered by the wind, tights covering her knees soaked with damp stains. “I was just bringing you these.” She handed over the folder, Lylith taking it from her and feeling it
s weight. The papers inside were few in number, the folder itself old and recycled for the occasion. “They’re the results from the autopsy of Robert Acrimony. He’s dead.” She explained.

  “I see.” Lylith muttered, glancing down to the Field Specialists legs then sharply back up again. “That’s too bad.”

  Elisa Smith nodded. “It’ll make a great anti-drugs campaign.”

  Lylith smiled politely. She threw the file aside and caught sight of a crouched Josiah Hartt, hidden and watching a few metres away. “I’m sure I can offer you a cream tea if you want one, Josiah won’t mind…”

  “…No, I’ve got to go, there’s been a fire during a Psychology lecture down at Mugollen University. No one noticed. Apparently they were all asleep.”

  Lylith curled her lips and nodded, uttering a quick goodbye and waving her hand as she closed the door shut, pushing the Detector off the step and down onto the damp earth.

  As she shut the door Lylith White cracked into a wide-eyed grin and her voice cranked up a few decibels. “Did you see that?!” She enthused towards Josiah, hurrying over to him, hands flapping with excitement. “I don’t believe it! Her knees, the way she winced when she handed over the papers…”

  “You saw that too?” Josiah asked, slightly surprised.

  “Of course I did. It’s obvious really; you just have to notice these things. Because you said didn’t you, you said the terrain was rough and bumpy, whoever planted the paper beneath the soil was bleeding, dragging their legs. Her knees were damp, just her knees. She’s just been there hasn’t she, to their base in Ashton Wood, that’s why her legs were weeping blood? She fell on the way here… She’s the spy!” She paused, breathless. “My God I’m turning into you.”

  “Isn’t it brilliant?” He beamed at her.

  “It’s mental. So all this time, all her arrogance and dedication, it was just for show? Unless, unless we’ve got it wrong, maybe that was mud on her knees, maybe she winced because she had cramp…”

  “No.” Hartt stated. “Don’t start doubting it, what you saw is what happened. It’s not like a photograph or a drawing that can be biased or corrupted, what’s there is true and the truth is she is not the woman we thought she was. It all fits. Every time we spoke to her she was the first to get something wrong. And every time those mistakes were misdirection – right from the moment she got it wrong about Roseanne Price.”

  “If she’s really helping the people trying to kill the Patriarch… that would make sense I suppose. But then why would she come here?” Lylith questioned. “We didn’t need to be told Robert Acrimony was dead, why would she bring it to us if it would only draw attention to herself?”

  “That’s not how she was thinking. It’s like a deviant schoolgirl, she does something wrong and to hide from blame she marches up to the teacher who is hunting her down and asks about some maths homework. They think to be so bold shields them from question. Her coming here was exactly the same thing, but this teacher is on the ball and sharpening his cane…” He blushed. “Sorry.”

  “Okay, then that’s decided, you can’t try and integrate yourself now, with Elisa and god-knows-who-else down there; you’ll be recognised immediately…”

  “It won’t look like me.” He repeated, disappearing from view and yanking open drawers, knocking over tables. “Chisel and a hack saw did you say?”

  “What?” Lylith White spluttered, following him around the section.

  “Your Aunty Josephine, she stuck a chisel and a hack saw in her toaster?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see….” She quietened herself as she watched him tear open a tool box and pull out a blunt old chisel and a razor sharp hack saw. He then yanked a panel off the wall and pulled out a series of long wires, twisting them around his arm and tearing them out of their fastenings, a slew of bronze cord pouring from inside.

  “Hold on a minute, what are you doing?” She asked, her voice heightened with panic. He started rattling off an explanation at lightning speed as he worked, knotting the exposed metal around the rusty ends of both tools.

  “Do you know what a bolt of electricity does to the body Lylith?” He asked excitedly. “It rips into you like a bullet through flesh; it tears across the human fabric, literally burning apart the sinews of tissue, scorching and eating at the tiniest vessel of blood. The body is very conductive and so it keeps spreading. In a second it can work its way around every inch of your skin, in two it could stop your heart. But to be controlled, to be focussed on one point - all that power and concentration reworks the meat of your body itself, a fiery, fleshly lump swelling like a cancer under your skin. You’d be transformed, deformed. You’d be unrecognisable.”

  A big grin crossed his face as he delved into the drawer and cleared the table above it of junk, only to replace it with an old battered toaster. He took the tools and placed them down beside it, unravelling the wires he’d wrapped around their handles and attaching the loose ends to two tiny white pads.

  “No way…” Lylith murmured.

  “Just a few seconds, maybe ten, and my whole face would me a mess, every feature contorted and swollen. It would be like I was a completely different person, an ugly one but disguised brilliantly, my true form hidden from sight.”

  “You’ll kill yourself.” She snapped. “Literally, you will die. Like you said, things like that stop your heart, things like that leave people a footnote in obituary columns: I won’t let you do this.”

  “I wouldn’t if I thought there was a slight possibility…” He replied calmly, collecting the contraption in his arms. “I’m no good dead Lylith, because then who would stop them? We’re not just talking two more dead men - these people are murderous with wanton revenge, who knows what they’ll do in order to destroy the Patriarch? Maybe they’ll plant explosives in Stone Hall, kill his wife, his daughter too. That little girl. What if they decide the whole town needs to pay? I want them stopped, for all our sakes. There isn’t a question of whether I’m doing this or not. I am. That’s it. If you want me to be safe you can help me control it.” He looked at her for a moment, waiting as Lylith contemplated before she nodded quietly. His lips curled into a smile, and in an instant he was leaping round the room again.

  She dived after him urgently, half following through intrigue and half through the fear of what he’d do if she didn’t.

  Lylith White chased him up the stairs, heavy feet creaking against battered floorboards, streaks of plaster fluttering from the stairwell as they emerged from the passage, now just tiny specs floating through streaks of moonlight.

  The second level was a little different from the first. It was cluttered with the same junk, if a morsel more refined. There were gaps in bookcases here where Josiah had hurried a book downstairs only to never replace it (or find it.) The large oval hadn’t been divided here either, and so she could finally admire the size of the building, a good walk from end to end, the long curved walls covered top to toe by wonky paintings and bookcases. There was no firelight up there, and so only small gaps in the windows allowed for passage of light. The whitewash walls were painted navy by the midnight sky as dim light flooded from the clouds above the hillside.

  She followed him across the floorboards, where he positioned himself on a patched leather chair, the base of which he hadn’t bothered to move when carpeting and so the maroon rug had trapped it where it sat. Before him was a desk, surprisingly organised with a row of bottles; each containing a liquid of different bizarre colour, nothing bright or impressive, just murky browns and peach tinted pinks. Each bottle was linked by a different tube, the liquids flowing down the cylinders like the torrent of a river, possessed by floating bubbles fizzing in the fluid.

  Josiah popped the cork off one of the bottles and poured its contents into a half emptied beaker. He was hardly careful in his experiments, the liquid spraying everywhere, pouring down the chair leg and spitting from their tubes.

  “I think we should talk Josiah.” Lylith White began. “Considering you’re about
to kill yourself, we don’t have much time left.”

  “Talk about what?” He quizzed, leaning closer to one of the bottles and squeezing on its neck, the colour sharply disappearing from the liquid and leaving the substance perfectly clear.

  “I don’t know…” She shrugged, sitting herself on a heap of old paperbacks a few metres to his right. “Two days together and it feels like a lifetime, yet I know nothing. You never seem to wash, you never seem to change or sleep and you have a rather inflated sense of your own importance, but any passing stranger could see that. What about the proper you? Do you believe in a God?”

  “I don’t really have an opinion.” He mused, biting one of the old corks in half. “I never liked fairy stories as a child so I don’t see why I should now.”

  “Okay…” Lylith White smiled. “I’ll take that as a no. What about love? Opinions, past romances? An old war hero surely turns heads?”

  “I’ve never…” He stumbled for words. “I was a child, then a solider. I missed out the important bit. I can’t say I’ve ever had the time or interest. You can’t learn from love…”

  She laughed ironically. “I think almost every single person would disagree!”

  “Listen, people can do what they want, love who they wish as far as I’m concerned, men, women – as long as I don’t have to hear about it.”

  “Oh good, I’ll tell Uncle Ted and Uncle Paulo that, they’ll be chuffed.” She shifted closer, to get a better look at the strange concoction he seemed to be brewing. “What about hate? There’s a weasely little cat that follows me around the Mill Plain at lunchtime - do you have any enemies?”

  “I suppose there are people who make my stomach churn, people who do evil things and make no apologies.”

  “Like how you see Patriarch Baltazar?” She suggested.

  “Perhaps, but he’s small fry, he is just a brainless solider. There are people who are clever, cleverer than me and aren’t afraid to flaunt it.”

  “That’s enough to make you hate someone is it?” Lylith mocked.

  “It is when you’re me.” He murmured. “There was a man I knew. His name was Crimson Lestradè. He was an evil man with the mind of a genius and he was deadly, he was cunning. He’d look at you for a second and work out your name, if you touched him, wronged him just for a moment they’d be a knock on the door and the next day your name in the paper. He could walk into a prison a condemned man and walk out with a suit, a governor’s badge and a wife.”