Operation WetFish, Vampire Detective: Ultimate Omnibus Volume 1 of 4 (Operation WetFish, Vampire Detective Ultimate Omnibus)

by Adam Carter

  “Your mission to keep the streets clean?”

  No, Jeremiah thought. “Yes,” he said.

  “You know,” Lin said, “none of us at WetFish are especially normal, are we? Sanders is a withdrawn obsessive, Stockwell’s … well, Stockwell. Then there’s me and you.”

  “We’re not normal?”

  “Look around you, Jeremiah. You live in a massive house, have more money than Croesus and Midas if they opened a joint savings account …”

  “I’m impressed with your references.”

  “… and you still chase murderers around back alleys,” she finished. “Don’t change the subject.”

  Jeremiah made a show of sipping his wine. “And you? You’re not normal, Sue?”

  “You know what connects everyone at WetFish? None of us has anyone. Sanders has his obsession, Stockwell his computers, you your mansion, but none of us has anyone in their lives. Which is sad, especially this time of year.”

  “Ours is a lonely life, Sue, but we chose it. If you want to do something about your loneliness, seize the opportunity. We could all be dead tomorrow.”

  She did not reply, and they sat staring at one another for several long moments. It was seldom that Jeremiah spoke with such familiarity, but sitting at that table with Lin, it somehow seemed right.

  “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose I should clean up. It’s not nice to leave everything for the servants.”

  “Leave it,” Lin said, pulling a face. “It’s what you pay them for.”

  “True, but I always ...”

  “Are you going to kiss me or what?”

  Jeremiah blinked, the question hitting him out of the blue. Lin was smiling, so certain of herself, and Jeremiah suddenly realised why he was so nervous around her, why he was finding it difficult to concentrate on the things he should be concentrating upon. And with that he also realised that yes, he did want to kiss her. Very much indeed.

  Leaving the dirty plates where they were, Jeremiah forgot all about his work. It would be there tomorrow, as would Sanders. But today was Christmas, and it didn’t really matter any more when Jesus was born, because that was the past. It was the present, and the future, which were important.

  For one night Jeremiah even forgot about his quest to destroy Edward Sanders. For one night he had far better things to be doing.

  OPERATION WETFISH

  BOOK 13

  THE POWER TRIP

  CHAPTER ONE

  The wood splintered beneath his boot. Perhaps the door had been unlocked, perhaps not, but one of the perks of his job was that Charles Baronaire got to break down a few doors when he had to. The room was large and spacious, and as the collapsed wood finally settled it was also silent. There were several tables, more chairs than necessary, a water cooler and a potted plant. The windows allowed an ample amount of light to spill into the room, while the blinds were there to keep that light at bay. Baronaire always found that as soon as someone designed something useful, someone else was always ready with a product to usefully counter that design. There were two doors leading from the room; one to another room or corridor, the other to a glass-enclosed meeting room. The meeting room was empty aside from a large table, eight chairs and an unused flipchart.

  He stepped into the room a second after kicking in the door, having taken in all the details at a glance. Baronaire was an observant man, but his training forced him to be even more so. Charles Baronaire was a tall man approaching his mid-thirties. He wore a scowl as perpetual as his trench coat, and often wished people would cease commenting on either. Behind him came his partner, gingerly stepping into the room after him. Detective Sue Lin was a short woman of Chinese origin. She was smartly dressed, as always, and seemed to have made it her mission to figure out the mind of Charles Baronaire. If she ever did, Baronaire himself would have been grateful for her sharing; he’d been trying to figure himself out for years.

  “You think we might try making a little less noise?” she asked without rancour, her eyes taking in everything about her.

  “He’s not here,” Baronaire replied, moving farther into the room. “If he was he’d be running right about now.”

  Lin stopped to examine some of the paperwork strewn over a desk and Baronaire left her to it, moving across to the window to peer out at the street below. Offices in central London were expensive, he knew, and he wondered just how long it would take for an area outside of London to be renovated to a sufficient degree to entice all the offices away. The street below him was alive with activity and he watched the people from two storeys above as they dodged traffic and each other, intent on their own lives, focused on their own drives. How many could simply disappear today and no one would have a clue what had happened to them?

  “Something out there?” Lin asked.

  He tore his eyes from the window and offered her a false smile. “Just thinking. You want to have a look round here while I check upstairs?”

  Lin raised her eyebrows; that had clearly not been her idea at all, but he could see she wasn’t going to argue. Baronaire was not in charge here, they were equal partners in fact, but it made sense for one of them to have a look around. “Just be careful,” she warned. “There’s something about Ilium I don’t like.”

  “Doesn’t much matter, he’ll be dead soon.”

  Baronaire left her to it and took the door leading to the unknown. It brought him to a corridor, and he followed it, checking the rooms as he passed them, until he came to the stairwell. Heading up, he found himself at a door with an electronic lock, and he simply took the lock in his hand and twisted. With a sickening crunch the lock shattered under his mighty grip and he pushed the door slowly open. There were things about Charles Baronaire people did not know, his considerable strength being one of them. It was the main reason he liked to investigate alone, since whoever he was partnered with would not know about his abilities. Where they came from or what their true extent was he could not say. But there were people who could, and the more time that passed the more he wanted to speak with them. Two were back at his own office, but they had never been especially forthcoming with information. Last year he had met another, though; a woman named Josephine Dalton. She had known everything about him, and Baronaire had been fascinated, intrigued and tantalised all at the same time. She had vanished without a trace and he so desperately wanted to find her again.

  Concentrating on the present once more, Baronaire headed onto the new floor. Ilium Industries owed two floors of this building, and if its founder Donald Ilium was hiding here somewhere it would be on one of these two floors. It was a Sunday and the office was closed, but if Ilium was hiding himself away this would be the best place for him to do so today.

  There were no tables and chairs on this level: indeed the entire floor seemed to have been dedicated to a gymnasium. There were several treadmills and exercise bikes, rows of barbells and other weights. There were various pieces of equipment Baronaire could not even guess the use for, although he was not here this day for a workout. Passing through the equipment, Baronaire swept his gaze slowly across the room; and he caught movement at the far end.

  Springing into motion, Baronaire took the direct route to his prey, leaping a treadmill and landing in a neat roll. He reached the far end of the room just in time to see the door click shut ahead of him. Cursing his slowness Baronaire charged through the door, almost stumbling into an ascending staircase. Taking them three at a time, he burst through the door at the end and went sprawling back down as something smashed into his face.

  His tumble ended him at the bottom of the stairs, and he muttered several obscenities as he felt pain shooting through his face. He put a tentative finger to his nose, but it didn’t feel broken, although his finger came away bloody. He noticed a barbell coming to rest beside him and knew whoever had been waiting behind the door for him had likely dropped the bludgeon in panic as he had fled. He could have been far away by now, although Baronaire was not about to allow little things like time and
distance stop him.

  He was back upon his feet in an instant and launched himself clear up the entire staircase without touching a single step. Ploughing through the door, he landed in another roll to avoid a second attack, and came up in a defensive crouch. He was one level above the gym, which meant this was a third level Ilium owned. It wasn’t in any of his records, so Ilium likely owned this one privately, which meant there could have been all sorts of interesting things to find up here. So far as Baronaire could see, however, there were only stacks of crates and boxes. It appeared very much to be a filing area, which was perhaps as uninteresting as things could have been.

  A notion flitted through his mind that he should have announced himself. Baronaire was after all an officer of the law, and he was there in the process of doing his duty. However, Baronaire’s department was something of a peculiarity. The edicts of Operation WetFish were to clean up the mistakes of the courts. If an obviously guilty party was found not guilty through bribery, police incompetence, witness intimidation, lack of evidence or simply the scum having a very expensive lawyer, the matter was handed to WetFish. An officer or two would be assigned to make sure the matter was reviewed; either they would plant incriminating evidence for a similar crime so the offender would be sent down; or else the officer terminated the target, making sure it was perceived as a suicide or revenge killing. The work of WetFish never reached the newspapers, and if it did it was never in an article connecting in any way to the police. They were insidious, operating ever from the shadows. And sometimes Baronaire believed they were the only thing keeping London sane.

  The room was dark, but Baronaire would not have turned on the lights even if he knew where the switch was located. His nocturnal vision was excellent, far better than that of whoever was hiding in this room. And seconds later Baronaire saw him, holding back behind a loose stack of boxes.

  Baronaire rose, hefted a plastic crate and tossed it effortlessly into the boxes. There came a startled yelp as the man attempted in vain to escape the tumbling boxes, and then Baronaire was upon him, dragging him out, shoving the boxes and their contents aside. He thrust the man into the centre of the room, struck him fiercely in the stomach and then watched him crumple.

  The man was in his twenties, with short dark hair and smart clothes which did not quite stretch to a suit. He could easily have been Ilium: most people tended to look alike to Baronaire. Whoever he was, he was clearly the guy who had just hit him in the face with a barbell, so Baronaire wouldn’t feel bad about giving him a kicking.

  Grabbing him by his collar, Baronaire raised him into the air as though he was a bag of wool and slammed his back into the wall. Hard. The man gasped, stared with wide eyes at his attacker, and while there was fear in the man’s expression it was tempered. This was a man who had seen strange, violent scenes in his life. It was a good sign from Baronaire’s point of view.

  “Donald Ilium,” Baronaire growled softly from deep within his throat. “I need a word with you.”

  “Wouldn’t mind a word with him myself,” the man said. He was in clear pain, blood flecked his mouth, although Baronaire doubted he had ruptured his stomach with his blow. However, the man worked through the pain to deliver clear and concise speech. He was not showing the flippancy of an idiot, but the sensible nature of a man used to torment. Baronaire was at once intrigued, although would not allow himself to become sidetracked from his reason for being there.

  “Prove to me you’re not Ilium,” Baronaire said in a voice a quarter civil, three quarters threat.

  “Driver’s licence in my back pocket?”

  Without taking his eyes off the man he held against the wall, Baronaire reached behind and withdrew the man’s wallet. Using just one hand he flipped it open and pulled out the licence, dropping the wallet. He peered at the card, glanced back up to the man against the wall, and was satisfied enough to release him. The man dropped to the floor, rubbing his throat and gathering up his wallet and spilled cards.

  “Shouldn’t keep your wallet in your back pocket, Marius,” Baronaire told him, flicking his driver’s licence back into his face. “You’re just advertising yourself to pickpockets.”

  “That official police advice?”

  Baronaire raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I know you’re police,” Marius continued without looking at him as he checked himself over for injuries. “Only the police would be stupid enough to come here unarmed.”

  Baronaire was again not certain what to make of this man. His driver’s licence stated him to be Mr Raymond Marius, and that was about all Baronaire knew for certain about him at that moment. That he was sure of himself was unmistakable, and Baronaire had interrogated enough people in this fashion to understand Marius’s reactions were not the norm. Whoever this man was, he was too familiar with this sort of thing for Baronaire to think he was just an average employee working overtime for the New Year.

  “What’s your connexion to Ilium?” Baronaire asked at last.

  “Ilium Industries or the man himself?”

  “Either.”

  “The company, I have nothing to do with. Donald wants to plaster his name all over the place, that’s up to him. Not a bad name to have plastered all over the place actually, but there you go.”

  “You know the man personally, then?”

  “That a snide way of asking whether I’m an angry relative looking to get even?” Marius asked with a winning smile.

  Baronaire grunted.

  Realising he wasn’t winning any points, Marius offered a shrug. “I know the guy, yeah. We swim in the same pond, we swirl in the same circles.”

  In one horrible moment Baronaire understood this was one of those men who liked the sound of his own voice, and he could imagine if this conversation went on much longer Baronaire’s head would begin to throb. He had to shut the guy up immediately. “So you rape teenagers as well do you?”

  Marius’s smile did not disappear, although it did fade somewhat. He was ready for that accusation, and again Baronaire knew this to be a dangerous man indeed. “Unless I missed something, Donny was cleared of that particular charge.”

  “Cleared, but still guilty.”

  “That’s not what the courts said.”

  Baronaire’s eyes narrowed. “Cut the bull, Marius. Why are you looking for Ilium?”

  Marius folded his arms defiantly. “Why are you?”

  “Just want a little after-court chat with the man.”

  “Great. Psycho cop’s all we need in this city.”

  “Your turn.”

  “Fine. Like I said, we move in the same circles. There are things I’m involved in which I would prefer not to become public knowledge. If Donny spills, which he might do if he panics, things could get very hairy for me.”

  “Your activities, are they illegal?”

  “Believe me, there aren’t any laws against what I do.”

  Baronaire did not like the way he had answered that. “Why?”

  “Because no one would have ever thought to make laws to prevent what I get up to. If you’re asking whether what I do is morally wrong or should be illegal ... no. It’s a matter of opinion of course, but from a personal point of view, no I don’t do anything which deserves me being locked up. I get the feeling if I told you, you’d probably agree with me.”

  Baronaire had no idea what he was talking about, and really didn’t even care. If there was a secret society of wealthy businessmen who got together in some stupid gentlemen’s club every now and again, it was hardly something he intended to bust up. “What do you do for a living?” Baronaire asked just to make sure. “I assume you’re rich as well.”

  “Rich in money, richer in power, my friend. Do you have a name? I’m not fond of strangers roughing me up.”

  Again Baronaire grunted. “If you know Ilium, where would he be besides here?”

  “At home? At his summer retreat? Jamaica? I’ve no idea.”

  “You have an idea. I can see it in your eyes.”
<
br />   For the first time Marius seemed a little uncomfortable around Baronaire. For the first time Baronaire was actually pleased by the progress of their talk. “There is a place we go to,” Marius admitted, “but he’s not there. I checked. And Cara’s back there, and she promised to let me know if he turns up.”

  Marius realised then he had given away a name and he clamped up. Baronaire made a forced show of smiling: in reality there was nothing to smile about but it did tend to put people off their game. “Why would Cara care?”

  “Because she’s a woman, and don’t all women want to bring rapists in?”

  “I thought you said he was innocent.”

  “The courts ruled not guilty: doesn’t mean he’s innocent.”

  Baronaire stared at him for several long moments while he decided what to do. That Marius was hiding something, was hiding a lot, was obvious, although he knew Ilium, knew where he might be hiding. Marius could prove useful, there was no doubt about that. But he was also annoying and in this for his own ends and Baronaire did not trust him in the slightest. However, right at that moment he was all Baronaire had to go on. If he left this office without Marius he would have nowhere else to search. He could go to Ilium’s home, interrogate his friends, and maybe six months down the line find where Ilium was hiding. Or he could just wait for him to resurface, which might be next year or never.

  No, if he wanted to close this case any time soon he was going to have to take Marius’s help, whether Marius wanted to offer it or not.

  “You’re coming with me,” Baronaire said before his conscience could change his mind for him.

  “Where?”

  “That’s up to you, Marius. Just remember, the sooner we find Ilium, the sooner we part company and the sooner you go back to your exclusive little club.”

  Marius seemed to find something amusing, but Baronaire was simply not in the mood for any of this.

  “Find me Ilium,” Baronaire told him, “and we’re both happy.”

  “Baronaire?” a voice called, and both men turned to hear someone rushing up the stairs. Detective Lin appeared in the doorway and ground to a stop when she saw them. Her concern quickly turned to relief at seeing him.