The Mutilated Merchant (The Edrin Loft Mysteries Book 1)

by Jon Evans

  "Now. Is there anything else we can do for you before we bring in my security chap and find out if we have a murderous guard in our employ? I take it you don't think we're involved in the murder?" she asked.

  "No, that's not something we've found any reason to suspect. If the person we're looking for, works here, we expect it's at the behest of one of the gangs in the city that's involved in smuggling. It could be an ideal job for someone looking for information that would benefit such a group," Loft said, "Or it just could be a coincidence that the man who killed Perl, also worked as a guard at his bank. That could be how they met."

  Mary rang a small golden bell on her desk and a few seconds later, a smartly dressed man was ushered inside. He wore a similar but more expensive version of the uniform the guards were wearing, minus the cloak.

  A scabbarded short sword hung at his belt, and he had the look of someone who was familiar with its use. He was no bureaucrat, he was probably ex-Watch or perhaps had seen military service somewhere.

  "Mary," he said with a nod. "Captain Loft, Sergeant Gurnt. What can we do for the Thieftakers?"

  "Now, Henry, I don't think using that epithet is very polite," Mrs Earligh admonished him.

  "Begging your pardon Ma'am but for the Old Gate Watch, it's considered a badge of pride. They embraced the moniker with great gusto. Going along with the joke is the only way to stop your fellow Watchmen taking the, err, rise out you," he explained.

  "Damned right, we're Thieftakers and proud of it," Gurnt said with a grin.

  Mrs Earligh coughed, "I see. I stand corrected. Henry, the officers, are here because witnesses described a man wearing one of our cloaks who may be involved in a vicious murder," she related the description and looked to Loft confirmation that she'd got it all. He nodded, and she went on.

  "Do we have any guards that might fight that description?" Mrs Earligh asked.

  Henry nodded, "It's a little vague, but there's a couple who might. When was this person witnessed? If I have a time and date I could tell you who was here and that might narrow it down if it is one of our men?" he asked. Gurnt opened her notebook and gave the time the man had had his encounter with Councillor Mohran at City Hall.

  "Not one of our day staff then. That only leaves one man it could be if it's one of my guards, Ulric Stenberg. He works outside of bank hours, evening and night shift most of the time. He's very rarely here during the day, and he had the nights before and after that day off. So yes, if it were him he'd have been able to be wherever your witnesses saw him," Henry said, apparently without the least rancour at having one of his men implicated in a crime.

  "What can you tell us about him?" Gurnt asked.

  "Stenberg is a good man, or at least, as far as I know, he is. He works hard, he's conscientious. Patrols the premises properly and I've never caught him somewhere he shouldn't be or had any problems with punctuality. He's tough as nails, I can tell you that. He was a marine on a ship before he moved up to Denethria, protecting merchantmen from pirates. He's in his mid to late thirties, black hair, from the City States originally I think, but he's been here at least a decade and worked for us for about four years."

  "You say he's tough? How do you mean?" Gurnt pressed.

  "I train my men, Sergeant. We need a lot of guards, for a lot of shifts, and not everyone is suited to it. Mrs Earligh sets high standards. No point having a guard that falls asleep at night or isn't watchful. So we have training sessions with weapons, swords, clubs and crossbows as well as fisticuffs and wrestling. If someone is robbing you, it's not a problem to stab him if you must. If a customer is drunk and getting rowdy, you have to be firm, but you can't knock them on the head," he explained.

  "Get a lot of rowdy drunks, do you?" Gurnt asked.

  "No, but I don't ever want to be before a magistrate explaining why someone got knocked unconscious because my guards don't know how to restrain someone and escort them out properly. Customers are sometimes upset by their financial situation, and they don't all handle it well. We don't ask a cashier to show them out, that's what we are for. Anyway, Stenberg is good at it all, a lot of fighting experience and you wouldn't want to tangle with him for real. He's a brilliant wrestler as well, wiry and quick like you wouldn't believe," Henry said.

  "Is he capable of murdering someone?" Loft asked.

  "With the life, he's had? I'm sure he could do it, physically. He must have killed pirates. But if you're asking does he seem like the type of person who would commit murder? No, not when he's here, he doesn't. He doesn't get angry when he's fighting, always follows the rules and holds back when he should. Put it this way, he wouldn't be the type to stab you in a bar fight, but if you tried to stab him, you'd probably end up being the one on the floor," Henry replied.

  "Can you tell us where to find him?" Loft asked, "If he's not here at the moment?"

  "Yes, I have an address for him though I can't know if he'll be there or if he's moved. We don't need to use our employee's address often enough to know if they move lodgings without telling us. You can try there, or else he'll be arriving for his shift a little after dark this evening as he's working through to when the morning shift comes in," Henry said.

  "We'll take the address you have for him and try there," Loft said.

  "I'll get it for you now, " Henry replied as he walked out of the office.

  "So, young lady, are you the same sergeant that delivered Councillor Mohran a short, sharp lesson in etiquette?" Mrs Earligh asked, her voice all sweetness.

  Gurnt glanced at Loft, "Yes, Mrs Earligh, I am."

  "Good for you. Mohran is a thoroughly unpleasant little weasel, and it's about time some gal reprimanded him. What did he say about it?" Mrs Earligh asked

  The sergeant couldn't repress her grin, "Not much, Mrs Earligh. He mostly just gurgled for a few minutes."

  "Hah! How wonderful. In my day, it would have been a hatpin, but I don't suppose you wear them in uniform," she said, "Many's a young man whose ungentlemanly advances have been halted because of a little prick."

  Gurnt laughed out loud at that. Loft winced and crossed his legs. "Thank you for the tip, I shall certainly remember that one. Maybe my helmet would stay more upright if it had a hole for a pin in it," she said with a wink.

  "Ah, what an interesting thought. Haute couture armour for the modern woman? It might be a small market, but I'm sure the bank would be happy to invest," Mrs Earligh said with a smile.

  Presently Henry returned with a file card bearing the address and name of Stenberg, the guard that he thought matched the limited description they had.

  "That card is a few years old, so he hasn't told us he's moved since then. It's a garret flat, in your patch as it happens," Henry said as he passed the card to Loft.

  Loft was about to ask how he knew what type of flat it was then realised it was the first line of the address. He didn't know the building, but it was on a side street that was becoming more familiar to him as he became accustomed to the Westgate district. He passed the card to Gurnt who looked it over and then passed it back to Henry, "Thanks, I know where it is."

  Loft stood and shook Henry's hand, "I hope all this has an innocent explanation, Captain. If it doesn't though, and Stenberg is your man, don't do anything foolish like try and arrest him on your own? You seem like a nice chap, and I don't want to read your obituary."

  "You should take that advice to heart, Captain," Mrs Earligh said, "Henry is an expert judge of such matters, he's got plenty of his own experience, and he follows all the major fighting competitions in the city. He knows how to size a man up and judge his skill."

  "Thank you for the information and the words of caution. Please don't worry, at this stage we just want to speak to Stenberg. He may have done nothing at all. I don't plan to try and lay hands on his collar on my own though, and I don't think Sergeant Gurnt would let me do something so foolish anyway," Loft said.

  "I wouldn't let any Thieftaker, go after someone on their own, no matter how experienced they we
re," Gurnt said.

  "Captain, I would appreciate any discretion you can bring to this matter if this man does turn out to be guilty. Having a bank employee murder one of the customers would be a terrible stain on our reputation," Mrs Earligh said.

  "I don't wish to do anything to harm your business, Mrs Earligh, the Watch is here to protect all citizens and their businesses from crime. I'm not sure what the magistrates will do once we have him in front of them, but I'll certainly pass on your concerns. I'm afraid we don't have too much influence in these matters," he said with an apologetic shrug.

  "No, I suppose not, but I appreciate anything you can do nonetheless," Mrs Earligh said with a small sigh.

  Loft bowed, and they took their leave. They walked out of the bank, and he headed toward the nearest constables, who'd moved their raucous conversation to a bench. Gurnt laid a gentle hand on his elbow and steered him away, crossing the street and walking well away from the bank and into a small park in a square formed by some well to do houses and offices.

  There was no-one there at this time of day, but she looked around cautiously before speaking. "Just some advice, Sir. Don't meet up with the men just after you finish watching a place. Disperse and meet up at the watch house or some other place, let them follow you. If we'd all met up in the street, the guards would have seen us, then the message could have got back to him. Stenberg only has to sleep a third of the day, just because he's doing night shifts, doesn't mean he's asleep now. For all we know, he got up already and headed to the pub with his fellow night shift guards before coming in. The morning shift might go and meet them, they might talk and spook him," she said.

  "I have a lot to learn, don't I?" Loft said.

  "We all do, Sir. If you've stopped learning. One of my sergeants always used to say that if you've stopped learning, you're probably dead," Gurnt said.

  "I can't fault the logic," Loft replied, "what next?"

  "I told the lads to meet us here and keep an eye out. We're probably fine today, but I don't want them picking up bad habits, if this were really dangerous like we were trying to get one of the gang leaders, we wouldn't meet up at all until we got back to the watch house. Every conversation we have in public is a chance for someone to overhear us and spread the news. Every time you meet your men when you're in uniform, and they're not, is a chance for someone to think they're Watch too," Gurnt explained.

  We're Thieftakers, not the Palace Guards. We want everyone to look as normal and uninteresting as possible. You think we don't polish our armour like the popinjays at The Palace because we're lazy? It's so we don't stand out, we just blend in. We don't want people looking at us, we don't want them remembering our faces, we don't want them saying a good morning to us every time we see them. That doesn't help with the smarter class of criminal; they know us anyway. You'd be surprised how many idiots we have to catch, that live not two streets from Old Gate but don't recognise a single one of us if we're not in our uniforms," Gurnt said with a smile.

  "Am I getting anything right?" he said with a laugh. In the back of his mind, he was wondering if the uniforms they normally wore weren't a massive hindrance to what the Thieftakers did. Perhaps they shouldn't wear uniforms unless they had to. He wasn't sure The Palace would let them get away with that, though.

  "If you were, I'd be surprised. Where do you learn any of this except on the street? The Academy doesn't teach this sort of thing, only experience and other Watchmen do. I didn't know any of this until I joined the Thieftakers. Hard lessons have been learned over the years, and we have a list of fallen Thieftakers on our wall to prove it. The deaths are further apart than they used to be because we're learning from our mistakes," Gurnt said.

  "Well, the city is less violent isn't it?" Loft said.

  "Are you joking? It's every bit as violent. Men didn't change, we got better and learned from our mistakes. You listen to the tales the older officers tell, you take them in. They're not all steaming great piles of cow shit," Gurnt said.

  "I suppose, I don't have any information either way. Do we even hear about all the murders and beatings that happen in Kalider? Even if the Watch does, we don't keep records," Loft said.

  "No, we don't, and the Thieftakers always deal with the real hard cases anyway. If the other Watch Houses have to deal with a serious criminal, they come to us, or they go with two dozen fully armoured men to arrest them. Here's another tip, did you notice that Libult and Swint have joined us?" she said.

  He glanced over her right shoulder and saw them kicking a stone back and forth like two adult men, reliving their youth. "Actually I did. I can hear, Miller and Pelunt behind me as well."

  "Did you spot the others though?" Gurnt asked.

  "Damnit, they're all here?" Loft said, looking around.

  "Yeah, they've all caught up and don't look around like that. The trick is to use what's in your head, not your neck," she said.

  "Do you mean think about where everyone is?" Loft asked.

  "Yeah, there's that but what I really mean is that if you're talking like we are, with a little imagination, you can look without it being obvious. If you just turn your head, anyone can see that you're looking around. A few exaggerated gestures and people look at your hands, not where your eyeballs are wandering. You can't just swing your head side to side, scanning like you would for game birds on a hunt. You have to make it look natural," Gurnt said.

  "Got an example?" Loft asked.

  "Well, let's try now shall we on the way back to Old Gate?" Gurnt suggested.

  "I think we need to go and find Stenberg," Loft said.

  "Yes but first you and I need out of this getup, or the rest of them need to get into their armour," she said, "We're going in quiet, or we're going in mob handed. So, as we walk out of the park, you decide you need to look left. Well, we're in uniform so you can make it seem like you're changing the direction of your patrol. If you move your whole body to face where your eyes need to look, that's less obvious. You have to look like you're not going anywhere for that, because you aren't in a hurry if you're patrolling," Gurnt said.

  "I see, so keep up the conversation and don't look like you're in a rush," Loft said.

  "Yeah, that's right. If you're moving quickly towards someone you want to look at, they might think you're about to chase them. Then they bolt, and you actually do have to chase them," Gurnt said as she turned up a side street.

  "You can also look at other things and people. A pretty girl, a cart you're waiting to pass while you cross the road. You don't need to look, but if you watch where it's coming from. You're patrolling the city, you're not busy, so you wait for it to pass. Then your eyes can follow it all along the road, it just looks like you're not in a hurry and anyone else will think you're watching the cart. Or the girl or the arguing couple in a window or staring at the birds. You can catch a lot out of the corner of your eye, while looking at something else," she said.

  "And out of uniform?" Loft asked.

  "Different story entirely. Depends on how you're dressed and you need to think about that before you go out. We could be family, we could be married, we could be working together. Have an argument, stop and face each other. Pull out a map and turn it this way and that, then go a different way. You look like you don't know the area at all and you're trying to find something. Of course, in some parts of town, you'll get mugged if you try that one. The first rule of being a Thieftaker, you can't get mugged. Ever. You'll never live it down," Gurnt grinned.

  "No, I imagine not. Tell me, Sergeant, how would you suggest we apprehend our suspect?" Loft asked.

  She glanced at him as they walked, "You don't want to give the orders?"

  Loft shook his head, "No, I think it's quite clear you know more about this than I do. I'm supposed to be able to rely on my Sergeant to run the Watch House while I'm not present and provide the benefit of their experience, achieved through many, many years of service."

  "I think one 'many' is sufficient, if that's alright with you, Sir," she
replied in the perfect tones of a society lady as if he'd said something impolite during a waltz.

  "I stand corrected, Sergeant. One can reasonably expect ones, Sergeant, to have more experience in the field, than one does oneself. Especially when one has just been promoted to their first command of a watch house. Please do accept my most humble apologies for the implied reference to your age," Loft said in equally plummy tones.

  "Actually, it's not far off," Gurnt said, returning to her normal, gruff manner of speech, "I joined up young, not long after I was in the army, and you'd have been a teenager then. Or maybe not even that," she conceded grudgingly.

  "So, our options are to go in mob-handed or to be subtle. What's your preference?" Loft said.