No sun, today
One of the patrol vehicles which arrived after the operation ferries me back to the station, where I left my car. I have made a virtue of necessity by getting used to dozing in the car when I get a lift from someone. I missed the two hours of daylight today, and that doesn’t help with trying to stay awake. In my sleepy state my banged up old car looks even sadder and neglected, on closer inspection I discover with horror that there’s new damage to the boot, presumably caused by that altercation on the motorway. Two damaged cars in the space of a few hours makes me feel like a manic depressive with a shiny new razor.
I give myself a moment to massage my eyelids in the company of the steering wheel, covered in real well-worn leather. Even the simple action of lighting a cigarette feels like too much to bear right now. Will I be the first person to die from the diabolic combination of magical contract and Onirò? Wait, how does it go, “die, sleep…”
A promise with certain appeal, all things considered.
A swishing sound in the passenger seat triggers an instinctive nervous reaction, the Altra jumps into my hand to come beteen me and a hypothetical threat before I’ve even focused on it.
Pale, red eyes, white kimono, on the verge of tears.
“What the fuck are you doing in my car?”
The Banshee doesn’t answer me. Actually, the fact that these creatures can’t talk in a normal way reminds me of my youth. She hands me a card.
“The senator thanks you, the debt has been paid, Screech,” I read out loud, as though simultaneously using my mouth, eyes and ears could help me fix the words onto the wall of deprived sleep that separates me from full awareness. The spectre nods and attempts a weird kind of polite smile, as though she feels she ought to do it but doesn’t quite how to go about it.
“Erm… okay, thanks.”
The un-dead nods again and vanishes into thin air together with the note I was holding a moment ago. I shoo away a shiver with a choice blasphemous expression of gratitude, happy in the knowledge that at least something has ended with no loose ends. Now, turning to another mortal endeavour, I dig around in all the available pockets until I find my mobile. Beep beep, you have one new message. Crap, forgot all about it. It’s Saturday and lardarse has sent me the usual blank message from the secret number for the week. Procedure dictates that I call him from a public phone to get the details. Naturally, it’s dangerous for guards and thieves to exchange compromising texts. I haven't got time for that now however, so the fat man’s urgent business will have to wait a bit longer.
I call Cohl’s number from my address book with unfamiliar deliberateness, smiling at my own brand of humour as he is listed under ‘moron’. It’s a good job I can always count on myself when I’m feeling down.
“Hello, Lieutenant!” he answers all perky, the moron. The sound of his rested, relaxed voice with a hint of vitality, is like salt in the wound fomenting my bad mood and finally directing it towards a specific target.
“Ah, shit, it’s still you, Cohl. I was hoping you’d turned into an eighteen-year-old model during the night.”
“No, no, I’m sorry.” The dickhead is laughing. “Thanks for the morning off, I needed it. It’s just a shame I got woken up at ten by an annoying journalist…”
Bastard.
Dammit, I’m too exhausted even to take the piss out of Cohl. I’m afraid the new caustic remarks will have to wait until after bed.
“Anyway, seeing as I was already awake I got on with work, I’ve made a list of all the clinics in the City.”
Na, na, na-na-na, top of the class. I’ve got you now.
“Well done. Pity though that while you were snoozing I found the killer. You can forget about the sprogs in test tubes, you’d better fasten your seat belt.”
“What do you mean?” he asks with a quiver of suspense.
“Nylmeris Lovl’Atheron, father of our comely corpse.”
Silence. Open your mouth wide and be amazed, amateur. This is how the professionals work.
“Still there, kid?”
“Yes, yes. How the devil…”
“Never mind the lord of the shadows, just trust me. It’s absolutely two hundred percent reliable information.”
Two hundred percent is one of those meaningless expressions that Reinart is so very fond of. I’m very fond of her sports bra. What’s that got to do with anything. Nothing at all. I’m tired and two firm boobs are better than a pillow.
“Come on, you can’t expect me to just believe something like that based on trust alone!”
“All right then, let’s say I order you to believe it.”
“Technically you can’t give me orders. I’m not under your command.”
“If you prefer, you can grope around in the dark by yourself then. I’ll let you know when I’ve cracked your case.”
I hang up without giving him time to answer, but I hang on to the mobile.
Five… four… three… come on, stay awake… two… one…
Dring.
“Okay, I’m very sorry, sir.”
“I’m so happy we understand each other.”
“Next move?”
“We’ll drive him out, then let’s see if he makes a mistake.”
“What if that makes him run away?”
“He won’t run, you’ll see. He’s got unfinished business. He still has to eliminate our belly dancer.”
“You could at least explain that?”
“Too long over the phone. Let’s meet outside the Lovl spire. Oh, grab a sandwich on the way, I haven’t had a bite to eat since this morning. And coffee!”
The bag is crying desperately. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope that Nylmeris is out looking for his blonde and puts the interrogation of until tomorrow.
“The phone records.” With all these goings on, I’ve missed something fundamental. “Get hold of the phone records for the house phone, mobiles, homing pigeons if necessary.”
“What are we looking for?”
Nohl has been knocked sideways by my update, as usual excluded from the incriminating details. Like a good boy he’s gone back to his natural condition of subordinate. I think that if I devoted some free time (purely hypothetical) to training him I could manage to get him on the podium at some dog show or other. Or as a racing greyhound, or something.
“Contact with Nylmeris, obviously. Let’s start putting some evidence together. Ah, just to perfectly clear, this time try not to do a shitty job like when you completely missed Gilder’s service record.”
“Listen, you gave me half an hour to dig around in a an archive that went on forever—“
“And you made a mess of it.”
“I’ve already said I’m sorry. I looked in the ones filed by Metro and it didn’t occur to me to—”
“—to do your job properly.”
The Inspector huffs before clamping his jaw shut in anger.
“No, don’t worry, I completely understand.” I absolve him sarcastically with a condescending tilt of my head. “You’re new here, and where you come from cops mainly take care of shovelling snow off the roads, gritting, and such like. Seriously, don’t take it personally, it’s not your fault if these temperatures make your neurons overheat and turn off.”
“You know something, Arkham? I can’t quite believe that you haven’t been stabbed yet.”
“Many have tried. Guess how it turned out? If you can’t, you could always be the next one.”
There isn’t a lot else to say. Cohl paces the waiting room anxiously, while I focus on the newspapers. It appears that this time our guest is in no hurry to see us, but I’m not lucid enough to understand whether this is good or bad. The articles could be written in hieroglyphics for all I can understand at the moment, at least I can read the headlines, even though I have to make a special effort. Judging by the low profile of this week’s mystery, my beloved ex-customs officer managed to keep his trap shut despite his unjustified respect for his own opinions.
“
It’s taking so long.”
“Long enough to piss us off.”
“It’s working, I was thinking—“
“Hallelujah.”
“… well, exactly, it would be better if I asked the questions.”
Yeah right, then what have we come all this way for?
“Let’s say that I’ll let you start.”
Change of scene, nausea and disorientation. It might seem like nothing but being teleported from a sitting position is pretty unpleasant if there isn’t a chair where you’re heading to. You find yourself on your feet without having stood up, fumbling around for something to hang on to. The Inspector, on the other hand, who was walking about, nearly smacks into the wall. A handful of asses wearing tunics snigger as they file past us like naughty schoolgirls. We wait ‘til they’ve gone past before we go down the corridor they came out of, calculating that the stairwell they’re heading for probably isn’t the location for our meeting with Nylmeris. We enter a large room which looks a lot like a training room, what with all the weapons hanging off racks on the wall. The maestro comes out of one of the other corridors, rubbing his head with a small wet towel. Thank goodness he was kind enough not to come out wearing a dressing-gown.
“I apologise for keeping you waiting, officers. I have just completed a long-planned practical session for this very day.” He excuses himself in a melodious voice, while he comes towards us. “Although, after all, I did not await protests from you.”
“Excuse me?” asks Cohl, already caught off guard.
“The corpse of my only daughter was found three days ago, and only now do the authorities deign to confer with her father.”
The kid swallows all ambition he had to conduct the questioning, so I promptly intervene. My tone is clipped.
“It’s not our job to inform people of deaths. I’m sure you were immediately contacted by the coroner, am I right?”
“You are right,” he quips back with a slightly self-satisfied tone to his voice, a totally inappropriate tone for someone who in theory is grieving for the loss of his only daughter. Maybe he can’t help gloating when an opportunity for a spot of bragging arises.
“Nevertheless, I could be in possession of relevant information for your investigation, Arkham.”
That’s the trouble with being famous. You don’t know them, but they know you.
“Naturally, in that case you would be duty-bound to go to the nearest police station. It’s also in your interests, that is if you want to find out who Inla’s killer is.”
Bastard.
“I shall gloss over your lack of manners in honour of your wisdom, but let it be noted that you will not abuse my tolerant nature again.”
Cohl clears his throat and tries to regain control of the conversation, to put it on a slightly less antagonistic track.
“It will satisfy you to know, however, that we have several very promising leads.”
Cohl is so tense he’s ready to snap. The idea to come here and play mind games with this ancient murderer must be beyond unnerving for him: astuteness is not his strong point, in the end, I was pretty nervous when I met Valan. I, on the other hand, am getting used to living in terror, so I don’t take much notice anymore.
“Indeed,” he comments in a clipped voice, intimating that he expects further elucidation.
“We have reason to believe that the murder weapon was,” he gulps again, “an elfish silk blade.”
“This is in contrast with the report from the mortuary.” He wrinkles his forehead.
“Yeah, maybe the coroner missed something as he was in such a hurry.”
And I bet you and the other pointy-eared folk who live in this luxury phallic dwelling don’t know a thing about it.
“We would like to ask you some questions.” Cohl quickly jumps in, realising that the elf has also picked up on the provocative inflection in that “hurry”.
“I will answer to the best of my ability.”
“Thank you. So… in your opinion, how many individuals would know how to use a silk blade well enough to pierce someone’s heart with absolute precision?”
“In Nectropis or in the entire world?”
“Let’s say in Nectropis.”
“Probably no more than a thousand of my cousins.”
“We’re only talking about elves, right?”
He nods.
“In fact, as an idea, it seems somewhat fanciful.”
“And in the world?”
“Just over a thousand.”
“Let’s start with the hypothesis that our ‘fanciful idea’ is right. If you had to make a guess as to who the murderer is, who would it be?”
“The Federal Guard has an odd modus operandi, of late.” Nylmeris runs his hand through his red hair. He takes a couple of locks and starts to braid his hair as though Cohl and I were two fucking hairdressers who have just given him a trim. “However, it seems obvious to me that the culprit is Gilder Feltu’Atheron.”
Crikey, what an unpredictable revelation.
“Uh-uh,” whimpers the Inspector, almost trembling, “and… did you… did you know him personally, by any chance?”
“Naturally.” Without any hesitation. He’s no fool. “I was his master, in a similar way I am to those youngsters you presumably saw when you came here. He was under my command for a short while, in the federal armed forces.”
“What was his job?”
“I am afraid that kind of information is protected by the state secrets act.”
“But you can tell us why he left.”
“Some individuals are not suited to military life.” Now he’s taking the ticked-off stance. “And they twist themselves into contorted philosophical ruminations in order to justify their own moral slackness. I can also add that, had he not spontaneously left of his own accord, I would have had him removed.”
“Therefore I imagine you disapproved of his relationship with Inla.” Another pointless statement from Cohl, to which the ass does not even deign to answer, he removes his gaze and redirects his disgust where it shatters against the wall.
“The correct question, Cohl, is how far Mr Lovl’Atheron disapproved of that relationship.”
Our eyes lock.
“What are you trying to imply, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t imply. If I’m not mistaken, Inla had been exiled by the dynasty.”
“Because that animal filled her head with foolishness!” At last we’re seeing some anger. It’s taken a good while to provoke him. I can’t turn around, so I settle for simply hoping that the Inspector hasn’t gone to hide and hasn’t pooped his pants.
“What sort of foolishness?”
“He induced her to disown all our traditions! To spit on the culture our victorious ancestors wrenched from devilish forces, to sully everything which for over a thousand years has allowed us to be the guardians of peace and freedom!”
“What could she have done that was so vile?”
For a split second, on the crest of his fury, Nylmeris almost betrays himself, then he composes himself and pronounces a few simple words I have already heard from someone else, a few floors higher up and by another person in another tower.
“She decided to leave.”
Yeah, that would be too easy.
“When was the last time you saw or heard from her?”
“The day before she was found.” He has completely regained full control. “She telephoned me to tell me that she intended to leave the City in a few week’s time.”
“Did she happen to say why?”
“She never got the chance. I answered that as far as I was concerned she could go wherever she wished, and that her pilgrimages did not interest me in the slightest. This was followed by a brief squabble, which I ended after a few minutes in distinctly unfriendly way.
“That was rather insensitive of you, don’t you think? Considering what happened immediately afterwards, perhaps you would have been better off listening to her.”
The flickering a
nger from before has transformed into a roaring furnace, the same kind of latent threat which bubbled up out of certain words pronounced by Valan. It evidently runs in the family.
“Don’t get caught up in the improbable attempt to grasp concepts which lie outside your range of understanding, Arkham. The only possible outcome would be that you could irritate me even further, I don’t think it would be wise of you to go too far.”
I happily respond with a rehearsed half smile, the one I generally use for informing suspects that I have something more than a shaky deduction. Not that I expected any visible reaction from a hard nut such as Nylmeris, so I’m taken aback when the elf contracts the muscles in his cheek in a flash of irritance. I add the complementary part to the other side of my mouth with an intense sense of triumph.
“If I may change the subject.” Nohl is still with us, and he’s trying to lower the level of the conflict, as pale as a person who lives in a crypt. “As far as you know, was Inla afflicted by any physical diseases? I ask you this as she looked… unusual for a young elf from your family.”
The elf exhales a sigh of regret, it isn’t entirely convincing.
“Perhaps that’s another reason why she let herself be… led astray by that…” The sentence dies away into a confused mutter. “She had Nerwer’s syndrome.”
Oh well, fuck, that explains everything. I look at Cohl in the vain hope of an explanation, but he slightly shakes his head and raises his shoulders, therefore we refocus on the master of weapons, with an interrogative expression.
“It’s genetic. It causes premature aging of the body’s tissues. It’s extremely rare, and Inla…she was the first case among us. The doctors could only provide conjecture regarding the development of the disease for an immortal affected by it, in any case, there isn’t even a cure for…”
Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets Page 19
