“So why was there so little about Oonagh’s murder in the papers?” Curtis was mystified about the secrecy surrounding this woman’s death.
“I don’t know,” Eurwyn said, “but I’ve heard the police are going all out to find the killer. Rumour has it that Sam will pay a lot of money to whomever finds out who did it. He’s very wealthy.”
“We must stick together now,” Janux said. “Don’t go anywhere on your own, not even up to the corner dairy. And don’t stay home alone. Our lives are at stake, sisters. I’ll contact Cyxia at the refuge and organise a meeting there in few days’ time. We must plan the best way to protect ourselves.”
CHAPTER 21
Baxy Hurzy poured himself a glass of whisky before he began the task of preparing breakfast for his master. Sly always wanted the same food, washed down with strong black coffee, after which he’d drink whisky and then fall asleep in his chair and start snoring.
As he carried the tray of food into the bedroom, Baxy noticed Sly was already up and sitting in his chair, studying a piece of paper.
“Had another visit from the big man,” he said. “With an updated list for us.”
Baxy put the tray down on the bed, pulled a small table in front of Sly and then placed his breakfast in front of him. “Yes, master. Can I get you anything else, master?”
“Take a look at the new name on the list. I want you to put her to permanent sleep before anyone else gets there first. We need to show The Controller we can exterminate the vermin just as well as the others have. Still he won’t tell us who these other guys are. He’s been going on about how cleverly and professionally they’ve done each one. And he won’t be satisfied until all the anomalies on the list have been put down once and for all. He’s ordered us to stop being soft. I want you to show him what we’re made of, Baxy. Like I told you before, I want Janux Lennan to suffer more than the rest. And make sure you leave her on display for that namby-pamby to find. But for now there’s a newby and I’m putting her first. Her name’s Lodax and she’s an easy target, lives alone. Take a look for yourself, man. No worries this time, eh, ha ha. Now go and enjoy yourself and you can tell me all about it afterwards.”
A sick feeling spread through Baxy’s stomach. Lodax, who gave him so much pleasure, had fooled him into thinking she wasn’t one of them. Baxy watched as Sly shovelled bacon and egg into his mouth and then took a noisy slurp of coffee. The brown liquid ran down his chin and onto his pyjama top, which was already badly stained. Baxy held out a napkin which Sly grabbed and scrubbed at his stubbly face.
He wanted to hate Lodax and to punish her accordingly, but he knew he couldn’t do it. No other woman had cared the way she did. Okay, it was a business arrangement, but she understood how he felt when storms came and made him cower and tremble with fear. The first time it happened at her place she hadn’t laughed at him. She’d held him until it was all over and he could breathe again. And now he’d been ordered to exterminate her, the only woman he’d ever felt anything for besides his mum – but she’d died when he was sixteen.
“Pass me the whisky,” Sly ordered.
Baxy obeyed and then picked up the breakfast tray ready to leave the room. The plate was now empty, except for some bacon rind and a few crumbs.
“Don’t forget now – act swiftly, man, and enjoy the rewards of your work.” Sly said, his smile like a tear in an old garment as he raised the whisky bottle to his cracked lips.
While Curtis was preparing some notes to take with him when they met with Aidan at the Prison for Human Males, Janux began studying her research on the origins of the female telepathy gene on Earth. It had taken many hours to finally glean the information from the reluctant employee of Kieran. Only when Janux had proved for the umpteenth time how she genuinely was descended through the line of Iggy Tretze 1st and Garxie could she get the coveted access to some very personal and formerly prohibited material about others of the same ilk.
It seemed that way back in 1905 Spryz Frurster the 1st had been angry at not being chosen as one of The Ten pure-bloods named by Oro Garvey 1st to mate only with pure-blood women in order to keep the purity of the Ryxin species. So to get what he wanted Spryz persuaded a pure-blood woman called Anxla who had not been chosen to marry one of The Ten to mate with him before either of them married Humans, also an order given by Oro Garvey 1st.
Unbeknown to Sly, Anxla was one of only two Ryxin women in the first migration who’d been born with the telepathy gene. Anxla knew she had to keep this fact a secret, otherwise it might get back to Oro Garvey and his pure-blood elite and she would be considered a deviation of the worst kind.
Spryz made sure Anxla was pregnant before she married so he knew the baby was his. She gave birth to a girl and Spryz was disappointed as he wanted his name to carry on, the first in a line of rebel pure-bloods. The baby girl had six toes on each foot and six fingers on each hand. Anxla’s Human husband was astonished. He said it looked disgusting and thought she was a freak, but Anxla said it didn’t matter. The baby was beautiful and she loved her.
After that, Anxla and Spryz kept meeting secretly so she could produce a baby boy and carry on the rebel pure-blood line with Spryz as the head. When Anxla became pregnant again Spryz made a decision without telling her. He was a ruthless man, and one night when her husband was coming home from work late, Spryz laid in wait for him and levitated him up and out over the Irish Sea, a long way out, then let him drop. As it was the middle of winter he knew the man would either drown quickly or freeze to death within half an hour.
When Spryz finally told Anxla, she was furious, but was by now completely under his control and knew she had to obey Spryz in everything.
Anxla told her husband’s boss that he’d gone to visit his sick mother who was now living in Australia. This time Anxla had a boy and everyone thought the Human husband was the father.
The fact that the baby was a supposedly half-blood Ryxin made no difference since the powers given to Ryxin males were the same whether one or both parents were Ryxin. The only difference was that pure-blood males were usually taller and bigger built than half-bloods. Anxla’s son was considered above average in weight but then her husband had been a big-built man so no one thought anything of it. But both Spryz and Anxla noticed other subtle differences to mark the baby out as their own. He showed early signs of having very strong telepathic powers and was developing a frightening amount of physical strength within the first three months.
Meanwhile, back in 1905 Max Yanly was another who wasn’t happy with Oro Garvey’s choice of the first ten couples. So he secretly arranged with Spryz Frurster that Anxla’s first-born daughter would marry Max’s second son. Oro Garvey was upset because the first-born Yanly boy was being stubborn and refusing to marry any pure-blood girl on offer. Eventually he obeyed orders and married a Logopex girl in 1937 when he was 31 and she was 22 just to keep Oro Garvey away from his father, whom he kept visiting, putting pressure on Max to persuade his first-born son to hurry up and get married.
Spryz and Anxla’s daughter eventually married Max Yanly’s second son in 1926 when they were both nineteen. There was a brief enquiry by Ryxin officials who wanted the daughter to be labelled an aberration, but the extra toes and fingers were considered highly desirable by Ryxin men, so the authorities eventually decided to take no further action. She was simply considered to be unusual in her physique. Another factor in their favour was that Anxla had done as she was ordered and married a Human male, so they saw her as obedient and loyal. She wasn’t to blame if her husband had gone off to Australia suddenly and not returned.
When Anxla’s son, Spryz 2nd turned twenty-one he married sixteen-year-old Gina Kurlty, the pure-blood 3rd daughter of Erng and his wife Priscillix. Gina’s parents had borne a grudge against Oro Garvey and his years-long authority over them and were keen to secretly defy him in whatever way they could. So out of that marriage a new rebel strain of pure-bloods was born.
But the Human authorities watched the couple car
efully. If Gina became pregnant then a twenty-year term of imprisonment went with that. So the couple planned a long honeymoon in another country and were soon offered some false adoption papers, so when they eventually returned to Ireland two years later their son had officially signed papers to say he’d been given to them for adoption by a New Zealand couple who didn’t want any more male children. The Human wife, they said, already had four boys and was trying for a girl. Ryxin authorities thoroughly checked out this story, and although they were suspicious had eventually accepted it since they could find no loopholes.
“Come on, Janux. We must get to the prison by 2 p.m. or they won’t let us in. Aidan will be waiting,” Curtis called from his study.
“Coming, boss,” she replied.
After quickly scanning her research papers and saving them under her high-security password, she locked the copies in her desk drawer, grabbed her PI pack and joined Curtis out in the car. At least if anyone stole the print copies she’d still have her Microsoft Word files.
CHAPTER 22
Curtis steered the car along the narrow, coastal road towards Rocky Point for their appointment with Aidan. In front of them was a black van, with Muritai Women’s Maximum Security Prison in white on the side. All the windows were tinted and the back ones had been blacked out altogether.
“Must be carrying more prisoners,” Curtis said. “I wish they’d hurry up – we’re going to be late at this rate.”
“That place is like going to hell,” Janux said, recalling the time she and Curtis had gone to visit Mistle Onyx on their last case.
The van was moving at about forty kilometres an hour, but when they reached the turnoff to the women’s prison it turned right. Curtis put his foot down for the last two kilometres to the Prison for Human Males, a much less intimidating sight.
Just before two o’clock they finally arrived and saw Aidan waiting by the main entrance door.
“Have you seen your father lately?” Curtis asked Aidan as they stood in the car park to give him a brief rundown on their progress.
“Yes, I came over a few days ago. He wanted me to bring him some clothes to wear when he goes to court.”
Curtis frowned. “I thought that was two weeks away?”
“Dad seems to think they want to move it forward. They told him the court isn’t as busy right now.”
“They can’t do that, can they? Anyway, we’re making some progress about why your mother was killed, son,” Curtis said, watching Aidan’s face.
“What possible motive could anyone have? She had no enemies at all. She was so kind to everyone. And Dad hardly ever let her out, so she didn’t know many people on the island.”
Janux stood to one side, ready to jot down the main points in her spiral notebook. No doubt Curtis would ask her to write a report on the visit and she’d have to present it to him with her opinion about whatever was discussed.
Last night she’d been up until ten o’clock doing a report on all the neighbourhood interviews. Curtis insisted she do it straight away before any information slipped her mind or was accidentally lost. Then tonight, once they’d eaten their evening meal, she would have to spend at least an hour reading out the report and answering a barrage of questions about everything that was said, what conclusions she drew from each interview, and what kind of action she was likely to formulate based on her findings.
Sometimes, if there were no reports to be done, Curtis would question her for half an hour on the Ryxin PI handbook, making sure she understood each principle and asking her to study certain aspects, telling her she’d be asked about that section the following night. There seemed to be no letup. The fact that they were lovers often had to be put aside and was not considered top priority in the middle of something important. Janux began to wish she could stay on her own out at Chamonix Beach. She knew it was too dangerous but that’s where her heart was. She loved that place with all her soul. Curtis sometimes seemed distracted and distant, and even cold towards her in a Ryxin-male kind of way. When this happened she felt confused and hurt.
He also demanded she show full commitment to her training. She was thinking of telling him to stop treating her like a kind of robotic office secretary, but she wanted to get her promotion to Assistant PI and held herself in check. Though she wasn’t going to put up with it forever. After all, she had feelings too.
Curtis and Aidan had moved away a little and she followed them, notebook and pen ready.
“We’re going in now, Trainee Assistant. Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir.” She followed them into the main prison reception area.
“Please take notes of everything,” Curtis said over his shoulder to her. “Curtis McCoy, PI, and my secretary and Trainee Assistant, Janux Lennan,” he announced to the receptionist.
Immediately a heavily armed guard came towards them, scanner in hand. “Bow your head, sir, so I can check your identity,” he said in a loud voice. Curtis did so and they heard the usual three beeps and saw the guard reading off Curtis’s identity details and occupation. He verified them on a computer screen next to him.
After their identities were proven the next step was to walk through a full-body scanner. The three of them passed and were ushered down a short corridor to where Oskin was sitting at a table in a windowless room. An armed guard stood in one corner looking straight ahead as if studying something on the opposite wall.
“They seem to have increased security since my last visit,” Curtis said quietly, taking a seat on the other side of the table from Oskin.
Janux and Aidan sat on the only other two chairs available, which were straight-backed. Oskin wore a worried expression and every so often glanced at the guard, whose face was impassive.
“Please get me outta here,” Oskin said to Curtis in a whining tone. “They gunna hang me if yuh don’.”
“No one is hanged in this country any more. Now listen, Oskin, we’ve come to tell you some good news.”
“Yuh have?”
“A lot has happened since I last saw you and we think we know why Nayxana was killed.”
“Why wuz it then?” Oskin said, staring fixedly at Curtis.
“We think it was because she was able to communicate telepathically.”
“Yuh what? Is this some kinda joke? What the hell d’yuh mean?”
“Let me explain. You see, all Ryxins used to have the telepathy gene when they lived on their own planet. Then the new king passed a law banning all females from having this gene. Their geneticists were able to alter the female’s genes so that they were all born without it. However, some women managed to slip through the net and passed it onto their children. Nayxana and some other women who live here had – and some still have – this special gene. We think some kind of Ryxin authority has ordered them to be killed because of it.”
“So I can get outta here now?” Oskin appeared confused albeit eager to seek his freedom.
“I’m afraid not, Oskin. We have to find the killer or killers first. You see, there have been other murders too and we think they’re all related.” Curtis opted not to tell Oskin about the list of women’s names. He noticed the guard’s face still looked blank as if he had heard nothing. Janux was scribbling down notes as fast as she could.
Aidan simply looked pale and weary. “Curtis and Janux are doing all they can, Dad. They’ll find the killers, don’t worry.”
“She don’t tell me ’bout this thing she had.” Oskin looked accusingly at Aidan. “Did yah know, boy?”
“No, Dad.”
“They gonna execute me if yuh don’ hurry,” Oskin said. “I’m being shifted ta the cell they reserve for prisoners who gonna go to death row after sentencing.”
Curtis sucked in his breath and knew Oskin was horribly right. The security around him had been stepped up. He was no longer treated as a low-risk prisoner. Guilty until proven innocent was the new slogan of the H-police and they wanted it made clear there were no exceptions. Of course Oskin was a Human, the favoured speci
es on Earth, but if they executed him it would show the islanders their police force had at least captured one of the killers. This would bolster the police image and keep the Human population feeling safer. The mere semblance of safety was what the H-police aspired to above all else. True justice was not high on their agenda. As long as the worried public weren’t told that there were similarities in all the women who were murdered, they would be none the wiser.
Curtis also knew that before long the H-police would announce that their intelligence sources had gathered enough evidence to prove the other murders had been committed by a Ryxin male. Therefore the search and capture of the killer was now out of their official jurisdiction. The whole matter would then be handed over to the Ryxin Justice Department to deal with. Perhaps Constable Melvyn could tell them if this was going to happen.
That evening, after their light meal of sweet corn on toast, Curtis asked Janux to accompany him to the study.
“We really need to sort this ghastly business out,” he said, a frown creasing his forehead. He was about to reach for the whisky bottle but pulled his hand back. “Let’s have your report on the neighbourhood interviews.” He settled back in one of the armchairs and put his hands behind his head, gazing at the ceiling.
“I have the report right here,” Janux answered, wishing the old Curtis would return soon. He’d been so serious lately and she was being very careful to ensure her remarks were about the current case and nothing else. She’d fastidiously typed up her reports, adding her opinions and observations and placing them in a neat pile on her desk, ready for sessions such as this one.
“Please read it out, Trainee Assistant. I’ll be sending my monthly report in tomorrow on your progress.”
Nayxana Alien Woman Page 13
