“We had a meeting with Kass just before she died,” he said. He was middle-aged and strongly built, with a thin pallid face that contrasted with black wavy hair. He was wearing a cologne so overpowering that Nick was felt slightly dizzy just standing nearby. Groa barely came up to his shoulders and had a timid, nervy manner, never meeting his eyes for long.
“What was the meeting about?” Nick asked.
“We regularly meet with Kass and with, well, we used to meet with Ember du Lissin at the main company,” Groa said, her arms crossed tightly.
“That’s, er, that’s right,” Pos said. “We provide adverts for both companies that show on planets we export to.”
Nick could see they were hiding something, but whether it was related to the murder or something else he didn’t know. “So it was just a regular meeting.”
“Yes,” Groa said quickly and there was definitely something meaningful about the look she threw Pos.
“Could I take forensic samples from you both?” he asked.
“What for?” Pos stared worriedly at the scanner.
“It will just show whether either of you was out in the yard where Kass du Lissin died.”
“But we were,” Pos said. “As soon as we heard what had happened we went out to see if she was really dead.”
“You didn’t hear the shot?”
“No,” Pos said and Groa echoed this.
A silencer was probably used again, Nick thought. “Were the two of you together the whole time between the meeting ending and the body being found?”
“No, I had calls to make,” Pos said.
“I went to use the toilet,” Groa added.
“It was only a word unknown after we left her that she was found,” Pos said. “Word unknown at the most.”
Damn translator. Nick called Reese over, knowing his translator would work better, and asked Pos to repeat what he had said.
“She died a few minutes after they’d seen her,” Reese said. “Eight at the most. Kass’s secretary told us that Kass came outside to speak to someone. He didn’t see who it was but Kass had said when she got to work that she urgently needed to talk to her son, Bop.”
Nick looked around. “Where is he?”
“No one knows.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“WE’VE COOPERATED with you fully and my mother is still dead,” Arwyl du Lissin was saying to the captain when Reese and Nick came back. The woman was crying and her voice was loud and high-pitched. “You investigators are useless. What was the point of you coming here and doing nothing?”
“We’re making good progress,” Prince insisted.
“Really? Who’s the killer then?”
“I will certainly know the answer to that question soon and I will then inform you and your family.”
Arwyl made a disbelieving noise and walked away. Reese saw Pos come over and put his arms round her while she sobbed. Everyone seemed shaken or upset by what had happened, which wasn’t surprising, although it was more emotion than Reese had come to expect from the family.
“Perhaps we should get back to the ship...” Poppy began but the captain cut her off, making a slicing motion with one gloved hand.
“No, I will return to my ship with Reese while you and Nick need to go off and solve this case. My reputation is at stake.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, not even trying to hide her irritation.
Reese and Nick exchanged glances and Reese said to the captain, “Maybe I should go along and help with the interviews and questioning.”
“No.” Prince put an arm round his shoulders. “I’ve had a thoroughly upsetting evening. You can come and cheer me up.”
“Right.”
Prince steered him towards the door and Reese glanced over his shoulder at Nick, who shrugged in a resigned way. They were presumably used to unhelpful behaviour from the captain. Tem and Lyro silently fell into step behind Reese and the captain.
“Did anyone make any useful comment when you got here, Captain?”
“Let’s not talk about that ugly matter.” They got out onto the street and Prince started wandering in and out of the shops that were still open. The market stalls were already empty, their owners presumably at home in the warm by now.
With no other choice, Reese reluctantly followed him while he bought several packets of sweets, a bolt of material and a fluffy sea monster toy. They returned to the ship, having achieved nothing remotely useful, leaving Reese thinking restlessly about Kass and the scene of her death. He wondered what Nick and Poppy had learnt.
So as to manage something worthwhile, he brought up the subject of his own investigation while Prince washed his face and hands. “One of the crew members mentioned that a man named Baltid Athens had died onboard recently. Was he a good friend of yours?”
“The pilot? Yes, that was inconvenient. He was a useful man.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, that’s not important anymore.”
Reese suspected that he wanted to avoid answering the question, which was interesting. “What brought him aboard your ship?”
“I invited him to join us. He was a decent pilot and Tanya recommended him as he’d worked for her family for some time. For once, she said something worth listening to.”
Tanya? The name was familiar but he couldn’t remember who she was.
There was a knock on the door and Lyn – the pilot who had replaced Athens – came in to ask Prince how he was feeling after his ordeal. Reese excused himself while they were kissing and ran into Tem nearby.
“Who’s Tanya?” he asked.
“Tanya is mated to captain.”
His wife – of course! Reese had forgotten all about her. He’d read her file in Jolly’s office but he hadn’t seen her yet and, from what he’d seen, the captain didn’t spend any time with her. “They don’t get on well, do they?”
“No.”
“Where does she work?”
“No work.”
He couldn’t seek her out then and, given his relationship with her husband, she might not be overly friendly if he introduced himself. He gave up on the subject for now and regarded the alien bodyguard again. “I suppose you’ve got used to seeing dead bodies while working on The Prince.”
“Always death.”
Reese thought about Ember du Lissin and Kass as well as people from his own past and gave a superstitious shudder. “That’s very true.”
Chapter Forty
NICK AND Poppy got back to the ship, tired, cold and exhausted, that night after an evening spent running back and forth asking questions and getting forensic samples. They found Prince and Reese in the captain’s quarters – which were three times the size of the rest of the rooms of the crew – playing cards. Nick was tempted to ask Prince if he had singlehandedly solved the murders as he had promised the du Lissin family to do, but the question would probably just get him sent outside into the freezing cold again.
“Have you found the murderer?” Prince asked, turning the question on them instead.
“Not yet,” Poppy answered, “but we’re getting close.”
“Then tell me everything you have learnt.” The captain put his feet up on a stool, one foot crossed over the other, and looked expectantly at them.
They should have changed out of their damp outerwear before coming here, Nick thought, resigning himself to at least half an hour spent here with the captain not even understanding half of what was said to him. It had snowed yet again while he and Poppy were returning and he could feel icy moisture dripping off his hair onto the back of his neck.
“I found forensic evidence from twelve people in the yard where Kass was killed, excluding our people,” he said, talking fast so as to get out of here quickly. Reese, at least, was listening intently, leaning towards him, cards forgotten. “Those are freshly made samples from the guys who went out there today. Five of them were for people who worked for Kass’s company, none of who seem to have any connection with Ember du Lissin,
so we can almost certainly rule those out as suspects. Two of the samples came from the person who found the body and the manager she alerted and, again, there doesn’t seem to be anything to link them to the other crime. Pos, Arwyl du Lissin’s husband, and his assistant, Groa, told us they checked Kass was dead and they account for two more of the samples. Arwyl and Mer account for another two and they didn’t say anything to us about going out there, although they could’ve been in too much of a state of shock to remember. There’s one unknown sample and we believe that might prove to belong to Bop du Lissin, who Kass had wanted to speak to that day and who was going against his mother’s wishes by getting engaged to Mung Sen Zhan. We haven’t been able to find Bop yet but we’ll look for him again tomorrow. He’s probably our main suspect at this point, although there is a slim chance that another person was in the yard and didn’t leave behind any forensic evidence.”
“Probably?” the captain said, planting his feet on the floor and standing up. “Slim chance? What I seem to be hearing is that you still don’t have any idea who the murderer is.”
“We had a couple of prime suspects,” Poppy said, “but there was no trace of Norla’s presence at the crime scene, which leaves Bop.”
“Except that you don’t actually know if the forensic evidence belongs to Bop?”
“We’ll determine that tomorrow.”
The captain stepped forward. “And make an arrest?”
“We’ll question him further.”
The captain tutted. “This is highly disappointing. You’re setting a poor example for our new investigator, Reese. Perhaps he and I should just solve the case without either of you.”
“Go ahead,” Nick said before Poppy could stop him.
Prince put his hands on his hips. He had taken off his coat and the lace cuffs of his shirt fluttered at the motion, white against the deep green of his breeches and velvet waistcoat. “Very well. Reese and I will put out minds to the matter and we shall see who solves the murders first. If we do so, I might have to re-think your place on this crew.”
Damn. Nick hadn’t thought through his impulsive words. Prince wouldn’t stand a chance of getting anywhere with it, though, so it wasn’t a meaningful threat.
Poppy pushed him out of the door, barely waiting until it closed again before she rounded on him. “What the hell are you trying to do to us? Do you want us to be stranded on a planet with slave hunters and nowhere to go?”
“It’ll never come to that. Prince barely knows left from right.”
“But Reese does. He’s been looking into this almost from the start and you said he was an ex-cop. If he wants to take over as sole investigator on the ship, you’ve given him the perfect opportunity.”
“He’d never do that,” Nick protested.
“Why not? You think he’ll show you some loyalty because the two of you had some kind of cool adventure together? Stop being such a dope. We’ll have to leave first thing tomorrow and get to Bop before they do, to test his DNA.”
“Okay.” He knew from experience that there was no point in arguing with her and, while he didn’t believe Reese would betray them, he had said enough to the captain to lead him to Bop. Nick had messed up and now he had to fix it before he and his sister paid the price.
Chapter Forty-One
NICK AND his sister arrived at the du Lissin castle early the next day, only to learn that Bop had gone – distraught over his mother’s death – to see his boyfriend and that his hy-phone was switched off.
The housekeeper, Beja, didn’t seem happy to have them here getting in the way while her people were trying to cook and clean, but she offered them hot drinks to help them thaw out after the icy walk here.
“Thanks,” Nick said, accepting her.
Poppy caught his arm. “What are you doing? We should get to the Mung palace.”
“We still need evidence to be sure we have the right person as the killer. If anyone knows private facts about all the family, it’s likely to be a member of staff.”
“All right. Let’s see what we can find out but we can’t take too long over it.”
They followed Beja, hurrying to keep up as she teleported ahead of them, to the kitchen and staff dining room, where she left them. They approached a middle-aged woman whose red-rimmed eyes and grief-stricken expression suggested that she would want the murders solved. They sat down opposite her with their drinks and she and the man beside her turned wary gazes on him.
“Are you all right?” he asked the woman, after explaining that they were detectives.
She wiped her face and the man answered for her. “Teffy was Kass du Lissin’s valet. This has been a unknown word shock for us all.”
“After two murders here, you must be wondering who you can trust.”
“It was a constituent of the Mung family,” Teffy said. “Kass was furious over Bop’s relationship with the Mung boy.”
“I’m afraid not,” he told her. “We were questioning Mung Li Mung and Mung Sen Zhan when Kass was killed. Neither of them was responsible, which leaves Bop.”
She shook her head. “No. He would never have caused harm to his mother or Madame. He’s a unknown word boy.”
Stupid translator. “We have forensic evidence from the place where Kass died. “Arwyl, Mer, Pos and Groa were all at the warehouse at that time. Did any of them have anything against Kass or Ember du Lissin?”
Teffy looked at her companion, who shook his head. “There were a lot of fisticuffs about who was willing to leave the planet with Kass. Neither of her children were full of delight at the idea. The Madame was on their side, though, and was still trying to plead Kass not to sell her company.”
That was nothing they didn’t know and it still pointed at Bop as the killer. Both Kass and Ember had been opposed to his relationship with Mung Sen Zhan and they had a lot of influence; perhaps Bop had been afraid they would talk Mung Li Mung out of supporting the match.
Teffy and her companion left to begin their day’s work and Nick rejoined Poppy, who hadn’t found any more than he had, the evidence still pointing at Bop. They were leaving the castle when a grey-haired man Nick hadn’t seen before walked into the hall.
“Excuse me, are you Swall Viemont?” he asked, before the housekeeper could stop him.
“Yes.” The man paused and looked at them. “Who are you?”
Nick studied Ember du Lissin’s husband. He had dark circles beneath hollow-looking eyes and deep-set wrinkles, as if the strain of the last few weeks was taking a toll on him. “We’re two of the detectives looking into the murders. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yes. So am I. It’s a lot for us to take in, particularly for Bop and Arwyl.”
“Kass and your wife weren’t happy about Bop’s romance, were they?” Poppy asked.
Swall paused before answering and gestured for them to follow him into the sitting room, its bright colours jarring with his sombre mood. They sat down in armchairs. “It wasn’t personal. Sen Zhan has always seemed like a polite friendly young man. They thought it was bad for the company, as if the damned business matters more than people’s lives.”
“Do you think that’s why they died? Because of the company?”
“You tell me. I can’t imagine how anyone could be capable of committing two murders for money or for any other reason.”
For money. That was always a good motive for murder. “Who will inherit Kass’s business now?”
“I’m not sure. Arwyl and Bop, probably. I’d sell the whole lot if it was up to me.”
“Surely you have a considerable say in the main business now?”
“In theory, but, no. I’ve never cared about it and, even though I have part ownership, the others would never forgive me if I did such a thing. But there should be more to life than the endless pursuit of more and more money, shouldn’t there?” He rubbed his face. “Please find out who killed Ember and Kass for us. It’s unbearable not knowing who was responsible.”
“We will,” Nick sa
id and they left him alone, beginning the long walk across town. “Poor man. I doubt the truth is going to be much comfort to him.”
Poppy stopped just beyond the castle gardens. “Perhaps we should speak to Arwyl again.”
“And say what: did you murder your mother?”
“Her fingerprints were at the crime scene.”
“So were Pos’s and he’ll gain part of the wealth through her if Swall is right about Arwyl inheriting half her mother’s money. They’re grieving and Bop is the one we decided is almost certainly guilty. Let’s see what he has to say and check his DNA before upsetting other people needlessly.”
It took them twenty minutes to walk to the Mung home, only to be told that Bop and Mung Sen Zhan had gone out – the housekeeper didn’t know where – and weren’t expected back until this evening.
“If we can’t find them, the captain certainly won’t,” Nick said as they came outside again.
“You’d better hope that’s true. I can’t believe you put our careers on the line for no reason.”
He couldn’t deny that he’d acted out of a moment’s anger. “I’m sorry. We’ll find him later. Let’s try to find out about Kass’s Will, to find out for certain who benefits from it.”
At the solicitor’s offices they once again hit a dead end, since all the du Lissin solicitors were in a private meeting with Arwyl, which was suggestive but not conclusive of her as a major inheritor.
“We’ll wait,” Poppy said.
“I should not bother,” the receptionist told them. “The meeting could last most of the day.”
Nick grimaced. Just as they seemed close to solving the case, everything was getting in their way. He could only hope the captain hadn’t found Bop in the meantime or he and Poppy met end up stranded on Ocean.
Chapter Forty-Two
“SO YOU have nothing at all?” the captain asked. Far from having been eager to win his bet against them, when they returned to the ship at around midday to grab a quick lunch, he hadn’t even left its warmth yet and was, instead, relaxing in the control room with Keith and Reese.
No One Likes Humans Page 14
