Kadj'el (The As'mirin Book 1)

by Ada Haynes

  “I hope you hear us now, Kimiel, wherever your soul is. I hope the wind will carry this to you.”

  When an As’mir died outside of the Valley, his or her soul was not given Ara’s choice. It was doomed to wander forever outside of the Veil. To avoid this fate, tradition prescribed incineration of the body in a favorite place on the Other Side, instead of within the Valley, to create an anchor point for the soul. If the complaints of the many McLean ghosts were any indication, it was not a much better option, but at least their descendants knew where the ghosts were and could, when necessary, still pay homage.

  Only, Kimiel had not been an ordinary As’miri, she was their Aramalinyia. So they had brought the soulless body to Kse’Annilis and performed the cremation rites in front of the Lake. So far, none of them had felt any manifestation of her ghost. But it was still early days.

  He approached the stone and read.

  Kimiel Malcolm Keh Niriel once was here,

  listening to the wind music.

  He walked towards Sarah-Lysliana and whispered, “This was a really nice ceremony, Sally. Thanks for the invitation.”

  “You are most welcome. You know what? I wish she had found time to write those songs for me, Ekbeth. I only got one, in the end, and it’s really good. There was a lot of sensitivity under that tough attitude of hers. I’m still busy with the last adjustments, but the CD should come out in three months. Pity she died so soon.”

  They both looked sadly at the stone.

  Yes, Kimiel was gone forever.

  63

  The lunch invitation at Watanabe’s place arrived two days later. Najeb explained to him how to get there and tried to prepare him for a surprise.

  Ekbeth was glad for the warning, as he was taken aback as soon as he saw the place. Kalem, at his side, hid his reaction no better.

  It was not a house. It was a monstrosity. He had never seen anything like this before. The setting was an impressive acreage of English countryside, and the house was not that big. No, what had surprised him was its style, or rather lack of style. He was not an expert in architecture, but the house looked to him like an experiment turned bad. It was just a bit of everything. A medieval turret in one corner, flanking a classical façade that was interrupted by a Tudor bow window and ended at the other end with a modern steel and glass greenhouse—and that was only one side. The house rambled in all directions. As if the architect had simply gone mad.

  It was either that, or the place had been constructed bit by bit, something he very much doubted, as no one in his right mind would have combined so many different styles.

  “Welcome to my humble house, Ekbeth!” Watanabe was expecting him by what Ekbeth supposed was the entrance door.

  Ekbeth shook his head. “Humble? There’s nothing humble about this place! Is it the reason you murdered two men? To get out of it?”

  Watanabe laughed. “It’s quite the thing, isn’t it? Maire felt in love with it as soon as she saw it. I’ve grown used to it over time. Come in, please.”

  Ekbeth soon realized the inside of the house was just as crazily planned as the outside. Near the entrance, three flights of stairs rose, all located on the same side of the hall. He could not see where they led.

  “Who built this?”

  “A very eccentric man, as you could expect. Eccentric and rich. After his death, none of his heirs wanted anything to do with it. Potential buyers were not really enthusiastic. The house had been on sale for ten years already when we visited it, Maire and I. You’ll have to excuse my wife. She’s quite busy with her business in London, so it’s going to be a men only affair today. You, your bodyguard, Jeffrey and me, I’m afraid.”

  “I was expecting to see Najeb as well.”

  Watanabe shook his head. “He’s occupied with something else right now. Ah, here we are!”

  Ekbeth kept his expression neutral. Watanabe was evidently not much more forthcoming than Kimiel or Matheson. He was giving as little information as possible.

  He looked around the room they had just entered. In contrast to the architecture, this was a cozy little place, simply decorated with modern furniture, comfortable armchairs and a low table, and a view onto the gardens from the French windows that was quite charming.

  Jeffrey was waiting for them.

  “Can I offer you a drink, gentlemen? Lunch will be served in the room next door, but we can start our discussion here.”

  The armchair Ekbeth sat in was as comfortable as he had expected. It was tempting to let his guard down, forget for a moment the man sitting opposite him was not a friend.

  “I’m glad you could find time for this lunch, Ekbeth. I asked to meet you to compare notes on the murder.”

  Ekbeth asked, “I was expecting you to ask this earlier. Three months have passed since she was killed.”

  Watanabe shrugged. “I told you, we were busy elsewhere. I was not really anticipating that you would need our help. If you managed to find Shona twice while she was trying to escape from you, I don’t think anyone can escape you.”

  Ekbeth made a face. “Well, not this time. Kalem has been working with the police, but we just don’t know who’s behind this. Only that the murderer was a hired pro.”

  “Your house is heavily secured. How was this possible?”

  Kalem explained to them. “The shot was fired from one of our neighbors’ houses. A neighbor who was away. His security system was shut down. Too far for our cameras to catch anything, but still near enough to have the perfect positioning for the shot. A nearly impossible angle, but still doable for a skilled sniper. The murderer just had to wait for her to walk in front of his weapon.”

  “So, you are certain she was the intended victim. Not Ekbeth?”

  Kalem nodded. “We were not so sure at the beginning, of course, but there has been no other attempt since then. No, I really think she was the target. As to why? I’ve checked all the possibilities on our side. With no results. Can you help us with that? I don’t need to ask you whether she had enemies—it’s more, how many did she have?”

  Matheson and Watanabe looked grim.

  “More than you can even imagine,” Watanabe said. “But many of them are my enemies as well. They would have tried to kill me before her, or send me a warning—at least, that’s what we think. No… someone who wanted her dead specifically? Five, maybe six people. I may have missed someone.”

  “It would help if you could tell us a bit of her past.” They reacted to his request as Ekbeth had expected. Distrustfully. He insisted. “We won’t solve this without helping each other, Watanabe. We need to know her past!”

  Watanabe stared at him for a long moment, and then finally asked softly, “What do you know of her?”

  Ekbeth had to think about this. There were some bits Watanabe certainly did not need to hear, like Ara’s talks with Kimiel.

  “She’s of the McLean family, but her own family rejected her. They think you’re responsible for what she’s become. Lost her father when she was very young. She killed her husband, but was still grieving for him. She worked for you. She was a thief. Also a killer. She was rich. Had some connection to Bhutan, of all places. Beside all of this, for all her toughness, she was not very stable emotionally. At least, I don’t think she was.”

  Watanabe allowed himself to smile at that. “No, she certainly wasn’t, but when you hear why, I’m sure you’ll be amazed she’s not stark raving mad.”

  He then paused. Took his time. “Did she tell you about her son?”

  Ekbeth did not manage to hide his reaction. “A son! She never told me she had a son!”

  Watanabe shook his head. “She never told me she was pregnant again either. You always had to find out the facts about her by yourself. Hopefully, before it’s too late.”

  He shifted a bit in his chair. “I suppose she would have told you about Sonam eventually. We both thought the boy was dead, but she recently discovered he was still alive. Or at least, that he might still be alive. I must admit I did not
believe her when she announced this news. More than four years had gone since the boy was last seen alive and he was not in a good company. But Shona can be so damn convincing! She convinced me to get out of jail to help her. With or without me, she would have gone after him anyway! And, as I told you, I protect my friends. Trouble is, we had no clue where to find him, except that he was probably in China.”

  Ekbeth was trying to sound uninterested when asking. “Did you find the boy?”

  Watanabe nodded, but there was nothing exultant about his expression.

  “I’ll spare you the details. We would never have managed it without Najeb and his girlfriend’s help. I must admit that that ability of reading minds came in very handy a few times. Anyway, the boy was found last week. We brought him back with us from China before going to the wake.”

  So, that had been what Najeb and As’leandra had been doing for Kimiel. Not that it was so important anymore. No, he was more concerned with the undertone in Watanabe’s voice. “What’s wrong with the boy?”

  “Wrong? Let’s just say his keeper liked the idea of having a human pet. We found Sonam chained in a kennel. He tried to bite me.”

  Ara! Who would do this to a little boy? “Is the boy going to be okay?”

  Watanabe nodded. Grimly. “Eventually.”

  Kalem suddenly asked, “Is Najeb with him, now?”

  “Yes. We brought the boy to a hospital. We had no choice: he’s really in poor health, and the doctors still have to examine his psychological state. Still, we can’t leave him alone for long. He’s refusing food and treatment when it’s not coming from us, and will not rest when we’re not around. Najeb has taken on the responsibility of guarding him. At least, until we can bring him here.”

  Watanabe looked at Ekbeth with a hesitant face. “We’ve been thinking of adopting him, Maire and I.”

  Ekbeth was too shocked by the news to oppose the decision. “We can decide on this later. I want to meet him. I can understand now is not a good time. But I want to see Sonam at some point in time. If he’s her son, he’s my daughter’s brother, which makes him my responsibility as well.”

  Watanabe did not seem to find the logic strange. He only nodded, and then said, “Anyway, Sonam apart, I think you’ve got most of the important elements of her story. As for her family, let them think what they want about me. They don’t know the real story, and Shona wanted to keep it so. She never wanted anyone’s pity.”

  A servant came into the room to announce that lunch was ready. So they moved to the next room, which was just as simply decorated as the previous one, and took their places around the table. Ekbeth waited until the first course, a soup of some sort, was served. He did not really pay attention to the food.

  Watanabe barely touched his meal. Instead, he told Ekbeth about Kimiel’s past.

  “I don’t know much about her younger years. On the rare occasions when Shona referred to those, she only said that she sometimes had the feeling she would suffocate among her relatives. They were never going anywhere. Her brother got quite religious over the years. This kind of thing. Her only consolation at the time was music, she told me. Have you ever heard her sing?”

  Ekbeth nodded. Watanabe continued. “She really had a lovely voice, didn’t she? At seventeen, she entered a music school in Glasgow. Was one of the top students there, if what she said is true. I never checked. Problem is, there is a lot of pressure when you perform that well. From your fellow students, from the teachers, from your family. At some point in time, it just became too much for her. And that’s where her problems started. She started using drugs. Heroin. From the beginning. She very quickly became an addict. Got expelled from school. Her family refused to help her, threw her out of the house. So here she was, nineteen, living on the street, in need of money to buy some drugs and no reliable source of income.”

  Another slight pause. “An unfortunate situation. But not an exception. I don’t need to tell you what happens in those cases.”

  Ekbeth shook his head, a bitter taste in his mouth. “Is it how she became a thief?”

  Watanabe sighed, hesitated. “Not directly. She never exactly lived on the streets. She had some older friends in Glasgow. Some freaks who had missed the flower revolution but were big on the idea. They were living together in a squat, sharing the money they were earning and the drugs. Shona was allowed to come and live with them. She told me she only needed to do a few favors to get what she needed.”

  The plates were taken away, the servant brought the next course.

  “Those favors soon brought her into the prostitution circuit. She could not remember that time very well, she told me. I found the social worker’s files of this period. The reports are rather sordid. She had more powder than blood in her veins at the time.”

  He took a bite of his meat, chewed on it for a moment.

  Ekbeth asked, “So how did you two meet? Did you have sex with her?”

  Watanabe almost spit his food. He tried to hide his reaction behind his napkin, but his eyes were glistening when he answered, “No! I was already married at the time!”

  “So what?”

  “Ah! I may be a criminal to your eyes, Ekbeth, but I do love my wife. I would never hurt her feelings that way. Besides, Maire’d probably kill me if she ever found out. No… I met Shona in different circumstances. Many things happened to her in the meantime.”

  Watanabe drank some water, and took a few more bites.

  “I don’t know when this happened exactly, but one day, so she told me, she just walked through a closed door of her community squat. She was too stoned to realize what she had just done but someone else had seen it. He asked her to repeat it. She slammed into the door. That man kept an eye on her from that moment on. He saw her walk through doors and walls a few times. Always when she was not paying attention, which by then was more often than not. The man was also a drug-user, but he was not as far gone as Shona was, and he was a thief. He saw the opportunity immediately. I’ve met the man. Briefly. He told me it took some convincing to prove to Shona she was able to walk through obstacles, and that by helping him with his job she could put her body to better use than selling herself for a few pounds a day.”

  Watanabe gave a brief smile. “The man probably saved her life. He managed to force her to reduce her doses, at least low enough that she was not a zombie anymore. He taught her the fine art of entering a house undetected and to chose the objects they could easily get rid of for some cash. Shona came to the idea of getting into the safes on her own, she told me. According to her, it’s actually easier than walking through a door.”

  Ekbeth did not need that reminder. He was glad Matheson hid his obvious amusement at that. Watanabe did not seem to have noticed anything.

  “The Glasgow police arrested her a few times. She had become a bit too confident, left some fingerprints. She finally spent some months in jail. When she came out, she was involved in a big deal. She had met someone who told her about an art dealer in London who had so much valuable stuff in his house he would probably not notice one or two missing pieces. Her contact assured her that—whatever those pieces were—she’d be able to sell them. That’s how I met Shona.”

  Ekbeth was not certain he had followed.

  “She sold the stolen goods to you?”

  This time both Matheson and Watanabe smiled. Watanabe shook his head. “No. I was the art dealer she stole from. True, I would probably not have noticed the theft, at least not immediately, except that she had taken two small thirteenth centuries Japanese tea bowls that had been sold the day before for a very high price. I got quite furious when I discovered their disappearance. I have connections. Something Shona’s contact forgot to mention to her. My men only needed two days to bring her to me, with the bowls.”

  His smile turned into a snarl. “She had just shot up a few grams when my men found her. She was barely standing on her feet when we met. Yet, I had no intention to let her live, and she knew it. Even as fucked up as she was, do you
think she begged me to spare her?”

  Ekbeth did not need the amused glint in Watanabe’s eyes to know the answer to the question. He remembered all too well how Shona had reacted when she had been at his mercy.

  He shook his head. “Not her. She probably told you that you deserved it.”

  Toshio nodded, a sad smile on his lips. “Close enough. She told me that she wanted to offer her talents to my benefit, and the theft was just her way to show me how good she was.”

  Ekbeth chuckled. So typical of her, indeed. “And you accepted?”

  Toshio moved his glass slightly. “Not before my men gave her a good thrashing for her insolence, but I must admit I was curious about how she had managed the little feat. My security is very good. So, when she regained consciousness, I asked her to explain herself.”

  The servant refilled the glasses and offered some dessert, which everyone declined, before Toshio Watanabe went on with his tale.

  “I have seen a lot of strange things in my life. But someone walking through walls like they were not there? I could not believe it. Yet, that girl was doing it, in front of me! As her mentor, I saw the advantages immediately, of course.”

  Ekbeth nodded. “So, that’s how you started working together?”

  Watanabe said, “My best idea ever. Understand, I only considered using her special talent as a last resort. I’d rather buy the goods, of just take them if necessary, but sometimes there was no other alternative. It was so simple for her! A few walls, a safe? Nothing was too difficult for her!”

  He shook his head. “For ten years, we worked together. I taught her everything she knew about valuable Chinese antiquities. As well as self-defense, because she had a way of putting herself in the worst situations. But she was never really good at it. That’s why I hired Jeffrey as her guardian angel at some point in time. Shona and I had agreed on a commission for her work. She was spending most of it on the heroin, but she had a nicely filled saving account when she left me. If not for her drug abuse, and her sometimes quirky moments, she would have been the perfect partner.”