by Dave Freer
“And nearly us.”
“I assumed you were his associates. Look, I have no interest in Freyja’s money, or home. Had Malik managed to get the Brisinghamen, my instructions were that they should enjoy a comfortable pension. Their gold and land I wanted simply as leverage for the Brisinghamen. Only, when Cander had panicked his associate, well, that associate had called me, and let the cat out of the bag about having others involved, and them having shared the loot… and I was no longer certain they hadn’t stolen the Brisinghamen and lied about it. And I also wasn’t going to leave a live trail to myself,” he said, with a disarming shrug. “The police… I can deal with. But there are a few of the Gods alive that I’d rather avoid. You were… unexpected.”
“So now we have the cops looking for their murderers. And some bright spark may remember Fin and I,” I said, irritably.
“It’s, er, been put down to a sex game that went wrong, and remorseful suicide. It’s the kind of thing that happens in finance all the time. Banker suicides are remarkably common,” said Dvalinn, who had probably caused a few.
“I’m glad you’re such a rotten shot,” I said with a scowl.
“I normally entrust this sort of undertaking to better skilled persons, but I wanted this kept as close as possible,” said Dvalinn. “Family, you understand.”
“You owe me three crates of beer,” said Fin, “and Oongy’s tribe a fair amount too. I fixed him and they’ve got him back.”
“And a fair amount more to Freyja and Gersemi for the share of the ring-gold Malik pocketed.” I rubbed my chin. “But it doesn’t solve the underlying problem, Hnoss. They’re really not up to dealing with the modern world.”
She pulled a wry face. “I know. I did most of the organizing quietly for them. But… ”
“We’ll see what we can do about it,” I said. Yeah, I am a sucker. “You might have to reluctantly agree to a reconciliation. Fortunately, Freyja’s genuinely scared the dwarves are out for payback, and she seems… afraid of you,” I said, pointing to Dvalinn.
“Freyja?” he blinked. “Me? Us?”
“It’s true enough, Daddy,” said Hnoss. “I think, well, she feels… she thinks she tricked you, and you may want to get even.”
He laughed. “Of course she tricked us. But it wasn’t like we didn’t want to be tricked or didn’t know she was doing it.” He sighed. “It wasn’t that we’d have liked her to stay around, even though we could never have afforded it — your mother, Hnoss, was high maintenance, as they say. But we knew she wasn’t going to. We were dwarves, she hung out with Gods.”
“I think you sell yourselves short… that’s a bad choice of words, but I think Hnoss can confirm that Freyja was… touchy about her claim to the Brisinghamen. I think ‘guilt’might be a bit more than Freyja ever felt. But the Norse were very strong on honor,” said Fin. “And she never really could grasp what you’re naturally good at and understand — cunning artifice. To her that is frightening, like math. She expected that to be used against her.”
Dvalinn blinked. “Did she think we wanted a fight with the one-eyed god? Or worse, Thor or that Loki?”
“Mother is not much on calculating,” admitted Hnoss. “She goes by her feelings, and, um, relies on her looks rather than thinking.”
“And sooner or later, that’ll fail her,” I said. “And the problem — the one you didn’t even think of when you started this, Dvalinn, is that she is the first chooser of the slain. Are you keen on Ragnarok?”
“I didn’t like Balder the first time around,” said the dwarf. “But I’ll leave her alone in future. You have my word. I did it for my little girl.”
“I’ll take it, and you’ll have my bill for damages too. But that’s not going to do. Freyja needs to be looked after, and Hnoss can sort that out. But I might need you as a threat.”
He looked amused. “You know in our profession we try to avoid being perceived as that. People neutralize threats. We never threaten, if we mean to act. We just act, and then it’s too late.”
“So that’s why you live in Switzerland. A threat that’s neutral.”
“Only to invaders, but yes. It’s also where we have always lived. So I would like to know… ”
Fin stood up and put his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “It’s like why people pee in your pocket or put beer steins down on your head. You don’t really want to know. You just want the situation dealt with. Eochaid will sort it out. He’s good at it. I’d say ‘trust me’, but that would be foolish. But you can trust him. All sorts of people do, for some reason.”
That was as near to a compliment as I’d ever got from Fintan while I was there to hear it. He must be finally getting old or something. So it was a good time to leave, before he made a recovery.
The trip back did not involve the TSA or the drinks trolley mysteriously getting stuck next to Fin. We flew back first class ultra, you might say, in Dvalinn’s private jet. He was, I felt, trying for brownie points. And getting them too. Not travelling cattle class was a pleasant experience.
While we were at it, I got him to fulfil the original bargain to the old woman. He knew what he was paying for, and his actuaries were well trained.
We took ourselves out to Mons Repose. They weren’t glad to see me, even when I opened with: “I got the rest of your money back.”
“I told you to leave it alone!” spat Freyja.
“I left the Swiss connection alone. This is what the other banker had. He’s dead. Unfortunately, I don’t think it has made any difference. The Dwarves weren’t ever after your gold. They wanted the Brisinghamen. And their agents are… looking for alternatives. They’re sniffing around the town. Around the countryside here.”
“What?” she asked, staring intently at me.
“Well, they came that close. Got into the house. They know your weak points now,” I explained.
Freyja got decidedly angsty at this. “We need to take steps. Get a few Varingian guards.”
“Maybe some kind of modern security system,” said Gersemi, more thoughtfully. She at least had some grasp of the world they now lived in.
“I’d like to think that would work,” said Fin with a very good imitation of genuine concern. He does illusions well. “But, well, the dwarves have vast resources. I mean they could buy whole armies, not a few old men with rusty swords. And their security experts guard whole vaults full of gold. You can bet they’d crack anything you can afford.”
Very rapidly from there we went through various schemes, and of course recriminations. Fortunately, we men are quite used to it being all our fault, so we bore up under the strain, and were as unhelpful as possible. Eventually, and inevitably, we were condemned as being useless, and Freyja started casting tearful wishes for Hnoss, who always knew what to do.
“You told her never ever to show her face here again, mother,” said Gersemi.
“That was then,” said Freyja, peevishly. “Now I need a dutiful daughter to help her old mother.”
“Is she still in Las Vegas?” asked Fin.
Gersemi nodded.
“That’s a place with top-notch security,” I said. “They have to have. I’d organize a reconciliation, if possible. She’s your best hope.”
“But… wouldn’t that put her in danger?” asked Gersemi. “She’s my sister, mother. Don’t look at me like that.”
Freyja sniffed. “They won’t hurt her.
It took Fin winking at Gersemi over Freyja’s head to get her to shut up, but with a final: “Well, I still don’t like it” we were given Hnoss’s address and ‘phone number, and asked to get her to come to their rescue. A suspicious Gersemi came to see us off the property, partly to make sure dodgy characters like us didn’t pinch her statues, but mostly to tell us not to do it, and to demand to know what we thought we were playing at. Hnoss was her sister and she wasn’t having her hurt.
“What your mother is not saying, is that Hnoss is the child of one of those black dwarves,” explained Fin. “I believe they’re actu
ally very fond of her, so they wouldn’t harm her. More likely to hurt anyone who tried.”
“What! You mean… ”
“Yes,” I said. “Strictly speaking, you might say, the Brisinghamen should be her inheritance. But I wouldn’t point that out to Freyja.”
Gersemi closed her mouth, and shook her head. “I don’t like the torc anyway. It’s not fashionable, and it’s not my color. She’s welcome to it!” she sighed. “I miss Hnoss. She and mother will fight all the time, though.”
“I’ll see what can be done,” I said, cautiously.
She hugged me. It took ages to get all the marble dust washed off.
The one advantage we had with Hnoss was all that acting practice she’d had in Las Vegas. I believe she was suitably reluctant to take the Brisinghamen. Had to be positively ordered to go and hide it by her mother.
The upside of all of this was that I had some more money to put into the banking system. I was in my office - that is, occupying a table at Mario’s, drinking coffee, being scowled at by Mario, reading in the paper about the terrible stresses of modern finance and how so many promising young men seemed unable to cope — you know, all well and normal with the world, no one shooting at me, and, just at the moment, no-one demanding money. Then Hnoss came in, with the Brisinghamen around her throat, and a proud dwarf papa following along behind her.
Hnoss was always beautiful anyway, but the Brisinghamen took her to that level where struck handsome young men did not follow her and try to talk to her anymore. Older men just felt their wallets and sighed. And looked. There is a point at which men know that you can window-shop, but you just don’t have the collateral. She came in, blinked those gorgeous eyes in the dimness, saw me and rushed up to me, beaming like I was the best thing she’d seen for weeks. Wrapped her arms around me and kissed me.
Dvalinn cleared his throat. “Any more of that, and I’ll be asking him what his intentions are.” It was said with a small smile, which I hoped made it safer. I’ve always erred on the too optimistic side with that kind of thing.
“Oh daddy. Really. I was kissing him.”
“I know. But he’s a dwarf. You can’t trust dwarves,” said Dvalinn.
“Or at least good ones are hard to find,” she said, sitting down on my knee, and cocking her nose at her father.
“So, I gather it’s all worked out?” I asked.
“Yes. Mother actually seemed quite relieved to give it to me. Once she’d done it, that is. It was a bit touch and go for a while, but Gersemi came down hard on her, which she never does… So Freyja complained we were ganging up on her, but my sister kept it up. Made me seem like the soft option, and so Mother was quite glad to give it to me, to spite her.”
“Being shot at is much simpler to deal with,” I said.
“I apologize for that,” said Dvalinn.
“You missed, which is the important part.”
“Now,” said Hnoss, “There is the matter of your bill. I know mother would just try and charm her way out of it. She always does. But sis and I agree you’ve earned more than we can pay.”
“Not true,” I said. “It was my pleasure. And I like having you in my debt. So you can’t pay her bills for her.” Yes, even I think with my testicles sometimes. But it wasn’t fair, even if she did have the money.
She dimpled. “You’re a fraud, Bolg. And we like being in your debt. But the least we can do is see mother pays her debts. And we will.”
When they’d left — and I found that Dvalinn had left a fine fat wad of hundred dollar bills, with a note that said ‘with thanks for being a moving target’, Mario came out from behind his coffee machine. For once he wasn’t frowning or scowling at me. “You know. That book you talk about, ‘PI for Dummies’… you wanna lend it to me?” he asked.
I spent some of the money on buying Fintan some re-engineered leptons. I could have bought him new ones, but he’s only going to smash them anyway.
Of course there is always a down-side to everything. Gersemi decided Fin and I had been serious about the statue. You know the one. That statue I now have on my lawn. Two thirds of the time. Or to put it another way, it’s two thirds there, which means always in peripheral vision, never the rest of the time. It’s quite good about not being there when someone comes to take some kind of action about it. On the other hand, they’re so busy paying attention to it, they seldom even notice me, or my house, which is as it needs to be. It’s a bit like those nude women who robbed a bank. No one could ever describe their faces.
*Polly-unsaturated. does not contain too many parrots.
**Mario's a real fairy, on of the Sidhe, from Southern Ireland. He just self-identifies as Italian. He's a Trans-Geographist. We Cis-Geographists just don't know how it feels to born in the wrong country, he tells me. I'm not an originist, but sometimes the accent is confusing.
For those of you who enjoyed Mr Bolg, PI, more of his case-files can be found here Bolg, PI, Away with the Fairies and here Bolg, PI: The Vampire Bride and even here Bolg, PI: Wolfy LadiesThere are lots of other books, shorts and, possibly, pink pachyderms on Amazon. The first two are available from me. I'm working on the third.
