“Detectors will come?” Lylith suggested.
Josiah grinned and slapped her arm. “Exactly! They played no part in Robert’s demise but they would have known we’d be here – a perfect opportunity to drop us a little message. See these lumps in the ground? They’re from when the soil has been smoothed with a flattened palm. They were trying to hide some disturbance in the ground and we know they moved Robert for some reason, suggesting of course that their message is buried right beneath him.” Hartt leapt from the floor and placed a heavy hand on Rosin’s shoulder. “Deputy Detector: fetch a spade! You lot have digging to do.”
Josiah took Lylith White by the hand and began to drag her away. Marcus Fraun jumped over Roberts’s body and grabbed Hartt’s arm. “Wait, Josiah…” The Chief panted. “What do you mean ‘you lot’? Where are you going? We need you here.”
Hartt tutted. “You’ve got your orders, report for duty later today.”
“But it makes no sense… You’re telling us to abandon our search for this drug dealer in order to focus our investigation on someone who’s left us one tiny message in the dirt?”
“That one tiny message could be anything, we already know they’re twisted enough to tamper with an undiscovered crime scene just to get their point across, god knows what else they might do. The dealer’s just some slime ball. Creepy? Yes. Living with his mom? Probably. Major threat to the on-going existence of the people of this village? No.”
“He’s a murderer: twice over!”
Josiah Hartt sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh Chief Detector, do you really still believe that? Why not open your eyes for once? Open your eyes and just look. If the drug dealer really, truly killed his customers - would Robert Acrimony be crying?”
The Chief Detector Fraun was left dumbstruck before him and so Josiah turned briskly away, dragging Lylith White with him. He leant into her ear as they hurried back down the alley. “We’re not the only people who are dealing with a body they think’s dead. Let’s hope for Roseanne Price’s sake we can get to the coroner in time-”
Arthur Frost shifted on his feet as he cleaned the scalpel. The blade was barely functional anymore, worn away to bluntness after years of faithful service. His hands shook as the cloth moved rhythmically along the sharp edge; a certain nervousness which came over him whenever faced with a fresh corpse. The body before him was stiff and grey, beads of sweat still speckling the woman’s bulbous forehead. He was keen to get home and yet from what he’d heard the bodies were coming in quick and fast. He looked at his coffee with concern. Could he finish his inspection before the steam stopped rising?
The coroner placed his hand upon her skin, shivers shooting down his spine as his hands brushed with the cold, dead flesh. He’d end up like this someday; he thought. All these corpses, he barely knew anything about their lives, just a name, if that. Human waste. In the end it didn’t matter, he just took out his tools and chopped them apart: somebodies wife, somebodies daughter; he never knew and he never cared. In the end he’d butchered more precious humans than any murderer achieved in a lifetime.
He sighed and tossed the cloth aside, shuffling the final steps towards the metal slab before him. His lips quivered, his own sweat stinking beneath his nostrils. The knife pressed against the woman’s skin, a slither of blood weeping from within. That wasn’t normal. He pressed harder, but the more he pressed the faster blood poured.
Arthur looked up her face and leapt back as he found her eyes were open.
“No” he muttered to himself. Her eyes were already open; it was just his caffeine-starved brain deluding itself. He had to get to that cup quicker.
He leant closer again, cutting deeper into her flesh. The woman seemed to be shaking, gasping. Arthur Frost shook his head, trying to ignore the impossible movements, lying to himself that they couldn’t be real.
The doors swung open behind him, Josiah Hartt and Lylith White burst through the doors, panting and clutching their chests. But even they stopped and stared in horror at the scene that lay before them.
Rosanne’s Price leapt up from her slab and started screaming.
“We’re so sorry Miss Price.” Lylith winced.
She sat beside Josiah on one of the unoccupied slabs, legs swinging back and forth while she looked at the woman opposite her. Rosanne clutched to her chest a thick pile of paper towels, a scarlet stain slowly seeping through the pages. She groaned whenever she moved, a shooting pain radiating from her wound and snapping through her bones. The colour was returning to her cheeks now, her complexion a rich pink where just half an hour before it had been placid and cold. The woman had clearly been shaken by the ordeal; whenever a nurse or cleaner walked through the doors she jumped; her eyes flickering from side to side. “At least we found you in time…”
“He’d started the autopsy!” Rosanne Price exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Lylith blushed. “Sorry.”
“And what was that thing?” She spluttered, “That, that…spider…”
“It’s called the Repo Glacialis.” Josiah Hartt replied, rolling in his hand a ball of floss. “As I said to Lylith, they have a rather nifty defence mechanism, that’s why the dealer could ensure you’d get bitten if you opened the packet he’d left for you. When most spiders deliver a lethal blow, they die within hours. That doesn’t happen to the Repo Glacialis because their sting only paralyses the victim. It gives the illusion of death, often for ten hours or more. By then your average predator has come along and finished the job and the Repo Glacialis can carry on along its way; safe in the knowledge they’re safe. For now.” He sniffed. “And it does a good job as well. No wonder we didn’t spot it, your heart was slowed incomprehensibly, your organs seemed to shut down before our eyes – you might as well have been dead. But then of course the poison wore away, and you woke up, safe as houses…Well…almost.”
“I didn’t know it was going to end. I watched you work all that stuff out, about me and my kids and then they zipped me in a bag and dumped me on this table….” She put her hand over her mouth, holding back the tears. “I thought he was going to cut me open and take me apart while I lay there watching him…” She dropped her head to her hands, sobbing gently into her palm.
Lylith leapt up off the bench, wrapping her arms around Rosanne and uttering words of comfort. “It’s okay now…You’re back…”
Josiah also stood, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you came running here to shove drugs down your throat, just so you’d feel better about you’re failed marriage-”
Lylith looked up sharply, eyes wide open.
“Too much?” Josiah asked.
“Yeah.”
“How did you know about the drugs?” Rosanne sniffed. “I cleaned up every last drop, I know I did…”
“They found another user, paralysed just like you...” Lylith replied, replacing herself on the slab next to Hartt. “There were traces on his lips. We just assumed.”
“Was it Cannabis, Heroin, what?” Josiah interrupted.
“Both I guess.” Roseanne said. “They call it Slide. There are dealers all over the city, but they always insist on using these little towns; Mugollen, Pollock, Stonemoore…The detectors around these parts are less vigilant than those in the cities …”
“Tell me about it.” Josiah sniffed.
“It tastes disgusting, but oh the high is like no other. Addicts are sprouting up all over the country. There are clubs, like some backwards NA groups where the meet up just to get high together.”
“And the dealer who got you onto Slide, who is he, where is he?”
“I don’t know…” Roseanne began.
“Oh come off it Miss Price!” Hartt snapped. “It’s over…”
“No, really, I never met him!” She exclaimed, and then sighed. “He wrote to me for a couple of months. Dealers were in short supply but I was addicted and so he found me – said he had something better.”
“And did he?” Lylith mutte
red.
“Oh yes.” She gasped. “What he gave me was amazing.”
“And so the symbol painted where we found you, it belongs to one of those groups you described?”
“No. They’re full of sleazy little men and they’re secrets… I never got into that, with me it was just…It’s a long story, okay?”
“Then you’d better tell it Miss Price.” Josiah Hartt retorted.
“You’re the big shot detective; I was lying on the floor while you worked all those things out, about me, about my kids - the kind of secrets I never even told my oldest and closest friends that somehow you stole from me at a glance? You tell it.”
“How much of the jigsaw I complete entirely depends upon the pieces you gave me.” Josiah explained. “You, Miss Price… there are bits missing all over the shop, so let’s hear it from you shall we?”
Rosanne sighed, shuffling where she sat. She winced as the wound sent her blood boiling again. She coughed, clearly uncomfortable about what she was about to say. “It began when we moved from the city to Mugollen. That place creeped me out, all the towns in this valley do. They’re full of horse drawn carriages and pigeons - haven’t you people heard of telephones? Anyway, the peace and the quiet seemed to make Harvey worse. Every day he stormed in angry and steaming. He started to…” She stopped herself. “…Let’s just say he was a violent man. And I was just scared for the kids, but there was nothing I could do. I started to drink: vodka, the odd shot of brandy in a cup of tea – that sort of thing.
But it wasn’t enough, every time I left them alone with him I felt nauseous. The first time I brought drugs was from some dirty little kid on the street, big clothes, unshaven but rich, you know, crime paid. The more I filled his pockets the faster the pot emptied. I started having to scrounge together the scraps of money I could without Harvey noticing something was missing. That went on for weeks, he was so angry all the time he barely ever noticed when I stumbled through the door past midnight with my head in the clouds.” Roseanne sighed. “It didn’t make me forget but it harder to remember.
Then one day I found a letter in my bag. It was from a dealer – he called himself the Iceman – he said he could get me top rate Slide from growers overseas. And it was almost as cheap as the crap off the corner. It was so simple; he’d set up a drop off point, mark it with a symbol and leave the drugs pinned to the wall. Those concentric circles just look like graffiti right? He used that to hide the drug packet from passers-by too, because he pinned it to the wall and then painted the symbol ontop of it. That’s how the system worked: I downed the drugs, put the money in the bag and pinned it back where it came from.”
“No wonder you didn’t recognise the symbol…” Lylith White bubbled. “…It wasn’t a logo; it was just a meaningless shape!”
“And that explains the paint on your and Roberts hands.” Josiah said. “I thought you’d had a scuffle and brushed against it but if he’d camouflaged the bag to blend in with the symbol, when you pulled it from the wall your fingers got covered in dye. Although that doesn’t explain why ‘Iceman’ would unleash a venomous spider upon a valued customer like you? Not much a head for business was he?”
“In the past fortnight things started to get difficult.” Roseanne explained. “I was addicted… I am addicted - and was looking for a hit once a day at least. I was so off my head I barely even showed for work, within days I was fired. I didn’t care; me and Harvey still had a shared account. Bit by bit I was draining it dry. But he was starting to get suspicious, he never said it but I could see it in his eyes. So for a couple of deliveries I stopped filling the bag with money, just took the drugs and run. I explained it to him in my letters and he didn’t seem to mind. I meant to pay him in full, I really did. But it’s hard to think straight when your minds so alive!
Then last night I stumbled back home and found Harvey waiting for me. He was sober for once; he’d even put the kids upstairs. He pulled out a couple of bags of that dope off the streets that I’d left for an emergency tucked inside my mattress. And he went mad. He knew I’d been taking the money and now he knew what I’d been blowing it on he really kicked off, like I’d never seen before, swearing and shouting and tearing the house apart. I took my keys and ran, as far from Mugollen as I could. I never even said goodbye to the kids. I found a little alcove in the wall of the valley and stayed there for a night. The first thing I did was send a pigeon out to Iceman. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide and my only comfort was the Slide. He’d given me five free stashes and I could tell in his writing his patience was wearing thin, but he’d agreed to one last batch…”
“And you just went?” Lylith asked. “You decided to trust a drug dealer who you’d been stealing off for weeks?”
“I didn’t think he’d do anything.” Roseanne stammered. “He was reasonable, and he seemed kinda nice in his letters…”
“Oh yeah. I’m sure he’s lovely.”
“Well still I hitchhiked in the rain to get here.” Roseanne Price continued. “I arrived just as day was breaking. The place was deserted. He said the drop off point would be to the North of the village so I walked around until I found his mark in that small wooden collection bay. I unpinned the bag from the logs and started to devour it. I finished off the lot, dumped the packet in a bush and was headed out the bay when I felt this tingling on my legs. I thought it was the hit, but when I looked down and I saw this spider – a tiny thing, covered in this sticky yellow pattern. Once I’d shook it off I realised it had bitten me. I suppose it was hidden in the package. My legs started to go numb, my hands began to tingle. I clambered around the bay, trying to shake the feeling off… Then I just collapsed to the floor. I tried to move my legs but there was nothing, like I was fixed in concrete. I lay there for two hours until you found me-”
“So you didn’t pay up and Iceman planted that, what, as a warning?” Lylith asked.
“If he owns a Repo Glacialis I’m sure he has much more deadly creatures in his artillery.” Josiah Hartt said. “But of course he couldn’t kill you because he would never get his money. And the same must be the case for Robert Acrimony; his things were old and battered, he had the money to buy them in the first place, but he must have lost it recently because he couldn’t afford the repairs or replacements. He’d spent it all on drugs. That’s a warning to you all kid! Don’t pay for your drugs and ‘Iceman’ lines you up for a…biting.” Hartt was cut off the doors burst open. The Chief Detector and his Deputy burst in, hands clutching their heaving chests. Marcus Fraun walked towards them, quivering hands clutching a ragged piece of paper. It was covered with dirt, some specs lying on top and a thick damp seeping through the page itself. He handed it to Hartt.
“Is that what was buried beneath Robert Acrimony?” Lylith asked, as Josiah unfolded the page.
Hartt nodded, flipping the page over in his hands for her to see. It was difficult to read at first but eventually she made out the single word scrawled on the paper. Four.
“Four? What does that mean?” She asked.
Hartt ignored her. “Chief Detector Fraun I’d like you to place Miss Price under arrest immediately. Hold her in custody until further notice.” He announced.
“You can’t do that!” Roseanne protested, leaping up for the slab, immediately forgetting the shooting pain. “You can’t arrest the users, just the dealers…!”
“You are an addict Miss Price. Beside from needing serious help, it will only be a matter of time before you flee and find another Iceman. As much as I hate to say it, we have to keep you safe.” Hartt concluded. “Don’t think of it as being arrested, we’re putting you up for the night, cold turkey style… but yeah: you’re being arrested.” He nodded towards Rosin, who after a few mumbled somethings under his breath walked forward and unclipped a pair of handcuffs from his belt.
Josiah took the opportunity and strolled towards the door. Lylith obediently followed him. “Meanwhile…” He began. “It’s getting late, I’m going home. Are you coming?”
>
“Mr Hartt.” Lylith White beamed. “Are you inviting me back to your place?”
Josiah smiled back. “Miss White I think I am.”
Meet Josiah Hartt
“I
t’s quite witty in a way.” Lylith White remarked as she strolled through the village, tired feet sloping across the mottled earth. “Iceman: the drug dealer who threatens people with spiders that freeze them alive. He was warning them right from the off.”
“If you like.” Josiah Hartt mumbled as he widened his stride, picking up pace as the storm rolled in over the walls of the valley.
“You don’t think so?” Lylith asked.
“Not particularly. I don’t tend to call people witty while I’m in the room. It would be like Einstein calling somebody a genius.”
“You think you’re witty?” Lylith retorted.
“You don’t?”
“I think you’re just sarcastic.” She muttered. “Lowest form of wit, you never heard that?”
“Maybe so.” Josiah shrugged. “But it doesn’t half rattle arrogant men like Marcus Fraun.”
“Maybe someone should try it on you…” Lylith murmured under her breath as they continued to walk through the village, passing by rows of wooden lodges, their occupants slowly slipping inside as the daylight succumbed to the storm. A heavy wind started to blow, whipping up lashes of mud from the floor beneath their feet. Josiah pulled a scarf from his pocket, wrapping it around his neck and pulling his coat tightly around him. Lylith huddled closer, using the taller man as a shield against the gale.
“I hope you’re not implying I’m arrogant...” Josiah grinned.
“Since I’ve met you you’ve been nothing but!”
Their faces were speckled with the finest of rain, pinprick drops tickling their bitterly cold skin. The village looked strange amidst the beginnings of the storm; the tiny cabins were so cosy in daylight but now so solitary and bizarre as the sun faded away. “I wouldn’t call it arrogance…” Josiah mused. “More a delusional image of my own self-importance.”
Blood & Baltazar Page 4