by Adam Carter
“Baronaire, eh?” Marius asked with a tight smile. “That’s a name I’ll have to remember, sport.”
Baronaire growled, giving him a shove. “Just get moving, Marius. Do us both a favour and put your thinking cap on.” Baronaire pointedly ignored Lin as he strode past with Marius. It wasn’t proving an especially good day; anything he would say to Lin would have likely only made it ten times worse.
CHAPTER TWO
“So how was Honolulu?”
“It wasn’t Honolulu, it was York.”
Lin hid her smile. She had known Baronaire for a year now and had never ceased to be surprised by him. When they had first met she had taken him to be a dark, depressive Humphrey Bogart wannabe; a man out of his time considering it was now the mid-nineties. If she knew when his birthday was she might even have bought him the hat to match the trench coat. However, as their time together progressed she had begun to see the sensitive side to his nature, the quirky even humorous aspects that made Charles Baronaire human. Lin had eventually come to the conclusion that Baronaire liked to exude a dark disturbing nature, when beneath that hard skin there beat the heart of a kind and caring man. Of course she would never make the mistake of telling him that, since it would only result in his retreat further into himself. Baronaire liked to project this air for a reason, and while she had several theories Lin could not say why. That he did not like people getting too close to him was obvious, but he was a good man and Lin wished he would let someone into his life sometimes.
Then he had met Rachael Webster and had fallen in love. It had been a turning point for Baronaire, and Lin had at last begun to see some of the stone walls crumbling. Rachael may not have been a conventional girl, but then Baronaire wasn’t a conventional man, so they were perfectly suited so far as Lin was concerned. So long as Baronaire was happy she didn’t much care who Rachael was.
“I’ll bet your request for leave next Christmas came as a shock to the DCI,” Lin pestered.
“He didn’t seem happy.”
“Why? Most folk at WetFish don’t do Christmas. We’re all lost causes without family. Probably why the DCI recruited us.”
“Sanders doesn’t like me having a life, Lin.”
Lin had the oddest feeling he meant that literally, although she did not press. Now was hardly the time. They had taken Marius from the office where they had found him and had headed to an area of the city in which Ilium apparently could have been hiding. It was, according to Marius, a disused theatre Ilium owned, and Baronaire had allowed the man to go in alone to search. Lin did not trust Marius at all, knew Baronaire didn’t either, and had not been at all surprised when the instant Marius was out of sight, Baronaire had told her they would be tailing him. Presently they were crouched in the front row seats of the dress circle, looking down at an oblivious Marius as he worked his way around the stage in search of clues.
Looking longingly about her, Lin wished she could have these seats for real someday, but her job wasn’t exactly famed for making people wealthy.
“Who’d buy a theatre anyway?” she whispered.
“Someone with more money than he knows what to do with,” Baronaire replied in a quiet tone without ever seeming to have the need to noticeably lower his voice. “Or someone who wants as many places as possible where he could hide.”
“I think we’re in the wrong job.”
Baronaire’s smile was faint, but definitely present. “So, you never told me what you got up to while I was in York? Christmas at home? You went back to your parents didn’t you?”
Lin’s parents lived in Chinatown. They didn’t associate too much with the country as a whole, her father didn’t speak much English actually. Lin loved her parents dearly, but had broken away from them as soon as humanly possible to learn about her country. She had been born in England and didn’t like the thought of hiding away her entire life in one little area, an enclosed society, too afraid of the big wide world. She had indeed planned to go visit them over Christmas, even though they didn’t really do Christmas, but she had become somewhat waylaid.
“Never made it,” she said, glancing away. “Work.”
She could feel Baronaire’s frown boring through her skin, into her soul. “I thought that was all cleared up by the end of the day.”
“And I didn’t think you were supposed to read reports of other people’s cases.” She had spoken in jest, although as she looked upon Baronaire it was to find him still frowning. She quickly looked away again. “We should go down to see what Marius is doing.”
“So long as he’s in sight he can’t do any harm.”
“Sure, but we ...”
“He’s fine.”
Lin bit her lower lip. She was heartily wishing Marius would slip out of sight. Any moment now would have been nice.
“What’s happened?” Baronaire said. “Maybe it’s something I can help with.”
“It’s nothing bad,” she said, a little snappily. This was ridiculous, that she couldn’t tell Baronaire what she got up to over Christmas. She could have cited the rules to him, that DCI Sanders did not like his officers to discuss their personal lives, but somehow she couldn’t see Baronaire much caring about Sanders’s rules. “I just ... didn’t get around to going back to see my folks, that’s all.”
Baronaire stared at her for several moments in stern silence, and then something seemed to click in his mind and he smiled. “You’ve met someone.”
“I ... might have.”
He laughed, remembered where he was and what he was doing, but Marius was oblivious to their presence. “That’s great,” he said in a quieter voice. “God, for a minute there I thought something was wrong.”
“Yeah.” It was indeed ridiculous the way she could not just say aloud what Baronaire wanted to hear. She was an adult, it wasn’t as though she was fifteen again and sneaking out to spend an evening with some boy. But if there was one thing she did not want Baronaire finding out about, it was her current relationship. Not that she was even sure she could call it a relationship. She had spent a single magical night with a colleague – Jeremiah – and that was about it. Neither of them quite knew what to say or do at work the next day. They didn’t speak for a while, and when they had finally confronted one another at the tea machine it was with a fumbling of words which left them both in polite but nervous laughter. They had not met outside of work since, and Lin wasn’t even sure she wanted to. Actually no, she was sure she did want to, but didn’t know whether she should.
She realised Baronaire was still staring at her and said, “It might be nothing. Probably isn’t actually.”
“Well, any man that lets you get away’s an idiot.”
“So I fall for idiots. Thanks.”
By this point Marius was disappearing around the back of the stage and Baronaire launched himself over the side of the dress circle. Lin held her breath, although she had seen him do things like this before and knew she should have been used to it. He landed silently between the seats in the stalls and darted over them, his feet barely touching the tops of the chairs. Lin had heard mice that made more noise than Baronaire. She, however, would have to take the conventional route and headed for the stairs.
By the time she found her way to the stage, Lin had lost sight of Baronaire completely, but she was used to that as well. Baronaire tended to do his own thing, even when he was out with a partner, and generally it was a good idea to just let him get on with it. With regards to results, he was the best officer WetFish had and it was silly to try to get in his way. Of course Lin should not have known he was their best officer, but forbidden information like that had a tendency to circulate through the office easily enough.
Lin had never before been backstage, not in a theatre anyway. She had once worked her way backstage for a Wham! concert, but that had been a slight disappointment since her ripe detective skills told her after ten seconds of talking to him that George Michael would have been more interested in her were she born Sean Lin instead of Sue. The
theatre probably should have been filled with props and stage-hands behind the scenes, but this place had been abandoned for so long it had been cleared out ages back. Now it was all darkness and plywood, the only equipment remaining having been left there due to its being defective. She sought Baronaire in the shadows, which was always the best (and hardest) place to find him, but she could see nothing.
“There’s an office in the back.”
Lin jumped as Baronaire materialised behind her. It did not matter how many times she had to go through that, she would never get used to it.
If Baronaire noticed he had spooked her he gave no indication that he cared. “I listened at the door and he was talking to someone, but I didn’t see anyone else in there.”
“Could have been making a phone call.”
Baronaire looked at her as though she was stupid. “Of course he was making a phone call.”
Lin inhaled slowly and forced herself to remember she was a detective and not a frightened child being scared by shadows. “What was he saying?”
“Something about Donny. This guy Marius must be on pretty friendly terms with Donald Ilium if he keeps calling him Donny.”
“Do you think he was phoning Ilium?”
“I don’t think so. He was asking where Donny could be found, where he might be hiding. Sounded as though he was looking for him. He mentioned someone called Cara earlier, maybe he was talking to her.”
“Uh, no offence, partner, but shouldn’t we be in that room with him? He might give us the slip.”
“There aren’t any other exits. Still, you’re right. I think Marius has had more than enough time by himself.” Baronaire moved across to the room and kicked the door. It likely wasn’t locked, but Baronaire really did like kicking doors in. Lin didn’t know what TV show he had got that from, but she wished he’d kick the habit instead of the doors.
They moved into the room. It was a dressing-room by the looks of things, but it was far from the large extravagant affair Lin had always seen on TV. There was a small table and no mirror: presumably any free-standing mirrors had been removed long ago. There was also a wardrobe, the worm-eaten door of which hung loosely, showing a clearly empty space. The carpet was frayed, the wallpaper was peeling and there was a rank smell Lin could not quite place but seemed like a cross between stale urine and rotting fish. The room was around two metres square. And there was no sign of Marius.
“Damn,” Baronaire mumbled.
“No phone.”
“What?”
“There’s no phone in here. Marius must have had a mobile.”
“I didn’t see him with one, and I shook him down pretty thoroughly before.”
“He’s rich, Baronaire. His phone’s liable to be as thin as a cassette.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to even get a phone to be that thin.”
“Then what was he using?”
“Maybe a normal phone.”
“But there’s not one here.”
“Then maybe he was never here at all.”
Lin frowned. “I thought you had super senses, Baronaire. You’re telling me you were wrong about him being in this room?” She had spoken in jest, but he looked more uncomfortable than she had ever seen him. Baronaire took a great deal of pride in his finely honed senses and he was clearly thinking the same thing. It was an insult to his manhood to have lost his prey in such a fashion and Lin suddenly realised they were in for a long night.
“Marius wanted to shake us,” Baronaire said. “Wherever he is, he’ll be a mile away by now at least.”
“Great. So what do we do?”
“We should head back to base, see if we can find out anything about Ilium. And while we’re at it we should look into Marius. He’s not the man we’re after but I can’t shake the feeling Marius is the key to all of this. We find him again and he’ll lead us straight to Ilium.”
It wasn’t every day Baronaire suggested heading back to the bunker: he was usually the kind of guy who would prefer to throw himself into the night and track his prey by smell if that was all he had left to him. But he was also right in this instance. Their best chance of finding Ilium was through Marius, and if Marius was still looking for Ilium it gave them a chance to catch up; Lin was not fool enough to think Marius wouldn’t find Ilium soon.
Lin sorely hoped Jeremiah wasn’t back at the bunker when they got there. Her day was becoming complicated enough already.
CHAPTER THREE
“The common kestrel sits in wait for its prey, staring intently from whatever perch it’s chosen. They feed mainly on rodents, but they’re true hunters and eat smaller birds if they need to. Opportunists. Always on the hunt for the next victim. The only problem is they don’t live over here. Across all of eastern Europe, but we’re too far west to ever see one in the wild.”
Baronaire stared long and hard at the man seated before him. Barry Stockwell was not an officer in WetFish, although he was in their employ. A man with long hair and thick glasses, he was young, eager and naïve. That he was thoroughly annoying was something Baronaire and the others had long had to put up with because of the simple fact he excelled in his job. The world was changing and computers were shrinking even as they became more powerful. Mobile phones, text messages, the Internet ... the things which Baronaire had never thought would catch on were becoming huge and it was almost frightening that people like Stockwell were becoming more powerful with it.
“That’s great,” Baronaire said dryly. “I’m so pleased for the common kestrel. How about telling us about Marius now?”
He cast a sidelong glance to his partner, expecting for Lin to look as bored as he was, although strangely enough she looked more nervous than anything. Stockwell had always been obsessed with fish, but it looked like for the New Year he had moved onto birds. Why Lin would feel uncomfortable with the talk of the hunting methods of kestrels was beyond Baronaire, although the less time he had to spend with Stockwell the better so he had no intention of asking her about it.
“Marius?” Stockwell asked, pushing his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “Sure, Baronaire.” His fingers danced over the keyboard and information scrolled across the screen. Stockwell had already discovered and read through all of this, although it was helpful for Baronaire and Lin to be able to read over his shoulder. “He’s a rich guy, this Marius,” Stockwell said. “Owns shares in pretty much everything worth owning shares in, but doesn’t actually do any real work so far as I could find out. Ilium owns a company, but Marius’s fortune seems to have come through birth and a clever manipulation of the stock market.”
“Nothing illegal, then,” Lin said, clearly having hoped for something easy.
“Nope,” Stockwell confirmed.
“What about his family?” Baronaire asked. “You said his fortune came through birth?”
“Father owns a shipping company, and before you ask I checked that out as well. No known affiliation to drug-running or slave-trading or anything like that. I’ve run every check I can think of but there’s not even an allegation. The guy’s clean as a whistle, Baronaire.”
“Every used whistle has a trace of spit rolling around the pea, Barry. Keep searching.”
Stockwell blinked. “Baronaire, there’s nothing to find.”
“Think of this as a giant birds’ nest, Barry. A challenge. How would a ...” His gaze flitted around Stockwell’s desk and lighted on a drawing of a bird labelled with a name he didn’t recognise. “How would a Eurasian hobby get its prey this time of year?”
Stockwell was half elated Baronaire had taken an interest, half confused by the actual question. “Well most of them die because crows kill them this time of year, but I know what you mean.” Baronaire doubted that, since he didn’t know what he meant himself. Stockwell continued regardless. “They often can’t find a decent enough food supply to survive, but during the breeding season prey on small birds. Swallows and swifts.”
“Well, you have to be swift to catch the swallows.
”
Stockwell didn’t understand. Baronaire wasn’t sure he entirely did either.
“Just get back to work,” Baronaire said, and taking Lin by the arm marched her away from the young man’s desk.
She shook her arm free once they were out of earshot and stared daggers at him. “What?” she barked.
“Did I say anything?”
“I know that look, Baronaire.”
“Fine.” His nerves were frayed after speaking with Stockwell, having been unprepared to fall into the net of his new hobby, and he had no time for whatever problems Lin had. “I saw your face when Stockwell was going on about his birds. At the end there your heart rate practically doubled. Whatever woman troubles you have, I could really do without dealing with them today.”
“Woman troubles?” she asked, folding her arms. Baronaire did not have to listen to her heart rate to know she was severely hacked off with him now. The blazing eyes told him all he really needed to know.
“All right, bad choice of words,” he admitted grumpily. “Could we just get on with this?”
“Oh, guys!” Stockwell shouted.
Baronaire turned around excitedly. “You found something?”
“No. I just thought you might like to know the Eurasian hobby doesn’t restrict itself to Europe and Asia. It comes to England sometimes as well, but never seems to venture very far north. Maybe there’s something about London that it likes.”
“Good God,” Baronaire said, although frowned as once more Lin’s panic set in. He knew there was some metaphor being dredged out somewhere, but was far too tired to much care about piecing it together. “I’m going home in an hour,” he told Lin. “Or at least I should be. If I have to call Rachael to tell her I’m going to be late I’d much rather it be because we have a lead.”
“You think I like running around not getting anywhere?” Lin asked defensively. A little too defensively for Baronaire’s liking.