by Adam Carter
“Strangely enough, I’m not in the mood for this, Detective. I’m going to go file some stuff. Write a report or something.”
He stormed off, not even sure why he was so angry. Lin was acting strangely, had been since the start of this assignment. Baronaire enjoyed working with Lin, she was the most level-headed of all the officers he worked with. He got on with others, sure, and Thompson had always been his favourite; but then Lin joined them and he found his cases were closed a lot quicker, and a lot neater, when he was assigned to work alongside her. But something was bothering her, and whatever it was it was none of his business. He had more than enough to concentrate on without trying to solve all her problems for her. Not that she even wanted or likely even needed his help.
“Looking a little tense there, Charles.”
Baronaire did not bother looking up. He wasn’t in the mood for Jeremiah’s cheeriness today. It was in direct contrast to Lin’s nervous moodiness, but Jeremiah’s happy nature was more than Baronaire could take at the best of times. And right now, when all he wanted to do was go home to Rachael, this was certainly not the best of times.
“Got a lot to do, Jeremiah,” Baronaire said, intent on his paperwork.
“Charles, you’re actually starting to sound like an office worker.”
Now Baronaire did look up. Jeremiah was a tall man of dapper appearance. He liked to dress as though he was living a hundred years ago, although still somehow managed to make the look casual. The top button on his shirt was never done up and he hated wearing suits, yet Baronaire always felt underdressed when around him. Jeremiah’s eyes were electric and alive, always busy with a thousand thoughts and schemes, and their smile was offset by the false raising at the corners of his lips. He wore a thin moustache and beard which travelled to his chin but did not dare touch his cheeks. His dark hair was receding and incredibly short, lending him an almost menacing appearance. Jeremiah was one of the most pleasant people Baronaire had ever encountered. And it was all a lie.
He was also one of those rare people who could get away with calling him Charles.
“I have a job to do, Jeremiah,” Baronaire told him. “And I do it well.”
Jeremiah made a face as though he had just bitten into an orange, only to find out it was a lemon in disguise. “We’re here for one reason, Charles, don’t forget that.”
Baronaire wasn’t about to forget it, but it was not a subject to be discussed lightly about the office. “While I’m here I may as well do a good job,” he said.
“Good job, bad job, who cares really? None of this matters, Charles. It’s all transitory.”
Baronaire noticed Jeremiah was sweeping the room with his gaze, and figured it was because he was making sure the DCI wasn’t listening in on them. It was when Jeremiah’s eyes lingered on Lin for a moment, and then flitted away when she turned to meet them, that Baronaire frowned. And then Lin looked away sharply, flustered, and Baronaire’s confusion became at once shock, and blossomed into anger.
He rose so sharply from his chair that Stockwell looked up from his station, pouted, glanced about to check everyone else’s reaction, then went back to work.
“A word,” Baronaire growled to Jeremiah in a low tone. “Outside.”
“Really? I was more hoping we might ...”
“Now.”
Jeremiah backed off a step, his usual gaiety shocked out of him. He attempted a smile, but it was half-hearted even for him, and performed a mock bow. “After you, then.”
The two men left the underground office as though they were running an errand and did not speak as they walked through the car park and into the outside world. Night was falling by then, the crisp January evening air chilling to the bone, the sky threatening to provide a light dusting of snow by the morning. Except these two men did not feel changes in temperatures as did others.
They continued walking in silence for several minutes, heading through the streets of London and as far away from DCI Sanders as possible. In theory the man should not have been able to spy upon them, but one could never be too careful where the DCI was concerned. They only stopped when they reached the Thames, and Baronaire leaned against the barrier, overlooking the sights of the city. The streets were busy with cars and pedestrians, joggers and beggars. No one paid the two extra men the blindest bit of attention.
“Tell me about Lin,” Baronaire said at last.
“Lin? Well she’s about so high, listens to Queen, likes to drive a ...”
“I meant tell me about ... Lin listens to Queen?”
“Yes. Don’t you ever talk to her?”
Baronaire was supposed to be angry, not confused, although Jeremiah had a habit of doing this with him. He turned away from the river and attempted to recapture control of the situation. “How long have you been seeing her?”
“First time I saw her was when she joined a year ago.”
“I’m not laughing. You slept with her at Christmas, have you seen her since?”
Jeremiah had been confrontational, but only in a nervous way up until this point. Now his own annoyance came to the forefront. “I don’t see how this is any of your business.”
“Lin’s my friend. I won’t let you harm her.”
“Friend?” Jeremiah laughed. “So that’s what this is all about. Men like us, Charles, we don’t have friends. We have prey, because that’s what women are to us.”
“I’m not like you.”
“Why? Because you’ve fallen in love? And how long will that last? How long before your woman finds out what you are? Finds out all the strange little habits you have?”
“She knows.”
“How long before ... What do you mean she knows?”
“I told her.”
“You told her? Everything?”
“I don’t know everything!” It was true. Baronaire and Jeremiah were different to other humans. They had sharpened senses and strange abilities. They also did not drink conventional liquids or eat conventional foods. They slept in soil to replenish their energy as though they were some modern-day Antaeus. And they performed odd, perverse actions of which Baronaire had always been ashamed. But Baronaire did not know why they were like this, only that they were. Perhaps they were possessed by demons, perhaps they were part of some genetic experiment, escaped biological subjects. Baronaire did not know, had always been afraid to find out. But Jeremiah knew, as did the DCI. And neither seemed to have any intention of telling Baronaire anything.
“Well,” Jeremiah said, a little shocked. “That was ... foolish.”
“Rachael won’t tell anyone. Who’d believe her?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“You touch Lin again and I’ll kill you.” The threat was offhand but genuine enough. “Sanders has rules against his officers being involved. I don’t want to have to go to him.”
Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare. Sanders would kill me.”
“So don’t make me.”
The two men stared hard at one another for several moments, until finally Jeremiah looked away. “It was a one-off anyway. She was handy at the time. God, Charles, I never realised you were this far gone.” He looked back to him. “We need to get out. I need to get you away from these people before they humanise you entirely.”
“Why? Aren’t I human?” he growled.
Jeremiah answered with a smile. “You’re from Jupiter, old boy, didn’t I tell you?”
“Well one day I’m heading back to Jupiter to give the folk there a piece of my mind.”
“You do that. I’m serious about leaving though. We weren’t supposed to be here this long, it’s been well over ten years now. We were supposed to enter WetFish insidiously, and when Sanders dropped his guard kill him.”
“Sanders doesn’t drop his guard.”
“Tell me about it. Maybe now Dalton’s resurfaced we might have that opportunity.”
“Dalton?” Josephine Dalton was the only other being like Baronaire and Jeremiah, the only one
he knew of anyway. She had appeared and disappeared so quickly Baronaire had almost convinced himself she was nothing more than an illusion.
“Didn’t Sanders tell you?” Jeremiah asked with mock shock. “She turned up at Christmas. She was testing Sanders, I think. But she was also sending us a message. She wanted us to know something about Sanders. He has some connexion to prostitutes I think we could exploit.”
“What connexion?”
“I don’t know. But if we found out, I think we could draw him away from his comfort zone and kill him without anyone connecting the murder to us. We’ve been doing this sort of thing for over ten years, we must be getting good at it by now.”
Baronaire was well aware of Sanders’s connexion to prostitutes. Sanders envisioned a country free of crime and had set aside one little part of London he policed more heavily than any other. He had recruited a fleet of prostitutes to aid him in this endeavour, and in charge of them was Sanders’s own daughter Tammy. Tammy had no idea Sanders was her father, but Baronaire had seen it immediately. She even looked a little like him, in a strange sort of way. Baronaire had sat on this information for over a year now, and still had no intention of letting Jeremiah find out. It was the information they had been waiting all this time to discover, and Baronaire would not use it. He would not cause any harm to come to Tammy, oddly enough. Besides which, Tammy was a good friend to Rachael.
He had no idea when he had changed, but Baronaire no longer sought the murder of his DCI. He told himself he did, for everything Sanders had done and was still able to do against him. But he just didn’t care any more. No, he did care; and perhaps that was the problem.
A low buzzing sounded from Baronaire’s inside pocket and he produced his phone. The message was brief, and when Baronaire put the phone away he said gruffly to Jeremiah, “We can continue this later. Thankfully for you I have a lead on my case.”
Jeremiah shrugged and left him to it. Baronaire knew he had angered Jeremiah by his aggressiveness, but for all his airs of friendship Jeremiah was only after the welfare of one person. Himself. He didn’t care for WetFish, didn’t care for Lin, didn’t even care for Baronaire. He was using everyone, and only an idiot wouldn’t be able to see that about him. Baronaire was done with being used by him, and maybe he was done with wanting to bring down Sanders as well. Maybe fitting in was at last what Baronaire knew he had to do. He had a decent job and the love of a beautiful woman. Why would he risk throwing that away just to satisfy an urge he should have long since resolved?
That he could even still ask the question meant this was far from over yet.
CHAPTER FOUR
She had no idea where Baronaire had sneaked off to, but Lin would have been a pretty lousy detective had she not noticed he had done so with Jeremiah in tow. As soon as Stockwell found something she had called Baronaire, and had the impression the man was not in the best of moods. He had said he would come immediately, however, and that was all Lin could really have asked for. By the time she had reached her car Baronaire was waiting. She knew he could move fast when he wanted to, but the way he was standing there, looking at her as though she was his teenage daughter sneaking home after a night out on the town, made her unable to meet his eyes.
“Tell me about this connexion,” he said once they were in the car. If he wasn’t going to mention what had happened between her and Jeremiah, she was more than happy to get back to work.
Lin filled him in on what Stockwell had found out. Marius’s family were involved in shipping, that they already knew, and Marius’s fortune had been gathered mainly through gambling. He took week-long excursions to Las Vegas at least four times a year and seemed to be well-known over there as a big spender. Ilium meanwhile worked hard for his money, or at least had worked hard to build up his company and now allowed it to work for him. That they belonged to the same secret society was a given, and Lin felt she had taken the first steps to locating one of the meeting points for that society.
“Poker nights?” Baronaire asked sceptically when she told him what she knew.
Lin nodded as she drove. “A few of them gather every so often for a poker night, always in the same place. We don’t know how many exactly are involved, or whether they all turn up for each night, but Ilium and Marius are both connected to it, so it’s a safe bet.”
“And tonight just happens to be a poker night?”
“No. Tomorrow actually, but they might also use the place as a meeting point. And Marius might be thinking along the same lines as us. Remember, he doesn’t know where Ilium is either so he’s going to be grasping at the same straws we are.”
Baronaire said nothing, which meant he was processing the information. It was a long shot, but it was worth it since they were also looking for Marius. There was little chance they would find Ilium at this location, but Marius might well be a different matter entirely.
She told Baronaire what she knew of the place. It was a small pub on the outskirts of the city, with a tiny common room but a sizeable back room where they gambled. The pub was privately owned, likely by someone who was also a member of this secret upper class society. She did not think either Ilium or Marius owned the place, but it didn’t really matter who did. The point was she was certain the two men they were after frequented the place.
“Maybe we should just talk to the victim again,” Baronaire suggested after twenty minutes of silence.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve had enough of busting up pubs. And besides which, maybe she knows something.”
Lin considered that. Ilium’s crime had been simple. He had assaulted one of his interns, working late at the office. He had done nothing to conceal the crime, had made no attempt to kill or bribe the girl, no attempt to silence her at all. He had even laughed after he had finished his attack and told her to turn out the lights when she left so she didn’t waste his money. Perhaps Ilium had never believed she would have gone to the police, or perhaps he knew he would get off the charge. Either way, the case had come to court and Ilium had showed not the slightest bit of remorse. The girl was brought out and like so many other victims had broken down in the witness box. Ilium’s lawyer had torn into her, emotionally shredded her, and convinced the jury the girl had enticed Donald Ilium into sexual liaisons with him with the intention of blackmail. The jury had delivered a verdict of not guilty and Ilium had smiled on his way out the door.
Lin had seen that part on the news. When Sanders had handed her and Baronaire the case she had been grateful, since she wanted nothing more than to wipe the smirk off his face. Just how she was going to do that she had no clue, but she figured Baronaire might have some ideas.
How Marius fit into all of this she could not say. According to Marius he was a part of the same circle as Ilium and had been disgusted by the man’s actions. Why he was looking for Ilium remained a mystery. If it was to dispense justice Lin was inclined to just leave him to it; it would save having to frame someone for killing Ilium if Marius was willing to do it for free. However, neither she nor Baronaire believed Marius in the slightest. Whatever he wanted Ilium for, it certainly wasn’t to shake the man’s hand, but Lin was not convinced Marius intended to kill him.
They pulled up a street away from their destination. It was approaching ten thirty and there was every chance the place would be closing up. If it was indeed a private establishment there was no guarantee it would even be open. Walking the final stretch of road Lin could see there was a light on, and was half tempted to just leave Baronaire to this next part. She did not quite understand how, but Baronaire seemed to excel in the night, and ten thirty seemed a pretty good time for him, especially with how dark it was in the winter. She had come to accept that he could do things ordinary people could not, although he had never volunteered any reason as to why and she had never asked. It was just good that he could in fact do them, for he had saved her bacon on more than one occasion and she would be somewhat ungrateful were she to suddenly start questioning him on how he could leap
across rooftops the way he did, or how he had learned such intense powers of hypnosis.
He was looking at her strangely then and she wondered whether she should add telepathy to that list, although he said, “I really don’t want to tell you what do to, Lin, but Jeremiah is a dangerous man. I know you’re an adult, but I don’t think you quite understand what he is.”
“I’m not having this conversation, Baronaire,” she said stonily.
“Fine,” he said, genuinely accepting the answer. “But that man is a monster, I’m not even convinced he’s a man at all.” He seemed to think he had said too much, although Lin had no idea what he was talking about. If he was trying to say Jeremiah was a monster, weren’t they all? Their jobs involved legally murdering people, and yes she knew that was a contradiction in terms. To the world at large it would be murder, but that it was lawful hardly changed the fact of what they did. If any other department in the police force found out what they did they would be shut down. With any luck Sanders had an escape route planned for them all and they could just disappear, although there was every chance they would all wind up in prison, sharing cells with those they had helped to put away.
It was a terrifying thought, but one which always pushed Lin and likely every other officer at the bunker into doing their best not to be found out.
Still, Baronaire was a friend and he was trying to look out for her. She had to appreciate that. “I’m not seeing him any more,” she told him in a small voice. “It was just the one time, believe me.”
She did not owe him even that much of an explanation, but contrary to all the rules she and Baronaire were friends. Sometimes one simply could not alter the inevitable.
They moved together for the pub and Baronaire tried the handle. The door was not locked, or if it was Baronaire managed to snap it without making a noise – which she wouldn’t have put past him actually. The room within was small indeed, smaller than Stockwell had led her to believe, and was probably only around six metres square. There was a tiny bar set against one wall and a door in another. A table sat against a third wall and there was a scattering of chairs; but while there were beer mats upon the table and bar there was no sign of any drinks. The entire place was empty and dark, although before Lin could take in much of anything else a door she had not noticed behind the bar opened and a stocky man waddled out.