Shadow of the Knife

by Jane Fletcher

  “I’m sorry. I thought you’d be out at Broken Hills.”

  “Sorry?”

  “It’s just the way it works out.”

  Hal pulled away and stared into Ellen’s eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s...” Ellen took a deep breath. “I don’t have a choice. I mean, I really want to spend some time with you.” The words were not mere mollifying sweet talk. Her whole groin was aching. Ellen wanted Hal with an intensity that surprised her. Absurdly, she found herself making pointless calculations about missing the barge and taking another, a day—a week later. Ellen knocked the thoughts aside.

  “But?”

  “But you know how important what I’m doing is. And that I can’t talk about it. I’ve got to go away for a few days.”

  “How long is a few?”

  “Eight or so.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t say.”

  Hal growled and shook her. “That’s no sort of answer.”

  “It’s the best I can give. Anyway, what are you doing in town?”

  “Worrying about you.”

  “How did you know—”

  Hal looped an arm through Ellen’s trying to drag her into a walk. “Let’s go to a tavern and talk.”

  “I haven’t got time.”

  “You can spare a half hour,” Hal pleaded, her tone one of exasperation.

  “The barge is going soon. I’ve got to be on it.”

  Hal disengaged her arm and stepped back. “You’re going to Eastford.”

  “How...”

  “Oh, come on! It’s not complex arithmetic. Two days downstream with the current. A couple of days farting about on your secret business, whatever it is, and then four days upstream with the wind, if you’re lucky. I can do the sums. There’s nowhere else you could be going.”

  Ellen shrugged. “Okay, I’ll—”

  Hal again enveloped Ellen in a fierce hug, with an edge of desperation. Hal’s hands clung to Ellen’s back and her head burrowed into Ellen’s neck. “Be careful. I want you to be so fucking careful.”

  “I will.”

  “It’s not safe there.” Hal shook Ellen without releasing her grip. Her words were muffled in the collar of Ellen’s shirt. “I don’t care what you’re supposed to be doing in Eastford. Just find a nice inn, lock yourself in your room for a few days and then come back here and say you failed. No one will hold it against you.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s my duty.”

  “So?”

  “If I wasn’t prepared to do the job then I wouldn’t have the nerve to take the salary.”

  “You are just too fucking...” Hal released her grip and spun away to face a wall. She crossed her forearms on the brickwork at head height as a cushion for her forehead. Her hands made tight fists. The pose was tense, almost vulnerable, out of character with Hal’s normal wry nonchalance.

  “Too fucking what?”

  “Too fucking upright to know when to duck.”

  Ellen slipped her arms around Hal from behind and gently kissed the back of her neck. “I’ll be careful, I promise. And I’ll be back in a few days.”

  Hal dropped her arms and leaned against Ellen. Her shoulders sagged. “That’s what they all say.”

  *

  Eastford was huge. Ellen stood on the docks, daunted by the scale. The awe had set in on the barge, when the Tamer had joined with the Little Liffy River and Ellen had her first view of the town. They had drifted on, past building after building after building, taking ages to reach the final mooring at the central docks. Eastford was at least twenty times the size of Roadsend. The population must number in the tens of thousands. Ellen did not have the slightest idea where anything or anybody was, and although getting directions to the Militia station should be straightforward, Susan Lewis was sure to be a lot harder to find.

  Ellen took a deep breath and hoisted her pack onto her shoulder. Then, amid the scramble of activity on the quay, she caught a glimpse of a familiar black shirt. She hurried after.

  “Excuse me. I want to get to the Militia station.”

  The Eastford patrolwoman turned ponderously to face Ellen. She was a tall, square-faced woman in her mid-thirties, with a bellicose manner, but her officious scowl became marginally more receptive at the sight of Ellen’s uniform.

  “It’s up by the temple.” Her hand flicked in what was presumably the right direction, although the gesture looked more like someone flexing a cramped wrist.

  “And the temple is...?”

  “You not been to Eastford before?”

  “No.”

  Judging by her reaction, the Militiawoman found this amusing. She pointed at the skyline. “That’s the roof of the temple. It’s the tallest building in Eastford, so you can’t miss it. The station is on the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  The Eastford Militia station, when Ellen found it, also dwarfed the one in Roadsend. However, the sight of half-empty mugs of tea growing cold on the briefing room table, the sound of drunken snores from the lockup, and the smell of old boots was reassuringly the same. Her letter of introduction from Major Kallim quickly got Ellen a meeting with the senior officer in charge.

  Captain Gomez sat behind her desk. She spent a minute reading the letter and then turned it over and spent nearly as long studying the back, even though it was blank. At last she put the sheet of paper down and looked up at Ellen.

  “So. Some Rangers get hurt, and finally they’re going to do something. But they still want the Militia to do all the running around. Who did you piss off to get landed with this?”

  “Um...” It was not the first question Ellen had expected. “I’m not sure what it says in the letter, ma’am, but—”

  “It says not a damned thing, except that I’ve got to help you as much as I can. But the address is the Roadsend Ranger barracks, and I’ve been hearing the news on the grapevine, the same as everyone else has.”

  Ellen frantically tried to think of a suitable response, and failed.

  “How old are you? Eighteen?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Captain Gomez sighed. “You look like a decent kid. So I tell you what, I’m going to do my best to help you make it to nineteen.” She pointed to a chair. “Sit down.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Nah—it’s just that I don’t want a crick in my neck from looking up at you, and this isn’t going to be quick. I’m going to be helpful beyond your wildest dreams.”

  Ellen shunted the chair away from the wall. Gomez was clearly bitter and showing it far more than was appropriate between a senior officer and a newly promoted patrolwoman. Yet Ellen did not get the feeling that the captain was lax or unintelligent, or that she had reached her current state of cynicism without a fight.

  Gomez waited until Ellen was seated before continuing. “You’re here because of the Mad Butcher. Okay. I’ll start with a history lesson. Eastford. It’s a nice town. Enough action to stop us from getting bored, but nothing we couldn’t handle. And if there was trouble, we always knew where to start looking—the Red Dog Inn. The innkeeper was a fence by the name of Svetlana Parker, and she allowed any sort of scum the free run of her place.”

  Ellen said nothing, although the casual acceptance surprised her. In Roadsend, any tavern permitting flagrant law breaking would have been closed down within days.

  “About ten years ago, a new girl moved into town and started working for Parker. First off as a debt collector, then a bit more imaginatively collecting money off people who didn’t actually owe it. Madeline Bucher was her name. I’ve dealt with plenty of thugs, but none who’ve come close to her for cold-blooded viciousness. When she started slicing people up, she got known as the Mad Butcher. It all got very nasty for a while at the Dog, and we were trying to work out what to do. Even thinking about shutting the Dog down. Then Parker had an accident. A very permanent sort of accident.”

>   “Did the Butcher kill her?”

  “She might have. She certainly took advantage of it. She became the new boss at the Red Dog. For a while it was quiet. Then we started finding bodies, dumped in the slums. But they were known villains, so we weren’t overly bothered. The word we got was that a gang war was going on. The crooks fighting among themselves. And, like fools, we thought, ‘Great. Let them wipe each other out.’ We never stopped to think what would happen when there was a winner.”

  Gomez pursed her lips. “The winner was Madeline Bucher—the Mad Butcher. She was the one who started it, and she was the only one who understood where it was going. She had her tactics worked out. First kill enough people to get the right atmosphere of fear. Then dole out a few beatings. The victims were too scared to report the crime, in case they were given worse, and bingo—her target audience knew that her gang were above the law. Once she was secure, she built up her organization. And she’s good at it. I’ll give her that. If she was an honest businesswoman, she’d be a damned successful one. Her gang called themselves the Knives—the Butcher’s Knives. Just so we’d know they’ve got a sense of humor.”

  “You could arrest her. Surely her organization would crumple.”

  “She’s got us beat.” Gomez looked sick. “It was a year after Parker died, when all the fuss seemed to be dying down, that the first Militiawoman was murdered. And then a second. And a third.”

  “We heard the rumors.”

  “And rumors were all you heard, right? Any official report would have claimed it was three coincidental deaths with no link between them.”

  Ellen nodded. “That’s what our lieutenant told us, and she said it stood to reason that if a gang had murdered three Militiawomen, then something would have been done about it.”

  “Yeah, well, somebody was making damned certain that nothing happened. We were left on our own to fight the gang. We lost. And do you know the day I knew we’d lost?”

  “When?” Ellen frowned, confused.

  “The day one of my patrolwomen turned up for work with a face covered in cuts and bruises, and she claimed she’d had a run-in with an unknown drunk who got away.”

  “You think she’d really been attacked by the gang?”

  “What do you think? Now folk know the Butcher’s women can beat up the Militia and get away with it. Who’d dare testify against her even if we did bring her in?”

  Ellen looked down at her hands, shocked. “But surely, if you know the Red Dog Inn is her base, you could mount a surprise raid and arrest everyone there. If you got the entire gang in the lockup, people wouldn’t be afraid to come forward.”

  “The surprise is the tricky bit. I’ve got forty-two women in the Militia here. About a quarter of them I can depend on to do their duty to the letter. They’re the ones I lie awake at night worrying about. The rest will look the other way if the Knives tell them to. And you can be sure the Butcher knows who’s in which group. Then I’ve got one or two women who’ve gone over to the gang. They take bribes and pass on information. I don’t know who they are, but I know they’re there. They’d inform the Butcher if I tried to raid the Dog.”

  “You seriously...” Ellen was too stunned to finish.

  “And of course, our other big problem is they know where we live. My youngest kid is now twelve, just left school. On the way to class, four years back, a rough-looking woman stopped her in the street and gave her a sealed letter to pass on to me.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It was blank. There was no need to say anything.” Gomez met Ellen’s eyes. “Have you got family back in Roadsend?”

  “My parents.” Ellen felt ice crystallizing in her guts.

  “You care about them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you need to think very carefully about what you’re going to do.” Gomez leaned back in her chair. “So, what exactly do you want to do in Eastford?”

  Ellen caught her lip in her teeth. She was not supposed to discuss details of the investigation with other members of the Militia, but there was not the slightest chance of achieving anything in Eastford without some help and local knowledge.

  “I’m trying to find a woman. One of the Knives.”

  “Who?”

  “Her name is Susan Lewis. She does an important job in the gang, but I don’t know anything else about her.”

  “Susan Lewis?” Gomez’s forehead knotted in concentration, but then she shook her head. “That’s not a name I know. Why do you want to find her in particular, if you know so little about her?”

  “It’s not so much her, but I think another Knife will be with her, and that’s the person I really want to catch. Her name is Adeola Eriksen—usually answers to Ade.”

  “Ah. Now that one I do recognize. She’s not been in the gang for long, but she’s already getting a reputation. Another vicious little brute. I imagine her and the Butcher get along like a house on fire.”

  “Have you seen her recently?”

  “No. In fact, I’d heard a rumor that she was out of town.” Gomez tilted her head to one side. “Did she show up in Roadsend?”

  “Yes. It’s where she’s from originally. We’ve had a lot of dealings with her, and the rest of her family.”

  “Okay. So back to my first question, what are you going to do?”

  “I guess I could check out this Red Dog Inn and see—”

  Ellen broke off at the captain’s pained expression. Gomez had closed her eyes and was shaking her head. “Have you listened to what I’ve said? If you’re going to get yourself killed, you should at least try to do it in Roadsend so your parents won’t have so far to go to visit your grave.”

  “I’ve got to do something.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s my...” Ellen frowned, unsure what to say.

  “Do you want to know the one thought that’s kept me going over the last few years?”

  “What?”

  “It was knowing that one day the Mad Butcher would go too far, and she’d run afoul of the Rangers. They’re the people who should have been sent here, right back when the first of my women was murdered. They’ve got no family on hand to threaten, and they are way too tightly knit to crack apart and intimidate. Kill one and the rest will hunt you down, through this world and the next. The Rangers have to finish her, because nobody else can do it.”

  Ellen frowned. “You’ve got a temple here in Eastford. Couldn’t the Guards have helped you?”

  Gomez snorted in derision. “Oh, they’re as incorruptible and fearless as you could wish. They’re all so damn sure the Goddess is watching over them. But they’re no damned use for anything other than standing around looking pretty. And the Butcher’s been very careful not to interfere with them or the Sisterhood. She even gave some big donations to the temple funds. But my real problem is…” Gomez hesitated, clearly debating whether to continue. “Ah, what the fuck. I told you someone made sure the murder of my women was put down to a coincidence.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t prove a thing, but I’m sure the Butcher has the town mayor in her pocket.”

  “The mayor?” Ellen was astounded at the seriousness of the accusation.

  “Yeah. She changed the rules of operation so I can’t do a frigging thing without her agreement. She refused to sign every request for more support from HQ. She was the one who insisted the murders weren’t related. She tore up each report I wrote and sent off her own little make-believe versions instead.”

  “Is she allowed to do that?” It was certainly not the way things worked in Roadsend.

  “If she wants.” Gomez shrugged. “It’s one of those obscure rules that most people don’t know exists. The town council pay for the Militia, so Mayor Richards can insist on the last word on everything. But she doesn’t pay for the Rangers, and they aren’t going to have to ask her permission. The Butcher has either bought or scared Mayor Richards, but now it won’t do her any good—not with twenty-nine Rangers lying in their
graves.”

  “It was only twenty-one.” Ellen hesitated. Only did not sound like the right word to use.

  “Numbers always get bigger on the grapevine. But it’s still a lot of dead women. The Butcher obviously reckoned the Rangers wouldn’t be intimidated easily. Just killing two or three wouldn’t be enough to scare the rest off. That’s why she tried to wipe out a whole squadron. So the Rangers would be too frightened to dare stand up to her again.” A humorless grin spread across Gomez’s face. “She’s going to be so surprised when she finds out it hasn’t worked. And it hasn’t, has it?”

  Ellen shook her head. “No.”

  “Do you want my advice?”

  “What?”

  “My cousin owns an inn on the other side of the river. The Ace of Spades. It’s a nice little establishment—quiet. The beer’s all right. I’ll give you directions and a note. Set yourself up in her taproom for a couple of days. Then go back to Roadsend and tell Major Whatever that you couldn’t find Susan Lewis. The Rangers will get the Mad Butcher in the end. You can be sure of that. They don’t need you to get yourself killed helping them.”

  *

  The borrowed trousers were a few centimeters too short, leaving a gap at Ellen’s ankles, and the shirt could have done with a good wash, but the net effect left Ellen feeling nicely inconspicuous on the dirty, run-down street. She had not been surprised to learn that the Red Dog Inn was situated in the seedy part of town.

  A mist of drizzle started to fall as Ellen got within sight of the Inn. Although true nightfall was still an hour away, a blanket of cloud hid the sun, and the light was fading. She hunched her shoulders against the cold and pushed open the door to the taproom.

  Despite the gloom, no lanterns were yet lit inside. Three long tables filled most of the floor space, with a couple of smaller ones in an alcove at the rear. A door to one side clearly led to another room. A woman was leaning against the wall beside it, projecting an air of surly watchfulness, making it clear she was the doorkeeper and that any attempt to go through uninvited would not be permitted.