Camwolf

by J. L. Merrow

  Crack raised both eyebrows. So it wasn’t just Tiff who couldn’t raise one on its own, she thought, pleased. “Squats? What, spent the rent money on drugs and pretty boys?”

  “Yeah, right. No. I just need to know—is there some sort of network, or word-of-mouth, or something? I mean, how do people find out about places?”

  “What’s this got to do with Julian Lauder?”

  Bugger. “I think he might be in one, all right? With…with an ex-boyfriend.”

  Crack nodded as if that’d entirely satisfied his curiosity. Then he tossed his hair back again and looked straight at her, green eyes piercing. “Why should I help you find him if he doesn’t want to be found?”

  “Because the boyfriend’s a bastard who used to beat him up.” She felt horrible, giving away Julian’s secrets like that. She should have thought of something else. Sod it. There wasn’t time to worry about stuff like that. Crack blinked. Tiff could almost see him thinking “But why would he stay with him, then?” like he’d never heard of domestic abuse before. “So, are you going to help me, or what?” she demanded.

  Crack unfolded himself and stood, jamming his hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. “When do you think the boyfriend moved in?”

  Just one more thing Tiff didn’t know. She resisted the urge to snap at Crack and thought for a moment. “Could have been any time. But say around the start of term? Or just after, maybe. I don’t think he’d have come here before Julian did.”

  Crack nodded, his black hair falling over his eyes. He tossed it back to hang over his left ear again. “Okay. That makes it simpler. Are you eating in Hall tonight?”

  “Yes. You think you’ll have had time to ask around by then?” Tiff seemed suddenly to have butterflies in her stomach.

  Crack started to nod again, then seemed think better of it. Maybe his neck was aching from all that hair-tossing. “Yeah. So I’ll see you tonight, right?”

  “Right.” Tiff remembered her manners. “Thanks.” She drew Julian’s jacket closer around herself. All the sunshine had faded from the sky, and it was starting to look like rain. She shivered and headed back to her room.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nick was bone-weary as he walked stiffly through the Porter’s Lodge on his return from the University Arms. Despite determinedly ignoring everyone he passed, he didn’t make it even halfway to his rooms before he was accosted.

  “Sewell? Been looking for you.” It was Angus Lemon. And all right, Nick’s Most Hated People list might have become quite a lot longer in recent weeks, but Angus Bloody Lemon was still impressively near the top of it.

  “Yes?” Nick replied brusquely, not caring that he sounded rude.

  “You’re wanted in the Master’s Lodge. Police are here again.”

  Icy fingers twisted Nick’s intestines into tight knots as he hurried to the Master’s Lodge.

  He was ushered up to the same room as before, where Detective Inspector Phillips sat at the desk as if he hadn’t moved since yesterday, wearing the same suspicious look as he watched Nick come in. This time, though, he wasn’t alone. A uniformed constable stood in one corner, hands clasped behind his back. Something in his posture made Nick think of medieval executioners, but even without this imagery, it seemed ominous that Phillips had apparently felt the need to bring in reinforcements.

  Phillips evidently tracked Nick’s gaze. “Oh, Constable Rupresh will be with us today. Sit down, please, Dr. Sewell.” He’d called Nick by his academic title. That could either be good, or it could be very bad indeed.

  Or it could mean absolutely nothing at all, Nick reminded himself angrily. He sat. “Any news?”

  Phillips nodded. “We’ve been investigating last Saturday’s crime scene and the surrounding area, and one or two things have come to light.” He turned to his subordinate. “Rupresh?”

  The constable demonstrated that he was not, in fact, made of stone. Moving over to the side of the room, he pulled a large zip-locked bag out of a briefcase. Nick’s heart stilled. The bag contained an item of clothing that seemed horribly familiar. Phillips took the bag and laid it upon the desk between them. “Would you say, Mr. Sewell, that you’ve seen this before?”

  Nick cleared his throat. “It looks—it looks like Julian’s sweater. Where did you get it?”

  Phillips didn’t speak for a moment, his lips tight. “Two streets away from the site of the murder. Would you care to give it a closer examination, Mr. Sewell?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he unzipped the bag and shook out the turtleneck sweater Julian had been wearing Saturday night. Julian’s scent flooded the room, and Nick made a convulsive movement towards the sweater, which he quickly aborted.

  He didn’t dare to hope that it had gone unnoticed. But Christ, that scent… Maybe a scientist could have analysed it, described each component. How many parts musk, how many parts fabric softener, how many parts expensive toiletries. To Nick, however, it was more an emotion in olfactory form, an elemental mixture of pack and mate and mine, mingled with a heartbreaking strain of stolen and lost. Couldn’t Phillips smell it? How could something so powerful not affect him?

  Had the man no feelings at all?

  “Would you be able to confirm that this is Mr. Lauder’s sweater?” Phillips asked mildly.

  Nick blinked, his mind reluctantly returning from the language of his senses to that of the human world. “Yes. It’s Julian’s.” He drew in a shuddering breath, trying to make himself think as well as feel and react. “There’s no blood,” he added with a mix of relief and a strange disquiet he couldn’t, as yet, explain.

  “Very observant of you, Mr. Sewell.” Damn it. Phillips was looking at him with an odd sort of stillness. As if he was a wolf, about to pounce. “Can you think of any reason why Mr. Lauder might want to get rid of his clothing shortly after a murder had taken place?”

  “You can’t think Julian did it!” Nick snapped, hoping he’d only imagined the trailing off of his voice into a questioning tone at the end. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Leaning forward on his elbows, Phillips didn’t drop his gaze from Nick’s face for an instant. “Now, I’m not suggesting it was premeditated murder. You said yourself that Mr. Lauder was promiscuous. Perhaps this other young man had just found out how free Mr. Lauder was with his favours? It’s easy to imagine a quarrel getting out of hand—”

  “You obviously don’t have the first idea what Julian is like. I told you, he doesn’t fight. Bash in a man’s skull and break his neck? Don’t make me laugh!”

  “If you wouldn’t mind sitting down again, Mr. Sewell,” Phillips said in a calm, even voice that made Nick want to rip his face off. “Mr. Sewell?” he repeated in a steelier tone, and abruptly Nick realised just how very thin was the ice upon which he was skating.

  He sat down shakily. “It’s all baseless speculation in any case,” Nick protested, trying to remain calm. “Julian wasn’t seeing anyone except me.”

  “Of course not, Mr. Sewell. Although one can never be sure, can one? Particularly with a young man of Mr. Lauder’s…history.”

  “I’m sure!” Nick snapped and felt like an idiot for doing so. He could hardly tell Phillips that he’d have smelled it on Julian, had he been cheating on him. “I suppose now you’ll say I did it and killed Julian too?” he muttered bitterly.

  “Jealousy can make a man do things he wouldn’t ordinarily dream of,” Phillips mused.

  It wasn’t so much his words as his apparently sympathetic tone that made Nick’s rage flare once more. “Inspector Phillips, I am a fellow of a Cambridge college. I’ve got more letters after my name than are bloody well in it. I am quite capable of recognising your nasty little mind games.”

  Phillips’ jaw tightened, Nick was pleased to see. “Nevertheless, Dr. Sewell, I’m sure you won’t mind my asking you a few more questions.” He cocked his head to one side. The late autumn sunshine trickling half-heartedly through the leaded windows cast eerie sha
dows on his face, making his lean features appear lopsided and sinister. “Perhaps we might just go over the details of your argument with Mr. Lauder one more time?”

  Nick felt his hackles rise, at the same time as a hollow feeling made itself known in the pit of his stomach. Games within games. Was this bastard ever going to stop playing with him?

  By the time Nick escaped from the Master’s Lodge, he felt more wrung out than he had after his long-ago finals. Phillips had gone over the events of that awful night in ever more excruciating, mind-numbing detail, obviously hoping to catch Nick in a slip of some kind. The worst of it was, Nick was quite aware he’d been within a hairsbreadth of making one several times over. Not the sort of slip Phillips had been looking for, but he had no doubt the man would be highly interested all the same. After all, evidence of insanity was all grist to the crime-solving mill, wasn’t it? And believing oneself a werewolf was quite clearly insane.

  Nick gave a choking half-laugh, making a couple of students nearby give him startled looks and quicken their pace through Main Court.

  He wasn’t sure if his rooms, when he finally reached them, felt more like a haven or a prison. Pacing about, unable to settle to anything and wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now, Nick was almost relieved when the phone rang.

  “Dr. Sewell? It’s the Porter’s Lodge here. Some gentlemen to see you—a Mr. Herrscher and two companions. Will it be all right to direct them to your rooms?”

  “I—yes.” Nick had been about to offer to come down and meet them, as he would have done for any other visitors, but decided it might be better not to conduct any more business in public than could be helped. Especially not this sort of business.

  Herrscher’s knock, when it came, was loud and aggressive. Nick took a deep breath, tried to rein in his irritation, and opened the door. The man in the middle must be Herrscher—he had an unmistakeable aura of command. He was tall, blond, broad-shouldered—in fact he seemed more Nordic than Teutonic. Nick could easily imagine the man in an apocryphal horned helmet, raping and pillaging his way around the English coast. He was flanked by a couple of what Nick could only have described as henchmen. Nick could feel his hackles rising already as he was faced by three strange wolves—for that, they undoubtedly were—on his territory. “Come in,” he said, trying to conceal his reluctance to allow them over the threshold.

  Closing the door behind them only served to emphasize how small the room was with four full-grown werewolves inside. Herrscher nodded at Nick, but made no move to step forward and shake hands. “This is Luther,” he said curtly, inclining his head about a millimeter to his right. He is my lieutenant, you would say.”

  “I would?” Nick looked at the bulky man. “I thought ‘enforcer’ was the common term these days. Although my knowledge of gangland slang is undoubtedly out-of-date.”

  Herrscher ignored the sarcasm. “And this is Wahl. He will track Schräger and the boy.” Wahl was a slender man with over-long brown hair and a moustache. He looked ridiculously small next to Herrscher and Luther.

  Bloody marvellous, Nick thought to himself. The muscle and the sniffer dog. “You seem very confident in his abilities.”

  “Yes.”

  Nick gave him a steady look, trying not to let his antipathy show. Apparently Herrscher had no such scruples. “You are my son’s lover?” he asked aggressively.

  “Yes,” Nick said tightly. Obviously Herrscher had paused to acquaint himself with college gossip on arrival. Or possibly the police had told him. Not that it mattered which.

  Herrscher sneered down at him. “You are not what I would have expected.”

  Abruptly Nick couldn’t care less about maintaining the illusion of politeness. “No? Were you expecting something more like that sadistic bastard you turned him over to?” His hands were clenched into fists, and he trembled with the effort of not launching himself at the man.

  Herrscher gave an approving smile that made Nick feel sick to his stomach. “So. You are stronger than you look. Good. Schräger exceeded his authority and was disciplined for it.”

  Schräger. That must be the bastard who’d given Julian those scars. “Gave him a good thrashing, did you?” Nick asked, unable to keep the disgust out of his tone.

  “You have not a pack, I think?” The smug expression didn’t change. “You know nothing of discipline.”

  “And you know nothing about fatherhood.”

  Herrscher’s eyes narrowed. “I had thought you would wish my help in finding the boy. Perhaps I am wrong.”

  Nick fought down the instincts that screamed at him to rip out the bastard’s throat. “You know something? Then tell me, damn you!”

  “Schräger has disappeared also.”

  Nick took in a deep, shuddering breath as he was hit with a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. The thought of Julian with that bastard made him want to throw up—but if Schräger had him, Julian was probably alive.

  “When?”

  Herrscher shrugged. “For a few months. Schräger had become a troublemaker. It became necessary to discipline him further in the eyes of the pack. But he is not a man who takes these things well. When he disappeared, it was not a surprise.”

  Then he could have been the wolf on Coe Fen—could certainly have been Tiff’s shadow in the bicycle sheds. Had he come looking for revenge on Herrscher via his son? Or had he just wanted to salve his ego with someone he’d always been able to dominate? Nick felt physically sick. “Wait—you knew, and you did nothing to warn Julian? Have you told the police this? Given them a description of the man?”

  “This is not a matter for the police. It is unfortunate that they have become involved. And I had no grounds to believe that he would seek my son.”

  “Not a matter for the police? Are you mad? This man is a killer. We need to find Julian, quickly.”

  “And we will find him. Do you wish for your true nature to be revealed, Dr. Sewell? I will not risk the liberty of my pack in any way. It is unlikely that Schräger will harm the boy.”

  Nick stared. “I think, Herrscher, that we have very different definitions of the word harm. Also of acceptable risk.”

  Herrscher sneered. “I would agree with you there, Dr. Sewell. But we do not even know if indeed it is Schräger who has him. You have grounds to believe that it is him?”

  “I have reason to believe a wolf has been stalking Julian, yes.” Nick was loath to bring Tiffany into this as a witness. He wouldn’t wish Herrscher on his worst enemy, let alone an eighteen-year-old girl whose only crime was wearing the wrong jacket.

  “And you have information on this wolf’s whereabouts?” he persisted.

  “A sighting here in the college—which is no use at all—and another on Coe Fen. But I’ve searched around the Fen Causeway area—it’s like looking for a needle in a bloody haystack.” Nick’s jaw clenched at having to admit his failure to Herrscher.

  “You scented another wolf?”

  “Yes.” Nick felt his face twist as he snarled the word.

  “Then we will start there. If it is Schräger, then we will know. And we will track him.”

  “What makes you think you’ll do any better than I did?”

  Herrscher just looked at him, a smug smile playing about his lips that made Nick want to rip his face off. “We have a little more experience, I think,” he said at last, his tone inoffensive to the point of insult.

  Clenching his teeth until his jaws ached, Nick forced himself to think of practicalities. “How will I reach you, if I need to?” Herrscher reached into his pocket for a mobile phone, and they exchanged numbers. “Where are you staying?” Nick asked, dismally failing to keep his tone conversational.

  “Outside of town. A house in a village. It is more private than a hotel.”

  “You managed to arrange that very quickly.”

  Herrscher cocked his head to one side, and for a ghastly moment Nick could actually see some resemblance to Julian. “I did not think you wished me to come here to discuss ren
tal arrangements, Dr. Sewell, but to find the boy. Or was I mistaken?”

  Nick took an involuntary step forward, his fists clenching. The two henchmen mirrored his movement, and Herrscher, damn him, laughed. “We will go, I think. Kommt.” He turned and led the way from Nick’s rooms. The bulky one, Luther, backed out slowly, his eyes tracking Nick until the door closed behind them.

  Exhausted, Nick sank into a chair. He jerked at the sound of a knock on the door. “What?” he yelled, then recollecting himself, “Come in.”

  Faces carefully schooled into blandness, a group of second-years trooped in. Nick looked at his watch. Their supervision should have started ten minutes ago, he realised. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to will himself calmer. When he opened them again, three white faces were staring at him. “Well, sit down.” he snapped.

  They scrambled to obey. “Dr. Sewell?” Erica Sumner (a bit of a no-hoper; possibly Daddy played golf with Angus Lemon) had a bit of a tremor in her voice. “Um, I’m afraid I didn’t manage to do all the questions you set last time—”

  Stretched to its limit, Nick’s temper broke with an almost audible twang. “What the hell are you doing here today, then?” he snarled. “For Christ’s sake, why do I even bother?”

  Erica flinched back from him and made a small sound in the back of her throat. Nick realised he was standing there with his fists clenched, shouting down into the face of a frightened, teenage girl. Appalled, for a moment he could only stand there, staring into her widened eyes. Just like a rabbit, his treacherous wolf-brain supplied. Sitting there, waiting to have her throat ripped out…

  Christ, what the hell was happening to him?

  Nick stepped back and back again. “The supervision is cancelled.” His desk made a good, solid barrier between him and the students, with their provocative scents and confusing body language. “I am unwell. Alternative arrangements will be made for you at a later date.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Dr. Sewell…?”