The Mutilated Merchant (The Edrin Loft Mysteries Book 1)

by Jon Evans

  He didn't want to step on anything the killer had left behind that could be used to identify him. Once he reached the window, he looked out, into the pre-dawn gloom, quickly deciding that the glass was too grimy for anyone to have seen the murder from outside.

  Then he swiftly looked over the sills and handles of the two windows that could be opened. Once he'd satisfied himself they hadn't been splattered by blood or left ajar by a fleeing murderer, he flung them wide. The crisp morning air rushed in, and the fetid stench began to lessen if only a fraction.

  Edrin had been developing his own philosophy on how crimes should be solved, since shortly after discovering the Academy was ill-equipped to provide him with one. His ideas had much to do with the notion that criminals were apt to be exposed by the clues that they left behind. Subtle hints as to their person that a sharp mind could find, if only they were trained to do so and could understand the need.

  Loft was passionate about the techniques and methodologies he had been developing, and this looked like an excellent opportunity to test them. He spent a good deal of his free time making notes in his journals about how criminals might think, what they might do and how you seek to identify the perpetrator of various types of crimes.

  A murderer or thief might leave marks, items or other signs of their passing. There could be traces of their clothing, a weapon they left behind or something that pointed to their reason for committing the crime. He reasoned that if he could identify all such clues, he would always be able to identify the culprit.

  Thus his interest in inspecting the windows. It didn't seem like a likely point for the murderer to enter or exit the room as the first floor extended about a foot into the street beyond the ground floor. He couldn't see a way that even the most accomplished burglar could gain access and the drop to the cobbles below would be at best lethal and at worst, lethal very slowly.

  Loft was not a burglar though, and he didn't want to make an assumption just because he didn't know how one would get in through this window. Better to be thorough and so he checked the windows with an open mind. No-one had touched the handles, the sills or the glass, with bloodied hands or crawled through in clothes with snagged on the fittings.

  He pulled out a notebook and made some brief remarks with a pencil. In part as an aide-memoire and in part to stand at the window a little longer.

  The fresh air wafted in and brought sweet relief from the sickly miasma of death that hung over the bed. He took a deep lungful of clean air and turned back to the horrible task that awaited them.

  Sergeant Gurnt seemed all nonchalance and composure, but he was certain she'd been watching him like a hawk. She would be trying to size him up, waiting for him to reveal his weakness or puke all over the floor at the sight of the corpse. Doubtless, she thought of him as some young idiot, so fresh out of the Academy that he'd not yet developed the cast-iron stomach of an experienced Watch officer.

  "As I said, Sir, I doubt he's from the city states. We've got quite a few southerners like him in the city. More than when I was a kid I think, they stand out like a sore thumb with that weird skin of theirs and their funny clothes but I ain't ever had to arrest one or heard a peep of trouble from one. Mind you, they're mostly merchants and the like, so their crimes are a bit out, well, outside our field of expertise, I suppose you could say," she said, apparently trying to be helpful.

  "Well, he must have been here a day or two to reek like this, wouldn't you say, Sergeant?" Edrin mused thoughtfully.

  "Probably. We're barely out of winter, and it's been quite chilly the last few nights. I've seen bodies go all runny in less than a day out somewhere with a lot of sunlight. In here, with the weather we've had, though, I think a couple of days is a good guess," she responded.

  Edrin wondered if she was trying to be usefully descriptive or see if she could get the new boy to lose his breakfast on the first day. She'd be out of luck there, he'd been woken up by Constable Libult far too early to have had time to have any food.

  He'd managed to grab a swill of what turned out to be stale mead before he left. Loft immediately regretted that but perhaps not as much as he would have the suspiciously flat looking pitcher of water in his office. That would have to change, he needed to get someone out to look at their water pump and check it was in good order, judging by the rants he'd heard on the subject from a medical friend of his.

  The last thing Loft wanted was to have his small team struck down by some horrible bowel loosening pestilence right in the middle of a case. Nor did he want them sticking to small beer, as much of the city's workforce did.

  For a couple of minutes, he just stood by the window, carefully taking in the whole scene. It seemed to Loft that the biggest mistake his colleagues made was to come across something like this, then allow all and sundry in to gawp at the spectacle. After that happened, how on earth could you glean anything useful from any clues that might be left behind by the killer?

  As soon as he'd arrived to take charge here, he'd talked to the assembled men and women of his command about this very sort of thing. They seemed to have listened, although it was only a couple of days ago, so they hadn't had much chance to forget.

  Sergeant Aliria coughed politely, the kind of noise someone makes when they don't quite know how or when it's appropriate to interrupt.

  "Yes, Sergeant? If you have something to say, I'd rather just hear it, no need to be coy," he said.

  "I was just wondering what we're doing, Sir? Is there something you want me to do?" she asked.

  Edrin nodded, half to himself, "There is, actually. I want you to stand right where you are and look around the room. Don't disturb anything, don't move anything out of place. Just try and work out what happened here, try to understand where the assailant must have stood and how this played out. At some point they came up here, I think it's obvious that they were fighting before they got here, then one of them got the upper hand."

  "I saw the broken lock on the door downstairs, Sir. Must have taken some force to do that. There was the broken jar which makes me think this poor bugger threw it at someone," Aliria said.

  "What makes you think he threw it at someone?" Edrin asked. He knew why he'd had the same thought, but wanted to know if Gurnt had reached the same conclusion. Not so much to test her as to test his own growing picture of what happened here. Gurnt may well have a better explanation for the things that he'd already spotted. Regardless, he wanted her to try using his methods so he could establish if they worked or not.

  "To be fair, Sir, I'm not certain," Gurnt replied, pausing to think it through before continuing, "If the jar was on the counter and it fell off, wouldn't it just hit the floor and break, nearer the counter? That spice was spread wide, all over the floor. If he threw it at someone and it broke before it hit the ground, it could waft down all over the place. If this poor sod realised he was in trouble, the jars are the closest thing to hand that he could throw, a desperate man will use anything as a weapon," she concluded, "And I already looked to see if he had anything behind the counter, he didn't."

  "Yes, that's how I read it. If the jar had dropped off the counter, the shopkeeper would have cleaned it up straight away. Not to mention a clumsy man couldn't make this kind of living. There were hundreds of jars of spices and the like down there. What I'm still working on is how it broke. That glass looked thick to me, and I doubt it would break all that easily against someone's chest," Edrin said.

  Aliria looked thoughtful at that. "What if he was wearing armour? Or had a weapon out? He might not know what was in the jar and if he was surprised he might smash it out of the air by reflex," she suggested.

  "That works as a theory, so we might need to be on the lookout for someone well armed, possibly armoured and if he has reflexes like that, a competent fighter," he said.

  They turned back to looking around the room at that point. Edrin tried to imagine how the fight went. There were several, obvious stab wounds in the man's back. There was far too much blood for it to h
ave come from just those injuries, though. At least, he thought there was.

  It also didn't seem to have just come from his back, judging by the way the blood was pooled on the mattress. Surely a man couldn't bleed that much from a few stab wounds? Blood more or less drenched the bed and had dripped onto the floor, creating large, brown stains.

  He looked up to notice his Sergeant crouching down and shining the lantern at something under the dresser. "What is it Sergeant," he asked, taking a cautious step to one side and crouching for a better view.

  "In my reasonably expert opinion, Sir, I'd say that that, is a sword," she said, pointing an accusatory finger toward the gap under the furniture. "Either that or a bloody great big knife. If he were a butcher I might think it was a tool of the trade, but I can't imagine what a spice merchant would chop up with something like that," Aliria said, "Want me to fish it out?"

  "No, leave it there for now. Let's concentrate on the rest of the room," Loft said. He didn't want to disturb anything until he was convinced they'd noticed all there was to see before they started moving things about.

  They looked around the room, almost pointedly ignoring the body, taking in the blood splattered all over the place. Noting where it had pooled on the floor and looking for signs of the struggle. After a few minutes, during which they found no particular clues, they gave up and turned their attention back to the body.

  Standing on the side near the window, Loft gestured for Aliria to shine her lantern on it. The sun was still struggling to rise and the morning fog hadn't lifted. In any case, the windows were neither large nor clean, and he didn't expect much light from them.

  There wasn't anything unusual about the man's clothing. It was the typical practical but neat clothing worn by the lower merchant classes. This man may have been a successful spice dealer, but he was not extravagant with any wealth he may have had, at least, not here. Then again, hardly anyone in this area was, thought Loft.

  Unless, of course, you counted the painted doxies that hawked wares of dubious quality outside the local brothels. Some of those denizens of the night could be pretty colourful. During his Academy days, he had heard tales of ribald adventures other cadets had with these ladies. He'd avoided that type of entertainment himself, preferring a good book or a quiet evening at a pub, gaming with a few friends.

  He'd even heard one somewhat ribald story about a naive younger son of country nobility who'd ventured into the wrong establishment. He had found himself a tall, elegant beauty who had turned out to be at least as well equipped as he was. He was amazed that that man had made it through the Academy at all with the ribbing he took for that incident. If anything, though, it seemed to endear him to the more boisterous type of cadet.

  Although the victim didn't have the most expensive clothes on, there was a gold ring on the little finger of his right hand. His left was pinned under the body so couldn't be seen. Loft counted out the stab wounds and asked Aliria if she agreed. "Yes, Sir. I'd say he was stabbed four times, on this side at least. Could be a lot more on the front with all this blood."

  "I suppose we had best roll him over then, Sergeant. I think if you come around to this side with me we should be able to roll him onto his back," Loft said, positioning himself near the shoulders. Once Aliria joined him he gave the count, "One. Two. Three!" and with a combined grunt of effort, they rolled the, quite literally, dead weight, onto his back.

  The stench was appalling. Disturbing the corpse released another flood of noxious fumes that threatened to overwhelm their sense of smell.

  That was the least of the horror, though. Edrin wondered if he could feel the blood draining from his face or if it was just his imagination. This was no simple robbery, no angry merchant who'd come to do away with a competitor after a trade dispute. No, this was something else entirely.

  It was not the kind of case one even heard about at the Academy. Loft knew that most murderers had simplistic motivations, money or a rash decision made in the heat of anger. They murdered in a fit of rage or else they planned it for financial gain.

  Surely this was something different altogether? The corpse had a livid, straight gash, wrapping around much of his throat, shallow and puckered at the edges. Blood caked the lips, and his belly had been sliced open.

  His greasy intestines had flopped out of his abdomen onto the bed as they rolled him over. The great gash across his midriff yawning open like some terrible mouth, allowing them to spill from him like grey noodles. Edrin had never seen anything so grotesque. He wondered if Gurnt ever had, she must have seen plenty of things in her time in the Watch. She didn't seem old enough to have served in the now defunct army.

  Perhaps the worst part of this horrific tableau was the eyes. For some reason, Loft found that they bothered him more than the emptied belly or the slit throat. Not that they stared back at him, glazed over with death and eerily open, accusing him of failing to prevent the murder.

  No, the problem was that they were not staring back at him at all. He couldn't reach down to close the dead man's eyelids in respect because there were no eyes to hide. There were just two open sockets, bloody pits without a trace of the man's eyeballs. It was hard to look at and just as hard to wrench his gaze away.

  Edrin took it all in for a moment, breathing slowly to avoid inhaling this fresh assault on his nostrils. He turned to look at Aliria, without speaking. She looked back up at him, then down at the body. He croaked out, "Are you alright, Sergeant? You look a little green." She bolted from the room.

  He reached under the bed and pulled out the chamber pot he'd spied earlier. Thankfully, there was none of the telltale sloshing that would indicate recent use, nor was there a malodorous whiff to accompany the already unpleasant smells emanating from the merchant's corpse. Joining Gurnt in the corridor, he presented the porcelain vessel to her and said, "If you feel the need to be sick, Sergeant, I shan't tell anyone."

  She took one look at the bowl, her eyes widening in shock then turned and ran to the end of the corridor, flinging open the window and retching noisily. There was a cry of disgust from below. Constable Knave, by the sound of it, was not impressed by this assault of vomit from above. Apparently, the window was directly above the doorway to the shop.

  Loft winced sympathetically, glad he'd been able to keep control of his own stomach. Though he hadn't expected to be able to do so, it would be good for morale in the Watch House if their officer was not faint of heart. He glanced down at the bowl, wondering if he should give it to Aliria and only then did he realised what had pushed her over the edge so violently.

  Nestled obscenely within the white porcelain of the bowl where two gelatinous lumps. Red globules of flesh with long strings of sinew hanging off them. The missing eyeballs, he presumed. Hmmm. He pondered that for a second, then carefully put the eyeball pot down on the floor and walked over to stand by Sergeant Gurnt.

  She was spitting out of the window, trying to get the taste of bile from her mouth. Then she drew back from the portal and leant back against the wall. Loft smiled at her, took her place at the window and quite impressively he thought, threw up what little food remained in his stomach from the night before.

  Again, Constable Knave cursed and Loft could hear laughter from the street. At least we're providing a cabaret for someone, he thought. Once he got himself back under control, he too withdrew from the window. Loft fished out a couple of handkerchiefs from his pocket, handing one to Sergeant Gurnt, which she took gratefully.

  In return, once they had wiped their mouths she produced a canteen. "It's just water, Sir, nothing medicinal," she said in response to the look on his face. Her medicinal flask was tucked inside her jerkin, safe and sound from the criticism of the officer class.

  He splashed some into his mouth gratefully from a height so as not to contaminate it, swilling it around and spitting it out onto the street and Gurnt did likewise. Then she looked at the forlorn handkerchief in her hand. Loft looked down at the one in his, cursing inwardly.

&nbs
p; Damn, he thought, those were perfectly good handkerchiefs his mother had only just sewn for him. She probably hadn't expected them to be abused in quite this fashion, he thought. He sighed and dropped his on the floor under the window, gesturing for the Sergeant to do the same. Perhaps he could get them cleaned at some point, but he doubted they'd survive such treatment.

  "Sorry, Sir. I don't usually react like that, but that was awful. What the hell happened here?" she said, "I've never seen anything like it."

  "Neither have I, Sergeant. Whatever happened here, I think it's safe to say it was no run of the mill crime. Whoever did this must have really hated this man. To do those things to him, they must have, mustn't they? What could he possibly have done to deserve such treatment?"

  "I don't know, Sir, but we won't find this murderer the usual way," Gurnt said.

  "Why do you say that, Sergeant?" Edrin asked.