by William Ray
If something happened to Phand, Clarke would make sure Gus paid a conspirator’s full penalty for it. Worse, once word got out that Gus had been, it would have unpleasant repercussions on the business, and Emily would never let him hear the end of it.
“So you tailed him to find out when they’d be best suited to conduct their snatch. Did you give up the cabbie too?” Clarke’s harsh tone made Gus shrink back a little, feeling off his usual game with the inspector. Seeing Gus’s hesitation, the inspector glanced down at his notebook and said, “Louis Siddel, driver of cab number 4669, an associate of yours if I’m not mistaken. And I’m not; I already followed up on it, so there’s no point lying.”
“Louis? Yeah, we,” Gus began, then paused, the words seeping in, “Wait, what do you mean, ‘gave him up’?”
Clarke sat back in his chair, frowning and looking critically into Gus’s face as he weighed his suspect’s reactions. After a heavy pause, Clarke said, “Last night, Mister Siddel was found dead in an alleyway. His cab was left there, but his horses were gone. His cab was the one used in the snatch. The coroner’s jury hasn’t been convened on it yet, but he was probably stabbed as part of Doctor Phand’s capture. Not sure yet if he did the driving, or they just killed him for the hack.”
“Louis? No. I mean, he’s got a family, and he never ….” Gus shook his head, dizzy at the sudden rush of news. It seemed unreal, and he wasted several moments trying to puzzle out why Clarke would put forward that particular lie before finally coming to the conclusion that he wouldn’t. The shock that came with that realization felt like a punch to the stomach; Gus thought if he’d eaten anything, he might well have vomited it up.
During his stint in the army, people had died around him all the time, and the consistent horror of losing friends had usually just left him numbly carrying on. With goblins or corpses charging after you in the dark, there wasn’t usually time for grief. It had only hit during quieter moments or those terrible moments when dead friends came back.
Life had been better since. People left, but they usually just slipped away in broad daylight. Gus would imagine them the better for it, living happily elsewhere, and if they died after they’d left, he’d never know. “Are you sure?”
“I worked the Nettle Lane murders, Baston. We got good at identifying bodies, I promise.” Clarke’s words were gruff, but seeing the 37th’s former colour sergeant paling, the inspector softened a bit. Clarke took off his bowler in a gesture of respect for the dead, then sat it on the table and brushed back his thinning hair as he contemplated Gus’s reaction.
Eventually, in a more conciliatory tone, the detecting-inspector said, “Whatever they paid or promised to pay you, it can’t be worth taking part in that sort of murder. Can’t be worth seeing good men killed just to keep things quiet. Give us what you know, and maybe I can talk the Crown out of trying you for your part in it.”
Gus shook his head, feeling stupid, but not stupid enough to give himself up as a witness. Doing that might make things easier for his petitioner if the Crown went after him as an unintentional accomplice, but being held as a witness would mean Gus’s own investigation of the case would have to stop.
Since he worked for the Crown, Clarke couldn’t even collect Missus Phand’s reward, so if Gus were a witness working with him, he couldn’t collect it either. While Gus could skate by with the money he had, Emily needed her share.
Worse, Louis’s killer was probably long gone. Everything pointed to Khanom, which was in Aelfua and thus out of the Crossing’s usual jurisdiction. By the time the detecting-inspector straightened that out, the trail would be completely cold.
Gus had passed through Aelfua while in the army, and from what he remembered, it was barely settled. By reputation, it was still a bit lawless in places, so he could get away with a lot there, and so long as he came back with at least fifty-one percent of Doctor Phand, he was probably entitled to the reward.
If Gus could just slip out somehow, he could clear his name, get the reward, and make sure something horrible happened to Louis’s killer in the process. He just needed to slip out somehow.
Clarke watched him quietly but began to look suspicious when Gus didn’t produce the gush of information he had clearly been hoping for. After a moment or two, the inspector shook his head, stood up, and said, “If you’re not interested in talking, then we’ll just have to discuss it again later.”
He waved over the constable on duty and then jotted a few notes into his book as the constable roughly pulled Gus back up to his feet and back towards the cells.
With no plan for escape coming to mind, Gus cried out, “Wait a minute! I’m entitled to counsel or something! You can’t just lock me up without letting me contact someone!” The constable did not relent and pulled Gus back towards the cold jail. Gus resisted as best he could, but his leg chose that moment to give out, and he stumbled, nearly knocking them both down.
Clarke snorted and looked up from his notebook, then called back, “You’re only entitled to counsel if you’re charged with something, and you haven’t been charged. Don’t worry; we only need to keep you locked up until the case is solved, so if you think of any more details, you just let the constable here know you need to talk to me.”
The detecting-inspector gave a cruel smirk, then picked up his hat from the desk and made his way towards the exit. Gus called after Clarke several times, but the constable dragged Gus roughly back to the jail, tossed him into the same damp cell, and slammed the door.
Gus sat in the cold cell, wishing they hadn’t taken his vengeful cellmate from the night before, so at least he would have some way to while away the hours. Emily probably wouldn’t worry about his absence from the office until sometime in the afternoon. Even if he was lucky, it would probably be at least a day or so before she worked out which district he was held in and managed to arrange something. With a sigh, he settled in for a long wait.
He usually carried a pack of cards in his pocket but somehow had forgotten them the prior morning. The barred cell door faced only the pale plaster of the empty hall, so he sat against it and watched the window. The window was high on the wall, presumably to keep anyone outside from seeing in, but it left him with nothing to look at outside other than the top corner of the building across the street and a small sliver of sky beyond.
Judging by what little he could hear from down the hall, there only seemed to be two constables in the offices, and he stared out at the few clouds he could see through the window as he listened to their muffled interactions. With no other distractions, his thoughts focused on the tall blonde woman who had claimed to be Alice Phand. He felt like a fool and thought through his meetings with her again and again, trying to see what details should have revealed her deception.
She had dressed the part to the hilt; she had looked more like the wife of a wealthy businessman than the actual Missus Phand that Clarke had brought by. Why was a famous and wealthy engineer married to a plain woman who was at least as old as her husband? Men of title were stuck with their wives, but in Gus’s experience, successful men of commerce like Phand frequently exchanged their originals for a jammier sort.
Was this kidnapping a scheme of Phand’s to escape his wife? Running away with the blonde? Running away with Miss Aliyah Gale? What could the engineer be involved with that would be helped by such an elaborate deception and require a murder to conceal?
With the Warden robes, the dead cabbie, the very public kidnapping, and the nearly stolen necklace, the facts of the crime seemed to point in every direction. It seemed chaotic, but thinking through the facts, Gus realized the chaos was far too neatly orchestrated.
Someone had planned this carefully.
The engineer was well educated but busy and successful, and that left little room for an education in crime. Someone of his class would be unlikely to have worked out using a numbered cab as a blind, and he had too much to lose to risk a scheme that necessarily involved the police discover
ing a murder. If Phand were to later reappear with the blonde or Miss Aliyah Gale, he would be wanted for murder. No matter how skilled a builder of bridges he was, Gus doubted even Tulsmonia would take in a known murderer, and more diplomatic nations would simply turn him over to Verinde rather than risk an incident.
They involved an outside chump to keep the kidnappers out of sight until the snatch. The mastermind figured they would need an inconspicuous vehicle that could approach Phand for the deed, so they hired a taxi. It had to be one that could not be traced back to them, however, which meant murdering the cabbie.
Gus felt his gut twist at the thought of his friend murdered in some alley, just because Louis did what they had paid him to do. He pushed that down, trying to focus on the case as he watched the clouds drift across the slim corner of sky he could see. Whoever was behind this had gone to great lengths to hide all trace of themselves.
After pondering it a bit, Gus realized that as well hidden as the culprit probably was, trying to discover them through the facts here in Gemmen would never work. Clarke would be doing that with every agency the detecting-inspector could muster, and Gus was sure that whatever kidnapper had thought through this elaborate setup had plans to remain hidden from the Crossing’s view. The choice of disguise, however, was alarming enough that the kidnapper must surely expect the Crossing to tear the city apart looking for them. The kidnappers would have to hide elsewhere.
When stymied on other cases, Gus had found that when he could work out the why, it would lead him back to the who and eventually the where. Knowing that a cheating wife had an eye for blondes or that a missing ring was useful for forgeries had helped him stop looking in the wrong places before. The best way to foil the plot was to figure out why Phand was kidnapped.
Out in the constables’ office, voices were being raised, and Gus pushed to his feet, pressing his face to the door and vainly trying to see down the hall. He could not make out the words in the next room, but the two officers were arguing with someone and sounded a bit defensive. After a moment, he recognized the cadence of the other voice and felt a twinge of sympathy for those poor constables.
~
“Rakhasin Rampage Continues”
Several serious outrages are reported in Rakhasin as the recent spate of lawlessness north of Karhas continues unabated. A militia leader’s home in Rileys was set ablaze while he was away in civic duty, and he returned to find his daughter had been attacked and left insensible; a rancher nearby was shot while returning from a fair, and while not very seriously injured, he was relieved of a prize-winning bull of great sentimental attachment to the family; a bailiff in charge of a farm was dragged out and shot in the legs; and a daring raid for arms is reported.
On the 24th, a band of men undisguised and carrying revolvers entered the home of Captain Castille of Muirnesville. After shooting a dog and tying the servants with ropes, the men carried off all the arms they could find. While reports remain conflicted, most agree this chaos is the work of the gang led by Elgin Ward, a notorious gunman and cattle rustler more widely known as ‘Gentleman Jim’.
– Gemmen Herald, 12 Tal. 389
~
- CHAPTER 12 -
In ancient tradition, the robes of a petitioner were black to signify their allegiance to the goddess of truth, one of the Triumvirate of Darkness. Once the three gods of shadow were cast down, signs of devotion to them had fallen from fashion, and petitioners’ robes became brown to make them look sufficiently humble as servants of justice rather than truth. In actual execution, petitioners seldom let that choice of color keep them from looking their best.
Francis Parland’s robe was brown, but it was also made from a polished silk and done in an elegant cut that left no doubt he was a member of the aristocracy. As he strode down the hall of the jail, pushing past a flustered constable to stand before Gus’s cell, the petitioner’s robe flared dramatically with the commanding wave of his arm as Parland pronounced, “You will unlock my client and release him. Immediately.”
Gus grinned, but Parland answered with a stern frown that indicated he felt this was no time for grins. The constable edged past the petitioner as if nervous to even brush against that flowing silk. Gus would have hated to be in the constable’s place, on the receiving end of Parland’s professional displeasure, but quite enjoyed seeing it exercised on his behalf.
The cell door was unlocked, and Gus gave the poor constable a pat on the arm and thanked him, which seemed to mollify Parland a bit as well. As soon as Gus stepped forth from the cell, the petitioner impatiently snapped, “A cab is waiting for us outside,” and then spun on his heel and marched off with another dramatic flurry of expensive fabric.
The constable by the cell stood back to let Gus follow the petitioner outside. They swept past a second constable who looked disgruntled but cowed enough to stay out of Parland’s way. When they reached the street, a cab was indeed waiting, the driver solicitous enough to hold the door open for them and offer a hand inside, although both passengers ignored him.
The door was shut behind them, and as soon as the driver climbed back to his perch, the hack began to roll forwards, apparently already having directions for their next stop. Slouching back in his seat, Parland loosened the knot on his tie and frowned, but Gus let him be the one to break the silence. “I assume you’re not really involved in this kidnapping?”
“No, no, of course not,” Gus said, then paused and added, “Well, not as a perpetrator, exactly.” He supposed if Clarke set the Crown’s prosecutor’s sights fully upon him, Parland’s intervention would go more smoothly if he had the facts. “The woman that I think did it hired me to do a bit of perfectly legal snoop work, which I did under the impression she was the man’s wife. How did you even find me so quickly?”
“Your girl-receptionist came to see me—last night actually. I’d have been here first thing, but as I was filing a demand for your freedom, the Crown’s prosecutor came in to request a writ to toss your office. I recognized the address and intervened on your behalf there as well.” The petitioner frowned at him and grumped, “I’m usually paid quite handsomely for my services, and I don’t like doing favors. It certainly doesn’t help my reputation any, being associated with the likes of you.”
Gus grinned and said, “Come on now. After all these years, aren’t we friends?”
“No. We are not friends. I’m helping you because my collection has a glaring incompletion, and you promised you could address that. I assume you still claim you can, but I’ve heard nothing new from you on that front in ages. I doubt the other sword was lost somewhere here in town, and you’ve made no trips to Gedlund that I’ve heard.” The man’s steely eyes bored into his, and Gus wilted a bit under their intensity. “Where is my sword, Mister Baston?”
“It’s close, I promise! There’s no reason for me to go to Gedlund in person. I’ve still got friends out there, and it’s very nearly in hand.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. On his discharge from the army, Gus realized the military pension he received for his injury would not leave him very comfortably set up, but luckily he and his friend Claude had literally stumbled across a retirement plan early in their careers while protecting settlers from goblins down in Rakhasin.
A goblin shaman had somehow obtained two elfsteel swords, which had probably served to mark him as leader of his band but had not rendered him bulletproof. Upon finding the gob’s body, the two men had each taken one, planning to sell them as soon as their tours were over. When Gus returned from Gedlund, he had found someone to sell his sword, and it was auctioned off for a small fortune, with which Gus had bought his flat and his office. Parland had been the one to win that auction.
“My bid was only as generous as it was because you said you knew how to find the other sword. I finally talked the National Museum out of that benighted spear shaft, so my general is now missing only one thing, and you promised me you could find it. I promised you I’d match the price for the other, and that p
romise holds, but if you’re holding out for more ….”
Technically, Gus had already found it and long before he ever met Parland. Claude had died in Gedlund, his sword lost in a farmer’s field on a fool’s errand. In the chaos after the war, Gus convinced his superiors to send him out on patrol, and with details from the only two survivors of that mad errand, he had found where Claude had fallen and there found the sword. Now it sat in his desk drawer, a lump of gleaming golden elfsteel that made him want to cry every time he laid eyes upon it.
Ironically, Parland’s begrudging favor today had kept the sword hidden from him just a bit longer. Had the Crossing searched Gus’s office, they would have found Claude’s sword, which surely would have come to the petitioner’s attention, and he would have found a way to claim it. Gus almost regretted that hadn’t happened.
“I’m not. You’ll have it soon.” Gus hated himself for not having sold it ages ago. It made him miserable every time he opened that drawer.
“You’ve been saying that for years,” snorted the Petitioner, clearly annoyed. “Well, the Crown’s Prosecutor won’t be tossing your office, and you’re released for now, but they still consider you a suspect. Don’t leave town, and if they call for you, be polite and responsive. Anything else, and they’ll take that as a sign of your involvement, and back in you’ll go until they find the real culprits. Assuming they can find the real culprits because if they can’t and still think you’re suspicious … well.” He fluttered his hand, waving off the unpleasantness that would most certainly follow.
Gus thanked him, and they spent the rest of the way speculating on the recent escapades of Rakhasin’s notorious Gentleman Jim. The Standard was of the firm opinion that Gentleman Jim’s success could only be explained if he were some sort of foreign agent, and to Gus’s mind, feeding a hidden army seemed like the perfect use for an uncatchable cattle rustler. Parland felt the whole idea was absurd and bet a full gold peis it would soon be proven otherwise.