Banshee Hunt

by Curtis, Greg

  She sounded calm at least. Not upset about what they'd done. That was good. In fact the entire interlude had been good from what he remembered. Actually at times it had been wild. He remembered clothes being torn off in their eagerness, and multiple encounters. He remembered sweaty bodies and tangled limbs and the sound of her crying out in passion. He remembered crying out himself a few times as well. It had been sex like he had never known. Maybe he had been repressing his natural needs for too long and just maybe she had been too. So when they had come together everything had just exploded.

  But Yasmin didn't sound happy about it. Theirs hadn't been a union born of love. Lust definitely. There had been some alcohol involved. A celebratory drink as he recalled which had become two. And then a third. Possibly there had been a few more than that? Actually, judging from the pain in his head there had definitely been a few more than that. There had also been dinner at a restaurant – Chinese as he recalled. And then he had walked her home. Into her home as it turned out. And into her bed as well. After that things became a little blurry. Actually they had been pretty blurry well before that.

  “Are you … alright?” He raised his head and craned his neck so he could look up at her. And unexpectedly he discovered that in the morning, bathed in sunlight with her make up off, she looked even more beautiful than usual. Especially with her hair flowing loosely like a cascade of glossy black rapids. But she also looked stern and strangely sad. Maybe that was just the way that the sunlight bounced off the elegant contours of her face but he didn't think so. He suspected she'd been awake for some time, just lying there thinking as she waited for him to wake up. And what she had been thinking wasn't all bread and roses.

  “Of course I'm alright. It wasn't terrible. It just wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “And what did –?” A sudden thought hit James mid-sentence and stopped him in his tracks.

  “Oh God! It wasn't your first time?” He didn't want to think that it might have been and that he'd simply taken her in a booze fuelled orgy of lust. She might have wanted something special. Something to remember. But the truth was that he didn't know. She was twenty seven and stunning. She could have had a hundred guys chasing her around like dogs with their tongues hanging out. But he'd never heard her talking about her boyfriends. Or in fact about any men in her life. Or anything else to do with that sort of thing. He knew about the others in the office, Will's wife and Peters' family. Daniels' string of girlfriends. But he didn't know about Yasmin's love life. Did that mean she didn't have one?

  “No. Of course it wasn't my first time. I don't do this often, but it wasn't my first time.” She sounded tired. Quiet. Almost dead inside.

  “Then it was too …?” James searched for the right word. “Wild?”

  “No. It was fine.”

  Fine? He didn't like the sound of “fine”. No man wanted to be thought of as just “fine”. It was like being just “good” or worse “nice”. It was being damned with faint praise as they said. And it had seemed better than that to him, even through the lens of alcohol soaked memories. But maybe that was all it had been for her.

  Then a somewhat sadder thought occurred to him. “There's someone else? I've intruded?”

  “There's no one else,” she answered him, again sounding quite tired.

  “But you're upset?” He knew there was something wrong. Just as he felt something wrong within himself. But he couldn't really identify the wrongness. It was as though they had done something thrilling and naughty, and there had been overwhelming excitement while they'd been doing it. But now that the excitement was over they were left with the remains. And what remained was uncertain, embarrassing and a little bit worrying as they waited to find out what their punishment would be.

  “I don't know what I am.” She answered James honestly at least. “Sad maybe. Disappointed. Maybe something else.”

  “I'm –.”

  “Don't!” Suddenly her hand was right in front of James' face, stopping him from speaking. “Don't you dare say you're sorry! No woman ever wants to hear that. Not after …”

  “You're right! I didn't mean it like that. That it wasn't good. Just that you didn't find it was what you wanted.” And that was what was wrong he suddenly realised. It was incomplete. It was an act that was supposed to mean something, and yet neither of them knew if it had meant anything at all. Or if they wanted it to mean something. It had just happened. But he still felt the need to apologise.

  “It was just that after Sheryl I never –.”

  “Stop!” Her hand was once more in his face. “Dear lord no! Never! No woman ever wants to hear about her lover's previous failures either. Least of all here.”

  Silence ruled the bed after that. James didn't know what to say. Neither he was sure, did Yasmin. But in the end she broke it.

  “You should go.” She said it flatly, as if it was nothing. But her face told the truth. It wasn't nothing. It was worse than that. It was regret.

  “You don't want to –.”

  “Talk about it?” She hit James with a sad look. “No. Not today. Maybe not ever. It happened. It shouldn't have. But all I can say is that at the time I was happy. We'd made progress in the case. There was booze. And you were being nice for once. Sweet. No one got hurt. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Slowly, wordlessly, James did as she asked. He wanted to say something. He knew he should. But he simply didn't know what to say. What would make this right. And he wanted to do something. To make a manly gesture. Something to tell her that she had no reason to be sad. But at that moment he couldn't think of anything. So instead he slid out of bed and crawled into his clothes, feeling like a coward and a failure.

  “I –.”

  “No … Please, just no.” She raised her hand once more to stop him. “I don't want to hear it. Besides, we have to go to work, and it's going to be a busy day.”

  “Busy day?”

  “Because of this –,” she grabbed her phone from the bedside table and started tapping away on it. Then when she was done Yasmin showed James the display and the documents listed on it. It looked like a list of reports, proposals and the financials on a project. Boring stuff really except for one thing. They related to a casino project. Planning had apparently been more advanced than he'd guessed. And no wonder Brucknell had been so terrified. His name was everywhere. On the bottom of every page when she opened up the first document. She had got everything she had said she would.

  “That's amazing!”

  And it was. In front of them they had the entire case solved, more or less. Because they now had the name of the family involved – Harper Lee. It was one of the names he remembered seeing in the information their Hong Kong office had sent them. But there had been so many names and so few records about them, that going any further than those names had seemed impossible. Now though, they could start digging. From there James guessed they would soon have the name of the banshee that was causing them so much trouble. Her name, photo and details. She wouldn't be at large for long.

  “I told you it would work. You need to trust me a little more.”

  “You're right and I apologise.” James realised he meant it as he said it, which felt strange. It wasn't that he really doubted other people's abilities. He was just so used to simply knowing what to do and then doing it. It was quicker and simpler. But saying that then and there sounded false. Anything he could say would sound false. So instead he went for the practical.

  “That information has to go to Will as soon as possible.”

  “I sent it to him last night when it came in. You were asleep.”

  “Good! You know you did a really good job with Brucknell. In case you didn't think I noticed. And if I haven't paid you enough respect before, I'm sorry. I should have.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And as for this.” He gestured at her and the bed and then watched her face harden as he suspected she was about to stop him speaking once more. “No. Please, let me finish.” It was his turn to ho
ld up his hand to stop her.

  “You know I'm a mess. Everyone knows I'm a mess. Everyone knows my story. And you have to know I never intended to be with anyone again. That's … hard for me. So I didn't expect this. I didn't plan on it. I've never lost control like that before. And now I'm sort of reeling.”

  “But as hard as this is for me, I don't regret it. And I hope you don't either.”

  With that he left, feeling like a low life. But he didn't know what else to do, and he knew it was what she wanted. It was the only thing he could do.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was after nine when James finally made it into the office. Later than he had ever come in before and he felt slightly guilty. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice when he arrived.

  The others were busy, hunched around their computers, tapping away at the keys furiously. Busier than he'd ever seen them before. But once James got a look at what was on the screens he understood. They had Yasmin's files and were currently going through them, matching what was in them with what they'd got from Hong Kong. They were also matching it up with what he’d caught on his phone – the images they had of the banshee.

  Yasmin was already with the others, tapping away. He guessed she'd got there about an hour before him. But then after he'd left her apartment James had had to rush across town to his own place to shower and change. He had also used the time to try and make some sense of things. Or tried to. There wasn't that much sense to be found.

  He didn't know where his rush of blood to the head had come from the previous day. Certainly there had been a sense of achievement, especially on Yamin's part. And alcohol had definitely played a role – he remembered a bar at some point and his head was still telling him they might have drunk too much. Why wasn't her head hurting he wondered? She looked completely rested as she worked. Good genes? Or was she just hiding it better than him? But mostly it felt like some form of madness had overcome him. A temporary insanity that had simply robbed him of all his reason for a time. The sort of thing that happened to kids. However, he wasn't a teenager anymore. He never lost control. He didn't do stupid.

  But apparently he did. Because what they had done had been the height of stupidity. For a while last night he had been a horny teenager in lust with no thought of the consequences. Certainly he'd known the stamina of a teenager. It was just that he hadn't woken up as that teenager. He'd woken up as a prematurely old man with all the worries of life weighing down on him. Not the sort to simply jump into bed with a woman he barely knew. Maybe the German could explain that to him. Not that he ever wanted to tell him about this.

  If he was confused and embarrassed however, Yasmin didn't seem to be. In fact she looked the picture of efficiency and order. She flashed a look at him when he entered that was all business and then immediately returned to her work. The message was clear. She didn't want to talk about it. And maybe he thought as he sat at his desk and flicked on his own machine, that was for the best. They had a busy day ahead of them.

  Besides, they were very different people. It was something he was just beginning to appreciate. He was a slob, and probably from the wrong side of the tracks. He hadn't realised that until that morning. But Yasmin was definitely from the right side of the tracks. She wore fashionable clothes and expensive jewellery. She had the money to own a sizeable, well decorated apartment in a good part of town and fill it with what looked like expensive art. She drove a late model Mercedes.

  He on the other hand was barely keeping his head above water. Between alimony payments and Matti's schooling – and of course every so often another bill for his ex-wife's stay in the Fairview Haven clinic – his salary got shredded. So he drove around in a twenty year old BMW. His clothes were anything but fashionable. His apartment was basic. And he had little hope of digging his way out of his financial hole. He certainly wouldn't be buying expensive artworks to hang on the walls any time soon.

  She had every reason to be disappointed in him he supposed. Ignoring his ice cold personality and abrasive nature as everyone kept telling him he had, he simply wasn't up to her standards. What had happened was simply hormones and frustration in action. And a boat load of booze. It wouldn't happen again. The clever thing would be to just forget that it had ever happened and move on. That was clearly what Yasmin was trying to do. He should do the same.

  So James busied himself doing exactly what everyone else was doing. Hunting down the banshee.

  Of course this hunt had to be done by computer.

  They had the documents from the aide. They had some names on those documents – if only surnames. They also had the files that the Hong Kong office had sent them about the banshees. Most of which unfortunately consisted of reports without pictures. Also too often, rumours and speculation without hard facts. Regulating a family of fascinators had to be difficult. And it seemed that the Illuminati from that part of the world were only concerned with keeping things quiet. They didn't care about their criminal endeavours, as long as they were discreet. But they also had access to the driver's licence databases for the territory and a number of other databases with pictures. They had records of births deaths and marriages. And lastly they had the somewhat fuzzy image of the banshee he'd shot in the church. Now it was time to start marrying them up.

  It meant starting with the family name of Harper Lee and then building a family tree from it through the records of births deaths and marriages. That would have been easier if the records had been complete and all translated into English. But they weren't. They were old, mostly paper documents that had been scanned – poorly – and where there was any English on them it was faded. So much for Hong Kong having been part of the British Empire he thought.

  The next step in the process was to match up the list of names with records. Those provided by the Illuminati that could tell them something of the gifts and positions within the family. They were particularly interested in any document that had a photo like a drivers licence or identity card. Sometimes it was photos from the society pages of the local papers. Whatever could give them a face. They needed someone who looked like the Asian woman, someone who was a member of the family, and someone who was known to have the family gift.

  Then last came the exciting bit. The moment when they'd find out if they had a match. A woman of the right age and family, with the gift and a face that could have been the one on his phone. But even that was difficult. The images they got from the records were often poor quality. The images on his phone were the same – apparently he was far from gifted when it came to taking pictures. Too often it was almost as though he was comparing one blurry blob with another. And there were a lot of them. They had to go through each of those images they had and compare them to the image they had of their banshee. Both visually and using facial recognition software. Daniels and IT were doing the facial recognition bit. James was concentrating instead on the faces and his memories. Neither of them was fast.

  In fact the entire process was proving to be agonisingly slow and painstaking. The records were incomplete and no one spoke the language. The images they got from the databases were often old and out of date. They were also often of poor quality. In addition they had to make sure that each record related to the individual they were tracking. It was all too easy to have the birth certificate of one connected up to the Illuminati records for another if they weren't careful. To add to their woes the Harper Lees were a large family with hundreds of members, and there was no accurate picture of who among them had the banshee gift.

  But the team persevered. And by the time six o'clock rolled around James thought he had a match.

  Soo Chi Harper Lee. Aged fifty eight. Supposedly an accountant in the family business. And according to customs and immigration still in Hong Kong. So if it was her and she was in America, than she was both an illegal immigrant and unregistered with the Illuminati. The photo was old which suggested that either people could drive on Hong Kong roads with licences that were nearly twenty years out of date or she'd simply
given up driving completely. It was of poor quality too. And the facial recognition only gave them an eighty seven percent match. But when he looked at the image James was sure. He'd seen her in the church. He'd studied her. He knew it was her.

  Of course he had to be thorough. So even after he'd found her he carried on, working through the rest of the names, fuelled by coffee and a burning need to identify his quarry. And perhaps by the fact that she'd tried to kill him – three times! Though really the third time had been more a way of making good her escape than an actual murder attempt.

  Still, by nine o'clock when all the others had gone home, her name was the only one that remained, and he celebrated a little. The hunter had finally found his quarry. That wasn't bad he thought. Not for a day that had begun in confusion and awkwardness.

  Of course he realised as he turned off the lights and headed for the car, next came the hard part. Finding a woman who wasn’t officially in the country and likely using a false identity. And whom none of her victims seemed to really know anything about. That was going to be tough.