Warhammer - [Genevieve 03] - Beasts in Velvet

by Jack Yeovil (epub)

  'Hero? That's an interesting word, Elsaesser. I've met people who think Constant Drachenfels was a hero.'

  'Neuwald ah, von Neuwald's supposed to have killed before. And he was from Altdorf originally.'

  Harald shook his head. 'I know about Wolf von Neuwald, watchman. I didn't like him, but slaughtering bawds wasn't his style.'

  'It's not an uncommon name,' said Elsaesser.

  'I'll have every Wolf, Wolfgang, Wolfie, Wulfrum, Wolfgard and Wulfric pulled in and put to the torture,' snapped Dickon.

  Harald, Rosanna and Elsaesser looked at the captain of the Dock Watch as if he were an idiot.

  'You're an idiot, Dickon,' said Harald.

  The captain looked as if he had an answer ready, but made himself forget all about it.

  'Just because this woman died thinking of Wolf doesn't mean he was her killer. Most men I've seen die call for their mother, or their girl×'

  'Brilliant, Kleindeinst,' sneered Dickon. 'So Wolf is the whore's mother?'

  Rosanna was annoyed. 'She wasn't a whore, captain. She worked in the Wayfarer's Rest. She was a maid.'

  Dickon huffed and walked away, taking out his pipe.

  Harald looked at the corpse, examining every detail of every wound. He wanted to build up a picture of the kind of animal he was after. He wanted to know what made the Beast get hot, what gave the killer his pleasure. His stomach was filling with acid, but he could imagine the thing he was up against.

  'I think you're right,' Rosanna said. 'Wolf was the girl's lover. I can make out a face. I think I'd recognize him.'

  Harald broke out of his concentration on the corpse. He pulled the blanket over, tucking it gently around the dead girl.

  'Can you draw?'

  Rosanna started to ask him what he was talking about, then caught up with him.

  'Yes. I could draw him.'

  Harald took Schygulla by the ear and told him to get some paper and a pencil. The manager rummaged through a desk piled with ledgers and found some loose leaves.

  Rosanna sat down and began to sketch.

  'The runner should bring back the landlord of the Wayfarer's Rest soon,' said Elsaesser. 'Then we'll be able to get her name.'

  'Really? If this were your girl, could you recognize her?'

  The boy was shocked. Just now, Elsaesser was in the dangerous stage. He got too involved with the job, but it was all still much like a game. If he survived the waterfront watch, he would learn. He might make a good copper.

  Rosanna handed him the sketch. He looked at it.

  'You've drawn Johann von Mecklenberg without a beard, scryer.'

  She bit her lip. 'Yes, I know. I tried not to. The face I'm seeing isn't quite the baron, but it's very close.'

  'This could be Baron von Mecklenberg as he was ten years ago, as a student,' said Elsaesser.

  'Ten years ago, this girl would have been about seven,' said Rosanna.

  Harald looked at her, not needing to ask a question. 'I can scry her age,' she said, 'but not her name. It's like fishing in the dark, you don't always get what would be most convenient.'

  'Hmmmn.' Harald examined the girl's sketch. She was a good draughtswoman. He wondered about the Baron Johann. He still hadn't worked out what von Mecklenberg's interest in all this was. He instinctively trusted the man×which wasn't exactly his usual attitude to electors and aristocrats×and intended to stick by his first feeling. But there were questions he would have to find answers for.

  'You've met the elector?' he asked Rosanna.

  'Yesterday. When they found the last girl.'

  'What did you make of him?'

  She was surprised to be asked the question, but did not try to get out of answering. 'He's concerned. I don't think he's the Beast.'

  'Neither do I,' chipped in Elsaesser. 'If he were, he would be stupid to set you to catch him.'

  Harald thought about that. 'Unless he wanted to be caught'

  The warehouse door was opened and Dickon let a watchman in. He was dragging a bald, middle-aged man who had put a cloak and boots on over his nightshirt.

  'This is Runze, of the Wayfarer's Rest.'

  The landlord looked at the thing on the table. Harald lifted the blanket.

  'Sigmar's mighty hammer,' Runze swore, 'it's Trudi!'

  The man turned, clutching his belly and was sick over Dickon.

  'Pathetic,' Harald said to himself. 'Another weak stomach.'

  'Trudi?'

  There was no answer.

  Wolf turned over in the bed and found no one there. He was not at the University, or in the room at the Wayfarer's Rest.

  'Trudi?'

  He tried to remember the night before, but could not.

  Water was dripping somewhere and the floor was shifting. He wondered if he were on a boat.

  There were questions he would have to answer. Where was Trudi? Where was he? What had he done last night?

  And why was he covered in blood?

  PART FOUR

  RIOT

  I

  When it was all over, there would be an Imperial inquiry, presided over airily by the Grand Theogonist Yorri. Whether the titular head of the Cult of Sigmar could possibly be impartial in the matter of the Great Fog Riots was a question that many asked but few answered to anyone's satisfaction.

  However, when all the allegations and rumours were discounted and the more fabulous lies disproved, these facts were definitely ascertained.

  Firstly, this particular fog was the thickest, heaviest, foulest, longest-lasting and most debilitating to descend upon the city within living memory. Since the term 'living memory' included that of Genevieve Dieudonne, 667, it was a simple matter to amend the statement to the effect that this was the worst the fog had ever been.

  For the rest of their lives, weather bores who had happened to be in the city during the Great Fog would annoy their friends and relatives and any total strangers who could be trapped into paying attention with fantastic, but dull, tales of the fog's duration, quality, quantity and climatic peculiarity.

  Secondly, at some time in the early afternoon, members of the revolutionary movement began to distribute a fresh pamphlet authored by Yevgeny Yefimovich, featuring the first publication of Prince Kloszowski's poem 'The Ashes of Shame,' in which it was alleged that the Beast was finding shelter within the palace of the Emperor. Among other things, this handbill claimed that Dickon of the Dock Watch, never an especially popular public figure, had found a green velvet cloak in the alley next to the murdered body of Margarethe Ruttmann, and that he had personally burned this piece of evidence. Yefimovich concluded his pamphlet with a call for all honest men to rise up against the hated oppressors and bring down the corrupt rule of Karl-Franz.

  Thirdly in a jurisdictional dispute typical of a city with more Imperial, religious, local and political factions than many nations, a surprising number of mutually hostile armed bands of men ventured out into the foggy streets, ostensibly to protect the citizens from the twinned dangers of the fog and the Beast. The watches were first reinforced by detachments of the Imperial Militia, augmented by the palace guard in the richer sections of the city. Meanwhile, under the command of Adrian Hoven, patrols of the Knights of the Order of the Fiery Heart combed the area of the palace and the Temple of Sigmar, tactlessly putting to the question many citizens lost in the fog.

  In addition to these official forces, a group of Hooks under the command of Willy Pick, flying the spurious standard of a Citizens' Vigilance Committee, took up tactical stations on the city's bridges and casually terrorised passersby And the League of Karl-Franz, vowing that a little weather was not going to halt their traditional Imminence of Winter wine-drinking contest, flowed in numbers from the colleges of the University towards the Street of a Hundred Taverns. Of course, the list of armed factions was swelled by many of Yefimovich's agitators, by a number of harlots who had decided it best that they carry weapons with the Beast at large, and by sundry fools and adventurers who thought this seemed like an in
teresting time to wander around in search of excitement.

  Between them, these three factors set off the most serious outbreak of urban violence Altdorf had ever known.

  The first clashes occurred in the early afternoon, when an inexperienced Imperial Militia lieutenant ignored the advice of the Dock watchmen he was detailed to assist and attempted to persuade a group from the Citizens' Vigilance Committee to abandon their positions at the north end of Three Toll Bridge connecting Temple Street in the west with Luitpoldstrasse in the east. No one was seriously injured, but the lieutenant was pitched into the slow-flowing Reik and had to struggle out of his armour to escape drowning. He learned a valuable lesson and peace was briefly restored.

  Just as the temple bell was sounding the hour of three×in the afternoon, although the fog made it hard to distinguish from three in the night×Don Rodrigo Piquer de Ossorio Serrador Teixiheira, the seventeen year-old second son of an Estalian duke, was returning with a severe headache from the House of von Tasseninck, where he had succumbed to an excess of wine during the ball of the night before, to his quarters at the University, where he was endeavouring to master alchemy and siege engineering. Angry at having missed the duel everyone was discussing and feeling in need of the proverbial 'feather of the chicken that pecked you,' he rapped on the door of the One-Eyed Wolf, insisting that the landlord open up and serve him some sherry. The landlord wasn't at home, but the front bar of the hostelry was currently occupied by a chapter of the Fish, who were listening attentively while the one who could read was explaining the contents of 'The Ashes of Shame.'

  Barging in, Teixiheira swished his green velvet cloak in a manner he considered quite stylish and requested, in somewhat belligerent tones, that he be served, insisting that his breeding demanded that these commoners do all within their power to oblige him. He was discovered hanging under the Old Emperor Bridge, his cloak having been cut into strips and used to fashion a crude but functional noose. Yorri's Commission decided that Teixiheira was the first official casualty of the riots.

  By the hour of five, seventeen others had come to violent ends and the riots had not even really got underway yet. These souls lost their lives in simple skirmishes between individuals or groups of not more than three or four. Typical was the case of Ailbow Muggins, a halfling fruit and vegetable merchant, who mistook an approaching pair of Knights Templars for revenue men intent on discovering the load of contraband harvest goods he had just taken delivery of from a Fish. Muggins was surprised trying to pour powder and shot into the horn of his state-of-the-art flintlock pistol and died, not from the swordblow to his head, but because a spark struck from his hat buckle by the blade ignited the powder in his horn. Cleric-Sergeant Rainer Wim Herzog, who inflicted the stroke and lost an eye in the explosion, was later decorated by Cleric-Captain Hoven and commended for valour, if not in the field, then at least in the fog.

  Yorri's Commission could not later account for the activities of Dien Ch'ing, the ambassador of the Monkey King, who apparently spent the day visiting several peculiar establishments scattered throughout the city, purchasing disparate elements that might well be connected with sorcery. Some criticism was also passed on Etienne Edouard Villechaize, Comte de la Rougierre, the ambassador of Charles de la Tete d'Or HI, who was believed to have spent the afternoon and early evening at the Matthias II tavern in the company of Milizia Kubic, an exotic dancer of heroic proportions, and to have conducted himself in a manner unbecoming a diplomat of Bretonnia. The sworn testimony of Norbert Schlupmann, a keg-hand at the Matthias II, who spent the afternoon peering through a small hole bored in the ceiling of de la Rougierre's rented apartments, was examined closely by the Grand Theogonist and then placed in the great library of the Temple with many other proscribed works, its contents sealed forever from the public eye and ruled not germane to the investigation.

  At some time in the afternoon, Harald Kleindeinst, while questioning the staff of the Wayfarer's Rest in an effort to piece together the last hours of Trudi Ursin's life, survived an assassination attempt and managed, after a very brief chase, to subdue Watchman Joost Rademakers, his would-be murderer. Unfortunately, Rademakers did not survive long enough to explain his motives for attempting the crime. At the time, however, Kleindeinst expressed the opinion that his fellow officer was acting upon the orders of an unnamed third member of the Dock Watch. An autopsy conducted in the Temple of Morr revealed that Rademakers expired due to complications following a crushed windpipe and that the thirty-six bone fractures sustained during his encounter with Kleindeinst were not necessarily contributory factors in his demise.

  The corpse of Graf Volker von Tuchtenhagen, suitably cleaned up, was delivered from the palace to the house of the von Tassenincks, following the tradition that the responsibility for the body of a losing duellist devolves, if his family are unavailable, on the owners of the property where the original insult was delivered. Grand Prince Hals, never particularly close to the deceased, had the graf packed in precious ice and sealed up for shipping back to his estates in Aver-land, where, upon the delivery of the news, his mother would die of grief and his tenants would hold an unofficial and unauthorized three-day festival of merry-making and licentiousness. Toten Ungenhauer was turned over to the local Temple of Morr, where a cursory examination revealed that he had indeed been drastically altered by warpstone. After scientific dissection, von Tuchtenhagen's champion would be disposed of in the same lime pit that would, after a respectful period, receive the unwanted, much-abused bodies of Margarethe Ruttmann and Trudi Ursin.

  The first of the fires was set just after nightfall, at the house of Amadeus Wiesle, an unpopular moneylender active in the East End of the city. The Commission was never able to determine whether this fire was the responsibility of a citizen with a specific grievance against Wiesle or by an agitator in the thrall of Yevgeny Yefimovich, and the watch×given a list of the creditors evicted, abused, physically disabled, sold into servitude or executed thanks to their involvement with the usurer×decided not to pursue the matter further. By then, the watch had far more pressing affairs to consider.

  If it had not been for the fog, word of the fire in the East End might have spread faster and caused a panic. As it was, there was a panic anyway, for a surfeit of other excellent reasons.

  Although no one was yet aware of it, the Beast was awake and was beginning to stalk its prey of the evening

  II

  Harald Kleindeinst had arranged to meet them at the Wayfarer's Rest in the middle of the afternoon, but was late. Rosanna had the impression that the officer was the sort of man who kept to his word unless an immovable object got in his way. He had given her Helmut Elsaesser as an escort and told her to poke around Trudi Ursin's room, to see if she could pick up anything useful about the girl. So far, the investigation had been proceeding on the assumption that the Beast was a random murderer, striking merely as the opportunity presented itself. But it would be a lot easier to build up a case if the victims were selected according to a system, no matter how insane. Kleindeinst had had Elsaesser reassigned to the case and put him in charge of finding connections between the dead women. Obviously, the young officer had already been thinking along that course, since he had memorised a great deal of information about the Beast's previous victims: Rosa, Miriam, Helga, Monika, Gislind, Tanja, Margarethe. And now Trudi.

  Elsaesser seemed to know them all intimately. Rosa, Monika and Gislind had worked for the same pimp, a Hook named Maxie Schock, and Miriam and Margarethe, older than the others, had at different times been involved with Rikki Fleisch, the small-timer Margarethe had murdered. Three blondes, two indeterminate brown, one black, one redhead and one shaven with dragon tattoos. Six prostitutes, one fortune-teller and, now, one hostel maid. Miriam, 57, was the oldest and Gislind, 14, the youngest. They had all worked in the same area, the rough sprawl around the Street of a Hundred Taverns, and those with homes had lodged within walking distance. The watch had already been through over two hundred husbands, ex-h
usbands, children, boyfriends, 'protectors,' 'admirers,' customers, associates, friends, enemies, acquaintances and neighbours. A few people had cropped up in connection with more than one of the women×there were jokes being told at the Luitpoldstrasse Station about the appetite of that dwarfish Bretonnian ambassador, de la Rougierre×but no one could be tied in with all of them. The only thing the eight had in common was their deaths, unmistakably the work of the same hand.

  Rosanna sat at the dressing table and looked into the cracked but clean mirror, trying to see a dead girl's face as it had been. She was trying to forget the red ruin she had seen at the Beloved of Manann warehouse, the blood sucked away by the water, greyish patches of skull showing through. Elsaesser searched the room, apparently at random, looking for things he had seen before. 'Helga had shoes like this,' he said, going through a box in the wardrobe. He made a discovery. 'And most of them used this stuff.'

  She looked over. He had found a cache of weirdroot. He scraped one of the dried roots with his fingernail and dabbed his tongue. 'This is snakeshit,' he said. 'Last year's crop. Maybe older.'

  Rosanna looked back at the mirror. Her face was cut in half by the crack.

  She touched the hairbrush and got the impression of long, thick hair, crackling as it was combed out. From the corpse, she hadn't been able to tell what the girl had looked like when she was alive.

  'Two people lived here,' said Elsaesser, holding up a maidservant's apron and a man's jacket. 'See, I can scry too. It's called deduction.'

  He seemed pleased with himself. That worried Rosanna a little. She wasn't sure why Elsaesser was so hot on the Beast. Partly, she saw, it was because he liked puzzles. The only thing she had caught from his mind was the feeling of his fingers working away at difficult knots, trying to get them loose. His hands were always restless. The whole process of tracking the killer excited him. He was like a first-time huntsman, exhilarated by the chase but not yet blooded, not yet forced to see a kill. And there was some other motive, something harder to define.