by A Clarkson
Ira felt the absence of Maureen in this space like there was a giant hole in the floor. This place was a sanctuary, much as Clarisse’s cottage had been, and the loss of its owner defiled it in a similar way. She felt loneliness and isolation seeping out of the penthouse, as though the walls themselves mourned the loss of the woman who had returned this metal and glass masterpiece of human engineering back to nature by building a jungle hideaway.
They hadn’t managed to turn up anything helpful amongst all of Maureen’s things. Whoever Johnnie was, he and Maureen hadn’t been exchanging love letters.
“Where do we go from here?” Ira asked in frustration.
Magnus was still scanning notes in the lab/greenhouse-terrace while Ira gazed out of the windows to the city below.
Without looking up, he replied, “Well, we need to visit John’s Pimento’s compound and see if he can connect him with Maureen. Perhaps she visited him at the compound if they were old friends.”
Ira turned to pace the room. “Ok, so what do we know?” She began listing on her fingers. “One month ago Maureen took a holiday and came back all nostalgic and wistful talking about unlived lives and lost loves. Clearly she met up with someone who she knew from many years ago, someone who Suzie believed Maureen had once been intimate with.” Ira turned to repeat her lap of the greenhouse. “Maureen comes home, and a few weeks later shows up murdered by our mystery man.” She stopped to face Magnus, “Why?”
“We’re assuming her latest trip was connected.” He said, looking at her thoughtfully.
“It just seems likely to me,” Ira agreed. “Here is this woman who barely leaves her house, who is murdered along with a bunch of other researchers and scientists? My guess is that she was told something she shouldn’t have been.” Drumming her fingers on the table she explained, “Let’s say she meets up with this old friend, and they share something, some secret. Maybe they reconnected physically and were having some post-coital pillow talk. They are both researchers, and they share some new discovery or something that they are particularly excited about.”
Ira looked around the room. “Suzie told us that Maureen had no friends, perhaps there weren’t many people she could talk about her research with, so maybe this person is someone who she shares exciting news with, even when it is confidential.”
Magnus nodded his head, though he didn’t appear convinced. “That theory works, but it doesn’t explain why she was attacked. How would the murderer know what conversation they shared? It’s one thing to murder the people doing the research, even the people funding it, but why some old lover?” He shook his head, frustration showing through. “It just seems like too far of a jump for me.”
Ira chewed on her lip, “You’re right.” Sighing, she rubbed her face, “We need to connect her to the case somehow. Why target Maureen?”
Magnus thought for a moment. “Let’s say your theory is right, and this latest trip did involve a visit to an old romance. What if there was more traded than simply pillow talk? What if our loverboy actually gave Maureen something? Maybe asked her to deliver a message? A letter? Something simple that seemed safe, but that actually put a great big target on her head.”
“The report said that she was getting groceries the night she was murdered. Were there any groceries found with her body?”
Magnus looked alarmed, “I’ll have to check. I don’t recall there being any notes about grocery bags on the incident report.”
“A woman returning from shopping would have at least one bag of food,” Ira said, leaning forward to place her elbows on the table and rest her chin in her hands. “Ok, so what if poor Maureen was just delivering a message, and happened to be seen doing so by our murderer? He doesn’t know for sure what she knows, so attacks her as she is coming home.”
“It would fit. But we’ll need to chase it up and see if we can find anything to back up the theory,” Magnus agreed.
“Well, we need to know where Maureen went the night she was killed. And if she met with someone, we need to know who.”
Chapter 11
The Break-In
Rhys intercepted them on the stairs as they left the penthouse. The big man was still sporting some nasty gashes on his face from his close encounter with the pineapple, but Lee had clearly patched him up with the magic ointment. At a glance Ira would have guessed the cuts were weeks rather than only a few days old.
Ira expected a cooler welcome from Rhys given their initial meeting, but he had been jovial and welcoming when she moved onto the barge, praising her skills with a fruit basket.
His team set up a discrete perimeter around the barge, and assigned Ira a bodyguard who shadowed her at all times. She thought the whole thing was overkill, and made a point of telling Magnus so. After much nagging the General condescended to explain that some of his men had been attacked, and he wanted to make sure that everyone was amply protected.
Ira glared at the woman assigned as her bodyguard when Rhys introduced them. “Are you serious? All this time you have been making me mime ‘banana’ and ‘pineapple’ to you, when you actually speak english?”
Margo was stocky with dark skin that was emphasized by the brightly coloured patchwork apron she wore over a simple blouse and trousers. She had been working as the local fruit vendor who had set up shop a few blocks from Ira’s house earlier in the year.
Margo just smiled broadly at Ira and nodded her head, before saying in a thick accent, “He-lo.”
Rhys laughed. “No, Margo really doesn’t speak english. And unless you speak portuguese, you two won’t be communicating much.”
Rhys then turned to Margo and seemed to translate Ira’s accusation, making the older woman laugh loudly before mimicking a gesture Ira felt she had perfected over the past few months. It involved splaying her fingers in all directions to try to indicate the spikes of a pineapple. Ira thought it was pretty good all things considered.
From the look of Rhys rosy cheeks Ira guessed whatever Margo said was related to the obvious pineapple shaped cuts that covered the man’s face.
“Bad news I’m afraid,” Rhys stated when they joined him on the stairs. “Your home has been broken into.”
He led them back through Valverna’s rings explaining that they found the place trashed during a routine sweep this morning.
“We need you to tell us if anything is missing,” Rhys said solemnly as they neared Ira’s street. “The place has been thoroughly trashed, and my team just don’t know it well enough to be able to tell what may have been taken.”
Ira braced herself for what she would see, but even with Rhys’ warning her heart broke at the sight of her townhouse so utterly destroyed. It looked like they came in through the kitchen window, before moving systematically through the rooms, leaving destruction in their wake.
Cupboard doors in the kitchen hung from broken hinges, drawers pulled from their housing, their contents sprayed wildly around the room. Her already messy lounge had been torn to pieces, the couches sliced by a sharp blade, stuffing spewing out in a macabre reminder of Bill’s murder. Her small collection of books were ripped apart, their pages now lay decorating every surface. Clumps of paper and stuffing had blended into a wet pile at the base of her staircase where water flowed in a steady stream from the floor above. It looked like someone from Rhys’ team had turned the water off now, but a small trickle continued to make its way down the stairs, gravity pulling it toward the floor to merge with the body of still water that had collected.
Upstairs was the same. They had smashed her bathroom mirror before flooding the room. She could see by the full tub that this had been the source of the running water on the stairs. Her bedroom had fared no better, bedding torn to shreds, drawers ripped open their contents strewn around. It looked like someone started a small fire on her bed that thankfully hadn’t taken. Mattresses weren’t as flammable as people liked to believe.
Even without a fire to top it all off the destruction was absolute. Ira couldn’t tell if any of her
belongings survived, or would be worth salvaging. She wasn’t sure she would live here again even if she could. Ira always had a strange relationship with this place. On the one hand, she had been immensely proud of this place, evidence of how far she had come from being that little starving girl on the street. She worked hard to become the woman who could afford to live here, with it’s on demand electricity access, and it’s large soaker tub. Sure it wasn’t the fancy penthouse they just came from, but it was still hers, and something that she achieved through her own hard work. It was why she got up every morning to kill those stupid filthy slugs. So that she could work and live as she wanted. And now it was gone.
And the worst part? As she looked around the room at the sum of her life’s accomplishments, Ira didn’t know if she wanted any of it back.
Because although this place was evidence of her success, it also symbolized everything she hated about Valvnerna. The constant obsession to own more, to have the fancier house in the upper rings. She detested the snobbery, and the materialistic obsession as everyone spent their lives coveting other’s success. All while those beyond the city walls starved.
Ira resented that this apartment reminded her that she was no different - constantly striving to be closer to the city’s centre, wanting more things, more tech.
This town was a disease, she decided. A plague that caused a blindness that affected your brain, not your eyes. It allowed you to ignore the suffering of those around you, in favor of building up your own selfish needs. No matter if those needs resulted in others going hungry.
Margo nudged a pile of clothing that had collected on the ground, and said something that caused Rhys to choke on a laugh.
Ira raised a brow in question, as the big man tried to stifle his smile, “She said you have daintier underthings than she expected.”
“Really? That’s what you feel like commenting on right now?” Ira asked incredulously.
As if understanding, Margo just shrugged, and looked at Ira as if to say, ‘what?’
“Okay, okay,” Rhys said, trying to bring them back on track. “Can you tell yet if anything is missing?” he asked with a sympathetic look in Ira’s direction.
Hands on her hips, Ira scanned the room. “Honestly, I don’t think so. I mean it looks like whoever did this had a thorough look through my house for something, and then trashed the place to hide it. But from what I can see, it doesn’t look like anything is actually missing.”
“What would they have been looking for?” Rhys queried.
“I have no idea. There isn’t exactly anything here worth taking aside from a few romance novels and my old underwear.”
Magnus considered the wreckage. “So what were they looking for? Gold? Weapons?”
Ira just shrugged, “Your guess is as good as mine at this point. I barely had any gold here, but it looks like they didn’t even take that,” she said, gesturing to a small pile of coins that had been pushed onto the floor. “As for weapons, I brought pretty much all of them with me to the barge.”
“Maybe they were just looking for you and decided to show their frustration,” Rhys volunteered.
Magnus hummed, “Maybe. But I think Ira is right, this looks more like it was trashed to hide a search, it’s too methodical for an angry rampage.”
“Woah! Cool!” A young voice chirped behind her, followed by the sound of squelching as small feet jumped up and down on the wet floor.
Ira closed her eyes and prayed for patience. Her life was a joke.
“Can you invite me next time you trash a place? Is there anything left for me to break? Man my parents would kill me if I did this! I can’t wait to be an adult. Do you think I can do this when I’m an adult? Of course I can. Adults can do what they want.”
The tirade of excited questions and exclamations continued behind Ira as Adrian explored the wreckage. She did her best to ignore him, trying to tune him out as she looked for any missing belongings, but the occasional “Cool!” or “I wanna break a chair!” managed to sneak through her best efforts.
“Can I help you with something, Adrian?” She asked eventually, when his running commentary on her torn apart underwear drawer became too much to handle. He just seemed to find the fact that her underwear was now all over the room utterly hilarious, and had been in a fit of giggles since first noticing.
Magnus had been zero help, chuckling along with Adrian every time the boy burst into a fresh peal of giggles, and causing Ira to simply roll her eyes in exasperation.
It was frustrating, and somewhat humiliating, but she had to admit, Adrian’s presence had lightened the mood by several hundred notches. Ira even found herself smiling in amusement every once in a while at his antics as they made their way through the house.
He looked at her from where he was perched on the sad remains of her favourite armchair. “What do you mean? You called me here.”
Ira wasn’t sure what to think of that. “Did I?” she asked suspiciously. “And how precisely did I do that?”
He frowned at her slightly, head tilted in a puppy-like impression, “Well I don’t know. I just sort of,” he paused as if searching for the right word, “felt it.”
Magnus perked up at this conversation. She knew he was desperate to understand how Adrian was getting around, but didn’t think the boy would be much help in explaining it.
“What did you feel?” Magnus asked slowly.
Adrian simply shrugged, and began looking around the room again as though bored of this conversation. “I dunno, I just felt sadness. And Ira. And a sort of” he bobbed his head from side to side, “pulling sensation?” The last was a question asked to no one in particular, and was accompanied by Adrian placing a closed fist to his chest and then jerking it outward, as though tugging on a rope tied to his heart.
Magnus flashed excited eyes in her direction.
Great. Now she was like a bloody science experiment. Or maybe a magic experiment? God, she was so confused.
“Ok, so I magically summoned you.” She flinched internally at the use of that word, but ploughed on, “Now what?”
“Now what what?” He asked, confused.
“Now what are you doing here?” She asked in a slightly shrill voice.
Rhys coughed to smother a laugh.
“Oh!” Adrian responded in that drawn out way of teenagers, “I dunno,” he paused to look around the room at the wreckage, “Checking out your broken stuff I guess?”
This time the question seemed aimed at her, as though she would be able to confirm that yes, he was indeed, snooping through her belongings.
Ira closed her eyes and begged for patience once more. “Right,” she took a deep breath and opened her eyes to stare at the kid, “Well, if you are all done, you should probably head home. Apparently people are after me,” she said with a gesture at the room around her, “and I don’t know how vulnerable you are when you visit me like this. Do you?”
Sobering, Adrian thought for a moment, “I can fight.”
Ira nodded at him seriously, she didn’t doubt that for a second. Any kid raised in a royal family was trained from a young age how to defend themselves. “I believe you, but I would still rather not put you in that position. I need you to promise me you won’t visit if you sense that I’m in trouble. I can’t have it on my conscience that you could be in danger.”
Adrian didn’t like that request. “But if you’re in danger maybe I can help!”
“Maybe you can, or maybe you can make me focus on keeping you safe instead of getting myself out of trouble.”
He thought about this and as if realising she was right, turned pleading eyes onto Magnus.
“She’s right Adrian, if you show up in a fight, Ira will be distracted and could get hurt. The best thing you can do is alert my men.”
Ira turned to him in surprise as he continued. “If you sense Ira is in trouble, can you go to the barge and tell Lee?”
Adrian thought for a moment before nodding his head. A determined glint in his
eye.
Oh brother, now the kid would be constantly monitoring her for danger.
“I’m sure I’ll be ok,” she rushed to reassure him, “You probably won’t need to do anything.”
But he was already ignoring her, focused on the task Magnus had given him.
“What if I can’t find Lee?”
“Any of my men would be fine, but Lee is usually on the barge as he is our medic, and we don’t like to have to go hunting for him when we’re in trouble,” Magnus explained.
Adrian nodded, his expression serious, and Ira thought she caught a glimpse of the ruler he may one day become.
Turning back to Ira he asked, “But you’re ok now?”
She smiled at him softly, touched by the sincerity in his voice. Maybe he would grieve for her after all. “Yes Adrian, I’m ok. Just sad that my house was destroyed.”
The young boy glanced around as if seeing the wreckage for the first time, understanding dawning in his eyes as to what this destruction really meant.
“I need you to go home now though, because I can’t focus with you here.”
He turned to give Magnus a serious expression, “You will take care of her?”
It was a question and an order, and Magnus gave him a solemn nod in return, the General accepting the Prince’s command.
Nodding to himself as if satisfied, Adrian vanished into thin air.
Rhys gasped, and Ira had to resist the urge to do so herself. Adrian had come and gone on several occasions, but always out of Ira’s sight. This was the first time he simply disappeared while in plain view, and the effect was astonishing.
“I can’t say I’m looking forward to that being the way of the future,” Ira confessed after a moment of silence filled the room. “I’m going to constantly be worried he’ll pop up while I’m on the toilet or something now.”
Margo said something that caused Rhys’ choked laugh to erupt into a full guffaw. “Margo thinks the kid’s got a crush on you.”
Ira glared at the older woman who just smiled benignly. “Yeah yeah, very funny,” Ira grumbled.