“And yet,” he mused to himself, “there could be a purpose in it, after all. He always has his back to the camera, so he evidently knows where they are. Do look at the others, Pet. Let me know what you think.”
“All right,” I said. There were still a couple of moments left of the footage, but not much was happening. The murderer just stood there with a heart in his hand, the floor dark with shadow and blood. Maybe he was waiting until it stopped dripping, I dunno.
When he finally moved again, backing toward the windows and turning away from the camera as he did so, the shadows and blood seemed to trail after him, huge and swiftly moving; a bird of prey following the carrion. I blinked at it, but when he moved through the window and into the light, there was only a human shadow following after all.
I sat staring at the screen for a few seconds longer before it occurred to me that it had stopped moving altogether not because no one was moving, but because the footage was at an end. I closed it down with a sigh, and looked glumly at the folder.
One down, four to go.
Chapter Four
Athelas and JinYeong must have both left the house again while I was too busy watching gory surveillance footage upstairs to notice them going.
“Flamin’ typical!” I muttered, when I went back downstairs for more coffee. Out investigating while I had to sit at home and watch creepy videos. They weren’t even useful creepy videos—just more of the same thing the first one had been. A bloke, getting punched in the chest and then having his heart pulled out. One woman, too. No good angle of the murderer’s face, his cap pulled low, and a good knowledge of where the cameras were.
I tapped the on button to start the jug boiling, and leaned against the kitchen island, fishing out my phone.
Oi, I texted Detective Tuatu.
I’m busy and I’m not helping you. I need my limbs.
I made a face at my phone. Talk about ungrateful! I’d saved his life a couple times now; risking a few limbs was the least he could do. I texted back, They’ve given me the surveillance footage to watch. I got a question.
A minute or two passed while I waited for my phone to ping with a message, and I hunched my shoulders. I must still be creeped out from watching that footage, because I could swear I heard someone breathing too heavily nearby. Not weird breathing, just like someone was a bit drunk or a bit out of shape.
I shook myself, and jumped when my phone pinged.
Are you lying to me?
Even more rude. Nope. Just watched four blokes and one woman get their hearts torn out. How’s your day going?
Why did they give that to you!
Dunno, for the fun of it, I s’pose. I got a question. The one with the balcony, did the murderer climb up?
The phone bingled with a call instead of a text tone.
“Don’t watch the footage, Pet!” said the detective’s voice. He sounded annoyed, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t annoyed with me.
“Too late,” I said. “You got an answer to my question?”
Detective Tuatu sighed. “All right; he didn’t climb up. No one did—the outside cameras show nothing at all from the lower floors. The balcony runs across two rooms, and the last person the cameras caught entering that room next door kept his face from the cameras the entire way through the club. He was identified by the concierge, though.”
“He sounds kinda dumb,” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Tuatu. “We’re not sure the concierge’s testimony can be trusted—we’re thinking he’s been drinking a lot. He insisted that the murderer never came down again, and he refused to believe us that the murdered man was dead, too. We’ve got him in the drunk tank at the moment, but I’m not sure it’s going to get a whole lot better. He’s got a wild look to him.”
“Probably saw a bit much,” I muttered. Between and Behind stuff had a tendency to do that. Even the old mad bloke was only the way he was because of all the Behind stuff that happened around him. Heck, I could be the next one to go mad if I wasn’t careful. “All right, that’s all I wanted to know.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, apart from having the feeling that someone’s breathing down my neck,” I said.
“I know the feeling,” he said, with heartfelt agreement. “Call me if you need anything. Not information, just…anything else.”
“Catch ya,” I said, and hung up. Detective Tuatu had enough of his own worries; I didn’t want him to worry about me, too.
I took my coffee into the living room, still fighting the urge to hunch my shoulders. There was definitely something bugging me, and until I knew what it was, I wasn’t going to get any peace and quiet to enjoy my cuppa.
I put my mug down on the coffee table and settled myself down to listen, or feel, or whatever it was I did with Between that somehow made me able to sense stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise sensed. Nothing Between or Behind was stalking the house, and all of the walls and places were still just house, so at least I didn’t have to worry about another tar beastie.
What then?
I still felt that sense of someone breathing over my shoulder. Or maybe not over my shoulder so much as toward the front of the house. The front door, maybe?
All of a sudden, I remembered the knocking at the door over the past two days. What if someone was there again? What if they’d given up knocking because they were unconscious, or dead? I stood up uncertainly, and took a step toward the door.
Zero had told me not to answer the knock at the door.
On the other hand, there was currently nobody knocking. Just…a creepy sort of silence that breathed. And if it was a human rather than a Between or Behindkind type thing, there was nothing to worry about, right?
What if I just listened? They couldn’t object to that.
I left my coffee where it was and went softly to the door, using Between to soften my steps as I went, and put my ear up against the wooden surface.
Oh yeah.
There was definitely someone leaning against the other side of the door. I shouldn’t have been able to feel the weight of him leaning against it, or hear him breathing. There was a flaming door between us. But of course, I’d been getting some practise at listening lately—the kind of listening that isn’t done just with your ears—and I could definitely hear it.
I mean, I had to go out eventually, right? I had to do the rest of the shopping, right? Zero wouldn’t be happy if there wasn’t a meal on the table tonight.
And okay, yeah—I could always climb out through the window in the back, but I wanted to know who was at the door. I wanted to know who Zero and the others had avoided by leaving by way of Between—because they must have known he was there if I’d figured it out. And it wasn’t like the world and his dog knew who and what my psychos were, so it probably wasn’t dangerous to open the door, either.
Not really.
It wasn’t like Zero had told me I couldn’t leave the house. If he’d wanted me to stay home, he would have said. And if it was the same person who had knocked on the door yesterday, it must be something pretty important they wanted to talk about. Maybe even the murders Zero was trying to solve.
I mean, it was practically my duty to see who it was. Or at least go outside, you know?
So I opened the door.
I didn’t expect someone to fall through the door when I opened it. He was definitely leaning against the door, and he must have been leaning there for a while, because when I opened the door he just sorta plopped down in a spineless pile next to the umbrella stand in a strong draught of alcohol-scented air.
He was an older bloke—maybe fifty-ish, but looking good for it—all fancy watch and business suit that was too expensive to be wearing while sitting on someone’s verandah. His round, gold glasses looked expensive, too, but he definitely smelled like he’d been at the pub for a bit too long.
He climbed to his feet without staggering, despite that smell, and said, “Finally. I’ve been waiting for some time and there’s no
chair out there.”
I blinked a bit, but didn’t tell him there was a chair out there because I was pretty sure someone from inside had hidden it from him to make him less likely to hang around.
“Who are you after?” I asked, instead.
“I was told someone at this address could help me with my…problem. I’m Preston.”
He said it like I should have known the name, or maybe like I should have been impressed.
“Yeah, pleased to meet you,” I said. “They sometimes help people, but more often they don’t.”
“They have to help me,” he said. His face a had a pinched, unpleasant look to it, but I was pretty sure there was as much fear as arrogance in the unpleasantness. “I was told the Troika would help.”
“The what?”
For the first time, Mr. Preston looked unsure. “I was told—they said there were three…people here who could help someone like me. And a girl who helps the Troika.”
I looked at him doubtfully. He was talking about the psychos, obviously. They had an actual name?
“I don’t know how much I can do. My owne—bosses are the ones who do most of the um, useful stuff, and they’re not here right now. I just help out.”
“The detective said I should speak to you because they probably wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Right, yeah.” Funny, that. I hadn’t thought he would send anyone to me like this; much like the psychos, he didn’t like me getting involved in stuff. And he hadn’t mentioned it on the phone, which was just rude. “Detective Tuatu sent you?”
“Yes. Detective Tuatu,” he said. “He said to talk to you first.”
“Okay, but I’m gunna have to talk to them, too.”
“That’s fine.”
“So what’s the go? What’s worrying you?” Heck, maybe it was just something small, something I could do without talking to the psychos about—
“Someone is trying to kill me,” said Mr. Preston.
Or maybe not.
“Someone? Shouldn’t you go to the police about that? They’re the ones who deal with threats and stuff.” Weird that Detective Tuatu had sent him here.
Mr. Preston’s eyes flickered around the room, as if he expected someone to point and laugh. “That’s the thing,” he said. “It’s not—it’s not exactly someone. It’s something.”
That sounded more like our sort of thing. “What sort of something?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or it’s not a believable thing?” I asked, grinning. I was betting on it being the last one.
“It’s not…I don’t even believe it.”
“What sort of thing is it? An animal sort of thing or a person sort of thing?”
“It’s…I don’t know.” He fiddled with his tie for a few moments, and then burst out, “It’s like fingers and claws in the bath and tentacles in the shower. But I can’t see it before it gets me, and by the time I can see the tentacles or the claws, the thing is always behind me. I nearly drowned in the shower last night!”
I shivered. I’d only known about Behind and Between for a little while, but I’d already met a lot of things I’d rather not meet again. Whatever Mr. Preston was being bothered by was definitely one for that list.
“You thought about going in for oil cleansing?”
“I haven’t had a drop to drink that wasn’t alcohol since last night.”
Well, that explained why he smelled like a brewery, even if he wasn’t drunk.
“Want me to get you some water?” I asked.
“No!”
“Might be safe if I’m the one getting it,” I said, pushing a bit. Even if the bloke lived through this, his liver wasn’t going to last long.
“Please,” he said, for the first time. It nearly choked him, but he said it. “Don’t!”
“Okay.” I put up my hands placatingly. There wasn’t much else I could offer him, apart from milk; I’d used up Athelas’ half bottle of wine in the sauce last night, and I didn’t think Mr. Preston would want JinYeong’s blood, either. “You want milk?”
He pushed his hands along his suit trousers, as if wiping away the sweat. “Yes.”
I thought he looked a bit too desperate to be there to stickybeak through Zero’s book collection, or anything, but I still kept him in sight through the kitchen opening as I fetched milk for him.
From the fridge, I called out, “Who wants to kill you, anyway?”
Mr. Preston shrugged unhappily, and his pinched face got a bit more pinched around the mouth. “There are a lot of people who could want me dead. No one’s tried before, though.”
I came back with his milk and gave it to him. “You a taxman or something?”
Again, that look of arrogance, as if I should have known who he was. Mr. Preston settled his shoulders and said, “I’m a lawyer.”
Okay, that explained a lot. The question was, was he the sort of lawyer who’d be helping out with Behind cases, or was he just someone who was caught up in something well over his paygrade?
Cautiously, I asked, “You ever help out on…weird cases?”
“I do what I’m paid to do,” he said, and there was a defensiveness to his tone that suggested he’d had this discussion once or twice before. “If they can pay, I do the work. Nobody explains everything to me, even if I ask them to do it. Everyone has a right to be defended in court.”
“All right, what’s your latest job, then?” I asked, filing away for later the thought that he had definitely been engaged on some weird cases. He probably didn’t want to think about them. The fact that he was even here talking to me meant that he took the threat seriously. He didn’t think he was mad, even if he was afraid that other people might think he was.
“I’m defending an um, person who has been charged with kidnapping and murder. She’s not very good with people, so she’s been putting everyone at loggerheads with her—not to mention the people who don’t want her found innocent. She’s—”
He stopped and took a swig of the milk.
“You think she couldn’t have done it?”
“Oh no, she could have done it,” he said, so frankly that I knew that whoever his client was, he was scared of her, too. “But I don’t think she did. I got a warning in the mail the day before I took the case.”
“So why’d you take it?”
Mr. Preston’s nose twitched a bit. “They’re paying me two million to do it.”
“Yeah, but now someone’s trying to kill you.”
“That’s what I’ve got you for,” he said sharply. “You have to make sure I don’t get killed.”
“So what is it you want my bosses to do for you?”
“Protection until the police catch whoever’s doing it. They need to at least come and look at my flat, but I’ll stay here if it’s not safe enough there.”
“I don’t think you will,” I told him. Mr. Preston might be talking in fear, but he was also still talking in arrogance, and that wouldn’t fly with Zero.
“I’ll talk about that with your owners,” he said, and that had me frowning.
Mr. Preston might not know a lot, but he knew a bit more than I was comfortable with. And the question was, how was I going to talk to Zero about this? He was very unwilling to help humans, despite being half human himself, and even if I thought that was because he was unwilling to endanger humans by bringing Between and Behind too close to them, I couldn’t get him to admit that. It would be a hard sell to get him to help someone, let alone someone like Mr. Preston. But someone had to help the bloke, and there was no one else to do it. I couldn’t let a bloke die just because it was too hard to persuade Zero to help him.
On the other hand, since this case obviously already involved Behindkind, it might be a bit easier to convince Zero. I mean, he’d always helped out in the end, even though he’d refused at first. He’d stopped a cohort of changelings from feeding off human bodies and deceiving their loved ones. He’d also found the Behindkind who had been killing humans and lyc
anthropes, and stopped me from turning into a lycanthrope.
He’d definitely help this time, too. I just needed to keep…pushing it. There was no way that Mr. Preston was the only human being harassed by this Behindkind creature, whatever it was.
I looked uneasily at Mr. Preston. Zero would help, though. He had to help. Athelas and JinYeong, I wasn’t sure of, but if I had Zero on my side, it’d be fine.
I’d been thinking for too long. Mr. Preston had sunk in on himself, clutching his milk and looking nervously around the room. The only trace of the arrogance remaining was there in the unpleasant lines around his mouth.
I took pity on him and asked, “How’d you meet Detective Tuatu, anyway?”
He jumped. “What? Oh, I’ve called him as a witness from time to time.”
Pretty tenuous connection for Tuatu to be sending him over to us, I thought, frowning. Still, if the bloke was in danger of his life, he probably thought it was necessary. I just wished Tuatu had come over with Mr. Preston himself.
It would have made it easier to bring up with Zero, too. And speaking of Zero, it was probably a good idea to get rid of Mr. Preston until I could talk about him with my three psychos. If he didn’t want to go home, there was always a coffee shop nearby—just so long as Zero didn’t see him straight up.
“You’d better go now,” I said. “Gimme your card or something, and I’ll call you when I’ve talked to the psy—”
“The Troika?”
“Yeah, them. What do you know about them, anyway?”
“Just their name and that they have a reputation for solving problems permanently. And that they’re not…affiliated with anyone.”
I didn’t like the way he said permanently, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I didn’t care for his tone, or because there was always a disturbing amount of blood and death in the psychos’ methods.
“Okay, well, you have to come back—”
“I’m not coming back. I’m waiting here.”
“If you wait here, it’ll be much harder to persuade them to help you,” I said.
“If I wait anywhere else, it’ll be much harder to stay alive long enough to be helped,” he said sharply. “No thank you. I’m staying here.”
Between Frames (The City Between Book 4) Page 7