Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets (2 page)

“So everythùng okay, place clean, no close! No fùne me!” she yells in broken Common, transforming all the i’s, which are inexistent in the language of Ogres, into one of the eight different u’s in her language.

Leaning over the counter, I grab her by the collar, my face only a few centimetres away from her squashed snout. “Oh, so now you can speak our language, eh?” I push her roughly against the burners. Finally she stops screaming, and looks at me in fear.

At this point I hold the permit as though I’m about to rip it up.

“No! You no do thùs! U’llugal!”

If there’s one thing that does my head in, it’s a fucking half-blood telling me what I can and can’t do. I rip up the permit and throw it on the floor. Cohl flinches, but doesn’t get involved.

“Now, if you just tell me what I want to know, I’ll leave and I won’t close this piss-hole down and you’ll have time to bribe someone else into giving you a new permit, which you are undoubtedly not eligible for. Alternatively, I’ll close this pit and I’ll send you down for forgery of an official document. What’s it to be, sow?”

“Okay, saw somethu’ng.”

As I guessed from her strenuous resistance, the suspect was an ogre. Pigs are incredibly loyal to each other. Mari says she saw him dump the body in the alley about an hour before the police came on the scene. She can’t give me a description but the van was from a pest control company called “Gremlicide”. Grateful I can finally leave, I go without saying goodbye, with Cohl trotting alongside. When you come out of a Godur, even the suffocating atmosphere of the city feels like bracing, alpine air. A dead elf on a van from a pest control company run by ogres. It doesn’t make much sense, so far.

“Did you hear what I said?” Cohl says to me, raising his voice in irritation.

“No, I wasn’t listening. Bet you didn’t have anything intelligent to say.”

“What you did was
illegal
, Lieutenant. I should report you immediately! This is
my
jurisdiction, it’s
my
case and your behaviour not only jeopardises the evidence in court, but it also compromises
my career!”

“Finished? I won the bet. And now, shut your trap and listen to me: the investigation is all yours, lock, stock and stinking barrel. If we solve the case, all the credit will be yours and it’ll be great for your fucking career. If you think that Mari the half-sow will report me for ripping up her permit with no eye-witnesses around, then flush the dope and come back to our planet. She’ll be inside this very minute giving thanks to some ham-shaped idol that she’s still got her business.”

“But—“

“But my arse. We needed information and we’ve got it. Now, go and get the prints off the corpse, shut the fuck up and get off my back!
Move
, fucking hell!”

My tirade sends him backwards into the alley as soon as I stop, stabbing my finger towards where he should go, he hurries off to the crime scene. Some passersby stop and stare.

“And what the fuck are you lot staring at? Federal Guard,
move your sorry arses!”

God, when I lose it…grabbing my mobile, I call the Divination Department. For the hundredth time, I think that retracing objects using magic and transforming data into satellite coordinates would solve a lot more cases for the metropolitan police—and more quickly, too. Instead, only the Federal Guard can do it, and even then only very rarely.

So, as usual, I call Dorisa.

“Arkham.”

“Hi, Arkham. I’m working, yes, I’ve got time to see you tonight, what kind of favour do you need?”

“Okay, I’ll buy you dinner. In return…a five-minute thing.”

“…and a few thousand crowns from taxpayers.”

“Oh come on, It’s not like I’m looking for a lost dog. We’re talking murder here.”

“All right. But I want you to take me to Fierno for dinner.”

“Fine.” That way, as well as a few thousand crowns of taxpayers’ money, I’ll have to fork out a few hundred of my own, shit.

“Go ahead!”

“Call a firm called Gremlicide, and get them to give you all the number plates of their vans. Tell them to make the drivers return to base immediately, then trace them and let me know immediately if anyone disobeys. Send a MetroPo team to keep the other drivers at headquarters until further orders. I’ll speak to you later about the dinner.”

The elf has a name at last: Inla Lovl’Atheron. Incredibly for an ass, Inla was arrested and put on file (even though she was released straightaway) eight years previously, during one of the many violent disturbances on the streets during the Year of Revolt. Thinking about the old times always make me stroke my gun fondly.

“You were wrong, Lieutenant,” says Cohl, in a tone of voice that makes me want to smash his face in, “she was just over three hundred years-old.”

“Impossible…by elf standards that would make her only little more than a girl, that doesn’t explain the grey hair.”

“Maybe she went prematurely grey, I don’t know. In any case, the prints match, there’s a photo, too,” he says, showing me on the patrol car computer. “It looks just like her. In fact, there’s no trace of grey hair.”

“Or winkles,” I add, pointing at the screen. “Impossible for them to appear on an elf in such a short space of time.”

“Maybe due to illness…I must admit it’s weird, though.”

I go back for a closer look at the body. Just before I turn away, I catch sight of a slight tear in Inla’s sophisticated dress, over her heart. There’s a cut underneath, somewhat insignificant to the naked eye, just above her nipple.

“What’s this?”

“Looks like a cut.

I stare at it for a moment without saying a word and sigh. Despite the fact that rigor mortis is already setting in and stiffening the body, the flesh around the breast is still soft. By applying light pressure on the wound, the cut reveals itself to be unexpectedly deep and thin, blood trickles out of the wound that was trapped within the damaged tissues.

“Incredible!”

“It’s like she’s been sliced by a sheet of paper. Two to one,
this
is the cause of death.”

“Have you ever seen anything similar, Lieutenant?”

“No...but I know who to ask.”

I take a few shots of the wound and the dress with my mobile, which suddenly starts ringing.

“Lieutenant Arkham? This is Divination.” It isn’t Dorisa, it must be the telephone operator. “Gremlicide’s got six vans, they’re all heading back to HQ bar one, who isn’t answering the call. I’ll send you the GPS coordinates.”

“Thanks, the van’s only a few blocks away.” I turn to the kid. “Come on,
Inspector
, let’s see if we can catch our suspect. With your car.”

A Fiamma 1600, it still smells showroom-fresh. He lives it up, this kid. For a brief second I’m tempted to ask him who feathers his nest, but certain things are best left unsaid. Or maybe he’s simply rich. The ashtray is spotless and I grind my cigarette into it.

“I don’t smoke, Lieutenant, and I would prefer it if you didn’t smoke in my car.”

Nodding, I light up another. He stares at me for a moment, stunned, then shakes his head in disbelief and turns the engine on. Driving only a few blocks at five in the afternoon in rain like an impenetrable smokescreen is like being stuck in the summer exodus. The siren is completely useless at getting through traffic when there’s a bottleneck in the guts of the lower levels. So I find myself boxed in with Inspector Cohl. The first cigarette goes by in peaceful silence, broken only by the occasional cough of complaint and the sound of the window periodically going up and down to let the smoke out. Then the kid feels obliged to make small talk.

“So…how come you came to my crime scene?”

“A tip-off.” What else could I say? Not the truth, that’s for sure.

“Ah. So there’s a link with organised crime, I suppose. Ogres, perhaps.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe if you could tell me more, we could try and crack this case
together
.”

He’s a pain in the arse with this ‘my case’ business, the wanker.

“Nohl Cohl,” I say, changing the subject, “doesn’t sound like a name from ‘round here.”

“No, in fact, I’m from Frosgaarde.”

Way out East of Nectropis. This kid really doesn’t like the sun. There’s no shutting him up now.

“…Then, when I finished my training, I was posted to customs for couple of years, until I discovered a shipment of Onirò hidden inside watermelons; inside
watermelons
, can you believe it? They cut them open, emptied them, filled them with drugs and then they closed them up again using magic. Do you want to know how I knew something wasn’t right?”

“To be perfectly honest, no.”

But Cohl’s not listening anymore, he’s all wrapped up in his story.

“…So I stuck a knife in and
poof
! A cloud of white powder flew out, unbelievable, I nearly ate a stick of Onirò, ahahah! Course, that time was just a stroke of luck, obviously I didn’t get a promotion just for that, I’d carried out a few raids. Like, once…”

The queue is on the move. I sit and watch it for a few seconds, imagining the sheer bliss of taking the Altra and blowing his skull off, right here in the cab of his Fiamma 1600. Then, with a sigh, I light up another cigarette and think about something else while the Inspector dries his mouth out with all the bullshit he’s spewing. Thinking about it, I don’t mind the idea of meeting up with Dorisa at all. I’ve been screwing no one besides the Brunette for at least two weeks now. Fancy goods, don’t get me wrong, but you need to vary your diet once in a while to stay healthy. Sergeant Xevez, that’s what I call her when we’re fucking, is the type of woman who appears to be designed to release stress. “Shit, Arkham, what’s with you? All you do is fuck everything. Money, colleagues, women, cases belonging to poor old Nohl ‘dick head’ Cohl…”

“Okay, here we are.”

A squalid lateral opening where the cement is literally crumbling away in some places, patched up with something that vaguely resembles dark soil. Considering, though, that the nearest soil is six levels away (a quick mental calculation: nearly two hundred metres below), that stuff could be anything except soil. The green Gremlicide van is stoically still in the pouring rain, a big lifeless gremlin face is painted on the side. The windscreen wipers are motionless, and the rivulets of water on the windscreen barely reveal a shape at the wheel. Pulling out our regulation Sebans, we get out of the van.

A high-pitched scream of terror from some creature greets us. This wouldn’t be very good publicity for a pest control company if it came out that one of their vans was nearly ransacked by a tribe of tiny parasites.

We approach with our weapons aimed, in the filthy rain.

“Metropolitan Police! Come out with your hands up!” Cohl yells at the cab.

Nothing.

“I’ll open it and you look inside, Inspector.”

He nods. We move towards the door. I open it. Nohl lowers his weapon to look inside. The ogre is stock-still, his glassy eyes are locked on the rain washing down the windscreen. A needle sticks out of his right arm, which helped to wipe away another useless piece of shit a tourniquet completes the pretty picture.

“Call the station…”

“I’m on it,” answers the kid, mobile already in his hand.

“I’ll look in the back.”

The double doors are locked, so I go back to the cab to get the keys from the dashboard. While I’m trying to get them out, I inadvertently lean on the corpse’s arm. Something’s not right. The pig’s body is still warm, but it’s as stiff as a board.

“Shit.”

“What is it?”

“He’s like a piece of wood.”

“Maybe he simply didn’t like dancing.” Nohl can hardly keep a straight face, all pleased with himself with the jokey comeback. He had it all ready or he heard someone else say it and thought it was so damn hilarious it deserved another airing.

Too soon for rigor mortis, considering the temperature and the fact that according to the Godur ‘cook’, our pest control worker here was still alive enough to dump the body and leave no more than two hours ago. Judging by the traffic, the ogre can’t have died more than an hour ago, an hour and a half if he somehow managed to fly over the other vehicles.

I try and move the eyelids, definite proof. They’re not stiff yet.

“Shit, he’s been murdered.”

“How can you say that? Maybe he stiffened up quicker because of the drugs.”

“A, it’s too soon. B, eyelids are the first part to go stiff on a dead body. You know that scene in all the films where they close the corpse’s eyes? Complete bollocks. C, this piece of shit hasn’t got one single hole in his arm, apart from the one that sent him to his maker. What the fuck do they teach the rookies in Frosgaarde, how to hunt penguins?” I toss him the keys. “Go get the weapon out of the back of the van, kid.”

“What weapon?”

Oh Sweet Mary.

“The blunt instrument this moron used to smash the ass’s skull when she was already dead, idiot.”

Father, if I hadn’t been here, I would have filed this as a suicide case. Or, ‘accidental death caused by solid excrement falling from a great height’. Instead it’s looking more and more like a fucking conspiracy. Evidently, the God of Intrigue, the Slitherer.

“The back is utterly revolting, pieces of skull everywhere. There’s a bat, too, all smeared with blood and other matter.” Nohl is pale, he looks like he’s about to puke. “You were right, Lieutenant Arkham.”

“Of course I was right. Wait in the car for your pals to get here, then let’s go. This is a red herring.”

Getting into my car right after getting out of Cohl’s Fiamma is a bit like having to leave the honeymoon suite of a young, selfless model to go back to your fat old wife who doesn’t believe in hair-removal. You love her (I suppose), but, I mean, for fuck’s sake…

Well. At least I’m alone at last. I take out the envelope from the inside pocket of my raincoat and turn it over in my hands for a second or two, and think. Five thousand crowns in cash, and a note, handwritten in gold ink, stating the address of the alley where we found Inla and a promise “TEN TIMES AS MUCH IF YOU TURN THE REAL CULPRIT OVER TO THE AUTHORITIES”. Oh yes, it’s a very tempting offer, but what with the gold ink and the fact that nobody actually delivered the envelope, it simply
appeared
on the desk in my office, these two signs clearly point to one thing. A magical contract; a more inexperienced person who took the money after reading the note would have been literally obsessed by the task until its completion. Therefore, whoever sent it is ignoring my five and a half years at the Nectropis Magic Academy, or else they think I’m some kind or retard. Magical contracts constitute one of the main subjects of the Legal Magic course.