Page 16 of Veiled Justice
Loki hunched his neck, his equivalent of a shrug. He didn’t know.
I grimaced. I’d had a witch rune my home, but runes were incredibly expensive and I was ninety percent sure I’d opted out of ogre safety measures because, until now, there had hardly been any ogres in Chester. Krieg had told me he’d moved his base of operations here presumably to be closer to Liverpool, the heart of the Other community. Maybe it was time for a rune upgrade.
I stripped off my rumpled, slept-in clothes and hopped into the shower to spray away the cobwebs in my brain.
Once I was out and dry I dressed in a fresh suit, the uniform of a Connection officer. Feeling sharper, I opened a cupboard to find something quick to eat. A thump behind me made me jump. A banana had fallen from the fruit bowl onto my glass table; it looked like my ghostly roommate wanted me to add some potassium to my diet.
I went to the table then froze as I spotted a large manilla envelope on the other side of the fruit bowl. I opened it cautiously and pulled out a veritable bundle of pages. When I tipped up the envelope, a small USB drive and two notepads flew out, one of which was mine.
As I studied the loose sheets of paper, a stray A++ caught my eyes. These were Channing’s and my notes. Someone had typed them up for us – and I only had one suspect.
I rang Krieg. ‘Who typed them up?’ I demanded when he answered. ‘This is confidential information!’
‘Hanlon,’ he said, unfazed by my agitated tone. ‘He used to love Mavis Beacon as a kid.’
‘You can’t just go around giving random people my Connection notes!’
‘I didn’t. I gave them to Hanlon,’ he said, patiently. ‘I want you to find Helga’s killer, not waste your time doing admin. Now you’re awake, I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.’ He hung up.
‘Son of a bitch!’ I swore.
‘Son of a bitch!’ Loki echoed. ‘Hungry! Feed me!’
I blew out a breath and went to the fridge to grab my carnivorous caladrius some honey-roasted ham, his favourite. He preened happily as I passed it to him. ‘Did you hear anything interesting when you were flying around the ball last night?’ I asked belatedly.
Loki squawked an affirmative. ‘Saw arseholes.’ He was as bad as Channing.
‘Sure,’ I said evenly. ‘But was anyone covered in blood or hiding a knife?’
‘Good riddance,’ he trilled, giving me a pointed look. He was quoting someone from the party.
‘Who said that?’ I asked.
‘Vampyr. There is no world without Verona walls, but purgatory, torture, hell.’
I stared at the bird. ‘Did you just quote Shakespeare at me? Howoldare you?’ Then I connected the dots. ‘Verona? Verona said that?’ Verona was one of Lord Volderiss’s vampyr clan and she’d been at the ball. Channing had interviewed her and her companion.
Loki bobbed his head.
Saying good riddance when someone died wasn’t the same as stabbing them repeatedly, but it was certainly a reason to question her more closely.
‘Thanks,’ I muttered as I pulled my laptop out and plugged in the USB.
I uploaded all of the documents on the drive and sent them to Channing with a subject line:To do.In the body of the email I instructed:Read these reports and pull out anything that’s contradictory or noteworthy. Compare to the handwritten notes and make sure they have been accurately transcribed. Then prepare us a paper file and electronic file for Helga Jónson.
Most police officers didn’t do their own admin but our dedicated Other secretary, Laura, was currently on annual leave, so for the next week Channing and I had no choice. We couldn’t outsource it to the Common admin team, more's the pity.
I studied my email to Channing and added another line summarising my visit to Helga’s family home. I hesitated but didn’t add that Helga had apparently fancied Krieg; it was irrelevant to the case and I had the feeling that if Krieg found out a personal aside had found its way into the report, there wouldn’t be any more of them. And if I wanted to find the killer, I needed all the information I could get.
Just before Krieg arrived at my door, I rang the medical examiner’s secretary to find out where Kate was with the autopsy. ‘Nearly done,’ Sharon said briskly. ‘Give her an hour or so.’
I looked at the clock: that would bring us up to midday. ‘I’ll swing by in the afternoon,’ I promised.
‘“The afternoon” isn’t an appointment time,’ Sharon said primly. ‘Let me have a precise time once you know one. I can’t possibly arrange a meeting with Dr Potter otherwise. She has a full day.’ She hung up. The woman was a total ogre.
I winced at my inadvertent racist thinking. That was beneath me. Unconscious bias was something we all had to fight by digging through our thoughts and examining the ones that weren’t okay.
I didn’t have to dig too deeply to know where this bias had come from because my dad hadn’t been the biggest fan of ogres. Too often crimes could be laid at their door but they were protected by the iron-clad contracts they entered into with their clients.
