Page 2 of Veiled Justice
I didn’t need any of the potions in my briefcase to test for the presence of blood: there was plenty visible here and all of it appeared to be the ogre’s. It pooled directly around her and, in the flickering light I couldn’t see a single drop anywhere else. SOCO would double-check.
It was possible that the scene had been tidied up since there were no drips from the knife that had been used to stab her; either the killer had wiped the blade afterwards – in which case we were probably looking at a professional – or the killer had cleaned up – in which case we were looking at an amateur. At this stage, I couldn’t rule out either option.
I lifted Helga’s hands and checked her fingers. No defensive wounds, no strands of hair in her fingers or skin under her nails. She hadn’t fought her killer and, since she was an ogre, that meant she must have been incapacitated in some way. We wouldn’t know whether it was by a spell or a potion until we’d run toxicology, butsomethinghad stopped the battle-trained warrior from defending herself. Her nose looked freshly broken, too, and a little blood remained around her nostrils. Someone had wiped her face – but why? To stage the body? The circle of lights added a certain amount of drama and that said premeditated to me.
I turned to Detective Channing. ‘Get me a guest list,’ I ordered crisply. This had been a fully Other gathering: all of the attendees that I’d seen were magical – dryads, fire elementals, the ogre.
At least I didn’t have the added pressure of trying to tidy the scene before humans stumbled on it. Quintos had anti-human wards in place that directed the unknowing and unmagical elsewhere. I’d felt them skim over me as I’d arrived, like fingers tapping on my scalp.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Channing nodded briskly before hesitating. ‘And how do I get the list?’
I swallowed a sigh and mentally cursed my boss, Detective Superintendent Thackeray, for lumbering me with a new partner to train. I was used to working solo and that was the way I preferred it. ‘Ask the organiser,’ I said as patiently as I could. ‘They’ll have had one for the door.’ The Quintos’s Charity Masquerade Ball was invitation only and I had no doubt they’d have insisted on printing gilt-edged invites for entry.
Channing looked nervous. ‘You meanspeakto Mr Quintos?’
I could understand his trepidation: Mr Quintos owned and ran Quintos Pharma, a company that had so many politicians in its pocket that he could probably sway any vote of the Symposium exactly the way he wanted. And that was a problem because the Symposium ran the Connection, the governing body for all supernatural beings in the magical realm known as the Other. The Connection was the equivalent of magical law enforcement, and the Symposium was the government. As an Inspector, the former were my employer but the latter were my boss. There was little to no separation between the two powers, which meant that corruption was rampant.
No doubt I’d soon have the higher-ups breathing down my neck to shut this case down quickly and quietly. The clock was already ticking loudly in my head; whether or not the killer was found, they’d want me to findsomeoneto arrest. But I wouldn’t arrest someone innocent, so that meant I had to find the real killer – and soon.
This wasn’t a case I could afford to let run cold because my damned brother had been the one to find the body. If the Connection was looking for a scapegoat, there was an obvious one right there: Rupert. And if I wouldn’t ‘shut’ the case, they’d bring in another Inspector who would, and Rupert would be dead or in jail quicker than I could say ‘fall guy’.
‘No,’ I said quickly to Channing, I’d tackle Quintos myself. ‘Leave Mr Quintos to me. He’ll have an event organiser. Track them down. Discreetly.’
‘Got it.’ Channing walked off briskly, just as Ed joined me. Ed was a SOCO and we worked together almost exclusively. Like me, he was a cross-over: he worked the same job in the non-magical world – the Common realm – as well as the magical one. With this death being a wholly Other issue, I’d bypassed the Common SOCOs and tagged him directly. This was an ‘us’ problem.
The Connection hired many people to do both roles because it was essential to continue to cover up the existence of a magical realm, especially in the digital age. Admittedly, the Other realm could protect itself to a degree: if a human saw a centaur, they’d see a horse; if they saw a griffin, they’d see an eagle. If they saw a wizard – like me – using the Intention and Release, they’d just assume a breeze had sent something flying into my hand.
The Other worked hard to give Common folk a non-magical explanation for what they saw, but if they saw too much the veil would be lifted and we’d have a problem that even a little mind-wiping couldn’t fix. The morality of such actions was rarely debated; the secrecy of the Other realm was sacrosanct.
‘All right.’ Ed scrubbed a gloved hand across his face. ‘What have we got?’ He was a mousy-haired guy with a beer belly and a dark sense of humour. I liked him as much as I liked anyone.
‘An ogre.’
‘An ogre?’ he parroted back in surprise. ‘I thought there was only one dead body.’
‘There is.’
‘Huh. Something is off then. They don’t die easily.’
‘No, andthis lady didn’t, either. Not a nice way to go – multiple stab wounds, no sign of a fight.’
Ed’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Potion or spell?’
‘Nothing conclusive either way.’
‘All right. I’ll dig in.’ He stepped closer to the scene, pulled his camera from around his waist and clicked a few wide-angle photographs of the scene at a distance before moving in closer. ‘No murder weapon?’ he called back to me.
I went towards him so we didn’t have to holler about the death. Even though we were in the garden and most of the guests were inside the hall, plenty of magical creatures had exceptional hearing – including ogres. We didn’t need to make it easy for them.
‘No. The killer took the murder weapon with them, along with one of her fingers.’ I crouched next to Helga and pointed to her right hand, drawing attention to the missing pinky finger.
Ed grimaced. ‘People are sick.’ He slid me a glance. ‘You and I both know it’s never a good sign when they take trophies.’
I suppressed a grimace of my own. He was absolutely right.
‘Trophies!’ Loki squawked as he flew down low and settled on a bush next to the body.
Ed blinked at the white, dove-like bird. ‘You kept it?’
