Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets (13 page)

Clean and ironed, my new clothes have a rejuvenating effect. They’re a tad too elegant for work, even if they aren’t among the most expensive ones I keep at her house. The thing is, she’s a classy woman, refined tastes, and she likes wearing things which reflect that high level. So, as well as spending a bloody fortune on her clothes and jewellery, as well as always having a bit of Onirò with me to spice up the evenings, as well as paying her rent for a flat which is on a higher level than mine, I also have to fork out for designer suits which I only really wear when I go out with her. If I think about it objectively, I sometimes think that the Brunette costs me
too much
but, every time we meet, she reminds me that it’s money well spent. We’re not exactly a couple. Let’s say that that she’s my woman, in the sense that she doesn’t let anyone else fuck her and she’s always available, but she’s completely uninterested in my private behaviour. According to the way I see marriage, she’s the same as a wife but without the characteristic drawbacks, financial rights and kids. No ‘I want more respect’, ‘That’s enough of your whores’, ‘Come and visit my mother’. Of course, despite the fact that we have grown fond of each other over the years, our relationship is predominantly business-based. All right, I admit, a few years back I did want it to get more romantic, then, with hindsight, I think it’s just as well it didn’t. Let’s be honest: I’m not the monogamy and slippers type. I’m more of a run-ins with murderous stripping elves type. I fill Eton’s baggie again and give her the packet of Onirò wrapped up in my dirty clothes. Better not go around with ten years’ jail time in the pocket of my raincoat. We say goodbye with another passionate kiss, and the Brunette slinks away with a hypnotic wiggle.

I sigh and light a cigarette. Break over. I haven’t been in a MetroPo station for at least six months, and I haven’t missed it. The usual hordes of sentients, with or without handcuffs, rhythmically crash into the officers, like waves pounding unstable cliffs. At least every two minutes someone starts screaming, every three minutes someone decides it’s the right time to resist arrest or attempt to escape, inevitably getting bogged down in the throng. In Nectropis there’s a crime reported every thirty seconds, even though, according to estimates made by a copper representative, a crime is committed every twenty seconds. As for me, I’m always amazed that there are still so
many
people who bother to report crimes, despite the authorities’ obvious inability to keep the peace. What’s more, many of these policemen have already thrown in the towel, consequently refraining from providing a regular and efficient service. By combining all these factors with the adverse weather conditions, which have condemned the City to another day of darkness swiftly turning worse just before the hours of daylight, the result is this muddy, noisy, foul-smelling enclosure.

I’m able to benefit from the relative quiet of the offices which are isolated from the general public after waiting a good five minutes for the end of an old man’s hysterical rant. He’d come to report his neighbouring half-ogres who’d killed his dog, and then as if that weren’t enough, they’d left the body to rot on the window-ledge. I bump into Cohl wandering up and down the hall, with a cigarette in his mouth, pressed so tightly between his lips that it’s perfectly parallel with the floor.

“How long have you been a smoker?” I go up to him and join him at the coffee machine.

“Lieutenant! How are you?” he asks, concerned, looking at the fresh dressing on my forehead.

“I’m tired, and I need a shower. Apart from that, the usual. That cigarette?” I insist.

“Oh, that, well,” he explains, holding it between his thumb and index finger and looking at it like it’s absurd and improbable. “I gave up at the academy, then, when I arrived in Nectropis, I started having one every now and then…”

“The City has that effect.”

“Which is?”

“It screws you hard and all over. Scientists say it’s because of the darkness. Did you get anything out of Betto?”

He shrugs his shoulders, indicating the vending machine.

“He’s the first person I’ve met who enjoys this swill. Personal preferences aside, he says he wants a lawyer.”

Nohl’s not happy, but he’s not surprised either. I mean, the kid’s been here a month and he hasn’t achieved a fucking thing. After only three days with me he starts to understand that there’s only one way to get results in this sewer. It’s no coincidence that it’s my result, not his. Although his mental slowness is plain to see, the kid’s grown on me, a little like a zit on your arse. It’s probably out of pity.

I enter the interrogation room, where I find the usual mirrored window, the usual bolted down table, the usual two chairs and the usual ugly, arrogant bastard sitting on one of them, whom I distract from his fascinating contemplation of his own dick-head face.

“Here’s the other one. Bet he’s come to ask me where the Spire is.”

I sit down slowly, trying to be friendly and polite. I feel like an Oda in a tutu.

“I’m here to give you some advice concerning your safety, Mr Siten. The wanted man is a mentally unstable murderer, and you could be in danger.”

Betto fakes a shocked expression, just to take the piss. He swivels his toothpick so it’s pointing upwards, just missing the tip of his nose. After hours of fruitless stalling and cops who are apparently incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery, the owner of Cicisbeo starts to feel cocky, and suspects that underneath all this, we haven’t got anything substantial against him.

I go along with it and let out a resigned, well-acted sigh.

“We can’t keep you here any longer. But you need to know that if you choose not to collaborate, the metropolitan police cannot guarantee your safety.”

“I’ll take that risk, pal,” the pimp retorts with a cheeky smirk, right before standing up and heading for the door. While he can’t see me, I start rolling up my shirt sleeves. At the door, Betto tries the door handle without success.

“The door is still locked.”

I land a one-two right in his kidneys just when he’s about to turn round to complain more loudly. He falls to his knees, slides down the door and cracks his forehead on the door handle. His beloved toothpick makes a run for it, rolling dangerously across the floor. I grab him by the nostrils and drag him over to the table leg. While he’s writhing around, I finish rolling my sleeves up and take out another cigarette.

Betto finally gathers up enough strength to say something. How odd, just a moment ago he had the situation by the balls, and now it’s all turned to shit.

“Are you mad? You won’t get away with this, my lawyer…” He coughs. I wanted to let him finish but it sounds like he hasn’t got anything else to say.

“Your lawyer’ll have a problem. You see, you said you didn’t want any help from the police. Interrogation is over, and my colleague on the other side of the window has turned the video camera off. This means that you got the shit beaten out of you the minute you left the station, we really can’t do anything. Like you said Betto. You took that risk. It didn’t work out.”

Now, Siten’s eyes are like those of a deer caught in the headlights.

“I’m not going against the elves,” he slobbers, sat in a messy heap on the floor.

What’s needed here is a kick in the face. After the impact of my foot on his chin, Betto’s head exactly hits the point between the table top and the leg. Perfectly accurate. The ball goes back to being immobile, marking its position with a red stain.

I push the table away, so I can crouch down right in front of his agonised face.

“Elves. You’re such a dick-head, do you know that? Do you know at least why that pisshole for crack-heads you call ‘Cicisbeo’ is the only place in the city that boasts an elf stripper?”

The rusted up cogs inside Siten’s brain start to creak and turn. A drag on my cigarette and I flick the ash directly into his face.

“Because, as a rule, elves don’t take their clothes off, or at least not for money. But Gilder is a bit of a special elf. His family booted him out, and he hasn’t got a penny to his name. Gilder is a nobody in the City. And you’re worried about him? You shouldn’t. But you know what you ought to be focusing on?”

I force him to look at me by squeezing his cheek with my left hand. My gun is in the other.

“The trigger-happy crazy cop with an alibi.”

Rats taken by surprise by a lorry on the motorway always end up the same way. The same goes for low-level amateur bullies, it’s the same story, apart from the fact that before they are reduced to a pulp they generally get the chance to say what I want to hear. Invariably, they settle for the option which is unavailable to the rat: dodge the lorry.

“He was running away.” At last he gives in, gingerly dabbing at his split lip with the corner of his shirt.

“Go on.” I press him, blowing smoke in his face.

“I don’t know much. It all happened quickly, out of the blue. As soon as he finished his number, he came to me wanting his money for the night’s work, saying ‘I’ve finished, Betto”. I told him to wait a minute, so we could talk about it properly, and I came over to your table.” He stopped for a minute to sniff. “But when I went back to the dressing-room, he was already dressed and he’d packed his stuff. He went on and on so I gave him his fucking money and I asked him to do the last two clients, at least that. Before he decided to smash up my club and get me into trouble with you cops, his plan was to tell you lot to fuck off and then disappear for good.”

“Did you see what was in the bag?”

“His things, I suppose. How should I know?!”

“Do you know where he lives?” I’ve asked this question too many times over the last few days. Investigating. What a waste of time.

“On the northern edge,” nods Siten, “I can give you the address.”

I doubt that Gilder is so stupid as to hide in his own house, so a new address isn’t much but it’s better than nothing. The other thing Betto remembers about him is that up until recently, an elf came to pick him up at closing time in a runabout car. Judging by the description, the elf—“quite a piece,” the pimp specifies with a knowledgable air—is most likely Inla, or one of the Lovl’Atherons anyway. He remembers her clearly because before he saw her he was positive Gilder was queer. He wasn’t sure about the name. The description of the car, decidedly less accurate, doesn’t narrow down the field of investigation by much. It’s a common model amongst the working classes in Nectropis, and without a registration number it can’t even be called a clue.

When I get fed up of hounding him (not that soon) I retrieve his chewed-up toothpick and ram it in his mouth, hoping that it hurts him.

What on earth could Cohl possibly say to me when I leave the room?

“You were a bit heavy-handed in there.”

“Have you done a course on how to say pointless things at regular intervals? Betto is a wanker, that’s all, and more to the point, a wanker in the past. While we’re here, let’s pop over to the coroner’s.”

“There’s no point, while we’re on the subject of pointlessness.” Cohl is disconsolate.

“What do you mean,
there’s no point
?” I ask, irritated.

“He’s already been cremated. The family’s wishes.” He shrugs his shoulders again, as if this were another absurd event he is powerless to do anything about.

Fuck’s sake. The family, that means Valan, anxious to hush everything up. The exile from the family has no legal bearing and Inla wasn’t married, ergo the Lovl’Atherons get to decide.

“But a post-mortem is compulsory when there’s a murder.”

“Yes, the report is on my desk. It says the cause of death is from the ‘extensive fractures in the temporo-parietal area, caused by violent blows with a blunt instrument, which can be attributed to the weapon found a short distance away from the crime scene’.”

“And the wound on her chest?”

He shakes his head.

“Ah, unbelievable. Bastard Father.”

“So, a quick examination because of pressure from the Lovls.

“Cremated, poof!” I vent my frustration, gesticulating. “No evidence. Burnt to a cinder. No weird wound. Shit. A post-mortem in only three days? Of course, it can be done if some big shot wants the evidence to disappear… fuck!” I curse in conclusion.

We both light a cigarette and stare at the floor while we mull things over. Nohl takes quick drags, savouring the dose of nicotine, like only someone who has recently come off the wagon can do. I’ve already devoured mine when he’s still got half of his left. I could lean on the coroner, but what for? Even if he talked to me, he’d never risk going to court. The magical contract complicates everything naturally. You’ve got to respect the fucking rules, if you want to win in front of the fucking judge. It’s akin to making me compete in a marathon with my legs tied, as well as allowing the other competitors to use a bike.

“At this point, we’d better go and look at the Spire’s lair.”

“When this business is all over, I don’t want to hear about elves for at least a month,” says Cohl, pulling his coat on.

Poor, deluded boy.

The frequent flashes of lightning are the best form of illumination around these parts. An ordinary rain shower an hour ago has turned into a violent storm. The northern edge on the Seventh, one of the bleakest areas in the world, boasts many record-breaking firsts, including the highest suicide rate and number of rape cases. I suspect, however, that the records have been doctored due to the impossibility of gathering reliable statistics in the lower levels. The dwellings, which in theory are detached houses with back gardens, were built during the previous century to house the industrial proletariat broods. A kind of large-scale breeding farm for low-lifes. Each house looks as though it’s being held up by the one next door, like an exhausted fan in the mosh-pit at a love-metal gig, where every song has a tragic and debased ending.

Every level, with the obvious exception of the top level and the ground floor, possesses what the autochthons call an ‘edge’, in other words, a rim which sticks up higher than the upper level. The higher up you go, the edge definition fades because the taller constructions and connected infra structures thin away, while lower down it’s as sharp as a blade because arriving at the edge is like coming out of a never-ending fetid tunnel. Even though, sometimes, it’s like coming up against a gloomy crater of desperation, like now. Living on the edge is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, living on the southern edge of a level is considered a mark of relative prosperity—relative to the level, that is. On the contrary, living on the northern edge is a byword for abject misery. When the weak daylight illuminates the City, darkness reigns supreme here, dominated by the silhouette of the towers. Every day a colossus looms over these stubborn pariahs who insist on living in these places. There’s very little traffic here, because residents can rarely afford a car, and it’s even more unusual for visitors from outside to dare to drive around in anything which is clearly worth nicking.