Poison City (9 page)

‘Just for the record,’ I ask. ‘Where were you last night?’

‘Me?’ he says with relish. ‘I was with my mistress. This is quite exciting. Am I a suspect? Are you going to take me “downtown”? What an interesting story for me to tell at my next dinner party.’ He holds out his hands, clasped together, waiting for the cuffs.

Armitage has watched this exchange while cleaning her nails with a small pocket knife. She finally straightens up and glances past the Chief. I follow her gaze and see a white van stopping at the bottom of the hill.

‘That will be Maddoc and Jaeger,’ she says.

Maddoc and Jaeger, Delphic Division’s very own orisha forensic pathologists. They’re sisters, and they . . . well no one really knows what they are. Not human, that’s for sure. Supernatural creatures that take an almost obscene delight in rummaging around inside corpses.

‘I’d advise you to clear the area, sir,’ Armitage says to the Chief. ‘It’s still an official crime scene, and if it’s tampered with I really will have to arrest you. You might think it’s all fun and games, but a night in the cells will soon change your mind.’

The Chief reluctantly stands aside. Armitage smiles brightly at him and heads down the path to have a few words with Maddoc and Jaeger. I stay by the door, arms folded, as they climb out the van. Maddoc is already wearing a pale blue paper suit and has her photographer’s bag slung over her shoulder. Her skin is as white as the first sheet of photocopy paper from a new ream. Same with her hair. Her eyes, however, are lemon yellow.

She climbs the path towards me, followed by Jaeger and Armitage. Jaeger is the complete opposite of Maddoc. Her skin is pitch black. Like new oil. And it has a sheen about it, making it look almost viscous. Her eyes are the same yellow as Maddoc’s. I don’t know what Armitage is saying to her, but she bares her teeth and looks in the direction of the Chief. I’m not sure if it’s a smile or a snarl.

The Chief notices this as well and steps into the shadow of his bodyguards. I don’t blame him. Jaeger is pretty terrifying.

Maddoc draws level with me and I nod respectfully. ‘Maddoc.’

‘London.’

She enters the house and puts her bag down carefully in the hall, squatting down to assemble her lenses and equipment. Then she takes some paper overshoes from her bag and slips them on, finally pulling a mask over her mouth to complete the incredibly fetching ensemble of crime scene respondents everywhere.

Jaeger draws level and grins at me. ‘Hey, lover boy,’ she says.

I flush with embarrassment. I don’t know why, but Jaeger always makes me feel like a teenager. She and Maddoc have never told us what they are, but I suspect they’re some form of succubus.

She cackles, showing her white, serrated teeth, and lunges past me, forcing the Chief and his were-hyenas to stumble back a step.

‘You three, fuck off,’ she says. ‘I don’t want dog hair on my crime scene.’

I grin as the Chief hastily makes his way back down the path, his bodyguards following behind.

‘What are you laughing at? I meant you as well. Who was the FOA?’

FOA – First Officer Attending. I shrug. ‘Not sure. But you’re going to have a long afternoon of it. ORCU
and
uniform were traipsing around the scene without any protective gear.’

She swears loudly. I pull my notebook out and jot down the names of the officers that I recognized. I tear the page out and hand it over.

‘There are a couple of names I’m not sure of. And I’ve no idea what time they got here.’

She takes the paper and pins it to the clipboard where she keeps her crime scene log. She’ll fill in the details later and most likely contact all the cops to get DNA samples from them.

If this all sounds surprisingly boring and mundane for a supernatural police force, it is. But that’s just the first phase of crime scene processing in the Division. Once Maddoc and Jaeger have gone through the physical evidence, they’ll sweep the area for shinecraft and aether disturbances. By end of the day tomorrow we should have a pretty good idea of exactly what went down here.

In the meantime, it’s left to me and Armitage to do the legwork.

You’d be surprised how many cases are solved just by talking to neighbours, writing everything down, and joining the dots. Making connections between seemingly disparate bits of information.

Oh, Jimmy Connors
always
walked the same way home?
Everyone
knew that? Thank you ma’am. Oh, Mr Smith left the pub early that night? And he
never
does that? What time? 11:30 on the dot? How do you know that sir? Because Jimmy Connors leaves the same time every night and he’d just stepped out the door. Thank you very much, sir.

It’s all disappointingly . . . 
normal
. But it’s how most crimes are solved. Because here’s the thing. Most criminals are pretty fucking stupid. They’re not Professor Moriarty or Hannibal Lector. They make stupid, pathetic mistakes that get them caught, mistakes that could easily have been avoided if they’d only stopped to think. Some bury the body in their back garden. Others are witnessed buying twenty kilograms of lime at the local hardware store. Others kill after having a huge argument with someone. An argument twenty people witnessed.

Call it what you want. Heat of the moment. Momentary madness. I call it the human condition – stupid to the last man. Or woman.

In this case, though, nobody has any information for us. We spend the next two hours doing door-to-door, questioning anyone who will talk to us. But nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything.

And nobody is sorry the poor bastard is dead. He wasn’t well-liked, our victim.

Which makes our job a whole helluva a lot harder.

Sometime after two in the afternoon, Armitage calls it a day. We leave Jaeger and Maddoc to do their thing and head back to home base, but not before I buzz the Chief’s intercom system.

‘Yes?’ It’s the Chief. He sounds drunk.

‘Detective Tau here. I notice you have CCTV cameras mounted above your gates.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like a copy of the feed. The past forty-eight hours should do. Take it up to the ramanga’s house and hand it over to one of our pathologists, OK?’

A pause.

‘OK? Otherwise, they’ll have to come knocking on your door.’

‘Fine.’

The sky is the colour of faded nicotine.

The clouds have turned purple and grey, week-old bruises that stain and bleed into the jaundiced sky. It’s like I’m looking at everything through tinted glasses, the world around me leeched of its normal vibrancy and tinged the colour of old bone.

I stare absently at the clouds, wondering if we’re going to get stuck on the freeway when the storm hits. I hope not. At this time of the afternoon, the traffic will be bumper to bumper. Plus, the first hint of rain and South African drivers become possessed by stupid.

I’m still staring at the sky when I notice a vague shape taking form. It takes a while for it to register because it’s so far away, nothing more than a tiny dot against the sallow sky. But it gets bigger. Closer.

I frown. Some sort of bird? I definitely see wings flapping. But it’s huge. It
can’t
be a bird.

It’s—

‘Pull over,’ I say urgently.

Armitage doesn’t ask questions. She steers the car to the side of the road and switches the engine off. Her hand moves to her hip, touches the butt of her police-issue berretta.

‘What is it?’

‘Trouble.’

I push the door open. Climb out the car. The afternoon heat crawls across my skin, stifling, oppressive. The threat of rain is heavy in the air. I wince and squint up into the sky. The figure is much closer now, soaring towards us much like Superman does in the movies.

That is, if Superman happened to be seven feet tall with wings.

The angel plummets straight towards the ground. At the last moment it flares its wings wide and stops abruptly, pulling sharply up and bobbing in the air.

The figure blocks out the sun, a silhouette of holy fury. It hangs there for a moment, watching us, then descends to the ground, slow-flapping wings raising a cloud of dust.

I wait, my heart hammering. What to do? I’m not going to attack another angel. Two in as many days is a bit much, even for me. My fingers are clasping and unclasping. I’m itching to grab my wand, but I don’t. I’m not very good with it and I barely survived a fight against a demented angel that was spaced out and high. I wouldn’t stand a chance here.

Unlike yesterday, this angel looks exactly how you imagine an angel to look. A face like a cold statue, hard lines and smooth skin. Curly hair that falls to his shoulders (it looks like a he, but it’s hard to tell with angels). As he walks towards us his wings fold down around him, draping over his shoulders and changing, forming into a dark brown trench coat.

Neat trick.

I resist the urge to take a step back, something I’m pretty fucking proud of. An angel is a pretty scary figure.

I raise my hands in the air. ‘In the immortal words of one of our forgotten, modern-day poets – “It wasn’t me”.’

The angel stops walking and folds his arms. ‘What wasn’t you?’

‘Uh . . . whatever. Anything. Nothing. What is this anyway?’

Yeah. Cocky denial may not be the best route. Babbling confusion might be better.

I hear a match scraping to life, turn to see Armitage lighting a cigarette as she squints up at the angel. She’s not looking very impressed.

‘Do you know who I am?’ says the angel.

‘The Easter bunny?’ I say.

‘I am Michael, Lord of the Archangels. Prince of the Heavenly Hosts. I am the Angel of Deliverance. My name is a battle cry. My wrath is the wrath of God. I am the Archistrategos. I am the defeater of the Dragon.’ He sighs and looks around, frowning at the sky. ‘And I fucking
hate
it here.’ He turns back at us. ‘It’s the heat, you know? Reminds me of you-know-where.’

‘Texas?’ I say. ‘Australia?’ Michael stares at me. ‘Sorry. I get snarky when I’m nervous. Not that I’m nervous. Why would I be?’

‘Yeah, why would you be?’ asks Armitage, amused.

‘Shut up, Armitage. So, why are you here? If you hate it so much, I mean?’

I tense, waiting for him to bring up the angel at Addingtons. Not that he has any moral high ground to stand on. One of his own was buying kids and snorting their souls. But still, you have to be careful how you handle these guys.

Michael sighs. ‘You must stop pursuing this inquiry.’

I pause, the words of denial and righteous indignation dying on my lips.

‘What inquiry?’ asks Armitage.

‘This death. The ramanga. I will find the perpetrator. I will punish him. This is not for you to deal with. If you continue on this course, you might be in danger.’

Armitage blows a cloud of smoke into the air. ‘Sorry, pet, was that a threat?’

A pained look flashes across Michael’s face. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Believe me, you would know if I was threatening you. But there are . . . things going on here—’

‘What things?’

‘
Delicate
things. Things you are in danger of getting caught up in.’

‘We’re already caught up in it,’ I say.

‘Then extricate yourself. I do not want to have to come back here again. If I do I might have to peel your skin from your body and dip you in vinegar.’

I blink.

‘
That
was a threat,’ says Michael kindly. ‘In case you didn’t catch it.’

‘No, no. I caught it all right.’

‘Good. I do not wish to see either of you again. Good day.’

The trench coat unfurls over his shoulders, spreading out to either side to form Michael’s wings. He flaps them a few times, rising up into the sky. He stares at us the whole time he does this. Then, when he is about thirty feet up, he turns and puts on a burst of speed, disappearing into the liver-bruised clouds.

There is a deafening crack of thunder and the storm hits.

Armitage tuts and shakes her head. ‘Bloody angels.’

It’s already four in the afternoon by the time we get back to the Division, so I spend the last hour starting my report into the ramanga’s death and typing up the first few statements from those we interviewed. (If you don’t like paperwork, don’t become a cop. We spend about seventy per cent of our time filling out expense reports, balancing personnel budgets, filing crime reports, and typing out interviews that we
already
have on tape and video.)

I stop as soon as the clock strikes five. We’ve been told that there’s no overtime any more, so it’s pointless carrying on. I shut down my computer and lean back in my chair, stretching.

I glance across at Parker. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘Nothing much. Dinner and some TV. You?’

‘I need a drink. A few drinks.’

Parker makes a face. ‘The Cellar?’