The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (33 page)

Olivia didn’t seem to notice the grim surroundings. Chris sat back in his seat and let her voice wash over him, thinking about Ana. He thought about how her life might have been about to change, about how desperately lonely she had been. He wondered about her beau, Ethan Grey, and what he felt on a day like today. And he couldn’t help but wonder what expression he, himself, might have had on his own face if his father had come at him with a knife. Would he have had cuts all over his hands from fighting, or would he have been split in one slice, like the Duke? He didn’t have an answer.

he doors to the police carriage didn’t open from the inside, which Chris discovered with some horror when he went to let himself out. Officer Dawson was there in mere moments to release them, but Chris still found the fresh air and the feeling of stretching his legs especially welcome after the experience.

It was mid-morning by then, and Darrington was loud and boisterous and full of people streaming in all directions. Chris looked around him, trying to place where exactly they were. It was the banking district, of that he was certain, but he couldn’t pin down more. The building they’d stopped in front of had clearly been a house, once, before it had suddenly found itself in the midst of a busy trade district and had been offered a sizable sum to join the crowd. It was small and quaint, but, very, very old.

Olivia jumped down behind him and turned about to survey the area as Chris had. Her dress today was modern and stylish, off the shoulder, tight in the waist and bust, long slender skirts ending in a small train. For once, she could have blended in with all the other ladies of Darrington, if it weren’t for the blood coating the hem of her skirts. “It’s hard not to feel like a criminal back there,” she said, retrieving her stylish lace gloves from her handbag, pulling them daintily onto her long fingers. “Though I should thank you for not locking us into the manacles, I suppose.” She fluttered her eyelashes at Officer Dawson.

The policewoman turned her back. “It was tempting.”

“I appreciate your restraint, Maris, as always,” Olivia gushed.

Officer Dawson tipped her chin towards the old building that had once been a house. “The offices of Rayner Kolston,” she said. “As you requested. You’re lucky it was along the way, or I’d have put you out at the station and let you get a hackney here.”

“Are you going to wait for us, then?” Olivia laid a hand on the policewoman’s forearm, who shook her off irritably.

“Hardly,” she grunted and started to walk off. “Let me know how it went when you get back to the office. This is still my favourite theory of them, especially with what you told me this morning. I want to know everything.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Olivia saluted Officer Dawson’s back mockingly.

“Oh, and one last thing…” Officer Dawson said, turning about and looking Chris right in the eye. He couldn’t help but start at the unexpected attention. The police officer gave him a grim smile and a nod. “You didn’t do half bad in there this morning, Buckley. Constance puked her guts at her first messy one, and she didn’t even know the victim.” She turned her attention to Olivia. “Keep this one. I mean it.”

From the corner of his eye, Chris saw Olivia give an awkward half shrug with one of her bared shoulders. The driver helped Officer Dawson up beside him, the whip was cracking, and the unicorns were trotting off down the road.

There was an uncomfortable moment where Maris Dawson’s compliment hung between the two of them like a fading perfume. The police carriage vanished into traffic and Chris tightened his grip on his notebook, clearing his throat. “So,” he said, trying to sound conversational. “Ah, after what we’ve already seen today, I doubt this is going to be very enlightening.”

Olivia chuckled. She reached into the satchel she carried at her side and pulled out a yellow and crinkling newspaper. She waved it in his general direction, just long enough for him to make out half of the headline,
MESSAGE TO OTHER DEBTORS,
before she was off down the walk at a brisk, swishing pace, and he was hurrying to catch up with her.

The reception room of the house-turned-office was dimly lit and grey, and it smelled like ancient mold. A pinched middle-aged woman sat behind the reception desk. She pointedly ignored them until Olivia walked directly up to her and put her categorization card on the surface between them. “I’m here to talk to Mister Kolston, please and thank you,” she said sweetly. The sour-faced woman stared up at her with pursed lips and flat eyes for a long time. Then she stood up and wordlessly bustled off down a hallway. The floors creaked and groaned and sagged under her weight.

“What does the paper say?” Chris couldn’t help but ask, now incredibly curious.

Olivia shot him an impish smile. “You’ll see. Oh, but it’s good. It’s
so
good.”

When the secretary came back out into the room, her belligerence seemed slightly reduced. “Mister Kolston will see you,” she mumbled, and started back down the hall. Olivia and Chris hurried after her. She led them down a long hallway lit with very old, dim, flickering alp-lights, their dark nimbuses fuzzy and undefined with age. As relatively harmless as alps were, the uncertainty of their bindings put Chris’s heart in his throat. Then he thought about Analaea val Daren singing to the one, and a moment of blinding grief overtook him.

The secretary pushed a door open. “Here they are,” she said, and, pushing past Olivia and Chris, turned back down the hall to the safety of her musty reception room without another word.

Chris hung back from the open door and Olivia shouldered past him and through the frame. He saw her put a friendly smile on her lips and tilt her head at the man inside before she vanished into the room, and he followed after her, opening his notebook to the first empty page. The one before it was full of descriptions of Ana’s death, and he tried not to look at it.

The room was very big, and it dwarfed Rayner Kolston. He was a small, furtive-looking man with sharp, narrow features. He wore a well-tailored but faded suit and a smart little bowler hat, just slightly too small for his already tiny head. He had a waxed and pointed little goatee that matched the slicked black hair poking out from beneath the back of his hat. His smile was oily and his eyes searching as he steepled his fingers over the papers spread across his desk. “Now,” he said, and his east-end Vernellan accent was thick as stew, “what do I owe the fine pleasure of such a lovely lady’s compan―”

Olivia dropped the paper down onto the desk. The headline was facing Mister Kolston, but Chris could read it upside down.
DUKE HERBERT VAL FRENTON MURDERED BY CREDITOR, MESSAGE TO OTHER DEBTORS.

Kolston took one glance at the article and then threw his hands up helplessly. “Right,” he said. “Not like I didn’t see this one coming.” Olivia watched him while he pushed up from his desk, sidestepped Chris, and shut the door behind them. “Look, I know it all smells plenty bad, but it weren’t me that killed Vik, okay?”

Delicately, Olivia picked the paper back up. It crinkled and a fleck of yellowed paper spiralled down to the rickety floor at her feet. “Let’s see here,” she said pleasantly, scanning the article with one finger. She cleared her throat and began to read, her voice musing and thoughtful. “Duke val Frenton’s arms were split from palm to armpit, dislocated, and then hung from the ceiling by the wrists.” She looked at Chris, a furrow appearing between her eyes. “That sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Christopher? Why does that sound so familiar?”

“Herbert’s neck weren’t cut, and he bled out from the slices down his arms,” Kolston protested. “Plenty different from Vik. Plenty different, love.”

Olivia continued to read. “Deathsniffer Trenton Gavril has put in for the arrest of categorized sumfinder
Rayner Kolston
, val Frenton’s creditor…” She focused her eyes on the rat-man leaning against his office door as if he could keep them in there with his diminutive frame.

“That’s a mighty old paper.”

“Oh, come on,” Olivia begged him. She folded her arms, crunching the paper, and settled her behind back on the edge of Kolston’s desk. “Don’t be such an amateur. I know a slimy sumfinder like you can do
way
better. Aren’t you creditors supposed to be smooth talkers? Try again.”

Kolston pushed off the door and paced towards them. The floorboards squealed. “All right, lovely,” he said, holding his hands before him, his face begging them to believe his harmlessness. “How’s this. If you bothered to read a paper a week later than that one, you’d see Gavril never got approved for that arrest. And a bit later, you’d know I got framed, see? Val Frenton’s wife came out and admitted she staged the whole thing, confessed, and got herself crisped up nice and good by a cloudling.” He rolled his eyes. “Old Blood, eh? Frying is a status symbol for those bunch. If it had been me, I’d just been hung.”

“I’m not convinced it wasn’t you.” Olivia cocked her head, not giving an inch.

“I’d be pretty bent in the head if it were, don’t you think?” Kolston asked. Something changed in his voice, and Chris felt the curious sensation of being wheedled and directed, like he was a sheep and Kolston was a little herding dog. “What kind of idiot would I have to be? Look at it, love, you’ll see. So I’m angry that Herbert ain’t paid up and I’m pretty sure he’s never going to, so I think, sure, I’ll turn him into an example, maybe use him to squeeze something out of all the other Old Debts I’ve got on my plate. I kill Herbert in the most needlessly grotesque way I can come up with, somehow manage to pull a vanishing act on the Deathsniffer who comes after me, and get away free as a bird. So then, what?”

Olivia raised her eyebrows and waited.

Kolston sighed and dropped his hands. “So, I wait eight years and kill another client with the same profile in the same way? Come on, now, you look like a smart lady. Smart enough to see
I’m
too smart to pull something that
stupid
. If I were to kill Vik, smart thing would be to do it as different as possible, eh? Doing it the same way, now, that’s just asking for a Deathsniffer to show up on my doorstep.” He peered at her for a moment and then gave her a sideways sort of grin, reaching up to straighten his ascot tie. “Course, if I’d known she’d be so fine a creature, maybe it would have been worth it.”

Chris expected Olivia to react poorly to the flirting, but, to his utter shock, she actually chuckled and rolled her eyes playfully. “Oh, don’t even try,” she said. “I’m a Deathsniffer. You’re a murderer. It would really never work.”

Kolston’s slimy grin widened. “Well, we never know till we give it a spin, eh?” He looked her up and down
very
slowly, and his eyes lingered in places that made Chris blush and focus his attention down on his notebook, where he almost tripped over himself weaving something very unflattering about the both of them. “Never did get your names.”

“Olivia Faraday, Deathsniffer. And this is my assistant, Christopher Buckley. Better looking than
yours
.” Olivia poked a finger at him accusingly, and Chris was grateful she silenced whatever remark Kolston was about to make. “You won’t distract me, Mister Kolston. I’m much too good.” She tapped one finger against her upper arm and raised her eyebrows. “Tell me about the val Darens.”