Cabal: Johannes Cabal, the Detective Part 13

"That one is hanging around," he whispered, to which Miss Barrow replied, "He's sweeping the street."

"That one is an obvious agent," he whispered, to which Miss Barrow replied, "He's a blind man, selling matches, pencils, and shoelaces."

"That's what he wants you to think."

"He's doing a brilliant job, in that case. Look, he's moving on." She slapped Cabal's shoulder. "I don't even know what I'm doing here. I should be pressing charges against you. Not waiting for G.o.d only knows who in some back alley in Parila. Behind a barrel. I'm mad. I must be. After all you've done, I must be mad. Not even after all you've done in general, but just after all you've done to me, today." She looked at Cabal, bewildered by herself. "Why am I doing this?"

"Simplicity itself. First, my ruse with the falsified bulletin must have been rapidly seen through."

"No," she said, shaking her head wearily. "You're too good a forger, it seems."

"Oh?" A slow smile of wry amus.e.m.e.nt appeared on his face. "Why, Miss Barrow ... are you a fugitive?"

"No! Nothing so ... you. They checked their files and couldn't find a Johanna Cabal, only a Johannes. So they decided there was no conspiracy, just a bureaucratic c.o.c.k-up somewhere along the line. They're a very pragmatic bunch, the Senzans. The lieutenant who arrested me gave me his personal apology. Then he asked me out to dinner."

Cabal grunted under his breath. "Most pragmatic."

"He was busily kissing my hand when Miss Ambersleigh turned up with half of the British Consulate in tow. Things were explained, and they asked if I wanted to make a formal complaint."

"Did you?"

"Well, no." She seemed a little embarra.s.sed. "It seemed a bit rude, what with him kissing my hand and everything."

"And everything?" he echoed with disdain.

She shot him a dirty look. "You like to pretend you're some sort of pure scientist without a human feeling in your body, but you're just a horrid little man really, aren't you, Cabal?"

Cabal had no answer, or at least no answer that he cared to make, so they crouched in silence for a minute longer.

Cabal checked his watch. "I may have miscalculated," he said. "We should have seen something by now. In fact"-he looked up at the road as he replaced his pocket watch-"we should have seen Cacon by now."

"Cacon? From the aeros.h.i.+p? I thought you said you didn't know who you were waiting for?"

"I wasn't waiting for Cacon. I was waiting for the man Cacon was following."

"Who's that?" Miss Barrow was growing more confused by the second.

"I don't know. I thought I'd already explained that."

"You haven't explained anything. This is the first I've heard that Cacon is somehow mixed up in all this. Why is Cacon following somebody anyway?"

"I don't know," said Cabal testily. "That's why I was waiting for him to pa.s.s by."

"I don't understand any of this."

"Neither do I. Do you think I hide behind barrels in shadowy alleyways for fun? No, I don't," he said to head off Miss Barrow, who he felt sure was about to say that it wouldn't surprise her at all. "There is something going on, and it has to do with the murders."

"Probable murder and suicide, you mean?"

"Oh, please." Cabal was splendidly dismissive. "DeGarre is murdered for some reason, then when the suicide story falls flat Zoruk is incriminated. The killer makes a hash job of it and eliminates Zoruk before the shortcomings in the charade can be exposed, not realising that it's too late."

"Lady Ninuka's alibi for him, you mean," said Miss Barrow.

"Exactly so. I have an inkling how DeGarre was dealt with, but killing Zoruk is a different matter. The more that I think on the matter, the more solid Schten's ridiculous concept of a league of a.s.sa.s.sins becomes."

"That makes me think of magicians and their stage illusions, you know. They pull off half their stuff because they're prepared to do the most incredible feats of engineering, far beyond what the audience thinks is reasonable for a small effect. Just because something seems ridiculous doesn't mean it isn't true."

Cabal considered her words, and said, "You have a very good point, and one that undermines the basis of much of my logic to date. I told Schten that he was a fool-though not in so many words-because this conspiracy of shadows flew in the face of Ockham's razor. When given the choice between a simple explanation and a complex one, the simpler is usually the truth. That's why I believed in Zoruk's suicide for an unconscionably long time. I've been an idiot, though. 'Usually' is a long way indeed from 'always.' As with the whole Johanna Cabal nonsense-you may hate me for it now, but you will dine out on it for a year, I a.s.sure you-they preferred to believe in incompetence rather than in a forged doc.u.ment. But the doc.u.ment was forged." He looked at her seriously. "And there are conspiracies out there. I've stood too close to several to deny their existence. In a hotbed of intrigue like these little states, so small that you can drop a penny and it will roll over half a dozen international borders before coming to a halt, and where everyone hates their neighbours, plots and conspiracies are endemic."

Leonie Barrow looked at him with a strange expression, her pale skin blue and shadowed by the failing light, her eyes dark and bottomless. "Cabal ..." she whispered.

"Yes?" he replied.

"How-" She paused, searching for the words. Her gaze fell, and then rose again, and she looked deep into his eyes. "How did you ever become so very f.u.c.ked up?"

Cabal sighed. He knew it wasn't even intended as an insult. It didn't matter; he had no answer. He looked back out onto the street. "Cacon's gone," he said, rising from his crouch. "He didn't come back around this way again. You can stop hiding down there. Unless you've developed a taste for it, of course."

She had not, and rose, patting the dust off her skirt. "If anybody sees me coming out of a side street with you, and I'm even a bit dishevelled, I swear I will never live it down."

"Nor I," said Cabal offhandedly. "I wonder where he went? Let's see if we can find him." He walked out onto the Via Vortis and looked both ways. There was no sign of Herr Cacon.

Miss Barrow joined him, albeit in a poor temper. "Why? He's just an odd little man. Why are you so interested in him?"

"You didn't see him. He was like a man with a mission." He started walking, and Miss Barrow had to scuttle a little to catch up. "Not the sort of man I would normally a.s.sociate with missions. Would you? He was behaving curiously, and since recent events render that which is curious suspicious, I want to know what he was up to."

"Oh, come on," she said and laughed disbelievingly. "Are you telling me that you suspect a pug in a bad suit like Cacon of crawling around the s.h.i.+p's vents and trying to throw you to your doom? You're kidding me."

"I am kidding n.o.body," he said icily, then reconsidered. "Well, apart from everybody who thinks that I'm a Mirkarvian civil servant named Gerhard Meissner, obviously. Them, I am kidding. In this case, however, I am sincere. I do not believe he attacked me, true, but I suspect he may know who did."

"Based on what? Masculine intuition?"

"Based," said Cabal, beginning to chafe under all the unwarranted sarcasm, "upon the weight of probabilities." They had by this point reached the Piazza Bior with no sign of Cacon. Cabal looked up the Viale Ogrilla, and frowned when he remembered the policeman at the cafe. He turned to Miss Barrow and, with evident reluctance, offered her his arm.

She regarded it with equally evident suspicion. "What's this?"

Cabal forbore to state the obvious and said, "It would help us go unnoticed if we looked like people who can actually bear to be in each other's company."

"I'm not a good enough actress for that, Cabal."

"I'm not asking you to look as if you dote upon my every word and glow with happiness in my mere presence-"

"That's lucky."

"I just need you to look as if you don't loathe me."

"I'm really not a good enough actress for that. Why the sudden concern?"

"There's a cafe up there, where there is a police officer busily derelicting his duty-"

"Hold on. There's no such verb as to derelict."

"There is now. Would you kindly stop interrupting? There is a police officer, and I do not wish to arouse his suspicions. Should he have eyes for anything other than the waitress, which I doubt. Therefore, it would help if we were to avoid an obvious show of animosity. Will you take my arm?"

Miss Barrow looked up the avenue, thinking. Then she smiled at Cabal and offered her arm. "I should be delighted, Mr. Cabal."

Cabal took her arm, and they processed towards the cafe like old friends, or at least the sort of old friends in which the lady wears a somewhat smug smile while the gentleman scowls darkly. Cabal wasn't sure why she had suddenly consented to walk arm in arm with him, but he took it to be some sort of arch, feminine insult that he did not understand, nor did he care to try to understand. It was only when they were less than ten metres from the police officer that he realised how remarkably stupid he had been-so focussed on looking for Cacon that he had regarded the policeman as nothing more than a trifling inconvenience that he could guard against by using Miss Barrow. Only now did he remember that using Miss Barrow in any ploy that involved being within calling-for-help range of an officer of the law while he stood right next to her was akin to searching for a gas leak with a flamethrower.

He thought he understood her well enough to conclude that she would be more interested in Cacon's activities than in just handing him over to the police. But, that said, he had framed her as a necromancer and set the military on her, and she might still be a tad upset.

In any event, it was far too late to punch her and run. Instead, he had to touch his hat, smile as convincingly as he could, and say "Guten Abend, Officer," as the policeman noticed that he had company. The policeman's attention rested on him so briefly that Cabal didn't know whether to be relieved or mortally insulted. He could have been wearing one of the more fetching "Wanted" posters published in his wake * on a piece of string around his neck, and the officer would not have noticed. Instead, Cabal watched as the officer's attention slid effortlessly across him like mercury in a pan to settle on Leonie Barrow.

"Buona sera, signorina," he said, failing to acknowledge Cabal altogether. If he had applied the same observational skills to crime scenes and suspects as he did to ascertaining Miss Barrow's marital status, he would have made capo della polizia before he was thirty. As it was, that seemed unlikely. At this precise moment, for example, he was far less interested in Cabal's awkward body language and rictus-like smile than in whether women were more interesting when they were dark and pa.s.sionate, like the waitress, or pale and interesting, like the beautiful lady out walking with the undertaker or clerk or whatever he was.

Miss Barrow barely looked at him. "Good evening, Constable," she said, and walked on. Cabal gave her a sideways glance that she pointedly failed to acknowledge. A few paces on, an argument broke out between the policeman and the waitress.

When they were safely past the cafe, Cabal said, "I am unsure whether to thank you or to demand an explanation."

Miss Barrow walked several paces before replying, "The former, I hope. As I'm not sure why I didn't just gra.s.s you up like the sc.u.m you are."

"That's uncanny. Are you channelling your father at the moment?"

Miss Barrow raised a hand in admonition. "Please, Cabal. Please don't mention my dad, or I'll feel guilty that I didn't just do the right thing and st.i.tch you up like a kipper." She put her hand to her mouth. "Even my dad doesn't talk like that. He would have understood not giving you up to the Mirkarvians," she continued, otherwise unabashed. "He's not a great fan of capital punishment. But he'd never understand why I didn't just hand you over to Constable Don Juan back there."

"No," said Cabal, remembering the implacable Frank Barrow, "I don't think he would."

"Don't get any bright ideas that I didn't do it because I think you're anything other than the monster you are, Cabal. Under different circ.u.mstances, you'd be under arrest right now. But-" She stopped, and Cabal stopped, too. She looked up at him, frowning slightly, and serious. "There's something going on. Something ... wrong. Something terribly, terribly wrong. Something wicked and cruel that ate DeGarre and Zoruk and would have killed you, too, if it had had its way. It's worse than you, Cabal. I've understood you better than I ever wanted to, and part of that is knowing that you don't go looking for trouble. It just seeks you out, but that's something else. Whoever or whatever is behind what has happened over the past couple of days makes trouble. The kind of trouble that makes corpses, and I think it's only just beginning. I want to stop it before it leaves anybody else dead."

"And how do I fit into this monster hunt of yours?"

She smiled, but there was little humour in it. "Set a monster to catch a monster, Cabal." She took his arm and started walking again. Cabal allowed himself to be drawn along, his mind distracted and distant.

By the time they reached the end of the avenue, night had truly fallen. A lamplighter was busily hurrying along, lighting the gas lamps as he went, clearly behind schedule. They stepped aside to let him trot past and turned onto the Via Pace. There was almost n.o.body about, it being the hour of the evening meal.

"Where from here?" asked Miss Barrow as they pa.s.sed into the shadow of the San Giovanni Decollato.

Cabal gestured loosely across the road to the end of the Via Vortis. "We go down there as far as the alleyway where you spotted me, and then we give it up as hopeless. Cacon, or at least whoever he was following, obviously stopped pacing around this triangle of the town, and the pair of them are long gone. After that"-he checked his watch, and swore mildly-"I don't know. I was intending to leave town, but I've missed my train. I a.s.sume that if I attempt it in the morning without your permission the police will be watching the stations along all routes from here just as soon as you can warn them?"

"You a.s.sume correctly. I think you're right about Cacon. We'll try the Princess Hortense, I think. He's probably there." She took a step, but was pulled up short by her arm's being linked with Cabal's. He wasn't moving at all. She looked at him curiously. He was staring off into the middle distance, his nostrils flared, hardly moving. After a moment, he relaxed a little and felt her gaze. He glanced at her, apparently embarra.s.sed. "What is it?" she asked.

"I don't want you to make any frivolous comments. You obviously enjoy calling me a monster, and I'm not inclined to give you any more ammunition. However-" He flared his nostrils again and inhaled. "However ... I can smell blood."

She looked at him in astonishment for a moment, and then sniffed experimentally. Perhaps it was just his words playing on her imagination, but she thought she could scent something warm and metallic on the warm evening air. "Oh, G.o.d. I think you're right. Where's it coming from?"

Cabal looked around, questing. "I think it's coming from-Ah. Actually, you're standing in it."

To her credit, Miss Barrow reacted in no more melodramatic a fas.h.i.+on than stepping back to study the dark wet patch that had formed between the cobbles at the end of a small shadowed pathway that led down beside the church before joining the road. It looked black and oily under the yellow glow of the warming gaslight mantles, high atop their lampposts.

"That's a lot of blood," she said with more detachment than Cabal would have expected.

"Not necessarily. A little blood goes a long way," he replied a bit ruefully, the voice of experience.

For her answer, she daintily dipped the toe of her shoe into the patch. It went in quite a way. It seemed that the patch was just the surface of a deep pool that had formed where a cobble was missing. "That's a lot of blood," she repeated, and Cabal couldn't argue with that. It had to be the best part of a litre, and people tend to get very distressed when they find themselves missing such a large portion of their vital bodily fluids. That, or dead.

"There's a trail," he said. There was indeed a trail, but not one made up of drops. The pool had formed by blood running down the pathway for a metre or so, but shortly beyond that there was a broad, smeared trail of the stuff. It didn't take a great forensic talent to realise that whoever was bleeding had collapsed, and dragged himself away further up the path. "Odd. If I were badly wounded right next to a thoroughfare, I would head towards it, try to get help. Admittedly, it's quiet at the moment, but it's still the best choice."

"Would you be thinking that straight if you were so hurt?" Miss Barrow was walking slowly up the path, following the trail.

Cabal didn't know. He also didn't know if they should be getting involved. "This has nothing to do with us. We should go."

"No. There's somebody terribly injured. They need help."

"Help? Look how much blood there is, woman. They're dead. So, I repeat: we should go."

She stopped and turned to look at him. In the darkness, he couldn't make out her expression, but her stillness unnerved him strangely. When she spoke, the tone was tired and dismissive, but he thought he heard something else there that he couldn't quite identify. Perhaps it was disgust. Or disappointment. "Go then, Cabal. Just shoo. I'm done with you." She turned her back on him and continued to follow the trail of blood.

He watched her, while he failed to do anything: he failed to come up with a witty retort; he failed to say anything very profound regarding their unusual relations.h.i.+p; he failed to walk away with dignity. He succeeded only in opening his mouth and closing it again, undecided, and-as her back was to him-she didn't even see that. He was still standing there impa.s.sively, thirty seconds later, when she became tired at being stared at. In that time she hadn't progressed very far, the blood becoming increasingly difficult to see in the shadows.

"Just b.u.g.g.e.r off, will you, Cabal? You're in my light. If you aren't going to-"

The groan that shuddered out of the darkness made her spin around with a small yelp of surprise. It was a barely human sound, deep and miserable, but Cabal-who had far too much experience in such things-realised that it definitely was human. It seemed that he had been wrong to believe that the donor of the blood on the cobblestones was dead, although by the sound of it that error would be moot in a few minutes. Checking that his knife was easily accessible in his jacket pocket, he followed Miss Barrow as she walked as quickly as she dared into the shadows.

A few paces on, she paused. "It wasn't far away," she whispered, ready to be quiet immediately she heard anything else. "There's a side door here." Cabal heard a handle being tried. "It's locked."

He stood beside her. The shape of the doorframe was just visible in the shadows. Further along the wall beside it was a narrow locked and shuttered window. "Are you sure this is where that groan came from," he asked, whispering, too.

"Must be." She squinted into the darkness beyond them. "I don't think there's anywhere else it could have come from. It just looks like blank walls after this house." She tapped experimentally at the ground past the door, and then turned back to him all business. "The cobbles don't seem tacky past the door. I think the trail stops here. We need to get in somehow. Can you pick locks?"

"No," said Cabal shortly, and kicked the door open. He stepped through and stood in the dark while checking his pockets. Miss Barrow heard a rattle, and suddenly a match flared in Cabal's hand. He quickly held the match away from himself to save his eyes from the sudden light, and s.h.i.+elded it further with his free hand. In the reflected glow from the walls, they saw that the door opened into a narrow hallway. At the end, a staircase ascended a few steps onto a landing before turning to the left. In the unsteady light, there seemed to be a widening in the hallway just before the stairs and the hint of another door leading further back into the house. To the right was a small dresser with a tray on which sat a candle in a holder. Finally, a door stood half open in the wall to their left. Cabal glanced down. The blood trail angled beneath his feet and through the door. A single smeared b.l.o.o.d.y handprint showed on the whitewashed plaster by the base of the frame.

He took a moment to light the candle, and lifted it. He stood before the half-open door and favoured Miss Barrow with a sideways glance in which only a grim necessity was decipherable. Then he turned his attention back to the door. With the fingertips of his gloved left hand, he gently pushed it open.

* He kept a collection, his favourite being the one with the decent woodcut, the correct punctuation, and-a tiny bit of egotism here-the eye-wateringly large bounty on his head.

Chapter 13.

IN WHICH CABAL PRACTISES NECROMANCY AND WAYS ARE PARTED.

Cacon had seen better days. To be precise, every day up to this one had been better, for today was the day that some unkind soul had stuck a long, thin-bladed knife into him and twisted it, and so murdered him.

He lay in a dark pool of his own blood in the middle of the barely furnished room. Cabal stood over him and noted the pallor, the slow drip of blood between the floorboards, and the slight quiver of Cacon's eyelids as he prepared to breathe his last.