Favours Page 5

  Caldera stares at me. The look in her eyes makes me want to back down, but I don’t. If Caldera does go to Rain, I know he’ll take her side – she’s a Keeper, and I’m not. But going to your boss for something like this would make her look really bad, especially after what Rain said about ‘quickly and quietly’.

  Caldera’s obviously doing the same calculation, and coming to the same answer. “Fifteen minutes,” Caldera tells me. “She doesn’t touch anything except the body. Got it?”

  I bite back a grin. “Got it.”

  ∞

  After how Anne was acting over the phone, I’m worried she’s going to freak out when she sees the body. Luckily, she doesn’t – she kneels down right next to it and touches her hand to its shoulder.

  “One penetrating wound through the left torso,” Anne says. “It went between the fifth and sixth rib and entered the heart through the left ventricle.” She studies the body, head slightly cocked. “Very precise.”

  “Weapon?” Caldera asks from the opposite side of the room.

  Anne rises to her feet, dusting off her hands. Caldera takes a casual step away. “Single penetrating implement,” Anne says. “Shaped like a knife, but it’s not one.”

  “Wait,” I say. “It’s like a knife, but it’s not a knife?”

  “The edges are cut as if with a surgical blade, but it wasn’t a blade,” Anne says. “To cause a wound like that you’d need something more like a spike, if you could find a spike that was sharpened like a scalpel. Except it’s not a spike either, because of the rib. The fifth rib was in the way of the strike and the blow went right through it and punched out a little notch from the bone. The only things that have that kind of power are air blades and force blades. In this case I’m pretty sure it was force.”

  “Why?” I say curiously. Anne’s acting totally different from yesterday, cool and distant, and now that she’s finished with the body, she’s acting like it’s not even there. I guess when she was talking about how seeing bodies would upset her she was exaggerating a bit.

  “Air blades tend to be thinner,” Anne says. “Plus since they’re made from hardened air they always carry a tiny bit of contamination from airborne pollutants. But there’s no bacteria here that you wouldn’t expect to see anyway.”

  “Anything else that could cause that kind of wound?” Caldera says. She hasn’t taken her eyes off Anne since Anne walked in.

  “No,” Anne says.

  Caldera gives her a sceptical look. “And how do you know so much about air and force blade injuries?”

  “I was the one who treated Alex after he got an air blade through his gut in that case of yours last month,” Anne says.

  Caldera stares at Anne, and Anne looks back at her. All of a sudden there’s a tension in the room. A photographer starts to come in behind me, sees the two women, and thinks better of it.

  “Um.” I clear my throat. “Okay. Anything else?”

  Anne looks away from Caldera, and the tension’s broken. “No,” she says.

  “Great, great . . .” I look at Caldera. She’s staring at Anne like a dog watching a stray cat. “Could you give us a minute?”

  Anne leaves. Caldera makes a gesture with two fingers and I close the door, leaving me and Caldera alone with the body.

  I circle the body and walk over to Caldera. “So?”

  Caldera stares at the door, tapping her fingers against one thick arm. “It’s something.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s something’? We’ve got the killer’s magic type, just like last time.”

  “Which we can’t take to a judge because it’s not admissible,” Caldera says. “And that’s if she was telling the truth.”

  I throw up my hands. “Can’t you just admit I was right for once?”

  Caldera looks at me and I flinch, wondering if she’s going to lose her temper, but when she speaks she doesn’t seem angry. “We have these rules for a reason, Sonder.”

  “Fine, so I bent them a tiny bit. You really think Rain’s going to have a problem with that?”

  “It’s not about bending them,” Caldera says. “It’s who you bent them for.”

  “What, Anne?” I have no idea why Caldera’s making such an issue of this. “Why?”

  Caldera doesn’t answer, and I’m getting annoyed again. “You didn’t have a problem with helping her last year.”

  “You think I only take kidnapping cases for people I like?”

  “No . . .” I scratch my head. “Look, I don’t get it. I know you don’t like her . . . well, actually, I don’t know why you don’t like her, but—”

  Caldera cuts me off. “You ever think about why you do like her?”

  That takes me aback. “Well . . . I mean, I’ve known her for years.” I cast about, trying to come up with reasons. “She stood for Luna’s apprentice ceremony. And she’s . . . well, she’s really nice. And she always—”

  “You think she’s hot and you want to bone her,” Caldera says.

  “No!”

  “You don’t think she’s hot?”

  “Well, I didn’t say that, but . . .”

  “Then you don’t want to bone her.”

  I glare at her. “Can you stop using ‘bone’ as a verb?”

  “You don’t ‘like’ her, Sonder, you’re just thinking with your dick,” Caldera says patiently. “You figure she’s a nice girl who’s easy to impress and you want to get into her pants.”

  “That is completely untrue.”

  “Yeah, one part of it. She’s not a nice girl.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve been on the job my whole life, and if there’s one thing that teaches you, it’s how to spot a liar.” Caldera looks at me levelly. “Your girl’s two-faced. She pretends to be nice and she pretends to be sweet and she acts like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and she’s lying, Sonder, you can take that to the bank. You get close to her, you’ll regret it.”

  I open my mouth, trying to think of something to say, but Caldera’s turning away, raising a finger as her comm goes off again. “Sec,” she tells me and talks into her comm. “Caldera, go.” Pause. “No, we’re pretty much done.” Pause. “What about? . . . Why? . . . All right, give me fifteen minutes. Caldera out.” She turns back to me. “Haken wants to talk.”

  “What about?” I say. I’m still pretty pissed off.

  “Won’t say,” Caldera says with a frown. “Making a deal, maybe. But then why would he . . . ? Well, never mind. I have to get back to the station. Send the girl packing and come meet me when you’re done.”

  ∞

  Anne’s quiet as we take the lift down to the ground floor and walk out through the lobby. I don’t talk either: what Caldera said is still going round and round in my head. I ordered a minicab on the way down, and it’s waiting for us in the car park. We get in and it pulls away, leaving the hotel and the police cars behind us.

  Once we’re on the M4 and heading east, I start to calm down a bit. I suppose I should have expected something like this. Caldera’s always come across as the Guardian type, very hard-line about Dark mages. Now that I think about it, she never trusted Alex much either, or at least she didn’t before. Though, well, she kind of had a point there. But Anne’s not Alex.

  I sneak a look at Anne. We’re both in the back seat and she’s leaning into the corner, staring out the window at the cars and the West London cityscape, her hair hanging down against the glass. She really is good-looking, and I wonder if that might be part of the reason Caldera doesn’t like her . . .

  Then again, it might just be the Light-Dark thing. It was something I ran into in the States, as well. I know it’s not something you’re really supposed to talk about, but it’s always seemed to me like Keepers are really prejudiced. Maybe it’s the whole police mentality. I’ve never had much to do with the regular police force, but they always seem kind of . . . judgmental, I guess? They don’t seem to really think, they just assume the worst of everyone and they’re nev
er interested in changing their minds.

  I mean, I suppose I can see the Keeper point of view. The Council’s a lot better than the alternative, and you have to draw the line somewhere. And yeah, in an ideal world, you could rely on Council mages and always go through the proper channels. But after you’ve been around a while you start to notice that the people who make a go of it, the ones who go up through the ranks, they’re not the ones who always follow the rules, they’re the ones who get results. Caldera’s been a Keeper her whole life and she’s still a journeyman at . . . what, thirty-five, forty? Doesn’t seem like it’s working out so great for her.

  I’m still mulling it over when the cab pulls in outside Anne’s flat in Honor Oak. “Can you help me put in my claim?” Anne asks as we get out.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Anne lets me into her flat and goes to make tea as I write up the report on my phone. I’ll have to print it out since the Council still hasn’t gone digital, but . . .

  I’m sitting in Anne’s flat, in the same chair as yesterday, when it occurs to me. She said Luna was coming around yesterday, right? Which would have been . . . right here.

  I think it’s what Caldera said that does it. She thinks Anne’s a liar – well, I’m pretty sure she’s wrong. So I’m going to check and prove to myself that I’m right.

  I skim back through the hours, catching flashes of images. Anne watering her plants this morning. Anne drawing something in a notebook. The night, silent and quiet. Anne moving through the living room, undressing for bed – I resist temptation and skip past that as well.

  And suddenly I’m there. It’s yesterday evening, and Luna and Anne are alone in the living room.

  Luna looks really good. She’s wearing a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, with her hair tied up, and looks like she’s just come from the gym. She strolls back and forth across the room, bouncing on her toes. From a quick scan I think they were in and out of this room for a good couple of hours, and I skim, looking for any mentions of my name.

  I find them.

  It’s nine o’clock. The ceiling light illuminates the room; the window shows only darkness, broken by a few scattered orange pinpoints from the far side of the nature reserve. Empty plates and two sets of cutlery sit on the table. Anne’s curled up on the sofa, and Luna’s stretched out in the chair with her legs crossed.

  “. . . was here just this afternoon,” Anne’s saying.

  “Oh, he’s back?”

  Anne nods.

  “Mm.”

  Something about that ‘Mm’ makes my heart sink. It’s not the kind of sound you make if you’re happy or enthusiastic. All of a sudden I know deep down that whatever I’m about to hear, it’s not going to be anything good, and a part of me wants to cut off my timesight right now, before it’s too late. Another part of me wants to keep listening, the same masochistic urge that makes you stop and listen whenever you overhear someone saying your name.

  The second part wins.

  “Let me guess, he wants to see me?” Luna says.

  “You don’t want to?”

  “Well . . . not that much, to be honest?” Luna says. “He’s kind of hard to talk to these days. All he seems to care about is his career. That was why we got into that fight, really. He kept talking about reputation and what people were going to think of me.”

  “He probably thinks he’s helping you.”

  “Yeah, by telling me what to do. It’s bad enough when Alex does that, and he’s seven years older than me. Sonder’s younger than I am.”

  Okay, that stings. Luna’s still an apprentice, and I passed my journeyman tests before she even knew what the Council was. As far as the Council’s concerned, I’m the adult, not her!

  Luna and Anne are still talking, and I rewind to the start of what Luna was saying to catch up. “He just feels more calculating, you know?” Luna’s saying. “Like . . . okay, take this flat. He set it up so that you can live here, right? But it’s not for free, is it? When he calls, he expects you to come running.”

  I flinch a bit at that. I look to Anne, hoping that she’ll say that she doesn’t mind, that she’s happy to do it, or . . .

  But Anne just makes an equivocal sort of gesture. “You don’t get something for nothing.”

  “Yeah, thanks but no thanks,” Luna says. “I like my independence too much. Anyway. What about that guy who asked you out, the German one? Did anything happen with him?”

  I snap back to the present. Anne’s just coming into the living room, and I jump to my feet. Anne looks at me in surprise. “You’re leaving?”

  I avoid meeting her eyes. “I need to get back to the station.”

  I walk out. I feel Anne’s gaze on me as I go.

  ∞

  I should be getting back to Keeper HQ, but I’m too worked up to make a gate. I walk down the hill instead, my thoughts whirling.

  Using my timesight like that was a bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea and I did it anyway. A part of me wishes that I’d just left well enough alone.

  But a bigger part’s angry. I’ve helped those two so many times! I even saved Luna’s life when I went in to help her in Scotland! I had so many sleepless nights worrying about that afterwards. If anyone had figured out that I’d been there, that I’d worked with a Dark mage and helped attack Belthas . . .

  It didn’t happen, but I’d kept thinking about it, and the whole experience made me a lot more careful. Luna never seemed to notice, though. She just kept breezing through everything without thinking what might happen. Maybe that works for her, but I don’t have chance magic giving me a charmed life! I have to actually work if I want to be safe!

  And the fact that Anne just sat there and listened makes me angry too. I thought she was my friend, she could at least have defended me! Is this how they always talk when I’m not around?

  A tiny, contrary part of me reminds me what Luna said, about expecting Anne to come running. She didn’t want to do that autopsy today.

  I push the thought away. It’s not like I’m blackmailing her. She can always say no.

  Can she?

  Yes. She can. Anyway, Anne’s fine with it. She heals people for free in her spare time. She likes helping people.

  But the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I gate back to Keeper HQ.

  ∞

  Caldera isn’t answering her comm when I arrive. I try the interview rooms and get told she’s already left. I go upstairs and check her office; it’s empty.

  I’m on the way to Rain’s office and I’m just about to walk up to the door when it slams open and Caldera strides out. She looks like she’s just had a meeting that has left her very pissed off, and she passes me with barely a glance and stomps off down the corridor. The door’s swinging closed, and looking through it, I see Rain sitting behind his desk. He gives me a preoccupied nod and turns back to his PC.

  I catch up with Caldera just as she’s banging open the door to her office. The door makes a cracking noise, as if it’s taken enough damage over the years that the wood’s on the verge of splitting. “What’s going on?” I ask as I follow her in and close the door.

  Caldera glowers at me and drops into her chair. It creaks under her weight. “We’re done.”

  “Done?”

  “As in, case closed.”

  “How?”

  “Haken copped to it, that’s how.”

  “He confessed?”

  “Next thing to it,” Caldera says. “He’s going to spin us a story about how he was so worried about those documents destabilising the Council that he broke in and stole them.”

  “Then . . . what did he do with them?”

  “Incinerated them. Says he’ll show us the ashes, if we want.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “Plea bargain,” Caldera says. “He takes early retirement in exchange for us not pressing charges. Case gets wrapped up, everyone’s happy.”

  I look at Caldera dubiously. She doesn’t look very happy. “What abo
ut the murder?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, Haken . . .”

  “Haken has the most cast-iron alibi for that murder that it’s possible to get. He was literally in our custody during the exact time window in which David Freeman was killed. He couldn’t have done it, and anyway, as far as Rain’s concerned, it doesn’t matter. Our assignment was the burglary. We had two suspects; one’s confessed, and one’s dead. Rain wants us to write it up, and once we’re done, that’s it. And if you want to know why, it’s because of a load of political bullshit I don’t want to talk about. Rain wants this settled by the end of the day.”

  “This is crazy, though,” I say. “Isn’t the guy who killed David Freeman still running around?”

  “Yeah, he is, and you want to go find him, you’re going to have to take it up with Rain,” Caldera says. “I can already tell you what he’s going to say, but you want to try, be my guest. Now I’ve got a report to write.” She leans forward and hits the spacebar on her keyboard with a lot more force than necessary.

  I stare at Caldera as she starts to type, and make a decision. “Fine,” I tell her. “I will.” I turn and leave.

  ∞

  When I get back to Rain’s office I’m told that he’s been called away and they don’t know when he’ll be back. I ask to wait in his office and they let me.

  As soon as the door closes behind me I use my timesight. It’s not that I think Caldera was lying, but I get the feeling there was more to that conversation than she was telling me. And I’m starting to learn it pays to double-check things.

  The wards over Rain’s office are no trouble; even a novice time mage could see through them for something as recent as this. I search back fifteen minutes and there’s Rain sitting behind his desk, while Caldera leans forward in her chair, gesturing for emphasis. The first part of the conversation goes exactly as Caldera said. Haken, a plea bargain, the documents destroyed. But then things get interesting.

  “I told you from the beginning, Caldera,” Rain says. “Quick and quiet. Now finish the job.”

  “We’ve only done half the job,” Caldera argues. “What about the murder?”