43

  Two days had passed since the deaths of Manny Litteragi and Eliza Hartwell. Nine more overdoses had been reported since, all of them junkies from the various slums of Valderia. It was all the newspapers wrote about. They had leapt on the connection between LaRue, Eliza, and Manny. The less reputable rags were spreading stories about how the Umbry Theatre was cursed. The more legitimate papers filled their pages with biographies and odes to the deceased genius and lifetime contributor to the Arts, Ozymandal Litteragi. Ridley had to stomach reading about how wonderful of a man Litteragi had been. How he had been a genius at this craft and, sickeningly, how he had always fought for women’s rights in the theatre. Interestingly, Eliza Hartwell’s death received much less fanfare. Most articles about her contained not so subtle suggestions at a physical relationship between her and Manny. Gerald was only mentioned as the third victim of overdose and survivor. He had been unconscious since they had found him, and doctors said it was unlikely he would recover.

  The deaths had hit the Sarge particularly hard. Ridley hadn’t seen her since they were brought in for questioning at the police station. Of course, she had told the boys in blue everything, and, of course, they had dismissed her out of hand. Overdoses were bad enough, but to suggest a serial killer murdering dozens of people over the course of a month while the police just stood by completely unaware was too outrageous for them. She had gone home, and Ridley hadn’t seen her since. That was okay with him. The case had hit a brick wall. With Manny dead, Eliza dead, Cecilia dead, Gerald in a coma, Shumacker in the wind, and all their case notes and evidence stolen, the investigation had completely stalled to a halt.

  Ridley was sitting on the roof of their building, chain smoking and staring out at the city. It was a rare cloudless night, and the crescent moon shone a yellow light across Valderia. Ridley was halfway through a litre of firerum, and a destroyed landscape of smoke ends littered the floor around him. In his hands he held the much creased secret papers he had discovered in Quinn’s flat. He looked down at the dates and numbers, an irrational anger taking over him. He wanted to ball the bloody paper up and launch it over the roof into the gutter. He wanted to tear it to pieces. To set it on fire. To do anything to get rid of the mocking scrap of parchment. Instead, he smoothed it down across his thigh and read each number again, perhaps for the hundredth time.

  “You old bastard,” Ridley slurred. “Why couldn’t you just leave me a fuckin’ note with the name of the bastards you were investigating?” Ridley hiccuped and lit another smoke, tracing his finger down the column of dates. “But no, Quinn has to be the smartest man in the fuckin’ room. It was always a test with you old man, wasn’t it?" Ridley took a drag of his smoke and furiously scrubbed his eyes with his sleeve. "And I always was too fuckin' stupid, wasn't I? Not smart enough to figure out what it all means." He slurped at the bottle and hiccuped wetly. "It was always about the job wasn't it? Even your death. You couldn’t have been killed coz you messed with a man’s wife, could you? Or coz you chiselled someone on a debt? No, it had to be some big fuckin’ case, with a bunch of sexy women, murder, drugs, showbiz… fuck sake, Quinn! You died a cliche!” Ridley chuckled drunkenly. He tipped the bottle to his lips again, tears glistening in the corner of his eyes. “A PI through and through. Here’s to you, you old git!” Ridley tipped the bottle back, leaning in his chair. The rum caught in his throat, and he spluttered, rocking forward and spitting alcohol across Quinn’s secret message.

  “Shit!” Ridley wheezed, punching his chest with one hand and wiping rum off the paper with the other.

  The paper was upside down as he carefully wiped it. He looked at the strange series of digits at the bottom of the paper. They looked different now they were upside down, or he was just seeing them differently. The intuitive instincts of the PI wandered into Ridley’s brain, had a look around, lit a smoke, and cleared its throat.

  Ridley continued to stare at the paper.

  His instincts coughed louder.

  Ridley stared harder.

  His instincts sighed and then waved its arms to get Ridley’s attention.

  “Sonofabitch!” Ridley slurred.

  He leapt from the chair and stumbled around the rooftop for a moment. After a few seconds of perilous teetering near the edge of the building, he regained control of his legs, picked a direction, and then used the power of inertia to drive his inebriated body forward towards the door.

  His instincts shook its head, popped up its collar, and drifted back into the shadows.

  *

  It had taken Ridley almost ten minutes to get down the stairs without falling. Although he probably had fallen and not noticed. He slammed into his office door. He tried every key in his pocket and then realised the door was still unlocked. He stumbled inside and bumped along the wall until he reached the office.

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Paper snapped at him. “You smell like a brewery!”

  “Map?” Ridley cried out at her, tripping over his own feet and almost cracking his head on his desk.

  “What?”

  “Map! You old batty… bat!”

  “Map? You want a map?”

  “Yes!”

  Mrs. Paper blinked from behind her spectacles and then pointed to Nairo’s desk.

  “Sally keeps one in her desk.”

  Ridley lurched over to Nairo’s desk and yanked open the drawers until he found a small, rolled up map of Verdalia.

  “Eur… Eure… Got it!” Ridley mumbled as he threw the map down on the desk and unfurled it.

  “What is going on?” Mrs. Paper asked. “Why do you need a map?”

  Ridley waved a hand at her. His very limited processing powers were being used to study the map. He slapped down Quinn's note next to it and traced his fingers across the line of numbers, mouthing along as he did.

  “It’s a fuckin’ location!” Ridley crowed triumphantly, throwing his arms in the air, over balancing, and falling into Nairo’s office chair.

  “What is?” Mrs. Paper said, caught up in Ridley’s jubilation.

  “Quinn’s code! I cracked it! The old bastard ain’t smarter than me!” Ridley jabbed his temple with his index finger. “I’m a bloody genius.”

  “If you say so, honey.” Mrs. Paper said, rolling her eyes. “Why don’t you kick off those shoes and have a little lie down?”

  “No time!” Ridley yelled, leaping back to his feet and slamming his knee against the desk. “Need the Sharge!”

  “Sally hasn’t come in today…”

  “I’m going to her!” he said, stumbling around the desk.

  He grabbed his coat, rolled up the map, and stuck it in the inside pocket so it was still hanging halfway out.

  “It’s almost the middle of the night!” Mrs. Paper said. “Why not wait until the morning?”

  “Genius doesn’t wait!” Ridley lurched past her and out the door before she could say another word.

  After a few seconds, there was a knock at the door.

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  “Yes?” Mrs. Paper called through the door.

  “I don’t know where she lives,” Ridley shouted through the door.

  Mrs. Paper sighed and rolled her eyes. One day she would get a proper job with a sane employer. One day.

  *

  “Sharge! Sharge! Open up!”

  Nairo sat up and wiped her eyes blearily.

  “Sharge! It’s me the genius... I mean Ridley!”

  Nairo stumbled out of bed and ran to the front door of her small apartment. She pulled on a nightgown and unlocked the door.

  “Ridley? What are you…”

  “No time!” Ridley said, barging into her flat.

  “Time? Do you know what time it is?” Nairo snapped at him as he brushed past her. “You stink. Have you been bathing in rum?”

  “I’ve been bathing in genius!” Ridley said, knocking into her coat stand.

  “Shh!” Nairo hissed. “You’re going to wake up the neighbours!”

  “Good! They should see my brilliance!”

  “What are you talking about? And why are you here?” Nairo padded barefoot into her living/dining room, where Ridley was trying, unsuccessfully, to remove his coat. He stopped and looked down at Nairo. She was wearing just shorts and a nightshirt. She pulled her nightgown tighter around herself. “What?” she snapped at him.

  “Never seen your feet before,” he said. “They’re nice.”

  “What? Ridley, what do you want? If this is about the case I don’t want…”

  “It is, and trust me, you do!” Ridley said.

  He reached into his coat and yanked at the map. He fought with his coat for a second before freeing the map.

  “Why have you got a map?” Nairo asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

  “The numbers on Quinn’s paper…” Ridley belched wetly. “They’re not numbers!”

  “They’re not?”

  “Well… they are. But they’re not just numbers.”

  “Ridley, it’s seriously late. I don’t…”

  “You see, Quinn had to be the smartest person in the room. He had to be!”

  “Sounds like someone else I know,” Nairo muttered.

  “Exactly. That’s why me and Quinn split eventually, we both had to be the smartest. That’s why I like working with you, coz you ain’t the smartest and you don’t mind it.”

  “Thanks,” Nairo said sarcastically. “Ridley, you should really leave…”

  “They’re a map!” Ridley said, cutting her off and throwing the map down on the table.

  “What?”

  “I mean… they’re a location… on a map!”

  “They’re coordinates?” Nairo said.

  “That’s the word!” Ridley cried out, flopping down onto Nairo’s sofa and wiping at his brow. “I’ve been trying to remember that word for ages now!

  He unfurled the map and waved Quinn’s paper in her face.

  “Where do they point to?” Nairo asked.

  “I dunno,” Ridley said and then he leaned forward and whispered. “I’ll be honest, Sharge, I’m drunk as a rat in a brewery. There’s too many little numbers. But you can read maps, right?”

  Nairo looked at the map, then at the paper, and then at Ridley’s earnest, red face. She sighed and snathed the paper from him before kneeling down and smoothing out the map. She brought a candle closer to the table and peered at the map. She read the coordinates and traced her finger along the map.

  “Did ya find it?” Ridley said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Okay. Let me know.”

  “I will.”

  Nairo followed the longitude with her finger and then stopped. She grabbed a pencil and then double checked her reading of the map before circling a small square.

  “Is that it?” Ridley asked, craning his neck to peer at the map.

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Pearlston Graveyard,” Nairo replied, her brows furrowed.

  “A graveyard?” Ridley said, sitting back and scratching his head. “I don’t get it.”

  Nairo looked at the scrap of paper again.

  “HH1477,” she muttered. “What if HH is someone’s initials?”

  Ridley looked at her, and his eyes widened in thunderstruck comprehension.

  “It’s a gravestone! It’s someone’s grave! It’s a… plot number. Like a grave number, 1477!”

  “The coordinates lead to a grave?” Nairo said.

  “Quinn you dirty old dog! What did you figure out?” Ridley, lurching from the sofa, overbalanced and went cartwheeling over the back of the sofa.

  "Ridley!" Nairo cried. "Are you okay?"

  “We have to go there!”

  “Where, to the graveyard?”

  "Yes!" Ridley's disembodied voice said, his feet waving in the air.

  "Now?"

  “Now!”

  “Ridley I…”

  “Am a damn detective!” he snapped. His feet disappeared, and after a moment of scrabbling about and fighting the forces of gravity, his face appeared over the top of the sofa. “And a bloody good one! You ain’t a genius like me, but you’re a great detective.” Ridley swallowed as if he were on the verge of vomiting. “You caught a bad case… I caught us a bad case, that’s true. And people have died. And now we gotta find the bastard responsible, and… I can’t do it without you. Let’s bring this poisoning fucker to justice, Sharge.”

  Nairo looked at him and blinked away a tear.

  “Ridley, those people are dead because of us. If we hadn’t started…”

  “And Quinn and LaRue were murdered before we got involved,” Ridley said. “Is that okay? Is it okay that their killer would have got away with it?”

  “No,” Nairo said quietly.

  “Those deaths ain’t on you." Ridley heaved himself back to his feet and held onto the sofa unsteadily. "They’re on whoever this evil bastard is. We’re gonna catch him. We’re gonna kick shit out of him. Then we’re gonna hand him over to the coppers so he can live the rest of his miserable, bastard life in BlackWater.”

  Nairo took a deep breath and then nodded.

  “Let me get changed.”

  “Nice on Sharge.” Ridley said with a lopsided smirk on his face. “Where’s your toilet?”

  “Down the hall, to the left.”

  “Good. I’m gonna go puke, and then I’ll meet you downstairs!”

  *

  After vomiting, downing a big mug of black coffee that Nairo forced upon him, and vomiting again, Ridley had sobered up enough to be almost sensible by the time they arrived at the Pearlston Graveyard.

  “Woken up in the middle of the night and whisked away to a graveyard,” Nairo sighed as they stood in front of the black wrought iron gates of the cemetery. “You sure know how to treat a girl, Ridley.”

  Ridley chuckled and then hiccuped. He wiped the corner of his mouth and looked at the gate and fencing.

  “Ever broken into a graveyard before?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “First time for everything,” Ridley said.

  “Have you?” Nairo asked.

  “Just gotta watch out for empty graves… and vamps.” Ridley said as he gripped the metal bars and looked for a foothold.

  “Why would vampyrs be in a cemetery?” Nairo said as she laced her fingers so she could boost him over the fence. “I thought they sucked fresh blood.”

  “They’re degenerate hell-spawn,” Ridley grunted back. “Who knows what they’re doing here.”

  He stepped on Nairo’s laced fingers and boosted himself over the fence. Nairo couldn’t help herself; she gave him an extra shove and sent him arse over tea kettle. He landed in a spiky bush of some sort and swore loud enough to make the corpses blush. Nairo chuckled and then squeezed through a gap made by a broken bar that Ridley had missed. Ridley rolled out of the bush and swung a bad tempered kick at the flora. He brushed himself down and then blinked in surprise at the sudden appearance of Nairo at his side.

  “How did you get over here?”

  “Jumped,” Nairo said as she breathed her glowstone torch into life.

  “Really?” Ridley said as he followed her.

  Their banter died on their lips as they looked upon the graveyard. The yellowish crescent moon had become obscured behind a heavy cloaking of fog, blanketing the graveyard in a cloak of near darkness. Headstones, sticking out like broken teeth, were the only feature Nairo could see. It was the most still place Nairo had ever been in, even the air seemed to die as it entered the place. There were no animals, no insects, and nothing stirred.

  “Well this isn’t creepy,” Ridley said, his voice carrying across the graves.

  “Come on,” Nairo said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Hesitantly, they began to wind their way through the graveyard, checking plot numbers at the foot of graves as they went. Most of the graves didn’t even have plot numbers, so it took them almost twenty minutes of walking before they could orient themselves and then another twenty minutes before they came to plot number 1477. A gentle misting of rain passed over the graveyard when they came upon the grave that Quinn’s secret message had led them to.

  “HH,” Nairo said, shining her torch down at the non-descript grave.

  “Hubert Hess,” Ridley read from the headstone. “Beloved son.”

  Nairo looked at the headstone and then at Ridley.

  “Who the hell is Herbert Hess?” Ridley exclaimed, throwing his arms up, his voice echoing in the darkness.