Detective Nicely Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf (11 page)

‘What? Who?’ Josh spluttered, taken by surprise.

‘Ah, got you!’ I said, laughing.

‘Strongoak, you little carpet creeper! Still not getting on the dangerous fairground rides?’

‘Yeah, you must have seen me there, Josh – you were on break from working as an exhibit in the House of Horrors.’

‘I’ve squashed bigger than you with a fly swat.’

‘And I’ve seen squashed flies that looked prettier than you.’

Pleasantries done, we got on with the serious business of the Hardwood list.

‘Has this got anything to do with the little matter that is making your name about as popular round here as a firbolg’s fart?’

‘Maybe Josh, I’m not too sure anymore.’

‘That’s a shame, Nicely. I’d welcome a little opportunity to get up the noses of a few of the gold badges. They’re running round like they’ve got a kobold’s pick up their arses and they’re currently making life unpleasant for a lot of us, including your ex-partner Ralph. One of them even had the nerve to say I should be filling in a time sheet!’

‘Sorry for that, Josh. To be honest, I’m surprised they haven’t had me in for an extended sweating.’

‘Well, something’s stirred the dragon, Nicely, and that’s for sure. I just don’t think anybody knows how to deal with it. In the meantime running about looking very concerned seems to be the order of the day.’

Fine with me! I wasn’t going to worry, not while I was still in the clear. Josh promised to stroke a few of his contacts and see if any of the names on the Hardwood list had been featuring in any reports or gossip. I thanked him and promised to take him out for a hogget bun next time I was in the neighbourhood.

Five minutes later I’d picked up the Helmington from the Two Fingers’ handy underground wagon park and headed on out to revisit
The
Twilight Alehouse.
Although the recently departed elf had driven me all around the Hill, my dwarf direction bump had rarely failed me before. After a frustrating hour I began to think that this time I just might have come unstuck. Maybe it was the Moondust, or the macing – it couldn’t be the exotic gravy, of course.

I parked the Helmington in what I judged to be the correct neighbourhood and took to foot. In the daylight, the area seemed even more commonplace. The rocks of the houses were all clean of moss and the steps were washed, but nobody much was at home. Bright drapes lit up the windows and small brass fittings were common on the doors. A lot of homelification had recently gone on and it seemed that all the useful older folk had been moved on. Nowhere could I see any indication of the alehouse I had spent time in with the dead elf. I tried talking to the locals, but they were of the ‘we-mind-our-own-business’ variety that is the bane of detectives everywhere. Even the local traders were not spectacularly garrulous. I did get an unpleasant sneer when I asked for directions from a butcher, but that might have been his need for a new personality.

I returned to the wagon and worried a nail. Whoever was trying to put me in the frame either had some sort of magical powers or alternatively an awful lot of clout. I hoped it was the clout, because even though I wasn’t sure whether I actually believed in all that sorcery malarkey, I knew I would surely be out-gunned in that department. I thought about the other options available to me and felt in my inside pocket for the pipeleaf picture of Rosebud. I examined it again, looking for something I may have missed. The driver of a delivery wagon was leaning on his horn behind me. All of the Hill available and he wanted the space my wagon occupied. I took it as a sign and pulled out.

My headache was returning and I decided I needed something a bit solid inside me to put some more fuel in the boiler. I went to a gnome joint I knew called
The
Side of Beef
. I chased the ribs down with something dark and sticky I had not realised I’d wanted. I then chewed on a toothpick, whilst planning my next move. Before anything else I decided to make my peace with the Citadel Guard, so I took the Helmington down to Guard Central on Fifth. It knew it would be a waste of time for all concerned at this stage, but it had to be done. From what Josh had said, my credit with the gold badges was fast running out.

I walked into the entrance hall and straight into Scout Telfine. He had been practising curling his upper lip especially for me.

‘I hear from around that you used to be hot stuff, dwarf?’

‘I don’t know if I can make any such claim, Scout Telfine. I think I was just lucky in the quality of my workmates at the time.’ Telfine added a sneer to his lip curl – an impressive achievement in facial manipulation. ‘Yes, laugh it up, ground hugger! I’ll tell you something for nothing, though: things are about to change around here. You just wait and see! We’ll have proper law enforcement, a place suitable for men, with no favours, corn spreading or special treatments!’

‘And there I was, thinking that is what we had already?’

‘Maybe that’s because you used to be one of the folk handing out the favours and spreading the corn! Times change though, dwarf! See you around!’

Telfine stormed on out, the creases on his trousers sharp enough to hobble unsuspecting walkers on the cobblestones ahead of him. I don’t know who had pickled his pixie, but he was going to do himself a mischief if he wasn’t careful. Unless I got there first, of course.

The Cits who conducted my interview were also new but at least house-trained. I played the indignant law-abiding dwarf, unused to the big-city ways and still with coal dust behind his ears. They were the put-upon professionals, just trying to do their duty. We danced around like this for a while. No one was fooled. I’m just glad nobody else recognised me at the station; they would have laughed themselves stupid. I checked the roster; Ralph was just coming off duty and I caught him in the wagon park. Snatchpole at the
Gally-trot-a-Go-Go
had given the Cits a description of the dwarf seen with Truetouch: short, bright-red hair, a waist-length beard and walked with a limp. As this did not tally with my physique – tall, dark-brown hair and twelve-hour stubble – I was in the clear for the moment, but Ralph again reminded me about not leaving the Citadel. I thanked him and let him get home to the wife and children while I returned to the office.

Since Snatchpole was not in fact visually impaired, I could take it that this was one big favour repaid. I somehow did not think anyone was going to come forward voluntarily from the back-alley inn that Truetouch had dragged me to, so I felt safe on that front. However, I did not kid myself that I was in the clear yet. Ralph and Snatchpole had helped buy me some time, but I needed to use it wisely. Most of all, at that moment, I needed the help of a wizard.

It’s not that easy to find a wizard in the Citadel. It is not as if you can just look one up in the white pages. I had to go all the way to directory enquiries. I caught him on the way out and we arranged to meet the next evening - wizards aren’t too good in daylight. They say it’s something to do with magic working better at night. I think they are just slug-a-beds and can’t get up in the morning.

Me, I was ready for bed and so I took myself home and slept the sleep of the blameless and untainted. I don’t think that eight hours of uninterrupted slumber would necessarily be a good defence in a court of law. Not with the axeman already sharpening the blade.

This hearty and clean-living dwarf was up early. An evening without being poisoned, beaten or powdered will do that for a body. So, I gave the body the treat of a steaming hot tub of water and managed to get a good start to the day. I made it up to the Two Fingers early, hoping to catch Liza, but she had pasted me a note to say she was off for the morning, visiting her kin at their home over on Helm and Rhavona. She had left me a number so I gave her a blast on the horn.

The woman that answered could have been Liza, if she was capable of spitting acid. The irate mother first wanted to know if I was ‘this no-good so-called boyfriend’. When I answered in the negative she was very keen on knowing exactly why I was bothering her daughter. I tried to explain without mentioning the word ‘detective’, but I made the mistake of mentioning the word ‘dwarf’. I thought I knew what ‘my kind’ was, but up until then I was not aware ‘my kind’ should keep away from the daughters of law-abiding Citadel men and women. Furthermore, she had heard all about ‘my kind’ and our filthy habits and if I didn’t desist in bothering her daughter the Citadel Guards would be informed of my deviancy.

It looked like my chances of being invited round for a nice family supper had gone west big time.

I rested my aching ear and sat to write up some notes and clear my desk, binning a few bills and sending off a few of my own, hoping my clients would not extend mine the same consideration.

At what seemed like a reasonable hour, I called Mrs Hardwood’s scribe and made an appointment for lunch. I wasn’t going to be put off that easy.

A few more calls, touching base with my scouts, and then I drove off to visit the address I had obtained for Leo Courtkey from the stableman Clubbin. It was in a so-so part of town: one of those places that never seem to quite establish their own identity, neither poor nor rich, fashionable nor unfashionable, it clung to the edge of the Hill like a barnacle on a sea elf’s boat. Leo Courtkey’s rooms were on the top floor of a building that was seeing the first of the homelification that had improved or ravished many parts of the Citadel, depending on your point of view. Gutters were being emptied and drainpipes fixed, which was all to the good, but windows and doors were being replaced without much thought and some of the fabrics at the windows would have made a transvestite troll blush. Unfortunately, for me at least, the address was way out of date. The current owners had no idea what had happened to the previous tenants and made it pretty clear that they cared even less. They also seemed less than happy about having a dwarf strutting around the quarter, like I was suddenly going to send the house prices plummeting.

On my way back to the wagon I looked out for the blind-twitcher. Every place like this still with its share of old folks has one. Sure enough, there was the sign: the give-away moving of slats that marked the ever-inquisitive neighbour. I went and knocked. The door had more bolts than a dwarf king’s treasure chest. I waited patiently. Eventually, door still on a last chain, one gimlet eye was put to the resulting crack and a voice as sharp as an axe edge said: ‘Yes?’

I showed her my shield and explained that I just wanted to have a few words about some old neighbours. She gave the shield a slow once over that would not have shamed the Citadel Guard’s finest, and then said I had better come in.

‘Dwarf, eh?’ she said, leading me into a spotless parlour. ‘Don’t see many dwarfs in this part of the Citadel. I suppose you’ll be wanting ale?’ I said it was a bit early and coffee would be fine.

‘Nonsense, I know what dwarfs are like.’ She walked into a roomy pantry lined with stone flagons, and brought out a particularly large one. ‘And just so you don’t think I’m antisocial, I had better join you.’

She gestured me to a seat next to a cheery little hearth in which logs were already stacked, awaiting winter. I duly took my appointed place. She went back into the pantry, returning with some pots. ‘I make it all myself, you know. That’s why they call me Mother Crock.’ Parking herself in a rocker that looked like it had seen some service, Mother Crock poured out ale and words in equal measure.

And what a mine of information she was. The problem was keeping her from wandering off the vein I wanted dug. A further problem was the strength of the ale. As she’d mentioned, it was all made to her own recipe, and what the ingredients could be, was anyone’s guess – blasting powder, maybe? The result, though, was smoother than a baby dragon’s belly and more dangerous than its mother. After we had put Widergard to rights (she put a lot of blame on the councillors and aldermen and looked forward to the next elections with glee: ‘heads will roll’), we finally got round to the subject of Leo Courtkey. The Courtkeys, as it turned out to be, for the address belonged originally to Leo’s mother and father. They had died some years before and Leo had sold on the house and had pretty much cut his ties with the neighbourhood. I told her I was trying to find him to ask about a horse he had once ridden. I wondered why this made me feel uncomfortable. Of course, I was telling the truth! It was the novelty of the situation.

‘I remember him best as a boy,’ said Mother Crock. ‘He was a strange one, he never really fitted into that family. His father was a lamplighter, as I remember. Mother sewed, and well; all very worthy, but to be honest, more than a bit dull. Leo, an only child, was different.’ She pulled herself out of the rocker, had a little walk and did a quick survey through her parlour window. Happily updated, she took her seat again, and picked up her ale and the thread of the conversation.

‘Leo was very small as a boy and hardly said a word. Always being picked on by the other boys. I took pity on the poor thing, and many a time he sat just where you are sitting, and I would tell him stories of the old days in the Citadel. He loved the old stories, especially the ones with horses in them. They made him really smile apparently. He loved horses, he did, and I was so pleased when he got a chance to become a rider. Of course, his build was with him, you see, and he did have a wonderful way with the horses, one you can seldom find in men. Oh, they make very good riders, but they say they don’t have the empathy you might find in an elf.’

‘How about after he stopped racing?’

Here Mother Crock looked more agitated. ‘I don’t know, he seemed to lose part of himself. Some say he fell in with a bad lot – not that he dropped by much after that, so I am mostly going by what I’ve heard. Eventually he stopped visiting at all.’ She stopped rocking for a moment and had a think.

‘I did see him once more, but in the market. I hardly recognised him and he didn’t seem very keen to talk to me. He looked very out of sorts. Very pale.’ She leant forward in that conspiratorial fashion that people adopt, even if there is nobody there to overhear them.

‘I was worried about powders and potions, you know. They say a lot of that goes on now.’

I had to agree with Mother Crock – far too much of that goes on now.

She sighed and continued: ‘I think he was probably trying to find something to replace the riding. I am just grateful that the Hardwoods kept him on at the house.’

‘The Hardwoods!’ I blurted. My astonishment was genuine and immense; I was completely trolled by this turn of events.

Mother Crock realised as much. ‘Yes, didn’t you know he raced for Mr Hardwood?’

I struggled to recover my composure. My credibility in the detective stakes was rapidly heading westwards. ‘But surely Leo rode Rosebud, owned by the Merrymeads?’

‘I don’t know all about that. It was Rosebud all right though, that was his favourite, but it was the Hardwoods who paid him his purse – I’m sure.’

Well, here was quillwork for the scribes and no mistake.

‘And before that it was the King of the Desolate Wastes,’ she added triumphantly.

‘King of the Desolate Wastes?’ I said, now really wondering where this was all heading.

‘Without any doubt. Leo’s mother was always going on about it.’ She tutted quietly. ‘For a hugely dull woman she could go on. He moved in there, of course, and if you ask me that’s where his problems first started, they did! Never the same after that, restless he was. Only visited me once and he couldn’t keep still. Something changed there!’

‘Did he ever mention any elves? One in particular, called Truetouch?’

‘Elves?’ Mother Crook rocked and thought. ‘No elves by name, but he loved the stories with elves in them. Those were always his favourites, the elf stories – mind you, what child doesn’t?’

I didn’t like to suggest, pretty much every young dwarf that was ever told a bedtime story, as that might have seemed a bit undignified.

The tie-in with the Hardwoods had taken the power from my pick, that was for sure, and what to make of the royal connection was anyone’s guess. The rest of her tale rather passed me by as my wits wandered westward. It was time to be moving on. I gave my thanks and said as speedy a farewell as manners and her continuing monologue would allow.

Mother Crock had given me a lot to think about. She had also given me a flagon of her homemade ale, which I put safely in the back of the wagon. What she had not been able to give me was a current address for Leo Courtkey. I waved to her, perched on the doorstep as I drove away, and promised to look after Leo if I found him; really I should have had more important things to do than chase after a fallen rider and, I suspected, wormhead. Like trying to find whoever was putting me in the frame for a very nasty murder. I mean, there was no way that Perry’s increasingly worrying absence, the dead elf and the Hardwood gem could be connected, was there?

I made my way back to the Two Fingers and I was at the desk just in time for a call from Mrs Hardwood’s secretary: Mrs Hardwood would not be able to make lunch today after all, and no, Mrs Hardwood would not be taking any calls today either. I did not even have time to get disappointed before the horn tooted again.

‘Master Strongoak, this is Thelen.’

I resisted the temptation to say ‘Thelen who?’

‘Could we meet, perhaps for lunch please, Nicely?’

I said that, as luck would have it, I was available and knew the perfect place. We agreed to meet at midwatch. I’d arranged to meet Mrs Hardwood at a very new and exclusive eatery called
The Sea Star
run mainly for the White and Wise. In typical elf style, it seemed that the more they took out of the setting, the more they took out of your purse too!
The Sea Star
was minimal to the point that you wondered if perhaps you should come back after the decorators had been in. The walls were coloured in those shades of white that have names like lace-white and shell-white and elf-white but still just look like white to me. Everything was in such good taste it put my teeth on edge and made me want to go wild with a pot of lava-red paint and a hefty book of gold leaf.

Thelen was suitably impressed.

I admit that I had intended putting this on Mrs Hardwood’s expenses and I shuddered slightly when I saw the prices, because there was no way I would put this on Liza’s tab instead. Oh well, speculate to accumulate, they say. I just hoped there might be some elucidation and illumination too.

‘I have heard of this place,’ said Thelen, ‘it must have been difficult to get a table at such short notice.’

I shrugged in what I hoped was a ‘dwarf-of-the-world’ fashion and, feeling suitably smug, I ordered a wine I had only heard whispered about before. We chose the food with the sort of attention I normally reserve for juggling vipers and when the wine arrived, in its own silver handcart, we traded appreciative noises, obeying the ‘no business while eating’ rule of the elves. Actually, dwarfs have a related rule: ‘whenever possible try to be eating and doing business.’ It explains why so many dwarfs have been so financially successful, but also why the dwarf waist measurement is, well, let’s just say certain eating disorders are a most rare phenomenon.

The food was in the ‘new style’ so beloved by the elves. All wonderful colours and beautifully arranged, and really subtle flavours, but nothing that could kick-start the wagon on a cold morning. Thelen, though, was absolutely in raptures, and that was OK with me. I could get used to Thelen-style raptures.

I had seen the young elfess in her wetsuit, looking almost boyish, and also at the ball looking like a princess. Today she was much more businesslike, wearing an outfit which would not have looked out of place on Mrs Hardwood: a dress cut to resemble the top of a gentleman’s suit, double breasted, buttoning down to the waist, but then opening into a slit skirt. This one was blue, with a discreet, narrow stripe, and the effect was both elegant and disconcerting, probably because it reminded me a little too much of the other lady. The business it brought to mind had nothing to do with finance.

Thelen was considering the dessert menu, holding it in one hand, her long tapering fingers and nails showing a natural manicure that, just for once, made me slightly self-conscious of my own workman-like spades. A fresh-berry confection safely put away, we then sat over coffee and finally discussed what had occurred since I last saw her. Her main tale concerned the recovery of the Gnada Trophy. I didn’t let on that I had been preoccupied with getting my head stoved in while it was being ‘recovered’.

I listened keenly to the full three volumes. The reappearance of the cup, back in the main hall of the Gnada Surfing Club, was greeted, it was fair to say, with some relief, as the date of this year’s competition was fast approaching. Although there was a rumour that Perry had been seen delivering the trophy, Thelen felt that this had been started deliberately, and had heard a whisper that Highbury was involved in its return. She wouldn’t reveal her source, and I did not push too hard; in her position I would have done the same thing.

I then told her about my run-in with Petal. I wanted her to be on her very pretty and well-formed toes and to look out for all lurking goblins with perfect dentition.

‘But why a warning? A warning against what?’ she asked, quite reasonably.

I had to admit my ignorance, never easy for a detective. We all like to pretend we have some idea about what’s going on, no matter how much of our lives we actually do spend totally mystified. It helps us feel better about our shiny badges and hourly rates.