Garrett Investigates - By Elizabeth Bear Page 0,2
he looked like a peeler, in that helmet, but I don’t know of any policeman who’d come into a rookery like this alone. It could be worth your life.”
Now that something was actually happening, Bitner was either warming up to the DCI’s presence or his curiosity was getting the better of him. Not only was he speechmaking, but he’d crossed behind Cuan and came up on the opposite side from the DCI. Cuan let the slick, weighty canvas slip from his fingers. It folded up at his feet like a collapsed fan.
Cuan said, “What are you going to do now, ma’am?”
“I’m going to make another examination for evidence. And before the body is released to the coroner, I’m going to try to reproduce the weapon,” the DCI said, shaking a lank pale strand out of her eyes.
She’d bobbed her hair like an actress, so it swayed across the nape of her neck and stuck to her cheeks in waterlogged locks. Cuan found himself resisting the urge to push it off her face.
“Curse this rain,” she said. “I could believe it follows me. Your brolly, please, Detective Sergeant?”
Cuan laughed, and opened the black oilcloth device in such a manner as to flick water away from both the crime scene and his fellow investigators. He used it to shelter the DCI while she rummaged in her carpetbag, so he could sneak glimpses of what she fetched forth. Paraffin, he thought, watch-glasses and forceps, a tiny camelhair brush that she grimaced at and returned to its loop on the inside of the bag.
“Right,” she said. “Detective Sergeant, please bring the umbrella over the victim.”
Some of her performance seemed no different from what Cuan and Bitner had done already. Some of it was alien to CID’s procedures, but comprehensible. And some of it was utter arcana. Cuan itched to ask her the purpose of her muttering and the passes in the air she made over the body with a black-handled dagger, but he also thought breaking her concentration might be a rather perilous proposition. So instead, he held the umbrella open over her hands and working area as best he could, and tried not to breathe down her neck.
For her part, the DCI seemed to ignore him. When she sat back on her heels, though, she caught his eye. “Thank you, Detective Sergeant.” She packed away her tools, dousing the glass rod with a pass of her hand. The brilliance of her light extinguished, Cuan noticed that the sky was graying around the rooflines.
DCI Garrett stood as easily as if she were drawn erect on a cord, and turned to Bitner. “Your scene, Detective Inspector. Gentlemen, I’ve served my purpose here. As far as I’m concerned, you may release the victim to the coroner whenever you’re finished with her. I should have a report for you within twelve hours. I assume I may rely on you for copies of the witness depositions?”
Bitner looked up from screwing the chipped lid back onto his vacuum flask. “Absolutely, ma’am,” he said. Arms folded over his chest, he held her gaze until she nodded thoughtfully, turned and walked away. Cuan came up beside him, his shoulder level with Bitner’s ear, and tried not to let the umbrella drip on the DI’s head.
Bitner turned slightly to sneer at Cuan from the corner of his mouth. “Goddamned toady.”
Cuan sucked his lower lip between his teeth, tasting the salt of nervous perspiration, the soot flecks washed out of the London smog. The DCI had already disappeared into the lightening morning. “You think she’s really His Highness’s mistress?”
“Bit old for it, isn’t she? Got to be thirty, thirty-five if she’s a day.”
Cuan glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t care if she’s fifty. You think those grow on trees? I was just asking what you thought of the gossip.”
Bitner spat out of the corner of his mouth. “Why? You fancy your chances?”
Cuan snorted. The rain had slowed to a mist; he snapped the umbrella shut and shook it off. “And what if I do?”
“Women and Irish,” Bitner said. “Taking over society, if you ask me. It can’t end well.”
***
It was closer to fourteen hours than twelve before Cuan managed to present himself at the gray stone Enchancery to deliver transcripts of some dozen depositions to DCI Garrett, but he hadn’t slept in the interim. He had managed a change of clothes, and shoes and socks that did not squelch, and that was a boon—as was the approximate gallon of hot tea with sugar