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‘See that you don’t.’ I kept my tone mild. No, he wouldn’t let me down again; like all things, it was a case of practice making perfect. Only being exposed to danger over and over again inures you to it. Or kills you.
I checked the time: it was already gone eight and we’d been on shift for more than twelve hours. ‘Clock off. See you tomorrow.’
‘Good night, ma’am.’
‘Night.’
Channing made his way through the office, smiling at the other officers as he went. They gave him very little back; they knew he was working with me and he was a leper by association, even if he didn’t know it yet. He was still optimistic, bless him.
I replied to some emails and was just signing off when my phone rang. Louise was calling. I swiped to answer. ‘Don’t,’ I pleaded.
She gave a half laugh. ‘Sorry, Stacy, you’re up. An anonymous call reported a fight at the address. When officers attended, they found a body. Murdered. Location 51 White Friars. DS Roberts and DC Atkinson already attending, but early indications are that the vic was from the Other. We need you to take this one.’
Of course they did because I was the only cross-over cop in Chester. Every magical case was my case; that was why Channing had been drafted in to join me.
I rubbed my face. Exhaustion was dragging at my limbs. Thank goodness for energy drinks. ‘I’m on it.’
Chapter Two
The dead body was pulverised – not just a little beaten up, but completely smashed beyond recognition. No need to verify if he was still alive or not; nothing, not even the hardy and long-lived creatures of the Other Realm, could have possibly survived this.
I studied the corpse for a moment to be certain that none of the wounds were healing, but nothing so much as twitched. I grimaced; it was going to be one of mine all right – it had all the hallmarks of an ogre attack.
Detective Sergeant Roberts frowned for exactly the same reason. ‘You’re taking it?’ he asked, his voice resigned but with an underlying huffiness that let me know he wasn’t happy.
‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘I’ll send a note to the Chief Super that I’ll be heading this one.’
His mouth tightened but he didn’t argue. Besides the fact that I was one rank above him, a detective inspector to his detective sergeant, he also thought that I worked for MI5. I didn’t, I worked for the Connection, but as Roberts was as Common as they come he didn’t know anything about the Other. All he knew was that certain cases were allocated to me and I usually worked alone with mysterious resources at my disposal.
I’m not a spook, though, I’m a wizard – like Harry Potter, but older, female and without a wand. I have some scars, too, though none of them are shaped like inclement weather.
‘Do we have an ID on the BB?’ I asked Roberts. BB stands for ‘brown bread’, Cockney rhyming slang for ‘dead’. Cop humour is dark humour, but without it you’d go mad. The question was mostly rhetorical. We were in a residential townhouse in Chester and the BB was mostly likely the owner. It should be straightforward.
I glanced around the flat. There were no pictures on the walls, no books on the bookshelves and no cushions on the sofa. The whole house was bare, like a rental property where a minimum amount of furnishing had been supplied. Maybe it wouldn’t be so straightforward.
The only thing of note in the whole room was a small, white, dove-like bird sitting in a golden cage. It stared at me unblinkingly with its beady black eyes.
Roberts sighed. ‘The name on the rental agreement and the ID found on the body say the body is John Doe.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
John Doe is the name allocated to unidentified dead bodies, so the fact that the one in front of me was using that moniker felt like either a sick joke or a true premonition. Maybe I’d need to consult with the seers on this one.
‘Where are we up to with SOCO?’ I asked. Just like on CSI, the scene of crime officers do what their name suggests – dust for prints, preserve evidence and take photographs of the crime scene.
‘They’re on their way.’ He checked his watch. ‘ETA ten minutes.’
Roberts’ partner, Detective Constable Atkinson, was outside the flat guarding the property. As I’d arrived, he’d been rolling out the police tape to secure it. If I only had ten minutes before SOCO arrived, I’d have to quickly see what I could find through magical means.
I snapped on gloves. My feet were already covered in bright-blue shoe covers and I had tied back my curly brown bob.
I stalked through the flat. Like most buildings in Chester, this one was old and the ceilings were high. Despite that, the apartment was warm in the chilly April weather. The cost of living was skyrocketing but whoever lived here – John, or whatever he had called himself – hadn’t been worried about the cost of the energy bills. The fridge was full, mostly with beer, rum and Coca Cola. There was little food in the flat and I surmised that the deceased had eaten a lot of takeout. And yes, the pizza box folded in the recycling bin was one of the clues.
The corpse, wearing comfy joggers, was splayed out on the living-room floor next to a velvet armchair that had toppled over. His abdomen was a mess: it looked so garish that it was almost cartoonlike. When my stomach roiled, I told it firmly that the body wasn’t real, it was a waxwork by Madame Tussaud. But the stench and the huge pool of congealing blood belied that. A log fire was still burning in the grate in front of the body, so the death must have occurred recently otherwise the fire would have died too.
I moved into the next room. The bedroom smelled significantly better and showed no signs of conflict. The bed was neatly made and there wasn’t so much as a shoe out of place. When I looked in the bedside drawers, however, my eyebrows shot up at the sight of a Glock G19. Getting a gun licence in the UK is tricky, so the dead man had probably worked in the police, the armed forces or private security. Or – perhaps more likely – he hadn’t bothered to get one, in which case, he was from the other side of the track. Given the way his body had been minced, I was betting on the latter. John Doe had just got a whole lot more interesting.
