“I suppose we’ll have to break it down,” muttered Reza, handing the paperwork to Saga to hold.
“There’s no need to get aggressive,” said Avery. The door itself was in a recessed alcove designed to shield a caller from weather while awaiting to be let in, but for Avery it created a dark patch of shadows in the two upper corners. She reached up and dragged her fingers along the darkness as if she were clearing a cobweb, but as she pulled it back, the shadows rested in her hand like translucent clay. She took a moment to mold them, re-creating the lockpicks she had used to enter Highgate. “Cover me,” she muttered and dropped to her knees to work at the lock.
Saga took a step nonchalantly to block the street’s view of Avery and pretended to dig around in her purse.
“This is breaking and entering,” hissed Lahiri under his breath.
“No, whatyouwanted to do was breaking and entering,” chided Saga.
“We have a warrant—”
“Did you or did you not literally just say we’d have to break the door down?” Saga asked. “Break, enter. Breaking and entering. At least this way the doctor gets to keep his door intact.”
A few clicks as the tumblers fell into their respective places and Avery stood. “Oh, how odd, Inspector, it appears the door has been unlocked this whole time,” she deadpanned, uninterested in hiding the lie. Lahiri pursed his lips, unamused, and the changeling smiled impishly, swinging the door open.
They’d taken two steps in before the smell confirmed Avery’s suspicions. It was eerily reminiscent of the flophouses of her time before the great sleep. She removed the white handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it to her face. “I hope you both can breathe through your ears…”
The scent of death was a distinct potpourri of unpleasantness one did not soon forget. There were some aspects to decomposition that could not be likened to any other, as flesh broke down and tension left the body, but they were intermixed with a confusing mixture of rotting eggs, cabbage, and garlic, with hints of an unexpected chlorinated musty scent.
“Oh no…” Saga whispered as she stepped inside, bringing up her sleeve to cover her nose.
“Gloves,” said Lahiri, pulling a pair from his coat and holding them out to her.
Avery studied the doorframe. No sign of forced entry. No sign of a scuffle. She craned her neck toward the staircase that would have led them up toward the living quarters. Worth investigating, but unlikely the location of the source of the scent.
The floor beneath them was lacquered wood. Sealed. Easy to clean if someone was determined and diligent. The walls were an eggshell shade, but adorned with art and accented by dark wood beams that made up the visible bones of the room.
This theme continued farther down the hall, which branched into other rooms: an empty sitting room, an unoccupied office. But the scent was stronger now.
Avery held the handkerchief over her nose and mouth, continuing down the hall until it opened up into the kitchen…and the crime scene it had become.
What had once been Doctor Campbell was pinned back onto a butcher block with one large knife driven through his forehead. He’d been cut open and—at first glance—eviscerated.
“Oh, fates, Saga—don’tlook,” Lahiri warned.
“I would be more worried about the smell.” Avery stepped carefully through voids in the blood on the floor to get a closer look.
This was not the same work of careful premeditation, this was an act of rage; a violent crime of passion without remorse for the life it had ended. “Victim seems to have sustained multiple stab wounds, though which dealt the killing blow will be hard to tell without an autopsy.” She made a motion above the body, mimicking stabbing the punctures she could see. “A very frenzied attack. If he was lucky he died well before our killer opened him up. What do you think?”
She’d addressed her inquiry to Saga, but the woman had not movedfrom the doorway. Saga was staring past Lahiri, who had attempted to shield her from the sight and failed. She was frozen and expressionless, not stoic but dissociated. Avery had seen that look on her face once before—that morning outside of her grandmother’s home. Numb, and a little ashen. It was a strange reaction to seeing a dead body for a doctor, even a young one. Was she not used to cadavers? Perhaps it was the shock of seeing someone she’d recently seen alive so decidedly…not.
Avery returned her attention to the body. The coffin flies had found their way to him. They’d even had time to lay eggs. “He has been dead a little under two days.” She peered closer into the wounds, and winced. “And he’s beenstuffed.”
Detective Lahiri’s upper lip curling ever so slightly in disgust. “Stuffed? More straw?”
Avery shook her head and pointed to one of the pages where distinct typography could be seen even beneath the layer of blood. “No, it appears to be some sort of documentation. A lot of it crumpled up.”
Lahiri pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll notify SOCO,59 they’ll need to collect evidence.”
“I’d prefer you hold off on calling anyone, if you please.” Avery examined the doctor’s nails. “While our killer likely caught him by surprise, the old boy did manage to fight back a little.” She pointed to the dark line under the edge of his nails. “Dirt—pretty uncommon for a doctor of his prestige, but a rather inevitable side effect of defending yourself. He might have scratched our murderer.”
“Scotland Yard should be notified,” insisted Lahiri.
“And indeed they shall be.” Avery pulled the hagstone from her pocket and examined the body. Even dried, the blood glimmered. It looked like gold flecks in the mud in this light. Glimmering with magic. “He’s one of ours.”
“Fey?”
“Blood confirms it. We’ll need to test to be sure, but… Were I a betting creature, I’d put my money on unicorn.”60
