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I called out a greeting. Startled, David whipped his head towards me. ‘Alpha,’ he welcomed me when he’d recovered.
‘David, I wondered if I might have a few words with you. I understand Mark wasn’t your favourite person.’ There was no point in pussy-footing around.
‘That’s not a crime,’ he said defensively. ‘Mark wasn’t a lot of people’s favourite person.’
‘So I’m beginning to gather, but your name keeps coming up and I’m under an obligation to investigate. I don’t believe you killed Mark.’
His shoulders dropped. ‘No. No one thinks me capable of anything.’
I was startled by his defeatist attitude. ‘It’s agoodthing that I don’t think you killed Mark,’ I pointed out.
‘In a werewolf pack, someone believing you’re capable of violence is a good thing. No one thinks I’m capable of saying boo to a goose.’
I felt Esme’s confusion.Why would one say boo to a goose? It is better to stalk it silently and snap its neck.
I struggled to contain my laughter.Yes, thank you, Esme. I’ll note that the next time I hunt a goose.
‘You’re eleventh in the pack,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s an impressive rank in a pack our size. I’d say you’ve shown you’ve got plenty of capacity for violence, when pressed.’
‘I did well during my first tourney, but since then I haven’t had a need for violence. I was a gardener before my turn, so it makes sense that I fulfil that role for the pack. But everyone sees me as little more than a green-fingered dryad. I’m a wolf, dammit.’
I considered his problem. ‘Okay, so next hunt we make sure you’re the one given the opportunity to kill our quarry, then everyone will be reminded that you’re still part of the pack. But David, you’re often sitting off to one side. You need to mix.’ At the recent hunt, he’d been part of Archie’s paw and they’d returned empty handed. I understood now why that had galled him so much.
‘Easier said than done. I’m shy – and apparently I’m boring.’ He sighed.
‘Who called you boring?’
‘Seren, when she dumped me for Mark.’ Ah. Now we were getting to the heart of the issue.
‘That can’t have been easy for you.’
‘I thought I was in love. I thought Seren was the one. Apparently, she thought I was boring and shy. Thankfully, she dumped me before I proposed. That would have made it a hundred times worse. I told my parents I dumped her.’
‘Were you changed by Lord Samuel?’
‘I was changed by the Berkshire pack after a near-fatal car accident. The driver who caused the accident was a werewolf. He didn’t want me to die and land him with a manslaughter charge, so he hauled my body away and changed me.’
‘I imagine that didn’t go down well with the council.’
‘No. He was incarcerated for six months, but that was still better than anything he’d have received in the Common penal system. When he returned to the Berkshire pack, I decided it was time to move on. I didn’t want to go too far, so I petitioned for the Home Counties pack. Lord Samuel accepted me. He was very kind.’
‘He was,’ I agreed. ‘So… about Mark…’
‘What is there to say? I hated him. He was vile and rude, he stole my girlfriend, and he thought that might was right. He was an asshole and I’m not sorry that he’s dead.’ David winced. ‘Maybe I am, a little. I wish he’d moved to another pack or something. Death is so final. He didn’t get a chance to redeem himself.’
‘Do you think he wanted redemption?’
‘No, but everyone deserves a chance to improve. He was raised in the Cheshire pack, in a world full of brutality where Jimmy Rain rules with blood and violence. Half of his pack live in fear and the other half are brutes, like him. Mark was the latter. He was a staunch supporter of Rain’s, but he wanted to be top dog. He would never have dreamed of challenging Rain, but everyone knew he was biding his time to challenge Lord Samuel.’
‘So why didn’t he just challenge him? Mark was a fighter and he was far younger. I don’t understand his reticence.’
David snorted. ‘We’ve always speculated that Lord Samuel had some sort of hold over Mark – it’s the only reason Mark would have held back. He treated Lord Samuel with barely concealed disdain. If he could have moved against him, he would have done. But he didn’t and no one knows why.’
Perhaps it was time to do some more digging in Lord Samuel’s office. Maybe there were some records that could shed some light on the matter. ‘So, you didn’t hurt Mark?’ I asked.
‘I wasn’t strong enough to hurt Mark, even if I’d had the inclination to – which I didn’t.’
I didn’t think that was technically true. The potion in Mark’s system and the candle burning in his room were both designed to disorientate and incapacitate him, then he’d been tied down. I was confident the killer was significantly weaker than Mark, or why use the potion?
