A Novel (27 page)

“I did a little research, you know,” said Ansveld Jr., “and guess what I found out? That little emblem is actually the badge of—”

“The Glorious Third,” I said. “The King's Third Feldesland Infantry Regiment.”

“Whose headquarters were, until very recently—” said Ansveld.

“In the Old Red Fort,” I concluded.

Another lock tumbler snapped into place. This was what Billy had seen, or part of it: someone from the Glorious Third in Ansveld's shop. And he had known this was strange or important.

“The man who took it,” I said. “You said he was white, a gentleman?”

“Yes.”

“But you had never seen him before?”

“Never.”

“Could you describe him? How old would you say he was?”

“Well,” said Ansveld Jr, “I didn't really get a good look at him. Sixty, perhaps, but virile. The shop was unusually busy that day.”

“And you were helping another customer,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“And did that customer make a purchase?”

“No. He browsed some illuminated clock faces—” he began, and then his eyes grew wide once more. “Oh, I see. You think the customer was a ruse to keep me busy while his accomplice stole the cane. Seems a lot of trouble to go to just to recover a sword stick.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of the wound in Billy's chest. “It does. This customer was also an older gentleman?”

“Oh no,” said Ansveld. “He was quite—what's the word?—
strapping.
Yes. Perhaps thirty. Athletic. A virile young black man with a pale scar just above one eye. An old cut.”

“He was black?” I said, taken off guard.

“It's not unusual,” said Ansveld, very slightly defensive. “We do not discriminate here.”

“Not if they can pay,” I said.

Ansveld's face clouded with indignation, but I cut in before he could say anything.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean that to sound … Of course you don't discriminate, and of course your customers—all your customers—have to be able to pay. Luxorite is an expensive commodity.”

Ansveld's hauteur had drained a little, but he was still standing on his dignity. “My father was not an easy man,” he said. “Very strict in his ways. Conservative. But he did not believe in the old Feldesland lie about the hierarchy of peoples, and he had some feeling for what was taken from the Mahweni when our ancestors came here. In his own small way, he did what he could to restore balance, and in this, at least, I try to emulate him.”

“Of course,” I said. “I apologize. This is not my world, Mr. Ansveld,” I said, gesturing around the shop, with its beautiful, elegant merchandise, sparkling in its own light. “I am in it because it is my job to be so. But I am not
of
it, and at times it seems quite…”

“Hostile?”

“Let's say foreign,” I said with a half smile.

He considered me, then conceded the point. “I can see how it would,” he said.

“So this young Mahweni,” I said, regrouping. “You called him strapping.”

“Athletic,” he said thoughtfully, and it struck me that he had a connoisseur's eye for more than luxorite. “But it was more than that. He had a certain bearing, a poise…”

“Military?” I asked.

The word struck him with the force of inspiration. “Exactly!” he said.

“And the white man?”

Ansveld wobbled his head uncertainly. “Perhaps,” he said. “I really didn't get a good look at him, and his movement was less—” Something dawned in his face. “He had a limp! I had forgotten, but I'm sure of it. Not too pronounced, but a kind of stiffness down one side that made him shuffle. I remember wondering if he might break something.”

“One more question,” I said.

Ansveld smiled, pleased to show how useful he could be.

“When did the cane appear?” I asked.

“I didn't see the person who brought it,” said Ansveld Jr. “It wasn't there the day my father went to see the Lani boy, I'd swear to it, and I closed the shop that night.”

“So someone brought it the following day?” I asked. “The day your father died.”

“Well, that's the odd thing,” said Ansveld, his face contorted with the effort of remembering. “I'd swear it was already there. I opened the shop before I heard about my father's death, and I remember seeing it there in the umbrella stand. But that would mean someone put it there overnight, or the previous evening after I had closed up. Whoever it was must have broken in.”

“And left his cane in an umbrella stand?” I said doubtfully. “That doesn't sound right. Was there sign of forced entry?”

“None.”

“Was there anything else unusual when you opened the shop that morning?”

“Cigar ash,” said Ansveld, staring at nothing and clearly unnerved. “Over there beside that chair. I spoke to the maid about it, but she said my father had told her not to bother cleaning the shop that evening.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Yes.”

“And you did not mention this to the police?”

“I was told my father had died by his own hand. There was no reason to think … But, now…” His face, which had been clouded by doubt, became suddenly focused and intense. “You think he was killed by someone. That's why you are here asking questions. You think he met with someone here the night before he died, someone who left his cane behind, and that that person typed a suicide note on that infernal machine of his, and then killed him.
Murdered
him.” He sat down abruptly, face slack as his mind put the pieces together.

“Yes,” I said. “I do. And that person has killed others as well. Billy Jennings was the most recent, but not the youngest. That was the boy called Berrit, who also met your father. There was an old Mahweni as well, though that never made the papers. And me,” I added. “He tried to kill me the night he got Billy, and I am certain that he is going to try again.”

 

CHAPTER

25

THE DUTY OFFICER TOLD
me—somewhat skeptically—that I would find Sergeant Andrews near Szenga Square, where a pair of protests had broken out. One of the protests was largely white and in carnival mood, singing raucous patriotic songs, waving flags, and burning an effigy of the Grappoli king on a bonfire outside their empty embassy. The other was quieter, angrier, a swelling horde of black men and women who chanted antiwar and antigovernment slogans. Mnenga may have been with them, but I couldn't see him, and as soon as Andrews caught sight of me, he shepherded me around the corner.

I thought of Kalla, wondering how she would weather whatever turmoil was coming to the city, and reminded myself that she would fare no worse for being at Pancaris.

Almost certainly better.

I cared about the child, but I could not care for her. For all the dourness of the orphanage, she was safe there, and I was free to do my job, my duty to my friends and the city. Without her, my mind was clearer, like gazing through clear glass into a blue, empty sky.

I watched the Mahweni demonstrators. You could almost taste their fury and frustration. It was like some great penned beast that had been starved and tormented for years, outrage and injustice heaped on it day after day, till it exploded with lethal, snapping fury. It had just been a matter of when. Mounted dragoons had been called in to Acacia Road, and they waited there, rank upon silent rank, steaming in the heat.

Andrews gave them a long look.

“Will they be sent in?” I asked.

“Let's hope not,” he answered, avoiding my eyes.

*   *   *

MACINNES'S FACE FELL THE
moment I walked in, and that was before he saw the uniformed policemen and realized who Andrews was. He tried for righteous indignation first, exclaiming on the barbarism of storming into a respectable place of business in ways that might tarnish his reputation, but Andrews blew through that as if it were steam from a kettle.

“I am Detective Sergeant Andrews of the Bar-Selehm police department,” he said. “And you are Elmsly Macinnes, shined-up lowlife.”

“I have always been most cooperative with our fine friends in law enforcement,” said Macinnes. “I see no reason for besmirching my good name.”

“Your good name,” said Andrews, “smells like what comes out the back end of a warthog.”

“I don't have to stand here and listen to you casting aspersions on—”

“In fact,” said Andrews, “that's exactly what you have to do. So. Mr. Macinnes, are you aware that trading in stolen luxorite is a crime punishable with a thousand-pound fine and three years in prison?”

“I did, actually,” said Macinnes at his most cherubic, “though I can't image why you think that might pertain to me. You ought to be protecting the likes of me from looters.”

“Is that right?” said Andrews. His three uniformed officers had eased themselves around the store, and they projected an aura of regimented menace, like dogs ready to break the leash. One of them, truncheon already out, was watching the bullish security guard closely, and though the guard was both imposing and armed, he looked very unsure of his role. “Then perhaps,” Andrews continued, “you would like to explain why the Dowager Lady Hamilton told me not one hour ago that she purchased a luxorite pendant with some very shaky-looking documentation from this very establishment.”

Macinnes must have considered his options earlier. He was the kind of man who kept his ear close to the ground, and news of what happened at the opera house had surely reached him. He had been expecting us.

“I did indeed sell the good lady a piece of fine jewelry,” said Macinnes evenly, “but I am shocked to hear that you think the paperwork not entirely in order. I assure you that when I acquired the piece—”

“Who from?” Andrews cut in.

“What? Well, I'm not sure I can remember. It was so long ago—”

“No,” I interjected. “It wasn't. The stone was new, but judging by what you have in this case, the setting wasn't. You mounted it yourself, yes?”

“I'm sorry,” he said, stiffening. “I don't believe I've seen your badge.”

“Miss Sutonga is a consultant,” said Andrews, daring him to argue. “She is assisting the police with their inquiries.”

“Sutonga?” he echoed. “You're the one what did for young Billy Jennings!”

“Miss Sutonga has been cleared of those charges,” said Andrews.

“Did you get the stone from a Lani boy?” I pressed.

“A Lani boy?” he repeated, still hostile.

It was the first time since we had come in that he seemed off script. He looked surprised, confused even, as if he might have misheard.

“Did you get the luxorite from a Lani boy?” I pressed.

“No,” he said.

“Then who?” Andrews demanded.

“I have many associates—” Macinnes began, acting again.

“Three years in prison,” said Andrews, “and a thousand-pound fine. Both of which I can make go away if you are as cooperative as you say you are.”

The color drained from Macinnes's cheeks. He opened his mouth to protest, but Andrews just stared him down. No one else in the shop made a sound.

“How do I know you'll be as good as your word?” he ventured. “If I had, indeed, anything less than strictly legal to report, which I'm not saying I have.”

“You don't,” said Andrews. “But I'll tell you this. I don't actually care about tracking stolen goods. This is a murder inquiry.”

Macinnes looked taken aback, but before he could say anything, a door into the rear of the shop opened and a woman came in.

It was Bessie.

She had been about to speak to Macinnes, but hesitated when she took in the sight of the police. Then she noticed me.

Her face flushed, her eyes—already red rimmed from crying—shone, and she took two decisive steps toward me before anyone could stop her. She slapped me hard across the face, and though I turned fractionally, I did not try to evade the blow.

One of the officers seized her from behind before she could strike me again, and for a moment she struggled before sagging into their arms, face averted, sobbing.

Macinnes looked embarrassed, and Andrews merely turned his eyes down. Through my confused horror I felt an urge to go to her, to whisper my apologies, but this was not the time. It probably never would be.

“Perhaps we should step outside,” said Andrews, motioning Macinnes toward the door.

We moved into the street, and the terrible sound of Bessie's furious grieving was lost to us. It felt like an evasion, and for what felt like a very long time I stared off down the road, seeing nothing.

“I got it from this black fella,” Macinnes said. “The dowager's pendant. I'd never seen him before. Hand to god. He just came in and showed me what he had.”

“He wanted you to sell it for him?” asked Andrews.

“Kind of,” said Macinnes.

“What does that mean?”

“He wanted to know what it was worth, how much I could get for it, how much I thought I could sell if he brought more.”

“He said he had more?”

Macinnes nodded. “Showed me another piece about the same size and shape,” he said, “but said he could get more.”

“Did he say where he had gotten it from?”

“I asked, but he wouldn't tell me. Said he would bring me more and we would talk then. Was supposed to be here three nights ago with more merchandise. I waited up, but he never showed. That's all I know. Certainly nothing about no murder.”

“This black man,” Andrews said. “Young or old? Local or Unassimilated?”

“Old,” said Macinnes, relieved to be able to answer something definitively. “And not local. Tribal herder type, by the look of him. Didn't speak Feldish too good either.”

“Name?” asked Andrews.