Johannes Cabal the Detective (22 page)

So, after the mysterious man from Mirkarvia had gone out of the exit and was presumably sneaking back aboard the
Princess Hortense
, the customs officer girded his loins and set off for the military compound. A minute after he left, the mysterious man from Mirkarvia stealthily reentered the customs shed and, discovering it to be as empty as he had hoped, became nonchalant and strolled out through the arrivals hall.

F
inally, after the wait had exceeded calculated rudeness and was now simply boring, the Senzans deigned to board the
Princess Hortense
. Captain Schten was disturbed to note that instead of its being primarily a customs operation backed up by the military, only troops boarded and took up positions with their rifles unshouldered and at the ready.

A lieutenant marched up to Schten and saluted crisply. Schten returned the salute more slowly, frowning at the unexpectedly threatening presence. “Why do these men have their weapons ready, Lieutenant?” he asked quietly enough to avoid being overheard by the passengers who were present.

The lieutenant drew a couple of sheets of paper from his peacock-green jacket and held them up so that Schten could read the first. Schten saw the heading and demanded, “Where did you get this? This is an official Mirkarvian document!”

The lieutenant was unimpressed. “Read it, sir,” he said with the carefully controlled inflection of a junior officer who has authority over a senior officer on a different chain of command; a sterile sort of respect. Holding his anger in with a grimace, Schten read on. A few lines in, his anger turned to astonishment.

“That’s impossible! I don’t believe it! I can’t believe it! I
refuse
to believe it!”

The lieutenant was enjoying himself, albeit inwardly. He folded the sheets and replaced them. “Then you don’t believe your own government, Captain. As you said, this is an official Mirkarvian document.” He turned to a soldier who was reading a copy of the ship’s manifest. “Sergeant, have you found the suspect yet?”

“Just about, sir.” He looked around the salon, and asked the captain, “Are these all your passengers, sir?”

“Yes,” snapped Schten. “You can see yourself. Oh, actually, no. We’re a couple short. I was meaning to speak to—”

“We know about the deaths, Captain,” said the lieutenant. He took the manifest and the passenger list from his sergeant and looked around, matching names to likely faces, ignoring Schten’s thunderstruck expression. He walked slowly through the passengers, who were uncertain what was going on, but certain that something
was
going on, and moved slightly away from the lieutenant, as if he had a contagious disease or was about to rope them into a party game. He stopped. “You are Signor Cacon, no?”

It was not. It was Signor Harlmann, who was visibly relieved that he wasn’t. He pointed out Cacon, who, in turn, shrivelled up a little beneath the lieutenant’s cold stare. The lieutenant slowly walked towards him, but paused halfway there to check his list again. He turned to his right and looked at Lady Ninuka. “You are … Signorina Barrow?”

Ninuka didn’t get a chance to answer, as an outraged Miss Ambersleigh fluttered in front of her like a combative chicken. “She most certainly is not, young man!” her ladyship’s attendant said in her severest tone. “This is the Lady Orfilia Ninuka, and I shall thank you to show her the proper respect! That”—she nodded at Leonie Barrow—“is Miss Barrow.”

The lieutenant looked over at her with mild interest.

For her part, Miss Barrow was wondering what all this head counting was in aid of. She was wondering how the Senzans had learned of the deaths aboard, especially as it was evident that the captain clearly hadn’t been the one to tell them. Perhaps Cabal had been right in his belief that there were agents aboard, just not Mirkarvian ones. And, speaking of Cabal, where was he? It struck her that she hadn’t seen him since the approach to the aeroport.

“Signorina Barrow?” asked the lieutenant.

“Hmm?” she said, thinking hard. Perhaps this wasn’t about the mysterious happenings aboard at all. Perhaps this was all about Cabal. “Yes. Yes, I’m Leonie Barrow.”

“
Splendido!
” said the lieutenant, as he snapped his fingers and lazily pointed at her. At the sound, his soldiers snapped to attention. At the gesture, Miss Barrow found herself ringed by six rifles.

“What?” She fought an impulse to jump with surprise, as the rational part of her feared, with reasonable grounds, that the soldiers might regard that as an excuse to fire. This left her up on the balls of her feet, from which she slowly descended back on to her heels in an effort to appear unthreatening.

“I still don’t believe it!” rumbled Captain Schten.

“What … what is the meaning of this?” Miss Ambersleigh was even more aflutter now than she had been a few moments ago. “You can’t point your horrid guns at her! She’s … she’s English!”

The lieutenant ignored her. He marched up to Miss Barrow and took a moment to curl his lip and sneer at her properly, so that she was in no doubt at all that she was being sneered at. “Signorina … 
Leonie
 … 
Barrow
 …” He said the latter words as though they were patent and obvious lies. “Or should I say—” He let the seconds linger, taking pleasure in the tension, knowing his civilian onlookers—poor ignorant fools that they were—were craning forward, hanging on his words. He let them squirm for a moment longer, and then delivered the dénouement. “Johanna Cabal … Necromancer!”

There was a collective gasp, including one from the freshly unmasked necromancatrix.

“You have got this
so
wrong,” she managed to say eventually.

He was aware that he could not push the sneer any further without its looking plain silly, so he waggled his head a little for emphasis instead. “Oh, have I indeed? We shall see. You are under arrest for crimes against humanity, nature, and God. Specifically, the proscribed practise of necromancy. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down in evidence and may be used at trial. You have the right to legal counsel during questioning, and during any subsequent trial. Do you understand these rights?”

Miss Barrow’s throat was very dry. The initial disbelief had gone now, and been replaced with the certain knowledge that she was in deep trouble.
Johanna
Cabal? It seemed evident that they were after Johannes Cabal and somehow lines of communication had become tangled and they thought their man was actually a woman. But, why her? She wasn’t the only woman aboard. And where was Cabal, anyway? She was having trouble thinking, and being badgered by some coxcomb in army uniform wasn’t helping. Did she understand these rights? he kept asking. Did she understand? She started to stumble through what might have been an agreement when suddenly Miss Ambersleigh was between them.

“She’s ENGLISH!” the tiny Miss Ambersleigh screamed in the lieutenant’s face. “How dare you suggest such a foul calumny upon an English lady, you … you … 
foreigner!
”

The lieutenant looked down at the incandescent woman and raised an unbearably superior eyebrow. “Ah, signora. Here,
you
are the foreigner.”

There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and they are just allowing everybody else to camp on bits of it from a national sense of noblesse oblige.

If looks could kill, the lieutenant would surely have been turned to gritty dust in an instant, and his entire family tree, dating back seven generations, retrospectively stricken from history. Looks, however, do not kill. He remained alive and smug, despite Miss Ambersleigh’s very best efforts.

“You vile man,” she said slowly, managing to make even “You” sound like a dreadful slur. She pointedly turned her back to him and spoke urgently to Miss Barrow. “You mustn’t worry about a thing, my dear,” she said, taking Miss Barrow’s hands in hers. “This ridiculous toy soldier has obviously made a stupid mistake. I shall go straight to the British Consulate and inform them of what has happened. You mustn’t worry, please. Help is on its way. Chin up, Miss Barrow. You show ’em, eh?”

Leonie Barrow had not had much time for the twittering antics of Miss Ambersleigh on the journey, but there was something very affecting about the little woman’s faith in her innocence, and her confidence that the truth would out, that made a lump grow in Miss Barrow’s throat. No matter what, she could be sure of one ally in this ordeal.

“Thank you,” she managed to say. “Thank you, Miss Ambersleigh. I shall.”

“Tchah,” muttered the lieutenant dismissively. The thrill of doing something out of the ordinary was wearing off. He’d been hoping for a gunfight, or a pitched battle against zombies. Two Englishwomen being unutterably English with each other was just boring. He gave an order to the sergeant, and Signorina Johanna Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy apparently, was escorted off the aeroship and into custody.

H
err Johannes Cabal, meanwhile, an actual necromancer of some little infamy (and even smaller scruples), was wandering the streets of Parila and considering his next move. His original plan had been to get out of the town with as much alacrity as he could muster. The reason for such haste was based on the least helpful chain of events that he could hypothesise; to wit, that Miss Barrow proclaimed, “I am innocent! That document is a forgery! You are actually looking for Johannes Cabal, who has been masquerading as Gerhard Meissner, a Mirkarvian civil servant!” and the Senzans replied, “So you are! So it is! After him!” In this dire scenario, the whole town would raise a hue and cry within minutes, and he would be arrested very shortly thereafter. This was an unpleasant hypothesis, and he didn’t care to think about it for too long, not least because it was not very likely. The document was not a bad forgery, and would maintain a thread of doubt in the mind of the authorities no matter how convincingly Miss Barrow proclaimed her innocence. They might believe her, but it would be gross incompetence to release her without definite proof of her bona fides. It was, after all, far better to detain an innocent person for a day or so, and then apologise, than to let a necromancer go free. A day or so, then. That was all the leeway he had. Trying to leave town with undue haste would draw attention, so he would spend a little time making life difficult for the pursuers who would inevitably try to pick up his trail when the authorities wearied of the little joke he had played on them. Miss Barrow also.

He had an uncomfortable feeling in his chest that he believed was probably the prickling of a guilty conscience. He was glad to have his soul back, but the whole “conscience” business that had come with it was very wearying. How dare this irksome inner voice torment him for doing what was necessary? Furthermore, it kept dredging up another unfamiliar sentiment—that he hoped she
was all right
. He couldn’t begin to imagine why he should care. She had been mildly discommoded, that was all. Good grief, he had shot people for being less of a nuisance than she. She should be grateful. He felt the faint flickering of a resentful anger at her, and this alarmed him, too, with its base irrationality. Finally, he drove all such thoughts from his mind by forcefully reminding himself that he was on borrowed time, and that she would soon be free—if rather cross with him—and the hounds would be on his trail.

So, Cabal made his plans. The first thing to do was draw a line between himself and the discarded Meissner persona. The first part of that was to lose the Mirkarvian accent he had adopted—very successfully, it seemed, judging by the fact that not a single native Mirkarvian had commented on it. Instead, he would exaggerate what was left of his own Hessen pronunciation and claim to be a tourist from the Germanies. A casual stroll into a bookshop and a perusal of its geography section gave him the details he needed to flesh out his story. He was staying at an inn in Escalti, a small town some fifteen kilometres away. He had found the place a little dull (a point intended to play to the locals, who maintained a friendly rivalry with Escalti), and cadged a lift to Parila, with the understanding that he make his own way back. Thus, could you direct me to the
stazione ferroviaria
Parila,
bitte
?

Of course, he had no intention of going to a provincial little dump like Escalti. Instead, he would lose himself in a city like Genin until he could find a way to get across the border. That shouldn’t be too difficult, he thought; it was its eastern borders, with untrustworthy neighbours like Mirkarvia and Katamenia, that Senza guarded closely. The west was a different thing altogether.

He would also have to undergo a physical transformation, and this he was not looking forward to in the slightest. He would change clothes when he reached the city, but in the meantime he would locate the necessary chemicals to make himself a quantity of impromptu hair dye. He certainly didn’t want to just buy the stuff ready-made; a single police enquiry in the right place and the fact that he was disguising his hair colour and the shade used would be known. Far better to make his own. The necessary knowledge to synthesise hair dye from common chemicals was something he had developed some years earlier when it became apparent that it might very well come in handy. To Cabal’s mind, it had been worth a few days then, and a few hours a year subsequently, to brush up on his notes and avoid the possibility of ending up on a gallows simply because he looked so very much like himself. His most obvious physical feature, after all, was that he was very blond indeed. Once he changed that, descriptions would lose a lot of their usefulness. He had thus developed a simple dye, synthesised from common chemicals, that rendered his hair a convincing brown. Furthermore, the stuff came out again after four or five washings, using warm water, a strong shampoo, and a lot of white pickling vinegar. It left him smelling like a gherkin, with hair the consistency of straw, but that passed quickly after a further wash in more sympathetic substances. Beer and raw egg worked well.