Chương 198: The Detective Five

Several weeks ago. The place was seedy as all hell. He'd been in his share of suspicious bars, of course. It was part of the job. In fact, it was so much part of the job that those who knew very little about actual detective work tended to romanticize this part at their own leisure. The pub was called the Wellspring under previous ownership.

It was just a few blocks over from the exclusion zone around the Ditz dungeon and had been a popular destination for delvers and their ilk to come and spend some of their hard-earned money after a long day's work. Now that the Ditz dungeon was... mysteriously unproductive, the Wellpring had changed hands. It was now owned by a man who used to be a customer and who still partook a little too much.

They'd stopped selling hearty stews and warm bread and had shifted over to lukewarm sandwiched filled with meat from a can. The alcohol's quality had likewise dipped. There weren't any more nice bottles, and the beer on tap was more akin to moonshine than anything else. Still, the place had a certain clientele that visited it. It kept running, even as the slums expanded into the neighbourhood and slowly pushed out all the other businesses that had been here and turned local warehouses into makeshift tenements.

The large W on the sign out front had been replaced by an H made from a few creatively placed pieces of lumber. He found that oddly poetic.

"Hey, you the, uh, guy?" Mallory shifted in his stool. He'd noticed the man coming from across the room. The detective had chosen a seat far from the centre of the room, to one side where the lighting was poor, but where he could see both the main entrance and into the kitchen at the back. The number of cockroaches he saw slip by in the back had robbed him of his appetite, so a Gwen-Brand Spam sandwich was sitting before him, untouched next to an opened bottle of the place's most expensive beer.

The beer, at least, was from another city, so he trusted it a little more, even if it was stale. In any case, he'd seen his man walk in and search for him.

"You must be Oscar," he said.

"Yeah, that's me," Oscar said. He was a reedy sort of man. Back slightly hunched, eyes quick and beady, like a rat that wasn't sure if the local cat had spotted him or not. Oscar was sweating under his well-worn coat, a layer of slickness sticking to the exposed skin of his upper chest. It wasn't warm enough to warrant that, and the man wasn't out of breath, so it wasn't from exercise. The detective scanned him quickly, a few skills flicking to life before he extinguished them. Nervous, afraid, prepared to lie.

Wanting something. Nothing he couldn't have figured out from context clues, but it never hurt to check twice.

"Did you want anything?" he asked.

"Huh?" Oscar asked intelligently.

"A beer, maybe?" the detective offered. Before Oscar could think twice, he flagged down the barman at the far end of the room, raised his beer, then made a gesture for 'two' before he reached into his pocket and slipped out a few coins that clinked onto the counter.

"Sit, sit," he said.

"Right, thanks," Oscar said. He sat, hunched and still nervous, still hyper aware of the other people in the room.

"So, uh, I heard that you had a reward up?"

"I do," Mallory said. It wasn't very much. In his experience, large sum-rewards tended to do little more than complicate matters. If he offered a thousand pounds for information, then people would have a vested interest in finding that information, regardless of its accuracy. It was like offering a reward for discovering heretics. It only led to every nosy neighbour and disliked coworker being accused. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Still, asking with a reward did have some benefits. As it was, he had a very modest ten pound reward out, and he suspected that news had circulated. It wasn't a lot... in most cities. But in this one, it was probably an officer's monthly take-home. More or less.

If this case was an assassination as he suspected, then those responsible wouldn't be swayed by so little, but the murder of so many people needed to be carried out by multiple people, which meant at least a small network of supporters, and while an assassin might have a decent amount of pay, the person carrying their stuff or driving them around probably saw little of that. That's what he was gambling on when he put out the reward. It was a shot in the dark, but one that would cost him relatively little.

He could slip this into his expenses, as long as he was reasonable about it.

"So, Oscar, I heard that you were looking to make a little extra?" he opened. Oscar froze, then nodded.

"Yeah. Just a little more Want to get out of the city, you know? Ever since the big riots a while ago, things aren't so good. More people than jobs, yeah?"

"I understand," Mallory said. And he did. It would take a blind man or a willfully ignorant one, to ignore the state of the local economy. Fewer goods were being produced here, and imports from other cities had slowed down considerably. Staple goods were still priced correctly, but he suspected that wouldn't last.

He didn't know exactly what would happen when the people in the slums could no longer afford even canned foods, but he suspected the riots from a couple of years ago were just going to be a precursor to something bigger. He had to solve the case before then. Chasing down dead suspects made everything so much harder. And he did think that those responsible were from outside of the sphere of the local nobility. Not because of any particular evidence, but rather because of a lack of evidence otherwise.

"Where are you planning on going?" he asked.

"Heard City Twelve wasn't so bad," Oscar said.

"Gonna take me and my wife over there. Maybe get a proper job, ya know? Raise a few kids?"

"That does sound nice," Mallory replied.

"I'm sure a few pounds would help make that a reality. The train over alone isn't cheap."

"Yeah," Oscar said. He looked around again.

"So, uh, you wanted to know some things?" The detective nodded seriously, then paused as their beers were brought over. He opened his but didn't take a sip.

"I'm sure you'll recall, but a few nobles died recently. Now, I already know most of the story, but before anything happens, I'd like to confirm that we're going after the right people, you know? I always feel like it's a shame when the bullies go after the folk just working to better their lives instead of the leaders that are really responsible for all the bad."

"Yeah," Oscar said. He tugged at his collar and nodded.

"Yeah, I get that."

"Good, good," Mallory replied.

"So, what can you tell me? To help?" The man licked his lips.

"You've got to understand that I wasn't responsible for nothing."

"Mmm," he said noncommittally.

"Yeah.. so, sometimes I take on little jobs. You know, for money? Just little things. Nothing criminal. Grab boxes from here, put them there, keep an eye out on a stall, help someone with something. Innocent stuff. Only, uh, sometimes the best employers aren't the, ah, most upright folk?"

"I understand," he said.

"Yeah, yeah. So, sometimes the Union offers some work. And I know how to drive. So they hired me for a pence one night, to drive this delivery van up to this real nice place in the noble quarter. Bunch of caterers in the back, food, drinks, nice stuff."

"Go on." Oscar nodded.

"I just drove, you know? A favour, really. Got some nice noble food out of it. Little piece of cake that I brought back to the wife. Anyway, it was all good until some folk died. I didn't know much about that. Kept my head down."

"Sensible."

"Uh-huh, but I heard things. Head down doesn't mean ears down, is what my grandpa used to say. Uh..." He scratched at his neck and the stubble there.

"Heard one of them grumbling about... poisons? Some sort of thing like that. Said that he was given something that one of the noble folk took."

"From someone at the union?"

"No, that's the weird bit. Said it was one of the boys. Like, a kid, from that fancy noble school, you know? Said he came up and gave him something that killed the noble dead."

"That's very interesting," Mallory said.

"Can you tell me more?" Oscar did, but it didn't amount to very much. Impressions of a night that had been rather boring for the man, and which was now months behind. Mallory listened anyway, even as his mind churned. A boy from the academy? Why did that... Wasn't there another nobleman who died recently? A few weeks prior to the fateful birthday night? 🍄︎🍄️🍄︎