City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [98]
‘Course it fucking is. We got a confession from the man-whore who bedded him. Got two of my lads following your albino. Saw what he got up to, more or less.’
Nelum had half hoped that he would hear otherwise. ‘Why should I trust what you say?’
‘Should I care?’ Malum replied. ‘I’ve no business with you anyway. I gain nothing out of telling lies. I want that albino dead – and, for sure, the gangs won’t fight for a pervert like him. Think about it: why would he come alone to fight last night if he was innocent?’
Nelum nodded, absorbing the information, scanning the sentences for logic, then reached into one of his pockets. He retrieved a purse of coins, dropped it on the table. ‘For your help,’ he explained.
‘I’ll take it.’ Malum slid his chair back. ‘But it’s not much to me. I’ve got more money than you could even begin to imagine.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘No refunds!’ the trader insisted, holding up his palms towards the descending snow. The skies had turned a dull grey, and Jeryd’s mood wasn’t any more colourful.
‘I’m not after a refund,’ Jeryd said firmly, ‘I just want to know where you got this meat from.’
‘No say.’ The trader frowned.
Jeryd sighed as a fiacre rattled along behind him. He loosened his collar, to display the medallion of the Inquisition, making sure it was clear for the trader to see. ‘Investigator Rumex Jeryd of Villiren Inquisition. Now, will you tell me where you damn well got your meat from? Or do you want carting off to spend the rest of the week pissing into a bucket in the corner of some gaol cell?’
‘I can’t tell you. I . . . scared.’
Jeryd frowned. What the hell is he scared of? ‘I’m not sure I follow you.’
‘No say.’ The man’s eyes were wide; now and then he’d flick sideways glances towards the neighbouring alleyway as if he was being watched.
‘If you’re frightened, we can protect you,’ Jeryd offered. ‘The Inquisition will stop anyone from harming you as an informant.’
‘Very good.’ The trader gave a hollow laugh. ‘You think Inquisition tough, yeah? Not so tough as him. Not as scary.’
Jeryd grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him close to his face. ‘If you don’t give me a name, I’m going to haul you in for selling strange meat, so don’t fuck with me.’ He pushed him away.
The trader scribbled something down on a piece of paper, before he backed off, palming the air helplessly, and disappeared down an alleyway, abandoning his stall.
Jeryd read the note he had been given. It said simply ‘Malum’.
*
He had some paperwork to catch up with, and Nanzi was alreadaiting with his morning tea – a gesture he couldn’t get enough of. She was bundled up in various dreary shades of brown, a cardigaverlaying a shirt, and one of those long woollen skirts she alwayore.
When she enquired as to his romantic night in, he merely shrugged it off.
‘I’m not the romantic type,’ he lied, knowing his entire existence seemed a futile attempt to peel back the layers of his own sense of nostalgia.
‘Tell me,’ he asked her, ‘is there any gang leader the street traders are particularly afraid of?’
‘I’ve heard things . . .’ She glanced across to the door, as if checking it was closed. ‘There’s talk in there, occasionally . . .’ She tilted her head, indicating the rest of the Inquisition. ‘Some of the gangs keep good control over a lot of things going on in the city, let’s put it that way. I don’t know any specific details, but if payments were being made by the gangs to the Inquisition, to turn a blind eye to some of their more violent activities, it would not surprise me. But sometimes it is better not to ask about names in this organization – that would be heavily frowned upon, but I myself refuse to be caught up in such matters.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he observed. ‘The good investigator always keeps well away from the temptations of such underhand dealings.’ He wasn’t at all surprised to learn that this sort of thing went on in a city as unruly as Villiren. The only question for someone like Jeryd, who increasingly convinced himself that his position here was only temporary,