Shadows of Valderia: An Urban Fantasy Detective Noir

“Go away, Ridley! This is a crime scene!”

“Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t, Captain,” Ridley replied, looking at the belligerent little Gnome in the oversized police helmet.

“You're not allowed in 'em no more! And stop calling me that!” The Gnome waved his non-regulation billy club at Ridley indignantly while his other hand frantically competed in a losing game of keepy up with his helmet.

“Not allowed? Who says?” Ridley asked, edging past the diminutive officer.

“Cap'n said so!”

“But you're the captain?”

“No I’m not!”

“So why do they call you captain?”

“They don’t!” The Gnome was almost beside himself. Gnommish sensibilities had no place for Ridley's brand of foolery. “I swear, Ridley, if you don’t scarper quick time, I'm gonna take this club and…”

“Is that angry fella the captain then?” Ridley asked, pointing over the Gnome’s head.

“Cap'n?” He spun on his little heels and snapped a salute so crisp he slammed his helmet down right over his face.

Ridley strolled under the police line with the Gnome’s apologetic squeaks echoing behind him. He hopped up the steps of the bank, pulling his trench coat tight against the cold breeze. The normally bustling bank stood curiously still. Verdalia city’s finest wandered around the bank in their faded blue tunics, some making an attempt to look busy, while most sipped hot drinks and swapped colourful stories.

Ridley skirted past two Hobgoblin bank tellers yapping in their guttural mother tongue while flapping reams of paper at the officers. Pixies flitted around everyone’s feet, sweeping around their shoes, their usually obliviously happy state carried an edge of agitation with it, as they sought to meticulously go through their daily routines despite the furor.

“Pixie, point me to the master vault,” Ridley said to the closest Pixie. It turned its little lilac head and its vacuous deep blue eyes slowly faded back into reality. Ridley lit a smoke and gave it a few seconds to process.

“Down the hall sir... Right at the silver deposit... Through the arches… Down the stairs,” the Pixie murmured slowly.

Satisfied it had done what was needed of it, it slowly drifted off again, mind elsewhere. An unconscious frown spread across its face as officers kept interrupting its sweeping pattern.

Ridley tucked his chin in the collar of his long trench coat, eyed the increasingly curious officers, and skirted down the stairs into the depths of the fortress-like bank. The further he went into the labyrinthine structure of the place, the more decadent the furnishing and decorations had become; obviously this was a part of the bank not meant for plebs. There was less activity down here, only a couple of absent minded Pixies floating about their daily chores and a particularly ferocious little HobGoblin who eyed Ridley coldly as he swept past. Down two more spiral stairs and Ridley finally came to the bank's most fortified vault.

Here the security became more ethereal than just locks and vaults. Bronze veins, laced with pure gold, ran down the steps, forming an old ward against invisibility charms. Ridley finished his smoke and flicked it into one of the dozen or so suspicious holes that lined the wall at strategic intervals. He guessed, if you were a thief, that you would be able to whistle just by running by the time you reached the bottom. His heels clicked down the pristine marble floor as he made his way to the mouth of the vault. Ridley stopped to look around; usually he would be dead by now, so this was all new to him. It would have been impossible to tell however, the same sardonic look of indifference hadn’t left his face in years. A colossal statue with a pulse stood at the vault's entrance, blocking his way, with a genial smile.

“Hullo Ridley!” the Troll waved happily, the movement stretching every seam in her police issue tunic.

“How’s it swinging, Walthram,” Ridley half acknowledged the Troll, and made to stride past her.

“Oh but, Cap'n said youse wasn’t allowed in the crime scenes no more. Had a meetin' about it and everything.” Walthram scratched the shock of red hair that sprouted from the top of her head, trying her best to look apologetic.

“Hmm, I heard. Don’t worry, I’ll only be five minutes.”

“But I think...”

“Don’t. Life's easier that way,” Ridley muttered as he walked past her leaving Walthram to chew over that piece of chunky nihilism.

The vault felt cavernous. It was dimly lit with the odd glimmer of light twinkling on the heavy locks on steel boxes and chests that lined the walls of the vault. In the middle of all this hidden opulence stood a red-faced Dwarf and a harried looking HobGoblin in a crumpled suit. He wrung his bony claws meekly and whimpered every time the Dwarf took a breath between insults.

“You useless scaly number crunching, yeller backed, green faced twerp!” the Dwarf barked, waving his stumpy arms in poorly contained fury.

“It iz like I have told you Captain,” the HobGoblin mewled piteously. “It iz zuppozzed to be impozzible to break in to thiz vault!”

“Tell me then, what's that?” the Cap'n cried as he pointed to a heavy gold wrought iron chest, its lid flapped open as if lewdly mocking them with its empty insides.

Ridley strolled past the Cap'n and peered into the empty box.

“Leave him be Cap, stress a banker that hard he might wet himself.”

Captain Mallory was a straightforward Dwarf who had simply made the horrendous error of trying to 'better his situation'. Half a dozen decades of working the beat and he had somehow landed the misfortune of being in charge. This new found responsibility had in no way dampened the Dwarf's naturally incendiary nature, nor had it broadened his very narrow horizons. He was a direct creature, he dug all his tunnels impeccably straight, and he did not mince his words.

“Ridley, you beardless worm's son! This is a damn crime scene!” he barked, spitting phlegm and chewed bits of tobacco.

“Funny, Gnome at the door said the same thing before his helmet blindsided him,” Ridley poked around the box a bit, before wandering around the cavern craning his neck to get a view of the whole room.

“Walthram! You useless duck brained excuse for a statue!” The Cap'n was one of those diabolically loud little creatures, the type that could rattle bones in a jellyfish.

“Cap'n?” Walthram peaked around the door.

“What did I say about letting anyone into the crime scene!?”

“I was having an existential crisis, Cap'n,” Waltham responded sullenly.

Mallory, closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath rhythmically, while running his paving stone hands from the top of his head all the way down to the tip of his beards. A supposed calming tactic Dwarves used. It didn’t work but at least they tried. “Get outside you loose bag of rubble and help Corporal Kasj with his helmet! And I want this perimeter sealed! Airtight!”

Walthram shambled off and left Mallory to round on Ridley, only to find he had slunk away to inspect the walls of the vault.

“RIDLEY!!”

“Cap'n?”

“What did I say would happen if I caught you poking yer nose into my investigations again?”

“Something to do with my nose and the place where the sun don’t shine, honestly Cap'n, you threaten me so often, who can keep track?”

The Cap'n blinked hard several times. It was the slow blink of a body struggling on the brink of understanding and violence. Ridley knew if he left the captain to boil any further his ears would start whistling.

“Relax Cap'n, I'm here on other business.”

“What other business?” he eyed the PI suspiciously.

“Errr… Missing Persons.”

“Missing persons? This is a damn robbery!” Confusion and anger were regular bedmates in Dwarvish minds. “Listen here you jumped up pile of phosphorous...!”

“Pleaze gentleman, ze Diamond,” the HogGoblin interrupted.

“Shut up!” the Cap’n barked.

“Captain Mallory?”

“What!” He rounded on this fresh source of annoyance. A young officer with bright blue eyes and an unruly mass of curly brown hair saluted the captain, snapping her heels together smartly.

“Oh err, Detective Sergeant Nairo, 'pologies.”

“Got the reports from the area, officers have canvassed but no one seems to have seen anything, sir.”

“The street vendors?”

“I’ve been here since dawn. No luck, I'm afraid.”

“Damn street venders, blood out of a stone with those people,” the Cap'n grumbled.

“I questioned the Pixies...”

“Waste of time,” he grunted back.

“They seemed spooked,” Nairo continued, unperturbed by the Cap'n's gruff retorts.

“They're Pixies, they haven’t got enough brain cells to be spooked.”

“Aah, but Captain, they are very zenzitive creaturez! It iz all the dizrtruption, they enjoy patternz. Zpeaking of dizruption, I muzt open the bank az zoon az pozzible! Thiz clozure will be cataztrophic to our bottom...”

“Will you shut up about your bloody bottom line!” Mallory snapped. “The bank will open when I say it can open, and that might be in a decade or two if you don’t get out of our way!”

“And you are?” Ridley asked, sidling up to the empty chest.

“Zimeon De Woolf, I am the manager of thiz bank.”

“Who deposited the Diamond?”

“Err… it waz deposited late lazt night by a young counzil man, he zaid it waz on behalf of a third party, very huzh huzh. Pulled me away from zome very important work.” Zimeon huffed and polished his glasses as if the mere thought had riled him up. He blinked heavily, the bags under his eyes gave hint he was a creature used to long days and late nights.

“Ridley I told you to keep yer bloody beak out of this! And you… that’s something you should have probably told us!” Mallory wagged his finger accusingly at the bank manager.

“I did it’z in my ztatement!”

“Oh… is it?” Mallory muttered out of the side of his mouth to Nairo.

She flipped open a little notebook and scanned through her neatly scrawled notes.

“It is.”

“Do we have a name?” Ridley interjected.

“We’ll ask the questions round here!” Mallory snapped at Ridley. “What was his name?”

“No zir, I’m afraid that is ztrictly confidential.”

“Now listen here you long streak of pus…”

“No zir, I mean I wazn’t given a name.”

“What?” Ridley and Nairo said at the same time.

“Well I waz given a name, but not hiz name. He mentioned zome very… lofty peoplez and I knew better than to azk more. I’m zure you understand.”

“That’s not proper procedure,” Nairo said, a sharp scowl of disapproval on her face.

“Procedure,” Ridley scoffed. “What time?”

“Oh ummm…”

“1:30 am,” Sergeant Nairo replied, flipping her notebook shut with a clean snap. “And you are?”

“Nobody,” Ridley replied.

“A damn pestilence!” Mallory barked. “This is the so called Private Investigator that almost tanked the Hemway investigation last year!”

“Bit of an exaggeration,” Ridley muttered.

“Oh, you were the one who thought he was poisoned by the maid’s Yorkshire Terrier,” Nairo said, a smirk stretching the corners of her mouth.

“That was a perfectly feasible theory,” Ridley snapped at her. “And don’t forget Cap’n, who handed you the Buxburry burglar and the Salington Slicer on a silver platter.”

“Those were flukes!”

“You caught the Salington Slicer?” Nairo asked, her eyebrows arching.

“Oh yeah. Single handedly.” Ridley said, returning her smirk.

“Only after he slipped out of that third-story window,” the Cap’n muttered petulantly.

“And I even let you do the media for that case,” Ridley continued. “Got a big fat accommodation from the Mayor for that one, didn't you.”

“Let me? Let me! I’m the damned police chief!” Mallory baulked, his face reddening again.

“Let’s not argue semantics,” Ridley said, waving his hand at him.

“Wait, wasn’t the Buxburry burglar an 82 year old man?” Nairo asked.

“You wouldn’t believe how fast that old bugger could run…”

“Err... Cap'n?” came a voice from the vault’s entrance.

The Cap'n looked to the heavens as if praying for the strength to deal with his life.

“Why did I ever leave the tunnels?” he whispered. “What now!?”

Walthram saluted for some reason and did her best drill response, “There's some Elves at the door... Sir!”

“Elves?”

“Elvez?”

Ridley looked up and raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“Elves?”

“Elves outside?”

“And the Mayor.”

“And the Mayor?” The cogs began to tick visibly in the Cap'n's mind. “Well, let them in then you rock faced abomination! Why would you not let them in?” The Cap'n frantically waved at the troll, bobbing up and down angrily. The colour had drained from the top of his head to the tip of his red beard.

“You said to secure the p'rimeter,” the Troll responded moodily. “Done the best we could, but air kept getting in.”

“What?” Mallory snapped.

“You said you wanted it airtight. But it was very windy and...”

“Shut up! Shut up! You thundering sack of... of... go get the damn Elves!” He ran his fingers through his beard agitatedly, grumbling curses about Troll mothers.

“Looks like we know who the Diamond belonged to,” Ridley couldn’t help but smirk in the depth of the collars of his coat: things were beginning to get interesting.

“Elvez, here? Oh thiz iz zo bad,” the banker whimpered. “I zhould maybe go, yez?”

“No,” Mallory barked. “Sergeant.”

“Should I go?” Nairo asked, snapping to attention.

“No! You stay.”

“Ridley!”

“I'll stay.”

“No you bloody well will not!”

“Sir, the Elves are here.”

“Mother help me.”