Shadows of Valderia: An Urban Fantasy Detective Noir

12

“What time is it?” Ridley asked as they walked out of HQ.

“Just coming up to five,” Nairo answered wearily, clicking her pocket watch shut.

“Good. Come Sarge.” He spun on his heels and marched away, limping like a disgruntled duck, while Nairo hopped and shuffled a couple paces to catch up.

“To where? Benny was our only lead and he’s cooling on a slab and we have no idea where the Diamond is!” She pulled up in front of Ridley and massaged her aching jaw, the pain fuelling her frustration.

“You’re wrong,” he replied, side stepping Nairo without breaking his waddle.

“Oh really?”

“Like you said the only lead we had was Benny and a missing Diamond.” He screwed a smoke into the corner of his mouth. “Now we get to figure out why Benny was killed, and my gold’s going on whoever killed Benny knows something about the Diamond.” He finished and vanished his lighter with a smirk, but it was a thin drawn attempt and only hung around for a moment, before his lips returned to their usual tightly drawn demeanour. One of his eyes was nearly swollen shut and half of his face was a livid bruise. The other eye was restless however, his head twitched like a bloodhound snuffling in the undergrowth trying to regain the scent.

“Well our only lead is sitting in police HQ and we’re not allowed to talk to him.”

“Only one thing for it, we go back to the scene of the crime.”

“The bank?”

“No, the second crime. We need to go back to Benny’s for clues. Like Conway said, we need some evidence that Benny had the Diamond, or even that he had anything to do with it. Time for some tedious police procedure, should be right up your alley.”

“PD’s already gone over the place.”

“Despite their trampling we may be able to still catch a whiff, unless you have a better idea?”

With a deep sigh, Nairo gave a defeated shrug and a wave of her hand.

“It’s worth a shot,” she conceded. “But you’re paying for the cab this time!”

Ridley returned her shrug with a smirk and stuck his fingers in his mouth letting out a shrill whistle. A large saggy cab bounced over to them, a towering chestnut mare whinnied and snuffled at them, flaring her cavernous nostrils, and offering them a moronic grin.

“Where to, marm?” the driver asked, punctuating his question with a healthy glob of spit over the side of the cab. He was shabby from head to foot and had all the tarnishes and patches of a veteran driver.

“RatHoles,” Nairo said, placing her foot on the cab steps.

“Err… dunno bout that, missus,” he grumbled scratching his bristly chin. “Don’t do drops that far. Out of me zones, you see.”

“Since when?” Ridley snorted from behind her.

“It's too far, mate,” the driver said testily.

“Bet you would take us North of Avantgard, wouldn’t you? That wouldn’t be too far would it?”

“For goodness sake I’m a police officer!” Nairo flashed the cabby her badge when she saw the doubt on his face.

“And I'm short of patience!” Ridley snapped, taking a step towards the driver menacingly.

“And I’ll guarantee your safety,” Nairo persevered.

“And I won't,” Ridley finished.

They stood shoulder to shoulder glaring at the driver with their blacked eyes and bloodied lips. The poor cabbie suddenly felt very put upon. With a quick doff of his shabby pillbox cap he ushered them in. Ridley threw himself into the worn, spongy seat and sank down into his coat, the end of his smoke weakly illuminating the musty gloom of the coach. As the cab began to trundle off the small window between the driver and fare popped open.

“Betty’s Bridge’ll be clogged back to the public chopping block this time of the day, we’ll be better cutting around the Foundries, if you’re in a hurry,” he finished lamely, trailing off in the manor of someone who didn’t want to be scolded again.

“Yes, that’s fine, thank you.” Nairo answered.

“Good good.” He clicked his tongue and with a flick of the reins they cut lanes narrowly avoiding hitting a small angry bundle of fur that squawked raucous curses at them in some unintelligible tongue. “Err… was nothing pers’nal by the way marm… just you know how it is.”

“What’s your name?” Nairo asked, while Ridley blew smoke rings absentmindedly.

“Sturridge, but me friends call me Stu… Marm.”

“Well Sturridge, get us to the southside and we’ll call it quits. Deal?”

Stu nodded and gave the chestnut mare another flick with the reins, this time with more of flourish, for the benefit of his passengers.

“’S only nowadays a fella can't be too careful, not wiv all these immigrants and wotstheirname, refugees and that. I heard there's fousands of ‘em coming over the mountains on account of that earfquake.” He said with a tone of uneducated authority on the matter.

“Those refugees have been made homeless by a disaster not in their control, their homes destroyed, their water diseased by dead bodies and human waste, not to mention the rampant looting in the wake of that earthquake,” Nairo replied hotly. “They have nowhere else to go and they need our help.”

“If I knew you had such a high horse we coulda rode it to the southside and saved the cab fare,” Ridley muttered sarcastically from the depth of the coach. Nairo blinked slowly and decided she didn’t have the energy and delicately dropped herself back in her seat.

“Oh no, course marm, t’was a terrible thing what happened, heart goes out to them wot lost their lives,” he said, even sweeping off his crumpled hat and pressing it against his narrow chest with a thoughtful glance to the heavens. “Still, they're a light fingered bunch.” He spat over the side of the cab and jammed his cap back on. “Heard they got schools for thieving out there, you know!”

“That why a cabbie keeps a loaded crossbow under his seat?” Ridley asked as leant forward and flicked his smoke out of the window.

“Err… I… I’ve got a permit for that!” Stu stammered, shifting his rear end trying vainly to hide the crossbow poking out from under his bench.

“Have you, Sturridge… didn’t catch your surname.” The flip of Nairo’s notepad made the driver flinch like the rasp of steel unsheathing in a dark alley.

“Ummm… well I’ve changed me abode since and err… could take up to four years… you know what them pencil pusher are like.” He ran himself into silence, the feeling of four eyes boring into his backside sent cold sweat beading down his spine. Finally he could take the howling silence behind him no longer. “Look it’s gotten rough out here, all these damn foreigners flooding in by the hundred, begging, borrowing and nicking anything not nailed down! The Goblins and the Landlord’s boys have been spoiling to have it out with each other! And… and these bloody burn addicts move like damned locusts, stripping anything they can sell for scrap! They’ll have the hindlegs of yore horse if’n yore not careful! So yeah, if I feel it necessary to arm meself, purely for self defence o’ course, and a man should be completely within his rights to damn well do so!” He spluttered to a halt, trying to catch the breath that righteous indignation and forty a day had robbed him of.

“Alright, calm down fella, not like we’re police,” Ridley said.

“I thought she was!” Stu crowed indignantly.

“Oh yeah, keep forgetting that, carry on squire!” Ridley slammed the window shut between them.

Stu sunk into his seat, fervently wishing he had clocked off early and got a pie and a pint down the Witch’s Wart with Wonky Bobby and his pet parrot.

“So what have you been chewing on?” Nairo asked when she grew tired of Ridley’s somehow infuriating silence.

“Huh?”

“Come on, you look like a dog chewing on a bee.”

“Just tryna make sense of this whole affair of ours.”

“It is a bit like trying to see a frog at the bottom of a murky pond,” Nairo mused, massaging her neck whilst trying to ignore the cloying smell of the cab and the emissions of its engine.

“Catch a fly,” Ridley muttered, with his arms crossed firmly across his chest, a frown etched across his drawn face.

“Hmmm?”

“Catch a fly, lure the frog to the top, simple predator-prey relationship.”

“So we need a fly then?”

“Well that analogy doesn’t quite work here. What we have here is a pond that it is impossible to have a frog in, a frog that doesn’t look like a frog, we don’t know what that frog eats, we don’t even know if it is a frog…” Ridley trailed off and fell into a broody silence.

“Still, the key to fishing is patience,” Nairo offered half-heartedly.

“You don’t fish for frogs,” Ridley snorted derisively. “Besides, I don’t think we’re fishermen in this metaphor, but the point’s valid. We lost Benny, but I don’t think Benny being whacked is just a coincidence, even if he was a piece of shit who’s had it coming for decades.”

“You heard what Conway said, it’s unlikely this was the Chaw’draks.”

“Still doesn’t mean Benny didn’t have something to do with the Diamond. He was there, then he winds up dead… I feel it in my gut.”

“One coincidence is just a coincidence, two coincidences are a clue,” Nairo intoned.

“What?”

“It was from an old book, you know one of those where the detective is a genius, set in a big old manor house.”

“I prefer my novels with a bit more sex and violence.”

“You would.”

“It’s true though. If Benny had just been around the bank, that’s a coincidence. But, for him to wind up dead hours later, that’s a clue.”

“You think we were barking up the right tree?”

“So someone cut it down,” Ridley finished, allowing himself a small smile at an analogy well done.

“We’re back to pulling threads and following breadcrumbs, aren’t we?”

“Yup,” Ridley replied, sitting up as the cab began slowing.

“This is the closest I’m willing to travel, ma’am,” came the hopeful voice of Stu the driver.

Ridley burst out of the door, his step reinvigorated. He sucked in a deep lungful of poverty tainted air and walked off. Nairo followed and flicked a coin to the driver.

“Don’t let me catch you with that bow loaded and concealed again,” she said as she walked away.

“Yes marm, corse not.” He flicked the reins, whipping his horses as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

“Except now we know our prey is running towards a corner and desperate not to be followed,” Ridley continued their conversation once Nairo fell into step with him. “And a cornered criminal is a sloppy one,” Ridley pulled out a smoke, an excited grin spread across his face. “Fancy poking a hornet’s nest?”

“I fought a Minotaur bare handed and chased a murderous Goblin across the rooftops of the infamous RatHoles, I laugh at hornets!” Nairo replied. Ridley’s hound-like eagerness for the chase was infectious, also she was fairly certain she had a concussion.