Shrank but returned. Constantly returned, denser and darker. For almost a full solar year, Mal had felt she was losing the battle with her misgivings. Ix’s words from all that time ago kept recurring to her. Be a paid thug. Enforce the status quo. Empire’s whore. Was that all she was? Was that all any Jaguar Warrior was?
She wanted to do good. She wanted to help those who needed helping. And if somebody broke the law, they needed to be caught and made to face the consequences, however drastic. Morally, it was that straightforward.
Wasn’t it?
Why, then, had it become so difficult to face going into work each morning? Why had she written that letter of resignation in her head, and refined and rewritten it, over and over until she had it by heart? Why did almost every punishment the Jaguars meted out, in the Empire’s name, sicken her these days?
While a bus ferried her to Scotland Yard, Mal ran over these questions in her mind, as she often did. By journey’s end she was no nearer answers than before.
The only positive she could glean from the previous night’s spectacular cock-up was that if she carried on handling the Conquistador case as badly as this, the future wouldn’t hold much more worrying for her. A macuahitl would soon be putting her out of her misery, and that would be that.
It was always good to look on the bright side.
Kellaway harangued her publicly, in front of the whole department, and she took it on the chin, drawing solace from two thoughts. One: the chief super needed to be seen to be yelling at someone, otherwise people might assume he was going soft. Two: as long as he was tearing a strip off her, he wasn’t going to execute her. The latter was the more significant. It meant she still had breathing space. She was in the last chance saloon but the bartender hadn’t called time yet.
An hour later Kellaway summoned her to his office. He was a whole lot more sanguine, and less red-faced, now, in private.
“Last night was a damn good shot, Vaughn,” he said. “Best anyone’s made to date. The shittest of luck that it didn’t come off. Anything on those fellows with the blowpipes?”
“My guess is Anahuac, sir. Mayan separatists.”
“That would make sense. Recruited by the Conquistador, or maybe employed. Hired muscle.”
“Or possibly sympathisers to his cause. Fellow travellers. He seemed to have no idea who they were when they first appeared. Could be they’re over here and on his side because they’re… well, fans.”
Kellaway rolled his eyes. “That’s just what we need — more of the buggers. Think we can root this lot out somehow? Check the immigration records, for instance?”
“I can have Aaronson look to see if a bunch of Anahuac nationals have passed through customs lately, but we get people arriving from there all the time, and if our guys are on tourist visas, as is likely, they won’t have to have specified a place of residence in Britain.”
“How about shaking a few cheap hotels, see what falls out?”
“Could do.”
“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”
“With respect, sir, I think the Mayans are a red herring. A sideshow, not the main event. I should really be focusing on the Conquistador.”
“If you say so,” said Kellaway.
“I’m not against exploring other avenues, but it’s the Conquistador who’s at the centre of all this, and catching him might just lead us to the Mayans, too. If I could only figure out who he really is… I mean, he’s a civilian when he’s not playing sociopath dress-up. He has another, discrete existence. It shouldn’t be impossible, based on what we know about him, to narrow down a shortlist of suspects and interview all of them.”
“Interview as in ‘interview’?” The emphasis Kellaway placed on the word was unmistakable. What went on in the basement of Scotland Yard wasn’t pleasant, but it had been proven to work.
“It needn’t be that drastic,” said Mal. “Under duress or not, whichever one’s the Conquistador is bound to give himself away. There’s a vanity about the man. Up on that stage yesterday, he wouldn’t bloody shut up. We prey on that, goad him, prompt him, he’ll reveal his true colours soon enough. Plus, I’ll recognise his voice.”
“How? The mask distorts it.”
“Not so much the voice itself — the speech patterns, the syntax, the choice of words. Some one-on-one time with him, that’s all it’ll take. Me and him in a room together. I’ll know.”
“How many would there be on this shortlist?”
“I don’t know, sir. A dozen. Two dozen. A hundred. Depends on what my researches turn up. Why?”
“Why do you think?” Kellaway smoothed a hand compulsively through his thinning hair. So few strands left, all the more important to keep them in line. “The commissioner’s leaning even more heavily on me. Wants results, and now. The news people have been asked to go easy on reporting the Conquistador’s exploits, play it down, not sensationalise, and mostly they’re falling into line. But you can’t avoid the bare facts getting out there. Skew them how you will, they spread, the public takes note, and the Conquistador gets the attention he craves. My theory is that’s what’s behind the murder of Priest Marquand. Someone’s been reading the headlines and decided to get in on the action. And we can’t have that, Vaughn. We can’t have Conquistador wannabes. One’s bad enough. And now these Mayans… If this should turn into some kind of contagion, which is what the commissioner’s afraid of, then where will we be?”
“How about instituting a blanket ban on all media coverage of the Conquistador? High Priest Whitaker could issue a formal decree. That might help limit the, as you put it, contagion.”
“The commissioner and I discussed the possibility. Partly the trouble is, we’re too late. The cat is well out of the bag. If the Conquistador suddenly vanished from the airwaves and the front pages, it would smack of government interference. And above all else the freedom of the press is sacrosanct.”
“The illusion of the freedom of the press, don’t you mean?”
“Yes, well.” Kellaway waved airily: same difference. “His Very Holiness would have no problem with the idea of depriving the Conquistador of the oxygen of publicity, but all said and done, he’d rather deprive him of oxygen full stop. In fact, as I understand it from the commissioner, the only thing that’ll make the High Priest truly happy is the Conquistador’s head on a railing spike outside Westminster. Which brings us back to you.”
Mal nodded sombrely. “Yes, it does.”
“The one surefire means of undoing everything the Conquistador’s done, rectifying the damage he’s caused, is capturing him and making an example of him. All the very worst punishments available have to be visited on him, and his suffering has to be photographed and written about and filmed and broadcast, every minute of it, every single excruciating second. So that people know. So that they won’t forget. So that they’ll be discouraged from trying anything like it, ever again. I like this shortlist idea of yours, chief inspector. It shows I was right to give you the job. You’ve got flair and imagination, something all your predecessors lacked, including that plodder Nyman.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You have carte blanche to carry on the investigation in whatever way you see fit. You have an unlimited budget at your disposal. What you don’t have is time. Get cracking. We need resolution on this. We need a result. For the good of the nation, find the fucking Conquistador!”
“You. You. And you. You as well. And you, the one trying to hide — yes, you.”