“Chief Inspector Nyman, as you’re aware, has been the senior investigating officer heading up the Conquistador enquiry,” said Kellaway. “He was in charge of security arrangements at yesterday’s blood rite. Responsibility for the safety of His Holiness Priest Sanderson lay with him and him alone. He fell short in that duty — dismally. The entire event was a shambles. The Conquistador remains at large, having notched up another eleven murders, including those of Sergeants Gravett and Fielding. I want you to witness this, Vaughn. I want you to see what happens when someone lets the whole division down, and lets the priesthood down, too.”
Vaughn already knew the penalty for failure at such a level, and Kellaway knew she knew. This wasn’t just a display of Jaguar Warrior internal policy. This was a warning. A threat. And, also, an overture.
“Gentlemen?”
The two constables took hold of Nyman’s arms and forced him to his knees. One of them grasped a handful of hair and yanked the detective’s head back, exposing his gulping Adam’s apple. Nyman’s face reddened. The fight-or-flight instinct was powerful in him, and he desperately tried to control it.
Kellaway unsheathed his macuahitl, something he had not had to do in years other than for this purpose.
“Inspector Nyman.” His voice took on a mollifying tone, stern but kind. “You have, up to this point, been an exemplary Jaguar Warrior, and I regret the solemn duty I must now perform. Make your peace with the gods and beg their forgiveness. May the Four Who Rule Supreme — Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, and dread Xipe Totec — welcome your soul into their arms and absolve you of all wrongdoing, so that you may live eternal in their company, as pure and blessed as they.”
Like a final punctuation mark, the sword flickered across Nyman’s throat. A crosswise thread of blood appeared, oozing into tiny beads. Nyman gurgled. His eyes rolled back and a deep red fissure suddenly split his neck. Blood gushed in fountains. His severed windpipe frothed. The constables lowered him to the ground, dancing back to avoid their boots getting splashed. Chief Inspector Nyman lay curled in his death throes. In all, from the sword cut to the last shuddering spasm, it took a minute and a half. Mal forced herself to watch the whole time, because she knew Kellaway expected her to and his scorn would be terrible if she didn’t. She would have given anything to be permitted to turn away, even just for a second.
“There.” Kellaway fastidiously wiped off the flecks of blood from his macuahitl with a handkerchief. As a mark of rank, the obsidian from which his sword blade was made was not sheer black but bore a golden sheen. Mal’s, similarly, bore a rainbow iridescence and had seemed to her, when she first took possession of it, the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on. It was still beautiful, although she was not sure she felt so proud of it any more. The discolouration, after all, was caused by microscopic bubbles in the mineral — imperfections, impurities.
“Deal with that,” Kellaway said to the constables, indicating the body. And to Mal, “Walk with me.”
They circled the quadrangle in a silence that Mal found increasingly unnerving. Come on, out with it, get it over with. Kellaway just scowled to himself.
Finally he said, “I’m afraid, Vaughn, it’s a good news, bad news scenario. The good news is, you’re promoted. You’re a chief inspector now. The bad news… The Conquistador case is yours.”
It was strangely a relief, to hear the worst.
“The bastard has been making a mockery of us for months,” Kellaway went on. “He’s killed five priests, a few dozen acolytes, several civilians, and eighteen Jaguar Warriors. He’s disrupted nine major religious ceremonies and left behind a trail of carnage each time. He’s a blasphemer, an insurgent, an affront to the Empire, and the fact that he dresses up like one of the would-be conquerors of Anahuac is the final insult. He’s saying that where Cortes, Pizarro and de Alvarado failed, he will succeed. The arrogance of it is quite breathtaking. His campaign of terror cannot be allowed to go on. Do you hear me? He needs to be stopped, as soon as possible, by whatever means necessary.”
“Yes, sir.” Mal couldn’t trust herself to say anything more than that.
“The High Priest is absolutely livid. Commissioner Brockenhurst had to go and see him in person last night. Old chums they may be, but by all accounts it was no fun, and Brockenhurst made his feelings about that known to me in no uncertain terms. His Very Holiness, in turn, has been hauled over the coals by the Great Speaker himself, so we’re passing the pissed-off-ness down through the ranks, one to the next. It’s the trickle-down effect in all its glory. You understand, then, that you have to get this right, Vaughn? We’re clear on that? You can’t — mustn’t — screw up the way Nyman did.”
Just at that moment they were passing the congealing puddle of blood that marked the site of Nyman’s execution. His heels had left two parallel smeared lines where the constables had dragged his body away.
“Yes, sir,” Mal said again. She wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to kick Kellaway to the ground and stamp on his balding sunburned head, stamp on it until it was pancake flat.
“Otherwise that’ll be your blood there,” Kellaway added, unnecessarily. “You’ll be the one bringing disgrace on the Jaguar Warriors. And neither of us would wish that, would we?”
The chief superintendent’s smile was never convincing. Nor, with the tumbledown, caries-clogged teeth it revealed, was it pretty.
“I think you can do this,” he said. “I think you’re the woman for the job… chief inspector.”
Now he was trying to be consoling, ingratiating.
Both he and Mal knew he had just handed her a poisoned chalice and it was very likely that, sooner or later, she would have to drink from it.
“Shit,” breathed Aaronson. “Oh, shit. Oh, fucking shit.”
“Yes, marvellous, isn’t it?” said Mal.
“I mean, congrats on the bump-up. Richly deserved and all that. And a handsome raise, too.”
“I was just thinking I could do with a new pair of curtains in the flat.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Buy us a few rounds at the nearest pub. Because that’s what we really need to do — go out and get totally rat-arsed. This minute. Because our lives have just become about ten times harder.”
“No. No, we do not need to get rat-arsed. That is exactly the opposite of what we need to do.”
“But — ”
“Maybe later, another day, but right now we’ve been given an assignment. We have a crook to catch. We work for the criminal investigation department of the Jaguars, so we’re going to do what they pay us to do and investigate. The Conquistador is just a man. He pulls off audacious terrorist outrages and gets away with it every time, but he’s still just a man.” Mal thumped the desk. She wasn’t sure why, except that it made a loud noise and she felt better for it. “The more we know about him, the easier he’ll be to take down. So we have to figure out how he does what he does. How he chooses when and where to strike. How he gets in and out. Above all, who the fuck he is, behind that mask. Let’s get cracking.”
She grabbed her jacket.
“Where are we going?” asked Aaronson.
“Where do you think? Where he was last seen. Scene of the crime.”
They signed out a car and drove east. En route to the City of London ziggurat, they reviewed what they knew of yesterday’s incident. In his lap, Aaronson had a copy of Chief Inspector Nyman’s case report, which the detective had been typing up half an hour before his execution. Aaronson went through it, reading out salient details.
“The Conquistador stowed away aboard the Sun Broadcasting aerodisc, hidden in a locker. He emerged and threatened the pilot at gunpoint, forcing him to descend to within jumping distance of the ziggurat. The cameraman decided to play have-a-go hero and tackled him. He came off worse. The Conquistador beat the guy senseless, chucked him out of a hatch, and followed. He also made short work of those two sergeants, by all accounts. Elite officers, and he made them look like amateurs.”