The elf slid silently out of his nonexistent cover. Even in the erratic lighting, there seemed to be nowhere anyone could hide, but he’d managed it.
Goes with the training, Geraint thought once his first instinctive alarm subsided. Might as well get that if you pay what I did for these guys.
“There’s been a slight cock-up,” the elf said quietly.
“Oh, wonderful,” Geraint sighed, “Tell me about it. At least there hasn’t been a firelight, since everyone’s sound asleep hereabouts.”
“Dead drunk, more like!” the elf chuckled sarcastically. “Well, you’re going to owe us blood money.”
“What?” Geraint was astonished.
“Jim’s throat was cut from ear to ear. Cheesewire and strangulation,” the elf said with a slight hint of disturbing relish. Geraint guessed he hadn’t liked the team’s leader all that much.
“What the hell-”
“There were some visitors ahead of us,” the elf said. “Jim must have surprised ‘em. He weren’t expecting any grief, so he went in while we covered him. Forgot basic routines, though I did warn him.”
“You said you had Seratini,” Michael groaned.
“I said no such thing. Jim told you we were on our way. We didn’t know someone would be lying for us. By the way, Gungrath’s waiting for an order to let those hostages go. They’re just office grunts-secretaries and clerks-and they don’t know anything.”
“Okay, okay, let them go then. You saw who did it? Here, I mean?” Geraint demanded impatiently.
“Sort of,” the elf said.
“Sort of?”
“Look, the bastard was bloody fast,” the elf shot back. “Ran like a Derby winner on methoxy. Seemed like he knew his way around. He went ‘round the corner and next thing I heard was a bike heading off south. Must’ve been him.”
“What did he look like?”
The elf shrugged. “It’s dark, chummer. And he was wearing a long black coat and you might as well ask what the ace of spades looks like down a mine shaft at midnight on a moonless night. But the troll had a little run-in with him.”
Ah, the troll, Geraint registered. No love lost here. At least Jim was Jim, even though this one doesn’t seem to care that he’s dead. But the troll-well, he’s obviously just “the troll”.
“Cut him,” the elf said with a grin of relish. “Slashed him in the side with his knife. Got him on head cam. No way the troll could have followed him, of course. He’s far too slow and there wasn’t a blood trail to follow. Could have used IR on his footprints, but he still couldn’t have kept up with him.”
Geraint hadn’t even noticed that the troll samurai had cybereyes. Behind them, implanted inside his skull, was a tiny camera that would have recorded the events of the struggle.
“Downloading it right now, back in the van,” the elf said.
“What about-”
“Your Italian term? Dead, Your Lordship, dead as a dodo with its giblets in an oven-ready pack.” The elf grinned. “Throat job, just like Jim. The bugger must have been inside the apartment when we arrived. Nice work, too. Very professional. A trained professional, you know what I mean?”
Geraint looked at him hard. The elf was saying that this was not even an ordinary hit-man; this was military work. When an ex-SAS man called someone a “trained professional” that’s what he meant.
“What if this was down to his dabblings in the illegal art trade?” Michael asked Geraint.
“Hardly.” The Welshman’s mind was racing. Something important was going on out of the frame, something that had led to a very professional assassination of a man who’d been tracking him, and maybe had a magical assailant invading his home that very night; and Geraint didn’t like that. He was too used to being in charge, of calling the shots himself.
“Wanna take a gander?” the elf said, his South London accent seeming to get broader with every minute. “Scene of the crime? Make sure all those heavy nuyen you paid were earned?”
“What if the police arrive?” Michael said anxiously.
“Frag me, what a spoilsport,” the elf spat out with an expression of barely contained disgust. “Look, do you wanna see the stiffs or don’t you?”
Geraint’s mouth felt dry, and he badly wanted a cigarette, but this was hardly the time or place. He nodded assent and they entered the building through the stark, bare foyer and approached the elevator. To his amazement, it was working, and the smell of urine inside stopped just short of overwhelming, which was a bonus.
The cramped and drably painted apartment was as starkly functional as one could imagine. Beside the basic kitchen utilities, a battered trid unit, and some bedding, there were but a few scraps of furniture. The only thing any of them had in common was that they all looked as if a pack of psychopathic and crazed felines had sharpened their claws on them, more or less continuously, for twenty years or so.
“I didn’t touch a thing, inspector,” the elf said dryly.
Almost despite himself, Geraint was beginning to warm to him a little. Suddenly he realized he didn’t even know his name.
“You can call me Streak,” the elf told him. “Now get your arse in ‘ere before someone else gets interested” He almost dragged them inside and shut the door carefully behind him. His dwarf fellow was standing guard within, a corn unit half-sticking out of his pocket, awaiting the obviously desired signal to get out.
“They’re here, Thumper,” the elf said needlessly “We can get our cred and blow soon. Show them the stiffs.”
“Thumper?” Michael couldn’t help but splutter.
“Named after some rabbit famous for its kicking,” the elf told him. “Kicked me in the bonce once over a minor disagreement. I had double vision for the best part of a week. Gave him some respect for that.”
Streak pushed at the corpse of his sometime leader just inside the doorway. “Here’s the first one. If you want to get the slash close up, you’ll have to turn him over.”
“I think we can dispense with that,” Michael said.
“We’re going to bag him and get him out,” Thumper said. “Can’t leave him here for the filth to find.”
Surprising that an ex-soldier should use such a term for the police, Michael thought, but said nothing of it. As the elf and dwarf sheathed the body in a resilient plastic body-bag, he could see the amazingly thin, smooth, deep cut in the man’s neck. There was less blood somehow than he’d expected, and the pale corpse face looked oddly peaceful. Not what one would have anticipated from the victim of such an attack.
“Your Mr. Seratini is in the bathroom,” Streak informed them. Geraint hardly needed telling; the flat was so small that it was the only place the as yet unseen stiff could be. He needed only a few seconds to take in the scene.
“How about that when you’re just about to have your annual bath?” Streak said. “Such a waste of that pine fragrance too. Costs a fortune, that Luxo stuff. Made from real trees, apparently. None of your chemical crap.”
“I’m afraid not,” Geraint told him, giving in to his cravings at last and lighting up, to the obvious disgust of the dwarf. “It contains three coloring agents, one of which is probably carcinogenic, at least to metahumans, and two rather noxious scent enhancers.”
“What are you, a scientist?” Streak enquired as he tugged at the zipper of the bag.
“I’m a director of the company that owns the people who make it.”
“Well, that’s the last time I sink myself in that crap then,” Streak said. “You want to give us a hand with this or you going to stand there like a plonker till lunchtime?”
“You’re taking him down in the goddamn elevator?” Michael said, surprised.
“Nah, you dumb git,” the elf said. “We’ll do what the locals do-chuck it out the window.”
For a moment Michael thought Streak was joking, but then the elf and dwarf dragged the bag to the window. They hefted the body into a sitting position, opened the window, and on a count of three jerked the black bag and its contents out into midair.