The coachman nodded. “Picked him up over on Barrow Street, about two hours before sunset, I think.”
“Was there anyone else in the carriage?”
“Course! The boy couldn’t very well have paid for it, now, could he?” Marrick gave a timid laugh.
Lenoir did not so much as hint at a smile. “Perhaps you would indulge me, sir, by telling me who else was in the carriage.”
The coachman scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Oh, right. Well . . . he didn’t give his name, actually. I mean he hadn’t booked or anything, he just flagged me down. We’re not supposed to do that, if you want the truth—my boss would box me around the ears if he knew. Doesn’t conform to the image, he says, picking up folks as though they were common hitchhikers. . . .”
Lenoir listened to the man’s drivel without comment, his face expressionless. But this seemed only to intimidate Marrick further, and he began to wander so far off topic that for a brief moment Lenoir considered cuffing him into silence. In the event, he merely said, “Stop. Try to focus, please. Short answers. Now, where did you pick this man up?”
“Warrick Avenue,” the coachman gulped.
“And where did you drop him off?”
“Berryvine.”
Lenoir blinked in surprise. Berryvine was almost two hours west of Kennian. “He must have paid you well.”
Marrick only nodded mutely.
“Was the boy with him when you dropped him off?”
Again, Marrick nodded.
“And did you have the impression he knew the boy?” Zach’s uncle flashed briefly through his mind.
Marrick considered this. “Well, I couldn’t hear their conversation from up front. But now you mention it, I guess not.” He hesitated, then shook his head firmly. “No, I reckon he couldn’t have known the boy, because he seemed to just sort of happen upon it. See, at first he just said he wanted to ride around town for a bit, but when he saw the boy, he asked me to stop. I don’t know what he said to the lad, but he looked happy enough to get in the carriage. And then the customer just asked me to take them to Berryvine, and that’s it. I dropped them on the main street, and he didn’t say where they were headed.” Marrick paused guiltily. “Guess I should’ve known something wasn’t right, him picking up a strange child like that.”
Lenoir ignored this, a knot tightening in his stomach. Any lingering doubt that Zach had met with foul play had now dissolved; the coachman’s description sounded like a classic case of a predator luring a child. Such things were not uncommon in Kennian, and orphans were especially vulnerable. Few people thought to wonder about the disappearance of a street urchin, and those that did tended to dismiss it as nothing out of the ordinary, just as the nun at Zach’s orphanage had done. All too often, the first sign of foul play was the discovery of a corpse.
Lenoir had only one question left. “What did he look like, this man? Would you know him if you saw him again?”
Marrick glanced skyward as he thought. “Well, let me see . . . He was tall, I suppose.” This seemed the limit of his powers of observation, for he was silent a long moment. Lenoir was on the verge of giving him a solid shake when the coachman added, “Oh, and his skin had a darkish hue. Might have been Adali.”
It was not much, but at least it was something to go on. If the man really was Adali, that would certainly narrow the field. Lenoir was skeptical, however, as he always was when a witness identified a suspect as Adali. As a race, the Adali were so distrusted that many witnesses either lied outright, preferring to see an Adal in jail rather than no one at all, or merely remembered the suspect as an Adal, when in fact that was not the case. The mere presence of an Adali camp near one of the outer villages was often enough to provoke a surge in the number of reported crimes.
He needed to return to headquarters and see if he could find Kody, for he would need help if he was to interview residents of Berryvine quickly. He only hoped the sergeant was there and not out chasing his phantom corpse thief.
Kody was in the middle of dictating a report when Lenoir found him. He was taking his time, waiting patiently while the scribe scratched his words out in full. You never knew when the smallest detail could be important, and Kody wanted to make sure that the scribe got everything down. He’d made it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate shorthand or paraphrasing, so he paused often and for as long as it took for the quill to stop moving. He’d just started up again when Lenoir stalked up to the scribe’s desk. The inspector didn’t even offer a greeting before cutting into Kody’s recitation.
“Get your riding cloak, Sergeant. We have work to do.”
The scribe looked up from his notebook, his quill poised in midair. He glanced uncertainly between Kody and Lenoir.
Because I’m not doing any work here? Kody thought irritably. Aloud, he said, “I’m in the middle of a report, Inspector. I spent the morning talking to some of the other sergeants, and I found out some interesting things.”
Lenoir’s lip curled. “Excellent. I can see you are on the verge of solving the crime of the century. But if you can delay your historic triumph for a few hours, I require your assistance to find a real, live child.”
Kody felt heat rise to his face, but he bit back the caustic reply that was on his lips. There was no point in antagonizing Lenoir. The man was his superior and had every right to divert him to another case. In truth, Kody was surprised Lenoir hadn’t already done just that. Still, if he didn’t finish his report now, there was a good chance he might forget some detail that could prove pivotal later on.
“If you could just give me five minutes, sir,” he said as evenly as possible, “and I’ll be finished here. I want to get this down while it’s fresh in my mind.”
A moment of indecision flashed across Lenoir’s face. Then, to Kody’s relief, he said, “Be quick about it.”
Kody cleared his throat, then hesitated uncertainly.
“An Adali male was spotted,” the scribe supplied helpfully.
“Right. An Adali male was spotted in Brackensvale some days ago by the blacksmith, who lodged a complaint with the constabulary claiming that this Adal had stolen a horse and most of his tools. Constable Sownes visited the village, but was unable to locate the suspect, and no one else in town reported seeing anyone matching the suspect’s description. Referring to Constable Sownes’s own report on the matter, quote, ‘It is possible that an Adali male was in fact in Brackensvale. However, there is no evidence that the individual was involved in the theft of Mr. Estes’s horse or his tools,’ end quote.”
Kody glanced at Lenoir to see if the inspector had caught the significance of this. But it didn’t look as though Lenoir was even listening; he stared fixedly at the floor, his eyebrows knotted as though he was deep in thought.
Pursing his lips in irritation, Kody waited until the scribe’s quill stopped bobbing. Then he raised his voice a little and said, “I would like to refer here to my previous report, in which I noted that a witness in North Haven claimed to have seen a strange Adal in town on or about the night the Jymes boy’s corpse disappeared. To have a witness in Brackensvale also claim to have seen a strange Adal on or about the day the Habberd boy disappeared is quite a coincidence.”
Still Lenoir didn’t look up. Was the man stone deaf? Or was he feigning indifference purely out of spite? To the below with him, Kody thought sourly; if the inspector could ignore him, he could ignore the inspector.
“Lastly, I was informed that Constable Crears of Berryvine reported a boy missing yesterday. A live one, that is. His parents haven’t seen him in two days.”
It was as though Lenoir had been startled from slumber. His head shot up. “What did you say?”