“You’re the Detective Inspectre,” I said. “Do you want to take over the case?”
“You’re Walker,” said Hadleigh. “This is your jurisdiction.”
“Then do me a favour. Go stand by the door, laugh in anyone’s face if they try to leave. No-one gets in or out until I’ve finished my investigation.”
“I’ll stand guard,” said Hadleigh. “It should be . . . amusing.”
He shot me a quick smile and strode through the crowd to the far door, without always waiting for everyone to get out of his way. The immortals were finding their voices now, the clatter of questions and demands becoming louder by the moment. I was going to have to make a stand—be Walker, and take charge of the situation. Or none of them would talk to me. I raised my voice and addressed the gathered immortals, and they reluctantly quietened down and looked at me.
“All right!” I said. “Pay attention! King of Skin has been murdered. That makes this ball-room a crime scene, and you’re all suspects. So none of you are going anywhere soon. Get used to it. Now, I’m going to need your help and cooperation to find the killer. He’s still here, hiding; and the sooner I find him, the sooner you can all feel safe again. I’m going to have to ask all of you some questions. None of you should take it personally . . .”
“We don’t answer to you!” snapped a man wrapped in a purple Roman toga, to which he might or might not have been entitled. “Jumped-up functionary! We are leaving; all of us! Before the murderer strikes again!”
“No you’re not,” I said, fixing him with my best hard glare. “No-one leaves until I’ve found the killer.”
Jasmine de Loir stepped forward, cocking her oversized head back, the better to sneer down her aristocratic nose at me. She was dressed as Elizabeth I, complete with red hair and a very high forehead. “You can’t keep us here! You’re only a mortal. You have no authority over us!”
“He isn’t even really a Walker!” said another voice from somewhere safe in the back of the crowd. “He doesn’t have the Voice!”
“I’m John Taylor!” I said loudly, and the crowd fell quiet again. I smiled nastily around me, and a few actually shivered. “You’ve all heard of me. The man with a gift for finding things. Now be quiet, and behave yourselves, or . . .”
“Or what?” said Jasmine.
“Or I’ll find your missing husband,” I said.
Jasmine hesitated and was lost. She slipped back into the crowd. I looked unhurriedly around me, nodding to faces I recognised.
“You there, I could find where the missing funds from your company went. Or you. I could find where you buried the bodies. And as for you, sweetie, I could find your old nose and put it back where it used to be.”
They were all very quiet now, looking at each for support and not finding it. They all had secrets, and none of them wanted me looking at them too closely. Of course, I was mostly bluffing, throwing out a few educated guesses based on the latest gossip; but they didn’t know that. I turned my back on them all and knelt beside what was left of King of Skin.
He was lying face-down, half-curled into a ball. There was a single bloody wound in the small of his back and more blood soaking his tattered coat. He’d died quickly, bleeding out in seconds. With his glamour gone, without his usual spooky aspect, he looked much smaller and very ordinary. I turned the head carefully, so I could see the face. His real face, at last. Not particularly handsome, or ugly; nothing more than another face in the crowd. His clothes were old and comfortable, and not in the least stylish. Very worn, very lived-in. And then, as I looked at the face, it suddenly shrivelled up into a mass of wrinkles. As though all the years of his considerable age had caught up with him at once. The wrinkles kept appearing, criss-crossing each other, sinking deep into the flesh, until I was looking at the face of a man who’d lived at least a hundred years, and most of them hard ones. The few immortals who’d edged in for a closer look let out horrified gasps and hurriedly retreated. Time’s catching up was an immortal’s greatest fear.
I checked the rest of the body thoroughly. Just as old, but no more wounds. The stab wound in his back was wide and deep, and it had been made with something with a jagged edge. Not a knife, or any other bladed weapon. Whatever it was, it had irregular, serrated edges . . . I went through King of Skin’s pockets and found nothing. Not even a wallet or a handkerchief or a ring of keys. The killer couldn’t have had time to rob his victim; which suggested King of Skin had arrived with empty pockets. Perhaps because he relied on his glamour to get him what he needed. Didn’t rule out robbery as a motive, though . . . I stood up, straightened my aching back, took out my mobile phone and put in a call to the Nightside CSI. Alistair Hoob; nice guy, multiple personalities, a whole department in one head. Crowded, but efficient. He took a long time to answer his phone.
“Yes? What is it? (I’m busy!) Oh, hello, John. (You call him Walker now.) I know! (He knows, he knows.) Someday I swear I’m going to buy a spirit gun and shoot all you other voices in my head.”
“I’ve got a murder at the Ball of Forever,” I said loudly. “Nasty business, with nasty implications. How soon can you get here?”
“Ah well,” he said. “That’s the problem. I’m already working another murder, at the Old Haymarket Theatre. That’s right on the other side of the city. (Bad business. Actors. Very touchy people.) (Who knew the old fellow had so much poison in him?) I’ll get to you as soon as I can (blood), but it’ll take me a while. (I want a pony.)”
“Do your best,” I said. “Got a feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get on this one.”
“Do you want me to alert the Authorities? (Who’s been messing with my DNA kit again?)”
“Tell them,” I said. “And then tell them to stay out of it. It happened on my watch, right in front of me, so it’s my murder, my case. Tell them I’ll be in touch when I’ve found the killer; and not before.”
“Your funeral, Walker. (Ooh, can I come? I love funerals!) See you in a while.”
I put my phone away and looked down at the body again. A stab wound in the back meant he never saw it coming. The assassin had struck from behind . . . but who would King of Skin turn his back on, in a place like this? He would have known better. So, had the murderer sneaked up on him? Without being noticed, in a crowded room? I glared at the watching immortals.
“Who found the body? Come on; somebody screamed.”
A tall, gangly fellow dressed in Puritan blacks raised a hesitant hand. “I was startled, that’s all. You don’t expect something as vulgar as common murder in a select gathering like this. I saw him lying there, and the blood, and I let out . . . an involuntary noise, that’s all.”
“You saw the body lying on the floor?” I said. “You didn’t see the actual murder?”
“No! No! Just the body. Isn’t that enough?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said because you have to say things like that. And I went back to looking at King of Skin.
The three reporters finally fought their way through the tightly packed crowd and stared at the dead body with fascinated, eager eyes. Brilliant Chang seemed as calm and serene as ever. He’d seen his share of bodies before, in his time as an enforcer. Bettie Divine’s face was flushed, and she was breathing heavily at the prospect of covering a real story. She didn’t get many of those, working for the Unnatural Inquirer. And Charlotte ap Owen’s face was an open book, for all her many nips and tucks. This story was her passport to the big time, and she was damned if anything was going to get in her way. She snarled for Dave the camera-man to get good coverage of the crime scene, and I let her. I could always commandeer the coverage later if I needed it. I nodded for Brilliant Chang to step forward. I could use a cool head to talk with.
“Am I not a suspect, then?” he said amiably.
“You’re a combat sorcerer,” I said. “If you’d wanted him dead, you could have killed him in a dozen ways and never left a mark.”