The Defeated Detective
Chapters 1 - 3
Case File 1: The Defeated Detective
Royce needs a paying client. Unfortunately, his latest client is dead and wants him to solver her murder.
Chapter 1
Like the Taylor Swift song said, I knew she was trouble when she walked in.
The sun was starting to set, and I was sitting in my empty office. An office that had been empty the whole day, in fact, the whole week. Not a single client, not a single soul, had entered the office. The last person I had seen enter was the owner of the local Chinese takeaway, who had come to drop some leaflets.
Like every day, I just came in and sat in an empty office staring at the dark grey walls until it was night and time to go home and sleep.
Outside, the shops were starting to close and the takeaways were starting their busy evening shifts. The Chinese takeaway just below me had started to cook delicious rice noodles with soy sauce and deep fried spring rolls. My mouth was watering and my tummy grumbling; not that I could afford to eat any, seeing as I hadn't had a client in three weeks.
I had been sitting without the lights on because just ten minutes ago it had been sunny; now, suddenly, it had gotten dark. Orange light from the sun streamed into my room but it was getting weaker and weaker by the second and only covered a quarter of the room. The corner I sat in was dark and empty, like my life.
There was a bit of noise outside as the evening office rush was starting to ebb down. A few angry people honked when the cars in front of them did not move as fast as they wanted when the red light turned green. A few kids screaming as they ran down the street, back from late school activities and a few young men and women laughing boisterously as they started their night out of drinking and partying.
Not that it mattered to me. I sat alone in my office staring at my dull grey walls. The same thing I did every day.
I liked staring at dull grey walls; they did not bore me in the least. I love them because they were boring and free of any excitement whatsoever. More recently, the only thing my life had been missing was dullness.
People complained about having to sit in a boring office and do boring work. I prayed to a god I was 110% sure didn't exist that I could have a boring and dull life, a life without adventure or insanity. Not that the non-existent god ever listened to me.
And that's when she walked in. I knew she was trouble as soon as I saw her.
What gave it away, you ask? Well, quite simply:
The first thing: Her dull, lifeless eyes - as dull and grey as my walls.
2nd, the fact that she was bleeding all over my torn and stained carpet (making more stains than the ones I had already added). I wasn't worried; the carpet couldn't get any worse than it was.
The final thing was the knife in her throat, still butting out from where someone had stabbed her. Invisible blood flowing down her dress.
“Help me,” she said. “Help me,” she whispered. She croaked, she screamed, all at the same time. Not that it mattered; no one could hear her. I'm sure she had been screaming and asking for help for the last few hours, but other than me, nobody could have seen her.
That was my curse.
And my gift.
“Help me, help me,” she screamed over and over. “Why won't anyone help me?”
I sighed deeply. “Listen, lady,” I said, “I'm really sorry, but I need paying clients. I need to eat. I need food. I need new shoes. I need more than two t-shirts and two pairs of trousers I cycle through every week. I can't do this.”
She didn't hear me, of course she didn't. She kept screaming: “Help me, help me, help me, why won't anyone help me?”
I took a deep breath and put my head in my hands.
I could look away. I could walk away. I could lock my office and leave her here. Why should I care? It wasn't any of my business. The police didn't care. The police wouldn't care when they finally did find her body.
How did I know? Because of how she looked. She was wearing really baggy trousers, too large for her, a musty brown coat that was torn in multiple places. Her hair dishevelled and matted, some baldness on her head, and carrying a large Tesco bag with small, assorted things. Her face full of dirt marks, I knew she wouldn’t have bathed for weeks. Her shoes were mismatched, like she had picked up two random pairs from a garbage bin in the dark, which she probably had.
Clearly, she was homeless. Nobody would care that a homeless person had been stabbed and left to die on the street. There would be no investigation. There would be no outrage in the newspaper. There would be no 9 o'clock news bulletin about the increasing crime in the city, about the fact that honest people couldn't walk down the street without being stabbed.
No, if she was lucky, she might get a slightly younger detective. Someone who hadn't lost their edge, or rather hadn't had their hopes crushed by cynicism and bureaucracy. And who might spend maybe a few hours investigating her case before closing it as unsolvable.
More likely, she would get a cynical and angry detective in his forties or fifties who would take one look at her and say, “Nah, I'm not dealing with this.”
And so why the hell should I? Who the hell was I? Some sort of homeless saviour? A knight in shining armour for those rejected by society?
I looked out my window and saw my own reflection, but it immediately vanished as it usually did. I hadn't seen my face in six years now. No mirror would show me what I looked like. I had learnt to shave by touch and kept my hair really short so I wouldn’t have to comb it.
It wasn't the mirrors' fault, though. It wasn't the mirrors that hated me. It was my own shadow, my own reflection. It hid from me like a scared animal hid from an abusive owner.
Instead of my face, I saw the face of a young girl. She was crying. You promised, she reminded me.
I remembered. I had promised her. And I kept my promises.
I turned to the woman who was standing in the corner, murmuring to herself:
“Fine Lady. I accept your case. Lead on.”
She couldn’t hear me, of course. She was dead and stuck in her world. I waved my hands in front of her face to get her attention.
“Let’s go. We have a murder to solve.”
She finally smiled. Perhaps happy that finally someone could hear her, could see and feel her.
We walked into the rapidly darkening night sky. As she started making her way out of the city, I knew exactly where she was going. And it had me worried.
I didn't have time to admire the TV as the homeless woman, my client, kept rushing forward. I wanted to tell her to slow down, but I doubted she could listen. Luckily for me, the streets were empty or at least not as busy as they could be, and so I had no problem chasing after her. Though I did hope she realised how hard it was. She was floating in the air and didn't have to worry about such small things as gravity or the friction of the floor.
Chapter 2
The Chinese takeaway under my office had just opened, but empty. There was a TV on, playing some Chinese version of a singing contest with young people giving performances and judges giving them high scores. I didn't know what they were saying, but everyone looked excessively and unnaturally happy. I guess that's how TV is nowadays. I hadn’t suffered from irrational exuberance any time in my life.
The shop, like everything else on the street, was run down and barely maintained. Just enough maintenance to keep it from falling apart into pieces. There were posters from 10 or 15 years ago when the place had been busy and had won many awards. Since then, it had only gone downhill. And not because of the owner's fault.
The whole area had gone downhill, and the customers had stopped coming. The streets were now dirty and even though the Council did its best to clean up every day, the filthy attitude of the locals didn't help., The good customers stopped visiting the area until the only customers left were the locals. 7 out of 10 shops had shut down, one for at least 5 years. Their windows and doors boarded up.
I knew my Chinese friend was barely surviving and tried to help him when I could. But what ended up happening was him helping me rather than me helping him.
I saw the local punks before they saw me. A few seconds later, they noticed me, and I knew it would be trouble. There were two of them and a dog with them. The two men were of local origin, but for some reason, they spoke with a Jamaican accent and fancied themselves to be great Jamaican rappers. I knew their father, the local doctor, had kicked them out because he had caught them taking drugs far too often. Rather than learning their lesson and going back to school, they had decided to become full-time drug dealers, and their local family had disowned them. Not that these two cared. They were picking fights almost daily and committing small thefts to pay for their drugs.
And today they had a nasty bulldog with them that, like them, was bursting for a fight. Even the thick steel chain around his neck could barely stop him from having a go at the few passers-by. No one dared say anything because the two model citizens would pick a fight with anyone who complained. Actually, they would pick a fight with you anyway; it was their hobby. Today, they thought I was an easy target.
“Oi mate! What you think you're looking at?” one of the brother sneered at me.
I really didn't have time for this, but the other brother came and blocked my way. His baggy trousers and his cheap hoodie smelled of sweat and piss.
“So, you think you're better than us, do you?” the other brother, the one with the dog, said to me.
“I certainly don't, mate. Now get out of my way. There's somewhere I have to be.”
But it wasn't so easy to get rid of them. They brought their dog closer to me.
“We know you're a troublemaker, mate; we know your type, buddy boy.”
Them calling me a troublemaker was rich but I wasn't going to say it to their face. Or to the face of their angry bulldog, who wanted to have a go at my family jewel.
“Listen fellows,” I said, “I really have to be somewhere. How about I give you £10, and you go get yourself a beer and we'll talk about this later, okay?”
“Just 10 quid? That isn't enough to buy us anything.”
“That's all I have. Do you want it, or do you want to get into a fight?”
“ Fine,” said the one with the dog. “We let you off easy this time, but next time, there will be trouble if we catch you messing around in our area. And this is our area, mate, never forget that.”
He punched me in the shoulder. “Never”, he repeated. “Forget that.”
I knew I would have trouble with them later.
My client, if she could be called as such, had been waiting for me near a red light. She started moving again as I jogged up to her. That was the last £10 I had, and I was hoping to buy some food. I could have fought those two idiots and given them a good beating, but that would've only delayed me and drawn unnecessary attention from the police.
I would've to take care of them later—not just them, but their dog as well, who was already trying to attack some teenage girls coming back from college. But there was only so much I could do. I wasn't Batman.
“Slow down!” I said. “I cannot move that fast.”
A few people walking on the road stared at me like I was crazy. I realised they couldn't see the dead woman and so thought I was talking to myself. I shrugged and smiled like it was normal. With a feeling of disgust, they looked away. It hurt a little, but I was used to it by now.
After another 5 minutes of walking, we went out of the main town and into the more industrial part of the city, which is when I realised where we were going and it made me groan.
I should have known. The whole area was abandoned and derelict for years. The exact building was an old restaurant cordoned off with Police Do Not Cross tape. It was a place that had burned down 5-6 years ago, and only the most desperate of the homeless would stay there. Because the roof of the main building had fallen down and killed people in the past. Still, there were one or two rooms still standing in the building and with working toilets and a shower it was a place many homeless people preferred in spite of its obvious risks.
But something had happened for the police to cordon off the area. They wouldn't do it for a minor crime like a mugging or similar. It must have been a serious crime, and thanks to my esteemed client, I could guess what it was.
She took me straight into the main building. We entered through the main door, and I saw the roof had collapsed into what would have been the main dining area. We went through the kitchens and into a side room which would have served as the storeroom at one point.
And there she was lying on the floor dead, just as I had expected.
That was not surprising. What was surprising was that she was surrounded by at least seven mirrors forming a half circle around her. But wait a minute! If the police had been here, they would’ve removed the body and they certainly would have taken the mirrors away for forensic testing.
It bothered me to see they hadn't.
Were they not aware that there was a dead body lying here? She did look like she had been dead for at least a few days. Why had the police been here? Why had they cordoned off the area but not discovered the body? I would have to answer these questions later.
For now, I had a stroke of good luck as I could do my investigation without interference.
I didn't bother looking at the body. I wasn't some CSI detective from TV. I would have no idea what to look for. All I would do was pollute the crime scene and later have the police harass me. They always did find out when I was interfering in their cases, I could never figure out how. Yeah, I would leave the actual forensics part to the experts. I decided to look at the more supernatural elements of the crime.
At first, I had wondered how the woman had made her way to me. Dozens of people were murdered in the city every year, and almost none of them came to me. Why should they? They moved on to wherever the dead moved on. The only people who came to me were those whose death had supernatural causes.
And it was clear this woman had been killed by something unnatural. The seven mirrors surrounding her body told me so.
She had been ritually murdered. A human sacrifice.
Chapter 3
I looked at the dead woman and the mirrors that surrounded her.
I stared into the seven mirrors and only saw a foggy haze, which was normal because I hadn't seen my face in a mirror for almost six years now. I didn't even remember what my face looked like.
Like Mr Bean from that comedy series, if I wanted to look at my face, I would have to go into one of those old-fashioned (non-digital) photo shops and have my photo taken. Mirrors and most digital appliances like phones and digital cameras didn't show me my face; others could see it but I couldn't. All I saw was a haze of fog.
Which was what I saw in the mirrors now. But that was fine, I didn't want to look at my face. I wanted to see if there was anything unusual in how the mirrors were placed or if there was anything special about them.
The mirrors were placed in such a way that the woman's whole body would have been visible to someone standing in front of her. Clearly, some sort of dark magic that involved killing her and then performing some rituals in the mirror. An easy way to check: I went around to the back of the mirrors and saw that runes had been drawn in blood.
Yes, this was a sacrifice of some sort, but why?
Why a middle-aged woman of no consequence? Human sacrifice, while not super common, did happen now and then. The victims were usually young and attractive women, at most in their twenties but usually in their teens. If there were men, they were usually rich and powerful, the type of people who would be missed and whose sacrifice would mean something.
Nobody sacrificed the homeless. Even the demonic world didn't care for them.
My heart broke a little when I thought of this. I had been homeless some time ago and I knew nobody cared for us. If one of us had died on the street, people would just walk over us to get to their important places. The bodies of my homeless brothers and sisters would only be discovered when the garbage men came to clean the streets and discovered them blocking the way.
And yet, somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to sacrifice this poor homeless woman.
“Don't worry, dear. The police or the authorities might not care, but I care. I will get your vengeance. I will get your justice,” I whispered to her.
I went to the front of the mirror to look at them again.
The world shifted.
The haze in the mirrors disappeared and the face of a woman appeared. The woman was smiling. A very attractive woman, she looked around sixteen and could pass for a movie star.
But she wasn’t.
Not just not a movie star, she wasn’t even human. Her attractive look was a trap, the way a spider would create a lovely home for a fly to visit. Come in, have a tea, we are all lubbly-jubbly friends here.
Shit, now this was real trouble. She was like that wicked fairy, every time you saw her someone would die, or you would get extreme bad luck.
I would look behind you rather than at my attractive face. Your mirror phobia means you don’t see the very obvious threat walking towards you.
I turned around, I saw a fist flying towards me. I didn't even see who the fist belonged to before it smashed into my face and sent me flying back and tripping over the dead body. I hit one of the mirrors and it shattered into a hundred pieces. Superstition says this is bad luck, but I knew my bad luck had started the moment the woman appeared in my mirror. She only appeared when things were going to hell.
I tried to get up to fight, but the man who was punching me was far too strong for me. I had barely gotten on my knees when he hit me again, and again, and again until I was bleeding from my whole face and couldn't move.
And that's when he pulled out a nasty looking knife. A knife that would look better in movies like Rambo than in real life.
“ I'm gonna fuck you over,” he said. “You shouldn't have come here Royce”.
He knew my name, which was bad. This wasn't a random mugging or someone just taking an opportunistic shot at me to relieve me of my wallet. This guy knew who I was and what I was doing here. Which meant he had to be connected to the murder. He must have been staking out the place. I should have been more careful, but my whole attention had been on following the dead woman here.
I had made a rookie mistake and was going to die for it.
Call me, said the most wicked woman I knew.
I am not wicked, and I am not a woman, sweetie, she replied.
And then she did something I had rarely seen her do. She stepped out of the mirror. That was bad. It was against our agreement.
I know it's against our agreement, darling, but you are about to die and so I will temporarily alter our agreement. Just for your sake. Because I love you so much.
She sat by my ear and whispered in my ear. Say it or I will.
The knife was a few inches from my left eyeball.
I hated this part. Death was preferable, but if I died here who would get justice for the homeless woman? Certainly not the police. Certainly not the uncaring public.
No, I had to survive. Even if it shattered my mind.
“Sweetie, help me!” I screamed as loud as I could. I had to call her sweetie or darling or she wouldn’t respond. “Try not to kill too many people please. Just the one, just the one!” I repeated a few times to make sure there was no confusion.
Anything for you, my favourite human.
My killer froze. His whole body was paralysed. I could see he was surprised and tried to struggle, but struggle was useless. He was like a fly trapped in a spider's web. His death was now certain.
Had been certain for some time now.
His death certificate had been signed the moment he had entered the building. The moment he had drawn a knife to kill me. The moment he had even thought of killing me, he had been a dead man.
He had been dead for several minutes. A walking corpse who didn’t know he was walking to his death.
The woman in the mirror could see into the future. I don’t know how far but she always knew when I was in danger and she always interfered, and it always ended in death. The only thing I could control was how many people died. Not a lot of choice, but I would take what I could.
I could see the man's brains melt and flow out of his eyes and ears in a thick, viscous red liquid. Like that horrible, crushed ice shake the kids love so much.
I could see into this skull and see that it was now empty. The police would have a hard time explaining this, and it would only make things worse for me. A homeless woman with her throat slit, they could explain away, but no way could they explain this. Reports would be written, questions would be asked. Questions that would lead to me.
And then there were the mirrors. The surface of the remaining six were now as black as a dark night, like somebody had burnt them to a crisp. Mirrors do not usually burn like that, and so this would be another thing the police would notice, and they would certainly put two and two together.
This had happened far too many times when I was around. They would come straight to my home, and if I was lucky, I was facing a murder charge. If I was unlucky, this killer guy's friends would visit me first. They certainly knew me and so must know of my extreme bad luck when it came to mirrors. Either way, some really nasty people were going to pay me a visit soon.
I wasn’t worried.
I had bigger and more urgent problems to deal with.
I knew it was coming; I knew it would hurt. That's why I didn't like using her powers, but she had left me with no choice this time.
Even though I had been expecting it, when the attack came it hit me like a hammer to the chest and head. My whole world exploded. My mind shattered. Everything went black.