The Defeated Detective: Chapter 8-9
Chapter 8
Eve left soon after lunch and so did I.
I didn't want to talk to any homeless people, but an idiot raven came and sat by my shoulder. “Hey Royce!” he said. “How you doin’ buddy?”
I wasn't going to answer him; I'm not that stupid. A few times I had talked to birds, people had stared at me like I was crazy, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Hey buddy, you can talk to me in your head. You know we ravens are telepathic, right? Don't need to use your mouth.”
“What the hell do you want boy?” I thought to myself.
“Did ya know there's a new bunch of homeless people living in the abandoned car park? Why don't you pay them a visit? Would be a nice idea. Me thinks.”
That's the other thing I hated about telepathic ravens - they try to act smart and talk like cool kids, but all they did was make grammatical mistakes. Only thing I hated more than telepathic ravens were telepathic ravens trying to act cool and talking like Gen Z.
That said, the information they gave me was usually really good. I would hate to admit it on paper, but a lot of the cases I solved for the police (which meant I always had at least a few helpful police officers) was due to tips given by ravens.
I decided to listen to this one's advice and go check out the abandoned car park. I knew which one of course; an old Tesco that was being closed down had its car park shut down because heavy rain had made big potholes in the road, and nobody wanted to pay to repair them.
Homeless people must have moved in. I hadn't known about them until now, but maybe it was time to pay them a visit.
The town I lived in was falling apart, but parts of it were even worse. The small shopping centre had once been one of the most popular areas in town, but over time the paint had faded, the huge neon lights had stopped working, and half the windows had been replaced with boards. Most of the businesses had left, only a small Tesco was still remaining, but even they were planning to move.
I knew a few hundred jobs had been lost, but there weren't enough people in the town at least people with money to support so many businesses, and so everyone had left, leaving behind dirt, grime, and potholes so large you felt you were driving on the moon. The shopping mall had two parking spaces. The one in front was still functional but barely. The one in the back had been completely closed off.
Huge concrete pillars put there to block the road. Nature was taking over the parking lot.
There were weeds everywhere, even growing out of the concrete. Like that movie Jurassic Park said: Nature finds a way. Over here, nature was finding ways of busting through hard road and bringing a sort of greenery to the city that the environmentalist would never have dreamed of.
Still, it was better than the drab greenness of the city. In the corner of the parking lot, the furthest away from the building, were a few tents set up.
I saw a few of them huddled in the corner trying to hide from the public and the police. They were a bit tense when they saw me coming, but I raised my arms. “Relax guys, I'm a friend. How are you guys?”
A distinguished old black gentleman came up to me and said, “We are good sir, any change would be appreciated.”
From the way he spoke, I realised he must have been very well educated and must have had a good job. I don't know why he had become homeless, and it wasn't my business to ask. I had bought some hot food from the local takeaway and handed out packages to all of them, which they took gratefully.
“I had some questions,” I asked the old, distinguished gentleman.
“I will try to help, sir. Although I doubt how I could do anything. We are barely surviving here.”
“That's okay, tell me, I haven't seen you here before. Are you new here?”
“Yes sir, we are. We were living in the other town over but they threatened to jail us, so we came here. We'll stay here a few days until the local police kick us out as well.”
He said so with a sigh. But not with anger. Like a soft disappointment. Like that's what he expected life to be like.
“I am sorry to hear that. I was homeless like you once. I wish I could help you but I am in a precarious situation myself.”
“The thought counts sir. Thank you for your kindness.”
I nodded. “Anyway I wanted to know about a homeless woman age around 40s or 50s wearing a dull brown jacket with baggy trousers. Have you seen anyone like her?”
“Yes, we do know of her. That's old Debby. She used to hang out with her until she vanished a few days ago. We haven't seen her since.”
“Do you have any idea where she could have gone, or if somebody gave her a lift or something?”
The man shrugged as if to say he had no idea.
“It's okay,” I said, “Don't worry about it.”
I gave them all £50 each, which would be enough to last them a week if they were careful with rationing how much food they ate. I also knew that most of them would just go and buy alcohol and blow the whole money in two hours. But fixing others wasn't my job. I thanked them and moved away.
As I was leaving, a thin man came running up to me. I thought he wanted more money, but he surprised me by saying, “Royce? Is that you, Royce?”
“Macintyre? Hey bud, long time no see.”
I gave him a hug. Mack, as he was often called, had been homeless with me. Last I heard he'd got on a job and had moved into a flat. I was surprised to see him back on the street.
“What happened man? I thought you were off the streets.”
He looked like somebody had slapped him. “Drugs man. That's what happened. I thought I was off them. Had been clean for six months, but then went to a party and somebody asked me to try a new hit. I knew I shouldn't but I did it anyway. Six months of hard work, down in the drain in six days.”
“Shit I’m sorry, man.”
“Not as sorry as me. Don't worry about me, it's my fault. I made my bed and I'm gonna sleep in it. I heard you're looking for Debby. Is that correct? Are you a proper detective now?”
Mack knew me from the old days when I did unofficial investigations. “Yes, I'm a proper detective now though money is still a bit tight. What do you know of Debby?”
“She fell in with the wrong crowd. I warned her to stay away. These crazy men came by and said they could pay her a lot if she did something for them.”
“Like gangsters? Pimps?”
“Nah man, she was too old for them. Too old for that sort of stuff, and these guys didn't look like gangsters. In fact they looked like the religious type - all were wearing tie suits, clean-cut hair, and carrying some sort of religious book. Something felt off about them, even though they looked respectable. They were dressed respectfully and were extremely polite. Something about them sent my spine tingling. You know what I did right?”
I did. Mack had been in the army intelligence and had a good nose for troublemakers. If he hadn't gotten addicted to drugs, he could have had a great career as a police detective. He was one of those people who had given me tips on how practical policing worked, which I had used to build up my own detective practice. If he had been sober, I would have asked him to come work for me. Unfortunately, spending years with homeless people, I learned the lesson the hard way. Unless people want to change, and I mean really, really, change, they don’t change. And they drag you down with them.
And so while it broke my heart, until Mack made the decision to remain sober for at least a whole year, I couldn't help him. It might seem cruel to those on the outside, but every homeless person knew this rule. Like Mack himself had said, he had made his bed, and he needed to sleep in it.
“Anyway,” Mack continued, “These people gave me the heebie-jeebies. I don't know how to explain them. Well-dressed like businessmen, but their personalities were like psychopaths, like hungry sharks circling prey. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do. Cultists is the word you are looking for.”
Cultists. People who worship strange alien gods and who were more than happy to carry out a few human sacrifices here and there. The modern educated liberal elite refused to believe in them and so many of these cultists hid in open sight. Most cultists were just rich spoilt kids who liked to do drugs and have sex and pretend they were calling the devil. And that’s the impression most people had.
It didn't help that the really dangerous ones, the ones who knew how to do the dangerous shit, were quite rare. You only saw them once every few years, and unless you had spent time in the gutters like me and had knowledge of the supernatural world, there was an almost zero chance you would run into them.
Unless of course you're unlucky like Debby had been.
“I am taking she didn't listen to your warning?” I asked.
“No, she didn't. She said that they were well-dressed and such respectable men. Clearly they couldn't be criminals. From the outside, she was right. These were the most polite people you could meet. They weren't trying to force her. They said they just wanted her to visit their church that they had this programme for helping homeless people. And so she went with them. I knew then she would never be coming back. Don't lie to me, Royce! Don't lie to me. You know I can detect lies. Is she dead?”
He could detect lies, so it was no sense lying to him. “Yes, she's dead, ritually murdered by this crazy cult. I don't know who they are. Your instincts were right, Mack.”
He shook his head sadly. “Shit man. Get her justice, bro.”
“I will, and Mack. Let me just say this: If you can remain clean for a year (and I do mean a whole year, not a few months), I could take you on. I'm barely making enough to survive myself, but business is getting better, and I could use an experienced detective like you. But you need to prove to me that you have been sober for a year.”
“I understand man, I totally get you, and I agree with you. I wouldn't hire some junkie who cannot remain clean for more than a few months either. Just to let you know, I do understand what's happening with me. I'm going through therapy and counselling, and also attending Addicts Anonymous meetings. I really appreciate you showing the confidence in me. I won't let you down. I will stay sober this year, and I'm not gonna give up.”
Giving me a thumbs up, he walked away.
So it looks like the raven had been right. I did find an interesting clue here. While I already suspected that it was some cult that would've killed her, somebody who had knowledge of how the hidden world worked, I still got some new information.
Many cultists, like I said, were the crazy hippie types who would go into the forest and just dance naked and pretend they were calling the devil or they were dangerous criminals who thought they were talking to the devil but in reality were just psychotic or on drugs.
The fact that these were well-dressed and well-spoken men meant that these were different. These weren't the hippies or the mentally disturbed. They looked like people who knew what they were doing, and the fact that they had targeted this woman specifically means they also had some criteria for choosing their victims.
Although I didn't understand why. Like I said before, no demonic god from another dimension wanted the sacrifice of a useless 50-year-old homeless woman. So why choose her? Clearly this group had taken a lot of effort and planning.
It was time to pay the Nice Witch from the East a visit. Yes, that was her name. She had a sense of humour.
Chapter 9
Before I could leave though, I decided to get a quick snack and some juice. As I was leaving the checkouts, who would I see but my new and helpful assistant standing near the checkouts, just like she had been waiting for me.
“Hey boss, surprising to see you here. Were you in the area?”
Yeah, I thought to myself, that's a nice surprise that you just turning up here. Loudly I said, “Yeah, I was talking to some homeless people who have moved to the car park at the back here. Hoping they could give me some clues. But unfortunately, I couldn't find anything. There are some more homeless people I think might be able to help. I will go see if I can find them.”
“ That's nice boss. I have something interesting to report. Since we just met by complete coincidence,” she smiled as she said that, “how about we catch up? We can talk in my car? Some privacy would be good.”
We went to her car as I didn't have one. I was not surprised to see it was a brand new Mercedes S-class with a 5 litre engine - a real power horse.
“So Eve, do you often go racing in this car? This is not the type of car one takes when going to buy tomatoes and onions at Tesco.”
She laughed out loud
“It actually belongs to my dad. I have just borrowed it for a few days. I don't have a car of my own yet, and I am not sure which one to buy. I love a Mercedes, but they are very expensive to maintain. I will probably get something smaller.”
As we sat inside, I smelled the new leather smell, which meant the car wasn't that old. I don't know how much judges earned, but if she was old family rich, it didn't matter, did it?
“So, what's the news? How are you back so quickly? I would have thought it would take you longer to find out more.”
“Yeah, it was hard when I started—none of the neighbours wanted to talk to me. Luckily, I found a chatty old lady who was more than happy to spend the afternoon talking with me, and I found a lot of interesting stuff. It's lucky we met here.”
“Yeah, real lucky.”
She didn't notice my sarcasm and started speaking. “This old lady says that our detective Tobias (that is his name, though she isn't sure what he does), he does live with a woman in that house, but it's not his sister; it's his girlfriend. She left home two nights ago almost near midnight. The old lady suspects they were fighting as she heard screaming and shouting as she was leaving, and they continued screaming at each other in the car park. She believes that he hit her, though she has no evidence.
What do you think of that? Is that good for my very first investigation?”
It was very impressive, far too impressive. It was almost like she had had training on how to talk with people and extract information from them. Those summers digging up broken pottery at archaeological digs in Egypt or wherever must have been very useful to her.
“I'll be honest, that's very impressive. I thought it would take you a few days to get this information. But the fact that you have it certainly pushes the case forward a lot faster than I was expecting. If what I suspect is true, we'll have to get the police involved soon. But I'll need a bit more evidence.”
She clapped her hands like an excited teenager girl and rubbed them very fast. “Gee, I'm so happy! I was hoping I could impress you. Anyway, what do we do next? Should we go around the neighbourhood and see if anybody else saw his girlfriend or if there is any evidence that he hit her?”
“No Eve, we don't do that. That's not our job. That's a job for the police. But before we can get them involved, I need one more thing from you. I need to find a photo of Tobias and his girlfriend. For Tobias, see if you can just get a selfie if you cannot find a photo of him. For his girlfriend, try to see if she has any social media pages that we can get the photo from. It is very important that I know what the both of them look like before I involve the police. Can you do that for me?”
“Sure, I can try. What about you? Are you not coming with me? I was hoping we could work together so I can learn from you.”
“Eve, my dear,” I said “clearly you are an expert already. What can you learn from me? You could probably teach me a thing or two about subterfuge and interrogation techniques.”
She burst out laughing. “You flatter me, boss. It's just beginner's luck. Anyway, why can't I come with you?”
“Because I need to talk to some more homeless people. They might get a bit rough with a lady around. Trust me, you don't want to be there if they do. This is something I must do alone. If you're going to be my assistant, you need to learn how to follow instructions. Sorry, but those are the rules.”
“I understand. Should we catchup tomorrow morning?”
She was far too confident she could get the pictures in one night. If I were to do it, it would take me three or four days. But then I would have to go to the library to find a computer and try to remember how the social media sites worked and what my passwords were.
Still, even if she was chronically online, I doubted it was a few hours' work. From what we knew, we didn't even know what the girlfriend's full name was. He had given us two fake names, and there was no guarantee that Tobias was his real name either, although he might have told that name to the neighbours.
“Let's see, let's make it after lunch tomorrow or near lunch, say 1?”
“Sweet. I'll buy lunch again. I hope todays was good and we'll meet in the office at 12, have lunch and then do a catch up at 1. That's great boss! Where should I drop you?”
“Right here,” I said and stepped out.
I had no intention of letting her know where I was going next.
The witch was an old friend, and I didn't want to take an unknown to her. Besides, she was my source and my sources were the few things that kept me in business. It was the reason the police still came to me and occasionally paid me because I could talk to people who'd normally never talk to the police or whom the police wouldn't even suspect could have information about criminals and gangsters.
My next contact was of the second type. The police would never even look at her or even think of her. But she was one of the most dangerous and most powerful women in the country if not the world. It was time to pay my friend the Nice Witch of the East a visit.