“Go back to the staff quarters,” Kentario told Liandra. “We’ll have a chat to Saki, but we might have a few more questions for you later.” A guard led the woman out of the room, another man hurrying off to fetch Saki.
But not two minutes later, Kentario began to feel a headache coming on, as the plot of the mysterious service door thickened. It was now getting on for nine o’clock in the evening, and all of them were running out of patience as tiredness got the better of them.
“I did no such thing!” Saki said emphatically, as Maro presented the accusation to her. “Liandra has been in charge of supplies for years. She’s served in the palace for nearly eight years. If I made any mistake here, it was to trust her too much to complete her job without supervision. But we’vegot nearly thirty staff coming and going on different days. Quite honestly, it was a relief to be able to hand that part over to someone so competent. Liandra’s very good at her job,” she added. “The supplies always come in on time, we hardly ever run out of anything. Before she started doing the job, it was far less routine. We’d constantly be running out of seasonal vegetables, or finding that the meat orders weren’t enough to feed the special guests. But I haveneverbeen asked about using the service door for deliveries, and if I had been, I most certainly would not have said yes.”
“Did you know the door was being used? With or without your permission?”
“I had no idea. I work the morning shift. I have done for years. The food deliveries come in during the afternoon. I swear by the Goddess, I knew nothing about this.”
Leaning against the wall, looking more worn out by the minute, Emica sighed. “Liandra says it was your fault. You say it’s Liandra’s fault. Which can only mean one of you is lying. So assuming for a moment that it’s not you,” she suggested, once more attempting to coax their informant around to a favourable mindset, “how would you suggest we work out what really happened?”
Saki sat still, contemplating the idea with a deep frown on her face. “I’ve worked in the palace for near on thirty years,” she said finally, turning to Maro. “I was here the day you locked that door, after the revolution in Arctesia. I saw the padlock you put on it. It was thick metal, the chunkiest lock I’ve seen in a long time. There’s only two ways it could have been removed. Either, someone unlocked it-”
“What happened to the key?” Kentario asked, interrupting her. He shot a wary glance at Maro. So far, he seemed to have been able to keep himself out of trouble. Was his luck going to continue to hold?
“I threw it away,” Maro said, then quickly corrected himself. “No, actually, first I had the key ground down so that it wouldn’t operate the lock in the first place. And then I threw it away. As far as I was concerned, no one need ever open that door again.”
“Okay, so if it wasn’t unlocked, how else would it get opened?” Kentario asked, turning back to Saki.
“Someone would have cut it off. And given the size of it, whoever did it would have needed an angle grinder to get through it.”
“Who on palace grounds has access to an angle grinder?” Kentario asked Maro.
“It would have to have been one of the groundskeepers. All the power tools are kept locked up in one of the garden sheds.”
“Get them in here,” Kentario ordered, rubbing his eyes to relieve the ache at his temples. “Someone’s got to know who did it.”
With a nod from Maro, two more guards scurried off, and the three of them resumed their anxious wait while the next wave of staff were rounded up and brought over.
“Yes,” a man said, fifteen minutes later. “It was me. I did cut the lock off.”
“Despite there being a large sign on the door saying that exit was not to be used for any reason?” Maro’s tone held all the disbelief of a mother asking her five-year-old child why he’d tried to flush her wedding ring down the toilet.
“What? No. There was no sign,” the gardener said. “They said they’d just lost the key and needed access in a hurry. I didn’t know there was anything amiss about the whole thing.”
“Who said they’d lost the key?” Kentario demanded.
“Liandra. She was the one who asked me to do it. She’s been working in the kitchen for years. I didn’t think anything of it.”
Kentario ground his teeth. Finally, they were getting some answers, but at the same time, a worrying pattern was developing. Aside from Aki, every single member of staff seemed to be of the opinion that so long as someone higher up the chain was authorising any decision, it was perfectly okay, no matter how many rules and protocols it breached along the way.
“Thank you, that’s all for now,” he said, dismissing the man. Once he’d left the room, he groaned, cursing under his breath. “You do realise,” he said to Maro, “that once this is all over, we’re going to have to re-induct every single member of staff, and firmly drive home the concept of personal responsibility for one’s actions, regardless of whatever your boss might say?”
“This is a mess,” Maro muttered, sounding defeated. “And I still take full responsibility for the ultimate outcome. I’m just glad we’re finally making some progress.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Kentario said, a venomous edge to his voice. “I’m perfectly prepared to hold you responsible. But in the meantime, I have a growing list of staff who are going to be abruptly sacked at the end of this investigation. That’s if we can’t come up with a few appropriate charges to have them arrested on instead.”
“Let’s get Liandra back in here,” Maro said, making an effort to keep them on track. “It’s getting late, and after a full day of being cooped up here, the staff are going to start getting stroppy.”
Kentario didn’t give a shit about the comfort of the staff right at the moment, but Maro had a point. Uncooperative staff were only going to make their job harder. But Emica interrupted before they could get any further. “Not to be a pain or anything, but I think we need to call it a night,” she said, stifling a yawn. “We’ve got halfway there. Arrest Liandra, arrest the gardener guy, and the three kitchen staff who owned up toknowing that the door was being used illegally. Even if the charges don’t stick, we get to keep them where we can get to them until we work the rest out.”
“We still don’t know who let the raiders into the palace,” Kentario snapped, his patience finally wearing out. He desperately wanted to go back to Oris’s house and check up on Ryu, to assure himself that the prince was still alive. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, he was exhausted, and leaving aside the tangled web of mistakes and gross negligence from the palace staff, hestilldidn’t know who was ultimately responsible for the attack on the royal family. “Weneedto figure out how this happened.”
“If we don’t get some sleep, we’re going to start making mistakes. We’ve already interviewed every single member of the kitchen staff once, they’ve all been put up in the staff quarters for the night, the Guard knows not to let anyone leave. I know you want to solve this. Both of you,” she added, glancing at Maro. “But maybe if we sleep on it we’ll think of something we’ve overlooked so far.”
“Fine,” Kentario conceded with a scowl. “We’ll start again in the morning. Eight o’clock sharp.”
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