“We’ll get the locals on it. The detective bureau owes us a few favours,” Peredur said. “What did you tell her?”
“That we wanted to post people to keep an eye out for the men coming back. She promised to bake more cookies and a cake for them.”
“Oh, that kind of witness,” Peredur said, face briefly lightening into a smile that just showed how tired he was. “I am sure the detectives will be happy to help. I sent Mel and Jasper to the other witness across the street. They didn’t get much from him other than what Mel referred to as some attitude.”
Hallie frowned, drawing the director’s attention.
“Problem, Miss Talbot?” he asked.
Aware that they had had some differences over the past day or so, Hallie tried to be as diplomatic as she could in her answer. “Well, sir, Mrs Rosewood referred to the other witness as an old, interfering busybody, in so many words, which suggested to me some kind of rivalry between the two. She has notebooks, and clearly keeps a close eye on things. I would have thought the old man did the same. And, forgive me, sir, but Mel is not the most sympathetic of questioners.”
Hallie heard what sounded like a smothered laugh from one of the tac team members around them at her description of Mel, although both the commander and director managed to maintain decent poker faces. Hallie was sure that Mel wouldn’t have slammed the old man’s head against a table, as he had done to her on their first meeting, but she was also quite sure that thehochleninvestigator would not have had much patience for an elderly human man, and the old man would have easily picked up on that.
Peredur stared at her for a long breath during which Hallie wondered if she’d gone too far in bringing up criticism of Mel. Then he nodded once. “I’ll ask the detective bureau to re-interview the other possible witness.” He glanced towards thehouse. “Looks like Findo has been here a while and doesn’t believe much in housekeeping.”
“Almost two weeks, according to Quella Rosewood,” Girard said, and Hallie heard the edge of frustration in his voice. “So, while we were getting nowhere in the Lucien Islands and then Minamaan, Findo was here all that time.”
“The last place we’d look for him,” the director concluded, expression reflecting his own frustration. He drew out his phone and checked the time, muttering a curse. “The Conclave meetings are due to begin soon. We’re going to secure this scene and head back. Miss Talbot, there’s been no time to give you a run through of the Conclave building or its security measures, and normally I wouldn’t bring you in without that knowledge, but given the situation, we need everyone. Stick with Girard. Your liaison to the tac team will be Frollo, as before.”
“Yes, sir,” Hallie agreed, echoed by Girard.
“We’ve got ten minutes before we need to leave. The building has been cleared. No explosives or traps. Take a look through and see what you make of it,” Peredur said, waving to the house in front of her.
“Is there a basement or attic?” Hallie asked before she moved.
“Yes to attic, it was searched when Frollo’s team moved in, and no to a basement. Or not that we’ve found,” the director said. He tilted his head towards the house, suggesting a measure of impatience for her to get on with her work, but his voice was mild when he said, “Your clock is running.”
“Yes, sir,” Hallie said, and started forward. Ten minutes wasn’t nearly long enough for a building that size, but the director knew that so there was no good pointing it out. However, she and Girard had been given a great deal of information by Quella, including where the woman had most often seen lights in the house. So, when Hallie got inside the front door, she took a brief look around the entryway, seeing wood panelling and heavilypatterned carpet, before heading into one of the rooms that opened off the entrance.
She found herself in what might be called a library in ahochlenresidence, but what she thought the house’s owners probably referred to as study or office. The shelves on two walls were full of old books, one wall was almost entirely taken up with a splendid bay window and heavy curtains, and the last wall was bare, with paler patches here and there showing where paintings might once have hung. There was an imposing wooden desk and equally large leather chair set to one side of the bay window. The desk surface was bare, but covered in what looked like dust and smudges from fingerprints. Hallie remembered Peredur’s comment about housekeeping and found she was glad she didn’t have time to go through the whole property.
“Any idea who owns the property?” she asked Girard, who’d come into the room with her. She thought it had been discussed during the morning planning session but found she couldn’t immediately remember.
“No one at the moment. The previous owner died, and apparently didn’t leave a will or any heirs, so the house has been sitting empty for a while with all the furniture intact,” Girard said.
Hallie looked up at him, frowning slightly. “So, of all the houses in midtown, Findo just happened to pick one where no one would be expected home for a while? How did he manage that, I wonder?”
“There will be records somewhere, I suspect, but you’d need to know what you were looking for,” Girard said, his own frustration clear. “I’ll add this to Jasper and Dudon’s task list.”
“Good luck to them,” Hallie said, heading behind the desk as Girard left the room. She made a quick search through the drawers, not so much because she thought Findo would have been careless and left something helpful there, but more tosee what was there and whether she could tell if anything was missing. She didn’t think that Findo was careless or stupid. But she also didn’t think he would have expected his hideaway to be found, or found so quickly. She would never have found this house, she was quite sure. She would have looked for Findo in low city, where he had previously been based and where his connections were. Or where she had thought his connections were.
The desk turned out to be almost empty apart from a collection of strange pens in the top drawer. She pulled them out, uncapping one and frowning at it.
“Where did you find a blacklight pen?” Girard asked, coming back into the room.
“In the desk. Is that what this is?” Hallie handed one of the pens to him. “Blacklight?”
“That’s not the proper technical term, but it’s the common name,” Girard said. “It’s like secret ink. You need a specific light colour to show up the writing.”
“Is that so?” Hallie bent down to look at the bulb in the desk lamp, which seemed perfectly ordinary to her eyes, and then up at the ceiling light. There was a metal spiral with perhaps half a dozen bulbs on it. “Like those?”
Girard followed her gaze and nodded, crossing the room to the light switch.
Hallie gasped as the plain wall, with all the gaps from where paintings had hung, lit up with what looked like a building diagram and a series of notes and symbols.
She barely heard Girard’s shout which brought the director, Commander Rojas and Frollo running into the room, too busy studying the map. Frollo dragged the curtains shut, making the lines on the wall stand out even more, and she saw both the director and Girard taking out their phones and photographing the wall.
“We need the forensic team in here, Brennus in particular, to see if they can tell us what that building is,” the director said, voice grim. Brennus meant Brennus Bowen, one of the forensic technicians who seemed to be the most knowledgeable about computers.
