“What made you look in here?” Rojas asked, turning to Hallie.
“The witness, Quella, mentioned that she’d seen the curtains in this room and the one upstairs get closed. Upstairs is probably the bedroom. If Findo spent enough time in here that he was closing the curtains, I wanted to see if he’d left anything helpful. I didn’t expect this,” Hallie said candidly.
“This looks like a tactical map,” Frollo commented, standing beside his commander. “Weak points, entrances and exits, and a couple of spots marked for concealment.”
“Agreed. I’d like some more time to study this,” the commander said. “But we are out of time. The Conclave building needs another sweep before we let anyone in.”
“Yes, sir,” Frollo said.
“The local police are on their way and I’ve called Isoud. The forensic team will be here as soon as they can and feed anything back to us,” the director said. He was staring at the wall, brows drawn together. “I could leave Jasper and Dudon here, but I need them for the top floors.”
“Yes,” the commander agreed. “Never thought I’d see the day when we thought we didn’t have enough people.”
“That is so true,” Peredur said with a faint sigh. He turned to Hallie. “Good catch. But we need to head off now.”
“Sir,” Hallie acknowledged. She gave the map on the wall one last, long look before she headed out into the daylight with Girard.
As they walked along the street back to the van, a pair of police vans and a couple of battered looking vehicles she assumed must be driven by the detectives Peredur had mentioned droveinto the street. Jasper must have moved the van to allow the cars through. A half-dozen police officers dressed in their tactical dark blue gear, with body armour, helmets and weapons, poured out of each of the vans and headed towards the house. One of them - Hallie presumed the officer in charge - paused to exchange a few words with Rojas and the director before following the rest of the police team.
As the police officers took up posts around the house, the tac team followed Frollo and Rojas down the street, piling into their own vans. As quickly as they had arrived, the tac team and investigators were leaving, heading back up the hill to high city and the Conclave.
Chapter twenty-four
Halliegaveuptryingto see where they were. The rear end of the van, where she and Girard were seated, didn’t have any windows and trying to peer out of the windscreen, some distance in front of her, was making her feel dizzy. Instead, she looked over Girard’s shoulder while he viewed the photos he’d taken of the wall of the house.
“No one recognised the building?” she asked, when he’d been through the images once and was starting again.
“No. But if it’s a tactical map, like Frollo and Rojas seemed to believe, then it’s not going to read like a normal floor plan. And looking at a building plan like this is very different from walking through it. All I can tell is that it’s one floor of a building, with at least three, perhaps four, rooms. Impossible to tell the scale as well.”
“So we don’t know if we’re looking for a garden shed or a palace?” Hallie asked, trying for a lighter tone.
“Right. Or even if it’s in Daydawn. I mean, you’d think so, as that’s where the map was drawn.” Girard’s voice trailed away. He sighed as he put the phone away. “Best leave it to Isoud and Brennus to work their magic. I think Brennus has some amazing program he can run which might get us a match. And Isoud is much better at looking at abstract data and understanding it.”
“And until then we’re doing security patrols?” Hallie asked, wrinkling her brow as she tried to think what that might entail beyond walking in circles.
“Something like that, yes,” Girard said, a hint of laughter in his voice. “It is mostly walking around. There are also some security protocols we need to verify and we need to keep our eyes out for anything unusual.”
“It’s the Conclave building,” Hallie pointed out, in a dry tone. “I have a feeling I might not be the best judge of what is usual or unusual.” After all, she was barely used to the fact that she washochlen.
Girard grinned at her. “You’d be surprised.”
Before Hallie could ask any more questions, the van drew to a stop and the side door opened, the investigators with them spilling out into daylight.
Hallie followed, took one step to the side to make sure she wasn’t blocking the door, and then just stared.
She’d caught a glimpse of the Conclave building the day before, when she and Girard had been on their way to Zurine’s dress shop. It had seemed impressive then. It was breathtaking up close.
The structure soared overhead, almost touching the trails of clouds in the pale blue sky. It was made of gleaming glass and polished metal which sat somewhere between silver and gold, formed of sinuous curves that seemed to suggest the movement of water. From their vantage point, Hallie thought they were at the side of the building. There was a wide swathe of open spacearound the building, with paths marked by different coloured stone and gravel, the space made less stark by wooden benches that echoed the curves of the building, and large wooden planters. The planters looked to Hallie to contain fully mature trees that would normally soar to the roof line of any building they were next to, but which here merely emphasised how large the Conclave building was. She found herself distracted by the sheer variety of trees from tall, spiky fronds of deepest green that Hallie associated with hotter climates to graceful drapes of pale, almost silvery, green. There were no planters in front of what she thought might be the official entrance to the building, which was several storeys of tempered glass that protruded out in a lazy semi-circle bounded by a wide spread of flat ground that continued the several different colours of paths and a wide swathe of roadway. It was easy to imagine the sleek cars of the Conclave members driving up to the front of the building to offload their important cargo.
Through the soaring glass front she could see what looked like a fountain except that the fountain was made of molten gold. No. Not solid pouring gold, but dozens and dozens of gold baubles of all different sizes, spilling from the high, high ceiling to the floor in an endless, majestic stream.
“Is that real gold?” she asked Girard.
“The installation? Some of it is, I think,” he said, as if she’d just asked about something mundane and ordinary like office supplies. And reminding her of just how different their lives were. It didn’t sound as though he considered vast quantities of gold being used for decoration as wasteful, whereas all Hallie could think of was the unimaginable extravagance. “It’s powered by magic and technology combined. The bubbles fall, are gathered in the pool at the bottom and then sent back up in a tube behind the scenes.”
“But someone decided to use real gold in, what did you call it? Installation?” Hallie still couldn’t wrap her mind around that idea. She’d been insidehochlenresidences. She knew they were full of wealth. But that was mostly in the form of decoration or art. Something to make a home more beautiful or more comfortable. She had some limited sympathy with that, having felt the difference when Rosalia had moved in and begun improving Hallie’s living space. Somehow having beauty in a home didn’t seem aswasteful- that was the only word her mind would come up with - as this endless display.
“It’s considered to be art,” Girard said, sounding as if he didn’t agree. “So it’s an art installation. There are a few other large-scale sculptures in the building, but that’s the biggest.”
