A slight miscalculation

===82 Summer 1380==========

“How did it never occur to us that they’d place watch wards here?” Curry lamented as we stood in the hall outside Lamb’s door staring in stupid dismay at the glowing watch wards that if crossed would tell the real **** guards we’d been here without permission or any justifiable reason for it.

“Maybe because the victim’s residence isn’t an actual crime scene probably?” I said, with vast irritation. We’d been already to Foglock and found the place so thoroughly warded out the ass that there was no point even trying. No shade would want to hang about there, anyway. Not that we’d been able to find Lamb in any of the obvious places, including the watch house.

We were only here because after everything else had proved fruitless, we’d begun trying to think of other places we might be able to turn up Lamb’s shade. His address was listed in the city directory, but had apparently been declared a site of interest for the investigation, which from the outside at least didn’t appear to be moving very quickly.

“What do we do now?” Curry asked, then glanced around to make sure nobody was listening. “Do you think a shade saw anything? Or could go in and have a look about for us?”

Before I could reply a trouserless man wearing only a linen shirt drifted through the wall next to me with his prick in his hand. “Listen to the man. If you could use a favor,” he offered suggestively, leering with what seemed to me unreasonable confidence considering he was still wearing the leather belt he’d accidentally strangled himself on, “I could use a favor.”

“Fuck off,” I snapped, and Curry drew up startled at the outburst, until he remembered a second later that this had been going on for about the last day now and he wasn’t the one I wanted to fuck off.

“Who is it this time?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, glaring at the man with as much contempt as I could summon. “Some imbecilic prat who loves a wank so much he can’t stop tugging on his pecker even after it killed him.”

Curry followed my gaze, casting a distressed look at what was for him an empty wall.

“Frigid bitch,” muttered the shade. “I just wanted to see some tits.”

“Oh, is that all! Then next time you meet somebody like me maybe try putting your dick away and not talking her up exactly like the leering fucking degenerate you so clearly are,” I advised the incorporeal pervert, then gave him the finger when in response he began stroking himself and made a point of retreating backwards to give me more of an eyeful. “I hope an Arvinterite exorcises you just as you’re about to finish,” I told him.

“You should really smile more,” the shade taunted back, plunging both hands through the wall to return my rude gesture twofold, then retreating when I kicked the wall angrily.

“Fucking hells,” Curry said with mild disconcertment, for about the sixth time today.

“I hope none of his neighbors were home to hear this,” I said.

“Or are women,” my partner added darkly.

“That too.” I eyed Lamb’s door, feeling a considerable deficit of good spirit. “He’s not here. Who could possibly hear both sides of that whole exchange and not turn up to see what was going on?”

“Is there anywhere else we can—” Curry began, when down the hall a door opened and an elderly elfish man looked out at us.

“Just chasing off a vagrant, sir!” I called.

He studied us, obviously not buying this explanation, possibly owing to how hard I jumped before shouting my flimsy alibi at him. “What do you want with his place? You look like guards, not thieves. Why don’t you just go in?”

We exchanged another look, trying to decide if we should simply excuse ourselves and leave, or whether this person might know something useful, or whether if we left and he decided we were suspicious he might tell somebody and then the chief and the captain would find out we were poking around with neither permission nor directive. When we’d hesitated a beat too long the man motioned to us. “You might as well come in here before somebody calls the proper guards.”

“We are the proper guards,” I said when we got a bit closer. “Just… not properly assigned to this case.”

“That’s obvious,” the man said dryly, and motioned us inside.

We looked at each other again and then Curry followed me through the door into a small, but tastefully decorated front room. “What are you up to?” the man asked without preamble, once the door was shut.

“Um, Lamb and his partner were…” I trailed off, unsure what I was trying to say.

“Mentor officers in the watch guard,” Curry supplied. “They were good to us and we were hoping…”

I realized he wasn’t sure what to say we were hoping. “We were hoping to help things along, if we could turn up anything useful,” I supplied.

The man eyed us with a neutral sort of curiosity. “And what is it you think two youngsters like you are going to accomplish that the regular **** guards can’t?”

I had no idea what to answer to that, but Curry said quickly, “The unit is understaffed without him and his partner. Maybe something got missed.”

I couldn’t decide if the man was being sarcastic when he said, “Maybe.” He stood there looking at us for a moment, and just as I was about to excuse us so we could flee and not feel any stupider and more pointless in this doomed venture, he said, “My flat adjoins his, from the days this used to be one big apartment. There’s a set of doors that never get used anymore, but I have the key to my side. If they’re as understaffed as you say, maybe they didn’t get it warded it on his side.”

“What if they did, though? That looks plenty more suspicious than us just going in the front and tripping the wards,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “That’s the chance we take. Though, if it turns out we’ve breached a ward, I can always just say I went over to get back a book he borrowed and I thought it would be less fuss just to let myself in like he and I always used to. I might get a bit of hassle but it won’t come to anything.”

“I thought you said nobody ever used the doors,” Curry said.

“The **** guards don’t know that,” said the man. “Anyway, take it or leave it.” He shrugged.

“How come you’re offering to help?” I asked. “You don’t know us.”

“I’m pretty good at spotting liars,” the man said. “Anybody's guess whether you're stupid or not, but you’re not lying, at least. And you’re not doing it for selfish reasons.” He stuck his hand out to me. “I’m Anton. I’m retired. But I used to be a contract verifier for the guild. I worked with Lamb on occasion, before I retired a couple years back. We were friendly.”

The contract magician thing explained his good-at-spotting-liars remark. I shook his hand. “Bersk,” I said, “from the Fourth,” and then Anton presented his hand to Curry, who shook as well and introduced himself.

“Aren’t you worried about getting mixed up in all this?” Curry asked. “What if they ask you to submit to verification later?”

Anton snorted. “No experienced detective would embarrass themselves like that. Any decent verifier has a good shot at beating a verified interview, if they need to. And that’s all assuming the door’s even openable on his side.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

For some reason this made him grin at me. “I’ll get my key.”

Without the distraction of our conversation with Anton, I finally noticed that the pervert shade had apparently decided it was amusing to stand out in the hallway with only his penis visible on our side of the wall, waiting for me to realize he was there. I wasn’t sure if shades could see through walls, or only move through them, but I made sure not to change my expression or otherwise let on that I’d seen anything.

But I couldn’t resist whispering to Curry, “I really hope this guy pisses off somebody who can actually do something about him.”

He looked confused. “I thought he seemed all right, with this letting us in his secret door thing,” he said at the same whisper. “Did I miss something?”

“No, just the dead masturbator,” I whispered back. “Never mind, I’ll tell you later. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of getting to know I even noticed.”

I could tell Curry wanted very badly to look around, even though he couldn’t have seen anything, and was actively suppressing this impulse out of solidarity with my wish to thwart the deviant shade. This almost made me laugh, except Anton came back then and led us to the back of his apartment, where he removed a painting from where it hung covering a narrow door. He set that on the floor leaning against the wall, then stuck his key into the lock and pulled the door open.

As soon as he did, the movement disturbed a sheaf of papers from where it was stuffed in between the two doors. The three of us stood staring as all the pages fluttered down and came to rest on the floor.

“So I guess that settles the question of whether the **** guards ever opened up that door,” Anton observed dryly after a moment, stooping to pick up one of the pages.