"The first corpse was discovered on the sixth of February fifty-sixth, at a landfill in Hilkarn. Here," Nathan tapped his finger on the map near the red pin. "This is one of the southern quarters, although it is far from the church of Sainte Helena. On foot - forty minutes, if cut through the yards."
The church was marked with a large white pin, the places where the three bodies were found - with red, the houses in which the children lived - with green.
"Francis van Holden was found by the scavengers around six in the morning. He was nine years old. His father is Wilhelm van Holden, a physician. He reported the disappearance of his son after four hours, on the fifth of February, when the boy's tutor finally confessed that he had lost a child in Freedom Park during a walk. Here."
"Far away," Longsdale remarked. "Both from the church and from the landfill."
The dog, lifting its face, studied the map.
"He abducted boys aged nine to twelve, all from good families, from completely different neighborhoods. We have only three bodies, all found in Hilkarn."
Brennon pushed autopsy reports to the consultant. He leafed through the first report to a conclusion on the cause of death.
"The autopsy was done by Mr. Kennedy."
"And who else..."
"Why didn't he open the skull?"
"Look at the report with your eyes," Brennon answered irritably, sticking blue pins into the map from the memory where the children were last seen. "The cause of death is strangulation. An imprint of the right hand remained on boy's neck. What does the skull have to do with it?"
"If he used magic, then micro-hemorrhages could remain in the child's brain due to rough exposure, but now we don't recognize it."
"Excuse me, eight years ago there was no one to enlighten us," Brennon muttered. "Paw!"
The hound calmly buried his nose in the clothes of Francis van Holden laid out on the table.
"If you found only three bodies, how do you know that another eleven children were killed by the same person?"
"From there," Nathan muttered, "that this jerkoff was seen near every missing child."
The hound lifted his face from the clothes and stared incredulously at the commissioner. Brennon took a puffy packet of scribbled paper and slammed it in front of the consultant's nose.
"A whole herd of witnesses saw this man, and not one could describe his face. All we have is a man about five and a half feet tall, with gray hair, always dressed in black. He had a black cane and a silver watch on a chain. I myself tried to knock out even a word from them..." Nathan wearily ran a hand through his hair. "They really didn't remember."
"And it's all?" Longsdale asked incredulously, sorting through the sheets in a bundle.
"It's all. Clothes, a cane, a clock — witnesses described everything except his faces," Nathan sat down on the table. "And now I think that it could not do without witchcraft."
"Quite possibly..."
"Possibly? I've been observing one of this type for a month and a half. Your butler has a damn unmemorable face. I still don't remember what he looks like."
The hound sniffed loudly.
"I'm not saying that your Raiden did it. But now I know that this is possible in principle. Ah?"
The consultant did not answer. He laid out three autopsy reports in front of him and began to read, starting on the first page, all three at once. Nathan waited, was silent for a while, and began to hang portraits of children on the wall near the map.
"We never understood why he stopped. On seventeenth of November, the last child went missing, and this stopped. We corresponded with the police of neighboring districts for several years, thought he had moved, and conducted several joint investigations into a number of suspicious cases. But I have never seen anything like it again. And you?"
Longsdale was silent. Nathan stood in front of the tables on which the clothes and things of the slain were laid out. The hound methodically sniffed them one by one.
"You can't read it," the commissar muttered muffledly, "I can tell you by heart: no signs of violence or binding, half-digested sweets in the stomach, a trace from the right hand on the neck, and left fingerprints on the face. He held the children with their back to him, with one hand he clamped their mouth, with the other he strangled. No autopsy revealed any traces of the drug. According to Kennedy, the children were conscious."
Longsdale rested his chin on his clasped fingers into the lock. His gaze wandered between reports, a map, children's clothes and folders with documentation. Brennon waited, but the consultant was silent.
"Judging by the state of food in the stomach," the Commissar continued, "the children lived only a few hours after the abduction. But we never found out whether he was hiding them somewhere or..."
"Witchers and witches nourish their powers with pain and suffering," the consultant unexpectedly said. "However, if it were a witcher, as you suspect, he would not have stopped at fourteen and, moreover, would have killed the victims for a long time and painfully. But..." Longsdale went over the sheets of reports and testimonies, as if feeling for something blindly. "But then where is the result?.."
"What result?"
"The murders were ritual and stopped because the killer had reached the number of victims needed. But then where is the one who was called through this ritual?"
"And what, it's necessarily to call somebody?"
Longsdale raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"And why else do you think he need fourteen sacrifices?"
"I saw people who killed because they liked it," the commissar answered coldly. "And they were not sorcerers. They were whoresons. No magic."
"Then why did the killings stop?"
"Well..." Brennon pinched his beard and finally reluctantly answered: "We assumed that he was dead."
A snort from the side of the hound stirred the portraits on the walls.
"No," the consultant whispered; his eyes lit up manic. "The point is the ritual that he performed! But why did he not finish the job? Where is the one he called for?"
"Over there," Nathan nodded at the window, "wandering the streets. Yesterday paid you a visit."
"But why so long? Why wait eight years?"
Nathan grunted.
"Maybe he went to jail for eight, which is not surprising given his hobby."
"Or something frightened him," Longsdale looked thoughtfully at the Commissioner. "In your city, undead and evil spirits behave very modestly, compared to what I usually see, and there are much fewer of them than in the another cities."
"This is good?" Brennon said carefully.
"If you have a roaring lion lurking here that can scare evil spirits, then you better think about what will happen when it takes over people."
The commissar rubbed his face in his hands.
"So, calm down. You say that the Strangler who wanted to summon the otherworldly toad was scared by someone even more terrible. And then this someone sat here quietly for eight years? And then our killer suddenly decided to bring the matter to a victorious end and called for this yours ifrit. Moreover, the one he is afraid of did nothing? Do you feel what rubbish you're talking about?"
"Well, why immediately the rubbish..."
"Because," Brennon said sharply, "we have fourteen children killed And we also have a corpse of a priest, in whose church the remains of eleven victims were hidden. And you know what I think? I think that Father Grace strangled them one by one - and then one of the relatives of the slain found out about it and called on your ifrit, because we didn't do a damn thing to hang this scum!"
"If Father Grace killed fourteen children in a year," Longsdale asked, "what did he do for eight years? Where are another hundred and twelve corpses?"
"Good question," Brennon said through set teeth. "I'll do that question. And you do a spot of thinking the fact that someone else could have finished the work begun by the Strangler."
***
"Both are good," Broyd ruled. "Both of your theories are in holes, like Meersand cheese. I can immediately get you five more of the same one."
Nathan thought with annoyance that the chief was right. Not to mention the fact that no diocese will give out any information about the priest on such grounds.
"You haven't figured out the evidence yet, but you're already getting into theory," the police chief grumbled. "Brennon, Hilkarn Strangler is a private matter for all of us, but you could have kept at least a drop of common sense!"
"Yes, sir."
"Start from the beginning, damn it. What do we have about the priest?"
"His most outstanding trait is the scum character, sir. Otherwise, he is no different from any other priest."
"Apart from the fact that he could have caused the ifrit," the consultant reminded about himself. Broyd gave him a heavy look.
"Do not confuse what he could with what he really was. What he could or could not - we still do not know."
"He couldn't call anyone," Brennon snapped. "For nothing, the ifrit did come out of the church exactly when we took out the bones? Like hell! I am sure that the one who summoned was in the crowd and whistled his beast as soon as it smelled fried."
Longsdale winced.
"Firstly, no one can whistle to the ifrit. Human cannot manage it. Secondly, I already said that they could scare them away ...
"Your theory is unprovable nonsense!"
"Your nonsense is also unprovable," Broyd interrupted, puffing his cigar. "If Father Grace killed children, why didn't he hide the first three bodies in the church? Why didn't there be a single murder after eight years? Why did the ifrit prevent us from taking out the bones?"
Nathan grimaced. He saw the number of holes perfectly.
"I'll take care of the hollyrolly," he finally muttered. "In addition to Grace, we do not have a single thread, so we will unwind, starting with him. Kennedy deals with the description of the remains. When he finished, we will have a bone catalog with all the damage. Although we still do not know to whom which belong."
"I can find out," Longsdale said. The policemen jumped up; Broyd almost choked on a cigar.
"You can find out?! How?!"
"I need the blood of their immediate family, better than their father or mother."
"Is it witchcraft, or what?" Brennon asked. The consultant nodded. "Mind boggles..."
"I will personally speak with the families," the chief decided. "We need to think carefully about how to present all this so that it does not get worse. Brennon, what else do you have?"
"Sir, Longsdale found on the doors of the church, eghmmm ... a magic lock. As if this thing was supposed to keep the ifrit in the church."
"Not as if, but should," the consultant answered irritably. "If the firefighters hadn't removed the door, the ifrit would now be sitting in his cage."
"That is, sir," Nathan went on, seeing that the boss was lost in thought, "someone locked up the ifrit in the temple, and this is the hell the strangest thing in case. Who could do this?"
"Good question," muttered Broyd.
"Or Father Grace, and then it turns out that he understood about all the unclean rubbish no worse than Longsdale."
The consultant grunted skeptically.
"Either," the commissar went on, "his killer did it. This has its own logic - it's more convenient to keep the otherworldly beast in a cage, and if the killer avenged his child, it is all the more clear why he did not want to release the ifrit in the wild.
"It would be nice to know who drew this thing," said the chief. "Ah, Longsdale?"
He shook his head.
"Each spell bears the imprint of the creator's personality, but if I don't know this man personally, I can't recognize the imprint as well. But I can determine when the lock was created. I would have done it long ago," the consultant said with annoyance, "but I got distracted by the bones and then the attack on my house... I'm sorry."
"Okay," Broyd took a deep drag and crushed the cigar butt in the ashtray. "Now your home. What can you say about this creature?"
Longsdale was silent for a moment, and Nathan noticed that he was not only annoyed, but angry.
"The ifrit is a fiery spirit from other side. He is intelligent enough, although not in the sense that we put in this word. Like most disembodied evil spirits, he feeds on human lives, but not flesh, but what is called life force or living currents. The more it swallows, the stronger it will become; the stronger it is, the more food is needed. It is sometimes mistakenly called a demon, but it is not."
"I'll settle for that," muttered Nathan.
"The ifrits are disembodied, therefore, in our material world they need a receptacle. Human will not fit - his flesh is too weak to hold such a spirit. But my house, in which the whole family burned alive..."
"And that is why it make its way to you through the whole city?" Nathan asked incredulously. "If it certainly needs a house in which someone burned down, then two blocks from the church there is an abandoned hospital for the insane. Three years ago, fifty people burned in it and as many suffocated in smoke."
Broyd lit a new cigar and looked thoughtfully through the smoke at the consultant. He frowned silently.
"Maybe," the chef asked insinuatingly, "do you remember who has such a long bill for you, eh?"
The consultant shuddered, waking up from thought.
"But that is completely pointless! What is the point of taking risks just for the sake of some revenge?"
"Well, it depends on how hard and to whom you squeezed the corn," Nathan grunted. The door swung open without knocking, and a red hound stepped majestically into the office. The beast beamed with complacency.
"Brennon, why is the animal chewing evidence?" The police chief asked coldly. Paw walked over to Longsdale and spat out a hat with a metal plumelet on his lap. The consultant raised it to his eyes in surprise.
"This thing belonged to the third victim, Robert Lynch," Brennon recognized. "Paw, what the hell..."
The hound squinted confidently at the commissar. Longsdale twirled the hat before his eyes, as if not understanding what it was; suddenly he jumped up with a short cry and flew out of the office with a bullet. The hound shook himself, dotting the carpet and the commissar with red hair, and slowly trotted after him. Brennon glanced apprehensively at the chief.
"A bloody zoo on wheels," he said hollowly, and the Commissar hurried out of sight.
3rd January
The priest's house had two floors. On the ground floor there was a kitchen, a tiny dining room, a living room, an entrance hall with a staircase and housekeeper Mrs. Evans's room; on the first - a hall with a large pantry, the bedroom of Father Grace, his study and bathroom. Brennon swayed in his heels, inspecting the stairs and thoughtfully strumming keys in his pocket. Four policemen languished on the porch.
"Everyone is ready, sir," said Dwyer.
"I'm up, you're down," Nathan threw him a bunch of keys to the ground floor. The housekeeper was sticking out here, tearing with indignation and not knowing whom to rush to before, however, she tried to stay away from Dwyer. It is not surprising - creating Dwyer, mother nature for a long time could not choose between a gorilla and a bear, until she finally decided that he would be much scary if to made hi a human.
Brennon grunted and began to rise, trying to foot every step - suddenly where is the cache? As for the ground floor, he was calm - the detective will not miss an inch. Mrs. Evans sighed heartbreakingly several times and dragged behind the Commissar with her lamentations. Upstairs, he opened the pantry and nodded to one of the policemen.
"If you suspect a cache - open the walls and floor without hesitation."
A strangled, indignant sound burst from the housekeeper.
"Give him the lamp," Brennon ordered, and opened the bedroom. The bed was against the wall, on the left of it was the commode with three drawers, and on the right was a bedside table. On the contrary, a wardrobe occupied almost the entire wall, a chest was located under the window, and a rocking chair was in the corner.
"A wardrobe and a chest," the commissar ordered, and pulled the bedspread out of bed. Under him were a pillow and a folded blanket. Brennon's foot touched a night pot under the bed. A housekeeper, looking like an angry boletus, watched as Nathan gutted the bed, and the policeman - the wardrobe. He methodically twisted all the pockets and felt the lining, collecting everything found in a box; the commissar had already reached the mattress, turned it over, felt it, looked under the bed, and fumbled with his hand on the boards.
"Did you make Grace's bed?" He asked Mrs. Evans.
"No, sir, a girl comes to us every three days, and she make the bed."
"What kind of girl? Send for her, let she wait below."
"So I did ..." the housekeeper helplessly waved her arms around the expanding mess.
"Quickly!" Brennon hooted. It is unlikely that anyone will begin to hide anything where a curious maid easily gets to the hidden one, but who knows what she managed to notice. Nathan squeezed past the policeman to the bedside table. On it stood a melted candle, the glasses in a case and a book of theological content. In the bedside table, the Commissar found medicine and a pile of prescriptions.
"Doherty! Give me the box. Go down and send it all to Kennedy."
"Yes, sir."
Left alone, Nathan pulled out a drawer and thoughtfully tedded for a while neatly folded linen. The housekeeper's steps were heard, and the Commissar asked:
"You have a whole room set aside for the bathroom. Where does this luxury come from?"
"Father Grace bought it," Mrs. Evans answered, who definitely did not approve of such embezzlement. "About eight years ago. Dragged here, scraped the whole staircase, the scratches on the floor are still visible."
"What for?"
"How should I know?" The housekeeper said querulously. "At first, he often splashed in it, here we were tormented to warm water. It's a lot of buckets need to pull and warm up to..."
"And then?"
"And then it became easier. Once a month, two, or even three, and in winter it is completely idle..."
Brennon opened the lock. In the free corner there was a table with a wash basin, a jug, a razor set and a towel. The rest of the place was occupied by a tin bath and a cupboard with a stack of towels. The commissar went around the bath, scratching his finger along the edge and bottom. It seems that Grace have not used it for a long time. He sat down, ran his hand along the bottom and stumbled upon a small bundle of oiled paper, tied with twine to the leg. The commissar snapped a folding knife.
"What is it there?" The housekeeper asked jealously, unable to come to terms with the fact that her house was being robbed legally. Brennon went to the window, barely letting in the light, and opened the paper. Inside was a notebook. All the sheets were clean. Nathan frowned and began to turn them one at a time. Closer to the middle, he found a single page with a note near the binding edge. The Commissar twirled it this way and that, but still did not understand the meaning of the squiggles. He put a bookmark ribbon on the page and put the notebook in his pocket.
***
Raiden opened only after the fifth ring. The butler, instead of the usual frock coat, was in a thick oilcloth apron, covered with stains and places - soot, from which Brennon deduced that in Longsdale's laboratory all hell is let loose.
"When are you doing all this, guy?" The commissar inquired, taking off his coat.
"I sleep less," Raiden muttered.
"Where is the master?"
"In the office. I'm taking you, sir."
Nathan noticed that the butler was looking asquint at him in a strange way - not only with his usual hostility, but also very intensely, as if he was waiting for him to be exposed in something.
"Longsdale said you would be the first to know if someone attacked the house."
"I knew."
"What did you see?"
"The ifrit," the guy said through set teeth. "Please come here, sir."
All right, Brennon thought ominously. He still gets to him. Moreover, when leaving, the butler threw a suspiciously waiting look at him, which commissar often saw those who have something to hide.
Longsdale's office differed from the laboratory only in the presence of windows. The Commissar looked into the laboratory a couple of times, and deep down he would like not to see it again. He had strong nerves, but not enough to admire parts of non-human bodies moving in jars with a solution.
"Good day," Nathan dropped the notebook onto the table. "I brought you another present."
"Put it somewhere," the consultant said absentmindedly, not detaching himself from the microscope. Brennon, glancing at the chaos on the table, laid hands on the evidence again.
"What do you have here?"
Longsdale fumbled around the microscope and raised the hat over his head.
"Remember?"
"It was on Robert Lynch," Nathan stole up. "And what?"
"There are blood stains on the hat."
"I know. The killer tore his skin on a plumelet shaped barrette."
"You know?" the consultant risen above the eyepiece, like a snake. "And you did nothing?!"
"What could we do?" Blood stains only indicate that he was scratched badly. We interviewed witnesses if they saw someone with scratches or a bandage ...
"Is that all?" Longsdale asked in shock. "And you don't have anything else... Oh yes. Sorry."
"We are not trained to conjure," Brennon answered venomously. "Excuse the wretched. Well, what's up?"
"Blood is the strongest thing in a magical sense. Although I only have the charred bones of the victim at my disposal, with due diligence, I was able to determine the identity between them and the blood," Longsdale drummed his fingers on the table. "And it's not him."
"What?" the commissar exhaled muffledly.
"Blood and bones belong to different people. This is not Father Grace scratched on the plumelet."
"Damn it…"
"You're upset?"
"Upset is not the right word," Brennon said grimly, although in general he felt as though after a powerful kick under his breath. "In Grace's house, we found a mountain of medicines and sent them to Kennedy. He also bought a bath eight years ago and, according to the housekeeper, was actively splashing around in it, but after a year he cooled down to the fun. Now Regan is looking for a bath bill in papers, or at least correspondence about an order."
Longsdale frowned.
"He could wash away some magic mixture."
"That's what I thought. He smeared with witch's shimp, so that people don't recognize him, then washed it off. But I found this under the bath, tied to its foot. All pages are empty except one."
The consultant opened the notebook on the bookmark.
"You, of course, can check the empty sheets, suddenly something written there, but first tell me what it is? Is this a cipher?"
"It's Elladian," muttered Longsdale. "But the note does not make sense. It's just a set of letters... or Grace encrypted something in it. Leave me her?"
"Take it. Other than that, there is not a single hint of magic. All books and notes in Grace's house relate either to theology, or to ancient history. There are several volumes of Lee Chambers' poetry."
"I'll take a look at the books," Longseidel pulled a piece of bone from under the microscope. "A masking spell may well lie on them."
"I don't think that someone will dabbled in vile verses in four volumes for the sake of disguise," Brennon glanced at the consultant and muttered: "You are serious. Okay, good. Now where are you going?"
"Come with me. It's time to show you what's inside the church now."
"What is your butler doing now?" asked the commissar on the way to the living room.
"Mister Broyd sent the first blood samples. Raiden compares them with bone samples."
"I need to talk to him. He is, after all, the only witness who has seen your ifrit."
The hound was lying on the carpet in front of the fireplace and hypnotized the fire. Brennon did not know what exactly the animal inspired it, but the flames were so drawn to the hound that the carpet was charred in some places.
"You screwed up a little, buddy," said the commissioner. - The blood was strange.
The hound dismissively jerked his ear and leaned sideways at the feet of the consultant. Longsdale put his palm on the dog's head.
"Look into my eyes."
The commissar compliantly stared into his bright blue eyes, thinking along the way about what a donnybrook will rise in the city, as soon as the truth about the skeletons in the church comes out. Broyd will not be able to hush up the hype, and the devil knows if it will scare away the killer.
"Don't get distracted," the consultant said sternly. The living room turned into a grayish haze and began to move away. The viewpoint shifted down, and Nathan realized that he was looking at the burnt out church with the eyes of a dog. The hound stood in the portal and looked around. There was almost no light; the temple was filled with some kind of suspension swirling in the air, similar to dust and ash. Paw buried his nose on the floor and moved from left to right, from the entrance to the altar. Brennon looked at the stone slabs in the stains of soot until the hound froze and scratched the floor with its paw.
"First point," Longsdale's voice sounded from the outside.
"What are you about?" The commissar whispered, fearing to frighten off the vision.
"Here is the first victim."
"Wait a minute! We found all the skeletons... Oh my god! You mean there were others?!"
"No," the consultant was silent for a moment. "In order to open the portal to the other side, you need not bodies, but souls. Under this slab is a vessel with the soul of the first victim."
"God, are they still there?" the commissar said unwillingly. The dog, meanwhile, reached the second plate and scratched the mark crosswise with its claws.
"It's closer to the center than the first."
"This is a four-pointed star oriented to the east. The last point will be the altar. He will be in the center."
"The altar," Nathan said quietly. The hound moved from point to point. When she finished with the star, it jumped to the center, to the place where the altar used to be. The floor was lower here, because the stone had melted into a shallow funnel. The hound sniffed its center and briefly snapped its teeth. The vision began to melt.
"Hey! Wait a minute! But if it is a four-pointed star, and another point in the center, then it turns out that there are nine victims!"
"Five extras," the consultant shrugged.
Brennon looked at him incredulously.
"Five extras?"
"Nothing special. Novice warlocks and necromancers often have extra sacrifices. Lost a vessel or did not catch a soul."
"Extras?" The commissar repeated through gritted teeth. "Yes, I will tell their parents that - your children were extras victims, because the necromancer has the hands from the ass."
"What does the parents have to do with it?" surprised Longsdale. "We're talking about spell points. By the way, a strangulation is an ideal option for sacrifice."
"I'll let them know about that, too," Brennon snapped. "Let them rejoice!"
The consultant was confused. He looked at the commissar with almost childish bewilderment, and only the hound seemed to understand what it was about — it lowered its head like a wolf, its fangs flashed in its mouth.
"Do you think parents need to know about this?"
- You do not hear me, or what?
"Well, I can conclude that the warlock was quite inexperienced ..." Longsdale began to say with lost, looking at the Commissar completely incomprehensible.
"And I can conclude that some miscreant killed fourteen children just for the otherworldly creature," Brennon got up and picked up his hat. "And I don't care if he killed them out of inexperience or for pleasure."
"But there is a difference! Although generally sacrifices..."
"There is no difference," said the Commissar stiffly. "I'm waiting for your butler in the department for interrogation. You will be charged with identifying the victims. Goodbye."
"I don't understand you," Longsdale said quietly. "What are you dissatisfied with?"
"You won't understand," Brennon answered and slammed the door.