Brennon slowly flipped through Miss Tay's interrogation protocol. However, there was nothing special to flip through here - with all the details, it fit on five pages. Miss Thay did not remember anything from the moment she put the ward in a chair, and until she woke up in a hospital with her head bandaged. The poor woman was frightened to death and shocked by the fact that she was being kept as insane, but the Commissar did not see any other way to save her life. Only a straitjacket, belts, the constant supervision of two policemen and Longsdale medallions - both on the victim and on the guards.
Nathan slammed the folder and threw it into the drawer. This morning, he held a meeting where he outlined the essence of the problem. He did this after a long meeting with Broyd, but still - not a single police Commissar will feel happy and confident in his professionalism, announcing to the entire department that a wizard-maniac has wound up in the city. It still seemed to Brennon that his subordinates were about to have the courage to twist him and commit him to lunatic asylum.
There was a knock on the door.
"Well?" the commissar said gloomily.
Byrne entered. The detective still didn't look well; on the other hand, he could no longer doubt the sanity of his superiors after what he saw in the interrogation room. Against the background of the dark vest Byrne gleamed medallion.
"Sit down. What do you have?"
"I checked Kennedy's reports for the past month. Among the unidentified corpses, there are none with injuries similar to those inflicted on two victims."
"That's good," Nathan creaked. "Apparently, our maniac is only at the beginning of his creative path. It is comforting."
"As for the potential killer," Byrne rubbed the scar, "I'm afraid that, under the influence of a maniac, even a woman could inflict so many blows to crush the victim's face. Moreover, they were no longer resistant. We are unlikely to identify the killer of the first victim, if it is not the same Frank Ryan."
"Still no murder weapon?"
"So many stones were caught from the pond that you can kill an entire women's boarding house. No witnesses either. No one saw, either in the park or near it, a bloodied man with a stone or even without a stone. Which is not surprising: the first murder was also committed late at night."
"Um. And what does a decent maid do in the park, and even in the dead of night?"
"Anything, sir. The maniac could order her anything."
"It is truth too. But still, somewhere she met a maniac and somehow reached the park. Did you interrogate Shihans and their servants?"
"I would like to, but..."
"But?"
"I'm afraid it will end the same way," Byrne said quietly. "Who will guarantee that the maniac doesn't tell Mister or Missis Shihan to throw himself from the roof as soon as I get to their house?"
"No one," Brennon answered dryly, "and if I could solve the case by looking in the magic mirror, I would solve it. But I can't."
"We risk their lives, sir." The detective's only eye swelled and blushed, and a bluish eye-sack appeared underneath. Byrne's bony physiognomy became even thinner and narrower. "I'm not sure I have the right to dispose of other people's lives."
"Me too. But if we don't follow Macy Flynn's path from the Shihans house to the park, we won't know where she met him. How many women do you think a maniac will need if he cuts such a small piece from each one?"
Byrne looked down at his notebook.
"If you are afraid that someone will die... Yes, someone will die. We cannot prevent the death of either the third, or, most likely, the fourth girl. But, perhaps, if we work from morning to night, it is possible! - the fifth will survive. And maybe not - but it already depends on us."
Byrne was silent, staring at the floor, gritting his teeth so that nodules swelled on his cheekbones.
"So what?" Brennon asked. "In your opinion, does it make sense to writhe for the sake of the fifth, sixth and all the rest - or let them die?"
Byrne took a deep breath and stood up.
"Sorry, sir. I feel bowled over. A hard couple of days. I would go to the Shihan in the evening to catch them all at home."
"And how many are there?"
"Mister Sheehan, Missis Sheehan, and three other younger Misters Sheehan. Sons from nineteen to ten. The servant includes a coachman, a gardener, a cook, a butler, two maids, three footmen and a tutor."
"So do it."
"Yes, sir. And, sir, Missis van Allen asked me to tell you that she would like to see you."
The commissar gazed steadily at the subordinate's phizog. Alas, because of the scar, it for the most part did not express anything. He doesn't want the Department to start betting on the engagement date!
"Okay," Brennon said evenly. "Considered. You're free."
Byrne allowed himself a quiet grunt and disappeared. Gallagher appeared at the door for a moment, handed a note from the Vice Department and also evaporated, hastening to return to the interrogation of the hospital staff. Nathan unfolded a piece of paper - there was only one name listed there: Fervor Patty (Pat Dormer). The Commissar of the Vice Department advised turning to her pimp, a certain Andrew Half Fist, whose last name had vanished in the wilds of his confused biography. In general, Commissar van Wissen believed that one and Half Fist nailed the prostitute himself, but since a colleague had some suspicions... But the pimp was so deftly in hiding that van Wissen lost sight of him, but Nathan had some trick up his sleeve. He put on his coat, his hat and went to house number 86.
He found the consultant in the living room, in front of a hot-burning fireplace. The hound luxuriated on the skin in front of the fireplace grate and lazily waved its tail in greeting; his master enthusiastically studied some maps, laying them on his knees, the table and on the floor. The witch, leading Brennon to the living room, wanted to leave on her butler's business, but Nathan stopped her.
"Good afternoon. I have a small request for you."
The consultant raised his head and blinked absentmindedly at the Commissar, as if he had time to forget who he was.
"I was in the park," Longsdale said. "I thought the killings were related to the place itself, but strangely enough I didn't find anything."
"That is, no hole to the other side from which the maniac wants to fish a dozen or two vile creatures?" the commissar became interested. "Did you think there was one?"
"Yes. Then it would be clear why the park," Longsdale frowned at the map. "But that is not so. There is nothing like a portal, man-made or self-revealed."
"Well, the hypothesis didn't work out..."
"But then there is that feeling, vague, half-erased, but I caught it. It occurs where many people once died. Do you remember anything like this about the park?"
"The Revolution," Brennon answered. "In those years, the whole city was littered with corpses. Here, for several months there were battles between us and the imperial army."
"Not suitable," the consultant muttered. "It was recently."
"Twenty years ago," Nathan said dryly.
"No, not that... It is too old and comes from the earth, deep beneath the park and a layer of modern soil..." Longsdale again buried in the map. On it, Brennon noticed the date - 1803.
"What are you looking for there? The devil knows this park for how many years. Kennedy remembers him from childhood, and the old man, by the way, will soon be eighty."
The consultant did not answer.
"What is he talking about?" The commissar asked Jen quietly. "What kind of feeling?"
"The spirit of a bad place. Imagine a covered gutter, passing over which you still smell the sewage. Only in a bad place it smells not of dirt, but of death."
"Um, in childhood, the old women in the village used to frighten us with dead places, but I always thought that they just scared children from swamps and forest thicket. Do you think this will lead to something? What is the use of a maniac from this place?"
"It's easier to make a hole to other side," Jen said. "And if there were too many deaths and torments, then such a hole can spread itself. In addition, such places always attract people like your maniac, even if he does not think about any portals."
"Affinity of souls," Brennon chuckled.
"What did you want to ask?" Longsdale inquired, not looking up from the map.
"We have drawn the identities of the victims. The first is Macy Flynn, the maid. Byrne went to her masters. And as for the second," Nathan pulled a note from his pocket and slipped it under the nose of the consultant. "She was a prostitute, and her pimp, Andrew Half Fist, also disappeared. I would like to find him."
Longsdale took Wissen note, handed it to Jen, and grunted, "Get with it." The witch joyfully grabbed it before Brennon managed to rebel. She is a girl, after all!
"Although, if he lets her out "to hunt" in the Raven Arc," the Commissar thought sourly, "probably this is not the first time for her."
The hound, too, raised its head curiously.
"Let go of Red?"
"I'm not going to go out," Longsdale answered absently and threw the map into a pile near the chair. "There is still a lot of work."
"And how does the hound help you in it?"
Jen grabbed the commissar under his elbow and eagerly pulled after herself. The commissar barely had time to say "Goodbye," when he ended up in the lobby. The witch was already pulling on her coat, whistling merrily.
"How far can they move away from each other?" Brennon asked. The whistle ended.
"What do you care?" The girl hissed.
"He asked for help. I'm helping. Ten feet? Ten yards?"
"About a dozen," Jen muttered.
"Why?"
"How do I know? Ask the hound if you are so concerned."
"A guard or a bodyguard?" The commissar thought. "Or is there another reason? But what the hell is it?!"
***
The Raven Arc stretched along the coast of Weer where relatively decent neighborhoods (such as where brewer Murphy lived) were replaced by a series of abandoned barns and warehouses turning into narrow streets. They repeated the curve of the lake shore and were randomly built up with low wooden shacks and brick houses in two or three floors - the last attempt by the city hall to ennoble the city bottom.
"They don't have to try," Brennon thought: since he began serving in the police to this day, the Raven's Arc has remained unchanged. To "ennoble" it, it was necessary to begin with the demolition of the entire quarter. Cleansing fire would not hurt either.
"Do not be afraid?" Commissar nodded to the Longsdale carriage.
"Let them try," Jen answered.
"What will you do?" Brennon asked when the witch purposefully walked past the barns and warehouses. Just in case, the Commissar pulled the revolver out of its holster and put his hand with it in his coat pocket. You never know...
"Since you have neither a piece of his flesh, nor a bottle of his blood, nor even any of his things, then we cannot use the spell. There remains only a scent."
"We could have taken the hound," muttered Nathan; however, they would have to drag the consultant...
"The hound also needs at least a footcloth," Jen said blithely. "And I can find him anyway. But I need a place where I can calm down and concentrate for half an hour. It is advisable to get closer to the Raven Arc, so that we do not lose him in the end."
The girl stopped in front of a dilapidated stone barn. Rotten doors lay on the ground, dusted with the last February snow.
"How will you do it?' Brennon made his way after her past the broken doors.
"If Fervor Patty was his prostitute, then that means he touched her. And much more often than all her clients. And if I concentrate well..."
"Wait a minute! And can you catch the maniac or the killer in this way?" Nathan seized. The girl shook her head.
"No. This will not work for those who have touched her a couple of times, especially after her death. Now step back and do not interfere. Make sure no one breaks in here."
Brennon kicked the boxes in the corner and crouched carefully on them. Jen froze in the middle of the barn, clasping herself with her arms and lowering her head. Nathan rummaged in his coat pocket, discovered a bundle of cookies (still seemingly edible) and began to nibble to pass the time. Cookies, hard as a piece of tile, began to give in at the moment when the witch took a deep breath and started to sway measuredly back and forth. The illusion crept from her, like a transparent melting veil, and Nathan involuntarily wondered how old she was. She could have been given eighteen to twenty-five in appearance, and she acted like an irrepressible teenager.
"Why give a witch to a human being to raise?" Brennon thought. Why does she obey him? In fact, what can a human harm to a witch? Or, after all, he is no longer a human, and witches and witchers consider him to be someone else. But whom?
Going through the memory of everything that he managed to find out, Nathan became more and more confused. He needed someone with whom to discuss everything, and this someone is clearly not the consultant. He, it seems, has still not really realized that some other person lives in him and needs help.
"What is in his head if he does not think about the most basic things? How can you live sixty years and never ask yourself who you are, where are you from, where are your friends and relatives from? Why don't you get old? Damn it, how can you not even wonder from which factories your amulets and bullets are brought for you?!"
And the hound that can not move away from Longsdale, or Longsdale - from the hound? Nathan was ready to swear that there was someone else in the hound, because a wordless creature could not behave like that, even if it's not just an animal.
Jen broke out a weak moan, and Brennon threw up his head. The witch no longer just swayed - she swayed like a pendulum, and the Commissar did not even understand why she did not fall. The air around was so warm that he unbuttoned his coat and opened his scarf.
"Why, interestingly, didn't her clothes burn?" The commissar thought, and immediately repelled an inappropriate thought. The stone floor under his feet was already so hot that Brennon scrambled into a corner where it was still cold. Now he knew why the witch was looking for an empty warehouse built of stone. The boxes on which Nathan was sitting began to smolder.
Jen took a deep breath and threw back her head. Her skin glowed like honey amber through which a sun passes. In the coal-colored hair, fiery red flares fluttered.
"Half-breeds," Nathan grinned. "What other half-breeds, if she �� all of them — aren't human at all."
Сколько их в мире? Сколько из ста сорока тысяч чернокожих жителей на самом деле люди? И не как ведьма, Лонгсдейл, этот чертов п��роман ... Валентина. Бреннон отвел взгляд от Джен в облаке горячего огненного сияния. Он запретил все мысли о Валентине к себе; хотя в прошлом месяце она дала поня��ь, что хочет видеть в нем друга своей семьи, Натан был полон решимости никогда не переходить эту черту.
«Но женат. Человек, - тяжело подумал он. "Прямо как я!"
Он покачал головой. Молодой красивый (он видел портрет) юрист. И не комиссар полиции, который был из деревни, и даже на пороге, давайте будем честными, скоро старость. Даже если это не дряхлый (его отец все еще иногда уходил в кузницу, а ему было семьдесят шесть!), Но ... но ...
Жара начала стихать. Джен перестала качаться; хотя она все еще выглядела спящей, ее волосы снова стали черными, а кожа больше не казалась прозрачной. Наконец из-под ее ресниц вспыхнул теплый оранжевый свет.
«Найдено», - шуршала ведьма. «Он возле крошечного костра, но огонь видит его».
"Крошечный?" уточнил комиссар, сокрушая его изумление. "Свеча? Splinter? Он пряче��ся в подвале? Зачем ему огонь во второй половине дня?
«Я не знаю», девушка моргнула несколько раз, пока ее глаза снова не почернели. "Пош��и. Мы поймаем его до того, как он сбежит.