Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Loki napped while I spent the morning impatiently awaiting Ed and Crane’s reports. In the meantime, I filed one of my own regarding the vampyr attack. I contacted Amber DeLea and requested that she attend the office to scry an image of the vampyr from my head, so I could look into the matter.
At lunch, I popped into the break room and was truly impressed with the dent everyone had made in the pastries. I picked through the remains and found myself a chocolate twist. Yum. With my lunchtime treat secured, I headed back to my office.
I’d barely sat down at my desk when my door opened without so much as a knock.
DSU Thackeray filled the doorway, his expression set to carefully neutral.
His shock of white hair was trimmed into a sensible crew cut, and his uniform was pressed neat, not a button missing, not an inch of shoe unpolished.
His piercing blue eyes took in the small confines of my office in one sharp sweep before pinning me.
‘Wise,’ he said gruffly.
Without hesitation, Loki turned himself invisible. He wasn’t a fan of authority figures. I didn’t blame him. From the look on Thackeray’s face, this wasn’t going to be a pleasant chat.
I didn’t have a visit or an inspection – or whatever the fuck this was – in my diary. I set my chocolate pastry down and surged to my feet. ‘Sir.’
He waved me down. ‘Sit.’ Then he stepped inside, shut the door behind him, strode forward and pointedly tapped two fingers against the side of my desk.
The privacy runes flared a bright gold, then settled.
Thinking of whispered conversations with Elvira about the Domini, I said drily, ‘It would have been helpful to know those runes were there.’
‘They’re need-to-know. And you didn’t need to know.’
‘Now I do, do I?’
‘Now we need privacy.’
My stomach twisted. Thackeray didn’t waste runes unless the conversation was about to get unpleasant, political, or both.
‘You’ve been busy,’ he said. ‘Talk to me about the vampyr attack.’
I kept my face neutral. ‘It was a quiet Sunday night. Presumably, the criminals wanted to get a jump on the week.’
His gaze flicked to my cheek. The bruising had faded completely thanks to Amber’s paste, but evidently he’d seen the photos I’d attached to my report. ‘Who saw to you? Your brother?’
‘I had some healing paste on hand,’ I said smoothly. ‘It wasn’t a big deal.’
Thackeray made a low sound in his throat. ‘You were deliberately attacked. Don’t insult my intelligence.’
I didn’t flinch. ‘I wouldn’t dare. It’s your best feature.’ The quip had slipped out of my mouth before I could call it back.
One corner of his mouth twitched – not a smile, but not a reprimand either.
Still, he stayed standing. A position of power over me, and I wasn’t oblivious to the undertones.
‘Run it down for me,’ he ordered.
I exhaled quietly, then gave him the bones of it.
‘After we concluded the scene at the ME’s residence, Detective Channing offered to drive me to my mother’s home.
I declined. I was in the mood to walk off some …
frustration. As I walked in the correct direction, I noticed someone tailing me.
A vampyr. He attacked, made some comments about gutting me. ’
Thackeray’s eyes narrowed. ‘And?’
‘I didn’t let him.’ I shrugged. ‘He got in a good hit across my face, but in the scuffle, I terminated him.’ I held his gaze. ‘He’s true-dead, sir. It was wholly self-defence.’
Thackeray’s gaze was sharp. ‘You didn’t call it.’
‘I intended to,’ I lied smoothly. ‘But given the late hour, I decided it could wait until morning. There were no other parties or witnesses to question or lose. The golden hour had started and ended with his death. There was no case to solve. I knew full well who had killed him: me.’
‘Wise,’ he growled. ‘You’re not a rookie. You know better. You report the crime contemporaneously.’
I kept my voice even. ‘I also know what happens when you call in “unknown vampyr turned to ash” one too many times with no evidence. Rumours spring up and someone somewhere decides I’ve shuffled from the asset column to the liability column.’
His eyes bored into mine. ‘Are you a liability, Wise?’
The question rankled and hurt more than the punch the vampyr had landed.
I bit out my answer between clenched teeth. ‘No, sir.’
‘Good,’ he said flatly. ‘Because all eyes are on you, Wise. All eyes are on Unit 13, and if you fuck up, I’ll have you out of the field so fast you’ll think you’ve been wiped by Witterhall. Unit 13 is my baby, and I won’t have you fuck it up for everyone else.’
Anger surged, hot and bubbling. It took effort not to let it show.
I’d worked hard to get to where I was, to build a sterling reputation for myself, and it was deserved.
Coming down on me like this was absolute BS.
My record was spotless, above reproach, and it felt like this dressing-down had more to it than meets the eye.
As my anger fell away and cool rationale returned, I realised that if Thackeray truly wanted me kicked to the kerb, this conversation wouldn’t be happening here. He wouldn’t be warning me. He would have already taken me off rota and out of Unit 13.
‘Now,’ he continued, ‘about Ash Aspen.’
There it was. The reason he’d come to my office and not summoned me upstairs to his mahogany desk like a headmaster with a detention slip. This was quieter. More discreet.
Political, then, I decided.
I sat back in my chair, careful to keep my posture relaxed. ‘What about him?’
Thackeray still didn’t sit, but he moved a step closer, hands clasped behind his back, eyes hard. ‘You are going to close the file.’
My stomach dropped, but my voice stayed steady. ‘I haven’t solved it yet, sir.’
‘No you have not. And you will not. But you’ll close it all the same.’
‘No,’ I argued instantly. ‘I won’t.’
His eyebrows shot up and he ground out, ‘Excuse me?’
‘Sir, I need to know who killed Aspen. I need to know who Jingo is currently wearing,’ I leaned forward.
‘Aspen was murdered on Kate Potter’s lawn, our ME.
She deserves closure. And there’s a dangerous doppelganger out there, wearing someone else’s face, and you want me to close the file because it’s … what? Inconvenient?’
The air in the room tightened.
Thackeray growled, ‘Watch your tone, Inspector.’
‘Respectfully, sir, that order is bullshit, and I suspect you know that too.’
Thackeray stared at me for a long beat. Then, very slowly, he let out a breath.
‘Respectfully, huh?’ He looked faintly amused, resigned. ‘You’re too bloody stubborn for your own good, Wise,’ he muttered. ‘Just like your father.’
‘Thank you,’ I said sweetly. ‘I try.’
His gaze flicked to the notes and case file on my desk, then back to me. ‘Wise,’ he began, lowering his voice, ‘you’re high enough in rank to know there are rules in place. Not just the ones written down, but the unspoken ones – ones people kill to keep secret.’
Thackeray stepped closer still, his thighs pressing against the edge of my desk.
Despite the privacy runes in place, he kept his voice low enough that it felt like a confession.
‘The unofficial stance within the Connection is that doppelgangers aren’t pursued criminally,’ he said.
‘As such, justice cannot and will not be adequately served here.’
My skin went cold. ‘Explain.’
He hesitated like he disliked saying it out loud.
‘A doppelganger’s very existence requires murder,’ he said.
‘They can’t stay living without it. The same as the griffins.
Like the griffins, they can’t “reform” or better themselves.
They can’t be rehabilitated. You can’t cage them long-term without a tribunal deciding you’re wasting resources.
And if you put one on trial—’ He paused ‘—you give the entire Other realm a front-row seat to the fact we have a creature amongst us that survives by hopping bodies like it’s changing coats.
’ He cleared his throat. ‘Think of it like this: it’s just like the way we don’t pursue the imps for criminal damage.
It would be punishing their very nature.
This decision was made at the inception of the Connection some eighty years ago, and it’s been in place – unofficially – ever since.
It’s not just a policy decision, but a safety one.
Think about it, Stacy. Any Inspector who comes up against a doppelganger and kills them …
that doppelganger can take over their body, and then we have a real fucking problem.
We have a doppelganger in our midst, infiltrating our ranks.
So we’ve agreed to a truce. We won’t arrest them for the murders their existence dictates if they agree to never infiltrate the Connection. ’
I stared at him. ‘So we let the doppelgangers get away with murder, taking whoever’s body they choose? Killing our citizens?’
‘No,’ he snapped, and there was anger there, real anger. ‘We don’t “just let them”. We handle them. Quietly. When we can. When it won’t start a panic. They know the rules too – people they’re not allowed to take, and they’re not supposed to take more than one body a year.’
‘Jingo has taken two this year. Aspen and whoever he’s in now.’
‘I’m well aware. But I’m telling you, this case needs to be officially closed.’
‘So it won’t embarrass the wrong people?’ I said cynically.
‘Yes,’ he bit out. ‘Because the Other doesn’t run on justice, Wise. It runs on power, and you well know that. And power hates looking weak.’
Something hot and fierce rose in my chest. ‘What am I meant to do, sir? Pretend Ash Aspen tripped on his shoelaces, fell, and snapped his own neck?’
Thackeray’s lips pressed into a thin line. ‘You’re meant to do your job in a way that doesn’t get you shut down. I need you heading Unit 13, not getting shuffled off to manage traffic violations for the rest of your life because you don’t know when to toe the line.’
I held his gaze. ‘My job is to stop killers, not toe the line.’