Quester amongst the flowers 6 weekend bonus

 

Chapter 6

 

Kiliana was purchasing sports kit for school; they were required to wear stretch tops and pants to do various field sports, and a sensible swimming costume for a world-class pool with diving pit and boards. Kiliana had learned to swim and dive like a fish under Quester’s tuition, and was looking forward to the feel of water again.  It seemed a shame to waste a good pool on probably no more than a hundred girls, but Kiliana knew well enough how loudly money could talk. She was confident enough about showing well in track and field events; Quester might look as though a puff of wind would blow him away, tall though he was, but under his robes in a fisherman’s linen trousers and light tunic, he had muscles. In fact, he was decidedly fit, thought Kiliana, who had worked at getting her body into tone to match his. Working out with Winged Hussars helped, too.

Kiliana had just picked a nice, plain swimsuit, which would hold everything in the right place tightly enough not to come off, when she stiffened at the nasal voice of another girl.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you found to criticise in my cossy, Miz Peta, my mother made no complaint.”

“I’m sure the thing you refer to as a swimming costume, and which I call a couple of wisps of lace, would be suitable for lounging on a beach, provided you did not mean to move at all; but it will not do to swim in. That girl there has the right idea,” said the adult, approvingly, and as Kiliana turned, the red-head could see that she was the one indicated.  The woman was of indeterminate age with an olive complexion, brown hair in a bob, dressed well, and neatly in a jump-suit with a short jacket over it. Her charge was somewhat more avant-garde, and Kiliana had to work not to blink.  The girl was a rich dark brown, with bleached, straightened hair, with golden yellow bootals matching the corset-tunic which barely covered the  essentials, and under it, white shortings, a garment Kiliana had thought silly, being shorts which carried on as leggings in lace. These had been cut away in large portions.  A white lace jacklette covered the girl’s shoulders and arms. Kiliana could not make up her mind if the girl was stunning, vulgar, or stunningly vulgar.  She was in a cream sleeveless jumpsuit herself, under a light brocade jacket with shades of orange flowers with sage green or brown centres and sage green leaves on a cream ground. It only had knee-length skirts, but it swished nicely, which was Kiliana’s definition of good fashion. The first of the clothes had arrived, for her to wear out.

“That’s not a swimming costume, it’s like dullsville for some dweeb who actually wants to swim,” yawned the other girl.

“What a nasty impolite vulgar ragamuffin you are,” said Kiliana. “I didn’t know they let your sort in here.”

The other girl screeched and went for her.

Kiliana put her down.

“Miz Stayvuhsunta!” Miz Peta jerked the dark girl up.  “How you can let down the Academy by insulting this young lady!”

“She’s no young lady!” started Miz Stayvuhsunta.

Kiliana sneered.

“I do hope you aren’t at the Nantsia Daviona Regina Academy,” she said. “If you’re an example of what’s turned out there, I’ll tell my daddy I don’t want to go.”

“Excuse me, miss...?” said Miz Peta, in a hurry.  “Miz Stayvuhsuntais feeling a little out of sorts today; I apologise for her.” She glared at the girl.

“I’m Kerria Leonida Antilla,” said Kiliana.

“I am Miz Peta, I teach sports, and I’ll be delighted to have someone serious about swimming. Miz Stayvuhsuntawas about to apologise to you.”

“She isn’t, but plainly her manners aren’t your fault,” said Kiliana. “I hope she’s not typical. I understood girls would be sophisticated in the centre of the Empire, not gauche.”

“Miz Stayvuhsuntais finding herself,” said Miz Peta. “Hurry up and pick something similar to Miss Antilla, Ambria, and we’ll get back to school. And because you’re behaving so truculently, don’t expect me to take you for coffee before we return.”

She sounded grim, and Kiliana suspected the girl was going to get a good talking-to.

“I wouldn’t want to be seen out with anyone as dowdy as a teacher anyway,” said Ambria Stayvuhsunta, of unknown middle name.

“Leo,” thought Kiliana, if they’re all like the girl I just met, I won’t stick the course without flattening some of them.”  She pushed the picture of her encounter to Quester.

“People like Hunter; it’s where they get their attitudes, I fear,” he replied. “Do your best; it seems she is particularly spoilt. The Stayvusanti are very wealthy, and have had money and position from time immemorial. You don’t have to interact with the girls, it’s being a girl with a flower name that’s important.”

“Dear Leo, you are an innocent,” said Kiliana, with mild exasperation. “If I don’t interact with the other girls, I’ll show up as different. But I won’t take her nonsense.”

“No, you should not,” said Quester.

 

 

“I’ve got a file on the killing of plebian girls with flower names,” said Cayban. “But the method is different. Where the patrician girls are tied up and raped and then strangled, there are a series of girls who have merely been stabbed by some two or three-bladed knife.”

“You mean, like a hand fork, for gardening?” said Quester. Cayban stared.

“Void take it! That could be it,” he said. “They were not violated, either.”

Quester made a sound of distaste.

“Treated as weeds to be removed from a precious garden of flowers to be tied up and arranged when plucked,” he said. “This thrice void-damned soul must be caught.”

“I don’t say you have it wrong,” said Cayban. “But difficult to understand. And if he knew my daughter was a flower...”  He had hastily introduced his wife and shy daughter on arrival, who had been hurried off to the apartment. His prisoner sat in a corner, nursing a coffee with some reverence, as fed by Burdock.

“Sah,” said Burdock, “Dis crackpot. What for is he killin’ ordinary girls if it’s the posh pieces he wants to screw?”

“As I see it,” said Quester, patiently, “He had an infatuation for a particular girl, and got carried away, raping her; and killed her to silence her. And then he tried to kill some other girls in the same way, choosing them to have flower names, as that was important to him, but somehow that awakened the madness.  I am looking at the girls just killed; one of them, a Rose, like the first Rosa, worked in the garden store where the twine was bought. I suspect he saw her name-tag and was enraged that this Rose lived when his was dead. I think he lured her to meet him, and then just killed her with an implement one uses to dig out recalcitrant weeds. The photos are consistent with a hand fork; it has three tines, and is a little more than a palm’s width... or in your case, Burdock, a little less.  Most of the photos here show two punctures in the throat, so we’ve had speculation that someone thinks himself a vampyr, a creature from folk tales. But they are too broad and too far apart to be teeth... though I suppose it could fit your fangs, Burdock.”

Burdock came over.

“Nah,” he said. “Yer couldn’ get teef into the neck at that angle, nowise.”

“No, you couldn’t,” said Quester. “But that needed to be checked out and discounted, in case anyone suggested it. Especially to spite me and my Ogroid aide; as I believe you’ve been thwarted with the Forrest case, uh, Peet?” he asked Cayban, having heard the man’s wife calling him by name and to stop chivying them like his suspects.

Cayban flushed.

“Yes, couldn’t get Forrest executed fast enough couldn’t Leading Lictor Oran.”

“Forrest; come here,” said Quester.

The gaunt-looking man shuffled over.

“Look into my eyes and tell me you did not kill Lindon Bain,” said Quester.

“I did not kill my friend,” said Danel Forrest. “They said it was because he was my wife’s lover as well as wanting the money; he was welcome to her.”

“And all it needed to clear the man was a Psion,” said Quester. “This man is about as innocent of anything, except fear to divulge his mutancy to the woman he thought he loved, as it possible to be. We can’t let you go free, yet, Forrest, however, because there are those who seem to have an interest in the case. However, if you want to write to your daughter, Lictor Cayban will have it delivered; and you will be on parole in a safe place. There are books to download... uh... that does not fill you with joy.”

“I’m not much hand at reading, my lord,” said Forrest. “Really? You knows I didn’t do it?”

“I could see your memories of the day which you cradle like a jewel in the love you have for your daughter.  Peet, I want his ex investigated from top to bottom. If she was the lover of Lindon Bain, she may have a connection to his killer. And may have used him to get at Forrest. I went over the files for the man, Chet Bradway, who supposedly dealt with the automated systems in Bain’s appartment. No such person is logged as an electronics engineer.  However, a Brad Chetway has served time for using his skills to override electronic safeguards to undertake robbery. I am inclined to think that they are one and the same, and that he was a part of the theft known as the nano-second payroll heist which led to the use of couriers in the first place.  Those responsible were never caught; they set up a bank called the Acme Banking Company and transferred the bankrolls there and then dispersed them as payouts to a huge number of other banks in various names, all of whom had standing orders set up with another shell company, and thence... well, thence the trail was lost.  I wasn’t on the job, which is just as well, since seven years ago I was a boy of nineteen with the patience of a flea on a hotplate, and the sanctimonious attitude that money was beneath the lofty reach of a guardian of souls.” He smiled. “I was, at least, more open-minded than Hunter, who has much to learn, and need of a more patient instructor than I.”

“I hate to think that a Leading Lictor is associated with theft,” said Cayban.

“I’m not overjoyed myself,” said Quester. “But we also need to consider that he might have been under some kind of coercion.  If anyone told you details of your daughter’s day, for example....”

“As a man who can hack electronic surveillance can do,” said Cayban.  “What about the apartment?”

“No surveillance and all the security is from our own suite, and already covers the floor below too,” said Quester. “I don’t like having servants there, but I’ve set up my own bugs and watching eyes. And Villnew is running the security system about who comes in and out; and my bugs depend on me being a Psion.”

Cayban nodded.

“I must say, I am relieved... thank you.”

“I take care of those who work with me,” said Quester, simply. “Though to be honest, I’d still care for an innocent who falls inside the criterion of this predator’s prey, even if you and I were still at crossed purposes.”

“What happened to Hunter?” Cayban was curious.

“He wasn’t ready to work with me, and tried to push my assistants around,” said Quester.

“I’m not about to assume that a girl a Justiciar considers capable of a dangerous undercover job is in any way a kid like my Daisy,” said Cayban.

“And you haven’t insulted Burdock,” said Quester.

“I make it a rule to be very nice to anyone who can make good coffee,” said Cayban.

Quester laughed.

“It’s a good rule,” he said. “I’m going to pull down the records of any banks registered in the last two years. They have to be registered, even as private banks, in order to be able to trade. And I’m going to look over the named officers of the Acme Banking Company.  An automated search was done, of course, but such things only check out name matches, it doesn’t make intuitive leaps about people with the same initials or, like Chet Bradway alias Brad Chetway, such name mash-ups.”

 

 

Quester requested a list of all banks set up in the last two years, and looked through them with Cayban.

“I think we can discount this one,” he said, pointing to a bank called ‘Arcadian Finance.’ “The CEO is Lucius Rykos Martellus,” he added.

Cayban frowned.

“Discounting him because he’s a patrician?”

“No, nor even that he’s a friend of mine, but because he’s so rich, he wouldn’t bother with, to him, a penny-ante payroll heist. Lucius probably carries as much as the payroll on his person as clothes, jewellery, and petty cash. He’s just married the first amongst equals of the Patrician council in Araklion, and owning a bank makes dealing back and forth easier. He can fleece the government of more in five minutes using his legal team than any honest crook could manage in ten years’ planning, but I like him anyway. As far as I know he pays his taxes mostly with honesty, and his activity stimulates other trade.  This is below him.”

Cayban nodded.

“I’m glad it’s not because he’s a friend of yours.”

“I usually investigate friends hardest and first.” Quester looked at his list of officers of the Acme Banking Company.  “Look, we have Bradley Chetton as CEO, and officers Atherton Rudge, Donal Duck – really? That’s the name of a character from an ancient propaganda vehicle to teach children the consequences of bad actions. Michal Quinn, and Spence Danyels.”

“There’s a new bank here, set up a week before this heist; ‘Admirable Banking Collective.’ Would using the same initials be significant?”

“Let’s see who their officers are,” said Quester. “Chester Bradley, Arthur Rudgeton, Damon Dastardly, Marcus Quinon Quintius, and Danel Spencer.”

“Well! That looks pretty damning,” said Cayban. “I can’t believe I neglected all this. My Lord!  Look! There’s a financial services company opened this week, the ‘Clarified Banking Advisory.’    ABC, but backwards....”

“Worth checking out,” said Quester. He frowned. “What’s Leading Lictor Oran’s first name?”

“Fredrik,” said Cayban. “Oh. CEO, Buster Chetley, officers, Ferdran Orlik, Rudi Athers,  Davy Day, Quinn Mikals, and Seth Dornkvast. His name is even an anagram.” 

“We have them,” said Quester. “And a link to Mr. Senior Lictor Fredrik Oran.” He pulled a face. “At least a tenuous connection based on past actions.  I can pull the activities of the ‘Admirable Banking Collective, because they are required to show their accounting, and I outrank any other fiscal authority. That, I fear, will take time to come through, but I wager we will find the amount matching the payroll paid in to the names of those on the chits, perhaps with extra spurious middle initials, and then they will have paid out the whole amount for services rendered to another company holding an account at another bank which will be found to have liquidated all its assets and disappeared.  I imagine a large amount will also have gone into the bank account of Fredrik Oran.  So, either this was done as a bribe; or to look like a bribe.”

“It certainly looks like a bribe to me,” said Cayban.

“And it looks like a bribe to anyone who sees an unexplained large amount in his account,” said Quester. “And maybe that’s what he was told to force him to act as he did.  I haven’t had any visit from him, foaming at the mouth over pulling Mr. Forrest out of peril of execution.  And he must surely have had a report on his desk about it.  Which inclines me to think that he has been thanking the Blessed Abe that some er, ‘Void-cursed heresy poker...’ I know what the Lictorium calls us... has taken an interest in some other aspect of the poor fellow’s life.”

“You can prove if he’s innocent with your Psion thing, can’t you?” said Cayban. “But if he was, why would he be an officer of this new bank?”

“To keep him on the hook,” said Quester, calmly.  “I believe I will send for him; we may get more from him than he thinks he knows. And I like to keep potential enemies close to me when there is trouble.”