5
Thunder had rolled in by the time they arrived at Quinn’s office. The crackle of lightning was in the air. Thunder boomed over their heads as they approached the rundown little yellow brick basement flat. Clearly Ridley had learnt his real estate tastes from Quinn, as the deceased PI had chosen a veterinary shop’s basement as his flat/office. Ridley had been silent the entire journey. He had stared out of the window and chain smoked the entire ride down South.
Quinn’s office was in one of the adjacent back alleys to the teeming docks. The Goblin controlled docks were the lifeblood of the city and one of the main reasons it had become a centre of commerce and political power within the Forest. Night and day ships came into the docks carrying goods from as far as the Abweigh Deserts and as exotic as the Lands of Nor and Quess. They were also the centre of most black markets and illicit goods that were smuggled into the city, which may have been why a PI thought it was a good place to make his base. The docks still teemed with life. Even the driving rain couldn’t stop the buzz of activity, but it could certainly slow it down. The backroads were less bustling. In fact, Nairo hadn’t seen a single soul out on the cobbles since they had entered the spidery alleys. The only sound was the pounding rain and the ominous rumbles of thunder in the distance.
They approached Quinn's flat from the rear entrance that backed onto a nearly flooded alleyway and walked down a short flight of steps to the back door. Ridley tried the door handle, and it was unlocked.
“Quinn would never have left the place unlocked,” Ridley muttered.
“The police probably didn't have the key to lock up after they left,” Nairo said, and Ridley ignored her.
He pushed the door open and then hesitated before stepping into the gloom. The office, much like Ridley’s former place of business, doubled as Quinn’s home. The place had the trapped, lived in smell of a person who didn’t get many visitors. There were piles of unwashed clothes strewn about and a sink full of unwashed dishes, mainly whisky tumblers. On the countertop, there were half a dozen empty green bottles of cheap spirits and more dotted around the room. It stank of sweat, cheap booze, and smoke. In the centre of the room was the chalk outline of where Quinn's corpse must have been found. Ridley swept past this, seemingly taking no notice of his mentor’s final resting place. Instead, he made straight for the rickety desk in the corner. He began pilfering through stacks of papers before pulling open the drawers. Nairo stood awkwardly to one side, unsure of what they were looking for and perturbed by the loneliness of the place. There were no pictures. No real personal effects. Quinn had clearly lived here, but it hadn’t been a home. She’d seen bedsits that had a more homely vibe than this hovel.
“This isn’t right,” Ridley muttered.
“What?” Nairo said.
“It’s not right... something’s wrong.”
“What’s not right?”
“Things have been moved.”
“How can you tell?” Nairo said, looking around at the general slovenliness of the place.
“Quinn was fastidious,” Ridley said, picking up a small leather bound journal.
“Really?” Nairo said.
“Not about that crap,” Ridley said. “About his cases, his notes, his files, you would have liked him. You could have compared notepads.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“All of these papers, they’re in the wrong order. Some of these should have been filed away. And look!” Ridley held up a datebook. It looked like several pages had been ripped out.
“Maybe he didn’t need those pages anymore?” Nairo said.
“No. Quinn didn’t rip things out of his date book. This is where he kept all the information about meetings, cases, and payments. He didn’t even like crossing things out. Look!"
Ridley thrust the datebook at her. Nairo reluctantly took it and thumbed through it. It was true. Whatever you wanted to say about Quinn’s homekeeping abilities, his note-taking was detailed and precise. There were dates going back almost two years. Case notes, payment details, names, addresses, and everything else he could scrawl into the margins.
“And what was it doing out like that?” Ridley continued, his eyes were flicking around the dim room restlessly searching for more evidence to fit his premise. “Quinn didn’t just keep it out. It was always locked away in that draw. And that draw is always locked.”
“Maybe the police…”
“Quinn hid the key. He hid a lot of this stuff. He was one of the best PI’s in the city, he didn’t just leave stuff like this out in the open where anyone could find it.”
“At least now I know where you got your paranoia from,” Nairo said, examining the torn out pages of the date book.
Ridley was right. There was not a single other page torn out. Quinn seemed to prefer a simple system of ticks and little x’s rather than deleting or removing anything.
"Ridley, this doesn’t prove...”
“Not yet,” Ridley said. “It’s not right. This whole place feels wrong.”
“Maybe because someone died in here. Someone who meant a lot to you.”
“No. It ain’t that. Someone’s been in here. Looking for something.”
“The police have been in here. Could be they moved things about.”
“This ain’t random cop nosiness. Someone was looking for something particular. Does that datebook say anything about the most recent case he was working on?”
Nairo tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and flicked through the date book to the most recent entries.
“No. In fact, it ends about two months ago. That’s where the pages are missing.”
Ridley’s eyes flashed in the darkness.
“Didn't Emily say he was working a case?”
“She assumed. She hadn’t seen him in months and guessed that he must be working a case, and that’s why she hadn’t heard from him. She didn’t know for certain.”
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“See those bottles,” Ridley said, pointing at the counter while peering around the single foldable bed in the corner.
“Yeah?”
“That’s pickled rice wine, Gnommish swill, it’s bloody horrible. Quinn would only drink that stuff when he was on a case. It was like a tradition for him.”
Nairo looked at the bottles, her stomach gurgling at the thought of pickled rice wine.
“Quinn was working a case. Look at the state of this place. He didn’t live like this. He was working something hard... You said two months worth of dates were missing?”
“Yes.”
“So he’s been on the scent for two months and he gets too close? Finds something out he shouldn’t have? So they kill him. Stage it to look like an overdose. Then they pilfer through all of his notes and remove any evidence of themselves. It’s a good cover up. OD’s are in the papers and the gossip rags daily at the minute. They poison him, leave the coppers to make their assumptions, and no one ever investigates.”
“It sounds plausible,” Nairo admitted. “But what could he have been investigating that would make someone not only want to kill him but to plan such a careful murder? Come on, Ridley, you know most murders are committed by someone the victim knows, and they're very rarely ever that clean. It’s usually in the heat of the moment.”
“It’s rare but not impossible,” Ridley said. “Could have been a professional hit. Maybe they hired someone.”
“Or maybe your friend was at the end of his string,” Nairo said, trying to keep her voice gentle. “This place, Ridley... it doesn’t speak of someone who was healthy and happy. It screams that the person who lived here was isolated and depressed and slowly drinking themselves into an early grave. The simplest answer is usually the correct one. Coming up with an elaborate conspiracy involving poisoning and mystery assassins is just you trying to avoid facing the reality of the situation.”
Ridley narrowed his eyes at her and turned away. He dropped to his knees and yanked at the bed.
“Ridley, what are you…”
Ridley yanked harder and pulled the little fold up bed away from the wall. He scurried behind it and began running his fingertips along the skirting board.
“You see, that’s where you’re wrong, Sarge.” Ridley muttered as he followed the skirting board around the room. “You didn’t know Quinn. The man was brilliant. He could sniff the truth out from ten miles away. He could tell you if someone was lying just by listening to the pitch of their voice. I once saw him beat up four men in a pub with a drink in his hand, and he didn’t spill a drop. Quinn had a mind like no one I’ve ever met. He wasn’t some sad drunk. He was a PI, and he was one of the best.”
“All PIs are drunks,” Nairo said.
“Yeah fair. But it doesn’t mean their suicidal or drug addicts, and I’ll prove it!”
Ridley stopped his mad scramble around the room. He stood up and began tracing his finger up an almost invisible line that stopped halfway up the wall. It looked at it curiously. He looked to the left and right, tracing his fingers around the wall like a blind person reading braille.
"Come on, Quinn," Ridley muttered. "What have you hidden for me?"
"Ridley..." Nairo said, but she shushed and continued feeling around the wall.
"What's that?" Ridley muttered, tracing his finger over something on the wall.
He then looked up and seemed to be tracing a seam in the ceiling backwards, over his head. He turned around and looked over Nairo’s shoulder and gave a short bark of triumphant laughter. He brushed Nairo out of the way and began feeling up the brickwork behind her.
“What are you doing?” Nairo asked him.
“You see Quinn was smart, or as you like to call it ‘paranoid’, he hid things and not just behind locked drawers.” Ridley grunted as he found a brick that moved.
Jamming his fingers into the space around it, he wiggled the brick until it slid out.
"You see Sarge?" He said with a cocky grin.
“What? What’s in there?” Nairo asked, standing on her tiptoes to see in.
Ridley turned and flicked on his lighter to look into the hole, and there was...
“Nothing,” Ridley said.
"Oh."
For a moment, Ridley looked despondent, and then anger flashed across his face. He spun and hurled the brick at the wall behind him.
“It can’t be like this!” he shouted. “Quinn didn’t OD! He wasn’t a fucking junkie! There has to be something here! Quinn would have known someone was trying to kill him! He would have left me a clue! He would have!” Ridley slumped against the kitchen counter, his back to Nairo as he slammed his fists on the countertop, making the bottles rattle.
“Ridley,” Nairo said.
“I know there’s something here! I know it! I’m just too fucking stupid or blind to figure it out!”
“Ridley.”
“Save it, Sarge! I don't need your feel good psycho mumbo jumbo right now...”
“Look!” Nairo said, pointing in the direction he had thrown the brick.
Ridley turned around. The brick had broken in half when it hit the wall. It was hollow. Rolled up papers had fallen out of it and began to unfurl.
“I knew it!” Ridley howled.
He ran across the room and scooped up the pieces of paper. He brought them back over the window where the light was better and began to lay them out on the countertop.
“They’re a bunch of dates?” Ridley said, his eyes flying across them.
“They’re all from the last two months,” Nairo said. “Except those two. That’s in the future, isn’t it?”
“Far in the future,” Ridley said. “This one’s for tomorrow, though.”
“Where’s the usual place?” Nairo asked, reading the scrawl next to the two dates.
“The Preston graveyard,” Ridley said.
“A graveyard?"
“Quinn used to like meeting clients there.”
“At a graveyard?”
“Perfect place. Anybody there is too wrapped up in their own shit to pay any attention to two people meeting. It’s quiet. And if anybody’s trying to listen in, it would be pretty obvious.”
“I guess. But what time?”
Ridley shrugged.
“Quinn was never a morning person but could be any time.”
“And you think he was meeting someone there?”
“Has to be. Why else would he be there?”
Nairo nodded and then continued to read through the pages.
“Look at the bottom of that page, it just says ‘HH?’ What does that mean?” Nairo asked.
“I don’t know,” Ridley said. “But this is it! This is the evidence Quinn wanted me to find! He was working a case and someone did kill him!”
“Ridley, none of this proves he was killed. How do you know why he put them there or even when?”
“What, it’s just a coincidence that someone’s ripped out the last two months of pages from his date book, and then we find a secret stash with a bunch of dates that match the missing months? Come on, Sarge! What did you once tell me about coincidences? One coincidence is just a coincidence, two coincidences are a clue.”
“And what did you once tell me about coincidences?” Nairo replied. “Coincidence can either be a detective's best friend or his worst enemy, just depends on who it's working for.”
“Quinn taught me that,” Ridley said, a wolfish grin on his face. “There’s a case here, Sarge. Forget that he was my mentor. Forget that I want there to be a case here and just use your own instincts. Something don’t smell right here.”
Nairo chewed on the inside of her cheek. She had to admit, something seemed off.
“Fine,” Nairo said. “We can work the case, but I still don’t think Quinn was murdered, and before you go off half-cocked, let’s talk to Drake first. He said he can see us this evening after the coroner’s gone home, and then we’ll get some answers.”
“Fine by me,” Ridley said, but Nairo had the feeling he had only half heard her.
He began moving around the room, collecting up every piece of paper he could find. He then walked over to the bedside cabinet and pulled open the drawer. He looked inside and then slowly removed a heavy signet ring with the letter Q embossed on. Ridley held the ring in a shaking hand. He closed his fist around and shut his eyes for a moment. He tucked the ring away in an inside pocket of his coat and turned to the chalk outline for the first time since they had entered the room.
“Don’t worry, Quinn, I’ll drag whoever did this into light, and I’ll finish what you started.” His voice was low and even, full of bloody promise.