6

“Getting anywhere with those?” Nairo asked Ridley after almost an hour of silence.

“Maybe,” Ridley grunted.

They were sitting in the coroner’s waiting area. Drake had promised them they could see the body after hours, yet despite the sun already setting, the coroner’s office was still buzzing with activity. Since they had arrived, three more bodies had been wheeled in with dark sheets over them. It was a never ending parade of corpses. Everyone looked exhausted and short tempered. Uncharacteristically, Ridley had waited patiently. Usually by this point he would have had at least two arguments with the receptionists, stormed off, found something to eat, and chain smoked his way through a whole pack of smokes. That part had happened actually, but otherwise he sat pouring silently over the sheets of paper they had found.

“All the dates correspond,” Ridley said to her. “They’re all real, apart from the future date at the bottom.”

“So we can assume Quinn was logging something?” Nairo said, glad to finally have some conversation.

“Quinn always kept a paper trail for every client he did work for. He said it was the best way to ensure you didn’t get stiffed on the payments.”

“Why couldn’t you have learnt that from him?” Nairo said, attempting a playful smile, and was met with a stone wall.

“Don’t like paperwork,” Ridley muttered. “Quinn always said a strong paper trail always doubles as solid blackmail material and an alibi for the coppers.”

“Smart man, Mr. Quinn.”

“Yep. He was careful. Cautious. He always set the meeting place. He always went early. He did his research on every client. That’s how he stayed alive and out of jail for so long. PI's mix with unsavoury types every day and Quinn didn’t have your high moral standards when it comes to clientele.”

“Is this about that pervert that wanted us to follow his ex-wife?”

“That would have been a good paying job,” Ridley said. “But Quinn liked to work with the underbelly of society. He said they paid the best, and most of the time what they wanted was fairly straightforward. Blackmail material, incriminating evidence to disappear, information on rivals, that sort of stuff.”

“I can’t imagine why anybody would want to kill him,” Nairo said flippantly. When she saw the hurt in Ridley’s eyes, she quickly apologised. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

“All your jokes are bad,” Ridley said, giving her the ghost of a smile.

Nairo gave him a wry smile in return.

“So what about HH?” she asked.

“Could mean anything. Like I said, Quinn was a touch paranoid, it could be someone’s name, a place, an event, it could be anything.” Ridley said, frustration creeping into his voice. “I don’t understand why he would be so cryptic. If I was meant to find this, then he should have at least given me a clue, somewhere to look, anything!”

“Maybe you weren’t meant to find it,” Nairo said. “If he wasn’t murdered then he wouldn’t leave any clues for you to find, right?”

Ridley didn’t say anything, his mouth was a hard slash, and his brows furrowed as he stared at the grimy floor tiles.

“Ms Nairo?” the receptionist said. “The junior coroner will see you now.”

“Finally,” Ridley growled. He folded up the papers and tucked them away in his coat before standing up and stalking across the floor.

They made their way down some steps to the basement labratory of the morgue. The last time Nairo had been in here, they had snuck in through the backdoor to examine the mangled corpse of Benny ‘Two Coats’ Tuco, who had his head near ripped off by a magical Diamond.

“Hello Sally,” Drake said as they walked in.

Drake was tall and thin to the point of physically lilting. He always had a little stoop in his back and had a habit of wringing his hands like everything was just too much for him to bear. He was dressed in a blood spattered apron and was wearing rubber gloves over his long, spindly fingers. His gangly height, pale skin, and macabre profession had led Ridley to assume he was a vampyr.

“Hello Drake, thank you so much for doing this,” Nairo said, giving him a warm smile that coloured Drake’s pale cheeks.

“Oh anything for a friend,” he murmured. “Hello Ridley.”

“Dracula,” Ridley said, giving him half a nod.

“Oh, haha,” Drake gave a nervous little titter. “I get it… because you think I’m a vampyr.”

"Yeah, you’re definitely not a vampyr,” Ridley said, giving him a little wink.

“Hush,” Nairo snapped at Ridley. "Drake, did you have a chance to examine the body?”

“Ahh yes I did, Mr. Quinn, right?”

“Yes.”

“I am just waiting for the final paperwork to be signed off. It should be here in a few minutes. Would you like something to drink?” Drake asked.

Ridley looked around, and the corpse strewn room.

“No thanks,” he said.

Drake nodded and stood awkwardly for a moment.

"It’s so nice to have a name with the body for a change. I’ve inspected dozens of John’s and Jane’s in recent weeks.”

“All of them overdoses?" Nairo asked, looking around the room.

Every bit of space was taken up by bodies covered in white sheets. The room smelt uncomfortably like a butcher’s shop. Nairo’s stomach gurgled, and she tasted bile in the back of her throat, but she forced the feeling down and tried to keep her composure.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yes,” Drake sighed. “It’s worse than people know. This tainted Burn is ripping through the drug addicts like a plague.”

“So it's confirmed its a tainted batch?” Nairo asked. “The papers are still calling them overdoses.”

“Well, strictly speaking, they are. But this strain of Burn seems to be almost four times as strong, and this is why so many are dying. They are using the usual amount, and it is too powerful. We haven’t been able to inspect any of it down here, but I have a friend in the police lab, and they say it has been mixed with some other substance they can’t identify, and that is what is killing the addicts. Especially those with lower tolerances. Many more are getting sick and dying from vomiting and diarrhoea. The lucky ones are those who go to sleep and never wake up again.”

“How awful,” Nairo said, the sick feeling churning in her stomach again. “Is it… deliberate? Did whoever brought it into the city know?”

“This I can’t say,” Drake said with a shrug of his bony shoulders.

“Don’t forget, drug dealers are pretty stupid,” Ridley said. “I wouldn’t put it past them to have cut it with something and not realise they would be killing of their users.”

“Stupidity or deliberate malice, I don’t know which would be worse,” Nairo said.

“Well ain’t too many people gonna cry over a bunch of dead junkies,” Ridley said. “If it wasn’t for all these rich kids and famous people popping their clogs, nobody would even care.”

At the mention of famous people, Drake made a little noise, like a squeak, and then covered his mouth with his hands.

“What?” Ridley said. “Is it feeding time?”

“What? No. I shouldn’t… it wouldn’t be professional,” Drake said.

“Then you definitely should,” Ridley replied, his natural instinct for juicy gossip pricked his attention.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” Drake said.

“Never do,” Ridley replied while Nairo mouthed the words along with him and rolled her eyes.

“I just carried out the examination on Lana LaRue,” he said the words with an excited titter.

“That dead starlet?” Ridley said.

Drake’s eyes grew wide, and for the first time since meeting him, Nairo saw a flash of anger in his eyes.

“Mr. Ridley, she was much more than that! Lana LaRue was a generational talent. Her acting…” Drake had a dreamy look in his eyes. “When she wept on stage, things stirred in my soul. She could make a whole audience laugh or cry with just a flicker of her eyelashes! Lana was being prepared to take over stage business in this city, that is, until she met such a cruel end.” Drake looked sadly down at the floor, his eyes moist.

“I didn’t know you were such a fan of the theatre,” Nairo said to fill the awkward silence.

“Oh yes,” Drake said, nodding his head. “I dreamt of being on stage since I was a little boy, but alas, my big, clumsy feet and stage fright put an end to my dreams.”

“How did she die?” Ridley asked.

“Overdose,” Drake said. “She overdosed the same as the others, but, judging from the damage to her body, she took a dose far bigger than any other I’ve seen so far. Her beautiful organs were... ravaged.”

“One actress OD's, and now suddenly the whole city is up in arms about the drug epidemic,” Ridley said, rolling his eyes derisively.

“We lost a bright star, Mr. Ridley, and now our world shines less bright because of it. Although the gossip was she was planning to retire young and disappear from the life of fame. Lana was a sensitive soul. She was too kind and pure for the cutthroat world of showbiz. I heard her only dream was to get married and have a family, living in obscurity out in the Forest.” Drake’s voice dripped with admiration as he held his hand to his heart. “It is always the best of us that go young.”

“I imagine being Burner might have had something to do with it too,” Ridley said, and then was elbowed in the ribs by Nairo.

“Don’t be callous,” she said to him.

“What? Why would someone who has the world at their feet, gold, fame, and a legion of admirers be doing Burn? It’s so stupid.” Ridley said.

“Mr. Ridley,” Drake said with as much steel in his quavering voice as he could manage. “The stage is a cruel place. The pressure on someone so young… you couldn’t even fathom what she was going through. I’m not surprised she needed something to take the edge off.”

Luckily, there was a knock at the door before Ridley could snipe back. A young woman in a white frock came in and handed Drake a manilla file.

“Thank you, Ms. Dearly.” Drake opened the file and took a deep threat, trying to compose himself.

“Your Mr. Quinn died of an overdose,” he said bluntly.

“How do you know?” Ridley said.

“He has all the same signs of a Burn overdose: bloodshot eyes, yellowing of the skin, bleeding in the oesophagus, ruptured blood vessels, and degradation of the heart.”

“Could anything else cause that?” Ridley asked.

Drake blinked and looked at him.

“Nothing that I know of,” Drake said. “It is the exact same presentation as the other OD’s.”

Ridley clenched his jaw.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am! This is my job, Mr. Ridley. I am very good at it, and I have looked at nearly fifty corpses that all present in the same way.”

“I want to see him,” Ridley said heatedly.

“I don’t think that would be…”

“Where is he?”

“Ridley,” Nairo said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Where is he?” Ridley growled again.

Drake looked from Ridley to Nairo.

“He’s… just through there,” Drake said, pointing to a flap of curtain leading into the next chamber of the lab. “But you really shouldn't.”

“I’ll be quick.” Ridley brushed past Nairo and stormed through the curtain.

“I’m sorry Drake, he’s going through a lot,” Nairo said, patting Drake on the arm.

“It’s okay Sally, these are hard times.”

Nairo nodded and then followed Ridley through. He was standing with his back to her, staring down at the corpse of Quinn. His hand was on the white sheet covering the corpse, but he hadn’t pulled it back.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Nairo said to him softly. “You don’t want to see him like this.”

Ridley looked at her, his eyes glistening, but his jaw set stubbornly. He yanked back the sheet, and Nairo looked down at the face of a man in his fifties who had lived life hard. He was pudgy, not fat, just soft around the edges. He had a scruffy grey beard, and his hair had long ago thinned on top. His face was frozen in a grimace of pain, his bloodshot eyes wide and unseeing. Other than the incision wounds from the autopsy, his body was untouched.

She heard Ridley’s breath catch in his throat. She saw the slight tremble in his hand, but then it was gone.

“What do you see?” he asked her, his voice flat.

“He looks… he looks like Sarita did this morning,” Nairo replied.

“Does he?"

“Yes. Exactly the same.”

Ridley breathed heavily and began walking around the corpse of his mentor. She noticed he refused to look at Quinn’s face. Instead, he studied his body.

“What are you looking for?” Nairo asked him.

“The usual,” he grunted. “Defensive wounds. Some clue as to what he was doing or what happened to him before he…”

Ridley stopped. He stared at Quinn’s forearm. There were a series of thin slices on the inside of his arm. Nairo had seen marks like that before: on Benny’s arm. The Goblin had been a burn addict, and Ridley had explained to her that Burners would slice themselves and pack the wound with Burn. It was the quickest and most intense way to get high. Nairo swallowed and watched Ridley. He simply turned the arm back over and straightened up.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve seen enough.”

Ridley turned and stormed out of the room.

“Ridley, wait!” Nairo was about to go after him, but she stopped and looked down at the naked body of Quinn. “You couldn’t have taught him how to deal with his emotions in a healthy way?” She asked the corpse before gently laying the cloth back over him. She stood in respectful silence and then after a second of hesitation she reached out and touched his cold hand. “I’ll look after him for you. You just rest easy now, Mr. Quinn.”

She bowed her head and then followed after Ridley.