50

Despite her not giving him an inch during their conversation, Mick left the townhouse cupping his hands around a flickering candleflame of optimism. Getting a warrant to arrest Lena Coarty and search the townhouse was feasible if he explained everything he had uncovered so far. The only problem was that it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Lena would skip out of the city before he got permission to start the search.

If that happened, what did he have? A bag with no owner, a house belonging to a businessman. That was all. Lena’s name wasn’t on a tenancy agreement or anything like that, and if there was any forgery equipment inside, then she’d probably used gloves while handling it. Connecting her to any of this would be like trying to lasso a wild horse while blindfolded.

His best bet was cracking Lena under a more concentrated interrogation. Once he got her singing, all the other circumstantial stuff would be like a backing chorus. But how did you crack a stone like Lena Coarty? He supposed you just needed the right hammer. Somewhere in that townhouse was the hammer.

Yup, that was the key to it. He needed to get a warrant to search the house, and he needed to make sure Lena didn’t skip town in the meantime. But how would he do both?

There were no benches here on Lexingdale Drive, since the occupants didn’t want to give people a reason to linger. Leaning against an acorn tree, he kept an eye out for guard patrols. The Full Striding guardship had a promise; every single street, avenue, or alleyway in the city would play echo to a guard’s footsteps at least once per day or night. This promise wasn’t always kept, of course, but then, guarantees dreamed up in a boardroom rarely were. He only had to hope that today was a day when the guardship stayed true to their vows, and that this street hadn’t been patroled already.

As long a day as it had been already, Stakeout Stamina kept Mick as alert as a meerkat as the hours went by. At five minutes to midnight, footsteps drew his attention. It wasn’t Lena Coarty sneaking out of the house; instead, it was a leather armored guard striding down the street, toward him.

He moved away from the tree. “’Scuse me, fella,” he said.

The guard jumped a little. He evidently hadn’t expected anyone to be lurking on this kind of street at this time of night. He immediately adopted a straighter, more authoritative posture.

“Can I ask what you’re doing here, sir?”

Mick showed him his guard badge. “I need you to do me a favor. Head back to your station, tell them what I’m about to tell you, and come back with a search warrant.”

The guard peered at the badge. “You’re the same rank as me.”

“I’m a sleuth in training.”

“Until then, you’re technically a guard. I don’t see why I’d take orders from you. I’ve still got half my patrol to do. I can’t just go running off to do your errands.”

“Can’t you help a guy out? See that house there? Well, there’s a lady inside, and she…”

Mick explained everything to the guard, whose name was Henny Ramsbottom. He’d worked as a Striding guard for thirty-six years, he said. He ought to have been a desk sergeant by now, but he was happy patroling the streets. The minute you got chained to a desk was when you dipped your quill in death’s ink and started writing your own obituary. Trust him on that.

“Right…” Mick said. “Anyhow, you can see my dilemma. I need to search that house. But if I go, Ms. Coarty might slip out, and then there’ll be no chance of catching her.”

“Seems like you’ve run into her three times in the last year alone. If I was a betting man, I’d say it’s more likely you’ll see her again than not.”

“Even so, I just need to wrap all this up and put my friend’s mind at rest. If I can get a nice cell for Lena Coarty in the process, it’d be like getting two sweet rolls for the price of one.”

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“All well and good, so why don’t you run along to the station, and I’ll wait here?” said Henny.

“What’s the difference?”

“My feet are aching like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Fine. Just don’t take your eyes off that house,” said Mick, then added, “Please.”

Not that Mick was keeping a list, but if he was, he’d have marked Henny Ramsbottom down as a trustworthy member of the Full Striding guard force. When he arrived back from the station forty-five minutes later, Henny hadn’t moved an inch from his position on the street.

“One warrant signed and ready,” said Mick, displaying the sheet of paper. “Let’s go see what’s inside Nine Lexingdale Drive.”

“Allow me,” said Henny, when they reached the front door. He gave the guard’s knock. It was a fine piece of door knocking – firm without being overly loud, each rap-rap-rap echoing with experience.

“Very nicely done,” said Mick.

Henny brushed his knuckles on his guard coat. “Thank you kindly.”

Inside, Henny kept an eye on Lena, entertaining her by telling her some of his many patrol stories. Meanwhile, Mick searched the house and found what he’d half expected. In one of the spare bedrooms, underneath a bed, he discovered a bunch of forgery equipment, a stack of stolen letters from the Food Safety Board with the sigils removed, and a leather bag bulging with gold coins. He was still some way from connecting Lena to it, but the find was enough to justify taking her to Elmshore East station for questioning.

All the main interview rooms were full thanks to a plot that had been foiled earlier in the evening involving four men, two women, three cows, and a stick of dynamite. As such, Mick had to interview Lena in a supply room on the east wing of the station. It smelled strongly of chalk, so much so that it brought to mind the Knapper’s Street billiards club. There were no inspectors, sleuths, or detectives available to accompany him, so he had to make do with a duty guard called Jimmy Ripple, who rarely spoke more than one word, and even that often came out as more of a grunt. This, Mick soon learned, was how he’d earned the nickname Soliloquy Jimmy. He soon found himself wishing Lill Gill or Henny Ramsbottom were there.

“Right then, Ms. Coarty. Just have a few questions to ask, and then we’ll see what’s what,” began Mick.

“Ask away,” she said. Sitting in the chair opposite, slouched back and with her legs crossed, Lena looked like she could have been getting ready for a face peel and foot rub at a beach retreat.

For this interview, Mick decided to begin with a more direct approach. He asked Lena about the forgery equipment. About the fact that he’d found her billiards club token in a bag that also contained black gloves and some tampered Food Safety Board sigils.

“Nothing illegal about a pair of gloves,” she said.

“And the sigils?”

“I collect them.”

“Ah. So the bag was yours, then?” said Mick.

This threw her, but only momentarily. “Nothing illegal about owning a bag.”

He carried on, directing his questions this way and that. The only thing was, Lena had an answer for everything. It was clear to him that at some point, she’d sat down and imagined all the questions she might get asked about her scheme if she was caught, and she’d reasoned out answers that were plausible. And that was all they had to be – plausible. The onus was on Mick to prove anything.

If his questions were gold coins, then his coin pouch was emptying by the minute. Finally, Mick put his hand inside and found it empty. Worse, Lena seemed to realize it, too, and her demeanor had grown smugger and smugger as the interview wore on. Soliloquy Jimmy was no help, either; he might as well have been a statue wearing guard leathers.

As spent as Mick was, he did have one more thing to ask.

“Let’s go back to the townhouse. Your brother-in-law’s place,” he said.

“No problem. I’m ready to go.”

“No, we aren’t going there physically, Lena. I mean let’s talk about it. About something I noticed about the place when I was searching it. In the hall.”

“Oh, the vases. Liam’s idea of style. You can’t account for taste.”

Mick shook his head. “Not those. There was some mail left out near the front door.”

“…there was?”

“In white envelopes. Same color as the little table they were resting on. Easy to miss, I s’pose. Only, I had a little look at them, and something stuck out to me. Namely, that they weren’t addressed to an ‘L Turner’. So while I was getting a search warrant, I had a little look at the Striding property records. Turns out the townhouse is owned by a lady named Phillipa Sue. She works for a company that sells agricultural equipment. Often on the road, she is. Touring farms, selling them new tinkered plows and the like. She’s gone for months at a time. A person could break in, stay there for a while, and nobody would say a thing. Not even the neighbors. Not if you told them you were minding the place for her.”

“Letters in the hall?”

“There is no brother-in-law, is there, Lena?”

“No comment.”

Mick grinned. “That tells me all I need to know. Isn’t that right, Guard Ripple?”

“Hmph.”

“See? Even Soliloquy Jimmy thinks you’re backed into a corner like a… rat that just got…uh…backed into a corner.. How about you make this easy on yourself, Lena?”