As the minutes passed and the store owner was conspicuously absent, the man decided to ring the bell again at the front desk. Finding himself somewhat impatient, he approached the back of the store with a certain timidity, where he thought he heard some persistent knocking noises that seemed to come from the stairs leading to the basement.
As he made his way through the room, he found himself in one of the corners of the room with a workshop filled with oddly shaped artifacts and tools. After observing them carefully; despite his limited knowledge of the subject, he was able to identify those artifacts as indispensable to develop trades related to the sublimation, fusion and distillation of different elements and substances. Suddenly, while he was examining the various gadgets, he heard the footsteps of someone hurrying up the stairs. A young man wearing dark glasses peered through the doorway and watched him for a moment without saying anything.
“Sorry, Kalev.” excused the man, blushing a little at having been caught in his intrusive behavior. “I've been waiting in reception for a few minutes and I thought you might not have heard me,” he added.
“You can take a seat, Vincent, I'll be with you in a moment,” said the young man sharply and pointed with his hand to a corner where a few dark-colored antique armchairs were located. And, without waiting for an answer, he went down the stairs again, stamping heavily on the steps.
Vincent sat down, putting aside his suitcase, and with interlaced fingers rested his hands on his cane. He felt that this brief encounter with the young man had made him even more nervous than before. He began to examine the room and noticed that the place, as well as the whole store in general, was covered with a thick layer of dust. On the wooden upholstered walls hung multiple paintings with gloomy depictions, dominated by the silhouette of a pair of glowing-eyed gods, born from a mass of chaos and primordial darkness.
In addition to these strange paintings, there was something else that caught his attention to a great extent. At either end of the room stood two very ancient sculptures majestically carved from stone. After analyzing them for a moment, he realized that they bore an obvious resemblance to the gods depicted in the paintings. One of the statues depicted a man with hard features, covered with a long cloak that reached the base of the throne, on which he sat with a certain solemn attitude in his posture. His gaze reflected an air of disdain and arrogance, typical of a king conscious of his great power.
The other sculpture, on the other hand, had the figure of a woman with a fine and delicate body. Dressed only with a veil that surrounded part of her torso, exposing her breasts and part of her abdomen. The woman protectively rested her hands on the shoulder of a couple of small curly-haired children, who seemed to be her sons. Each of those statues had glowing stones, similar to amethysts, embedded in their eyes. And as the light from the lamps reflected off the crystals, their eyes gave back faint purplish sparkles.
Vincent remained there absorbed with the image of these sculptures, which seemed to him both beautiful and frightening at the same time. Until the sound of the store owner coming up the stairs brought him out of his reverie.
The young man crossed the threshold of the door leading to the basement and headed for the shop table, oblivious to the presence of Vincent, who was watching him from the other end. In his hands he carried a metallic sphere which he placed on one of the workshop tables, and taking one of the steel tongs that were there, he began to turn a few screws protruding from the outside of the object.
After a moment, the man in the couch began to cough and searched through his clothes restlessly.
“Excuse me, do you have a problem if I light a cigarette here?” Vincent asked aloud, holding a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other.
Kalev turned and watched him for a moment, as if that question had reminded him that he was there.
“You can do it if you want to!” the young man answered in a deep voice and then went on with his work.
Vincent put the cigar in his mouth and flicked the knob of the lighter, which emitted only a faint spark. After trying for more than a minute and failing to get it to light, he put the lighter back in his clothes.
“Excuse me, Kalev, do you have a lighter I could borrow? Mine seems to have gotten wet from the rain and doesn't work.... Sorry for the inconvenience!” he hastened to add.
Kalev set the metal sphere down hard on the table and wiped his greasy hands with a rag that was lying there. He turned and walked over to where Vincent was sitting and took a seat next to him. He rolled up his black shirt to his forearms and reached into the small pocket of his vest, from which he pulled out a lighter and handed it to the man. Vincent thanked him with a gesture, brought his cigarette to the mouth and took the lighter shakily. For this reason, he had to hold it with both hands to keep a steady pulse.
“Your condition has worsened!” said Kalev as he stared at him.
“Since I got my promotion my health has deteriorated greatly," Vincent answered, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “Sometimes I think I never had to aspire to anything higher than the position of sergeant. How I long for those years when my only concern was catching petty thieves and petty criminals,” he added with a sigh of resignation.
“The respected position of district commissioner did not meet your expectations?” asked the young man with a certain sarcastic tone.
Vincent pursed his lips and his face tightened, showing a clear displeasure.
“Now it's not only up to me to keep the crimes committed by mere mortals in check, but I also have to deal with the atrocities carried out by the monsters that belong to your world,” Vincent pointed out loudly, as he took a folder out of his suitcase and threw it on a small table next to Kalev. “If you had told me about the existence of this reality a year ago, I wouldn't have believed it. I would have thought it was an idea born of a disturbed mind, or a fragment of a world taken from a horror novel. Sometimes I think it's a nightmare, just a bad dream? But no, it's all real!” He added and exhaled the smoke upwards, “I have so much pressure that, when I am alone in my office, I look up at the ceiling and imagine a deadly sword hanging over the ceiling, lower and lower and about to fall on me with certainty.”
“Listen, Vincent, your duties are only limited to informing us of those cases that... How shall I put it? Which by their peculiar characteristics are the exclusive competence of the Order,” explained Kalev with a stern tone, “that's all..., you must not take care of anything else. Only those acts with which you can provide us with relevant information and which do not involve exposing yourself. It is crucial that you do not intervene or you will put your life at risk unnecessarily” Kalev kept silent and took the folder, opening it from its ends.
“There you will find all the peculiarities pertaining to the new case.” Vincent pointed out in a sarcastic tone, while taking repeated puffs on his cigarette.
Kalev looked up for a few seconds in Vincent's direction, but said no more. His glasses glittered for a moment from the reflection of the lights illuminating the room. Then he turned his full attention back to the reports. Inside the folder were enclosed several photographs taken of at least eight different women. All of them appeared half-naked, their mutilated bodies covered in dried blood. Whoever committed these macabre acts had stabbed the bodies of these young women numerous times, and in addition to this, they had deep, masterfully executed cuts, both on the necks and on the limbs of the fallen ladies. Kalev, studying the photographs carefully, could also distinguish different signs drawn in blood on the skin of some of the women and on the wooden floor where they lay lifeless.
“Have you taken photographs or individually recorded each of the signs on and around the bodies of the young women?” Kalev asked, pointing to the symbols he was referring to in the image.
“I'm afraid not. I'm sorry,” Vincent replied, looking down, “those are the only photographs that have been taken of the crime scene.”
Kalev clicked his tongue and clenched his jaw in distaste:
“The photographs as evidence are deficient, as the signs are blurred or incomplete.”
“We thought they were just meaningless drawings!”
“It was necessary to record those signs in the right way.” Kalev answered sharply. Then he put the photographs down on the table to pick up the written report and began to read it carefully. “What makes you think that these murders are the Order's business? Such acts are commonplace in the city.”
“Well..., As you read in the report, the crimes were committed after midnight at the Red Orchid brothel. Atypically, the establishment was closed all night. But, behind closed doors an exclusive meeting was held for important wealthy men, all from the outskirts of the city.”
“Madame Diane runs that brothel. Did you have a chance to question him?” Kalev asked.
“She's dead! She was also found lifeless on the spot with her head severed. In fact, this is her photograph,” commented the commissioner, opening his briefcase. “And that's not all..., we also found the body of Basile Erdevane, a nobleman from Harlifax. Byron Dulash, an important merchant from Norfall, and Erwin Rimerk, a wealthy banker from the city of Yorkdell” Vincent threw each of his photographs on the table as he named them.
“It's strange, I don't deny it. But you still haven't answered my question. It could have been a planned assassination for power, political or economic reasons. And the murder of the women, well...An obvious way of not leaving loose ends. You know that if there is no link that somehow connects these crimes to the business of the Order, I can't help you. No matter how aberrant the murders committed, I can't do it,” Kalev concluded, closing the folder and placing it next to the photographs.