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Chapter 116 - The Art of Misidentification

  "Call me a bluff old traditionalist, Lant, but I kind of assumed that, when identifying bodies, you might have, I don't know, some sort of fucking process you use by which to ensure some degree of accuracy!"

  Lowe’s voice echoed off the tile, bouncing between the exposed pipes and low-hanging light fixtures of the Deathcaller’s mortuary. The smell was as bad as ever—a rancid, chemical mix of rot and preservation fluids - and that was even before it got to Lant’s stench itself.

  Soar’s Deathcaller - Penarth Lant - was, on his best day, a goblin-shaped stain on Lowe’s peace of mind. Today was not shaping up to be one of those.

  "Inspector, Inspector, Inspector.” Lant said, voice oily with condescension. “You always did have a charming way of implying incompetence when you simply didn’t understand something too complicated for your silly little mind. It’s a shame to see that your fall from grace didn’t do anything to adjust that.”

  "Oh, forgive me, you lecherous piece of shit! I was under the naive impression that when you, personally, are in charge of identifying dead bodies, you might actually inform those of us responsible for investigating murders what’s in your cold storage before we go out there with our facts wrong! If you don’t clear this up for me, right now, my next stop is Staffen’s office and I think we both know she’s just itching for the opportunity to rip your balls off and stuff them up your arse!"

  Lant didn’t flinch. He never flinched. The man had all the social instincts of a carrion bird—he just stared back. "Inspector,” Lant said, “As I have been trying to explain to you, since you appeared here in your customary shambolic way. As far as the massacre in the Vault is concerned, I haven’t told Cuckoo House a damn thing yet.”

  Lowe stopped mid-rant. “...What?”

  The Deathcaller rolled his eyes and waddled over to a drip-covered gurney, his wide belly shifting as he moved. He gestured vaguely at the row of bodies covered in stained cloth. Some were largely intact, others… less so.

  “I,” Lant continued, “am still in the process of establishing a clear, confirmed identity for each of these poor, headless souls. Which means that any presumptions made by your little nest of underpaid malcontents”—he waggled his fingers in the air dismissively—“were nothing to do with my office at all.”

  Lowe blinked. Then blinked again.

  “You’re telling me,” Lowe said slowly, “that Cuckoo House has already filed identification on all these bodies… without you signing off on it?"

  “Absolutely. Quite hilarious, isn’t it?”

  Lowe could feel his head pounding as all of his righteous indignation drained away. “So let me just get this straight," he said. "You’ve been sitting on a pile of unidentified corpses, and instead of actually doing your fucking job—”

  “Hang on, Lowe. My fucking job?" Lant interrupted. "First you come in here telling me I’ve fucked up by not identifying these wankers properly. And now you want to pivot to balling me out for not doing it quickly enough? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s not my fault you guys jumped the gun. What I’ve been doing in the handful of fucking bells since this lot were dropped off here is, first and foremost, making sure they’re actually deceased . . .”

  “Oh, don't start with your weird-ass definitions of death, Lant—”

  “You’d be amazed at how many bodies are only mostly dead, Inspector—”

  “Not the point! The point is, you’re letting an entire department move an investigation forward assuming the corpses have been positively identified, and you didn’t think to mention to anyone that was absolute bollocks?”

  “Ah, Lowe. You are, as ever, a treat.” He made an exaggerated flourish toward the bodies. “You see, these are my problem. You and your fellow investigators acting like complete tossrags is - and I cannot stress this enough - absolutely not my circus. I don’t like sharing unfinished work. The fact Cuckoo House is happy making assumptions about who was to be found amongst that slaughter is neither my purview, nor my issue. I really hope none of your colleagues have informed the next of kin yet. I’m sure it would be . . . awkward should any of that needed to be walked back."

  Lowe stared at him.

  Lant stared back.

  "You," Lowe said, "are a horrible, horrible little man."

  Lant’s grin widened into something deeply unsettling. “Why, thank you, Inspector. I do try.”

  The worst of it was that Lant was right. If assumption was the mother of all fuck-ups, then Lowe had made a big one here. He’d gone off to see the Warden of Reserves assuming that the bodies were bank staff and customers. Not that anyone had suggested anything otherwise to him. And Morholt and St. Claire had obviously thought that too.

  Hadn’t they?

  And what about Elias Stern? Or, more to point, not Elias Stern.

  What the fuck had he stumbled into here? And how in Soar was the Black Knight involved?

  “Okay,” Lowe said, voice forcing himself to be calm. They’d jumped the gun. He needed to get things back on track “So, let’s resolve this, shall we? What, exactly, do you have here?”

  Lant sighed dramatically, as if he were being deeply inconvenienced, and waddled toward the nearest corpse. He pulled back the stained sheet with an air of theatricality, revealing… something that might have once been a man.

  The stump around its head was blackened. Twisted. Charred beyond recognition. Lant waved a hand over the body. “As you can see, other than losing his head at the wrong moment, this chap is positively pristine. Extremely fit. Very athletic. I tell you what, you should have a look at one of the girls. If I leave the bag over her head I can almost get interested.”

  “Can we do this without the colour commentary please, your fucking chaos goblin?”

  "Ah-ah!" Lant wagged a finger. “Temper, Inspector. We mustn’t be unprofessional. As all the little HR meetings I keep having tell me. Respect in all things. No, what is interesting here is that this chap,” Lant gestured to all the other bodies packed around them, “and all of the other lads and lasses is that not only are they headless, but they appear to be fingerprintless too.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, I’m sure you don’t. I’m using all sorts of complex polysyllables, aren’t I? Would it help if I drew you a picture? Maybe if I located a more than usually dim eight-year-old to explain it to you? You know, someone on your level?”

  Lowe bit down on his tongue. “You’re saying, Lant, that none of the bodies in the Vault have fingerprints?”

  “No. No, they don’t. Isn’t that interesting? It seems that whoever killed them succeeded in not only removing their faces, but also any identifying marks at all. I have to say, I respect that sort of thoroughness. That’s a Skill I think we can all agree would be very helpful indeed, in certain circumstances. Now, perhaps, you will appreciate why my report to Cuckoo House is, as yet, somewhat incomplete.”

  “No faces. No fingerprints,” Lowe said. “So you’re telling me you do not have a way of figuring out who all these people actually are?”

  Lant beamed, as if this was the exact question he had been waiting for. “Oh, don’t despair, dearest Inspector! I am no mere Graveteller. You stand before Penarth Lant, the foremost Deathcaller in all of Soar. I am not so easily discouraged. However . . .”

  “However, what?”

  “However, you haven’t asked nicely.”

  A silence stretched. Rage swelled deep in his chest, rising like a goddamn volcano—

  "Fine," Lowe gritted out, with all the warmth of a dying sun. “Please, oh mighty Deathcaller, if it isn’t too much trouble, would you be so kind as to share your deeply insightful wisdom about the actual, proper identities of the people who died in the Vault?”

  Lant giggled. Fucking giggled. Then, with obnoxious levels of satisfaction, he flicked through a stack of notes, pulled one free, and tapped it against his palm.

  “Well, Inspector, since you grovelled so prettily—”

  “For the record, I absolutely hate you.”

  “—I will, out of the graciousness of my heart, reveal to you that at least five of these bodies are not who I was told they were supposed to be.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, Inspector,” he said, voice thick with mock patience, “that the initial report I was given about what occurred in the Vault suggested that I would be examining the corpses of a bunch of bank workers and a number of well-to-do customers. As is policy, the mana signature of all those who are employed by Soar Bank are on record and, I can tell you, they are absolutely not a match for the first five bodies I have been able to complete the required activation ritual over.”

  “Okay, so you’ve started with five customers, then?”

  “What a lovely example of the legendary Lowe intuition I have heard so much about over the years! It really is a pleasure to see a master in action.”

  “Fuck off!”

  “I do wonder,” Lant mused, “if I’m not the only one who would benefit from a course in Sensitivity Training, Inspector. But hey ho, never mind.Yes, indeed, it was my assumption I had, coincidentally, picked out five customers first. Five beheaded corpses. Five hapless customers in the Vault at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Tragic, really.” He flicked a page over with obnoxious precision. “So imagine my delight when I was actually able to find records of these five particular ‘customers.’”

  Lowe didn’t miss the inverted commas. “Why ‘customers?’”

  "Because, Inspector," Lant said, "I do so enjoy accuracy in language.” He waddled toward a workbench cluttered with stacks of parchment and the charred remnants of personal effects, fingers twitching over a burned leather bag. “And while these five individuals were present in the Vault during the unfortunate events of that evening, it appears that in the strictest sense … none of them were actual customers.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Lant placed a hand to his chest like a put-upon saint. “I know! Shocking. You’d think a Vault would contain actual Vault clients, but no. Turns out, these five had no registered holdings at the Sovereign Bank, no active accounts, no transaction history—and yet, they were all in the Vault at the exact moment of the unfortunate massacre.”

  Lowe looked around at all the bodies. What were the chances that the first five bodies Lant tried to identify would not be workers at the Bank. There were what? Twenty-five? Thirty bodies here? And what about that fucking Accountant? He hadn’t been who he said he’d been either . . .

  Lant was continuing with his lecture. “Well, naturally, I assumed these five ladies and gentlemen must have been extremely important. High rollers. Perhaps private Vault clients with… unusual ledgers. So I did what any diligent Deathcaller would do. I cross-referenced their mana signatures with some of my more . . . secret databases. And would you believe it?” He spread his hands, voice dripping with faux innocence. “Every single one of them matched a sealed record.”

  “Sealed?”

  “Oh yes, Inspector.” Lant rocked back on his heels, satisfaction rolling off him in waves. “And not just lightly sealed. Not minor-bureaucratic-inconvenience sealed. No, these files are to be found in a vault within the Vault sort of sealed. The kind that doesn’t like being opened.”

  "Lant," Lowe said, voice edged with warning, "what kind of records are we talking about?"

  Lant paused and put a finger to his lips and clearly activated some sort of Skill, Mental Fortress dispelling what Lowe assumed was some sort of Silence Ability. “Now, whilst I do not necessarily believe that the walls have ears, I do not want to take any chances. Should anyone be eavesdropping on us, they will simply hear us continuing our line of amusing banter.”

  “Okay . . .” Lowe felt Lant’s Skill turn into Pressure via his manacle. He had a moment wondering how fun it would be to sit Lant down on his arse, but then restrained himself. The Deathcaller was being helpful for once. “So what sort of records are they?”

  “Military, dear heart. Military. And while it is entirely plausible that a member of the military might find themselves in the Vault at the wrong moment…” He lifted a scalpel from the workbench and twirled it theatrically between his fingers. "And even two might be possible. But five out of five of the ‘customers’ I’ve examined thus far?" Lant's grin was grim. "Well, Inspector, I’ll leave that up to your own brilliant little brain to unpick.”

  What the fuck? There were five members of Soar’s Military in the Vault when it was robbed blind?

  “Lant, I swear to every god listening, if you are wrong about this, I will make sure that sensitivity training is the least of your problems.”

  Lant gasped in mock horror, clutching his considerable belly. “You wound me, sir! Oh, I, too, thought it must be a mistake at first. A bureaucratic hiccup, perhaps. A case of clerical incompetence. Impossible, I know, given how well-run our institutions are. But, when I realised all five of our dearly departed ‘customers’ had their mana prints tied to sealed military records, I began to lose all my curiosity in this situation. Why, should it turn out that everyone in this death heap have their own files, I imagine I will forget any of this happened at all.”

  Lowe couldn’t blame him. This was some deep shit.

  The Vault robbery. The Black Knight. The unidentified Accountant, and now this? Five, at least, military personnel - with sealed records - in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . except, no, that wasn’t it, was it? They hadn’t been in the wrong place. They had been exactly where they were meant to be.

  And then they had been murdered.

  "Lant," he said, voice deceptively casual, "exactly how much trouble do you think I’ll be in if I start digging?"

  Lant cackled, a high-pitched, obnoxiously gleeful sound. “Oh, Inspector,” he said. “I do hope you start digging.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I am dying to know what you’ll find.”

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