Dead as a Dodo

Chapter One

“Detective Constable Liddell, isn’t it?” A soft male voice, originating somewhere just behind my shoulder, somehow managed to infiltrate my thoughts.

Slumped over the bar with my chin in my left hand, I flicked my eyes to the right. A weasel-faced man with long, lank, mousy hair and a stubbly beard was regarding me with something akin to curiosity. When I blinked and tried to focus on him, he pulled his thin lips apart in the semblance of a smile. The two front teeth from the top of his mouth were missing, exposing an excess of red gum.

Ugh. I shuddered and returned my attention to my glass, twirling the remains of the colourless liquid around the ice cubes. I was knocking these shots back a little too quickly. The ice hadn’t even had time to melt.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here before.”

The man was annoyingly persistent.

I tutted and swung about on the stool to snap at him. “Inspector!”

“Pardon?” The little man cringed away from my sudden ire.

“It’s Detective Inspector.” My voice rang out in the otherwise quiet pub. A number of the other patrons, otherwise minding their own business, turned to stare at me.

Fiddlesticks.

“Was,” I added, my words slightly slurred. “It was Detective Inspector. I’ve retired now.”

“Oh.” That seemed to satisfy him and the onlookers. They turned their attention back to whatever dastardly deeds and dark deals they were quietly plotting, but unfortunately my new friend was made of sterner stuff. He would not be put off.

“You seem rather young to be retired.”

Was this guy for real?

I tried to ignore him and instead held my glass up to catch the attention of the young bartender. He busily wiped glasses with a filthy cloth and studiously avoided eye contact.

“I hope they gave you a pension.”

I swivelled to look at Weasel-man again, not sure whether to laugh or smash a bottle over his head. A pension? I’d walked away. They weren’t going to offer me a pension. “That’s a good one,” I said, but I didn’t smile.

Thirty-two going on ninety-two. That’s how old I was feeling. Losing my partner Ezra, DS Izax, in the way I had, while on a job down in East Devon, had finished me off. I’d been with the Ministry of Witches Police Department for thirteen years, and on their magickal murder squad for eight of those. I’d become jaded even before that final investigation, but I hadn’t been remotely ready for the emotional toll that the death of a partner can take.

Part of me didn’t understand why I had struggled so badly. When you’re on the job, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices, give your all. There is an ever-present danger. Perhaps I’d been lucky. Until that day at Whittle Inn, I’d never been personally affected by anything at work. I’d always compartmentalised everything. Personal life in one box, work in another. But after Ezra’s death, I realised that my personal life box was empty.

Ezra had been it. The sole content of that stupidly small box.

Not that we were lovers or anything of that kind. There’d been quite an age gap between us, given that he was nearly thirty years older than me. We were just friends. Good friends. Buddies. He’d started as my mentor, but I was young and ambitious and determined to have an interstellar trajectory to the top echelons of the Ministry of Witches Police Department. Soon enough I eclipsed him in rank, and I’d been due another promotion that would have pulled me into a different squad. He had been thinking about retirement. We’d been preparing to say our goodbyes.

I hadn’t figured they’d be eternal ones.

My eyes filled with tears. I sniffed hard and slammed my glass down on the old wooden bar top, sending a couple of chunks of ice spinning over to the bartender’s side. Weasel-man cowered away from me—by cripes he was jumpy—but the bartender, obviously long-suffering for such a young man, looked up and raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll have another.” I jiggled the glass in his direction, pleased I had his attention at last.

His gaze lingered on me a little longer. I knew what he was thinking. I’d had enough. I should go home and sleep it off.

I did my best to glare at him, but I suppose hostile drunks are something he was used to in his line of work, because he shrugged and reached for the bottle of Blue Goblin vodka I’d been favouring. He expertly poured a single finger’s worth into a new glass, added fresh ice and a slice of lemon, and slid it over to me. I thought about asking him to fill the glass completely, or even leave me the bottle, but I knew how much money I had in my purse and how little I had in my bank account.

I was going to need another job. And soon.

I twiddled with the vodka, sloshing some of the precious liquid over the bar. Countless numbers of drinks had been spilled here over the centuries. I could imagine the ghosts of patrons past squinting over my shoulder and studying the optics. Little sparkles of light demanding attention out of the corner of my eye.

I refused to acknowledge them. I had no time for the dead.

“It’s unusual to see your kind in Tumble Town,” Weasel-man said.

I turned my head to glare at him again. Was he hitting on me? If not, what did he want? “Are you still here?” I growled.

He climbed up on a stool next to me, as though I’d invited him.

I rolled my eyes.

“This is my local,” he said. “I’ve never seen you here before. That’s all.”

There was a simple reason for that. I’d been trying out a different pub every night since I’d handed my warrant card over to my boss. There wasn’t an inn or a tavern that I hadn’t visited in all of London. Probably. Tumble Town had been a bit of a last resort given that it existed on the dark side of town. This particular pub, The Pig and Pepper, had been way down on my list of places to patronise. I’d been living in a comfortable apartment close to Celestial Street, where the Ministry of Witches was located. My local was The Full Moon. But there’s a limit to how much you want people you know—people you’ve worked with, respectable people—to see how much of a drinking problem you have.

Located on the east side of Tumble Town, itself renowned for housing those rogues and villains of the paranormal world—you name it: witches, wizards, warlocks, faeries, goblins, mages, sages, soothsayers and anyone else who didn’t want to be found—The Pig and Pepper was a den of iniquity. A cauldron of chaos.

Good people, or people who had nothing to hide, did not tend to hang out in Tumble Town unless they had been born here and had no choice.

I’d had occasion to work on a couple of investigations here, but I’d never been assigned to the Dark Squad, as my colleagues and I thought of them. The Dark Squad were detectives who moved among the rogues here, who understood the people and could distinguish between the worst excesses of witchcraft and magick and general criminality. My understanding was that there was a fine line and that the residents of Tumble Town could get away with so much more than they might out in the ordinary world.

Most of my work had been out in the mundane world, investigating murders that involved magick up and down the United Kingdom.

Weasel-man was looking at me expectantly. I’d zoned out for a second.

“You’ve never seen me here, but you know my name.” That much had filtered through my alcohol-addled brain.

“I knew Detective Izax. I saw you with him from time to time.”

“I see.” I took a sip of my drink, wincing at the burn in my throat. Good stuff, this Blue Goblin. Clean. But boy, it packed a punch. “Then you know he’s dead.”

“I heard.” Weasel-man nodded.

Of course he had. Nothing ever escapes the attention of the Tumble Town telegraph. It’s hard to keep a secret in a town where people trade in such things. Secrets and lies. The most prosperous of the residents are the ones who know the most about those who don’t want anyone to know anything about them.

I waited for Weasel-man to tell me Ezra had been a good man. A decent man. A man who hadn’t deserved what had happened to him, but Weasel-man said nothing. Maybe he didn’t believe Ezra had been a good man. That was refreshing in itself. We’re all flawed, after all. Or maybe he simply liked to keep his thoughts close to his chest.

If that was the case, Weasel-man was wise.

The clanging of a bell behind the counter startled me. About the size of my head, I was sitting too close to it. My head spun.

The bartender dropped his hand. “Last orders!” he shouted, and I sensed rather than heard the shuffling of punters reaching for their wallets or digging into their pockets to find some change.

“Is that the time?” Weasel-man asked. A hypothetical question if ever there was one. Of course it was the time. How many bartenders get the time for last orders wrong? “I have to be somewhere.”

I wondered where he had to be at eleven at night, but I couldn’t be bothered to ask. My interest in other people and what they chose to get up to was at an all-time low.

“See you again,” he said, slipping off his stool, but I barely even acknowledged him. He tapped the bar twice with his knuckles, a long-honoured Tumble Town tradition that recognised the bartender’s service and was a form of goodbye.

Should I have a refill? Funds were tight. I had to walk home and, while it wasn’t a long way from here to my pad—perhaps a twenty-minute walk—meandering through the maze of Tumble Town’s tiny lanes and alleys could be difficult enough when completely sober.

I sighed.

As if reading my mind, the young man behind the bar plonked down a mug of coffee in front of me. “On the house,” he said and offered me a small jug of milk.

I stared across at him, trying to read his face, but it remained closed. Not the slightest hint of warmth.

“Cheers.” I quickly drained my vodka and picked up the ceramic mug. There was a chip in the rim. I scratched at it absently with my thumbnail, waiting for the steaming liquid to cool down enough so I could drink it. People came and went, making orders at the bar, bringing back glasses, tapping their goodbyes. I zoned out again, the noise and the light becoming blurred, tears falling unbidden into the dark liquid in the mug between my hands.

“You have to help me.”

I lifted my head, struggling to focus, becoming aware that I’d been crying. Just how out of it was I? The pub was virtually deserted now—just a few people finishing off a game of pool at the rear of the pub and a table of poker players loitering over the dregs of their drinks.

“Detective Liddell?”

I slowly swivelled my head. Weasel-man again.

“I thought you’d gone.” The coffee in the mug had cooled to the point that a thin layer of skin had formed on the surface. I took a swig. It was strong.

“I need your help,” he repeated quietly, and this time he took hold of my right arm and tugged as though to hurry me along.

I glared down at his hand. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, pal.” He wouldn’t want me to practise my witchy-police-detective-ninja skills on him, I was sure of that.

He dropped his hand. “Please come!” His voice, quiet but insistent, finally got through to me. I’d heard that tone before. Too many times. Laced with dread, but also … need. You have to sort this out for me. I can’t cope with this by myself. Something terrible has happened.

“What’s up?” I asked and took a deep gulp of my coffee. It was habit. Fortify myself with caffeine. No matter how disgusting it was.

“It’s my friend.” Weasel-man pointed at the door to the street outside. It stood ajar. I could see shapes moving past. “Wizard Dodo. I think he’s dead.”

Chapter Two

In my experience, going out into the fresh air after a night on the beer can go one of two ways. Either you start to sober up and think a little more rationally, albeit with a buzzy head, or you pass out on the pavement. Luckily for me, that night at least, I did the former.

I followed Weasel-man out into Tudor Lane, one of the oldest parts of Tumble Town as far as I was aware. The buildings faced each other across the lane here, no more than eight feet apart. Even during the day there was little in the way of light. At this time of night, most of the illumination came either from the windows of the houses—mostly three-tiered Elizabethan builds, all wattle and daub and black and white fronts—or the gas-powered lamps that hung from iron struts above our heads.

So, there was lighting … but it was muted. All the better to hide those who loitered in the shadows, watching me.

I could sense them there, the curious and the antagonistic. It occurred to me that maybe Weasel-man was setting me up. Perhaps this was a trap. Maybe there was a potential cop killer tucked away in the safety of the darkness …

But probably not. I’d always been one to trust my instincts. Weasel-man was agitated and afraid. He hadn’t been this emotional while trying to draw me into a conversation in The Pig and Pepper, which suggested that something had happened in the ten minutes or so after he’d left me.

I wobbled after him—hey! I never said I had sobered right up!—as he turned left out of the pub. He moved quickly and kept to one side, hugging the wall as he walked, as though he too wanted to avoid being seen. The vodka had made me brave, or foolhardy—take your pick—so I stuck to the middle of the lane, all the better to spot anyone if they chose to launch a sudden attack on me as I followed him.

We didn’t go far. The houses gave way to a row of old shops, the lane widening slightly, which was lucky because the buildings seemed to bow out here. I had a feeling that they would one day meet in the middle above our heads, creating a kind of pedestrian-friendly tunnel like a fifteenth-century shopping mall.

“Detective Liddell!” A voice hissed at me from a doorway. Weasel-man had taken shelter. “Here!”

I tipped my head backwards, craning to get a better look at the ramshackle building in front of me. Some sort of rundown hat shop. I squinted to read the sign, my eyes in and out of focus. The Hat and Dashery. There were no lights on in the shop itself, or on the floor above, but a glow emanated from the small sash windows on the top floor.

“In here,” Weasel-man hissed again, even more urgently than before.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I told him, and reached inside my leather biker’s jacket for my mobile. I thumbed the screen, reassured when it lit up. Better to be safe than sorry. I slipped it into my side pocket where I could reach it easily and drew out my police issue wand. The one I should have returned, weeks ago.

I joined Weasel-man at the door and nodded, indicating he should go first. I might have been drunk, but I wasn’t stupid. There was no way I wanted him behind me. He crept up the first flight of stairs, surprisingly feather-light on his feet. In contrast, my tread was heavy and I struggled, catching hold of the banister several times to stop myself from falling. The tread on the carpet was worn, making it slippery, the stairs themselves so old they angled downwards. You risked breaking your neck if you weren’t careful. I had cause to thank my sensible footwear—a pair of army boots I’d bought from the army surplus shop years ago—and the fact that I wasn’t the type of woman who wore heels.

You can’t chase after a villain in stilettos, no matter what you see in the movies.

At the top of the first flight, I paused to listen. Weasel-man had gone on ahead. There was a single door to my left, the faintest of chinks of light threading beneath it, but no sound and no hint of movement. Satisfied that there was no-one waiting to spring out at me, I continued to the next landing. The stairs wound back on themselves, becoming ridiculously narrow at the top. Fortunately, the lights were on in the room beyond and I could see where I was going.

I stumbled into the room, ducking at the last moment to save banging my head on the low doorway, blinking into the light. The floorboards were oddly spongy beneath my feet, and that, on top of the vodka and the steep climb, made me feel a little queasy. I stood still for a moment, took a few deep breaths and glanced around at my surroundings.

Having worked for the Ministry of Witches Police Department, believe me, I knew all about clutter. I had walked away from a desk where the in tray was two feet high. The out tray had hardly existed. Instead, that was where I kept my ‘in progress’ files. I’d had boxes and boxes of evidence piled high next to my desk and against the wall behind me. Such had been the general chaotic nature of my desk, I’d barely had room for my computer mouse, let alone the computer itself.