The two patients weren’t just in a had-a-few-too-many sleeping it off kind of place. They were in an odd catatonic state, unresponsive to sound, smell, touch. As they groaned gently, it was almost like their senses had been worn out.
“How long have they been like this?” asked Mas.
“The guy nearest you, we found at the end of last sleep span, the other guy has been in here since before your dead girl turned up. We weren’t sure what to make of it at all at first, but now there’s a pattern—”
“Yeah maybe. Mind if I take a closer sniff?”
“I—, we should probably ask Yayu though?”
“Yayu wouldn’t mind at all,” came a voice from the other side of one of the guild’s many curtains. “Hello, Teller. Do ask for me in person if you need me.”
“Thanks, Yayu and I’ll come and find you first next time,” said Mas, taking the hint.
He circled one body, sniffing here and there, then the other. Frisked the clothes of one, then the other.
“Ow!”
“What’s up?” asked Anda.
“You got tweezers?” Mas said.
“Yeah.” She pulled a drawer open.
“Under my nail here? Shhh- aaah!”
“Now what’s that?”
“A glass shard I think, pass it here? Odd.” Then after sucking his finger to stem the bleeding, “I think I’ve found your link.”
“Ok?”
“The guy you said you found before the girl? He had the glass splinter in his pocket lining. It smells the same as the other guy’s fingers.”
“No.” Anda quickly picked up the hand of first one body, then the other and came over to take the tiny glass piece off Mas in the tweezers. “Damn, you’re right. Lemons, leastwise something acidic, and something else.”
Mas felt a yawn crawl out of his throat, he couldn’t help himself.
“Listen, let me have this shard for a half span, maybe I can use some reagents to work out what’s on it. You sound like you need to go back to bed for half a span more rest. Come find me later.”
Mas went back to his place, he even slept, but of rest there was none. More nightmares. More drowning, and this time in his desperation to claw to the surface—a hand—he reached out and touched a hand: rough, calloused, scarred. Then he woke, sharply to the faint aroma of lemon and tobacco.
He was still in a post-nightmare daze when he got back to the lodgings house where Anda was staying. It took him a while to take in what met him. A sharp stab in the sole of his foot brought him to. Glass. He Air-sensed a floor full of debris, breaking up the shape of what should have been a flat floor and, on the floor, a prone form. He moved quickly to feel for a pulse. There was none. The smellscape engulfed him. He limped back to the door and called for Madame Bana’s bouncer, he was nowhere to be found, so he stumbled into the street and headed for the nearest police bell. He rang it and rang it till his arm ached. He was still ringing it when the constables arrived and had to pry the bell rope from his hand. By the time Chief Knia had arrived, he’d been copiously sick twice.
“Gods and devils Mas, you smell awful,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Mas said, and told her what she’d find in the room, through clenched teeth. The constables were busy calming down Madame Bana and preventing her from contaminating the crime scene.
The investigations drifted on into sleep-span. Knia had constables all over the place and had asked Mas the same questions at least three times herself, and once using a constable as proxy. Mas wasn’t surprised she suspected him. He would have done in her place.
“Right, I’ve had enough,” said Knia. “Lock up that room, tape it and the shutters, no-one goes in. Mas, I want you in my office first thing. Everyone go to bed.”
Mas couldn’t sleep and spent what was left of sleep-span, scribbling what he could remember of the crime scene and what he already knew about the case. When what he was writing on the bark scroll wasn’t making any sense anymore, he went back downstairs to see if any racta sellers were awake yet. It seemed the Bocado had abandoned all hope of a sleep-span for anyone working there, as they carried the casualties of the recent revelries out onto the street to regain consciousness, or lose what was left of their possessions. He stepped over the bodies to find Rychuck or the new girl to persuade a racta out of them. As good as expected, there was a pot already on.
“Rough shift?” said Mas when Rychuck plonked his cup onto the counter.
The bartender sniffed and said, “I could ask you the same.”
“Y’know, the usual: no leads, no sleep, on the suspects list already—”
“Oh, that young midwife? Terrible business.”
Mas laughed. He could smell no trace of the new girl.
“What?” said Rychuck. “It’s my business to know everything. And while I think on I can save you a line of inquiry.”
“Oh?”
“Yep. You can’t fit Bobbins up for this one, well not legitimately anyhow, he was in here all span.”
“Damn. I thought I could smell him on the way in. Wish I had as sound an alibi.”
“I can always say you were here too if they ask me.”
“Kind of you, but not how I do things.”
Mas drained his racta, “Well, thanks for the racta. Justice waits for no one and all that.”