Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Nor I,” said Cabal offhandedly. “I wonder where he went? Let’s see if we can find him.” He walked out onto the Via Vortis and looked both ways. There was no sign of Herr Cacon.

Miss Barrow joined him, albeit in a poor temper. “Why? He’s just an odd little man. Why are you so interested in him?”

“You didn’t see him. He was like a man with a mission.” He started walking, and Miss Barrow had to scuttle a little to catch up. “Not the sort of man I would normally associate with missions. Would you? He was behaving curiously, and since recent events render that which is curious suspicious, I want to know what he was up to.”

“Oh, come on,” she said and laughed disbelievingly. “Are you telling me that you suspect a pug in a bad suit like Cacon of crawling around the ship’s vents and trying to throw you to your doom? You’re kidding me.”

“I am kidding nobody,” he said icily, then reconsidered. “Well, apart from everybody who thinks that I’m a Mirkarvian civil servant named Gerhard Meissner, obviously. Them, I am kidding. In this case, however, I am sincere. I do not believe he attacked me, true, but I suspect he may know who did.”

“Based on what? Masculine intuition?”

“Based,” said Cabal, beginning to chafe under all the unwarranted sarcasm, “upon the weight of probabilities.” They had by this point reached the Piazza Bior with no sign of Cacon. Cabal looked up the Viale Ogrilla, and frowned when he remembered the policeman at the cafe. He turned to Miss Barrow and, with evident reluctance, offered her his arm.

She regarded it with equally evident suspicion. “What’s this?”

Cabal forbore to state the obvious and said, “It would help us go unnoticed if we looked like people who can actually bear to be in each other’s company.”

“I’m not a good enough actress for that, Cabal.”

“I’m not asking you to look as if you dote upon my every word and glow with happiness in my mere presence — ”

“That’s lucky.”

“I just need you to look as if you don’t loathe me.”

“I’m really not a good enough actress for that. Why the sudden concern?”

“There’s a cafe up there, where there is a police officer busily derelicting his duty — ”

“Hold on. There’s no such verb as to derelict.”

“There is now. Would you kindly stop interrupting? There is a police officer, and I do not wish to arouse his suspicions. Should he have eyes for anything other than the waitress, which I doubt. Therefore, it would help if we were to avoid an obvious show of animosity. Will you take my arm?”

Miss Barrow looked up the avenue, thinking. Then she smiled at Cabal and offered her arm. “I should be delighted, Mr. Cabal.”

Cabal took her arm, and they processed towards the cafe like old friends, or at least the sort of old friends in which the lady wears a somewhat smug smile while the gentleman scowls darkly. Cabal wasn’t sure why she had suddenly consented to walk arm in arm with him, but he took it to be some sort of arch, feminine insult that he did not understand, nor did he care to try to understand. It was only when they were less than ten metres from the police officer that he realised how remarkably stupid he had been — so focussed on looking for Cacon that he had regarded the policeman as nothing more than a trifling inconvenience that he could guard against by using Miss Barrow. Only now did he remember that using Miss Barrow in any ploy that involved being within calling-for-help range of an officer of the law while he stood right next to her was akin to searching for a gas leak with a flamethrower.

He thought he understood her well enough to conclude that she would be more interested in Cacon’s activities than in just handing him over to the police. But, that said, he had framed her as a necromancer and set the military on her, and she might still be a tad upset.

In any event, it was far too late to punch her and run. Instead, he had to touch his hat, smile as convincingly as he could, and say “Guten Abend, Officer,” as the policeman noticed that he had company. The policeman’s attention rested on him so briefly that Cabal didn’t know whether to be relieved or mortally insulted. He could have been wearing one of the more fetching “Wanted” posters published in his wake ^* on a piece of string around his neck, and the officer would not have noticed. Instead, Cabal watched as the officer’s attention slid effortlessly across him like mercury in a pan to settle on Leonie Barrow.

“Buona sera, signorina,” he said, failing to acknowledge Cabal altogether. If he had applied the same observational skills to crime scenes and suspects as he did to ascertaining Miss Barrow’s marital status, he would have made capo della polizia before he was thirty. As it was, that seemed unlikely. At this precise moment, for example, he was far less interested in Cabal’s awkward body language and rictus-like smile than in whether women were more interesting when they were dark and passionate, like the waitress, or pale and interesting, like the beautiful lady out walking with the undertaker or clerk or whatever he was.

Miss Barrow barely looked at him. “Good evening, Constable,” she said, and walked on. Cabal gave her a sideways glance that she pointedly failed to acknowledge. A few paces on, an argument broke out between the policeman and the waitress.

When they were safely past the cafe, Cabal said, “I am unsure whether to thank you or to demand an explanation.”

Miss Barrow walked several paces before replying, “The former, I hope. As I’m not sure why I didn’t just grass you up like the scum you are.”

“That’s uncanny. Are you channelling your father at the moment?”

Miss Barrow raised a hand in admonition. “Please, Cabal. Please don’t mention my dad, or I’ll feel guilty that I didn’t just do the right thing and stitch you up like a kipper.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Even my dad doesn’t talk like that. He would have understood not giving you up to the Mirkarvians,” she continued, otherwise unabashed. “He’s not a great fan of capital punishment. But he’d never understand why I didn’t just hand you over to Constable Don Juan back there.”

“No,” said Cabal, remembering the implacable Frank Barrow, “I don’t think he would.”

“Don’t get any bright ideas that I didn’t do it because I think you’re anything other than the monster you are, Cabal. Under different circumstances, you’d be under arrest right now. But — ” She stopped, and Cabal stopped, too. She looked up at him, frowning slightly, and serious. “There’s something going on. Something … wrong. Something terribly, terribly wrong. Something wicked and cruel that ate DeGarre and Zoruk and would have killed you, too, if it had had its way. It’s worse than you, Cabal. I’ve understood you better than I ever wanted to, and part of that is knowing that you don’t go looking for trouble. It just seeks you out, but that’s something else. Whoever or whatever is behind what has happened over the past couple of days makes trouble. The kind of trouble that makes corpses, and I think it’s only just beginning. I want to stop it before it leaves anybody else dead.”

“And how do I fit into this monster hunt of yours?”

She smiled, but there was little humour in it. “Set a monster to catch a monster, Cabal.” She took his arm and started walking again. Cabal allowed himself to be drawn along, his mind distracted and distant.

By the time they reached the end of the avenue, night had truly fallen. A lamplighter was busily hurrying along, lighting the gas lamps as he went, clearly behind schedule. They stepped aside to let him trot past and turned onto the Via Pace. There was almost nobody about, it being the hour of the evening meal.

“Where from here?” asked Miss Barrow as they passed into the shadow of the San Giovanni Decollato.

Cabal gestured loosely across the road to the end of the Via Vortis. “We go down there as far as the alleyway where you spotted me, and then we give it up as hopeless. Cacon, or at least whoever he was following, obviously stopped pacing around this triangle of the town, and the pair of them are long gone. After that” — he checked his watch, and swore mildly — “I don’t know. I was intending to leave town, but I’ve missed my train. I assume that if I attempt it in the morning without your permission the police will be watching the stations along all routes from here just as soon as you can warn them?”

“You assume correctly. I think you’re right about Cacon. We’ll try the Princess Hortense, I think. He’s probably there.” She took a step, but was pulled up short by her arm’s being linked with Cabal’s. He wasn’t moving at all. She looked at him curiously. He was staring off into the middle distance, his nostrils flared, hardly moving. After a moment, he relaxed a little and felt her gaze. He glanced at her, apparently embarrassed. “What is it?” she asked.