Soldier of Fortune: Gideon Quinn Adventures Book One

Chapter 35

Mia had been correct in her estimation of Detective Sergeant Ishan Hama.

He was decent.

He took no bribes, believed in justice for all classes, and did his best to keep the peace in a city that had been under the cloud of war for over half his life.

Though the war with the Coalition States had seldom directly struck Nike—the airborne blitz that decimated Lower Cadbury had been the worst for the city—it was the indirect effects of war which made policing in Avon's capital an ongoing challenge.

Effects such as the majority of tax monies going to support the war effort (with no few detours to various wartime committee chairs), along with a significant number of citizens who might have made fine police officers gone to the ranks.

Citizens such as Ishan's husband, Paolo, lost when an enemy mortar struck his troop 'ship, the UCF Tenochtitlan.

Even years later, Ishan still recalled the numbing cold he'd felt the day he returned to the precinct, fresh from tamping down a potential riot, to see the colonel in his dress greens, accompanied by the regimental keeper.

He was recalling it now, in fact.

Probably because the young man seated at his desk, brought in as a potential witness in Ishan's latest case, was the very image of a young Paolo.

"You okay, Dad?" Tiago asked.

"I am quite... okay," he said gruffly, appalled that his son might see the old distress. He cleared his throat, tapped his pencil and shoved his untouched tea a bit to the left (he'd shoved it a bit to the right three minutes past). "So, you believe you have seen the man we are looking for?"

"Yes, like I told Officer Prudawe ten minutes ago, and DS Couerliane when she knocked on my door at home."

"Home." The word came out more as a derisive snort.

"Don't start," Tiago said.

"Of course not." Ishan waved his hands in parental frustration. "After all, what business is it of mine if my only son chooses to dwell in a derelict building, putting his life in danger every day for the sake of—"

"For the sake of our neighbors," Tiago said. "The same people who used to join us for tea in the morning, and to celebrate First Landing Day, and who came to Papa's funeral—"

"Don't start," Ishan echoed his son's earlier directive. He glanced around at the nearby desks, where other detectives and officers were suddenly very busy with the paperwork they usually avoided like a plague. "This is not the time," he added.

"It never is," Tiago sighed, slumping back in his chair as if he were fourteen and not twenty-four.

The two men sat so for another moment before Ishan moved his chair slightly, and the predictable squeak of wood on cheap rehabbed flooring brought them back to the purpose of this interview. "About the suspect. Can you give me the description?"

"I already—"

"Told Prudawe, and Couerliane. I know this, but every time you tell the story, you may include another detail, and so we paint the picture, one telling at a time, yes?"

"I'm sorry. Yes," Tiago said, then he took a long, slow breath, and began.

Dutifully, Ishan recorded that the man Tiago had seen was tall, and thin (too thin for his height and build, the medical student had pointed out), and looked a right mess.

Riding in a compost lorry after being shot whilst jumping from a second-story window could do that, Ishan thought, and looked up when his son paused. "Is there anything else?"