Devil Take The Hindmost

Chapter Twenty

I used the hour it took to walk down the hill from Tettenhall and along the straight road into the city to undertake a thorough mental review and cataloguing of all the things about both cases I did not know.

By the time I trudged through the underpass, made my way up Darlington Street, issued a curt nod to the Mon on the Black Oss and arrived at the bus station, I realized that the gaps in my knowledge were like the stars in the sky; vast, numerous beyond counting and with the ability to make me feel quite insignificant.

Widdershinz used the same period to issue a non-stop monologue on the occult, the interconnected spider's web of conspiracy governing all our lives and the certainty that, in addition to their commendable work for charity, the Daughters of Wulfrun were also trying to have me killed.

My grisly murder was either in veneration of a malign four-thousand-year-old goddess, or to please four kings of Hell. The details were sketchy.

The guy seemed to be able to talk and breathe at the same time, and I had tuned it out long before we emerged from the shadow of the hill upon which the Wyntham Estate perched.

Literally the only thing that had been straightforward was to locate the clock, though it had clearly been under false pretences. I believed Miriam's reaction when I asked about the timepiece. She seemed unaware of its existence, which suggested perhaps I could return it to Sylvia Distain and claim my fee without comeuppance.

This led me to another imponderable question.

Why had Tish not contacted me?

It had been well over a week since our dinner date, which is how I liked to characterize that evening, during which I told her I would be securing the clock. I know my chat over the amuse bouche wasn't exactly A-grade, and that perhaps her bouche had not been sufficiently amused, but I thought the prospect of closing the case and collecting ten grand might cause her to at least pick up the phone to see how I got on.

Then there was the vexing issue of who had attacked me.

Widdershinz was convinced the snippets of messages he decoded were between members of the Daughters of Wulfrun, and they pointed to complicity. Miriam Calhoun was having none of that, and in the cold light of her scorn it seemed mad to suggest it. Yet she had let slip knowledge that I had not provided.

Who was killing the homeless on the very streets through which I was walking?

Monty was shady, and his boys were obviously making bank on the back of some understandable panic, but that couldn't be it. I could conceive of a single shake-down turning into an accidental homicide, but murdering people left and right was very bad for business.

Cat was easier to fathom.

She had dropped a bollock, career-wise, somewhere along the line and really needed this score to provide some redemption. Bagging a serial killer would put her right back on the fast track to readmission into the fraternal arms of the force, if she could account for how she managed to close the case when she should be dealing with ghost sightings and haunted balti houses in Wednesfield.

Widdershinz, of course, was convinced Cat was part of some secret society herself. But he was several shortbread fingers shy of a tartan tin, and his attitude toward her when he discovered that she was a police officer threw everything he said into even more doubt.

My head hurt, and my mood was not improved when I scanned the bus timetable behind its plexiglass screen at stand W.

There are four busses per day to Pebble Deeping, and the next did not depart for another hour and a half.