Devil Take The Hindmost

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"You've got some nerve, showing up here!" Priya hissed like a spitting cobra, her body coiled around the open door, ready to strike.

"You've spoken to Miriam, I take it?" I asked, a weak smile playing at the edges of my mouth. I was powerfully emotionally conditioned to try and please Priya Pooni, and she was, very visibly, anything but pleased.

"I told you, Satchmo. I warned you if you fucked this up for me, I'd kill you ..." she paused her stream of vitriol and looked over my shoulder, watching Ty as he strolled into view from the driver's side of the Land Rover.

"... and you! I don't know why I expected anything different from you, but you've let me down."

Edge hesitated a half-step at the top of the path leading to her door and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "We are trying to find a killer, I'm sorry you feel that way," he responded with a faint hint of something altered in his usually emotionless tone while still deploying a politician's apology.

"So, anyway," I gave a little cough to break the intense staring competition that seemed to have broken out spontaneously between the others. "We need your help."

Priya tossed back her head and laughed maniacally. Cackled might be a better description as the forced mirth at this suggestion caused a wave of her hair to ripple and flow across her face like an obsidian waterfall.

"Please, Priya," Ty held out his arms imploringly. "We need to use my laptop."

"And my internet connection, I presume?" she shot back waspishly.

The revelation she had been assisting Ty in his technical endeavours had been something of a surprise to me. To hear Edge describe the situation, Priya had been giving him a series of lessons in computing basics, and permanently housing his equipment, so to speak, into the bargain.

I couldn't imagine Ms Pooni as a teacher.

Her hair-trigger lack of accommodation for anything or anyone not operating at her level would see her decorating the walls of her classroom with the entrails of her pupils before the first bell had rung.

However, when Ty had asked for help, she had summoned some heretofore buried sliver of patience and taught him the rudimentary elements of internet browsing, word processing and to turn everything off and back on at the first sign of trouble.

"We need to go through some evidence for the case," I said, holding up the disc with the CCTV files on it.

"I should get my head checked," she tutted. "You two dickheads might have cost me distribution rights into Birmingham with your fucking nonsense about witches and devils. I'll be lucky if the Daughters don't chuck me out,"

"We also have to talk about that, Priya. We have some questions the Daughters of Wulfrun that you might be able to help with," I gabbled, rushing through her front door before she could slam it in our faces.

*

"Well, that's a disappointment." I stared at the computer screen with the media player windows artfully arranged across it, a dimly lit black and white image of a different street in each.

"What did you expect?" Priya leaned over my shoulder to wrest the mouse from my grasp, soft strands of her hair brushing my cheek and the scent of a delicate floral perfume in my nostrils.

"You downloaded an eight-hour period of footage from three separate cameras. That's twenty-four hours of empty pavement you've got to stare at. There's no fucking way you are staying here while you do it!"

"I meant to download more, but I ran out of room on the disc ..." I muttered disconsolately, realising that in under twelve hours' time the augury clock's single hand would tick over to its next destination, Bael, just in time for the dawning of Halloween.