THIEF OF BREAN (VOL-1)|✓

INKLINGS- XXII

Carl sat still on his desk. He took a blank glance at the letter he had penned down to Bel. Opposed to what he had decided earlier, he had finished the letter in just three lines. The greeting, the cottage, and the snowfall, that was it. Days have been passing like seconds and he had not been able to find anything relevant to the murders yet. Every witness and every suspect associated with the case was an enigma. One greater than the other.

He fished out the mail from his coat and dropped it on his desk. Lily freeman was another unsolved mystery. Previous night, after getting his hands on those bloodied cotton samples he had sent them off to the forensic toxicology in Isaac. They had answered back that all the tests had negative results. There were no traces of narcotics present in those samples.

But he wasn't convinced. Somewhere, something was wrong.

If someone had tried to drug the Freeman couple, they must have given the same drug to both of them. But the reports did not match. The toxin discovered in Jim's blood stream was absent in Lily. It made no sense. Moreover what was the motive behind taking Jim captive, drugging him with some toxin and keep him in the shack?

Carl gulped down a mouthful of beer from the glass.

An old enemy?

A psychopath who enjoyed slow killing?

He ran his fingers over his unkempt mess of hair. The state security unit at Isaac knew about every illegal drug that set foot into the market, through the information forwarded by the grey spies. It was a complex intelligence structure used to keep the spread of the narcotics in check. So it was likely that these robbers could not have gotten their hands on a new drug before it made to the list in Isaac.

Carl emptied the beer in the glass and walked over to the bedroom. He opened his trunk and rummaged the bottom strewn with books for his pastime, newspaper cuttings, torn maps and few informative files. Plucking a file that had the enlisting of all kinds of narcotics and toxins, produced both naturally and synthetically, the ones used in the past and the ones still being traded in several cities of Aristos that were under the influence of mafia.

He spent minutes thumbing through the pages. The experts in Isaac had run the tests on the narcotics presently trafficked in the markets. So, he took notes on the old ones to see if he could match any aftereffects with that of Lily's condition.

As the night deepened and temperature dropped further down, he lit the fireplace along with his pipe, for both warmth and focus.

The pink poppy mould

It was a narcotic used to induce altered perception, widely traded by the Cinnabar peddlers in Aristos before the riots. The source shrubs were grown in secret cabins called tickle pinks, which were then burned down by the army.

Mar Cactus thorn (aka grey ball)

A hypnotic toxin used two or three centuries back in time. A brew of this particular plant would cause memory loss. Smoked or sometimes the thorns were pricked to the skin to induce sleep.

Sea drink

A brewed drink of unknown ingredients. Also traded by the Cinnabars in the past. It put the user into a strange sleep in which they claimed to have experienced an out of body experience. Caused memory loss and disorientation on withdrawal.

Sugar trap

Produced originally in Tariq-Tazar and traded all over the world. Users claim an instant feel of detachment. Obtained in crystalline form and is consumed with alcohol or the liquefied form is injected form with a syringe. Causes altered perceptions of self, memory depletion-fatal if consumed in higher doses.