Detective Nicely Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf (19 page)

‘I imagine it was the business card of an increasingly unpopular dwarf detective.’

‘And how long do you think it will take me to find this card?’

‘Twenty-four hours?’

‘Twenty-four hours it is.’ Ralph looked back into the scene of the slaughter. ‘’What aren’t I seeing, Nicely?’

‘He was a writer. Where’s his writing? There should be papers, parchments, fragments of old posters even, which he might have used when he didn’t have money to buy anything else to scribble on.’

‘Got you.’

‘All gone, all conveniently disappeared.’

‘And what might they have said?’

‘That’s the one-thousand-crown question, isn’t it?’

‘So what are you going to do, Nicely?’

‘I’m going to see a gnome about an elf.’

‘And then we nail whoever is responsible for this butchery?’

‘We certainly do, Ralph. We certainly do that.’

Historians do not, as a rule, have an easy time in the Citadel. I mean, what is the point of spending years poring over old manuscripts, trying to figure out what went on in some age-old war, when, for the price of a stamp, you can find out from someone who was actually there. It must be quite galling to have your latest work put down by a near-immortal: ‘Actually Gedred the half-dead could not have killed Slut, the Goblin King, because he was round at my place for cocktails at the time.’ Still, that does not stop them scribbling, and as historians go, the scribe Arito Cardinollo was one of the better known.

I’d had a poor night’s sleep thanks to all the questions rattling around my noggin. Could Mr Hardwood really be implicated in the killing of a disadvantaged scribe who happened to write a largely forgotten piece of speculation some years before? Or had Renfield really turned up something new? As for finding Perry, I felt further away than ever from solving that particular problem. I just couldn’t see him sipping cocktails on the beach with Leo; Liza couldn’t have chosen that badly, surely?

I was surprised the Cits weren’t camped out on my doorstep as I finally headed on out. I now owed Ralph a very large drink or three. My twenty-four hours were ticking down quickly.

I took a street-train out to Little Hundred. It’s not the place to take your wagon, as one is liable to come back from a visit and find a market has been opened in it; this year you were more liable to find it had been trashed. Some of the summer’s worst violence had been centred on this ghetto area. The quarter had come into being when land reforms led to the reorganisation of the gnomes’ traditional homelands in the Hundreds. With the resulting over-farming and the Dust Basin Disaster, many thousands of gnomes headed for the urban areas. As the Citadel did not have the kind of conditions they were accustomed to living in, ever resourceful, they created their own. Corrugated iron, old packaging, dead wagons; you name it, everything was put to use to create a maze of tunnels and small buildings. The effect is rather like an ants’ nest opened for public viewing and can make you feel a touch uneasy. Not that I have anything against gnomes, it’s nothing to do with their colour, or their noses or anything stupid like curly hair on their feet, but I do get an occasional twinge of good, old-fashioned liberal guilt. I know that of all the races in Widergard, they have got probably the worst deal, and I also know that solving the problem is certainly beyond my capabilities. Whatever, the trip to Arito Cardinollo was likely to be the highlight of my day.

It was still hotter than a dragon’s tonsils and running for the street-train did not help my demeanour or disposition. I handed the boy a quarter-crown and pushed my way on. The train was fit to bursting, full of homeward-bound workers, at the end of their split shifts. No seats inside, so I stood on the platform, which was no problem as I was glad to get away from the heat of the boiler.

Folk do tend to romanticise about the good old steam street-trains, how they are so much part of the Citadel’s magic, but they probably never had to sit next to the boiler on a hot summer’s day. With the bellows wheezing like an asthmatic ogre, the pistons hissing like incensed serpents and the wheels squealing against the tracks on the bends, it feels uncomfortably like being banged-up in a necromancer’s dungeon. Mind you, it’s the best place in Widergard on a winter’s morning. And if our learned Councillors and Aldermen are really interested in learning what the people they represent think, they could do a lot worse than travel, at least once a week, on a Citadel street-train. All of life, as they say, is there. Well, nearly all of life. In all the years I have been domiciled in the Citadel, I have yet to see an elf on a street-train, and that about says it all.

A group of gnome girls got on, red scarves and spotted skirts giving the train a sudden carnival atmosphere. They would be heading down the Hill as well, after an exhausting shift in the sweatshops of the lower Third Level. You would not think it to look and listen to them. Hands that had been working the looms for hours, now clapped along to their happy sing-song voices; eyes that had been straining at the finest stitching were now gleaming brightly at the possibilities of an evening spent dancing and singing. Make the most of it, girls. It would not be long before home time meant just more work. Cook the meal, wash the children, put them to bed, then get them up and still the same demanding grind in the sweatshops facing them the next day.

It was a sobering fact that while unemployment amongst the male adult gnome population was a staggering seventy-five per cent, the textile industry was still crying out for the skills at which their women excelled. Unfortunately, the vast influx of gnomes into the Citadel following the increased mechanisation of agriculture had meant there was no shortage of workers and the textile industry could still offer minimal wages. This was not an ideal situation and trouble was bubbling away like a simmering gnome bean stew. The husbands, resentful and frustrated, smoked too much pipeleaf, whilst the overworked mothers lost control of their youngsters, who too easily got involved in petty crime and gang street-life. It was a sad situation for a once proud and independent people with their own culture and roots.

Not that you would have thought that anything was amiss listening to the group of youngsters as they rode the street-train, laughing and singing their way down the Hill. A group of men came down the stairs, shooting filthy looks at the party of gnomes. I snarled in their general direction and they left the train in a hurry. Sometimes I despair for all hopes of proper integration.

I made my way up to the top deck and found the space that the men had vacated. I got the nod from two Brothers travelling on the back seat. I didn’t know them and I just gave the signal that said I needed some thinking time, then found a seat near the front of the train – just like an excited kid.

The street-train smoked at another hold-up – two wagons had collided and the citizens were settling the dispute in the time-honoured fashion – by taking turns to see who could hit the other the hardest. The Citadel Guards were on the way, but their wagon was stuck in the same queue we all were. I understand there was a move being mooted to get the Cits on horseback. It couldn’t happen too soon.

Building a city on a mountain may be aesthetically pleasing, and the huge encircling walls and spiralling roads were just fine for keeping out the goblin armies, but they do not encourage an efficient urban transport system. The planners say that it is all the fault of the conservationists. The conservationists say that if the planners pull down one more treasured building, they will find themselves up to the knees in their own hardcore surveying the bottom of the Bay. I personally tend to go with the conservationists; the last chance the road builders had to improve things, the best they could come up with was a ring road.

The bickering wagon drivers soon apportioned blame, by one fall and a submission. The crumpled wagons were swept into a side alley and all the monies were paid out on the bets taken on the combatants. The Cits finally arrived, and waved us on.

The street-train turned through a narrow arch, narrowly missing a gnome market that had sprung up, mushroom-like, the minute a crowd had gathered. I could see stalls laden with armies of fruits and vegetables, thrown into relief by the strings of lights. Huge polished squashes squatting like Eastern Mages, a carnival of fat peppers in red, green, yellow and orange, and tiny dragons’ teeth no bigger than your finger, but hot enough to have you crying for mercy and more ale. Carefully we navigated this throwback to the gnomes’ more pastoral heritage. We almost made it without mishap, and then I heard a large crunch. Oh, well!

The crunch turned out to be some poor gnome’s livelihood, and not the transportation, and I therefore breathed a great sigh of relief when the train passed through the last of the Citadel gates and we began to make up some time. Soon we were in the cauldron of activity; laughs, loves and despair, that is Little Hundred.

Little Hundred is a maze and I’m good in them, but unfortunately it lacks the logic of the one under the Citadel Central Archive. I only got lost four times. Gnomes feel friendlier towards dwarfs than other races, but the spare axe was a comfort. Much of Little Hundred is daubed with slogans of the ‘Gnomes go home!’ variety and although many had been painted over, unrest is still evident in the broken windows and burnt-out homes. In the middle of the maze, where Arito lived, things were better.

The gnome lived in a hole. Boy, was it a hole. His front door was made from the fender of a ’42 Dragonette, the model before mine, and would be a collector’s piece in a few more years. I had knocked. Entering when I heard the faint ‘Come-in’, I then paused to survey the devastation. Dirty dishes were piled up next to mounds of grey underwear, and everywhere was the smell of heavy-duty pipeleaf, the gnome special variety. What was a respected scribe doing in such conditions?

‘Look at him will you, Wilmer. Knocks, as if we could run to a lock.’

Through the wall of crockery and clothes and many twinkling lamps, I spotted the gnome. Although obviously old, the hair on his feet and head were both as brown as a new conker and his eyes twinkled like the lamps. ‘So, you got a name, or you some sort of sheriff? If so, the wagon’s been stolen and the music maker’s under that pile of togs! If you can find it, take it, you’ve earned it for finding me.’

I would not have touched the togs for all the gold in Iron Town. Instead I pushed a card in his direction. ‘The name is Nicely Strongoak, Master Detective, and I’ve come about elves.’

‘Elves, he says, you hear that, Wilmer?’ The old gnome sat himself down on a rocker with no rock left in it. ‘Well, if it’s elves you’re interested in, I suppose you already know that I am Arito Cardinollo, and this, this is Wilmer.’

He pointed vaguely to his right and I looked around for his companion. At first I saw no trace of anyone, but then I noticed a parrot’s pen. Instead of the expected bird, I saw, sitting on a small perch and reading a tiny scroll, something that made my jaw drop: a fat, sweating, unshaven pix. He was not as the funny papers usually paint them; the pointed boots were down-at-heel and the trousers of his bright green suit had certainly seen better days; instead of a jacket he wore a stained vest, over which red braces sought to keep at bay a spreading gut. He was probably the most degenerate example of any of the Races of Widergard I had ever come across; and I’ve seen a troll in a pink trouser suit, and met goblins who mixed stripes with checks and topped it off with flares and platform shoes.

‘Wasa matter, musclebound, dropped yer axe on yer foot?’

The pixie had a surprisingly deep voice, for someone at home in a birdcage. Not that I had any experience with the pix. Some experts considered that they were amongst the very first, if not the first, of the races to settle in Widergard. Others thought that they were all a figment of the earliest elves’ imaginations – come magically to life. They were certainly now very elusive, seldom seen in public life, even by the elves. This led to all sorts of stories about them. Some people thought they had wings, some people said they lived off nectar and dew, but no people I had ever met had ever mentioned that they had a body odour problem.

‘Pix are lucky you know,’ the gnome commented, by way of some kind of an explanation. ‘It’s just that Wilmer here, his luck is kinda messy.’

Wilmer seemed to take exception to that. He donned a ridiculous pointed hat, at least two sizes too small, threw down his scroll, stuck out his tongue and said, ‘Nice to meet you, fat boy,’ and then disappeared.

‘Neat trick,’ I said, with a grin.

‘Yes,’ said the gnome. ‘Apart from the elves, the pix are the only race that can claim to have what are normally considered magical powers. They aren’t really of course, but the pix’s extra abilities, like their incredible sense of smell, are very useful. For example, Wilmer has already given you the once over and said that you are not carrying any concealed weapons.’

‘He missed the axe,’ I said, coughing and pointedly raising the shaft at my side.

‘Not at all. Do you think, given the arrangement of the room, that it would do you much good?’

He was right. All the piles of rubbish and clutter made it just about impossible to attempt even a half-hearted lunge, let alone get up a good swing. Also, all the rubbish provided numerous hiding places for a gnome of his stature.

‘You’re cautious,’ I said.

‘Given the atmosphere in the Citadel this summer, and some of the attacks being made on gnome property, I think it pays. You should know, Master Dwarf, you look like you have been around.’

‘I’ve done places and been things.’

‘That is the trouble with travel.’ The gnome let out a sigh. ‘It does broaden the mind.’

‘Trouble?’

‘Yes.’ He found himself a stool and waved me in the direction of an old settle. I cleared myself a space with the axe, and perched warily at one end. ‘Trouble. Now, take me,’ he continued after re-lighting his pipe, the heavy leaf making my eyes smart in the enclosed space. ‘I’ve never travelled. Lived all my life here in Little Hundred and so, thankfully, my mind has remained focused, concentrated – unbroadened – and thus able to think in depth upon a single subject.’

‘Which is?’

‘Why, elves, Master Dwarf, as you well know. Why else would you be here?’

He offered his pipe, but I stayed on the side of caution and filled my own. ‘So, Arito, how did you get interested in elves?’

‘Always been interested. It’s in the family. We have records dating back to the very first Shire. Priceless they are. I was weaned on stories from these books, and many were the tales about elves, and I just became hooked. Fascinated I was, as a youth; I longed to see them, travel with them, be around them. I never did. Somehow the scrolls and parchments always seemed more interesting than the real thing.’

‘So, you became an expert on elf history instead?’

‘Yes, and it is not an easy subject. You would think, given their longevity, that it would be a simple matter. The question is, not what the elves know, but what they are willing to tell you. I think it is better to say that I have become an expert on elf history for the rest of Widergard. I am sure nothing I have to say would be of the slightest interest to any of the High Folk. But come, tell me, what aspect of elfdom interests you?’