The Office of His Majesty’s Special Investigators was founded more than two hundred years ago by King George IV, when he was still Prince Regent. Investigators were dispatched to Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Cardiff, to hunt out supernatural creatures and practitioners of witchcraft, all reporting back to the Chief Investigator in London.
Within a few years, it became apparent that a single investigator per city was woefully insufficient, and so regional offices were opened and organised in the model of the newly-formed Metropolitan Police. The Dublin office was also assigned a Resident Magistrate to rule on cases that could not be referred to existing local courts.
I joined Containment the next morning on a raid. For the previous two weeks we’d been working together to hunt a gang of human traffickers who had been using Midnight Doors to stay ahead of law enforcement. My first position with the OSI had been in Containment, and I enjoyed getting back to my roots and periodically helping them with operations. We kicked in a few non-magical doors but found nothing and were back in the office by lunch.
After I returned my door-kicking equipment to Containment, I took a few minutes to visit Murtagh in his office. I’d been putting off speaking to him for weeks, but with Tommy due to visit that evening, I knew I’d run out of time.
Murtagh’s office was at one end of Containment’s bullpen. It was wider than it was long but Murtagh had his desk positioned half-way down the long wall so, sitting behind it, he could see everything that happened through the long grilled window. And, of course, anyone in the bullpen could see him. I was reminded of my uncle’s “stoic overseer” theatrics.
When I found him, he was sitting at his desk, pecking away at an old-fashioned typewriter. Nobody was quite sure how old he was, and best guesses went from ‘hard-earned mid-forties’ to ‘spry early-sixties’. He shaved his head and every inch of exposed skin was tattooed with protective sigils. He was still wearing his door-kicking gear, but had removed his helmet and gloves. The latter were tucked inside the former, which was sitting upside-down on his desk. It rocked slightly with each careful keypress. “Vic! Forget something?”
“Just wanted a quick word. Sort of a sensitive subject?”
He frowned and turned to the window to glance out into the bullpen. It was empty, but he still gestured at me to close the door. “Hope it’s nothing serious?”
“I wanted to ask about your man Finlay. Has he been acting odd at all, over the last month or so?”
“He’s always been odd,” he replied with a beaming smile, before sensing my trepidation and dropping it. “No, nothing strange. Why?”
Murtagh’s office had no extra chairs, so I took a perch on the corner of his desk after a quick test of its weight. “The Buckley Fae we took in after New Year’s. He said some strange things before he… before he passed. Finlay was there and I think he heard too, even though he said he didn’t. He’s been acting weird towards me all month.”
“Hmph. Not like Finlay to believe fae nonsense. What did he say, specifically?”
This was the moment I’d been dreading and until this moment, I hadn’t quite decided how honest I was going to be. “Just a lot of the usual trickster stuff,” I heard myself say. “Predictions of doom and gloom. ‘A troll will bring about catastrophe’ was the jist.”
He had no eyebrows, so he narrowed the tattoos above his eyes instead. “You didn’t report this?”
“Didn’t see the point. Dying fae just rattling off nonsense to get under my skin. Finlay didn’t say anything?”
“No… but I can speak to him if you want.”
“If you’d like. But I have a cousin coming in tonight for a statement, and I saw he’s been added to the roster for department security this evening. Last minute. If he’s planning something, or running his own investigation…”
Murtagh stood. “You’re right to bring this to me. He's a bit of a hothead. May have got it into his head to check into things on his own. Can’t have that.”
No, we certainly can’t have department employees holding back vital information and running around conducting their own investigations.
Tommy arrived for his 6:00 pm appointment promptly at 7:45. Finlay hadn’t been removed from the security roster, but I saw that Murtagh had assigned Putter Ogbonna to reception with him. It was a smart move. Ogbonna was everyone’s favourite co-worker; a tiny bundle of smiles and sunny optimism, but she could handle herself in a fight better than colleagues with a foot of height and five stone of muscle on her. She’d been awarded her nickname by the office rumour mill, which claimed that she once put down a golem with nothing but a golf club. If Finlay planned to make trouble around Tommy, she was the perfect counter.
Cormac and I were killing time with a board game when they escorted Tommy to my desk. Tommy’s glamour was easily as good as mine. Blood magic glamours were rare, so most trolls used 2nd- or 3rd-generation hand-me-downs, or cheap glamours that didn’t change the wearer’s appearance as much as obscure it. But when I looked up from my assortment of little plastic pieces, even I couldn’t tell they hadn’t brought a complete stranger to see us. Flanked by Finlay and Ogbonna was a tall and handsome blond-haired and bearded man I’d never seen before. If my glamour made me that actor from that terrible superhero movie, Tommy’s made him the guy he fought in the sequel that somehow made another billion dollars.
He smiled down at us and spread his hands in one of those ‘Well, I’m here’ gestures. “Well, I’m here. Dad said you needed to speak to me?”
I folded the hand of cards I’d been holding and shrugged sadly to Cormac. “I guess the game is cancelled.”
“But I was about to win,” Cormac sputtered.
“I guess we’ll never know. Amina, is Interview Room One free?”
Of course it was. It was 7:45 on a Tuesday evening. Even the cleaning staff had left for the night. Ogbonna took the cue, though, and replied, “I believe so, sir. Shall I escort him there for you?”
“Please. And bring him tea? Coffee?” This was aimed at Tommy.
“Neither is fine. I won’t be here long.”
“Tea for me, please, Putter,” said Cormac, tidying away the game.
She beamed and led Tommy away. Finlay broke eye contact with me a second later and turned to follow.
When Cormac and I entered Interview One a few minutes later, Tommy had removed his glamour and was reclining in the suspects’ chair with his ankles propped on the table. He was a virtual copy of his father, just with a few less scars and about two more ears. Before we could even sit, he announced, “This is about a truck?”
I swept his feet back onto the floor and took a seat opposite him. “In a way. We’re trying to pin down the location of one of the new fleet. It was spotted on Friday night, somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Well, mine was in Salthill.”
“Yours?” asked Cormac, taking a position in the corner of the room. “I thought they all belonged to your dad.”
He sighed theatrically. “Truck number one, which has been in my care for the last nine days, was parked outside a bed-and-breakfast in Salthill last Friday night. We done?”
“Not quite,” I said. “We want to ask about the GPS systems used to track the fleet.”
“What’s to ask? Nobody is stealing those trucks without industrial equipment. Dad and I installed the GPS ourselves. They’re state of the art and sealed inside a box welded to the chassis. Even without power, they’ll run for about three or four days off their batteries.”
“We have reason to believe the GPS tracker on one of the trucks was tampered with. The truck was in Louth but the tracker had it miles away. Any idea how that happened?” I asked.
“Magic?” He threw an arm towards Cormac in the corner. “Ask the spellweaver there. It’s way outside my area.”
“The sealed boxes can be opened, right? Matt says both you and he have keys. You could pop the tracker out and leave it behind while you go off, doing who-knows-what.”
“Driving to Louth? To do what? What the actual fuck is this about?” He leaned in as he spoke, and I could see the concern in his eyes. My lie about Matt had clearly rattled him.
I figured he was in just the right place to be overwhelmed by facts. “Just outside Dundalk, about ten o’clock on Friday night, two meth-heads killed each other in a drug deal gone wrong. They left a mountain of drugs and a big bag full of cash. A nearby troll presumably heard the gunshots so walked over and found the cash. Then walked away with the money. Or rather, he drove away with it in one of Uncle Matt’s trucks. We checked the CCTV of Clancy Trucking. The ones that weren’t in England were parked there all night. We know it was the truck checked out by you or by Robin or by James Ó’Báin.”
Tommy flopped back in his chair. “Shiiit.”
Cormac took a seat next to me. “There’s already been a deal made. If the money is returned - all of it - there’ll be no prosecution.”
“We know you have a key to unhook the GPS,” I pressed. “Why’d you take it? What other business are you running you don’t want Matt to know about?”
Tommy sat bolt upright again. “I never said I had a key!”
“But we all know you do. Why’d you take it?”
“I didn’t take it. Hang on,” I could see realisation dawn in his eyes. “I had an extra copy made. Nothing was ‘taken’. What exactly did Dad tell you?”
I shrugged and admitted, “You got me. Matt doesn’t know you have a key. And he won’t find out if you tell me what you want it for.”
Tommy gripped the bar we handcuffed our more unruly suspects to and twisted. I could hear the wood of the table creaking underneath. “You’re a fucker, Grey, you know that? Clanless bastard.”
Cormac laid one hand on my elbow and one on the table between me and Tommy. “Let’s chill things down a bit. We just have a few questions and then you can go. We don’t work for your Dad. If what you tell us isn’t relevant to the case, it won’t go beyond these walls.”
“Listen, spellweaver, I don’t have to tell you shit,” he growled as he raised a finger to Cormac.
I reached over the table and grabbed the proffered finger with my fist. “We’re law enforcement and you’re in our territory, so you have to tell us whatever the hell we damn well want. And if you insult my friend again, I’ll make sure you don’t leave here until your Dad comes down and posts bail while you apologise to the Magistrate for disrespecting his home.” For good measure, I put just enough pressure on his finger to make one of the knuckles bend slightly in the wrong direction.
Tommy’s demeanor suddenly changed and he tried to withdraw his hand. On the second attempt, I let him. “Look, this money stuff is nothing to do with me. I just have a key because I sometimes took a truck on the weekends. I had a deal with the White Clan. I buy booze and cigarettes in the North and ship ‘em down to the Whites who sell ‘em on.”
“Tobacco and alcohol smuggling? That’s it? Just avoiding some import duty?”
“Well, it may not all be legally acquired by the guys I buy from. Pretty profitable if you can ship it by the truckload. I make six grand on a single trip.”
“And were you doing that this weekend?”
“No, haven’t done it in months.”
“Why not?”
“Dunno. Ask the Whites. They phone me when they need a shipment, but they haven’t called in ages.”
“So where were you on Friday?”
“I told you. I was in fucking Galway. I didn’t even bring the key to the GPS yoke. It’s in my locker at work.”
“Who knows you keep it there?”
“I didn’t know anyone knew I even had one! Look, how much money are we talking about?”
I thought for a second before answering. “Four hundred grand and change.”
“Ah, Jesus, I wouldn’t lie about that. That’s nothing.”
“You regularly go behind your dad’s back for six grand. And you know how he feels about independent operations behind his back.”
“That’s just pocket change, you know? Spending money. And I’m really only doing it to make connections with the other Clans. I have to think about the future. I’ll be chief one day, and this sorta stuff is good for the reputation. But fuck, if you need four hundred grand, ye can have it. Gimme a day to sell some stuff.”
We let him leave a short time later. Cormac took him from the interview room and I could see Ogbonna in the corridor, waiting to escort him out of the offices. I was alone, so sat on the table and swung my legs idly a few times before addressing my reflection in the two-way mirror.
“You get all that?”
My reflection didn’t answer.
“Look,” I said, “I know this whole situation is weird. But if you know me at all, you know you can trust me about this. We can work together. Just agree to keep things between us for now, and I’ll read you in on what I learn. You do the same for me?”
Silence from the mirror again.
“Knock once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’.”
My reflection jumped and wavered as Finlay knocked heavily on the other side of the glass. I waited for a second knock, but all I heard was the slam of a door.
“It has to be Robin, right?” said Cormac. “He’s the only one without a masking glamour. Tommy or James would have shown on the CCTV looking like, well, people. Robin’s makes him all blurry.”
“James only has his glamour a few months, which means he probably has his old one still,” I replied. “And I guarantee that Tommy has a whole box of them; different types and appearances to suit his moods. Did you hear him offering to pay back the four hundred k? The fuckin’ nerve.”
I was back at my desk, typing a summary of the interview before going home. Cormac was hanging around. I never saw him doing any paperwork, but he always seemed to have it done. I had a brief image of him waving a wand and making pens come to life and dance around on their own, filling in GC-109 forms, like a substandard Disney movie.
“You think he drove all the way back from Galway on Friday evening?”
“Hopefully, we hear back from the traffic corps tomorrow. That’ll make this a lot easier.” We had tasked them with checking every traffic camera within fifty miles of Dundalk, to try and find other appearances of the truck.
“Thanks, by the way.”
I looked up from my keyboard in surprise. “For what?”
“When he got all angry and pointy, you stood up to him. You called me a friend.”
“We’re allowed lie to suspects during an interview. It’s in the Constitution or something.”
“You can lie to suspects and even yourself. But we both know the truth.” He nodded conspiratorially. “Deep down.”
“If you don’t fuck off out of my sight, you’ll be found deep down a shallow hole.”
He grabbed his coat from a chair and swirled it around his head as he donned it and left. “Bye, friend. See you tomorrow, friend,” he shouted from the door, before ducking out.
I waited until he was gone, and gave it a few minutes so I could be sure he wasn’t coming back. Then I stood, lifted his desk, and carried it to the furthest corner of the office from my own.
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