Chapter Twenty-three

Griffin

The corridor of the station was silent and empty, not a soul to be seen as Ben and I traversed it. Mind, that was probably because we'd done our best to avoid bumping into anyone—Ben's route deliberately bypassing the main office. He held up a hand as we reached the left turn before the custody cells, a strip light flickering above our heads as he peered around the corner before giving the all clear signal.

"How do you know he's still here and they haven't transported him to the morgue already?" I whispered.

"It's the middle of the night," Ben replied, his voice pitched equally low. "Nothing happens that fast in the middle of the night. Besides, we know where Patrick is. He'd want to look at the body first. Check for any signs of foul play."

"Foul play?"

Ben nodded. "We can't rule it out. Did Dougie strike you as someone who wanted to kill himself? "

I thought about it, picturing the different sides I'd seen to him during our brief acquaintance. The sweet boy who'd sat and drunk tea with us definitely hadn't come across as suicidal. The crazed man in Eclipse waving a knife around had seemed more keen on hurting other people than he had himself. And the more composed version I'd watched being interviewed had demonstrated no signs of depression. In fact, he'd seemed quite pleased with himself. He'd enjoyed having one over on the police and forcing them to root out his secrets. Like people finally taking notice of him made him feel important. Or at least that was my reading of the situation. Ben's might differ. "You might have a point," I admitted. "That's why you're the detective and I'm just the hired help."

Ben shot me a look of fondness that despite all the crap that had happened tonight, reminded me that there was at least one person on my side. "I really want to marry you," I said, the words coming out before I could think better of them.

Ben gave a quiet laugh. "Now?"

A door lay at the end of the corridor, the room silent. We were hoping—although hoping seemed a strange word to use—that the room would contain our second dead body of the night. As dates went, this had to be the shittiest. "Maybe not now. But soon."

"Soon," Ben echoed as he approached the door. This was his workplace, so it wasn't as if he couldn't be back here. However, for what we had planned, we needed to be alone, and we needed it to stay that way for as long as possible. I hung back as Ben opened the door, only joining him and stepping inside when Ben beckoned me to do so.

Despite expecting it, the body on the narrow bed came as a shock. Whatever his state of mind, Dougie had always been so animated. Now, he was still. I examined the red mark around his neck while Ben closed and locked the door. It supported the story of him having hung himself, but that didn't mean someone else couldn't have strung him up. It was easy enough to make something look like an accident.

Ben might have locked the door, but the room had windows and no blinds. Therefore, the probability of us pulling this off with no one happening along and discovering us was slim to non-existent. We stared at each other, both presumably thinking the same thing, that there was no coming back from this. "You could lose your license," Ben finally pointed out.

"I could." I slid my ‘borrowed' scissors from Aaron's house out of my pocket. I healed fast, but not that fast, the palm I'd sliced open less than an hour ago still bearing a jagged red line across it. It was lucky then that I had another. "Cade's had practice at getting licenses back recently. He should be good at it."

"And if he can't get it back?"

I shrugged. A few years ago, the idea of losing my license to practice necromancy would have seemed like a significant loss, but I'd spent the last few years suffering an even greater loss: living without Ben. It was just a job. And not one most people would view as that pleasant. I paused with the blade of the scissors resting against my palm. "What about you? You could lose your job."

Ben reached up to massage the back of his neck, his expression contemplative. "Before this case, I would have said nothing was worth losing my job over. Now, I don't care." His voice cracked. "I can't visit any more crime scenes like tonight's. I might be a homicide detective, but even I have my limits and I've reached it. "

I wanted to take him in my arms and tell him everything would be alright, but it wasn't a promise I could keep. The only thing I could do was bring Dougie back so he could question him. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." No crack in his voice this time, just a quiet confidence that reassured me he was set on this. I pressed down, digging the scissors into my palm for the second time that night. There were a lot of people who'd have something to say about what we were about to do. Baros. Cade. The necromancy council. Dougie's mother. I just hoped the end would justify the means.

"Keep your fingers crossed it'll work," I said as I unbuttoned Dougie's shirt and drew the sigil on his chest. I'd never brought two corpses back in a single night, and I could already feel the toll that raising one without taking energy from the ley lines had wrought. Two would leave me struggling.

I gave consideration to calling someone instead. Who, though? Calisto? There was no way the young necromancer would be up for breaking any rules, no matter how polite and amenable he might be. John? Yeah, right? Like he'd ever do me a favor. He'd probably tell me where I could stick that idea, and he'd be right to when I'd never given him the time of day. Besides, the council really would take his license away if he got caught in an unsanctioned act of necromancy for the second time in a matter of months. My replacement at the PPB? I didn't even know his name, never mind have his number.

"Griff?" There was a note of urgency in Ben's voice, a reminder that if we were doing this, we needed to be quick. At least my subject having all his fingers and being dressed made for a refreshing change. I had a feeling that if and when I did finally make it back to my day job, that I'd be counting my blessings far more than I ever had before.

My part done, I slumped against the wall while Ben confronted Dougie. The young man was still on the bed, but had pulled himself up to sitting. Ben pulled no punches, his eyes full of a fury the likes of which I'd never seen from him before.

"We know you weren't in this alone, that either you gave a false confession or you have an accomplice. Which is it? And don't even think about feeding me any bullshit."

Dougie blinked. His gaze found me, but I had nothing to offer in terms of reassurance. Nothing to offer in terms of anything. I felt like a wrung out dishcloth, the energy I'd expended in bringing back two corpses in quick succession, leaving me wanting to do nothing but go home and sleep.

Dougie shook his head. "I don't know… I'm confused." He moistened his lips, looking around the room as if searching for help from an unexpected source.

Ben tried another tack. "That night at Eclipse… When you entered the club, you didn't have a knife. We know you didn't because the CCTV shows there's nowhere you could have hidden it. Where did it come from?"

I slid down the wall until my arse met the floor, relief flooding through me at no longer having to support my own body weight. "Just tell him what he needs to know, Dougie. We've gone way past you lying or covering for anyone." That was an understatement, but we had to operate under the assumption that Dougie didn't know he'd killed himself. Would Ben tell him? Possibly. But only as a last resort. Ben had just as many flaws as the next man, but being deliberately cruel wasn't one of them.

"I got the knife from a guy at the club," Dougie said, his voice carrying a distinct tremor. "He told me what he wanted me to do."

The weariness lifted from Ben's shoulders at the nugget of truth from Dougie's lips, his back straightening. "What guy? What was his name? Had you met him before? What did he look like?"

Dougie shook his head. "I'd seen him in there before, but he was never interested in me. Not until that night, anyway. He cornered me in the toilet and told me it was time to make people sit up and take notice of me. I asked him how and he gave me the knife." He shook his head, his expression bemused. "He told me he knew who I was and what I'd done, that it was time to give myself up. He said I was a sick bastard, that I must be to remove their fingers and to use their blood to draw the symbols on the wall." His head dropped forward, his hair falling over his brow. "I told him I couldn't have done it, that I'd loved Rupert even after he wanted nothing to do with me, but he insisted it was me."

"And you believed him?" Ben asked.

"I don't know." Dougie's expression was pained. "I don't know anything anymore. I just want it all to go away. I don't want my mum to have to deal with this. She deserves better."

Hence him taking such drastic action. He'd obviously decided the only way to spare her was to take himself out of the equation. If only he'd told the truth earlier. Hard to do, though, when you struggled to grasp what was real and what wasn't .

He'd been the perfect fall guy for Satanic Romeo, the murderer obviously taking one look at him and knowing that Dougie would do whatever he'd asked. Had he still been in the club, laughing, when it had all kicked off? Ben and I could have walked straight past him and never known it.

A shadow in the corridor made me jerk my gaze to the window in time to see a uniformed officer peer through it, his hands cupped around his face to cut out the extraneous light. "Ben!" I warned.

He turned his head as the man tried the door, the man's lips moving, but the glass in the windows too thick for him to make himself heard. He gestured for Ben to open the door, but Ben shook his head, turning his attention back to Dougie and speaking faster. "What did he look like?"

It was the same question Ben kept asking that we never got a satisfactory answer to. Most of the victims had met him far too close to their death to remember. Rupert's memories had been hazy and at that point, we hadn't even been sure the guy he'd met in the club had been the same one he'd brought home. The two could have been unrelated. Aaron, though, had been the outlier, able to recall things far more clearly. But we'd still got nothing more than someone generically good looking, a description that could have fit at least half the men in Eclipse.

"Great smile," Dougie said, something about his answer seeming to amuse him before he straightened his expression. "And he had a tattoo here." He slid his hand to his chest and tapped just below his collarbone on the left-hand side.

Footsteps sounded outside in the corridor, one officer having turned to four. Despite feeling faint, I levered myself to my feet. If I was about to be arrested, it seemed prudent to at least be on my feet for it .

"What was the tattoo of?" Ben asked as a key was fitted into the door. "Quickly."

Dougie's brow furrowed. "A… humming bird. Just black ink. No color. I don't think I was supposed to see it, but his shirt was hanging open."

The door opened, uniformed officers erupting into the room like a plague of locusts. And in their wake was Baros, the DCS's expression one of thunder. "What in the name of all that's holy do you think you're doing?"

Ben stood tall, refusing to be cowed by Baros' fury. "What am I doing? Finding out the truth, that's what. I'm trying to stop the murders before anyone else gets slaughtered and we have a large, horned problem on our hands."

"There are rules," Baros squeezed out between gritted teeth, "as you very well know." He waved a hand in Dougie's direction, his gaze not lifting any higher than Dougie's chest, eye contact apparently too difficult for him. "And this. This isn't playing by the rules. It's not even close."

Fury glittered in Ben's eyes and I'd never loved him more. I hadn't believed him before when he said that if he lost his job, he'd live with it. Now, I did. "Fuck the rules!" Ben said. "The powers that be don't get to bring in a necromancer and then decide when that area of enquiry has run its course. Not when it can make the difference to finding this bastard. I had a rare talent at my fingertips and I decided to use it." He tipped his chin up and met Baros' stare without blinking. "Twice."

Baros scanned the room, his gaze skimming over me before settling on the uniformed officers. Most of them were staring open-mouthed at Dougie, seemingly at a loss to what they were supposed to do with a dead suspect who'd come back to life .

Baros let out a sharp breath as he faced Ben once more. "I need you in my office. Not when you feel like it. Not in five minutes. Now."

A muscle twitched in Ben's cheek, but he nodded. He knew when he was beaten. He'd known that as soon as the door opened that his opportunity to ask questions of Dougie was over, that the DCS wouldn't—couldn't—let it continue.

Disapproval came off Baros in waves as he focused on me. "Make sure he's not left in here." I raised an eyebrow at his tone, but didn't comment. I was already skating on thin ice and arguing would only make it worse. Two of the officers dragged their gaze away from Dougie for long enough to flank me, taking hold of an arm each. I was still weak and shaky enough to be glad of the support.

"Are we arresting him?" one of them asked.

The look in Baros' eyes said that nothing would please him more.

Ben opened his mouth to defend me, but a shake of my head had him closing it again.

Baros' scrutiny of me went on for long enough that it went way past uncomfortable and became excruciating. Finally, he sighed. "There's no point. Cade greases far too many palms to make it stick for more than a few hours. Just… get him out of my sight."

He made to depart, one officer coughing before he could. "What do we do about…?" He didn't seem to want to use Dougie's name, jerking his head in his direction instead.

I did speak up then. I was the expert, after all. "Make him comfortable. Get him whatever he wants and take him wherever he wants to go. Let him call his mother if he wants to. "

Dougie brightened at that. "Can I? And I'd kill for a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea." He grimaced when he realized what he'd said. "Not actually kill. It's just, you know, a turn of phrase."

There was a certain irony to the person who'd confessed to several killings they hadn't done balking at a slip of the tongue. Were I not already being escorted out of the room, I might have pointed it out. Baros and Ben were a few steps ahead of me, Ben following his superior officer obediently. My escorts didn't release their iron grip on my biceps until we were a few corridors away. I used my newfound freedom to catch up with Ben before he reached Baros' office, the DCS already having disappeared inside.

"I'm coming with you. I'm not leaving you to face him alone."

Ben shook his head as he pulled me to one side. "Don't be stupid! The only thing that'll happen if you go in there is that he'll change his mind about arresting you. And Cade might be Billy Big Bollocks, but even he can't just click his fingers and get you released in seconds. They can keep you for twenty-four hours without charge, and trust me, it's a tactic we're happy to do. I've done it myself enough times."

The idea of being stuck in a custody cell for twenty-four hours held little appeal. "I don't like the idea of you in there all on your own when we both did it."

Ben rolled his eyes. "I'm a big boy."

"You are." I let my gaze drop to his crotch just so he couldn't possibly miss the double entendre.

His eyes might have flashed a warning, but it was very much at odds with the smile on his lips .

"DCI Weaver! Perhaps you'd like me to explain the meaning of the word NOW in simpler terms you can understand, because you seem to be having trouble with it."

Ben gave me a little shove. "Go home and get some sleep. I'll call you in the morning and let you know what was said."

I checked my watch and grimaced when I saw it was nearly five. It would be light soon. "It is the morning."

"WEAVER!"

Ben gave me another shove, this one more insistent. "Go. And don't walk home. Get a cab. You're in no fit state to be walking."

I backed off a few steps. "Good luck."

Ben sighed, his gaze straying toward the open office door. "Thanks. I think I'm going to need it."

Despite my misgivings, I did what he'd said and left him to it. It wasn't until I stepped outside that I allowed myself to think about what the night had brought. Not the good stuff. I would think about being engaged again later. No, I thought about the bad stuff. Another murder and Dougie's suicide. The latter had me looking back at the station. Was he still alive? Would they tell him what he'd done? I doubted it. Who wanted to have that conversation? They'd just wait. I only hoped they'd do what I'd said and give him anything he wanted until it happened.