Page 2 of Veiled Justice (The Other Detective #1)

Champagne, caviar and a corpse – the glittering masquerade ball had descended into deadly scandal.

I’d already donned gloves and cordoned off the area, so I set down my well-worn briefcase and knelt next to the body.

I felt for a pulse. Rule one: always check the dead body really is dead.

The magical occupants of the Other realm could recover from a veritable tonne of injuries; even with blood pouring from every orifice, death was never a certainty.

I shook my head. No pulse. There would be no miracle for this poor ogre.

The blonde female was barely into adulthood and was dressed in black combat trousers and a black tank top.

Two large tusks protruded from her forehead and into her hairline, one in front of the other, but neither the tusks nor the metal mace by her side had any blood on them.

For whatever reason, despite being heavily armed she hadn’t fought her killer.

I opened my briefcase, retrieved my camera and took a few snaps of the scene, both close-ups and wide-angle. The Scene of Crime Officers - SOCO - would document everything when they arrived, but a contemporaneous record was preferable before anything was disturbed.

When I’d finished, I turned my attention to the body and took more close-up shots, this time of the many stab wounds that decorated her slowly greying flesh. She was short for an ogre, only around six foot three, maybe six foot four at the most.

I set down the camera and searched the body.

I found a phone, some ID and a plethora of weaponry.

Besides the mace and the tusks, she had a gun on her left hip, a knife on her right hip and another knife strapped to her ankle.

Most of her weapons were visible, which led me to believe she’d been here acting as a bodyguard.

Dressed like that, she sure as hell hadn’t been a guest at this pompous affair.

The area was lit by oil tiki torches, which I’d been assured had been in situ when the dead body had been found; they had been staked around the body like points on a pentagram. The moon was full and vibrant and that, combined with the torches, provided a creepy but well-lit crime scene.

I checked the victim’s ID under the flickering orange light: Helga Jónson. When I looked at her date of birth and did some maths, my stomach clenched: she was only just eighteen. This had probably been one of her first bodyguarding jobs – and something had gone terribly wrong.

Helga lay in a pool of crimson blood; without turning her over, I could count at least fifteen places where she’d been stabbed. The wounds had stopped leaking but her body was still warm and supple. She hadn’t been dead for long.

Like most ogres, one of her limbs was particularly misshapen. Her right arm was overly large, and it was from that side that a finger had been severed. I grimaced: had it been taken by the killer as a trophy? The removal was recent, with blood coagulating on the stump.

I picked up the phone I’d found on her and tried facial recognition by holding it above Helga’s face.

When that didn’t work, I tried her fingerprints, but that failed too; either she’d used her missing pinky, the phone wasn’t hers, or she hadn’t set up biometrics and preferred to tap in a PIN. Plenty of people did.

I sealed up Helga’s phone and ID in separate evidence bags, dated, signed and labelled them, then put them into the evidence box.

Since the phone was password protected, I’d have to pass it on to my tech guy, Ji-ho Lee.

People didn’t tend to write down their phone passwords in the same way that they did their computer ones, but perhaps her parents would know her password or code.

It was unlikely but possible; if they didn’t, Lee would sort me out.

I didn’t need any of the potions in my briefcase to test for the presence of blood: there was plenty visible here and all of it appeared to be the ogre’s. It pooled directly around her and, in the flickering light I couldn’t see a single drop anywhere else. SOCO would double-check.

It was possible that the scene had been tidied up since there were no drips from the knife that had been used to stab her; either the killer had wiped the blade afterwards – in which case we were probably looking at a professional – or the killer had cleaned up – in which case we were looking at an amateur.

At this stage, I couldn’t rule out either option.

I lifted Helga’s hands and checked her fingers.

No defensive wounds, no strands of hair in her fingers or skin under her nails.

She hadn’t fought her killer and, since she was an ogre, that meant she must have been incapacitated in some way.

We wouldn’t know whether it was by a spell or a potion until we’d run toxicology, but something had stopped the battle-trained warrior from defending herself.

Her nose looked freshly broken, too, and a little blood remained around her nostrils.

Someone had wiped her face – but why? To stage the body?

The circle of lights added a certain amount of drama and that said premeditated to me.

I turned to Detective Channing. ‘Get me a guest list,’ I ordered crisply. This had been a fully Other gathering: all of the attendees that I’d seen were magical – dryads, fire elementals, the ogre.

At least I didn’t have the added pressure of trying to tidy the scene before humans stumbled on it. Quintos had anti-human wards in place that directed the unknowing and unmagical elsewhere. I’d felt them skim over me as I’d arrived, like fingers tapping on my scalp.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Channing nodded briskly before hesitating. ‘And how do I get the list?’

I swallowed a sigh and mentally cursed my boss, Detective Superintendent Thackeray, for lumbering me with a new partner to train.

I was used to working solo and that was the way I preferred it.

‘Ask the organiser,’ I said as patiently as I could.

‘They’ll have had one for the door.’ The Quintos’s Charity Masquerade Ball was invitation only and I had no doubt they’d have insisted on printing gilt-edged invites for entry.

Channing looked nervous. ‘You mean speak to Mr Quintos?’

I could understand his trepidation: Mr Quintos owned and ran Quintos Pharma, a company that had so many politicians in its pocket that he could probably sway any vote of the Symposium exactly the way he wanted.

And that was a problem because the Symposium ran the Connection, the governing body for all supernatural beings in the magical realm known as the Other.

The Connection was the equivalent of magical law enforcement, and the Symposium was the government.

As an Inspector, the former were my employer but the latter were my boss.

There was little to no separation between the two powers, which meant that corruption was rampant.

No doubt I’d soon have the higher-ups breathing down my neck to shut this case down quickly and quietly.

The clock was already ticking loudly in my head; whether or not the killer was found, they’d want me to find someone to arrest. But I wouldn’t arrest someone innocent, so that meant I had to find the real killer – and soon.

This wasn’t a case I could afford to let run cold because my damned brother had been the one to find the body.

If the Connection was looking for a scapegoat, there was an obvious one right there: Rupert.

And if I wouldn’t ‘shut’ the case, they’d bring in another Inspector who would, and Rupert would be dead or in jail quicker than I could say ‘fall guy’.

‘No,’ I said quickly to Channing, I’d tackle Quintos myself. ‘Leave Mr Quintos to me. He’ll have an event organiser. Track them down. Discreetly.’

‘Got it.’ Channing walked off briskly, just as Ed joined me.

Ed was a SOCO and we worked together almost exclusively.

Like me, he was a cross-over: he worked the same job in the non-magical world – the Common realm – as well as the magical one.

With this death being a wholly Other issue, I’d bypassed the Common SOCOs and tagged him directly. This was an ‘us’ problem.

The Connection hired many people to do both roles because it was essential to continue to cover up the existence of a magical realm, especially in the digital age.

Admittedly, the Other realm could protect itself to a degree: if a human saw a centaur, they’d see a horse; if they saw a griffin, they’d see an eagle.

If they saw a wizard – like me – using the Intention and Release, they’d just assume a breeze had sent something flying into my hand.

The Other worked hard to give Common folk a non-magical explanation for what they saw, but if they saw too much the veil would be lifted and we’d have a problem that even a little mind-wiping couldn’t fix.

The morality of such actions was rarely debated; the secrecy of the Other realm was sacrosanct.

‘All right.’ Ed scrubbed a gloved hand across his face. ‘What have we got?’ He was a mousy-haired guy with a beer belly and a dark sense of humour. I liked him as much as I liked anyone.

‘An ogre.’

‘An ogre?’ he parroted back in surprise. ‘I thought there was only one dead body.’

‘There is.’

‘Huh. Something is off then. They don’t die easily.’

‘No, and this lady didn’t, either. Not a nice way to go – multiple stab wounds, no sign of a fight.’

Ed’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Potion or spell?’

‘Nothing conclusive either way.’

‘All right. I’ll dig in.’ He stepped closer to the scene, pulled his camera from around his waist and clicked a few wide-angle photographs of the scene at a distance before moving in closer. ‘No murder weapon?’ he called back to me.

I went towards him so we didn’t have to holler about the death. Even though we were in the garden and most of the guests were inside the hall, plenty of magical creatures had exceptional hearing – including ogres. We didn’t need to make it easy for them.

‘No. The killer took the murder weapon with them, along with one of her fingers.’ I crouched next to Helga and pointed to her right hand, drawing attention to the missing pinky finger.

Ed grimaced. ‘People are sick.’ He slid me a glance. ‘You and I both know it’s never a good sign when they take trophies.’

I suppressed a grimace of my own. He was absolutely right.

‘Trophies!’ Loki squawked as he flew down low and settled on a bush next to the body.

Ed blinked at the white, dove-like bird. ‘You kept it?’

I gave a one-shouldered shrug. I’d found the caladrius at another crime scene where Ed had assisted me.

The talking bird had helped me find the killer and for some reason he’d stuck around after that.

Loki was a total pain in the arse but I had yet to work out how to stop him from following me around.

He was needy as fuck. And he was fast, too.

‘More like he kept me,’ I admitted.

‘Pigdog,’ Loki said as he flew to my shoulder and settled like a piratical parrot.

Ed snickered. ‘I really like him, Stacy.’

‘Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,’ I groused.

A peacock strutted into our part of the garden and promptly fanned out his feathers like he was getting his best flirt on. Loki made a derisory sound. ‘Slut.’

‘Just because he’s dressed nice, doesn’t mean he wants it.’ Ed wagged his finger at Loki. ‘No means no, bird.’ He looked from my diminutive bird to the far larger peacock. ‘Plus, there’s a size issue with you two guys.’

‘Dick issue, too,’ Loki snorted.

‘Hey!’ Ed said sharply. ‘Two guys can rub dicks together if they want.’

I studied Ed. ‘You know that’s not how two guys have sex, right?’

‘Well, that’s not the only way.’ Ed winked. ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of frottage.’

I blew out a breath; we’d got derailed. ‘I don’t quite know how we got here but let’s focus on the dead girl, shall we? I’ve called the ME – Dr Potter is inbound.’

Dr Kate Potter was my favourite medical examiner and, like me and Ed, she was an Other specialist. She attended Other crime scenes to verify cause of death and she would perform an autopsy if it were required.

A lot of Other deaths required autopsies; there were just too many ways we could die that weren’t obvious on a visual inspection.

Dr Potter, Ed and I worked together to keep the magical Other realm hidden from the Common realm.

Some days it was easier than others; today, despite the number of guests at the ball, it would be easier.

Since everyone here was Other, I didn’t have to bend over backwards to hide the existence of magic.

Ed nodded. ‘Great. Kate’s one of the best around.’

Next to me, Loki looked over the body and ruffled his wings in agitation. ‘She is not fit as a flute,’ he said sadly.

‘Fit as a fiddle,’ I corrected before sighing. ‘No. She’s not.’ I turned back to Ed. ‘We’ll leave you to it. Dr Potter should be here soon.’

He gave me a mock salute. ‘Inspector Wise.’

I turned to the other pressing issue: my brother. Pale and visibly upset, Rupert was lurking in the shadows of the garden. He had a protective arm wrapped around his date, Ava Grey, who looked no less shaken.

If I didn’t get this case wrapped up, there was a very real chance my brother would go the same way as Helga and end up dead.

Because the Connection didn’t let their scapegoats live.