Note: After vowing to never self-publish again, and after being asked by one of you, dear readers, whether I might consider self-publishing, I broke my vow, proving yet again that never saying never is the wise thing to do. As a result, Fang in Fang — The Agency will be out as an e-book on September 27. I will still publish the chapters for free here but in case anyone wants to read the book in one go, you now have that option.
“Who’s this friend?”
Fros rubbed her forehead. The worm of a world-class migraine was beginning to burrow its way out behind it.
“It doesn’t matter, Jules. I’m really sorry about this but Jeremy was breaking the law.”
“Yeah,” Jules’s voice was low and bitter. “And if I hadn’t told you so you can go on and tell the FCA, I would’ve still got a job. Not the best job, sure, not even a reasonably good one but it paid the bills. And before you say anything about my parents, I don’t take money from them. Do you know how easy it is to find a job in this industry right now? It’s lmost as bad as in 2008.”
Fros winced. How about having to refuse jobs because you’re afraid you might get angry, breathe on someone and kill them, she wanted to say but bit her lips until they hurt.
“I’ll try to help. I’ll ask around.”
Jules made a noise – not quite a groan but not just a snort, either.
“Yeah, thanks. At least I know my former boss was a crook.”
“You already knew that,” Fros said, sensing a whiff of change. “That’s why you asked us to check him, right?”
“Yeah. And look where it got me.”
A thought struck Fros, killing the worm of migraine on impact.
“By the way, don’t take this as a hint or anything but what do you think people would pay for something like what we did the other night? This sort of investigation?”
“You’re not asking me to pay you, are you?” Incredulity was so heavy on Jules’s words they fell like stones on Fros’s ear.
“No, no, of course not. No. But I’m considering a career change, hypothetically. So I was wondering…”
“You want to become a private investigator?”
“Maybe,” Fros said guardedly. After all, Peter had looked deadly serious when he’d talked about that the other night after they’d cornered Jeremy. They had a couple of extra skills that would come in handy in investigations. And they worked well together, he had noted.
“You mean, I once tracked a killer thanks to the cheese he likes to eat and you caught a dishonest banker because you know about finance,” she’d said.
“You know what I mean,” Peter had said, stopping in the middle of the street. “We complement each other. Your nose and my powers of persuasion. Also your powers of persuasion and my contacts.”
“What powers of persuasion?”
Peter had laughed at that, heartily.
Oh, well, that’s great,” Jules said now. “I’ve opened your way to a whole new career. Call me if you need a secretary, then.” With that she hung up, robbing Fros of the opportunity to explain once again that it hadn’t been their goal to get her fired. Talk about powers of persuasion.
Fros had declined two job offers in the past two days. One was easy to decline – it came from the owner of a new vegan café and was going to involve not just food but people, too. The risk was too high even though the payment they offered was also high. The other offer was harder to refuse: a coffee and cocoa importer was expanding locally and was updating its website. Fros loved the smells of coffee and cocoa. On chocolate she was picky because not all chocolate was created equal but she could sniff coffee beans and cocoa powder all day, every day. But that involved people, too.
She logged into her bank account when Jules cut their conversation short, still feeling guilty about it all. She hadn’t been able to give Sam’s jobs back to her and now she’d cost someone else her job. Clearly, she had a knack. What this knack was for, besides separating people from their jobs, had yet to surface but there was something, Fros told herself as she looked at her balance.
It didn’t look well. Peter had insisted there was nothing wrong with her and she wasn’t endangering anyone but Fros had remained unconvinced. True, she had breathed in close proximity to that Jeremy guy but she had been calm. She couldn’t trust she would stay calm forever. In fact, she was quite sure she would not stay calm forever.
Sometimes the food she had to shoot annoyed her. More often, the people who hired her to shoot food annoyed her. The bitter taste she’d felt in her mouth the night when the drug dealer had died was a good indication of when annoyance became deadly but what if it did that in the middle of a photoshoot? It was one thing to find two people dead from a supposed overdose behind a night club and another to have them drop like flies at a vegan café.
Two thousand pounds and change, that’s what she had in her account. That would cover next month’s rent and some basics, nothing more. She either had to risk it or lose her house. Or she could go into business with Peter, ridiculous as it sounded, because she had a strong suspicion that his proximity – and his scent – had a calming effect. She wasn’t going to share this with him, because the man already had a healthy ego, but working with him could be safer than risking it in her current line of work.
There was only one way to find out if he had been serious about it and Fros set about doing just that. While she browsed her address book, Sam’s name flashed at her. She hadn’t called since her last visit which must have left her with certain doubts about Fros’s mental health. That was strange. Sam liked to talk on the phone even when nothing interesting was happening and now something definitely interesting had happened, at least from her perspective. Fros shook her head and tapped Peter’s number.
“Hey, I was just about to call you.”
She rolled her eyes.
“No need for this, I wasn’t sitting by the phone with bated breath.”
“But I was. I have a surprise for you.”
“Oh?”
“Yep. Are you busy right now?”
She considered lying, out of self-respect, because most people were busy at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday, but then decided there was no point in that.
“No.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
The building was wider than it was tall, with five floors that had rows of tall windows.
“We’re on the second floor,” Peter said and opened the door to the vast, brightly lit, high-ceilinged lobby.
“So you were serious,” Fros said, taking in the shiny surfaces, the smell of people being busy – and also anxious, happy, worried, angry, and sad – and the fact that, contrary to the regular rules of life summed up in the phrase “It sucks” she may have just landed a whole new career.
“Of course I was serious,” Peter said and pointed to the staircase. “I thought you wouldn’t like to use a lift so I picked the second floor.”
“Right. Thanks.” She wouldn’t want to use the lift, any lift. Lifts were death traps of miasma.
There was nobody else on the stairs but but there were people around them, hidden behind the frosted glass doors like the one Peter opened when they climbed the two flights of stairs and gestured Fros in.
“We’ll have the sign by the end of the week.”
“Sign?” Fros was having difficulty processing current events. Everything was happening too fast. Private investigators were supposed to take training courses, get licences, and wait for months to be allowed to practice their profession but, apparently, not in the UK. You could operate as a private investigator perfectly legally without a licence.
“The company sign.”
The door opened into a reception area that held a small semicircular metal reception desk near one wall and three round tables with four chairs around each scattered across the rest of the space.
“Oh. And what’s the company called?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.” Peter said with a grin. “This is supposed to be the reception area slash work area but I think we should get rid of the tables. Who works at a café table?”
“A lot of people,” Fros said and sniffed the air. “Normally at cafes.”
“Exactly. This is not a café. This is a reputable detective agency. We can keep the sofa, it looks appropriate,” he said and pointed to the long, green faux leather sofa that lined the far wall.
“Has there been a murder here recently?” Fros said.
“What?”
“There’s a smell.”
Peter sniffed and frowned.
“Smells like old blood.”
Fros nodded.
“It didn’t smell like that yesterday.” He rushed to a door to the right of the reception desk and pushed it open all the way. Behind him, Fros saw a piece of a grey wall, a dark pink padded chair and a human foot. The air filled with the stink of stale, rotting blood.
Peter walked into the room without a word. Fros pulled her scarf over her nose, which didn’t help a whole lot, and followed him.
Jason Colby lay on the white conference table spreadeagled, his eyes staring glassily at the flower mural on the wall to the left, his mouth hanging open. Blood had pooled around his head from the wide cut in his throat that looked like a huge red grin.
“What the hell is going on here?” Fros hissed, foregoing originality in favour of accuracy. Her pulse was thumping in her temples, the hairs on her body stood on end and the bitter taste of venom was back in her mouth.
“Leave the room,” Peter said without turning. “Walk out slowly and do not try to come back in.”
“What?”
“Go away, now.” There was a hoarse, ice-cold note in his voice and that note did it. Fros turned and strode out of the conference room with Colby’s corpse on the table, pulling the door closed behind her. She headed for the door that led out of the office and onto the stairs but stopped before she pulled it open. The bitter taste was still there. And out there she might run into people. Fros let go of the door and walked back into the reception area, anger simmering inside.
The smell of blood was a lot fainter here, overwhelmed by the smells of new plastic, new wood, and new metal. There was a counter with a sink and a kitchen island at one end of the reception-slash-work area. Fros turned on the cold water and watched it run for a few seconds. The smell of cold water cleared her nostrils and the bitter taste weakened but it did nothing to help her understand Peter’s strange behaviour. That hoarse voice put her in mind of a growling dog whose self-control was about to snap.
While Fros deliberated whether it would be smarter to go back into the conference room to see what Peter was doing there or stay put and wait until the venom went away before storming out, his scent was suddenly all around her. She spun around grabbing the first thing she saw, which happened to be a small glass jar with a metal top. Empty.
Peter raised his hands.
“It’s me. There’s no one else here.”
“I know it’s you,” Fros said. “But I didn’t know what you’d do.”
Embarrassment rippled his features and he even looked away for a moment.
“I don’t react very well to death,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Fros set the jar back next to its two identical twins by the sink.
Peter sighed.
“I only kill for food, Fros. I don’t kill for pleasure or any other reason people kill for. I realise how ridiculous it sounds but death makes me nervous and when I get nervous I get aggressive.”
“So, what, you would’ve attacked me if I hadn’t walked out?”
“Very likely, yes,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. I’m okay now.”
“Good to hear. We need to call the police,” Fros said. “Did you detect anything interesting around the body?”
He shook his head. The embarrassment had obviously developed an attachment to his face because it stayed there.
“I was a bit busy getting myself under control.” He took his phone out and hit a fast-dial button. “But we can go in now and have a look until the… Hello, I’d like to report a murder. My name is Peter Granger and I’m in my office at number one, Carter Lane.” Pause. “I don’t know the man,” he said and shot Fros a warning look. “But his body is in my conference room. There’s a lot of blood.” Pause. Nod. “Okay, we’ll be waiting.” He hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. “Come on, they’ll be here in about ten minutes. Let’s see what we can find until they arrive.”
“And you’re sure you’re okay?” Fros asked as they stopped in front of the closed door to the conference room.
“I think so.”
“Great,” she said with a sigh and pushed the door.
Fros had never examined a body and she had no idea what to look for in the way of clues. She felt stupid and useless walking around it and peering at parts of it. This whole idea with the private investigations business was ridiculous. They were playing detectives, they weren’t real detectives.
She reached the top of the table and the head with the gash in the neck. Peter was on the other side of the body doing exactly the same as Fros – peering at parts of it. Fros took a deep breath from the fold of her right elbow and leaned over the pale head and the glassy eyes. The wound had to be important. She peered at the gash stifling a shiver. She never wounded her prey. She wasn’t comfortable around wounds.
“No signs of vampire markings on this side,” Peter murmured.
Vampire markings. Vampires sometimes masked them by cutting their victim’s throat. Fros leaned closer to the red gash. It was wide and rough around the edges. It probably wasn’t made with a scalpel.
“Anything?” Peter asked and looked up. “They’re coming.”
“How did you know?”
“I heard the sirens.”
“I don’t think—” Near the end of the wound the flesh was rougher than the rest of the edge. Fros breathed from her elbow again and leaned even closer. One rough place near the upper edge and one rough place near the lower edge. “Come have a look.”
Peter bent over the body.
“Markings,” he said. “He was bitten but he wasn’t fed on.”
“How did you know?” The sirens were audible to her too, now. The police was here.
“There is too much blood, even if it was a quick snack.”
Fros straightened up.
“Well,” she said looking at the corpse of Sam’s former boss. “At least we found him.”
The detective that questioned them in the reception area while three crime scene investigators piled up in the small conference room was grey-haired and had bags under his eyes. Unfortunately, the eyes themselves were sharp.
“So you’ve never seen that man before?” he asked Peter.
Peter shook his head.
“Not until today.”
“And you?” The detective, who had introduced himself as Maxwell and who smelled reassuringly of freshly ironed clothes, turned to Fros.
“His name is Jason Colby,” she said. “He owns an advertising agency. He fired a friend of mine last week and I went to talk to him and try to change his mind.”
Maxwell waited.
“That’s all I know,” Fros said.
“It must have been a good friend,” he said. “Did you change his mind?”
“No.”
“And the name of your friend?”
Fros sighed. Of course the story would automatically make Sam a suspect.
“The name of my friend is Samantha Whittaker and she found a new job just a couple of days later so she couldn’t have killed him. A better-paying job.”
Maxwell wrote down Sam’s name.
“What did you and Colby talk about?”
“I asked him to reconsider his decision. Sam had told me somebody had framed her. They sent an embargoed press release to a journalist from her computer and she was blamed for the leak. She swears she didn’t do it and I believe her.”
Maxwell huffed.
“Advertising must be a fascinating business. Were you a colleague?”
“No, I’m a food photographer.”
“I see. So you went to talk to Colby about his decision to fire Ms. Whittaker and he refused, is that correct?”
“It is.” Peter’s eyes were boring into her but Fros ignored the wariness that radiated off him in waves. She was fine. She was in control. When the police had come, Fros had lingered in the conference room while Peter went to meet them. She had taken one long look at Jason’s body and had promised herself to get to the bottom of all this, whatever happened. Bursting with determination, she’d come out, not a hint of bitterness in her mouth. Maxwell’s freshly ironed clothes smell had helped. This was the scent of trustworthiness.
“And then what happened, Ms. Kirova?”
Fros blinked.
“Nothing,” she said with a shrug. “I went away and never saw him again. Sam called two days later to tell me about the new job.”
“Where is this new job?”
“Zippity. A bigger ad agency.”
Maxwell wrote that down in his notepad below Sam’s name.
A young female officer walked up to them.
“We’re ready to move him, sir.”
“Okay, Stevens, thank you.” Maxwell stood up slowly. He carried about forty pounds of excess weight, most of it concentrated in his midsection. “Well, if you remember anything else, give me a call.” He handed Fros a business card. “Have a good day.”
“You know we have nothing whatsoever to do with this, right?” Peter asked the detective. There was a hint of added weight to his words, a sense of emphasis without the actual emphasis.
Maxwell sighed.
“Yeah, I know,” he said to Fros’s slight shock. It wasn’t standard police to believe people who had just discovered a body.
“Good. So,when could we return to our office?” Peter said.
“Hopefully by the end of the week,” Maxwell told him and nodded at Fros. “We’ll call you.”
They waited in silence until the crime scene team and the officers left the building, carrying the body of the unfortunate Jason Colby with them.
Peter walked over to the open door of the conference room, now decorated with a stretch of police tape, and peeked inside.
“What a start to our new business,” he said. “Fit for a crime novel.”
Fros didn’t respond. She was on her phone.
“Sam? Do you have a minute? I have bad news.”
“What’s happened? Who’s dead? Will I cry?” Sam fired off the questions like a machine gun.
“It’s about Jason,” Fros said and flicked her eyes to Peter. He stood with his back to her, also with a phone to his ear. They probably looked very professional. “Somebody killed Jason and left him in my… my new office. The reason I’m calling you is that the police may come looking for you. I had to tell them about that time I went to talk to him, Sam, I’m sorry.”
For a while all she could hear from the other end was Sam’s heavy breathing.
“What?” she finally spat out. “What do you mean? Who killed him? How? What the hell, Fros? Are they going to arrest me?”
“I don’t know who killed him. And I don’t think they’ll arrest you, I told them the whole story, but they will want to talk to you.”
“Well that’s just great, thanks a lot. The moment the cops show up here I’ll lose another job after less than a week. Perfect. Couldn’t you say you didn’t know him?”
“No,” Fros said icily. Sam in distress was not the prettiest sight. “I had to tell them because they will certainly go to his office and question all of his employees. I spoke to one of them, remember? The one who Jason bribed to set you up? Patrick.”
“I have no bloody idea what you’re talking about,” Sam said.
The belated realisation dawned that she hadn’t told Sam what had happened during her meeting with Jason and afterwards. She hadn’t told Sam about her very enlightening conversation with Patrick because she had been in distress herself and had temporarily forgotten everything besides the dead snake and the equally dead girl. And then Sam had announced she’d found a new job and moved the revelation further down Fros’s priority list.
“Patrick was the one who set you up with that press release,” she said, holding her phone tight for lack of cigarettes. “He said Jason had promised to make him vice-president of the company if he did it. According to Patrick, Jason had a crush on you.”
Sam snorted.
“I know he did, the pervert. If he hadn’t fired me I would’ve left on my own. Dropping hints and always staying too close to me. Disgusting. Good thing he’s dead.”
“I suggest you don’t share this sentiment with the police,” Fros said. Peter had ended his conversation and stood at the door, watching her. “I’ve got to go now, Sam. Take care.”
“Yeah, throw me to the cops and tell me to take care. Thanks, Fros.” She hung up abruptly.
Fros put her phone back into her jacket pocket and shook her head. Poor Sam. Stress certainly did not bring out the best in her but Fros could relate – you didn’t become a murder suspect every day just because you were fired under false pretences.
“I need a beer,” she said, joining Peter at the door.
“There’s a pub about fifteen minutes from here.”
“Good, let’s go.”
He locked the frosted glass door and they started down the stairs.
“You never told me what the name of the company was,” Fros said.
“Fang in Fang Investigations.”
She stopped.
“What?”
“Fang in Fang Investigations. Limited,” he added, something like a smile twitching on his lips.
“Fang in Fang.”
“Yes. I thought we could tell whoever wanted to know that we’re the fangs that bite into crime. Or something like this. It sounds lame now that I say it aloud.”
“Fang in Fang Investigations.” She burst into laughter, which bounced off the wide empty stairs.