“He isn’t even really a Walker!” said another voice from somewhere safe in the back of the crowd. “He doesn’t have the Voice!”
“I’m John Taylor!” I said loudly, and the crowd fell quiet again. I smiled nastily around me, and a few actually shivered. “You’ve all heard of me. The man with a gift for finding things. Now be quiet, and behave yourselves, or . . .”
“Or what?” said Jasmine.
“Or I’ll find your missing husband,” I said.
Jasmine hesitated and was lost. She slipped back into the crowd. I looked unhurriedly around me, nodding to faces I recognised.
“You there, I could find where the missing funds from your company went. Or you. I could find where you buried the bodies. And as for you, sweetie, I could find your old nose and put it back where it used to be.”
They were all very quiet now, looking at each for support and not finding it. They all had secrets, and none of them wanted me looking at them too closely. Of course, I was mostly bluffing, throwing out a few educated guesses based on the latest gossip; but they didn’t know that. I turned my back on them all and knelt beside what was left of King of Skin.
He was lying face-down, half-curled into a ball. There was a single bloody wound in the small of his back and more blood soaking his tattered coat. He’d died quickly, bleeding out in seconds. With his glamour gone, without his usual spooky aspect, he looked much smaller and very ordinary. I turned the head carefully, so I could see the face. His real face, at last. Not particularly handsome, or ugly; nothing more than another face in the crowd. His clothes were old and comfortable, and not in the least stylish. Very worn, very lived-in. And then, as I looked at the face, it suddenly shrivelled up into a mass of wrinkles. As though all the years of his considerable age had caught up with him at once. The wrinkles kept appearing, criss-crossing each other, sinking deep into the flesh, until I was looking at the face of a man who’d lived at least a hundred years, and most of them hard ones. The few immortals who’d edged in for a closer look let out horrified gasps and hurriedly retreated. Time’s catching up was an immortal’s greatest fear.
I checked the rest of the body thoroughly. Just as old, but no more wounds. The stab wound in his back was wide and deep, and it had been made with something with a jagged edge. Not a knife, or any other bladed weapon. Whatever it was, it had irregular, serrated edges . . . I went through King of Skin’s pockets and found nothing. Not even a wallet or a handkerchief or a ring of keys. The killer couldn’t have had time to rob his victim; which suggested King of Skin had arrived with empty pockets. Perhaps because he relied on his glamour to get him what he needed. Didn’t rule out robbery as a motive, though . . . I stood up, straightened my aching back, took out my mobile phone and put in a call to the Nightside CSI. Alistair Hoob; nice guy, multiple personalities, a whole department in one head. Crowded, but efficient. He took a long time to answer his phone.
“Yes? What is it? (I’m busy!) Oh, hello, John. (You call him Walker now.) I know! (He knows, he knows.) Someday I swear I’m going to buy a spirit gun and shoot all you other voices in my head.”
“I’ve got a murder at the Ball of Forever,” I said loudly. “Nasty business, with nasty implications. How soon can you get here?”
“Ah well,” he said. “That’s the problem. I’m already working another murder, at the Old Haymarket Theatre. That’s right on the other side of the city. (Bad business. Actors. Very touchy people.) (Who knew the old fellow had so much poison in him?) I’ll get to you as soon as I can (blood), but it’ll take me a while. (I want a pony.)”
“Do your best,” I said. “Got a feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get on this one.”
“Do you want me to alert the Authorities? (Who’s been messing with my DNA kit again?)”
“Tell them,” I said. “And then tell them to stay out of it. It happened on my watch, right in front of me, so it’s my murder, my case. Tell them I’ll be in touch when I’ve found the killer; and not before.”
“Your funeral, Walker. (Ooh, can I come? I love funerals!) See you in a while.”
I put my phone away and looked down at the body again. A stab wound in the back meant he never saw it coming. The assassin had struck from behind . . . but who would King of Skin turn his back on, in a place like this? He would have known better. So, had the murderer sneaked up on him? Without being noticed, in a crowded room? I glared at the watching immortals.
“Who found the body? Come on; somebody screamed.”
A tall, gangly fellow dressed in Puritan blacks raised a hesitant hand. “I was startled, that’s all. You don’t expect something as vulgar as common murder in a select gathering like this. I saw him lying there, and the blood, and I let out . . . an involuntary noise, that’s all.”
“You saw the body lying on the floor?” I said. “You didn’t see the actual murder?”
“No! No! Just the body. Isn’t that enough?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said because you have to say things like that. And I went back to looking at King of Skin.
The three reporters finally fought their way through the tightly packed crowd and stared at the dead body with fascinated, eager eyes. Brilliant Chang seemed as calm and serene as ever. He’d seen his share of bodies before, in his time as an enforcer. Bettie Divine’s face was flushed, and she was breathing heavily at the prospect of covering a real story. She didn’t get many of those, working for the Unnatural Inquirer. And Charlotte ap Owen’s face was an open book, for all her many nips and tucks. This story was her passport to the big time, and she was damned if anything was going to get in her way. She snarled for Dave the camera-man to get good coverage of the crime scene, and I let her. I could always commandeer the coverage later if I needed it. I nodded for Brilliant Chang to step forward. I could use a cool head to talk with.
“Am I not a suspect, then?” he said amiably.
“You’re a combat sorcerer,” I said. “If you’d wanted him dead, you could have killed him in a dozen ways and never left a mark.”
“True.”
“Why are you standing around, Taylor?” snapped Charlotte. “Why don’t you use your gift and find the killer!”
“Because it doesn’t work that way,” I said. “I have to ask my gift a specific question to get a specific answer.”
“A question occurs to me,” said Chang. “King of Skin was not a well-liked man. He knew things, and wasn’t loath to let people know it. So, which of his many secrets was a step too far? Which one was important enough to be worth killing over, to keep it secret?”
“Good point,” I said. “But he’s been hoarding secrets for years. He always knew how far he could push things . . . Wait. Hold everything. Something’s happening to the body.”
Chang and I both knelt beside King of Skin, while Charlotte shrieked for Dave to get a close-up. King of Skin’s deeply wrinkled face was twitching, rising and falling, as though something was moving underneath it. And then, as we all watched, his entire face peeled off and dropped away, revealing another face beneath it. A second, completely different set of features. And then it aged, too, shrivelling into a mess of wrinkles, before dropping off to reveal yet another face beneath. The process went on and on, face giving way to face, skin to skin, aging and slipping away to reveal another, like those Russian dolls that nest inside one another. As each face fell to the floor, it rotted quickly, decaying and falling to dust in a matter of seconds. Skin under skin, face under face, until the process finally stopped, with a face I recognised. I’d seen it once before, on the future King of Skin, who’d been a member of my Enemies, in the terrible possible future I’d visited. And then that face aged, too, and fell in upon itself, a mask of far too many years.
“It’s stopped,” said Chang. “Do you suppose that last one was his real face? His original face?”
“I think so,” I said. “Remember what Hadleigh said to him? He said King of Skin’s power was skin deep. He knew about this.”
 
; “You think you can get Hadleigh to talk?” said Chang.
“Probably not,” I said. “It’s his job to know things like this, but he never talks about his job. Hell, I’m not even sure exactly what his job is. Stick to the point. Is this how King of Skin became immortal, by wrapping himself in other people’s skin? Stealing their skins, their lives, their life energies, to bolster and prolong his own?”
“I have heard of such measures,” said Chang. “But I never knew . . . His name! King of Skin! He was taunting us all with his name. His own greatest secret, right there in the open for everyone to see.”
He carried on talking, but I wasn’t listening. A thought had struck me. A very personal, very selfish thought. With King of Skin dead, the group of Enemies I’d seen in that potential future couldn’t happen. Which meant . . . that future couldn’t happen. Did this mean that, finally, the Nightside was safe from the terrible destiny I’d seen? The end of the world that I was supposed to bring about? Oh please God, let it be so. I could do with one less burden to carry. I realised Chang had stopped talking and was looking at me quizzically.
“Sorry,” I said. “King of Skin’s death has many repercussions, and I’m only starting to see some of them.”
“I was wondering . . . what’s become of the murder weapon?” said Brilliant Chang. “It isn’t in the victim, or anywhere near the body.”
I got down on my hands and knees and looked back and forth underneath the buffet tables. Dust bunnies, dropped food, and what looked very like rat turds, but nothing that could have killed King of Skin. I got back to my feet, brushing dust from my knees.
“The murderer must still have it on him,” I said.
“Do you have the authority to search everyone here?” said Chang.
“I could try,” I said. “But I think that might be a step too far for most of them. They’d see it as an affront to their dignity. Some of them would rather fight a duel or defy the Authorities than be physically man-handled in front of their peers. And anyway, the murderer’s had plenty of time to dispose of the weapon by now. It could be anywhere.”
“Anywhere inside this room,” said Charlotte ap Owen, chipping in to remind us she was still there and not being left out of anything.
“Excuse me! Hello, excuse me! I’ve got an idea!”
I looked round to see Bettie Divine bouncing on her feet and waving her hand in the air excitedly, like a child in class who knows the answer.
“What have you got, Bettie?” I said patiently.
“We all saw the different faces King of Skin was hiding behind. If they are the faces of people he killed, to take their life energies for his own. well, mightn’t they have friends or family who’d want to avenge their deaths? If someone had found out King of Skin was a serial killer, that could be your motive right there!”
“Good point,” I said. “Well done. Unfortunately, all the faces have rotted away to dust. I’ll see if the CSI guy can dig out some evidence from what’s left, when he finally gets here; but I’m not hopeful.”
“I got all the faces on camera,” said Dave. “Close-ups of each, before they rotted.”
“Good man,” I said. “We can study the coverage later.”
“For a price,” Charlotte said quickly.
“Don’t push it,” I said. I looked round at the crowd of assembled immortals, and sighed deeply. No easy fixes here. I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, by asking a lot of people a lot of questions they didn’t want to answer and trying to sort the truth from a pack of lies.
I said as much, and Bettie grinned. “You mean, establishing alibis! Where were you when the lights went out, and all that sort of thing! Can we watch?”
“No. Chang, you keep an eye on the body and make sure no-one interferes with it. Bettie, Charlotte, Dave . . . You can interview anyone you can get to talk to you but don’t get in my way, or I’ll have you arrested for something I may or may not make up on the spur of the moment.”
“You’re going to make a fine Walker,” Chang said solemnly.
“Now you’re just being nasty,” I said.
I went off to have a private word with Razor Eddie. He was still standing in his corner, quietly observing the drama. He nodded briefly to me.
“You’re right. I’m a suspect. No secret that King of Skin and I were enemies. But he was never powerful enough to take me on, or annoying enough to be worth my time.”
“He knew something about you,” I said. “What did he mean when he asked where you got your straight razor?”
Razor Eddie looked at me for a long moment with his cold cold eyes. “He knew things. But not enough to be worth killing over. My secrets . . . remain my secrets. You know too much about me as it is, John.”
“Then how can I be sure you didn’t kill him?”
Razor Eddie smiled slowly, showing ruined grey teeth. “Because if I had killed him, I’d have been a lot more thorough. You’d have found pieces of him all over the room.”
I had to nod. I’d seen the Punk God of the Straight Razor’s handiwork before, and it was always messy. He didn’t simply kill people; he made a statement.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said. “Please.”
“Ah well,” said Razor Eddie. “As long as you’re saying please . . .”
I left him, and went over to join Dead Boy, who was still hovering at the other end of the buffet table and still eating. He looked at me a little guiltily, put down the plate of mushroom vol-au-vents, and wiped his fingers on the front of his greatcoat.
“Sorry. Bad timing, I know. Should show respect for the dead, and all that. But I’m already dead, and I get no respect. I want to enjoy as much of this as I can before the pills wear off.”
“Where does all the food . . . No, I don’t want to know.”
“Very wise,” said Dead Boy. “Why aren’t you questioning the butler? It’s always the butler who did it, on occasions like these. You saw him when we came in, very shifty-looking fellow.”
“It’s not him,” I said patiently. “On the grounds that he was on the other side of the door when the murder occurred.”
“Ah,” Dead Boy said wisely. “But that’s how they do it! It’s always the least likely suspect!”
“No,” I said.
He sulked. “It was the butler last time. With the Griffin.”
“We are changing the subject,” I said firmly. “What did King of Skin know about you? He said something about your girl-friend.”
Dead Boy scowled. “It’s not easy having a sex life when you’re dead. Most of the kinds of girls who do come looking aren’t the sort you want to encourage. So when I do find someone special, someone who can . . . reach me, she’s going to be very special. So I’m not going to talk about her. But, if I had wanted King of Skin dead, which I didn’t, because basically he was only an annoying little tit . . . If I had wanted to kill him, I’ve got more sense than to do it in front of a roomful of witnesses, and you. I’m dead, not stupid.”
“True,” I said.
Dead Boy looked at me thoughtfully, choosing his words carefully. “You do know it’s almost certainly Hadleigh Oblivion who did it?”
“What?”
“It’s common sense. Think about it. Who else here is powerful enough to kill King of Skin, in front of all these people, and not be noticed?”
“But . . . why would he want to?” I said. “He’s the Detective Inspectre; why would he lower himself to common murder?”
“Because King of Skin knew something about him. And he knew more about King of Skin than any of us. Maybe . . . King finally stumbled on a secret he should have kept quiet about.” Dead Boy looked over to the door, where Hadleigh was standing guard. “If it is him, can you arrest him?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m Walker. I can do anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s part of the job description.”
“Well, yes,” said Dead Boy. “Obviously. But this is Hadleigh Oblivion we’re talking about. The Detective Inspect
re, whatever the hell that is.”
“I’ll have a word with him,” I said. “But for now, he’s just another suspect.”
“Along with me and Razor Eddie?” said Dead Boy.
“Very definitely including both of you,” I said.
“Ah,” said Dead Boy. “But what if it was both of us, working together? What would you do then?”
“Improvise,” I said. “And phone Suzie Shooter for backup.”
“The horror, the horror,” said Dead Boy. And went back to his vol-au-vents.
I was heading for Mistress Mayhem when I was interrupted by Bettie Divine. She planted herself right in front of me, hands on hips, and glared at me.
“You don’t really see me as a suspect, do you, sweetie? After all we nearly meant to each other? I’m not guilty of anything!”
“No?” I said. “What about the Schalcken affair?”
“A clear case of mistaken identity,” Bettie said briskly.
“The Lovett pie-shop fiasco?”
“I was misinformed. Anyone can make a mistake.”
“Big John . . .”
“They never proved anything! Look, the point I’m making is I’m not the kind to go around killing people! I’m not capable of it!”
“Anyone is capable of anything,” I said. “Given sufficient motivation. Now, if you want to make yourself useful, try turning that devastating charm on the assembled immortals and see if you can get someone to admit to something. If anyone can, you can. I have work to do.”
I passed her by and nodded politely to Mistress Mayhem. She was hugging herself tightly, as though against some chill, and she looked a lot younger than she had before. Almost like a teenager playing dress-up at her first adult party. She fixed me with a defiant gaze.
“I didn’t kill him. Didn’t even know the man. I never even met him before tonight.”
“He still knew things about you,” I said. “He knew you touched up your skin with dye to maintain that dreaded Kali connection. And he knew about the baby you would have had.”