So... the lament is because of the sacrifice? Or did the targets turn out to be wrong, so the sacrifice was in vain, and you're lamenting the mistake? So many questions! Speaking of "too many," I ran over the character limit again and had to double-post. Sorry :(
Lament They left the canteen and took the stairs to the Inspectral’s office. On the way up they met Adams, who looked as though she was coming away from the Inspectral’s office. Her face brightened when she saw the Inspectral but fell just a little when she looked through him and saw Collins behind him. “Michael Batts is in the cells,” she said, her voice jumping a little with excitement. “I got a bit lucky, really, and I happened to be in the Savacenter carpark looking around when I realised that I could see someone who looked a lot like him hovering near a blue car. So I ducked down and snuck around to get a good view of him where he couldn’t see me, and when he thought he was alone he took a penknife out and started gouging the side of the car. Caught him red-handed, boss!” “Good work,” said the Inspectral. “One less thing for us to have to worry about. Make sure a copy of your report goes to Susan in PR. She’ll pass it over to the insurance companies’s industry group so that they know we take even their small issues seriously.” Adams’s smile faltered just a little at the mention of paperwork and disappeared entirely at the mention of Susan. “Right,” she said, crisply. “I was going to do the write-up this afternoon unless there’s anything more… pressing?” They arrived at the Inspectral’s office and he reached through the door and unlocked it from the inside. The door opened, and a voice boomed out, “Harold! I thought you were never going to return!” “Ethel,” said the Inspectral and in his ethereal, weary tones the name was somehow a lament. “How did you get into my office, exactly?” He looked at Collins and Adams. “You better both come in,” he said. “This is bound to be interesting.” Adams shot Collins a look that he found hard to interpret: narrowed eyes and lips pressed tightly together, perhaps as though she’d been expecting an exclusive invitation. The Inspectral sat down behind his desk, then stood up and handed a manila folder to Collins, who accepted it without looking at Adams at all. “You still haven’t answered my question, Ethel,” said the Inspectral.
“You ask so many questions, Harold,” said the Ritual Examiner cheerfully. His voice boomed even in the office, and his bearded face seemed to be permanently smiling. “I’ve added it to the list, and I promise you I will get around to answering all of them in due course. Sometimes I think you never stop being a policeman.” The Inspectral looked theatrically at his wrist, where there was no watch, and said, “We are inside working hours, are we not?” “And another question! I should start billing you for my time spent answering them!” The Inspectral shook his head and for a moment Collins felt weariness like a thin fog passing over and through him. “Right Harold, I’ve done some – well, quite a lot actually – work on your little shindig over in the graveyard and the news is still not good. If you remember there were two rituals that had been performed, one to hide the other. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that; once I started teasing the strands apart and looking at the evidence that the SOCO boys picked up – by the way, do you know that they’re still as clumsy as ever? I thought that Daniel was supposed to kicking them into shape? I had boxes with actual corners when I left the graveyard, and when I got them back they were practically spherical!” “Get on with it,” said the Inspectral. “Oh yes, well, we’ll talk to Daniel later. So, there’s actually only one ritual, but it’s a three-parter and the middle bit is completely irrelevant and does nothing but hide what the ritualist is up to. That’s your Vodoun stuff, it’s all just there to confuse the issue. If I had to take an educated guess—” “—which you will—” “—I’d say that that ritual is an invocation of Lady Bon Ange, who is a significant figure in the Vodoun pantheon. Now she’s not the most important, that would be—” “Ethel, are you now just confusing the issue?” “Hah! Haha, very good Harold! I did get a bit distracted there, didn’t I? Right, well, as I was saying, three parts. The first part is a search for something. Using war graves – I’ve read about, not seen it done myself. But if you’re searching for something spirits of soldiers are a very good starting point. Dogs are better, but they’re much harder to get hold of, and there’s good reason for that. You see--” “Ethel!” “Oh yes. Well, the third part, the part with the Radiance worked in, is the destroy part of search-and-destroy. And soldiers probably beat out dogs there, but again, it might be a bit situation dependent.”
3 comments:
So... the lament is because of the sacrifice? Or did the targets turn out to be wrong, so the sacrifice was in vain, and you're lamenting the mistake? So many questions! Speaking of "too many," I ran over the character limit again and had to double-post. Sorry :(
Lament
They left the canteen and took the stairs to the Inspectral’s office. On the way up they met Adams, who looked as though she was coming away from the Inspectral’s office. Her face brightened when she saw the Inspectral but fell just a little when she looked through him and saw Collins behind him.
“Michael Batts is in the cells,” she said, her voice jumping a little with excitement. “I got a bit lucky, really, and I happened to be in the Savacenter carpark looking around when I realised that I could see someone who looked a lot like him hovering near a blue car. So I ducked down and snuck around to get a good view of him where he couldn’t see me, and when he thought he was alone he took a penknife out and started gouging the side of the car. Caught him red-handed, boss!”
“Good work,” said the Inspectral. “One less thing for us to have to worry about. Make sure a copy of your report goes to Susan in PR. She’ll pass it over to the insurance companies’s industry group so that they know we take even their small issues seriously.”
Adams’s smile faltered just a little at the mention of paperwork and disappeared entirely at the mention of Susan. “Right,” she said, crisply. “I was going to do the write-up this afternoon unless there’s anything more… pressing?”
They arrived at the Inspectral’s office and he reached through the door and unlocked it from the inside. The door opened, and a voice boomed out,
“Harold! I thought you were never going to return!”
“Ethel,” said the Inspectral and in his ethereal, weary tones the name was somehow a lament. “How did you get into my office, exactly?” He looked at Collins and Adams. “You better both come in,” he said. “This is bound to be interesting.” Adams shot Collins a look that he found hard to interpret: narrowed eyes and lips pressed tightly together, perhaps as though she’d been expecting an exclusive invitation.
The Inspectral sat down behind his desk, then stood up and handed a manila folder to Collins, who accepted it without looking at Adams at all. “You still haven’t answered my question, Ethel,” said the Inspectral.
“You ask so many questions, Harold,” said the Ritual Examiner cheerfully. His voice boomed even in the office, and his bearded face seemed to be permanently smiling. “I’ve added it to the list, and I promise you I will get around to answering all of them in due course. Sometimes I think you never stop being a policeman.”
The Inspectral looked theatrically at his wrist, where there was no watch, and said, “We are inside working hours, are we not?”
“And another question! I should start billing you for my time spent answering them!” The Inspectral shook his head and for a moment Collins felt weariness like a thin fog passing over and through him. “Right Harold, I’ve done some – well, quite a lot actually – work on your little shindig over in the graveyard and the news is still not good. If you remember there were two rituals that had been performed, one to hide the other. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that; once I started teasing the strands apart and looking at the evidence that the SOCO boys picked up – by the way, do you know that they’re still as clumsy as ever? I thought that Daniel was supposed to kicking them into shape? I had boxes with actual corners when I left the graveyard, and when I got them back they were practically spherical!”
“Get on with it,” said the Inspectral.
“Oh yes, well, we’ll talk to Daniel later. So, there’s actually only one ritual, but it’s a three-parter and the middle bit is completely irrelevant and does nothing but hide what the ritualist is up to. That’s your Vodoun stuff, it’s all just there to confuse the issue. If I had to take an educated guess—”
“—which you will—”
“—I’d say that that ritual is an invocation of Lady Bon Ange, who is a significant figure in the Vodoun pantheon. Now she’s not the most important, that would be—”
“Ethel, are you now just confusing the issue?”
“Hah! Haha, very good Harold! I did get a bit distracted there, didn’t I? Right, well, as I was saying, three parts. The first part is a search for something. Using war graves – I’ve read about, not seen it done myself. But if you’re searching for something spirits of soldiers are a very good starting point. Dogs are better, but they’re much harder to get hold of, and there’s good reason for that. You see--”
“Ethel!”
“Oh yes. Well, the third part, the part with the Radiance worked in, is the destroy part of search-and-destroy. And soldiers probably beat out dogs there, but again, it might be a bit situation dependent.”
Greg - never apologize for writing 'too much'. You should know better by now.
Ah, good to hear from Ethel again. Even if he does go on a tad... :)
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