Free Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets by Alessio Lanterna

you said yourself that it was probably all about these lovebirds, so to speak. Come on, what could an elf know of such importance if she’d been disowned for nearly ten years?”
    “Who knows. Something exciting perhaps.”
    “No. I think the passion lead is more promising.”
    “That’s what worries me.” The fact that Cohl is a dick, I mean.
    I go back to the report. Just before an army of lawyers—possibly literally called up from hell—arrived at the police station to get her released, Inla stated that she’s been attending a protest “in favour of equal rights for all races, against corruption and bad government”. It’s easy to play the big defender when your
grandfather
summons half the Sulphurous Throne to save your arse. This might be why she left shortly afterwards. Maybe she was able to work out in that brain of hers, strangled by hair and ears, that two and two makes four, and she realised that the people pulling the strings inside that corrupt government were none other than the
noble
elf dynasties. Not that they’d gone to any great lengths to hide it. I finish up Colh’s flat beer.
    “Drinking on duty isn’t allowed,” Nohl reminds me, strictly.
    “Indeed. You drink like a fish, you ought to stop. Anyway, we’ve got an address that needs checking out.” I look around but can’t see the car. “Where the hell did you park?”
    “There’s a carpark two blocks up the road.“
    “You
paid for a carpark
?
Two
blocks away?”
    “I’m on my lunch break, so…”
    “See you there then. I’m not walking two blocks because you’re too dumb to park close to where you have to go.”
    I indicate the square, where, naturally, there are no other cars, apart from mine, right in the middle. Parked all wonky.
    I stand up and remind the Inspector to pay the bill.
     
    We drive around most of the city before we get to where we need to be. I have to get petrol at one point during our pilgrimage. It’s like watching the lives of the two lovebirds condensed in an afternoon. And it stinks.
    It’s still light when we find a nice apartment block at the address Lonny gave me. Seventeenth Level, it’s bound to be nice. The streets are incredibly clean, and the houses have a garden. I wonder how much it costs to get soil all the way up here to create these gardens. The sparkling aviomobile in the driveway is practically ubiquitous, looking all the world as if it’s been washed just after the rain, ready to be shown off. A preposterously gorgeous sexpot, the masterpiece of some talented plastic surgeon smiles at me slyly while taking her cat for a walk, on a lead. I bet Miss Balcony’s husband is a wizened old bird with pots of money and a wizened old cock to match.
    As far as I can see, as soon as they fell out of favour with their respective families, our centuries-old young things lived the high life on their liquidation. After a year of this, the bank balance can’t have been very healthy, according to what an old trout with aristocratic airs living across the road told us. She insisted on offering ‘two good police officers’ a cup of tea.
    The inside of the house would make anyone want to take up thieving. I reckon even Cohl got a hard-on when he saw the gold and crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall. What’s really incredible amongst all this splendour is the gremlin. There’s a fashion amongst the rich to breed gremlins and keep them as pets, to show the skeptical sentients of Saros that, with the right upbringing, the little beasts can be a part of society. So that little green turd is standing in the corner dressed like a pageboy from some long-forgotten era. The old bag—or most likely some unfortunate slave—had put white make-up on its face, and rouged its cheeks. I would laugh at the contrast between the creature’s lost expression, but the thought that the hag spends much more money on food to feed it than I spend on food for myself, kills all the comedy.