Free Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets by Alessio Lanterna Page B

underneath the NO SMOKING sign, just to pass the time.
    The fax turns out to be exhaustive, as promised. The unmarried newly-weds lived on the thirteenth floor for two years, during which time nothing much happened. According to the tenant’s contract, Gilder was a dancer with the Hulyen Xen’Atheron company, while Inla described herself as a “painter”, without leaving any additional information. So Gilder went to work for one of the minor dynasties, who presumably hired him to get back at the Lovls. Obviously the manager couldn’t have cared less what these two did for a living, as long as they paid their rent regularly. At a certain point though, they started skipping payments. Six months later they were evicted, but for some reason they weren’t reported to the police. I suppose it was the manager who wanted to avoid any trouble with the elves, even though they had no money. You never know, once they got back in with their families they could have come back and wreak revenge. Unfortunately there was no indication as to their next address.
    We have more luck at Hulyen. Nohl is in and out in under twenty minutes, after he begged me to let him do something to break the boredom. He comes back with an address and a leaflet of the opera season. There’s a telephone number written in one corner.
    “Your shirt is buttoned-up all wrong. Loverboy.”
    Embarrassed, he fixes his buttons.
    “Aren’t you Reformed supposed to get married before you screw?”
    “Oh, no. Sex is a tribute to Mother, not to Father. Marriage is one of the last goals of illumination, because it combines—“
    “Okay, whatever, who cares. What did she tell you this…” I stretch my neck to read the name above the telephone number. “…Marena?”
    “Well, Gilder worked here for a couple of years. After that, he only did the odd off-season performance, up until three years ago. Marena told me that the last time he was here, he had an almighty row with the manager, and he was never seen since.”
    “What did he want?”
    “A new two-year contract.”
    “The Xen’Atherons mustn’t have wanted to piss the Feltus off anymore. Address?”
    “An apartment on the Ninth.”
    “Ah, crap. We’ve been driving around all day and we’re going back there.”
    “Well, not exactly. It’s quite a way from Mezzodì. At the other end of the Level.”
    “At the Bazaar?” I ask, incredulously. Then I add, sarcastically, “From hero to zero. There’s no blueberry shampoo round those parts.”
    We go back to the cars and go down. The Bazaar is a rough area even by the Ninth’s already embarrassing standards. The only thing that stops it from being a complete sewer is that the hundred and eighty is quite nice. The nickname comes from the fact that you can buy almost anything here: drugs, light weapons, sex, black market goods. Let’s say it bridges the gap between the dregs of the lower levels and the growing glitz of the upper levels.
    The view from the street is discouraging, even though the building is a fair way from the centre of all the illicit activity. Groups of decrepit sentients swarm backwards and forwards, along with clumos of gremlins and stray animals. The few windows of shops open in the late afternoon are inevitably lit with various shades of red, whether they be fast-food joints, porn video stores or clubs showing off their ‘dancers’ to passersby—commonly referred to as “whore houses” by patrons, rarely classy enough to use the more polite “bordellos”.
    A tramp slumped in a corner asks for a few coins by tugging at my trousers and breathing his putrid breath towards my face. Shrugging him off I light a cigarette to get rid of the revolting stench, praying to God that Cohl isn’t looking for a place to park, while the beggar goes back to talking gibberish to a bag of rubbish, his new best friend. Instead the Fiamma pulls up right behind my double-parked car, thank God.
    The entrance to the apartment block is an obscene