114: The Assassin

So, mum, remember we were investigating the deaths of three people who had all been killed with a triangular blade, like the rat man blade we had found in the temple of the horned rat. Having a look at the victims, Vinny said he knew Yiva and she was a grocer, like our gardeners were gardeners, and he was a dentist. He said that she had probably been dumped at Morrspark by a bunch of the Man’s men, and they had just pretended she was a grocer so she would get a half-decent funeral.

Fred was trying to work out the exact size of the weapon that caused the wounds, and I got out the horned rat dagger and we decided that it must be very similar but not exactly the same. And Fred decided that the sort of blow that had caused the wounds were quite powerful and the victims (except Gerg) must have been taken completely by surprise and dispatched in a single expert blow. So this must have been a competent and professional killer, which let Vinny off the hook.

So we headed off to the Komission for Public Works (KPW) to talk to Krohn’s widow. On the way. Vinny was talking a lot to Fred, and I think Fred was looking a bit uncomfortable. Vinny was bemoaning how much money he had given to all his lady friends, and how, in return, they made him do their laundry. He wanted to know how long he had to remain in the laundry zone before he could get to know them better.

And I think Fred told him he was being fleeced. Vinny was a bit indignant and said nobody robbed a robber, but it turns out nobody shags a shagger. I’d thought he was the top shagger, mum, but he had been lying about that all along. Who would have guessed it? And Vinny told Fred not to mention it to anyone, especially Guido who might put it in a report, and me, because I tell you everything, mum. So if you ever meet him, mum, you have to pretend that you don’t know that Vinny isn’t really the top shagger.

Anyway, Fred was pretty relieved when we reached the KPW. He spoke to a clerk and told her that we were investigating the death of one of her colleagues, and she told us that it wasn’t a colleague, it was her husband, so that was Britte Krohn. She was very cooperative and it looked like all she wanted was for us to find the culprit. And we promised we would do our best. She told us he had worked on enabling works for sewer improvement and had written a large dossier on the subject and those papers had gone missing.

We showed her the unfathomable map, but she found it unfathomable, but then Vinny showed her the papers he had found in the rat man chest, and it turned out that that was the very dossier. I was surprised we had been carrying that around for a couple of days without reading it, but Vinny couldn’t read and Blume couldn’t be arsed. Blume had a look through it now, and there was lots of writing and drawings but nothing that could really help us with our map. We guessed that there must be something in there, however, that the rat men didn’t want people to know.

Vinny tried to console Britte by asking her what the difference between death and sewers was. ‘Shit, in it.’ But she didn’t laugh. And then Blume broached the subject of rat men, but I sensed that that was a bit of a dead end, and so we made our excuses and left.

Then we went down to Sudtor to see where Yiva had been found. On the way we went through a list of all the contents of the chest again to see if there was something else we might have overlooked, like the massive pile of papers about the sewers we forgot to look at. But there wasn’t.

The apartment was very derelict and not somewhere anyone had been living so we guessed that the body had just been dumped here by the killers. Boy had a sniff around and found the very spot she had been left, but that didn’t really help us much. She could have been killed almost anywhere. We had a look around the area for connections to the sewers, and there were a few manholes, but nowhere that was particularly accessible.

So we went to the watch house to talk to Jacko about Gerg. Blume and I went in while Vinny and Fred waited outside. I think Vinny wanted some more advice about his liaisons, but Fred pretended to be really interested in a street musician, so he didn’t have to have another awkward conversation.

Jacko was there and so we had a chat. I told him about the upside-down world and about how there was probably a Jacko in the upside-down world and he seemed interested. I also told him that I was in a secret organisation that was fighting Middenheim’s nefarious enemies and he seemed pretty relaxed about the idea.

And when we asked him about Gerg he told us that Gerg’s body had been found in Neumarkt. He had been a big lad and so whoever killed him must be quite strong and dangerous and so Jacko said we should be careful. And, after he had checked that Blume could be trusted, he told us that Gerg had been found clutching a piece of hide, and he gave it to us, wishing us luck in our fight against the nefarious.

When we examined the hide we could see that as well as some strange rat writing, there was a map of Middenheim’s undercity. And there were three dagger marks on it. Two of the marks had been crossed out. One was in Sudtor and one was in Nordtor, which we thought could have been Krohn’s and Yiva’s murder locations. And the third mark was in Freiburg near the Collegium Theologica. There had been no murder in Freiburg so that made us think that that one could be happening very soon.

But it was time for the meeting with the agent of the Man in the Verdra room at the Heaven’s Lament. Vinny insisted on going there alone, while we waited at Hausnung, but Fred did give him a quick briefing of things not to do. In any case, he came back because they wouldn’t let him in, so he had to bring Blume along to vouch for him. But then he insisted she wait in the lounge while he went down to the green room alone.

The Man’s man was already waiting in the green room. It was Ron, who Vinny knew was a mid-level enforcer in the Man’s network, and so he became immediately worried again. Although, to be fair, I think getting mid-level interest from a criminal network is probably a step up for Vinny.

Vinny made all his excuses again for writing the incriminating note, but then went through all the things he had done for the Man, like clearing out the Zombies from Wyndhund, and he showed him his head wound.

I don’t know if he convinced Ron of his innocence, or not, but Ron decided to tell him what he knew of Yiva. He said that she was in charge of keeping the underground sections clear for smuggling and other activities, and while she was down there, she had apparently seen something she couldn’t believe. Something that would bring the dirt on one of the sewer jack captains. Vinny asked if she had mentioned rat men, and Ron told him to grow up.

And Vinny asked for some more gardeners for Hausnung, and told Ron they had to be decent gardeners, and they should promise not to rob Blume. And he agreed to that but Ron said if Vinny didn’t catch whoever was responsible for Yiva’s and the gardeners’ deaths then he would kill him himself.

And then Ron left, and Vinny went to tell Blume that we could never drink at the Heaven’s Lament again, and she told Vinny off for spoiling everything. Vinny told Blume that she wouldn’t last a day in his shoes, and Blume agreed and said she would rather kill herself, but I think she was just considering the fashion element.

And so we had found out something about a sewer jack captain. Really, mum, there is only one sewer jack captain, and it’s Jacko. But perhaps it was just any old sewer jack. Perhaps it was Raina Mus because she is the sergeant of the other shift, and some people think she’s a captain. Perhaps it is me mum, because I am a sewer jack and a captain, although I don’t think it is.

We had another look at the rat skin map and decided that Professor Hasche (or someone else at the Collegium) could be in imminent danger from the assassin and so we went up to her place. She had an apartment on the third floor of the building. And we sort of had to insist that she let us in so we could do a security appraisal of her apartment. She told us that she was sure she was in no danger, but she had also told us that she was sure that her assistants couldn’t be behind the rat-man-body-swap incident and she was wrong about that. We showed her the rat skin map and she agreed it did seem to pinpoint the Collegium.

She had nice rooms with lots of windows and a good view of the park. And we decided that we should spend the night there to make sure she was safe. She kept insisting that she had to go to the shops to get some food for us, but we didn’t want her to do that and in the end we sent Vinny and Blume to do the shopping.

I decided that there were so many windows it might be hard to keep an eye on all of them, and so I set up a trap that meant if anyone opened any of the windows, it would tug on some string that would make a vase fall over, thus alerting us of any intruders. That’s the sort of thing they teach you in the sewer jacks, mum.

When Vinny and Blume got back, Hasche made us a nice meal and we had some drinks and we played charades and ‘Guess my Career,’ which I didn’t really understand. And then Hasche went to bed and we settled down on watch.

I don’t think Hasche was that worried about it, but we are professionals. So, Me and Blume did the first watch and at the end of our three hours, we had a terrible feeling that the assassin had already come in and murdered her without us hearing anything, so we sneaked into her room, and it turned out, she was perfectly fine.

But during Fred’s and Vinny’s watch they heard some strange grinding noise and Vinny, with his professional expertise, decided it was someone cutting a hole in the window. They opened Hasche’s door to see that a rat man had got through a neat hole in the window and was just emerging through the curtains.

Vinny let out a loud scream and the rat man threw a three bladed throwing knife at him, hitting him in the chest. I think the blade was poisoned, but Vinny shrugged that off. He ran to the rat man and pulled the curtain rail down around him and tried to entangle him in the curtains. But the creature managed to slip out with ease. And Fred dived across the bed and attacked the rat man with his sword. But he avoided that, too.

Then the rat man drew three daggers, one with each hand and one with his tail. And in the gloom he looked a bit strange, like he was surrounded by a wispy cloud making it hard to see exactly where he was. He slashed at Vinny with one of the daggers, and got a good hit on him, and Vinny fell on to the bed, on top of Hasche. He was bleeding heavily, and he fell unconscious.

With all the noise, Blume woke up and rushed to the doorway, but couldn’t see much in the darkness and so grabbed Fred’s lantern. Fred had another go at the rat man but the rat man avoided him, again. Professor Hasche woke up and tried to shove Vinny off of her, while Fred shouted at her to get out as quickly as she could. And when she saw that Vinny was bleeding she tried to staunch the blood flow. And I charged into the room, and jumped onto the bed, and managed to get a good hit on the rat man, although he got a hit back at me.

It looked like we had the creature cornered in the bedroom, while Hasche was escaping, but then he scurried up the wall and ran across the ceiling and down the opposite wall closer to Hasche as she tried to drag Vinny away. I hate rat men. And then he stabbed Hasche with his poisoned blade.

We had to cross the bed again to reach the rat man. Fred attacked but the creature fended the blow away, and Blume fired her pistol. She got a good hit on him, but the bullet seemed to get lost in the thing’s cloak and didn’t affect him at all.

Hasche bravely continued dragging Vinny to safety, but that just gave the rat man another chance to attack her. And I had another go with my sword, but the bloody rat man was just too good at fighting.

The rat thing threw one of its throwing knives at Blume and got a hit on her. The blades were poisoned, but she fought on. And he attacked Vinny again, doing even more damage to the unconscious lad.

Blume fired her second pistol and got an excellent hit on the creature, and this time its cloak did not affect the bullet. Hasche dragged Vinny out into the next room, and the rat man followed her, running past Blume on the way, and stabbing her. He hit her squarely in the nose and her face erupted in blood.

Me and Fred desperately tried to go after the rat man, but none of our blows landed. And he reached Hasche and with a single sweep of his blade, cut her in two. And Vinny finally bled out.

Seeing his mission accomplished, the rat man scurried up the wall and across the ceiling again and out of the window. I hate those rat men, mum, as you know. And I couldn’t stand the thought of him doing that to us and getting a way with it. So I ran after him, and as he began climbing down the wall, I dived out the window after him, and tried to grab hold of him as I flew through the air. Unfortunately I mistimed my jump quite severely, and I was nowhere near the creature. As I fell I prayed to uncle Isaak to give me one last chance to catch the rat thing, but I’m not sure uncle Isaak is that interested in catching rat men, and he didn’t help me. And in a few moments I hit the ground.

As fate would have it I came round lying on a particular soft clump of grass in a quadrangle outside the Collegium, so that was very lucky indeed. Uncle Isaac may not have helped me to catch the fuzzy rat man but I would like to think he saved me from certain death from my fall. Perhaps in the upside-down world there is a dead Harry lying outside the upside-down Collegium.

We couldn’t save Hasche, and the rat man got away. But worse than all that, Vinny had died.

I think when we first saw Vinny he had been quite impressive, the way he had picked the lock for us, and helped us. And then we had seen him going through the contents of the house like he owned the place, not giving a toss about anything else. And then when he revealed he was the top shagger I was very impressed by that as well, mum.

And that is why he came to work for us at KITUM. But, the more we worked with him, I think the more we found out that he wasn’t as impressive as he made out, and the more he did give a toss about things. He failed to open locks and climb walls more times than he succeeded, and he seemed to be terrified of the very underworld that he claimed not to work for. And he managed to get the worst of things in every fight we had.

Sometimes when he was with us, and the way he acted, you forgot that he was still quite young. I think he was a bit lost, too. He acted like he thought a man should act, but was really just a lost boy out of his depth in Middenheim’s underworld.

I think he had joined KITUM as a way of getting away from his upbringing, but we didn’t really welcome him as an equal, and we never let him forget when he came from. And the more we did that, the more he tried to impress us. And the more desperate he was to impress us, the worse he seemed to do at it.

Anyway, Vinny’s dooming was, ‘Ready your coin on the thirteenth chime,’ which, to my knowledge, has nothing to do with rat men. But the clock did strike thirteen for Vinny, at least figuratively. And he was getting pulled by an older woman at the time, so I think that is how he would have wanted to go. I would like to think that in the upside-down world Vinny is still alive and having a top shag. So, rest in peace, Vincentious. Top Shagger.