They got to Axle’s house. Stephanie went round the back while Skulduggery knocked on the door. Sometimes people with dodgy pasts liked to sneak out of windows. She cupped her hands, blew on them. It was chilly out. Roarhaven was as dark and as quiet as ever. She heard the low murmur of Skulduggery’s voice. No alarm raised, no windows opening, no one trying to run.
She heard the front door close, and walked back to the Bentley. Skulduggery was already behind the wheel. They didn’t speak as they pulled away from the kerb. They drove for a few minutes, stopped outside a dingy little pub called The Cauldron.
Skulduggery led the way into the chatter and the laughter. Stephanie didn’t have his skills. She couldn’t glance at a room and notice every single thing, catalogue every single face, in one go. It took her a few seconds to notice the man sitting at the bar with an empty stool beside him. His work boots were dirty, his clothes not much better. He sat with his head down, shoulders slumped unevenly, staring into his drink. They walked up to him and for a few moments he didn’t notice them. He had a small cut on his jawline, another on his neck. There was a larger abrasion on his right hand and across his thick knuckles, and a plaster was wrapped clumsily round the thumb of his left.
“Mr Axle,” Skulduggery said, and Axle looked up sharply. He paled when he saw them, and when he finally spoke he could only manage one word.
“What?”
“Mr Axle, you know who we are, yes? We don’t need to introduce ourselves, or tell you what we do. From the look on your face, you know all that.”
Axle swallowed. “So? What do you want with me?”
“When we walked in this door, all we wanted was the location of a friend of yours – Billy-Ray Sanguine.”
“Sanguine’s no friend of mine,” said Axle. “I know him, that’s all. Haven’t seen him in months. Maybe over a year. We’re not friends. Can’t help you.”
The bartender wandered over, and Axle went back to hunching over his beer.
“Can I get you folks something?” the bartender asked.
“I’m a skeleton,” said Skulduggery, “and she doesn’t drink.”
Stephanie frowned at him. “How do you know I don’t drink? I’m eighteen. I can drink if I want to.”
“Do you want to?”
She kept frowning. “Shut up.”
The bartender shrugged and wandered away again, and Axle watched him go.
“We’re looking for where Sanguine might go if he were in trouble,” Skulduggery said. “A safe house, something like that.”
Axle straightened with a pained expression, and shook his head. “Didn’t know him that well. Ask someone else. I haven’t even been in this dimension all that much over the last few years.”
The clothes, the cuts, the rough hands … construction work. “You helped build this city?” Stephanie asked.
He looked at her. “Helped build it? I practically built it myself. None of those other foremen could have done what I did. My crew built the best and we built the fastest. It’s because of us, because of me, that the city was ready to be unveiled by Grand Mage Ravel. Just in time for those bloody Warlocks to wreck half of it.”
“How’s the rebuilding going?”
Axle snorted. “You’d be surprised how a simple job can get complicated once you introduce a little red tape. When we were working in that other reality, we were below the radar. We were working in secret. Things got done. But now that it’s all out in the open you have committees and safety inspections and what have you, and immediately you’re behind schedule and waiting for approval and blah blah blah …”
Skulduggery tilted his head at the empty stool. “Waiting for someone?”
Axle stiffened again. “Yeah,” he said. “A friend of mine.”
“Is he late?”
“He is, yeah. He’ll be here, though.”
“Is this a regular thing? Going for a drink after work?”
Axle nodded. “End of a long day, yeah, it’s good to relax. That a crime?”
“No, it isn’t,” said Skulduggery. “Murder is, however.”
Stephanie raised an eyebrow, but left the question for Axle to ask.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Skulduggery took a pair of light handcuffs from his jacket and laid them on the bar. “What started the argument? Was it about work? Was the pressure getting to you?”
Axle gave a sharp, dry laugh. “What murder? Who’s dead?”
“Your friend.”
“You’re talking nonsense. He’s not dead. He’s just late.”
“What’s his name?”
“There! See? That’s how ridiculous this is! You don’t even know who he is and you’re saying he’s dead!”
“What’s your friend’s name, Mr Axle?”
Axle stared at Skulduggery. “Brock.”
“You’re incredulous, and yet you’re keeping your voice down. You’re scared of meeting the barman’s gaze, but you don’t want to take your eyes off him. You’re worried that he might have seen something last night – maybe he overheard your argument with Brock. You’re scared he’ll mention something about it in front of us.”
“This is ridiculous. I don’t have to sit here and listen to—”
He went to slide off his stool, but Stephanie stepped up close to him, blocking his way. Skulduggery leaned in from the other side.
“You have muddy water dried into the left leg and the right knee of your trousers. Also the left side of your jacket. It wasn’t raining last night, but it was the night before, and there are still puddles out the back of this pub, aren’t there? You had too much to drink, you got out there, the argument turned physical. You hit him. That’s when you cut your knuckles. He went down and you went down with him. You started strangling him. He managed to turn you over, and you fell on to your left side, into a puddle. But you pushed back, got on top, straddled him, hence the stain on your other knee. He clawed at your hands, leaving those scratches. And you choked him until he died.”
Axle shook his head quickly.
“You’re having trouble sitting up straight,” Skulduggery continued. “Did you do something to your back? Maybe as you were carrying his body through the back streets and alleys? You couldn’t have supported his weight for too long, not in your inebriated state, but you would have needed to take him somewhere you knew well, and somewhere you knew would be deserted. The construction site you’re working on isn’t too far away from here, is it? That’s where you dumped his body – probably in a pit scheduled to be filled in this morning.
“But