The Concarnadine Chronicles #036 -- "Smell"
Title: "Half-glimpsed; half inferred"
'Fandom': The Concarnadine Chronicles
Claim: General; Characters
Prompt: #036 :: "Smell"
Word Count: c. 2220
Rating: PG (ish)
Summary: Barratt plays away from home
Author's Notes: And a darker side to these charcaters, as well. BTW, definitely part of the Jovimort strand.
Half-glimpsed; half-inferred
“We’re ready ?”
“As it gets.”
Barratt looked round - he was well off his official “patch”: technically this wasn’t even the Met., it was Hertfordshire. But with Medallion there, and a local uniformed Chief Superintendent, and with warrants, issued by a High Court judge on the request of an Assistant Chief Constable, the technicalities were suspended for the time being. Ruthven was there, in full assault gear, radio-helmet and all, and Robin Flavour was at the head of a mixed-agency rumble squad - Special Branch, Customs, Immigration, even a couple of people from the Health and Safety Executive, based on the possibility of hazardous materials being discovered.
And then there were Barnaby’s people. Barratt was, deliberately, not looking too closely at anyone who he didn’t recognise. It had been a shock to learn that the spymaster had people inside the Met, but, given that, it made sense that he probably had some in other areas, too.
So far as he knew, Barnaby wasn’t present in person - there was no scent of him anywhere, and instead Rejker and Shareya were leading a small group of agents, all looking very serious.
He nodded, more to himself than to Ventrice, who was a Hertfordshire DCI, and said “We’d better do this - or just go for coffee.”
“For broke,” Ventrice replied, and headed off toward the front door to the house.
Two minutes later, the crackle on the intercom said they were in position. Barratt heard Ventrice knock on the door, and then saw the rear door open, and then rapidly close.
“Go !” he said and stood well aside as Ruthven’s squad sledge-hammered the door open and went in.
By the time he went in personally, there were people everywhere and things were happening. But someone, he told himself, had had to stay outside and keep an eye on the possibility of people trying to get out of windows, or do anything else extreme.
“Mr. Barratt ?” The young constable looked very nervous.
“What is it ?”
“They want you downstairs, sir.” The lad led the way to a staircase, leading down to what Barratt presumed were the cellars. He went down, and found Rejker waiting for him.
“Have you any idea ?” the agent asked, indicating a broad stone archway. It looked all very architectural, except for the whirling indigo-coloured miasma that was filling the archway itself.
Barratt started to go closer, but Rejker reached out to him.
“I wouldn’t - at least half a dozen of them went through that as soon as we started down, and we’ve seen no trace of them coming back.”
“It looks like something - ” Barratt paused, selecting his words - there were people about who weren’t, as it were, “cleared”, for the full version “ - that we need one of our specialists for.”
Rejker nodded: “Shareya’s upstairs,” he said, “But I think she’s got her plate full for the moment.” Then, realising that Barratt hadn’t been briefed on that phase of the operation, he added: “She’s in charge of our expert squad.”
“Oh.”
Barratt left Rejker and three flak-jacketed Hertfordshire officers to guard the - whatever-it-was, and went back up to the ground floor, when he found Flavour waiting for him (looking, frankly, stunning, in her smart suit and hair-in-a-bun).
“How’s it cooking ?”
“So so,” Flavour replied. “We’ve got three haz-mat incidents, but none of them serious enough to need an evacuation. And the Customs people are very interested in some papers relating to imports from the Netherlands. And Shareya’s here, with some suits.”
“What’re they doing ?”
“Going through the library - apparently there are half a dozen books in there that they reckon are too dangerous to let people read.”
“Well, there’s some sort of dimensional portal in the basement,” Barratt said, “so she might want to escort a couple down there, to assess whether we’re safe with it.”
“A what !!?” Robin Flavour closed in and lowered her voice: “Thane, since when do you diagnose … paranormal phenomena ?”
“Long words, Hood - we may have to discuss that when we get home - and the answer is, I don’t, but I’ve seen a couple of them, and this one looks like another one.”
“Point taken.” For an instant her hand brushed his chest, then she was all business again. “I’ll tell her - encourage her that way. You might want to check upstairs - I think Mr. Ventrice went that way, and he hasn’t come down.”
Ventrice proved to be deep in sorting out the bedrooms of the house.
“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“Why ? What’s up ?”
“Put it this way: the phrase “bodily fluids” doesn’t get near it.” He waved a hand at the two SOCOs (Scenes Of Crime Officers) who were sorting through bedding and towels. “This is strictly latex-gloves-only territory. According to what they tell me, we’ve got a bouquet of human, animal and ‘undefined’ bloods, three sorts of bodily lubricants, at least four ejaculates, and more than twenty herbal residues. And in there, there looks to have been some sort of a chemical lab - there are burned residues I don’t like to think about, and Health and Safety have had us out twice to remove stuff that’s too dangerous to go near.”
“Any sign of people ?”
“Apart from the three that we found at the start and the half-dozen that scarpered sharpish ? No. Certainly not the hostages that Social Services woman talked about at the briefing. Not unless - ”
Barratt walked past Ventrice, to a wall panel, and tugged on the gargoyle’s head that decorated it. At once it moved aside, to reveal a space, and a narrow staircase, built inside the wall, and leading up, toward the roof-space.
“It’s all right - you can come down now. You’re safe.”
Ventrice watched the four teenagers - three girls and a boy - come down out of the roof. When two WPCs had taken them away he asked Barratt: “Did you want to explain ?”
“How I knew ? We had one of these individuals - ” He waved his hand to encompass the entire house “ - in lock-up in London, and I was lucky enough to sit in on the interrogation. He mentioned that - ” He pointed to the gargoyle “ - as a guardian of prisoners. So when I saw it … ”
Ventrice nodded, but Barratt took care to absent himself before two more minutes had passed.
Going back downstairs, he ran into Medallion, who was towing the Chief Superintendent behind him in the manner of a small boy and a balloon-on-a-string.
“How has it gone, Barratt ?”
“About as well as I expected, sir,” Barratt replied, gloomily. “The chief perpetrators appear to have escaped through the cellars, but we’ve people going through what they left behind.”
“But was it worth it ?” the Superintendent asked Medallion, rhetorically. Medallion, hearing, crooked an eyebrow at Barratt, who calmly said: “With respect, sir: yes. We have disrupted whatever they were planning and they were only able to take what they could carry. Moreover - ”
“Mind your backs !!” Three young man made their way down the stairs - between them was a lead casket, from which either steam or smoke was coming. There was also a stuffy perfume on the air - something that savoured of decay, and immense age.
From upstairs came an icy voice: “I told you Not To Open The Books. All right - it’s done now: we should retire and let the aroma settle. The cellar, I think: I gather we’re needed there.”
The Chief Superintendent paled slightly, and then a trio of sober-suited men came down the stairs, each of them incongruously clutching what looked like bare twigs.
“Good morning, Mr. Playgar,” one of them said and the Hertfordshire man had nodded in response before he’d even had chance to ask the obvious questions. Barratt, courtesy of the briefing he’d had, knew that the “twigs” were rowan rods, and that they were there as a basic item of protection.
“If you’ll excuse me, sirs,” Barratt said: “I ought to get a first-hand report - the cellar was where we lost a number of suspects.”
The Chief Superintendent might have asked, but Medallion leaned over to him and whispered: “Honestly, Gordon: you don’t want to know.”
Shareya escorted the three down into the cellar, with Barratt following close on their heels. They looked at the archway, with its miasmic swirling, and one of the men said “Pretty average Brekker-Hansen coriolis function. Ought to be simple to disconnect.”
“Do we know where it leads ?” Barratt asked.
“Do we need to ?” came the reply. Shareya quirked an eyebrow at the seething DI, before he exploded, and explained that valuable suspects appeared to have used the portal to escape arrest.
“No, we don’t,” came the eventual admission.
“Would it be safe for us to go through ?”
“To go into, yes … to come out of, probably not: a Brekker-Hansen is too capable of being twisted in on itself, generating a Klein anomaly.”
“Yes,” another of the men said, totally soberly: “Not to mention the fact that, according to Brokaw, a Brekker-Hansen is fundamentally vampiristic: feeding off of the people that sue it. Far better to use Molinaw’s formula, and dispense with the need for an independent power source.”
“Close it !” Barratt ordered crisply. Heads turned to him but he remained resolute. “If it is not possible to us to use this … device … then it represents a danger, and it should be shut off.”
“I’d prefer - ” one of the consultants began to say, but, unseen by the others, medallion had followed Barratt down into the cellar, and he interrupted.
“If DI Barratt says to close the … whatever the thing is, then you should do just that, and as quickly as possible. Mr. Barratt - I’d like you to stay and oversee that; then please join me upstairs. I think we are approaching the review and withdraw phase of the operation.”
“Yes, sir.”
With Shareya’s assistance, it proved a matter of a mere ten minutes to have the portal closed down. That done, Barratt ordered the cellar evacuated and then locked. He left Rejker and the three men in flak-jackets to see to that and he went to see Medallion, leaving Shareya to complete her sweep through the property checking for any other items of significance - there was already a small pile of cardboard boxes containing impedimenta - thuribles, glass retorts, peculiar-looking knives, and obscure leather items - standing by the stairs.
“Well, Barratt,” Medallion said, “was it worth while ?”
“Yes, sir - whatever they were going to do here has been comprehensively disrupted, and unless I’m very mistaken, there are large quantities of material of which we will be depriving them. In addition, I’m satisfied that we will recover most of not all of the material which was stolen from the evidence storage, and that, in due course, we will get useful intelligence on what to look for if and when this sort of thing recurs. Finally, sir, I’m satisfied, in my own mind, that there are other people involved in this … cult, for want of a better word: what we’ve done today serves firm and unequivocal notice that we won’t countenance what they have been doing. Even if it doesn’t bring people back to our side, it means that they can no longer pretend when we come across them that we’ve no reason to question them. They’re tainted, and they now know we have an interest in that taint.”
Medallion nodded. “And now what ?” he asked.
“I think we … that is, I … need to consult Concarnadine again. I suspect he’s going to say that anything more will have to be left to him, but I’d like him to look over whatever we’ve found, just in case he can use his specialist knowledge.”
Medallion nodded again. “I’m going to take Mr. Playgar back to his office. I suggest that you wrap up here as quickly as you can, and let everyone go home. Whatever you think you need to bring back, do - I’ll tell the local boys that we’ll take responsibility.”
“Thank you.”
He let Medallion leave first, then went to look for the others he knew. Shareya was about ready to pull out. Her “experts” wanted to take the things they’d found with them, but the agent herself was quite happy for Barratt to take them instead, and she prevailed upon the three to relinquish their claim “for the time being”. With that sorted out, Barratt located Gabriel Ruthven, now thankfully out of his armour, and entrusted to him the job of transporting the arcane “loot” back to the station.
“I don’t need to tell you not to touch anything, sergeant - oh, and make sure you get the book in the lead casket. You’ll probably want a van to get everything in. You’d better also organise an appointment for us all to meet with the Durbar people, so that we can sort things out with them.”
“I can see to that,” Ruthven replied, and Barratt wished him well, adding the unspoken petition that, for once, things might turn out as simply as Ruthven imagined they would.
Then he went to find Flavour.
“How are you doing ?”
“Most of the other teams have gone - I’ve been working with the locals, going over the mundane paperwork. Why - how’s it been for you ?” She reached up and adjusted her hair-bun.
Barratt smiled, gently: “Tell you what - got everything sorted out, and maybe we can go off and you can let your hair down with me.”
And, to his joy, Robin Flavour smiled back.
'Fandom': The Concarnadine Chronicles
Claim: General; Characters
Prompt: #036 :: "Smell"
Word Count: c. 2220
Rating: PG (ish)
Summary: Barratt plays away from home
Author's Notes: And a darker side to these charcaters, as well. BTW, definitely part of the Jovimort strand.
Half-glimpsed; half-inferred
“We’re ready ?”
“As it gets.”
Barratt looked round - he was well off his official “patch”: technically this wasn’t even the Met., it was Hertfordshire. But with Medallion there, and a local uniformed Chief Superintendent, and with warrants, issued by a High Court judge on the request of an Assistant Chief Constable, the technicalities were suspended for the time being. Ruthven was there, in full assault gear, radio-helmet and all, and Robin Flavour was at the head of a mixed-agency rumble squad - Special Branch, Customs, Immigration, even a couple of people from the Health and Safety Executive, based on the possibility of hazardous materials being discovered.
And then there were Barnaby’s people. Barratt was, deliberately, not looking too closely at anyone who he didn’t recognise. It had been a shock to learn that the spymaster had people inside the Met, but, given that, it made sense that he probably had some in other areas, too.
So far as he knew, Barnaby wasn’t present in person - there was no scent of him anywhere, and instead Rejker and Shareya were leading a small group of agents, all looking very serious.
He nodded, more to himself than to Ventrice, who was a Hertfordshire DCI, and said “We’d better do this - or just go for coffee.”
“For broke,” Ventrice replied, and headed off toward the front door to the house.
Two minutes later, the crackle on the intercom said they were in position. Barratt heard Ventrice knock on the door, and then saw the rear door open, and then rapidly close.
“Go !” he said and stood well aside as Ruthven’s squad sledge-hammered the door open and went in.
By the time he went in personally, there were people everywhere and things were happening. But someone, he told himself, had had to stay outside and keep an eye on the possibility of people trying to get out of windows, or do anything else extreme.
“Mr. Barratt ?” The young constable looked very nervous.
“What is it ?”
“They want you downstairs, sir.” The lad led the way to a staircase, leading down to what Barratt presumed were the cellars. He went down, and found Rejker waiting for him.
“Have you any idea ?” the agent asked, indicating a broad stone archway. It looked all very architectural, except for the whirling indigo-coloured miasma that was filling the archway itself.
Barratt started to go closer, but Rejker reached out to him.
“I wouldn’t - at least half a dozen of them went through that as soon as we started down, and we’ve seen no trace of them coming back.”
“It looks like something - ” Barratt paused, selecting his words - there were people about who weren’t, as it were, “cleared”, for the full version “ - that we need one of our specialists for.”
Rejker nodded: “Shareya’s upstairs,” he said, “But I think she’s got her plate full for the moment.” Then, realising that Barratt hadn’t been briefed on that phase of the operation, he added: “She’s in charge of our expert squad.”
“Oh.”
Barratt left Rejker and three flak-jacketed Hertfordshire officers to guard the - whatever-it-was, and went back up to the ground floor, when he found Flavour waiting for him (looking, frankly, stunning, in her smart suit and hair-in-a-bun).
“How’s it cooking ?”
“So so,” Flavour replied. “We’ve got three haz-mat incidents, but none of them serious enough to need an evacuation. And the Customs people are very interested in some papers relating to imports from the Netherlands. And Shareya’s here, with some suits.”
“What’re they doing ?”
“Going through the library - apparently there are half a dozen books in there that they reckon are too dangerous to let people read.”
“Well, there’s some sort of dimensional portal in the basement,” Barratt said, “so she might want to escort a couple down there, to assess whether we’re safe with it.”
“A what !!?” Robin Flavour closed in and lowered her voice: “Thane, since when do you diagnose … paranormal phenomena ?”
“Long words, Hood - we may have to discuss that when we get home - and the answer is, I don’t, but I’ve seen a couple of them, and this one looks like another one.”
“Point taken.” For an instant her hand brushed his chest, then she was all business again. “I’ll tell her - encourage her that way. You might want to check upstairs - I think Mr. Ventrice went that way, and he hasn’t come down.”
Ventrice proved to be deep in sorting out the bedrooms of the house.
“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“Why ? What’s up ?”
“Put it this way: the phrase “bodily fluids” doesn’t get near it.” He waved a hand at the two SOCOs (Scenes Of Crime Officers) who were sorting through bedding and towels. “This is strictly latex-gloves-only territory. According to what they tell me, we’ve got a bouquet of human, animal and ‘undefined’ bloods, three sorts of bodily lubricants, at least four ejaculates, and more than twenty herbal residues. And in there, there looks to have been some sort of a chemical lab - there are burned residues I don’t like to think about, and Health and Safety have had us out twice to remove stuff that’s too dangerous to go near.”
“Any sign of people ?”
“Apart from the three that we found at the start and the half-dozen that scarpered sharpish ? No. Certainly not the hostages that Social Services woman talked about at the briefing. Not unless - ”
Barratt walked past Ventrice, to a wall panel, and tugged on the gargoyle’s head that decorated it. At once it moved aside, to reveal a space, and a narrow staircase, built inside the wall, and leading up, toward the roof-space.
“It’s all right - you can come down now. You’re safe.”
Ventrice watched the four teenagers - three girls and a boy - come down out of the roof. When two WPCs had taken them away he asked Barratt: “Did you want to explain ?”
“How I knew ? We had one of these individuals - ” He waved his hand to encompass the entire house “ - in lock-up in London, and I was lucky enough to sit in on the interrogation. He mentioned that - ” He pointed to the gargoyle “ - as a guardian of prisoners. So when I saw it … ”
Ventrice nodded, but Barratt took care to absent himself before two more minutes had passed.
Going back downstairs, he ran into Medallion, who was towing the Chief Superintendent behind him in the manner of a small boy and a balloon-on-a-string.
“How has it gone, Barratt ?”
“About as well as I expected, sir,” Barratt replied, gloomily. “The chief perpetrators appear to have escaped through the cellars, but we’ve people going through what they left behind.”
“But was it worth it ?” the Superintendent asked Medallion, rhetorically. Medallion, hearing, crooked an eyebrow at Barratt, who calmly said: “With respect, sir: yes. We have disrupted whatever they were planning and they were only able to take what they could carry. Moreover - ”
“Mind your backs !!” Three young man made their way down the stairs - between them was a lead casket, from which either steam or smoke was coming. There was also a stuffy perfume on the air - something that savoured of decay, and immense age.
From upstairs came an icy voice: “I told you Not To Open The Books. All right - it’s done now: we should retire and let the aroma settle. The cellar, I think: I gather we’re needed there.”
The Chief Superintendent paled slightly, and then a trio of sober-suited men came down the stairs, each of them incongruously clutching what looked like bare twigs.
“Good morning, Mr. Playgar,” one of them said and the Hertfordshire man had nodded in response before he’d even had chance to ask the obvious questions. Barratt, courtesy of the briefing he’d had, knew that the “twigs” were rowan rods, and that they were there as a basic item of protection.
“If you’ll excuse me, sirs,” Barratt said: “I ought to get a first-hand report - the cellar was where we lost a number of suspects.”
The Chief Superintendent might have asked, but Medallion leaned over to him and whispered: “Honestly, Gordon: you don’t want to know.”
Shareya escorted the three down into the cellar, with Barratt following close on their heels. They looked at the archway, with its miasmic swirling, and one of the men said “Pretty average Brekker-Hansen coriolis function. Ought to be simple to disconnect.”
“Do we know where it leads ?” Barratt asked.
“Do we need to ?” came the reply. Shareya quirked an eyebrow at the seething DI, before he exploded, and explained that valuable suspects appeared to have used the portal to escape arrest.
“No, we don’t,” came the eventual admission.
“Would it be safe for us to go through ?”
“To go into, yes … to come out of, probably not: a Brekker-Hansen is too capable of being twisted in on itself, generating a Klein anomaly.”
“Yes,” another of the men said, totally soberly: “Not to mention the fact that, according to Brokaw, a Brekker-Hansen is fundamentally vampiristic: feeding off of the people that sue it. Far better to use Molinaw’s formula, and dispense with the need for an independent power source.”
“Close it !” Barratt ordered crisply. Heads turned to him but he remained resolute. “If it is not possible to us to use this … device … then it represents a danger, and it should be shut off.”
“I’d prefer - ” one of the consultants began to say, but, unseen by the others, medallion had followed Barratt down into the cellar, and he interrupted.
“If DI Barratt says to close the … whatever the thing is, then you should do just that, and as quickly as possible. Mr. Barratt - I’d like you to stay and oversee that; then please join me upstairs. I think we are approaching the review and withdraw phase of the operation.”
“Yes, sir.”
With Shareya’s assistance, it proved a matter of a mere ten minutes to have the portal closed down. That done, Barratt ordered the cellar evacuated and then locked. He left Rejker and the three men in flak-jackets to see to that and he went to see Medallion, leaving Shareya to complete her sweep through the property checking for any other items of significance - there was already a small pile of cardboard boxes containing impedimenta - thuribles, glass retorts, peculiar-looking knives, and obscure leather items - standing by the stairs.
“Well, Barratt,” Medallion said, “was it worth while ?”
“Yes, sir - whatever they were going to do here has been comprehensively disrupted, and unless I’m very mistaken, there are large quantities of material of which we will be depriving them. In addition, I’m satisfied that we will recover most of not all of the material which was stolen from the evidence storage, and that, in due course, we will get useful intelligence on what to look for if and when this sort of thing recurs. Finally, sir, I’m satisfied, in my own mind, that there are other people involved in this … cult, for want of a better word: what we’ve done today serves firm and unequivocal notice that we won’t countenance what they have been doing. Even if it doesn’t bring people back to our side, it means that they can no longer pretend when we come across them that we’ve no reason to question them. They’re tainted, and they now know we have an interest in that taint.”
Medallion nodded. “And now what ?” he asked.
“I think we … that is, I … need to consult Concarnadine again. I suspect he’s going to say that anything more will have to be left to him, but I’d like him to look over whatever we’ve found, just in case he can use his specialist knowledge.”
Medallion nodded again. “I’m going to take Mr. Playgar back to his office. I suggest that you wrap up here as quickly as you can, and let everyone go home. Whatever you think you need to bring back, do - I’ll tell the local boys that we’ll take responsibility.”
“Thank you.”
He let Medallion leave first, then went to look for the others he knew. Shareya was about ready to pull out. Her “experts” wanted to take the things they’d found with them, but the agent herself was quite happy for Barratt to take them instead, and she prevailed upon the three to relinquish their claim “for the time being”. With that sorted out, Barratt located Gabriel Ruthven, now thankfully out of his armour, and entrusted to him the job of transporting the arcane “loot” back to the station.
“I don’t need to tell you not to touch anything, sergeant - oh, and make sure you get the book in the lead casket. You’ll probably want a van to get everything in. You’d better also organise an appointment for us all to meet with the Durbar people, so that we can sort things out with them.”
“I can see to that,” Ruthven replied, and Barratt wished him well, adding the unspoken petition that, for once, things might turn out as simply as Ruthven imagined they would.
Then he went to find Flavour.
“How are you doing ?”
“Most of the other teams have gone - I’ve been working with the locals, going over the mundane paperwork. Why - how’s it been for you ?” She reached up and adjusted her hair-bun.
Barratt smiled, gently: “Tell you what - got everything sorted out, and maybe we can go off and you can let your hair down with me.”
And, to his joy, Robin Flavour smiled back.