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Chapter 28: Ellison talks to Crewe
While they were down in the dungeon, the castle had become a hive of activity.
Ademar had arrived, and so did the last shipment of supplies for the Baron’s army.
A couple of supply sergeant types were busy coordinating the repackaging and allocation of the delivered goods while a cook was preparing a meal for the Baron and his top officers.
Trask gathered that the suppliers had delivered more than the Baron had ordered, as a way of compensating for the delays. It always paid to stay on the good side with your best customer.
“If you guys need anything for the road, there’s plenty,” one of the Baron’s people told them.
And they did. Trask was able to grab some bread and cheese and some sausages and a bag of apples, while Joe, being a professional, scored a whole cured ham.
“I’ll take everything out to the carriage and get the horses ready for the trip back,” he said.
“I’ll go and see what Matilda came up with and we’ll meet you outside.”
He thought about that ham as he walked back to the dungeon stairs. He planned to slice it thin, and layer it with cheese on top of the bread. It would have been nice to have some pickles or mustard to go with it, but travel always required sacrifice. In his old life, that meant having to eat airport food. Now, he had to give up condiments.
He took his time walking back. He didn’t want to interrupt Matilda in the middle of something particular gruesome.
But when he finally made it down into the dungeon, he found Matilda in the hallway, just around a corner from the cell where the Baron did his torturing.
He waved to her but she raised a finger to her lips before he could say anything and waved at him to come closer.
As he approached, she pointed at her ear, then at the corner and Trask leaned closer to listen.
“I saw your target list.” Ellison’s smooth voice echoed from stone walls, but Crewe’s response was mumbled.
“I got your briefcase from City Hall,” Ellison continued. “Most of those cases are months old. I can find them all for you in a couple of days.”
There was some more mumbling from Crewe.
“It’s back in my room at the inn.”
Was Ellison referring to the Barley Mow? If so, Trask needed to have a chat with Quimby.
“You know you need me,” Ellison added.
Trask straightened up. Ellison wasn’t the Baron’s torturer. He was another process server looking for a job.
“He’s Crewe’s brother,” Matilda whispered. “Just released from prison. Nobody will hire him and his parole officer is threatening him with career counseling and therapy.”
“You know I’ve got special skills,” Ellison said.
“Is he the griefer?” Trask whispered back.
Matilda shook her head. “I don’t think either of them had anything to do with it.”
“I guess I’ll just head on back to the city,” Ellison said.
Matilda pulled Trask away, back down the hall.
“How sure are you?” he asked once they were back on the stairs.
“Pretty sure,” she said. “Neither of them strikes me as the kind of person who’d commission violence. And I know my way around violence.”
“But Ellison was in prison.”
“Some kind of non-violent, white-collar crime,” she said. “At least, that the sense I got from what I heard of their conversation.”
If neither Crewe nor the Baron was behind the griefing, what else was left? Trask no longer thought it could be a random person with a grudge because of the number of attacks, attacks that continued after the first griefer had died. It had to be a coordinated campaign by more than one person.
Unless Crewe was right and someone at City Hall was involved.
Maybe the Humanists planted one of their own among the grid’s contractors and were trying to destroy Krim from within.
“We need to hurry up and get back to the city,” he told Matilda, picking up his pace.
Also, Joe was alone in the carriage with the ham.