one direction and then the other. Slowly. Someone had time. ‘This wasn’t murder, it was torture,’ he stated, noticing the fingernails lying on the floor directly beneath the wall.
‘Why torture a City Watchman? Rex didn’t seem convinced. ‘Unless something happened in the meantime that the victim’s friends haven’t told us about. Some sort of dispute, an argument, or an incident that could potentially serve as a pretext for cruel revenge.’
‘They probably would have told us about it. I also doubt the innkeeper would try to cover for them, nor the priest.’ Earl shook his head. ‘If anything had happened, half the village and all the merchants who were here on that fateful day would surely be talking about it. At some point, it would have reached us too. Too great a risk.’
‘So perhaps something that happened back in the capital? They didn’t go into details when they mentioned the farewell.’ The non-commissioned officer looked around, his gaze lingering on the Guards slowly rearranging the furniture and checking whether anything important lay amongst the shards scattered about. ‘A wild party means plenty of alcohol, and that’s a recipe for trouble. All it would take is to rub someone from the Thieves’ Guild the wrong way, or some other shady character. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone had hired a hitman.’
‘Do you think they’d risk retaliation from the City Watch?’ Darius looked up from the bloodstain. ‘Even if Rocha had left the unit, he still had friends in the city. If it came to light that someone from the underworld was behind it all, Arkien, and even more so Xalveth, would become the scene of mob justice. Just as cruel as what happened here.’
‘So what do you think, Colonel?’ Rex gave up on coming up with his own theories.
‘I think we know even less than we thought. First, we need to find the missing pieces of the puzzle.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘I also don’t like the timing of Rocha’s transfer request. Somehow, I don’t want to believe it’s a coincidence that the
