The Alchemist's Cell
by SJR0301
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Edar and Fay were waiting in the conference room once again.
"I'm sorry, Edgar," Fay said, "but they had to be told. You just can't do that. Betray your oath to the Job, and cover things up like that."
"I know," he said.
Masters came in and once again, the Prime Minister came with him. Edgar stared in surprise. He didn't think Prime Ministers came to attend a lower ranking officer's termination. He wondered whether he'd be able to get a job in the wizard world, and thought his prospects looked pretty dim. And being fired from Scotland Yard didn't look real great on one's curriculum vitae in the Muggle world. Edgar and Fay stood up for the Prime Minister, and they both waited for him to wave them to their seats.
"Well," Masters said, "this is a pretty pickle, Bones. Quite a pickle indeed."
"Yes, sir," Edgar said.
The Prime Minister stared him and Fay and said, "Superintendent Masters tells me there was quite a scene at Kings Cross. Wizards blowing up the station and chasing this madman of theirs who was supposed to be dead. That's right, isn't it?" Edgar simply nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak.
"And you sent off the uniforms and told them it was a rehearsal for a new movie with that cute little girl from that telly sitcom. That's right, isn't it?"
Once again, all Edgar could do was nod. Beside him, Fay sat stiffly and he knew that she must be utterly miserable. She had been within an inch of receiving her promotion and now she was likely to be demoted back to uniform, or fired along with him.
"And what happened to this madman? Did their Ministry get him?"
"No," Edgar answered briefly. "Sergeant Kray here shot him and wounded him in the shoulder, but he got away."
The Prime Minister's rather mobile eyebrows rose over his angular face.
"Well, done, Sergeant," he said.
"Thank you, sir," Fay said stiffly.
"In fact," the Prime Minister said, "Well done, both of you. Very quick thinking, Inspector, covering the incident up like that." Edgar had to keep his jaw from falling all the way to the floor.
"Yes, indeed," Masters said. "Brilliant thinking. Can't let the public panic over mad wizards on the loose can we? Just think of it, it'd be a disaster. Tabloids screaming about explosions in the train station and people being in terror of some dark magic they can't see or defend against.”
"All in all, well done," the Prime Minister, agreed. "But seeing how this madman is still on the loose, we thought we ought to have a liaison with the Minsitry of Magic. I want someone reliable who'll be able to handle a thing like this and who can think on his feet. Masters seemed to think you two could be spared from your regular duties from time to time at need."
Masters said, "Yes, I think they'll do. Bones, here, caught the drift of all this quite quickly. Much more quickly than one could expect, given how difficult the whole thing is to believe, anyway." He coughed a little dry cough and Edgar was hard put upon not to point out how Masters' determined disbelief had slowed up the investigation all along. Edgar could feel Fay twitching beside him. He felt just the same. An appointment direct from the Prime Minister? A secret one?
Then Edgar felt, knew, that he had better be entirely truthful now, before something else happened and his past truly came back to haunt him. He gave a bit of a dry cough himself and stiffened his spine for the ultimate rejection. "The thing is, sir," he said as apologetically as he could, "I had an inside line from the start."
Masters stared at him and so did Fay. She kicked him under the table. He had noticed that she had not told them that he himself was a wizard. He had hoped it meant she wasn't dumping him for good for covering things up.
The Prime Minister gave him a searching look and said, "Perhaps you'd better explain that Inspector Bones. So far as I know, only the Queen, myself and one other cabinet member is even aware of the existence of the wizard community and the Ministry of Magic. How could you have an..."Inside line" then?"
Edgar took a deep breath and tried to think how best to explain himself. In the end, he simply drew his new wand and laid it on the table in front of them.
Masters stared at it in shock and said, "What is this, some prank?" Then the color flushed through his face and he said, "You had it from the evidence box, I suppose. That's how you knew."
Edgar shook his head and said, "No, sir. That one is mine. I had an inkling right from the start what might be going on because Riddle, that's the perp, sir, killed my family when I was sixteen. I ran away then thinking I'd be killed myself if I stayed or let on I had lived and no one in the wizard community knew I'd survived. It wasn't until I started investigating Nancy Bell's death that I had any contact with the wizard world again. I knew that there was a way to kill that left no mark. So when I saw Nancy Bell and Margaret Miller and Janet Gordon, I knew another possiblity existed that wasn't drugs or a heart attack or anything like that, but that still was murder. And I can tell you, I was hoping when we got the autopsy results that they would find some new drug."
Edar waited for the distaste, the horror to show on their faces. For a long agonizing moment, he saw his whole life crumbling beneath him, his love, his job and the life he'd made all, all gone.
The Prime Minister simply stared at him and said consideringly, "Then that makes you all the more useful, doesn't it, Inspector. You speak the language, as it were."
Edgar answered very dryly, "British wizards speak English, sir."
The PM gave him a look as dry as his own and said, "You know perfectly well what I mean. I'm quite sure Her Majesty will be pleased to have a wizard on call from time to time again. They've been a bit standoffish since World War II for some reason. Though according to my files, they came through quite magnificently when asked."
"Really?" Masters asked. "World War II? What on earth could a wizard have done in World War II? You can't blow up a tank with that, could you?" Edgar didn't answer, but fortunately, he didn't need to.
"Hitler had his wizards," the PM said, "and we had ours. Thank goodness they came up to scratch just like the rest of our boys."
Edgar stared at him and said, "I wouldn't mind seeing that file myself, sir."
The PM smiled a terribly sneaky sort of smile and answered, "Ah. Well, if you take the job of liaison, you'll report only to Masters and myself. And of course, our files will be open to you once you sign the Secrets oath as permanent on-call seravnts of the Cabinet." Edgar thought a second. He didn't want to ruin everything again by doing this wrong.
So he looked squarely at Fay and said, "Sergeant Kray, as my assigned partner, you've got a say in the decision. Do we do this, or not? I'm quite sure the Superintendent and the Prime Minister won't hold it against us if we decline the honor." He wasn't sure of that at all. But he was sure Fay might never speak to him again if he left her out of this.
Fay stood up and said, "Who are we to decline the service of our country when our fathers stood up and risked their lives for it when they were called, each in their own way." Edgar wanted to kiss her, but he thought she'd probably kill him if he tried just then.
He settled for a sedate, "Very good, Sergeant," and he turned to the Prime Minister and the Superintendent and said, "There's your answer, Sirs. And if I may say so, I believe we've got our work cut out for us still."
The Prime Minister said quietly, "And what's your assessment of this situation. I understand the madman-- Riddle?-- was wounded. How soon can we expect the Ministry of Magic to get him in their lock-up?"
Edgar said just as quietly, "I don't know, sir. He's been at this, killing and terrorizing for as long as fifty years. For a long time, he confined most of his killings to the wizard world. But if you want my analysis, what we're dealing with is a psychopath who happens to be a wizard. He shows much of the pathology of those types, except that he has the ability to attract a few followers out of fear or charisma. He has been very organized until now. He's a brilliant planner, almost military in his ability to think ahead and to set up traps for the unwary. And he's utterly ruthless. Without any conscience whatsoever."
Masters looked at him consideringly and said, "That makes him very dangerous indeed. You said up till now. What does that mean about the present."
Edgar looked at Fay and she answered for him. "What it means, sir, is we think he may be decompensating. He's maintained his organized thinking for far longer than the average psychopath once he began to act out his violent impulses. But if you look at his recent actions, especially this last thing in the station, he's losing that organization. He's become completely obsessive, to the exclusion of rational thought. He killed one of his own followers at the station to get at an object he wanted. And he went after his victim right in front of the world and didn't care who saw it. In textbook terms, that means that his compulsion has now begun to control him that he no longer plans for avenues of escape or concealment. That makes him more dangerous then he ever was before."
Edgar saw that Masters, at least, understood the true import of their assessment. The Super gave a funny laugh and tried to joke. "I guess that means we'd better buy a string of garlic then, given what he is."
Edgar said dryly, "He's not a vampire, sir. Not that garlic actually works, either."
Masters started to laugh and then did a double take as the meaning of his words sank in. "Oh, come on," he said. "Next there'll be fire-breathing dragons making off with the Queen."
Edgar thought it would be more tactful not to let on that there really were dragons, even if they weren't at all interested in elderly human Queens.
"What about the boy?" Masters asked. "The one he went after in the station? What are we doing about him? If this fellow is truly decompensating, he could go after the boy again."
"Harry Potter, sir?" Edgar said. "I'd think it's a dead certainty he'll go after the boy again. Especially after today."
The Prime Minister said, "Potter? Wasn’t that the name of the kid they told us knocked him off a few weeks ago?" He put on gold-rimmed reading glasses and pulled some notes out a file that had TOP SECRET marked in red across the jacket. "Yes," he said, "Here it is. Fellow invaded a school full of kids and this Potter boy fought him. Nearly got killed, too."
"That's right," Fay said. "We heard the same thing from another source."
"A wizard source?" Masters asked.
Edgar said quickly, "Yes."
He was quite sure Masters wasn't ready for goblins anymore than he was ready for dragons. "We'll be keeping an eye on the boy," Edgar said. "Nothing obtrusive. But I think it's as good a way of keeping track of the villain as any, watching out to see if he strikes at his chosen victim again." Masters nodded and the Prime Minister got up and shook their hands.
"I'll expect you Number Ten tomorrow morning to take your oaths and sign the Secrets Act."
Afterwards, Fay said, "Edgar, do you really think all this secretiveness is the right thing to do?"
Edgar sighed and stared moodily out his office window. "I don't know, Fay. One part of me, the part that grew up as a wizard, says we ought to keep it secret. That's what I was always taught. But another part of me says that there'll never be a normal place in the world for wizards until we do stop trying to conceal ourselves. And for that matter, I don't know, I can't measure, just how many people might be endangered by our not telling all that we know about Riddle."
Fay wrapped her arms around him and said, "Then we'd better do our level best to catch him, hadn't we?"
Edgar turned to her and said, "You're a brave woman, Fay Kray. I just hope we survive to tell the tale, if we do." He looked at her and said, "You ought to get a medal, anyway, wounding the villain like that. That was incredible, you know, getting that shot off in all that pandemonium and actually hitting him."
"I wish I'd killed him," she said fiercely. "He'll go after that poor boy again. You know he will."
Edgar nodded and said slowly, "Very likely. But it seems to me he's got something of his own to contribute. I've never seen anything like what he can do, and he's only sixteen. When my father was an auror-- that's like a wizard policeman-- he always told me that nothing could block the Killing Curse. And Harry Potter survived it, somehow. I think we'll hear more from him before all's said and done."
