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A few mornings later, feeling bright and breezy, I made my way to a place I had never before visited - and one I sincerely hope I never have to visit again. The Residential Institute for the Criminally Insane was located at one end of a small and rather obscure cavern, a cave with very limited connectivity to the network of travel tubes otherwise ubiquitous in the Lower Realms. From the outside, the Institute resembled nothing so much as a giant cage of the kind that might have been used in a zoo for large flying creatures. Stout wire fencing in two widely-spaced layers stretched from rock wall to rock wall, and from floor to ceiling too. The fences themselves, and the wide spaces both in front and behind, were wrapped in an ethereal haze which was somehow not quite visible in the air: a side-effect of the permanent deployment of a force for the suppression of glamours and other magic. It seemed that the authorities had spared little expense in eliminating the risk of escape by either mundane or magical means. Set in the centre of the doubled fence was the only entrance and exit: a heavily-build stone fortress which seemed to have congealed around a large doorway. The door itself was a brooding block of stone, circular in shape and set in a sloping track in such a way that, with considerable effort, it could be rolled open, but it would only take a moment for it to be released to come crashing closed. Fortunately, there was also a smaller sally-port alongside, an opening which led to an internal maze of rock corridors barely big enough for a Goblin - quite a tight squeeze for me - and which would be impassable for larger creatures, like most humans. Within the prison there were any number of other precautions and defences, which I must decline to describe in these notes. Not because you wouldn't be interested, you understand; it's just that those - still nameless - authorities prohibit the recording of the internal layout and structure of the Institute, for obvious security reasons. I still want to hang on to my PI licence, after all. Eventually, after a certain amount of paperwork and a fair bit of old-fashioned hanging-around, I was shown into an interview room. Slumped in one of the two comfortable seats, apparently asleep, was Dalgrin Balloch. I slipped inside and positioned myself in the other leather chair. The steel door behind me closed with a click. I was locked in with a madman. After a minute, the occupant of the other chair stirred himself and looked blearily around at his surroundings. Balloch was still dressed in prison uniform but was otherwise unconstrained. Following a suggestion worked out with the aid of much alcohol with Tewel, the interview room had been - very temporarily - equipped with a couple of rather fine antique chairs, a low table with a lamp and a few faded prints to hang on the wall. None of this decoration interfered with the view through the one-way glass, nor with the efficiency of the hidden microphones and recording equipment. Finally, Balloch's attention alighted on me. "Who are you?" he demanded, his eyes roving over me like barely-constrained pinballs. "It's Findo Gask, old boy," I drawled, "Surely you remember me from Rourke's?" His face screwed up with the effort of concentration of identifying me through whatever whirl of misfiring neurones was going on in his head. The gamble I was taking here was that Balloch's mental state had blanked out, caused by some combination of the blow to his head and the collapse of his sanity in the deep caverns, and would think I was still the affable old soak he had picked up in Rourke's Club. "I was interested in making a business investment," I went on, "In the Midnight Square Theatre." Like a bright ray of moonlight on a cloudy night, a flash of recognition lit up Balloch's face. "Ah, yes, Gask," he said, in some approximation to the urbane manner he had affected when I first met him, "Good to see you again. Let's have a drink." I sat back in the leather chair and picked up the cup-and-saucer of coffee that some police officer, no doubt playing a part as a waiter, had placed conveniently close. "Glad you remembered me," I went on affably, "I was terribly interested in your business ventures. Sounds jolly thought-provoking. Why don't you tell me about them?" It was like a floodgate had opened up. Balloch talked and talked. I barely had to prompt him at all. He told of places, and times and dates, the names of associates and contacts, the deals he had done, and the ones which had fallen through for all kinds of reasons, up to and including cases where he had arranged for the party of the second part to be parted from his life, often with extreme prejudice." He appeared to be unable, at least in his current state, of distinguishing between a legitimate business deal, and activities which would be flagrantly illegal in any jurisdiction on the planet. For him, trafficking in warm young bodies was just another piece of profiteering from a natural and apparently endless resource. Coffee - nothing stronger - was served at intervals. I was glad of the caffeine kick, just to maintain the appearance of paying attention. It must have been much harder for those on the other side of the one-way mirror. Tewel told me later that the stenographers had to work in shifts to capture all that he said in shorthand, as well as the use of microphones and mechanical recording machines of the kind they would have utilised in the surface world. When Balloch ran dry, he seemed to collapse - perhaps just with exhaustion, of maybe from some kind of mental release. I guessed that the notes and recordings would go a long way to clearing up some of the seedier parts of the Lower Realms; I could imagine Tewel's colleagues rubbing their hands with glee at the intelligence which had fallen into their hands. So when I left, it was with a strong sense of a job well done - and the unspoken promise of a favour owed to me by the police. I was even paid for the work, at my usual rates: Tewel had arranged for the authorities - whoever they were in this case - to fund me an advance for the day. So that would help with the office rent, at least.
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Part 105