Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked by Derek Landy Page B

him. His lips moved, forming the words. When he’d finished, he looked up.
    “It’s already signed,” he said. “I wanted the Grand Mage to sign this in front of me.”
    “That’s not going to happen,” Skulduggery said. “He’s a busy man. Too busy to be visiting prisons. You know it’s genuine – only the Grand Mage can write on that paper.”
    Nadir tipped a finger to his lips. “And what about dear old Delafonte Mien? How is he going to be punished for his blatant abuse of power?”
    “Mien is already in a cell in the Sanctuary. His punishment is yet to be decided.”
    “You be sure to throw the book at him, you hear me? I feel violated, Detective. Violated.”
    “I’ll throw this table at you if you don’t give us the names we’re looking for.”
    Still smirking, Nadir lounged back in his chair. “Lament was a scientist, so he never went anywhere without his muscle to back him up – Vernon Plight. That woman was with them too sometimes, the small one, the psychic. Lenka Bazaar, that’s her name. And someone else.”
    “Who?”
    “Can’t remember.”
    Skulduggery reached for the contract but Nadir snatched it back. “Kalvin Accord! That was it! That’s all I know.”
    Skulduggery looked at Valkyrie. “Vernon Plight is missing presumed dead. Same with Kalvin Accord, and I’ve never heard of this Lenka Bazaar.”
    Nadir shrugged. “That’s not my fault. I fulfilled my side of the deal.”
    “Yes, you did,” said Skulduggery. “There’s no one else you remember? No one else they mentioned?”
    “I wasn’t really taking much notice of what they were saying in between hitting me. Those are the names I’ve got for you. That’s all.”
    “OK. It’s something to go on, at least. Cleaver, could you escort Mr Nadir to his cell, please?”
    Nadir stared. “What? You said you’d hook me back up. You said you’d take me back to that contraption!” The Cleaver hauled him to his feet and shackled his wrists. “We had a deal! We have a contract!”
    “Yes, we do,” Skulduggery said, picking it up off the desk. “Unfortunately for you it’s not binding.”
    “But the Grand Mage signed it! Eachan Meritorious himself signed it!”
    “The Grand Mage did sign it,” Skulduggery nodded, “but Eachan Meritorious is dead – which you wouldn’t have heard about, what with being hooked up to that thing for the last fifteen years. And unless Erskine Ravel, the current Grand Mage, signs this contract with his own name, well... It can hardly be considered a legal document, now can it?”
    “You cheated me!” Nadir screeched as the Cleaver dragged him to the door.
    “You’re a serial killer, Mr Nadir,” said Skulduggery, tearing up the page. “You deserve to be cheated.”

offee. That’s all she wanted right now. Just coffee. Sunday morning coffee. Lovely Sunday morning coffee. Just the thing to take her mind off the dull throb that was making her arm ache, right where Nadir had grabbed her the day before. Just the thing to take her mind off the mystery surrounding Argeddion and Lament. Coffee, in fact, was almost a wonderful enough experience to take her mind off the fact that her next port of call would be a murder scene.
    Valkyrie didn’t like murder scenes. The more she’d visited, the less she’d liked. If they were more along the lines of the murder scenes that her gran watched on TV, where elderly detectives tut-tutted around beautiful countrysides and manor homes, she might have changed her opinion. But the murder scenes she tended to visit belonged in horror movies or police procedurals, where the emphasis was on blood splatter and defensive wounds and, occasionally, finding the head.
    Skulduggery had warned her that this morning’s murder scene contained blood, and lots of it. But that was ages away. Skulduggery wouldn’t be picking her up for another half an hour or so. If she were a mayfly, that would be practically a lifetime away. So here she was, in a nice bright coffee