Looking up at Raffy, the guard looked surprised at the youth's first questions - however, it didn't take him too long to realise he was being spoken to by one of the captain's men. Grudgingly, he answered.
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"Where exactly was the body?"
"Jus' lyin' here, by the wall." He gestured to the shrouded thing that he had covered with his cloak. "I ain't moved it far. Just outta people's way." He looked around. "Frankl was s'posed to be comin' back to help me move it."
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"What did it look like? Any symbols carved in this one?"
"Not that you could make out," said the man, with an involuntary shudder. "Y'can take a look if you want, and if you keep these dawdlin' passers-by from taking a gawp at it too. I wouldn't advise it, though, not 'less you have a strong stomach."
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"Who was the victim? Any connexion to the house here?"
"Dunno yet. Not enough left o' the face for any what found him to recognise the poor bugger."
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"Which way was the body lying, and where on the body were most of the wounds?" ((Wants to deduce which direction the murderer struck from. If the body was torn up then....)) "Think man. Did you see any marks that are more like flesh wounds, like knives or a claw swipe? Those would've hit first to knock him down, before... tearing him up. Which side of the body were those on?"
The man shook his head.
"You ain't seen one o' these before, have you?" he asked, glumly. "All over. Like he was... ate alive. It ain't natural. I seen blade-work, and I seen beast-bites too, and this ain't like them - no proper cuts, no big tooth-marks. Jus' ragged ruin, and the skin what ain't gone, all covered in little scratches. He were jus'...
consumed."
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"Was there any mud tracked around here, or muddy prints? Besides the blood stains?"
"There's mud all aroun' this town, ain't there? Din't see no prints, but the blood had been carried a fair way all around - maybe scavengers getting at him before he was found. Cleaned it up, like the captain told us."
Once his questions had been answered, Raffy commenced his search of the alley - the guard watched him with an air of slight trepidation, as if the fearsome murderer might still be lurking somewhere close by.
There was none of the urban litter of crates and boxes one might find around the Neumarket in this part of town - satisfying himself that there were no portable hiding-places he needed to examine, Raffy began tapping on the walls, the guard's expression turning to mild bewilderment as the young man went up and down the sides of the narrow lane. The walls seemed thick and solid on both sides - what you'd expect, from the homes of the nobility. If there was a secret entrance somewhere here, Raffy wasn't seeing it.
Turning his attention instead to the cobbled surface of the street itself, Raffy repeated his routine, diligently searching across the ground for any sign of a hidden hatch. There was none - however, near where the gutters of the large house against whose walls the poor wretch had died emptied down onto the street, a narrow storm-drain stood to channel the water away into the sewers. Perhaps a little under a foot square, it was covered with a grid of rusted but sturdy iron bars, driven directly into the stone. There seemed no way to remove the coverings, still less for anyone to squeeze through the narrow opening if they could - but just below the level of the top of the drain, Raffy could see thick traces of blood that had been smeared against the sides of its interior, unnoticed by the guard in his clean-up.
It seemed improbable that the man's blood could have run this far in the quantities needed to paint the sides of the drain so vividly... and even if it had, the traces he could see were rough and scratchy, more like the work of an old paintbrush or stiff furs a than any fluid flow.
Caught in the pinch between two of the iron bars that covered the hole, he caught sight of something thin and black - pulling it free, he held it up to his eyes. It was a spiny black hair, clearly animal rather than human. It smelt of blood, and something else: before his return to Delberz, Raffy might have been hard put to place it, but after their desperate flight through the sewers, there was no mistaking the sharp musk of the city's rats.
Straightening up, Raffy noted four large houses with windows overlooking the short alleyway - they had remained shuttered, the inhabitants perhaps choosing not to see the slumped shape under the guard's cloak. Nevertheless, it would be easy enough to knock on their doors...