The mist outside turned back into proper rain. It fell steadily, washing the streets clean once more.
Lila and I left the café without another word. The rain had grown heavier, drumming on umbrellas and turning every cobblestone into a black mirror that reflected only fragments of the grey sky. We walked side by side toward the poorer districts where the Maddox brothers were known to have contacts. The air smelled of wet stone, coal smoke, and the faint metallic tang that always seemed to follow recent bloodshed.
Neither of us spoke for several blocks. My boots splashed through puddles that soaked the hems of my trousers. Lila's coat was already dark with rain at the shoulders. She kept pace with me easily, her expression calm but focused.
We stopped first at a rundown public house on the edge of the docks. The sign outside creaked in the wind, paint peeling like old skin. Inside, the air was thick with pipe smoke and the sour smell of spilled ale. A few rough-looking men glanced up as we entered, their eyes narrowing at the sight of a well-dressed woman and a detective.
I approached the barman, a heavy-set man with a scar across his left cheek. I slid a coin across the counter along with a description of the Maddox brothers.
"Seen either of them lately?" I asked quietly.
The barman barely looked at the coin. "Haven't seen Harlan or Rhys in days. And even if I had, I wouldn't say. Not to you."
Lila stepped forward. Her voice was soft but carried the trained clarity of a singer. "We're not here to cause trouble. We just want to know if they were working for anyone new. Anyone paying well."
The barman's eyes flicked to her, then back to me. He wiped the counter with a dirty rag. "You're the detective who's been asking about that red-haired ghost, aren't you? The one the papers are laughing about. Chasing fairy tales while real blood gets spilled."
The words stung more than I expected. I felt the doubt rise again, thick and heavy in my chest.
We left the pub without answers. The rain had intensified, turning the narrow streets into shallow rivers. We moved from one contact to another — an old fence who claimed he hadn't seen the brothers in weeks, a woman who ran a boarding house and said they had left suddenly two nights ago with heavy bags. Every answer was evasive. Every face carried the same mix of fear and mockery when I mentioned the red-haired man.
By late afternoon we were soaked through and no closer to the money trail. We took shelter under the awning of an abandoned warehouse near the docks. Rain poured off the edge in a solid curtain, cutting us off from the rest of the world.
Lila shook water from her hair. "They're scared," she said. "Not just of the Maddox brothers. Of whoever paid them. And of you."
"Of me?" I gave a bitter laugh. "They think I'm mad. Chasing a man with burning hair who appears and disappears with the rain."
Lila looked at me steadily. Water ran down her face in thin silver lines. "You're not mad, Elias. But you are alone. And they're using that against you."
We stood in silence for a while, listening to the rain. I pulled out my notebook, the pages damp at the edges, and flipped through the sketches I had made at the family's house. The boot print. The angle of the cuts. The cloudy whiskey glass. Everything pointed to the Maddox brothers. Everything except the red-haired man, who seemed further away with every passing day.
A sudden gust of wind drove rain under the awning, soaking us further. I closed the notebook and slipped it back into my coat.
"We should head back," I said. "Before we catch our death."
We walked on through the worsening rain. The streets were emptying fast. People hurried past with heads down, umbrellas tilted against the downpour. In one alley we passed a group of children playing in the puddles, their laughter strangely out of place.
As we neared the main road, a newsboy ran past, shouting headlines through the rain.
"Prime Minister collapses at private dinner! Poison suspected!"
I stopped. Lila turned to me, water streaming down her face.
"Another one?" she asked quietly.
I didn't answer. The rain fell harder, drumming on the cobblestones like impatient fingers. Another death. Another convenient silence. Another thread in a pattern I could no longer trust.
We continued walking. The red-orange hair strand in my pocket felt heavier than ever — a single fragile piece of evidence in a world that seemed determined to wash everything clean.
I no longer knew if I was chasing a killer.
Or if the killer was chasing me.