Edgehaven Yard

[Hadrian Beaumont]

((Becci's given me temporary God-Modding powers over Myra and Zack while she's buried in Dissertation work. I'm just writing them out so we can continue without having to wait for her. Any objections?))


Hadrian eyed him in vague irritation, "No. I haven't even left the building yet! And it takes longer than half an hour to fix whatever you've done to the car on whatever occasion! Not to mention find the damn thing because you never do tell," he scolded sharply. "Besides, we're going to investigate something over ten years old?" he asked sceptically, for once not in the mood to join the Captain on one of his merry jaunts to persue Justice and Broken Bones around the city so he could avoid paperwork. Especially when Hadrian ended up having to do more of the damn stuff to deal with the damages the man caused. There was a reason why Myra was his favouritist girl in the whole world, she didn't nessicarily help him with the paperwork, but at least she got him what he needed and did the filing for it so all he had to worry about were the actual forms.

Speaking of Myra, the young woman shook her head and got to her feet, "I want no part in this," she stated flatly, a slightly peturbed look on her face, "If we have paperwork that old still here, then it needs filing and then binning." She couldn't believe Wright actually still had paperwork that old. As far back as 1987?! Setting her now empty tea mug down, she made her way upstairs, determined to hunt down every last unfiled scrap of out of date paperwork and Deal With It.

Hadrian watched her leave, his eyes determinately staying above her waistline - OK, he may have done a little bit of ass ogling but could you blame him? She was hot in that 'I can kill you with my legs' kind of way. Not like the whole 'I will rupture your eardrums with my screeches and claw your eyes out' way that Models did.

"I think she's going to be a while," the Techn Freak supplied, just in case the Captain missed the look of irate determination on the young woman's face.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright froze where he was, and turned to face Hadrian, his expression suddenly stoney. His eyes had a strange look in them, and they gazed to Myra as she went to leave.

"Constable Everett. Stay where you are." He said in an even and steady voice, but one that certainly wasn't to be taken lightly.

"Perhaps you could answer a simple question for me. Am I your mate down the pub who just asked a favour?" He didn't wait long enough for a reply. "No? So then, am I your captain?" Again, he didn't wait for a reply. "Who gives orders?"

"Yeah, we can all laugh at wacky Captain Wright and his latest scheme. Or, maybe, you can remember that I know every brick of this city, and if I read a report about a suspicious building, no matter how old, I know where that building is, I know what it looks like, and I know that I've never once seen somebody go in or out, never once seen an apartment advertised for sale there, and I know that it's been kept in perfect condition despite all of that." He left his little rant hanging for a moment, his expression remaining curiously stationary.

"You don't get to opt out of investigations because you don't believe they'll be significant. And if you don't believe me when I think something is worth checking out, if I haven't earnt your trust by now, you know where the door is." Wright finished. He wasn't angry. He was furious, with that stone cold rage that came when he realised his own coppers didn't believe in his choices.

"Constable Everett. You have no desire to be involved with this investigation? Fine. The lavatories need cleaning. You can give the janitor a hand. Maybe you can learn his name." Wright added, not wanting Myra along. If she didn't trust him and didn't want to follow his orders, she could stay out of his way. His suggestion Myra learnt the janitor's name wasn't a joke, it was making a point that none of them even paid attention to how the station worked.

"But no old paperwork is thrown away. No case is closed without me hearing about it. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's not significant." Wright explained.

"Now let's get to work." He said to Hadrian and Eleri, and walked out of the front doors.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hadrian leaned back in his seat in surprise at the Captain's abrupt dressing down, startled and a little confused as to what had prompted it before he paused and replayed what had just happened and winced.

He hadn't realised just how rude he had come across, in all honesty, Wright was in fact the first legitimate authority figure Hadrian had ever had in his life - when your father is a nancy bitch, your teachers dumber than you and the nearest paternal figure in your life happens to be your (butch) older sister, you tend not to be all that caring about conventional chains of command. He'd toed the line there and he hadn't even realised it. Grovelling time.

He got to his feet and glanced over at Myra who was stock still and probably just as cowed as he was in all honesty - even if she didn't show it.

The girl nodded, "Yes Sir," she affirmed, "No... no disrespect intended, sir." She winced slightly, looking guilty before straightening and accepting her punishment, she had deserved it after all. "I won't throw anything away. Shall I put anything that hasn't yet been looked into on your desk?" she asked calmly.

All business, right, Hadrian took a breath. He would find a way of apologising to the Captain later - when he'd found a suitable way of grovelling appropriately. Just how the hell did you apologise for something like this? He wasn't good at this sort of thing at all. Oh crap, he felt like a fifteen year old again caught snooping for Fae's diary under her bed.

No, think about the job. Fix that lot later.

Ok, ten years since this was set up. According to the Captain the building was in a good state - so it was obviously still in use (how the hell was he so familiar with the city anyway? Hadrian may not have been born here but he'd been here for almost ten years. He barely knew the area beyond the Outskirts and the main roads!). No one had been seen going in or out though. Which meant there was a different entrance somewhere that wasn't visible from street level - sky was out, people would notice a helicopter or a plane in this kind of area. Which left underground.

Ten years, especially considering the distinct lack of Highway engineers - they had a habit of getting eaten and then buried in their trenches before they'd finished working - meant that most of the sewer systems were probably collapsed or severely structurally unsound. He doubted the smugglers would have risked their goods or themselves going through something likely to collapse on them. So it would have to be tunnels that could handle the stress of constant use.

Just where was this apartment block anyway?

He wanted to ask but... after that telling off, he was a little hesitant and a lot cowed. It was so easy to forget that Wright was Edgehaven Born and Bred and had the solid steel balls to go with it. Especially when he was off on one with his usual antics. Hadrian wasn't quite sure how to behave now because the man was right. They weren't mates. Wright was his Superior Officer - and Hadrian honestly didn't know how to behave to that.

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri was in the middle of pulling her hair into a ponytail when Wright spoke. She froze and then let her arms drop to her sides, her hair falling to her shoulders in an untidy wave. She knew that voice, it was the same voice that her mother had used on her brother when he'd set fire to the neighbours car, except this time there was added Copper. It was the cold, hard anger that only came out when somebody was too angry to shout. She stood, stunned, as Wright addressed the younger members of the team; she'd never heard him use that voice before and, truth be told, it frightened her a little bit.

She didn't move again until he'd walked out of the door, when she hastily shoved her hair up and out of the way and hurried after him, gesturing to Hadrian to get a move on. "I think I know the building you mean now, sir." She said, catching up to him. "The one on St Jude's street? I remember it, it was on my route home from school when I was a kid. We used to tell stories about it being haunted. I think my brother tried to break in there once, but I don't think he got further than the back garden."

She shut up, aware that she was rambling. She knew Wright, she knew how he thought and to hear him that angry, to hear him question their trust in him had shaken her. He was right, they had all gotten friendly and perhaps forgotten that, no matter what their perception of him, he was their commanding officer. Hell, she'd forgotten it herself sometimes, generally when she was feeling like his mother.

She made a mental note never to question him about his knowledge of the city - she and Hadrian might have grown up there, but Wright... well Wright was the city, in some ways. She shook her head and followed him.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright didn't comment on the two's meek reactions. It seemed that he was, for the moment, calmed a little by the two following his orders. Plus, while he was angry, he didn't want to return to a pile of paperwork that Myra had left on his desk because she was too afraid to throw anything out.

"Use your discretion, Constable." He answered Myra's question, holding open the station door. "I want two cabinets. Pending investigation, and those you think are ready to be dismissed. I'll review the dismissed pile." Wright hoped his tone suggested pretty clearly this wasn't a good time to point out whenever he promised to 'review' anything, Eleri usually ended up doing it.

He headed out, and listened to Eleri's rambling. At least she was trying to be helpful.
"Sounds like the one." He answered, being slightly irritated the kids knew it as 'haunted' and he'd never checked it out. He thought back to the buildings they thought were haunted when they were children. One actually was. Which kind of ruined pretending other places were haunted. He wanted to make it clear he wasn't thinking any more about what he'd said back there, and was just focusing on the job.

"Water front is nearby. But they can't be using boats." For all of Wright's knowledge about the city, it was always clear he didn't know anything about anything that wasn't policing or Edgehaven. How boats and water ways worked fell under that catogery. "Sewers are unstable, but possible. And who knows what else is down there? Old tunnels or passageways, old streets destroyed in the war and built upon?" He suggested, hoping one of the two would take the bait and work something out. When he said 'war', he didn't bother to elaborate that he didn't mean the world wars.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Tazer, cuffs and miscellaineous things grabbed faster than he had ever gathered them before, Hadrian fell into step behind the pair, his mind going a mile a minute with the new information provided by them.

He swallowed a little nervously before speaking quietly, "Properties in that area didn't tend to have basements due to the clay in the ground. But there is a network of Victorian sewer systems that connect onto the river, the train station and throughout the majority of the city and even into Bellephrone. A lot of them have been catelogued and systematically demolished in the central and Outskirts though."

He chewed his lower lip, frowning slightly, "No major constructions have been carried out near the Waterfronts though. City Council was too concerned with the clay consistency of the foundations to risk extra weight and cause the whole thing to slide into the river. They should have remained untouched for the last two-hundred years so access should be fairly easy through any Sewer coverings in the near-by area."

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri walked in silence with Wright and Hadrian. She felt a little sorry for Myra, being stuck in the office with paperwork and toilet duties, but then, she supposed, it was her own fault really. She could sense Wright's irritation too, both at the younger team members and, she assumed, her mention of the haunting rumours; she tried to ignore it, the last thing they needed at the moment was her acting on someone elses anger. It was times like this that she really, really wished she could turn off her empathetic abilities.

As they walked, she listened to what was being said about the sewers and waterways. She didn't have a lot of knowledge about things like that and Hadrian impressed her with his information about the structure of the city.

"Is it possible," she began, watching her feet, "that there's a tunnel running under the river? If the council have left that area alone, nobody would notice a few extra tunnels, would they?" She thought a little more, trying to think of what she would do if she were smuggling things out of the City. As she spoke, it was fairly clear that she was thinking out loud rather than trying to come up with a conclusive theory.

"Depending on the structure of the house, it could be possible, in theory at least, that there's a basement to the house which connects with a tunnel system. Especially if, like you pointed out, Sir, the street was built on older buildings that were destroyed or partly wrecked during the war. Maybe rather than fix the damage, it was decided that it was easier to just build on top of it? And on the Waterfront, if there was subsidance, that would be a safer plan anyway." She rubbed her neck, apparently without noticing. "Theoretically, there could be a whole other city beneath this one. You could use it to get around the whole city without being seen."

She looked up, apparently just becoming aware that she had been talking out loud. "Does... that make sense to anybody else?" She asked self-conciously.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright paused for a moment, considering the options the pair had just given him. If there was one idea he didn't like, it was the thought of another city being beneath his feet. This was his city, and he really didn't like the idea of things he didn't know about going on underground.

He had to admit though, he might have known every brick and path, but he didn't know a damn thing about the consistency of concrete or what foundations places had. He had no idea why Hadrian did, but he didn't care. It was useful information.

And Eleri's theory could work too. Why there would be a tunnel under a river, he had no idea, but it was possible. In retrospect, he had to admit, it might have been better to try and find some building plans in a library or something, but he knew what building records were like in Edgehaven anyway.

"So, there's nothing official under the ground here?" Wright asked, making sure he had Hadrian's point right. "Makes sense. I guess part of the illegal smuggling thing is that it's illegal." He grumbled, considering his options. If Eleri was right, and they'd used the old city beneath the current one, then not only was it very dangerous, but there must be an entrance somewhere. What passageway could they have found that was stable and secret?

"So, our options are ancient sewers or ancient ruined city?" He pondered out loud. "Well, nobody said being a copper was glamerous." He muttered to himself. "If they've found their way into the ruins around here, there has to be an entrance somewhere..." Wright started to prowl the street, as if he was expecting some clue to leap out at him.

"...in the sewers maybe? That wouldn't go unnoticed, even in this town..."

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri cringed. The sewers, really? She wasn't a squeamish person by nature but the thought of trudging through the sewers beneath a city the size of Edgehaven... she shuddered.

"If there's a smuggling operation going on in there, would they really use the sewers?" She asked. "I'm mean, not only does it pose the risk of them being seen by maintenance workers, assuming there are any, but they and whatever they were smuggling would end up smelling like.... well, sewer. And that can't be good for business. I think it's more likely that they've got another way in and out." And I really don't want to go down there, she added silently.

She looked around, judging the street carefully. "It might be worth checking out the ground floor and gardens of the neighbouring buildings first," she suggested. "It could be as simple as a linked cellar that they're using to get into other houses in the street."


((I'm assuming they're in St Jude's street now? Also, just had a thought. Does anyone remember the scene in Interview with a Vampire where Claudia is crying and pretending to be lost to get someone to take pity on her so she can eat them? That could be how they get people to agree to come and be eaten if we're going with the idea of the 800-year old girl...))

[Hadrian Beaumont]

"Possibly..." Hadrian muttered, "But an unusually large amount of activity in one location always brings attention. Everytime I've been down this way its been near enough deserted."

He shifted slightly and began to rummage in his pockets, usually he hated carting around his PDA but he'd brought it with him to show Myra - his sister had sent him an unusually long e-mail about all the supernatural activity in America and he knew how much it would peturb the usually rational woman that this sort of thing had been under their noses for hundreds of years and all over the world at that.

"Give me a second to check the schematics of the area," he muttered, logging onto a near-by wireless server. A few taps with his wand as he trailed behind the Captain and Eleri had him pulling up the most recent maps of the area. "A few of the houses do have basements, a wine cellar here and there. Nothing very big but the properties around the house do have them."

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright scowled at Hadrian's evil magic pad for a moment, wondering if he could break it with his mind. He discovered he couldn't, and decided to move on. He hated technology. He had the bad habit of breaking it whenever he touched it.

"So, does our apartment block?" Wright asked reluctantly, given that it meant it'd mean bowing down to the accursed screen thing gizmo whatsit and letting it tell him information.


Wright eyed Eleri, and decided to agree with her sewer assessment. He was running out of shirts anyway, and ruining another one was probably not his best plan. Especially with sewer gunk.
"Sewers around here are pretty unstable anyway. Probably not down there..." He admitted, although he had to admit, they were fast running out of options.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hadrian tapped away for a little bit and frowned, "Considering the foundations, there shouldn't be or the building would become too unstructurally sound for its size but I'm getting a rather large wine-celler listed. 20 metres by thirty," he explained, a little perplexed. What idiot compromised the foundations of such a large building for a fucking wine cellar that wasn't even the same size as the floor above?

"There's nothing on the maps to suggest a linkage with the other houses but," he shrugged here, "Whoever bought the place could have done some creative remodelling."


((Sorry for taking so long!! D8))

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri watched with some fascination as Hadrian did... something on his PDA. It wasn't that she was a technophobe, but she had just never got her head around some of the more complicated areas of things and touch screens in particular made her uneasy. She liked buttons on things.

"Hmm...." she said after listening to both Wright and Hadrian. She strode up to the door of the house nearest the block of flats and tried the door, keeping her hand near the Magnum holstered on her belt. The door swung open and she glanced through into a darkened room with very little furniture and a thick layer of dust. It was obvious that the house hadn't been lived in for quite a long time.

"Worth a look, do you think Sir?" She asked, glancing back to the two men.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright walked up to the doorway, and went inside, not hesitating. He had no gun out, but then again, he rarely carried one. He mostly believed in the 'getting beaten up and somehow winning' approach. He figured if something in there was waiting to attack him, he might as well get it over with.

"Hello!?" He called out into the darkness. "Anything scary in there waiting to jump out on us?" He waited. "Just asking, 'cause we thought we'd get it over with now. You know, save time. We promise to scream and stuff?"

After a long pause, he turned back to Eleri and Hadrian and shrugged.
"Guess it's okay. C'mon." He gestured for them to follow him inside.

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri sighed and rolled her eyes at Wright's back as he went in to the building with absolutely no regard for his safety. She was about to follow him when he stopped and called out, and ended up having to fight back a giggle.

"Right you are, sir," she said with a mercifully straight face. She didn't think it was worth pointing out that Wright's version of 'safe' seemed to be 'announcing yourself loudly and hoping that if there was anything there, they were stupid enough to come out'.

She stepped in to the building behind Wright, pulling the gun from her belt as she did. She could feel its twin in the special pocket-holster she'd added to the inside of her jacket. It wasn't the most practical of places to keep a gun, she admitted that, but it was concealed and fairly easy to reach. And she didn't really like having two guns on her belt anyway, it just felt corny.

In the doorway, she pulled her torch out of her jacket with her free hand and shone it around the room, glad that at least one of them hadn't broken theirs yet. She braced herself for what she thought would be the inevitable scurry of something small and furry and felt a bit silly when nothing happened. "No rats... that's weird. You kind of expect rats in an abandoned house..." she said softly. "That's... spooky."

From what she could see in the dim light, the room they were in was a living room at one point. It led off to a kitchen, and beyond that a back garden. To their right, the room split off into a passage, and she could see a set of dilapidated stairs rising in the shadows.

She stomped sharply on the floor twice, raising a cloud of dust. "Hollow." She stated. "That means a cellar. It also means floorboards, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were rotten by now. Be careful where you step." This last part was mostly to Hadrian, she knew Wright would only do something daft, like jump on the rottenest part of the floor, if she told him to be careful.