Saguru Hakuba and Kaito Kuroba had lost the trail. "Are you sure you don't have any more deductions about where they might have taken her, tantei-san?" Kaito asked. "You're more familiar with London than I am."
"I might," Hakuba replied, "if you'd share your information, Kuroba. You know something about this kidnapping that you're not sharing. Why did you hiss snake when it was clear Koizumi-chan was gone?"
"Isn't it your job to have all the answers? You must have a few ideas about their current location."
"Do you know what your doing, Kuroba? You're interfering with a kidnapping investigation by withholding the answers. Every moment you fail to disclose about the kidnappers is a moment when our classmate could be being killed."
There was silence for a moment, then Kaito grumbled, "I told you if you weren't going to be useful, detective, to go back with everyone else."
"Stop acting as though its your job to rescue Koizumi-chan. I should be the one telling you to be useful or get out of the way." The boys stopped to glower at each other for a moment, and just as they were engaging in a stare-down, they were interrupted by a car horn.
The boys looked over at the sound of the horn and saw a sleek black car beside them. The driver's window was rolled down, revealing the driver to be Hermione. "Chief Gregors called my colleagues and me about your classmate's kidnapping. Get in, we have a lot to talk about."
Kaito laughed nervously. "It's about that, is it?"
Smirking, Hakuba opened the car's rear door. "You first."
Kaito climbed into the car, ending up in the middle of the backseat between Harry and Hakuba. From shotgun, Ron asked, "How does it feel to be found out, Kid?"
"Pardon?" Kaito asked.
"Aoko Nakamori said you hissed the name Snake before you ran off after Koizumi. I can only think of one reason you'd know that name."
"Oh, you can, can you?"
"Yeah. The only person who should know that name, other than Snake and his men of course, is Kid the Phantom Thief. You were the one who told it to me while you held a stun gun to my back and gave me information on the guys after you."
"Oh, is Kid the only one who would know about Snake?"
"How else would you know about him, Kuroba?" Harry asked. "Normal, everyday citizens do not know the code-names of operatives of secret, criminal organizations. You are neither the police nor a private detective. What else is left but a criminal?"
Kaito was silent for a moment, then: "I don't like to talk about it, but I know of Snake through my father, Touichi Kuroba. Snake and his minions knew my father's reputation as a magician and thought that he might know some things about real magic. They went to him with a demand that they help him look for some sort of magical object, but he refused. They killed him for it. They made it look like an accident, but my family knew better."
Hermione questioned the teenager. "If your story's true, then why haven't they asked for your help? Aren't you a magician too?" she pressed.
"So you've heard about that?" Kaito asked. "Yeah, I am a magician, but, as much as I hate to admit it, I'm just an amateur. They probably think I don't know enough about magic to help them out."
"I doubt that, Kuroba," Hakuba interrupted. "I'm certain that we could call on our classmates to give a testimony counter to that claim. They've seen you showing off."
Kaito was getting very uncomfortable with where the conversation was going, but he didn't let it show. His poker face was challenged when Hermione stated, "You know what we are and why we're involved in our case. We have enough evidence to convict you in one of our courts between the words you and Ron exchanged before your show of stealing the Wizard's Coal and your friend's witness that you know who Akako Koizumi's kidnapper is."
"Really?" Kaito asked, more tension showing in his voice than he would have liked. "How do you figure that, Detective?"
"It's the black-feathered dove," Ron stated. "You told me that serpent referred to a name, so I wondered if black-feathered dove couldn't refer to a name as well. We did a bit of digging."
"And?"
"Kuroba means black feather," said Hermione. "Dove is a nick-name for the Phantom Thief Kid. The black-feathered dove would mean the Kuroba-dove who stole the Wizard's Coal: Kaito Kuroba, the current Phantom Thief Kid. We tracked Kid back from returning Ron's property and came across your dorm building. Your classmates told us that your name meant black feather, and I double-checked the name of everyone involved with your exchange group to make sure there were no other matches. You were the only one. We have plenty of evidence to convict you in one of our courts, Kid, so I suggest you cooperate."
Kaito hung his head, but his lips form a smirk. "I guess I finally overestimated my own abilities. You've got me, Detective, but I have to ask, do you have jurisdiction over me? Only in your courts would you have the evidence you need to convict me."
Hermione glanced at the thief in the rear-view mirror and answered, "We have jurisdiction over all things pertaining to the Wizard's Coal, including matters of its theft. However, there is something more important here that you've forgotten about: Koizumi's kidnapping. If you have information as Kid, you have no reason to hold it back now."
At the station, Kaito told them what little he could about Snake that he hadn't already told Ron before his last heist. He was also forced to admit that Akako had done magic on his behalf at the scene of his heist, and that Snake might have seen her doing it. He said he had seen Snake hanging around outside the cafe, giving Akako an odd look, but he had no clue where Snake and his group could be hiding out, either.
"Are you sure?" Ron asked. "You're Kid the Phantom Thief. You're the one who took the gem they're after. Are you sure you haven't heard anything?"
"Snake's the one who killed my father, but he hasn't worked out that I am the one who replaced him yet, and without knowledge of my identity, the only way he has of contacting me is publicly," Kaito responded. "If there were a ransom demand, someone would have heard about it by now." The thief regarded the Aurors and Hakuba. "Look, I might have personal experience with crime, but I'm neither a detective nor a law enforcement officer. Any of you would probably have a better idea of where Akako is than I do."
"Well," said Hermione, "if she's alive, it would have to be a place where either no one would notice or no one would care that they had a young woman with them against her will. If she's dead, there are plenty of places to hide a corpse in London."
Kaito looked at the Auror intently. "If you had a special way of tracking Kid down, then couldn't you use a special way of tracking Akako down too?"
"No," said Hermione. "We were only successful with you because we were there to put the tracker on you."
Kaito hissed something under his breath in Japanese and fell silent. The thief had no more suggestions. Luckily, his classmate had something to share. "Aren't you forgetting something?" he asked. "We have a way of narrowing down Snake's hiding place. Snake is foreign, not likely to be familiar with London. He wouldn't have much knowledge of the city, so the hiding place is probably somewhere that could easily be found out about, like an empty area accessible through a service door of a hotel, or someplace that's been in the news recently."
"Like what? The Century Museum?" Ron snorted. "Empty places don't make the news that often."
"No," Kaito said, "but ones being abandoned do." Four pairs of eyes turned and looked at the blue-eyed magician. "Hakuba, you know my habit of reading every article about my alter ego, right?" he asked.
Hakuba narrowed his eyes. "Just spit it out, Kuroba."
"Well, I was reading about my exploit at the Tower of London, and I skimmed the rest of the news after I had finished. There was a headline there about a pawn shop that had unexpectedly gone out of business. I'd imagine the location's closed now."
"Now that you mention it, I remember that article too," said Hakuba. "It would be a convenient place for people from out of town to hide someone; it's recently abandoned, and it's at an address that's easy to find on a map too. There's no guarantee that Miss Koizumi is there, but without a better lead, we have nothing to lose by checking."
Hermione nodded. "We'll check it out. Now, this is dangerous business and we don't want civilians tied up in it, so we'll leave the two of you behind for now. Detective Hakuba, you're dismissed unless you find anything useful, but could you inform Chief Hakuba about Kid on your way out? I'm afraid the three of us don't have any time to lose"
Hakuba nodded his understanding and left the room. Kaito protested, calling after the Aurors, "Oi, if there's not enough evidence for normal law enforcement to stick charges on me, then why are you handing me off to Chief Gregors?"
No one answered his question.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione made their way to the recently abandoned pawn shop. The place had an exterior entrance on the ground floor of a business complex and a rather unremarkable white paint job. Its windows had black paper blocking the Auror's view of the interior.
The three Aurors had grown enough since their earlier years at Hogwarts that they could not all successfully use Harry's cloak at the same time, so Harry had worn the cloak and Ron and Hermione argued about disillusionment charms on themselves as they approached the shop's entrance door – after all, Harry had been disillusioned when he'd been shot.
"Can't we just send one of us with the cloak?" Ron whisper-argued with his girlfriend. "It's impossible to spot someone under there, even if you know what you're looking for."
"There's no way they could have seen Harry, even with the slight discrepancy against the background that the spell uses," Hermione whispered back. "It was dark, they were far away, and you heard what Kuroba said about Snake's aim. If he'd actually been able to see Harry, he would've hit the bullet-proof vest instead of his arm. I think it was the brooms being visible to someone closer to them than the police were that gave you and Harry away at all. Really, it's not so unreasonable to assume that brooms have riders, considering broomsticks are our worst-kept secret."
In the end, Hermione won out, so Ron cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself and waited for Hermione to let them into the pawn shop.
With the faintest flick of her wand, Hermione had the door unlocked in an instant. Entering the stop quietly, however, was another matter. The three of them had forgotten to check for a bell above the door before they came in, and the bell did its job in announcing their arrival.
There were men inside, not many, but more than enough to be a threat to the wizards with their guns pointed at the door. Even though the Aurors could not be seen didn't guarantee the thugs would not open fire if they made the slightest noise, and magic could not help them move quickly enough to dodge bullets.
Harry whispered to his friends, as loudly as he dared, "We've seen enough to investigate further, but I don't fancy our chances against those guns. Let's Apparate back to my office and think how to proceed. On three. One... Two... Three..."
