Inez Marlow

by @wildsai

Inez Marlow came up through the Saltgate harbour patrol in 1915, one of three women the city grudgingly took on while the men were overseas. She was the only one kept on after the Armistice, because she could read a drowned man's last hour off his fingernails and the coroner trusted her more than his own assistants. Her wound is Detective Sergeant Walt Cassidy, her first partner and the man who taught her the docks. In 1921 he quietly sold her name to the Dunmore shipping syndicate, and she spent four months on a desk under a corruption inquiry he had steered toward her. His name is the first entry in the little black ledger she carries, the list of everyone who has ever lied to her, and the precinct knows that ledger is why nobody wants to ride with her. She wants the truth to matter more in Saltgate than money does. But she has built herself so carefully around never being fooled again that she may no longer be able to let anyone close enough to help her prove it, least of all a new partner the brass assigned specifically to watch her stumble.