The staff are working themselves up into a frenzy now. They’re jostling each other and pointing at Harold and barking commands, but nobody seems to know what to do. It’s left to the old man to take action. He grabs at the third bag as Harold lifts it. Tries to yank it away from him. For a few seconds the pair form an absurd sight as they tug back and forth. It’s East versus West in a wrestling match for a prize that is literally garbage.
The inevitable occurs when the bag splits, and once again a pile of detritus cascades to the floor.
And that’s when time freezes.
This isn’t Chinese food, or Japanese food, or any kind of food for that matter.
It’s paper, mostly. Newspapers and magazines.
But there’s something else too.
It hits the floor hard and rolls across the carpet, stopping when it bumps up against the soiled shoes of the elderly restaurant owner. Everyone looks down at it. Customers seated at the nearest tables get to their feet for a clearer view. The yelling stops. The warring factions are on the same side now, united against whatever may have brought about the incredible apparition that has landed in their midst.
Harold stares at the object in disbelief. Is it really what it looks like?
When the place erupts again – the screams of horror, the yells of fear and confusion, the sounds of people retching and vomiting – Harold knows he is not mistaken. Everybody else has seen the item for what it is.
A human head.
Geoffrey doesn’t move for several minutes. He remains on the street corner, a huge smile on his face as he dreams about how he is going to break his news to Stuart.
That boss of yours? Antonio? The one who took you for a drink? The one you think is so good-looking? Wanna know something about him?
And then it hits him. How bitchy his imagined words sound. His smile drops away, to be replaced by immense sadness at his planned cruelty to the most important person in his life.
Because what he realizes then is that Stuart was being honest with him all along. There was nothing to it. A harmless drink with the boss – that’s all it was.
I need to make it up to him, he thinks. I should go back there right now and tell him how sorry I am for jumping to conclusions and being spiteful. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.
He almost wants to run across the street and knock on the restaurant window and blow Antonio a kiss for his unwitting part in all this. But he doesn’t. Instead, he turns away, feeling that he is a happier and wiser man.
Agamemnon seems happy too, although maybe not so wise, buried as he is in the trash that the drunk spilled onto the ground. Geoffrey tightens the leash and tries to yank him away, but the dog continues with its burrowing into the mound.
‘Aggie, come on! What the hell have you got there?’
Geoffrey takes a few steps closer. He sees that Agamemnon is concentrating on one particular garbage bag, ripping at it with his front paws and teeth.
‘Aggie!’
He heaves on the leash, dragging the dog backwards as its claws scrabble on the sidewalk for purchase. It’s only once Aggie is out of the way that Geoffrey gets a good look at the item of interest now exposed to the air.
It looks like . . .
Geoffrey brings a hand to his mouth as he utters a high-pitched giggle.
Well, it looks like . . . An ass. A tush. A pair of buttocks. All by themselves.
It has to be something else. A part of a store mannequin, maybe. Something like that. It can’t just be—
But when he steps closer and sees the tattoo of the angel at the base of the spine, its wings unfurled over the wound-ridden globes of flesh, when the aroma hits him and he is instantly transported into a butcher’s store, when his dog continues to strain to get back to its feast of raw meat – that’s when he knows this is no dummy.
And that’s when he scurries to the curb to empty his stomach.
TWO
She hears the voice, but it seems just a faint drone in the distance. She doesn’t catch the words.
She stares at the television, but the pictures make no sense. They are just blurs of color.
There’s a cup of tea on the table in front of her. It’s cold and untouched.
Her senses are almost closed. They will stay that way until things are right again.
Something touches her shoulder. The voice repeats, louder and more insistent this time. The words are forced into her head.
‘Nicole. Come to bed. You need to get some sleep.’
Sleep. What is that? Why is that important? Doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he understand?
She stays where she is. She would sit here for ever if she knew it could make a difference.
Detective Second Grade Callum Doyle is feeling good about this night. Even though he’s reaching the end of an October day that has been dismal and gray enough to thump misery and depression into the most optimistic of souls, Doyle has no complaints about it. To Doyle this could be the first day of spring. He could be witness to lambs gamboling and daffodils pushing their heads above the earth and the sun getting its ass into gear with some seriously overdue illumination. Doyle is so full of joy he could sing. And does, in fact. ‘Norwegian Wood’ by the Beatles, for some reason. It’s not exactly tuneful, but he belts it out anyway, ignoring the grimacing of his partner in the car passenger seat.
The reason Doyle is so buoyant tonight is that he has caught a homicide. Which is not to say he relishes the thought of staring death in the face, or of the consequences of death for the innocents who are left to deal with it. Far from it. What’s important here is the symbolism. The fact that the Police Department is willing to entrust its lowly detective with solving a crime of such enormity. Which might sound odd, given that’s exactly the kind of thing Doyle is paid to do.
It wasn’t so many months ago that the relationship between Doyle and his employers was less than amicable. He was being given all the shitty jobs – the cases nobody else wanted to handle. Cases that served to keep him occupied but out of the limelight and out of everybody’s hair. It got so bad that Doyle was seriously considering abandoning his police career.
And then he got a break. Second fiddle on the murder of a young girl in a bookstore. He was meant to be doing the menial stuff, freeing up the other detectives to do the real investigatory work. But it turned out to be a whole lot more than a simple homicide. It grew into something gargantuan that threatened to chew Doyle into tiny pieces and spit him out. It could have been the end for Doyle.
But he survived. He came through it, not exactly unaffected by his experience, but in the NYPD’s eyes something of a hero. And since that time he has become a cop again. A true detective rather than a helping hand. Back on the cases that matter.
Like this one, for example. A homicide. Handed straight to Doyle as soon as the call came in.
After what he’s been through, how tough can a case like this be?
Doyle practically jogs into the Chinese restaurant, he’s feeling that good. He doesn’t wait for his partner: he’s not even aware that the kid is struggling to keep up.
Doyle still doesn’t know what to make of LeBlanc. He’s probably a perfectly good cop, but he’s young and he’s inexperienced and he has this aura about him of not knowing what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t even dress the part. He goes for trendy instead of functional. Skinny ties and pointy shoes and stupid designer spectacles. When you’re in need of an authority figure to follow in a moment of crisis, this kid with his waxed blond hair is almost certainly the last person you’d consider.
Inside the restaurant, Doyle’s ebullience subsides a little when the first person he sees there is a guy called Kravitz. It would have been difficult not to spot Kravitz, seeing as how he’s nearly six foot seven tall. He’s unnaturally thin too, which makes him appear even taller. Or his height emphasizes his lack of musculature. Either way, he’s a man of mismatched dimensions.
He looks to Doyle like someone who should permanently have a basketball under
his arm. ‘Ah,’ people would say, ‘you’re a basketball player.’ And they would no longer question his freakish frame.
Kravitz is a cop. More specifically, he’s a member of the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force – a mouthful that is usually condensed by his fellow cops to the more memorable Homicide South. Doyle bears no grudge against this cue-stick of a man; it’s his partner – a more meagerly proportioned individual called Folger – who is the one to watch. Doyle’s last run-in with the poison dwarf is still fresh in his mind.
Steeling himself, Doyle moves toward the center of the activity. Kravitz is the first to notice Doyle’s arrival, his eyes turning on him from his lofty position like a lighthouse scanning the seas.
‘Well, well. Hello again, Detective.’
Doyle looks around him. ‘Where’s Tom Thumb? I didn’t step on him, did I?’
Kravitz smiles. ‘You mean Detective Folger? We had a parting of the ways. We didn’t see eye to eye.’
‘More like eye to crotch, huh? You get sick of him poking his nose in your business?’
Still Kravitz smiles, and Doyle feels he’s doing so in apology for what has gone before. He decides he should stop being so hard on the guy. At least for now.
Kravitz gestures to the man standing next to him. ‘Meet my new partner. This is Detective Fenster.’
Fenster nods, but doesn’t proffer his hand. He seems to be studying Doyle intently. Probably wondering why Doyle is smiling.
The reason Doyle is smiling is not because of anything pertaining to Fenster’s physical appearance. Whereas the man’s predecessor was massively challenged in a vertical sense, and played an important part in amusing his fellow officers by merely standing next to his cloud-scraping partner, Fenster’s own build is unremarkable. In fact, aside from a slight reddish tinge to his hair that only the cruelest of jokesters would refer to as a disability, his looks present negligible entertainment value. No, Doyle is smiling because he knows that Kravitz is often given the nickname Lurch, after the ugly tall butler in The Addams Family. And because Doyle remembers that in that family was also an ugly bald guy called . . .
‘Fester?’
So much for not giving the Homicide boys a hard time. Hey, how many opportunities get handed to you on a plate like this?
‘Fenster,’ says Kravitz sternly, obviously already acutely sensitive to the likelihood of this comparison.
‘Not Fester?’
‘No.’
‘Ah.’
Fenster continues to stare at Doyle. ‘Have we met before? You look awful familiar.’
Before Doyle can answer, Kravitz chips in again: ‘You’ve probably seen him over breakfast.’
‘Huh?’ says Fenster.
‘In your newspaper. Or on TV. This here is the famous Detective Callum Doyle of the Eighth Precinct. The Eighth Wonder, as I like to think of him. You remember that serial killer we had a few months back? Only nobody knew we even had a serial killer?’
‘Oh,’ says Fenster. ‘Yeah. Doyle. I remember that one.’
‘Of course you do. Doyle solved it all by himself. He was the only cop in the whole city who realized the murders were connected. It was uncanny. I still haven’t figured out how he did it.’
Doyle remains silent. It’s clear to everyone listening that Kravitz is suggesting that Doyle must have been privy to more information than he ever revealed at the time. And the reason Doyle fails to respond is because he accepts the accusation is true. He knew a lot more. And he still feels the pain every time he thinks back to that case. The guilt over deaths that should never have happened. Deaths he might have been able to prevent if only he’d acted differently. He has tried telling himself that he shouldn’t dwell on thoughts involving ‘should’ or ‘ought’. But still it hurts.
He says, ‘You’re right. It was a little weird. I guess I was just thinking outside the box. I mean, I’m just one cop in one small precinct. It’s not like I got a wider picture of things. Not like, say, the boys in Homicide . . .’
Doyle’s targets glance at each other, and then Kravitz says to his partner, ‘You should know that Doyle here is not a man to be crossed. He’s upset a lot of cops in the past, not least my previous partner, with whom he had a little altercation.’
‘Is that so?’ says Fenster, and again he stares at Doyle.
Kravitz continues, ‘But then Doyle knows what it’s like to lose a partner. Ain’t that right, Detective?’
Same old same old, thinks Doyle. It always gets dredged up. I miss my partners more than anyone, yet still some people insist on trying to taint me with their deaths. How much longer am I going to be haunted by it?
For a few seconds the three men stand in strained silence. Then Kravitz says, ‘Speaking of partners, you wanna complete the introductions?’
Doyle suddenly remembers that LeBlanc is standing behind him.
‘Uh, this is Tommy LeBlanc. He’s gonna be working this with me.’
‘Pleasure, Detective,’ says LeBlanc, moving in front of Doyle and thrusting his hand out. Doyle rolls his eyes, while Fenster regards the younger man with disdain until he sheepishly drops his outstretched arm.
‘You been on a homicide before?’ asks Fenster.
LeBlanc shrugs. ‘A couple. Nothing like this, though.’
It’s only then that the four men turn their collective gaze on the reason they are all here. The head is that of a blond girl. No more than twenty, and probably pretty too. Once. Devoid of blood, of life, of spirit, her wavy hair matted with food, her white skin blotted by injuries – it’s difficult to imagine how she appeared in life. Impossible to imagine how she ended up like this.
‘You think she’s dead?’ asks Kravitz.
‘Hard to say,’ answers Fenster, ‘us not being medical experts. I’d hate to make such a pronouncement and then be proved wrong when the ME gets here. What idiots we’d look then.’ He glances up at his partner. ‘You know about chickens, right?’
‘Chickens?’
‘Sure. Those bastards can live for some time even without a head. There was this one chicken, lived for months that way. Its owner would put food into its gullet with an eye-dropper.’
‘Really? Where’d you learn about such a thing?’
‘Ripleys. You know? The Believe-It-Or-Not people? ’Course, what we got here ain’t exactly the same. We got the head, and I don’t think the chicken’s head stayed alive.’
‘Maybe not. Although we humans are more highly evolved than poultry. I’ve yet to see a chicken program a computer or drive a racing car. Hell, those fat feathery fucks can’t even fly for shit. Who knows how long we could live without heads if we put our minds to it?’
‘We certainly are the master race, all right,’ says Fenster as he puts his finger up his nose.
Doyle is grateful when the door opens again and another figure breezes in. The man is Chinese, but he’s not here for a meal. He wears spectacles with lenses so thick they magnify his eyes to cartoon proportions. He is wearing an overcoat that looks several sizes too big, and he is carrying a large black bag.
THE HELPER
After taking his bachelor’s degree and then a PhD, David Jackson became a full-time academic. He is married, with two daughters and a menagerie of animals. Pariah, his first novel, was Highly Commended in the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Awards. This is his second novel.
By David Jackson
Pariah
The Helper
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank all of my family and friends who have supported and encouraged me in my writing. I think I have surprised them, and many of them in a good way! I’d also like to thank the staff at Pan Macmillan for their incredible work. In particular, though, I will be eternally grateful to Will Atkins, the man who gave me my first break as a novelist, who offered me my subsequent contract, and who has played an invaluable part in making my books what they are.
First published 2012 by Macmillan
This electronic editi
on published 2013 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-2307-6315-9 EPUB
Copyright © David Jackson 2012
The right of David Jackson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’). The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
The Helper (Callum Doyle 2) Page 33
