The book felt wrong. Like a book, old, yes, but somehow wrong.
And the words within were…what? What exactly? Evil?
Holland thought that might be just about right.
“Where did it come from?” asked his daughter, head cocked, her purple hair covering half her face. The eye he could see, though…she was sharp. Sharper than him, maybe.
Maybe? Definitely.
Holland thought about lying to her. Just for a second and that second alone was too long because if he set out down that route, the thing that worked about them would cease to work. They wouldn’t be teacher and student, father and daughter, partners. They’d become strangers, right there, in one single lie.
One lie a lifetime was too many already.
Sitting with a sigh at the kitchen table, in front of his gargantuan breakfast, Holland told her. He told her all of it without leaving anything out, because she was his partner, she’d take his mantle when he died, and because she was old enough to take the truth. If she felt she was old enough to pierce her nose and ears and tongue, if she didn’t bat an eye at the sight of blood, at the sight of his gun, and knowing who he was, what he did?
Then she could take it, and God damn if he wasn’t proud.
8
Roughly twenty-four hours before Holland finished the book, in the early hours, he’d pulled up before a small, unassuming house on the aptly named “Council Houses Road.”
He parked the car on the curb, two wheels on the pavement because it was a narrow street.
As it stood, there were just two vehicles outside the house. His, and a police car, lights off. The police car wasn’t in a rush, so Holland didn’t see why he should rush about either. The murder was done and dusted. This was the aftermath.
The city was still dark, but with the noisy kind of dark you get in urban areas—street lights, car lights, house lights, shop lights. Dark, but not really.
Holland didn’t know how people slept through it. To his eyes, a man who slept well enough in a small cottage by the sea, the city night was almost as bright as the day.
Some people slept, still. Others, sleep would be a long time coming.
The house before him blazed—every light turned on. The occupants wary, now, and probably for a long time to come. A well-maintained house. In the brightness, he could see no litter on the front lawn. The grass looked cut, and someone had done a good job of it.
He pushed himself up and out of the car, took his stick and walked not to the house itself, the one that was calling to him, but along the path to the front door of the brightly lit neighboring house belonging to an elderly couple who’d made the call. Probably not when the screaming started, because people didn’t do that. They waited until they were sure there was a problem, or it became an annoyance. No one calls the police when the screaming starts.
Maybe if they did…
Holland sighed and rapped on the PVC door with his thick knuckles.
A police constable opened the door.
“Shit, Holland, you can’t be here…”
“French.”
The PC’s name was French, or he was French. Holland didn’t know him that well, but he’d always assumed the former. He was wary of assumptions, but didn’t have the time or the inclination to find out either way. French didn’t have any discernible accent, though, so his assumption was probably right.
“Just let me in, French, and I won’t tell your wife about the time you fucked that blonde at the Christmas party…”
“Shit, Jesus…how do you…how…”
Holland nodded. “I know shit. Come on, let me in. I haven’t got all day.”
French shook his head, but let Holland into the house. The front door opened straight through to an old-fashioned living room. The couch probably wasn’t stuffed with horsehair, but it was pretty old. Holland could tell, just with a glance, that it didn’t meet current fire regulations. But then neither the man or the woman smoked. Didn’t smell like it, and didn’t look like it. The yellowing ceiling was just old.
Both the man and the woman seemed pretty shaken. Understandably so, though. It’s not every day you call in the police for a bit of screaming and end up in the middle of a murder investigation.
9
Holland took out a cigarette and stuck it behind his ear. He didn’t try to smoke it, though he wanted to. Could have been outside, in the strange half-night of the city, listening to the sirens and drunks and delivery vans wheezing along the streets. Smoking.
Instead, he was sitting on an uncomfortable couch in the wrong house. He knew as soon as he saw them that the old people here didn’t know anything he needed to know. He was, largely, going through the motions with the old people because it paid to be attentive, and because French was a bit of a twat.
The wife offered him tea. He said no, with a smile, because he liked tea, and manners, and didn’t want to need a piss when he got next door where the real work waited…but Holland had been a cop, once, long, long ago, and old habits die hard.
The wife got up anyway, went to do busywork. No doubt to leave the men to talk about the icky business of blood. Old-school wife charm that Holland liked as much as being offered tea. Holland wasn’t sexist. He was just Holland. He liked women who made tea just as much as he liked men who made tea.
Fuck was he going round in circles thinking about tea for?
Come on, Holland. Ask something halfway bloody pertinent. Start thinking.
“Sir,” he said by way of opening. He didn’t care what the old man’s name was. “Sir” would do fine. They didn’t know anything a PC couldn’t manage to get out of them.
Keeping up appearances, though. People liked their detectives to look like Holland. They seemed somehow…satisfied…if they got to speak to a real detective. A fat one in a shiny suit smelling of tobacco. The fact that he wasn’t, actually, a policeman, was largely irrelevant. Very few people ever asked to see ID. And mostly, by the time Holland got to people, they weren’t in a position to ask much of anything.
Holland’s brain was ticking. His mouth wasn’t exactly working, though, because he could see, smell and hear a dead little Yorkshire terrier sniffing around his feet.
Things like that put people off their tea more than worrying about using the toilet at a crime scene. What was really disconcerting Holland, though, was that when the Yorkie cocked its leg, Holland felt the ghost dog’s piss running down his foot.
“Sir,” he said again, trying to hold himself together. “I’m just here as an advisor, really. Here’s my card. Anything you think of that you haven’t already told PC French here, call me direct,” he said.
He pushed himself up and smiled a little as he managed to kick the ghost dog with his big, heavy foot. He handed the card over and left the bewildered old man, his wife, and the PC to deal with the fallout.
He closed the front door behind him, and waited on French to finish smoothing things over. He could have asked some questions, made it look like people expected things to look. Truth was, he was feeling some kind of pull to get done. Truth was, the house next door was more than calling to him. It was an unbearable itch, right in the middle of his shoulder blades.
He didn’t know what to expect. Didn’t know what had happened, or why he’d had a call a couple of hours ago on his mobile sending him here. He only hoped it’d be a quick one. With any luck, the murder victim would stand up, take a bow, and have a tale to tell.
10
Holland tired of waiting for French to emerge, and wandered to the house. He was thinking about kicking the door in when French caught up with him.
“You wouldn’t tell my wife…you know…”
“No, French, I wouldn’t. I don’t care who you shag, do I?”
“Only…”
Holland didn’t know French’s wife in the slightest. French wasn’t thinking straight, though. Bit of a kick in the balls to find out someone knows all about the dark stains in your past.
Holland wasn’t a mind r
eader. He did, however, see dead people. Dead people liked a chat.
Boring, Holland imagined, for the homeless legions of the dead. Like French’s grandfather, who followed the man around with a permanent air of disappointment.
“French, give me the key and we’ll say no more about it, eh?”
“What? Fuck, Holland, I can’t give you the key.”
“Well, come and open the door, then.”
“Shit. Give me a minute,” said the young PC. “I left my stuff next door.”
Holland could have gone easy on him, but he didn’t need friends, and he was tired and hungover.
He shifted around a little, whistling “Ring of Fire,” for a laugh.
Holland pulled his cigarette from behind his ear and lit it with a Swan match. He smoked, looked at the night sky. Comfortable enough, just a man, smoking, standing around. Waiting to see a dead man.
French came from the house next door—the old people’s house—with a key ring in his fist.
French’s grandfather shook his head. Long suffering. Holland nodded at the dead man, while French wasn’t looking.
Leaving the keys to a murder scene sitting around while you cadged tea off the old people next door?
Holland got why French’s grandfather looked eternally disappointed.
French fumbled around until he found the right key, then opened the door.
“Shall we?” said Holland.
French nodded and ushered Holland inside, like they were spies or something.
“Searched top to bottom,” said French. “There weren’t nothing much but a dead fella.”
“How dead?”
“Pretty dead. Bits and bobs were all there. Bit of blood.”
“Why me?” asked Holland. “Why me, though?”
“What do you mean? You turned up. I didn’t…”
“Not…never mind,” said Holland. French didn’t need to know where Holland got the call from. “It’s a weird one then, I take it?”
“Like I said,” said French. “The bits and bobs were all there…just…not where they’re supposed to be.”
Fucking brilliant, thought Holland again, and let French lead him into the house where the murdered man waited.
11
Sound, smell, sight. Three prime senses in checking out a scene. Touch shouldn’t be in there—sometimes it is. Taste? Taste doesn’t really have a place in a murder scene.
Shouldn’t, anyway.
But for Holland, mostly, memory was the important thing. Above the senses, paramount for him; the memory that stayed in a house.
Holland didn’t need to taste or see to know he was tramping on sodden carpet, and even without smelling he knew full well it was blood. He flicked the light on—simple on-and-off switch, not a dimmer switch—and looked around.
The pattern on the carpet was still discernible. The wallpaper pattern, too. Both looked cheap, but most things look a little cheap when they’re daubed in blood and viscera.
The body, thankfully, wasn’t present. Holland was grateful for that, if not quite so grateful for the muck he was treading in. The coroner and cops (mostly), forensics, had all left. The cleanup crew were yet to arrive. No rush, figured Holland. It wasn’t like the house would be going on the market this week.
The scene—the blood, the bits—wasn’t a pretty sight. It seemed entirely random. Not in the way an old spinster’s garden might be, with plants carelessly placed decades ago and grown wild since. This was new random. No thought at all, no time taken to place anything. Holland understood that straightaway. This wasn’t a message…and if it was, it certainly wasn’t any kind of occult shit he’d ever seen.
He wondered, as he had all night, why Jane had wanted him here.
Jane wants what Jane wants. Might as well try to discern a pattern in the blood as her whims.
Staring round the room, taking in the bloody masterpiece of a cracked mind at work, he remembered a documentary about chimpanzees he’d seen. One part in particular—an intruder in the troop’s territory, shortly followed by the utter insanity of that troop tearing the interloper apart.
There was no murder weapon, but Holland didn’t think this was a murder-weapon gig. He knew it wasn’t, the same way he knew he’d never win the lottery, because it was just fucking common sense.
Someone immensely strong, almost definitely insane, and certainly a nasty horrible bastard, had torn the victim to pieces. He’d probably torn the man’s arms off first, then legs, head. That, it seemed, hadn’t been enough. After, probably with tooth and nail and rage and brutish strength, the killer had eviscerated the body.
Sight was more than enough. The smell was blood and flesh, stale tobacco from his clothes, his and French’s disquiet and sweat. Shit, too.
And, that unpleasant tang of plastic or something similar, getting warm.
12
Plastic. Warm.
Definitely plastic. Follow your nose, he thought. He nodded at French and did just that.
The smell seemed to originate from somewhere upstairs. He let his nose lead him.
It took him to the bedroom. There was only one bedroom.
A ruffled bed, black bedspread. Dirty, but not seedy.
The murdered man must have used this room for sleeping and studying, or gaming, or just watching whatever a man watches on a computer. Holland didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. Wasn’t relevant.
Across the room was a cheap MDF computer table with an expensive-looking computer on top. One of those office chairs with wheels on it—the spiteful kind that hurt Holland’s back—sat dormant before the cheap unit.
The computer screen was off, but the hard drive indicator was flickering.
If that’s a bomb, he thought instantly, we’re about to end up like this poor bastard.
His second thought, a much more sensible one, was that whoever did this was maybe wiping evidence from the PC’s hard drive, or SSD, maybe, he guessed.
His third: To turn on the screen, check, figure out what someone who knew more about computers than he ever would (judging by the look of the rig) had left running…or call someone, or hack into some kind of encrypted…
While thinking the third thought, Holland was already striding, clomping, toward the PC, and before whatever it was got a chance to do any kind of damage, he picked up the expensive-looking tower and ripped it away from the power cord, away from the wall, the unit, and backward. The USBs, SATAs, monitor all followed. The thing went dead.
Job done, he thought.
“Fucking hell, Holland…I’ve got to try to keep this quiet!”
“You’ll be alright, French,” said Holland, putting the heavy, dead, tower unit back on the computer desk. “Don’t fret. You’ll be golden, because some tosser forgot to tag this rig, and you found it before it wiped the hard drive, right?”
French was shaking his head.
“You know I’m right. If there’s anything good in here—you get it. Get it?”
“I get it, but shit…go easy, alright?”
“Fair enough,” said Holland, not particularly caring either way. Because…
Something’s in here. Something…
The big knobs with their big brains would want the drive and whatever was stored, but he figured they wouldn’t mind if he took a look.
Something warm, maybe plastic…but…
When he’d pulled the heavy tower free of its cords, he felt something move inside the computer’s casing. Something that maybe smelled of warm plastic.
Wallet? Pictures? Something wrapped in cellophane, or a little baggy? Drugs?
Something more than that…
The kind of thing Jane would send me to look for. The kind of thing Jane would want.
Smells of warmth, yes…but of power.
But what, Holland?
“Won’t know unless you look, will you?” he whispered, aware that French was now looking at his broad back. A broad back that shielded him from view while he slid off the side cover, exposing
the guts of the computer. That smell was stronger. Wasn’t coming from a hard drive, or the power supply, or the GPU. It was coming from the corner of a smallish notebook, covered in some kind of skin. The smell wasn’t from the book. It was from the CPU fan, which had no air to circulate. Rushed, he thought. The murdered man hid the book quickly…because?
Because he’d been expecting his death.
No doubt.
While his back still blocked French from seeing what he was about, he swiftly pocketed the notebook.
“Nothing,” he said, turning.
Why did he say that?
He wondered for a moment, and knew exactly why. He was following his nose. And yes, Holland wasn’t a copper, not anymore.
He wasn’t even close. He had blood on his hands, and not all of it human.
He knew this was a weird one as soon as he saw the book. Felt it, smelled it, touched it, saw it…fuck it, smell was only a couple of inches away from tasting it, too.
The truth was, he just knew it.
Knew it was wrong…because in the house next door, the ghost of a dog had pissed on his foot. A little dog.
Like a man who could see, could feel the ghost of a dog, but couldn’t see the ghost of a man torn to pieces?
Yeah.
It was wrong.
13
Jane, thought Holland, what the fuck have you got me into?
Holland kept his face still and amiable as he could manage.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said. He pulled his trousers up a little. He could only ever get the front just under his gut. His ass was forever out. Thankfully his shirt and jacket covered his crack.
This time he was more careful on his way through the carnage.
French nodded. “What did you find?” he said.
“French, listen…forget this. Okay? Seriously.”
“What? I already have.”
Master of Blood and Bone Page 2
