Carnivore

by Jonathan Lyon

  Cranes metastasised towards the horizon, building new skyscrapers for the next influx of victors. The city was punishing itself too, it seemed – a hypercarnivore, sick from overeating, forcing itself to keep eating anyway. Soon these tumours would be all that remained. I wondered what would happen if the police were persuaded to shift their allegiance – away from the investments of oligarchs – and back towards the clamour that created them. But property was such a thrilling violence that few could ever give it up. Perhaps I should give in to it too, and help London accelerate into its future as a bonfire.

  ‘I’m going to take a sample from you, now,’ the constable said. ‘Just stay like that please.’

  She inserted a cotton swab into my arsehole, and firmly rubbed at Kimber’s cum until enough was removed to be sealed into a plastic pouch. At her touch, my body abstracted – and I became the city beneath me. The sewers and subways were my arteries, cars covered my arms – the whole tournament of civil society was a fever, and I was being drilled at and stretched out and kissed. My plasma was livid with people – the people living here now and the people that lived here before and those that would live here hereafter – and yet it was not with a oneness that my body rose towards pleasure – I was neither a disunity nor a unity – my body was the city, and the yearning of its matter was the yearning for a desert that could never be empty enough. I was impossible as long as I could say ‘I’ – the inertia of being was an impossible inertia for a city, since it could never stop, or it if did, it would no longer be a city. Life was not the opposite of death, here – pain was the opposite of death, and life didn’t exist – I was the silent ticking heard before the traffic lights change – the dread of isolation inside the dream of time itself. My words were pollutants – and I breathed them in, with the relief of belonging – with the relief and reassurance and joy of coming home.

  ‘Open your mouth a bit for me,’ she said, a gloved hand tilting my head away from the view as she prodded under my tongue to collect saliva.

  Another two swabs collected paint, three more collected blood. The filled pouches were placed in the green case – and as it was clipped shut, she said, ‘You get to be clean now.’

  I laughed, and she stared – as though staring in regret at her own sentence – hanging saffron-yellow in the air between us. I had drawn her away from her trained speech patterns, into awkwardness and overfamiliarity – but I needed to take her further still – until she forgot that I could be a suspect – or even, until she became complicit in my performance.

  What she meant was – my suffering had been separated from my skin, and I no longer controlled it.

  She led me to the bathroom. My nose brushed her neck as she slowed – and the saffron I’d seen in her voice combined with the taste of anise and cloves from the wine – into a perfume – and I imagined this was the scent of her emotional state – and could mean that she was afraid, or uncertain, or tricking me.

  The huddle of other officers, in passing, confirmed the authenticity of my name and the existence of Detective Chief Inspector Sanam. They seemed now suspended in inactivity, confined to the corridor, as though they were in such awe of what had happened here that they were unable to remain in any of the rooms for long. Or maybe this was a misreading – and they were regarding me not in awe but in suspicion. In contrast, I felt overactive – time was speeding up.

  In the bathroom, I crawled around a partition of glass into the shower area at the back. My knees chafed on the flagstones. Queasily I reached to the tap and turned it on – releasing too-hot water over my back. My biceps swelled with acid and indigo swilled in my eyes. I reclined into the corner, tired by pain, back towards sleep.

  ‘No, Leander.’ Constable Carr crouched down beside me, on the other side of the glass, taking off her gloves. ‘You need to wash yourself now. Otherwise I’m going to come in and do it for you.’

  I groped into the recessed shelf above me and picked out a pot of ‘exfoliating scrub’. It had the texture of wet sand and smelt of parsley and frankincense. I pawed it liberally over myself – massaging first my aching underarms and then my chest and feet. It abraded my face and clotted my hair. But as I stood to wash behind myself, the motion inspired more nausea – and I vomited the last of the wine into the drain. Again, vomiting felt comforting – like the interior version of a lover’s caress.

  I considered pomading myself with the other products on the shelf, but I was too tired. So I kept to the scrub, barking in agony as I cleaned my stab wound with it, riskily arousing myself by this into an erection. I sat down to hide it – and as my lust retreated, I bent to let the shower patter onto my whip welts – and sobbed, for the sympathy of Constable Carr.

  ‘I think it’s time for you to come out,’ she said, unfolding a towel from the rail and holding it open for me.

  Time stuttered. I stopped the shower and swayed towards her – she embraced me with the towel, holding me longer than seemed appropriate. Heroin had blurred the boundaries of my body – so that her body felt more like mine than mine did – and I wanted to stroke my own skin with her hands, and reach round from the small of my back to the hair below my navel. She could have been half the age of Constable Floris – perhaps she’d even been born on the same day as me – and she was less straightforward than her, with none of her maternal instincts. Here, her embrace confused the roles of sister and seducer. I revolved away from her – onto the lid of the laundry basket – and enjoyed my own nakedness as she tried to keep her eyes on my face. I could feel her thinking of the officers on the other side of the wall.

  ‘What do you like doing?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, unprepared for this line of questioning.

  ‘What are your… interests? Do you like heli-skiing?’

  ‘I like cooking,’ she said, cautiously.

  ‘Like roadkill or profiteroles or – what kind?’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘I only eat turtle.’

  She smiled. ‘You need to dry yourself, ok? And then we can go get dressed.’

  ‘What’s your best dish?’

  ‘I like horse meat,’ she said, easily at last. ‘I’ve scared all my family with making them eat it.’

  I nodded as I dried myself.

  ‘I roast it in madeira, in cubes,’ she continued. ‘With prunes sometimes – and make a stew. And everyone gets converted to it. It’s got more interest to it than beef, and it’s got more strength and it’s sweeter – but it’s also got that more wild taste. And it’s not fussy like. And it’s cheap. I’ve cooked with donkey too. I got recipes from Italy off of the internet, and I make up my own – but I never been there. I want to go, one day, around the South, I’d like that. I want to learn Italian but I never did languages.’

  ‘Where do you buy horse meat from?’ I asked, standing to dry my legs, too giddy to meet her gaze.

  ‘I get it off of the internet,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to buy here. I used to get it in Nottingham in the market. But your London markets are too expensive.’

  ‘London is all only markets now – and all the sellers are thieves.’

  ‘I’d be well up for cooking turtle actually,’ she said without listening to me. ‘You can make turtle soup, I know that. And then there’s mock turtle soup, I know that – but that’s with offal. You can make it with calf’s foot. And brains and oysters. And even testicles – if you fry them first in blood and fat so hot that it’s spitting. And madeira.’

  As she was speaking, I watched my shadow widen across the flagstones – until it was a horse, galloping across the wall – and onto the ceiling – which was a meadow, crowded with other horses – and all of the horses had syphilis – and they were being ridden by male models – who all longed to be abandoned by the horses – but who stayed because they all longed to catch syphilis too.

  I nearly fell over. She held me up. My lips touched her skin and tasted salt and lard – and I imagined her smearing herself with horse fat in fr
ont of a mirror.

  ‘The mock turtle is my favourite character in Alice in Wonderland,’ I said. ‘He has the best line: “‘Once’, said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, ‘I was a real Turtle.’” The fall from the real-self to the mock-self – that’s nearly all of literature.’

  ‘So you’re a Mock Turtle?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m more of a Mock Moss Piglet,’ I said and stumbled into the sink. ‘Though maybe I can reverse that fall.’

  She steadied me.

  ‘Let’s get some clothes on you, first, how’s that?’ she said.

  I draped the towel around myself like a cloak and emerged, haughtily, to face the officers in the corridor. Perhaps they already had evidence that could convict me – something I’d forgotten, that couldn’t be explained away by intoxication or trauma or Kimber’s insanity – and they were just letting me carry on for fun. Perhaps they would even let me walk out of the front door – and then, at the last moment, they’d stop the lift doors closing – and the handcuffs would go back on.

  Constable Carr was guiding me past them to Kimber’s bedroom, almost too fast for me to understand what she was doing – but I realised this was a test of my innocence, and readied my pretend surprise. At the sight of Kimber’s blood I yelped, recoiling – as though instinctually – and pressed my face into her vest.

  ‘Are your clothes in here, Leander?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ok – have we taken photos of those?’ she asked another officer. ‘We’re just going to – he needs to wear something.’

  I withdrew from her to approach the bundle at the foot of the bed. Kimber’s corpse kept a metallic taste in the air despite the breeze from the window. I knew the officers were studying my reaction – but my inebriation made me confident of my innocence, even as I tried not to smile with glee at my guilt – and my glee slid into the scent of Kimber’s blood. Kimber had played against me and lost, just as Dawn had. He knew the risks.

  I briefly considered stealing his suit – but instead pulled on the outfit I’d borrowed from Francis, since I’d rather have a last memory of him. The alcohol in my limbs turned dressing into a vaudeville act – I staggered over myself, falling forwards, losing myself in the two sweatshirts, putting my trousers on backwards. Eventually, the constable intervened.

  As she helped me dress, my head knocked into hers – her hair smelt of baking bread, like Francis sometimes did – and I had a vision of washing her hair in her own blood, as she died beside me on the bed, and the apartment flooded so quickly that the other policemen forgot how to swim – and so they drowned below us, as the water rose to wash the blood back out of her hair, and I flowed out of the window, on a wave, to safety.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ She was leading me out of the room. ‘We can get you some food while you’re talking to the chief inspector.’

  My senses were too unstable for fear – but doubt began leaking through the heroin’s defences.

  ‘Can I have a satsuma?’ I asked, trying to seem unconcerned.

  ‘Do you not want chocolate or something?’

  ‘I’m lactose intolerant,’ I lied. ‘And I like satsumas.’

  ‘Alright,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll have a look for some.’

  More policemen now crowded the corridor – but this only increased the sense of inactivity. They seemed to be waiting for some judgement to be passed. A warbling entered the air. And before I could fully understand what was happening, I was pushed into the kitchen.

  Detective Chief Inspector Sanam stood alone at its centre, holding the back of a chair. He seemed somehow narrower than before, perhaps in rage.

  ‘Sit,’ he said.

  And the door behind me was shut.

  3.

  I hugged him. The chief inspector semi-reciprocated, trying to maintain his public authority – but I insisted on this paternal intimacy, refusing to release him until I’d forced out tears. Then, crying, I stepped back, and lifted my face towards his.

  ‘Good afternoon, Leander,’ he said. ‘I understand that you are… inebriated, but I need you to sit down for a moment.’

  He indicated the chair. As I watched, its wood turned nacreous and began to melt.

  ‘A throne of pearl, for the boy king!’ I cried happily, and sat.

  He patted my shoulders twice in uncertain reassurance – and walked around to face me, his hands behind his back. On the table beside us was Kimber’s camera. But, I noticed, the microwave had not yet been opened – though its window was blackened – so the investigation had been paused for my interview. Or was this an interrogation?

  ‘First of all – I have contacted Ms Vasari,’ he said, ‘and she’s coming here to take you home. She tells me that Mr Cole – that Francis is safe. So I don’t want you to worry about that. And I – I would like to personally apologise for – the way this operation has been conducted. It was unethical of me to… expect you to be able to help us. I have regrets about that. We have failed to protect you and that failing is my responsibility.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a wonderful weekend.’

  ‘I –’ he tried to smile at my fake positivity, but then pointed towards the camera on the table. ‘There is very disturbing footage on this camera – some of which we’ve already recovered from Ms Amélie Jasiukowicz’s laptop – as you suggested we might – and that footage was in fact critical in helping us with our investigation. But first I need you to provide me with some information. There appears to be more recently filmed footage on this camera of you being… assaulted by a man unknown to us. Can you tell us anything about him? And can you tell me how you came to be here, and how Francis came to be free? According to Ms Vasari, Francis is not well enough to speak with us at present. So I need to hear from you the sequence of events.’

  ‘I didn’t flee the crime scene this time!’ I said. ‘Could have been my third fled murder in a row. But I resisted the hat-trick.’

  ‘From what I understand, you were not able to flee because you were restrained.’ He grimaced. ‘Specifically – with police handcuffs, that belonged to Constable Floris. And in a separate room to the one in which… Kimber’s body was discovered... So. What do you remember? Can you describe Kimber’s state of mind to me?’

  ‘Have you read Faust, Part Two? You know that bit where Mephistopheles goes to a second Walpurgisnacht – and there are monsters from older myths there this time – and so the little Calvinist devil is out of his league? “Doch das Antike find’ ich zu lebendig”. That’s what happened last night. Kimber met a demon from an older religion and lost.’

  ‘What do you mean lost?’

  ‘I killed him. But I wanted him to suffer first – you know, death is a pleasantry, pain has the meaning. So I injected him with rabies. And then I leashed him like a dog. He became afraid of water. I boiled the kettle and poured it over his head. He went blind, then mad, and then I peeled off his skin and fed it to him. Eventually I became tired and went to sleep – and when I woke up somehow Kimber had come back to life and so it started again.’

  ‘This is not the appropriate time for your jokes, Leander. It’s over. Kimber killed himself, that much we know – unless you found a way to shoot him point blank in the head without a struggle while his eyes were open and his finger was stiff around the trigger.’

  ‘Who says I didn’t?’

  ‘You just said that you didn’t. You said you injected him with rabies. There is no evidence of that. What there is evidence of is a sexual attack – it’s possible that you’re in shock.’

  The word ‘shock’ carried a perfume into the air that seemed the opposite of its meaning – slow and corrupt and rich, like the spores of a toadstool growing from a corpse – and this perfume became a jungle in my mind – a jungle I could see from an aerial vantage – spreading across the contours of many hills, towards the eastern sea – and the western fires of deforesters.

  ‘I meant… I injected him with rabies metaphorically,’ I said after a pause.
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  ‘I suggest you don’t use metaphors in your answers, then. We’ve had this discussion before.’

  ‘We’ve also had a discussion where you said that I was “no damsel in distress”.’

  ‘I regret that conversation. I was too eager to… follow up my lead. You were my lead. And you were not protected well. I am sorry for that. You were failed. But can you explain how Mr Cole came to escape? And can you explain how you ended up here?’

  ‘Don’t rely on love – it’s not enough,’ I said coldly. ‘You can’t rely on yourself either. Self-reliance isn’t enough. Sometimes Goliath has to win – but you don’t have to be David, you can be Jonathan instead. Leave David to die, refuse your father’s battles, avoid the army on the hill – and exile yourself. Patience and exile and cunning – but not silence. Jonathan fucked David well enough for their love to “surpass the love of women” – but it’s time to elude the world of the Bible, and escape the story entirely. There will be other Davids, or even if not, there will be other days. And that’s enough. You can be a different Jonathan. Let Goliath win. Love won’t.’

  ‘What does that mean? Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Francis doesn’t love me anymore,’ I said, teetering on the chair, unable to force a smile. ‘He doesn’t want me.’

  The chief inspector lunged to catch me before I fell to the floor – and knelt, holding my upper arms against my torso.

  ‘None of this is your fault,’ he said. ‘You’re trying to blame yourself… and I believe that the way I chose to express myself last time we spoke suggested I wanted to blame you too. But although you might have… kick-started this phase of our investigation – you are not accountable for Kimber’s actions. And I can’t speak for Mr Cole, for – for Francis, but I think he will understand that. It really isn’t appropriate for me to be speaking to you in this state… but I want to reassure you that we are working to… round up the rest of Kimber’s operation. We’re rounding them up. Do you understand? Our raids are working – we’ve seized hours of video evidence – and in two different houses we recovered victims of trafficking. There’s not many figures left anonymous – and there are fewer places for them to hide. But the man in this video with you is unknown to us – do you know who he is?’