Best New Horror: Volume 25 (Mammoth Book of Best New Horror)

by Неизвестный

  Old man …

  He closed his eyes. Inside his skull images of the scene from the night before ran though his brain. Multiplied. He saw them again and again. Take after take. Wait a minute, in that one he’s quite aggressive. That one, more sympathetic. The clapperboard snapped, making his eyes flicker. Close-up. Take eleven. Man steps from the shadows, his lips open in a horizontal grin … No, take twelve, smiling evilly, the hands rubbing together …

  He always wondered how editors remembered every nuance, every glance or inflection: now, only twenty-four hours later, he had difficulty doing the same. Now he had trouble remembering if the man had said anything to incriminate himself – anything actual, tangible – or whether his threat and bluster was born out of sheer panic, a bombastic act of frightened self-defence. What did he know for certain? Just that Gledhill had verbally attacked only the person who’d verbally attacked him first, in his absence. Was that inhuman, the behaviour of a cornered animal? Or the alltoo-human reaction of an innocent man?

  You’re losing your fucking marbles, old man …

  He flinched again at the obscenity scrawled on his memory like graffiti on the wall of a public lavatory. Then saw Gledhill’s face again, at the gap in the door.

  An old man and a little boy …

  The insidious words’ capacity to appal him was undiminished, sickening him to his core. He took a deep breath and dispelled any misgivings. The man was a liar, and had shown his cards. Hadn’t he?

  Aware of a slump he normally only affected when “old man acting” was required, he pushed his shoulders back, stretched his spine, scratched his chin, the bristles rasping there. While there was nothing on the walls to see himself in, in the mirror at home before setting out he’d seen a saltand-pepper beard emerging, starting to give him a look like “Dr Terror” from Milton’s portmanteau extravaganza, though he knew the particular nastiness in this tale he was living was nothing so comfortably outré as ancestral werewolf, voodoo jazz or malignant vine. He wished to goodness it was. He wished he could even be as pragmatic and unflappable as his Inspector Quennell in The Blood Beast Terror when luring a gigantic moth to its inevitable flame. But it was all too easy to face monsters with a screenplay in your hand. Even a bad one.

  The previous night he had slept in erratic bursts, but not as sporadically as the night before, and did not dream as he had feared he might after his encounter. The framed photograph of Helen had rested on the pillow at his side and the influence of too many third-hand superstitions from bad scripts made him feel it had fended off evil. He’d allowed the thought to comfort him without analyzing it too much. Still sorely sleep-deprived, he had awoken at dawn spiky and brittle but strangely purposeful, and had played Berlioz’s “Royal Hunt” from The Trojans while he dressed, pausing only to turn it up louder. Twice.

  The door opened, the turn of the handle surprisingly sibilant, and a thick-set man entered wearing a brown suit, beige shirt and mustard tie. The shirt had been acquired when he had less of a paunch, and consequently the buttons were under stress and had tugged the ends out above his belt. He ran his index fingers around the rim of his trousers to re-insert them before settling his rump in the chair at the table. His socks and some inches of bare, hairless leg were exposed above slip-ons.

  “Peter.”

  “Derek, dear boy …”

  “Did you get my card?” The man, in his thirties, had hair slicked back with Brylcreem, and his fluffy growth of incipient sideburns was both ginger and ill-advised.

  “Yes.” In fact, Cushing knew full well it was with all the other cards, in a pile on the bureau, unopened. He was an actor. He would act. “Thank you so much.”

  Inspector Derek Wake did not waste time.

  “What can I do for you?”

  His bluntness bordered on sounding like impatience. Whether the policeman was particularly busy or merely lacking in sensitivity, Cushing didn’t want to consider. Perhaps neither man wanted to indulge in the ritual of feigned sympathy, feigned appreciation. Anyway it was unimportant. That was not why he was here.

  He had been to the Inspector before for advice when preparing for a part. Usually he was greeted with a measure of perky, hand-rubbing delight, doubtless providing as it did a welcome diversion from the normal, irksome jobs officers of the law are tasked to perform, many of them unpleasant, many downright dangerous. Advising on a screenplay was many things, however “dangerous” was not one of them. But today Wake was taciturn. Perhaps he had too many things of greater importance on his plate. Cushing didn’t imagine meeting a man recently bereaved would make a seasoned copper awkward or restless, given his profession, but perhaps it did. Perhaps this is how he showed it.

  He’d brought a few pages of script from Scream and Scream Again, the Christopher Wicking draft. He was taking a gamble that Wake hadn’t seen the film and didn’t know it had already been made and released a year ago. He’d torn off the title page and said the film was called Monster City – not a bad title, he thought: he’d been in worse. His role had been Benedek, a Nazi-like cameo with only a couple of scenes, but he told Wake he was lined up to play the Alfred Marks part, Superintendent Bellaver, the Scotland Yard detective given the run around by a spate of vampiric serial murders.

  For a full three quarters of an hour he asked the policeman questions about playing Bellaver. How would he address his assistants? How would he talk to a murder suspect? Whether a line seemed plausible. Whether another was properly researched. And when Wake replied, he scribbled notes copiously in the margins, underlining or circling the text, double-underlining on occasion, when he received details of special, usable significance. This, he knew, would please Wake as a kind of flattery. These days people’s hearts were warmed by an affiliation to Hollywood in the way that past generations were by touching the hem of royalty. But, of course it was all nonsense. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the Inspector’s advice, and was hardly listening to his answers. The important questions – the vital questions – were yet to come. He was treading water, if the man but knew it. He had a plan. And it was nothing to do with the neatly formatted pages in front of him.

  “Well, thank you. You’ve been most helpful. I shan’t take any more of your time.” Cushing rose from the chair. “I’m sure you have better things to do than talk to me.” He shook hands in his sincere, country-parsonish way, buttoned up his coat and moved to the door. Whereupon he paused, his fingers fluttering next to his mouth – perhaps too theatrical a gesture? – before turning turned back to the seated detective.

  “Yes?”

  “Actually there’s another script. Not a script, a story treatment I’ve been sent by a film company. Very intense. Very troubling. I’m not at all sure I shall accept the part, but …” He hesitated, tugged his lower lip, waved his hand as if dismissing the idea, criss-crossing his scarf on his chest, showing Wake his back then peeking back over his shoulder. “I feel in my bones the writer hasn’t really done his homework. In a legal sense.”

  “Well, here I am. Run it by me. I’ll be able to tell you if it rings true. In a police sense, at least.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t like to—”

  “Not at all. I enjoy it. You know I do. It livens up my tea break. Fire away.”

  “Very well.” He sat back down and placed his fingertips together in a steeple. Very Sherlock Holmes. Too Sherlock Holmes? “This is a Canadian production. The lead is a Canadian actress who plays the mother. But they might film it in this country.” He didn’t like improvising, but in this instance an off-the-cuff quality was essential. The telling details were most important in a barefaced lie. “I play a headmaster. I suppose it’s essentially a version of M.” No flash of recognition. “The Fritz Lang film?” Still nothing. “The Peter Lorre movie? Set in Germany?”

  “Oh.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Yes, of course.” Clearly he hadn’t. “Remind me what it was about again.”

  “Lorre plays a disturbed man.
A man who kidnaps and murders children. A child molester who becomes hunted down by society. A horrible character, paradoxically portrayed as sad and lonely and even strangely sympathetic.”

  “No, I’ve never seen it.” The policeman stood up. “Why would anyone want to see a film about that?”

  “These things happen in the world, I suppose.”

  “All the more reason not to put them in films. I go to the pictures to enjoy myself, I don’t know about you.” He stood, running his fingers round the rim of his belt yet again. “What did you want to ask me?”

  “My, er, character has evidence against the, um, perpetrator …” His confidence had wavered. He speeded up his delivery. “In the story, I mean. Incriminating evidence. This is the crux of the plot. Evidence against a family member, not the vagrant who has already been arrested. And I’m curious. What would be the correct police procedure in a case like this?”

  Wake shrugged, and having arranged his shirt and trousers to his temporary satisfaction, adjusted the knot of his tie. “We’d have to investigate. Long process. Doctors’ reports. Court. It’s complex. You’ll have to give me the exact details and …”

  “Everyone would be interrogated.”

  “Questioned. Yes. Obviously.”

  “And the boy?”

  Another shrug. “Taken into care, straight off, any sniff of evidence. Whoosh. Can’t take the risk. Get him out of there.” The lick of a lighter on a cigarette tip. Secreted back in the jacket pocket. Smoke directed at the ceiling. “Mum and dad can squabble till the cows come home. Right little cheerful movie this is going to be. Not a comedy, I take it.”

  “No.”

  “No. Too right.” With his hands on his hips now, the belly jutted unabashed. “Nobody does well out of these cases, I can tell you. Nobody goes home smiling, put it like that. Families get broken up, pieced together again. Except you can’t piece them together again, can you? Worst of it is, unless you virtually catch the bloke red-handed, it’s one person’s word against another, and often as not even the kid won’t speak up against their own parent, even if they halfkill them on a daily basis. And the mum sticks up for the feller like he’s a bloody angel. So they get off scot-free. Buggered up it is, really buggered up. To be honest, I hate it, more than anything.” More smoke, through teeth this time. Breath of a quietly seething dragon. “Sooner string them up and have done with it, ask me. Know the bloody liberals say, what if there’s a miscarriage of justice? I say, tell you what. Cut their bloody balls off they won’t do it again. I guarantee that.”

  Which was as much as Cushing needed to hear. He stood up and shook the man’s hand generously in both of his.

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Don’t do it.” The detective flicked ash into a metallic waste paper bin. “You don’t want to be associated with that kind of rubbish.”

  “Perhaps not.” One side of his mouth twitched. “I’ll consider my various options. Definitely. Thank you, Derek.”

  Out in the corridor with the sound of a clattering typewriter nearby and garrulous laughter slightly more distant and out of sight, the old man heard from behind him:

  “Peter, do you mind if we have a quick word? On an unrelated matter?”

  It felt like a cold hand on his shoulder, which was absurd. Two uniformed constables passed him, a man and a woman. They both smiled, as if they recognized him. He touched the rim of his hat.

  Smiling, he turned to see Wake leaning against the jamb of the doorway to the interview room, not smiling at all. The policeman switched off the light, closed the door and walked past him up the corridor in the direction of the sergeant’s desk, then turned into a glass-sided office and sat behind a desk with several bulging manila files on it which he arranged in piles of roughly equal height.

  When Cushing had stepped reluctantly into his office he stood up again, flattened his tie against his shirt-front with the palm of his hand, and crossed the room to shut the door after him. The conversation and clacking of the typewriter became substantially quieter. Wake returned to his swivel chair.

  “A man came in this morning and made a complaint about you.”

  “Oh?” He told himself not to betray anything in his expression. Certainly not shock, though that was what he was feeling. Now the reason for Wake’s mood was all too clear.

  “May I ask who?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. I told him I’d prefer not to, but if he wanted to make it official, I’d make it official. But he was reluctant.”

  “I’ll bet he was.” Under his breath.

  Had he heard? Wake’s buttons really were straining across his midriff. “He was doing you a favour. He doesn’t want to cause any trouble.”

  “What exactly did he say, Derek? Are you allowed to tell me that? Officially or unofficially?”

  “He said you were talking to his little boy.”

  “That’s absolutely correct. I was. I won’t deny that. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Let’s just say he doesn’t want it.” The way he lounged back in the chair was beginning to annoy Cushing. He found it louche, oikish and disrespectful. And the man’s fly zip was distressingly taut.

  “I chat to all the children. You know that. They chat to me. I’m like the Pied Piper. Helen and I …”

  “I know. I know.” Wake leant forward, elbows on the desk. Pushed the harshness of the angle-poise lamp away. “Listen, it puts me in a very awkward position. When someone comes in with a complaint like this. I don’t want it to go any further if I can help it.”

  “On my part?”

  “On anybody’s part.”

  Cushing could feel his lips tight and bloodless with rage and dared not speak for fear of what might come out. So, he’s got his retaliation in first, he was thinking. Clever. Before I could make any accusations, he’s made his.

  Clever man.

  Clever monster.

  “Look, I know this feller. He’s a hell of a nice bloke.” Wake raked his hair with his fingers and offered his palms. “We went to school together. I’ve got drunk with him. He’s not a troublemaker, not like some round here. He’s got a decent job, down on the boats. My wife knows his family, has done for donkey’s years. He visits his mum in the nursing home every Sunday. He helps out at Christmas, with the food and that.”

  “In other words, you believe him.”

  “I think things can be misinterpreted, that’s all,” Wake said. “And he has, probably. I don’t mean ‘probably’.”

  Cushing didn’t think he could remember such anger building up inside him. It was white hot and it terrified him and he knew if it rose much more he wouldn’t be able to control it, and that would be a disaster. He opened the door.

  “Thank you so much. I think I’ll go now, if you don’t mind. Unless you have anything more to say to me.”

  Wake sighed and rubbed his eyes.

  When he looked up to reply, Cushing was gone. Wake sprang up, grabbed the closing door of his office, yanked it back wide and hurried to the sergeant’s desk in pursuit of the long dark coat. Remarkably, the older man was outstriding him and he had to break into a run to catch up.

  “Peter. Let me drive you home.”

  “No, Derek. Thank you all the same. I think I’d prefer some nice fresh sea air. Good day to you.”

  The detective followed him outside, caught up with him a second time and stood in front of him on the pavement, this time blocking his way.

  “Look, all I’m suggesting to both of you is keep a wide berth from each other. You, and Gledhill and his family. Both parties. Either that, or sort out your differences without the police getting involved.”

  “I’m sure we shall,” Cushing said, circumnavigating him.

  The scenario had changed radically. The script had been rewritten, drastically. Now at least he knew with some certainty that he daren’t rely on the police or the legal system. His adversary had prepared the ground, cleverly sown the seeds of doubt in a pre-emptive strike against him.
If he made an accusation now it was too risky he would be disbelieved and, worse, far worse, the boy would be disbelieved – if the boy even spoke up at all. There was no guarantee he would do so, given his only way of dealing with the situation, it seemed, was through the prism of monsters and monster-hunters. Wasn’t it Van Helsing who said “The Devil’s best trick is that people don’t believe he exists”? In Bram Stoker’s novel, he thought, but certainly in the play and Universal film. He remembered the Van Helsing of the book: a little old man who literally talked double Dutch. He remembered asking Jimmy Carreras why he didn’t cast a double-Dutchman in the part, and Jimmy saying: “We rather think you should play him as yourself”. But the point was, how should he play this part, now? He had to stop this man. Alone, if need be. And he needed ammunition. In the words of Inspector Wake, he needed evidence.

  Without delay he resolved to visit the Fount of All Knowledge.

  She was wrapping up a cucumber in newspaper for a customer with whom she was conversing breathlessly. Through a steady stream of clients like this one she gleaned her vital information. A round-faced woman with the general shape of the Willendorf Venus and the given name of Betty, she knew everything to know about everyone in town: even a good deal they didn’t know about themselves, he suspected. When Helen and he came to buy fresh vegetables from her and her husband’s shop, they invariably came away a little wiser about something of high import, locally. In the woman’s opinion, anyway. Which is why Helen had coined her nickname: “The Fount of All Knowledge”, and it had stuck. A private joke between Peter and his wife. A private look between them as she twirled a bag of tomatoes at the corners whilst dispensing the latest gossip. A private raised eyebrow. A private hand concealing a wry smile. It seemed so long ago, and only yesterday.

  “Lovely morning.”

  “Hello, Mr C. Yes it is.” She wiped the dry earth from her hands to her apron. “The sun’s done us proud. For February.”