The case continues…
FOURTEEN
TAYLOR ATTACHED the file to an email and sent the document to the Express. He looked out the window at the city below him. It had been weeks since he had been outside, and when he thought about it, a fear gripped him, he felt as if he were exposed outside, as if his outer body were invisible, they could look inside him and manipulate his vulnerabilities. His face a map of his past failures, his footsteps, exaggerated, laboured, indicative of his failure. The streets were not safe. He was scared mostly of himself. How he would react to an ordinary conversation if one were to be brought up. Would he be able to join and talk about ordinary stuff like the weather, or would he retreat back inside himself and return to the safety of these four walls. The trouble was that he would have to treat himself. There was nobody else in Fun City crazy or sane enough to treat him. Strangely, he was always calm when treating patients (which he did for free), their madness gave him the strength to continue existing. It was as if every neurosis and anxiety told by a stranger gave him a clearer idea of the concept of mental illness as a whole. Their madness made him sane.
Taylor opened an old file on the computer and began to type…
… And so she moved south toward the lake…
FIFTEEN
THE RED sky died to the colour of an angry bruise above the station. The grey functional building stood at the mouth of the ninth road. The smell of barbequed chicken wafted from a nearby stall. The Detective had read somewhere that a fraction of the government funds granted to build the place had been spent on its construction. The rest of the money carefully invested on imported German cars, expensive wine, body massages, minor wives, iPads, and Belgium chocolate drizzled over rich Swiss alpine berries. The chief had yet to set foot inside the station. He had a place on the hill with a moat, a dozen Siamese–salt-water hybrids, and fifteen dancing Mademoiselles, two from each continent and one exotic woman of mixed race who had once been a star on both stage and screen; the stage revolved and the screen was blue.
Inside the station, it was as cool, dark, and quiet as entering a cave after hours under the Fun City sun. A blank room with four walls, two doors, two desks, and a plastic fig tree in one corner. The paint, although recent, had already begun to flake away from the concrete rendering owing to the shoddy workmanship and fluctuations in room temperature.
A Chinese-looking Thai sat behind the desk with a toothpick in his mouth. A toothpick moved around his teeth as he listened to Hale speaking. His eyes narrowed, bored, just another crazy, lost foreigner. The police officer looked at the clock on the wall; he looked at the watch on his wrist. If the town clock tower were visible from the station window, he would have stolen a glance. The cash for its erection had already been pocketed by a fulcrum in the council years ago: it had never been built.
Joe stepped forward and casted a line about the UK embassy and an international investigation. The sergeant’s expression changed to one of alarmed congeniality. Like most officious fucks, this one backed down under the threat of responsibility. Permitted Joe and Hale fifteen minutes to speak to Sebastian in the holding cell.
They walked through a courtyard to the cell.
A skeletal thin man stood behind the bars. His skin was pale and his eyes danced to the tune of fear. He looked like a murderer, Joe thought. That is to say, whatever murderers looked like, they looked like Sebastian. Yet, there was something feminine about him. Not that he was gay. It was just whatever it was that made a man a man; he didn’t have it. He was very thin. Long-limbed and uncomfortable in his skin, anxious, like a boy actor cast as a man in a demanding role. His hair needed cutting and his furtive eyes gave some clue to the darkness behind them.
“I didn’t do it,” he said.
“Do what, Geezer?” Hale said.
“Tammy. I didn’t kill the girl, I promise. On my mother’s life, I promise I didn’t do it. You have to get me out of here, Hale. I’ll do anything.”
“Well, as far I can see it, Sunshine, they have you bang to rights. I mean, with the computer pornography stuff and your reputation for, amongst other things, choking the chicken, it seems you have been caught on a sticky wicket, dear boy. You must know you can’t simply sit around jerking off to that kind of material, Sunshine. Not somewhere like this. Not in God’s pure and clean moral city?”
Sebastian smiled like a little boy who had murdered his mother’s cat and then buried it in the garden. The shovel in his hand, cat hairs covering his shirt.
No remorse, no shame.
Nothing.
Nothing resembling human emotion. Just a little smile that was as painful to the recipient as it was to giver. The Detective pitied him as he had never pitied anyone before or since. Whatever conjuncture of circumstances that had led him here, it hadn’t been a picnic. You could figure out a man’s childhood by the way he held himself and the words he chose. Those men that seemed too stiff or too loose had been praised or resented too often and at the wrong time. The ones that spoke too much had been neglected, and the quiet ones had been dejected. He figured the boy hadn’t murdered Tammy.
He didn’t have it in him.
“Sebastian, this is my friend, Joe Dylan. He is a detective. He is going to be asking you some questions and you are going to be answering those questions without any of your normal bullshit. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Sebastian. Do you consider yourself religious?” The Detective asked.
“What…?”
“Skip it. Do you love your mother?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“More than anybody else, that’s how much.”
“Do you think Tammy had a mother, perhaps she was a mother herself?”
“She was.”
“She was what?”
“A mother. She showed me a picture of her kid, a seven-year-old boy. I forget his name. Listen, mister, I didn’t do this. It wasn’t me.”
“What does 1888 mean to you?”
“What…?”
“Skip it. How do you feel about fish?”
“I’m allergic to it. Can’t eat seafood.”
“Birds?”
“What?”
“Animals with two wings and feathers?”
“I never really…”
“Wading birds, herons, storks?”
“I like them, I guess.”
“Ever caught the clap?”
“What?”
“Sexual disease. Crabs, genital herpes?”
“No. Hale, give me some help here,” Sebastian rubbed his temples with his right hand. The Detective noticed a tear rolling down Bell’s cheek.
“Just answer,” said Hale.
“I’m clean. Apart from a little blister.”
“Does the blister come up now and again, like, every few months?”
“Well, yes.”
“That’s herpes. And do you practice sexual intercourse with prostitutes while the herpes is evident?”
“I…I…”
“Well don’t. That’s how the virus gets in.”
“The virus?”
“Yes the big one.”
“But she didn’t have…”
“When was the last time that you saw Tammy?”
Sebastian fell to his knees. The tears began to flow. He made a strange gurgling sound. If it weren’t for the bars between them, the Detective would have pulled him up and slapped him across the face.
The Detective let him ride it out.
“I’m here to help. I’ll ask you again. When did you last see the deceased?”
“Last night. She came back. We slept together and then she left the apartment. About 2am. She had a telephone text message. She read the message and then she left the apartment. I wasn’t too bothered about it. Check the security cameras. You can see that she left the building. I am not a murderer.”
“What does the name Jack mean to you?”
“Look. We get on the telephone and call my
Mom. She will sort this all out. She’s on her way.”
“The name Jack?”
“We once had a dog called Jack…It was a Jack Russell.”
“Good. We will get you out of this can as soon as we can, son.”
“Hurry, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“Be cool, kid.”
SIXTEEN
OUTSIDE, THE sun shone down onto a cracked broken courtyard where a woman stood shading the sun from her eyes with the palm of her hand. She was probably just south of fifty, wearing a pair of tight jeans and a pastel blue bohemian blouse. Very few women took style to the grave. This one had a chance. Her figure once walked runways and her intelligent face had been featured in the kind of glossy magazines that clutter up waiting rooms all across the rock. A face that was attractive in an intelligent professional way that was as rare as a straight lawyer in Fun City.
She strode toward them. “Are you detective Joe Dylan?”
He nodded. Her accent was British. Joe placed it to one of the suburban satellite towns that hugged the M25. Those that came from just outside London sounded much the same, clear vowels with a barely noticeable cockney twang when relaxed, drunk, or threatened with being too posh.
“Look, he didn’t do this. My little boy didn’t do this. He has never been the same since his father died, and well, he just couldn’t do something like this.”
“What? You mean you are responsible for…that?” Hale said motioning back to the cells.
“I could have done worse,” she said, eying Hale up and down.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Bell,” Joe said.
“Miss Bell. He couldn’t murder a prostitute. Hell, he couldn’t sleep with one of those, those, women. There must be a mistake. I want you to find who really did this. I will pay you. Look, basically, I have money…”
“Lady, go and see your son, now. Pay what you have to pay to get him out on bail.”
“I’ve tried. Negotiations broke down. I don’t know how long he will last in there. He isn’t like other boys, he, is well...”
“Special?” Hale offered.
“I’m not sure I like your tone, young man. The word I was looking for before you rudely interrupted is sensitive.”
“Tough city for a sensitive boy, Mrs Bell,” the Detective said.
“Miss Bell. He likes it here.”
“Daresay,” Joe handed her a card.
She read it. “I’ll give you five thousand dollars to find out who did this. Another five thousand to get him out,” Miss Bell said.
“Ten thousand to spring him free?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’ll put the kids through school for another year.”
“You have children?”
“No.”
“Then why…?”
“Just making conversation, lady.”
“I see.”
She didn’t.
“It’ll cost more for a conviction. Miss Bell, you smell like money if you don’t mind me saying,” Hale said moving closer to her. “I heard you were a pin-up girl back in the day?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“It doesn’t, lady. Excuse my friend. I’m training him,” the Detective said. “He’s all mixed up.”
“Perhaps you should try putting him on a leash.”
“I have. The trouble is he likes it.”
“Really,” she looked at Hale. “He doesn’t seem the type.”
“He’s submissive. He just craves attention.”
“Well, about Seb. I just want him out and back at home.” She dug about in her purse and pulled out a brown jiffy envelope. “The police wouldn’t take it. So I guess you two will have to do.”
“I’ll get him out,” Joe said. He took the envelope and weighed it in his hand. Felt like about 5 k and it felt rude to check. “But I think your son has been in too deep. There’s a certain depravity in this city. Some swim in it and survive. Most sink. Your son is close to sinking. You might want to teach him a few lessons. Play hardball with the purse strings. Make him get a job. Lazy hands and the devil…”
“I don’t need parenting advice, thank you very much.”
“You’re right. It’s probably too late for that. I’ll get him out, Miss Bell, but I’ll tell you, this town doesn’t need Sebastian, and Sebastian doesn’t need this town.”
She gave the Detective a card. She spoke. “Here’s my address. You come up and see me tonight, you understand?”
“I’ll do that. Right now, you go inside and see your son, lady. He wants his mommy at a time like this.”
She walked away, high heels clicking along the tiled courtyard. She still had the legs and the ass of a catwalk model. She still had it and by the Lord above, she still knew it.
They were pulled away from watching Miss Bell’s behind by the sound of rapid talking inside the station.
Joe and Hale both understood at the same time.
There had been another one.
SEVENTEEN
THE KILLER cleaned the knife and put it back into the kitchen rack. He emptied the contents of his satchel and hid the bag under his bed. The Killer walked into the bathroom and opened a medicine cabinet. He looked at the five bottles inside the medicine cabinet and briefly read the labels. The Killer began to open the bottles, taking one from here and two from there until he had a little pile of tablets in his hand. He walked back into the studio and put the tablets on the table. He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. He swallowed the tablets using the water to wash them down. He masturbated twice. Once on the sofa. Once on the bed.
He took out the map and considered the next location. The first two had been easy. He had not needed to move the bodies in order for the ritual to work. Ah, he almost forgot the souvenirs. He reached into his pocket and felt it soft and smooth between his fingers. Yes, the souvenir. The transvestite’s liver. The second part of the jigsaw puzzle. He placed it on the kitchen draining unit and opened a cupboard. Inside, was a plastic lunch box. He opened it and picked up the slice of Tammy’s liver. He rubbed the two organs together. He smiled. Not yet. He needed more, before the ritual began. For the spell to work, the women had to have fallen, like harlots, and they had to have been one of the wenches that gave him the awful disease. Just a few more, to make sure. He had much more hunting to do. It had only really just started. It was easy. It was all too easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
The organs were to be mixed together. A candle was to be fashioned using a wash of wax and letting the mixture dry. And then? Well, yes, then what? He walked to the bookcase again and opened the black book. The killer read the words to the spell once more. He opened the map. Seventh Road.
EIGHTEEN
THE BODY had been removed from the crime scene. The blood on the sand was all that was left of it. If it were the second event in a string, then it wasn’t committed by the Pin-up’s son. The Detective spoke in the local dialect to a crowd of rubbernecks on Beach Road. They told him the victim was a transsexual known to patrol Beach Road. She was known to her friends as Lucky.
“Fancy the chances of that. Lucky?”
“I guess it ran out,” Joe kicked at a mound of sand. “Investigating a murder is like playing a game of chess. You have to know where all the pieces are. I know about Sebastian. I know about you. I don’t know about old Vern, Jim, the other members of the pool team. Both teams.”
“Vern drinks on the beach during the day. It’s a sad fecking existence.”
“Lead the way.”
NINETEEN
OLD VERN was leaning up against the wall on a spot of shade near the pier. He was wearing a soiled and torn Hawaiian shirt and a pair of old combat shorts. He was shoeless. Hopeless. He was drinking from a tall red can that the detective remembered was six point five and went under the brand name:
Cheers Extra.
“Vern, how’s it going?”
Vern’s expectant mug looked at them like the hy
brid bastard child of anxiety and relief. The Detective guessed it wasn’t the visitors that Vern relished. It was the gifts that they might bring. Drinkers rarely remembered faces and names. They remembered peculiar gestures, nuances of conversations, cigarette brands, favourite sporting teams, hometowns, tattoos, humorous comments, and sensitive subjects. Vern drained his can and put the empty on the sand.
The Detective handed Hale a purple bill. “Hale, this man is thirsty, buy him a six pack.”
Hale shrugged and headed toward a seven-eleven. Vern smiled painfully. He was over sixty years of age, give or take a few rivers of Tiger Sweat and draughts of self-hatred and delirium. His face was heavily lined. His cheeks a network of veins that reminded The Detective of the London tube map. Vern’s train was underground. Wrecked. He was like a battered suitcase abandoned at a lost property office in an old train station, never to be claimed. No hope of return. But there always was a chance. A slim one.
Maybe.
The Detective crouched. “Nasty business this morning.”
“Every morning’s nasty, until I get the fourth one down,” Vern said slowly. “Then things get a bit clearer. The hallucinations, shit. Ants, spiders…I can tell by looking at you that you know what I’m talking about. You used to be a drinker, right? Seen a few insects in your time. I can tell an ex-beggar when I see one. Can see it in your fucking eyes, mate. I used to be a detective, see? Liverpool Street station. Seen a few boats in my time, mate.”
“I got on the program. Killed the can.”
“It was the vampires in the end. One huge bastard. Francis was his name. Beware the vampires.”
“Sure, baby.”
Hale came over with the cans of beer and handed one to Vern who opened it with trembling fingers and took a good, long, hard bite.
The White Flamingo Page 6
