by Sam Millar
“Fear can make many things look real. Don’t feel bad. One of the benefits of being homeless is that people expect you to be half crazy. It’s a myth that helps us create illusions, such as rubber strips transformed into deadly metal knifes. That way, people leave us alone.” Michael laughed, a touch nervously, before offering his hand to Karl. “Michael Graham.”
“Karl Kane,” replied Karl, shaking Michael’s hand while studying the man’s features. Older-looking than his years, Michael’s face sagged, as if the dogs of poverty and depression had stolen every bone from it. His nose was knotted, like a boxer’s. To Karl, Michael’s entire face was a map of hardship.
“What can I do for you, Karl? If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t look like you’re ready to join our nomadic family.” The eyes in the ruined face sparkled.
“I’m a private investigator,” stated Karl, extracting a business card from his wallet before handing it to Michael. “I’m looking for a young girl, missing for almost two weeks.” Karl produced the photo of Martina Ferris. “Ever see her about this place?”
From his shirt pocket, Michael produced a pair of thick eyeglasses before scrutinising the photo.
“My eyesight isn’t the best. This looks quite grainy.”
“Granted, it’s not the best of pictures, but it’s all I have at the moment.”
Michael looked at the photo again. “She looks vaguely familiar. Do you have any money on you?”
“Very little with me. You’re not going to run off and get a drink?” said Karl, regretting the last sentence as soon as it emerged.
“Ah, another myth. All homeless are drunks and thieves. Actually, I’m a boring teetotaller and one of the leftover petals from the flower people.”
“I didn’t mean the way it sounded.”
“I’m well used to it by now,” responded Michael, a forced smile appearing on his face.
“How much do you want?” Karl tagged a ten spot from his wallet.
“It’s not for me,” smiled Michael. “Probably about twenty quid.”
“Twenty …” Against nagging doubts, Karl replaced the ten spot with one of the few twenties left in his possession, reluctantly handing it to Michael, along with the photo of Martina.
“You wait here, Karl. I’m going to talk to someone very special. Give me about five minutes.”
While waiting, Karl sucked in the history of the adjacent Custom House, picturing the Victorian novelist, Anthony Trollope, sitting at his desk in the local post office section of the grand building in the nineteenth century, labouring away until finally getting his big break as a writer. Bet you had your fair share of rejection slips, Tony, old lad. Though not in the same tonnage as yours truly, of course.
Five minutes turned to ten, and the oven-like heat had transformed into a microwave. Sweat began trickling down Karl’s back, pooling between the cracks in his arse. He felt like he had pissed himself. Hated the thought that he might have been taken for a fool. Considered entering the dimly lit building, go searching for boring teetotaller Michael weighed down with his twenty spot.
“Sorry, it took a bit longer than I expected,” exclaimed Michael, re-emerging suddenly from a side door. “Cathy enjoys her sleep. Behind her back, they call her Cathy the Cat because of her nocturnal ways. She’s our de facto leader.” Michael’s smile broadened mischievously. “Follow me. Watch your footing. It’s a bit treacherous in places.”
“How on earth do you survive?” asked Karl, stepping over discarded boxes of rotten fruit.
“Being homeless, you mean? It’s the freest you’ll ever feel. You can walk through this town at midnight and not worry about getting mugged, because you have nothing worth stealing,” smiled Michael.
The vast interior of the building was an organised shambles, with makeshift tents scattered chaotically like oily puddles. Pews – the few that had escaped being burnt as firewood on cold nights – were pyramided like marooned canoes against a far wall. Adorning the many other walls, a coterie of carved angels and classical deities remained remarkably unscathed, looking down upon the huddled masses. The outstretched arms of forsaken saints, though, had met a more mortifying end, being used to dry tattered clothing as well as holding a small army of TV antennas that somehow managed to pick up signals for the contingent of discarded black and white television sets flickering eerily in the charcoal light. A large crucifix with a tortured Christ dangled precariously above, looking down upon a badly chipped Madonna, most of her face gone.
To Karl, the entire scene resembled something out of Apocalypse Now, and as Michael furthered him to a one-time sacristy now converted into a rickety semblance of a bedroom, Karl hoped that Cathy the Cat wasn’t going to turn out to be a shaven-headed Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.
“Cathy?” whispered Michael, tapping meekly at the door. “Cathy …?”
“I heard you the first time,” hissed the scissoring voice. There was a sound of movement coming from inside the room before permission was finally granted to enter.
Cathy the Cat was sprawling out upon a badly stained mattress, her skinny frame propped up by a family of orphaned cushions. A sunburst of red hair fanned on the cushions. Her eyes were green and luminous as absinthe. Star of David earrings were tooled tightly into the lobes of her ears. She was wearing an anarchist tank top depicting a cracked, inverted champagne glass with the words Fuck The System stencilled in black, goal-posted strategically between two very erect nipples. Faded tattoos – most of which appeared to be self-made, prison-types – branched from her arms. Only one of the tattoos appeared to be professionally done. It was creepily ornamented: a pubescent angel with a syringe being inserted into its wings, transforming them into sharpened blades of dripping blood. Hell’s True Angel stated the legend directly beneath the angel’s feet.
Despite Cathy’s slenderness, Karl thought that her arms looked muscularly chiselled for giving headlocks, and that he would certainly hate it to be his head in the wrestling match.
The room smelled wet and rusty. A faint lofting stench of urine and reeking chemicals that smelled like rotten eggs mixed with paint thinner.
“Hello,” said Karl, his hand outstretched towards Cathy. “My name is –”
“I already know your name, and your supposed business here. What exactly is it you want?” asked Cathy, ignoring Karl’s hand. Tilting an egg-timer, she began watching its contents flow softly, filling the empty glass belly underneath. “I would say you have less than two minutes.”
“I was told you might be able to help me with my enquiries. Michael explained that you –”
“Michael can tolerate hunger, but silence has always been a mean torture for him. He can’t keep that bucket mouth of his shut. Isn’t that right, Michael?”
Without replying, Michael slinked sheepishly away, leaving Karl and Cathy alone.
While Cathy watched Michael’s shadow disappear, Karl studied patches of baldness on Cathy’s head.
“From numerous bottles being smashed against it,” said Cathy, almost blasé, catching Karl. “The numerous dead wounds have left tracts where my hair will never grow again. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t mean to stare.” Yet, despite the ugliness of the scars, it was obvious to Karl that Cathy had once been extremely attractive.
“Here. Take your photo back,” said Cathy, standing slowly up, allowing her hair to fall over the balcony of her shoulders. “I don’t like your look or smell. You have the sneaky stench of a cop about you.”
“Cops travel in a totally different direction from me. Persona non grata is the phrase they normally use when describing me.”
Cathy studied Karl for a few seconds. “What’s her name, the girl in the photo?”
“Martina. Martina Ferris.”
Cathy yawned like a sluggish cat. “She said her name was Angela Reilly. Came here a few weeks ago, wanting to ‘fit in’. She didn’t strike me as the type that could ‘fit in’ anywhere, let alone in this world.”
“You r
efused to let her stay?”
“This is my kingdom.”
“I notice there are no other women here.”
“That’s best for the family. The men get confused. They still retain their testosterone, despite how they look. Their minds are inclined to wander into darkness, allowing their cocks to become stiff dowsing rods.”
“I see.” Karl gave a quick cough. “You don’t feel threatened by all the men in here?”
For a moment’s flash, Cathy’s green eyes did a strange movement of tiny flickering. Her face tightened, and then just as quickly relaxed. Suddenly, she stood toe-to-toe with Karl, her face close to his, her mouth seductively open. Her breath smelt of stale medicine. He noticed for the first time the family of metal studs embedded in her tongue. They made him think of silver mushrooms.
“Do I look the type of person easily threatened?”
“Not the type at all, Cathy. It was a silly question. You have to forgive me. I’m notorious for asking silly questions.”
“Good. Understanding goes a long way,” replied Cathy, glancing at the egg-timer. “I think you’ve overstayed your welcome, Karl.”
“What about Martina? Is there anything you can tell me? She could be in danger.”
“You’re very persistent for not being a cop – allegedly. What’s in this for you?” Cathy placed a sharp fingernail on Karl’s cheek. Traced his jawbone. “Did you pimp her out? Has your fat golden goose fled its cage, left you with rotten eggs on your face?”
“Nothing like that. Just trying to make sure she’s safe.”
Cathy’s fingernail travelled to Karl’s mouth, tracing the little flesh indents on his lips.
“She said something about heading down to Dublin, find a friend who’s in a hospital of some sort,” said Cathy. “Now, go. Visiting is over.”
CHAPTER SIX
“And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him.”
Jack London, The Call of the Wild
“Not too far now, Max,” said the man, patting the dog’s head before continuing the journey towards Black Mountain via the pathway known as Mountain Lonely. A few minutes later, he cut across Hatchet Field – so-called because of being shaped like an old hatchet – and let the dog off its leash despite a warning sign advising against such action.
“Go on, Max! Good dog!”
The dog went bulleting ahead, barking with excitement.
Less than thirty minutes later, the man finally rested atop Black Mountain, taking in the spectacular views over Belfast with a pair of Pentacon Cobra wide-angle binoculars.
“Beautiful!” he exclaimed, rotating slowly, catching sight of Donegal in the far distance, before capturing Scotland, the coasts of England and the Isle of Man, all in one panoramic scoop. “Where in the world would you get see such sights on a Wednesday morning, eh, Max?”
Max commenced barking at his master’s voice before drinking quickly from a skinny stream veining inwards from the hillside. Seconds later, the dog was away in hot pursuit of a motley crew of flea-infested rabbits out enjoying some early morning sex.
“Max! C’mon, boy. Don’t go too far ahead.”
Abruptly, the dog stopped dead in its tracks, standing stiffly before growling at a small mound of puckered earth where one of the rabbits made good its escape. The hairs on the dog’s back suddenly began spiking eerily.
“Max! C’mon the hell with you, now!”
The dog, normally obedient, ignored him.
“Max! Get back here!”
Max was getting old and deaf, thought the man, justifying the dog’s unusual behaviour.
As he approached, Max began howling and sniffing at the ground, throwing its body back with a jerk, as if its nose touched something hot.
“Max? I don’t have time for this nonsense with rabbits.”
Max began barking uncontrollably, digging furiously.
“Max! Will you cut that out! Look at the state of your –”
Suddenly, hordes of filthy flies – wings lit green with small splashes of light through the slats – buzzed angrily at the man, hitting his face forcefully, some entering his mouth and windpipe.
“Bastards!” he shouted, almost choking on the black sludge. The flies tasted like excrement and raw meat. He felt like vomiting, but stubbornly held it. “Filthy bastards!”
Max’s barking became louder.
“Max! Get the hell away from –”
The sun came into play, just at the right moment, landing rays on the washed-out piece of whiteness slightly hidden in the darkened soil.
“What on earth?”
Covering his mouth with a hand, the man nudged the ground with his boot, overturning the soil. The earth was spongy and easily succumbed to the push of the boot. There was a muted metallic odour to the overturned dirt that made him think of decaying onions.
At first, he thought the whiteness a piece of broken plate or an upturned cup from a campsite. Only when his boot investigated the soil further was all revealed.
“Oh dear lord …”
The face was barely visible behind a mask of leaves and soil. The gaping skull had been bleached so thoroughly its lines held dark, almost carbon shadows; teeth and jaws gaping up at the sun down there in the damp darkness of hellish ground. The flesh – what little there was left – was winter pale and off-yellow, like hardened cheese in a darkened cupboard. Colourless eye sockets glared at him from their dark passages.
Suddenly wilting to his knees, the man bowed his head, as if praying, retching violently.
The man was no expert, but as he buckled over in the filthy nightmare, he suspected from the braces gating the teeth that this was probably the skull of a child barely in its teens.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“He knows death to the bone.”
W. B. Yeats, “Death”
“Hello, Tom,” said Karl, standing at the office doorway of best friend and forensic pathologist, Tom Hicks.
Glancing up from his computer screen, Hicks looked slightly on edge.
“Karl? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Lovely greeting. Haven’t seen your grumpy old gob in months, and that’s what I get?”
“Don’t you know Wilson is upstairs in his office? For God’s sake, man, show some common sense – even though I doubt you have any.”
“That’s what I always admire in you. Your honesty. Anyway, my delightful ex-brother-in-law is way down my list of priorities, right at this moment.”
“I’m serious, Karl. I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but I’ve heard through the grapevine that he hates your guts.”
“The day I worry about a wanker like Wilson is the day I stop being a private investigator. You more than anyone should know I’m not easily intimidated, Tom.”
“I’m getting too old for old men acting juvenile.”
“Speak for yourself when you say old. Anyway, I brought you a present,” said Karl, handing Hicks a book.
“Don’t tell me you finally got one of those books of yours published?” said Hicks, taking the book, looking at the cover. “Peter Mullan? Why does that name ring a bell?”
“It should. We were in the same class for about a year. Looked a bit like a weasel. Always complaining.”
“Oh, yes … now I remember him,” said Hicks, smiling. “He’s an author?”
“A bestselling one, the bastard. Had to buy that in Eason’s this morning where he was signing. Fifteen bloody quid it cost. Is it any wonder people don’t buy books any more? Got him to inscribe it to you. That’s your birthday covered, next month. So don’t be asking for anything else.”
“Did he remember you?”
“Of course he bloody remembered me. I saved him from a couple of hidings in school, you know. He owes me,” stated Karl. “That’s why I gave him a copy of my new manuscript and asked him to have a loo
k at it. Hopefully, he’ll give me a cracker blurb. Sometimes that’s all it takes to win a publisher over.”
“I’m embarrassed for you.”
“Don’t be. I’m not. Besides, the squeaky wheel always gets the oil. If you don’t ask, you won’t get.”
“You still haven’t told me what caused all this bad blood between you and Wilson.”
“Best you don’t know.”
“The last I saw you two together, I had to separate the both of you, rolling in the muck, punching the daylights out of each other – and at a funeral of a murdered officer, into the bargain,” said Hicks, looking at Karl in such a way it made Karl’s neck itch. “That poor girl, Jenny Lewis. What a horrible tragedy – her and the mother. Not forgetting Detectives Cairns and McKenzie, of course.”
“Of course.”
“They never did find the killer – or killers. You’d think Wilson would have made the murder of three of his detectives a priority, wouldn’t you?”
“Has he recruited any new members of staff?” asked Karl, carefully evading the question.
“So far, he’s hired one young detective. Extremely wet behind the ears, by the cut of him. There’s talk Wilson is after two more to fill the ranks of his depleted crew, but is refusing to take on a female, after what happened to Jenny Lewis.”
“Has Wilson tried to heavy-hand you?” replied Karl. “Remember, he more or less threatened you at the funeral?”
“That was all in the heat of the moment. We give each other a wide berth now. If we happen to stumble into each other in public, we nod professionally as if nothing ever happened.”
“Glad to hear you two are so cushy-wushy, now. Which reminds me. Fancy going to a birthday party tomorrow night?”
“Whose party?”
“Ivana’s.”
“I … I can’t. I’ve tickets to The Thirty-Nine Steps in the Grand Opera House tomorrow night.”
“What a strange coincidence.”
“Stop making everything out to be a conspiracy. Anne’s been waiting months to see it. Tell Ivana happy birthday and that I’m so sorry I can’t be at the party.”
