Death by the Book jsm-1

by Lenny Bartulin

  On the bus to Kings Cross, Jack searched through the Edward Kass books in his bag for the poem Kass had given Annabelle. He found it in Entropy House. The singed copy.

  IN DEMONS LAND

  His forehead smeared with defeat,

  His journey without reason, willed —

  The young man turned at the bridge

  And shouted his commands.

  Her arms broke the day,

  The highest steps too splendid

  For the eyes. Ten centuries

  Blown about — their weight

  The sin of pride. Only God

  Satisfied, among the dead,

  The price of empty glory faded,

  And then crawled on

  In exile with a myrtle crown. The light

  Observed brilliant in the same,

  And three mirrors the whiteness of the moon —

  Another sphere proceeds the truth

  You seek. Mandatory, to slake

  The great awe.

  Suffer the world rejoiced.

  I am obedient too late.

  Jack closed the book and slipped it back into his bag. The ancient Egyptians said that when you died, the god Ra weighed your heart against a feather, on a set of golden scales. If it were lighter, then heaven awaited. During their meeting, Edward Kass was going to have to hope for a feather the size of New Zealand.

  The boss was behind the counter at Celia’s Crystal Palace, head down over the till, counting out the fifties. Her lips moved silently. There were more golden notes than Jack saw in a month. Maybe he should make the switch to designer costume jewellery.

  “Lucky I’m not wearing a balaclava.”

  Celia looked up, surprised, and pushed the till shut. The faint sound of a bell echoed from it. A few fifties were still scrunched in her hand.

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “The papers call me the Phantom.”

  Celia smiled. “I’ll just put this away in the safe.” She bent down below the counter. Jack heard a few digital-sounding beeps, a metallic creak, and then the hollow thud of the safe door banging shut.

  “Right. Shall we go?”

  “After you.”

  She came out from behind the counter and went over to a large mirror: it opened to reveal a cupboard. She took out a grey woollen coat and worked her shoulders into it. Then she looked into the mirror and removed her sparkly earrings, fixed a black woollen beret on her head and teased her fringe a couple of times. “It’s just down the road. Only take a minute.”

  Jack waited while she wrote something on a small piece of paper and then taped it to the glass of the front door. She let Jack through and then followed him outside.

  “Boy, it’s cold today!”

  “Arctic,” said Jack.

  “I love it. Winter’s my favourite season. And autumn as well. The cooler months.”

  Jack believed her. Any excuse for more wool.

  Celia moved to the edge of the road and pointed. “It’s just down there.” They crossed Macleay Street and headed in the direction of Woolloomooloo. “We’re in St Neot Avenue.”

  “Wonder what he’s the saint of,” said Jack.

  “Poets, probably.”

  “He must have suffered terribly.”

  “It’s only appropriate, then.” Celia’s tone hardened. She quickened her pace.

  Jack followed, half a step behind. “Is your father feeling better?”

  “He’s working, I suppose.”

  “No more packages in the mail?”

  “Maybe there’s one waiting now.”

  “Phone calls?” Jack paused. “Visitors?”

  “Just you, Mr Susko.”

  They walked on. Questions were crowding Jack’s frontal lobe. Questions about Durst, about Kasprowicz, about Celia, too. It made him frown. So did the guy who walked past wearing designer-ripped jeans, a bleached red T-shirt, scarf, sunglasses, thongs and a takeaway latte.

  They turned into St Neot Avenue, following the long curve of an apartment block on the corner. Cars lined either side of the street, bumper to bumper all the way down. Lots of trees, too, and small front yards with manicured hedges and lawns and potted plants. It looked like an expensive stretch of real estate. Every building was an apartment block, in a range of architectural styles. Across the road, Jack noticed a renovated art-deco number with a column-framed entrance and a couple of palm trees out front. It even had a name: Grantham. But that was not where Edward Kass lived.

  Celia stopped in front of a plain, redbrick low-rise opposite. Its name was simply Twenty-One.

  “This is it,” she said.

  The path leading to the entrance was of pale blue-and-yellow-tinted stone. Hedges on either side added to the shadows thrown by a large frangipani tree that grew in a small patch of grass, half-naked and slightly obscene with its blunt, sausage-like branches. Jack shivered for a second as he went up the three front steps: under the entrance awning it was dark and the cold was palpable, as if he had walked into a butcher’s coolroom. He looked through the glass doors into the foyer, but inside it was dark too, and did not look much warmer. Dank was the word that came to mind.

  Celia slid a key into the lock and pushed the door open. The place smelt like closed windows and cheap carpet cleaner. She pressed a switch on the wall: the lights came on in the stairwell with a lazy clunk. Jack looked around. Maroon carpet, wood-veneer walls and a bit of dull brass here and there. And a sulking pot plant that looked like it needed a holiday. They began to climb the stairs, under weak yellow light that would have made an athlete look sick. Not a sound but the odd creaking step, or the banister giving a little. Somehow, the place suited Jack’s idea of Kass: moody, mostly cranky and never happy with visitors. Then again, the place was probably all he could afford after coming out the tight end of a family fortune.

  The apartment was on the first floor. The front door was slightly open. Celia gave a puzzled look as she pushed it open.

  “Hello? Dad?”

  Jack walked in behind her. The place was dark: green curtains on two windows were drawn, filtering a weak, four-o’clock light into the room. A lamp in the corner glowed dimly and the ceiling light drizzled down at about twenty-five watts. Two large, dark green lounge chairs with wide armrests and wood-grain edging kept each other company. The room was crowded with furniture and bookshelves and the walls were covered in pictures.

  “Dad?”

  Jack looked around. Without thinking, he sniffed the air: something strong, sulphurous. Something wrong. Instinctively, he took a step backwards, as if any second he might have to make a run for it. The whole room seemed to grow darker, and smaller, seemed to shrink in around him like a child’s fairytale nightmare.

  Celia slipped off her coat. “Is anybody here?”

  There was a noise, like something being knocked over. Jack and Celia turned towards the doorway opposite. Ian Durst walked into the room. There was blood on his white shirt, patchy streaks where a hand had gripped or pulled or wiped itself. And he was holding a gun. The way his shoulder drooped down a little told Jack that it was not made out of plastic.

  ~14~

  Celia Mitten eventually stopped screaming. She was now sitting in one of the lounge chairs, right up on the cushion’s edge, legs clamped together and to the side, every part of her shaking, all in different directions. Durst had given her a whisky that she had not yet tasted. At least it gave her something to stare at. Shock had shut her down for the moment.

  Jack went into the kitchen, where Celia had just been. Durst followed him.

  Edward Kass was bent forward over the kitchen table. His head rested on an open notebook and a few loose pages spread out before him. A couple of pens were there too, a cheap blue Bic and a fancy black fountain, as well as a pencil lying next to a sharpener and a small, dirty cube of rubber. His arms were crossed over his lap, hands resting palm up on each thigh. Kass looked as though he had fallen asleep — almost childlike, innocent and oblivious. Maybe he had dozed off wh
ile grinding a gear or two over the final wording of a sentence. Painful as that might have been, Jack doubted it was the cause of the hole in the side of his head.

  He stepped closer to the body. Just in front of the dead man, covered in blood, a piece of paper with a line that had survived the bullet’s aftermath. It read: the waters rise around me.

  On the kitchen floor lay another body. Jack recognised that one, too. The thin man was lying on his stomach, arms tucked in under his chest, and his legs splayed a little, one leg bent awkwardly with the foot in against the knee of the other. His head was turned to the side, eyes open, blank, staring across the floor at the wall opposite: or at the void he had not long before fallen into. A bullet had darkened his back with blood that seemed as black as sump oil. It had seeped out around him and circled the top half of his body: a halo of thick, paint-like blood, rich and red against the off-white linoleum patterned with curlicues of gold and silver covering the floor. Jack had been looking forward to catching up with the guy again, telling him that attacking people with knives in their place of business was not a very nice thing to do. That playing with sharp objects and starting fires would ultimately only get him into trouble. But it looked like he already knew.

  If Ian Durst remembered Jack from the other Friday, when he had thrown a fist and some BMW keys into Jack’s stomach, he did not let on. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, heavy-shouldered like he was suffering a hangover, pointing out details with one hand, while the gun hung limply in the other. That was where he had seen the intruder. That was where they had struggled, there where the chair lay knocked over. That was where the gun had fallen and then slid up against the sink cupboards for him to grab. He said how the guy had tried to knee him in the balls, scratch his eyes, even bite his nose. He went on like that for a while. Lots of details. Ian Durst seemed to be blessed with a photographic memory. Maybe disgraced former gynaecologists were good at remembering things.

  Jack listened and looked around the kitchen. He was wary and nervous and kept glancing at Durst’s gun hand to make sure his finger did not creep up and hug the trigger, accidentally or otherwise. Adrenaline could do funny things to nerve-endings, even after you had calmed down.

  Durst said: “I had to get out from under him after the gun went off.”

  Jack watched him pull a face. His thin, leathery lips stretched tightly across his Royal Doulton teeth.

  “He looks small but he weighed a ton. I had to kind of slide out. Dead weight, all right.”

  “So how did he get in?” asked Jack.

  “Don’t know. Must’ve picked the lock. The door was open when I got here.”

  “Pity you didn’t get here earlier.”

  “Yeah,” said Durst. “Pity.” The fringe of his sweptback hair had fallen down over his forehead in two thick, Superman-like curls. He pushed them back up with his free hand, letting it rest on top of his head.

  Jack looked at Edward Kass again. He could identify a little of the man he had seen in the photo on the net: long face, thick lips, strong straight nose. The hair was grey of course, though still there, the ears larger, the eyebrows like wild tufts of bleached grass growing out of a crack in a wall. He was not so gaunt in old age, or as dark. Whatever had been on his mind, only the eyes could confirm, and they were now shut. Forever. His poetry would never be so definitive.

  The dead poet was wearing a blue cardigan, an orange-and-black-checked flannelette shirt, faded black pants with folded-up cuffs and red tartan slippers. House clothes. Blood dripped onto the left slipper from the edge of the table: Jack could hear it now in the dark silence of the room, the soaked slipper, the thick thwap … thwap … thwap of slowly congealing blood dropping down, almost in slow motion. Jack had never seen a dead body before. He never thought his first time would be a double.

  He looked over at the man on the floor. Shiny, silver-grey tracksuit and what looked like brand new black Adidas sneakers with gleaming white stripes. Tough-guy-in-the-money, break-and-enter clothes.

  “Do you know him?” asked Durst.

  Jack turned too quickly: his neck jarred and made him grimace. Ian Durst did not notice. He was staring down at the body on the floor as well — casually, half interested, like the dead man was just a hooked fish gone stiff on a jetty.

  “No,” said Jack. The question annoyed him. “Do you?”

  Durst shrugged and shook his head. “Just one of those faces, I suppose. Makes you think you’ve seen it before. Don’t you think?”

  Jack frowned. His heartbeat changed up a gear. “Not really.”

  Ian Durst locked his clear baby-blue eyes onto Jack’s hazel-brown ones. Then he glanced down at the gun in his hand, but without moving his head too much. He checked it out from a couple of angles, turning it a little this way and then the other. He had an almost smug look on his face. A grin dimpled his cheek but was gone before it could be accused of anything. He looked up again, his face now hard and dark and vaguely threatening.

  Jack held the stare. Said nothing. Neither did Durst.

  Celia’s shaken voice was heard from the lounge room. “The police are here.”

  Jack half expected to see Peterson among the blue uniforms searching the apartment for clues. He was relieved not to. Instead, a Detective Sergeant Keith Glendenning was the man in charge. Under his creased grey suit he possessed maybe half a personality. Everything else about him was pretty average, too: height, width, looks and shoes. Jack wondered about his abilities. Glendenning walked with a heavy gait, slowly and sadly, like a man who might have carried a bucket and mop for a living instead of a badge and a gun. He was probably only in his forties but looked a decade older around the eyes. They crowded in together above a nose the size of a small ham. He kept glancing at a mobile phone in his right hand, as if hoping it would ring — but it never did. Not even a text message. The disappointment on his face came and went swiftly. Jack could see it was well practised.

  He gave a statement to a couple of police officers first. They asked him to come into the main bedroom. It was dark with stained timber and heavy brown drapes. The double bed was made, the polished wood-veneer closet closed, the rugs on the floor perfectly aligned: there was nothing out of place, not even a pair of old pyjamas thrown over the tall-backed chair set against the wall. Kass must have been an obsessive-compulsive it was so neat in there. One of the officers wrote down what Jack said, the other prompted him. Neither looked him in the eye, once. Cops had a way of making Jack feel that whatever he said was a lie. It must have been a trick they learnt at police school: How to dredge your suspect’s guilt, no matter if it’s from when he was five and stole a chocolate bar from the corner shop. After they had finished, he read through the script and signed.

  Then Detective Sergeant Keith Glendenning had his turn. There were flakes of dandruff on his shoulders. In a steady, bored voice he asked a lot of questions. One of them was whether Jack knew either of the dead men.

  “I knew Edward Kass,” said Jack. “But only by name. This would have been our first meeting.”

  “About what?”

  “His books. I’m a book dealer.” Jack elevated the prestige of his business, but it had no visible effect on Detective Sergeant Glendenning. He looked just as bored as ever.

  “What about his books?” he asked.

  Jack cleared his throat. He knew Celia had already spoken to the detective. “I was interested in buying them.”

  “Why?”

  “So I could sell them. It’s what I do.”

  “Are they worth a lot of money?”

  “Not really.” Jack checked himself. “Well, a little, if they’re signed.”

  “And that’s why you were coming to see him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How much?”

  “How much what?”

  “How much are they worth? Signed.”

  “Not enough to get excited about.”

  Detective Sergeant Keith Glendenning gave a sly smile. Probably his first
for the month. Jack caught a glimpse of his crooked, not very white teeth. The cruel shape of his pale, fleshy lips emphasised a mouth that had spoken an obscenity or two in its time. A mouth that could snarl when it wanted to.

  “How much gets you excited?” asked the detective.

  “Anything above a dollar eighty-five.”

  Jack had the distinct feeling that maybe he had underestimated the detective. Glendenning was piling on the questions like a chess player who only moved his pawns. But before you knew it, most of them were standing around your queen, grinning like a pack of murderous dwarves.

  “So they were worth enough to come and see him?” The detective’s smile had vanished. He checked his mobile phone, squinting down at its illuminated screen.

  Jack shrugged his shoulders, tried to give an air of calm. “A buck’s a buck. Unless you’re on a copper’s wage, I suppose.”

  The detective looked up. “It’s only a buck over here, too, last time I checked.” The tone was nothing nasty but the hard grey-blue eyes were unimpressed. Glendenning glanced down at his mobile phone again. “And what about the other guy, on the floor?” he asked, like it was an afterthought. Like he did not care whether Jack knew him or not.

  They were standing in a small connecting hall that led to the two bedrooms in the apartment. It was dim — the bare, single globe above them did a cheap job. Jack looked at the floor: it was covered in an orange-and-brown carpet, patterned with circles and some kind of curved pyramid shape set at different angles between the circles. He doubted there was ever a time it was fashionable. As his eyes followed the pattern around for a moment, he noticed somebody else walk into the hallway.

  “Just need the toilet.” Durst squeezed past Detective Sergeant Glendenning. He looked at Jack. Jack looked back. The detective noticed.

  As Durst shut the door to the bathroom, Glendenning scratched the stubble on his broad chin. “So have you ever seen him before? The guy on the floor?”