by Heide Goody
How wonderful was the typical man, thought Morag. She looked like she’d been dragged through a janitor’s cupboard backwards and he didn’t even notice.
“Of course,” she said. She followed him down the corridor.
“What’s this about you being followed by a horde of cats?” said Rod.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I think they liked my perfume or something.”
“You smell very clean,” he said.
“Er, thanks.”
Morag looked at her new ID card. “Jesus!”
“What?” said Rod.
She showed him.
“That’s a nice picture,” he said.
“Well, yes…”
Rod swiped and opened a door.
The interview room was a windowless but warmly lit cube of a room. Venislarn protective glyphs were etched into the doorframe. At a table sat a young and miserable woman, toying unhappily with her chunky earrings. Morag instantly thought that no woman that pretty could ever be that miserable. There was something utterly fascinating about her elfin face, glamorous even.
The two rounds of buttered toast on the table in front of her sat entirely uneaten. To the side, Rod placed a pair of handcuffs and a rolled-up canvas banner.
“Izzy, this is my colleague, Ms Murray. She and I have a few more questions for you.”
“I’m not answering any more questions,” said Izzy moodily. “Not until I’ve had my phone call. I’m entitled to a phone call.”
Rod and Morag sat. “Who would you call?” said Rod.
“My boyfriend.”
“Uh-huh. Bet he’s worrying about you. What’s his name?”
“Benjamin. When do I get my phone call?”
“The sooner you answer our questions, the sooner this will be over. I need you to explain how you broke into the Library Vault.”
“I told you once.”
“And when you start telling us the truth, I’ll stop asking. I pride myself on being able to turn my hand to anything,” he said and picked up the handcuffs. “Give me enough time and I reckon I could near break in anywhere, get past security doors, crack keypad locks, even open handcuffs without the keys. But you…”
“You couldn’t pick them the other night,” said Izzy, raising an eyebrow as she picked at her nail polish.
“I was under pressure,” said Rod. He snapped the handcuffs around his left wrist, took off his tie clip, twisted it into two needle-like halves and paused with one over the cuff lock, looking at Izzy. “I should think you felt the pressure the night before last. So, while I pop this open, why don’t you have a rethink and tell us how you really did it?”
“I told you. I levered open the back door and I went down the stairs and there was a keypad and I pressed buttons until it opened,” Izzy huffed like a child forced to eat their greens.
“I saw the CCTV, Izzy,” said Morag. “The first six buttons you pressed were the right six buttons.”
“Lucky guess,” said Izzy.
Rod twisted and dug with the lock pick. “No one’s that lucky,” he said.
“How’s that lock coming?” said Izzy.
“Coming,” he said without much conviction.
“You knew the access codes,” said Morag. “You knew exactly where to go.”
“I was protesting,” said Izzy. “Standing up for our local library service.”
“You don’t even have a library card,” said Rod. “We checked.”
“I don’t need a library card to enjoy the library or to know that it’s important.”
“Someone gave you the codes, Izzy.”
Izzy nervously fingered her earrings. They were silver, or possibly white gold, thick pieces embossed with an intricate looping knot design over which Izzy traced her fingers.
“Who told you the codes?” asked Morag.
“Just tell us and then you can go back to your boyfriend,” said Rod and grunted as the handcuffs failed to give.
“I can’t,” said Izzy.
“Can’t tell us?” said Morag. “Why can’t you tell us?”
Izzy’s stressed fidgeting with her jewellery intensified, as though the pattern on her earrings were an endless race track for fingers. Now she accelerated to F1 speeds, round and round the overlapping lanes, bouncing off the three – no, four – corners. No, three.
Morag reached forward and grabbed Izzy’s wrist.
Dr Ingrid Spence’s T-shirt said, ‘There are two kinds of people: those who can infer from incomplete data’.
She considered the earrings for some time.
“I’ve seen a design like that before,” said Morag. “A piece of graffiti in one of the canal tunnels.”
“It’s definitely Venislarn,” agreed Ingrid.
“So, our protestor friend is a lying cow,” said Rod. He still had the handcuff on his wrist and worked at it constantly.
“Or this is an amazing coincidence,” said Morag. “Rod, do you think we should just get someone to cut that off?”
“If I can’t pick it, I want to know how our friend Izzy got out of it later without any keys.”
“No, it’s embarrassing, Rod,” she said.
Ingrid closed the earrings in her fist. “The design is a zahir.”
“A what?” said Rod.
“A zahir,” said Morag. “Is it dangerous?”
“It’s not quite a Langford Basilisk,” said Ingrid.
“Are you two just making up words?” said Rod.
“This is a minor zahir,” said Ingrid, “but enough exposure could prove fatal.”
“How?”
“The pattern is visually fascinating. The eyes follow it. Like the Coventry ring road, once you’ve been drawn in, it’s almost impossible to get out. You ever seen something or heard a tune and not been able to get it out of your head? It’s like that.”
“I remember a training exercise in Beersheba,” said Rod. “Joint exercise with the Israeli Defense Forces. A forty-mile hike with full packs. I was following behind an IDF trooper, Roni her name. Shapely lass and no mistake. All through the heat and the pain I just stared at her jiggling arse, followed it all the way home. Focussed on it ’til there was nothing else in my mind, ‘til the rest of the world had gone away. Got me through the hike.” He smiled. “I can still picture it now, clear as day.”
“Yep,” said Ingrid. “Well, the zahir is just like that. Sort of. Not really.”
Rod shrugged. “Closest I’ve come to being obsessed by anything.”
“Sure,” said Morag, watching his continuing struggles with the handcuff.
“The more powerful basilisks actually exploit mental architecture,” said Ingrid, “infecting the brain with a Trojan reboot loop or the human equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death. The obsession becomes everything. The victim sees it in their dreams and thinks of nothing but it when they’re awake. They lose the ability to perceive any form of external reality. They stop talking, they stop eating, they stop moving.”
Rod leaned back and looked through the narrow window at Izzy. He was saddened and surprised. He vividly recalled how, on first meeting her, he was taken aback by her beauty. Now, he just saw a thin young woman who really ought to take advantage of the food laid before her.
“She’s changed,” he said.
“The effect of the zahir casts a glamour,” said Ingrid and Morag grunted in agreement. “Our eyes are drawn to her, to the zahir she wears.”
“So what next?” said Morag.
“Since our girl isn’t talking, this is our lead,” said Rod.
“I’m not sure how,” said Ingrid.
“Let’s have a look.”
“Careful.”
Rod took one of the earrings from her and turned it over. “Maker’s mark,” he said, circling a series of indentations on the reverse. “I’m willing to bet this is local.”
“The Jewellery Quarter?” said Ingrid.
Rod nodded. “Time to pound the streets, newbie,” he said to Morag and gestured for them to g
o.
“You in front,” said Morag. “Now that I know you’re a perverted arse-ogler.”
“Only on punishment marches,” he said.
In reception, Rod pressed for the lift. Morag turned to Lois the receptionist.
“I think you’ve got some explaining to do,” she said, as politely as she could. It was only her second day after all.
“I’m looking for your luggage as we speak,” said Lois and then, aware that she was sitting at a desk and doing no such thing, added, “In my mind. Mentally retracing my steps.”
“Not about that. About this.” Morag held out her new ID card.
“Did I spell your name wrong?”
“No. The picture.”
Rod was looking over her shoulder. “It’s a nice one. You look like thingy out of whatsit.”
“Scarlett Johansson in The Avengers,” said Morag.
“That’s the girly.”
“That’s because this is a picture of Scarlett Johansson in The Avengers!”
“I would admit there’s a passing similarity,” said Lois.
“It’s her! Not me! You think I don’t know my own face?”
“I did say I’d do a little Photoshopping,” said Lois.
“Yeah. I thought you meant airbrushing, not cut and paste.”
The lift arrived with a ‘ding’.
“It looks just like you,” said Rod.
“Then your eyesight must be defective,” Morag snapped and got into the lift. “Too much staring at arses probably.”
Nina entered the Library, mildly diverted by the trio of moggies sitting on the pavement watching the building expectantly.
It was nearly eleven o’clock but Nina worked flexi-time. There was no official policy or procedure that allowed officers to work flexible hours but Nina did it anyway and ignored anyone who said she couldn’t. It had served her well in the two years she’d been with the Birmingham consular mission.
Coming the other way across the lobby were Rod and Morag, bickering like an old married couple. Rod was preoccupied with something on his wrist. Morag was wearing the same clothes she’d been in the day before, had her hair pulled back in a Croydon facelift and looked generally like crap.
“No, it is offensive,” Morag was saying.
“How can it be?” said Rod. “I’m saying that you looked good. I like Scarlett Johansson.”
“Point is, I don’t look like Scarlett Johansson,” said Morag. “So what you’re really saying is that you don’t know what I look like. You haven’t even looked at me.”
“I thought you didn’t want me looking at you.”
“At my bum! Heaven help me, Rod. I’d expect you to know what my face looks like. If I went missing and the police asked for a description, would you tell them I looked like Scarlett Johansson, just without the rubber catsuit.”
“I think a rubber –”
“Don’t even finish that sentence! It’s like you’re saying all gingers look the same. It’s practically racism. And would you stop fiddling with that bloody handcuff.”
“Morning, Rod,” Nina chirped, sipping her take out coffee. “Morning, generic ginger person.”
Rod sighed. “Nina. As a woman, please tell Morag that if people think she looks like Scarlett Johansson, she should take it as a compliment.”
“They look nothing alike,” said Nina.
“Thank you,” said Morag.
“I think people shouldn’t quibble when folks are being complimentary about their appearance,” said Rod.
“You look great,” said Nina.
“Really?” said Morag.
“You’ve got that whole skanky accountant look going on. Bold perfume too.”
“Uh-huh,” said Morag.
“What’s with the jewellery?” said Nina of Rod’s handcuffs.
“Man is trying to prove a point,” said Morag.
“Give me a minute,” said Rod.
Nina reach for the locked cuff. “You haven’t even got lock p–” Rod began and then the cuffs came away in Nina’s hand.
“How?”
“I could explain,” said Nina.
“But?”
She shrugged and walked towards the lift, drinking coffee.
“Highest concentration of jewellers’ businesses in Europe,” said Rod as they walked down Vyse Street to the next shop on their list.
“You don’t say?” said Morag.
“Birmingham was built on the manufacture of small things – buttons, pins, jewellery. That and guns. Over half the jewellery in Britain used to be made here.”
Beyond the modern shops and Warstone Lane Cemetery, Vyse Street was a road of tall Georgian terraces. Every other one was a jeweller’s shop. Many of the rest had simple plates by the door, advertising the specific expertise of the workers within.
“A city of metalworkers,” said Rod.
“You should work for the tourist board,” said Morag.
Rod shrugged.
“My flat’s round the corner. It''s just stuff you pick up.” He stopped by the door of a jeweller''s. “Whereas you appear to have picked up an entourage.”
The half dozen cats that had followed them down the street wound themselves around her legs. There was a pair of tabbies, a stumpy tortoiseshell, a grey with no tail and three black cats which were somehow each a different shade of black.
“You a cat person?” said Rod.
“I suspect I smell like a cat person,” said Morag. “This new spray I put on this morning…”
“Maybe I should just take this one,” he said. “You stay and appease your followers.”
Rod went inside.
Morag was not a cat lover really. She admired their self-sufficiency but truly couldn’t understand the idea of a housemate who didn’t contribute to the chores. She didn’t hate them either. She wasn’t so low as to resort to violence to drive them away. Instead, she told them all to piss off and, when that seemed to have no impact, resorted to harsh language that would make an Edinburgh schemie blush. Cats, it seemed, were made of stronger stuff.
Rod all but skipped down the steps.
“Knew someone would know,” he said. “Hylton Street. A jeweller called Ben Shipston.”
“Benjamin the boyfriend?” suggested Morag.
Hylton Street was a loop of a side street almost entirely occupied by the rear doors of shabby workshops. A peeling blue door beneath boarded-up first floor windows held a small brass plate that read ‘B. Shipston, Lost Wax Casting’. The edges of this door were cracked and splintered. Rod prodded with one finger and the door swung in.
“Always an interesting development.” He undid his jacket and unclipped the leather strap on his holster but did not draw.
“Shall we?” he said and stepped inside.
Morag went in after him, followed by a handful of furry deputies.
“Jesus! Leave me alone, would you?” she hissed.
The door led to a dirty uneven set of stairs. A small ancient window let in a pale dusty light above. The air smelled musty and damp.
“Mr Shipston?” called Rod. “Your front door was open.”
There was no sound but their own footsteps and a minor spat between the pair of tabbies. At the top of the stairs was an open workspace. Bare floor boards and ceiling beams. Crumbling brickwork. There was a desk, a strongbox set into the wall and three workbenches set out with jeweller’s tools and orders at different stages in manufacture.
“This place probably hasn’t changed in a hundred years,” said Rod. “’cept maybe the electric lights.”
“And the dead body.”
“Hmmm?”
There was a body.
Wedged between two workbenches was a man, or at least his legs and torso. The bloody ruin of his head looked like a failed pitch for a headache advert. There were powerful splash marks on the wall behind the corpse. Some of the trails were still wet.
“Fresh,” said Rod.
“How fresh?”
“Last few hou
rs, I’d reckon.”
Morag looked at the jewellery on the workbenches. “It wasn’t a robbery.”
She turned over a couple of pieces. Some of the designs hurt her eyes, like magic eye pictures. “Venislarn designs. He was making zahirs.”
“Don’t look like your usual occultist.” Rod’s experience told him that much.
“In what way, apart from the lack of a head?” she asked.
“Not rightly sure. I just haven’t encountered many occultists in Converse sneakers and skinny jeans.”
A tortoiseshell cat leapt up onto a workbench and began licking at a damp patch.
“Your feline friends are contaminating a crime scene.”
“Damn.” Morag picked the moggy up and dumped it on the floor. Her nose twitched. She bent down and sniffed the patch. “Fishy.”
He sniffed too.
“You think it was fish?” she said.
“I don’t want to know what it is if it isn’t fish.”
“Samakha?” she suggested.
He raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.
“There’s a fish ghetto between Digbeth and Deritend,” he said. “This is across town for them, although the canal does cut under Summer Row not far from here.”
“Some of these markings do look like a samakha graffiti tag Nina and I found yesterday,” said Morag.
Rod took out his phone. “I’ll call this in and see if Nina’s got an opinion on the samakha angle.”
Morag reached under the bench and pulled out another phone. She woke the screen.
“Locked. Biometric thumbprint. Might have been a problem if it required a retinal scan, but he still has his thumbs, see?” Rod gestured towards what he hoped was a thumb.
Morag turned the dead man’s hand so it was upright and pressed the phone against his still warm thumb.
“Thank you.”
Nina picked up Rod’s call.
“Wassup, kinky cuffs?” she said.
“We’ve stepped into a murder scene. We’re at fourteen Hylton Road.”
“Human?”
“One Benjamin Shipston, we think. We’ll need police and black ambulance at some point. Morag has this theory that it’s a samakha hit job.”
“That’s not their style really.”
“No, but there’s some circumstantial evidence and there are designs here that look like samakha gang tags. Didn’t you say the Waters Crew were starting to act too big for their boots of late? This new twerp leading them. Free Willy?”
