by Unknown
The mystery midget flung up his arms to shield his eyes and squealed, ‘Whatever it is, I didn’t do it!’
***
After they’d given him a once-over that must have felt like X-rays, they never even asked the pocket Adonis how he’d crossed the police line. Seeming mesmerised, they all watched him answer the Inspector’s questions. The WPC sort of sighed at each chocolate-brown word. Meantime the young copper’s tongue poked out the side of his mouth. He looked up from his scrawly note-taking. ‘B-O-S-what, did you say?’
The newcomer rolled his darkly handsome eyes. ‘Never mind. It’s on my – don’t be a prat! I’m hardly going for a gun – on my driving license, see? Boshay Lopez. Usually known as Bosh. Here, give it back! Thank you.’ With camp irony he rushed to forestall the interrogation. ‘Look, I didn’t know I was gate-crashing a murder, did I? I just heard Zoe’s ring-tone so I knew she was in here and came in for a chat, all right?’ This despite the flashing blue lights and the police do not cross line. Bosh lowered his voice with theatrical patience. What we could see of his fine features could have been Indian or Mediterranean, but when he moved incautiously we couldn’t miss the snazzy black eye he’d been trying to hide. He glared defiance at the cops. ‘Yes, I was beaten up this evening and yes, I am thinking of pressing charges. No, it wasn’t racially motivated, thank you for asking, and yes, it was domestic and what do I expect with people like me?’ Then he hissed, ‘Zoe, you stupid mare, why don’t you ever answer your bloody phone?’
I waved at the constabulary. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, Bosh, I’ve been a bit busy. Goodness knows what you’re doing here but you’re just the person. Nisha’s CCTVs are frozen and unless we get a picture for the, um, time of death. Sorry, pet.’ I squeezed Nisha’s other hand. ‘We won’t be able to prove we didn’t do him in.’
‘What, you? Never!’ Bosh scoffed.
‘They don’t know me and they think I might have. Please. Just do something, will you?’
Bosh scrunched his eyes shut and sniffed while turning his head from side to side. Suddenly he snapped them open again. ‘Don’t get antsy, Zo, I know you didn’t.’ He went to jump up from his armchair saying, ‘Give us a shufti at the camera then.’
Inspector Johnstone loomed over him. Bosh gave him a falsely charming smile and subsided into the cushions. ‘Or don’t you want to get the cameras working, officers?’
‘He’s a techno-wizard,’ I said hastily to the boys and girls in blue. ‘He can fix anything.’
You’d have thought the droopy DCI would have insisted on somebody from computer forensics but he just shrugged. ‘Can’t hurt.’ I caught myself thinking, ‘I’m sure cops didn’t use to be like this.’ My hand flew up to cover my mouth in horror. Mid-thirties, presentable, but starting to think like a fud. How come Bosh got his own way with the Met like he did at the office? Was it because he was too buff for words? I’d often wondered if he only talked to me because my love-life was as rubbish as his.
Beaming at the inspector, Bosh whipped out a set of tiny screwdrivers. ‘Got a ladder, boss?’
***
While I got the family doctor’s name off Nisha’s mobile, Ms Bunnysuit took the shattered body to the mortuary. Most of the other cops blared off with sirens and lights to enjoy an affray. The doctor chucked me out so I went to see what Bosh was up to. Nobody stopped me. Curiouser and curiouser. I was surprised we weren’t in the nick already.
Outside, Ellis held the ladder while Bosh fiddled with the cameras above his head. The mild September night had turned bitterly cold once more so the audience had mostly given up and gone home. It was eerily quiet, and the stars shone brilliantly, promising a frost that hadn’t been on the weather reports. Mist haloed the streetlights and I wondered uneasily if it was going to come to life and kill us all, but it just hung about looking romantic and smelling of bonfires.
Now I had time, I checked my phone. Two more voicemails from Andy which I deleted without listening to them. It was the only way I could withstand his emotional assaults. After all he’d done I still loved the bastard when I didn’t hate him. He was probably only playing songs about the chains of love again but I wasn’t going to fall for it this time. And six, count them, six texts, all from Bosh. He was a good ten years younger than me and while we bantered when he came into work to update the aged IT stuff, we were hardly bosom buddies. He’d plonked himself at my table in Starbucks a couple of times and I’d been glad of the company, but he only had three topics of conversation: his rollercoaster relationship with a loser called Lee, nerdy gizmos and his new puppy. Did I mention I’m scared stiff of dogs? But Bosh was so determined to make me like them that he’d even changed my screensaver to one of his long-tailed pet Alfie. I’d got him back, though. I’d changed the one on his laptop to a kitten in a Barbie-pink tutu. His texts from this afternoon were three more pictures of his dopey dog and then two this evening saying, ‘Call me ASAP’, ‘Lee’s chucked me out’, and the one just now. It said, ‘Life or death, you dozy mare. Where are you?’ Thoughtfully I deleted them as well. Had I got myself a stalker?
‘You all right up there?’ Ellis called to my creepy follower on the ladder. ‘You’ve been ages.’
‘No, constable.’ Bosh’s hands were visibly shaking. ‘All right is about as far from how I’m feeling as you can get. I’ve just found the love of my life with his hands down someone else’s pants and I’m up a ladder getting frostbite because my BFF’s a murder suspect.’ I’m his BFF? When did that happen? I wondered, but Bosh blabbered on, ‘Come to think of it, constable, after seeing all that blood, I don’t suppose you’re feeling on top of the world either. Is that puke on your utility belt?’
‘I’m all right, sir.’
‘Me neither, Constable Ellis. Can I call you by your first name? After all, we’re brothers in freaked-outedness.’
Could things get weirder? They became Darren and Bosh, with Darren rambling on about how he’d just graduated from Hendon police college and this being his first time on nights. He wouldn’t admit it but I could see he was torn between horror and excitement at his first actual murder.
The doctor left, telling me charmlessly that Nisha was sedated and he had no extant next of kin listed so we should stay until she could find someone. It wasn’t a question.
Accusingly the WPC told me Inspector Johnstone had gone next door to check the freezer. As time went on she stopped meeting my eye. When her superior eventually came out of the shop next door he was three sheets to the wind and smelling of Polish plum brandy, but much cheerier. Breath puffing white in the chill air, he called upwards.
Bosh answered, ‘Yeah, that should about fix it. Let’s go in and look at the footage before I freeze my bollocks off.’
We all trailed inside, Ellis making a meal of keeping the non-existent crowds away. The journalists had all gone to the nearest pub for a warm and a whisky and most other people had realised they’d have to get up for work in the morning so he didn’t have much to do.
I ostentatiously put the Closed sign on the door. Nisha, doped to the eyeballs, drifted into the office with us and so did the WPC. With the Inspector and Daz Ellis it was crowded.
And Bosh worked his magic. There on the monitor was Mr Chopra, slipping on an old green bottle all covered with frost, somersaulting into the air clutching his heart. The bottle smashed under his fall. That’s what caused his terrible cuts. They all remembered the smell of wine. That’s why Inspector Johnstone had thought it would be a drunken row. But the two women and the likeable Asian lad had no alcohol on their breath at all. They weren’t even on the recording. It was just an accident. Sorry to have troubled you in your hour of grief.
They left, Darren slipping Bosh a wink and promising to call in for a cuppa the next time he was on nights, and Bosh saying, ‘Yeah, when I’ve got somewhere to live.’ I locked the door behind Dazzling Darren and followed Bosh and Nisha into the Chopras’ living room.
‘What on earth is going on?’ I burst out
. ‘And what the hell are you doing here in the first place?’
Mouth agape, he fell on the sofa. His sad-puppy eyes welled up. ‘What d’you mean, what am I doing here? You don’t care at all, do you? My whole entire life’s been ruined and you can’t even be bothered to answer your phone to see if I was all right. I thought you at least would understand my broken heart but you’re too wrapped up in your own self-pity to take a blind bit of notice.’
‘Be fair! I had my phone on silent for art class, then I couldn’t get a signal on the train, and now,’ I waved my hands around, ‘this.’ I turned to Nisha. ‘Look, is there someone I can call or do you want us to get out of your hair?’
‘Don’t leave me alone,’ she stammered. ‘I called Uncle Saatvik Saatalya but he’s in Glasgow and he won’t be here ’til morning.’ She slapped her face to pull herself together. ‘Where are my manners? Your order was ready hours ago, Zoe. You must be starving. And your kind friend.’
I protested but Bosh said something to her in what might have been Hindi. Surprised but pleased, she replied in the same language, then wagged her head and said in English, ‘You might as well. Dev’s uncle’s been trying to shut down the business for ages so he can throw us out. Anyway, it’s the last thing Dev cooked. It wouldn’t be right to waste it. Stay here.’
Too jangled yet to succumb completely to the sedative, she wafted down to the commercial kitchen. I sat forward, glaring at Bosh. ‘So give.’
‘I found Lee with his hands down some smarmy beggar’s boxers. I went to lamp him one but when they stood up the other guy was about ten feet tall and built like a brick shithouse. He flattened me. And then Lee turned round and said, “You’re pathetic, you and your mystic East crap. I can’t believe you’re still living in the dark ages. Pack a bag and clear out.”’ Bosh gulped back tears and finished Lee’s sentence: ‘“Anyway, you had to find out sometime. You can pick the rest of your stuff up in the morning. And don’t forget to leave the key.”’
Bosh’s tears were real but he seemed to be kind of enjoying them. Histrionics, but I did sympathise. It was only a couple of months ago that I came home to an empty cottage to find Andy had left me a note, a pile of credit card bills in my name and a packet of condoms at the bottom of the wardrobe; even though I was on the Pill. So I listened to Bosh – and listened. I was just about to brave his wrath and say, ‘Yes, sorry, but never mind that. Dev didn’t trip over a bottle because there wasn’t one for him to trip over. What about freezing fog that goes round strangling people? One of ’em has to be a hallucination. Or maybe Nisha and I have gone cuckoo in the same neck of the woods?’
I didn’t get the chance. Nisha came in with great piles of chicken biryani. ‘Eat, eat,’ she slurred, laying out pickles and poppadoms.
‘Won’t you need it when your relatives get here?’ Bosh asked, magnetised by the smell of food.
‘No one will come. We are ... were ... I’m not welcome in some parts of the Asian community. I am twice married, too Western, a bad example to dutiful girls. D’you think I’d better call Anjuli?’
I rescued the raita before it slopped on the table. ‘Leave it, Nisha. She’ll be in bed by now. Tomorrow’s soon enough.’
Nisha crumbled a poppadom. ‘Soon enough to find out she’s lost her father and her home on her birthday. We never told her Dev’s uncle wanted to chuck us out. He holds the lease, you see. He’s been getting quite pushy about it.’
‘Did he send that ice-djinn?’ Bosh asked through a forkful of chicken.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Nisha replied while I sat there like a stuffed trout. ‘But his son would sell you the skin off your back.’
‘Back up a minute!’ I sputtered. ‘Djinns?’
The techno-wizard clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Yes, cloth-ears, djinns.’
‘What, djinns as in demons?’
‘Well what did you think it was? Honestly, Zo, you’re the limit sometimes.’
‘I’m the limit? I’m not the one talking about demons!’
‘You saw what happened. Okay? You also saw what I made the tape show, so the police could wrap it up in a bow and leave us darkies alone, but you ought to have more sense. Steam doesn’t just turn homicidal on its own, you know.’
‘Well why did ... how did you ... what’s happening?’
‘Look, I’m a bit of a wizard, and not just with the technology. So was my dad, and my mum was a Spanish bruja but they’ve got ten times the power I have. I can just about push a few pixels around to defend you and your friend here. That is what’s happening.’
‘And enough to shove the police around?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘Just a neurone or two.’
‘Ha! If you’re a wizard why didn’t you sort Lee out with a love potion or something?’
Bosh deflated. ‘Because faking love takes the point out of it.’ He sighed. ‘Nisha, sweetheart, you’re falling asleep over your dinner. You go to bed and we’ll take care of everything, Okay?’
I caught her just before her face landed in the chutney and helped her up the stairs.
***
I was sure Bosh would have collared the couch while I was in Nisha’s bedroom but he wasn’t even in the flat. A cold wind was blowing up the stairs and I tiptoed down to check if the ice-fog-freezy-thing was coming for us. But as I stepped into the shop I saw it was only Bosh.
Bosh, who I’d only known for a couple of weeks. Bosh, my stalker, who seemed on nodding terms with demons and could make you see things that weren’t there; or that were, only I hadn’t known about them.
I hid a great big knife behind my back and edged round the counter. ‘What d’you mean leaving the door open, you great wazzock?’ I cried.
Well, at least I tried to. I only got as far as ‘mean’, because then I saw the slavering fiend on the doorstep. Fang-filled jaws agape, its head looked over Bosh’s shoulder and its plume of a tail brushed the ceiling. It wasn’t a dog. It was a DOG.
With insane courage I grabbed Bosh and leaped backwards, tripping us both over the snack spinner. Packets of Bombay Mix burst across the floor. The monster barked. My heart threatened to explode. Especially when the dog said, ‘Sorry.’
A good job I was sitting on the floor because otherwise I’d have fallen.
Picture a puppy, say the size of a lion crossed with a carthorse, but with enormous paws so you know it’s going to be as big as a number nine bus when it grows up. With teeth like swords. Give it a long, long tail with little flags of hair tufting up and down it. Fur the colour of a dusty savannah, except for the scales – scales – on its front legs.
In a curry shop in Crouch End.
‘Get off me, you daft bat!’ Bosh snapped, disentangling himself. ‘It’s only Alfie.’
Alfie. Who’d looked a lot smaller on my Blackberry. Alphyn, a genius loci. I only knew what it was because I’d started watching horror films to make my life seem less bad.
***
Bosh dosed me up with shots of plum brandy and Alfie kindly shrank. ‘I didn’t know they could do that,’ I slurred, but Bosh was too busy foozling with the burglar alarm to answer so it was Alfie who said, ‘Sorry to startle you. There’s some heavy stuff going down. I kep’ telling ’im to introduce us properly. We need you.’
‘What as? Dinner?’
The Alphyn was now the size of a King Charles spaniel, playing cute games with his tail. ‘Nah, you pillock.’ He talked like a Cockney geezer. ‘You’re an empath, ain’t you? Which is just what young Bosh is short on. Just what we’ve been looking for.’
‘I’m not anything. Just a project manager with a presentation to do at eleven tomorrow and your freaky pal here hasn’t fixed my system yet.’
Alfie snorted.
The burglar alarm gave a tiny electronic sigh and a green light appeared. ‘If you’ve quite finished nattering,’ Bosh said, hauling me up. ‘We’ve got work to do. Give me some rage.’
‘What?’
He put the brandy glass on the counter
and patted my cheeks between both hands. ‘Come on, Zo, get with the programme! We’ve got to lay down some serious protection. They had some pretty serious shields on this place but that ice-demon smashed ’em to bits. We need to get it done before Uncle Pious Neverending shows up. Cui bono, I ask you, except dear old nunky who holds the lease? So gimme some rage, dammit! You must have some going spare after what that two-timing toe-rag did to you.’
He tightened his grip. I tried but I couldn’t wrench free. It really wound me up. ‘Yeah, attagirl. Empath, see? Raw as hell and totally untrained but you can project your feelings when you get mad enough. Think of Andy buying Miss Big-Tits a car on your credit card. ’Specially when he’d forgotten your birthday. That’s the ticket, channel it through me. We’re making a demon mirror. We want it outside, though.’ Reluctantly I let him drag me into the pre-dawn street which still had that sticky dark patch on it. Not to mention unseen ice-demons. ‘Don’t want to spook the customers, do we?’ he finished blithely.
The instant he squeezed my fingers, dark, bitter rage boiled up inside me, far more than I’d ever believed. I felt Bosh’s hurt join with it. And something sucked it out through our clasped hands. Syphoned it off. Spraying frightening quantities of fury right up to the eaves of the three-storey shop and down through the coarse London clay. Alfie wee’d exactly where it splashed the pavement but Bosh just gave him a thoughtful nod. The genius loci was the size of an Alsatian now, but Alsatians didn’t usually tell me not to get my knickers in a twist.
When Bosh dropped my hand I felt suddenly lighter, as though something foul had drained away. Grey light was stealing through the trees, and I was cold; so cold I was shuddering. I didn’t like any of this. I wanted normal. The streetlights blinked out. ‘Just got time to dash home for a shower before we catch the train,’ I yawned.
‘So you’re just going to leave Nisha to face her uncle on her own?’ Bosh exclaimed.
‘Yes. No.’ I glanced at him and groaned. ‘We’re not going in, are we?’
Bosh gave me a one-armed hug. He smelt only slightly of recycled alcohol. Even as I caught it the smell disappeared. Just like the one last night from that green bottle that hadn’t been there. ‘Good on you, heart-face!’ he said. ‘And don’t despair. You might make your presentation yet, for who is this is driving yon Roller down the highway?’
