Flesh and Coin (The Mulrones Book 3)

by Craig Saunders

  “What are you!?” he demanded this time, the memory of his blood-rage roaring in his ears still fresh from this vision or dream he was living.

  “I am yours, Charlie. You own me.”

  Charlie got the sense that the shadow grinned.

  “You own me,” said the grinning thing of mist and smoke, some ember deep within lighting it even though it stood in against nothing but the unnatural fog suffusing the ward that Charlie could never leave, and the words followed Charlie down, down, down…

  *

  ’92. Around five minutes until Charlie’s life outside finished. Not straightaway. He would have been paroled, at some point. But then he went and got ill. Then he went and died.

  But this was a flashback, ghost-Charlie knew. Some kind of hangover from all the drugs he’d taken in his life. Pills and acid and coke and benzodiazepines and horse tranquilizers and weed and hash and heroin. Anything. Everything.

  He’d taken enough in life to flashback in death. The Shadowman, these memories, the bed in the ward full of dying men.

  That’s all this is, he thought. That’s all.

  I’m just a ghost haunted by my own past.

  An alleyway. Dark enough. The streetlights didn’t reach it.

  The insane young man-boy who’d set the whole thing in motion (Shadowman telling him he owned this didn’t touch Charlie—not now. He was too deep) wore shoes. Charlie wore sneakers. He could hear the clack of the lad’s shoes, but his own footfalls were quiet on the rough and uneven tarmac on this trash-strewn alley behind takeout restaurants. The alley smelled of grease, loaded with empty barrels of frying fat and big, industrial-sized bins.

  As he neared the guy, Charlie put his head down. The young lad shifted his head to check, like a jungle animal attuned to danger, but Charlie just nodded, not making eye contact, still cold, passing by, saying “Evening,” too. Just a normal night out and a greeting from a drunk man. Too dark to see much of anything, though Charlie thought he saw black splashes on the boy’s face.

  Blood. Blood on his face. Take his face. Take his face.

  The young lad didn’t say anything and as Charlie passed he threw an elbow as hard as he could into the side of the young lad’s head. Lucky, untutored…effective.

  This boy’s a monster, thought Charlie. Don’t back off.

  He didn’t. Charlie knew how to punch, how to kick. He wasn’t strong, but he was made of ice. Stone-cold and ice.

  It was winter, Charlie, he thought, remembering things differently. Wasn’t summer. Was it winter?

  His face is blood. Take his face.

  `Take it off.

  It was winter, because as Charlie remembered from his dead man’s prison, he remembered wondering if he’d broken his knuckles and the cold. He had broken his knuckles, though. Hadn’t he?

  The boy was on the floor. He was saying something Charlie didn’t understand because his face was mushy and Charlie’s fists were noisy.

  An old man with a house overlooking the alley had heard, though. The young boy had been calling halt.

  “Enough,” he said. “Had enough.”

  But Charlie didn’t stop, and when he did, the boy was dying and Charlie was on his way back out into the bright streets with blood on his coat and a different face.

  I took his face off, thought Charlie, juddering and stuttering on the bed. I took his fucking face off. Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck what the fuck…

  He had a long walk home, and the police picked him up before he got there. Picked someone up on the way home.

  Where did the knife go, Charlie? Where did it go?

  He never saw the outside world again.

  *

  And even now, the Shadow looming over him, he realized he couldn’t see it, still. He was far from the window, and all he ever saw, even during the daylight, was a swathe of grass. Never the sun. Charlie hadn’t seen the sun for so long. So goddamned long.

  The memory of the night shook him so hard he wanted to cry. Things that were real, things that weren’t. Memories that couldn’t be real. Could. Not.

  Shadowman (You own me) was right beside Charlie when he came back from the vision of the past that had been solid enough to him that he could have been living it over again. His knuckles even hurt from the power of the memory.

  “I’m your rage, the boy, the life you lost. You own me, Charlie, like nothing else.”

  “Fuck you,” whispered Charlie to Shadowman. “Fuck you.”

  “You’ll never reach the other side, Charlie. Never.”

  “What do you know about the bridge?” asked Charlie. God, he wanted to be on the other side. Even now, frightened, fully aware he was dead, he wanted the Promised Land, the end, to storm the fucking castle.

  The shadow seemed to smile.

  “The bridge won’t open to you,” said the creature, and he sounded happy about it.

  “I’ll…”

  What, Charlie? What will you do? Against this thing, this remnant of your rage that you brought through?

  You own me, said the shadow, but Charlie did not know what it meant. He did not remember the knife and the blood.

  Take his face, something said, something within the dream.

  Charlie closed his eyes hard against that awful, evil thing, the Shadowman’s games, the Shadowman’s curse, his tortures and mind tricks and his darkness.

  The creature was cruel and cold and hard as hail.

  Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and pushed his aching dead knuckles against his eyelids to shut out the visions, the memories, the present and the past. Desperate to think, to fight, to lash out or beg or plead with Shadowman to show him the way, he tried to gather himself, make himself solid as the creature of smoke and mist so he could fight back, do something, do anything but be a victim on this fucking bed…

  When he opened his eyes, though, the shadow was gone and it was daylight again. Another endless day with nothing but memories of death and pain.

  Oblivion, as ever, so far from his reach.

  V.

  Darkness Rises

  Apparently, the thing on the ceiling was called a rose. A pretty thing made just to look pretty. It seemed to serve no purpose other than as a spot to hang a light. The duvet cover was clean and crisp beneath Hattie’s back as she looked up at the ceiling rose with a genuine smile on her face.

  Bart looked up from between her legs, where he was lapping away like a thirsty German shepherd. She wasn’t anywhere near coming. She never had with a man. She didn’t know if she ever would, nor did she particularly care. It wasn’t about the sex, but control. Winning.

  Having a laugh.

  She guessed she’d have to pretend to come just to get him to stop. Then he’d expect a little something in return. Perhaps she’d let him get in her, rather than blowing him. It would be nicer to look around the room he’d paid for, for her, than stare at his graying thatch.

  Sometime later, Bart snored and Hattie smoked in bed beside him. She tapped her ash into a drawer in a bedside table. Figured no one would be any the wiser, and what did it matter anyway? He’d paid for the room, and it wasn’t like you got arrested for putting ash in hotel drawers. Probably never been opened anyway, she figured. The Bible in there had a thin layer of dust on it, like it’d never been read.

  For a time, while her eyes roamed the room, she wondered how many people had fucked in the bed she shared with Caulden. He snored. She thought, and looked. Smoked some more.

  She wondered if he was staying all night. Wondered, too, what he’d told his wife, if that was the plan. Hattie had seen his wife, of course, around Old Oak. She wasn’t sure what the woman did, but Hattie didn’t like her much. She was well turned out, but looked like a cold, dead fish.

  Hattie hoped she never felt like that. Never lost her sense of humor.

  She stubbed out her cigarette in the drawer before turning out the lamp above the board at the top of the bed.

  Hattie fidgeted for a while, until she took the pillow from behi
nd her head and held it in her arms. It took a while, but then, she too slept.

  *

  Daybreak wasn’t much of a thing in the hotel room, because it was winter so the light was muted, and because the curtains were such heavy things barely any light broke through.

  Hattie was already up. Apparently Bart had stolen a night from his wife with a decent lie, because when he woke, he didn’t panic, didn’t look remotely guilty or regretful.

  They didn’t pretend to be lovers. Hattie wasn’t dumb, and Bart didn’t care enough to lie to her. Hattie liked that. He lied to his wife but not her. In a way, that was special enough. If he was ever pussy-whipped enough to tell her he loved her, she’d be gone. No looking back.

  But he didn’t, so she made him tea with the small plastic kettle that was the only thing in the room out of place. Cheap and tacky, functional. Nothing like the ceiling rose, or the drapes, or the flowered duvet cover she’d lain on in the night.

  They did the things people need to do in the morning. Toilet and teeth, dress, tea. The small things people do every day without thinking. Then, finally, he was dressed and she was half-dressed.

  “I’m off,” he said. “See you at work?”

  Hattie smiled, but the smile was sly. “I think I deserve a day off, don’t you?”

  Bart shrugged. “Your call. I don’t particularly care. Call in sick, if you want. The senior should be able to sort out some cover.”

  “I quite fancy going shopping.”

  Bart looked confused for a second. Like, why are you bothering me with this?

  “Could do with some money,” she added, because he was being slow. “Buy me something nice?”

  “What?” This time he didn’t look confused. He looked like a man getting ready to get angry.

  “You want me to spell it out for you?”

  “You’re fleecing me for money? Again?”

  Hattie made a pretense of thinking. “That’s right, honeybun. Couple of hundred should cover it.” She smiled, warmer this time, sure she’d get what she wanted.

  “You just shot yourself in the foot, little girl,” said Bartholomew. He pulled all the notes from his wallet. “For this?”

  Hattie felt herself getting angry, but hypnotized by the money, too. Turned on by his anger in a way his efforts the night before hadn’t touched her.

  She nodded.

  He threw the money on the bed.

  “Congratulations. Now you’re a whore.”

  He slammed the door. She took the money. She finished dressing, smoked a cigarette with a shaking hand, then stubbed it out in a cup.

  By the time she finished, Hattie’s eyes were cold and she decided to go to work after all.

  *

  Cathy picked up the slack while Hattie was late to work. She was paid more than Hattie, being senior, but that didn’t mean the extra workload didn’t rankle. Hattie had always been unreliable. More than that, though, she was mean to their patients. Cathy thought she might be dangerous, even.

  When Hattie finally showed, Cathy took one look in the girl’s eyes and resolved to watch her. The girl looked like she wanted to chew up iron and spit out bullets. Cathy didn’t ask where she’d been, or what was wrong.

  Maybe she should have. She might have saved a life.

  *

  Going to hit that fucker. Hit him where it hurts. What does he care about? Money. Money and nothing else.

  Call me a hooker? A whore? Fuck him.

  Going to hit him where it hurts.

  The smile on Hattie’s face was blatantly forced to all who saw it. A girl younger than Hattie who’d just started in the kitchens, Elizabeth Hunt, scuttled out of the way when Hattie came in to get some more milk from the big refrigerator, nearly tripping over her new shoes. And Hattie only smiled at her.

  It hurt her, holding that smile over her real face.

  The floor was quiet when she began work. She got the sense, tonight, unlike any other, that she was being watched.

  That crazy old bitch. She’s pretending to read to the ghost that’s not there.

  Yes, that’s it.

  Hattie’s extraordinary second sight told her all she needed to know. Just a glance here and there, listening hard while going about her business. The old girl wasn’t turning the pages at all.

  Not as smart as she thinks she is.

  Hattie and Cathy were both qualified to administer drugs. Both knew of ways to get around the safety features on the infusion pumps that fed the patients their essential morphine.

  Hattie suspected Cathy had never given anyone a little helping hand on the way to the next life, or oblivion, or whatever hell awaited the other side of death.

  Hattie, however, was more than willing to do it. Eager, even.

  Hit the fucker hard, she thought, but she was thinking only of Caulden, not of murder.

  There was a patient opposite Cathy, and Hattie chose him. Partly because doing it so close to the old cunt pretending to read was a kick. Mostly, though, because nobody would expect her to kill someone right there, under Cathy’s nose.

  Nose in a book, she thought. What good’s that, anyway?

  At that moment, as Hattie leaned over to administer her fatal dose under the sheets of some smelly old corpse-to-be, Cathy looked up. She looked right at Hattie.

  Hattie’s smile didn’t budge and she hit the man with the increased dose.

  She moved on to the next man, making a pretense of checking him over, speaking softly to him, just below the bitch’s hearing.

  Thinks she’s better than me, with her fucking books and her extra money.

  I’ll show her, too.

  But mostly, she was figuring in her head how long the OD would take, and how she was going to cover up signs of her tampering on the morphine pump.

  That’s going to smart, Barty boy. Right in the wallet, she thought.

  When the man finally gave in to the mass of morphine Hattie had administered, he didn’t even make a peep.

  VI.

  Jim Wayne

  When Bartholomew Caulden turned up to the office, Jim Wayne’s Mondeo was parked in the visitor’s lot yet again.

  “Shit,” he said, because he could imagine what Jim was thinking. Man gets chopped in half, nothing doing. But now Hattie had fucked him. Someone nameless called the press, blabbed some details. Anonymous source, of course, but he knew, just knew, it was her.

  Bitch.

  Jim would be getting it in the neck, which meant Bartholomew would be next in line for a kicking.

  He sighed, settled his shirt in his suit jacket (the expensive kind today, in case there were any reporters around—there weren’t) and keyed the number into the pad on the front door. Lizzie, the receptionist, greeted him cautiously, like she was expecting to get shouted at, but Caulden just smiled and nodded and headed straight to his office.

  When he opened the office door, Jim was smoking out of the window again. Caulden figured it was Lizzie that kept letting him in. He’d have words with her at some point, but not today. Bigger things to worry about.

  “When I said I’d keep a lid on things, I was kind of expecting a bit of discretion on this end, too, Bartholomew,” said Jim, by way of greeting.

  Caulden sighed. So that’s how it’s going to be, he thought.

  “It’s a hospice, Jim. Mainly women, and women blab. Just the way it is. Like people die, women blab.”And that’s the way it is, thought Caulden.

  “The death last night? OD?”

  “It does happen. The dose isn’t, never can be, exact. A small error in judgment. The member of staff in question has been severely reprimanded.”

  “Reprimanded?”

  “The man was terminally ill, Jim. You know how this goes.”

  Jim sighed.

  “Seriously, Caulden…words travel, you know? Words have legs. People are talking about this place.”

  “Whatever the rumors are, there’s no substance. It’s a hospice. We aren’t a slaughterhouse, but we do deal, unfortu
nately, in death.”

  And I’m losing money hand over fist, he thought, but kept that to himself. Currently with two empty beds, he was getting close to his running budget. Might have to let a staff member go.

  Might have to be Hattie. Stupid bitch.

  Jim sucked on his cigarette one last time before tossing it from the open window and rising.

  “I’m trying to keep this hush, okay? If your staff start talking to the press, I can’t protect you, or the hospice. You understand?”

  “Totally,” said Caulden.

  Jim sighed, like he was going to say something else. Shook his head, like he just didn’t have the energy. “Walk me out?” he said.

  “Of course,” said Bartholomew, with the expression of a man waiting on a kick in the balls.

  *

  Jim Wayne walked ahead of Caulden, which irked Caulden. Headed toward the ward. He passed it, then stopped and made a show of remembering something.

  Bastard thinks he’s Columbo.

  “Who’s the guy in the bed? It’s just…it’s been bugging me.”

  “Which bed?”

  “You know which bed,” said Jim with a smile that didn’t crinkle his eyes in the slightest.

  “The empty one?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “He was known as Paulie. Paul Small. I remember him. Cold, horrible man. Came from prison with advanced cancer.”

  “Paul Small? Really? Is that a real name?’

  “Far as I’m aware. I’ve got records…I could check.”

  “I’ve got records, too,” said Jim. “I’ll check.”

  “If there’s nothing else?”

  “Nothing else,” agreed Jim.

  This time the men did not shake hands.

  Caulden went back to his office when Jim left. He shut the door, didn’t speak to anyone, and took out a small glass and a big bottle of good whiskey. He didn’t drink often, but when he did, he wanted to make it count. He took the first shot quickly, the second, slow. Sat thinking, mainly, staring out of the same window that Jim flicked his ash through.