Flesh and Coin (The Mulrones Book 3)

by Craig Saunders

  He thought about the ghost in the bed. Paul Small.

  Evil bastard. The truth was hard to admit for a man, but Small had frightened Caulden, unsettled him, even though the man had been all but a corpse when he’d been brought to the hospice. Compassionate something or other.

  Small had frightened him, but not as much as the old woman who’d been with Small’s mother.

  The grandmother, Mrs. Small had said. Her mother, Paulie Small’s grandmother.

  “Boy’s all wrong,” the old crone had said. “Gonna fix it,” she said.

  She fixed it, all right. Caulden had seen him. Paulie Small. His fucking ghost. She’d fixed him. How, Caulden didn’t know. Nor did he ever wish to. Old woman was some kind of gypsy witch or something.

  Caulden didn’t believe in witches, or gypsies. They weren’t real people. But sitting, even in daylight, remembering…

  He believed wholeheartedly, right then. Maybe it was the whiskey, maybe it was Jim, stirring things up. But he believed, God help him.

  He wondered if the old woman was dead. He hoped she was.

  *

  Jim Wayne pulled up the file on his PC, back in his office, on his comfortable inflatable ring with a cup of tea on his desk, cooling, that his assistant made. She made good tea.

  Turned out Paul Small was a real name, though the guy wasn’t small at all.

  He’d been built. Jim could tell just from the shot on the file, showing the guy’s head and neck. Like a bull.

  Turned out Paulie Small was a bona fide evil bastard.

  Killed two men in a pub brawl. One, David “Rashers” Upward. The other Charlie Dawes, after the fact, in a vicious and sickening attack while Small fled the scene. Took Jim a couple of times before he understood the words in full, and even then, he read it again to be sure.

  Cut his face off? That can’t be right…can it? Cut his actual face off? Stole his face?

  Crazy fucking traveler family—the whole lot of them had criminal records. Paulie had been suspected in an arson attack when he’d been only fifteen. Jim could imagine the scenario back then. Same then as now. Coppers didn’t like to get involved with the traveling families. They’d have let it slide. More trouble, for an arson, than fighting travelers was worth. If they’d hauled him in then, maybe they’d have saved two lives, later down the line. Maybe not.

  But his face? How the fucking hell do you cut off a man’s face? Is that even possible?

  Jim searched deeper. Brought up the court records, which took him the best part of an hour to read through. By the time he’d read it he felt sick to his stomach. He’d seen some nasty shit in his time, but this was right up there. Right, maybe, at the top. He’d seen rot and murder, car wrecks and heard screams that still chilled his blood in the dark hours of the night. He’d seen living men infested with maggots and bodies in pieces. He’d been at his fair share of autopsies. He knew what was inside a body all too well.

  But the psycho really had cut off the man’s face…and worn it. He’d been wearing it when he was picked up.

  Charlie Dawes had been buried in a closed casket.

  Fucker stole his face.

  Jim took a deep breath and called for another cup of tea. When his assistant placed the steaming cup in front of him, he smoked another cigarette, thinking.

  Then he emailed the prison Small had gone to and smoked two more cigarettes quietly, tapping the ash into the ashtray in his desk, before he got his reply. He read the email back from the governor. Apparently Small hadn’t turned over a new leaf in prison. Two killings, two more suspected.

  Hard bastard.

  Dead hard bastard. But not just a hard man. A sick hard man. Unusual, in Jim’s experience. The sickest ones were often quiet, unassuming, above all normal. Normal in stature, build…bigger guys were more prone to open violence than the typical killer.

  But Paulie Small had been a dangerous nutjob, without a doubt. A lunatic with the strength to do whatever his crazy, fucked mind wanted. But he was dead. Dead, without a doubt. He’d died, handcuffed, in a bed in the Old Oak Hospice, out of it on morphine, out of compassion because, according to the hospital records, he’d turned over a new leaf.

  Jim read the line again and laughed. Men like Paulie Small didn’t have new leaves. They were one-page books, a flyer. Not even as complex as a pamphlet. No, Jim read between the lines. Money had changed hands.

  “Compassion my arse,” he said. Yet, even knowing all that, it didn’t have anything to do with the man cut in half. Nothing to do with the old woman reading to an empty bed that had once held a criminal, or an OD that might or might not have been an accident, and probably didn’t warrant a hell of lot of time, either way.

  But that wasn’t what was worrying Jim.

  Who paid for the bed? His mother? Jim wondered for a while. Something tickled him, yet again. The reason he hadn’t let it go.

  Worth hunting down?

  No.

  “Why are you obsessing over this, Jim?” he asked himself, quietly, so his assistant out in the hall didn’t think he was going nuts.

  He sat, thinking, smoking, staring into space.

  “Because Caulden looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

  And because of the old lady. The old lady reading to the empty bed.

  “She wasn’t reading to an empty bed,” he said, still whispering, though unaware he was talking aloud, rather than thinking.

  But Paulie’s a bad bastard. She’s a nice old lady. Right? She looked nice. Why is she reading to him?

  “Because it’s not him?”

  Jim caught himself speaking aloud. Sometimes, when he thought, he talked to himself. It was just how he worked things out.

  But it’s nuts, Jim, because ghosts aren’t real, there’s no mystery. It’s a crazy woman reading to an empty bed.

  But that didn’t feel right. Didn’t feel true.

  “If it’s not him…who the fuck is it?”

  Not real, he told himself.

  But no matter how many times he told himself he was being daft, something stuck in his craw. Something was odd, jarring. He smoked another cigarette and crumpled his packet before he tried his tea. The tea was cold. He called in his assistant.

  “Wouldn’t make me another, would you?”

  She picked up the tea and gave him a look. Smelling the heavy smoke, feeling the cold tea.

  She had good blue eyes and she was far from stupid.

  “Something up?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Not sure what. But something, for sure.”

  She nodded, happy enough that he’d tell her which way to jump, should she need to. He watched her leave, smiling as he did so. Then he talked to himself some more.

  *

  The phone rang, shrill in the darkness in the Caulden household. Millicent Caulden took the phone from the charger beside the bed to stop the damn thing ringing, rather than being curious as to who would call before six in the morning.

  “Hello?” she said, her tone abrupt and terse, pushing herself out of bed. The air was cold.

  The woman on the other end of the telephone wasn’t bothered in the slightest by Millicent’s tone. She’d been in her job for over six years now, and she knew, metaphorically, where the bodies were buried. She certainly wasn’t afraid of Millicent Caulden.

  “Mrs. Caulden,” said Lizzie Jones, carefully, but she had a job to do and didn’t apologize. “We’ve an outbreak of norovirus at Old Oak. The doctor’s confirmed. It’ll push a couple of the residents over the edge, which isn’t a bad thing, but regulations stipulate that we shut down to all nonessential business.”

  “Before six in the morning?” said Millicent, heading down the stairs to turn up the thermostat while she spoke. She wouldn’t be going back to bed this morning.

  “Yes, Mrs. Caulden. I’m afraid Mr. Caulden needs to give his approval, and we need it as soon as possible.”

  “Well, I’m not waking him up at this time in the bloody morning.”

  “That’
s fine, Mrs. Caulden. I won’t shut it down. I’ll let the delivery company, the doctors, the visitors all get a nice case of the runs, and sue the home. No skin off my nose.”

  Millie nearly swore at the woman, but she didn’t like to swear at the staff, or anyone. Apart from the golf pro, once a week.

  “I’ll have him call you back in five minutes,” she said, and put the phone down before she gave in and called the woman something unseemly. She turned the thermostat up and then took a deep breath.

  “Bart!”She didn’t bother going back up the stairs. She didn’t care if he woke up grumpy. From the sound of it, he’d be having a bad day either way.

  “Bart!”

  “What, dear? What?” She imagined him gritting his teeth. She smiled.

  “Outbreak of vomiting flu or something. They need your approval to lockdown. Said you’d call back in five minutes.”

  All this, shouted up the stairs. Millie hardly ever shouted. She found it quite liberating.

  She heard Bart swear. Imagined what he’d be thinking. He’d be thinking about all the money he’d lose from the empty beds when a bunch of weakened old men shit themselves to death.

  Millie smiled again. It wasn’t a nice smile at all.

  *

  By the time Jim Wayne woke, Bartholomew Caulden had been in his office for over an hour.

  Jim woke up happy enough, except for that little thing that coppers have, that many people have. A niggle, something gnawing at them. A hunch, that one thought, feeling, that just won’t let go. Something in the gut or the amygdala, the nape of the neck, in a man’s balls, maybe.

  He brushed his teeth, drank his tea, ate bland cereal because anything interesting played his guts up. But those very guts were gnawing at Jim the whole time.

  On the way into the station in his unmarked Mondeo that cost nearly as much as Bartholomew’s BMW, he decided to follow it through. It took him another minute or two in the morning traffic to decide to call in person. Bart was an arsehole, true, but just the generic kind. He could handle Caulden.

  Club rules are off, though. No more kissing up, holding hands.

  Jim nodded. Decided.

  As he chose a course of action, his guts settled down, and he knew there was definitely something. What, he didn’t know. But figuring in a psychopath, a crazy old woman reading to an empty bed, a traveling family with a history of violence, and a man chopped in half?

  He might not have the picture, but something was wrong. Didn’t take a hunch to know that, didn’t take proof. The fact that he didn’t know what was going on, and couldn’t even see the shape of it, didn’t matter at all.

  That’s what you’re going to find out, he told himself, and turned back at the next roundabout he came to. Took the bypass south and then headed from the city to the country.

  *

  Jim pulled into the same parking space he’d used every time. There were a few visitors’ cars at this time in the morning, people waiting for loved ones to die, holding hands, saying prayers for their fathers to pass, maybe, and for the suffering to end.

  Jim had seen his grandmother in a hospice. He knew the sorrow, and the hope, and the guilt. It was why he’d never stepped onto the ward on his previous visits. Why he wouldn’t this day, either. He didn’t belong. It was for the staff, for the family and friends, for the dying.

  He walked, crunching, on the shingle drive, to the front of the building. A light rain, slightly heavier than a drizzle, fell on him while he walked. His wool coat caught the worst of it, across the shoulders, beading there. His hair didn’t matter much to him. He never wore a hat and figured umbrellas were for pretty men and women with interesting hair. His was mostly gone from his head anyway.

  He reached out to ring the reception to be buzzed in, same as every time, when he saw the note on the door.

  “Great,” he said. The last thing he needed was a case of the shits. Still, there was nothing for it. He needed to speak with Bart again. He wanted this, whatever this thing was, nailed down tight.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. He didn’t want it. He needed it nailed down, if only to settle his bastard guts.

  He rang the doorbell.

  Thwarted at the walls, he thought. For some reason he’d always thought of the Old Oak building as a kind of castle for the dying. It had those kind of faux battlements up high, like many period buildings had. Crenulated brickwork made to look like a castle’s walls. Narrow windows, like archer’s slots. At a stretch, the curved gravel driveway became a moat. The receptionist, coming to the door, a knight preparing to sally forth and see him off.

  Fucking idiot, he told himself, and put his professional smile on his face when the woman opened the door to him.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “DCI Wayne. Here to see Mr. Caulden,” he said, smiling as pleasantly as his old face would allow.

  “Mr. Wayne,” said Lizzie Jones. “I’m afraid I can’t let you in. We’re under lockdown with an outbreak of norovirus.”

  Mr. Wayne, for some reason, rankled. He didn’t let it show, but kept right on smiling.

  “Then, would you send him out?”

  The woman nodded, not looking bothered either way. She shut the door without a further word.

  Bit rude, thought Jim. He smoked while he waited, looking out across the gardens. Old Oak, and therefore Bartholomew’s land, spread out for a good three or four acres. Surrounded by trees (very few oak, Jim noted) that hid the hospice from the road. Jim could barely hear the hum of the traffic through the trees. He could, however, hear the groaning and moaning of the dying from the side of the old house. Must be a window open. Or he hoped there was a window open.

  He couldn’t imagine being near that awful sound all day. Working with it, bathing the dying, tending to them in their last days. He could still feel the echoes of the sensations of a hospice from his own experience. Overwhelming sorrow, a hint of repulsion, and oddly, fear for himself and his own mortality. He remembered the scent of death, too. A creeping kind of smell, slowly covering all the other smells that reminded him of his grandmother until there was nothing left. The smell on the ward, every time he’d been there, reminded him of her, and the memories were tainted by the scent.

  He jumped a little, lost in his thoughts, when Bartholomew opened the door and stepped outside. Jim ground out his cigarette in the moat (driveway, you daft bastard) and turned.

  Bartholomew looked tired and unimpressed by yet another visit.

  Jim, on the other hand, was quietly enjoying this small diversion from paperwork. He had plenty of coppers he could get to do this kind of thing…but it beat the shit out of sitting on his arse all day, worrying about his cholesterol.

  “Fancy a little stroll? Good to stretch your legs, apparently,” said Jim.

  “Jim, I’m rather busy sorting out this mess…I’m sorry if I seem brusque, but is there something you need? Something else, that is?”

  Jim smiled. This time, a genuinely happy smile. He was delighted to find it there, on his face, and all because he was really getting a kick from twisting Caulden’s balls.

  “Won’t keep you then, Caulden. Just a simple question. Who paid for the bed?”

  “What?”

  “The bed. Who paid for it? The empty bed.”

  “His mother. Paul’s mother.”

  “Is she still paying for it, or was it a one-off deal?”

  “One-off payment. She bought it…in perpetuity.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “She wasn’t an old woman. Probably. I should think so, yes.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Mrs. Small, I suppose.”

  Great, thought Jim. I’m chasing down the fucking Mr. Men family.

  “First name?”

  “Don’t recall. Jim, what’s this about?”

  A hunch, thought Jim. It’s about that tickle on the back of your neck, that heaviness in your gut, that tightening in the groin. It’s about an old woman reading stories to a
n empty bed, about a psychopath and a man cut in half in a hospice with no leads. It’s about me being bored shitless from sitting at my desk all day and winding up some puffed-up ignoramus. Truth was, despite all that, Jim didn’t rightly know. But Caulden didn’t need to know that.

  “Thanks for your time,” he said, and left Caulden bristling behind him.

  *

  While Jim and Bartholomew spoke near the front door of Old Oak, Charlie Dawes sniffed the air, sure he was tripping on the memory of morphine, but just as sure that he really could smell a policeman.

  Always could smell a copper a mile off, he thought. But the thought was out of place, jarring.

  Suddenly, he wanted Cathy, his angel. Wished she were there, reading, taking away these strange, unsettling thoughts he was having.

  I ain’t going back, he thought.

  Just like the thought about smelling coppers, he did not know where this thought came from, either.

  Going back where? Where the hell would he go? He was a ghost of a man, tripping on spirit morphine, chained and forced to haunt nothing more than a bed in an old building full of dying men.

  No way I’m going back, he thought again.

  He really wanted Cathy. Could a ghost get ill? Could a ghost hallucinate?

  I’m not feeling like myself.

  This thought, though, rang true, and was somehow all the more unsettling for it.

  *

  Jim returned to his office, all the way at the top floor of the station.

  You’re the big cheese, he thought, as he started his PC. You don’t need to be doing this.

  But the fact was, he wanted to be doing this. Satisfying that feeling right in the pit of his belly. He’d enjoyed his work once. He didn’t enjoy it anymore. He’d lost his passion somewhere along the way up the ladder. Too many heavy dinners, too many limp handshakes and rounds of golf with movers and shakers like him.

  Grease the machine, move on up…and never do another honest day’s work in your life.