The Memory Man

by Steven Savile

  He sent an email to Laura, updating her on what he had been doing, including the proposed meet and the sting he’d set up with Danilo.

  He remembered his promise to call Frankie.

  He pulled up her number.

  ‘Peter,’ she said, even before the ring signal had had a chance to cycle back to him. ‘How did things go?’

  ‘I followed Danilo – the man the judge met – to his home outside the city. He’s received a package. A toe.’

  ‘A toe. Same note?’

  ‘Same message. The meet isn’t until tonight. A bar in Rome at eleven. He’s agreed to let me use him like bait to draw the killer out.’

  ‘How about backup? You bringing the Italian office in?’

  ‘Nope. Just me.’

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me,’ he said.

  ‘Then don’t be stupid. Make sure you have backup in place. That’s what Division’s for. Use our resources.’

  ‘It was the only way that Danilo would agree to do the sit down. No police, his own car close by so he can make good his escape the moment I’ve got my hands on the killer.’

  ‘Then don’t tell him. Lie. Tell him it’s just the two of you. It’s not like he’s skilled enough in tradecraft to pick backup out of a crowded bar.’

  She was right, of course.

  ‘I’ve been in touch with the Carabinieri so they know we’ve got an op going down, and requesting transport to bring our boy in when we’ve got him.’

  ‘Bet they loved that idea.’

  ‘They weren’t too keen, especially when I wouldn’t give them any details.’

  ‘You do realize the only reason Danilo wants his escape route clear is so he can run, right? Which means he’s worried the Carabinieri will want to hold him. He’s not some innocent victim in all of this. He’s up to his neck in it. You don’t end up on a grudge list like this without having done something very, very wrong.’

  ‘My first priority is making sure no one else gets killed. After that, I’m happy to solve the mystery. But right now it’s all about keeping everyone alive. So, how is it your end?’

  He listened while Frankie filled him in.

  Maybe the killer wasn’t as infallible as they’d feared. There were mistakes in there. Uncharacteristic, based on everything they’d seen so far. He didn’t know whether that meant they were good, or he was getting careless.

  Or they were being led down a particularly shady garden path.

  ‘Laura’s running the financials from the bank account used to wire the cash to Galanos. The account name doesn’t appear on any of the documents she’s found so far relating to the charity.’

  ‘False identity. Makes sense. So, what name did he use?’

  ‘Lev Yashin,’ she said.

  Ash tried not to laugh, but for once appreciated their quarry’s sense of humour. ‘Eastern European accent?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Lev Yashin.’

  ‘You say that like you know him. Have you come across him before?’

  ‘Bit before my time. I’m more of a Clemence and Shilton kind of guy. Hand of God and all that.’

  ‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?’

  He smiled despite himself. ‘I can tell you’re not a football fan.’

  ‘More of an ice-hockey girl,’ she said.

  ‘Lev Yashin was probably the greatest goalkeeper in the history of the game. Certainly up there with Gordon Banks and Bert Trautman.’

  ‘So, Laura is wasting her time.’

  ‘Not at all. We’d expected a fake name, just because he picked a famous one doesn’t mean we won’t learn something from it.’

  ‘But it suggests he expected us to find it,’ she argued. ‘And that means he is still controlling what we know about him, even down to playing games with his fake name. He’s still steps ahead of us, and knows how we’re following him, not just that we’re following him. These aren’t mistakes. He’s the guy shooting at our feet cackling: Dance, motherfucker, dance.’

  He couldn’t disagree with that.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The bar wasn’t remotely what Ash had expected.

  The night air was clammy but clear. He felt it tight in his lungs. As he walked down the narrow Roman street towards Caligula’s he saw six girls, probably in their late teens, dressed in varieties of white: jeans, T-shirts, shirts, linen trousers, skirts – all laughing at something he couldn’t see. Two sat on a low wall, one wolf-whistled at a lad on his Vespa, reversing traditional gender-harassment roles. One of the girls, with raven-black hair that reached all the way down to the hollow at the base of her spine, was busy rolling her own smoke. Ash saw her sprinkle a little something extra into the tobacco strands. She licked the paper and closed the straggly coffin nail. These weren’t exactly Vesta’s usual crowd.

  A couple of them said something to him; he assumed they were mocking the old man and his poor fashion sense. He had never been the kind of man arrogant enough to think women would look twice at him, regardless of their daddy issues, low self-esteem or any of the other clichés that supposedly gave average guys a better than average shot at punching well above their weight. In point of fact he was generally useless with women and always had been. For a man who spent most of his life trusting the instincts and emotions that underscored investigative technique he was a poor judge of a woman’s interest when it was in him.

  Despite the warm evening the two doormen wore leather jackets, but no shirts. Every single muscle on their incredible physiques was defined, the skin glistening where it had been oiled. Now he realized why the girls were hanging around. The doormen weren’t there to keep any sort of order, they were eye-candy meant to draw the punters in.

  The sign above them, neon red against the night, said Caligula’s. Together with the oiled abs and pecs, the promise of the kinds of temptation waiting inside were obvious.

  He headed in.

  Ash nodded to one of the two men as they smiled his way. The guy’s teeth were too white. ‘I’ll be inside later,’ the man said. ‘I’ll let you buy me a drink if you’re lucky.’

  Ash matched his smile with one of his own, but his mind was racing. The choice of venue, given the number of bars, restaurants, clubs, and public spaces in the city that would have functioned just fine for the killer’s needs, couldn’t be anything other than a message. It wasn’t just that he’d picked a gay bar, but one so overtly Tom of Finland in its street presence made it a statement.

  Of course, he only had Danilo’s word that this was the right place. The old man claimed to have destroyed the note.

  Inside was dark but far from dingy.

  He walked down a series of stone steps into what might have once been a wine cellar but had been converted into a bar. The music was pulsing. He didn’t know the tune this time even though the words, few though they were, were definitely in English. The speakers were huge for the relatively small space, covering all angles of the dance floor.

  There were maybe twenty people in the dimly lit chamber, half of them at the bar, the other half at tables clustered around the empty dance floor. The one thing they all had in common was that they were fit, well-dressed, and attractive. There wasn’t a bookish boy amongst the twinks, Muscle Mary’s, and other friends of Dorothy. A door on the far side opened and a couple of bears walked out of what was obviously the playroom, wearing leather bandoliers over their hairy torsos. They were the closest thing he’d seen to fat men since he took the short walk down into Caligula’s.

  It was aptly named.

  Despite the fact it was still obviously early and would get busier as the night wore on, there was already a vibe to the joint. It was another world. He couldn’t imagine a place like this in London, but then, London was repressed enough that just about every flat around King’s Cross was basically a brothel, not that anyone wanted to admit it.

  One of the most beautiful women he’d seen in his life worked the bar. She stood ma
ybe an inch taller than Ash, in heels, with eyes like sin and lips that promised damnation. She saw him and smiled as he approached the bar. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, even after he realized she was a he, and she leaned towards him to ask, ‘What’s your pleasure, stranger?’ Her voice was as husky as a sixty-a-day habit, which only made her appeal more magnetic.

  ‘Una birra,’ he said, pointing at a bottle of Nastro Azzuro.

  He pushed the money across the counter as she uncapped the green bottle.

  It was easier to pretend to drink with a bottle, so he declined the glass as she offered it.

  He scanned the faces in the bar to be sure Danilo hadn’t ignored his instructions and arrived early. There was no sign of him. Of course, now the issue was would he show at all.

  There were a number of booths along one side of the room, only one of which was occupied. The couple in there were deep in conversation, their heads close together, hands locked like they were about to arm wrestle. It was obviously a deep and meaningful moment for the pair. Pity they couldn’t hear themselves think for the relentless drum and bass, Ash thought, crossing the dance floor to take one of the empty booths. He picked the third one, as it gave him a clear view of both the doorway and the bar area, meaning he’d be able to see Danilo arrive, and the meet at the bar when it went down.

  He checked his watch.

  He still had twenty minutes to kill.

  A few more people arrived; all men, all veering towards the twink stereotype, though one stood out because he was considerably older than the rest. He maybe had a year or two on Danilo, but he was in much better physical shape.

  A buzz cut and a hairless boy came in next, and danced their way across the floor, popping and locking, or whatever it was called. Ash couldn’t help but follow their exaggerated dance, taking his eye off the door.

  He turned his attention back to the older man.

  A couple of the younger guys drifted towards him, preening and posing like peacocks – or meat on display, no doubt hoping he liked what he saw. Ash had no idea what the gay version of a sugar daddy was, but could well imagine a good-looking, fit, rich guy was the white whale for some of these boys. No doubt Danilo enjoyed the attention. He noticed the girl at the bar waved a hello to him. A regular then. Known to the staff, and probably the punters.

  Frankie had suggested that the killer had scouted out the place before he’d met Anglemark, choosing a place without security cameras. This place, Ash was sure, would have some form of security, but once it got busy it would be hard to make out faces through the strobing neon and the wild kinetic dance, though there was no knowing what was through that door and if it really was a playroom, or the safe space or whatever, but if this was that kind of club, gloryholes in the toilets, and a happy little cottage industry going on back there, maybe there were no cameras at all? Plenty of guys would be down to fuck, but not so down if they knew it wasn’t anonymous. There were still plenty of guys who kept their sexuality secret from the outside world. Even in places like this. Or maybe especially in places like this.

  People kept coming in. Now it wasn’t just twinks, there were muscle boys and daddies and every other kink imaginable.

  And they kept on coming, two by two, down the stairs into Caligula’s.

  Two bears with huge bellies spilling over their leather trousers put on a show in the middle of the dance floor, one pulling off his belt and using it to whip the other who crawled on his hands and knees, much to the delight of those gathered around the edge of the dance floor.

  He raised the bottle to his lips, tipped it, but put his tongue into the mouth as he did so, so that there was nothing for him to swallow.

  He put the bottle back on the table and made a show of wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  He was thinking. The problem was it was hard to think straight given the sheer volume and sheer volume of distractions.

  Assuming the killer had used the same criteria when he’d chosen Caligula’s, that meant he had a place close by. Somewhere he could take Danilo to torture him to his heart’s content before he sliced a bit of him off to send to the next victim.

  Something niggled away at the back of his mind.

  Why do that?

  Why add to the risk?

  Why not just drug them, bundle them into a car, and be gone, as far and as fast as possible, kill, mutilate, and dump the corpse and move on?

  Why rent a place for a month?

  Was it just so he had a quiet place to do his worst? Or was it something else?

  He felt the urge to ring Frankie. He had something he wanted to run past her, but there was no way he could call from inside Caligula’s, and a quick look at his watch said he was out of time. Danilo could arrive at any moment. And there was no way he could make a call in here.

  Another couple came down the stairs.

  He saw their silhouettes in the doorway before they stepped inside. The stepped under the fluorescent lights, all smiles, white teeth glowing like the Cheshire cat’s. A couple of the younger men propping up the bar cried out a greeting as the music changed.

  It was getting considerably hotter as more and more revellers came down the stairs.

  There were more people on the dance floor now, not just the two leather-clad daddies.

  In the last twenty minutes maybe two hundred people had come in. It was so much louder now, and not just because of the music. People crowded around the bar. Two more girls came out to join the barmaid, though these two were sissies rather than transsexuals. Their make-up was good, but it was obvious they were cross-dressing, even in the flashing strobe lights and the weird halo-effect of the neons.

  Ash couldn’t help but think that the emperor would have been proud.

  He caught sight of the older man as he emerged from the crush around the bar. He balanced two drinks as he moved gracefully through the revellers, until he reached a boy who looked barely old enough to drink it, and handed it over with a stroke of the cheek and an almost coy shrug. The old queen seemed content. Ash couldn’t imagine that the killer was already inside; no one else was sitting alone, watching, removed from the fun. He was a loner. He thrived on anonymity. He didn’t put himself in the middle of something like this. It was too much, too loud, too many variables and room for something to go wrong. The only thing in its favour was the fact it was dark, and offered darker shadows off away from the main excitement, and no one would be surprised to see one queer leading another out, under the influence, after he’d been roofied. That was part of the play. Part of the fun. Everyone knew everyone else. This was a community.

  Ash was the only stranger here.

  Another couple of dozen good-time guys entered over the next ten minutes before Danilo arrived.

  Ash saw the man give the slightest glance in his direction, nothing enough to sell him out to the casual observer, but enough perhaps to give him away if he was being watched less casually. Danilo caught himself, realizing what he had done, and continued to scan the room, deliberately lingering on a few other faces, just in case.

  With ten minutes to the scheduled meet Ash still hadn’t made an obvious killer in the crowd, and assumed he was still outside, giving the old man time to sweat it out before he descended into this Caligulan fever dream. The bottle in front of him was empty, but that didn’t stop him from lifting it to his lips and pretending to drink.

  A couple of bar-hangers gave him the eye. One chewed on his lower lip like some sort of come on. It was peculiar being on this side of the mating ritual. Men, he realized, were pretty basic when it came right down to it. None more so that the twentysomething who walked up to him and asked outright if he wanted to fuck. Ash said sorry. The guy didn’t seem to mind. He went on to the next booth and asked the same question, playing the numbers game. Someone would say yes. They always did.

  Ash made a show of waiting for someone and glanced regularly at his watch. It wasn’t the most convincing charade; he was hardly Tom Cruise. But he sold it because i
t wasn’t a total lie, after all.

  He was so intent on watching the stairs that he missed the arrival of a butch bearded guy who slid into the booth opposite him. The bear put a bottle of Peroni in front of Ash and took a deep swallow from his own.

  ‘First time?’

  It took him a second to place where he’d seen the guy before; it was the eye-candy doorman who’d flashed him that smile on the way in, only he’d changed the leather jacket for a tight-fitting white T-shirt.

  ‘I’m meeting someone,’ he said, trying not to sound rude but trying to move him on just the same.

  ‘You keep looking at your watch. He’s late. Being late is just rude. It’s like saying, “Hey your time isn’t as valuable as mine.” Show a little respect, huh? You make a date, you show up on time. It’s the least you can do.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Maybe he will. But you’re still left sitting alone, which is no fun. So how about I give you a little company while you wait?’

  ‘It’s OK, I’m fine, honestly.’

  ‘Well, if he’s a no show, you come and find me, eh? You can buy me that drink back.’ The man stood up.

  Ash raised the empty bottle in salute. ‘You never know, I might just do that. And hey, thanks for the drink.’

  ‘It’s not from me, I was just the delivery boy. There’s a guy at the bar who bought it. Thought you looked like you needed company. Or a drink. Or both. I guess he was wrong.’

  ‘Which guy?’ Ash asked. The eye candy was blocking his view of the bar. By the time he’d moved, Ash realized that Danilo was no longer there.

  FORTY-NINE

  ‘OK, what did he look like?’ Ash demanded, but the eye candy just held his hand out in apology.

  ‘I’m sorry, man, I didn’t get that good a look at him. Normal-looking guy. Nothing to write home about. Didn’t stand out in the crowd. He’s not a regular, though, I would have recognized him. There was a crowd at the bar, he bought maybe a dozen beers, handed me a couple and nodded your way, saying he’d seen me look.’