‘Dynamics of the human situation,’ mumbled East as he left the meeting. ‘Factors immediately preceding death.’ His cynicism magnified by an inexplicable bitterness, he leaned on a lamp-post. ‘Self-determination and the social reflex.’ The lamp-post his bosom buddy. ‘Pah!’ he scoffed. ‘Where's the fun in that?’ He slapped a hand over his mouth, realizing there might be Ears, there might be Eyes, there might be Noses. The rules were strict for those believing in them. And East did, he was a committed non-interventionist and practising thinker, a pupil of the school and as such dedicated to its teachings, namely: THOU SHALST NOT.
Bullshit.
‘The hardest way is the surest,’ he said, clinging desperately to the metal upright, its bright globe nodding sagely overhead. ‘Temptation is not gravity and can be resisted!’
But it was no good. East was corrupted. Soon there might be Fingers and Teeth.
It had started with the month, November rolling smoothly into place as October faded, the advance of time subtle and watched, permeating the city like breath. The days were short and often damp; but the sun shone too, peeling away layers of wet. East rode the buses to and fro as usual, observing the mostly gentle interflow of passengers and discouraging the small fears that people dragged around with them like shackles or pets, fears spread and exploited by trenchermen who, it seemed, always had the last laugh. They were the do-badders, the stirrers, the tempters, the inveiglers of the wicked and the weak. Quod opposed them. Quod and the Trenchermen, their battles were political, their manifestos exclusive, the one believing in accident and momentum, the other in artifice and manipulation. Those who followed the quodian philosophy stood apart from the living world, not interfering, while the Trenchermen wanted their fingers in as many pies as possible, creating conflict where there was none, energizing the human drives of greed and suspicion. They preyed on vulnerability...all in the name of entertainment.
It was sickening. It was obscene what they got away with, thought East as he folded his bus ticket. But who was he to deny the mind-eaters? The priests might advocate their own brand of violence, demanding banishment and non-redemption, but there were extremists on both sides. Hell's politics were nothing if not complicated. Parliament was hung. Both sides debated after a fashion, but it was stalemate. And both sides greatest fear was dictatorship.
There had been as many false Gods as unconvincing Satans.
Yet it was only a matter of time...
Chaos ruled. It was unclear who benefited, as each side cancelled the other out.
‘Hypocrite,’ said the old lady as she took her seat.
East, dreaming, was not sure he'd heard correctly.
‘Go on, practice that innocent look. Smug little shit.’
East gaped. Shut his mouth. He hadn't seen her get on and felt guilty about the lapse. ‘Are you talking to me?’
‘Who do you think? Sitting there like butter wouldn't melt in your mouth.’
He was embarrassed. ‘I'm not harming anyone,’ he countered, straightening his back. ‘I've every right to be here.’
‘No you haven't. You're just a voyeur. You're sitting there waiting for something to happen so that you can do nothing about it, thus perfecting your arrogance.’
‘That isn't true,’ East argued. ‘I'm here to protect the living from your interference. They deserve as much.’
‘Protect the living! From what? Me?’ She peered at him out of the tops of her eyes.
‘Go ahead and mock,’ said East with confidence. ‘But they have volition and should be left in peace.’
‘Peace he calls it,’ the old lady gibed. ‘I'll say it again: hypocrite.’
East clamped his lips tight. He breathed deeply, unwilling to be baited. ‘Is it hypocrisy to hold freedom in such high regard?’ he challenged, his bus ticket crushed. ‘Is it hypocrisy to respect the right of an individual, a living individual, to determine his or her own future without some meddlesome third party to confuse and obstruct? A third party, I might add, whose selfishness is driven by failure, the failure of their own past lives to amount to anything.’
‘Hey, enough of the speeches.’
East, though, continued. ‘It's a common trait among trenchermen that they spurned the opportunity to influence the outcome of their lives and others when the opportunity was a legitimate one.’
‘Now hold on.’
‘You know it's true,’ he said, sensing blood.
‘Not so. How many of us knew then what we do now? What about yourself? Change the course of history? Discover a cure for cancer?’
‘I lacked the means.’ Fact was, he had lived in a time of great change, an epoch of truly momentous social and scientific advancement, and known absolutely nothing about any of it.
‘Of course you did!’
‘But your interference does more harm than good.’
‘Only if you're bad at it,’ the old lady insisted, seizing the initiative. ‘I'm on the side of the angels.’
‘That's quite a boast.’
‘Well, I do my best.’
‘You indulge your ignorance! And you have the nerve to call me a hypocrite.’
‘Still, I'm not afraid to try.’
‘Or fuck up, as inevitably you must. Whose fairy godmother are you anyway?’
She smiled, enjoying the secret. ‘Come along and find out.’
‘No,’ said East. ‘I'm taking you in.’
The fairy godmother laughed. ‘You're what? Ooh, say it again.’
‘I'm taking you in,’ he repeated. ‘You're a danger to public safety.’
She laughed louder, tears streaking her make-up, feet lifting from the deck.
East stubbornly folded his arms.
‘Coward,’ she said.
‘Not so.’
‘Then come along. See for yourself. See how it's possible to make someone happy.’
‘Happiness is not something you make,’ East maintained. ‘It comes from within. Each person must find his or her own.’
‘Oh!’ She wafted a palm at him. ‘Now you're quoting from text. Don't you have a mind of your own? Any volition?’
‘Volition is for the living, as I've pointed out.’
‘Bollocks; you're just scared.’ She leaned across the seat as if engaging him as a confidant. ‘I'll admit there are those of my persuasion whose motives are questionable. But we all have our failings, and they are a minority whose actions are relatively short-lived.’
‘Not unlike their victims.’
‘Occasionally, yes,’ she conceded. ‘Often, though, the blame lies as much with the living as the dead. Not that I'd use that as an excuse for sloppy workmanship.’
East barely managed to hold his anger in. He may not have amounted to anything in life, but he prided himself on his ability to follow orders, to do his duty and keep his mouth shut. Besides...
‘Subtlety has a much greater effect,’ she went on. ‘Crude art doesn't last, and it is to crude art that I, like yourself, object.’
‘Whatever you call it, crude or otherwise...’
‘Sophisticated.’
‘...an excuse is an excuse,’ East rejoined. ‘The only safe course is one that steers you, and them, clear of temptation, for it is all too easy to corrupt. Whether you mean well or ill is besides the point.’
‘There,’ the fairy godmother pointed out. ‘There you go quoting again. Don't you have anything to say for yourself?’
‘I've said enough!’ he snapped, not knowing what else to say.
‘You haven't said anything.’
‘Your ears are blocked!’
‘And for that you're taking me in?’ She feigned exasperation, getting his goat with a mixture of gestures and looks.
‘Correct,’ East affirmed, now crossing his legs.
‘But you'll have to go too,’ she reminded him. ‘And then there are all those forms to fill in - and who knows when they might let us out.’
‘I don't care. I'll h
ave done my duty.’
She narrowed her mouth. ‘Couldn't you just frighten me off?’
‘No, I could not.’
‘You're making this very awkward.’
‘It's perfectly simple. You must be stopped.’
‘Okay.’ She stood ready to get off the bus. ‘Stop me.’
East had no choice but to follow. If he was to apprehend her he couldn't let her out of his sight.
Thinking now of that short walk made him sick. He gripped the lamp-post like it were her throat.
They walked in silence, shoes leaving ill-defined prints on the damp pavement. He had yet to learn her name. Better he had stayed on the bus. Together they walked up to a house and she knocked.
‘Mrs Beantower?’
‘Yes...’
‘Edith Beantower?’
‘Yes.’
‘My name's Lotta Dosh, and this is my husband, Paul.’
The woman was about thirty-five, East saw. She appeared to be having doubts. Already things had gone too far. He wondered if it was his failure to act there and then that paralysed him. For a moment he was back in the Crimea, running, the earth exploding, the screams resounding, the limbs flying through the air. Not charging but fleeing. East swallowed his shame. And then that final cannonade, launching him skyward, trews on fire and arse flayed.
What was going on? He peered at the old lady, constrained by highly elasticated undergarments, whose husband she professed he was, half her physical age. He peered at Edith Beantower, whose expression had coagulated into a vague friendliness.
‘Lotta Dosh?’ Mrs Beantower said.
Her fairy godmother smiled and nodded in a rewarding manner.
Mrs Beantower trembled, but not with fear. Suddenly she screamed, her face crumpling with excitement. ‘Murray! Murray!’ she shouted, flapping her arms and turning her head. ‘Murray, come and see who's at the door! It's Lotta Dosh!’ Then she froze. Then she yelped and threw her arms round the old lady. Threw her arms round East and gave him a big kiss. ‘Murray! Hurry up! Oh...how much have we won? How much have we won? No! No, wait for Murray...no, come in!’ She stepped aside and waved them across the threshold, an average hallway in an average house.
Murray was slumped in an armchair, watching TV.
‘Murray, look who's here!’
Murray watched TV. ‘Shut up, woman,’ he mumbled.
‘It's Lotta Dosh!’
Murray didn't answer.
The fairy godmother took Edith's arm and clenched it to her midriff, gently patting her wrist. She leaned forward and whispered in her ear, ‘Forget Murray, eh?’
Edith looked confused.
‘It's you,’ the old lady cooed. ‘It's yours, Edith dear. You posted the coupon. It's your name on the cheque.’
East watched as Mrs Beantower's eyes slid round her head. They moved from her fairy godmother to her husband and back.
‘Mine?’
‘Every penny.’
Her joy was different now; she no longer had to share it. She got to keep it all to herself.
‘Edith, why don't you go upstairs and get the kids?’
Edith nodded. ‘Yes...’
‘He beats her,’ the old lady explained to East. ‘She'd have left already had she anywhere to go.’
East watched Mrs Beantower ascend the stairs in a trance.
‘Murray gambles. Murray drinks. Murray loses. Murray watches TV. He beats her, and there's no way out. He beats her and she takes the beatings because she thinks that as long as he's beating her he won't beat the children. She's wrong, of course. He beats her because he's weak. But Edith is strong, strong enough to take the beatings. She has no choice. She can't leave. She's tried. Murray just calls the police. She has convictions for shoplifting and a string of petty offences, so he calls the police and they bring her back. She's the criminal in their eyes. He's a hardworking father, a provider, never been convicted of anything in his life.’
East could think of nothing to say. He knew what was happening was wrong, yet faced with the cold reality of it, the choices offered and the opportunity provided, he could not recognise the fault. He still had his own demons, after all. All those bloodied cavalrymen and their butchered steeds. They still wanted explanations, even after all this time, those moustachioed gentlemen and their proud stallions. But the fact was he had none; he had run away, run in the wrong direction, failed in is duty on that fateful day in history, 1854.
Mrs Beantower appeared at the foot of the stairs clutching her life: a small suitcase, two golden children and their teddies.
‘Come along, Paul,’ Lotta Dosh said, sweeping her skirts. ‘Open the door.’
He stepped toward the front door and grasped the handle. As he did he realized his involvement had become tangible - but he opened the portal anyway. A great white river of spangled light rushed in and wrapped itself round them, glowing in Edith's cheeks and in the cheeks of her infants, glowing in the cheeks of the fairy godmother and in East's cheeks too. It was a magical glow from a magical source. Edith's happiness was immense. But what of the consequences? By steering the ship of this woman and her two kids, by attaching a rudder to their lives and filling their sails with wind, what might be brought about? Anything was possible from here, contemplated East as he helped usher the winning party to a waiting limousine, as he and the old lady waved a tearful goodbye to Edith Beantower and her shining children. Anything was possible, yes, but anything had been possible from the outset, from the inception of these three related lives. The facts hadn't changed, only the circumstances. Was there, after all, fault to be found? On this or any other afternoon? Those French cavalrymen certainly thought so, left to die under a barrage the British knew was coming, sending a runner with the news, a runner who ran in the opposite direction.
The fairy godmother hugged him. ‘I'm Belle,’ she trilled. ‘Belle of the ball.’ She spun and danced back to the house, where she locked herself in.
East could only stare through a gap in the curtains. What had she in mind Murray?
Guilt made him physically sick. In the space of ten minutes she had transformed a number of lives. But who could say fate or luck might not have done likewise? Or better or worse? Or what she did was not universally for the betterment of mankind?
No-one, East thought; that was the problem.
The nub of the argument.
An unwinable argument. An eternal argument among the dead. An argument that set apart the two poles of Hell. There was no possibility of reconciliation, there were only the extremes; and necessarily, for you had to belong to one camp or the other and to belong to either meant you had to invest your all. Total belief sufficed. Nothing less. There were no substitutes. You measured your strength by the strength of your enemies.
Dictatorship?
What both sides feared most. Yet, he reasoned, might it not be for the best? The power of a king, a power with no room for argument.
The priests sought the true God. He let go of the lamp-post. He’d become a priest. There would be no more compromises. That ought to keep his accusers at bay, out to condemn him to an eternity of spine-tearing, knee-breaking, teeth-pulling, skin-peeling, limb-smashing pain. All so reminiscent of the Crimean peninsular...
They’d have to catch him first, and East was fast on his feet.
Grey Area
Thorp lit a cigarette using a match struck off the door pad. He crushed the empty pack and dropped it on the floor, where it rolled with countless others in the footwell. A week had passed since he gained his passenger, the midget whose appetite for Woodbines and gibbering proved insatiable. The fiend's occupancy of the back seat was a ludicrous feature, yet one he was forced to take seriously.
‘Bugger,’ the midget repeatedly continually. ‘Bugger, bugger.’
Thorp inhaled, guiding the Ventura through drizzle and traffic, its windscreen wipers motionless, the red lights pallid and a deeper grey than the green - although there wasn
’t much between them. He meandered through the city with little direction. Nothing on till six-thirty, then a family of four and carbon-monoxide poisoning.
Two hours away.
He thought of Jenny. The perplexed feeling associated with her presence on that roof returned. He wondered if something bigger was stirring, something his mind had yet to gauge, his imagination contain, his memory recall. Something past. Nothing the future might uncover hadn’t been seen before; that much was known. Things always snuck up on you from behind.
Only, how could he hope to find her with a demon for company? If, that is, he wished to find her. Thorp had still to convince himself of the whys and wherefores, etc. This was new territory. No telling yet if it was neutral.
Byamol's stooge, no less, naked and slavering down its mammoth cleavage, scratching its oversize testicles and yawning hugely without letting its cigarette drop from its mouth. The stub was adhered to its lower lip, crackling wetly there before being extinguished. Thorp wrinkled his nose at the burnt smell. He'd been forced to pack his souls in the boot, well away from the creature, but still it insisted on counting them.
‘Stop! Up ahead; the restaurant!’ It flopped its gruesome chin on his shoulder and burped.
Obligingly, he pulled over.
‘Wait in the car,’ the midget instructed.
Happy to, Thorp sucked the last from his Woodbine and wondered if they sold them in the restaurant. He was getting through six packs a day, twice his usual consumption, thanks to his companion.
His eye was hooked by a nearby Railstation. Bound to be a booth there selling tobacco and confectionery. Only the fiend had told him to stay put.
So what? Was he afraid? Or honour bound? No, so how to get rid of the little bastard? It would have to be convincing to Byamol. He didn't think he could kill it, simply because it was already dead and undoubtedly slippery. He literally had to dispose of it. He needed a method. He needed cigarettes and opened the car door, the drizzle shrinking the skin of his face and making it tight round his mouth and across his cheekbones. The air, despite the month, was warm. He crossed the road, making for the heavy grey light of the Railstation, the black of the building above abutting an aluminium afternoon. Already a few stars were visible, the rain dragging the night down. Thorp slid on his sunglasses as he entered the concourse. It was packed with people. He located a concession stand and proceeded toward it, pulling notes from his lefthand coat pocket, their bland markings reflecting a strange copper hue. He was puzzled by that and lingered beneath a large cluster of decorative lights, tipping his head back to fully swallow the glare. The rich white light swamped him; but no copper. He gazed around the concourse for the source of the tint but could find nothing.
The need for smoke driving him, Thorp purchased two hundred Woodbines. The concessionaire grumbled distantly about having no change. Thorp didn't want any anyway. He shrugged and walked. The woman would forget him in a moment and be curious later about the surplus in her till. She'd shrug then, blessing her good fortune, perhaps feeling a bit strange. An uncomfortable displacement. It was merely the unseen, glimpsed.
By a quirk of logic, or perhaps simply for the fun of it, it was only public houses where he declined to pay.
Thorp returned to his car, his passenger not yet seated. Some things had to change, he decided. Smoking cigarettes made him crave beer. He entered the restaurant.
‘Would you like a table, sir?’
Was he becoming more visible?
‘No? I see. You're waiting for a friend?’
Yes. No.
‘Very good, sir.’
A worrying trend.
The demon was nowhere to be seen.
And then who should enter the restaurant, by name the Fourteenth Cloud, than a huddle of sycophants and possibly the next governor of this disparate metropolis, however that might be defined; Hell’s rising star, Jones.
Thorp knew about Jones.
Jones was a contemporary. Where Thorp picked up the accidents and suicides, Jones catered exclusively to the murdered. Murders were glamorous, or so Jones believed. Thorp wasn't sure he disagreed or was envious. Given the choice he would favour the murder franchise. He had to admit that. There was the added drama of criminal activity, the sort of operatics that required you to visit the more exotic regions of subdom, those places farther displaced than suicide country, which was only marginally off the map. One step was all it took. Several steps and a push got you to killings. Yet there was something too zealous about Jones. He participated. Not directly; but he played a part. It was unprofessional, Thorp thought, only to be reminded of Orangepeel, Jenny Pith up there on the ledge and his intervening word.
So who was he to criticize? Jones had ambitions, political ambitions...
But Thorp knew about Jones.
There was a crash and the swing doors to the kitchen flew open. His head swivelled at the bar. The small angry shape of the demon and the suddenly animate party of trucklers occupied the extremes of his vision. Silver bullets streaked through the previously subdued restaurant air. The fiend blazed with a passion, its discharging weapon centred in its stomach, its penis and breasts radiating a deeper greyness, shimmering as the midget advanced on the squirming crowd desperately trying to shield their supernatural confederate. The silver bullets ripped into them. Not killing them, they were past that, but puncturing them and deflating their existence, the pale stuff of their construction becoming incoherent.
Thorp watched it all with a sense of irrealism, like it was theatre, an episode of some subterranean gangster spoof here filming on location. Expensive stuff.
The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had started, the midget having run out of ammunition. It dropped the ungainly weapon and strolled out of the Fourteenth Cloud, whistling.
Emerging moments after, he found his passenger in its familiar position and himself the getaway driver.
Thorp drove frenetically at roof level, dodging antennas and dishes, greenhouses, horses and the occasional chimney breast. He was low on fuel and needed a drink, needed to ditch his minder before he could be seen to be involved in anything partisan or unethical. Leave that to the Jones' of this world, he thought. Death was complicated enough.
Letting go of the steering wheel, he twisted round in his seat. With his other hand he opened the rear door on the driver's side, twisted back, took the wheel and banked sharply, throwing the Ventura onto its side and emptying beer bottles, cigarette packs and one demon out into fresh air high above the city. The monster was reluctant to fall, however, its clammy flesh gripping the upholstery as it babbled threats and curses. He brought the car round in a tight looping curve, the air buffeting the open door and slamming it repeatedly against the midget's skull, cracking it with a sound like a mug hitting concrete, until, brains spilled, Thorp's aerobatics finally evacuated it.
He arrested his dive, straightened, reoriented, quelled his panic. Landing briefly to wipe the velour and leather he supposed any respite would be temporary. But it had been an accident, hadn't it? Explain that to Byamol. He'd mention the priests. A priest secreted in the passenger compartment.
It was a short drive to the ice-cream factory where he loitered as it grew dark, supping Pilsener from a pint pot and reading the stars. The weather was surprisingly warm. There were no clouds to obscure his vision. Venus shone brightly in a firmament as black as black silk knickers.
The ice-cream was piped from an overflow tank and gurgled thickly as it travelled into the dark throat of the Ventura, which purred appreciatively, the smoothest freezer. Thorp filled the tank to the brim, stowed the now empty pint pot along with his cache of Czech lager, and got back in the car. The interior was a perfect zero. His breath misted the glass, giving it a silver sheen like a mirror. If you stood outside you could see your reflection.
His watch told him fifteen minutes till the multiple. Father, mother, two children. Thorp was nervous. Something had shifted for him and his job was no lo
nger routine. The image of Jenny Pith revolved in his mind, tantalizing him with half-remembered colours. He drove silently into the early evening traffic. The Pickering family would have just reached home, the kids picked up from the in-laws where they'd been since school. A quick detour to the supermarket. They would be sitting in the garage of their large detached house, father with his hand on the key, the doors locked at the touch of a button. Technology made it easy for him and his wife, even now holding hands. In effect the children were victims. It was the parents who had chosen suicide as a solution to their problems, the scale of which were unimportant, the parents who knew best for their son and daughter. The kids were just along for the ride, worried now as the garage door had shut automatically. Nothing unusual there, only the engine was still running. There was a terrible quiet in the car. And their father's eyes in the rearview mirror. They wanted to get out but couldn't. They sat drugged, like puppets. Father and mother had their windows electrically wound down and were in control of the buttons. The rear doors and windows were secure. This was a very safe car.
Six twenty-five. Thorp pulled up, checked his appointment book to make sure of the address, got out and opened the boot. He tidied the souls therein, his stunt driving having tangled a few, soft and crackling as he teased them apart with a rasp of static.
Another vehicle breezed to a stop alongside his own.
Six twenty-nine exactly.
Thorp closed the boot. He had a bad feeling. As he walked toward the garage the bad feeling joined him.
‘Strange,’ it said, ‘to encounter you twice in one day.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘A coincidence.’
‘I can see you weren't expecting me.’
‘No.’
‘But this is my jurisdiction.’
Thorp halted by the wide aluminium door. There was a banging noise from within and then silence.
‘You seem puzzled,’ Jones said. ‘Perhaps you're becoming jaded.’
Perhaps he was. But Jones was no confessor.
‘Shall we?’
They entered together, locks proving no obstacle, four souls like grease-proof paper languishing on the oil-patterned floor. The garage was filled with acrid smoke and the stench of death uninvited. Neither man was affected. Both reached for the souls, their fingers touching, their eyes locking.
Jones said, ‘Two of these were murdered. They are mine.’
To which Thorp replied, ‘They made no effort to save themselves. They were willing victims.’
‘That isn't true and you know it. Take the parents; the children are mine.’
‘I can't...’
Jones straightened, his tie clipped to his shirt by a clip of yellow bone. ‘I know what is right,’ he stated.
‘Why,’ challenged Thorp, ‘because you're powerful?’
Jones sighed. ‘We go back a long way, you and I. You know I can beat you, so why argue? If I am right because I am powerful, then I am powerful. But it isn't all power, Thorp, a greater part is timing, knowing where and when and what amount of force is necessary to get the job done. Large rocks are best broken using small ones.’
Thorp had no answer. Jones could dance circles round him. It had not occurred to him that the children had been murdered. Jones was right and he was wrong. And his appointment book? He must have misread the entry. Or had he? Twice it had let him down now.
His rival unravelled the smaller souls from the larger. ‘Don't worry,’ he said, ‘things might soon be different, and those differences are on their way.’
There was a portentousness to Jones' words that disturbed and excited. They were preposterous, too, in a calculated way. He offered bread, but take the bread and risk a beating.
Jones played with fire, literally.
Realization
Swene woke up and it was Friday. He lay in bed enjoying the quiet, brain bouncing back and forth between the events of the previous four nightshifts and those of the preceding weekend. He still wasn't sure how he'd got home Sunday morning. Saturday night had left him dazed, but unquestioning. Perhaps there would be more of the same this weekend. At work he had been distant and preoccupied. Normal, it seemed, as nobody thought to query his mental presence, or lack of it. His colleagues had got bored of waving their hands before his eyes years ago. ‘Hello. Anybody home?’ He smiled, glad the work week was over. With Christmas ever nearer he could look forward to some time off and even greater quantities of alcohol. He'd certainly been drunk last Saturday, even managing to keep up with Owen and Mickey, although the whereabouts of their prolonged drinking remained a mystery. They'd travelled unknown roads to unknown bars full of unknown ladies whose nature was decidedly friendly into the early hours of the morning. The phone rang, but he didn't get up to answer.
Only it kept ringing...
‘Great lazy ape,’ he could hear his mother comment.
‘Hello.’
Click.
Huh, back to reality.
Then, ‘Psst!’ From the kitchen.
Swene put the phone down and walked into the adjoining space, not knowing what to expect. Everything appeared normal.
Shadows hung on the walls, encompassing cupboards, window frames and naked plaster. Thick shadows. And it was twelve-thirty. He reached for the light switch and as he did so there was a rush of air and the sound of much commotion. Shadows, still to that moment, charged past him, bundling him back into the living-room as they escaped through the flat, slamming the front door.
The kitchen thus emptied he travelled beyond to the bathroom and gave voice to his bowels, which spoke a deeper, inner language, one Swene felt comfortable with. His body perched on wood and porcelain he regarded the door not three feet from his face. The world, newly discovered, lurked beyond. Soon he would have to go out and confront it, a world to which he'd awoken, a world of madness, danger and shadows. He wondered if he was ready for what lay out there, and if not, what the consequences might be. He'd already had a taste of it, a taste he liked, but there was the risk of being swamped by sensation. Certainly that was a risk worth taking, Swene decided, only then realizing he was out of toilet-paper.
Gloop
Flicking through papers, Nancy struggled to eliminate the everyday from the truly grisly. Obviously Mingis Bros. couldn't be responsible for every unnatural termination in the greater urban conurbation, so she needed to sift her data to come up with a likely last event, hopefully then to predict the date of the next. That date had to be imminent. Why else would Mingis have approached her when he did? He wanted her involvement, wanted her presence even, wanted her to find him out. His motives she could dismiss. Let others delve into the minds of psychopaths, Nancy only wished to photograph the rainbow-hued surface, probe with her oar the oily mixture and see what floated to the top. It would be foolish to dive in, breath held and feet kicking. As a journalist she was used to baiting sharks, but this was an altogether more dangerous fish.
She had much to learn. She had her instincts; often unreliable, always fearsome. She had an editor leaning on her desk.
‘Problem, Kowolski?’
She smiled her best lemony smile. ‘Everything’s a problem,’ she said sweetly.
‘Good. Write it.’ He straightened and patted his heavy gut, a glint in his eye that spoke volumes. ‘Meantime, there's someone downstairs wants to meet you.’
Nancy's brow creased. ‘Tall? Broad shouldered?’
‘You're fantasizing, Nance. This one's short and weedy; looks like he likes violence.’
‘Don't they all,’ she commented.
‘Other people's violence.’
‘Right...’ She kicked her boots out from under her desk and made for the exit.
She found him hovering nervously in reception, clinging to the draught at the doors as if frightened to venture any farther into the building. He shuffled his feet and peered out through the glass.
Nancy tip-toed behind.
‘Kowolski,’ he said witho
ut turning. ‘Can we leave? It's just I've a lot of equipment in my car I don't want stolen.’
‘Don't be paranoid,’ she answered, disconcerted by the apparently false impression she'd drawn. ‘Things aren't that bad.’
‘Yeah?’ He looked at her indulgently, offering his hand. ‘In my experience things are generally a lot worse. Henry Eels.’
They shook. ‘Pleased to meet you, Henry. You wanted to see me. Why?’
‘I scour the globe,’ he said. ‘I'm putting together a documentary about death and romance.’
‘Called?’
‘Death and Romance.’
Could she trust him? Was he crazy? It would be best, thought Nancy, to forget about trust for the time being.
‘Now can we leave?’
She didn't have her jacket or her bag. ‘Okay.’
Henry pushed open the door and held it for her. ‘My car's up here. It would be the end of me were anything to happen to it. Years of work...’
‘You carry everything with you?’
‘Everything. Everything's on video. Over two thousand hours of footage.’
‘That's some documentary,’ Nancy remarked, thinking she might slope off shopping instead.
‘Don’t I know. Most of it's garbage. I plan to get it down to eighty minutes. Once it's finished, that is. I reckon I've about seventy-two minutes now.’
‘So you'll be filming in Palmersville?’
‘Partly.’ Henry's face screwed up, like she'd posed him a problem.
‘You don't seem too sure,’ she probed. ‘You look a little indecisive.’
He squirmed. ‘How do you feel talking about something you don't necessarily understand?’
Did he mean himself or her? Nancy wondered, and appreciated his difficulty.
‘Here's the car.’
‘A Ventura,’ said Nancy. ‘Not what I'd choose to scour the globe.’
Henry shrugged. ‘It has its virtues.’
They stood by the Ventura, Henry with his arms folded, Nancy beginning to feel the cold.
‘Why exactly did you want to see me?’
‘You're my seventy-third minute.’
Nancy stared at him quizzically. ‘You want to film me?’
He squirmed again. ‘Kind of. You're more of a locus. I want to film round you.’
‘To what end?’
‘It's all part of the process.’
‘Your documentary.’
‘Right.’
‘Death and Romance. I'm not strong on either. Why don't you tell me about the seventy-two minutes you have already; maybe show me some video.’ She was losing patience with this strange character.
Henry shook his head. ‘Not possible.’
‘Why? Are you a fake? Is this some diversionary tactic? Is someone going through my desk? Does the name Mingis mean anything to you?’
That caught him. He gazed over both shoulders. ‘You keep dangerous company, Nancy. You want to be careful. You could be in deeper than you think.’
‘The risk's mine to take. What about you, Henry?’
He laughed a pretend laugh. ‘Risks are my business.’
‘Then stop shaking. Mind if we get in the car? I'm freezing.’
He agreed reluctantly and she squeezed in the passenger side, feet raking polystyrene cups and takeaway dishes. The back seat was filled with newspaper and strangely shaped black containers.
‘You sleep in here, don't you?’
‘Yes. It's practical.’
‘It's smelly.’
‘Well, you wanted to be in.’
Nancy made herself comfortable. ‘And now I'm not leaving.’
‘What?’
‘Not until you show me something of interest to me professionally. I'm a journalist, Henry, I want stories and headlines and pictures and gruesome detail. What are you offering me besides bad breath and indecision?’ And why did she care? What kind of joker was he?
‘Damn.’ He chewed a nail.
‘I'm waiting.’
‘You're a fascinating woman.’
‘I know what I want and I know how to get it,’ she said in her best Mae West.
‘Damn.’
‘Well?’
Henry shuffled. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘No.’
He lit up. ‘About six years ago I was on holiday in Greenland.’ He inhaled. ‘People usually say, “That's a strange place to go for a holiday”.’
‘It is?’
He exhaled. ‘Anyway, I met this beautiful dark-eyed girl in a bar and we had unbelievable sex on a grand piano.’
She didn't blink. She knew grand pianos.
‘I was in hospital for three weeks with pneumonia and ever since I've had this fascination with the preternatural.’
Nancy regarded her boots amid the rubbish. ‘What was she, a succubus?’
‘I believe so.’
‘I thought they only came to men in their sleep. Were you asleep?’
‘No.’
‘Intoxicated?’
‘By her, yes.’
‘And you'd like to meet her again, after she froze you...’
‘She didn't freeze me; not literally.’
‘But she did inflame you, or at least your lungs.’
‘She did.’
His smoke was getting in her eyes. ‘Death and Romance.’
He smiled bashfully.
‘You're a fool, Henry.’
‘Thank-you.’
‘Albeit an honest one. And near the end of your search, if I'm reading this correctly. Only another eight minutes?’
‘Seven,’ he confessed.
Nancy scowled ruefully. He'd been filming.
‘You're a fascinating woman.’
‘What is that, a code? The camera's voice activated?’
‘Yes.’
‘An honest but devious fool. Just what I need right now.’
‘Everybody's favourite picture,’ said Henry.
‘Explain that to me,’ Nancy insisted, pushing the balls of her thumbs into the upholstery.
‘Okay, listen.’
She listened, was soon restless. ‘No, on second thoughts...Hold it.’
Henry pressed PAUSE.
‘How much more is there? I've got a headache.’
Henry smiled. ‘Altogether there's eighty minutes.’
She cringed. ‘This is the voice-over for your documentary?’
‘It's kind of a draft, a work in progress. I'm still polishing, see? I don't really know how it will end.’
Nancy was silent a while, just staring out the car window at the figures in the street. What were they doing out there? Who the hell were they? Then she asked, ‘Why me? What brought you to me?’
‘Initially?’
‘Initially.’
‘It's somewhat complicated,’ Henry confessed, a bit scared of her, a bit excited. ‘It'd be easier if you listened to the tape.’
‘Somehow I don't think so,’ she replied. ‘Let's fast-forward, bring things right up to date. How did you find me, find my name, where I worked, whatever?’
‘Your father.’
‘You know Pa?’
‘I know someone who knows him,’ Henry told her. ‘I have an interest in a number of his associates.’
‘Like who?’ Nancy wanted names and faces, names and faces she could put together.
‘I haven't got that far yet.’
‘This isn't helping.’
‘True, but you asked.’
Nancy continued to stare out the window. She didn't recognise anybody out there, she realized. Even this close.
‘There are eighty objects,’ said Henry. ‘She told me that. She told me that if I wanted to find her again, and she knew I would, then I would have to find seventy-nine things before I got to herself.’
‘Does she have a name?’
‘Doubtless she has many. I've spent six years searching, recording, digg
ing, assembling the objects; some animate, some inanimate.’
‘Not all people?’
‘No. You're the first; but I've a hunch the remainder are, too. Or once were. It gets hazy round the edges.’
Yes, thought Nancy, it certainly does. A person was staring back at her now. A woman about her own age. She stuck her tongue out.
‘Look, you're curious, you're wondering why you, what makes you special, how come you're involved, and I can't answer any of that. The truth is I don't know. One thing leads to another. One thing led to you, Nancy Kowolski. What's the connection? I don't know, not for sure; but you're in the link. You have an inquiring mind. Maybe that's it. Maybe something's set up home in your head.’
‘In my head?’
‘Maybe.’ He reddened as she turned to look at him, not really sure where he stood with the head argument.
‘So what was number seventy-two, this thing that led you to me?’
Henry, relieved to have escaped that hook, appeared to think. Then decide. ‘Remember the cat you had when you were a kid?’
‘Gloop,’ said Nancy. ‘Yes…’
Henry reached behind him and rummaged on the rear floor until he recovered a black painted shoebox.
She placed her hand on the lid. ‘Take me to dinner.’
Henry lay the shoebox in his lap. ‘Tomorrow,’ he promised with a shrug. ‘I've a previous engagement.’
‘Tomorrow then.’ She opened the door, which required an unusual effort, as if the air outside the car had thickened. For a moment it was like peering through a murky lens: the street distorted, the faces blurred...
‘Sure,’ he agreed, the excitement tangible, at the back of his throat like a stuck peanut. The fear too. ‘Midnight, and let's make it a picnic.’
Associates
Some things cease to exist once they are understood. No one understands this better than Thorp. Thus his unquestioning stance, his abject refusal to look too closely at his situation, occupation and circumstance.
Jones made him do it. Jones and Jenny Pith.
Suddenly his diary was empty. Unheard of, especially for a Friday night. Yet there it was, pages newly blank in his appointment book, as if all suicides had been revoked, all accidents outlawed unless the fatalities were zero.
It was Jones' doing. Jones had contacts.
Still, it amazed Thorp to find he had nothing to do. Worse, no souls meant no income, no income no funding for the project.
‘Well,’ said Pa. ‘This is a turn up for the books.’
Chapter Three: Across The Quiet Sleepers, Ascending Their Threads