Turning Blue

by Benjamin Myers

  I don’t know says Brindle. I don’t know.

  They watch. They see Rutter squint and crane again then scratch his head. They watch as Rutter turns to face the road and looks up and down it. Then they see him turning back to the building one more time. He appears puzzled. . They see Rutter walk up the stone steps to the wooden door and try it. It is locked. He walks down the steps and then Rutter quickly walks back to his car and starts the engine and leaves.

  A minute later Mace and Brindle stand before it.

  Neglect and the Yorkshire weather have combined with the city smog to blacken its facade. Perhaps it was originally a bank or an accountancy firm or a chartered surveyors built 150 years or more ago with profits from the industrial boom but now it is a shell. There is a sign bolted to the building but it is too high for them to read.

  That sign says Brindle. Can you see what it says?

  No. Wait a minute.

  Mace steps back and takes a photo of it on his phone and then when the picture is saved he zooms in on it. He studies the sign. It is cheap and plastic and at the top of it there is Islamic writing printed in blue on white and then beneath that it says:

  ABU MADINA MOSQUE

  Beneath that is a phone number. He shows the picture to Brindle.

  Not what you would call opulent says the reporter. Not like these new-money new-builds with their fancy minarets.

  Brindle studies the building again.

  It’s derelict he says.

  Now I see why they made you a detective says Mace.

  I’ll need to send someone in.

  Brindle’s phone rings. He answers. Says nothing. Mace studies his face. Still he says nothing. Then he hangs up.

  THEY DO NOT follow Rutter.

  Instead Brindle turns the car around and heads back out of the city to the motorway to take them the forty miles back to Cold Storage.

  Where are we going now? says Mace but Brindle does not reply so Mace says great wonderful it’s not like I don’t have anything to do anyway.

  It is still light but the moon is already out. It sits high and large in a pinkening spring evening sky.

  They turn into what looks like an industrial estate. They drive deep into it and skirt a roundabout. The roads are empty and they see no one. Brindle drives into a maze of squat buildings. He parks up beside one whose exterior gives nothing away. Close up it looks more like a base from where exhausts are distributed or where catalogues are printed or frozen curries are made.

  Where are we? says Mace.

  We’re here says Brindle.

  I thought so.

  They enter through glass doors and Brindle produces a card which he scans to open a turnstile which closes behind him. He walks around to a side gate and swipes his card and then gestures for Mace to follow him.

  They pass through more doors and then up a flight of stairs.

  Is this where you work? says Mace. Is this where they put you?

  This is an issue of trust replies Brindle.

  You poor bastards. Stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.

  Bindle says: you’re one to talk.

  Give me sheep shit and a nice upper-valley ale any day says Mace. This place is dead. It’s like a retail graveyard. A chrome nightmare.

  Brindle strides down corridors and when they reach it there is no one in the open-plan office of the upper floor.

  Where is everyone? says Mace.

  The other detectives actually have lives to lead says Brindle. Wives to placate and children to feed.

  He fills a coffee pot from a water cooler and then turns on the percolator. He fits a fresh sachet of coffee. From a cupboard he takes out an Earl Grey tea bag for himself.

  You need coffee he says.

  Fine says Mace. So this is Cold Storage then. I can see how it got its name. Full of stiffs I bet. Why are we here?

  To find out about that building.

  Couldn’t we do that online from anywhere?

  I need to show my face from time to time.

  But there’s no one here to see it.

  Even better says Brindle.

  So who did you call before?

  A colleague. A contact.

  You said they were in Cold Storage says Mace.

  I said they were from Cold Storage. With Cold Storage.

  You’re fucking weird man.

  Welcome to modern policing said Brindle. I hope you appreciate the river of shit that could flood my life for bringing a drunk journalist in here.

  That’s quite poetic. Anyway I’m not –

  What – a journalist?

  Drunk. Prick.

  While Mace pours the coffee for himself and the tea for the detective Brindle goes online. He researches the Abu Madina Mosque. He looks up past sales and ownership of deeds.

  Mace brings the drinks. He pulls over a chair and sits next to him. He hands over the tea. He looks at Brindle’s work station. He sees neatness and order and hygiene. A system. A sterile environment.

  Is your desk always this tidy?

  The detective ignores him.

  It’s not a mosque then says Brindle.

  What do you mean?

  It’s going to become a mosque. But it’s not one now. The signage out front is the first step. It was acquired by a Muslim conglomerate. It is one of many.

  Right. Yes. I thought that.

  Brindle looks at him blankly.

  Really? You never said.

  What’s the link to Rutter though? says Mace. He doesn’t seem like your typical Muslim. Or property owner. Or human.

  Brindle takes a sip and flinches at the heat.

  He is not connected to the mosque he says.

  But him just being there surely connects him.

  He is connected to the building – yes. But only to what it once was. We know its future but not its past. Didn’t you see him approach the building with surprise – with trepidation?

  I thought he looked almost hopeful says Mace. Or confused. But that’s a permanent state for Steve Rutter.

  He expected something else. Or hoped for something else.

  Like what?

  Brindle picks up his desk phone and makes a call. He waits. He puts it on speakerphone and sits back with his tea. It rings for a long time before a young lady answers.

  Hello?

  I need to check out prior ownership of a building says Brindle.

  I’d be happy to sir. The office is closed for the day so if you’d like to call back—

  It’s Abu Madina Mosque on City Road.

  As I said the office is closed for the day so if you’d like to—

  I wouldn’t says Brindle.

  Well sir I’m afraid—

  Brindle interrupts her.

  You should be.

  Excuse me?

  And it’s not sir – it’s DS. Detective Sergeant James Brindle. And this is urgent police business.

  Urgent?

  Yes. Murderously so.

  Mace smirks and shakes his head.

  Failure to assist in enquiries can be treated as obstruction says Brindle.

  Oh says the young lady then she sighs.

  I know for a fact that this will take you about sixty seconds even if you only have half a functioning brain.

  The woman sighs again and mutters something which Mace thinks is wanker and he stifles another laugh.

  I’m meant to be going home she says.

  We’d all like to be going home says Brindle. So. The building currently registered as the Abu Madina Mosque on City Road. I need to know what it was – and who owned it. Let’s say over the past five decades.

  He waits a moment. There is no reply

  Got that?

  Yes says the woman. It’ll take longer than a minute though.

  Call me back in ten then.

  He ends the call and sips his tea.

  You have such a nice telephone manner says Mace. Warm. Ever thought of joining the Samaritans?

  Ten minutes later the phone rin
gs. Brindle doesn’t put it on speakerphone this time. He listens and writes words down on a notepad.

  He says thank you – you have been very helpful. Make sure you have a nice evening and then he puts the phone down again.

  Bingo he says.

  AND THEN SKELTON stopped calling upon him. No messages ever reached him and weeks and then months went by with no mother to mither him and no nocturnal assignments. No envelopes of cash coming in.

  His mother existed in name and flesh and heartbeat only. She was a monthly direct debit now. The shadows of the farm grew longer and life began to ebb from it.

  Only one message reached him. Typed and posted: stay away. So he did and he tried not to think about the films and parties and Pinder and Lister and Hood and all those other men with their secrets and their suits and their cigars and the things he had seen and the things they had made him do. He stayed away until the need to return was overwhelming because back at the farm he floundered. He stopped washing and eating and tending to the animals. The roaming dogs hunted the hillsides and the penned pigs soon began to starve.

  These pigs that had dined on tragedy now scratched furiously at the dirt for a missed acorn or a worm or anything and then when the weakest fell the others gorged on it. They tore away the richest flanks and then devoured the rest of it. It sustained them but not for long. Two days later they were squealing for attention again. They butted their shoulders and brows against the pen sides. They ran in circles and like desperate concentration-camp prisoners they tried to make an escape. They scratched and gnawed at wood and they tried to dig. Bestial moans cut through the night but he was deaf to them. He was adrift. Each emaciated hog that starved and fell then fed the rest of the dwindling drove. Over the weeks only the fiercest were left. Five then four then three then two and finally like the snake that consumes itself the pigs were reduced to nothing but one. The food cycle had shrunk down to an irrefutable singular then that final animal slowly faded until one day he went out and saw nothing but one dead rotting pig and a pen full of excrement and teeth and bones. The food cycle had become a circle. A zero.

  That same day he got the call from Skelton instructing him with one last job – and not just a clean-up operation this time. Right down the line from Mr Hood himself. Non-negotiable.

  He felt no need to ask why Muncy – why his girl? because he knew what Muncy was like and he knew he had a big mouth and he knew that some secrets didn’t stay buried forever. But he did say to Skelton: I don’t have the pigs any more.

  So find another way said Skelton.

  What way?

  Any way. You owe us.

  Owe you?

  We had a call a few weeks back. From the police.

  Why?

  Something about you being in the cinema the night your mother died.

  She didn’t die.

  Skelton said nothing to this. He heard his breathing down the line.

  What did you say?

  There was talk of checking our records. Our security.

  Is that why the cinema closed?

  That has nothing to do with the cinema being closed. It’s just business.

  Does Ray Muncy have anything to do with the cinema closing? Or Larry Lister? Is it something to do with him?

  Again Skelton did not respond.

  Hello? he said. Hello?

  SKELTON HAD TOLD him to do it and he had done it and now he needs just one last time with her. One last visit. Because Steven Rutter is barely sleeping now; Steven Rutter is barely eating now. All his thoughts are occupied with her. The trace of her – what is left of her – still up there in the great space of the moors.

  Like the pigs before them the dogs are starving now too. With jutting ribs and forlorn eyes they only appear to come alive to fight over the scraps that he throws into the pen – if he remembers to.

  Unfed the chickens have contracted an infection. They are no longer laying. Those that are still alive are turning upon one another in frustration and starvation and madness. They fight and peck. The carcasses of the weaker ones litter the floor of the coop; those that live pluck and pull at the feathers of the fallen. They nip at their white elastic skin.

  He has become fully nocturnalised now.

  In the darkness he passes the windmills. He feels their slicing of the air and hears the malignant sounds they make. That torturous canticle.

  He drags his feet across moss and heather and bog.

  And then he is there and he is lifting again and pulling again and crowbarring again.

  He is prepared this time. This time he is prepared. With more tools and a new tarpaulin. He also has gloves and rags and ropes. A facemask and lime.

  The goodbye package.

  The slaked lime is his final present to her. Calcium hydroxide by its other name. It is used to eliminate odours and deter animals and further bacteria and flies. Easy to get hold of and when doused on her moist flesh the powder will dehydrate and burn away the past. It will slowly sear any remnants. Burn away all record of him and preserve Melanie Muncy forever in myth and memory rather than reality.

  The lime will erase all physical trace of a person who went to theme parks and shopping centres and pop concerts and libraries and who sat in cars with boys.

  The crackling of the tarpaulin seems deafening as he peels it. His senses accelerate and then she is there looking impossibly small and withered. The bloating has stopped and what flesh that’s left has sunken and withdrawn. Tightened. She seems half her previous size and this visible retreat from her physical form suddenly moves Rutter to tears.

  He hears a sob and shocks himself.

  He climbs into the tarpaulin with the matter that once was a girl and he pulls the sheet around them so that they are encased. Cocooned. Her rotten flesh is squashed beneath him and makes new noises and emits smells that he will never get to experience. Her juices are on him. He is breathing her gases. Their bones are knocking.

  In the darkness his fingers find a way to gently touch that hard cranial curve that is protruding from her down below.

  And as he does so it is as if his blood is coursing and bubbling through his veins and popping and fizzing in his ears. Near death – tasting it and entering it – he feels more alive than ever.

  His hand touches the skull of the girl and wipes away matter that was once the skin of her scalp. It feels like the remains of soap in a soap dish.

  Beams of light and energy seem to be rushing out of the top of his head.

  IT’S THAT NAME again says Brindle. Blue Kingdom owned the building beforehand.

  Let me write this down says Mace.

  Forget about that and just listen says the detective as he stares intently at his computer screen. It seems they had it for over three decades. Ran it as a cinema.

  So?

  An adult cinema. The Odeon X. A notorious flea-pit. I remember the name says Brindle – vaguely. It has come up before. I certainly remember seeing City Road as a boy in the early eighties.

  Eighteen eighties?

  Very good. I remember the feel of the place. The dirtiness of it.

  It’s still bad now says Mace.

  It was even worse then. It always had an edge. It felt like the North.

  How do you mean?

  The true North as it was says Brindle. Before gentrification. Before coffee-shop and cocktail culture turned all the towns the same. Before town centres tried to become European but they couldn’t change the weather or the people or the architecture or the mentality.

  You don’t like Europe?

  Europe is fine. Europe works where it is.

  You’re a Tory?

  I don’t care for politics.

  Brindle drinks more tea and then searches online for the Odeon X. There are dozens of Odeons but only one with the X suffix.

  Mace points at the screen.

  That’s where we need to look.

  It is a reference to a search term on the forum of a swingers’ website.

  When Brindle c
licks the necessary link it tells him he needs to register. He takes out his credit card and enters his details in the drop-down boxes and then signs up.

  Good luck claiming that one back on expenses says Mace but Brindle does not reply.

  We’re close says Brindle. Pinder has been getting paid by a company that made money out of sleaze. He’s right in there. Him and the late Lovely Larry Lister. And now Rutter is turning up at the very same building. That’s no coincidence.

  The screen tells them that they need to create a profile in order to proceed.

  Brindles hesitates. His hand lingers over the mouse.

  Let me says Mace. I’m the writer.

  He moves to the keyboard and starts typing. He fills in more drop-down boxes. He deliberates for five seconds then he continues. He clicks a link and they both look at pictures. Pictures of women and pictures of couples. Couples on holiday couples with their faces blurred; couples in tacky sex clothes. And pictures of fat lonely men in cold lonely rooms too. Each is a hopeless window into their respective worlds.

  I wonder if all these people really do all the things that they say they do says Mace.

  An email comes into Brindle’s inbox. Mace clicks a link to confirm their membership and then they are into the members’ area of the site. He goes straight to the thread titled any1remberOdeonX?

  He scrolls through the responses. There are pages and pages of memories and recollections.

  The semiliterate scribbling of the perverted pining for the old days of communal wanking to grainy grot says Mace. It’s depressing.

  They sit in silence and they read comments from people with names like TurboTommy and HevvyRepeater that lament how home entertainment and the internet have changed the way that users indulge their dubious tastes. Mace can hear Brindle breathing. They read stories about how things were much better in the seventies and eighties and on into the nineties when you could still pay the five-pound entrance fee to the Odeon X and stay all night. There are discussions about the old stag films. The blueys.

  They’re living in a black-and-white world says Mace. It’s like listening to old people talking about rationing. He keeps scrolling down but Brindle stops him.

  Wait – look.

  Hi. Did any1 here ever no Neville Hoyle? He went missing in November 1992 and was last seen leaving at the Ode X. Nev was one of the trannys and well known on the scene. Mid 30s worked for British Gas. Police found f-all. Pleaz pleaz get in touch if you rember my Dad. Thanxx.