by Robert Wilde
“Nah, we’ll go now.”
“If you’re sure.”
“People keep losing their eyes, we don’t need to sleep on it.” She realised, once she’d put the phone down, that she was being very short with him.
After a visit to the toilet she crossed the narrow corridor and knocked on Nazir’s door. He opened it, then dived back to whatever he was doing on his laptop.
“Jeff rang, we’ve got another lead.”
“A good one?” Nazir asked, as he began powering down and pulling his trainers on.
“Who knows, can’t be any worse,” and Dee raised the rest of the group, which meant waking the snoozing Professor up and picking Joe off the desk.
“Have you been drinking?” Pohl asked.
“Yes, which is why we’re all insured on each other’s cars. One of you can drive. Let’s go.”
They were soon crossing the city, pulling up, and with the dying light walking down an alley until they came to a line of garages behind a housing estate.
“Right Joe, for what feels like the hundredth useless time, are there any eyewitnesses here.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s go home.”
“No, Dee,” Pohl interrupted, “he said yes.”
“What, wait, yes, yes!”
“Yes, there is a spirit of a woman here. Would you like to say something, the machine allows them to hear us.”
“Yes, yes, hello, hello, tell me, has the Berlin Wall fallen yet?”
“That happened decades ago?”
“Amazing, how amazing.”
“Anyway, we were wondering if you saw…”
“Are you police?”
“We’re working for them, special unit.”
“Good, and you’re interested in that poor man with the eyes and…” The machine went silent.
“Where’s she gone?” Nazir asked.
“She’s miming vomiting,” Joe explained, “I think the event upset her.”
“Ghosts vomit?”
“No she’s miming it.”
“Right.”
“Okay, she’s back.”
“I know what you want, you want their number plate!”
“You have no idea how happy that would make us.” Pohl produced a pad and pencil and wrote, not only the license plate number and details, but a description of the woman who’d been behind it all.
“Is there anything else you need?” The spirit asked.
“That will be perfect thank you, absolutely perfect.”
“Will you visit? It gets lonely here.”
“Of course we will,” Joe said, and then egged them on with “won’t we team.”
“We can work it into our schedule. But we can’t stay, we have a total bitch to catch.”
“Should we ring Jeff?” Pohl asked.
“I guess that would be the sensible idea.”
“Who the fuck are you?” The voice came from behind them, and as they turned a man walked out of the shadows. They could soon see he was waving a baseball bat. It was Pohl who stepped forward to answer.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Dave, and I’m keeping these streets safe. Some fucker harmed my son here last night, and I’m making sure they don’t come back, and stopping ghouls coming and taking fucking photos where my son suffered for their own pleasure. What are you lot fucking doing?”
Pohl, calm and collected, replied, “we’re private investigators working for one of the other families involved. We are examining the scene now the police have left, and we are coming to some very interesting conclusions.”
The baseball bat continued to sway, “like what?”
“We have spoken to several eyewitnesses in the area, and we have a licence plate to pursue.”
“Eyewitnesses? I spoke to everyone, no fucker said owt to me.”
“Were you holding a baseball bat as you said it?”
“Yes?”
“Well I present a different approach don’t I. We’re softly softly, you’re… a little in your face.”
“So who told you?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Right, so what’s the licence plate?”
“We’ll be following that up as soon as you leave.”
“I’m not leaving without that licence plate.”
“So you can go round and kill them?”
“Yes, yes so I fucking can.”
“Let us do this, stay out of prison.”
“My son, my own fucking son, will never see again, and his mind is in fucking pieces. You want me to walk away? You think I should walk away?”
“David, we are experts in strange things. That boy needs his father, with him, helping him. He doesn’t need his Dad in prison. Let us go and sort this out, and you stay safe. Help him, help your son, trust me that we have this in hand.”
Dave looked at Pohl, and decided she didn’t look like some young arsehole on the make, that she instead looked very much like a serious, considered woman, and lowered his bat.
“You’ll sort this?”
“We’ll be going there right now.”
“Okay, sort it.”
He turned and stalked off into the darkness, so Dee and Nazir thought they were safe to move and not upset him. They came close to Pohl, and found she had started shaking slightly.
“You alright?”
“Let’s get him. Now, as we promised.
As soon as they got into the car Pohl started it and they drove off, and Nazir worked in the back to trace the number plate. He was soon able to announce “got it!” and the vehicle turned onto the desired route thanks to the sat nav they’d got installed. Soon they were pulling up outside an ordinary looking suburban semi, where they parked.
“Do we have a war plan?” Pohl asked, as Dee got out of the car.
“We fucking do,” she replied storming up the neat but meandering path and knocking on the door. With a combination of alcohol, adrenaline and sheer rage in her veins after what Dave had said, it was a simple matter to hop on one foot until the door was opened, see the description matched a heavily built lady with fading red hair, and punch her cleanly on the jaw so hard she stumbled backward and hit the ground. Dee and Nazir then rushed to pick her up and drag her into the lounge, where she was forcibly sat on an armchair, and surround by Dee, Nazir and Pohl. Joe had been put on a table.
“I guess you’re related to one of them,” the woman said, “you don’t act like police.”
“No, we really don’t do we,” Dee said threateningly, “so you don’t deny it.”
“I’m Abigail, and hello to you all.”
“You did it then? You went around grabbing people, drugging them, and then swapping their eyeballs?”
Abigail laughed. “Yes, yes I did. I got the idea from the paper, there was a story on someone drugging people and eating their eyes.”
“Yes, we solved that too.”
“Ah, ah, I didn’t know the police had a branch for eyes!”
Perturbed by her happy demeanour, as if she was pleased at being caught, Pohl asked “Why? Why did you do it?”
“Why? They weren’t matched, they were all wrong. Brunettes should have brown eyes, blondes blue, redheads green.”
“And black?” Joe asked.
“Whatever they have.”
“Wait, wait,” and Dee’s hand were animated, “you mutilated people because you’ve got some fucked up OCD?”
Now Abigail went serious. “OCD? OCD! You people all think OCD is lining up your pens and washing your hands a lot. That’s not OCD, OCD is hell, a twenty four hours a day for as long as you live hell. Every time I went out I saw people’s eyes, I saw it all wrong, I fucking saw it, and for so long I hid away in here with nobody caring, until I realised what to do, until I knew I could start reordering the world. Until I could make it right.”
By now she was staring right into Dee’s eyes, and the latter felt hers start twitching. “You are a very sick person, and you are going to be ke
pt away from people very, very soon.” She pulled her phone out and turned, “I’ll ring Jeff, they can start researching this woman backwards.”
“There’s some eyes in the fridge.”
Dee turned back to Abigail. “What?”
“They won’t need to do much hunting for evidence, I keep the eyes in my solution in the fridge.”
“And you’re telling us this why?”
Abigail went quiet.
Dee turned and tapped on her phone. Pohl and Nazir looked at each other and exchanged bemused facial expressions.
“Err, guys,” Joe said, and they all looked at Abigail again.
She had picked up a teaspoon from an empty cup and saucer on the low table to her right, and before they could react she had attacked her face with it, gouged in and round where it was pliant, and with a sticky plop popped her right eye out of her socket.
“Oh fuck,” said Dee, frozen.
“She’s doing it again,” Nazir said bending and wincing, as Abigail quickly popped the other eye out too, grabbed hold of both, and yanked them from their thin connectors. She screamed at this point, of course, and then began laughing.
“I won’t see them anymore, I won’t see them anymore!”
“Oh good god, she’s a proper mental,” Nazir said through clenched teeth.
“I think,” Pohl said, backing up, “I might just go to the bathroom and be sick,” at which point she ran from the room in a triumph of decorum fuelled willpower over broiling stomach.
“Hello, Dee, Dee, what’s wrong…”
Dee realised the phone was talking to her, then that it was Jeff. “We’ve found your eye thief.”
“Excellent!”
“In no way is it excellent. No way at all. I suggest you send an ambulance here, and a pair of the most resilient police people your contact on this force can find.”
“Ambulance?” What happened? Is everyone alright?”
“I don’t think we’re ever going to be alright again.”
The ambulance was there in fifteen minutes, and the paramedics reacted much as the quartet had done. Soon the police took over, eyes were removed from the fridge, and Dee explained their cover story, that they were investigators and had located an anonymous source willing to squeal on the number plate they’d seen while being out doing nefarious things. The group were believed, and were allowed back to their hotel, where they all sat in Dee’s room, all staring inward. All except Joe had a glass now almost empty of spirit.
“If I’m not careful I’m going to end up back with the psychiatrists.”
“I think we’ll all be joining you,” Pohl commented.
“All that pain and waste and effort, and there’s no reason, no reason at all, just a mad woman.”
“I think, Dee,” Pohl began, “that maybe we look too hard for reason. Even if there was some reason in this world, with seven billion people all acting against each other, the reason is too complicated to understand. There is no reason. It doesn’t exist or it is far beyond us. We have to work with what’s left, as hard and confused as that is. We have to make our way as best we can through the doubt and not expect logic or explanation to aid us.”
Three: Open Up
A man of average height and build, but a moustache to put the fear into any thirties film star, was walking from the entrance to his park. He first had to pass through a narrow path, which bushes had been trained to almost enclose into a tunnel, and then he was into the park proper, and before him stood a large dinosaur, its green skin not even remotely blending into the flora around it.
Now, most people wouldn’t need telling that this creature was a dinosaur, because it did look like a large lizard and was in loosely the sort of colour you’d expect assuming you weren’t sensitive to bright colour, in which case you’d need glasses. But most people would have a problem telling you what dinosaur, and not due to any deficiency in their knowledge. They’d have trouble, because it didn’t look like any creature you’d find in a book of real dinosaurs. It looked like a dodgy artists bad imagining of a dinosaur, because that’s exactly what it was.
The man walked to the creature and patted it, feeling the cold concrete beneath. He didn’t care what people said about his dinosaurs, he knew that all they wanted was something big, bright, and with a mouth you could fit a child in, whether the inspiration ate plants or not. He ran this dinosaur park his way, and he had no truck with those hipsters falling over themselves to spend huge sums. Animatronic dinosaurs which moved as you went past? A huge sum of money for no benefit. People in dinosaur costumes who moved around? A huge sum of money and the need to tolerate theatre studies students on their weekends off. No, all this future looking, all this attempt to portray anatomically accurate creatures, it was all a waste. What people wanted was a huge reinforced concrete monster which they thought looked like a dinosaur, and which cost a lot less to maintain or construct.
And that, here at Dino Mania, was exactly what they got. It’s what this man had inherited from his father, it’s what had been created in the fifties, it’s what his son would inherit. All the man had done was update the name when the sign had fallen down and pocket the money.
He patted the cold concrete of what resembled a triceratops if you’d taken more acid than the Beatles, and smiled. This one was called Jim, named after his father. He was sure the old man would have appreciated it.
Walking past Jim, the man looked to the sky and decided it wasn’t going to rain today so the customers would flow through. He never knew someone had sneaked up behind him, his mind never catching up as he felt himself being barrelled into, lifted up, carried back slightly. Instead his mind was able to focus on the two horns Jim proudly carried, and how they came very close to, and then - along with the sensation of being thrown - tore through, the man’s chest.
“I’m afraid the park is closed today, yes, terribly sorry, but we’ll give you a complimentary ticket for when we reopen.” The lady in the booth was doing a good job of smiling and handing things out when she actually wanted to cry.
“What’s wrong, dinos sick?”
The ticket lady looked at the joker, hoping he’d realise and leave, but he just stood there smiling smugly, waiting for a response.
“We, err, we…” We weren’t supposed to say murder, or even tragic accident, but no one had actually come up with an alternative. She turned to a small boy “I’m afraid the dinosaurs are sick today, but we’ll give you a free pass for the future.”
The joker opened his mouth, clearly to say something else, but a stronger voice came from behind him.
“I’m Detective Jeff Maquire, and I urge you all to do what this woman asks.” That shut the man up, and he took his children away. “Hello, can I get through please?”
Jeff was soon walking through a tunnel of bushes, out into an opening, and then into the realm of… “what the fuck are these things?” He asked, looking at the concrete forms.
“Dinosaurs sir.”
“Yes, I know they’re meant to be dinosaurs, but which ones?”
“A fan sir?”
“I was a little boy, of course I was a fan.” By now he’d reached the crime scene. “So what have we got here?” he asked, looking at a rather clumpy and low concrete monster whose cowled head had two horns jutting out, currently kebabing a very dead man.
“Might be a triceratops…”
“No, no, this time, I meant what happened to him.”
“Unless he fell off a ladder that’s run off, this isn’t an accident, someone picked him up and threw him onto the horns.”
“Must be strong.”
“The thrower or the horns?”
“Both. Murder then?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, fill me in on what you’ve got.” As he was told he looked at the way blood had run down the horns from the chest wounds, then down the concrete in little rivers and pooled on the ground. The advantage of stopping the public spying on the goods was no photographers had got a shot of this
.
“Err, sir, there’s some people to see you.”
Jeff turned, and discovered Dee, Nazir and the professor standing behind him, and he raised an eyebrow as Dee waved the box at him.
“How did you lot get in?”
“Turns out we’re familiar faces around you,” Dee smiled, Jeff looked concerned.
“And why are you here?”
“We heard there was an incident, we came to help.”
“How did you here?”
“I love this park,” Joe said from out of nowhere, “so when we heard the call we came.”
“Are you admitting to listening in to police radios?”
“You’d be amazed.”
“Right, well, it’s nice of you to offer to help, but we’ve got a good lead so it won’t be necessary today.”
“Oh.” They looked sad.
“Hi!” Joe shouted.
“Oh fuck, he’s started,” Jeff said, and turned to the corpse. “Right, officers, if you could move away for a minute, I’m just going to have a little chat with these people.” Everyone looked at him, eyebrows raised, and walked over to the entrance. “Right, this better be good.”
“Hi, you can talk into the b…” Joe didn’t need to explain things any further.
“That bastard could have hurt Jim!”
“Is Jim your son?”
“Jim’s the dinosaur!”
Okay, thought Jeff, it’s going to be one of those days. “Look, do you know who killed you?”
“Yes, I saw them as they walked away.”
As Jeff talked with the new arrivals, the uniform who’d walked away joked about the detective’s entourage, their term for the band of private detectives who were increasingly visible around their, well, he wasn’t exactly their boss was he. Half the uniform joked Jeff was just trying to get a bit of ‘skirt’, half joked that the group had a psychic octopus locked away. Then they got down to some serious work.
John Smuts, owner of Dino Mania, had not been killed by a criminal mastermind. Firstly no one had broken into the park, so they concluded the suspect used keys and was employed there, and a quick interview found a handful of people with the strength necessary to pick Dave up and throw him onto a horn. They couldn’t find a motive at this point, but it took this long for other police to go through the close circuit camera footage, and they soon identified Dave Callahan as the killer. Now Jeff arrived, his entourage having gone away, saying they should look at… Dave Callahan. No one asked how he’d got to this point, but with a three pronged lead it was time to raid the Callahan house.