by Anton Marks
Patra joined the huddle of women on the bed, her back to them, her butterfly tattoo at the base of her spine. She leaned on Suzy and Y, letting her head loll between their backs, smelling fresh and her skin cool to the touch.
“I’m feeling your pain babe and I know you feeling guilty about this shit but it could have happened to anyone of us. We don’t blame you.”
“Come on sis, yuh know Patra reasoning mek sense.”
“I knew you two would react like this but you can’t help me feeling guilty about it. Tyrone duped me, duped us and I’m pissed. That bastard took our dreams from us man, I can’t be cool with that.”
“We not cool sugahhh,” Patra said. “But we gotta accept the facts. Motherfucker Tyrone took our money, played us like a ten dollar whore and I want his nuts between a vice, you feel me.”
Y smiled at Patra’s directness and the amusing package of her delicate high pitched voice. For those who didn’t know her very well they were always surprised by her street lingo and profanity. They stereotypically expected those character traits from Y, the fit, feisty dark skinned one not the statuesque, light skinned sister with the twinkle in her eyes and butter couldn’t melt in her mouth smile. After their initial shock - even with the sexy lilt from the southern states of the US - what they wouldn’t know was how much of a good soul she was, kind, selfless and loyal. And Y knew the world did not have an abundance of such people.
Y squeezed Patra’s hand.
“I just can’t help thinking you blame me.”
Suzy kissed her teeth loud and long.
“Yuh know that’s not true gal. If yuh going to start thinking like that yuh might as well blame me for not being stronger.”
“Yep,” Patra nodded in agreement, the word flipping out of her mouth petulantly.
“I should have kicked that Motherfucker’s ass as soon as he tried to flip shit and breakdown our friendship.”
“Nip it rass, in deh, bud.” Suzy added. “He felt odd, sis. His whole vibe, from day one but nothing screamed out about him. That alone was strange.”
“Maybe we misunderstood him? He was unfamiliar, so you read him wrong.”
Patra sighed, rolling her eyes.
“Don’t let me pop you upside your head giiiirl. Tell me you didn’t just try to make excuses for that thieving cocksucker?”
“I just thought…”
“No you didn’t think queen bitch.” Patra looked over to Suzy exasperated. “You tell her before I get tribal on her ass.”
Y knew it was the frustration of people who cared; finishing her Asti she placed the empty flute on her side table.
“Yuh don’t know the full story baby.” Suzy said. “Him aura was vivid in mi face, not evil dark, just a conniving light blue. I smelt old money and grease, tasted steel and coffee. Me know him have a mischievous aura but that doesn’t make him bad. I wanted to talk to you about it but you wouldn’t have taken it seriously. We decided to spare yuh the details.” Suzy said calmly.
“And now.”
“Well at deh time we thought wi had your best interest at heart.” Suzy said.
“You felt I couldn’t accept that, after everything we’ve been through?”
Suzy nodded.
“You were happy babe.”
“I was a fucking fool.” Y said.
“Hindsight is a bitch sugahhh.” Patra concluded. And we both know Suzy has the touch, she can sense shit. We need to give her gift more respect.
Y nodded.
“We hope him, would show him colors to you and you would drop kick him rass but he was smarter than we gave him credit for.”
“As I said we should have bum rushed his bitch ass.”
“The worst feeling is that I was sleeping with this bastard and my instincts told me nothing. What does that say about my choice of men?”
“It stinks.” Patra stated plainly.
“Coming from someone whose relationships last in deh region of hours at a time, dat’s rich.” Suzy said.
Patra shrugged and grinned.
“What now?” Y asked.
“What to do but carry on.” Suzy said.
“With what?” Y sounded exasperated.
“We alive ain’t we?” Patra jumped up, arms pointing to the ceiling. “Let me tell you what I’m going to do now. I’m going to update my Facebook profile, drop kick that chicken shit outfit called a courier company I work for and find someone who appreciates my hard working ass.”
Y spluttered in the background.
Suzy sighed staring into the middle distance.
“I hand in mi uniform next week then start looking around feh something part time.” She looked at her sisters with sad eyes. “I haven’t told him yet.”
“What do you think he’s going to say?” Y asked.
“Is what Paul won’t say that worries me. He will cover our mortgage wid out question. I’m just not sure whether him getting tired of me an my drama.”
“You mean our drama.” Patra corrected her.
Their rock and ghetto oracle sounded forlorn, not something they saw often from Suzy and it was attacked with optimism from quarters where optimism wasn’t second nature.
“It will work itself out,” Y said.
Suzy agreed.
“It will work itself out. But nuh fret, Tyrone nah get away wid it. I promise you dat.”
“Hell no! I told you I got plans for that motherfucker, recognize.”
“You an’ me both but nuh worry, him time a guh come.”
“But why us Suzy?” Y asked. “Why now after all the hard work and graft to get to this point just to see it dragged from us?”
“It’s a shift. It can’t be anything but dat.” Suzy said.
Patra, with the towel over her shoulder scratched her head playfully. Y gesticulated for Suzy to keep going.
“It’s another life changing event, yuh know like the bank robbery. A turning point in all our lives dat brought us together.”
“So we are the lucky ones again, the chosen ones.”
“What the fuck did I do in a past life?” Patra piped up.
“C’mon girls, deh world is a big place. Yuh don’t honestly believe we are the only people experiencing this. No way. But we will be the ones who will accept what has been given to us, rolling wid the blows and adapting. When our destiny presents itself we will accept it.
“Remind me, what is our destiny?” Y asked.
“Mi nuh know.”
“Great.”
“We are but tools and fate will use us how it sees fit.” Suzy recited.
“Shakespeare?” Patra asked.
“No, Grandma Wong,” Suzy laughed.
“Talking about fate, I left a message on John’s mobile just after this shit started today. He hasn’t returned my call yet.”
“You don’t mean Detective Sergeant John ‘the dick’ Shaft of the Metropolitan Police Force?” Patra parodied the tones of a southern belle in some Gone with the Wind drama. “Don’t play,” Y said seriously. “He’s a gentleman.”
“You can’t blame a girl for trying. All I know when I see him I just want to bite a chunk out of that chocolate booty. That nigga is fine.”
“Him nuh have eyes feh the likes of you miss hot stuff, he’s sweet on Y.”
“Don’t even start with that ‘we should be together’ bit. John is a pro and he’s got more pressing things on his mind than me.”
“Pressing it may be baby but what’s pressing is not on his mind,” Suzy couldn’t resist.
“All I know,” Patra shuffled on the bed as if the mention of DI Shaft made her uncomfortable. “Is if any cat is glad that lame dick son-of-a-bitch Tyrone is gone, Shaft is that man. Every nigga deserves a chance sugahhh.”
Y’s silence only meant that the thought had crossed her mind before.
“Suh let’s make another toast,” Suzy announced. Y poured some more Asti into their empty glasses, watching the effervescence settle.
“To battles fought and won.”
“Battles!”
Their glasses met in the gesture of a toast, crystal clinking and the sound resonating as they pulled away in unison to sip from their glasses. That’s when they saw a weak glow connecting all three flutes. This wispy flutter of light became more intense as the girls looked on in hushed amazement, the hairs on their arms standing on end and their breaths caught in their throats. The glasses almost sang as they vibrated a beautiful varying pitch that made their arms tingle, maintaining the tone of the glasses song like a soprano in an opera. Not wanting to break the connection themselves they watched it as the overtones rose to a heady crescendo and slowly died out, dissipating as if it never existed. They lowered their glasses in incredulous silence.
Suzy grinned and said.
“Ladies I tink we’ve just been given a sign.”
3.
Soho, West Central London
Friday, July 5th
03.20am
DI John Shaft MacFarlane parked the car at the north side of Old Compton Street. He arrived with no fanfare and only when he had turned off the engine did he slide his emergency light on the roof of the jag and let it flash for a moment without leaving the car.
He checked his mobile and swore. Y had tried to call him and somehow he had missed it. Y’s calls never languished on his mobile phone for too long because, on a level he did not quite understand, her presence required his full attention. He loved talking to her but most importantly he loved listening to her speak. It was the way she massaged her words with her tongue as they left her mouth, a husky female backbeat that cloaked her sentences, delivering them into the world with erections almost. Y could be talking bullshit – she never did – and he could happily luxuriate in how she delivered it. Then there was this mystical warrior princess thing she had going on with her sexy friends that was definitely a turn on. To her credit she never demanded attention - directly or through implication - but he felt she deserved it. Strange thing was she had a live-in lover and he presumed she was happy but for reasons he would one day look into he didn’t care. He decided to call her in the morning when he could give her his undivided attention.
Soho was as blunt and unpretentious as always and he loved it for that. He loved the tacky neon lights, the smell of cigarette smoke, the dingy upstairs apartments and the aromas of stale beer. For this kind of summer weather the Pubs had spilled out their patrons onto the narrow pavements, conversation and laughter were everywhere. No one knew or cared what had happened not too far away at Soho Square.
The party goes on.
Tonight, even under the circumstances, he was glad to be here - in fact as long as he was away from Wood Green and any skinny women called Marcia he would be happy anywhere.
The priority message he was acting on deserved his full attention even if he was on a date. This had been the only real day off he’d had in three weeks, a great excuse to ignore it but truth be told his mobile had saved him from a date worse than death.
For single men like him it could be a jungle out there, inhabited by a menagerie of venomous female specimens who wanted to take a mate whether a member of the male persuasion wanted to participate in the dating rituals or not.
He slid out of the black Jaguar saloon dressed in a grey Ralph Lauren polo neck, a dark Kenzo suit, Gucci loafers with no socks and adjusted the symmetry jacket. Shaft had a gifted sense of fashion and his quick glance in his rear view mirror, reminded him his standards remained high.
Operation Black Book was never a good place to find an ideal woman anyway unless introverted analysts who barely knew the difference between an Orc attacking them in World of Warcraft and an amorous advance in the real world was your thing. Romances at work had a tendency to end disastrously for him anyway.
He had tried.
So DI MacFarlane instead focused his efforts in a small obscure section of the Scotland Yard Operation whose funding sidestepped the Metropolitan Police bureaucracy and was kept hidden almost by its specialist category. The crimes he investigated featured heavily on the uncategorized ethnic crime fringe. The top brass had been able to kill two birds with one stone by forcing him to take this gig and making sure he never darkened the crime scenes of DI’s who do real police work ever again.
John McFarland was not so easily ignored. Shaft, as the boys from Operation Trident preferred to call him because of his more than passing resemblance to a young Richard Roundtree - without the chest hair and tash – did not roll over for anyone. With an IQ of 160 he was a trained anthropologist, ambitious and confident. Shaft blazed a trail from Hendon to the streets with a detour in Africa, making as many enemies as he could along the way and some well placed friends too. Operation Black Book was supposed to neuter his drive, frustrate the shit out of him with no resources, no cases and no satisfaction. Instead his department reconnoitred resources from Operation Trident who dealt in cases of black-on-black crime – and begged, borrowed or stole what they needed. Who would take seriously a division that handled the unexplained, strange, religious and superstitious stuff – kinda like a ghetto X-Files.
Well he did and a few well positioned figures in the Met hierarchy did too.
Over the years the major cities in the UK were being adversely affected by cult, ritualistic, voodoo and urban myth related crimes. The many unexplained cold cases that fell between the cracks of rational explanation and involved the ethnic demographic did not rest well with the rank and file of the Metropolitan Police force. Fingers were being pointed and the Met spin doctors were struggling to shrug off the institutional racism label, hence his small department and its specific remit. The official line was that Black Book did not exist and that was fine by him. If it protected the sacred institution of Scotland Yard from the ridicule of sanctioning the investigation of spooks, myths and curses then that was a public relation coup for them.
So with everything going on it was difficult keeping the dating game fun and the dates themselves regular - he didn’t like the idea of prowling nightclubs with the other bachelors like pack animals either. This required him to relax his standards and adapt a new method of meeting suitable women. With his expertise of human interaction and the importance of the highly evolved mating ritual of the human animal, online dating did not sit well with him. And that was his problem. Shaft didn’t see it as a means to an end; he viewed it as an anthropological blind alley. Not just another tool with its unique set of rules. Against all he believed in his savior was to be online dating and tonight had been his first face-to-face.
They met at a restaurant of her choosing - which makes the rest of the story even more surreal - and at Wood Green of all places.
The woman who walked in and greeted him was the spitting image of Popeye’s Olive Oyl and now he was beginning to understand why she never posted a photograph of herself in full cartoon glory, just choice snaps of her best bits.
Their compatibility charts may have been in the high percentile but she ticked all the boxes for the wrong reasons. A woman with bigger feet than him was an immediate and unequivocal, ‘Hell no!’ But he must have been trapped in the moment because he gave her the benefit of the doubt. After all a woman who could write so well couldn’t be all bad, could they?
Then she opened her mouth and spoke.
By this time his jaw was dragging on the floorboards.
Marcia’s vocal tone was an impressive high end basso.
Damn!
He must have been in shock because Shaft sidelined ‘the voice ting’ as a mere oddity and by now was holding his breath, expecting a reprieve in the form of just one pleasing character trait, to salvage the evening.
Please.
He waited to exhale.
Then all hell broke loose.
A clumsy waiter spilt wine, stained dress and grievous bodily harm. Marcia may have been skeletal in frame but it took Shaft some doing to pry her off the waiter.
It was comforting to know the old edicts still applied and why Marcia was to be the object lesson in how
our basal instincts still dominate even after mankind’s complete domination of the planet and to a lesser degree why women with big feet throw him off his game.
Providence came to his rescue and his bleeper went off - not that it mattered because he would have been out of there before his colleagues in blue turned up.
A mobile phone call later and he was making his way to the West End, leaving his androgynous, anger challenged, Olive Oyl lookalike date far, far behind him.
Shaft breathed his third sigh of relief and buried tonight’s incidents deeply in his mind. Ahead of him was the reason for his hasty arrival. The part of Soho Square near Frith and Greek Street was sealed off.
Taking his time to observe his surroundings, Shaft casually walked over to the police cordon allowing the vibe - the smells, the feel and the gathering crowd’s reaction - to wash over him. He recognized the unmarked Astra’s and the Sprint vans and knew this had attracted the usual clique of hotshot DCI’s. Shaft’s involvement usually occurred when they hit a brick wall or became uncomfortable with the direction a case was taking. A call so soon was unusual.
He began to step over the cordon and immediately he was approached by a uniformed officer.
He flashed his warrant card nonchalantly, stopping him dead in his tracks.
Shaft said.
“I’m Detective Sergeant McFarlane, I need to see your SIO. A Detective Inspector John Duncan?”
The officer looked around the area behind him, his eyes picking through the milling investigating team all engrossed in their work and bathed in light from powerful halogen lamps.
He pointed to an area near the wrought iron fence that ran the perimeter.
“He’s over there sir.”
Shaft nodded, seeing only an outline at first smoking a cigarette. To his right was a lighted forensic tent with its flap pulled to one side. He could just see the CSI team, in their disposable Noddy suits, capturing as much evidence as possible around the body and blood splashed area. And the area was blood splashed. As if some crazed surrealist artist had thrown buckets of animal blood all over, creating a macabre sense of depth to his composition.