Ms Holmes

by John Noonan

  And then at that precise moment, my front door burst open and a whirlwind in a trench coat came flying into the living room.

  ‘John! Hands off cocks and on socks! That was from Kestrel for a Knave, yeah? Depressing book that. That’s why I never understand why people read fiction. If you’re going to revel in misery, you may as well pick up a book about real life. Stop looking at me with that slack face; I’ve been up since six. Thought about waiting for you to get up, but realised that I was unlikely to see you before 9am. Aaaand it’s 8:59 so you win that one. Right, I’ve been to the shops, got you PowerAde - red flavour. Is that really a flavour? Now, I have a pack of cigs and there’s a café round the corner that looks like it could be good for something to eat; provided it involves a combination of beans, sausage, and egg. I’m going to go to smoke three of these and you are going to meet me outside. Chop, chop matey. Love what you’ve done with the place by the way. Mary would like it.’

  The whirlwind left and like that I realised SH was back in my life for good.

  We walked to the café in relative silence. The airplane engine that was my brain refused to allow coherent thought get out, and so I stared at the concrete allowing SH to guide me to the establishment. By the time we arrived and the smells of the fried breakfast failed to make me throw up, I found myself to returning to good spirits. SH refused to have anything but a black coffee, claiming that her stomach was like a walnut. She had occasionally refrained from eating ever since high school. Mum had expressed concern that she was anorexic, but SH always insisted that she just found it easier to think when digestion wasn’t getting in the way. By the time her GCSEs were over, she’d lost 5kg and Mum said she would never let her do something so irresponsible again. True to her word, she made me take in an extra pack lunch into school every day for her. She’d have SH by the ear if she were here.

  ‘So, how come you don’t feel like you’ve been dragged through a shit factory backwards?’ I asked.

  SH took a sip of her coffee, ‘I stopped drinking a long time ago. Much more interesting to watch you drink for both of us.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ I responded. ‘So, no drinking at all?’

  ‘Life of an Ibiza rep, mate; throws you off extreme alcohol consumption. I’ve been thinking about writing a blog about it.’

  We spent the next half hour reminiscing about our time in university, and went back even further to how we became friends in the first place. SH was the first person I came out to when I was 15. To be more exact, she was the one who came out for me. Having never shared a conversation ever before, she had approached me in the library and asked me what it was like to have affection for someone of the same gender. I remember being incredibly flustered, looking around to see if there were any prying ears ready to pounce on me at a moment’s acceptance of SH’s accusation. None came, and I realised that there was no malice behind her query. She saw something in me that I had never told anyone; as if one look at me had opened me up like a book.

  This would become her literal party trick and she would hold court in kitchens around Manchester guessing complete strangers’ lives simply through observing their stance, clothes and, on one instance, the type of gum they chewed. She said she never really understood it, it was just a family trait. Her talent would also create an uncontrollable thirst for knowledge. She would devour books on neurolinguistic practices, and mediation. She’d memorise compendiums on statistics and make notes on technical manuals. And whilst her grades flourished, she would struggle in areas such as English and History; believing that knowing who the ‘nine wives’ of Henry VIII were, and whether Shakespeare wrote Macbeth to be unnecessary to life. That was not to say she didn’t appreciate the arts, she just didn’t see the need to dissect them the same way you could a person. And then there was always the Jurassic Park conundrum.

  ‘It could never happen,’ I interrupted, as SH’s ramblings in the café turned to that Spielberg classic.

  ‘You honestly don’t know that, yeah?’ SH sighed, realising the conversation would go nowhere without my full cooperation. ‘That’s very narrow minded of you.’

  I laughed, ‘Says the woman who failed basic science…’

  ‘Right, this sun nonsense…’

  Before she could continue her hypothesis, her mobile vibrated on the table signalling a text. As SH picked up and read it, I noticed a flash of annoyance in her face. It was so minute it could have been anything, but I knew my friend well enough.

  ‘I’ve gotta go. Sorry!’ She said, packing up her stuff.

  ‘Wait, where you going?’

  SH didn’t responded, instead making her way to the out of the café like the devil was at her heels. Throwing some money on the table to pay our bill, I ran out after her and saw her hailing a taxi. I managed to sidle up next to her as one pulled up.

  ‘SH! Where are you going?’ I asked, blocking her entrance into the taxi.

  ‘What… Just… I have stuff that needs to be done. I’ll catch you later, yeah?’

  SH pushed me out of the way, and got into the back of the cab. I followed her in.

  ‘Wythenshawe, mate,’ SH shouted at the cabby, before noticing I’d got in. ‘What’re you doing John?’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ I said like a petulant child. ‘Whatever is going on, you can’t shut me out. Nope. Not happening.’

  ‘Are we going or what’ the cabby barked.

  SH scrutinised me for what seemed like an age, before turning to the cabby and murmuring a yes. She drew her attention back to me and sighed.

  ‘Right, we’re doing this yeah? You and me. Is that what you want?’ she asked not really wanting a response. ‘Right then. Well, you best be on your best behaviour, hadn’t you?’’

  ‘For what?’ I asked as the taxi lurched off.

  ‘For who more like,’ she said. ‘For my brother.’

  Meet Michael

  The revelation of another Holmes sibling was quite startling to me. For as long as I knew her, there had always been her and Ford. Nothing more, nothing less. As we travelled to Wythenshawe, my hangover more than subsided, I threw as many questions as I could at SH and hoped that some would stick, warranting a response. Managing to ignore me for as long as she could, she finally opened up.

  Soon after Ford’s death, a letter in the mail arrived from a man claiming to be her brother. A one-night dalliance between her mother and his father had apparently resulted in a half-sibling, Michael. With no other family to her name, her mother having long ago uprooted and left for London, SH had found someone who could fill the hole that had been torn unceremoniously out of her heart. Over that year, when I had thought that SH had been consumed by alcoholism and mourning, she had been taking the train to Manchester to meet with this new sibling in hopes of establishing some kind of relationship.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I replied. ‘Why would you not tell me this?’

  ‘There’s other things,’ She said dismissively. ‘Things that crawled out of the woodwork, that I had to deal with. It’s part of the reason…’

  ‘...you left?’ I finished off.

  SH turned to look out of the window and, like that, the remainder of our journey was taken in silence.

  We arrived at the estate and SH led me towards the house I proposed was where Michael lived. A throbbing base line had greeted us when the cab turned in to the estate, and now walking the brief distance to the house, it was clear the noise was emanating from a Ford Mondeo parked across the road with its windows rolled down; Aphex Twin bursting from its radio. The car’s driver rocked his head back forth, giving the impression of a cobra entranced by a snake charmer. As he watched us make our way to the house, I was caught off guard by the intensity of his stare. It was as if I had slept with his grandma and never called her back, such was the anger that screwed up his face. As his dark eyes pierced me, SH, appearing to have noticed the man as well, grabbed my hand and pulled me quickly towards the house.

  She knocked on the door and let herse
lf in without waiting for a response, leading me into a tastefully decorated living room. A three-piece suite played audience to an oversized TV and there were shelves bursting with books. In the centre of the room was a glass coffee table, with a box displayed quite prominently in the middle. On the couch lay a man of large stature, reading a battered copy of Cujo.

  ‘You know he’s outside,’ SH said by way of a greeting and nodding her in the general direction of noisy Mondeo outside.

  ‘Mmm?’ the man responded not talking his eyes off his book.

  ‘He been here long?’

  ‘Mmm,’ the man responded still not taking his eyes off his book.

  SH took a quick look at me and sighed. She lit a cigarette and then kicked the couch where the large man lay.

  ‘You’ve got guests,’ She spat.

  Continuing to read, the man shifted his bulky frame until he was making a pretence of sitting up.

  ‘Hello John,’ he said, turning a page, his voice dripping with forced received pronunciation. ‘You really shouldn’t drink so much bourbon; it plays merry hell with your sleep.’

  ‘Did you tell him I was coming?’ I asked SH.

  ‘Oh, Ms. Holmes told me nothing,’ the man said, finally putting the book down. ‘No, no. The clues are all there. SH told me she was going to be seeing some friends last night. It doesn’t take a genius to see that she’d go and meet up with her nearest and dearest. Outside of me obviously. Namely, the one man who put up with her for most of her life: John Watson. The fact I hadn’t heard from her this morning led me to realise that she had probably stayed over somewhere. And you smelling like a bottle of Jack Daniels told me the cause of the dark lids under your eyes.’

  ‘But you didn’t even look at me?’ I queried.

  ‘I’m looking at you now, aren’t I?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh god, can we move on?’ SH sighed, clicking her fingers. ‘He’s dicking you around John, and taking pot shots at me.’

  ‘Who is?’ I asked, getting tired of all the theatrics. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘I’m Michael, dear boy,’ the man said.

  Taking a moment, I looked Michael up and down. He was only in his 30s, but his hairline had long since seen better days. There was a possibility that Michael was once a formidable boxing opponent, but the muscle had turned to fat. Despite my brains assurance that I could easily outrun him should I need to, there was something in his eyes, behind his smile, that said he would catch up with me eventually. What was with all these men staring daggers at me today? You could tell they were related. His face would so similar to SH’s, if she happened to be fat and…

  ‘White.’ SH said, finishing off my thought. ‘Well done, John. You’ve twigged he’s white.’

  She threw her attention back to Michael.

  ‘Why do they always go there first?’ she asked.

  ‘Did you tell him I was a half-sibling?’ Michael responded

  ‘Yeah, but evidently he assumed our mother only liked black men.’

  ‘It’s kind of racist, when you think about it.’

  ‘It’s fetishizing is what it is. White women only sleeping with black people.’

  ‘Okay!’ I barked. ‘Enough of this, Chuckle Brothers.’

  Michael went onto explain how SH’s mother had left him when he was ten, moving on to start a new life as she would do again with Ford and SH. Raised by his father, Michael dropped out of school before his GCSEs, theorising that he was quite capable of learning things for himself. Moving to London when he was 18, he fell in with ‘the rum sorts’ and found that he was actually rather proficient in dodgy dealings.

  ‘I read about Ford’s death in the paper. SH was in a family photo they had used for the article. There was my mother with two people who would be my half-siblings. One I would never know, and one I would have a chance of knowing.

  ‘When I met SH, she was distraught. She needed distraction. Our minds rebel from stagnation, you know. So, I offered her a position.’

  ‘A position?’ I asked, looking at an increasingly nervous looking SH. ‘Nothing to do with Ibiza then?’

  ‘No, no and no. A fact finding mission, if you will,’ Michael’s eye sparkled the same way SH’s did from time to time. ‘I myself have too many eyes on me. If I was going to make my way ‘oop norf’ then I was going to need a local. Someone who could do various tasks. Cross the T’s. Dot the I’s. That sort of thing.’

  ‘So you’re a criminal?’ I asked SH.

  ‘Johnny, please. Criminal is a strong word,’ Michael protested. ‘I never ask SH to do anything I couldn’t get other people to do. No, SH is special. You must have noticed that. We both are. I’m sure Ford was the same. We see things others don’t. SH has never picked up a parking ticket under my watch, let alone a gun. She just goes out of her way to look for things that others struggle with. Solving crimes for criminals if you will. Now, see, you’ve made me use that word now.’

  ‘Why don’t you do them if you’re so similar?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘As I’ve said, dear boy, I have too many eyes on me. Lots of people who would want to split open my head and scoop out all the things I know.’

  ‘Like the bloke outside?’

  ‘Like the very same. A mildly impudent little cove, who has been trying to snare me in his web for some time.’

  I found that I was becoming lost for words; the enormity of what was going on had become hard to digest. SH had left me to help a long lost brother solve ‘crimes for criminals.’

  ‘John? John!’ SH said gently tapping me on the shoulder. ‘You said you wanted in. This is in. Now can I trust you? Or do you need to leave?’

  I paused for what seemed like an eternity.

  ‘I’m in.’

  To this day, I can’t tell you why I said what I said. Perhaps my own brain was stagnating. Perhaps it was the pain of my mother’s loss still being so fresh. Perhaps it was just making sure my friend was safe, so I never had to lose her again.

  Michael clapped and smiled.

  ‘Good show,’ he laughed. ‘Now, dearest sister, this one is a doozy.’

  ‘Is that accent for real?’ I asked, feeling brave.

  That was clearly not the question to ask. Michael’s face darkened and I felt my testicles retreat into me. After a short moment of uncomfortable tension, Michael leant forward to the coffee table and took the lid off the box. Still frowning, he gestured for us to have a look inside. Doing so immediately made the bile rise in my throat. The box was brimming with salt, some of it tinged pink. And on top of the pile were two very distinct fleshy items that someone was clearly going to miss.

  ‘Jesus,’ I whispered. ‘They’re fucking ears.’

  Fucking Ears

  ‘Right,’ said SH with more calm than one should really have in these situations. ‘When did these arrive?’

  ‘You’re talking like this is an Amazon delivery,’ I said.

  ‘John, mate, I’m going to need you to be quiet, yeah?’

  ‘They arrived this morning,’ Michael said, taking control of the conversation. ‘Wrapped in paper and string of all things.’

  SH took the wrapping that Michael handed to her and inspected it. Presuming she took nothing from it, she threw it into her bag.

  ‘Makes sense,’ she finally said. ‘Why would you risk having your parcel tracked? Who is S. Cushing?’

  ‘She is my, shall we say, tenant here.’ Michael responded.

  ‘Is this a brothel?’ I gasped.

  ‘Why does his mind keep hurtling towards these conclusions?’ Michael aimed the question at SH.

  ‘He’s a writer. It’s what they do.’

  Michael sighed and shifted his weight once more. As my cheeks went a deep crimson, he patiently explained that he was not, as I assumed, a pimp. ‘S. Cushing’ was in fact Susan Cushing; a middle aged woman who lived in the very house we stood in.

  ‘One of the many hats I wear is that of landlord,’ Michael explained. ‘Susan received thi
s parcel this morning and immediately called me. As her landlord.’

  ‘Why didn’t she call the police?’ I asked.

  Michael threw a hand in the direction of the large pile of DVD players and personal CD players in the corner of the room that I had failed to notice. Evidently they were stolen.

  ‘Ms Cushing makes a rather good tenant in so far as she knows that calling the police could lead to certain consequences for us all,’ Michael explained. ‘One of my associates, James, is supposed to be coming around at some point this week to pick those up.’

  During this conversation, SH had begun to prod the ears with a biro as to ascertain the legitimacy of their existence. Using the tip of her pen, she balanced one ear by its helix, taking a long look at the serrated edges on the side.

  ‘Right, well, this got interesting,’ she smiled, wriggling the ear in front of my face.

  ‘More interesting than finding ears in a box?’ I remarked, slapping the offending item away from me.

  SH put the ear back in its makeshift home next to its partner and turned to me.

  ‘First off, I’m sure Michael doesn’t need me to tell him that this a warning. More than a warning. This is a threat.’

  Noting Michael’s nod of agreement, she carried on.

  ‘Michael gets threats all the time, but not to this magnitude. Aside from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the box, what’s interesting, John, is that these aren’t identical. They belong to two different people.’

  She whirled around to Michael and pointed at him.

  ‘Who have you pissed off?’ she asked accusingly. ‘Who have you pissed off enough to warrant this?’

  ‘No one,’ Michael responded, holding up his hands in mock defence. ‘And if anyone were to do this to me, there would be repercussions. No dear sister, as I have said, this parcel wasn’t addressed to me. It was to my tenant.’

  ‘I need to speak to her. Is she here?’

  Michael called out into the kitchen and a moment later, Susan Cushing entered the room. Her eyes red from crying and a Marlboro hanging loosely from her mouth. In her hand, she carried an early morning glass of wine. Michael introduced her to the room.