The Smiling Man

by Joseph Knox

  ‘Are you OK?’ I said. She nodded but didn’t look up. ‘It’s been a night. Let me call you a cab.’

  She paced up and down the road while we waited, like she was trying to walk off the memory of Ali’s attack. The lapsed detective in me wondered if there was something between them but I immediately dismissed the idea. She was young and successful, a city girl at least twenty years his junior, going places. When the car arrived she climbed inside and started to close the door before pausing.

  ‘The fourth floor …’ she said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You found Ali on the third, you said. Why did your boss say they couldn’t go up to the fourth? What else was up there?’ I didn’t answer and she came to her own conclusion. ‘Before the paramedics put him under he was scared. Really scared …’

  ‘Scared of what?’

  ‘Voices, he said.’

  I passed her my card. ‘We’ll need to speak to you again, but call me if there’s anything you want to talk about in the meantime.’ She closed the door and stared at the back of the driver’s seat like we’d never met, until the cab merged into the traffic and disappeared from view.

  Although I’d only been gone for ten minutes, Scene of Crime Officers had arrived when I re-entered the building. I saw a junior member of the team hauling gear up the stairs as Sutty was coming back down them.

  ‘That’s all she wrote,’ he said. ‘I’ve set the primary scene boundary in 413.’

  ‘It should be at least the whole floor.’

  ‘We’ve only got half a team. Tactical can go door-to-door as and when. It’s not as though there’ll be a rush on the front desk tomorrow morning, is it? I’m pushing off.’ He walked past me, whistling a tune. The sound echoed through the lobby.

  I carried on up, past several uniformed officers. They were visibly uncomfortable with my being there, and I thought they might even try to block my path. When I reached the third floor I saw Karen Stromer, the pathologist, descending the stairs. Stromer was an impressive woman with a reputation for withering criticism and sharp instincts. It was the first time I’d seen her since rejoining the night shift, and I got the feeling that I’d fallen in her estimation. She valued serious officers, professionals, and the look on her face said she didn’t consider me one. She was wearing a pristine, plastic CSI cover-all. She stopped when she saw me and drew down her hood, revealing a narrow, bone-white face and a frown. She had short, black hair, gleaming dark marbles for eyes and an almost invisible little paper-cut for a mouth.

  ‘Detective Constable Waits,’ she said, still standing a few stairs above me. ‘May I ask what you’re doing here?’

  ‘We were responding to a reported break-in …’ I started.

  She cut me off with a subliminal smile and spoke with a quiet, steady voice. ‘I hadn’t quite realized you were back on active duty.’

  ‘I managed to keep a foot in the door.’

  ‘And a foot in something else, if I recall correctly. You were arrested. You were stealing drugs from evidence …’

  My voice sounded thick. ‘They dropped the charges.’

  She nodded, stared down at the space between us and smiled to herself. ‘I think I’ll ask you to return to the lobby, if that’s OK. I don’t want my crime scene contaminated.’

  I started to back away. ‘Is there anything you can tell us at this stage?’

  ‘Time of death somewhere between 11.30 p.m. and 12.30 a.m. Never ideal because one doesn’t know which date to record it as. No identification on his person. And it looks as though the labels have been cut out of his clothes.’

  ‘Cut out?’

  ‘I’ll be making a full report to your superior officer. Detective Inspector Sutcliffe, I believe?’

  I nodded and started for the stairs. ‘I keep trying to believe it myself.’

  ‘There was one thing, Detective Constable.’ I turned to see the smile, still playing on her thin lips. ‘I wonder if you spotted the thread in the dead man’s trouser leg?’ She read the look on my face. ‘Of course you did. The stitching’s from the inside …’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means that something’s been sewn into his trousers. Something he obviously wanted to keep safe …’ When I didn’t say anything she went on. ‘If I find drugs, I’m afraid I’ll feel compelled to report your attempted access of the crime scene. Given your history.’ She started to climb the stairs again, clearly unwilling to leave the body alone while I was in the building.

  ‘You won’t find any,’ I said to her back.

  She stopped but didn’t turn. ‘And what makes you so certain of that, Detective Constable?’

  ‘It’s something else.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’d know.’

  She climbed the stairs out of sight.

  Standing alone on the landing I realized I was out of breath.

  * * *

  The boy reached out for the woman’s hand but she pulled away.

  He was in the chaos of an outdoor market, between the stalls, surrounded by adults twice his size. The people were all moving in different directions and all he could see were their hands trailing by him at eye level. He reached out for the woman again but she shook him off and disappeared. The boy stopped, panting, being jostled all the while by the movements of people around him. He reached out for another familiar hand. Dark blue veins, long fingernails and silver jewellery. He held on tight this time and didn’t let go, even when the woman pulled him out into a clearing. He reached his other hand up and hung on, until she was dragging him along the floor.

  She stopped, gave a final tug and then crouched to look at him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said. The boy let go and saw that, her hands aside, she wasn’t much like his mother. This woman was younger. She smelt like fresh flowers, and when she frowned it was compassionate, curious. He opened his mouth, wondering what he was about to say, when the light changed. Something blocked out the sun and a strong hand clasped his shoulder.

  ‘Wally, Jesus, mate. Don’t run off like that, yeah? Scared me to death.’

  The boy watched the woman’s face change. She moved dark hair out of her eyes then stood, squinting at the large man who’d joined them. The boy twisted round to look up at him. Against the sunlight he was just a silhouette. That superhero square jawline with the shoulders to match.

  ‘He’s yours?’ asked the woman, tilting her head.

  ‘For my sins,’ said the man, with a rogue’s grin. ‘I’ll never tell you what I did, though. I’m Bateman, by the by.’ He held out a hand and she took it.

  ‘Holly,’ she said. ‘That’s a funny name he’s got …’ She was prolonging the conversation unnaturally. The boy often noticed women doing that around Bateman.

  ‘Wanna know where it comes from?’ Holly wrinkled her nose, nodded. ‘Well, Wally’s not his full name. It’s actually short for wallet.’ He reached behind the boy’s ear and produced a coin, dropping it into his outstretched hand. ‘Kid’s a gold mine.’ Holly started to laugh. When she did, the boy saw that she was more like a girl than a woman. Bateman took a step closer, offered her a cigarette. ‘You live around here, Holl?’ Her face changed again, and she shifted her weight from one leg to another.

  It was dark by the time Bateman got back to the car.

  Holly said her parents were out for the night, and Bateman had gone to look at her house. When he got back to the car he smelt like her, like fresh flowers. He sniffed his fingers and then searched his pockets for a cigarette, lighting up and chuckling to himself. He’d smoked it halfway down to the filter before he looked over at Wally. He reached behind the boy’s ear as if to produce another coin, but this time took a fistful of his hair. He held him tight with one hand, edging the tip of the cigarette towards him with the other.

  ‘Not a word to your mother, understood?’ Wally nodded, eyes locked on to the flame. Bateman grunted and let him go. ‘Let’s see how you did at the market.’ Wally opened the
glove compartment and pulled out some jewellery. Some of the rings from women he’d held hands with and three wallets he’d taken from passing men. Bateman went through the wallets, stripping them of cash and cards before dumping them out the window. He put the rings in his pocket and started the engine. He looked at the boy again before he pulled out into the road.

  ‘Fucking gold mine,’ he said.

  * * *

  II

  Red Eyes

  1

  I woke up confused by my surroundings, like I’d been moved in my sleep. The phone was ringing and I climbed out of bed to answer it.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, surprised at the gravel in my voice. There was no answer. Shafts of bright, warming sun beamed through the windows into my eyes, and everything was quiet and still. I leaned into the wall, happy to bask in the daylight I saw so little of. ‘Anyone?’ A moment passed. I thought I heard breathing down the line before it went dead.

  I waited a second, replaced the receiver and went to the window. It was the same Northern Quarter room I’d lived in for a year but it still felt borrowed, unfamiliar. My last job had required my moving here, severing ties with old friends that I’d yet to rebind. In the months since then I’d remained on pause, sleeping through the days and working through the nights. I’d got in from my shift after 6 a.m. It was after 9 now. The morning traffic that roared daily by my window had been and gone, and the street below was quiet. I could hear the buzz of talk radio coming from a car, the tick of a girl’s heels down on the pavement.

  I went to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. The night shift had done its work. Drained my skin of all colour, except for the immovable black shadows beneath my eyes. Sometimes my face seemed to change, drastically, in the night, and the next day I’d barely recognize it. I knew in reality it was just me, my idea of myself, that was so moveable, but now these shifts in perception, these changes, came so fast that they were frightening. Sometimes I thought I could even see my face warping, altering in the glass. I couldn’t tell if it was the drugs, finally leaving my system after all these years, or some kind of psychological trauma. It felt like finding out something terrible and undeniable about myself every day, and had become one more reason to hide out on the night shift. I could disappear into it and never be the same person twice.

  Identity, I thought.

  The smiling man.

  I usually experienced the presence of a dead body as an absence, but in this case it felt like a black hole opening up in front of me. Stromer said there had been no ID on his person, no labels in his clothes. As though the man had intended to disappear, to strip himself of all meaning. But the room we’d found him in sent mixed signals. I’d given a lot of thought to the anonymous death. Aokigahara, the suicide forest at the base of Mount Fuji, where the trees are so dense that the world can’t get in. Varanasi, India, where the blasting heat of the funeral pyre incinerates hundreds of bodies a day, or the Ganges, where you can fill your veins with cheap smack and walk up to your waist through the grotesque waters, keep on going, and vanish into the slipstream. Dying in the Palace Hotel was different. A flaw in what I saw as an otherwise perfect design. Where everything else about the man felt anonymous, there was something personal about the choice of room, the choice of view. Whether he’d made that choice himself or not was a different matter.

  The phone rang again and I went back into the living room to answer it.

  ‘Rise and shine, gorgeous.’

  ‘Morning, Sutts.’ I could almost smell his breath through the phone. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Turn that Aidan Waits frown upside down and get over to St Mary’s.’

  ‘Is the guard awake?’

  ‘He’d better not be. I want those sulky blue eyes to be the first thing he sees. Hold his hand and squeeze out a tear or two, he’ll spill his guts.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we be handing this over to the day shift?’ I wanted to know how involved we’d be before getting invested.

  ‘Officially it’s on DS Lattimer’s desk.’

  ‘So it’s a paperweight.’

  ‘Which is why I said you’d help him with the legwork.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘It’s going in my clearance stats, Aid. Not his.’

  Between Sutty and Lattimer that meant doing all the legwork. Somehow I didn’t mind. ‘What do you think our guard knows?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he flat-lined for a few seconds and saw the other side? You tell me. I’m mainly interested in what happened before someone bounced a fire extinguisher off his head. Get a sense of what kinda guy he is, dirty or clean.’

  ‘I’ll head over there now.’

  ‘And ask him about this other guard, the day guy. Name’s Marcus Collier.’

  ‘Have we got anything on him yet?’

  ‘An address but you know what it’s like. Uniform couldn’t raise a hard-on in a high school. They’re looking now.’

  ‘Do you think he’s involved?’

  ‘Well, one point of interest. The key card found on the floor of room 413 belonged to him.’ Marcus Collier. The day-shift security guard. I wondered if it could be that simple. He could have let someone into the hotel before Ali’s shift started. He could have had his key card stolen. He could even be our dead man. ‘Anyway,’ said Sutty, derailing my train of thought. ‘Everyone’s involved until I say otherwise. That includes your boyfriend in a coma. If the nice-guy act doesn’t wake him up, he might need a dose of your real personality, but please, only as a last resort.’

  ‘Is this a murder investigation?’

  ‘Only if it’s over my dead body. Think of this as a pleasant diversion from the investigation of dustbin fires. A thorough analysis of the facts designed to get the file off our desk and into my clearance stats.’

  Sutty’s investigative approach was usually the path of least resistance.

  ‘So you’re going to say it’s suicide? The attack on Ali implies—’

  ‘Implies shit,’ said Sutty. ‘For all we know, Smiley Face knocked him out then topped himself. You haven’t worked a case like this before, Aidan. We’re looking for a result, not a resolution. Our job’s to find out what top brass want to hear and belt it out from the rooftops.’

  ‘And have we got anything on him?’ I tried to ask naturally but I couldn’t keep the interest out of my voice. I could hear Sutty breathing down the phone. ‘Sutts?’

  ‘We’ll have the post-mortem results tomorrow. All I’ve heard from that direction is Stromer wants you off it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why does a fly eat shit? She’s a dyke, hates men.’ He snorted. ‘She must have you confused with one.’ A call with Sutty could feel like pouring poison into your head, and my ears were already ringing. I gripped the phone tightly.

  ‘I don’t think that’s it, Sutts …’

  ‘Listen, she’s been muff-diving so long she’s finally got the bends. Don’t worry about it.’

  I changed the subject. ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘It’s Sunday. Shift doesn’t start for another ten hours, I’ll be in bed. Let me know how you get on.’

  I started to hang up and then thought of something. ‘Did you call me earlier? About five minutes ago?’ He whistled in response. ‘What?’

  ‘Two callers in one day, an Aidan Waits record. Maybe it was Stromer,’ he laughed. ‘Maybe you’ve brought her back from the other side?’ Sutty hung up and I took a shower, mainly to wash him off me. I drank a coffee, dressed and left for the hospital. As I closed the door I wondered idly who else had been calling.

  2

  The sunlight was brilliant, beating down from a powder-blue sky. The people were all gleaming smiles and glowing skin, and their shadows danced out in all directions at once. After so long spent out of the day, it felt like a brand-new sensation to walk, unnoticed, through a beautiful one. I passed through streets of dirty redbrick buildings, through the morning bustle, feeling somehow new, somehow awake.

  My shirt was damp ag
ainst my body when I reached St Mary’s. I approached the reception and was directed up to the first floor. I arrived on to the ward to see the uniformed officer Sutty had sent to keep watch. He was pacing back and forth, yawning into the crook of his arm. He started when he saw me, unconsciously tucking his shirt in as I closed the distance between us.

  ‘Morning,’ I said.

  He looked at me strangely. ‘Detective Constable.’ As he spoke there was a scream from behind a closed door. ‘Just some bloke with night terrors,’ he said wearily.

  ‘It’s the morning.’

  ‘Go and tell him that, he’s been at it for hours.’

  ‘How’s our patient?’

  ‘Slept through the lot. Wish they’d given me whatever they gave him.’

  ‘A blow to the head? Don’t give Sutty any ideas.’

  ‘That was my fault …’

  I changed the subject. ‘Our man hasn’t said anything?’

  ‘Hasn’t opened his eyes, but they don’t think there’s any permanent damage.’

  ‘When are you being relieved?’

  ‘Two hours from now.’ He said it like a wish.

  ‘Well, I need to be here when he wakes up, anyway. You may as well get off home. I can hang around until your replacement arrives.’

  He paused. Glanced down the corridor over my shoulder, then looked at me again.

  ‘I’m not sure I should leave him alone …’

  ‘Alone?’ I said. He floundered, searched for the right words. His hands were clasped so hard behind his back that I felt like I’d cuffed him. ‘You mean that my reputation precedes me, Constable?’ He gave me a combined look of relief and dismay as I addressed the elephant in the room. He nodded tentatively. ‘That’s fair enough,’ I said. ‘I’ll find us both a coffee.’