The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16

by Stephen Jones

  Fred slapped him. “Trying to help,” he told the shocked policeman. “Now shut up, Busy Lizzie!”

  Richard snapped out of it. “No need for additional ultra-violence,” he said. “There’s been quite enough of that. You, Constable Boddey, give me the court report.”

  Busy looked up at Richard. Fred nodded at him.

  “This morning, something came here and did . . . that . . . to Booth.”

  “Very concise. Did you find the corpus?”

  Busy shook his head. “No, it was Brie. One of the girls. Massive knockers. Does secretarial stuff too. She’s scarpered. You won’t see her Bristols round here again in a hurry.”

  “Was anything seen of the assailant or assailants?”

  Busy shut up.

  “Now now, come come . . . you called Fred for a reason. The Diogenes Club has a reputation. We don’t involve ourselves in gangland feuds or routine police-work. We’re here for more arcane matters.”

  Busy tried hard to stop shaking. “I saw it,” he said.

  “The murder?” prompted Richard.

  “The murderer.”

  “It?”

  “He, I suppose. When Brie screamed, I came upstairs. It was still here, standing in that doorway. It had done its business, just like that, in seconds I reckon. Thump thump thump and the show’s over, folks, haven’t you got homes to go to? It had a big coat, like a flasher, a dirty mac, and a hat, old-fashioned . . .”

  “Tricorn, shako, topper . . .”

  “No, one of those movie gangster jobs. Trilby.”

  “So, we have his clothes described. What about the rest? Size?”

  Busy held his hands apart, like a fisherman telling a whopper.

  “Huge, giant, wide, thick . . .”

  “Face?”

  “No.”

  “No, you can’t bear to remember? Or no, no face?”

  Busy shook his head.

  “What you said second. Just greyey white, sludge-features. With eyes, though. Like poached eggs.”

  “A mask,” suggested Fred.

  “Don’t think so. Masks can’t change expressions. Can’t smile. It did. It saw me and Brie, and it smiled. How can something with no mouth to speak of smile? Well, it was bloody managing, that’s all I can say. God, that smile!”

  Busy covered his face again.

  Richard looked about the ante-chamber. Spots of blood and something like mud dotted about the doorway, but this room was clean. Floor-to-ceiling shelves held box-files with faded ink dates on their spines. A coffee-table by Busy’s stool had a neatly-arranged fan of girlie magazines – Knight, Whoops!, Big and Bouncy, Strict, Cherry, Exclusive. An undisturbed coat-tree bore a mohair topcoat, a bowler hat and an umbrella. Savile Row, definitely. Better quality than anyone on a Scotland Yard wage could afford without going into debt.

  There was a clear demarcation line. The devastation was confined to the inner office.

  “Your Mr Sludge made quite an entrance,” said Richard. “Splashy, in fact. But the exit was more discreet.”

  Busy nodded.

  Fred took the constable’s chin and forced him to look at Richard.

  Busy swallowed.

  “It emptied out somehow,” he said, making a swirling gesture, “as if going down a plug-hole, then it was just gone, coat and hat and all.”

  “Intriguing.” Richard took another gulp of tea, and put his mug down on the cover of Knight, blotting the chest of a girl wearing parts of a suit of armour. “So we have something here substantial enough to wreak considerable damage but capable of, as it were, evaporating. You were quite right to call us, Constable Boddey. If there’s a phantasm, golem or affrit in the case, it falls under our purview.”

  Fred let Busy go.

  He was surprised to find he felt a sympathy twinge for Busy. He wasn’t a chancer anymore, just a shell-shocked survivor who’d have to live with bad dreams.

  Richard produced a scraper from a flapped side-pocket. He ventured gingerly into the office, careful not to brush against anything dripping. He took a sample of something congealed and sticky.

  “Sludge, indeed,” he said. “Plasm of some specie. Ecto-, perhaps. Or psycho-, eroto- or haemo-. Then again, it could just be gunk.”

  He scraped it back onto the door-jamb.

  “I just need to know one more thing,” said Richard, addressing Busy. “Who else have you told?”

  Busy looked up, a sparkle of the old cunning reminding Fred he was still the same flash git he’d known at Hendon.

  “Um,” began Busy.

  There was a commotion downstairs. People arriving.

  “Not the police,” Richard observed, instantly.

  His hawkish brows narrowed. Busy shrank, trying to slip back into shivering wreck status to avoid answering for his actions.

  A yelping and ouching indicated someone was being dragged upstairs.

  Zarana was pushed into the room. This time Fred caught hold of her. She put her face to his chest so as not to look into Booth’s office.

  A beef-faced, big-bellied man in a dark suit that had fit him better in 1965 was at the top of the stairs, wheezing. Charging up two flights was something he hadn’t done in a while. Someone (almost certainly a young woman) had persuaded him that a paisley scarf worn under an open violet shirt would make him look less behind-the-times – the sweaty foulard flopped on his sternum like a dead (but with-it) herring.

  A pair of heavy lads backed him up.

  The newcomer was so used to being a hard man he hadn’t bothered to keep in shape. People were still afraid of him for things he’d done years ago. If half what Fred had heard about Mickey “Burly” Gates were true, people were right. Gates had apprenticed as a meat-cutter at Smithfield’s before joining the firm. Throughout his career, Gates had been in meat of one sort or another.

  Allegedly, he kept his hand in with his old chopper.

  Gates took in Richard, from pointed boot-toes to tumble of long hair.

  “Who the bloody hell are you?” he demanded, “and what the bleeding hell do you think you look like?”

  Richard shrugged his eyebrows and commented, “Charming.”

  Then the meat-cutter saw Boot Boy Booth. “Jesus wept!” Gates said, involuntarily crossing himself.

  “Friend of yours?” asked Richard, casually.

  Gates tore his gaze away from the red ruin in the inner office and looked again at Richard, squinting.

  “This is them, Mickey,” said Busy Boddey – it didn’t surprise Fred that a DC in the OPS was on first-name terms with Burly Gates. “Specialists in ghosties and ghoulies. The Odd Squad.”

  Richard cocked an eyebrow. “I haven’t heard that one before. Not so sure I care for it.”

  “I understand about specialists,” said Gates, making an effort to calm down. “I use them a lot. Like plumbers. If they do a diamond job, I’m a happy chappie and the packet of notes is nice and thick. If they don’t . . . well, they forfeit my custom and, as it happens, tend to retire early. Clear?”

  “Crystalline,” drawled Richard, not really listening.

  A framed photograph had caught his attention. Pony-Tail, again – in St Trinian’s uniform, with hockey-stick and straw boater. Ten years gone, and the girl was still all over Soho.

  “Diamond,” said Gates. “So, get on and specialize. I don’t really care what happened, just so long as it don’t happen again on my patch. Track down who . . .”

  “What, most likely.”

  “. . . or what did this, and make sure they get put out of business.”

  Richard looked at Gates and did something shocking. He giggled.

  Gates’ red face shaded towards crimson. Sweat steamed off his forehead.

  Richard’s giggle became a full-throated King Laugh. He made gun-fingers and shot off all twelve chambers at Gates. Fred had to swallow a smirk.

  Gates searched his waistband for a chopper. Mercifully, he had left it at home.

  Richard shut off his laugh. “You’ve made
a fundamental error in assessing this situation,” he told Gates. “I am not a plumber or a cabbie. I am, as it were, not for hire. I cannot be suborned into serving your interests – or, indeed, any but my own. Call me a dilettante if you wish, but there it is. I am here as a favour to my good friend, Sergeant Regent, and because the matter has features of uncommon interest.”

  Gates goggled in amazement.

  “You evidently consider yourself a power in this district,” observed Richard.

  “I could have Eric and Colin snap you like a twig, sunshine.”

  Gates’ heavy lads pricked up their ears. They cracked hairy knuckles.

  “You could have them try,” said Richard, amused. “It wouldn’t advance your cause one whit, but if you feel the need, go ahead. Powerlessness must be a new, disorienting condition for you. I understand your need to attempt to reaffirm yourself. However, if upon second thought you’d rather not annoy me further and leave me to continue my investigations, kindly quit my crime scene. This isn’t your fiefdom any more. This is where the wild things are. Is that, ah, diamond?”

  Gates’ mouth opened and closed like a beached fish’s.

  He grunted and left. Eric and Colin directed the full frighteners at the room, but only Busy cringed. Richard waved at them, a flutter of farewell and dismissal.

  “Toodle-oo, fellows.”

  Eric and Colin vanished.

  Fred breathed again. He hoped Zarana hadn’t noticed him trembling.

  IV Local History

  “Let’s see if I have this straight,” began Richard, setting his thimble-cup down on the red Formica table, “ ‘Skinderella’s’ is owned by that irritable gent Gates, but was managed by a serving police officer? Setting aside that puzzle, I understand that Mr Gates is a big fellow around these parts?”

  Zarana nodded. “He has a ton of clubs. Chi-Chi’s, the Hot-Lite in Dean Street, Dirty Gertie’s (at Number Thirty), the Prefects’ Hut, the National Girlery . . .”

  She had taken off her Carry On Cleo gear (on stage, not that Fred had caught her turn), and now wore a lime-green mini with matching knit waistcoat, Donovan hat and shaggy boots. She had nondescript, shortish brown hair – pinned so she could get the wig back on quickly for her 5:30.

  They sat in Froff, a Greek Street café. Gleaming, steam-puffing espresso machinery was held over from when it was called Mama Guglielmi’s. A new vibe was signalled by deep purple tactile wallpaper, paper flowers stuck to mirrors and sitar musak. Waiters wore tie-dye T-shirts and multi-coloured jeans wider at the ankles than Fred’s sta-presses were at the waist. The staff were wary of Fred. His just-growing-out skinhead haircut (a ‘suedehead’) made him look like the natural enemy of all things hippie, but he sussed that they had Soho antennae that twitched if there was a non-bent policeman about. He had pointedly been asked if he’d like a bacon sarnie. As it happens, the one which turned up was excellent, even if he had to make a conscious effort to blank out the memory of Boot Boy Booth’s death-site to face his nosh.

  Two tables over, a rat-faced herbert in a fringed Shane jacket two sizes too big for his thin shoulders sold silver-foil slivers to fresh-from-the-country kids who were going to be disappointed when they tried to smoke the contents.

  “Mr Gates strikes me as somewhat traditional for these environs,” said Richard.

  Zarana drew four corners in the air and sniggered.

  “Indeed,” said Richard. “The original Soho Square.”

  “Burly Gates started out as meat-cutter,” said Fred. “Then as a bouncer, for Schluderpacheru.”

  “Yeah, Popeye,” said Zarana. “Now there’s a real creep.”

  “Fred, you are familiar with this foreign-sounding person?”

  “Konstantin Schluderpacheru. Vice Lord back when we had rationing. Soho was overrun by demobbed blokes with money in their pockets and bad habits picked up in the War. No one’s sure where he comes from, but he claims to be Czech. Besides the striptease places, he was – probably still is – landlord for a lot of first- and second-floor properties with single female tenants.”

  “Knockin’ shops,” said Zarana, with distaste. “Don’t gawp, Freddy. I show it, I don’t sell it.”

  Richard patted a hand over Zarana’s large fist.

  “I’m amazed you have such a command of local history,” Richard told Fred.

  “It’s what Every Young Copper Should Know. Faces and statistics. At the Yard, they print them on cigarette cards.”

  Fred was pleased that for once he was filling in Richard on arcana. Usually, it was the other way around.

  “Pray continue, Frederick.”

  “Come the late ’50s, Mickey Gates is a jumped-up teddy boy rousting drunks at Schluderpacheru’s places. He was a double act with a cove by the name of Grek Cohen, who used to be a wrestler. One of those man-mountain types. The story went that you could stick a flick-knife into him over and over for five minutes and he wouldn’t even notice. Burly and Grek worked up a nice little protection racket, originally targeting Schluderpacheru’s competition. Also, they started smut-peddling – brown-paper-wrapped little mags and pics. Gates calls himself a ‘publisher’ now, which means the same stuff on glossier paper. You saw his stuff in Booth’s reception area. Knight, Whoops!, Cherry. Those are the ‘respectable’ ones.”

  “You’re well up on this.”

  “Where do you think all the stuff confiscated in raids winds up? Night shifts at police stations get very boring.”

  “I was in Knight once,” said Zarana. “A Roarin’ Twenties set, shimmerin’ fringes, long beads.”

  “Schluderpacheru thought porn was peanuts, and let Burly and Grek scurry around picking up grubby pennies. Big mistake. Pennies add up to a grubby pile. They acquired leases to half the district. They were the new Vice Lords.”

  “How did their erstwhile employer take that?” asked Richard.

  “That’s the funny part. Schluderpacheru was in the Variety Club of Great Britain by then. He got into the film business, as an agent and then a producer. He leased his ‘talent’ to quota quickies. Pony-Tail played the victim in a murder mystery, Soho Girl. After she got killed and before Zachary Scott found out Sid James did it, audiences lost interest. But when she was on the screen, they sat up to attention. Schluderpacheru reckoned he had the next Diana Dors under exclusive contract. Well, maybe the next Shirley Anne Field. Blonde and British, you know. This made him feel like the unpronounceable answer to Lew Grade. He planned to build a whole film around her . . .”

  “Brighton Belle,” said Zarana. “Mavis was goin’ to be in it.”

  “He was going to give her a proper name. Gladys Glamour, or something. But it didn’t happen. Schluderpacheru became a producer, but not with Pony-Tail as his star. She disappeared about that time – presumably wriggling out of the lifetime contract, and making things easier for Shirley Anne Field. Burly and Grek were taking over the clubs and Schluderpacheru had to put up some sort of fight or lose face. If people weren’t respectful, which is to say terrified, of him, his empire would tumble. But he also knew he needed to ditch girlie shows if he wanted to be invited to the Royal Film Performance. So, in 1963 or thereabouts, Soho had a not very convincing gang war. In the end, Schluderpacheru divested himself of the clubs – retaining enough of an interest to claim a stipend from Gates.”

  “And Grek Cohen?”

  “When the dust settled, Grek was nowhere to be seen. His missing persons file at the Yard is still open. In order to make friends again, Schluderpacheru and Gates had to agree neither were to blame for their disagreement. But someone had to be, to satisfy pimps’ honour or whatever. Grek was handy, stupid and expendable. That said, God knows how they got rid of him. Not with a flick-knife, obviously.”

  “Mavis says it was her,” blurted Zarana.

  Richard and Fred looked at the girl. There was a long pause.

  “I’m not goin’ to be a grass,” she said. “Life expectancy is short enough in this place.”

  “I’m not a pol
iceman,” said Richard. “And Fred barely counts as a plod. Look at the crimes he’s ignoring just by sitting here.”

  The rat-faced bogus dealer pricked up his ears, took a good look at Fred and headed for the hills.

  “This is all gossip. Mavis tells it different every time. She gets it mixed up with Samson and Delilah. The big thing is that Grek Cohen was besotted with Pony-Tail, devoted like a kid to a kitten, the whole King Kong scene.”

  “ ‘It wasn’t the airplanes,’ ” quoted Richard, “ ‘t’was Beauty killed the Beast.’ ”

  Zarana nodded. “How else could Popeye and Gates get to Grek? They took Pony-Tail away, threatened to carve her face up unless Grek turned himself over to them, lay down for whatever was comin’ – an express train, most likely. Then, the bastards probably did her in anyway, no matter what they say about her now.”

  “So, at the bottom of it all, there’s an unwilling femme fatale, a lure and a sacrifice.”

  “It makes sense,” said Fred, “two mystery disappearances about the same time. Bound to be a connection.”

  Richard clicked a spoon against his teeth. “It seems singular to me that this Pony-Tail person is so frequently mentioned. As if she were a presiding spirit, patron saint of stripteaserie, the Florence Nightingale of ecdysiasts.”

  Fred remembered the girl in the stables. He slowed the film down in memory. Pony-Tail was looking beyond the camera, fixing her eye on one face in the darkness, undressing just for him.

  “She can’t have been that good,” said Zarana. “She just took her clobber off to music. It’s not astro-physics.”

  Richard and Fred still thought about her.

  “Men,” said Zarana. “What a shower!”

  Something exploded against the window like a catapulted octopus, splattering black tentacles across the glass.

  “Interesting,” said Richard.

  V The Festival

  The girl Fred had scared earlier staggered into Froff, one heel broken, halter torn, hair dripping. Tarry black stuff streaked her face and arms.

  Outside the star-splattered window, a black-uniformed army marched down Greek Street, lobbing paint-grenades. Advance scouts whirled plastic bull-roarers. Voiceless screaming and sticky missiles generally cleared the way.