by Andy Remic
Cal paused on entry, listening for any rogue sounds which might betray the presence of Mia.
Mia!
Delectable Mia!
Mia Sanchez, Cal’s (girl)friend, half–Mexican, half–maniac, stripper (dancer, he corrected himself), 88lbs of dark–skinned hot–tempered sadistic sultry pouting sleazy classy high–strung woman who drove Cal wilder than wild, hornier than horn, and dropped in whenever she was in the mood, disappeared for days or weeks on end, and occasionally stole his Porsche. Cal knew not when she would arrive or depart; and often, idly, wondered if she would one day clear out his apartment, then his bank account, and head for Mexico with a toss of luxurious brown curls. Sometimes (when he was drunk) he thought about reclaiming her penthouse key. But then, only a suicide case would dare that; and anyway, she added spice to a sometimes flaccid life. With each passing day, more and more spice was something Cal craved.
‘You home, honey?’ he called.
No answer. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t actually there. It could mean she was sulking. Or hiding. Or stoned. Or masturbating. He had caught her a few times, and had sulked as she gesticulated wildly with her Rabbit – until that evening when she taught him that to watch could almost be as much fun as to do. An invigoration, one might say.
‘If you’re not here, darling,’ she would purr with that Latino hint which drove him so wild, ‘what is a lonely girl to do?’
Cal moved from room to room, methodically clearing his penthouse with more precision than any Special Force über–commando. Only when convinced he was alone did he drop the dead–bolt and strip off in the bathroom, analysing cuts and grazes and bruises from his recent escapade in Glasgow. He’d lost a lot of skin. Some pride. A little blood. And one toenail.
‘Bastard.’
Pain throbbed everywhere, and he set a bath running and padded naked through the apartment, moving to the lace blinds and pulling the cord to allow more light from the massive room–wide span of floor–to–ceiling windows.
Outside, the Thames stretched away like a snake and Cal watched late Autumn rays of sunshine sparkle on dark waters lapping lazy against concrete quays. Beyond, Canary Wharf swept to the right and rose into the staggered tombstone teeth of Downtown Finance. Cal blinked, impressed as ever by his view, his homeland, his fathertown, his moneyworld – London! – with everything he could ever need or want or lust right there on his doorstep. But what about Glasgow? And the secret rendezvous?
He grinned. Well, he thought. Nearly everything.
Cal cut a line of coke on the marble bathroom worktop and inhaled greedily. He closed his eyes and massaged his ethmoid. Then shook his head, eyes watering as honey settled across his limbs. He grabbed the Glenmorangie Highland malt from a low crystal shelf and poured a generous dram, topping it up with the sacrilegious fizzy stuff. Whisky and Coke tasted good atop the white wizard; always had, always would. Then Cal slumped into the butterfly embrace of a leather settee as sunlight sparkled through high tinted windows. As he sank, Cal allowed his mind to swim for a while, lost in dreams of Mia, and Sophie, and then even more insanely spinning down and down down to other women on the fringes of his life... faces sliding neatly past a stroboscope of twisted and twisting memory.
He decked the whiskey–mix in one, poured himself a straight malt this time, drank that too. It had been too long; too much shit and too long a ride without stimulation.
Staggering a little, Cal climbed to his feet and made it drunkenly to the bathroom. He lowered himself into the spa with a moan. Bubbles caressed, but he was too wasted to allow any sort of arousal. He slipped into heavenly warmth and felt the chloroform of sleep sneaking over him like a kidnapper with a rag...
The phone rang.
‘Bitch.’ He tried to go back to sleep.
It rang. And rang. And rang... until it spiked his conscience worse than any affronted housewife. Cal stretched, dripping bubbles, grabbed the wireless terminal with a scowl and drawled, ‘Yeah?’
‘Cal, it’s Jimmy. We got a problem.’
‘Problem?’
‘The prints are fucked.’
‘Prints?’
‘Yeah Cal, prints. Is there an echo on the line? Or have you just once again crusted your snout with toxic shit? Look, the stiff you snapped yesterday has flown the nest. The body is missing and your 35 mil and digital shots are dead as a dead donkey. So get your arse over here now, because Eddie is pissed as a bear with no balls.’
‘But the prints... blank... they can’t be!’
‘There’s something else.’
‘Good news?’ Cal sounded hopeful.
‘No. There’s another one of those fucking messages. You know, from your secret neighbourhood Wacko Jacko. You remember? The one in the white envelope with your name in blood.’
‘Great. You’re such a good friend, Jimmy. Remind me to buy you a bunch of flowers – replete with razors sewn under petals.’
‘Get over here. Now!’
A click. A buzz of digital insect.
Cal and Jim made the perfect team. Jim did the words, Cal the pics. They’d had some scoops, hell no, some fucking scoops. Royalty, celebrities, royalty fucking celebrities, celebrities fucking royalty. And they’d made money. Bricks of money. Buckets of money. A year earlier they’d been headhunted by Black and White, a young upstart bastard of newsstand stardom backed by some of the richest of players; big and bold and full of spunk, Black and White had taken the nation by storm. Not afraid to tell the truth. Shit, not afraid to make it up. Political and politically incorrectible. A Goliath. A Titan. From ashes to Phoenix in 12 short months. And Cal/Jim were The A Team, The Platinum Riders, cruising On Top of the Damned World, Baby! Only now...
Cal frowned. Now there was a problem. A problem with his shots. And on top of that he’d received another death threat. Great. Hell. Bollocks. Shit.
The first message had arrived four months earlier. He’d taken it as a sick joke. The bloody envelope (written in pig’s blood, it was later confirmed by the pigs) had words typed using a traditional impact typewriter instead of lasered by friendly Hewlett Packard. The first message read:
they seek him here, they seek him there
they seek little callaghan everywhere
under the floorboards and under the bed
its time they all realised hes better off dead
It seemed almost funny at the time. Some dick–head he’d annoyed with his – admittedly – amoral and privacy–invading photography. Reluctantly, and only after Eddie shouted at him with neck–veins bulging, Cal handed the note to the police; who simply confirmed what he knew in the first place. They could do nothing. There were no finger–prints. The post–mark was a blurred London smudge – and London was a BIG place. The note was skimmed half–heartedly through forensics; no other clues were dredged except to clarify the typist had no sense of punctuation.
The second message came a week later.
It read:
come into my parlour
said the spider to the fly
its the prettiest little parlour
that you did ever spy
it really is amazing
what youll find inside my bed
like lumps of severed gristle
torn from callaghans head
Cal became known around the staff–room as the ‘Pussy’s Poet’ – not just haunted by an insane poet, but by an insane and fucking shite poet, torn from the deviant loins of an undergrad creative writing class. Around the office, name–calling and sniggers began. Constant jibes and mocking from Cal’s merciless workmates. Hell, Cal had finally acknowledged to a staff–room full of half–drunk ex–friends one Saturday afternoon that he wished the poetry–writing bastard would just get it over with and kill him. At least he wouldn’t have to endure more terrible verse if he was safe in his grave!
Laughter. But Cal had nearly been serious. In an amber–coke sort of fluid way.
Cal sighed. It was a deep and meaningful one. He climbed from the
bath and towelled himself, head still spinning from a narcotic narcolepsy as he swayed on the genuine marble floor (imported from Slovenia at no little expense). He padded to the long living space and stood for a while, lost in thought, contemplating what could have gone wrong with the prints.
The previous day, a 60 year old pensioner had been brutally murdered; stabbed six times, robbed of £33.20p. Receiving the scoop tip–off, Jim and Cal had met at the murder scene in Hastings, dropped the attending DI a bundle of cash and done their own private sniffing. Cal used his trusty Nikon D2X digital 12.4 megapixel, and Pentax MZ–S 35mm SLR to photograph the brutal stabbing. Both cameras had never – never – let him down. Now Jimmy was claiming both machines had failed.
‘Impossible.’
With lethargy accelerating into annoyance, Cal dressed and drank a pint of water in one, dribbling a little unnoticed down his silk shirt. A dab of CK and he descended to the Marriott underground car park, sank back in his Porsche – feeling that special glow as he fired the awesome 380 bhp six–cylinder horizontally opposed flat – but cursing at the same time as recurrent toothache returned to haunt him, rhythmical stabs drumming along his jaw and radiating out into his head.
Too much whisky, he nodded.
Yeah, that and too much cocaine, dickhead.
Must get to a dentist.
He powered up the ramp from the park, stopped for a moment to chat to the jovial but still businesslike security guard – after the atrocities of 9/11 and 7/7, and subsequent terrorist presence, they couldn’t be too careful, even with a fat cat like Cal – then howled down the bypass with his jaw set to Grim and dark eyebrows almost touching, so severe was his coked scowl and the accelerating pounding in his skull.
I open the skinning razor, enjoying the resistance and the feeling of quality in this antique tool. The blade gleams. It gleams so bright it hurts my eyes. Slowly, I press the razor against my pale white palm. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? The blade is a mouth and creates a mouth, and my blood flows warm over frozen flesh as it runs between my fingers. I turn my hand over. Crimson stains my knuckles. I smile, pain pulsing with the slow beat of my reptile heart. I gaze at the blade. At my trade. My love, my life, my woman, my core, my blood–fuck. Blood has made love to the oiled steel. My blood. The Blood of the First.
‘Cal.’
‘Jimmy. What the hell’s going on?’
‘Bad news buddy. Eddie wants to see you.’
‘I can deal with Eddie.’
‘Ryan’s with him.’
Cal looked at Jimmy for the first time, then. Noticed the sympathy there, and the inherent genuine friendship. That display of caring slapped Callaghan in the face. It was something to which he was unused.
‘You OK?’
Cal nodded, feeling sick. How could vomit haunt him twice in such a short time span? Callaghan hated being sick. No, hated it. He was never sick. Never. He had internal switches, tiny stepper–motors which cut off his brain and his drinking hand when he was close to the event horizon of promised puke. But this, this was something different. And like a simple event only twelve hours earlier – Jesus, only twelve damn hours? Glasgow felt like a lifetime away, a million distant fuzzy years – it was something which took his belly in its fist and squeezed real hard. Gave him a kick in the guts. An epidural of titanic proportions.
And to make things just that little bit more uncomfortable, his toothache was growing.
Damn those Ibuprofen!
‘We going in together?’
Jimmy grinned his trademark grin and shook his head, short dark hair falling over his forehead. Which, noted Callaghan, was beaded in sweat. So much for the cool–as–cucumber tough–ass Glaswegian ex–boxer. Yeah, Jimmy had been brought up in the Gorbals, worked the markets, drank in its smoke–filled dens, fought in its pits – as tough as a sock full of engineering brick. But if he had to dick with Ryan? Sorry, Mrs Ryan? If he had to put his job (and bollocks) between the oak blocks of the Guillotine? Become another Pelletier? Shit no.
‘You’re on your own, buddy. She wants a big fat slice of Callaghan pie.’
‘Cheers mate.’
‘My pleasure, mate.’
‘She’d better be careful I don’t sprinkle the pastry with poison.’
‘Cal, that bitch could imbibe a bong of strychnine and still walk the walk. You got your facts straight?’
‘No.’
‘Blame moisture.’
‘What?’
‘Moisture. In the cameras. It’s the best I can think of...’
‘Yeah, Jimmy. Thanks.’
‘And here’s your little lover’s message.’
Cal sighed, taking the neat square envelope. Yes, there was his name in dried blood. Yes, the trademark smudged postmark – what did the guy do, smear grease on the envelope or something?
He opened it. Unfolded the precisely folded sheet.
The poem, if it could be called such, read:
ring–a ring–a roses
a pocketful of poses
atishoo atishoo
callaghan contracts a terminal virus
through a dirty needle
and then he falls down
into a pulped hiv slop.
Jimmy peered over his shoulder. ‘Has he got any better?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Ahh. I observe he at least hasn’t lost his ear for tone. Must have been top of the class on his creative writing course. You know, I think Shelley would be proud!’
‘Just get to fuck.’
‘Touchy, hey, Callaghan? It’s just not your day, is it mate?’
‘It’s not my fucking decade, buddy.’
Cal walked down a thickly carpeted corridor, past glass–walled offices where keyboards clattered, eyes fixed potently on LCD screens and men and women argued into phones. He stopped at the end, knocked on the one door which did not sport glass – it was a heavy, mahogany door which had, over the years, absorbed the very essence of intimidation. The wood grain itself seemed to be an enclave of trapped demonic mouths screaming. That portal was a personification of fear.
‘Come.’ The sound was muffled by depth.
Callaghan opened the door, stepped in, closed it with a precise click. The office was a paragon of luxury. Thick cream carpets. Mahogany furniture. One entire wall stood floor–to–ceiling glass, looking out over London’s West End. Ryan sat in a high–backed leather exec chair, writing slowly, leisurely, on a cream paper in a gold embossed pad. She did not look up as Cal staggered forward. She simply continued to write, with no break in her stride.
Callaghan glanced to the right where Eddie sat. Eddie, tough as a cockroach and about as handsome; lean and wiry, tattooed knuckles and furious grey bushed eyebrows. Their eyes met. Eddie’s face was cremated ash; his mouth a grim, iron barrier.
Callaghan waited, blood draining from his face, toothache receding a little as the double–dose of Ibuprofen finally kicked in. Then, after negative acknowledgement, Cal finally forced out the words. ‘You wanted to see me, Mrs Ryan?’
She looked up, pen poised above the page. Steel eyes met Cal’s, her wrinkled old face locked without expression as her pupils drilled his soul. ‘Yes, I did,’ she said, enunciating each word with care. Then her head lowered and she continued to write.
Callaghan chewed his lip. Shit, he thought. Shit!
He studied Ryan; she was aged somewhere between fifty five and sixty five, and the ageing process had not been kind. Her face and throat were heavily lined, wrinkled webs of flesh hung with pouches of loose skin; her hair was a yellow–streaked grey – a legacy of heavy nicotine abuse – and tied back into a tight bun, Headmistress–style. She was starting to look stooped, withered almost. And yet ironically, where age robbed many of their iron–will, their steel–resolve, their thunder and fire, the approach of old age – and the promise of death beyond – had done nothing more than harden Ryan. Like old leather she got tougher and tougher. Old Iron Cunt, they called her in the Black and White
staff–room. That, and Von Ryan, Über Von Ryan, Obersturmführer Ryan and, when merry on smuggled wine and feeling like a jolly old sing song, Any old Ryan / Any old Ryan / Any any old old Ryan – referring to the comical moment during a desk editor job interview and subsequent appointment where Ryan had chosen from twelve possible candidates her own daughter for the post: Mrs Ryan, junior. Yeah. Right. Soon, the bitter and cynical staff of Black and White had cackled, Old Iron Cunt would contravene employment law and hand out jobs to her entire damned family if she thought she could get away with it. Then, they’d have to bus the entire fucking Ryan tribe to the London offices – on Von Ryan’s Express, no less. Boom boom.
Cal waited, hands crossed in supplication before his groin, feeling like a schoolboy (which, he was sure, was Von Ryan’s intention).
Finally, Ryan removed her scratching pen from the neat little pad and placed it down almost reverently. She sat back, fingers steepled, cold grey eyes on Cal. The colour of raging storm–clouds, he thought sourly. And he felt himself breaking down slowly, tantalisingly, into a sweat. His toothache roared through his jaw and up into his temple, crashing like surf on the shores of a bleached and pounding skull.
‘We’ve had to pull the lead story.’
‘You’ve had to... shit. Because of the photos?’
‘Yes, Callaghan, because of the fucking photos,’ she snapped. She glanced at Eddie, then back to a cringing Callaghan. ‘We’re running with Billy’s “Essex Teenage Car Smash”. I suggest...’
‘Yes?’
Ryan paused for a moment. She leant forward a little, wrinkled old lips pursing over steepled fingers. ‘I suggest, Callaghan, that you sort out your fucking cameras. Quickly. Before I employ somebody else to work with that jumped up little Jimmy Jock bastard. You clear, Mr Photo Man? I will not give you another warning.’