by Andy Remic
‘Yeah Jimmy, life imprisonment. Come on, we’re not the cops. We work for a newspaper. We’re not vigilantes; some bastard decides he’s going to waste a few people, OK, but I don’t intend to be the next feckless person on the obituary list.’
‘Callaghan? Volos mentioned you again.’
‘He did? What did he say?’
‘He said if we attended this murder, we’d get our answers. You would get your answers.’
Callaghan shivered. ‘Maybe I don’t want answers.’
‘Oh, you do Cal, you do. I remember your face when you saw the envelope had your name on it. I saw the look in your eyes. Why me? What have I got to do with this? I’m just a photographer... well, this sick deviant has your name mate, and he wants a slice of your action. For whatever reason. Now, we can go and sort this out like Big Boys, or you can whimper in your room like a little girl – and wait for the sicko to come get you. I know what I’d rather do.’
‘You think he might be there? At this tip–off?’
‘Aye. I think he’s playing games with us. With you.’
‘What do we do if we meet him? This killer?’
‘That’s OK.’ Jimmy gave a grim smile and opened his coat. Inside, a small Walther PPK sat in a holster. It looked new. Unused. Callaghan could almost smell the polish.
‘Not another gun,’ groaned Callaghan.
‘Got it from a friend in Glasgow. You’ll have to meet her one day. The most fearsome OAP in the world!’
‘You got your gun from your gran?’
‘Yeah. She's a tough old woman, my gran. Anyway. Cal – you can’t just sit at home playing with your dick. You’re in this situation up to your tonsils. No walking away. No turning your back. The stakes are high... Now, you coming, or do I have to go it alone? Risk my own arse on the wire without any backup?’
Cal considered this. He stared into his friend’s eyes.
I know what we should do, he thought.
We should tell the police... But why does this killer want to implicate me? Why drag my name through the shit?
‘Fuck it. Right. Let’s go. We can call the police later, yeah?’
‘Yeah. Later. I’ll look after you mate. You see if I don’t... Come on, we’ll take the back exit. We don’t want Bronagh’s monkeys tailing us. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I’ve been followed all day!’ Jimmy moved ahead. He was buzzing; high on adrenaline. High on the hunt. ‘I feel like fucking James Bond!’ he grinned, almost manically. ‘Well, not actually fucking him. You know what I mean.’
Cal nodded, following with a weariness that threatened to overwhelm him. His limbs were lead. His back and legs and balls all throbbed, victims of a recent beating.
‘Where exactly are we going, Jim?’ he said as they reached the exit and cold air gusted in. Jimmy was doing his Secret Agent thing at the doorway. Callaghan tapped free a Marlboro and lit the cigarette – wishing – praying to God – that the day would one day end. ‘Come on Jimmy, what dazzling holiday destination has our fun and wacky Mr Volos picked as a playground for his next gratuitous murder?’
‘Stratford,’ said Jimmy. ‘We’re going up to Stratford. Come on.’ He disappeared.
And failed to see the shock register on Callaghan’s face.
I watch the two men climb into the old Mercedes. The rain has stopped and I lift my nose, sniffing fresh cool London air. Snow is on its way. That’s a promise.
It was good to see the look of panic on Callaghan’s features as he emerged from the underground lock–up. I can sense his confusion; revel in his stupidity; his feelings of being dragged along by events so much greater than his pitiful little directionless life. He is a drug to my system. An injection firing cold grey veins...
An intoxication. A liberation.
I smile at that.
At the concept of freedom.
I fire up the motorbike and feel the powerful rumble beneath me. Slowly, I ease away from the kerb and follow Jimmy’s Mercedes with lights off. My bike is a stealth machine; matt black, sleek, invisible.
I called him directionless: Callaghan. A man without motivation. Without goals. Without focus. Well. I will give him focus. I will motivate him. I will direct him.
I smile at that.
I know he dreams of the girl. With the sword.
No longer will he be one of the deaf, the dumb, the blind.
For nearly the entire journey Callaghan kept his hands over his eyes and rubbing at his jaw as his toothache and radiating headache thumped his skull; like an old familiar friend. An uninvited guest.
He tried to sleep, managed to doze a little, lulled by the harsh rhythm of the engine. Just enough to ward off unconsciousness. Just enough to boost his flagging energy levels.
Darkness had fallen long before they reached the outskirts of Stratford. A technophobe with a hatred of Sat Nav, twice Jimmy had to pull over to check his A–Z; both times he made a joke about his ex–wife being the worst navigator in the universe; said, ‘There’s nothing more dangerous than a woman with a map’, but Callaghan didn’t laugh. Could not laugh. Humour was the last thing in his soul. He wanted to tell Jimmy about his trip to Stratford earlier that day. But he stopped himself. After all, how much more fluky could something get? Yeah Jimmy, I rode the Beemer up to Stratford, met Sophie, got chased by what we think could have been the Mafia; we had a big crash, Sophie shot a man in the head, we went back to our little nest and had sex, then I rode back down to London. And what’s this? Mr Volos has phoned with yet another murder victim for us to investigate? Back up in Stratford, you say? Really? How strange? What a remarkable coincidence!
Rain was hammering from black skies as the old Merc negotiated a series of narrow, unlit roads. Windscreen wipers thumped and Jimmy peered myopically over the steering wheel.
‘It’s along here... somewhere.’
‘Just where, exactly, are we going?’
Cal had come round a bit. Four paracetamol and a few slugs of Jimmy’s whisky brought him yawning from zombie slumber, and even eased the pounding in his head, in his jaw. But it was still there; like the distant, sub–audible rumble of an earthquake... unheard, but teasing senses with a subtle vibration.
‘It’s an old industrial site, near the canal.’
‘What, like an old factory or something?’
‘Yeah. Volos said it was an abandoned mill.’
‘Great place for a murder. I suppose.’
‘Certainly is,’ said Jimmy, fighting with his apparently sentient A–Z. ‘I hate maps,’ he muttered. ‘Why do they never make them the right size?’
'Maybe if you bought a Tom Tom...'
'Ha! That's the Devil's help!'
They carried on for a further twenty minutes, down winding narrow lanes and through woodland, until they came to an old battered timber and iron gateway which lay half–open, listing to one side and heavily overgrown with hedges and birch trees. The Merc’s headlights picked out a sign, but it was too rusted and buckled to read.
The site was still; as dark as sin.
Jimmy’s Merc growled forward, picking a weaving path to avoid stranded brick–clusters and lumps of stone. They passed an old boiler lying rusted on its side, great iron door fastened shut. As they rumbled past Cal tilted his head to read the inscription: LOMBARD AGUSTA, he managed to make out in curved iron script, huge letters punched into the metal. He glanced around, but could distinguish nothing else; his eyes couldn’t penetrate the charcoal.
Cal shivered, despite the Merc’s heater. ‘I don’t like this, Jimmy. I’m telling you, we should have called Bronagh.’
‘Have some balls, man! And remember, I’ve got a gun. Nothing bad can happen. Trust me.’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen what a gun can do,’ muttered Cal, half to himself and shivering at recent memories.
They passed outbuildings, crumbling brick and rotten black timber ensconced in thick undergrowth with layers of moss–like green–black blankets eating away at diseased faces. Many of the smaller buildings
had collapsed in on themselves, with rotten beams protruding like slick wet teeth, poking towards the sky at irregular angles through the constant downpour.
‘There she is. Just like Volos said.’
The main factory building loomed suddenly out of the dark. It was huge, a mammoth red–brick structure with few windows and several sections badly collapsed. The huge, sloping, black slate roof – or what remained of it – gleamed like glass under the pounding rain. There were two huge chimneys, but one lay on its side, disappearing into distant nothingness. The whole place was infused with an air of sadness; of abandonment and desolation.
Jimmy killed the Merc’s headlights and the night crowded in. It was black. Blacker than anything Cal had ever seen.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he muttered. ‘I ain’t going in there, at night, in the dark; no chance, compadre. Not even if you had ten guns. And a fucking rocket launcher.’
Jimmy grinned. ‘Well, you can wait here in the car then. But think on this: maybe the killer’s lurking out here? Maybe he’ll surprise you when you step out for a fag and a piss? Just don’t whine at me when you’re lying in a dismembered heap.’
‘Remind me again why we’re friends?’
‘Come on, pussy.’
Jimmy opened the door, allowing a gust of freezing air filled with howling rain to smash their cosy interior nest. The door slammed, and Jimmy was gone, sprinting across rubble–strewn concrete towards an overhang of teetering roof above a collapsed out–building.
‘Son of a bitch,’ muttered Cal, opening his own door and gasping as the coldness slapped him. He ran after Jimmy, and they stood beneath the roof which poured huge streamers of water from ancient, bowed wooden troughs.
Jimmy was holding a small rucksack. He pulled out two torches. ‘See? I came prepared.’
‘Great. You can go first,’ said Cal, accepting the large Maglite and weighing it thoughtfully.
‘I intend to. Soak up the ambience for my story. And don’t worry, I even brought you a camera.’
‘Considerate, as well. My hero.’
Jimmy pulled the pack’s straps over his shoulder and drew out his gun. Cal stared at the weapon and gave a little shiver that had nothing to do with cold. He was sick of guns. If he never saw another damned pistol in his life, it would be too soon.
Distantly, thunder rumbled. Lighting danced in the sky.
Cal turned, followed Jimmy into a low room filled with shattered glass and bricks. Something huge and metal stood rusting in one corner, picked out in black under the bright glare of Jimmy’s Maglite. Jimmy crunched off, stooping under an archway, and for a moment Callaghan stood alone, surrounded by the desecration of another age.
Cold air gusted in, and rain dripped from above.
We shouldn’t be here, he thought.
Nobody should be here. We’re interlopers... in another world.
He followed Jimmy, splashing puddles, boots crackling old brittle glass. He hopped over a fall of bricks and emerged into –
A vast, open space.
Callaghan gasped.
Above them reared four storeys of jagged openness. Many of the floors and ceilings had either collapsed or been pulled down. The central floor space was a vast mound of old and rotting debris, its mouldy stink clawing at Callaghan’s nostrils like the rot of organic putrefaction. His torch weaved uncertainly across this pyramid of decay. Streamers of water poured from unseen heights, hidden in the darkness. Holes high up in the brick walls allowed a sudden flash of lightning to throw the scene into stark tableaux.
‘Look. There are stairs.’ Jimmy’s powerful torch picked out a crumbling, rotting wood structure, leading up to a section of interlaced beams. His torch moved up and up and up. ‘Stairway goes all the way to the fourth floor.’
‘Yeah, and look at the state of it! Most of the building hasn’t even got a floor! It’s just beams, mate. And most of them have come tumbling down.’ Cal’s torch moved slowly around the shell’s vast, decrepit interior. To one side huge pitted rusting chains dangled from two storeys up, locked in place on rusted wheels. They swayed occasionally, clanking.
‘There’s nothing here.’ Jimmy sounded disappointed.
‘Good.’ Cal felt himself relaxing a little. ‘That Volos is a dick. Dragging us all the way out here on false pretences.’ But something horrible occurred to him.
What if there was no body? No murder victim? What if the two victims were standing right there? Waiting for it. Prize lambs come bleating to the slaughter...
Cal whirled, torch beam flitting crazily over the rotten building. Then – he shone his torch in Jimmy’s face and his friend yelped, trying to wave the light away.
‘Stop it! You’ll destroy my night vision!’
‘Come on,’ snapped Cal. ‘Let’s get out of here. Before we catch pneumonia.’
That was when they heard the whimper. It was... distant. Elevated.
‘Shit,’ muttered Callaghan.
‘You heard it as well?’
‘Yeah Jimmy. I heard it. Although I wish I hadn’t.’
‘It was a woman! HELLO?’ Jimmy shouted, voice reverberating from the old mill walls. Rain poured down from above, as if from a jug, splattering the collapsed roof with a constant river of black. ‘HELLO? IS THERE ANYBODY UP THERE?’
‘Yeah!’ came a woman’s weary voice. She sounded young. And very, very frightened. ‘Please... oh please, help me... you’ve got to help me... you’ve got to get me out of here...’
‘Shit,’ muttered Callaghan. Again.
‘You wait here,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ll climb up.’
Cal shone his torch upwards. ‘Up that? You’re insane mate. You’ll break your neck!’
Jimmy stared up at the teetering structure, clamped like a parasite to the internal mill wall. Held in place by faith.
‘Hmm. Actually, I don’t know if I can do it alone.’
‘I knew you were going to say that.’
‘Come on.’
They walked, climbed and fought their way across the pile of wet slippery wood, brick clusters, plaster and jagged lumps of severed stone. Callaghan slipped, nearly put his hand on a plank sporting nine–inch rusted nails. One would have gone straight through his palm – a parody of stigmata – but he twisted, arm slapping out, and instead the blunt tip shaved a long, deep curl of flesh from his wrist.
‘Bastard,’ he said, staring at the dripping blood, at the bulged gathering of scraped skin.
Jimmy motored ahead and reached the foot of the rickety staircase. He was shaking it to test the frame for solidity. Cal shone his torch across the slick swollen wood, and up again, across the dripping, pouring, ruptured overhangs far far above.
Jimmy holstered his Walther, and gripping the slick, mould–infested staircase he eased himself up the first few steps. The whole frame shook. Water pumped down from a shattered roof. Cal looked on dubiously, face twisted into a gargoyle grimace.
‘This looks like a set–up, my friend. We’ve been stitched up tighter than Frankenstein’s Monster’s arsehole.’
‘Maybe. But now there’s a girl stuck up there. How the hell is she going to get down?’
‘Only with your heroic help, obviously.’
Jimmy scowled. ‘Look Cal, you can stay down here if you want, stand in the dark like a moaning, shivering schoolgirl. But I tell you something, I’m getting sick of your fucking whining. You going to help me, or what?’
‘I’m just trying to project the voice of reason.’
‘Well, keep your damn opinions to yourself.’
They moved up the first rickety, rotten staircase and onto a landing of bare wooden boards. Planks were missing, making for a treacherous traverse; many were splintered, poking up, grey and brittle like old snapped bones. The two men crossed this ‘platform’, keeping to their right and the promised solidity of the brick wall. To their left the staggered floor dipped and fell away to the pyramid pile of central, crumbled building.
Callaghan walked with ca
re. The whole place promised collapse. And that included the walls. The best bloody definition of condemned I’ve ever seen in my life, he mused sourly.
Above, sobs echoed.
Cal grimaced, shaking his head. It – this whole thing seemed just too... neat.
Water dripped in Cal’s eyes. He cursed, releasing his grip on the wall and halting, boards flexing worryingly beneath his dancing boots. Darkness and shadows whirled above his head. Thunder echoed distantly. He cursed again, licking fear–dry lips as vertigo threatened to toss him over the precipice.
They moved to the next set of stairs. These were more sturdy, fastened into the wall and beams with huge black bolts which had somehow escaped the acid–ravages of time and decay. The wood was sound, and they climbed with care – to look aghast at the next level of buckled warped flooring. Flooring that wasn’t. Nearly all the floorboards had rotted and fallen away. All that remained were thick beams, ragged, black, chewed, protruding with an army of rusted bent nails.
‘Stick to the left hand beam,’ said Jimmy, shining his torch across the dangerous expanse. ‘The next two are rotted to rat–shit. Look – they’re like tinder in the middle!’
Cal nodded, and watched with a clenched stomach as Jimmy teetered across the eight–inch wide span of timber, one hand holding his torch, the other steadying himself against the wall. Then he stepped onto the bottom of the third flight of stairs and glanced back at Callaghan. ‘Come on, mate, your turn.’
‘Fucking magic.’
Cal placed his hand against the wall. It was damp, slick, cold. He stepped onto the beam and felt it shudder. He glanced down, and wished he hadn’t. It was a long fall onto an awful lot of shit sprouting nails and pieces of broken glass. How do I get myself into these things? he wondered. Jimmy – you’re a heroic fool who has a lot to answer for! But then, what were they going to do? Leave a sobbing woman in the dark, in the rain, in this place? With a maniac killer on the loose? Yeah, right. But then, wasn’t this just a set–up? And for whose benefit?