A Well-Timed Death (Booker Shield Book 1)

by Karl Bourdiec

  ‘You going to open that door, Nicoll?’ Ford asked in his booming voice he used all the time not just when he was mad. There was an urgency in his voice, Ford was the one who created the open-door policy, he wasn’t even sure why police stations had doors.

  Richard shook his head, pointed at the little porthole in the door, telling Ford to look. To Richard, the man looked dead. He’d seen loads of dead bodies now, their grey lifelessness, the millions of dropped opened mouths and silent eyes. Ford looked through the window. He gasped.

  ‘He looks like a stiff.’ The Sergeant, Ford spoke the quietest he’d ever spoken. Maybe not the words Richard would have used but he was right, the man did look like a stiff.

  ‘Open the bloody door, let the man in. We’re here to help and serve not lock people who are obviously ill out of our building.’ Ford padded away after he spoke to get on with whatever he wasn’t doing earlier.

  PC Richard Nicoll popped the door fire escape handle and the door opened allowing the man inside. “This is how zombie movies start.” He thought to himself as the man wandered in from the fog.

  ‘Could somebody grab my thingy.’ The zombie spoke, rare for a zombie, he pointed outside to a large rolled up rug in a shopping trolley.

  ‘I’d like to speak to somebody please.’ The grey deadite spoke softly, he seemed rather nice for a zombie. Although a little short in comparison to the rest of the people around him, although the police are known for most of them being tall. A man behind the desk turned slowly, the undead man smelled foul, looking at him was a chore as there was something which stood out like he wasn’t meant to be there.

  ‘Could I speak to somebody please.’ The zombie asked again, rather politely. Which the man behind the desk found a little odd. Normally zombies just go straight in for what they want. Yelling “brains” all over the place, walking with their arms out. This zombie was rather well-spoken, his arms were mostly by his side, sometimes they went into his pockets but came straight out with the shine of being a little damp

  ‘Em, yeah who would you like to talk to?’ a young kid behind the desk asked. Unsure whether this was the right answer or not. He hoped there was somebody the zombie had in mind, and he hoped that person wasn’t himself. Although the zombie wouldn’t get much food from the lad behind the desk. He had little brains to give away, and even then, he borrowed some from the people around himself.

  ‘Anybody really. I’ll go sit over there while I wait.’ He pointed to a set of chairs where a drunk man slept. Maybe the zombie would eat the drunken man’s brains, that would be two birds with one stone. The lad thought to himself.

  ‘Can I take a name first?’ the kid asked. This was almost a trigger, something he just did automatically.

  ‘Oh yeah, Adam.’ He turned to go find a seat, watching a few police pass him to bring in his carpet. It dripped grey and brown splotches of soil through the hallway, leaving round stains throughout the off-cream lino.

  Adam looked damp, as if he was sweating, not just in the areas which normally sweat though. He had sweat pouring from every part of his skin, which gave him a shiny slimy look. He grinned at the young guy behind the desk. The young guy forced a grin back. In most desk jobs where you have to deal with people, there is a small red button you can press to summon the police, the issue for the young man behind the desk was there was no button, and if there was who could come running to the police station to help the police. The young man had decided to hand his notice in, in the morning, this evening of a well-spoken zombie was a little too much and he’d decided to find a much more relaxing job, maybe follow in his father’s footsteps and go into bomb disposal.

  Richard was one of the three officers pulling in the carpet, throwing all their weight into lifting the trolley, they huffed and panted until it made it up the three steps which stopped it. Adam grinned at them, while they wheeled his rug through the hallway. It's top scraping the roof leaving a wet patch as it moved.

  ‘I’ll just wait here.’ He said as they passed him, his hands in his lap. Adam tried a grin again, nobody spotted it. He made it larger, so it almost filled his face, way bigger than a smile should ever be. One officer spotted the smile and smiled back in the hopes Adam would allow his smile to fall away. It did, Adam looked down at his hands and nails, they were filthy. Adam didn’t like it, it triggered something in his head he’d never felt before. Disgust.

  They wheeled the rug behind the counter, now the smell of rot mixed with the smell of wet rug, there was a drifting smell of wet dog which Rich presumed was the carpet.

  PC Richard Nicoll wondered up to Adam.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Rich asked putting his hands on his knees and bringing himself in eye line with Adam, his eyes looked grey and as if he was looking past Rich, Adam wasn’t it’s just how his eyes were.

  ‘I’m Adam.’ Adam answered.

  ‘Why have you brought a wet carpet here.’

  ‘That’s also Adam.’ Adam answered with a chipper tone.

  ‘So, you and your carpet are both called Adam?’ Rich asked confused.

  ‘He’s not wrong sir.’ The kid behind the desk answered. Pulling a tab on the carpet which read Ådum.

  ‘Okay then.’ Rich replied.

  ‘Adam, why are you here?’ Rich asked, turning back to Adam trying to comfort him. He’d have sat down but the drunk man had taken up two chairs and Rich would have been close enough to smell Adam, that wasn’t a good thing right now.

  ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ Rich asked he seemed to be doing all the talking.

  ‘The car said to come here.’ Adam said with childlike wonder. The car he’d been following had pulled up outside, then two police had pulled a man who stumbled and stuttered into the station. This was the drunk now laying on the seats.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ These were the words Richard Nicoll always fell back on, they were simple but when you asked them people knew they could rely on you.

  ‘I need to rest.’ Adam replied.

  ‘Okay, there’s somebody I need to talk to then we’ll sort you out something, somewhere to rest.’ Rich had almost forgotten about Booker, but the sudden silence in the station meant the tiny hellos which came from the phone Booker was on the other side of could be heard. The tiny hellos were Booker.

  Rich got up heading towards the phone, he turned back to look back at Adam but Adam had fallen to sleep. He really did need to rest.

  ‘Could you put him and his carpet into room B for me?’ Rich asked as he picked up the phone.

  ‘Booker I’ve got your address. Sorry about that it's. ’ Rich read the address to him.

  9

  The number Booker had scribbled on the back of his napkin wasn’t a house address but an address for an office building. He looked it over a few times before showing it to his driver. Rob looked at it blankly. Trying to understand the chicken scratching which the paper held, they looked like numbers at some points but if you looked at the napkin in other ways the markings looked like ancient runes from well before the English language had set root in the isles.

  Rob squinted, some of the shapes made letters. Pulling some of the markings together they made words by smudging some parts with others.

  ‘Do you know where this is?’ Booker asked. Rob’s mind pieced them together, word by word, letter by letter until all the puzzle pieces fell into place.

  ‘It’s that building near the coast. My mate takes calls there, trying to sort peoples Internet I think.’ Answered Rob between nibbles. Rob had few mates, true mates that was. The man he was talking about was a failing womaniser. The type of womaniser who slept with mothers who were made mothers a little too young and now had three to five kids and a drug dealer boyfriend. Which was fine as long as you were never caught by the drug dealer boyfriend. Rob’s friend often turned up to birthdays with black eyes or broken legs. This was not a good hobby to have, which Rob learnt quickly. This was one of the reasons Rob was somewhat a recluse.

  ‘Gre
at.’ Booker emptied the first pint glass, there was only a little of it left but it was gone in seconds, he began on the second pint, this one went down in a few short gulps. His liver went on high alert, which was a state it was surprisingly pretty much always ready to activate. Booker was in the very lucky group of being incredibly unhelpful to his body, he did it no favours. But somehow, through every doctor’s appointment and GP check-up, blood work and even the bleep test, he always got the full bill of health. Nobody knew how even Booker’s doctor knew he tortured his liver but somehow the only thing he ever had which could be seen as a slight issue was the smallest amount of lower sugar levels. Which was never really an issue.

  ‘Now we can go.’ Booker told Rob who just stared in amazement, he’d never seen anybody finish a drink like that since college.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Rob had lost his train of thought. He was sure he’d just seen it somewhere, maybe it had gone through a tunnel or had missed his stop. There he went again, losing his train of thought about trains of thought. Where does the term train of thought even come from? Focus. Rob thought to himself.

  ‘We’re going to meet Mr Brixton obviously.’ Booker gave a little grin and pushed the chair back. ‘Shit.’ He said pulling out the little flask he kept in his inside pocket. Gull walked past at this exact moment. Half of the job of being a barman, a good one at that, is knowing when your most profitable clienteles are going to request a large and expensive drink. It was almost a six sense, if Gull's fifth sent, his sense of smell hadn’t been killed off from cleaning the bar with very highly toxic bleach.

  ‘Fill this up will you Gill, put it on Rob’s tab.’ Booker handed over the small silver flask to Gill, who nodded, filled it with one of the bottles on the back shelf and handed it back. Booker sloshed it around next to his ear to work out how filled it had actually been, sealed it and put it in his jacket pocket. With a swivel, Booker fell from his chair.

  ‘Right then, to Brixton’s?’ Booker headed to the door, forgetting the fog which waited for him. It rolled steadily past the door to remind Booker that it was waiting to get him.

  Getting Brixton’s office address didn’t seem very odd to Booker, it was where he’d most likely of been when someone spoke to him about his wife if somebody had even spoken to him about her. Booker hoped somebody had spoken to Brixton about his woman. Somebody had to have spoken to him about her surely. Booker looked at his watch, it had only been three hours since her death. Only was a weird word to use but sometimes it could take a few hours for the paperwork to get done if it ever got done.

  The thick fog rolled around the bottom of Rob’s blue car. Booker had held his breath to make it the distance he had. In Booker's head if he didn’t breathe in the fog it couldn’t affect him, it worked with other things. His cheeks blown up to hold the air Booker stumbled to the door of the car and tugged at the handle, the door did not come loose, he tried again, still nothing. Then the lights on the car flashed twice and the door swung open nearly making Booker fall to the floor. Rob held his keys up showing the little fob which unlocked the carriage.

  ‘Sorry.’ Rob mouthed as Booker got into the car and began panting breaths into his lungs.

  Booker was worried the fog might crawl through the gaps in the car, it wouldn’t but this was an honest fear he thought could happen.

  ‘Can we get going?’ Asked Booker as Rob dropped his head into the car. As if driving faster than the fog was an option. Rob ignored Booker, which seemed to work for around twenty seconds. Which gave him enough time to start the engine and get going before he was told.

  ‘You’re going too fast.’ Booker held onto the front of the car as if he was on a roller coaster. His foot pressed against the old carpet of the car. Something below his feet crunched the harder he pressed on it. He hoped it was a crisp packet and not the actual metal of the car crumbling below his feet.

  The office they pulled up at was a beautiful multi-tiered building which looked like it was designed by a mad scientist and constructed by a wedding cake baker.

  It was a towering uneven collection of layer after layer of offices. Designed by the Gods but if this God had a funny eye and a very straight ruler. People bustled in and out staring down at papers or phones or notes written on their hands if they weren’t too far up in the chain of command and couldn’t afford a phone. Booker watched from the car, like a steak out, but not, he was just waiting for the fog to finish off its crawl before getting out the car.

  ‘Fucking idiots.’ He said to himself, watching from the car nibbling on some chicken he’d slipped into his pocket. He shook his head. Booker couldn’t imagine having a desk job, yes, he had a desk and a job and sometimes his job meant he had to sit behind his desk but he’d never classed it as a desk job. Desk jobs meant you had to get and keep a haircut, shave your face and not drink at work. Booker only got his haircut when he could blow it out of his eyes and only shaved when the grey showed.

  ‘Fucking sheeple.’ Booker had heard a cult member use the word sheeple and found it amazingly fitting. He adopted it as his own but never could scream it in handcuffs like the first time he heard it from that cultist. The chance had just never appeared.

  They watched and watched, Rob was actually enjoying it, it felt as if he was hanging out with an actual detective for the first-time meeting Booker. Until now Rob had felt like he was just hanging out with a drunk child who wanted to show you a dead body near the train tracks but didn’t want to go too close to it himself.

  Booker scribbled down notes, Rob didn’t even glance at them, he didn’t care, he was on a steak out. People scribbled notes on steak outs, it was the done thing, so he just ignored it.

  ‘Pew pew.’ Rob said to himself pretending to fire a gun, he didn’t do the actions, just said the words. Booker gave him a sly look which matched the situation. This was England, nobody actually carried a gun. Everyone was too polite to and what would be the point. If a robber carried a gun then the police would carry guns, that was a sure-fire way of somebody being shot. Maybe even killed.

  ‘We’re going in, just to ask a few questions.’ Cabin fever was an actual thing police officers got from sitting in their cop cars for too long. Booker had begun to suspect Rob may have caught a little of the fever now, he’d began making odd noises. That and Bookers knee had started to hurt, it did if he sat down for too long, yet another reason a desk job was never going to be for him.

  Booker pulled himself from the car, Rob followed after, Booker had already begun making his way to the building before Rob could even lock the door.

  He checked the handle and followed on, with speed to start but slowing down when he caught up although Booker was a hard man to keep pace with.

  The doors swooped open, it was a nice gentle swoop which made a noise like the doors on a spaceship. Booker thought the noise was probably false, a little player which sampled as it opened. A second shorter swoop as the doors reopened for Rob.

  He gave a little soft grin which showed no teeth and pushed at his cheeks.

  The entrance was a huge white foyer, it was spotlessly clean, and nothing hung on the walls other than a sweeping orange logo, this was the logo of the company who owned the building, renting offices to the slightly rich and overly pretentious.

  Behind a desk in front of the large sweeping logo sat a blonde thin girl, nobody could call her a woman without insulting her, she may have been around her mid-twenties, but her face said she was around eighteen, her eyes said they hid the mind of an eight-year-old. She looked ditsy, her blond hair, pale skin and huge lips made her look like every other secretary in the world.

  ‘Hey.’ There was a long gap as Booker read the girl's name badge. She covered her chest which wasn’t on show. ‘Annabel. I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction, I’ve heard some very upsetting news and I’d like to pass on my condolences to a friend of mine. His names Brixton.’ Booker had lent on the counter Annabel called her desk.

  ‘Who?’ She asked chewing
gum, everybody was chewing gum, Booker added gum to the list of things he hated.

  ‘Brixton, first name. Alan?’ Booker had pulled the name Alan from nowhere, he had to admit that. Alan Brixton just sounded right.

  ‘Sorry, don’t know him.’ The girl turned to face her computer, a sign she’d finished talking to Booker.

  ‘Mr Brixton?’ Booker spoke up.

  ‘Oh, Mr Brixton, he’s not in right now.’ Annabel answered continuing to pretend to type. She was a terrible touch typer, she moved her two first fingers around the keyboard with speed but only seemed to use those fingers. It was odd to watch, her wrists moving her whole hand which only triggered one finger. It was a little dance on the keys.

  ‘Oh, okay, have you got a number.’ Booker replied, trying to keep calm. He wasn’t really good at keeping calm, he liked to let calm go, allow it to run free. If it chose to stay he would kick it until it learnt that calm wasn’t wanted here.

  ‘Yeah, I shouldn’t really give it out though.’

  ‘I understand. Come on Rob.’ Booker moved his head in a way which said follow me. Rob did follow, they walked, not out of the building like the girl had hoped they would, but towards the lift, further into the offices. Annabel stood up, she glanced around a little in shock, thinking about if she should chase them or not, she looked back at her desk and sat down, they couldn’t do much in the building. She let them go, which was her mistake.

  When Annabel had gotten the job, she’d been given very conflicting suggestions on whether she should chase people or not. Her handbook, an actual printed book she’d lost on day two of her job, nobody had noticed she’d lost it, so she never mentioned it. The handbook had said to never chase anybody under any circumstance, but her boss had suggested she should, Lucky it had never come to chase. In fact, sometimes it was difficult to get rid of men from circling her desk.