by Jon Richter
‘So you think someone here might have… poisoned him?’ Wilshere demanded, rising to his feet in visible agitation.
Sigurdsson risked the wrath of his new partner by interjecting.
‘Unfortunately that’s a possibility we have to explore. We owe it to Mr Valiant and his family to understand exactly the circumstances surrounding his death. And you can rest assured that we will leave no stone unturned.’ He gave the boy a reassuring smile, and Wilshere nodded slowly before resuming his seat on the bench.
‘Okay,’ Mason continued, ‘that’s all the information we have at this stage. We will take your telephone numbers from Mr Penman here, and contact you if we’d like to bring you in for questioning. Thank you all once again for your co-operation.’
At that point she turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Mitchell and Sigurdsson to follow her back along the corridor and past Penman’s office. Sigurdsson could feel stares boring into his back as he walked away.
A very strange group of people. And not a group with whom to make enemies, he mused as he thought about some of the powerhouses he had seen that evening, like Tall Paul and Kevin Samson. He wondered how many enemies Victor Schultz had managed to make in his short time here.
The drive from Rumours to the Grand Hotel, where Sigurdsson would be staying, was mercifully short. Rain had begun to fall, and although it was not yet the predicted downpour, its pattering on the car’s windscreen and roof seemed deafening in the glacial silence. Sigurdsson was relieved when they arrived and he could clamber out of the vehicle. ‘I’ll pick you up at half-eight tomorrow,’ Mason barked at him as he headed towards the lodging’s entrance.
Like the island itself, the place was shabby and dilapidated; age and regret seemed to radiate from its very brickwork. A very thin middle-aged woman welcomed him, handing him an old-fashioned key before showing him to his room. She seemed as much a part of the place as the furniture – a suggestion of vibrancy and optimism long ago replaced by embitterment and dereliction. As though she was slowly wasting away, like the building itself.
A rickety lift led them upstairs to a surprisingly large and well-furnished room, thoughtfully stocked with the little extras that many chain hotels no longer provide: kettle, teabags, little sachets of milk, complimentary shampoo and conditioner, a tiny sewing kit, extra blankets. But Sigurdsson had no time to make use of any of these – the energy had suddenly seeped out of his body, and he had to struggle just to clamber into the sagging bed. He fell asleep immediately, tortured as always by premonitions of his own death.
Excerpt II: The End Of The End
Ten years ago it was 1998, and the Monday Night Wars were really heating up. The biggest two wrestling companies in the world were directly competing for TV ratings – it was a real boom period for our business, and stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock were becoming household names. Both companies were resorting to more and more controversial storylines to try to win the ratings battle, and the kid-friendly, all-American, comic-book product of the eighties had been replaced with something darker and more adult.
The SWA was always an also-ran, but we’d been gaining a lot of publicity for some of our edgier stuff, and I think Lance was angling for a big money buy-out by one of the big two. We’d had in-ring crucifixions; a story where one of our guys had put another’s mom in the hospital; we even had one wrestler who was supposed to be an insane dentist who was pulling people’s teeth out at the end of every match, with fake blood spraying everywhere. It was getting pretty out of hand. I’d been loyal to the place for over a decade, I’d been their champion twice, but Lance thought my character was getting stale, that people didn’t want a Kiss rip-off any more, that I needed to ‘add more layers’.
I think that got to me the most. The idea that I was outdated, past my prime, no longer relevant. The fact that he also told me I was getting fat and out of shape and that people were laughing at me honestly didn’t really bother me. He was right. I was a fucking mess. I was popping about thirty Vicodin a day by that point. I would run out long before I could get a doctor to write me a new prescription, so I was having to buy them from drug dealers. If I dropped one of them I would get down on my hands and knees and root around for it on the floor. And I was chasing them all with beer, or whiskey, or vodka, so most of the time I was pretty out of it. Some of the other guys had tried to persuade me to go into rehab, but I honestly thought I had it all under control, and Lance couldn’t fuck with me too much because I was still one of his biggest draws, because the others all kept getting poached by the bigger promotions. It was all fairly clear to me at the time. I was in a ton of pain because of my job, so I was taking the pills to help deal with it. The booze was because of my wife stressing me out, or my kids, or my divorce, or my second wife. You see what I mean – it was always some external factor, never my fault, or at least that’s what I believed back then. And anyways, I was special, I was Vic fucking Valiant, and yeah everyone else had to be sober for the show, but there were special rules for people like me, the real stars.
We were doing this stupid story where I’d been paralysed by the Brutaliser, Butch Buzzcut, and I was supposed to get pushed out to the ring in a wheelchair, and do this big speech where I broke down about my deteriorating mental state and how he’d ruined my life and how I was going to recover and make this big comeback and kick his ass. Maybe it was a bit too close to home, or maybe I just didn’t believe in the stupid bullshit story that the writers had cooked up. Vince Russell was the head script writer, and I never did like him, he always had it in for me like I was some big star and he wanted to bring me down a peg or two. That was probably all in my head too, or maybe I was just too fucking wasted to think straight, but anyways I decided I was just going to ruin it all.
It wasn’t planned or anything, I wasn’t thinking days beforehand that I was going to turn up to work stinking drunk and throw my career away. It just sort of happened. Marv and I were in some bar sinking shots about half an hour before showtime. I vaguely remember arriving at the MECCA Arena and Lance screaming at me and making me drink coffee before we went out, like that was going to help. He should never have let me go out there at all. But out I went, wheeled out like an invalid, which I pretty much was at that point. Then they gave me a mic, and I just let rip.
Some star. I finally made myself watch the video, a few months back. Up until then I think I’d always thought there was still something honourable in it, like I was trying to stick it to the man, man. The reality was just this overweight wrestler with his makeup smeared all over his face who was swearing and crying in front of a load of strangers. I told them how hard it was being famous, and how no one cared about the real Vic Valiant, the man under the makeup, and how even though I had tons of money and women my life was oh so hard and my kids didn’t speak to me no more and it was all everybody else’s fault.
When I stood up, even though I was supposed to be crippled, the crowd just started laughing, and throwing beer cans and popcorn and other trash at me, and so I turned on them too. I’d pissed myself by that point and you could see this big stain on the front of my silver tights, and I’m there ranting and calling them all fucking losers and assholes and then I fall back into the wheelchair and it tips over backwards and Chuck, who was supposed to be my assistant pushing me out to ringside, just stands there staring like he doesn’t know what to do. Lance finally sends Butch out there to talk and pretend like it’s all part of the act, that I’m having a breakdown because of the injuries he’s inflicted on me, but I’m still talking and interrupting him even though I’m lying on the floor covered in my own piss. Eventually they cut my mic and I just carried on ranting away regardless, and didn’t move or get up, until they just gave up trying to cover it up and a bunch of the other wrestlers came and dragged me into the back. Suddenly I was having a second wind and kept pulling away from them, and the crowd were lapping it up by this point, egging me on while I tried to run away. Then I got in the rin
g, dropped my pants and exposed myself. Sure, it was an adult show, but there were kids in that crowd.
Eventually they got me in the back, and Lance fired me on the spot. Then he fired me again the next day when I woke up and didn’t fucking remember it happening.
Monday
Sigurdsson blinked himself awake. A sickly morning sun leered in through a gap in the window blinds, shrouded in dark clouds and a spiteful rain that had thickened but still seemed to be only a portent of the storm to come. He had become used to this routine: waking up naturally after a fitful sleep, around ten minutes before the alarm clock on his phone was due to go off. Sure enough, when he scrabbled on the bedside table for the device, it confirmed that the time was 06:48 (his obsessive brain didn’t allow him to round it to ‘quarter to’ or ‘ten to’ – facts were important).
He switched off the alarm and forced himself up and out of bed, wiping sleep from his eyes as he began to assemble the day’s plan in his mind. He wanted to meet the pathologist to go through the conclusions he’d drawn from the post-mortem examination of Schultz’s body. They needed to interview Zheng, who had been missing from the previous night’s congregation. And they ought to talk to the ‘April’ that Penman had mentioned last night – Schultz’s girlfriend, presumably?
He glanced around the threadbare room that would be his home until the case was solved. His travel bag still rested in the middle of the floor, an affront to the order and precision that his brain demanded. Unpacking it efficiently, he ironed a fresh shirt for the day ahead before changing into his running gear. At 07:24 he was ready to go out for a jog before Mason picked him up, and before the weather worsened any further. He locked the door behind him and walked down the corridor, across the worn burgundy carpet and past the peeling wallpaper to the lift once again, and pushed the call button.
The doors creaked open above a sheer drop into blackness.
Jesus, that was dangerous. He would need to report it. He found the stairs and hurried down to find a portly middle-aged man on reception, writing in an old-fashioned ledger of some kind. Perhaps this was the husband of the cadaverous woman who had welcomed him the previous evening? He looked up as Sigurdsson approached.
‘Your lift is out of order,’ Sigurdsson told him. ‘I’ve just nearly fallen down the open shaft. You need to get it fixed urgently.’
‘Oh dear… certainly sir. I will get that seen to as soon as possible. We’ve had a lot of problems with the lift lately. The whole place is just… falling apart.’ His accompanying gesture might have referred to the entire island. His eyes were sad and watery, as if lamenting Salvation’s plight.
Sigurdsson was happy to leave the mournful place and step outside, despite the chill wind that immediately tore at his exposed legs and arms as he undertook his stretching routine on the pavement. He began to trot along the promenade, noticing immediately the lack of any signs of life, even at this relatively late hour of the morning. No one seemed to be going to work, or out like him for some early exercise. Many of the shops still seemed to be closed, some of them boarded up. There didn’t even seem to be any seagulls wheeling overhead. Just the rabbits, gathered in despondent clusters, their heads close together like conspirators.
He saw a group of them beneath a bench and ran towards them to take a closer look, but they scurried immediately towards the shadows of the nearby alleyways. They were thin, anaemic-looking creatures. He thought about their lives, lived in quivering terror. He thought about his own fears, his own fixations. He thought about myxomatosis, swollen eyes clogged with tumours. Disease, pestilence. Inevitable death.
His brother, Marcus. A car thundering forwards like an unstoppable juggernaut, smashing through flesh and bone.
A rabbit caught in the headlights.
He shook his head and concentrated on his footfalls, on his breathing. A regular motion, pounding against the grubby pavement, pounding in his chest. He was heading west, the sun an ailing blob of bilious light behind him as his feet splashed through puddles and amongst the old newspapers and other detritus that blew along the walkway. There was still no sign of another soul. It was as though the entire island was closed down, abandoned, like a diseased village that had been placed under quarantine. As though the island itself was a cancerous, dying thing. The mist that hung around it seemed more and more like a toxic pall, driving the island’s inhabitants indoors, each lungful slowly poisoning him.
Maybe this was why Mason was so angry; she was like the sheriff of a ghost town.
As if to emphasise this point, the houses to his right gave way to a long chain-link fence, broken and fallen down in places. Beyond it was a patch of weed-choked ground covered in rubbish and discarded beer cans, and then beyond that, the sad spectre of an amusement park. The Ferris wheel that he had seen from the boat loomed above the derelict scene like a sombre monument.
He stopped running, approaching the fence, squinting through the rain and fog.
There were rabbits everywhere. The ground was pocked with holes like cavities in rotten teeth, and hundreds of the creatures squatted near these entrances, ears and noses twitching as they sniffed at piles of garbage or chewed at forlorn clumps of grass. He wondered how many more of them were beneath the ground, the ones not hungry enough to be driven out into the rain. Maybe the big, strong ones sent their emaciated cousins out to forage for them. Maybe there was a gigantic, monstrous King Bunny lurking somewhere deep within the bowels of the island.
Sigurdsson laughed at the nonsense of his racing thoughts, but the noise seemed alien in this dismal corner, and it died on his lips. This place was getting to him, somehow.
He decided to head back to the hotel.
The reception area was deserted as he passed through and ascended the stairs. After showering (turning it as hot as he could make it, trying not to think about flesh being boiled from rabbit bones), he changed into one of his nondescript work outfits and headed back downstairs. The old man on reception still wasn’t there. A beeping horn sounded outside and he found Mason in an idling squad car, wipers waving maniacally as if trying to scare the rain away. Mitchell wasn’t with her this time, so Sigurdsson slid into the front passenger seat, feeling a strange relief at finally seeing another human being.
‘Morning,’ he said. She grunted a response, peering through the rain that had worsened into a deluge, hammering against the windscreen.
‘So where are we heading?’ he persevered.
‘The station, of course.’
‘I thought we might go to the morgue first, so I can talk to the pathologist.’
She started to reply but was interrupted by the hiss of the radio.
‘Chief?’ crackled a voice through the static.
‘Yep, I’m here,’ she replied. ‘Go on Mitchell.’
‘You were right, Adams turned up. But the ferry isn’t running; nothing is getting off the island because the storm is about to hit. He was furious about missing his flight.’ Sigurdsson realised it was the first time he had heard Mitchell’s voice.
Mason smiled. ‘Good. He seems too keen to get away if you ask me.’
‘Shall I bring him in?’
‘No, there’s no point yet – we know where he’s staying. I’ll see you back at the station; I’m on my way in now.’
Silence descended once again. He was angry that she hadn’t consulted him before having Adams followed, but he knew she would expect that. Eventually he spoke evenly.
‘Look, I don’t know what political game Wells is playing, but I’m not here to score points or try to outdo you. I just want to help solve the case. So we should work as a team.’
She gave no indication that she had heard him, but evidently she was just considering her response carefully. When it finally came, Sigurdsson was shocked by its vehemence.
‘The only one playing games here is you. I know Wells thinks I’m useless, and wants me out. Sexist fucking pig. So if you’re here to babysit me then at least be fuck
ing honest about it.’
‘Look, I don’t know what he’s said to you, but you’ve got this all wrong. I’m n–’
‘Just save it! If you want to go to the morgue that’s fine by me, but I’ve got my day job to do. So we’re going to the station to get you your own car, and then you can do whatever you bloody want.’
She hadn’t looked at him once during her outburst, but Sigurdsson could see the whiteness of her knuckles as her fingers gripped the steering wheel.
‘Mason, I am not your enemy here. I don’t know why Wells doesn’t rate you, and to be honest I don’t care. But I’m not exactly flavour of the month with him either, so if anyone is being punished here it isn’t you.’
She stared straight ahead, piercing the lashing torrents in front of them with her glare.
‘Oh yeah? The way he phrased it you’re some sort of golden boy.’
‘See, that’s what he does!’ Sigurdsson clenched his teeth in fury at his scheming superior officer. ‘He’s trying to play us off against each other. I don’t know, maybe he thinks it’s bloody motivational or something. Trust me, I’m far from a golden boy in his eyes.’
She seemed to relax a little in the face of his evident ire.
‘So what did you do to get into his bad books then? As far as I know all I did was take time off to have a baby.’
‘Finally, I find out something about you! So who’s the unlucky father?’
A pained expression tweaked the corners of her mouth. ‘He’s… not around any more. Me and Holly moved here to get away from him. Let’s just leave it at that.’
‘Okay, of course,’ Sigurdsson replied, regretting his joke. ‘Holly is a pretty name,’ he added eventually.
‘Thank you.’
Silence descended once again, broken only by the metallic battering of the rain on the roof and the rhythmic thunk of the wipers.
‘I reported a colleague for punching a young boy,’ Sigurdsson said eventually. The memory was still vivid in his mind. ‘The lad was in for drink driving, and he was mouthing off like an idiot. I was only in the station so late because we were investigating a murder. I wandered out when I heard the commotion and saw a sergeant punch the boy in the stomach. The lad was trying to go down but the sergeant held his head upright and got right in his face, threatened him, before he realised I was watching. I think at first he thought I was going to join in.’