Deadly Burial

by Jon Richter

  Everybody knows that everybody gets old. You even know it when you’re a little kid. But you don’t really know it, really understand it, until it happens, and then it’s too late. You think you still have all this time, all these days and months and years to fix everything and right all the wrongs. And then you have none at all.

  They call WrestleMania ‘the showcase of the immortals’. Well I never made it to WrestleMania, and now I know why, because it turns out Vic Valiant is a mere mortal, after all.

  Wednesday

  He had never been a big drinker. After years of struggling to keep up with his colleagues in the pub, he had accepted that gaseous drinks like lager and cider just didn’t agree with him, and spirits tended to make him ill before he could get drunk. So for a short period in his early thirties, he’d taken to drinking white wine on a night out, and on occasion had woken up the next morning in the alarming state of being able to remember literally nothing about his evening, or the journey home.

  Once, he had awoken with a terrible headache, his clothing torn, and bruising and cuts all over his hands. Somehow he had made it back to his own bed, still fully clothed including his shoes, but without his wallet or car keys. In a panic, he had leapt out of bed, head pounding as he scoured his apartment for any sign of the missing possessions, racking his aching brain unsuccessfully for any memories of the previous evening. He started to invent all sorts of theories: he’d been mugged, he’d been in a fight, he’d left the door unlocked while he slept and someone had sneaked in and stolen from him. He’d even checked inside all of the wardrobes in case the imagined intruder was still in his flat.

  It was almost an hour later, after phoning his friends several times to no avail, while he was heating some beans on the hob, that a barrage of vivid memories had suddenly assailed his mind: the bouncer bundling him out of the club, him being adamant that he was in a fit state to drive home, his friends wrestling his car keys from him while he tried to fight them off, him being sick in the taxi where he had doubtless left his wallet as unwitting compensation.

  He had been confused, horrified, embarrassed, relieved, all at once. His friends had thought it was funny, but he had virtually given up drinking for a few years.

  He traversed a similar series of emotions when he awoke that Wednesday morning. First, he experienced an almost total momentary amnesia as he stared up at a beautiful woman with short red hair who kept repeating a word that meant nothing to him. He wanted to move, but found that he couldn’t, as though his muscles had all wasted away to mush in his sleep. All he could do was look up at her in total bewilderment as she spoke.

  ‘Chris… Chris?’

  Someone’s name. She really was very pretty. Why was she –

  His name. Which meant that she was –

  The memories came then, a sudden rush of recollection that seemed to override his atrophy and hauled him bolt upright. The fragmented recollections of the terrifying attack, his improbable survival, Dixon’s hate-filled face, the moonlight glinting off the sickeningly sharp katana.

  Dixon’s animal howl as he had disappeared down the lift shaft.

  ‘What happened to him?’ he blurted into Mason’s face.

  ‘Jesus Christ Sigurdsson, lie back down. He’s dead.’ Sigurdsson felt an exploding pain behind his eyes, and did as he was told. They were in a white room, with sunlight streaming in through the window. The hotel… how had they…

  ‘Am I in the hospital?’

  ‘Yep. And you’re not on Salvation any more, Toto; you’re in the North Devon District Hospital. The storm broke last night. You didn’t wake up once during the whole trip in the air ambulance. I was worried about you. You’ve got a massive gash across your chest and you were knocked unconscious. And your hand looks like you’ve been punching a brick wall.’

  The pain seemed to return with her words, a crushing ache in his right hand as though someone had just tightened a vice around it. He remembered the protective cup Dixon had been wearing, the sort of preparation that would be taken by someone who had been caught out before and wanted to eliminate their only weak spot.

  A carefully planned execution.

  ‘What… happened?’

  ‘You tell me! The night porter was almost hysterical when she called us. She said she thought she heard a scream, then a few seconds later she’d heard a massive bang from the lift, then another bang, and then someone had crawled out of it, bleeding everywhere.’ She frowned down at him, her face a mixture of emotions, mirroring his own: relief, confusion, concern. ‘By the time we got there Dixon had made it halfway up the stairs, then died. His back was broken. Fuck knows how he managed to drop down into the lift, and then make it that far. At first we thought there had been a fight in the reception area, until we checked the rest of the building and found you.’

  Sigurdsson nodded his understanding, wincing as he tried to flex the fingers of his throbbing hand.

  ‘He was… still holding the sword,’ she added. ‘How the fuck did you manage to chuck him down the lift shaft?’

  He managed a small shrug, wondering how long it would be before the pain in his head subsided, considering the strength of the man who had inflicted the injury with a single wayward blow.

  ‘I was awake, in the bathroom,’ he said. There was no need to tell her about the panic attack. ‘He burst in through the door and started chopping my bed to pieces. Then he realised I wasn’t in it, and came at me, and somehow I managed to fight my way past him and out into the hall.’ He raised his injured appendage. ‘I got this trying to punch him in the bollocks.’

  She laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth, apologising.

  ‘I’m sorry, it isn’t funny at all.’

  He smiled back.

  ‘Don’t worry; it’s nice to see a friendly face.’

  A silence descended then, the two of them just looking at each other for a few seconds. Then Mason’s phone rang, and she seemed to become suddenly self-aware, flushing slightly as she rose to answer the call.

  ‘Mason,’ she said, her voice returning to its familiar deep bark. ‘Okay, excellent. Just keep looking. Yeah, Sigurdsson’s all right, we’re just on the way to get him checked out for concussion and get his chest stitched up.’

  She hung up and turned back to him.

  ‘That was Mitchell. They’re here with us too, turning over Dixon’s flat in Barnstaple. Says they’ve already found his stash of steroids there, although not enough to prove that he was a dealer.’

  Sigurdsson nodded, trying to banish the haze from his brain. He tried to sit up again.

  ‘Look, I’m fine, can’t we just get over there?’

  She speared him with a look that needed no words. He lay back down obediently, gazing around him at the array of medical apparatus. So much advanced equipment, with the sole purpose of preventing the bed’s occupant from passing away. It seemed that with all of this technology in the world, all of the medical advances of human civilisation, it ought to be impossible to die.

  But it wasn’t. Last night, he had come within centimetres of it.

  And no equipment in the world would be able to save Paul Dixon.

  *

  It was afternoon by the time the doctor permitted his release. His phone rang as he hurried towards the squad car that had been dispatched to collect him. He answered and heard Mason’s voice, sounding excited.

  ‘We found a diary,’ she said. After leaving him at the hospital, she had headed straight to Dixon’s apartment to meet the others. ‘Not like his private journal or anything, just a list of appointments and names. But “V” appears multiple times, which could be “Valiant”, and supports our theory that Dixon was dealing to him. But get this: one other nickname crops up repeatedly, and each time it has numbers next to it, like maybe the cost of what he was buying, or the quantities.’

  ‘What’s the nickname?’

  He could almost hear her smiling down the phone.

  ‘
“Boss”,’ she quoted.

  He stopped in his tracks, the breeze picking up around him like a remnant of the Salvation storm. ‘So that must be Penman?’

  ‘Yep. I say we arrest him.’

  ‘Is that enough?’

  ‘Are you joking? He’s mentioned repeatedly in the diary of a man who just tried to murder a senior police officer with a sword!’

  Sigurdsson continued towards the squad car, clambering into the passenger seat and shaking hands with the young female driver, who must have been from the local constabulary.

  ‘Just wait till I get there, okay? Have you finished searching the flat?’

  ‘More or less – just get a move on.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask if I’m feeling okay?’ he asked, in mock indignation.

  ‘If you weren’t you’d have already told me,’ she retorted, and hung up.

  His next call was to Wells – he supposed a near-death experience qualified as a significant update – but his superior officer was unavailable. As he left a long message explaining the latest developments, he gazed out of the window, his mind starting to fit together the jigsaw pieces they had accumulated so far.

  If Penman was dealing steroids to his own wrestlers, was Dixon acting as some sort of middleman, or was he just a customer? Either way, why was he worried enough about Sigurdsson’s interference to try to kill him? It must mean that the big man was also responsible for Schultz’s death… maybe Penman had sold steroids to Dixon to sell on to Schultz, explaining their regular meetings, but for some reason Dixon had switched them for deadly strychnine. But why? And why would his MO suddenly switch from poisoning to crazed sword attacks?

  Or maybe they were just twisting the facts to fit their theory. In reality all they had was a diary that suggested Dixon had met regularly with two people. But Dixon’s involvement in the case was an indisputable fact, now.

  A fact that the wrestler had died trying to keep secret.

  They needed to focus on understanding why Schultz had died, not on trying to crucify Howard Penman, odious as he was.

  His meditation was interrupted with a jolt about ten minutes later as the car bumped onto the kerb outside a long, low building, whose architecture seemed to be Victorian, with ornate gables and parapets adorning coffee-coloured brickwork. An image flickered in his mind, of Tall Paul rampaging through the corridors with his katana, cutting the other residents to pieces in their beds.

  He shuddered as the driver radioed Mason to confirm their arrival. Then she pointed towards the rusty iron entrance gate, where a gravel pathway led across a poorly-maintained lawn towards the building’s main door, where Mason was waiting to greet them. Sigurdsson followed her inside, glad to be out of the bitter chill that hung in the air like an omen.

  ‘Have you found anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing significant since we last spoke, although I don’t think I told you about the fucking blacksmith’s in the spare room.’

  Sigurdsson frowned quizzically as he followed her down a long, high-ceilinged corridor, but no further explanation was forthcoming. On either side they passed doors to various numbered apartments.

  ‘Quite a nice place he had.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘A bit creepy though.’

  He knew what she meant. The whole place seemed decaying somehow, smelling vaguely of mould and damp. And it was deathly silent. No inquisitive neighbours came to their doors. The only sound was the tramping of their footsteps along the tiled corridor.

  She stopped outside number 53, and pushed the door open.

  Dixon’s apartment was spacious, the high ceilings and large rooms befitting his titanic frame. Four doors led off from the small hallway – a bathroom, a main bedroom with an en suite, a living room, and a second bedroom. The rooms were featureless, white walls and sparse furnishings making it appear as though Dixon had only recently moved in, or simply had no desire to stamp his personality on the place. Like a machine for living in. The lounge did contain a surprisingly large book collection, mostly about warfare or martial arts. But it was the second bedroom that contained the most remarkable feature. They found Mitchell waiting for them inside, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling window that dominated the opposite wall.

  The room’s other two walls were covered with weaponry.

  Carefully hung from various hooks were crossed pairs of sai, butterfly knives, differently-sized katanas, even a set of nunchakus. One pair of swords was missing its second half. All of them gleamed in the wan sunlight, as though they had been recently polished.

  ‘Impressive collection, isn’t it?’ Mason murmured.

  Sigurdsson said nothing. He was picturing Dixon calmly selecting the best blade with which to slaughter him in his sleep.

  ‘Here, I’ll show you the diary.’

  She led him into the main bedroom, another soulless white-walled cube with a single divan bed and stacks of weight-lifting paraphernalia.

  ‘The diary was in the bottom drawer with his socks,’ she explained, gesturing towards the chest standing in the corner. Mitchell handed the small, black-bound journal to Sigurdsson, and Mason showed him the entries that had caught her attention. He had met with ‘V’ on a more and more frequent basis over the past three months, each entry printed in a careful, childlike hand. ‘Boss’ appeared at similarly irregular intervals, albeit over a longer period of time. Each of these listings had a number next to it that might represent quantities, or values. Or weights. Or birthdays. Or lottery numbers.

  ‘Mason, are you sure we aren’t getting carried away here?’

  She looked surprised. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that he has regular meetings with Penman, outside of the performance dates?’

  ‘Well, maybe he’s collecting his payment for the shows. Or just meeting socially. Look, I agree that it’s something to confront Penman with – but is it really enough to arrest him?’

  ‘Chris, Dixon tried to kill you last night. They must be trying to cover something up. This is our best lead yet!’

  He couldn’t help but think that they were missing something, an obvious clue that was staring them in the face.

  A phone rang, and he reached instinctively for his pocket. But it wasn’t his; it was Mitchell’s. The sergeant lifted the mobile to his ear and wandered out of the room to take the call.

  ‘Has Penman been told that another of his wrestlers is dead?’ Sigurdsson asked.

  ‘Not yet – we’re trying to contact Dixon’s next of kin first. His mother and sister live in Ealing, but we haven’t been able to contact them all day. Penman will probably need to be the one to identify the body.’

  ‘Don’t they have a show tonight?’

  Mason stared back at him blankly for a few seconds, then her face screwed up in exasperation.

  ‘Shit. Yes, they do. Dixon is probably supposed to be performing.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’ll be starting soon. We need to get to Penman, so he can cancel it.’

  Sigurdsson replicated her gesture. 15:33. ‘What time does it start? He could even be there already, setting up.’

  Mason looked as though she wanted to punch something. Just then, the door opened and Mitchell stepped back into the room, bafflement on his face.

  ‘That was the SWA calling me back. I’ve just spoken to the vice president of Talent Management.’

  ‘Well, what did he say?’ Mason asked irritably. ‘Do they have any idea where Adams is staying? Surely he’s got off the island by now.’

  Mitchell’s frown deepened as he shook his head.

  ‘They said they were never scouting Vic Valiant, or Kevin Samson. Arn Adams was sacked six weeks ago.’

  *

  Sigurdsson checked his watch again as they sped towards Rumours. 18:40. They hadn’t been able to get hold of Penman, and in the end had had to arrange for the air ambulance to take them back to the island, as that was closer than any available police helicopters. Mason was sullen and si
lent in the front seat next to Mitchell, stewing over her mistake in not contacting Penman sooner with news of the death of his ‘bodyguard’.

  They were treating Adams as a key suspect, and all three of them as well as Giggs were geared up to arrest him on sight. His involvement in the case wasn’t yet clear, but it was certain that he had lied about his reasons for being in Salvation. Sigurdsson was hoping that they might even find him at the evening’s event.

  The ‘R’ of the neon sign had been shattered since their last visit, adding to the club’s tawdry appearance. They proceeded past the bouncer on the door and into the bar area. The show had already started, and television screens projected live images of Penman into the room, his voice bellowing and confident as usual, seeming to emphasise Mason’s error.

  ‘Have we got a show for you tonight!’ he was enthusing. ‘We’ve got both of our semi-finals, which means The Strongman Kevin Samson in action in this very ring against the villainous Vortex, and a battle between two forces of darkness when the Tokyo Psycho takes on… The Necromancer!’ The crowd cheered appreciatively. ‘But first up, in a rematch of our Sunday evening spectacular, and this time with hardcore rules… it’s the Amazing Andrew Wilshere battling The Maniac Mick Morgan! That’s right, you can forget the rest, ‘cos we’re…’

  The roar of ‘the best’ reverberated around them, clearly audible through the double doors that led down into the dancefloor area. Sigurdsson gritted his teeth at the idea of the clearly-injured Wilshere competing in another match.

  ‘What does “hardcore” mean?’ Mason asked, echoing his thoughts.

  ‘No disqualifications, essentially… in other words, an excuse for them to hit each other with chairs and throw each other around outside the ring instead of inside it.’

  She snorted distastefully, commenting almost to herself. ‘The sooner we can put this idiot out of business the better.’ She turned to her sergeant. ‘Mitchell, you go into the main room and keep an eye out for Adams. We’ll go and find Penman backstage.’