Stark Contrasts (An Adam Stark novel Book 1)

by Peter Carroll

  Stark also worried about the moment the excreta connected with the whirly thing. The moment when the press got hold of it. Up until now, no journalist had made the connection between the mutilation of Dwayne Clements and the murder of Ernie Martin and, as yet, no-one from the department had been tempted to leak it. However, it wouldn't be long before the lure of financial recompense proved too great for some low ranking clerk or beat cop to resist. He couldn't blame them really. Then again, the most likely source of information would be this self-appointed moral crusader. Whoever he was, he'd gone to the trouble of leaving messages intended for mass consumption; the fact they'd hitherto gone unpublicised would be unlikely to meet with his approval. All this effort would be for nought if he didn't get his message out to a much wider audience than a couple of cops and a forensic team.

  Stark drifted into sleep and a strange dream about Lara Katz seducing him in a distinctly sadomasochistic fashion. Not his first choice of kink if truth be told but, for Katz, he'd give it a bash - literally.

  9. A Bad Call

  I'm no different to the next man in many ways. I enjoy a beer, sports and a posh meal with the wife once in a while. She's my second wife as it happens. The first one left me, taking my son with her, but sometimes these things work out for the best. I get access and our relationship is amicable and cooperative as far as the lad goes. To be fair to number one, I wasn't as faithful as I should've been. It's a behavioural problem I really should've grown out of by now. I don't know what makes me find monogamy so difficult to achieve – even when I'm deeply in love.

  The current Mrs and me have a favourite restaurant but it's a bit pricey. Actually, it's frigging extortionate and we can hardly ever afford to go there. When we do, it's for something really special like our anniversary, or a worryingly significant birthday. This time it was due to her promotion at work. She's the brains of the operation. And the beauty.

  As restaurants go, it's a fairly big place; set across two floors, with a mix of open tables and more intimate booths. It is at once modern and traditional but extremely nicely done. I suspect it cost a whole heap of cash to get it kitted out. These qualities help it attract the rich and famous, as well as the fiscally challenged, indulging themselves every once in a while. Unfortunately, it has always been my experience that there's a certain type of money that deletes the manners and consideration most of us have in such social situations. On a couple of previous occasions our enjoyment of the night had been diminished by loud-mouths, braying about how they made their fortunes and how they did it all themselves. The worst intrusions into our cherished and infrequent moments of indulgence were perpetrated by the mobile-phone-shouters. Tonight, the guy in the next-door booth was going to learn a very important lesson in restaurant etiquette.

  We were not even finished ordering our meal when he started.

  “Yeah, that's right, man. I'm down at Cardoza's. Slumming it with the football players and a few wannabes.”

  Insert unheard reply from fuckwit at other end of the line.

  “HAHAHAHA!”

  Insert etc.

  “No, I tell you what, it's going downhill. They let all sorts in these days.”

  Insert...

  “Waitress is a babe, though. Reckon I might have seen her in a movie...if you know what I mean! HAHAHAHA!”

  Insert...

  “Ok, no problemo. Catch you later, man. Yeah, nice one! Ciao!”

  My wife looked at me and sighed. I shook my head. The waitress blushed. We ordered and settled back to enjoy the food and each other's company. The shouter had other ideas. Versions of the initial conversation rattled out over and over again. Sometimes more profane, sometimes involving some sort of business transaction. All the time, immensely irritating.

  After the starter, I made a visit to the bathroom and took stock of his set-up.

  I never got a good view of his face because he sat in the booth with his back to me. His date was a blonde, naturally. Well, I doubt she was a natural blonde, but nonetheless, the nouveau riche clichés kept on coming. Half-eaten food, an ice-bucket with Krug champagne, a blinged-up smart phone lying out on the table for all to envy. Even without seeing him well I could tell he was young - early to mid-twenties maybe - immaculately groomed and dressed in the kind of designer suit I would need to work a couple of lifetimes to afford. Wealth had afforded him a lot of things, but class was not one of them. Here he was, in the company of a beautiful, nubile young lady, with plenty of cash and the vigour of youth on his side, and yet, here he was, ignoring her, shouting his mouth off to numerous unseen callers, and leering over the waitress. He may have professed contempt for footballers, but he was a Premiership arsehole in my book. I made some preparations in the toilet and returned to my main course.

  The shouting and profanity continued. A waiter asked him politely to tone it down and he gave him a mouthful of abuse. Doubtless, the restaurant were prepared to tolerate a lot more bad behaviour from a client spending the kind of eye-watering sums he was lashing out. Personally, I think this was a bit of a short-sighted and short-term approach. If this was my place, he would long since have become intimately acquainted with the pavement outside. As we completed our desserts, he got up and headed to the toilet. I made my excuses to my wife and followed suit.

  He entered the stall, making the fatal error of failing to lock the door. I walked in straight after him and, before he could turn or react, I smashed him round the temple with the golf ball in a bag. He fell to the floor unconscious. I closed the door, slid the bolt across and got to work.

  I donned a pair of surgical gloves and gagged him with his own tie. Then, retrieving the mobile-phone from his pocket, I searched through the menus for his number; scribbling it down on a small pad. Next, I used a rope to tie him to the cistern, positioning him so his torso was across the pan. I undid his belt and zip, pulled his trousers and boxer shorts down to his knees. Finally, I took out the condom and applied the lube.

  Back at the table with my wife, we finished our aperitifs and paid the bill. Outside the restaurant I stopped at a pay-phone.

  “I just want to make a couple of calls. You go on ahead to the car. I'll catch you up.”

  “Why not use your mobile?” asked my wife.

  “Oh, the battery's running flat. Anyway, I sometimes get sentimental for the good old days,'” I said, winking at her as I punched in the number.

  “Yeah, if only that dickhead at the next booth had felt the same!”

  I laughed as the number rang out and I got through to the answer machine. It was the voice of a sultry young woman.

  “Leo can't take your call right now as he's too busy being successful. Leave your message and he might get back to you.”

  Something suddenly struck me about the name. Leo. Why would I know someone like him called Leo? I let it ride but something was nagging.

  In the toilet of Cardoza's a couple of waiters were washing their hands when the distinctive, but rather muffled ringtone of one Leo Corantelli struck up.

  One of the waiters whispered to the other.

  “I would love to shove that mobile up the arrogant bastard's arse!”

  “Yeah,” replied his companion, “too right, mate.”

  They chuckled quietly and headed back to the restaurant.

  I left my message and hung up.

  10. A House Call

  Ernie Martin's house was just as Stark imagined it might be: a hovel. The estate it sat in was thoroughly depressing and depressed. A congregation and aggregation of the discarded and forgotten, the ill-educated, poorly raised and all manner of other unfortunates. There were a million different hard luck stories within the confines of this place. So many flats and houses ending up as containers full of broken dreams, misery and disconnection: the poverty extending far beyond what cash people had in their wallets. You could add to this mix the parasites and the chancers. The ones who were exploiting the desperate or bucking the system. If you didn't have to live in a place like this, you wou
ld never choose to. It was like his old home in Alloa but on steroids - whatever problems the Bottom End faced, multiplied a thousand times. His desire to help the good people drowning in such seas of inequity was undiminished but, sometimes, he would feel overwhelmed by the scale of his task when he visited an area like this.

  Mildred Martin was a mess. Face ruddy and bloated; like she'd been crying and drinking for a week - and not necessarily in that order. Her shabby clothes, bloodshot eyes and trembling hands, aptly offset by her bird's nest hair. A middle-aged woman whose life had panned out very badly, and she knew it. Once upon a time, Mildred had been a pretty, little girl with hopes and dreams and a future. But now, little more than a cypher; one of the walking dread, shuffling around the estate, alive in strictly biological terms only.

  She chuffed feebly on a succession of cigarettes, each allowed to burn to the point of depositing ash on her carpet between puffs. Not that it made much difference to it's dirtiness. The place would probably have made a cockroach nauseous. A glass of neat vodka was topped up periodically throughout their conversation and alternately glugged or sipped as the mood took her.

  “He was a good man,” she slurred, “and he worked hard and I loved him.”

  “I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs Martin, but I need to ask you a few questions about Ernie and what happened to him.”

  She slurped her vodka again but he hadn't the heart to force her to desist.

  “You need to find them two boys what scared the livin shit out of 'im the other week!”

  Stark, knocked right out of his stride by this, shot a look at Katz. She seemed equally rattled.

  “What do you mean, Mrs Martin?”

  “He was taken hostage by two men. They tied him to the front of his truck and played chicken with their car. He was terrified. He told the local bobby but that fat tub o' lard never did nothin about it. I never thought they'd come back and finish him off though.”

  Her shoulders hunched and she let out a sob, quelling her fragile emotions with a quivering draw on her cigarette and a glass-draining gulp.

  “Are you saying that two men did this to him a week before he was killed?”

  She wiped snot from her top lip with the sleeve of her blouse and sniffed.

  “Yeah, that's right! And I want you to catch them evil bastards and throw away the key for what they done to my Ernie!”

  Stark and Katz looked at each other and, without consciously planning it, raised their eyebrows in unison. It was very rare for vigilantes to work in pairs or teams. You could expect that kind of thing more often when gangs or drugs were involved. Not only that, but the notes left at the scenes so far made no reference to there being multiple people involved.

  “Mrs Martin, I need you to tell us all the details you can remember but can you please do me a favour?”

  “What's that, son?”

  “Can you stop drinking? We need to be sure you can recall this properly and not miss anything out. Every detail you can give us might be crucial in finding whoever did this to your husband.”

  It was obvious that even stopping now would make little discernible difference to the quality or veracity of her evidence. They needed to leave her to sleep it off and get her into the station for a full, fully sober interview the next day.

  Back in the car, Katz was first to break the silence.

  “Do you believe her or do you think the old coot is getting muddled up with all that vodka sloshing around in her brain?”

  “She seems pretty convinced but I suppose it might be an alcohol-induced false memory.” He looked off into the distance, considering.

  “Nah, it's just not the kind of thing you would make up or blurt out to a cop unless it was true...surely?”

  Katz shrugged. “I guess.”

  “No, really, I think it's just a wee bit too off the wall to invent unprompted. Anyway, at least it gives us a start. It also means we've got two bad guys now and not one. It would explain the physical advantage over the victims but it also gives me some hope we'll catch them. Partnership is much harder to get right than being a lone wolf.”

  “Don't I know it, sir!” quipped Katz.

  They both laughed. The first glimmer of a thawing Stark had seen so far. His hopes upped a notch. Why, he had no idea. There was so little to be gained from turning your work partner into your bed partner. Katz was young, beautiful, cool as, and one of the most focused colleagues he'd ever encountered; of either gender. He was just horny. Simple biological urges, which required resistance.

  “By the way, did we get anywhere with looking for CCTV footage from the park where Dwayne was attacked?” Stark asked.

  “No, sir. The park itself isn't actually covered because it's too dark for any footage to be useful. The council's been saving money on lights apparently. They have dummy cameras and signs up as a deterrent but there's nothing for us to look at.”

  “Ah, well. Nobody had CCTV in the seventies and the cops still managed to solve crimes, so we'll just need to look for some other way to catch these guys.” Stark added wryly.

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  11. Motion Sickness

  Every workplace has one. An annoying, officious dick that likes to do everything by the book. Obsessed with what people fail to do, seemingly incapable of ever recognising achievement. Mine had one too.

  Morris Hargreaves reached his late fifties still buttoned up about everything - from starched collar to attitudes about sex. Bitter and resentful about life, it was apparent he tried to make himself feel better by making others feel like shit. Incidents resulting in tearful and stressed-out colleagues making for exits and bathrooms abounded.

  He cultivated a hard on for me that would've made the 70's porn star John Holmes jealous.

  What pissed him off most was his inability to intimidate or stress me out. I found his frequent petulant outbursts pathetic for a man of his years and standing. In fact, on at least two occasions I laughed in his face. Give him his due - he was a persistent little fucker. I could expect at least one dressing down a day and, if I was really lucky, several. It was a battle of wills he would never win.

  By a strange quirk of fate, and much to my chagrin, I needed to deal with Morris Hargreaves in another aspect of my life. He was Chairman of the committee that ran my son's swimming team. His granddaughter was a junior champion, he was a prize prick.

  Whenever anyone made a suggestion as to how funds could be raised, communications might be improved, uniforms could be sourced more cheaply or anything else minor or major pertaining to club matters, they got the same answer.

  “You'll need to table a motion.”

  Nothing could ever be decided there and then. Nothing could be ad hoc. Everything needed to follow the due process set out in the club constitution. It added unnecessary delay but, crucially, as far as Hargreaves was concerned, everything went through him. This rendered him gatekeeper and backstop for all things swimming club. People such as Hargreaves are drawn to such positions for all the wrong reasons. They delight in exerting power over others and always seem to take life far too seriously.

  Given our strained relationship, I avoided volunteering ideas or suggestions unless I was sure he already agreed with them. He waited with baited breath whenever a committee meeting was in session, willing me to contribute something radical, just so he could slap me down. I kept my counsel and he seethed with frustration. It made the meetings more bearable for me.

  “Ok, but you'll need to table a motion.”

  It wasn't a particular incident as far as I can recall. It was more like Chinese-water-torture. A drip, drip, drip into my subconscious. He must have filled the tub and I needed to pull the plug to prevent a flood.

  “TABLE”

  “A”

  “MOTION!”

  Accessing buildings covertly didn't usually present a big challenge for me. The swimming club committee met in a back room at the local church hall. Tight security was unnecessary - nothing worth stealing ever spent t
he night there. As a result, this covert entry proved to be a cakewalk.

  The committee meeting was set to begin at eight the next morning. Hargreaves liked to drag things out, so he started early. As a keyholder, he was always punctual. For once, I would be there well ahead of the kick-off to ensure I could enjoy the moment.

  At seven-forty-five I found myself outside the church. The club secretary, George Amberry, also waited. He only experienced being bawled out for lateness once, but it was enough to ensure he never ran the risk of getting there after Hargreaves again. Not the most assertive of guys, but a very good accountant by all..er..accounts. Conversation between us didn't extend much beyond a 'How are you?' and remarks on the weather. Blue sky, sixty degrees, as it happened.

  At seven-fifty Hargreaves rolled up in his twenty year old BMW. Almost all his life took place in some form of suspended animation; a golden age of times gone by. He could easily afford a new car, but he'd rather spend hours maintaining and polishing the one he bought in his prime. He shot me a quizzical look - with just a dash of healthy (and, as it happened, well-placed) suspicion. I nodded in faux deference and politeness.

  Hargreaves, carrying a bundle of folders and papers, turned the key in the lock and let the door swing open. He strode forward with his purposeful, military gait. Around half-way down the hall he stopped dead in his tracks, dropping the paperwork to the ground where it slid in various directions across the varnished floorboards. His hand went to his mouth, then he bolted for a waste-paper bin and held it up as he retched and dry-heaved.