Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology]
Page 38
Crouching there, holding the dirt-encrusted knife in my hand, fuming at my impotence, I knew one thing.
Mam had won and there was nothing I could do about it.
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* * * *
ENTANGLEMENT
H. P. Tinker
... A series of unexplained deaths rippling across a city paralysed by overly-ambitious copycat serial killers, bi-curious junkies, homeless Santas ... 197 exchange students killed in simultaneous unrelated coffee table incidents ... a travelling salesman mutilated in his bed surrounded by obscene cuddly toys . . . art critics butchered amidst some of the countries most innovative new buildings ... a motivational dog-trainer garrotted in her car by a 5-inch child’s lariat . . . several hundred random business journalists killed by lethal injection . . .the city a vast amoral jungle of blue-haired gamblers and punk rock scholars . . . out on the Sheik-infested streets a thousand tragically sassy beauticians, Rembrandt scholars who don’t like Rembrandt, religious activists sexually haranguing timid agnostics . . . the atmosphere of each day eerily in keeping with the vapid production values of the entire Sussudio period . . . Q surrounded by photographs, articles, graphs detailing these sly, wittily constructed deaths: dismembered ex-girlfriends, decapitated nuns, disembowelled cardiologists, violently violated violinists . . . Q pondering the dark methodologies at work, regularly raising both eyebrows simultaneously . . .
* * * *
. . . unshaven in blue underpants, organic cotton, knitted stripes - no logo of any description - Q squinting at cold black newsprint, reading about the death of a former chess champion. Several witnesses saw him fall “almost cheerfully” - after straightening his bowtie, tossing himself from the roof of the building ... an ever-increasing grin widening across his face ... on impact he was “practically having sex up against a tree for five to ten seconds.”
* * * *
Q circles the paragraph in bright red ink.
In some advanced technological epoch - Q thinks to himself -perhaps people will wonder why we bothered to circle such articles in bright red ink. Q filing away the latest of the latest unexpected demises ... a light-bulb salesman ripped apart by a gaggle of lions . . . renegade schoolgirls exploding into young pieces, their charred remains evenly distributed across the piazza . . .
* * * *
“... my files cannot possibly take the strain of this increasingly worrying information,” realizes Q. “Soon I’ll be requiring an all-new filing system . . .”
* * * *
. . . cryptic messages arriving - from disparate loners: infertile child psychologists, lunatic travel agents, broken down housewives, fairly lethal sounding Hispanic 52-year olds . . . the latest: Mrs A, a glamorous cripple in a dark suit, pale tie, gold shoes, legs splayed about a mile wide: “I must interject into your investigation in my customized wheelchair,” she states earnestly, like Kate Bush. “My husband is listed as missing in the places where they list such things - and that’s a distressing state for any husband to be in . . .”
* * * *
“. . . regarding your husband—”
A: “I fear he’s gone, forever into the overbearing darkness, more overbearing darkness than I had personally bargained for. Having dreamed all my life of romantic trajectories, I now find myself in a full-length narrative of angry policemen, would-be assassins, pre-teen suicide bombers, nothing remotely romantic about it—”
Q: “The rediscovery of a missing husband rarely represents an enormous cause for celebration . . . but if you have any supplementary information that might shed light on your husband’s disappearance . . .”
A: “Well, there is one thing - probably not important . . .”
Q: “No, please tell me. Even the smallest grain might prove central ...”
A: “Well, people do say he bears an unnatural resemblance to Kris Kristofferson . . .”
* * * *
. . . into his Dictaphone: “- as events turn ever more torrid, I am proud that I have not betrayed myself, not once - well, maybe once - but never twice and, in a corrupt and immoral age where inconsequential dialogue has become the order of the day, that seems important ...”
* * * *
. . . Q waking, the smell of maple syrup thick in both nostrils. In a city of foetid fragrances, the mysteriously saccharine odour rapidly hits local radio. One listener describes the smell as “oddly flavoured coffee”, another: “rather like maple syrup”. A well-spoken spokesperson from the Office of Emergency Aromas asserts: “We are fairly confident that the odour is no way dangerous and that citizens of the city can continue with their usual patterns of early morning business and communication ...”
Stepping outside, a gigantic billboard overhead reads: “. . . THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT FULLY COOPERATE HERE . . .”
* * * *
... an unexpected sight greeting Q along the angular carpeting scheme of Mrs A’s apartment: an arm reaching outwards, two fingers raised like a gesture, or sign - or salute; or symbol. Mrs A impaled on the far wall by several metal hooks. Dark scuffs on the linoleum resembling less of a struggle, more a dance of death, possibly the Foxtrot. Why were murdered women often tortured and mutilated horribly in this fashion? asks Q. As if simple murder wasn’t enough for them? Was the secret cousin of some rich and powerful people involved? Who else would be up to the task of nailing somebody’s wife to a wall with so much obvious enthusiasm? Recent events unusually frozen on the face of Mrs A in the form of a happy expression . . . but - given the circumstances - was there really anything to be quite so happy about? Q taking samples of her nightwear away - for special analysis - under his jacket . . .
* * * *
“. . . even previously thick-skinned police sniffer dogs have taken to contemplating their own mortality,” Q notes, alone in his office with cheap bourbon, sour conclusions, false assumptions, vague deductions, a Dictaphone, some even cheaper bourbon . . . the telephone spluttering in the ever-dimming dimness. Q picking up, as is his custom. A voice answering like a deceased banker dredged hissing from a lake, some time last May. “When an unhappily married woman is unexpectedly crucified,” advises the voice, “her husband is generally called in for questioning ...”
* * * *
. . . on a hunch, Q tracing the husband of Mrs A to the Northern fringes of the Latino-Disco Crossover Quarter, where he is rumoured to be professionally dancing the paso doble under an assumed initial: “O”. A largely colourful room crowded with the contours of humans; in the centre about thirty middle-aged bisexuals thrashing out symbolic acts of dance. Dubious dress codes at work: purple sequinned shirts, casual khaki slacks, Manhattan sandals ... an unusual man bearing a passing resemblance to Kris Kristofferson in a lime-green rental tuxedo ... a slim white cane sweeping in front of him, left to right, right to left, like the feelers of an insect socialite.
Q doubts the veracity of this disability, almost immediately . . .
* * * *
“. . . did you ever dance the paso doble with Mrs A?”
Silence.
“Did you ever dance the paso doble with Mrs A and then not contact Mrs A for some time afterwards?”
Silence.
“Do you still dance the paso doble nowadays . . . with other people?”
“O” smiles diffidently, the expression of idyllic contentment written across his face: “Sometimes,” “O” admits, “I feel like a dead man. But I’ve made my choice. I have a certain life and I like my new way of thinking. I’m happier where I am today. I remain fairly confident of that ...”
* * * *
. . . unperturbed, Q puts on his hat . . . only when he looks down the hat isn’t there anymore. Instead, in the place where the hat should be: no hat, a reduction in hat-based circumstance. Out in the street, noticing almost everybody seems to be wearing hats, wide-brimmed fedoras mostly, noting how hats are central to maintaining confidence during daytime detective work in the street.
As a consequence, Q feels hatless and alone .
. .
* * * *
. . . the corridor adjacent to his office: an incredibly angry looking young woman in a rhinestone kilt leaning heavily against an instant coke machine. Q wondering: what is the source of the young woman’s incredible anger? Were her parents incredibly angry throughout her formative youth? Does she have an incredibly angry young husband at home? Are her clothes incredibly angry clothes? What is the significance of the incredible anger of the incredibly angry looking young woman? What is the incredibly angry looking young woman really so incredibly angry about?
“You are investigating these crimes not from compassion but from intellectual avarice,” she tells him - incredibly angrily. “That may sound totally asinine - but that’s never stopped me before ...”
The incredibly angry looking young woman then invites Q to supper at her brownstone townhouse. Having already slept with more than five hundred young women during his investigations, Q welcomes this latest development . . .
* * * *
“. . . you can disappear in this city,” explains Q. “Its belly is death . . . you can become entangled in the everyday nuisances here, ensnaring you like a pop career you never even wanted.”
“That’s why this city needs you,” she snaps. “Some people don’t realize it yet. Others, however, are only too keenly aware . . .”
“. . . but” - Q flounders - “my masculinity appears to have become badly eroded, over time, to the point where I am starting to feel like I’m trapped inside a bad Phil Collins song ...”
“How can you say that!?” she shrieks. “That implies there are good Phil Collins songs, which, as we both know, there are not . . .”
* * * *
. . . down in the square, a travelling carnival in residence: a procession of bearded ladies, Siamese triplets, marching penguins, fire eating gypsies, alcoholic strong men belittled by self-doubt. . . under the shadow of the big wheel, two men appearing like plain-clothed policemen, lingering across the street like plain-clothed policemen, blending in with their environment like plain-clothed policemen, smartly dressed in homburgs like plain-clothed policemen - Q suddenly suspecting that these men . . . might. . . actually . . . be . . . plain-clothed. . . . policemen . . . as if to confirm the hypothesis, grabbed from behind by thick-set arms - thrust into a wall, gun pushed into the nape of the back.
“We have certain questions,” they say together, nonchalantly waggling a subpoena. “Questions of a certain nature. Concerning a certain matter. Although we are not authorized to release any further information at the present time.”
There is no struggle. Q not being guilty of anything, - other than a cheap haircut and a sexual trajectory that had roused latent curiosities, perhaps - no need for a struggle. “I am not the person who crucified Mrs A,” Q informs them, forearms wrapped around his head . . .
* * * *
. . . beneath the ethereal lighting of the interrogation room, Q continues: “People are happily killing each other, cheerfully maiming themselves. And I am genuinely fearful for this city and any future implications for its general populous. Death is being interwoven, intimately connected on some level I don’t understand. My findings have surprised me on many levels. I never knew there were so many deaths of a suspiciously transvestite-based nature, for instance . . .”
Chief Inspector S bends forward, removes the gilt-edged silver coffee spoon from his mouth with a confounded sigh and guffaws through a quick-fire series of shuddering jowls and crumpled face-skin: “So what is it you are trying to tell me exactly?” he says, voice incredibly loud, expression extremely close up.
“People are dying,” Q tells him. “Some are vanishing. Others are being co-opted by the ghosts of the formerly living.”
“Who are these people exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are these people now?”
“I don’t know that either . . . but their lives form part of the wider investigation.”
“And how wide has this investigation got?”
“At least twice as wide as it is long.”
Droopy-eyed and sanguine, Chief Inspector S appears to be wearing a white turtleneck pullover and gold chinos, a prize Smith & Wesson half-cocked down the front of his pants like an utterly meaningful trophy. On his feet: a pair of tartan espadrilles tapping enigmatically to a soundtrack of smoothly-syncopated swing standards recreated by an authentic orchestra of recognized legal experts . . .
“Have you managed to reach any firm conclusions yet?” Chief Inspector S asks.
“Absolutely none,” Q confesses, “of any firmness whatsoever . . .”
* * * *
. . . more deaths . . .
Frozen motorcylists. Electrocuted clergymen. Castrated hoteliers. Barbecued spouses. Casually skinned multi-storey car park attendants. . . Q occupying chairs, manipulating desktop toys, looking at women adjust themselves through digital binoculars - from high vantage points . . . slouching in gay revue bars, starting to feel like James Stewart at the end ofHarvey . . . encountering an unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves - in a gay revue bar - who tells him: “Come with me and you will find the answers you seek . . .” before sprinting unhelpfully in the opposite direction. Following a high-speed jog through the futuristic ruins of the city, Q tails the unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves to a back street, down a side alley, through a sliding door, up dark creaking steps, into the grubby hallway of a communal spa which - Q guesses - is probably funded by an anonymous pervert millionaire for his own private purposes: the enjoyment of watching strangers conduct themselves nakedly, in private, via a two-way mirror system . . .
* * * *
. . . behind the reception desk: a young Asian woman with the high-browed demeanour of Virginia Woolf, wearing a tartan turban.
“Who are you?” she demands in a refined voice, rich and plummy with strong overtones of Merlot. “You don’t belong here.What could you possibly want?”
“Well,” Q explains, “entanglement is weaving a path through time, very strongly, rather like an incendiary device ... I do have some graphs and charts and other illustrative material to demonstrate this point . . . but outside of the investigation, my life is an empty canvas minus myself and prior to this I was desperate, down-on-my-luck, back against the wall, hand to mouth, mouth to hand, always questioning myself:what am I saying? who am I? what is my destiny? why won’t she answer my calls? has she rekindled her relationship with a former saxophonist? because in essence, you see, I have been sucked into a vortex by all the beautiful absences in my own life, so many beautiful absences I couldn’t possibly list them all, well, maybe I could, but it would take a very long time ...”
- only partway into one of the longest sentences he had ever attempted, Q notices the young Asian woman striking her turban violently against the hard, glossy edges of the reception desk. She pauses momentarily, gazes around, forehead glistening purple. Realizing she is still conscious, she repeats the action until almost completely concussed . . .
* * * *
... in the steam of the communal spa, the unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves reclines on a long pinewood bench: naked except for a trilby hat now, his body improbably misshapen. The man signals with expansive homosexual mannerisms towards a half-raised portcullis framed by two portable cannons. Inside the gates: a stone-cold cold stone room, malevolent scarlet wallpaper, the smell of tepid piss, the ambience carcinogenic. Volumes of unread books line every wall, a dark archive of unremittingly obscure easy reading tomes. Over a grand piano, the vast imprint of a swastika, surrounded by a series of portraits, minor Scottish poets lounging indignantly in the semi-nude . . .
* * * *
. . . suddenly: the fearful drone of traditional bagpipe music ... 12 figures dressed as Judas Iscariot expressing a slight feeling of bewilderment via a Highland jig . . . behind them, a gnomic man in sparkling jackboots and the habit of a nun. From
inside his habit an epic pause ensues. Lowering the hood he reveals: the over-sized head of Princess Margaret. On her face a severe expression. Q having seen a similar expression on the faces of several other people lately. Friends. Family. Lovers. Lawyers. Paramedics. Magistrates.
There’s another pause, not quite as epic as the last . . .
“My name is Herr Schmaltz!” cries Herr Schmaltz, visibly demented. “/ have recently undergone a complete face transplant and - during the same procedure — had my colon medically revised. However, originally I came from Newark, New Jersey, where I trained to be a violist. But when I moved to Leipzig and became the world’s smallest basketball player, they accused me of decapitating my nephew during a violent sex call. . . then proceeded to arrest me for something I didn’t do .. . then questioned me about my relationship with a comatose futures trader . . . then offered me cocaine, an incredible pay rise, and a part-time shot at redemption in the Scottish hills ... I quickly became very Scottish and having a head for business I quickly became a millionaire too . . . now, having returned in partial disguise, I shall awaken dormant memories of love and crime and death . . . and nobody shall penetrate the heart of my dark secret . . .”