by Mark Morris
My hunch turned out to be right. I stepped out of the lift on to a landing with three widely spaced doors. Above the door closest to me was a wooden sign with the words ‘Suite 4’ carved into the wood and highlighted in gold paint. Half a dozen steps brought me to ‘Suite 5’. I checked my watch. 1.57 a.m. Perfect timing. I raised a hand and knocked gently.
It was so silent that you could almost hear the air hum. When I leaned forward to put my ear to the door, the rustle of my jacket seemed to reverberate from the beige walls.
I couldn’t hear anything from inside the room. I waited a few more seconds, then knocked again. My tongue rasped across lips which were dry with nerves. I shifted from one foot to the other – and then, for the first time since stepping out of the lift, I heard a sound.
It didn’t come from behind the door of Suite 5, though. It came from above me. I looked up at the ceiling, not that I expected to see anything. The sound was like claws scrabbling on a rough surface. I imagined an owl landing on a roof a few metres above my head. Maybe even rats running about in the air conditioning ducts.
The sound continued for a few seconds and then stopped. I looked at my watch. 1.59. Raising my fist, I knocked louder. Glancing up and down the corridor, I leaned forward again, my face so close to the door that I could have kissed it, and in a low, urgent voice, said, ‘Hello?’
Still no answer. ‘Fuck,’ I said, though so quietly that the only audible sound was the wet ‘ck’ in my throat. I knocked again, louder.
‘Hello?’ I repeated. ‘Anyone there?’
2.01. My anxiety was turning to paranoia. What if I’d got it wrong – the time, the place? What if I’d not read the email properly?
But I had. I knew I had. Not only had I read it properly, I’d read it at least twenty times. The details were seared into my brain. There was no way I’d made a mistake.
Email man had told me and Clover not to ring anyone – that if we did, he’d know – but surely that didn’t apply to us ringing each other? I took my phone out of my pocket. A quick call, just to double-check the details. Before thumbing the buttons, however, I tried the handle of the door.
It opened.
I was so surprised I jerked back, almost yanking the door shut again. I managed to stop myself, and for a few seconds just stood there, my hand wrapped around the handle, the door open half an inch. I couldn’t see much. A line of light, a sliver of something brownish that might have been a desk or a table.
‘Hello,’ I said into the gap. ‘I think you’re expecting me. I’ve got something for you.’
Silence. I sighed and pushed the door open. Hesitated for a second, then stepped forward into a typical hotel sitting room, nice but anonymous. Desk to the left, three-piece suite, low table, TV, rust-coloured curtains billowing in the wind.
It was empty, but there were signs of recent occupation. A folded Japanese newspaper on the brown leather settee, a china cup containing half an inch of what looked like weak, milkless tea on the low table.
‘Hello?’ I called again, but I’d now pretty much accepted the fact that there was no one here. I wandered over to the window, which was open as far as it would go, and looked out. From here London was a mass of lights, some moving, some not, with dense patches of blackness in between. I debated what to do. Wait here till the people I was supposed to meet came back? Leave the heart where it would be easily seen and vacate the premises? Call Clover to find out whether there’d been a change of plan?
I decided on the last option, but first I wanted to check out the other rooms. There were doors on opposite walls, to my left and right. The one on my right was closest, so I tried that first. I opened the door on to a bedroom containing a king-sized double bed, which looked not to have been slept in, or even sat on. In fact, there was no sign that anyone had been in here at all – no luggage, no clothes, no glass or book on the bedside table.
I went back into the sitting room. The door on the opposite wall was just beyond the desk. I crossed to it, guessing that it must be the bathroom. I was reaching for the handle when I heard the scrabbling sound again. It seemed to come from directly above my head, and I got the odd feeling that whatever was up on the roof was tracking my movements. Again I looked up, but there was nothing to see except a white ceiling. I glanced across to the open window, where the curtain was still billowing like a listless ghost. Suddenly I felt the urge to be as quiet as I could. Gritting my teeth, I pushed the handle of the door down slowly and eased it open. The first thing I saw was white walls streaked and spattered with red. A single word jumped into my head: abattoir.
The shock made my fingers spring apart, jerk away from the handle. Letting go didn’t stop the door from swinging all the way open, though. Inch by inch the room was revealed. I stood, stunned and gaping, my mind like an expanding balloon that was being filled not with air but terrible images. I wanted to recoil, but instead felt myself taking a step forward, as if tugged by invisible wire. The door gave a final creak and came to a halt.
The light was on in the bathroom, and its barely audible hum was like a tiny, almost subliminal scream. A scream that went on and on, as if reacting to what it illuminated.
There were two men in the bathroom. Both were dead. They were not just dead though – they had been taken apart, piece by piece. Their blood was pooled on the floor, spattered up the walls and across the mirror, and was even dripping from the ceiling.
Their heads were in the sink, cheek to cheek like lovers, glazed-eyed and open-mouthed. Their torsos and severed limbs were stacked in the bath like firewood – except for one hand, which was resting on the lowered toilet seat, dead fingers still curled around the butt and trigger of a chunky black handgun.
The instant effect of seeing so much carnage was like a stinging, open-handed slap across the face. It was a flash of sensation, so awful and vivid and unexpected that I felt almost blinded by it. It was only little by little that I noticed specific details associated with the two men and how they had died. Even then, shocked as I was, it struck me that some of the details were very odd indeed.
The first detail – the obvious and most mundane one – was that the men were Japanese. Their faces were slack, blood-flecked, horribly distorted by death, but there was no mistaking their nationality. The second detail was that they had been smartly dressed in suits and ties and crisp white shirts. They looked like businessmen. But businessmen with guns. Which is where it began to get odd.
The gun in the severed hand resting on the lowered lid of the toilet seat had not been fired. If it had been, there would have been evidence – a bullet hole in the wall or door or ceiling, or, if the bullet had embedded itself in the killer, a trail of blood leading from the bathroom, across the floor of the sitting room and presumably out into the corridor. But there were none of these things – which seemed to indicate that although one of the dead men had had his gun in his hand, he and his companion had been attacked so swiftly and savagely that he hadn’t even had time to pull the trigger.
Maybe I was being paranoid, but I couldn’t help thinking, as I stared down at the hand, that the killer wanted me – or whoever else might have found the bodies – to know this. That was why the hand had been placed so carefully where it was – as evidence of the killer’s incredible speed and agility.
He’s showing off. I was still so shocked that I wasn’t sure whether I actually whispered these words or merely thought them. I wasn’t so shocked, though, that I didn’t notice another detail. And again, like the unfired gun, this was one that seemed so impossible that, despite the evidence, it couldn’t be true.
Admittedly I haven’t seen many dismembered corpses in my time, but it still looked pretty obvious to me that the men hadn’t been taken apart in the normal way. There were no clean cuts that I could see, no evidence of the kinds of marks made by axes or swords or chainsaws. No, these men seemed to have been ripped apart, their skin stretched and torn, their exposed bones shattered and twisted. I thought of roast chicken, the grist
ly sound of sinews snapping as the legs were wrenched off the bird.
Oddly it was this thought, rather than what I was looking at, which nearly made me throw up for the second time that night. I managed to keep my gorge down through sheer willpower, telling myself what a bad idea it would be to puke at two separate murder scenes on the same evening. Leaning forward, so as not to get blood on my boots, I grabbed the door handle and pulled the bathroom door shut. As it clicked I heard a flapping sound behind me and almost jumped out of my skin, but it was only the curtain blowing in a particularly strong breeze.
With the door shut, my mind went into a sort of automatic self-preservation mode. I’d already used my handkerchief to clean blood off my face, so now I untied my right boot, pulled off my sock and used it to wipe all the door handles I’d touched. I wished I’d had the foresight to put my gloves back on before entering the room, but it had never occurred to me that I would have to worry yet again about leaving physical evidence behind. When I’d done all I could to cover my tracks, I left quickly, using the stairs this time instead of the lift. The fact that I didn’t meet anyone on the way down or crossing the lobby was a stroke of luck, I suppose, though after the day I’d had it felt like the very least that the universe owed me. I stepped out into the street and started walking up the road, and it was only when I’d taken a couple of dozen steps that I wondered where the hell I was going.
ELEVEN
FLESH AND METAL
It was when I turned right, cutting down Bateman Street, that I realised my subconscious had made the decision for me. I was heading towards Incognito. Of course I was. It was five minutes’ walk from the hotel, and I needed somewhere close and familiar where I could get my head together.
My head was very much not together as I trudged the quarter of a mile or so from Frith Street to the little alleyway off Poland Street in which Incognito lived up to its name. The chaos in my head reminded me of something a work colleague, Stephen Carrier, had once told me. Stephen was a lecturer in modern literature and a committed bibliophile. He loved books, adored books, couldn’t get enough of them. He pored over catalogues and publishing websites with the gleeful enthusiasm of a child. At weekends he travelled the length and breadth of the country to spend hours browsing in second-hand bookshops or visiting book fairs. He had a phrase to describe the moment when he entered a room full of books for the first time: ‘book blindness’. Confronted by an overabundance of sensory input, he told me that for several seconds, sometimes even a minute or two, his brain could simply close down, unable to cope with the barrage of information it was attempting to assimilate.
Walking through the streets of London in the early hours of Wednesday morning, I understood for the first time exactly what he meant. My thoughts were like a mass of trapped flies, buzzing, never settling, impossible to catch. I couldn’t focus on my surroundings; cars and buildings and people were nothing but smears of light and shadow. How I reached Incognito I’ll never know. Automatic pilot, I suppose. A combination of instinct, desperation and self-preservation.
It was only when I came to the alleyway that the fog in my head started to clear. The gap between the buildings on either side was so black it was like an absence in the world. If it hadn’t been for the ascending seepage of light from the surrounding streets, it would have been impossible to tell the difference between the tops of the buildings and the muddy strip of sky which separated them. Beyond the blackness the only light that made any impression came from a caged bulb above Incognito’s entrance. The bulb illuminated the club’s name and highlighted the dents and scratches in the metal door, but that was about it.
At least it gave me an oasis to head for. I started forward, crossing an area so dark that there could have been a whole gang of muggers standing in my path and I wouldn’t have seen them. My foot knocked against something, which bounced away with a clunky tinkle. Only a bottle, but the sudden noise made my body spasm with tension.
As if reacting to the sound, something moved in the blackness. It was more an impression than a certainty, but it made me stop and stare, screwing up my eyes as if that could make me see better. It hadn’t been a quick, darting movement, like a cat would make, but a kind of slow, bunched-up oozing, like a slug or a snail – and hadn’t it been briefly accompanied by a sly, metallic tapping noise too?
Stupid, I thought. Just my eyes trying to create shapes out of nothing. Even so, I trod a bit more carefully as I crossed the last few metres of darkness, scanning the ground ahead as best I could.
It was only when I thought about raising my right hand to knock on Incognito’s door that I realised it was resting on the bulge of the heart in my jacket pocket. It must have strayed there when I’d entered the alleyway, but even though the movement had been an unconscious one I still found it unsettling. It reminded me of a villain reaching for a gun – which in turn made me think of the severed hand of one of the murder victims back at the hotel, still curled around the butt of a pistol which had been no use at all.
I tried to tell myself I had no reason to be worried about the same thing happening to me. I had no quarrel with anyone. I was merely following orders; I was nothing but a pawn in a game I didn’t understand. However the darkness had a way of pulling such reassurances out of shape, of turning logic on its head. But it wasn’t just the fear of violence which bothered me; it was also the prospect of deliberately using the heart as a weapon that made me sick to my stomach. I had no idea what the thing was, or what it was capable of, but I knew that people had died because of it. I moved my hand away from my jacket, clenching my fist as if that would make me forget the shape and weight and feel of the heart in my palm. And then, scowling, I bashed on the metal door.
As the echo of my knocking faded I sensed movement above my head. I looked up, and caught a glimpse of something leaping the six or so metres from the top of the building on the opposite side of the alleyway to the one beside which I was standing. The thing moved so swiftly that it was there and gone in a flash, leaving me with nothing but an impression of something as ragged and flappy as a crow, and as spindly-legged as a spider, but far larger than both. For a few seconds after it had disappeared I stared up at the black clouds drifting through the murky sky like blood clots. My mouth was dry and a rash of goosebumps crawled up and down my arms and back.
I was so unnerved that when the door of Incognito opened I almost leaped out of my skin. I pushed straight past Mary and slammed the door behind me, ignoring her indignant cry of, ‘Do you mind?’
‘Where’s Clover?’ I asked, clenching my fists to stop my hands from shaking.
Mary pursed her lips, her face hardening, and then she must have seen something in my eyes. ‘She’s in the bar,’ she muttered, ‘having a well-deserved—’
‘Is that door unlocked?’ I interrupted, pointing at the black door at the end of the corridor.
Mary nodded, and I all but ran along the corridor and shoved the door open. Immediately the heat of the club enfolded me in a sweaty hug and the bass beat of the music thumped in my teeth and chest. On the stage a small, muscly girl in a red bra and thong was pole-dancing, her back arching and her blonde hair flying as she coiled and contorted like a snake. At a glance I’d say there were forty or fifty people in the room, all but half a dozen of whom were men. I could see Clover at the bar, dressed in a little black number which showed off her slender legs. She was sitting on one of the plastic stools, her hand curled around a tumbler containing something red. As I watched she leaned forward and took a sip through a black straw. Next to her was a fat man in a light blue suit whose conversation seemed to be a series of punchlines followed by roars of laughter. Clover was smiling and nodding, but even from the walkway I could tell she was listening to the man more out of duty than because she wanted to.
I hurried down the steps, marched across to the bar and took her arm. She turned with a scowl, and then smiled as if she was genuinely relieved I’d made it back in one piece.
‘Alex,’ sh
e said. ‘Is it done?’
‘Not exactly,’ I muttered.
The relief on her face changed to concern. ‘Why? What happened?’
I glanced at the fat man. ‘Can we go somewhere else?’
‘Sure.’ She turned back to her customer and dabbled her fingers across the top of his forearm. ‘Excuse us, Clive, would you? Duty calls.’
The fat man looked daggers at me. ‘Will you be long?’
‘I may be. Have a drink on the house.’ She beckoned to Robin the barman and pointed at Clive’s glass.
Two minutes later we were in Clover’s office and she was checking her emails at my request. She shook her head apologetically.
‘Nothing. So tell me what happened.’
I told her. About the old man. About what I’d found at the hotel. She paled and her lovely features tautened with fear, her breath starting to come in panicky gasps.
‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘Oh shit.’
‘Is there anything you’re not telling me?’ I asked.
She looked startled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean is there anything you’re not telling me? Anything you forgot to mention?’
If the hurt look on her face was an act, she was a bloody good actress. ‘Is that really what you think?’
‘I don’t know what to think, Clover. This is all so… fucked up.’
‘What you said about the heart…’ She hesitated. ‘There’s no way you might have been mistaken?’
‘About what?’
‘About the way the blade… retracted?’
‘It was absorbed,’ I said. ‘That’s the only word I can think of to describe it.’
‘Maybe it folded up. Maybe the… opening it comes out of is so tight it looks seamless when it closes again.’