Blood & Breakfast, West Midlands Noir

by William Stafford

  “Put the beer down, Mrs Box,” he said, flatly.

  “I am doing,” said Mrs Box, apparently unconcerned. “Down the bloody sink.”

  “You meddling old boot,” Anfred sneered but came no closer. “Just put it down and I’ll take it all away from here. Far away.”

  “Evil. Pure evil,” Mrs Box opined but whether she meant the foaming liquid gurgling down the plughole or the Norwegian nutter with the knife was not clear.

  “That,” said Anfred wryly, “is in the eye of the beer holder.”

  “And that happens to be me,” said Mrs Box, continuing to pour. “Why have you come back here?” The question was almost casually posed. Mrs Box wasn’t going to let the unwelcome visitor see how much she was rattled.

  “I like it here.” The response sounded equally casual. It could have been any idle conversation in a bus stop or bar.

  “Well,” Mrs Box gave the current bottle one last shake, “we don’t like you.”

  “Oh, Edna!” Anfred’s expression was one of amusement rather than pain. “That’s hurtful.” He took a step closer. Mrs Box spun around to face him and he froze but this was no childish game.

  “Look,” she pointed a fresh bottle at him like a finger. “What happened all those years ago, we -“

  “You wanted it to happen!” he cut her short, pushing the bottle aside. “You both did!”

  “We all make mistakes.” She uncapped the bottle and upended it over the sink. Anfred came closer and spoke over her shoulder.

  “The years have not been kind to you.” A cruel twist played on his lips. “You’re harder. Colder.”

  “I would have thought you’d be at home with the cold,” she was trying to keep her voice off-hand and calm. “You look exactly the same.”

  “I have excellent genes,” he boasted.

  “And you’re still an almighty prat.”

  He was tickled by the insult but did not address it. “It’s not too late,” he said in hushed and breathy tones. Mrs Box’s shoulder twitched and a shudder ran through her. “Leave me the beer. It’s just a bit of fun.”

  Mrs Box laughed bitterly. “Your idea of fun drives people round the bloody twist.”

  “Where’s your sense of humour?”

  “Back off!” She straightened her back and set her jaw. “I know you’ve got my best carving knife behind your back.”

  “Who? Me?” He spluttered his innocence. She turned to see him making an extravagant display of showing her his empty hands. Mrs Box seemed unconvinced. He took another step towards her.

  “Come, lighten up. It could be like the old days - better! I’ll give you and old Bertie the best seats in town and we’ll sit back and watch the mortals slice each other to bits. It will be a right giggle.”

  “You said that last time.”

  “I was careless,” he held up his hands to own up, “Things got out of control.”

  “We don’t want your sort around here,” she stepped towards him, looking up into his eyes. “Folk am crazy enough these days without your input. Don’t you watch the news? Go on. Piss off. Loki.”

  Anfred changed colour with anger. “Don’t ever say that name!” he roared. On the rows of shelves, pots and plates shook. The bottle in Mrs Box’s hand shattered, showering her with beer and glass. He rushed at her, pushing her back towards the sink. The knife was suddenly in his hand. He pressed the flat of the blade against her throat. “You don’t ever call me that.”

  “What?” Mrs Box forced herself to maintain eye contact, despite the heat and sulphurous odour of his breath. “Loki?”

  “I’m warning you...” His nose was a centimetre from hers. In his eyes blazed the madness of millennia.

  “You won’t touch me,” Mrs Box allowed contempt to colour her voice. “You can’t. It’s me and Bertie what’s keeping you here. Without us, you’ll be beamed back to wherever you come from.”

  He laughed. “’Beamed’?”

  “Well, however it happens. And I know for a fact you don’t want to go back there. Trapped under that snake with the drip, drip, drip of the venom driving you off your conk.”

  “Shut up!” he bellowed, treating her to another gust of stale breath. But he released her. The knife, however, he kept in plain sight.

  He took a moment to calm down. “Look,” he tried to reason with the stubborn old boot, “Things are just getting started around here. This little festival is just the beginning. Sales reps will be taking samples all across the country, all across Europe.”

  “We’re not interested,” said Mrs Box as though trying to deter a door-to-door salesman. “The B & B takes all of our time.”

  “Pitiful,” said Anfred, disgusted. “Every single one of you.”

  “So bugger off then,” Mrs Box flapped a tea towel in his direction. “Go back to Assland.”

  “Asgard,” he corrected her although he knew she knew what she was saying.

  “Go back to spending eternity chained to those rocks.”

  Anger flashed again across that timeless face. “I’m warning you...” he said again.

  Mrs Box made a scornful exclamation. “Don’t make me laugh,” she said.

  ***

  D.I. Brought and D.S. Miller were conducting an exploration of the rear of the building. There was a small car-park with cracks in the asphalt and moss encroaching across the surface. There were a couple of large, cylindrical bins on wheels, a few empty beer crates unevenly stacked, and on a small, weed-ridden patio, a neglected garden furniture set, its white plastic greyed with mildew. The beams of their police issue torches played across all these things but care was taken to keep the light from the windows and alerting the occupants to their presence.

  “Seems quiet, sir,” whispered Miller.

  “I believe the customary response is ‘Too quiet’,” Brough murmured, humourlessly. “Come on. Back up will have arrived by now. They’ll be out front.”

  “Shall we join them, sir?”

  “No, for you and me, a little bit of back door action is called for.”

  “Sir!” Miller gasped in shock and, she had to admit, delight.

  Brough realised what he had said and blushed. He turned his embarrassment to annoyance. “Get that bloody light off my face!”

  He had had no choice but to call for reinforcements. He wasn’t sure whose collar he’d come to feel: the American’s or the big loony’s. Perhaps both. But he couldn’t do it alone. He glanced at Miller. Well, not quite alone but as good as.

  “Sir, sorry, sir!” Miller swept her torch to his feet. Oh, he was attractive when he was riled up! She kept the beam trained on his feet and lower legs as he stepped towards the rear entrance of the B & B. His fingers closed around the door handle.

  His heart almost stopped when Miller’s phone suddenly started playing the theme tune from Cagney & Lacey. He swatted at her to switch the damn thing off. She showed him the illuminated screen.

  “From Interpol, sir.”

  Brough took the phone and read the email.

  “Ohh...” he said.

  ***

  Cassidy had barricaded herself behind the counter in Reception and was bombarding her assailant with glass dolphins and china kittens in boots. The shadow of Bertie Box hung over her. He would not be warded off with ornaments and bric-a-brac. She tried a barrage of invective and imprecations as well.

  “Keep the fuck away from you, you fucking giant!”

  A glass bird with a bulbous body and long neck - the kind that will dip its own beak as if taking a drink - deflected off Bertie’s shoulder.

  “Just let me settle my bill and get the fuck out of here,” Cassidy held up her hands. She gaped in horror as Bertie Box stepped over the counter as if it was nothing. The rear wall was against her back. Some of the fading celebrit
y photographs crashed to the floor.

  Bertie was unrelenting. Cassidy’s knees buckled and her back slid down the wall. She held up her arms as if they would be enough to protect her.

  ***

  Bertie’s wife and Anfred were still at their impasse in the kitchen. They were eyeballing each other, cat and mouse at a standoff but it was difficult to determine which was which.

  “Come now, Mrs Box,” Anfred smirked, breaking the silence. “Isn’t it about time for you to tell me I won’t get away with this?”

  Mrs Box affected a yawn. “If you say so, chick.”

  “And then I will counter that by telling you how my plan is foolproof and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  Mrs Box rolled her eyes slowly. “For a god of mischief you ain’t half a boring fart, do you know that?”

  Anfred laughed heartily and sincerely. “You still have the power to amuse. Come, it’s not too late for you to join me.”

  Mrs Box counted on her fingers. “I’ve got floors to clean, beds to make, tiny bottles of shampoo to replenish...”

  “Like all humans you lack the necessary imagination to appreciate what I’m doing.”

  Mrs Box returned his look of contempt. “You’re driving people to commit gruesome murders with that pathetic moose piss you call beer.”

  “Oh well, you put it like that -“

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the American girl, staggering as though shoved through the door. Behind her, filling the exit came Bertie Box, a silent block of flesh and muscle.

  “Well now!” Anfred exclaimed brightly. “What have we here? Come to join the party, Cass?”

  “Not by choice,” Cassidy grumbled. “This place is crawling with fucking freaks.”

  A shove to her back like a bulldozer pushing into a building sent her stumbling further into the room. She collided with Anfred who caught her and helped her stand up.

  “Thanks,” she composed herself. Then she frowned as she caught sight of the large knife in his hand. “What’s with the blade?”

  Anfred groaned. “Do we really have to go through all the exposition again?”

  “I’d appreciate it,” said Cassidy, keeping a wary eye on the knife.

  Anfred turned to the landlady. “Mrs Box?” he invited her.

  Mrs Box took a deep breath. “He’s Loki, Norse god of mischief, the trickster and shape shifter, escaped from his otherworldly prison to wreak havoc among mortal men.”

  “Right...” Cassidy was having difficulty processing this information.

  “It’s true,” said Anfred, happily.

  “Heh,” said Cassidy feeling awkward. She began to edge towards the back door. “I’m just going to leave, if that’s okay with everybody. Here’s my credit card, Mrs B. You can fucking keep it.”

  She tossed the piece of plastic to Mrs Box’s feet where it lay, unwanted and disregarded.

  “Oh no,” Anfred seized her by the upper arm, “you’re not going anywhere.” He raised the tip of the knife to her neck.

  “He does that a lot, dear,” said Mrs Box, helpfully.

  “Fucking freaks,” said Cassidy. Her eyes widened as she tried to see if the knife was causing any damage to her throat, despite the impossibility of this action.

  “Right!” yelled Detective Inspector Brough, storming in. “Nobody move!”

  “Nobody!” echoed Detective Sergeant Miller from over his shoulder.

  Brough moved towards the Norwegian. “Put the knife down, son,” he said, as if he hadn’t got time for shenanigans. “Let the Yank go.”

  “Hey!” Cassidy complained about the epithet.

  “Stand down, Inspector Brough,” Anfred matched the policeman’s tone perfectly. “Don’t make me slice her.”

  “Hey!” Cassidy didn’t like the sound of that either.

  Brough pointed at the floor as a visual aid for his next instruction. “Put. The. Knife. Down.”

  “Down!” yelled Miller, coming to her superior’s side. “The knife. Put it.”

  “All right, Miller,” Brough urged from the side of his mouth. “Just get the other two where I can see them.”

  “Sir.”

  She signalled with her head to the large man in the doorway for him to join his tiny wife. The large man didn’t move. Miller improvised; she took Mrs Box by the hand and led her over to her husband.

  “Don’t make things worse for yourself, son,” Brough tried to sound reasonable. “There’s no need to add to the body count.”

  “Son!” Anfred exclaimed. “Believe me, Inspector, I am older than I look.”

  “You’re crazy!” Cassidy was squirming in his grasp. “He’s crazy, Inspector. Can you like help me or something?”

  “Steady, Miz Whitlow....” Brough put out his hands as though to calm down a wider audience.

  “He remembered your name, Miss,” Miller marvelled, “That’s a good sign.”

  “Christ,” muttered Cassidy.

  Mrs Box raised a hand and stepped forward. “If I might make a suggestion -“

  “Hold tight, Mrs Box.” Brough snapped, irritated; why did people always think they could do his job better than he could? “We have reason to believe this man is not who he claims to be. We’ve heard from Interpol. There is indeed an Anfred Anfredsen, working as a sales rep for a brewery. Or rather worked. Poor bugger died in a car crash last year. At the grand old age of sixty three.”

  “Oops,” said Anfred, biting his lower lip.

  “But, Inspector, if I might interpose -“

  “Mrs Box, please!” Brough was in danger of losing his professional cool.

  “But how we got rid of him last time -“

  Brough, Miller and Cassidy all turned to the diminutive landlady and gasped in perfect unison, “Last time?”

  “Yes, dears,” Mrs Box was glad to have their undivided attention. “Been through this bugger’s shenanigans before. And I’ll be buggered if I’m going to let him do it all again.”

  Her audience was hanging on her every word. Eyebrows raised, mouths opened as they urged her to continue. Mrs Box smiled in satisfaction, took a deep breath and began.

  “It was over twenty years ago...”

  History

  “Me and Bertie had been married for ten years by that point. We went on honeymoon, backpacking around Europe and sort of took our time in coming back. We went everywhere. We had itchy feet. But we got some ointment for that and kept moving. Oh, the places we went to! The things what we saw! I liked Rome a lot. Rome was very nice. And Vienna. Beautiful. And the caravan site in Dawlish Warren. You forget when you lives somewhere like this that such beautiful places exists. I’m not saying I don’t like it around here - it’s my home town and always will be but we was in no particular hurry to get home and settle down.

  “I’d met him when he was a student. He’s a very clever chap, my Bertie is. You might not think to look at him but he is. Head full of brains. He was studying Mythology and he used to entertain me with all the stories when we was lying together after we - you know - and I’d go to sleep in his arms, with pictures of Perseus, Venus and Odin dancing in my bonce.

  “Oh, we was happy. The world was our cockle. There seemed no end to it. No need for us to come home. But then, of course, as it always does, life got in the way, didn’t it? It was good news - we couldn’t have been happier. A baby! Mine and Bertie’s little boy. It was time to grow up, time to build a nest, time to think of somebody else.

  “So we came back here. Bertie got a job at the museum and art gallery. There was nothing he didn’t know. And I stayed at home. Bed rest, they call it. It was like being locked up. Like I’d had my wings clipped. But even that wasn’t enough. Our little baby - well, I lost him. I don’t know what happened. He just died inside me. And I can see t
he look on Bertie’s face when he got to the hospital. He blamed himself for leaving me on my own. And we was devastated, of course we was. And it drove a whatsit, a wedge, between us. It was like we couldn’t even mention it. Like there was an elephant in the zoo. And Bertie went away - he left me a note saying he had an idea. There was something he could do to make everything right again.

  “Well, I thought I’d never see hide or hair or hear from him again. Well, you do, don’t you? I thought that was that. The bubble was over; the dream had burst. And I had to get a job cleaning just to keep myself going. And then, after about a month or so, I come home from my morning shift and there he was. He was back with a big, silly grin on his face and a ruddy big book under his arm.

  “He’d been researching into arcane matters - Don’t ask me. I thought arcane was where you find all the slot machines. And he has the idea we can make things right and not only right, but better.

  “So the next full moon we goes down to the old ruined priory in the park wearing these robes I’d adapted from the fancy dress shop. He borrowed some old things from the museum just to make it more authentic, like. I had to put these combs in my hair, made from antlers. He said they was older than the castle itself. He had this belt and a blackened bar of metal he said was the blade of an old sword - it was all, whatsit, decoration. We could have done without it but it helped us get in the mood.

  “He then did a reading from the book - although he’d practised so much he damn near knew it off by heart. He said this was to ‘engage us in the mythic flow of timelessness’ or something. I just went along with it. But there was something about it, that night, the moon, that old place, and all our old things. You could feel the modern world slip away. Past and future flowed around us like we was on a merry-go-round at the centre of the universe. It was like going mad. And that’s how he moves, you see. That’s how he gets about. Through madness.

  “Bertie wanted to go back, you see. He wanted to go back to the day he went to work and I was in the house on my own and - He wanted to stop it happening, you see. He wanted to save our baby boy.”