‘Are you a happy man, Mr Stoner?’ A question at last, albeit an unexpected one. ‘I am told otherwise. She . . . cares for you. Cares about you. She wishes to pay you rent.’
At this point, a lesser man than Stoner may have stared open-mouthed and incredulous. Stoner was not that man. Nothing, nothing at all was reflected in his face.
‘And the people with whom you wish to speak are on their way here.’ Another statement. Excellent English. Mr Tran’s eyes, the remote eyes which kept watch on others, were less easy to observe than more conventional eyes. Stoner recognised that Mr Tran was not only inscrutable but also invisible, accepted this and accepted the tea. It pays to be polite. ‘Menace and Mallis,’ confirmed Mr Tran. ‘They know you well. And you them also, I believe.’ Statements. Always statements.
Stoner supplied a statement of his own. ‘Rarely met them. But they are excellent to work with. The techno prisoners. Masters of all things digital.’
‘As all should be, Mr Stoner.’ Mr Tran poured, gracefully. ‘But few are in fact. A common weakness and an unnecessary one. Digital affairs are simple enough for very unintelligent folk to master them. Very many very unintelligent inadequate individuals are indeed masters of many things digital. It is real life which is complex and subtle. Digital binary yes and no endlessly . . . mere fools can handle that.’
Stoner accepted both tea and wisdom with an equable smile and a gentle and appropriately slight bow. ‘Understanding how to formulate the questions which require and accept the simple yes or no answer . . . that is the subtle and the difficult business. I find that Menace and Mallis are excellent at sorting meaningful questions from the meaningless mess of other people’s lives.’
Mr Tran bowed gently in return. ‘Reducing many of life’s variables to the question which will accept only a yes or no answer? Philosophers have passed many ages with that one, I think. The tea cools. It is to your liking?’
‘Everything cools in the end, Mr Tran.’ Stoner drank slowly and with appropriately obvious appreciation. ‘Death cools everything in the end.’
‘And cool music provides warmth. Missy is a sympathiser to your own music. She praises it. She plays it when she is alone. She is proud to know you, and to be your friend. As you sometimes appear to misunderstand. Which allows a heated sadness to enter her life, which is unfortunate, because her life, although filled with love-making is not filled with love. Your music is filled with violence . . . to my ears. Amplified music has no subtlety, no art. But it drowns pure music, as violence destroys peace. Violence will destroy all of our lives if we allow that, Mr Stoner. If we fail to understand what violence is. That violence is weakness. It is always weakness.’
This was a colossally long speech for the usually almost silent Mr Tran. Stoner carefully, silently and precisely replaced his empty cup upon its saucer, gazed upon Mr Tran’s calm features.
Said nothing.
Mr Tran rewarded his acceptance with a smile.
‘I lost a war when the USA left my country. I lost my home. I lost most that I held true and dear to me. Violence had destroyed the land and the people who lived upon that land. I was unable to return to my land because the USA lost its war with China. The violence of the Chinese was greater than the violence of the USA.’ Mr Tran looked up from his tea and smiled. ‘And now I have it back. I am welcome in my land once more. The greater violence has indeed proved to be the weakness. The USA continues to lose its world in its struggle with China, and both of them have forgotten me. And my own country. Their violence has left us. They have moved their battle to another ground.’
‘You’re going to return, then? To your home?’
‘No. My return could cause both of those most violent nations to remember a former fighting ground. There is never a need to resume an old struggle. In any case, I do return. Regularly. It is a land of beauty. But of limited opportunities for me. At this stage in this life of mine.’ Mr Tran smiled. ‘What was lost to me when the USA left my land is forever lost. To me. That loss is also a gain, to me. Everything balances, as you know, Mr Stoner. Fighting against that balance achieves only a loss of energies, a loss of opportunities and the acquisition of perpetually complicated enemies. Which is a lesson unlearned by your usual, your current employer. He knew it all at one time, but has stripped himself of that learning in his quest for greater understandings of smaller details. He cannot be an easy man to work for. I can see no reason why I would work for him. For example.’
Mr Tran looked across the low table with a chill smile directly into Stoner’s gaze. ‘Working with you, Mr Stoner, is not a problem for me. Living in your house is an honour for me. I am pleased at the opportunities for balance which accompany our relationship.’ He looked down at the drying cups. And looked up suddenly.
‘Our guests are here. They await.’
He led the way into the rear of his apartment, into a set of three rooms which Stoner had never visited before, despite having been the property’s owner for several years. He had inherited Mr Tran along with other sitting tenants when he’d acquired the properties, and there had never been an incentive to either intrude or to evict.
Siblings. Maybe twins. Maybe almost identical twins. Maybe brother and sister. Maybe they were unrelated, although that seemed like the least appealing option, the least likely. Menace and Mallis, the self-anointed techno prisoners. Digital gurus of the highest calibre. Permanently unemployed and in receipt of state benefits; permanently occupied and high-earning data delvers; digital deliverance almost guaranteed. No find, no fee. Failures always welcomed; the only way to earn is to learn and the only way to learn is to err. Which possibly made them human, although they made few efforts to appear conventionally so.
‘Mr Tran.’ A pale-skin androgyne spoke softly. No meeting of eyes, no handshakes. Matt black straight hair in a long loose ponytail, dark downcast eyes, black clothes, the speaker was wearing a black long-sleeved T-shirt with a ghostly image of a ghostly well-washed waterfall. Mallis, then. Probably.
‘Stoner.’ The other seldom spoke. No eye contact, no direct acknowledgement other than a rare vocal interjection. The T-shirt with a pair of washed-out semiquavers dimly visible. Menace. Probably.
Stoner’s tension, temporarily defeated by the Vietnamese calm, returned. He could feel a headache arriving, like the clouds of storms on his mental horizons.
‘Murders. Bad ones. Several. Can you help?’ They either could and would, or could and would not. Conflicts of interest could too easily be fatal in their shared world.
Mallis spoke. ‘Yes. Provisionally.’ Menace looked up briefly. ‘Depends on what you want and who you want it for.’
Stoner ran through the series of deaths. Mr Tran stood by a window, fingered the opaque lace curtains in shadowed silence.
Mallis spoke again. ‘When did you last speak with Shard? Are you working this together or in opposition?’
‘There is no opposition between Shard and me. No conflict.’
‘But there should be. Shard has already entered this investigation, Stoner. Did he talk with you of his own concerns in this . . . this . . . common interest?’
‘He did. He thinks he’s being set up to take the blame. He says he’s not the killer. I believe him in this; he has no reason to lie. Not to me. I want you to link the victims. The way through this mess is through the victims. The fact that there appears to be no link is in itself a linkage. Given the similarities of the attacks and their characteristics it seems impossible that there is no link. Find that link for me and I’ll be on my way.’
‘There must be a fee.’
‘Of course there must be. At this point I’ve got so little to go on that any assistance you can provide would be of great value, and I’d pay accordingly. You’d not over-charge.’ He smiled. ‘You never have before.’
Menace was talking inaudibly with their Vietnamese host. Mallis looked up; looked directly at Stoner. ‘I know some of this, but only because of my conversations with Shard. Shard and yoursel
f, Stoner, carry equal weight with us. I’ll want him to confirm that you are not in conflict. Will he do that for me?’
Stoner nodded. He couldn’t imagine where their loyalties lay at the best of times. Their priority was rarely money, which Stoner understood perfectly well, and it didn’t seem to be anything personal. The techno prisoners appeared to operate on a private internal code, and were well-known in the shadowy community for their refusal to work against the interests of their friends. Unhappily, only they knew who their friends were, and, more importantly, who were not their friends. They didn’t hand out convenient badges or issue press statements.
But they were tools, tools of the trade, the techno prisoners. Tools like a sophisticated and intelligent search engine. It was not easy to become emotionally connected with a search engine. Even if it did have a near-identical partner and wear Goth punk blacks left over from the 1990s.
‘OK. How can I help?’ Mallis again. The dim conversation between Menace and Mr Tran had concluded.
Stoner had asked himself the same question. Until he’d arrived to his own mild surprise on Mr Tran’s doorstep he had been unaware of a need to involve anyone else in what he considered was most likely to be a fairly straightforward investigation. The number of freelance professional killers in any country is small, and although freelance work was hardly uncommon the usual suspects were usually the usual suspects because they usually did the killings. Stoner’s intent had been based around the well-worn and well-proven elimination of the innocent. When the innocent have been eliminated, the guilty will always be among the remainder.
The problem of course is that if the guilty party was not included in your list of the usual suspects then the process of elimination could eliminate . . . well . . . everyone on the list.
‘There’s a connection between the victims.’ Stoner sounded almost confident, at least to his own ears.
‘You already said that. It may be true. Are you intending to convince me or yourself by repetition? No one is eavesdropping this conversation so you can’t be intent upon convincing a third party.’ Dealing with Mallis could be an oblique process.
‘Just thinking aloud.’ Stoner was indeed thinking. Why would anyone eavesdrop, and why would Mallis wish to emphasise that they were not? ‘I have stats and stuff on the victims. You’ll want them. How do you want them? How much time do we have here, today?’
Mallis surprised him, not for the first time. ‘I’d prefer to uncover facts fresh. Keep what you’ve been told separate from what we tell you. Compare what you know with what we tell you. That way you may discover routes to a more fulfilling reality. A greater understanding. I’m not being deliberately mysterious, Stoner, far from it. If Shard is actually as concerned by this as he appears to be, then it’s something bigger than a bunch of butchered bodies. Shard is not a guy to fret about a few stiffs, a mutilation or two. He is not one to be over-concerned about you, either. I want to start from the overlap between you and Shard. I reckon that there is more to that than is plain to me at the moment. But you’re right. There is a link between the dead. And if there isn’t . . . if they’re random somehow, then that is more remarkable than if they turn out to be blood relatives. I hesitate to say this, knowing your loyalties, but I would also consider the motives of your own employer. Does he . . . is he, setting you out as a target, for example? That was one of Shard’s initial considerations. You know already that you are going to be presented with information suggesting that Shard is in some way involved in these killings. You may already have this data?’
He paused. Stoner shook his head.
‘Be ready for it. The form it takes and the source will be interesting in themselves. The data will be false, but a truth will be available in the manner and method of the delivery.’ Mallis was plainly happy in his work.
‘The murder websites? The sites with the movies?’
‘Genuine. Not a concern. I know the provider and the purpose of the sites.’
‘Are there several of the things?’
‘Yes. But the main one, murdermayhemandmore.com is the central source. It’s a fansite for crime fiction freaks.’ Hearing Mallis judging other web-dwellers as freaks was a minor entertainment. ‘There’s been a lot of fan chat and fiction forum stuff on there for a while, judging by the site histories, but only the last couple of entries have displayed actual real-time footage of genuine body parts. It’s refreshingly different. It may even catch on. Become something common. Beats endless football as a visual treat for the mindless masses.’ Delivered in a deadpan voice.
‘Contacts, data? Where do you want it, and how do you want it?’ Stoner was always aware of security; his own and others.
Mallis grinned; a faintly unsettling sight. ‘The murder website?’
Stoner nodded.
Mallis again. ‘The site has a message board. It’s unregulated, unmoderated so far as I can see. Packed with fools. You hunter; me seeker. When I have something I’ll post a cell number for you to call. You can do the same. Got a collection of sim cards?’ Stoner agreed that he did. ‘Add the reverse date to the end of the name, so we’ll know. Today’s the eighth; seeker80. It’s not obvious, except to us.’
‘Fee?’ Stoner repeated himself. Mallis shook his head.
‘Later. If it’s easy we’ll do a reciprocal, if it’s not we’ll talk further.’
‘Shard, then. Does he use the same arrangement on the message board?’
‘That,’ Mallis was expressionless, ‘would be too much knowledge at this stage. Ask him.’
As if by signal, Mr Tran appeared at Stoner’s side; Menace turned away, walked rapidly to his partner. They left the room.
‘No long goodbyes.’ Mr Tran’s day of statements was continuing.
18
JUST LOOK AT US . . .
‘Just look at them all.’ Stoner was talking, tuning, wickedly aware of the open microphone. ‘Where do they all come from?’
‘It’s a lyric, hey?’ Bili leaned over her long-suffering long-scale Rickenbacker bass and popped an open-A harmonic, sociably enough, listening as Stoner tuned to it. ‘All the lonely people?’
‘Why do they all come here?’ Stoner was picking harmonics of his own, micro-tuning the elderly Stratocaster in an inevitably doomed attempt at lining all of its six strings up in tune at the same time, all the better to play some vigorous blues. ‘Surely their lives would be more complete if they sat at home watching some unreality show on the TV? Or is it nuts’ night out at the nuthouse?’
Faces in the audience were smiling. They would be the regulars, the regulars who understood the floor show. Other faces displayed a lot less amusement. They might get the joke. Or they might instead get the hump and leave. Their loss.
‘They come for the lessons.’ Bili snagged her cascade of curls into a tangle, loosely restrained by a scrunchie. ‘They come here for the free education. They come here for the sparkling wit, playful repartee and almost free booze. And most of all, they come here so they can try to answer the greatest riddle known to modern man.’
She was knocking out a steady common time beat against her bass E-string.
‘Forget nuclear fusion. Forget the mysteries of the pyramids. They come to learn, man; they come to learn the answer to the lastest greatest mystery; how long can one man take to keep his bloody guitar so perfectly out of tune?’
Applause. Stoner rattled a few glasses with a growl of bass string feedback; the elderly Fender fizzing in his fingers as its strings resonated to Bili’s more beefy bass, an octave below his own. She had added a counter-beat to her rhythm pattern, picking a second E an octave above her first and alternating with it; first finger and forefinger alternating and matching on the heavy strings. Stoner switched between the Fender’s pick-ups, selecting the middle of the three then winding its tone control back with his right-hand little finger, then lifting the volume to compliment the throb of the big bad bass guitar.
‘I’ve been rollin’ and tumblin’ . . .’ Bili’s over-am
plified voice startled the audience. She’d sung straight into the microphone; nothing half-heard here, just the full smack of the words. ‘Cried the whole night long.’
Stoner’s guitar scratched a rhythm; some strings sounding crisply through the muffle of the heel of his right hand, which deadened their resonance. He was picking the strings with his fingernails, the flat pick tucked away behind the guitar’s scratch plate, ready for use, should the song head that way.
‘And when I woke up this mornin’, all I had was gone.’ Bili tossed her head and stood up, slinging the big bad bass guitar into a better position and beating its strings with renewed vigour. Stoner remained leaning against his high stool, watching her more than listening. He knew the song; he had little idea of where she would take it tonight. She walked away from the microphone, singing out a high-crying yeah . . . trailing from audible sound as she walked away from the audience, moving her left hand higher up the guitar’s long, long neck until she was picking out a harmony to Stoner’s battering rhythm, a neat exercise in role-reversal, one which would be recognised by the regulars, who were used to four-string guitar solos and appreciated the burst of creativity which they demonstrated.
Newcomers were welcome to join in the appreciation, although few would. Bass guitar solos are fairly rare, and are viewed by some as an acquired taste.
Bili was playing way up the neck now, pulling and bending the strings as well as slapping them hard against the fretboard and then pulling them away from it, letting them snap back with an explosive percussive punctuation to Stoner’s solid, scratching, too-treble accompaniment.
A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) Page 20