Shard continued. ‘As am I. We are supposed to be in conflict. I need to ask this again, JJ. Are we at odds in this? If so, say so, and we’ll resolve it. I will walk away if we agree on that, but I’ll be replaced before I’m out of sight. And I think we would both be targets from that point.’
Stoner nodded his agreement. ‘The key?’
Shard pointed. ‘By the bike’s.’
‘Very good. Where from? More usefully, who from?’
‘My employers gave the key to me, but that’s not what you’re asking. It’s plain that they’ve got others working the case. At least one other. And the finger is aiming at you. They know I know you, maybe suspect that you may trust me and that trust might well be misplaced, displaced in favour of a cash transfer. As is usually the way among thieves, after all. Nothing remarkable in that. But where they acquired the key . . . your key . . . I have no knowledge . . . but we both have ideas. They told me that it was the key to your house near Oxford, that I would know which if I know you as well as he thinks.’
‘At which point you remarked that I have no house near Oxford . . .’
‘I did not. I accepted the key, pocketed it, said OK and left. It was easy to leave quickly as we were in a safely public place, and in any case I have a habit of leaving quickly. There was no point in lying and no point in being honest either. So I did neither. I left, like I said.’
‘And you couldn’t call because they know your numbers, my numbers, everyfuckingbody’s numbers.’
‘Just so. Exactly so. Tangled webs. Spider geometry. Which is where we came in. Actually, we came in less than a half an hour apart, so someone’s surveillance is first-rate. Had you been far away?’
Stoner paused. ‘No. Not far. And not working. Not on this. I’ve done nothing on this. I have . . . things . . . things on my mind. There’s no rush. Not from here.’
Shard walked a little, relaxing a little. ‘Your boss, Cheerful Charlie the laugh-a-minute lad, sees an urgency. That said, that said . . .’ he lapsed into a moment of muse. ‘That said, his name is not coming up. No one has commented on his existence recently. Which in itself is remarkable in a small way. My lot know him well.’
‘But he,’ Stoner looked at Shard; right at him; ‘he has mentioned you. He’s warned me of you and of your interest in me. Your interest in taking a hit. On me.’
Quite suddenly and without warning, Shard was holding a blade. A black non-stick twin-edged killing blade. He raised it slowly in front of his face. Pointed it at Stoner, rolled it through his flexing fingers. Balanced its point on his thumb. Caught the killing edge, the serrated edge between thumb and forefinger. Lofted the blade into the air, gently, heading for the arm of the chair in which Stoner sat, unflinching.
‘Catch, JJ. A gift.’
Stoner reached out and caught the falling blade cleanly, turned it and hurled it into the ground between Shard’s feet, as exactly halfway between the feet as could be measured without a tape. ‘Point taken.’
‘No offence, JJ, but you’re getting soft. If I had designs . . .’ the sentence faded.
‘We need to do this every time we meet?’
Shard looked up at the question. Raised an eyebrow and almost smiled. ‘Maybe. I can almost trust you, JJ, because I have the upper hand. I’m fitter and my sources are providing information more effectively and more efficiently than yours appear to be.
‘It’s a good blade. You should keep it. I have several.’
‘Me too.’ A second knife sprouted next to the first. Both men laughed. A nervous and combative humour.
‘How far can you trust Cheery Charlie?’ A serious question. ‘You’re in decently deep with him, JJ; does he feel clean to you, with you? And how many bodies has he told you about? Why would he even care if I was killing them, anyway? Who are they? My own lords and masters tell me that there’s nothing special about them, the bodies, but it’s kind of hard to believe that. Only nutters hack up other people and play with bits of bodies, and nutters never last long in this line of work. I imagine you still know freaky folk who do freaky things with data? You using them?’
Stoner nodded. ‘They’re on the case, but as I keep telling you, I’m way behind you in this. Way, way. Tasked the techies only recently. Very recently. No reports yet. In a way that’s encouraging. In another way it’s the opposite. They did however speak kindly of you. A welcome reassurance.’
Shard looked long and hard at his companion. ‘You’re detached. It’s still not real to you. What’s the haps, JJ? A lack of focus is too easily fatal. You starting to listen to dem ol’ retirement blues?’
‘Don’t you hear them?’ No banter, just a straight question from Stoner, a momentary whimsy. ‘Don’t you think that this is a power play, and if it’s time to move on . . . again . . . then it’s time to move on? Don’t you get tired with all the pretence? The insincerity? The bullshit? The endless repetition of it all? Don’t you ever want to walk away from it? Just walk on?’ He looked into Shard’s dark eyes, eyes which stared back, flat and calm.
‘No. No. No, I do not. Nor do I want to have a house on a hill, nor a sweet baby in waiting, nor a groovy crowd of best mates. Nor do I want to hand over the hat to some new, young thing. Nor do I want to be plain and straightforward honest Jack Shit. Nor do I want to be poor. It’s not a game we can retire from, JJ, just isn’t. We . . . you’ve always known that. Fuck it; you told me exactly that when . . . whenever it was. And you were correct. There’s no getting away with it. There’s no relaxation. Retirement is only hiding. Hiding, hiding, hiding until a debt you thought you’d cancelled comes calling and calls collect. You pay and that’s it. That. Is. It.
‘I’m not ready for the hiding yet. Surprised to even think that you’re even thinking of it. Fuck yes. You’re not a runner. Not a hider. If I’d thought you were about to cut out, to run out . . . fuck it, JJ. If I’d thought that I wouldn’t have come.’ Shard was on his feet. Towering. Mighty. Pacing, restless. ‘Is this a goodnight call for you, with you as head boy on the last list? Are our lords, ladies and gentlemen setting you up for the long fall? Is their scheme that they build a case against you, I take you out or provide entry and exit for some young disposable hero to take care of the head shot? Is he sat outside now waiting for that shot? And if he doesn’t hear that shot will you hear it as I leave, as he blows me away then reloads, re-arms and re-enters to come see you? That would fit.’
Stoner was still. Quiet. The more Shard paced, the more agitated he grew, so Stoner shifted further into silence. He looked up.
‘No.’
Shard stopped, looking at the door. Then at the black Harley-Davidson which dominated the room. Then at the coffee pot. He collected mugs and set a fresh brew in motion. Finally he looked at Stoner.
‘No?’
‘No. There is no one out there. Not unless they followed you, and you would know if they’d tried; not unless they followed me, and no one did that.’
‘They know where you are. Where we are. They gave me a key, for fuck’s saintly sake.’
‘No. They have a key. They have no idea which lock it fits. They tried to follow you and you lost them. Did you feel a tail? Did you shake some tail on your way here? Was your route a clean route?’
‘Virginal.’ Shard was pouring, serious, steady and concentrating. ‘No tail. But it always feels like there is a tail, y’know?’
Stoner nodded. ‘Keep the brew hot; back in a minute.’ And Stoner was gone. Out into the back of the building, down a flight of steps into a vehicle inspection pit, through a not-obvious door and then gone. Shard waiting. Patience. Stoner knew his homeland, needed no one to clutter his security.
Then he was back. The front door opened silently. Shard was in shadow, blades in each hand, but Stoner stepped alone into the light, arms wide, hands open.
‘Nothing. If there’s anyone there then they’re better than I am, better than you are, and we’re dead if that’s what they want. But there is no one. How’s your phone?’
‘Coffee, then, and thinking caps on, my dark friend. Let’s do plotting.’
Shard agreed, nodding. ‘And scheming. Sorry about the paranoia, too.’
‘Paranoia? I heard none. We live by wit, by an instinct for preservation. Ritual. Routine. Recognition of wrongness which most never see, never understand, never even dream of until it’s way way, way too late. We are not amateurs. We are the caffeine cowboys, and we never forget it!’ Stoner ended on a top note of droll melodrama, took a slight bow, and poured yet more coffee. Always fresh, always the same strength. Habit. One less thing to worry about, in a world where everything was a worry.
‘Caffeine cowboys? Shit me, when was that? Back to the old Father Jean, eh, JJ?’
‘Let us hope not. It’s far too long ago, in a distant place, and that was not a good place to be. Not a good place at all. Though we did learn a lot. How many keys?’
Shard looked up. ‘Say again?’
‘How many keys. How many keys to my place were you given?’
‘Why?’
‘Work it out. How many?’
‘Four.’
‘You have them all?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Handover time.’
Shard reached into clothing, passed over three keys. Stoner looked at them carefully. ‘Interesting. How many of them did you try? How many doors did you try them in?’
Shard looked at him, straight. ‘Just this door, this place. The only key which fits that posh lock is the posh lock key. Come along, JJ, why do you ask?’
Stoner dropped the keys onto the table, separated the key to the Transportation Station. Then one other. Looked harder, sat back. Reached again for his drink. ‘This one is for the club, Blue Cube. No idea what the others are. Interesting, huh?’
Shard looked closely at the remaining keys. Stoner looked at his companion. ‘You recognise these?’
A shaken head. A puzzled expression, unguarded.
‘They’re like . . . I should know what they are. But I don’t. Odd. It’s like, you tell me that they’re the keys to something and I go, “Oh, yeah!” Know what I mean? But I don’t know. Seen their like before, though. Seen a lot of keys, JJ. A lot of locks. Lots of locks locking lots of things. Churches to chastity belts. More likely the latter than the former.’
Stoner swung to a shadowed desk, seated himself in an atypically big, comfortable chair and pulled a keyboard from a drawer. Thought for a moment. Reached down to his right and powered up one of several desktop PCs.
‘Time to ask the technotwins what they’ve found, I think. Before we decide where we’re going to, we need to decide where we’re starting from. And this is a new-to-me PC, acquired from a seriously illegal source, so should be packed with someone else’s ID and cookies and handshakes and . . .’
‘Oh my!’ Shard faked his own exclamation marks. ‘You do not mean to imply, to suggest, that this is a stolen computer?’
‘Afraid so. I shall surely spend many ages in purgatory, atoning for my sins.’
‘If there was any justice, we should expect the heavy tread of the boys in blue as they come to arrest you; assuming that the previous owner of this stolen machine was a well-known purveyor of kiddie porn and that said plods will descend on you as soon as you log in. Or is it log on? I can never remember.’
‘No idea. The machine is supposed to be clean of all infections, viruses, that kind of thing. I assume that the PC cleaner would have removed anything particularly unpleasant or incriminating. But it is true that you can never tell, and that postulated higher powers do indeed move mysteriously where complex questions of morality are involved. For example . . . it’s certainly taking its own sweet time to boot . . . for example, consider the morality of using a stolen computer to assist in the apprehension of a serially murderous bastard . . .’
‘Christ, JJ. Father Jean the Confessor is one thing, Father X the swinging vicar of suburbia I can quite do without. I’ll put the kettle on. What are you looking at? Strange time to surf seeking adventure. A bit public for porn?’
Stoner ignored him. He wandered instead around the unfamiliar machine’s web browsers, selected the most familiar and used the world’s most popular search engine to locate the murder fansite. Entering it via that route felt more secure, although he had no idea whether it actually was. Shard drifted over, faux concern for screen privacy shining like fool’s gold.
‘Anything you’d prefer I didn’t see?’
Stoner shook his head, apologised for the screen’s poor resolution and slightly bizarre colours. ‘You’ve seen this, surely?’
Shard shook his head. Silence. Jocularity forgotten. Focus. ‘Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing, JJ?’
‘New to you?’ Stoner was puzzled. Shard confirmed that he’d not seen the site before, that the sight of the dead head was a new one. Not a particularly welcome sight, although he’d seen better sfx body parts at the movies.
‘Not sfx, sadly. This is my lost head. The head once attached to the body whose mysterious demise my master wishes me to investigate. As indeed I am doing, in the leisurely way folk find so very frustrating.’
‘It’s not my head, JJ.’ Shard displayed a little puzzlement. ‘Wrong race, colour, ethnicity. And size. Age too. Too young. Got any others?’
Stoner looked up. ‘You sure?’
‘Yup. How many others you got? And while we’re at it, where is this? What are we looking at? Murdermayhemandmore? What’s that? They’ve got strange tastes. Is that a real dead head? Colour’s not good. Who wants to just look at some sad fuck’s dead head anyway? Apart from some other sad fuck?’
‘And that, Tonto, is what we’re here to find out.’
‘Cheerful Charlie gave you this site, did he? Doesn’t seem his style, to be honest. Always thought he’d go more for the torture stuff. Wouldn’t have thought him a necro at all, except in the righteous satisfaction and gloating senses.’
‘He’s a very hard man with many strange tastes. He did give me the site. Access and info about it from the techno prisoners. You’re using them too, I believe? Saves on effort if we can avoid duplication.’
‘Those gothic weirds? No. Not much. Don’t really get on with them. Paralleled on a couple of cases, and I know you rate them, but they’re too up themselves for me. Too out only for themselves, not altruists like you and me.’
‘Irony at such a young age, Shard? Proud of you. Got the impression from Mallis that you were all in signals. Certainly seems to know what you’re up to and where you’re up to, too.’
‘Wheels within wheels within wheels, JJ. I am not faking this innocent expression. Behind the innocent expression lies confusion, plain and simple. What’s the website? What’s it for? Why are we looking at it? And whose head is that?’
Stoner clicked open a fresh window, another head. ‘Come to think of it, why is it there at all and how was it removed so cleanly from the rest of him? Beheading is not as easy as it looks in samurai movies.’
‘You’d know that, huh?’
Stoner smiled. ‘I try to be more subtle, myself. Chopping off heads is a little . . . statemental, don’t you think?’
‘More likely just mental. Doesn’t make a mark more dead, hacking off bits of him. But if we have different heads, presumably we have different bodies too? Time to compare notes, Kemo Sabe? Are we trusting one another yet?’
‘OK.’ Stoner left the window open on the last dead head, turned to his companion. ‘That’s not live any more. When I first saw it, the image was a live video. If that was still running in real time you’d be able to smell it from here. I’m not sure whether that means anything. The site? Techno prisoners are looking at it. It’s some sort of route, contact to the killer. Perhaps.’
Shard nodded. Stoner grumbled some more.
‘Mallis . . . Menace, I can’t tell them apart, gave me some id
iot access code using this site’s forum, or something. I’ve not used it. Not even been there. A forum? What is that? Fuck’s sake. What’s wrong with talking coded nonsense from an anonymous Hotmail account? These geeks are all up themselves. Up each other. Who gives a fuck?’ He turned back to the screen. ‘I’d been planning on taking a stroll through the whole site, but you sort of interrupted that.’
‘Techno prisoners? OK. The geek freaks, right? Mallis and his strange friend. You’d thought they were working for me? OK. OK.’ Shard appeared to be a man confused. ‘Why everyone and his dog insists on using fake names these days I dunno. Wish they’d not. Techno prisoners? Is that some kind of joke?’
‘OK, Mr Harding. As you say, Mr Harding.’ Stoner grinned.
‘Fuck right off, JJ. You know what I mean.’
‘The plan, in so far as there ever was a plan, was that Mallis and her (his? You sure?) mate would research the data they have and communicate using this very site. Which, as you can see,’ Stoner opened the appropriate window, ‘boasts an unregulated – well, it looks unregulated – forum for death freaks. I’ve not looked at it yet, so let, us, share . . .’ he tailed off, dramatically. ‘It’s going to take ages. Which clown thought this up? I’d expected a few sad fucks pretending to be killers, acting some childish online fantasy about how they’re great killers of our time. There are stacks of the idiots. I’ll need to scroll down the entries to see whether Mallis has left something for me. Amuse yourself. It might be an idea to take a run around the estate anyway. We’ve been here for quite a while. There might have been an invasion of humans.’
Shard walked over to inspect the motorcycle on its high bench in the middle of the workshop Stoner appeared to call home.
‘Never thought I’d see you on one of these things. Aren’t they bikes for bankers? Harleys? All style, no substance? Great looks, no go?’
‘Got three.’ Stoner was skimming through the entries, the names of the forum’s inhabitants, looking for Mallis’s mark. ‘They do what they do. That’s the only big one. The others are trail bikes; perfect for town and country, sir.’
A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) Page 22