by Gary McMahon
Spinks closed his eyes. The ash was no longer there. I could almost believe that I'd imagined it. "She was the one got me into it, wasn't she? I met her first, and she helped me get to grips with the other two. They all knew each other, see. Worked in the club, and then on the films. Films Baz Singh sells through a mail order company and a website that's not even registered to him."
Sick.
"How long had she been dealing in pornography?"
He paused, blinked, and then continued as calmly as if we were discussing the weather: "Since she was twelve. Her dad got her into it."
Sick.
I didn't know how to respond. The words drilled into my temples, going deep into my mind, churning up so much hatred and disgust that I felt nauseous. "Her father? You mean Baz Singh?"
"Aye. Baz Singh. Only he isn't her real dad. She told me once. She was adopted when she was a baby, and they raised her for what she always called a special purpose. As far as I could see, that purpose was shagging. She was such a great fuck… did it like her life depended on it. Liked it any way you could think of. She said her dad showed her all the best moves." The ghost of a smile wafted across his features as he no doubt recalled some wild night in bed with Kareena Singh.
"I have to go now, Byron. But thank you."
"She was a great shag. A bit sick, though, sometimes. But a great shag."
"I know, Byron. I know she was."
Sick.
He kept repeating the words as I banged on the door and waited for the guard to let me out. True to his promise, he was prompt and a few seconds later I was standing out in the hallway, bent double and retching as I tried to rid myself of the image of Baz Singh, my current employer, inducting his own pre-teenage daughter into the dubious pleasures of low-rent pornography.
SEVENTEEN
There are times in life that no matter how fast we run events conspire to change our chosen means of escape. It's like trying to flee whilst wearing roller skates: no matter how quickly you move your legs, or in which direction you turn, the lower half of your body, from the waist down, will follow its own route, steered by those silly little wheels you suddenly realise aren't really that much fun after all.
My own life had been littered with such moments, and this was just one of them.
We were heading back towards Millgarth police station in Tebbit's unmarked car. There was an uneasy silence between us that I could not quite understand, but I put it down to the strange experience I'd just had – and Tebbit had witnessed – with Byron Spinks. The meeting was playing on my mind, causing me to doubt certain things I'd been led to believe. If Baz Singh was the absolute scumbag Spinks had implied he was, then I'd been fooled. Again. People were always fooling me, taking advantage of my lack of connection with them. I understood the denizens of elsewhere all too clearly, but the complex psychological imperatives of my fellow man remained a mystery. I was getting better though, improving my game. I just needed a little more practice.
"That tattoo on his arm. Do you know much about it, what it means?"
Tebbit didn't respond immediately to my question; he kept staring at the road, his face slack and lacking any kind of expression I could name. Then, gradually, he came out of himself, asserting his presence in the moment. "It's a gang thing: a sort of brand. The MT is a street gang, they run around the Bestwick Estate causing us all kinds of trouble, and have done for years."
"I see. I'd guessed as much. What's Spinks's involvement?" The traffic was light, the shops and offices in the area not yet ready to give up their workers. I watched people through their car windows. They all looked so bemused, as if life itself was puzzling them.
"He used to be a member, back when he was in his teens. We arrested him for a burglary and after that he changed his ways and left the gang. Baz Singh gave him a job in one of his restaurants: after-hours security. He built himself up from there and eventually became head doorman at the Blue Viper." Tebbit's voice was strained; he sounded tired and irritable.
"Do you think the gang have anything to do with Penny Royale's abduction? Perhaps the two cases are connected."
Tebbit shook his head, still staring at the road. His eyes were flat and lifeless. "No, they're not into kidnapping, it's out of their league. Your average youth gang doesn't possess the intellect to pull off something like this – they go strictly for the obvious stuff: drugs and robberies and the odd rape." The cynicism was audible in his words, shaping them into something sad and bitter and twisted.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help. I realise that you were probably hoping for a confession." Somebody leant on their car horn and left their hand there; the sound was reminiscent of a child's wailing lament.
"Not your fault, Usher. Don't mind me, I'm just tired. Tired of it all. Dead girls, missing children: the whole fucking thing. It's endless, like a tide of bad things that we can never hold back, just wade about in the shallows trying to clean up the mess…"
"I know." The car horn stopped abruptly. "I'm sorry. Do you think Penny Royale is dead?"
He paused then, as if he could not quite think of an answer. "I don't know. Do you?"
"I haven't seen or felt her, but that could mean anything. Maybe she's dead and doesn't want to come to me, or perhaps she's still alive and chained to a bed somewhere on that horrible estate." I wished I had not said that. The image it created and held in my mind was almost too much to bear.
We reached the station in silence, and when we left the car Tebbit raised a hand and headed towards the scowling facade of the ugly main building while I walked the other way, along Dyer Street and towards the centre of town. The area around Eastgate was busy so I had to dodge the crowds that were smeared across the footpath as I headed towards the Headrow. I had the weird feeling that everyone was looking at me but averting their gaze whenever I caught their eye. Couples walked slowly, hand-in-hand, ahead of me, solitary pedestrians crossed the street to stand in front of me and block my path and traffic slowed as it drew level with my position.
I began to feel hungry. I could not remember the last time I'd eaten, and my stomach felt light and empty – my head, too. There were countless cafés and restaurants in the area; I just had to pick one and head in that direction. It was too early in the day for a curry, and the last time I'd had a Chinese I had not enjoyed it. Italian sounded good – a pizza, maybe, or a light pasta dish – so I searched my memory banks for a decent place located not too far away from where I was standing.
There was a small Italian café along one of the streets that bisected the Headrow. I had eaten there many times, and despite the place changing owners more times than I changed my suit, the food was never less than excellent. I hurried along the main drag, looking for the correct street, and soon recognised it because of the tiny news stand on the corner that sold hardcore pornography alongside the daily newspapers. I wondered if Kareena Singh might have appeared in one of those skin mags, or if she only ever starred in her father's films…
Cutting along a narrow side street, I crossed the road and passed a second hand bookshop with a "Closing Down Sale" sign in the window, a computer repair centre with whitewashed windows and a boarded up building that I seemed to remember had been a printing firm the last time I'd come this way. The recession was slowly tearing the city apart, piece by piece. But it seemed to me that another kind of recession – one of the human spirit – was developing behind the scenes, and its collateral damage would be even worse.
The café was a few hundred yards up the slight rise, and if you didn't know it was there you could easily miss it. There was no sign above the door, the windows were dark and hung with heavy net curtains, and the front door was nondescript enough to suggest that the building was a residential property rather than a quaint little eatery.
I opened the door and walked in – glad that it was not locked. The counter was at the back of the dining room, and a short slim man wearing too much hair gel was busy with a coffee machine that made noises like a cat choking on a
fur ball. He had his back turned towards me, and the sound of the machine was so loud that I decided to wait until he noticed me. Several tables were littered around the room, all set for lunch with plain white tablecloths and simple table settings.
In one corner sat a young couple sharing a pizza. The girl had blue streaks in her shoulder-length dark hair and a ring through her nostril, while the boy wore a smart business suit. This odd couple were feeding each other from a huge central plate, their eyes locked onto one another's face. The only other customer was an older man in a long raincoat who sat near the toilets drinking white wine. There was no food at his table, but two empty carafes sat before him, and the third was already halfway dead.
"Help you?" The man behind the counter was now looking at me, a crooked smile on his thin dark-skinned face. I had not even been aware of the coffee machine going silent.
"Table for one, please."
"Sit anywhere, sir. We're quiet today. Can I get you a drink?" He came out from behind the counter, stepping off the box that he obviously kept there, and I was surprised to realise that he was little over five feet tall, even in his Cuban heels. "Here all right?" he pointed to a table, dragging his arm through the air in what he clearly thought was a dramatic gesture.
"That's fine," I said, and took a seat.
"Drink?"
"I'll have a large glass of house red, please."
The man produced a menu from I don't know where and slipped it onto the table in front of me, then he skipped back behind the counter, hopped back onto his box, and began to pour my drink. He was humming a little tune under his breath as he worked, and I could not help but smile. He brought my wine and took out a little pad and pencil, raising his eyebrows as I tried to decide what I was hungry for.
I ordered a seafood pizza and sat back to wait for the food to be prepared. The man disappeared out the back, where the kitchen was located, and I heard him talking to someone who I assumed must be the chef. They laughed together, a comfortable sound that I found relaxing after the stress of the last few days, and the man did not reappear right away.
I sipped some wine. It was marvellous: plummy and spicy and soporific, as good red wines should be.
I thought about what Byron Spinks had said as I waited. His message had been chilling and once again opened doors in my psyche that I was not quite ready to step through – not again. I closed my eyes and wondered who "They" might be, and if they were as dangerous as they sounded. Spinks obviously thought so; he'd been terrified when I left the little interview room. Terrified and somehow distant, as if his mind was elsewhere and his body could not quite catch it up.
"I wouldn't worry about him."
The voice came from out of nowhere, and at first I thought that it was inside my head. But when I opened my eyes he was sitting there, opposite me, his hands laid out flat and unmoving on the table and his dark eyes staring right at me. Mr Shiloh; the one man I had not expected to bump into today.
"Pardon me?" I tried to remain calm, pretending that this kind of thing was perfectly natural and not really very shocking at all. The air shimmered around him, as if reality was trying to come apart. He had stepped through a fold, a kink between different states of being, but not in the same way as a ghost. Ghosts get lost, they lose their way; Mr Shiloh was here for a specific purpose and could seemingly move through these metaphysical gaps at will.
"I said not to worry about Spinks. We'll take care of him." His smile was hideous, more like a leer. His plastic face shone greasily under the fluorescent lights and his hands did not move from the table. He was wearing the same dark suit – or another, identical one – as last time I'd seen him, but this time the T-shirt under the jacket was grey. Like the prison walls; like the sky when it threatens rain.
"What are you doing here?" I kept my voice low, calm. The couple in the corner began to giggle, but when I turned around they were silent, stony, and glaring at me. The old man in the corner shifted in his seat, but when I flicked my gaze across at him he was motionless.
"Fascinated, aren't you?" Mr Shiloh's voice held no trace of an accent. The words were dry and clipped, as if he was reciting them from a sheet of paper. He looked bored, vaguely disinterested, and the only reason I knew he was talking to me was because those dark unblinking eyes never left my face.
And that was another thing: the blinking, or lack of it. I'd been with him for a little under five minutes and he was yet to blink. What kind of person doesn't blink every few seconds? It's impossible not to blink; nature demands that we continually moisten our eyes in this way.
But Mr Shiloh did not blink. I doubted very much that he even breathed.
"Fascinated by what?" Still I managed to maintain the illusion of calm.
"By me; by Them." I knew he didn't mean the other customers in the café – although I was indeed interested to know if they were with him or if I was simply imagining that they were acting strangely. No, he meant the same Them that Byron Spinks had been so afraid of.
The man who'd taken my order still hadn't come back into the front of the café. I wondered if he was in on this, too, or if Mr Shiloh could somehow control people's actions, make them move a little bit slower than usual, or force them to carry on a conversation that they might otherwise have ended five minutes before. There was power in this man; I could sense it. I just didn't know what kind of power it was, or what its source might be.
I stared at Mr Shiloh, taking him in properly for the first time. The other two occasions I had seen him, I'd been taken unawares and not had the opportunity to study him, to examine the features that now sat before me, immobile and unknowable as those carved upon an Easter Island statue.
The first thing I noticed was that he had no eyebrows. The fact had not registered before; I'd just known there was something peculiar about his face, beyond the plastic complexion. Nor did he have any trace of stubble. His skin was too smooth, hairless. Staring at him, I failed to detect even the slightest hint of the normal pores that mark the human face. He did indeed look false – like an oversized doll. His hands, on the table, large as they were, also looked all wrong, rubbery; like the hands of an old Action Man doll I used to play with as a child. I imagined that if I were to reach out and grab one of his fingers, bending it back as far as it would go – way beyond snapping point – the finger would simply flick back into place when I let it go. He looked… undamagable. That's the only word I can think of to describe it, and it probably isn't even a proper word.
Consensual reality, but on an individual scale: the ability to make things so by the relatively simple act of belief. If Mr Shiloh believed that he could bend his body back into shape, then who was I to argue?
"Who are you?" At last my voice began to betray unease. I had to force the words out, as if they were large lumps stuck in my throat.
He smiled. He smiled and it was vile, perverted, like the grin of a father before he penetrates his own daughter: a dead, decayed expression that was almost enough to make me vomit. I coughed into my fist, trying to quell the nausea flooding my system.
I looked at my wine glass and saw that it was now filled with blood – there were even small chunks of tissue floating near the surface, and what looked like part of a human ear, possibly the lobe.
It was like a mockery of the Catholic mass: drink my blood, eat of my flesh…
"Who are you?" I whispered it this time, as if the answer – when it finally came – would be too fearful to hear; as if the question itself was a form of blasphemy.
"Oh, I'm just a fellow pilgrim travelling the road to enlightenment." There was a note of humour in his voice that was, in many ways, even worse than the plague-ridden smile.
"Mr Shiloh… that isn't your real name. Who are you? What are you?"
"You can just call me the Pilgrim," he said, smiling again.
I didn't know what to say.
"You got my message, I take it. A rather dramatic way of getting it across to you, I know, but so much fun. Such acts reli
eve the boredom of being down here among the meat, and I'm all for relieving the boredom."
Still I could muster no response.
"Its okay, Thomas, you don't have to speak – not this time. We will have time aplenty to talk, and next time we meet I'm sure you'll have a lot more to say. Perhaps then I'll have more to show you. Just be aware that we have been watching you, and we have been waiting. We've nudged you occasionally across the years, just to make you travel in the right direction, but know ye that enlightenment is close at hand." He let out a soft chuckle, barely there at all. He was having so much fun. "Sooner or later we'll open our hand and show you what we are holding there, glowing like enchanted gold in the palm. Until then, I bid you bon appetite, and hope that you enjoy the rest of the show."
Something strange happened as he stood out of his chair and at first I couldn't quite grasp what it was. As he raised himself up to his full height, looming upwards rather than standing in any kind of natural way, his hands remained flat on the tabletop, his arms stretching as he pushed himself up and away from the table. Those hands were still there as he headed for the door; I could not take my eyes off them. Then, finally, just as the door to the café opened, the hands lifted from the smooth table cloth and he looked the same as he had before.