EQMM, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  ** L. Ron Hubbard: Dead Men Kill, Galaxy, $9.95. This novella from the July 1934 issue of Thrilling Detective has currently trendy subject matter: zombies. With a stalwart police hero and a masked villain known only as Loup-garou, it recalls those cliff-hanger movie serials that flourished from the 1920s into the 1950s. If not as substantial as some of Hubbard's pulp work, it's certainly loads of fun. (The story is available in an audio version at the same price.)

  * Barbara D'Amato, Jeanne M. Dams, and Mark Zubro: Foolproof, Forge, $24.99. Brenda Grant and Daniel Henderson, who formed their own software security firm after losing friends, coworkers, and her fiancé on 9/11, uncover a plot to rig the 2008 Presidential election in favor of a fictitious incumbent who you'll surely agree (regardless of your politics) is stupider and more venal than any of his real-life counterparts. Laggardly pace, bland characterization, and clichés of style and plot undermine promising subject matter. I would expect better from any of the three authors working individually.

  Good News/Bad News Department: It's hard to dispute the subtitle of the thousand-page trade paperback The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published (Vintage/Black Lizard, $25), edited by Otto Penzler. Apart from representation of big names past and present (Rice, King, Lovecraft, Stoker), there's introductory matter by Kim Newman, Neil Gaiman, and the editor, plus a 100-page bibliography of vampire novels and short stories by Daniel Seitler. But the book is a particularly blatant example of an unfortunate recent trend: The version offered to the public is printed on paper markedly inferior to that of the advance copy sent to reviewers. Yes, I agree, it should be the other way around.

  Copyright © 2010 Jon L. Breen

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: MIRROR IMAGES by Mick Herron

  In 2009 Mick Herron won the EQMM Readers Award with the thriller novella “Dolphin Junction.” He returns this month with a case for his popular series characters Zoe Boehm and Joe Silvermann. Zoe features in Mr. Herron's 2009 novel Smoke and Whispers. His 2010 book, Slow Horses, expected to be released in the U.S. by Soho in June, is a departure for him—a spy thriller, and the first in a new series.

  We didn't keep count, but he must have dispatched up-wards of thirty people. Few had given him sleepless nights. Death was part and parcel of what he did, and if some of his initial methods had been a little off the wall (he had once strangled a bus conductor with the sloughed skin of a boa constrictor), he had calmed down since, and now generally shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned his victims to death without undue fuss.

  But last night, three in the morning, he'd sat bolt upright in bed thinking: Harry.

  Couldn't even remember Harry's surname at first, it had been so long ago. Harry Cudlipp. He'd been a nobody, Harry Cudlipp, but he'd seen something he shouldn't have seen, and reckoned to profit by it, and thus his uneventful life reached its eventful close. All, as stated, long ago.

  So why is Harry at the foot of the bed, three in the morning?

  Not literally, of course. Not literally. If Nigel Reeve-Holkham believed in ghosts, he'd not have gone in for this particular line.

  He'd got up and closed the wardrobe door, hiding its mirror from sight, then returned to his pillows, but sleep held off, only taking him back in its sly embrace moments before the alarm clock screeched the morning into life. He'd risen heavy-lidded, with unresponsive limbs. Black coffee left him just as exhausted but with a tic at his eyebrow. And when he'd shaved, there'd been that nudge from his subconscious again, an awareness of Harry. You couldn't put it stronger than that. It wasn't as if Harry Cudlipp appeared in his bathroom cabinet mirror—not even in that classic double-take shock, when you open the cabinet, then shut it again, and yeek, there he is, beside you—but as Nigel put razor to cheek, tracing those bumps on his reflection's right jaw that were a perfect match for those on his own left, back Harry arrived, swimming into mind as if he were a long-term resident of Nigel Reeve-Holkham's mental aquarium, instead of a passing guest some sixteen years gone.

  Sixteen years gone, Harry had been on a boathouse balcony, looking across the river to the meadow. Quite probably he'd been remembering that thing he'd seen that he shouldn't have seen, and musing on the profit he might turn. A certain smile had played across his lips. Then Harry Cudlipp—who had not been at the boathouse as a rower, student, or college chap eager to watch his alma mater's crew put through their paces; he'd been there because that was his job, cleaning out the boathouse of a morning—had stubbed his cigarette in the hanging basket to his left, yawned, stretched, and crack!, a shot had rung out.

  Stubbing one's cigarette out in a hanging basket is impolite but not, perhaps, a capital offence. Still: crack! A shot had rung out.

  And Harry Cudlipp had been effectively remaindered.

  Nigel Reeve-Holkham sighed, and continued shaving.

  He nicked his chin in the process, and bloodied a clean towel.

  * * * *

  After that, it was all about Harry. Not that Harry dogged his steps (this wasn't a literal haunting; Nigel Reeve-Holkham was coming to caress that scrap of comfort) but he'd spring to mind a dozen times a day, mostly when Nigel caught his own unexpected reflection—shop windows, mirrored pillars in stores, the distorting surfaces of passing cars. Why was that? Nigel Reeve-Holkham in no way resembled Harry Cudlipp. Harry Cudlipp had been gaunt, with cheeks that sucked in as if he had a lemon drop under his tongue. His hair had been thinning too, catching up with the rest of him; Harry's hair had been no more than a few stray wisps, brylcreemed into place. He'd smoked constantly. And his clothes had been rubbish: a mishmash of garments over which he pulled a stained apron every morning as he set about tasks which remained, in Nigel Reeve-Holkham's mind, vague and undefined, but which had doubtless involved the application of industrial-strength cleaning fluids and mops and buckets and other details.

  Nigel himself was abstemious; immaculate. His cleaning fluids came in polite plastic bottles with spray-nozzles. They rarely intruded on his consciousness.

  But all this Harry stuff: It was getting him down. He was starting to wonder who else was going to turn up out of the long-dead blue—that bus conductor? The one who didn't like snakes? Or maybe the woman thrown from the roof of that chichi hotel in Paris. She'd landed spread-eagled near a fountain whose reach had been just enough to rinse her life's-blood from the flagstones and drag it in a pinkening swirl to the gutters of the rue Pigalle. But there was nobody. Only Harry. No one else made a peep.

  A couple of afternoons after that first visitation, Nigel took his newspapers to the recycling bins near the local park. There were a lot of them; his haul included Oxford's daily Mail and weekly Times as well as the decent nationals, not that either had given him joy. And as he was hoisting them through the letter-box mouth of the bin, he saw Harry again. There were swings and roundabouts over at the park's far side—the infants’ play area was fenced off, to keep monsters at bay—and that was where Harry stood, leaning against that very fence, smoking, and wearing rubbish clothes. He was staring in Nigel's direction.

  And then Nigel blinked, and he was gone. There was a man over there, that was all—a man who not only wasn't Harry, he wasn't even smoking. Nigel shook his head. It was early, but already he knew today would be a wasted day. He'd spend most of it gnawing on this new non-encounter, a reminder of something that had been put to rest years ago, but apparently wouldn't lie down.

  He was beginning to think that in killing Harry Cudlipp, he'd made a terrible mistake.

  * * * *

  What Joe Silvermann liked to say was, there was no such thing as an ordinary case. “People, they come in all sizes. Their problems, likewise.” This was largely theoretical, because he didn't work much. And the problems that didn't come in different sizes—the problems that were always the same: the credit checks, the reference evaluations, the child-support defaulters—were dealt with by his wife and partner Zoe Boehm, on the grounds that they paid the rent and didn't need screwing up.
<
br />   Her words.

  Where she was right now, he didn't know. As for Joe, he was in the office of a couple of upstairs rooms on North Parade, which was a confusing mile or so south of South Parade. And he had a client with him. His client was a small man, sinisterly well-dressed: He had long fingers and small teeth, and a tic at his left eyebrow. And he'd just told Joe he was being haunted.

  "Haunted?"

  "Not literally."

  Joe nodded sagely. He didn't believe in ghosts—Zoe would have given him a hard time if he had—but didn't mind talking to people who did. He just had to be careful not to absorb any supernatural beliefs by mistake. Like any virtue, empathy had its downside.

  "It's more of an . . . awareness."

  "Ah."

  "You see?"

  Joe nodded politely, but didn't have a clue. He was hoping matters would become more specific. Otherwise—well, this wouldn't be the first interview with a prospective client where he'd never worked out what he was being hired for.

  "But some things trigger that awareness more than others."

  "And they would be . . . ?"

  "Well—when I'm shaving. I'm reminded of him when I'm shaving."

  "You see him when you look in the mirror."

  "I'm reminded of him when I look in the mirror."

  Joe raised a finger to make his point. “There's a difference."

  There followed a slight pause during which both men became aware of a bluebottle on the window, fizzing like an electric charge.

  "I know,” said Nigel Reeve-Holkham at last. “That's why I made the distinction."

  "As you say,” said Joe. Positive responses, he'd read, were a good thing, so he'd memorised a couple. “But I'm wondering how you think I can help.” Less positive, but it had to be asked.

  "You're a detective."

  "I am,” Joe said.

  "You solve problems."

  "Mmm."

  "Well—this is a problem."

  "But you don't think it's one perhaps better addressed by a . . . “ A slight nervousness had him split the word in two. He was as good as calling the client a nutter. “Psycho analyst?"

  "I have an analyst. We've discussed the matter."

  "And he, ah—?"

  "She thinks it's guilt."

  Analyst, thought Joe. He/she. Schoolboy error.

  "But you disagree,” he said.

  "Well, obviously."

  "And what do you think it's down to?"

  Nigel Reeve-Holkham said, “I think I made a mistake in killing him. And I need to know what it was, so I don't make the same mistake again."

  "Pardon me one small moment,” Joe said. He rose, walked round his desk, and raised the sash window six inches; enough that a brained creature would take the hint. But the bluebottle rose with the glass and continued to rage against its invisible enemy. Still: a step forward had been made. An opportunity offered. There was a chance that within the next little while the bluebottle would find freedom.

  Joe returned to his chair.

  "Sorry about that,” he said. “Where were we?"

  * * * *

  For a while after his new client left, Joe sat listening to the bluebottle buzz. Eventually he decided that opening the window had only irritated the creature, and tested this theory by closing it. The bluebottle subsided. Problem solved. The fact that the bluebottle remained on Joe's side of the glass was a matter to be dealt with later.

  This new client, though. This new client presented a problem unlike any Joe had come across before.

  His normal reaction to a new problem was to seek Zoe's input, ideally without her noticing that he was unsure what to do next. The word “ideally” was unavoidable here, as Zoe not noticing never actually occurred in practice. But somehow Joe felt that this situation wasn't one Zoe would find sympathetic. Zoe's qualities, all of which he theoretically prized, included a low tolerance for the supernatural, and when Zoe's tolerance was low, matters swiftly became critical. By and large, it was Joe they were critical of. This looked like being a solo job.

  Which left Joe's fallback position: What would Marlowe do? To which the answer was obvious. Marlowe would get out on the mean streets.

  Even if those streets weren't actually streets.

  * * * *

  Now this—this was something you did not see every day.

  Had Joe's thoughts been broadcast alongside footage of the scenery he was gliding through, many would agree with him. Here were trees bending low over the water, as if stooping to drink; and beyond the bushes lining the riverbanks, meadows stretched into a friendly distance. Cows could be spotted, grazing and suchlike, and Joe had seen a small animal scrabble into a muddy hole in the bank. And not long since, a heron had flown overhead. Joe was almost certain it had been a heron. For some seconds before its appearance he'd been aware of its flapping, deep and hungry as a monster's heartbeat, and just for a moment he'd suspected there was something he'd never been told about Oxford: that it involved the occasional unexpected hazard, such as a giant bat. But then the heron had flown round a bend in the river and passed no more than two yards over his head, its stick-legs trailing in its wake like a kite frame. Its wing-breeze had ruffled his hair. That, too, didn't happen every day.

  But what he actually meant by this, the this you didn't see much, wasn't the trees or the water or the cows or even the heron; it was this: Joe Silvermann in a punt. Poling upriver. With water rolling up his arms. And how did that happen, anyway, water rolling up his arms? It must be a punting thing; some freakish bending of the laws of physics. Because every time Joe lifted the pole clear of the water (which almost made him fall over, because this was not a steady surface: It was like balancing on three planks of wood, which he had nobody's word for but the young woman hiring out punts at the Cherwell Boathouse were riverworthy anyway) he felt his elbows getting wet, even though they were raised at this point. Five minutes in he'd had to stop to remove his jacket, and the punt pole had rolled into the river, and it had taken another ten minutes’ paddling to retrieve it, all of which had taken place within clear view of that same young woman, who was either finding all this very amusing or was remembering something funny that had happened to her once.

  And now his jacket was folded and carefully placed on the bench in the middle of the punt; his sleeves were rolled up; the riverbank was gliding past in a reasonably steady, panic-free manner; and Joe had to admit there was a certain elegance to this mode of travel. From a distance, he probably looked in control of things. Which was just as well, because if his mental map was working, he must be approaching the place he'd been looking for.

  What Nigel Reeve-Holkham had told him was that the boathouse where Harry Cudlipp had worked had stood just beyond the bridge across which the main road rumbled. “On the left. As you're heading upriver."

  "But it's not there anymore,” Joe had said. Just to be clear on this point.

  "No."

  This was a thing about boathouses in Oxford. They had a tendency to burn down.

  "And this happened . . . ?"

  "The same year."

  "And you think there's a connection between, ah . . . “

  Nigel Reeve-Holkham had stared at him as if he'd sprung a leak. “How on earth could there be?"

  "No. Good point."

  The bluebottle had rattled the glass again.

  Joe had said, “You'll excuse me, I can be slow.” Then mentally kicked himself: not a great admission to make to a client. “But my being there? This place that burned down, sixteen years ago? How precisely might this help? There'll be evidence?"

  Any remaining evidence, he'd been told, was of the circumstantial kind. The boathouse might not be there any longer, but the river hadn't changed. And it was from the river that the bullet that had killed Harry Cudlipp had been fired.

  "From a punt, to be precise,” Nigel Reeve-Holkham had said.

  "I see.” A longtime resident of Oxford, Joe had never been nearer a punt than looking down on one while cr
ossing Magdalen Bridge. “And that was—that was a straightforward business? Was it?"

  "I thought so at the time. But now I'm worried that it wasn't. That something in fact went wrong, without my realising it."

  "And you think that's why Harry Cudlipp is haunting you now?"

  "Yes."

  Joe had nodded.

  "But not literally."

  Joe had kept nodding.

  "Do you think you can help?"

  Well, no. No, he didn't. How could he help? This was outside sense. But there was no doubting Mr. Reeve-Holkham needed somebody's aid, and if his analyst couldn't supply it, Joe felt duty-bound to step in. People, he hadn't forgotten, came in all sizes. Their problems likewise. The sign on his door didn't specify that some of those problems, Joe didn't want to know about. The sign in question had actually fallen off the door some weeks ago, but that didn't alter the facts. The bluebottle had buzzed again. Joe had taken a deep breath. “Yes,” he'd said. “Yes. I can help."

  And so here he was. This was the place Nigel Reeve-Holkham had meant. It was where the old boathouse had stood.

  He raised the pole from the water and the punt came to a gentle halt. Or that was the plan, but in fact the punt continued to glide upriver. For a moment Joe simply stood, confused by the way things weren't turning out as he'd intended. And then the familiarity of this circumstance asserted itself, and he groped for a contingency plan. Sooner or later, the punt would run out of steam. It was, after all, headed upriver. There were only so many laws of physics one punt could break. So thinking, he lowered the pole into the water again, to act as a drag, and steered into the bank.

  Okay. That worked, too.

  A few minutes of uncoordinated flapping about later, Joe had the punt more or less stationary; its pole jammed into the riverbed, acting as a kind of anchor. A tree spread low overhead, its branches gnarled and stumpy. Joe sat in its shade, in the punt, facing the far bank. Somehow, before he'd set off on it, this had seemed a sensible venture. Now he was here, the theory—that punting upriver to look at something that wasn't there anymore would cast light on events buried way in the past—held less water than the punt. He'd been reminded of how much this was when he'd sat and put his feet into the puddle. ("It's sinking,” he'd pointed out to the woman at the boathouse, to which she'd replied, “It's got a bit of water in the bottom, that's all.” “That's how sinking starts,” Joe had said. But she'd sworn this was normal.)