Bad Blood

by David Bussell

  It ignored me. Cats are such snooty little bastards.

  Then it darted forward and leapt for the envelope in my hand, snatching it away in its jaws.

  ‘You little shit!’

  The cat turned to face me head on. It was only then that I realised something was very wrong with the thieving moggy. It wasn’t a real cat at all, it was an impossible, three-dimensional representation of a cat. A painting of a cat come to life.

  ‘What the hell?’

  The painted cat shot off, vanishing from the pool of overhead light and dashing across the park. I was so surprised that it took me a second or two to find my legs, then I was off, sprinting after the stolen envelope. My tattoos shovelled coal into my belly, giving me steam, firing my engine. I ran, feet slewing in the muck, heart in my mouth, sucking down breaths in small, hot spurts. The impossible cat ate up the grass in front of me.

  ‘Here, weird kitty, that’s not a chew toy!’

  I chased the cat to the skate park at the south end of the green and saw it disappear over the crest of one of its graffiti-tagged concrete bowls. I reached the lip of the polished basin and looked down to see a lone figure standing in the hollow. He stared back at me, cold and indifferent.

  Sharez Jek.

  ‘I didn’t take you for a sk8er boi,’ I said, gesturing at the ramps and grind rails surrounding us. ‘Big Avril Lavigne fan? Same. Let’s be friends.’

  He didn’t look any prettier up close, unless full-face skull tattoos are your thing (if they are, then I’m not judging you) (but you’re definitely full-on weird and need help) (that’s me not judging you) (I’m not great at it).

  The painted cat delivered the envelope to its master, and Jek tucked it into a pocket of his cargo trousers. The cat purred and made figure-eights through Jek’s legs, rubbing itself against him as it weaved back and forth through the tattooed man’s shoulder-wide stance. After a few seconds of this, Jek rolled up one leg of his trousers and the cat pressed itself against his exposed flesh. To my amazement, the cat began to meld with Jek’s body, absorbing into his skin until it became two-dimensional, a tattoo of a cat on its master’s calf. Jek rolled down the trouser leg and smiled. Okay, I hated to admit it, but that was pretty sweet.

  ‘Your move,’ he said.

  My heart was still smashing around in my chest from the run, but I had plenty of fight left in me yet. I leapt into the concrete bowl and landed in front of Jek with my feet planted wide.

  ‘Why don’t we find out if bald guys really do have more testosterone?’ I said, and launched a fist at his face.

  He sidestepped it easily, grabbed my arm, and jacked it up behind my back.

  I felt his breath, hot in my ear. ‘Try harder.’

  I spun about, aiming to jam an elbow into his ear, but he ducked and left me pirouetting through air. He came up with a jab and caught me under the chin, loosening a couple of teeth. I took exception to that. A lot of exception.

  I felt my tattoos come to life, lighting the blue touch-paper within me. I threw another fist, not just aiming to punch the guy but to punch through him. He dodged again though, darting backwards and returning an attack of his own, not a fist but a long blade, which ejected from the back of his forearm, emerging magically from his flesh. His sword tattoo had come to life, real as steel and sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. The point of the blade pierced my shoulder and exploded from my back. I didn’t realise you could hurt that badly and not pass out, but somehow I managed to stay conscious despite being impaled. Go me.

  Never one to pass up an opportunity, Jek jumped on my moment of distraction and head-butted me so hard I ended up cooling my arse on concrete.

  ‘Time to go sleepy-bye,’ said Jek, then delivered a boot to my temple.

  Singing.

  Was the radio on?

  No, wait, it wasn’t the radio.

  Someone was singing. Someone in the same room as me. Sharez Jek.

  I opened my eyes and groaned. Not because of the pain, I was all better now thanks to my tattoos. No, I groaned because the tune Jek was singing was a Carpenter’s track, Rainy Days and Mondays. My mum used to listen to that song while she was doing the ironing, back when I was little.

  ‘Do you take requests?’ I groaned. ‘How about something by the Ramones? Or maybe a choice cut from The Kinks?

  Jek turned to me. He had a knife in his hand.

  It was only at this point that I felt the ache in my shoulders and realised I was dangling. I looked up to find my wrists bound with a length of steel wire. I was suspended from a hook attached to the ceiling, my toes a foot from the ground, my body spinning in a lazy circle. As I turned about, I took in the full panorama of my surroundings, though there wasn’t much to see. The room I was in was dark, most of it hidden by shadows. I could just about make out plank wooden walls, a dirt floor, and something up in the rafters that looked like it might be a canoe. One thing I did know for sure, the place stank. Stank like a festering wound.

  ‘You know,’ said Jek, ‘once upon a time I took a little girl’s skin. I cut it off her with care, even as she wriggled and passed out and screamed and woke and screamed and passed out. Over and over and over. It takes care to keep someone alive while you skin them. A lot of care. Did you know that?’

  ‘I did not,’ I said, still trying to figure a way out of my predicament. This was the second time I’d been knocked out and woken up in bondage. If things carried on this way, people were going to talk.

  ‘You have to be gentle to get all of the skin off in one piece. Tender, even.’ He examined his reflection in the polished blade of his knife. ‘I scrubbed her skin clean once I had it removed, then posted it to her father in a gift-wrapped box. Made him sign for it, too.’

  ‘Well... everyone likes a nice pressie.’

  ‘Not him,’ replied Jek, my sarcasm escaping him. ‘Not even the recordings I sent him of his skinless daughter’s screams.’

  ‘And after all your hard work. Tsk. Some people, right?’

  As I watched, the skin on Jek’s shoulders seemed to crawl, then a pair of snake tattoos detached from his back and crept down his body, searching the air, winding their way towards me.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ I said, helpless as the snakes found their way to my body and began to slither around my waist.

  ‘People always want to talk but no one ever wants to listen,’ said Jek. ‘That’s the problem. That’s the problem!’ He walked into the shadows and returned dragging a chair. ‘Take this one...’ Strapped to the chair was a body, long dead. Surrounding it was a swarm of buzzing bluebottles that glittered in the air like a cloud of sapphires. Maggots tunnelled through the body’s rotten flesh, wriggling to and fro, dripping to the floor. Jek gripped the dead man by the chin and spoke to him.

  ‘I tried to talk. Tried to make you listen. But all you wanted to do was yell and beg and plead. You had to make it all about you.’ Jek leaned forward and planted a kiss on the dead man’s putrefying mouth. He turned to me with maggots spilling from his lips. ‘Now, would you like to talk, or would you like to listen?’

  ‘Oh, I’m all ears.’

  Jek laughed and hurled his knife. I gasped as it planted in my shoulder.

  ‘I said no talking,’ he said. ‘Now do I make myself understood?’

  ‘Yeah, I think got the point,’ I replied through gritted teeth. ‘Little joke for you there.’

  ‘Tiny,’ said Jek yanking the knife free of my shoulder meat.

  I winced as my tattoos went to work and the wound began to heal. Jek opened up my jacket and watched the cut zip together, fascinated by the display.

  ‘Oh, I could have endless fun with you,’ he said. ‘Well, not endless. It always ends eventually.’

  ‘Why did you take the Galoffi kid?’ I asked.

  ‘Talking. That’s talking. Isn’t that talking?’ he said, turning to the corpse in the chair. ‘Yeah, Fred agrees with me. Talking. Six point penalty.’ Jek stuck the knife in my other shoulder and stepped back to admire i
t. Meanwhile, his snake tattoos lapped at the blood that dripped from the fresh wound and pooled beneath my feet.

  ‘Sorry, such pigs those two, I only just fed them.’ He whistled sharply and the snakes wound up from the floor and returned to Jek’s skin, becoming part of him once more.

  ‘Where’s the one who helped you?’ I asked, the room turning hazy around me, the air rippling like I was underwater. ‘Where’s the Red-Eyed Man?’

  Jek peered right through me. ‘I think I’m going to go now,’ he said. ‘We could have a lot of fun together, you and me, but it’s getting late, and I still have a lot of work to do.

  He walked behind me, disappearing from view. I kicked my legs a couple of times to turn in his direction, and when I found him again I saw he was carrying a can of petrol. He unscrewed the metal cap and began to splash the can’s contents about the room, filling my nostrils with the oily, sweet smell of gasoline.

  ‘Wait, wait, let’s just hold on for a bit,’ I said, trying to keep the fear from my voice.

  ‘You know, I’m definitely going to have trouble getting my deposit back on this place,’ he quipped, shaking off the last of the can.

  ‘Stop. Just stop a minute.’

  ‘Aw, you didn’t like my joke? And I thought you liked to laugh.’ He turned to the corpse strapped to the chair. ‘You found that funny, didn’t you, Fred?’ Jek waggled the dead man’s head and a pair of maggoty waterfalls poured from his eye sockets.

  The pain in my shoulder was searing. I couldn’t heal, not with the knife still stuck in me.

  Jek pulled a box of matches from a pocket in his cargo trousers and lit one, gazing at the tiny flame, the fire reflected in his eyes.

  ‘Jek! Just stop! Just a minute, just for a second, let’s pump the brakes here.’

  ‘I once murdered a bride on her wedding night while the groom was in the bathroom getting ready to do the deed. When I think back to it, I think I really ruined their big day.’

  ‘Jek!’

  He turned and headed for the exit, tossing the lit match over his shoulder. ‘Bye bye.’

  The flame dropped to the floor and met the lake of petrol. Fire rushed around the room, turning the whole place orange.

  ‘See you later, Fred,’ said Jek, waving to the corpse as he exited.

  The flames chewed through the room, setting the dead man ablaze, maggots writhing in the flicker.

  Spiked by panic, I struggled to break free of my bonds, my whole body shaking, tattoos burning as I fought and flexed and strained. Try as I might though, I just couldn’t get loose. There was no breaking the steel wire binding my wrists, so I was left dangling, the flames beneath me already licking the soles of my boots. I drew my legs up to avoid the blaze, and as I did, I began to swing back and forth on the hook. My eye-line pitched to the ceiling and I saw the canoe slung up in the rafters.

  That was it.

  I couldn’t break my bonds, but if I could just get enough momentum I might be able to uncouple myself from the hook I was suspended from. I kicked out my legs, flames up to my knees now, eager to consume me. Smoke burned my eyes red raw. I rose and fell, my body a pendulum, getting higher and higher with each swing. The pain from the dagger in my shoulder was excruciating, and only aggravated further by my struggling, but I carried on, up and down, back and forth.

  Finally, I felt my toes scrape against the side of the canoe and tried to find purchase, but slid away from it and pitched into another backwards swing.

  ‘Come on, come on!’

  I was coughing violently now, the flames as high as my waist, my jeans singeing, close to catching fire. I willed the tattoos to give me strength, to fight the flames, to tranquillise the pain, but they were as good as useless so long as Jek’s dagger stayed buried in my shoulder. One more swing, that’s all I had left in me. I kicked back my legs and thrust them forwards—

  And the heel of my right boot caught on the lip of the canoe. I was horizontal now, the flames beneath me, a few feet away but close enough to roast me still. I needed to act fast. Making sure I had a good grip on the canoe, I pulled it towards me, tucked my lower legs inside, and used the purchase I’d gained to slide my bindings free from the metal hook.

  ‘Yes!’

  I hung upside down for a moment, trying to grab a breath, but the air I tasted choked me. I gasped, sweating bullets from the heat. I had to get out of there before I was cooked alive. I looked about and noticed a door I hadn’t been able to see before, lit by the inferno, wide open. The only way I was getting to it was through the flames.

  ‘This is gonna suck…’ Two short breaths, in and out. ‘Fuck it.’

  I tumbled backwards into the flames and struck the ground with a whump, the dagger jarring in my shoulder like a hot skewer. The world was roaring, orange, my own private Hell. Head down, I made it to my feet and sprinted forward blindly, my nose full with the smell of burning hair. Somehow I managed to keep my bearings and burst through the other side of the flames, where I stumbled through the charred doorway and hit a chilling brace of outside air. Knees crumbling, I pitched to the ground, flames biting into me, stripping my skin like acid. Panicking, I rolled across damp earth, my body picking up momentum as I hit a slope and went tumbling down a steep bank.

  Splash.

  The flames were snuffed out immediately, but I wasn’t out of danger yet. Now I was underwater, carried along by a current, my body turning numb, shutting down. I closed my eyes and thought about the Carpenter’s song again, the one mum used to play: Rainy Days and Mondays. Always that one song. Sometimes she’d play it five or six times in a row. I’d heard her singing it to my brother James once. I wondered if she sung it to me when I was a baby.

  Reaching out an arm, I closed my fingers around a clump of passing reeds, and with an almighty heave, pulled myself free of the water. I flopped on to my back, gasping, looking up at the night sky, my whole body stinging. Reaching to my shoulder, I pulled Jek’s dagger free and tossed it into the water.

  My tattoos kicked in right away, stitching together the knife wound, evaporating the burns, leaving behind only faint scars to join all the rest. The Carpenters rang in my ears still. Rainy Days and Mondays. I hated that song. Not because mum played it so much, but because she loved it.

  I sat up. I was lying in a river bed downstream from the building I’d stumbled from, a burning shack surrounded by empty dirt roads and fields. I pushed myself to my feet and walked away.

  12

  It turned out that Jek’s torture shack lay opposite the River Ouse, a few miles north of Brighton. I had to walk to the nearby town of Lewes and flag a ride back to the city, easier said than done when you look like a convicted witch who broke free of her stake. The trip home ended up taking an hour or more, which wasn’t great, but when you’ve managed to escape a madman setting you on fire, you don’t complain about a little hike.

  Once I got to Brighton I headed straight for Baker’s Pub, desperate for a breather and a drink to take the edge off. I needed to clear my head, to take stock of what I’d been through and figure out what, if anything, it told me about the Galoffi case. No doubt the gruesome twosome would be wondering where I’d got to, but they’d have to wait. For now, I needed a minute to myself.

  Parker hadn’t been exaggerating about Sharez Jek; the guy was a nightmare made flesh. Something about the way he looked at me, about the words he spoke. I’d heard all sorts of creepy shit in my time, but the bulk of it rolled right off me. Jek’s words were different. Jek’s cut to the bone. Took root inside of me.

  ‘Fucking prick,’ I muttered, and took a shot of whiskey before turning back to my pint.

  ‘Here I am then,’ came a gruff voice, cutting through my gloom.

  I looked up from the beer mat I’d been turning into confetti to find an eaves in front of my table, shifting from foot to foot.

  ‘Long way from home, Razor.’

  ‘Fucking hate seaside towns,’ he replied, settling down on a stool opposite me.

&nb
sp; Razor, like all eaves, looked a bit like a squashed man and a bit like a mole. I’d crossed paths with this one recently when I’d travelled to London, looking for Carlisle.

  ‘So they tagged you in, did they?’ I said. It seemed my request to Brighton’s elder eaves—the one I’d sat on the bonnet of my Porsche with—had been passed down the line.

  ‘You want to know about Carlisle,’ said Razor. ‘I know more than most. First-hand, not passed-on info.’

  ‘Nice of you to make the trip.’

  ‘Had to be here. If you’d come to me, to London, he’d have known. He always knows.’

  Razor seemed on edge. Miles from London, in a dark corner of an out of the way pub, and yet he still kept glancing behind him as if he expected someone to spring from the shadows.

  ‘Ever heard of a phone?’ I asked.

  Razor grimaced. ‘We don’t share by phone. Face-to-face is the eaves way. More’s the pity.’ He reached forward, grabbed my pint, and took a great gulp before passing it back to me.

  ‘No, you help yourself,’ I said with a grimace, pushing the pint back his way.

  ‘Any crisps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I like crisps.’

  ‘Everyone likes crisps.’

  Razor frowned, wrapping his filthy fingers around the pint glass. ‘What do you want, Banks? Ask me and I’ll decide if I can tell you.’

  I nodded. ‘A long time ago, someone close to me was taken. I can’t remember it all, but I do know I crossed paths with Carlisle on the night it happened. That wherever I found myself, he was there too.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he says it was nothing to do with him, that he just happened to be there. I want to know if that’s true. I want to know if I can trust him.’

  Silence hung heavy as Razor’s beady eyes blinked once, blinked twice, then he burst into peals of hysterical laughter, head back, hooting, clutching his sides.

  ‘Trust him, she says. Can she trust him? Carlisle! Oh, that’s rich, that is. That’s oil baron rich, that one.’ Razor pulled a soiled hankie from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes.