by Simon Logan
“Took her where?”
“A club. Called uh . . . Flesh Heel I think. I’m there now.”
“So where’s Katja? What’s the woman doing with her?”
“I don’t know, she took her through a door in the back then came back out without her.”
“Well what are they doing with her?”
“I don’t know! Look, man, I’m, going to get out of here, this place has a fucking dark aura and there’s a tranny that keeps—”
“You’re staying fucking put until you know whether that bitch is getting her due or not. Have you got the camera?”
“Yeah but man, there’s something else going on—that other guy, the one that jumped her first? He’s a cop, man. A frickin’ detective!”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because I’m looking at his frickin’ business card right now, man! Detective Dixon DeBoer it says right here!”
“Dixon DeBoer? That’s who was after her?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
“I know of him. Used to work shipments from the island, made sure no overly keen customs guys got in the way and dealt with them if they did. Took pleasure in it too, from what I heard. Guy’s as crooked and nasty as they come.”
“Yeah, well, he needs to learn to watch his back ’cause Miss Pink has Katja now and so we’re done, right? I did as you asked.”
“You’re going nowhere you dirty little hippy,” Kohl snaps. “DeBoer, I know, would deal with the little bitch but this other one? Find out where she was taken and what they have planned for her and don’t you dare think about leaving until you know, you got me? Otherwise the next call I’ll be making is to the ward sister—or your wife.”
63.
So Moonbeam waits, mixing himself into the crowd, feeling like an antelope singled out by a pride of lionesses, watching as more of the clientele punch in the code, memorising the digits—but there’s too many people in his way and he can’t risk entering the wrong code. Eventually he moves as close as he dares to the door, pretending to drink from a beer bottle which someone has left behind while making sure that his lips don’t make contact with the possibly germ-addled rim. More couples come and go. Those who enter do so with stoned smiles and lustful eyes and those who emerge do so beaded in sweat turned multi-coloured by the club’s lights.
Then the rubber-skirted woman he’d seen earlier approaches with a tall, skinny man, leading the man by the hand. Her co-ordination made shaky by the cocktail of drugs she has no doubt filled herself with, she has to type in the code slowly enough that Moonbeam can identify it.
He waits for a few moments after they have gone inside then approaches the door. He looks around to check nobody is suspicious then punches in the code, hoping that he has identified it correctly. A green light illuminates on the bottom of the pad and there’s an audible click. He doesn’t want to go through that door, doesn’t want to hear it locking behind him and sealing him in with whatever lies beyond. But it is too late to back out now.
Before he can change his mind he pushes the door open, keeping it casual, to look as if this is something he does every night.
And panic floods through him as he almost bumps into Katja.
64.
The mist of body heat swirls around him for a few moments then dissipates in the relative coolness of the short white corridor beyond. The punk stands before him with another man, junky-looking.
“Excuse me,” Moonbeam says, making an instant decision on what to do and stepping to one side.
For a moment he is certain that they know exactly who he is and why he is there, then they both push past him and into the club. Moonbeam lets the door click shut again behind him, too busy watching the two figures move through the crowds.
Then hurries after them.
65.
He punches in Kohl’s number and once more it’s answered before the end of the first ring.
“Well?”
“Well . . .”
“You still at the club? Then where? Did you find her? What did they do to her?” Kohl asks, his voice dripping with glee at the thought of what horrors Katja might have been subjected to.
“She got away,” Moonbeam says. “Her and this other . . . someone else. I don’t know what the frick was going on there but that is one seriously fricked-up place—”
“Got away?” Kohl says, the words heavy and menacing like a bloodied meat cleaver. “What do you mean she got away?”
“Or they let her go, I don’t know. But she left. With a guy. Don’t worry, I followed her. They’re holed up in some old squat under the Falqué flyover and I’m sitting outside it now.”
Kohl mutters something that Moonbeam is glad to not quite catch.
“I give this bitch to them on a plate and everybody’s just dicking around. Have you still got DeBoer’s number?”
“The cop?”
“Call him. Tell him where she is before they move on. He’ll deal with her, I can guarantee it.”
“Look, man, why don’t you call him you know him so well, you know? I’ve done what you asked, now . . .”
“First of all I don’t know him, I know of him—and secondly, you moron, I’m in as much shit as Katja after what happened on the island. Why would I be relying on a weasily little piece of muck like you to do all this if I could just call up a contact or two and get them to fuck her over for me?”
“Wait,” Moonbeam says but Kohl isn’t interested, launching into another bile-and-threat soaked rant but Moonbeam keeps saying it over and over. “Wait. Wait. Just wait a minute! I see her.”
“Katja? You see Katja?”
Moonbeam doesn’t answer right away and Kohl goes silent, the only thing audible the click and hum of the medical devices he is attached to.
“Miss Pink,” Moonbeam says finally, watching the woman emerge from the car parked up ahead. “I’ll call you back.”
He hangs up, sits upright, leaning towards the dashboard. Picks up the video camera and switches it on, zooming in on the woman just in time to see her vanish inside the squat. He keeps the camera trained on the entrance, for how long he isn’t quite sure, until the doors open and two figures burst out. The cheap auto-focus mechanism on the camera can’t quite settle on its target in the low light, the digital zoom making the image he is presented with sparkle with pixels.
But it isn’t Katja or Miss Pink, instead two men, or teenagers more likely, one dressed in skinny trousers and a t-shirt, the other in cargo pants and an oversized hoody. They hurry away from the place and so Moonbeam puts the camera down. He looks at his watch, cursing the fact that under normal circumstances he’d be tucked up in the comfort of his own bed by now, his wife’s warm body next to him. He thinks of the other warm body which was, only a short while earlier, pressed against him but pushes the thought away.
Then the door flies open again and this time it’s Miss Pink and she is half-carrying, half-dragging someone behind her. Moonbeam grabs the camera again and points it in the woman’s direction. Once more the auto-focus whines in protest, dancing between the few points of light it can pick up on, but he gets enough of a view to recognise who she has in tow, as Katja’s shaven head glows with the reflected light. He follows Miss Pink back to her car and for the second time that night watches her stuff the punk’s limp body into it. And for the second time that night he follows after her, headlights off, for a dozen or so blocks, pulling his car over when he sees the brake lights ahead.
He isn’t familiar with the area, but it’s nowhere near the club so where is she taking the punk now?
He watches Miss Pink get out and recover Katja’s body from the back seat and it’s only then that it strikes him that she might already be dead. He trains the camera on them, following them until they duck into an alley. There’s a moment’s hesitation in which he asks himself again whether that would be enough for Kohl, and the answer comes as quickly
as before. He jumps out of his car and jogs along the deserted street, and then, the camera still in hand, leans around the alley’s corner only as far as he dares.
He spots the van parked three quarters of the way up and instantly recognises the transvestite who first confronted Katja back at the warm up gig. She is locked in conversation with Miss Pink but the two are maintaining a healthy distance, edging around one another like two wild animals that don’t want to get into a fight but are entirely prepared for it should it be necessary.
He kneels down, using a pile of rotten fruit crates for cover, dials Kohl’s number and quickly updates him.
“So what are they doing? Can you see?”
“They’re just . . . talking.”
“This is taking too fucking long, I’m sick of it,” Kohl snaps. “Give the cop a call. Now.”
“But, I mean, it looks like—”
“I’ve not got time for a game of pass the shitting parcel here, I want that little bitch dealt with, do you understand me? Call him. Call him right now and tell him to get down there fast if he wants a piece of her and make sure he gets her, do you understand? I want to know that she made it into his hands.”
Moonbeam no longer has the energy to argue or to question. He feels the strings Kohl is tugging on him, pulling him this way and that in the man’s little game of revenge and any resentment is lost amidst the tiredness, amidst the knowledge that he should never have started fucking around with the Nurse Trixie in the first place. The Universe guided him away from her that first night when he scalded his ass against a heating pipe in the closet in which they first fucked and he ignored it—and look where it had gotten him.
So he does as instructed, hoping that perhaps this is the Universe offering him a chance back onto the right path. He makes the call. He tells the cop about the exchange and he just goes along with it when the man assumes him to be some sort of street-smart informant and as he hopes and waits for the man to arrive Moonbeam makes a promise to himself that it is all over with Nurse Trixie. With all of them.
And he waits, hiding just around the corner from the white van, praying that the Tgirl won’t leave just yet when a battered old station wagon pulls up. A man gets out wearing a raincoat and Moonbeam points the camera—capturing the man sneaking up on the transvestite and felling her, then opening the van doors. Katja emerging and trying to escape but being caught and dumped into the rear of the station wagon.
So that’s it. The detective has her and Moonbeam has the proof. Kohl will, finally, be happy.
Moonbeam looks up at the vast darkness twinkling with stars above him, and thanks it, and walks away.
66.
And everything is fine until he rides the elevator down, thinking about getting home and lying down in his own bed next to his wife, about letting the night’s events unravel from his muscles, and the elevator doors open and she is standing there.
The punk is standing right there.
67.
“Move me closer,” Kohl says, not taking his eyes from Katja in the bed next to him.
Moonbeam pokes the tip of his foot down on the chair’s locking mechanism then pushes the man as close to the bed as the contraption will allow. Close enough that she will feel the warmth of his breath on her forehead.
“No. Take this fucking headset off, it’s annoying the hell out of me.”
Moonbeam does as instructed. “Better?”
Kohl ignores the question, his attention focused on Katja. “Been a while,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says to him, working against the restraints. “You look . . . different. Have you done something with your hair?”
His smile falters momentarily but he forces it to return. “You know, for a good while there I wished that you had done a better job on me back on the boat. The doctors said that if the cut had been another few millimeters deeper then it would have been a different story. Instead of instant death I ended up with more pain than you can imagine and the ability to move nothing more than this little finger.”
He wiggles the digit just to prove his point. “Stuck staring out that window all day and then what do I see? You think a shaved head and a couple of new tattoos is enough? You should never have crawled out from the rock you were under, Katja.”
“If it means that much to you, give me a knife and I’ll have another go,” Katja says.
“No,” Kohl says. “It’s my turn now. Nurse?”
Moonbeam lingers between the door and the bed to which Katja is strapped. “Look this is . . . I’ve done enough. I told you already I wouldn’t—”
“And I told you that you would do as I fucking asked if you know what’s good for you. Prep her.”
“No,” Moonbeam says, “this isn’t right.”
“Prep what?” Katja asks.
“The Cosmos brought her here, remember. It delivered her right to us. It wants us to have her.”
Sensing Moonbeam’s resistance wavering, either at the holistic crap Kohl was spouting or at his threats, Kohl says again, “Prep her.”
“I won’t start it,” the nurse says, crossing to one of the machines lying dormant against the rear wall and wheeling it back to the bed.
“I’m not asking you to,” Kohl tells him. “This is between me and her but I can’t do it myself can I? You’re here to care for me, that’s your job isn’t it? To help me do the things I can no longer do for myself? So prep her.”
“What are you doing?” Katja asks, tugging at the restraints but getting nowhere.
The nurse flicks a couple of switches on the machine and there is a hiss of pneumatically-driven air. Then he takes a sterile package from a drawer and splits it open to reveal a needle. He plugs the needle into an IV line that runs from the machine and secures it into place.
He presses down on one of her arms, pinning it. “This will only hurt for a moment,” he tells her as if this is just a routine procedure. She barely feels a stab of pain as the cannula is inserted, while trying to read the label on the translucent pouch he hooks the IV line up to.
“Now give me the trigger,” Kohl says.
Moonbeam hesitates momentarily then unwraps another line from the machine, this one black as opposed to clear, and ending in what looks likes a stubby permanent marker but the tip isn’t a pen, it’s a button. He glances down at Katja but his eyes are unable to meet hers. He slips the trigger into Kohl’s hand, curling the immobile fingers around it to hold it in place.
Kohl caresses the button with his one good finger.
“I’m guessing that’s not saline,” Katja says, now slumped in the bed from her efforts to wriggle free.
“You guess right,” Kohl tells her. His eyes swivel to Moonbeam. “Tape her up. I’ve heard enough.”
At first Moonbeam isn’t sure what Kohl means then notices the roll of surgical tape on the instrument trolley next to him. Kohl blinks in affirmation when Moonbeam picks it up. The nurse peels the end away and pushes it towards Katja.
“Don’t you fucking d—”
He presses it onto her mouth, white and waxy and too strong for him to tear with his fingers. He opens the slim top drawer of the instrument trolley and takes out a sterile packet containing a scalpel blade, peels open the packet and uses the blade to slice at the surgical tape across her mouth. He applies another two layers, criss-crossing them to create a crooked star shape, one end touching the base of her nose, another the edge of her jaw.
“Perfect,” Kohl says. “You can go now.”
Moonbeam doesn’t move, as if he is an animal who has been caged for so long that it doesn’t know what to do with its freedom when offered. “Are you sure? Maybe I should just make sure that—”
“This is between me and her,” Kohl says, his upper lip curling into a snarl.
Moonbeam puts the tape and blade on the trolley and backs away, working the beads around his neck.
“What about the . .
. uh . . .”
“The what?” Kohl asks. The neck brace won’t let him angle his head enough to see what Moonbeam stands next to but he already knows. The money they had found on Katja.
“You want it?”
“No, I mean, not for myself but perhaps, you know, to keep it safe or if someone’s—”
“Take it,” Kohl tells him. “What use is it to me anyway?”
“I could hand it into the lost property downstairs or maybe donate it to a charity or something.”
Katja grunts and strains against the surgical tape.
“And it’s of no use to you now either,” Kohl says to her. “Take it and get out.”
Moonbeam picks up the loose notes, the scent of charred metal and beer rising as he shuffles them into order. The guitar she had been carrying lies there too, spattered with her blood from their struggle in the elevator.
He hears a click as Kohl pushes down on the button beneath his finger, there’s an electronic whine, like a small motor spinning up, then a beep and a moment later a muffled gasp from Katja. He stuffs the money into his uniform’s chest pocket, and when he stands back up Kohl’s face is split by a broad grin.
Moonbeam opens the door and gives Katja one last sorry look before leaving.
He closes it quietly, turns, and then everything falls apart again.
About halfway up the corridor, just beyond the nurse’s station, are two people—and both of them trouble. One is the skinny fuckup that had been with Katja by the elevator, the other the Tgirl who had taken Katja’s body from Miss Pink in the alleyway, now dishevelled and bloody. They’re looking at the patient charts on the wall.
“Oh frick,” he says, the words already spoken before he is able to snuff them out.
He ducks back inside Kohl’s room in time to hear the click of the man delivering another dose of drug into the punk.
“I thought I told you to—”
“We have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” Kohl asks.