by Adam Maxwell
Scarfe shook his head as he pulled on the handbrake.
Cracking open the door, Roach paused as he felt Scarfe’s hand on his forearm. “Zack,” Scarfe spoke lightly but firmly. “Don’t get ahead of yourself again.”
Roach wrenched his arm away from Scarfe’s touch. “Fuck you,” he replied and slammed the car door. Another damned reminder that the powers that be wanted to ensure he didn’t get too honest, always stuck with his bloody babysitter.
As he stepped out into the melee, sirens screamed like angry ghosts, clearing revelers from the road. As the crowds parted, two fire engines screeched to a halt outside the nightclub. A phalanx of firefighters poured into the street, suiting up, moving people to a perimeter, rolling out hoses and generally doing the sorts of things you’d expect firefighters to do.
Roach made his way over and soon located the crew manager.
“Detective,” he nodded towards Roach. They’d met on many occasions but neither knew the other’s name.
“Evening,” Roach gave a half-smile in acknowledgement. “Had a tip-off it could be arson.”
“Good to know, thanks.” He turned to two of the tallest firefighters, each of them ready with breathing apparatus already in place.
After a brief exchange, the two moved off and threw open one of the club doors. Smoke poured out into the mild night air and the pair stepped inside, out of Roach’s view.
“We aren’t getting in there any time soon.” Scarfe appeared at his shoulder, the muttered words somehow managing to float into Roach’s ears despite the noise surrounding them. “Any counterfeit currency…” he said the words with disdain. “Well, there’s going to be nothing rescued from in there, is there?”
“Why don’t you knock off early, mate?” Roach turned to face his partner, trying to arrange his features into something resembling sincerity. “I’ll hang around, just so we’ve got a presence.”
Scarfe stared at him for longer than he needed to, then walked back to the car, got inside and sat, watching.
Roach turned back to the club. The Tulip Street Gin Palace was well and truly alight now, the flames consuming the whole of the lobby. His eyes were drawn by the chimeric architectural facade, the lumps and bumps and other features he assumed probably had names he didn’t know. Sitting alongside it, looking like a Transformer’s glass-encrusted dildo, were the offices of Elias Croft.
Roach stared at the office building, torn between the knowledge that Elias was untouchable and the fact that he had a tip-off. If Lucas was telling the truth then this could be an insurance job. There was precious little he was able to do about that for the time being but, there might be counterfeit currency on the premises. The premises for which he didn’t have a search warrant, but which were, technically, open to the public. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think he might pop his head around the door, maybe to check there was no-one in there. If he happened to see something worth investigating while he was at it, that would just be a happy coincidence, wouldn’t it?
He glanced over at his partner. Scarfe’s attention was being drawn by three girls whose combined age was less than his. Roach grinned and slipped, unseen, into the reception of the glass monstrosity.
five
Elias Croft sat in what he described as the penthouse, but everyone else called the ‘bell end’ of his gleaming glass building. With a smile, he replaced the bakelite receiver on his mock-sixties telephone and smiled. He ran his fat little fingers across the aged paper of the book laid out in front him, before carefully closing it.
The title of the book, ‘A Miscellany of Rare Birds and Other Undescribed Animals’, had once been embossed upon its cover but now that and the author’s name, Tobias Jardine, were all but lost.
The knocking at his office door persisted but he continued to ignore it, as he had done for the past half hour. He placed the book back on its shelf, its size a shade larger than the surrounding uniform modern tomes, leaving it jutting proud of its younger siblings.
The knock-knocking had become more urgent. Elias stood barefoot in front of the bookcase. The deep, deep pile of the carpet he’d had fitted only two weeks earlier was still an undiluted pleasure to walk across. He made fists with his feet, his toes wiggling like overstuffed cocktail sausages. The carpet was one hundred per cent wool and threatened to engulf his feet as he moved them. Money wasn’t a huge issue to Elias. After all, if you ran out you could just print more.
He took a deep breath. “If you don’t stop knocking on that door right now,” he shouted at the closed door, “I will shoot you through it.”
The knocking ceased.
Elias smiled and walked over to his desk. By the side were a pair of handmade Italian leather shoes, his socks bunched up inside. He tried to lean over to pick them up but his expansive belly got in the way and he ended up having to contort himself sideways to do it. He dropped into the large leather desk chair, its cushions sighing in protest at the weight. Once the shoes were on he began to compose himself for the call ahead. He took a laptop out of a drawer in the enormous desk then reached into a second and took out a plate.
On the plate was a single sausage. He went to pick it up then, just before his fingers touched it, he pulled back. He would wait. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to eat it at all. But if he did, he would wait until later.
Turning his attention back to his laptop, he opened it up and clicked to activate the video messaging.
In an instant he was confronted with a high definition picture cropped just below his own jowly face and reaching just above his full head of too-black hair, a dyed mop of hair plugs battling in the face of male-pattern baldness. He grinned and gave himself a little wink, apparently impressed by the cross between an obese late-era Elvis impersonator and Alfred Hitchcock’s reanimated corpse.
Elias paged down through the contacts until he found the one he was looking for.
Felix Thrust.
He glanced at the time in the corner of the screen. Waited for it to tick past one more minute and then clicked to call. It barely rang three times before it was answered by a rangy man in his mid-thirties who looked like he only slept three hours a week.
“Elias,” he said. His voice was dry and crackled like tin foil being wrapped around breaking bones. “Right on time.”
“Felix,” Elias replied. He peeled his smile even wider unveiling a much higher percentage of gum than you would usually encounter in a human.
“Was the vet I put you in touch with useful?” asked Felix. “I never did make a decision about bringing my business into Kilchester.” He smiled back at Elias, flashing his golden grill. Every one of Felix’s teeth was gold, and his canines were encrusted with what Elias assumed was cubic zirconia but might just as easily be diamond.
“I’m disappointed to hear you have yet to decide,” said Elias. “Is London so lucrative?”
“No. That’s the fucking problem though. I do fancy me a slice of Kilchester. England’s second capital. The jewel of the north, eh?”
Elias nodded. He hated it when southerners talked about Kilchester as if it were some parochial bastion of the backwards. “I’d hoped we would be going into business together. That I’d already be heading up your expansion.”
Felix squinted at him from the laptop screen. “An associate of mine has recommended Big Terry.”
“Big Terry?” Elias nodded. So this was the game. He was prepared. He glanced over to the sausage and smiled. “Well he has a reputation that is the inverse of his stature.”
“You what?” asked Felix, screwing his face up in confusion.
Elias knew for a fact that Felix Thrust was public-school educated. And yet here he was affecting a heavy London accent and pretending he didn’t know what words meant. This was London criminals for you.
“I mean that everyone knows he’s vicious in spite of being a short-arse,” said Elias.
“S’right,” replied Felix. “But if he’s ruthless then maybe he’s the one I’m choosing. Maybe…”
<
br /> “You asked about the vet,” said Elias.
Felix lifted his chin, acknowledging the statement, waiting for a continuation.
“Did you know what I needed him for?”
“Nah.”
Elias did his horse’s grin once more. This was the moment he’d been waiting for.
“I needed him for revenge,” he said, a little too loudly.
There was the sound of a can of lager being cracked at Felix’s end of the line. “This is gonna be good, innit?”
“I can guarantee it,” said Elias, his grin settling down into a smug smirk. “My girlfriend. She liked to shop.”
“Women, eh?” said Felix, chugging his can.
“Yes. Exactly. She liked to shop and she liked to screw. The one got her in the mood for the other.”
“I wish my bird was that simple,” said Felix.
“I noticed that she wasn’t going to the usual shops. Every Wednesday evening she was going somewhere else. And she wouldn’t tell me where. Avoided the question. Changed the subject.”
“Suspicious,” said Felix, lounging back on his sofa and lighting a cigarette. “How d’ya notice something like that?”
“I have one of my men follow her all the time,” said Elias. “Did you know they have artisanal butchery courses?”
“What the fuck is that?” asked Felix.
“Hipsters go to the butchers. And do a class. They learn how to butcher… say… a pig.”
“And you wanted the vet to kill a pig for her? Aw, man, that’s the shittest story I’ve...”
“I’m not done,” said Elias. “Not by a long shot.”
Felix nodded and waved at him to continue.
“So she’d been going to this place every week for a about a month. At first I think nothing of it and then it becomes clear she isn't mentioning it to me. Usually you can't shut her up about what she's been up to but this… this she doesn't mention.
“I get my man to dig a little and she’s the only one at the class and the guy who runs it, he’s called Django. Have you ever heard of anyone called Django? Such a bloody hipster name.”
“I saw a film called Django. Was good.” Felix took a drag on his cigarette and let some of the smoke drift out of his mouth before inhaling it through his nose. Apparently that was all he had to say on the matter.
Elias stared at him for a moment, wondering why he was trying to impress this idiot, and then remembered. The money. The power. The influence.
He smiled and continued. “So I gave her a chance. The next Wednesday came and I asked her where she was going. She said ‘shopping’. She was lying.”
Felix sucked air through his gold grill.
Elias nodded. “I was sure then that she was screwing him. And something had to be done.”
“And that was when you called me.”
“Exactly. Because I needed expertise.”
“Did you have him neutered? That would be cool. Don’t think Big Terry has ever had anyone neutered before. Although I heard this one story where he got two bricks—”
“I didn’t have him neutered,” Elias interrupted. “Did you know the vet you sent was a vegetarian?”
“How the fuck would I know that?” asked Felix. “I didn’t take the bugger out for dinner.”
“He took some persuading to do what I wanted him to do.”
Felix grinned his golden grin. “Oh yeah?”
“Did you know you can amputate both arms and both legs from a person and they can still survive?” said Elias, idly clicking around his desktop looking for a file.
Felix spat his lager at the camera in pretend surprise. “You chopped him up? Noice.”
“I know people at the hospital here in Kilchester but when I made enquiries… it turns out you need a surgeon to do the chopping and an anaesthetist to put them under. If you want them to survive. Vets are a bit more… talented. They can do both. My problem was that I didn’t have immediate access to a veterinarian who was morally flexible enough to carry out my wishes in the tight timescale.”
“You are most welcome, my friend,” said Felix. He was engrossed in the story and Elias knew it.
“On the Wednesday in question we waited until she left and then we snatched Mr Django. Took him to a secure facility and… He was a talented vet, your man. Amputating from a human is different from animals. He was telling me. Once you’ve chopped off, say, the arm… you’ve got to seal off the blood vessels and nerves, there’s a whole mess of stuff you have to deal with. Warned me that the patient might die. But he didn’t.”
Felix was wide-eyed and nodding now. “Aw man, that showed him.”
“Not really,” said Elias, a glint in his eye.
“Not really?” Felix barked an idiotic laugh. “Classic.”
“So I took his arms and his legs back to his little shop. And I brought along a man of my own. Very talented butcher by the name of Mister Kelly. And he did some artisanal butchery of his own.”
“Aw man, you’re a sick fucker!” Felix slapped his sofa and grabbed a fresh cigarette.
“He tells me that the arms and legs weighed about ninety pounds. Give or take. So he takes Django’s knives and he slices and dices. Takes out the bones.” Elias glanced at a document on his computer where he’d made some notes. “Humerus, radius and ulna.”
“Humorous as fuck.”
“With the hands, they’re the arm bones. Femur, tibia and fibula. They’re the legs. By the time he finished we were left with about ten pounds of meat. And so he feeds this into the mincer. Once. Twice… Three times it goes through until he’s happy with how smooth it’s become, then he starts adding in his secret ingredients. The rusk, his herbs and spices, water and he feeds it into the sausage machine. We ended up with around seventy sausages. Had to use pig’s intestines for the sausage casings so they weren’t one hundred per cent hipster. But pretty close.”
“Aw, man. That’s… that’s savage,” said Felix, slightly awed.
“When she turns up for her liaison the next week he’s not there. Was still recovering. Week later and he’s ready for solids. So we bring him a lovely sausage sandwich. Brown sauce.”
Felix’s mouth hung open in a deliberate and exaggerated display of shock. “Brown sauce,” he repeated.
“He ate it up.”
“Awww!” Felix kicked at whatever piece of furniture his laptop was balanced on and it crashed to the floor.
Elias waited while he picked it up and put it back in place.
“Then I decided to make my girlfriend a meal. Bangers and mash. Turns out she has quite the appetite for Mr Kelly’s speciality sausages. Of course I made sure I steered clear of them but she ate up a dozen of them over the next few days.”
“Did you tell her?” asked Felix in hushed, urgent tones.
Elias nodded.
“In a manner of speaking. I showed her these,” he said and clicked a button.
Four images appeared on the screen. One of the amputation in progress. Another of the limbs being butchered. A third of them being fed into the sausage machine and the last was Django. Sans arms. Sans legs.
“That is… aw I think I’m gonna chuck.”
Elias smiled. “She didn’t react well. I accused her of the affair, she denied it. Apparently she had signed up for this ‘sausage wrangler’ course to make me a birthday present. That was all I managed to get out of her before she shut down.”
“Shut down?”
“Yes, the doctors said she had some sort of psychotic break. She’s completely catatonic. These things happen.”
“And she ain’t gonna wrangle no-one else’s sausage any time soon.”
“Certainly not.”
“Aw, you’re a maniac. I like you. Fuck Big Terry, we are going to do business. Consider this deal done my friend.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Elias.
“Listen,” said Felix, leaning in to the laptop. “I gotta go but we’ll meet. I’ll come up next week, right?”
&nbs
p; “I look forward to it Mr Thrust,” said Elias. He cut the call and closed the laptop before reaching over to the plate and taking the sausage between his thumb and forefinger. He examined it closely before finally taking one, large bite.
Not bad at all, he thought. Mr Kelly is indeed an artist.
And then, his success, his happiness, his moment of triumph was ruined by the infernal hammering on his office door once more. He returned the plate and laptop to the drawer before storming over and throwing it open.
“What the shitting hell do you want?” He literally spat the words, leaving speckles of saliva on the two men who stood beyond. The pair of them wore identical black suits with identical shoulder-strap gun-bulges and identical unable-to-process-complex-information expressions on their faces.
“Sir…” The man on the left began, but suffered a serious vocabulatory collapse in the face of his irate boss.
“What?”
“Well, sir…” The other man’s voice was almost comically deep, perhaps resonating in the void between his ears.
Elias’ face reddened, filling with blood from the tip of his chubby chin to the gaps in his hair plugs.
“WHAT?”
“The P-Palace is on fire, sir,” the man on the left stammered.
The colour drained from Elias’ face.
“Who would dare to do that?” he hissed.
six
Violet bounded up the staircase towards the manager’s office. Flames licked the bottom of the stairs, rapidly consuming her only escape route. There was every chance he would still be there. Given who he worked for, it was unlikely he would abandon his post at the sound of an alarm. More worryingly, there was an outside possibility he might have caught sight of what she had been up to on the club’s security cameras and… prepared himself.
Reaching the final landing, Violet paused. There was a small porthole window in the door, a thin mesh of metal running almost invisibly through it to reinforce it in the event of a fire. She peered through to the corridor beyond. It was empty, so she pushed the door open and slipped through.