A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (4 page)

‘Whatever.’ She’s looking grumpy now. Maybe food would be a distraction? She flags down an innocent bystander and asks him if he’ll just pop up to the bar and get her a pint. He agrees. I have no idea why they do this. But they always do. She often asks total strangers to fetch her beer and they always just do her bidding. The beer is inevitably free too. It’s a remarkable talent. I must look unremarkably inoffensive. Maybe they think I’m her dear old dad. Sometimes I could get very angry very quickly.

‘Grin, JJ! Grin!’

The dirty blonde is beaming sunshine at me. It is impossible to resist her. A complete stranger is battling his way through the evening bar crush to buy her a beer. She wants to talk death, not romance. Strange lady.

‘The new one . . .’

‘How many? How many? Is it lots?’ She can be a worry sometimes. ‘And when was this new one topped?’

Her barslave appears at her elbow, blushing and presenting her with a fresh glass of some faintly fizzing beery beverage. She looks up and smiles. He stammers something inaudible but probably cute and endearing. She smiles more sweetly, reaches for his hand. He looks startled. She pulls his hand towards her and puts his forefinger into her mouth. Pulls it out, slowly, past her scraping teeth. ‘You dripped a drop.’ He looks more stunned than ever. My
turn for panto. We have played this scene many times. There are several possible lines for me to choose at this point, but he looks like a pleasant lad so I select something simple and painless.

‘That’s as near as you want to get, my friend. Believe me.’ He looks faintly affronted. The dirty blonde looks really dirty now. Eyes slitted and languid; the real dark Bacall. The lad is blushing; she is flushing, a deep red rising from her shirt neck and up. She leans back in her chair, reaching for her shirt buttons.

‘You want a prize?’ She undoes a button. ‘A reward?’

‘You should leave now.’ I smile. ‘Really. Thank you.’

You could smell his confusion. He walks away. I have so far not hit anyone and no one has hit me. This makes it a good start to the evening.

‘I’ve already told you. Probably more than a half-dozen, less than a dozen.’ The dirty blonde’s flush is fading fast. I have that effect on her. It must be a special skill. ‘That they know of. There may be more. Probably are. If murder was an iceberg, there could be lots below the surface, invisible but threatening . . .’

‘Don’t go all whimsical, JJ. I don’t want your whimsy yet; poetry comes late at night, not over beer and supper. “If murder was an iceberg?” Get you, Mr Poet Lubricant!’ Whatever the drink was, it plainly did contain something intoxicating. Probably a vodka shot or two added to her beer at the bar; she has that effect on folk. Taps into unsuspected reserves of secret generosity. Marvellous.

‘Yes. The last one looks like this. Looks like a body in a big puddle of blood. Stinks. In a hotel room. Stinks, a lot. The killer left the heating on full chat. Hideous, he says.’ He being the Hard Man. She knows that.

‘Time of death?’ she asks. ‘Tod. As in Sweeney Todd. Call in the Sweeney and they’ll tell you her time of departure.’

Sometimes I worry about her grip on reality. It cannot be easy being blonde. Even if she is a fake one. And stubbly.

‘Not a her,’ I tell her; ‘a him.’ She beams, looks even more happy. If we were on the TV I’d send her drink dregs to the lab for analysis. We’re not, so I tip half my own beer into her glass.

‘Cod!’ she cries loudly, playing to the surrounding silent tables. Our conversation has been observed. It’s time to leave. The dirty blonde swills down the last of my glass. Her own beer has evaporated. She has many rare and unusual talents. Making drinks vanish is one of them.

‘Cod!’ She’s all-but shouting now. The bar is all-but silent. ‘Cause of death! How did he die? Was he exsanguinated? Isn’t that a great word? Was every last drop of his bright precious blood drained away? Was this like some fantastic vampire attack gone wrong?’

All eyes in the bar are bulging in our direction. I want to point out that had the poor bloke been the victim of a massed attack of the killer undead, then there’d be no mess, no blood, because they would have drunk it all, vampires being conveniently tidy like that, but this was not the time.

‘Cod,’ I spoke gently, calmly, ‘with chips, and mushy peas. And maybe a slice of freshly buttered bread. Possibly curry sauce, as you suggested a while back.’

The dirty blonde snaps to her feet, balancing well on her big black boots. The audience springs away in a massed scuffle.

‘Sounds cool,’ she announces. And leaves the building unopposed.

‘So . . .’

The dirty blonde and I are sharing a large cardboard carton of what claimed to be Kansas fried chicken. I would not argue with the ‘fried’ bit, but the rest of the description was open to debate. Her mood is pensive, her fingers greasy. Talking about murder plainly gives her an appetite. It has the opposite effect
on me. As usual in this situation, I wished that I smoked cigarettes, because this would have been the time for one.

‘So that twat has found a body and he wants you to go and . . . do what, exactly? The last job you did for him was something to do with insurance, no?’

She knows exactly what my last job was. She knows because I told her all about it while it was shutting down and afterwards, while I was laying low and feeling a lot lower. It was an insurance job, true, but only in the sense that the man who’d murdered his wife had only been investigated by the Hard Man when the life insurers’ own man had been beaten insensible by the supposedly grieving husband. This had been as unexpected as it was unwelcome, as the man from the Pru had only been returning personal effects, which does not normally reduce grieving relatives to moments of mindless violence, and the Hard Man had only become involved because the police had declined, as the dead wife’s death was entirely unsuspicious and the police do not work on commission.

This is the thing with the Hard Man; despite being some sort of shadowy government high-honcho he never turns down paying work. You pay him; he works. In a sense. In this case he sent me to ask the grieving husband why he’d knocked out the lights of the harmless man from the Pru, because insurance companies are socially responsible organisations and wish to understand the inner feelings of the grieving. They also prefer never to pay out if they can avoid it, and any straw is worth a clutch when the sums are as handsome as they were in this case. Anyway, I had asked politely enough, only to be attacked myself.

An unwise move on his part. I always attack back. Grieving husband revealed himself to be a callous murderer within an hour. The men from the Pru were suitably delighted, and gave the Hard Man a bonus for his zealous and efficient work. I did the work. He got the bonus. And as the grieving husband would
soon discover, lacking most of the teeth on one side of your mouth is not necessarily a disadvantage in the prison showers. Life is always instructive. Popularity needs to be earned.

I strike an imaginary match, light an imaginary cigarette (probably a Marlboro; I always liked tight jeans, Cuban heels, Stetson hats), and lean back. The imaginary nicotine routine provides a genuine real-life excuse to forgo the greasy chicken.

‘I need to read about the others, because the bods are all bagged and burned long since, but the scene of this one’s fresh, so I’ll go look at it later when the man calls. Body’s gone to a morgue, though, which is a shame.’

Imaginary smoke curls like the dark blues in motion.

‘Some guy, professional guy, aren’t they all, in a hotel room. Blood everywhere, like I said. It’s impossible to make that much mess without meaning to make a mess.’

The dirty blonde’s all ears. A strange expression, especially given that she’s staring hard and unblinking too. This is plainly not exactly the right moment to discuss the adventurous application of English idiom. She nods, rapt. Waggles greasy fingers encouragingly.

‘What did he die of? No one seems sure. He’d maybe been knifed, bottled certainly, hence the gore-fest, and had been knocked about a lot. The man says there’s something not right, though, so he’s doing the open mind thing until the coroner’s done with it and comes up with a verdict. The room is a wreck. Everything that can be smashed has been smashed. That is such a crap way to carry on. No pro would behave like that, so it’s probably a crime of passion. Family, then. Or girlfriend gone loco, like they do.’

I look up, hoping for a smile.

No smile.

‘If it’s not a hit, your man won’t be interested, will he? No hit, the plods will handle everything, and there’ll be no cash for the
twat, and without cash he’ll be gone from there. Am I right? Yes, I am right. Do girlfriends really knife their guys? Really? In real life? Isn’t it outraged wives who do the knifing thing after getting ditched for some sloppy tart? I mean, it can’t be that common, the killing, or guys would never stray and wives would never stab them.’

The dirty blonde’s grip on everyday life is awesome as ever.

And of course she has a professional interest in these things. I decide against mentioning this. It would do me no good at all.

‘Killing is rare. Killing is unusual. Killing is not the everyday inevitable result of a little bit of excess bad temper.’ I could almost get grumpy about this. She has this effect on me. Sometimes I think she deliberately winds me up just for her own amusement. ‘Despite what the television suggests, the streets are
un
packed with deranged killers. Most deaths are natural causes or accidents. You know this. Despite the fact that you watch TV and are a noted armchair expert, you are also not entirely dim.’

She smiles at me, in an encouragingly almost-friendly way. I am encouraged. So I carry on.

‘Most killers are accidental killers. Almost no killer does it twice. Most killers are not murderers. Most killers don’t do it because they want to. Almost no one wants to kill people. Almost no one knows how. It’s a rare skill. I don’t think there’s a Boy Scout badge for killing. Not yet.

‘But this is a murder. You can’t easily get accidentally stabbed to death. You can do accidental death to yourself in lots and lots of ways, but this is a difficult one. In any case, there’s no knife at the scene. It’s particularly difficult to slice yourself brutally to death and then dispose of the knife.’

She sits up, lit from within by her bright and very white grin. ‘It’s the ice knife!’ Erudition is a marvellous thing. ‘Solved it! No need for you to waste hours of valuable quality time with that twat. Call him up, tell him you’ve solved it and ask for the fee.
We’ll spend it together.’ Grip on reality tenuous here, as you can see.

‘Ice knives don’t slice. Ice daggers stab. There’s apparently slicing as well as stabbing. I’ll know better when I’ve seen it.’

‘Gotcha!’ She laughs. I am smitten. I surrender limply and eat some of the congealed chicken.

‘I won’t know all of it until I’ve seen the scene.’

‘Which is when?’

‘Later tonight, I think. The phone is quiet at the moment, though.’

‘OK. Why don’t you call him? I don’t know how you can stand the suspense. Give him a call. Do it now?’

‘There’s no rush,’ I hear myself say, telling the truth as a chap should always try to do. ‘He’ll call when he’s ready. I’m in no rush to gaze upon the remains of the departed. In any case . . .’ I smile in an encouraging way, ‘it’s good to spend a little time together while we’re neither of us in a hurry, no?’

She looks a little shifty. Glances down. Smiles unhappily.

‘I do need to work. I do have an appointment for later.’

I try very hard. Like all chaps of a certain disposition I try hard to be uncritical and I try hard to be supportive. It may well be something to do with that long-ago religious upbringing, who can tell? But trying is not the same as succeeding, and every time the subject of the dirty blonde’s occupation leaps between us, restraint is called for. My restraint, that is.

The dirty blonde, possibly the most exceptional woman in town, if not in the whole world, is a professional escort. I tell myself that this is unimportant, that I should love her as she is and that what she does to earn her money should have no bearing on my feelings. I tell myself that I should care for her regardless of her occupation. Why I tell myself this is a mystery. Of course I care for her, even though she’s an escort. Why it should be the case that I should tell myself that it’s no issue is an entire gristly
issue in itself. But it is an issue. I do care for her. I do care what she does.

And no, before you ask, sniggering at the back, I did not meet her professionally. Not in that sense. Even though I am of a generation and of an upbringing which insists that a thing is worth what it costs and if a thing costs nothing then that is likely to be its worth, I do also believe that love should not be paid for. I led a confused childhood.

That said, of course I met her professionally, but through my profession, not hers. My profession. I can see your eyebrows soar to the north as you wonder how a chap could meet a lady while investigating a death, timely or otherwise. But killing and seeking killers is only the half of it. What I also do is play loud music. What I also do is rent out places where folk can lay their heads when they are either weary of the world or simply weary, and that is how I met the dirty blonde. She was a good friend of a good tenant and she needed somewhere to live. She still is a friend of that tenant, and she is also a friend of her landlord. That would be me, then.

Aha! you cry, displaying a predictably dull lack of imagination. You have worked out, all on your clever own, that I provide a roof and the dirty blonde supplies certain services in return. If you suggested that while you were in my company or even near it then you would suddenly rapidly and completely enter a violently dark and unpleasant phase of your life. I am sensitive like that. Maybe too sensitive. There are those who have suggested that my sensitivity will get me into trouble one day. They’re right, except in that it already has, and many times, but we have no need to go there just at the moment. It would not improve your understanding, although why your understanding should be important to me at the moment I am unsure. My unconventional sensitivity is how I met the Hard Man, and that sensitivity is the single feature among my many, many virtues which generates
the balance and calm which are essential to a quiet and fulfilled existence.