Altered States (5 page)

Conner plodded his way back from the hospital. It was a few miles home but he didn’t mind the walk; he walked pretty much everywhere. Walking offered high-quality thinking time. Plus he found all other modes of transport in the city pretty much unbearable. Grid-locked roads. Crowded subways. Slimy taxi drivers.

After thirty minutes of walking and thinking, something finally struck him. It wasn’t so much an idea; more of a ... bat.

Moments later he came to, slumped against a wall with a baseball bat thrust to the centre of his chest. At the other end of the bat was a small-framed individual wearing a kid’s toy mask. Or maybe it was just a kid wearing a kid’s mask. Through his haze he couldn’t be sure.

He shivered slightly from shock and breathed heavily. His face had hit the wall on the way down and he felt a trickle of blood from just above his eyebrow begin its journey down his face, following the tracks of his tears. He had not yet mustered the energy for even an expletive before the bat-wielder spoke. The voice was disguised by a cheap synthesiser in the mask.

‘Leave Bigby alone,’ it said with tinny resonance that clawed at Conner’s pounding head. ‘Or things will get much worse. For you. For everyone.’

He was too sluggish to respond before a final prod from the bat signalled the departure of its owner. As he watched the figure walk away he realised that there was something odd about the walker’s gait, but he couldn’t place what it was. And he knew this wasn’t the time to care.

Slowly and somewhat apprehensively, Conner reached up to examine the damage to the back of his head. Duly his fingers returned to rest before his eyes, and they were completely covered in ... nothing. In fact, the only fresh blood offered by his head was from the cut above his eye. Last time he checked, his skull wasn’t made from titanium, which meant that the bat couldn’t have been made from wood or
anything
hard. What kind of thug’s weapon-of-choice is a rubber bat?

Another riddle that could wait. Getting home was his only immediate priority. He stumbled to the nearest busy street and hailed a cab.

At home he nursed a bump on his head, a cut over his eye, and what remained of his pride. He longed for someone else to be doing the nursing. He’d had a lot thrown at him in the last few days and it suddenly felt that in this game of dodge-ball that people called life, everyone else was standing on the other side of the court. He wanted someone to be on his side, for someone to just give a damn.

He placed the mantelpiece photographs face down once more and slumped back onto the sofa to begin rolling a salvia joint. The dried leaves of
Salvia divinorum
– literally ‘sage of the seers’ – act as an intense but short-lived hallucinogen. Most people don’t get on with salvia. Many find it frightening. But paranoia was not an issue for Conner right now – he really
was
being persecuted.

The woman was slender, really slender, but she carried it well, so as not to appear at all skinny. Her hair was brilliant red; her skin translucent blue. And her edges were peculiarly well defined, as if they had been inked-in by a graphic-novel illustrator. Conner recognised her, though she had no face to speak of. As a large bee circled her body, the woman contorted rhythmically for a moment, in a motion that couldn’t quite be described as a dance. Then she turned and walked away. Conner watched her hips sway distinctively as she passed effortlessly through the wall.

The effects tapered off only minutes after they had begun. Reality solidified around Conner once more and his thoughts snapped back to his assault a few hours earlier. Suddenly, it was so obvious what was distinctive about his assailant’s gait.

He realised that the man in question was in fact ... a
wo
man. Further proof, if needed, that even a man concussed can maintain relatively clear focus when a woman’s bottom is involved.

Yet another question. What kind of thug’s gender-of-choice ... is female? – no offence.

One thing was certain. This was not the Feds. If they were in the business of sending out thugs to warn off nosey cops, then slim chicks with rubber bats would not be their style.

Surely?

Taking a Life

In New Meadows, the only escape from the tacky, flashy, nastiness of the casinos is the undeniable class of the grungy themed bars and restaurants. I found myself in old-town, contrary to much sound advice, including the government health warnings on the road signs:
Warning: this neighbourhood may seriously damage your life.

I was purposefully striding along, casually risking violent muggings as I did so, when the rain began to fall. Yeah, rain in a desert – such is my meteorological fortune. Luckily, I would be ducking into the next establishment, which looked like it was ready to welcome me with open gun barrels. Satori it was called, some has-been Japanese-themed café-bar. And in an impressive homage to the concept of irony, the sub-theme seemed to be water. It was everywhere. By design, rather than the result of some bad plumbing work, but gratuitous to say the least. But then, New Meadows is the definition of gratuity – and not the 15% kind.

I made my way to the bar, rather unnerved by the vivid orange carp looking up at me from beneath the glass floor. Occasionally, a column of water fell from the ceiling and disappeared into a hole in the ground. Hopefully, this was governed by some clever system designed to avoid the clientele, rather than hydrating them in a fashion they hadn’t requested.

I pulled up a stool at the bar and mumbled a request of a beer at the Japanese-themed barmaid, who was about as oriental as a Big Mac. Shortly she slid a glass in my direction. The bar she slid it over yielded no exception to the watery theme. Water coursed through a cavity within it, along with tiny brightly-coloured fish no longer than a fingernail.

‘It’s free if you want to take it upstairs,’ the barmaid said nodding toward a baroque iron staircase that spiralled around a column of tumbling water, leading to the mezzanine level.

I knew what she meant, and I wasn’t in the mood.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

As I sipped, I toyed with a photograph between my digits, idly staring through it. I allowed myself an indulgent moment of escape until the barmaid dispassionately flitted a cloth across the bar in front of me, and I was back in the room – back to reality. I allowed the sensations of the external environment to return to me one-by-one, and then I held the picture of Pearle up to the side of my face.

‘Do
you
think she had my eyes?’ I queried toward the barmaid. The woman looked rather perplexed at the question.

‘Ummm,’ was all she could muster.

‘Never mind,’ I said with a quick shake of my head, and placed the photo on the bar in front of me. Of course, this little charade was all for the benefit of the man sitting next to me.

That was why I was here, in New Meadows, in this bar. To sit next to this man, Jackson Burch, whoever he was. Instantly – if not slightly sooner – I knew I didn’t like him. Five minutes later I knew I had to kill him. He was a bad man, you see. He’d done bad things. I could tell. That’s the way it is with me. Not the killing part, but the knowing things, bad things, about people; the not liking people.

It’s a drag.

In my periphery I saw the guy make the occasional sideways glance at the picture. I’d placed it slightly to one side – conspicuously closer to him. An invitation to steal a glimpse – not that he usually awaited invitation. He began to shuffle a little in his seat. I purposefully moved my attention away from the picture. Now we weren’t sharing her. Now she was all his. Minutes passed and a tension grew between us that was beginning to condense on the bar top. Eventually, I broke the silence.

‘Do you like her?’ I asked.

The man didn’t speak but threw me a look that betrayed a battery of inner thoughts and questionable desires.

‘Do you
know
her?’ I continued, analysing his every movement.

And then finally, ‘Did you
kill
her?’

Unsurprisingly, that got a response out of him.

‘Who the fuck are you to be asking questions?’ he snapped with unsubtle hostility.

‘I’m the guy who bailed your ass out of jail to ask you these questions,’ I responded enigmatically, choosing not to match his aggression.

Burch sported an expression somewhere between suspicion and confusion. ‘Expensive questions,’ he said. ‘You know there are visiting hours, right?’

‘I’m not a big fan of jails,’ I said with a distasteful look, which I hoped would make him a little jittery. Mystery bail-touting benefactors in his world rarely have good intentions. I guess that was true of me too, although he could have done a lot worse. I mean, I wasn’t
definitely
going to kill him.

I didn’t need to say anything else now. It was probably beginning to dawn on his dullard mind that his future participation in this world might depend on his answers to the questions being put to him. He looked at the photo again, sliding it closer to himself.

Normally, I would not be so direct. Normally, I’d be about as direct as a philandering politician. But when determining whether someone had committed a murder, there was no need for subtleties. When asked a question about an objective fact of such magnitude, it would be virtually impossible to react without revealing the truth, regardless of what you said. If, of course, the questioner knew what to look for.

I knew what to look for.

And the truth was ... he didn’t kill Pearle; he didn’t even know her. He didn’t know my story or the people I had lost. He was not a player in that episode of my life. He was just unfortunate. Wrong place: here. Wrong time: now. Wrong guy: me – pissed (in the vernacular of either side of the Atlantic).

It wasn’t the truth that I had wanted. It wasn’t a truth that got me any nearer to closure on this issue. I sighed and tapped the table with my fingers. Where did this leave me? It left me with a rather obvious question.

In response to the question Burch downed the last of his drink and motioned to leave. Surprisingly, it seemed, he hadn’t come here for a spot of charity work.

‘Listen, I don’t care about you, it’s true. But I want to know what happened to this girl. So I want to know who set you up. So I reckon that makes me about the only person who is gonna to do anything about it, yeah?’

‘Not directly,’ I flashed a smile which verged all too close to cocky. So much for subtlety; I really should have known better. With that smile I knew I’d blown it. I wasn’t going to get anything useful out of him now.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘I need a piss,’ he said and headed off toward the bathroom.

He wasn’t the only one that needed relief. I was finding it increasingly difficult to remain affable with him. With every word I gleaned another morsel of information, beyond the word itself. And they were not tasty morsels. So whilst the liquid of his first few beers was exploring some Japanese-themed porcelain, there was only one thing left to decide.

Was I going to leave empty handed?

Or was I going to take a life?

I searched around in my jacket pockets and recovered a small cylindrical object. It contained a substance known as Necrovial, which is used for spiking drinks with a nasty kick. It does so in a virtually untraceable manner. It uses ‘clever-nano-shit’ to deliver a spike of insulin into the bloodstream. An overdose of insulin reduces the level of glucose in the blood to a point where the brain can no longer function. But being a substance found naturally in the body it is virtually impossible to detect as a cause of death.

Insulin has been used as a murder weapon almost since it was first used to treat diabetes in the 1920s. It says something about the world that the first mechanism devised for delivering insulin into the bloodstream orally was perfected by a government agency for the purpose of assassinating people rather than saving them.

Ethical debate aside, Necrovial is an extremely sophisticated method of killing, which can always come in handy for the odd spot of fatal imbibing. I ‘acquired’ a supply before I left the agency and as of yet haven’t exploited it once. That was about to change. Maybe.

My best mate was making his way back from the bathroom. In his absence I had ordered him another shot of bourbon. I had also palmed a Necrovial capsule in my hand, in readiness for his unwelcome return. But before I could take that final step, I needed to elicit one final piece of information. This was going to be more difficult. This was where subtlety came in.

In his past he had been involved with the police with regard to his unhealthy interest in young girls. He’d done some real nasty things, and just standing near him made me feel dirty to the core. But that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to award me the role of judge and jury. I needed to know something else. I needed to know whether he was going to do it again. Because knowing this fact, I reasoned, could conceivably make the act of killing him the right thing to do.