Sonata of the Dead (22 page)

‘Shit,’ said Sean.

‘You’d better lose that gun,’ I said. ‘Or you’ll be looking at a ten stretch. At least.’

He turned in his seat and pointed the muzzle at me instead.

‘Niker. Load that thing first. Then play “noisy penis compensation”.’

‘I think there’s one in the chamber. To tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track.’

‘Christ,’ I said. ‘You really are a brain-dead twunt, aren’t you?’ I punched him in the eye and the gun went off about three inches north of my skull. The world went very quiet and I was momentarily blinded. Gunshot residue, I was guessing. It felt as though a thimbleful of hot sand had been thrown in my face. The only thing I
could
hear – though dully, as if coming to me through many layers of thick blanket (was I asleep? God yes, please make this a bad dream) – was the rise and fall of sirens. More than one, now, unless my insulted brain was fashioning elaborate echoes.

Somehow the car had stopped, the doors opened, and I was being led, blinking, eyes streaming, through dingy little veins of road and pathway, all of them furred with fly-tipped junk, all of them hazy with the feral mist of several species’ worth of male piss. We climbed over fences and pushed our way through body-high walls of nettles. A police helicopter was blatting towards us; we had to find safe ground before it reached us or there’d be no escape. We scrambled across a no-man’s land of back yards stippled with dog shit and puddles of electric-blue petrol. Big dogs on chains with jaws the size of firefighters’ hydraulic cutting tools. Up stone steps carpeted with dead beetles and pebbles of reinforced glass. Along corridors lit by stuttering fluorescent tubes. Down scaffolds, feet slapping on duckboards. The shiver of brick netting. Yells of pursuit falling away. And then we were on level ground, down by the river somewhere. I had no idea where I was. This area might well be pink space on a map of uncharted territory. A sketch of a serpent and a warning:
Here be Dragons
. Christ I needed a beer and a lie down and Romy telling me how shit I was because my ‘d’ was too small.

I felt his punch before it landed; it seemed to push the air before it. It certainly pushed the air out of me. I fell to my knees and he punched me again, right on that painful little knot of nerves and glands at the top of the jaw. I couldn’t see him to stop him; Kim’s shouts at him to leave me alone were being ignored. A shadow fell across me; I pushed myself to one side and swept my leg around in a wide arc. I connected with leg. I hoped it wasn’t Kim’s. Niker’s grunt as he landed confirmed I’d made the right choice. He swore and scrabbled after me, but now I knew what direction he was in I could keep all my dangerous edges pointed his way. I thrust a boot out when I sensed he was close enough and enjoyed the satisfying crunch as his nose became so much red putty in the centre of his face. That ended it. He was choking on blood, and reaching again for the gun. Kim screamed at him and slapped his hand down. She took him off to one side and tended to his blitzed schnozz with a handkerchief. By degrees she calmed him, though he didn’t stop shooting me malicious looks every few seconds. It looked as if she had given him some instructions because he nodded twice and then sloped away, like a dog that has been reprimanded after shitting in the bath.

A jet took off, arse-shrivellingly close. City Airport? And when it faded, I could hear my hot, hard breathing, and that of another.

‘Kim?’ I asked. My eyes were still stinging, grit-filled. I felt as if I’d shifted a gallon of fluid from my tear ducts alone.

‘You pair of testosterone pillocks,’ she said. She tugged at my sleeve and cajoled when I stopped to hack my lungs up into my mouth.

‘Am I shot?’ I asked. I kept touching my head, where the heat of the round had burned my skin, and my hand kept coming away wet, but I could feel no wound.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘Sean put a hole in the roof. You were lucky.’

‘So was he,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

‘Nearby.’

‘Where are we going?’

She stilled me. ‘Let’s have a look at your face,’ she said.

I couldn’t keep my eyes open for longer than a second. Then blessed relief: she was splashing water on my face, irrigating my eyes, chasing away what felt like jags of hot glass.

‘Can I have a swig of that?’ I asked, and she put the bottle in my hand. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Niker’s convinced you have something to do with this. That you might actually be the killer.’

My sight was improving. We had entered a blasted land of derelict buildings: mills and warehouses and factories. We went inside one of them. I could see concourses of fractured concrete, sun-ravaged safety notices on walls topped with copings of shattered glass. There was a stormguard door in faded metallic blue with a sign painted on it in stark white capitals:
IN CONSTANT USE
. Barrels, a plastic chair, hubcaps, chicken wire. Arcane machinery frozen by time and oxidisation; valves and springs and pistons. Every pane smashed; every door sagging on buckled, rusted hinges. All of it could be fifty years old for all I knew. It seemed as if nobody had visited this district for decades. Dust was thicker than palace carpets.

Instead of gunsmoke and blood I could smell the river. And something Kim was wearing. Something subtle, something floral.

‘It’s strange knowing your real name,’ I said. ‘You look like an Odessa, weird as that might sound. You don’t fit Kim quite as well, somehow.’

‘This experience thing,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I think it’s getting out of hand. Sometimes I think it’s the best thing anybody could do. I’ve never felt so alive.’

‘I’m happy for you,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to be experiencing your experiential joy right now.’

She ignored me. There was misery in her voice, despite the smile on her face. ‘You know how this started for me? I’ve been thinking about it. I guess I must have been about seven or eight. We were learning stuff at school, science stuff. Temperatures. Expansions and contraction. I remember drinking super-cold iced drinks followed by cups of tea I’d scald my lip against. All so I could crack my teeth. I’m having enormous problems with the dentist now, but that’s how I got the bug. Pushing myself to do crazy shit.’

‘Crazy shit,’ I said. ‘I saw some crazy shit once. Not long after a dog ate a box of crayons.’

‘What are you up to?’ she asked. ‘What is it you want from all of this?’ There were a hundred stories I could spin. Anything to gain more time, to win back some trust. I guessed she liked me; I guessed she wanted to believe me, to be on my side, even though Niker felt the polar opposite. But I was tired of lying. It didn’t matter any more. They knew me, I knew them. Nothing mattered except one thing.

‘Solo,’ I said. ‘I know who she is. Her name is Sarah. I’m her father. I’m trying to find her. She was involved with Martin Gower.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, you’ve got the lying skills for a career as a storyteller.’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘I told you, her attendance is erratic.’

‘Do you know where she lives?’

‘No. We all thought she lived with Martin. They seemed pretty close.’

‘Martin lived with his parents.’

‘So we gathered. You wouldn’t think it, to listen to him. Mister Independent. Strong-minded. Used to take over our meetings. And then went home and got his mum to wash his socks.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘I’ve never met Martin’s mum.’

I gave her a look. ‘You know who I’m talking about. I haven’t seen her for five years. She was a kid when she ran away. She’s an adult now. I’m not going to get those years back.’

Kim spread her hands. ‘What do you want me to say? She was funny. Had some lip on her. Like you.’

‘Is she a good person? I mean, would you say she was happy? Does she have… you know, people she can turn to if she needs them? Does she have a job?’

‘I liked her, Corkscrew,’ she said. ‘She seemed streetwise. In control. I didn’t see her too often. We didn’t really talk. I read some of her stuff.’

‘What did she write about?’

‘Why don’t you ask her that yourself, when you see her?’

I couldn’t speak for a moment. I didn’t know how to answer her. ‘What will you do?’ I said.

‘Now? Lay low, I suppose. Write about it.’

‘It’s what the police would advise. It’s clear this killer has a beef with you lot for some reason.’

‘I don’t believe it’s an ex-member,’ she said. ‘The ones who left went abroad. Only President is still around, and he got out because he wants to write music.’

I wondered if that was the case. I was going to ask her if she really thought Niker was to be trusted, when he turned up on a motorbike, a knackered Suzuki Bandit. He didn’t switch off the engine. He didn’t take off his helmet. Through the visor I could see his eyes, like two pork pies with slits in them. Kim went to him and got on the back.

‘It’s an offence to ride without a helmet,’ I said.

‘It’s an offence to steal a motorbike,’ said Niker. ‘So arrest us.’

‘What about me?’ I asked. ‘You drag me halfway across London and then just maroon me? What about the experience of three on a bike?’

Kim waved. ‘Check the drop from time to time,’ she said. ‘We left a warning for Solo. You never know.’ Then they took off.

The manuscript was odds on favourite for the Big Black Bin, but that was before Roper came in with the coffee. Caffeine was his panacea for the Monday morning depressions he fell into when he shambled into the office. It was something that could have been cured by a simple furniture change, re-decoration, maybe even a couple of prints to brighten the walls but he was damned if it would come out of his pocket. No. Cofee was an immediate solution and it sufficed.

He was Don Philbert, editor of
Dark Candy
, a monthly magazine devoted to the macabre. It was a rag that had lasted ten years and he had been a co-founder along with Ralph McKean. Ralph had been claimed by throat cancer a year after the launch, lumbering Philbert with the unenvioable task of trying to make a success out of things. Which he did, partly through his own motivation, partly through a resurging interest in horror and fiction, and mostly due to a lucky break when James Herbert gave him a story back in 1982 which got
Dark Candy
noticed. That year also saw them rise from small press status into what Philbert called ‘The Big Kids’ Playground’. For him, the most important part of this promotion was the freedom to offer tempting payments for submissions. And he was inundated every day of the week – some of the manuscipts were top class – perhaps too good for
Dark Candy
(something Philbert would never admit to).

This particular morning was quite possibly the worst Monday since creation. A nuclear winter he decided would be mild compared to this. He climbed the steps to his office, noticing the crisp packet that was still pushed deep into the pointing of the brickwork. It had been there for at least five years. He couldn’t care less.

The wind howled its annoyance when he closed the door behind him and sent a sudden barrage for rain to strafe the wiundows but Philbret was already at the stairs, shrugging off his mac and scarf and making yet another ascent. His mind flirted briefly with the idea that the steps, varnished wooden risers, should by now be displaying signs of age and excessive wear but no dips were apparent, only a few scuffs and scratches.

And it smelled here in this dark passage – some cat had magicked its way in and decorated with walls with a coating of urine or a rat had crawled under the stairs to die.

Philbret’s office was L-shaped. From his seat he had a view of the entire room. Across from his was the large conference table he would use to interview any new masters of the genre (and wasn’t that a laugh) for his Grave Words column. The last one had been a carpet-fitter from Hull called Nigel Willett who had a lisp and chronic halitosis.

Now Philbert opened one of the latest submission envelopes with his paper knife, its sheen considerably dulled from years of cutting, and pulled out the manuscript. What’s this? He thought. The manuscript was an utter mess. It had been typed on the back of milk receipts, used envelopes, letters from the Gas Board, even on a section of cardboard from a box of Coco Pops. Coffee stains were on every ‘page’, the typing was atrocious and a basic knowledge of spelling was aparetnly lacking.

“What’s THIS?!” He was getting angry. The gall of the man. And no SAE! The bastard. Right. He was going to… there was an accompanying letter with the story, slipped in between the fourth and fifth pages, almost as an afterthought.

Mr philbot.

itS TIME YOU HAD ONE OF MY STORYS. SEND THECHEQ THIS
WEEJ
WEEK.

ROMAN FORREST

It was getting comical. The name was obviously contrived – a fabrication that reeked with pretension. And for the man to virtually demand publication… What a colossal impertinence. Philbert laughed it off. He would perform an Elvis Presley and Return to Sender, but not before ripping this effort to shreds.

BLONDE on aSTIKC
By ROMAN FORREST

He loved knifes.Yeah. He loved there sharpness and beauty. He loved the way they could cut and slice flesh, the slick oily blood what coated the metal after…

What kind of ungrammatical crap was this? Philbert found his ‘trigger’ finger itching to shoot this Forrest into the ground and he pulled one of his rejkection slips close. But now his mood had lightened. Coffe,e, shelter from the storm, a comfortable leather chair. And he was a story that might give him a chuckle. He left the rejection slip alone and returned to the first page. He could play God to it later.

…coated the cold metal after digging it in deep into unsuspecting victims and tugging through skin and grissle. Yeah, Jethro love playing with his knifes they was his toys…

At lunch time Philbret took the story down to the local pub – The EMPTY COW – and finished it off over a chicken pie and Guinness.

…and then Jethro pulled thr knife out of his head and licked the blade clean. A nasty laugh rose into the night getting louder and louder. It only stopped when he begun to cry, kneeling over the girl with the knife in his hand.