The Broken Ones (11 page)

Oscar flipped through the files. Most included a photograph—a holiday snap, a graduation photo, a cropped family portrait—but these were all useless for identifying a corpse whose face had been torn off and shredded by industrial machinery. Prophet shuddered, rallied, and spat itself back to its index page.

Oscar logged in again, and diverted to Prophet’s Violent Crimes database. Again, how to narrow it down? Five hundred homicides every year, and ten times that number of serious assaults. He confined his search to homicides involving mutilation and deprivation of liberty. Sixty-three files. Each was accompanied by the arrest photograph and charge sheet of the perpetrator. Men and women who stared at the camera with expressions that ranged from outraged surprise to exhausted relief and amused indifference. Most files included two photographs of the victim: one snap when he or she was alive—a frozen, prosaic moment at a party or laughing at the beach or proudly displaying a sports ribbon; the second was a death shot that bit at the viewer’s soul. Skirts rode up or shorts pulled down, exposing limbs set at awkward angles, thighs and buttocks and rib cages black with bruises or deeply slashed or studded red with cigarette burns. Thin wrists and ankles, too often a woman’s or a child’s, encircled by bruises or bound with fence wire or a belt, or slashed open with wounds like tiny, screaming mouths. The dead faces never smiled.

Oscar forced himself to look at the images. Yes, some bodies had been carved into, but usually roughly and generally with words—“bitch,” “cunt,” “slut”—and on occasion swastikas or death’s heads or crude phalluses. None, though, remotely resembled the incisions he’d seen on the girl pulled from the sewage-plant auger: cuts suggestive more of a careful watchmaker than of an enraged butcher.

Prophet spasmed again and coughed up a “system error” window. Oscar shut the program and proofread his initial report. “Flimsy” was too kind a word for it. No likely victim. No likely perpetrator. He printed it, signed triplicates, and went to Moechtar’s pigeonhole. He held the papers to the slot but hesitated. Very likely he and Neve would have no chance of finding the dead girl’s name, let alone her murderer’s. With only two detectives and a performance review pending, the girl’s
body and her file would be shuffled down and on, deeper and farther into cold drawers and file drawers, until she was barely a statistic. Lost. Jon had a point: Oscar did seem hell-bent on committing career suicide, part of his self-punishment for hitting the girl on Gray Wednesday. Or was it as Neve had accused—that Oscar just wanted to keep one more bone away from Haig?

“Pull the report,” he told himself. “Let Homicide have this one.”

But the image of the symbol on the girl’s belly was stuck in his mind. Who carved it? And
why
? Was the poor thing alive when it was done?

He pushed the folded paperwork into Moechtar’s pigeonhole.

Chapter
5

L
uke looked around through the evening rain, wondering whether anyone would see if he pulled it out here and had a quick wank. He told himself to wait and kept walking. But he was restless; sometimes even half an hour between flogs seemed to be an aching forever. It just wouldn’t fucking go away, this hard-on. Well, it might subside for fifteen or twenty minutes after he splodged, but then: hey presto! A rabbit that pulled itself from the magician’s hat. The mental image made him smile.

Besides, the erections weren’t his fault, he reasoned; they were
hers
. Legs, Christ. Ass, Christ. Tits, Churrrist. As long as he didn’t look at her face and see who she was, or see those twisting-socket eyes, he could imagine she was any chick. And
that
got him very hot and hard.

Luke finally stopped and turned about in a full circle, looking for people. Usually, on his way to and from work at the shit farm, he walked with one hand in his knapsack gripping a length of heavy galvanized-steel pipe, for protection. After the cops, he’d left in such a hurry that he couldn’t find it.

But you got another hard pipe, doncha?

He giggled aloud this time.

No one heard. Except his mother, in that tight top and short shorts. She looked at him worriedly, disapprovingly. But she was dead and he was alive, so she could just, you know, fuck the fuck off.

Luke thought he recognized the street he was on. There weren’t many buildings left on this deserted stretch. Until a few months ago, there were heaps of Delete labs around here, but then there was an explosion and a motherfucker of a fire, and the cops came and the council flattened half the street. Tall weeds and scrubby stuff were
growing between the piles of sooty brick in the empty lots. There were a couple of old houses left, and nearby was an old movie theater. Luke didn’t like movie theaters, but it was the only building with a doorway that was deep enough to afford just a little privacy, and the urgency of his throbbing crotch couldn’t be ignored any longer. He nimbly avoided puddles and stepped under the solid marquee into the gloomy vestibule. He put his backpack down beside the nailed-shut doors, leaned against the wall, and undid his fly. He licked his palm and started.

While he stroked, he looked around. He wondered if this was the theater. When he was nine or ten, he’d sneaked away from home. Mum was with some guy, and he wanted to see that pirate movie. Mum hadn’t been able to afford to take him (bitch), but he was determined to see it. Yes, he was sure this was the very same cinema. He’d spotted a family with a heap of kids and simply tagged along with them; once inside, he’d found a seat in the dark to curl on. He’d spent the first few minutes focused more on being sprung by the attendant than on the movie, but then the story and the pictures took hold. It was brilliant and exciting, even funny, right up until the scene when the big black ship came along and the pirates all became skeletons. Suddenly, the movie stopped being fun and started being scary. Very arsefuckingly scary. The ship was long and dark and almost alive, like a shark, and covered with tattered sails. And when the pirates’ skin all melted away and they became skull and bone, but moving—undead and chasing and wanting—he’d had to look away before he gravy-trained his pants.

Luke realized that the memory of the movie was softening him up, so he shook his mind away and looked across at his mother. She stood on the footpath, watching him. The rain passed through her, and her hair and tight top remained forever dry. Her eyes—those horrible black nothings, like grub holes in a rotten apple—watched him and her mouth moved silently. He hated to see her face, and hated to think what she was trying to say. So he looked down at her tits instead. But the sight of her nipples through the top made him think of the dead girl’s little tits. That had been fucked up, finding that girl caught in the number-one screw, chopped the way he used to chop lizards with a razor blade. His cock went slack in his hand. A waste of time. Strange. Unusual. Not to worry—he’d find a squat tonight, and there was usually some Deleted slag up for dick. Sometimes guys, too, but girls felt
better. And if no one wanted it, more fool them—Mrs. Palmer and her five daughters were always ready.

As he was zipping up, it arrived.

When it emerged from the rain, a huge long black thing that growled low and rumbly, his heart thudded hard and he thought for a stupid, panicked moment it was that pirate ship, gliding across a dark sea. But then he saw the wheels and the shining black flanks and dark windows. A clean, new car in these parts was not much less unusual than a pirate ship, though, so as it slowed to a halt outside the old theater Luke slipped his hand into the backpack and remembered with an unpleasant shiver that he didn’t have the pipe.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and Luke wondered if the person inside the car had noticed him at all and had simply pulled up outside the old theater by coincidence. Just as he’d convinced himself of that, the passenger-side window slid down. In the dark of evening, and with the rain, he could just make out the shape of a small elderly man with drawn-back hair.

“Young man?”

Luke was simple—couldn’t pour water from a shoe with instructions on the heel, his mother used to say—but he knew the sound of men who wanted to rob and men who wanted to fuck ass, and this guy didn’t sound like he needed to rob anyone and, judging by the car, could afford much cleaner ass than Luke’s. Luke caught movement at the corner of his eye and glanced that way. It was only his mother. As usual, she was staring at him with those empty eyes, and again, her mouth was pleading silently.

“I wonder if we could talk some business?” the old man continued. “Do you mind?”

Maybe this guy did want some cock; there was something about him that said he was no stranger to rough stuff. That was okay, if he had the bucks to pay for it. Luke stepped out into the rain. His mother was waving wildly, her mouth working wide in a silent shout. He shooed her away like a fly.

“Okay,” Luke said. “Is it just you, or your mate, too?”

He crouched to see the driver, but the man was in shadow. That made him uneasy. He told himself it was just the drug patches. Besides, he was nearly at the car now.

“My friend is certainly interested in you,” the old man said, and reached into his jacket. “Take a look.”

As Luke put his hands on the open windowsill to stoop and get a better look at the driver, the old man grabbed his wrists.

“What the fuck!” Luke yelled. He twisted, but the old man’s grip was shockingly strong.

The driver-side door opened, and the other man stepped out. Luke recognized him, and his heart jumped like a kicked pigeon.

“Hold him,” the other man said.

Luke wrenched wildly and shook off the old man’s fingers. He turned to run like hell.

And slipped.

The footpath was wet and slick, and he went down. A second later, the driver was on top of him.

“I’ll give it back! I’ll give it back!” Luke yelled, although part of him, deep inside, knew it was far too late for that.

Something struck him on the side of the head, and the edges of the world grew very dark. Before it faded, the car’s trunk swung high in the air, like a sail of that dark, dead pirate ship. And Luke screamed.

Chapter
6

W
ith shopkeepers unwilling or unable to commit to lease payments, shopping malls had become as quiet as mausoleums and trade had gone outdoors. The closest markets to Oscar were in Castlemaine Street. They were a collection of canvas stalls, trestle tables, and covered wheelbarrows that trimmed the western length of the football stadium like the colorful hem of a monstrous dress. Some kiosks were impressive structures with brightly embroidered flaps; others were dark little secrets with sharp-eyed minders perched outside. Most were open-fronted benches or tables displaying goods as diverse as the people who offered them: live chickens sold by old men, pornography by old women, knives by children, lightbulbs by a blind man, rifle cartridges by twin girls. Fresh herbs, bread, jars of kerosene, cooked possums hung by their tails, disposable diapers, small bottles of drinking water, large bottles of dodgy alcohol, cigarettes, shoes, haircuts, hand jobs, crematory urns.

Behind the stalls were the tents: colorful tents offered aphrodisiacs and puppet shows; darker tents rented sex and peddled curses; black tents in the shadows sold abortions. People wandered and sniffed samples and spun gun barrels and held condoms to the light and drank. Men wore suspicious scowls and scars. Women wore suspicious scowls and kohl. Children wore a circus-clown collection of patched clothes, handmade bibs, and trimmed hand-me-downs. The air was a rich swell of scents: dried spices and beeswax candles, fresh blood and old fish, honey and horseshit and sex.

The morning rain was hardly more than mist, and Oscar walked slowly, letting his eyes rove over the orange blurs of fearful chickens, the blue-red of skinned rabbits, the small tubs of ice as precious as
diamonds. Oscar had spent an hour picking over fruit already turning brown, almonds as hard as horn, sugar speckled with ants, and flour shifting with weevils. But fruit could be stewed, almonds ground, flour sifted. He’d overpaid for eggs, and a knob of yellow butter had cost him two packets of Jilu. He was nearly done; all he needed now was ribbon and wrapping paper.

A flurry of fingers snatched at his legs and jacket hem, and he spun around. A flock of children, none older than eight, circled him like ducks after bread, diving and scrabbling.

“Hey, mister, what do you—”

“Hungry? Thirsty? I can—”

“… ever seen! Let me show you—”

“… cheap, just a dollar, and I’ll take you to—”

Oscar shook his head and batted them away with his hat; they gave him a halfhearted last salvo, then flapped off to find an easier target. He found himself in a row of tents painted with pentagrams and eyes of Horus and signs of the zodiac. From awnings and bright-colored posts hung candelabra, charms, the painted skulls of dogs, and the severed feet of cats mounted on nickel chains. Bells rang softly in air that moved and smelled now of woodsmoke and herbs. Men and women sat behind beaded curtains, reading palms, faces, eyes, bowls of water. Those without clients called to Oscar.

“Tell your future, sir?”

“Third eye, can give you the gift of—”

“Love charms, true love here—”

“Lift your curse, sir? Rid yourself of your ghost?”

This last made Oscar hesitate. Thirty paces behind him, between the vibrantly painted stalls, stood the dead boy. Oscar looked back at the old man who called the offer.

“Really.”

The old man offered a solemn smile of few teeth. “Absolutely, sir. I discovered the way.”

In the months after Gray Wednesday, Oscar had quietly tried a dozen ways to exorcise himself of the dead boy. Three psychics, baptism, Taoism, celibacy (not hard, with Sabine gone), hypnosis, fasting … The last—and, on reflection, most desperate—attempt involved a late-night visit by a middle-aged man with wild, unwashed hair and earrings the size of dinner plates. Oscar was commanded to disrobe,
lift his arms to the sky, and keep his eyes closed at all costs while the feverish man marked his naked body with a foul-smelling liquid. When Oscar noticed a new aroma emerging, he glanced down to see that the would-be exorcist had put down his paintbrush and was vigorously stimulating himself front and back. As he kicked the charlatan out of the house, Oscar acknowledged that the dead boy was here to stay.