The Worm King (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Bad Bob

I
want to be remembered as a simple man.

A simple man, yet a  . . . 
cruel,

and insane man.

Dick looked at himself in the mirror and
liked what he saw. A tie? No, it’d be too formal and didn’t stress the “scientist”
angle adequately. He re-hung the green and yellow striped silk Hermes that’d
been laid out on the French oak dressing table.

Dick was waiting for Bob.

He swept a hand across the top of his head
to brush a single, flyaway strand back into place, barely touching the
offending hair but the motion felt good. The blue cotton shirt he’d selected didn’t
need a tie anyway, it had a pearl button-down collar and was perfectly
complimented by gold cufflinks inset with turquoise opal. The matching charcoal
jacket and trousers blended very agreeably too. These were 80% merino wool and
20% polyester so even if the need arose to go outside, he’d stay warm. The tan
belt was Queensland crocodile and the polished Italian brogues picked up the
rooms reflection like a mirror. For those game enough to venture close, they
might pick up a hint of Yves St. Laurent
Ocean
around his neck, and his
face, should anyone dare touch it, had been softened with Clarins Q10 moisturizing
crème.

Bob the tool. Bad Bob.

Dick took a sip of his dry martini, made
according to the regimental spec’s laid out by James Bond in
Cassino Royale
:
3 parts Gordons, 1 vodka, ½ measure of Lillet Blanc and a dash of Angostura
bitters, shaken through ice and wrapped around a large, juicy slice of lemon.

A plate of English watercrackers and small ceramic
tub of duck liver pate sat on the coffee table but he didn’t have any more because
he’d already flossed and small pieces were apt to get lodged in one’s teeth. Next
to the crackers lay an open copy of the Canberra Yellow Pages. Several pages
had been torn from the pharmacy listings and Bob was currently occupied with
these.

He pulled back the rooms curtain and looked
into the internal courtyard of the Hyatt. Black as the ace of spades and absolutely
nothing to see. It certainly wasn’t the best room in the establishment, but
anything in this place is better than being out there.

Out there  . . .  watching.

A merry tune flashed through his head, a little
ditty he’d composed himself called
Blunt Stick,
about his friend Bob.

Bob’s big night out.

He found
Blunt Stick
to be an
excellent vocalization exercise immediately before going on air. It arose after
he was out
watching
one muggy, summer evening five years ago when he first
spied Bob, in a seedy backstreet off Kings Cross, battering a prostitute to
death with a baseball bat. Laying into her like there was no tomorrow.
Go you
good thing!
Out of sheer curiosity, Dick followed Bob all the way back to his
flat in Bankstown, and the next day, let him know that someone
knew
. That’s
right, knew all about it. But if Bob did a small favor for Dick, not only would
he overlook Bob’s transgression
re lá bat,
money could change hands. A
relationship had formed. Then, as was inevitable, a year ago Bob got himself
arrested because festering, septic, brutal rage like that isn’t easily bottled.
After considerable effort, Dick had tracked Bob down in the vicinity of Goulburn
goal six days ago.

He rechecked the mirror, stretching his neck and moving his head
slightly to view it from a number of angles. Still good. There were powerful people
to impress and he had to be perfect. They’ll all want to know what will happen with
the weather. He’s the man! Powerful, powerful people. Dick ran through a few
more whispered lines of
Blunt Stick
:

I gotta blunt stick

an a friend o’mine,

with a handful of cash

an a gun loaded up jus’ fine

Big man; Big stick

His name is Bad Bob

an he’s crazier’n shit,

if you see him you’ll know who it is

cos he ain’t got no lips.

Mad Bob; Lip Stick

We’re going down town

gonna go to the pound,

get us a dog

point’im around.

Run Dog; Red Stick.

The time had come to set Bob in motion.

In these troubled days, or nights, one had
to have something to sell. You didn’t need much, just a crack of an opportunity.
One, single chink in somebody’s armor and you’ll find your highest bidder. The rest
will fall straight into place. Right now the armor is wafer-thin everywhere. Sheng
sulked in the room next door, looking after the twins. Dick sat at his table,
going through the bag Bob brought back. A knock sounded on the door and he knew
immediately it was Bob. It hadn’t been the soft
rat-a-tat-tat
of the
hotel staff or Sheng’s
tappity-tap
, it was a series of uneven knocks of
varying loudness. Dick wondered if this pattern was a trait of all criminal psychopaths,
and he tried to remember what his own knock sounded like. At first it eluded
him, and then a pleasing realization dawned: I’m not the sort of person who
even
knocks
on doors, I have doors opened
for
me.

‘Yes!’ It opened and Bob poked his ratty face
in, then reached up to click off his headlight before stepping into the room. A
patchy moustache covered most of his harelip but the lisp was bad enough to
make anyone take a second glance at his mouth anyway and you’d invariably
notice the grotesquely deformed upper lip. The lisp used to be much worse when they’d
first met. He must’ve had some freebie work done on it in Goulburn although Dick
didn’t like to pry because Bob was somewhat sensitive about facial cosmetics.

‘Thumeones arthking for you. Thee workth
with you. Thee’s with a fat guy, and a d’warth.’

‘A dwarf?!’ snarled Dick.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Shank

N
ever again.

Winston tenderly touched his mangled head. The
two of them had bowled two-thirds of a case of Grange, the last bottle skulled
in complete darkness.

The room’s single bulb glowed dimly. He
vaguely recalled the porter saying four hours light per day, so if they were
already back into the “lights on” cycle, that certainly seemed a quick twenty
hours darkness? Or perhaps the four hours was staggered at different times? Astrid
propped herself up on the bed rubbing her eyes and Francesco sat on the floor
leaning against the wall beside the window, peering at his watch. The Italian’s
hair stuck out at odd angles and his pudgy face had picked up a scattering of dark
puffy bulges while he’d slept. A greasy swathe of black bristles carpeted his
face. He scratched his cheek and squinted at his watch again.

Without any warning the door opened. Winston
got a quick glimpse of a man’s face before it withdrew and the door closed. ‘Did
you see—?’

It reopened, and the head poked back in. He
had insipid grey eyes which seemed unusually close together, acne scarring and
a pronounced harelip under a straggly moe. ‘Width one’ve you’th Winthton? The beam
of his headlight was easily visible against the rooms weak light, and pointed straight
at Winston as he spoke. Winston raised a hand; Harelip continued to stare for
another few seconds, then closed the door.

Francesco lumbered to his feet and went to
the door, pressing his ear to it, listening. Half a minute passed before he
pulled back then said quietly to Astrid, ‘Did you tell them his name?’ He pointed
at Winston.

She shook her head.

He looked around the room wearily and
returned to the bed, sat, then picked the corkscrew off the floor and passed it
to her. ‘Put this in your back pocket.’

‘Why?’

Instead of answering he pointed at the head
of the bed. ‘Pass me the pillow.’

She passed it.

He bent to the floor again, this time
grabbing an empty wine bottle and laying it on the pillow. He folded the pillow
in half then brought it down lightly across his raised knee.
Crump!
He unfolded
it, and frowned. The neck had broken off in a clean circle at its base. Francesco
glanced around the room, saw another empty under the TV, stood up and got it. The
procedure with the pillow was repeated. This time the break left a long, jagged
spike below the neck and he nodded approvingly. The neck with the spike was
left on the pillow and the rest of the glass, along with the first broken
bottle, he pushed under the bed out of sight. Then he lifted an edge of the bed
sheet and using his teeth, began a tear. A narrow strip about double the length
of an arm was ripped off. He spent several minutes carefully wrapping the
material around the neck below the protruding shard. When it was finished, he
held it out to Winston. ‘The sheet stop end splintering back into your hand. Here.’

Winston looked aghast at the dagger. He
didn’t take it. ‘What on earth do you expect me to do with
that
?’

‘Only two place it work properly. Middle of
face.’ He tapped his nose lightly. ‘Or straight in throat. Watch where they
take us. If we no like, this might be help.’

Winston reluctantly accepted it because he couldn’t
immediately think of a reason not to, although he knew one was likely to come
to him pretty quick. Astrid held her corkscrew out at full stretch as though it
were made of poison snot.

Francesco laughed, but it sounded forced. ‘Is
probably nothing. We be fine. Still, you know, they lock the door, and the man
who come before, he not chatty man, and the light, it is come on early. All is strange.
They probably just testing the light, and checking on the people, but is
strange.’

Winston held up the shard. He imagined that
in the joint this is what you’d call a “shank.” After a tentative waggle and
thrust, which resembled a poorly played ping-pong stroke rather than a stabbing
tool of death, he was even less convinced. ‘I think I can guarantee I’ll be
happy with absolutely anywhere they take us, rather than trying to change their
mind with
this
.’

‘You right, probably. But put in pocket
anyway, just in case. We give them half hour, see what happens. If we no hear
anything we try and call them back, ask some question.’

Winston slipped the shank cork end down into
his back pocket and untucked his sweatshirt, pulling it over the spike so it was
less visible. He leant nonchalantly against the wall and wondered how far he
could actually bend back before fatally stabbing himself in the kidneys.

Barely a minute passed before the door
reopened, and Harelip reappeared. He pointed at Winston. ‘You. Come here.’

Winston hesitated, then walked slowly towards
the door feeling a rising surge of panic over the bottle. If discovered, it’d
definitely be assumed he’s up to no good! For an instant he considered attempting
to toss it under the bed as he passed, but there was no chance of that without
being seen, and a second later he was past the bed anyway and at the door. He
glanced back to see if the others were also being taken, but they weren’t, and Francesco
stared at him intently, tapping himself on the nose. Then the door shut behind him
and Harelip flicked on his headlamp, and re-bolted the lock. Why would there be
an external lock on a hotel room? When they’d arrived he’d been too pissed to
notice but before he could contemplate this further, he received a shove in the
shoulder and they were marching down the hall. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Outhide.’

‘Why?’

No reply. They came to a corner, swung to
the right into a hallway with its ceiling lights on so Harelip switched off his
headlamp. ‘Why,’ repeated Winston.

A hand grasped his shoulder. ‘Awound here.’ They
took a left into a wider corridor which ended five meters ahead at a double
staircase. The hand remained on his shoulder but he didn’t try and shake it off
because it wouldn’t have taken much of a tug on his sweatshirt to divulge the
concealed shank. They descended. In the foyer at the bottom were ten or twelve men
standing around talking in groups of two or three. They stopped and watched
Winston and his companion. Adjoining the foyer was a ballroom set up with many tables
although he only got a flash of this before they reached another door, beside which
stood a man in hotel uniform. The door was opened and suddenly  . . . 
they were outhide.

A carpark. The air was colder and the grip
on his shoulder tightened. Harelip’s headlamp flicked back on. ‘Why are we out
here?’

‘There’th an eye’th kweam twuck,’ he sneered.
‘You d’warth wike eye’th kweam don’t you?’

They moved steadily away from the hotel,
across the carpark then onto rougher ground. The fence appeared and he saw
they’d arrived at a point directly in front of a long, vertical slit in the
wire.

‘Thwoo here.’ He pushed Winston through the
gap, keeping the hand on his shoulder. The top edge of the shard snagged momentarily
on the wire but Winston twisted and dropped his rump so was able to slither
through, bottle and all. They travelled another thirty or forty meters, weaving
their way between patches of dead scrub.

The hotel lights were much fainter out here.
Harelip paused, scanning the ground with his torch; Winston caught a glimpse of
a trench about half the length of a cricket pitch, with a mound of dirt piled
on the opposite side. Fingernails dug into his shoulder. He glanced around to
see where the other hand was and spotted a coil of thick rope dangling from
Harelip’s left fist which he didn’t recall being there when they’d climbed
through the fence a minute ago.

Eye’th kweam? Winston didn’t think his
companion was being totally honest with him. He heard a faint rustle in the
undergrowth beside them. The headlight swung around and probed the area but
found nothing so the beam darted forwards again.

They were barely meters from the trench. ‘Snake!’
he shouted desperately, hopping first on one foot then the other. Harelip looked
down and at that precise moment, Winston jumped with all his might, stretching up
his hand like superman and driving the bottle up and up and  . . . 
directly into an eyeball. He twisted as he fell back and the glass spike cracked
clean off.

The hand shot away from his shoulder and Harelip
clutched the side of his face. He began screaming like a banshee and blood gushed
between his fingers while the good eye darted back and forth frantically. The
headlight remained on with the lamp pointed down at a low angle which
illuminated the mutilated face beautifully.

Winston looked at the shank in amazement,
but nothing was left apart from the handle; the shard of glass had disappeared
completely, buried deep in Harelip’s eye socket.

They were right, that Grange really was a
cheeky little drop.

He ran off into the darkness as fast as his
stubby little legs would carry him.