Weird Cries From The Soul Read online

  Boyle pulled his jacket collar tight and straightened up. "So all we know is that he was a white male, late forties judging by the build, snappy dresser, about a hundred and fifty pounds, five ten. Gives us a lot to go on," he said resignedly.

  "Would a tattoo of a spider behind the right ear make things any easier for you?" Macklin said in a muffled voice. He was bent across the dead body, his mouth almost in contact with what was left of the lips.

  "It just might." Boyle knelt back beside the corpse.

  The youngsters at the jukebox put on some more music and shouted at Petersen to turn up the volume. Davenport looked across at them and gave them a stare he had perfected in the mirror of his attic bedroom as a teenager. It was a stare as warm as snow. Most of the group glanced away except one boy a little too drunk to notice the threat in the ice cube eyes. "Turn it up." The boy called out again. His friends tugged at his arm to shut him up.

  "Loud enough." Petersen said firmly. He had seen, had anticipated, the menace in Davenport's stare. He had seen it before.

  Davenport leaned back onto the bar. On his lips a snake smile writhed as if the music from the jukebox came from a charmer's flute.

  "Fucking kids." A man whose arms were covered in tattoos murmured along the bar. The comment served to break the tension.

  Petersen laughed, a little strained laugh. "Spend some money though."

  "Losers the lot of them." Davenport said. "When I was their age I was out working, not scrounging off the State. Students and layabouts all of them."

  "Drink, Frank?" one of the men asked.

  Davenport made a performance of looking at his watch. It was large and gold. "Better not. I said I'd pick Helen up from her mother's half an hour ago." He laughed to show he was the boss in the family set up. He laughed to show he was the boss here as well.

  "Next time," the man said.

  "Better take a piss first." Davenport swallowed what was left of his whiskey and pushed himself away from the smooth wooden surface of the bar.

  The toilets were at the back of the bar and as Davenport reached out to pull the door towards him, someone pushed it to come out. It was the boy who had misjudged Davenport's warning stare about the jukebox music. He was drunkenly swaying and as he stepped aside to let Davenport through he seemed to recognise him as if he was an old lost friend.

  "Listen," he slurred. "Don't you like our music?" He smiled a little crookedly. He was still young enough to hope people would like his taste in music, like it and like him because of it. Then he made another misjudgement. He put his hand on Davenport's sleeve.

  Davenport took the soft hand of youth, bent it round and up and behind the boy's back. "Get back inside." He propelled the boy back into the toilet, twisting the hand as he went. When he knew the boy was off balance he shoved him hard against the wall. His head knocked against the warm air hand dryer and he slouched to the floor.

  The boy cowered against the wall. He had sobered up rapidly and the misjudgements he had made in alcohol were like a hangover reminder to him. Davenport reached down and took hold of one of the soft hands. From the hand he selected a finger, the little finger. Taking it between his own hands he bent it back until the boy cried out in pain. Then he bent it further until it snapped. The boy started screaming. He stopped when Davenport kicked him in the balls.

  The door of the toilet opened, noise from the bar crowded in and a man hesitated in the doorway. Davenport snarled and the door shut behind the man as he left.

  Davenport snatched the front of the boy's jacket and dragged him towards one of the stalls. He pushed open the door and took hold of the boy's other hand.

  "No, please..." The boy pleaded.

  Davenport held the elbow of the boy's arm so that the hand was on the doorframe. Then he slammed the door shut and the hand crumpled as bones cracked.

  He had forgotten he wanted to use the toilet. The excitement had given him an erection and he could never piss when he was hard. He left the toilet and went back to the group of men at the bar.

  "I'm off then," he announced. A few voices waved him off and Davenport left the bar. It had been a good evening.

  Macklin turned what was left of the head to one side and wiped away some of the blood with a swab. "Black widow by the look of it, little red hourglass on the body...nice job, looks almost real."

  Boyle suppressed a shudder and stood up quickly. He hated spiders. "Too real. Does a spider tattoo mean anything to you, Eddie?"

  Eddie Kimball shrugged and shook his head. "I'll work on it." His mind would start working straight away even if he gave no outside appearance of seeming interested. His knowledge of the criminal fraternity of the city was legendary. He could recall names from more than fifteen years ago. Sometimes he and the Captain became lost in stories from the old days and Boyle, younger and with less experience, became frustrated at being left out.

  The extractor fan of Mr Chow's Chinese Restaurant gushed warm spicy sweet and sour aromas into the alley adding to the already pungent smells from the neglected rubbish sacks, the odour of stale urine, animal and human, and the individual stench of death.

  The lines of technicians and the photographer had wandered up to the head of the alley where a ghoulish crowd of concerned citizens were impatiently being kept away from the grisly sights by three squad car teams of patrolmen. Even in a city where death was known too frequently the spectacle of its aftermath was too much for the curious.

  "The sooner the ambulance gets here the sooner we can eat," Kimball said. The smell of the Chinese food was making him hungry.

  "Not me," Boyle told him. "I'm going to surprise Susan at the Arena. I told her she could use my ticket for one of her girlfriends, but I thought I'd meet her after the show."

  "Going to the concert then?" Macklin said, standing up at last, massaging the backs of his knees.

  "You a rock fan, Mike?" Kimball asked, not quite managing to keep the surprise out of his voice. He felt guilty about his earlier surliness with Macklin.

  "Not on your life. Berlioz, Beethoven and Bach. Heard of this group though. My daughter has them blaring out of her stereo morning, noon and night. Think she's got a crush on the pretty blonde one who plays the guitar, got his pictures all over her bedroom. With me it used to be Doris Day."

  "Is your daughter going tonight?" Boyle asked.

  "No chance, she's only fourteen." Macklin frowned.

  "You're a killjoy, Mike" Kimball said. "You should have taken her along yourself."

  "When hell freezes over. It's bad enough I have to suffer it in my own house. Don't you think you're getting a bit old for that kind of thing, Robert?"

  Boyle smiled.

  The uniformed officer who had found the body after it's presence had been reported was picking his way carefully up the alley, avoiding the puddles and the piles of minor debris. He was wearing the regulation dark blue gabardine rain cover over his uniform and a grim expression. Kimball had seen him before, without the raincoat, but never without the expression. It seemed a permanent feature and Kimball often thought that if had been unfortunate enough to have stayed on the uniformed beat his entire career he might have a similar expression. He had hated the beat and had done everything possible to make detective as soon as he could.

  The face of the photographer with the officer was more relaxed. Round and friendly, the face of a college kid, open and clean-shaven, with pink cheeks and a mouth that was quick to smile. It was only when you'd watched him for a while that you noticed the smile never extended to his eyes. They were small and black, like shark's eyes, and, if you looked at them long enough, they made the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. The photographer always wore the same style clothes. Tweed jacket, rumpled grey terelene slacks, brown cotton shirt with grey wool tie. He lived in those clothes and from their crumpled appearance probably slept in them as well. He only seemed to come alive when his lens was focused on its subject. As much of his police work was photographing dead bodies Kimball had doubts about h
is personality.

  "Ronnie looks pleased with himself," Kimball observed about the photographer.

  "Perhaps he heard someone else died," Boyle said. He didn't like Ronnie.

  Macklin heard the siren first. "Sounds like the ambulance from City General has arrived."

  Boyle looked one last time at the corpse whose appearance in the alley had caused so much work for so many of them that evening. It was a proven fact that any homicide investigation not picking up the thread of a lead during the first two days of investigation went colder than a city hooker's heart very quickly.

  "One of the rubbernecks reports seeing a car in the street about an hour ago," The uniformed officer announced with the kind of understated pride a father might use to tell snobbish friends that his child was going to a top university.

  "Amazing," Kimball said. "What...nine, ten million cars in the city and we're lucky enough to have an eye witness spot one near the scene of the crime."

  Kimball moved across to the officer. Close up he didn't look as young as he did from a distance. "Tell me, what make of car did the witness see?"

  "Early model Pontiac, guy's a car fanatic, he could tell you the suspension compression or the cylinder capacity if you asked him." The officer's grim expression hadn't changed even though he was clearly pleased with the information he had learned.

  "What about the licence plate?" Boyle asked. He had seen Kimball in this mood before and they needed the officer's report first thing in the morning to start things off. He had been the first on the scene and to antagonise him now would only slow things down.

  The officer twisted his face into an even more grim expression. "The witness isn't so hot on licence plates."

  Boyle nodded. "Could be connected. No car could squeeze down this alley, but they could have carried the man down here and shot him."

  Kimball touched the officer on the shoulder. The man seemed to shrink away as if from a blow but Kimball's tone was gentle. "Okay, thanks for that. Take a note of the man's name and address. We'll follow it through. Will we have your report tomorrow?"

  The officer nodded, grateful for the thanks he had been given. "Before nine."

  The photographer had moved away from them and was packing his camera and lenses into a large silver case.

  "Have you taken all the shots you need?" Boyle called over to him.

  "And then some. You'll have them by the afternoon, don't push me for them earlier, this is the third killing I've covered today. I'll be seeing you."

  Macklin snorted. "Thank God for the ambulance crew. They've rescued me. Robert, give me a call tomorrow and I'll have a report for you. Gentlemen."

  They watched as Macklin negotiated his way to the head of the alley. Two white-uniformed ambulance men were busy around the body, readying to zip it into the body bag.

  "Not much more we can do here, Eddie," Boyle said.

  "Guess not." Kimball glanced at his watch. Susan's concert had started.

  The ambulance men lifted the body bag waist high and carried the corpse out of its temporary tomb. Culpepper Alley let it go without comment.

  "Okay, how about we wrap this up for the night?" Boyle said. "Eddie, I'll see you in the morning. Okay?"

  "Give my best to Susan."

  Boyle turned and walked out of the alley. Kimball watched him go, and then realised the alley was empty. Their job was done for the night. In the morning it would begin again with the painstaking questioning, the checking, the reading of the lab reports and the compilation from records of a list of suspects. That was if they got lucky. If they didn't, then the whole process went on until there was nowhere else to go.

  Kimball walked slowly out of the dark claustrophobia of the alley and into the sleazy streets that at least retained a semblance of life. His car was parked across the street and as he slipped the key into the lock and pulled the door open he had a sudden flash of memory about a spider tattoo. He knew who the dead man was. Hell, I thought he had retired years ago. He chuckled lightly to himself. He guessed he had now.

  It was a dark starless night with a fine rain in the air. Damp enough to mist your face and hair but not enough to soak you. There was a slight early winter chill to the evening that made Davenport pull his beige raincoat around him so he could enjoy the atmosphere.

  Voices and music merged from lofts and apartments above the shuttered shops along the main street. There was still about an hour before the time he had set himself to perform his little task for the evening. An hour to kill; he laughed out loud. An hour to kill, he liked that. He smiled to himself and decided to tell Helen that one when he saw her. If she didn't laugh he would tell her she should be grateful he didn't take his work home like other men.

  There was a hamburger bar along the street; the neon sign of the takeaway shop flickered intermittently, spilling pools of light onto the oil-slicked surface of the pavement. Davenport could remember when there had been a proper men's tailors on that site. There were still a few of the older businesses dotted around the town but the threads of that way of life were coming apart more quickly every day. More and more fast food shops, more video stores; perhaps that's what people meant by takeaway, Davenport suddenly thought, they take away the character of a place. He liked that as well. They had replaced the old tailor's with junk food; the area was coming apart at the seams. He would tell that to Smithson when he collected the balance of his fee for tonight’s work. That might bring a smile to the lifeless bastard.

  A combination of the gradually cooling air and his relaxed mood reminded him that he needed to piss. The cosy violence in the toilet had made him forget what he had originally gone in there for. There were a couple of dark alleys off the main street and he selected one of them and relieved himself. The alley had a name but he didn’t give it a thought. It was an anonymous place for a private function.

  When he had finished he looked at his watch. Less than forty minutes to go. He gave himself a minute and went through the ritual of cutting and lighting a cigar. It was one of the fine Havana’s he bought from a shop in the Upper Quarter. It was then that he became aware of two men at the head of the alley. Muggers, he thought, and began to decide which one to take first, planning his strategy in case they had knives.

  Then he saw that they had more than knives. One of them carried a sawn-off shotgun. It was then that he realised, with the streetwise intelligence that had allowed him to flourish in his anonymous professional life, that this was no mugging.

  “Hello, Frank.” The smaller of the two men had a soft voice, not unpleasant, almost kind.

  “Who is it?”

  “I haven’t changed that much have I, Frank?”

  “It’s dark. Let’s get back onto the street. Whatever this is we can sort it out.”

  The bigger of the two men grunted. He may have been laughing.

  “You’ve amused my friend now, Frank.”

  “We can sort it…”

  “Too late, twelve years, three months, and two weeks too late.”

  Suddenly, as though someone had plugged his fingers into an electrical socket, Davenport realised who the quiet man was. “I didn’t realise you were out.”

  “Goodbye, Frank.”

  The man turned away into the welcome anonymity of the bustling street, and Davenport heard the hungry breathing of the bigger man as the shotgun moved lovingly in his hands.

  BAD MOON

  The last bars of Limelight rang out across the smoke-hazed room, as a solitary couple on the dance floor swayed together for a few more moments, then moved reluctantly back to their table to collect their coats. It had been a slow night, but then Wednesdays usually were. I unplugged my Fender Jazz bass from the amp and started wiping the sweat from the fretboard. Eddie, one of the barmen, came up to me.

  "Marie's here, Harry," he said, staring down at his feet, and twisting a knot in the end of his apron.

  I stopped wiping. Marie was my ex wife. "I didn't see her arrive."

  "She came in twenty minute
s ago, during your solo. She's in the dressing room, waiting."

  I pushed open the door to the dressing room and caught a faint aroma of Chanel No 5, Marie's favourite perfume. She must have sensed me watching her and turned slowly to face me. "Oh, Harry," she said breathlessly, and collapsed sobbing into my arms.

  "What's the matter, didn't you get your maintenance cheque this month?" I said.

  She looked at me with tear filled eyes. It was enough to break your heart, if you didn't know her. "Don't be cruel, Harry, please. I don't think I can stand it if you're cruel, not tonight. Can I have a drink? A large one."

  I shrugged and poured her a scotch. After a small hesitation I poured one for myself. "You still haven't answered my question," I said.

  "It's Ray," Marie said. "My boyfriend. He's in trouble, Harry, really serious trouble." Tears were springing to her eyes again. "Some people are after him, terrible people, they want to kill him."

  "So where do I come into it? I'm no bodyguard."

  She avoided my eyes and stared down at the table, as if she could read secret messages in the wet rings from our glasses. "Have you still got that cottage in the Lakes?"

  I knew why she wanted to know. "No," I said.

  "No what? No, you haven't got the cottage any more, or no, you won't let us use it?"

  "Oh, I've still got the cottage, that was about all I had left after your lawyers got through with me."

  She could see it was no use arguing, and so she told me what she thought of me, slammed the door behind her, and left me to pack away the bass and go home.

  The next morning something a little like guilt woke me up. I hadn't changed my mind about the cottage. I still didn't want her to take him up there, but I thought another talk might clear the air. I telephoned her office but she wasn't there. Gavin, her boss, told me she'd taken the rest of the week off, she had said something about going off to spend some time in the Lakes. I hung up, and swore loudly at the telephone.