A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (18 page)

‘There must be a fee.’

‘Of course there must be. At this point I’ve got so little to go on that any assistance you can provide would be of great value,
and I’d pay accordingly. You’d not over-charge.’ He smiled. ‘You never have before.’

Menace was talking inaudibly with their Vietnamese host. Mallis looked up; looked directly at Stoner. ‘I know some of this, but only because of my conversations with Shard. Shard and yourself, Stoner, carry equal weight with us. I’ll want him to confirm that you are not in conflict. Will he do that for me?’

Stoner nodded. He couldn’t imagine where their loyalties lay at the best of times. Their priority was rarely money, which Stoner understood perfectly well, and it didn’t seem to be anything personal. The techno prisoners appeared to operate on a private internal code, and were well-known in the shadowy community for their refusal to work against the interests of their friends. Unhappily, only they knew who their friends were, and, more importantly, who were not their friends. They didn’t hand out convenient badges or issue press statements.

But they were tools, tools of the trade, the techno prisoners. Tools like a sophisticated and intelligent search engine. It was not easy to become emotionally connected with a search engine. Even if it did have a near-identical partner and wear Goth punk blacks left over from the 1990s.

‘OK. How can I help?’ Mallis again. The dim conversation between Menace and Mr Tran had concluded.

Stoner had asked himself the same question. Until he’d arrived to his own mild surprise on Mr Tran’s doorstep he had been unaware of a need to involve anyone else in what he considered was most likely to be a fairly straightforward investigation. The number of freelance professional killers in any country is small, and although freelance work was hardly uncommon the usual suspects were usually the usual suspects because they usually did the killings. Stoner’s intent had been based around the well-worn and well-proven elimination of the innocent. When the innocent have been eliminated, the guilty will always be among the remainder.

The problem of course is that if the guilty party was not included in your list of the usual suspects then the process of elimination could eliminate . . . well . . . everyone on the list.

‘There’s a connection between the victims.’ Stoner sounded almost confident, at least to his own ears.

‘You already said that. It may be true. Are you intending to convince me or yourself by repetition? No one is eavesdropping this conversation so you can’t be intent upon convincing a third party.’ Dealing with Mallis could be an oblique process.

‘Just thinking aloud.’ Stoner was indeed thinking. Why would anyone eavesdrop, and why would Mallis wish to emphasise that they were not? ‘I have stats and stuff on the victims. You’ll want them. How do you want them? How much time do we have here, today?’

Mallis surprised him, not for the first time. ‘I’d prefer to uncover facts fresh. Keep what you’ve been told separate from what we tell you. Compare what you know with what we tell you. That way you may discover routes to a more fulfilling reality. A greater understanding. I’m not being deliberately mysterious, Stoner, far from it. If Shard is actually as concerned by this as he appears to be, then it’s something bigger than a bunch of butchered bodies. Shard is not a guy to fret about a few stiffs, a mutilation or two. He is not one to be over-concerned about you, either. I want to start from the overlap between you and Shard. I reckon that there is more to that than is plain to me at the moment. But you’re right. There is a link between the dead. And if there isn’t . . . if they’re random somehow, then that is more remarkable than if they turn out to be blood relatives. I hesitate to say this, knowing your loyalties, but I would also consider the motives of your own employer. Does he . . .
is
he, setting you out as a target, for example? That was one of Shard’s initial considerations. You know already that you are going to be presented with information
suggesting that Shard is in some way involved in these killings. You may already have this data?’

He paused. Stoner shook his head.

‘Be ready for it. The form it takes and the source will be interesting in themselves. The data will be false, but a truth will be available in the manner and method of the delivery.’ Mallis was plainly happy in his work.

‘The murder websites? The sites with the movies?’

‘Genuine. Not a concern. I know the provider and the purpose of the sites.’

‘Are there several of the things?’

‘Yes. But the main one,
murdermayhemandmore.com
is the central source. It’s a fansite for crime fiction freaks.’ Hearing Mallis judging other web-dwellers as freaks was a minor entertainment. ‘There’s been a lot of fan chat and fiction forum stuff on there for a while, judging by the site histories, but only the last couple of entries have displayed actual real-time footage of genuine body parts. It’s refreshingly different. It may even catch on. Become something common. Beats endless football as a visual treat for the mindless masses.’ Delivered in a deadpan voice.

‘Contacts, data? Where do you want it, and how do you want it?’ Stoner was always aware of security; his own and others.

Mallis grinned; a faintly unsettling sight. ‘The murder website?’

Stoner nodded.

Mallis again. ‘The site has a message board. It’s unregulated, unmoderated so far as I can see. Packed with fools. You hunter; me seeker. When I have something I’ll post a cell number for you to call. You can do the same. Got a collection of sim cards?’ Stoner agreed that he did. ‘Add the reverse date to the end of the name, so we’ll know. Today’s the eighth; seeker80. It’s not obvious, except to us.’

‘Fee?’ Stoner repeated himself. Mallis shook his head.

‘Later. If it’s easy we’ll do a reciprocal, if it’s not we’ll talk further.’

‘Shard, then. Does he use the same arrangement on the message board?’

‘That,’ Mallis was expressionless, ‘would be too much knowledge at this stage. Ask him.’

As if by signal, Mr Tran appeared at Stoner’s side; Menace turned away, walked rapidly to his partner. They left the room.

‘No long goodbyes.’ Mr Tran’s day of statements was continuing.

18

JUST LOOK AT US . . .

‘Just look at them all.’ Stoner was talking, tuning, wickedly aware of the open microphone. ‘Where do they all come from?’

‘It’s a lyric, hey?’ Bili leaned over her long-suffering long-scale Rickenbacker bass and popped an open-A harmonic, sociably enough, listening as Stoner tuned to it. ‘All the lonely people?’

‘Why do they all come here?’ Stoner was picking harmonics of his own, micro-tuning the elderly Stratocaster in an inevitably doomed attempt at lining all of its six strings up in tune at the same time, all the better to play some vigorous blues. ‘Surely their lives would be more complete if they sat at home watching some unreality show on the TV? Or is it nuts’ night out at the nuthouse?’

Faces in the audience were smiling. They would be the regulars, the regulars who understood the floor show. Other faces displayed a lot less amusement. They might get the joke. Or they might instead get the hump and leave. Their loss.

‘They come for the lessons.’ Bili snagged her cascade of curls into a tangle, loosely restrained by a scrunchie. ‘They come here for the free education. They come here for the sparkling wit, playful repartee and almost free booze. And most of all, they
come here so they can try to answer the greatest riddle known to modern man.’

She was knocking out a steady common time beat against her bass E-string.

‘Forget nuclear fusion. Forget the mysteries of the pyramids. They come to learn, man; they come to learn the answer to the lastest greatest mystery; how long can one man take to keep his bloody guitar so perfectly out of tune?’

Applause. Stoner rattled a few glasses with a growl of bass string feedback; the elderly Fender fizzing in his fingers as its strings resonated to Bili’s more beefy bass, an octave below his own. She had added a counter-beat to her rhythm pattern, picking a second E an octave above her first and alternating with it; first finger and forefinger alternating and matching on the heavy strings. Stoner switched between the Fender’s pick-ups, selecting the middle of the three then winding its tone control back with his right-hand little finger, then lifting the volume to compliment the throb of the big bad bass guitar.

‘I’ve been rollin’ and tumblin’ . . .’ Bili’s over-amplified voice startled the audience. She’d sung straight into the microphone; nothing half-heard here, just the full smack of the words. ‘Cried the whole night long.’

Stoner’s guitar scratched a rhythm; some strings sounding crisply through the muffle of the heel of his right hand, which deadened their resonance. He was picking the strings with his fingernails, the flat pick tucked away behind the guitar’s scratch plate, ready for use, should the song head that way.

‘And when I woke up this mornin’, all I had was gone.’ Bili tossed her head and stood up, slinging the big bad bass guitar into a better position and beating its strings with renewed vigour. Stoner remained leaning against his high stool, watching her more than listening. He knew the song; he had little idea of where she would take it tonight. She walked away from the microphone,
singing out a high-crying yeah . . . trailing from audible sound as she walked away from the audience, moving her left hand higher up the guitar’s long, long neck until she was picking out a harmony to Stoner’s battering rhythm, a neat exercise in role-reversal, one which would be recognised by the regulars, who were used to four-string guitar solos and appreciated the burst of creativity which they demonstrated.

Newcomers were welcome to join in the appreciation, although few would. Bass guitar solos are fairly rare, and are viewed by some as an acquired taste.

Bili was playing way up the neck now, pulling and bending the strings as well as slapping them hard against the fretboard and then pulling them away from it, letting them snap back with an explosive percussive punctuation to Stoner’s solid, scratching, too-treble accompaniment.

A set of descending triplets and she was quite suddenly back at the microphone, back face-to-face with the audience, who were by now stamping and stomping and even clapping a little as six-string Fender and four-string Rickenbacker snapped their waves of rhythms together.

‘If the river was whiskey . . .’ Bili beamed at a regular who had threaded his way to the bar, recognising where the song was leading. ‘And I was a diving duck . . .’ She bobbed her head, walked back a few paces, leaving more room to swing the long bass neck again, completing the verse and hammering halfway into the next one with the instrument talking instead of her voice. Stoner smiled and scouted the edge of the stage, half-wondering whether more instruments would be joining them. Not this time.

Halfway into the verse, then: ‘I’d swim right to the bottom, Drink myself back up.’ The small woman and the big guitar bounced together through another verse of purely improvised duet with Stoner watching, listening and waiting for his cue for some closing chords. None came.

‘That’s it!’ Bili just stopped.

Stoner stared wide-eyed. He’d stopped at exactly the same moment, unbidden and for no reason he could understand. Utterly and unconsciously in tune with his companion. Where there had been a bouncing, rollicking beat of blues there was now the silence. Followed by a pause . . . then the applause. Followed by Bili accepting a bow and a multiple measure of spirits from a hand in the audience.

‘Why do they come here?’ Stoner was laboriously pretending to re-tune his Fender. ‘It’s bloody noisy sometimes. Can’t hear to tune this bloody thing. Not that anyone would notice . . .’

‘It’s the cheap beer.’ Bili beamed at the audience who’d supplied a long drink. Bili beamed, the audience looked away, flattered but a little sheepish, too. It’s as though they had made an offering to a minor deity of some kind, only for the godling to pay attention, look up and say thanks. That never happens in religion, making music a better bet for those of a generous and worshipful disposition.

‘I do believe that it is the sheer art of it all.’ Stoner leaned back against his stool and watched carefully as Stretch eased himself into the piano player’s seat. Stretch was a big man, but delicate and subtle with his hands. He lifted heavy eyes across the piano’s scratched lid, and breathed heavily into the open microphone above his keyboard.

‘They come, my man, for inspiration. They come from a world of desperation and despair, keen to share with the Cube’s bright and optimistic vision of a future powered entirely by the blues and the booze. A world . . . they seek a world where all that matters is that the booze flows and the blues follows it, faithful, like a hound. Faithful, like love following beauty. Faithful . . .’

‘Christ!’ Bili pointed the long slim neck of her bass at the wide pianist. ‘Are you going to peddle philosophy? I bet these guys chose to pay us a visit to learn familiarity and understanding
of the piano hammerer’s take on the world. Christ, man, they’d get more sense from . . .’ she paused for effect ‘. . . from a drummer.’

‘A drummer?’ Stretch and Stoner chorused like the well-practised act they were, while the former kicked off into an instrumental version of a tune so often stolen and plagiarised by generations of jazz club musicians that no one could be certain what the words were until someone started singing them. No one sang. Bili and Stoner chugged along following the piano’s leadership and the audience forgot whatever it was they were escaping, avoiding and evading by sitting and sharing expensive drinks in a grubby club late into the night.

Stretch shifted key twice and the guitars followed. Shifted time signature twice, unannounced, and they followed that too. The audience shared the stormy passage. Stretch started to sing, in the wrong key for his voice but with considerable force; ‘There is . . . a house . . . in New Orleans’. Got no further than that; the key was perfect for Bili and she picked up at the second line, howling the verses through slitted watering eyes while the piano ground through its chording and Stoner appeared to drift. He picked up a pint glass of tap water from beside his stool and sank it all, raised the empty vessel to his companions and relieved Bili of the lead spot. It’s a good tune to jam to, for guitars and pianos and almost anything else, and the jam lasted for a half hour, shifting key once more before it returned home and Bili howled the last verse as though she really meant it, as might have been the case.

The audience added their own appreciation, and applauded Stretch as he took a bow and introduced both himself and his venue and his fellow musicians.

‘Now walk’, he instructed them. ‘Now is the time for a little ivory magic.’

And so he proved it to be.

Bili headed off to the table of the free drinks provider, who shot comically to his feet, bursting with surprise and delight to be so honoured. Stoner laid his Fender into its case, wiped down the strings, and walked to the bar.

‘Your boss,’ announced the Chimp, the perfect bartender, ‘is not your friend. He leaves you messages. They are not sweet little love notes. Increasingly they are not. I have promised him that should you appear, no matter what the hour and no matter your condition, I will demand that you call him. Immediately and at once. If not sooner. Do you have a problem?’

Stoner shook his head. ‘No more than the usual. Missing persons, you know how it is.’

Chimp did not, of course, although he may have suspected. ‘Even for him, quiet man that he is not, he is being insistent. Not aggressive, but that condition is approaching fast, I think. Call him. Why not?’

‘Why not? How long have you got? How many reasons would you like?’ Stoner waved a hand towards the bar. ‘A drink while I think? Anything will do. Water would be best. Water makes lions strong, y’know. Failing that, whisky runs it a decent second. Has a package landed here for me? Maybe something you needed to sign for? Addressed to me? Looking – y’know – important? Personal? For me?’

The Chimp shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, handed over a padded bag, and reached for an industrially proportioned bottle of sparkling water. ‘“Water is the strong stuff. It carries whales and ships . . .”’

‘“But water is the wrong stuff, don’t let it get past your lips.”’ Stoner knew the same song. As indeed did Bili, who had appeared at his side. ‘“It rots your boots and wets your suits, puts aches in all your bones; dilute the stuff with whisky, aye, or leave it well alone,”’ they chorused, to the bemusement of customers, audience and musicians alike.

Glasses clinked. Bili spat out her first mouthful. ‘It’s bloody water!’

‘Of course it is. Stoner has a call to make.’

Stoner tipped a cell phone, a note and some spare batteries from the bag into his hand. He sighed, read the note, sighed once more and dropped phone and batteries into a pocket.

Bili turned to him. ‘The blonde? Your blushless paramour? A new romance? Your new fan from last night is here somewhere. At least she was a moment ago. Where, where, where she gone?’ Bili pointed at a bottle. It was uncertain exactly which of the many she was pointing at. ‘Fill me up, o Chimp. Make my life complete. The muse for my blues comes from a bottle. Like a genie. Rub, rub, rub, pour, pour, pour and kabam! Express solos are us. The blonde, JJ? She running you around as usual? I wish she would stop that. Or that you would stop trailing after like that two-dicked dog.’

‘Nah. Not her. The boss. Knickers twisted into more than their usual knot.’

‘You know why? If it’s urgent maybe you should call.’

Chimp had gone back to keeping bar, Bili was acting as temporary conscience.

Stoner sipped. ‘Another missing person. Thing is, I don’t know why he’s pestering. I’ve done no real work on this yet – although I did agree that I would. Wheels in motion, vague stuff like that. He knows that but is still pestering. Not like him, truly.’

Stoner maintained a legend; a nebulously vague but consistent story that he was a private investigator who specialised in finding missing folk. He was never specific. Never entirely honest, but never entirely dishonest, either. And he was a fairly private man anyway. So folk tended not to ask. It is a minor oddity of folk in general that they are more usually curious about themselves than about others. Very often, when they quiz nosily into another’s affairs it is a competition thing. They want to see where they fit.
They want confirmation that they are successful in whichever parts of their lives they value, and a way of confirming their supposed success is to delve into the lives of others and run a comparison. Sometimes out loud, depending upon their levels of self-confidence and intoxication. Stoner almost always deliberately failed in comparisons of this kind. He rarely competed with most other men. Most other men had nothing, did nothing, he would value, so he was unrewarding in competitive conversation.

And he could . . . and would . . . talk for as long as anyone could want on his favourite subjects. Although most men know that a Harley-Davidson is a large American motorcycle, and that a Fender Stratocaster is a guitar, and that the blues is a kind of music, few of them could compete with Stoner’s considerable knowledge on those subjects. So they usually retreated to discussing politics, football, beer and women, at which point Stoner could always pretend ignorance.

‘So call him. Cut the crap out of the way and we can stretch some strings, hey?’ Bili often talked sense, even when her grip on the real world was compromised by alcoholic intake.

Stoner dug the new cell phone from pocket and flicked it to life. Nothing. Not a glimmer. He dug a battery from the pocket and fitted it, causing snorts from his companion.

‘Wow, JJ! What kind of super-asshole takes the battery out of their phone! Man! You worried about those black helicopters?’

Stoner rolled his eyes, thumbed the button to call the only number in the phone’s address book. It was picked up at once. Stoner walked steadily and with deliberation to the rear exit, his favourite entrance, too, but doors work both ways.

‘Where’ve you been? Never mind. You’re where? At the club? OK. No need to leave. Just important to know where you are.’ The Hard Man viewed his troops as pieces on a board and moved them impersonally sometimes. ‘There’s another fucking body. It’s getting insane. Can you hear me yet?’