Fletcher (2 page)

“I’ll repeat. I’m not sure you want to do this. I had a psychiatrist, once. She said I had uncontrolled rage issues. Of course, she recanted this absurd accusation once I slammed her head in a drawer.” Still no pause. I didn’t expect there to be one. Hoop did, however, slow down and let his companions lead by half a step. Maybe he was picking up on that aura.

I found myself musing about that psychiatrist. I hadn’t heard from her in quite some time. Dirt tends to absorb sound superbly.

At one metre, they stopped for a millisecond before the leftmost one lunged at me.

Hand around wrist. Twist to apply pressure. Curl arm inwards. Knife into throat.

I finished with a piercing kick to his heart, knocking him backwards while leaving a comical trail of arterial spray. Before I had time to admire my art, the second one swung at me, this time from above.

Block with crossed forearms. Grab wrist, hold tight. Rotate. Break arm.

A sweep to his legs brought him to the floor, where a kick to the temple silenced him permanently. I like to think it was awe that finished him off, but it was probably the steel-toed boots.

Hoop’s face had gone from smarmy indifference to abject horror over a matter of moments. The shock didn’t last long, though; he quickly reached into his tattered jacket and I foresaw airborne lead coming my way. Of course, you can’t shoot without muscle control; Hoop realised this a few seconds after my throwing blade ran across his arm. In hindsight, this was bad news for everyone involved: the Uzi fell from his hand, and anyone who has ever seen one of those things knows exactly what happens next.

I came out from cover after the gunfire had stopped completely. Hoop was propped up against a tyre, looking decidedly worse for wear. I don’t know if he saw me grin, but even if he did, I think the holes in his lungs were a slightly bigger concern. Not for long, though.

I grabbed him by the neck and hauled him to one of the busted cars. After a minute of rhythmic slamming, the street was quiet again.

It felt like it was going to be a long day already.

***

Before 2012, the Helix Institute for Biochemical Research & Development was located in an ideal part of an industrial zone. Barely a stone’s throw from the nearest train station and perfectly situated for almost uninterrupted water and electricity, this research centre was staffed by a small group of privately funded scientists and researchers. The area lost its appeal, however, in 2012, and since then the institute has been barren and uninhabited.

Uninhabited, that is, save for me.

Before the first fires had even started to burn, I had set my eyes on the Helix Institute. Ninety percent of the structure was underground, hermetically sealed through layers of steel, silicone and concrete, with thick blast doors at the only entrance. I guess I have government regulations to thank for that. The institute’s ‘green scheme’ had adorned the aboveground structure with solar panelling, and there were secure, sterile water tanks below ground, all of which drew from pure subterranean sources. All in all, it was perfect as a base of operations and a place to tenuously call home.

Acquisition had been an interesting affair. Panic had spread like Ebola during those first few days—all a part of the simultaneous, worldwide panic which had rocked societies everywhere. Most of the staff had fled into the military zones for safety; the ones who hadn’t holed themselves inside to wait until the rioting stopped.

It didn’t.

It was impossible to break into the Institute. The regular, clichéd methods—air vents and disposal chutes—were all either too small or too regulated for passage. There was no simple password to open the blast doors, and I was loath to use excessive force to gain entry. In the end, I reverted to what I was best at: investigation.

It took little over two days to trace one of the team leaders to his flat in one of the allegedly safe zones. I think I handled the entire situation pretty well. When I left, the fire had been extinguished and the door was still in one piece. I even managed to get his identity tag with no more than minor bodily harm. Minor, that is, once his six-month body cast came off.

Things fell into place from thereon in. By the time I returned to the Helix, there was only one scientist remaining.

By the time I was settled in, I was alone.

I smiled at the familiar, reassuring hiss of the pneumatic doors as they returned to their embrace behind me. It was strange, but that hiss meant a lot to me. Over the past two years it had come to be a symbol of safety: a sign from my home saying, “Welcome back, K. I missed you.” Alternatively, it may have been saying “You stupid tosser, you almost got yourself killed out there,” but I don’t like to split hairs. It was my barrier against the insanity; a levee separating my own erratic thoughts and those of the grinning flesh outside.

I went directly to my room and spent the next two minutes ferreting around in my drawers for a cap of
livewire
. I placed a half-dose under my tongue, feeling the familiar kick as the drug took effect.
Livewire
was great for long, sleepless nights: a designer drug based on a compound given to fighter pilots before long missions. It was cut with a raft of other substances, most of which were aimed at hunger suppression and triggering auditory hallucinations.

A half-dose would keep me awake while avoiding the hallucinations in my eardrums. In my eyes, that was totally worth the one in a thousand risk of onset deafness. No time to sleep; there was work to be done. Things to see and people to do. You understand, of course.

Security room. Satellite link, up. Monitor, flicker, hello world. Hello, Tor. Hello, encrypted messages. Hello, career.

Two conversations of importance flashed at me. One was regarding a recently concluded case: a concerned father who had asked me to get his runaway daughter back. He didn’t specify what condition she had to be in, but in my opinion she really made those bruises work. She got off lightly though: the guy whom she was running away with wouldn’t be looking at any other girls any time soon. I sighed: I had missed a perfect chance to quote from King Lear. Now that was a tragedy.

I closed the set of messages and moved onto the next one. This was my currently active case: a recent murder-suicide on the fringe of the city safe zone. One look from the armed forces, and that was the conclusion. I wasn’t so sure, and luckily for me neither was the father of the accused and departed. It was a hunch that I had, one of those tingling kicks you get as a killer.

“Let’s tango,” said the tingle.

Let’s tango
, I responded
.

#1002

“This morning I set someone on fire. I’d been watching him for a while now, and it was high time I did something. Nothing quite wakes up a person like getting doused in surgical spirits. I then spent two minutes chasing him around the apartment, waving a Guy Fawkes sparkler. He got tired when we passed through the kitchen for the fourth time, and I lit him up in the hallway.

“He screamed loud enough to wake the dead. No one came to help. No one even knocked on the door.

“It’s a good time to be a serial killer.”

2: Tingle, Turn, Tingle

I had work to do. I opened up my new case—the murder-suicide—and responded to the client.

“Do not be in the given address between 13h00 and 15h30 today. Leave photographs, payment and anything relevant somewhere I will see them. Do not activate the alarm, but leave the flat locked.”

This was, for the most part, my standard modus operandi. I despised meeting clients in person. On occasion I would break this rule, but only after a thorough vetting from my side. In this day and age, meeting people was risky for someone like me. After an instinctive scan for spelling errors the message was sent careening through the deep internet.

The response came through quickly. A simple “done” seemed to conclude matters. I checked my watch: 11h42. Enough time to get my stuff together and make it back into the safe zone by 13h00.

***

I ran through a mental checklist as I heard the blast doors hiss shut behind me. I was typically decked out in my light weather attire: throwing knives in a sheath around my chest, a ballistic blade nestled by my hip next to a silenced pistol and a straight razor in my back pocket, all innocently hidden by my sweeping trench-coat. Slung over my shoulder was a bag with a few other assortments: a camera and some surveillance equipment.

I fizzed another half-
livewire
under my tongue, and started walking. The buzzing in my ears sharpened and became a clear, electric snapping, while my wandering thoughts focused on the task at hand.

Getting back into the quarantine was hardly a problem. Fewer patrols outside curfew times meant that jumping a rooftop just south of the checkpoint gave me easy access to the intact chunk of civilisation. The difference was jarring, every single time; the change from a barren, dilapidated waste to a regular-looking city centre was enough to jolt the hardiest observers. I vaulted through the air, feeling the wind ripple through my coat, before dispersing the impact with a classy roll. Admittedly, I could have simply walked across the alley, but sometimes I see no point in being a private investigator if I don’t allow myself a few stylish moments.

It loomed close to 13h00 when I arrived at the apartment block. It was a towering thing: a ghastly abomination-unto-architecture that reeked of over-modernisation. I clicked my tongue disapprovingly.

The receptionist smiled at me as I walked through the glass-drenched hall. She was pretty at first glance, but her eyes were a common brown and failed to hold a stare convincingly, while her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week. I bit my tongue, though: I was here on the job, and I had more important things to do than crush the spirit of some annoying creature.

“Good afternoon: how can I help you?” she said, cheerily—too cheerily for my tastes.

“I’m going to see a friend. Don’t worry, I know the way.”

She nodded. “Well then, enjoy your day!”

“You too,” I lied. A characteristically gaudy set of stairs led me up to the second floor. Two doors down the passage stood my destination,
202
embossed upon the wood in shiny metal. The lock was equally shiny, but easily yielded to a standard bump key. I was greeted by a stark wall of cool air as I stepped through into the crime scene.

The apartment itself was fairly expensive-looking, with lots of natural light flooding the entrance hall. First door on the right: bathroom. Second on the right: kitchen. A set of items on the granite counter grabbed my attention, a stack of photographs, two boxes—one small, the other the size of a shoebox—and a scanned report, stamped near the bottom by the residential armed forces official.

The report was the standard attempt of the armed forces to instill some control into their job. The murder rate was on the rise and this, coupled with the fact that the military was a far cry from a squad of detectives, meant that they could barely keep up at all. They weren’t stupid, but they were overworked. To compensate, they masked their work in bureaucracy and ineffective ‘military reports’. This one was no different, a four-line paragraph detailing the situation with utter indifference. The mother had visited her son’s apartment after not hearing from him for roughly a week, only to find both him and his wife dead. The armed forces were called in, and the official on-scene had determined that it was a murder-suicide. His conjecture was superficially supported by the fact that there seemed to be no forced entry, as well as the loaded gun in the husband’s hands. Gunpowder residue on his fingers confirmed that he had indeed fired the weapon.

For some reason, I wasn’t buying it. A glance at the personal photographs around the apartment told me that he wasn’t the kind of person to shoot a girl he clearly loved, and then end his own life. His father struck me as magnanimous through his posture, while the mother clearly doted on her son. It just didn’t add up.

I opened the boxes. In the small one lay a single gold ring: payment. It seemed legitimate, possessing the right density and sheen for real gold. Plus, if it turned out to be fake, it wouldn’t be hard to straighten things out. The shoebox contained a handgun, wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. I assumed this was the murder weapon. Finally, I rifled through the photographs while slowly walking into the bedroom. I closed my eyes, and the scene emerged before me.

Crumpled by the side of the bed, one arm outstretched in a futile defence, was the wife. Two bullet holes desecrated her chest, filling her lungs with blood and lead, each on either side of the heart. The window to her right had been spritzed in red droplets: these hung on the glass like engorged ticks. Closer to the door lay the husband, his back turned away from his dead spouse, a hole through his temple. Blood leaked from his eyes, and in his right hand was the very weapon I held now.

Eyes open. Eyes close. Rewind.

The body in front of me rose to its feet, the broken pieces of skull surging together and repairing themselves in a moment. The gun returned to the temple with the finger lifting off the trigger as I traced back what had happened.

Pause.

Something was profoundly wrong here. The shooter stared at me defiantly, until I quickly erased his assumed expression. There was something out-of-kilter here.

The wife.

She lay behind him. Her chest had raised slightly during the rewind: she wasn’t quite dead yet. So why didn’t he stare at her? Why did he turn his back to her?

Guilt? No. Anger? No. Repentance? Definitely not.

Murder-suicide shooters never look away. It’s just
wrong
. It makes no sense; they kill themselves because of what they’ve done, not in spite of it. They’re drawn to it, compelled by it. Why did he turn away?

There was something here. This definitely wasn’t a simple murder-suicide. There was something far more complex at work.

Rewind.

The handgun left his temple, descending into both his hands as his spouse traced back her fall. Blood sprang from the walls before draining out of the air and into her chest. Her right hand remained raised; her posture was frightened, and she was half-turned to the side in an attempt to make her body smaller. It was futile, and she knew it. In fact, she probably knew it better than he did.

Pause.

The scene froze again as the first bullet returned to the chamber. Now he was looking at her, gun outstretched in his two hands. Now he saw her.

Why did he turn away? What was it about this case that threw the psychology of the entire crime?

I couldn’t rewind any further. That brief instant before death is generally my stopping point; as I try extrapolating further, it becomes hazier and far less understandable. There was a picture frame lying face down in the room, just next to where her body had fallen. I picked it up.

The glass was cracked, but the picture was still clear: the married couple together on a boat. It looked like the Mediterranean, and was clearly taken before 2012. People don’t go on holiday any more. Had she held it up as a plea? An attempt to reason, to connect, to remind?

My thoughts were distracted by a dim grating sound above me. Someone was moving furniture around. I took out a throwing knife, stood on the bed, and tapped the ceiling lightly.

The grating continued. I struck the ceiling a second time, with a lot more force, and this time my efforts were rewarded with a second of silence. The person upstairs had heard the second knock.

Was there a silencer? No neighbours had reported hearing gunshots.

I smiled, and took out the handgun.

No silencer.

My doubts had been rewarded. Had he hidden the silencer? I seemed to recall reading about the muting effects of the human skull somewhere, once. Had someone else taken the silencer? Why?

I had a new destination in mind: I needed the counsel of someone in the medical field. I knew exactly who to talk to.

I had a very special nightclub to visit.

***

The Midnight Hour was located on the edge of the gutterage, close enough to the safe zone to avoid trouble, but nonetheless outside the effective jurisdiction of the armed forces. This was not only convenient, but vital. It began as a night-time lounge and was notable for its easy trance music, its comfortable array of bean-bags and sofas, and the hot chocolate it served on tap. Notable, but not famous. Another aspect that made the place ‘notable’ was the vast array of devices the adorned the walls, large hooks, chains and ropes of all thicknesses, riding crops, blindfolds, low-power stun guns, dog collars—both standard and electrified—and even a cat o’ nine tails. What really made this club famous, in its own underground way, was that these objects were used. Frequently.

During the instability of 2012—and in wake of the military curfew—the Midnight Hour had closed. However, scant months after the quarantine boundaries were set, it simply opened again. There was no great declaration, and I doubt many people even know the exact date of revival. I certainly don’t. The mood was different, though, even edgier and more broody than before—tensed, coiled and waiting to pounce.

One night, the inexplicable happened. A woman, out of her mind on
angel-rage
, removed a hook from the walls and fed it through her left shoulder before diving onto her partner for the evening. The grinning flesh simply followed suit. A far sight from the casual-yet-edgy bar it was, the Midnight Hour is now the prime establishment for the skull-ravenous (skaverous?), the amoral, the versatile, the depraved and the sadomasochistic.

All in all, it was my kind of crowd.

A defining feature of the Midnight Hour was the doctor who worked there, known for her pretty green eyes and her affinity for scalpels. She was as close a friend to me as Vincent was, and an expert in more than one medical field. Valerie, however, was of the train of thought that her computer was for her convenience and not that of others. As such, contacting her electronically was almost always an exercise in futility.

I didn’t mind. I preferred meeting her in person.

By the time I arrived, the dance floor had already started to fill. The sun had set just as I stopped by the Helix Institute, mainly to eat and get another cap of
livewire
. I wasn’t hungry and the bread was hard enough to deflect a bullet, but I hadn’t eaten in almost two days and I could feel myself getting weak.

Weakness went either way at the Midnight Hour. If you were of that ilk, being outwardly weak made you an ideal target for the club’s more predatory members. I wasn’t that type of patron.

A handful people nodded to me as I walked in. I knew some of them by name. I’d slept with some of them. A few fell into both categories. I acknowledged some in return as I moved over to the bar. Everyone called the bartender Dante; this was due to the large and appropriate lettering above the counter: “
Through me the way to eternal pain
.”

It wasn’t the only piece of quoted literature in the club. Around the walls were many others, all with their own special touch and relevance.

“
The abyss gazes also into you
” above the doorway to the upstairs Wasp Gallery,

“
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair
” across the exit, and

“
Illusion is the first of all pleasures
” above the entrance to the main lounge.

Even these were eclipsed in stature by the burnished steel prose above the main entrance, in the immortal words of the Marquis de Sade: “
Shudder. Tremble. Anticipate. Obey
.”

I leaned over the counter, caught Dante’s eye and placed the gold ring from earlier on the counter.

“Add this to my tab.”

He nodded without hesitation. He knew me. He knew everyone. I spoke again.

“Get me something potent,” I began, and after casting a lingering glance on a quiet-looking girl next to me: “and make it two.”

I turned to the girl. She was pretty in a muted way, dolorous blues mingled melancholically with her dark hair and eyes. I smiled at her, at which she raised an eyebrow.

“Now you’d have to be damn antisocial if I have to finish both of them,” I whispered.