The Book With No Name (43 page)

Scraggs had taken the call from Captain Rockwell and had reacted immediately. Rockwell’s instructions were precise, and he had made it very clear that they were to be followed to the letter. The last thing he had said remained imprinted on Scraggs’s brain. ‘
Get there as soon as you can and take charge of the situation. Don’t under any circumstances touch anything, I mean ANYTHING, until you’ve spoken to me first.
’

After a dramatic stoplight-running twenty-minute race in his squad car he had arrived at the House of the Mystic Lady and immediately realized that he had to act fast if Rockwell’s orders were to be followed. There were already four other squad cars parked outside and half a dozen uniformed officers milling around cordoning off the immediate area with orange crime-scene tape. Scraggs jumped out of his car and jogged over to the nearest cop, a tubby man leaning against one of the squad cars and speaking into a cellphone. Scraggs recognized him as Diesel Borthwick, a fairly lazy, underachieving foot-patrol officer.

‘Hey, Diesel, I’m in charge here now,’ he barked as he approached the paunchy, middle-aged officer. ‘What’s the current situation?’

Borthwick looked moderately irritated by the arrival of Lieutenant Scraggs, probably because it was interrupting his conversation. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he muttered into his phone before ending the call and turning his attention to Scraggs. ‘Well, Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘we have one dead body. A sixty-year-old female, or thereabouts. Her head’s on a coat hook
behind the door, and the rest of the body is propped up in a chair behind a desk, with the exception of the eyes and tongue. Which are missing, sir.’

‘We got any leads yet?’

Borthwick stopped leaning against the car and stood up straight.

‘Yeah,’ he replied in a weary voice. ‘We got a witness who says she saw Freddy Krueger run out of here in a hurry this morning. Apparently he drove off in a silver Porsche. No licence plate, though.’

‘
Freddy Krueger?
’ said Scraggs quizzically.

‘Fancy-dress costume, sir. It’s Lunar Festival, remember … Detective?’

From over by the front entrance to the house Scraggs heard a banging sound. He turned to see where it was coming from. The door of the house was swinging back and forth in the wind.

‘Anything else?’ he asked, grimacing at the head that he had just noticed was impaled on the back of the door.

‘Yeah, I have a theory, sir.’

Scraggs looked back at Diesel Borthwick in surprise. The laid-back officer was not known for having much more than half a brain, so it was unusual to hear him voice any kind of opinion or suggestion.

‘Really? What is it?’ Scraggs asked.

‘I suspect suicide,’ said Borthwick, smirking.

‘You fucking idiot.’ Disgusted, Scraggs marched over to the house. Two other uniformed officers were standing at the bottom of the steps leading up to the door, guarding the entrance. Scraggs barged between them, brushing shoulders with both as neither bothered to move aside to give him any room. He stepped in through the front door, glancing only briefly at the misshapen head impaled on the coat hook. Inside he saw the shambles that had been made the night before. Blood everywhere, chairs overturned, the torso of the Mystic Lady in a chair at the table directly in front of him. And Officer Adam Quaid flicking through the pages of a large hardback
book lying on the table.

‘Hey, Quaid! What the fuck are you doing?’ Scraggs snapped at him.

Quaid looked up, startled, for he hadn’t heard Scraggs walk in. Almost as a reflex, he saluted his superior officer, even though it wasn’t necessary. Saluting was old hat in Santa Mondega, and pretty much the only reason for doing it was as an instinctive reaction to being caught doing something improper by a senior officer.

‘I found this book on the table, Lieutenant. I really think you should take a look at it,’ Quaid mumbled nervously.

‘Leave the book and wait outside until I give you further instructions,’ Scraggs ordered. ‘The Captain is on his way, and he’ll be pretty pissed if he sees you flicking through the evidence. He’s specifically ordered that nothing is to be touched.’

‘But sir,’ said Quaid, pointing at the open book on the table. ‘I really think you should take a look at this.’

‘I SAID OUT!’ yelled Scraggs. ‘Leave the goddam book and wait outside!’

‘Yessir,’ mumbled the cop, apologetically.

Scraggs tried to stare at Quaid in an intimidating fashion as the overweight, doughnut-loving officer passed him sheepishly on his way out. It wasn’t possible to eyeball him, though, because Quaid was looking down at his feet like a naughty schoolboy. Scraggs watched him walk to the entrance, shaking his head as the mumbling fool shied away as far as he could from the Mystic Lady’s head on his way out of the door.

Nothing to do now but wait, then?
Scraggs thought to himself.
The Captain should be here within twenty minutes. Should I tell him that one of the officers has been flicking through the book on the desk? Hmm, maybe not. It’ll only piss him off.

It took only five minutes of indecision about whether to stare at the Mystic Lady’s head or the rest of her corpse for Scraggs to become restless and impatient for the Captain to
arrive.
So what is in this goddam book?
he mused.
Surely it won’t hurt to look at the pages that are open on the desk, just so long as I don’t touch them?

He sidestepped gingerly over to the table, all the while looking out of the front door in case Captain Rockwell appeared and caught him nosing. His hip touched the side of the table and he looked down at the book, which was at such an angle relative to his position that it was all but upside down. Something on the open page caught his eye immediately. He turned to get a better look.
Could that be …? Surely not?
With one finger he edged the book round on the table so that he could look at it the right way up. Sure enough, his eyes had not deceived him. He had just seen what Officer Quaid had been looking at.

Oh fucking hell!

Peto had very little idea what the whole fancy-dress thing was about, but Kyle had convinced him that they should be joining in with the festivities. The previous morning they had hired a couple of outfits. Although they didn’t know who the Cobra Kai were, both of them took quite a shine to the costumes. They had been informed by the owner of the fancy-dress store that the Cobra Kai were a gang of martial-arts experts from a film called
The Karate Kid.
The outfits were made of a rugged thick black material. The pants were baggy and comfortable, while the sleeveless wraparound jackets had a rather artistic depiction of a yellow cobra sewn on to the back. For the first time in their lives, Kyle and Peto had an idea of what it felt like to look cool.

They had waited outside the Nightjar for about twenty minutes before they were forced to accept that Dante wasn’t going to show. Peto was disappointed by this because he had warmed to the young man, and considered him to be one of the more pleasant people they had encountered during their time in Santa Mondega. It seemed that one of two things might have happened. Either Dante hadn’t shown up and had never intended to, or he had shown up early, seen the Nightjar had been closed down, and had therefore gone on somewhere else. It was the second option that led Kyle and Peto to try their luck in the Tapioca. They needed to hurry, though, because time was running short. A glance at the sky suggested that the moon and the sun would intersect very soon.

Jogging at a brisk pace through the streets towards the Tapioca, they quickly realized that they were quite literally
racing against the moon. It stayed one step behind them the whole way, edging ever closer to the sun, which was now hanging directly above the centre of Santa Mondega.

After fighting their way through the ever-growing crowds in the streets they eventually made it to the Tapioca, but with very little time to spare. As they trotted up to the entrance they knew that they didn’t have time to make any sort of plan, so they just headed straight in through the front doors. Once inside, Peto was quick to notice that there was trouble brewing at one of the tables. Some quite ridiculously dressed characters all seemed to be beating up on a guy wearing a black leather outfit and a pair of dark sunglasses. It looked like some kind of torture, although Peto couldn’t be sure because he was trying very hard not to get caught staring.

They made their way over to the bar. Sanchez, as always, was behind it, only today he was dressed in a curious tight outfit with a black hood over much of his head and face. Both had been rather unnerved by all the fancy-dress outfits they’d seen because a lot of them looked so real, and for the most part they didn’t know who the costume wearers were supposed to be. As he always did in potentially tricky situations, Peto wisely left Kyle to do the initial talking.

‘Two glasses of water please, Sanchez,’ Kyle requested.

‘Hey, Robin, get the two monks a coupla beers … on the house,’ Sanchez ordered Mukka. Then he turned back to Kyle and Peto. ‘And by the way, you two, I’m not Sanchez today. I’m Batman.’

‘Bat …
man?
’ said Kyle, registering how clever it was of Sanchez to put the two words together to form one. ‘I like it. Great costume,’ he went on. ‘So what have all these other people come as?’

‘Well,’ said Sanchez quietly, leaning towards them and gesturing at the table where the action was taking place. ‘Listen carefully to this, ’cos it’s important. See those two guys dressed as cowboys? That’s Carlito and Miguel, a pair of mean bastards who work for El Santino. The guy in the red-and-black stripy sweater with the mask on, that’s Jefe, the
bounty hunter you’ve been looking for. The big fella with the black-and-white face paint, that’s The Man, Santino himself. But I think mostly you’ll be interested in that guy in the black leather jacket with the sunglasses on. He’s come as the Terminator, and he had your blue stone with him, too.’

‘He
did?
I mean,
he has?
’ Kyle found himself half asking, half stating.

‘Sure, he did, but now Jefe, the guy in the stripy sweater and mask, has got it.’

Peto knew that this was their cue. There was no time to drink or for conversation of any kind. The sole reason they were here was to get the Eye of the Moon back before the eclipse, which was due at any minute, possibly any second. Not without trepidation they approached the table, Kyle leading the way with Peto at his shoulder, as usual. El Santino, the very large man with long dark hair and a black-and-white painted face, was interrogating the Terminator. Miguel was standing at the Terminator’s side with a fist at the ready to administer any punishment if the young man gave any unsatisfactory answers to the big man’s questions.

‘Hey, Kyle,’ whispered Peto. ‘The one dressed as the Verminator? Isn’t that Dante?’

‘Yeah, I think you’re right. I guess he didn’t let us down after all.’

Dante looked as though he hadn’t had the right answers to most of the questions he was being asked because his face had swelled up and his nose was bleeding a little, suggesting that he had taken quite a beating. It was now or never for the two monks. Kyle went first, manoeuvring himself in front of Dante to get the full attention of his interrogators. Everyone at the table stopped what they were doing and looked in astonishment at this member of the Cobra Kai who was interrupting what was a very serious interrogation.

‘Excuse me,’ Kyle said politely, addressing the whole table but pointing at Jefe. ‘I understand that this gentleman here has something of ours. We would like it back, please.’ His tone was quiet and even, but there was a hint of steel in it.

The table went silent, and everyone looked at Kyle as if he was insane. Even Peto wasn’t convinced his partner had acted wisely.

‘Who the fuck are these two clowns?’ asked El Santino, standing up from his chair and kicking it violently backwards across the room.

‘I think they’re meant to be the Cobra Kai,’ answered Carlito, who sat unflinching by El Santino’s side.

‘Wow, cool!’ gasped Miguel like an excited child. ‘From
The Karate Kid,
right?’ He took a moment out from concentrating his attentions on thumping Dante and looked the two monks up and down. His face betrayed how impressed he was by their costumes, much to the annoyance of his boss. El Santino slammed a fist down on the table, almost smashing it in two with the sheer force he mustered from what had been a very short backlift. His nostrils were flared, and a vein in his forehead seemed to have appeared from nowhere and looked ready to burst.