Death & the City Book Two (53 page)

Before closing and locking the car, I reach behind the front seats and find my rucksack. More work stuff for Connor to think about. Just in case he thinks calling me over in the middle of the night means something else. At the last minute I remember to grab my phone back out of the dashboard slot as well, and find a missed text message from him saying:
In the office walk through X.
I'm glad, as it reassures me he's not playing a new game, like suggesting I find him in the bedroom, or play
Hide-And-Seek
with the lights off. Now that would end up as Murder In The Dark.

I walk in through the open garage door, past his black Audi, and find the utility room door unlocked at the rear. As I let myself through, the garage door starts to close behind me automatically. I shut the utility room door also, and head through to the kitchen.

The downstairs lights are all on, I'm relieved to see. I pass through the kitchen and by the tropical fish-tank in the living-room wall, where the various Angels and Butterflies flock back and forth in response to movement, begging for food like any other family pet.

"In here," Connor calls me over in a low voice, and I cross the large living-room to the smaller study in the corner. Its windows are currently walls of inky blackness through the slats of the vertical blinds, which in daylight would be overlooking the sanctuary of the deer park, woods, and the un-illuminated main driveway outside. Connor's got his back to me in the leather-backed swivel office chair, watching something on multi-screen layout on his computer monitor. As I approach, it's immediately recognisable as a CCTV live feed. "I got you another chair already."

"Cool." I put the rucksack down between us and sit down on the other office chair, identical to the first. It smells like new, but I decide not to mention it. "Got some evidence from the FTO incident the other day for you. Camera film I took at the scene, and something taken out of a livestock casualty they thought was a wooden tent peg. Thought you might want to have a look at them in Forensics."

"Cheers." He opens the top of the rucksack and feels inside, taking out the clear plastic hygiene bag from the vet's, and turning over the now dried-out bloody contents. "Yeah, looks familiar. You don't process your own film any more, then?"

"Not for a long time. Besides, it's colour."

"Won't be a problem." He puts the evidence bag on the shelf next to him. "Not a lot for us two to look at on here at the moment. Just recording vehicle registrations for back trace, and identifying any unfamiliar faces on site. Stick here, I'll get us a coffee."

He gets up out of his seat and smiles at me, giving my straightened blonde ponytail a bit of a tug through his fingers in passing, on his way out. I'm used to that. Doorman Harry used to do it all the time when we first worked together, like checking it was my real hair. Then I took it as a form of hello, until eventually I found out he did talk, but his stock greeting was simply to announce that he wants to punch somebody. I don't know where he learned his social skills, and even less about how he managed to get married.

I peel off my work blazer and let it hang over the back of the chair, really wanting to put my feet up on the desk, having been standing for five hours at work. But I don't know Connor's house rules about that sort of thing, especially considering technically it's not his house. Anyway, if it all goes pear-shaped, it's just more prints and evidence to clean up, I think, resting one foot up on the other knee instead, and inspecting the tread of my boot for glass. I lever out any fragments I find with my car key while watching the screen idly. The first chip of glass is small and green, and I deposit it on the desk, while the second shard, firmly wedged in, emerges like a mature shark tooth. I look at it in mild dread, before measuring it against the edge of my boot. Would have been through to the lining. I hope that doesn't mean soggy socks next time it rains.

A resident, or visitor, emerges from the rear of the house on one of the CCTV images in front of me. He goes to one of the cars in the main car-park, opening the boot, and rummaging inside.

I touch the screen to zoom in briefly, and press the icon for Print Screen Capture when the man pulls something out, before slamming the boot again. Connor's printer starts up as I restore the screen size, watching the subject head back indoors, unawares. Within a few seconds I've got a nice colour snapshot under the parking lot security lighting, of a bottle of antifreeze.

"Is it a dinner or cocktail party?" I ask Connor, holding it up to show him, as he returns from the kitchen with coffee. "Someone just took that out of the boot of the green Jag. Not sure if they were playing Borgia Roulette in there or not."

Connor puts the coffee down, and opens another window on the monitor to replay the micro-event.

"Yeah, this is why you and I still have jobs," he sighs, sending the sequence as an email to head office before closing the additional window again. "To spot the stuff people are playing with that doesn't have an arms signature that a scanner can detect. Wonder why he's resorted to using that. Maybe the cheap Spanish Fly he ordered over the net isn't convincing him, or he's made a dirty punchbowl and thinks he diluted it too much."

"What's he up to?" I query.

"Trying to make zombies to play with." Connor sips his coffee. "Playing Mad Scientist with alcohol."

"If he wants pissed-up zombies, he should just get himself a bus and wait outside The Plaza at kick-out time," I remark. "It's like
Sean Of The Dead
in the car-park every night."

"Yeah, but those are temporary, they sober up. I think he's going for the permanent brain damage effect. Trying to create a special party piece for a different kind of party he's been planning."

"Is anyone else on his case at the moment?" I put my keys down, and pick up my coffee.

"Yeah, there are two guys on the inside, and they're doing their best drinking game sabotage." Connor picks up the glass fragments I've levered out of my boots so far, and drops them into the wastepaper basket under the desk. "Private rewards for proof of undeads, or
Necromorphs
,
are way above the old school hit-man contracts you deal with. Specially by those with an interest in living forever and not ageing, in which to enjoy their money. But of course guys like this one, trying to fake a few zombies to collect a reward, don't know that side of it. He just knows about the money he'll come into if he succeeds in his con. He doesn't know that he'll be found out as a fraud soon as the buyers run a few medical and scientific exams, looking to distil the secret of eternal life. As far as he knows, they're fetish collectors, or Great White Man-Hunters with an Undead Game Reserve somewhere. I've met a few of those in Pest Control. Guy with his vampire donkeys. Bought them off a farmer in Mongolia. Turned out they'd just been fed a carnivorous diet of milk, blood and their deceased dried siblings because of lack of vegetation in their home territory - soon as he got them back to his ranch in South America, they were munching on grass and shrubs, happy as Larry, getting fat and breeding like rabbits."

"What did he do?"

"Called us lot. Said they were cursed. I sold them on for him as working stock, to places he wouldn't be scared they'd find him again once they got their taste for blood back." Connor grins to himself in recollection. "Obsession with the dark side of fairytales is all good while they think they're in control of it, but not when they think it's hiding under their bed, or crawling up the U-bend to bite them on the butt."

"Wow," I agree, taking a sip of my drink. "They really are like kids believing in stories. And I thought I was bad for that."

"The difference is, you know yours are a psychosis because you made them up in your own head out of your own personalities," he points out. "The others out there believe stuff from folklore, that's printed in history or handed down in legends, or found on the Net or popularized in fiction. Anything with a common self-reinforcing illusion can lay claim to be a qualified account in the mind of people like that."

"They've only got each other's word for it," I observe. Recalling some similar feeling myself recently. Starting to work alongside Connor, and his free admissions to finding my buttons to push in his favour.

"Yeah, but then guys like this comedian here try to manufacture other proof for them, because there's money in it," says Connor. "Round up a few tramps, get them hammered, turn them into live mummies, that kind of thing."

"No wonder the tramps in town all seem to be carrying a grudge at the moment," I remark. "Like the one I caught out back of 21 Black's with an iron bar, hoping to clonk a doorman or customer, by the look of things."

Connor leans back in his chair and rests his feet up on the desk.

"Who was on the door that night?" he asks, and it sounds a bit too casual, like his deliberate change of posture. I don't imitate it, wary of showing myself up either way by being too cautious, or showing too much effort in mirroring. I realise I'm also using both hands to hide behind my coffee mug self-consciously, in the short pause, and lower it again slightly.

"Er…" I hesitate, giving myself time to see if I've misjudged it, but he just sips his coffee and acts idle with what could be convincing continuity. "Salem Du Boise and Tony Blackman, I seem to recall. I could be wrong."

"Not all homeless folks are on the look-out for each other," Connor grunts. "Some are only looking out for themselves. Playing for the other team to make a fast buck. Hollywood homeless hit-men."

"Are they the ones Warren uses for target practice?" I query.

"Sounds like the kind of thing he'd do," Connor smirks, putting his mug back down. "Put your feet up if you want. Take your boots off first."

I do as he suggests, glad of the invitation. He moves the wastepaper basket out from under the desk, puts it next to his seat, and picks up one of my boots, turning it over to look for more glass. He pulls out a drawer in the desk and finds a penknife, opening the screwdriver attachment.

"You're going to need new ones soon," he mutters, prising out yet another piece of beer-bottle the size of a shark's tooth.

"Oh, good - another excuse to buy shoes," I joke, and he grins. I start to feel more comfortable.

"Speaking of shoes, have you packed for Vegas yet?" he asks, one eye on the CCTV still. "Just wondering if I'm keeping you from the usual girly tradition of being late getting ready for everything."

"Guess I'm not that traditional, then." I twirl my coffee mug.

"Shocking, coming from you." He switches boots. "Have to say, though, I'm the same. Got suitcases I never unpack. My short notice cases, you could say."

I nod. He's definitely pinned the tail on that particular donkey.

"Anything similar on the radar at the minute for you?" I ask, uncertain whether I've missed a hint.

"Maybe." He drops another chunk of glass into the basket. "Head office might have mentioned something. I get calls from Pest Control sometimes, that they want to piggy-back jobs onto the back of."

"Population control?" I ask, thinking about him shooting goats out of a helicopter.

"Some culling, some re-location, some disease migration issues." He picks up his mug for a mouthful of coffee, and puts it back down again. "Poachers can be a problem too. Different kind of pests."

The resident on screen emerges again, to replace the antifreeze bottle back in the boot of the Jag.

"Think he had anything to do with the holes dug in the woods?" I suggest.

"Drinking game losers gotta end up somewhere," Connor agrees, putting the boot back on the floor and the penknife away again. "Looks like I might be doing a bit of travelling as well this week, anyway. Means I'll come back and find my fridge full of Yuri's weird salami, and pickled God knows what, that he likes to stock up on while he's on stakeout here. I'll bring you back a present."

"Cool, thank you," I nod, finishing my drink and putting the empty mug down. "Just as long as it's not a tropical disease."

"Might discover a new one. You could name it."

My brain finds the entertainment value of this idea a bit too diverting, as I wonder how many variations I can think up on the theme of 'Door Lurgy.'

"Ah - you didn't find this on the computer the other day when you were here, did you?" he says suddenly, opening a new window on the screen. "The Director's Cut of Grayson's fake snuff movie. Forensics had it."

I watch the replay on the screen. It's a bit longer, typically self-indulgent from an artistic perspective. But it's the alternate ending that's of particular note.

"If you want a job done properly, call a licensed professional…" I echo.

"Not the local cowboy," Connor adds, completing the quote. "It was his contract killer advertising commercial. Still kind of tongue-in-cheek. A bit Monty Python sketch, when you think about it. It ended up cut out and circulated as snuff film fodder by Facebuddy users. When head office finally found this version, that was when they called him and said:
Buddy, who do you think 'the professionals' are, exactly?
And found out he'd been stalking you looking for evidence. He was dropping hints all right that something was going on, but he wanted in on it too. They reckoned it was only a matter of time otherwise, if they hadn't caught him, that he ended up taking cash jobs in his ambulance and ending up on the To Do List. The only reason he hadn't so far, was his commercial had been edited by viral pirates as soon as it went live on ViewTube."