Feeding Frenzy #2
It was still early, not yet 7:15. Between the still-shadowed buildings of the city the trapped sky through the bus windows was struggling to widen its paler streaks.
He liked the city like this; its somnolence soothed him.
The illusion of tranquillity did not last long, however.
When he turned the corner into Edward Street, where Hanson’s was, he had to halt a moment to take everything in.
Three panda cars were parked on double yellows outside Starbucks across the road.
Uniformed police were erecting an incident barrier around the entrance of the alleyway that cut between Hanson’s and its neighbour, Muji.
A group of Adam’s work colleagues were standing around, looking shocked or dazed, some clustered around the assistant manager, Rachel, who was weeping.
Adam walked forward until he was in earshot of a plump curly-haired guy smoking a cigarette, whose name he tried but failed to remember.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The curly-haired guy looked at him without expression. “Some bloke’s been murdered in the alley,” he said. “Rachel found him.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You reckon so, do you?”
“No, I just meant…I’m shocked, that’s all. What happened?”
Curly shrugged. He would have seemed lethargic if it hadn’t been for the way his hand kept jerking his cigarette to his mouth. “Dunno. Sounds like the guy was stabbed and dumped.”
“Jesus. So what’s going to happen now? Are they going to let us in?”
“Not yet. They’re going to cordon off this part of the street until they’ve searched it. They want us to wait in Starbucks until they decide whether to question us or not.”
Clutching his cappucino twenty minutes later, Adam observed the police activity through the window, which seemed to consist of various people rushing in and out of the alleyway.
Though he was sitting at a table with five others, he still felt out on a limb until Jacinta came over and knelt beside him. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi. How are you?”
“Well, I was hungover, but this seems to have cured it – not that that’s a good thing. It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
Adam nodded. “It seems unreal.”
“I’ve been looking after Rachel. She’s in a terrible state.”
“I bet she is. Has she said much?”
“More than I’d want to hear.”
Her voice had been getting quieter, and his with it, as if each in turn had been taking a cue from the other. Despite the circumstances Adam liked the fact that she had chosen him to confide in, if that was what she was doing, or about to. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Unburden myself, you mean?”
“If that’s what you feel you need.”
She shuddered. “What Rachel saw sounds like something out of one of your books.”
Adam tried not to grimace. “The books I read aren’t anything like real. This is.”
Briefly she closed her eyes, as if that might deny the reality. “It’s horrible.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, I need to. I need to get it out of me.” She leaned close enough for him to feel the warmth of her breath on his face.
“The guy Rachel found had been killed by a pair of scissors, but that’s not all.
Whoever had killed him had cut his stomach open and pulled out his intestines.
But Rachel said that even worse than that was that the guy had had his lips and eyelids and ears cut off.
She said they were scattered round his head like…
” She made a sound that was not quite a groan and not quite a gag, but that released a rush of breath that smelled of stale coffee.
“Don’t go on,” Adam said, less as a plea for Jacinta to be spared than himself.
His head felt suddenly stuffed with a darkness that seemed to pulse in tandem with his heart, and that threatened to drag him into an even darker place within itself.
Jacinta looked taken aback at his abruptness, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to explain his reaction – not even to the police, who let them all return to work just before mid-day.
Although the police had spoken to Rachel at some length, they hadn’t felt a need to question anyone else.
Adam was grateful, but he felt guilty for not having shared his insight with them.
The problem was that he couldn’t see how he could and not be regarded as the main suspect.
On the other hand, if someone were to stumble across the passage in Satan’s Beast, which was in his jacket pocket, wouldn’t his silence be viewed with even greater suspicion?
As soon as he got into work, he locked himself in a toilet cubicle and transferred the book from his jacket to his trousers.
For the rest of the afternoon he carried it around with him, aware of its weight and shape, fearing that its very presence would incriminate him.
It wasn’t the murder weapon, but Adam found himself regarding it as though it was.
His mind was on anything but his work, though he was toiling mechanically and efficiently enough, when he felt a hand on his arm.
He spun round to confront the store manager, Nigel, who asked if he might have a word.
Adam followed Nigel up to the first floor, where outside contractors were transforming an area as wide as two tennis courts into a café.
At the top of a set of stepladders stood the bottom half of a man whose backside was swelling out of a pair of dusty jeans.
The red and grey loops depending from the square hole in the ceiling through which he had thrust his top half were not intestines, but electrical wires sheathed in plastic.
Adam tried to swallow the lump in his throat as Nigel led him to a pair of plump leather armchairs clad in polythene.
“Might as well sit in comfort,” he said, lowering himself with a crackle.
Adam had to adjust the rectangular bulge in his pocket to follow suit. Nigel’s sharp, bird-like features on his balding, disconcertingly scaly head remained deadpan as he remarked, “I hope you’re not relieving us of stock.”
Adam laughed, though felt certain his voice was thick with guilt. “It’s just a book I’ve brought from home.”
“Oh? What are you reading?”
Was Nigel asking him to produce the book to prove he hadn’t stolen it, or did he know more than he was letting on? “It’s just a trashy thing. A bit of easy reading. Oliver’s already made me feel embarrassed about it.”
“Has he? That’s not the sort of thing I want to hear. I’d rather we all pulled together, especially after this morning.”
Adam couldn’t help feeling he’d avoided one trap only to step into another. “He was only messing about.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of that,” said Nigel, “as long as it doesn’t go too far.” The polythene crackled as he leaned forward. “Team spirit’s important to me, Adam. That’s why I wanted us to have this chat.”
“It’s important to me too,” said Adam, “to get on with the people I work with, I mean. If you’re wondering why I didn’t come out last night it’s just that I couldn’t afford it. I’m getting divorced from my wife and my finances are a bit tight.”
Nigel raised a hand as scaly as the dome of his head, which Adam at first took to mean that he didn’t want to hear any excuses. The corner of Satan’s Beast was pressing into his thigh. He shifted position, but the crackle of polythene felt like an attempt to draw attention to the book.
“I’m not interested what you do outside of work. Or rather, I am, but what I mean is, your time there is your own. The only commitment I’ll ask from you is to the store.”
“I am committed,” said Adam.
“Or should be, you mean.”
“Sorry?”
“Just my little joke.”
Each time Nigel moved, Adam couldn’t help thinking that the crackle came from him and not the chair, that his dry skin was a brittle sheath he might be in the process of emerging from. The wires drooping from the ceiling suddenly drew in with a muffled clatter, making Adam jump.
“Don’t think I’m singling you out, Adam,” Nigel was saying. “I’m having these chats with everyone, only sooner than I might have done after what happened today. How has the incident affected you, do you think?”
Adam shrugged. “Well, it was a shock obviously, but I guess you just have to put it out of your mind, get on with your job.”
“That’s the kind of attitude I’m hoping everybody shares.”
“I’m sure they will.”
“I’m sure so too. I think we’ve got a good team here.”
On the bus on the way home, Adam felt encased in a cloud composed of minute flakes of cardboard.
He’d been disembowelling boxes all afternoon, scooping out their innards of books to fill the ranks of scrupulously-dusted new shelves.
Satan’s Beast was still pressing against his thigh like a lover’s hand.
As he had left the store he had expected his stiffly nervous walk to arouse the suspicions of at least one of the policemen guarding the entrance to the murder site, but he had walked past them unchallenged.
When he stepped off the bus he waited for it to round the corner, then plucked Satan’s Beast from his pocket.
Folding at the knees, he posted the paperback through two of the bars of a drain beside the kerb, and was already walking away when he heard the faint plop below.
Twenty minutes later, a mug of tea in his hand and Debussy on his portable CD player, Adam felt not only calmer but able to think more clearly than he had all day.
Of course the murder had nothing to do with him.
It was an appalling coincidence; the killer had probably read Satan’s Beast and sought to imitate it.
There was even the possibility that the killer could be one of his work mates who had got the idea from browsing through the book that Adam had left in the break room.
After all, he had only known them for a couple of days; some of them he had barely exchanged a word with.
Who was to say that one of them wasn’t capable of murder?