Bad II the Bone (5 page)

3.

Soho, West Central London

Friday, July 5th

03.20am

DI John
Shaft
MacFarlane parked the car at the north side of Old Compton Street. He arrived with no fanfare and only when he had turned off the engine did he slide his emergency light on the roof of the jag and let it flash for a moment without leaving the car.
    He checked his mobile and swore. Y had tried to call him and somehow he had missed it. Y’s calls never languished on his mobile phone for too long because, on a level he did not quite understand, her presence required his full attention. He loved talking to her but most importantly he loved listening to her speak. It was the way she massaged her words with her tongue as they left her mouth, a husky female backbeat that cloaked her sentences, delivering them into the world with erections almost. Y could be talking bullshit – she never did – and he could happily luxuriate in how she delivered it. Then there was this mystical warrior princess thing she had going on with her sexy friends that was definitely a turn on. To her credit she never demanded attention - directly or through implication - but he felt she deserved it. Strange thing was she had a live-in lover and he presumed she was happy but for reasons he would one day look into he didn’t care. He decided to call her in the morning when he could give her his undivided attention.
    Soho was as blunt and unpretentious as always and he loved it for that. He loved the tacky neon lights, the smell of cigarette smoke, the dingy upstairs apartments and the aromas of stale beer. For this kind of summer weather the Pubs had spilled out their patrons onto the narrow pavements, conversation and laughter were everywhere. No one knew or cared what had happened not too far away at Soho Square.
    The party goes on.
    Tonight, even under the circumstances, he was glad to be here - in fact as long as he was away from Wood Green and any skinny women called Marcia he would be happy anywhere.
    The priority message he was acting on deserved his full attention even if he was on a date. This had been the only real day off he’d had in three weeks, a great excuse to ignore it but truth be told his mobile had saved him from a date worse than death.
     For single men like him it could be a jungle out there, inhabited by a menagerie of venomous female specimens who wanted to take a mate whether a member of the male persuasion wanted to participate in the dating rituals or not.
    He slid out of the black Jaguar saloon dressed in a grey Ralph Lauren polo neck, a dark Kenzo suit, Gucci loafers with no socks and adjusted the symmetry jacket. Shaft had a gifted sense of fashion and his quick glance in his rear view mirror, reminded him his standards remained high.

Operation Black Book was never a good place to find an ideal woman anyway unless introverted analysts who barely knew the difference between an Orc attacking them in World of Warcraft and an amorous advance in the real world was your thing. Romances at work had a tendency to end disa
strously for him anyway.

H
e had tried.

So DI MacFarlane
instead focused his efforts in a small obscure section of the Scotland Yard Operation whose funding sidestepped the Metropolitan Police bureaucracy and was kept hidden almost by its specialist category. The crimes he investigated featured heavily on the uncategorized ethnic crime fringe. The top brass had been able to kill two birds with one stone by forcing him to take this gig and making sure he never darkened the crime scenes of DI’s who do real police work ever again.
    John McFarland was not so easily ignored. Shaft, as the boys from Operation Trident preferred to call him because of his more than passing resemblance to a young Richard Roundtree - without the chest hair and tash – did not roll over for anyone. With an IQ of 160 he was a trained anthropologist, ambitious and confident. Shaft blazed a trail from Hendon to the streets with a detour in Africa, making as many enemies as he could along the way and some well placed friends too. Operation Black Book was supposed to neuter his drive, frustrate the shit out of him with no resources, no cases and no satisfaction. Instead his department reconnoitred resources from Operation Trident who dealt in cases of black-on-black crime – and begged, borrowed or stole what they needed. Who would take seriously a division that handled the unexplained, strange, religious and superstitious stuff – kinda like a ghetto X-Files.

Well h
e did and a few well positioned figures in the Met hierarchy did too.

Over the years the major cities in the UK were being a
dversely affected by cult, ritualistic, voodoo and urban myth related crimes. The many unexplained cold cases that fell between the cracks of rational explanation and involved the ethnic demographic did not rest well with the rank and file of the Metropolitan Police force. Fingers were being pointed and the Met spin doctors were struggling to shrug off the institutional racism label, hence his small department and its specific remit. The official line was that Black Book did not exist and that was fine by him. If it protected the sacred institution of Scotland Yard from the ridicule of sanctioning the investigation of spooks, myths and curses then that was a public relation coup for them.
    So with everything going on it was difficult keeping the dating game fun and the dates themselves regular - he didn’t like the idea of prowling nightclubs with the other bachelors like pack animals either. This required him to relax his standards and adapt a new method of meeting suitable women. With his expertise of human interaction and the importance of the highly evolved mating ritual of the human animal, online dating did not sit well with him. And that was his problem. Shaft didn’t see it as a means to an end; he viewed it as an anthropological blind alley. Not just another tool with its unique set of rules. Against all he believed in his savior was to be online dating and tonight had been his first face-to-face.
    They met at a restaurant of her choosing - which makes the rest of the story even more surreal - and at Wood Green of all places.
    The woman who walked in and greeted him was the spitting image of Popeye’s Olive Oyl and now he was beginning to understand why she never posted a photograph of herself in full cartoon glory, just choice snaps of her best bits.
    Their compatibility charts may have been in the high percentile but she ticked all the boxes for the wrong reasons. A woman with bigger feet than him was an immediate and unequivocal, ‘Hell no!’ But he must have been trapped in the moment because he gave her the benefit of the doubt. After all a woman who could write so well couldn’t be all bad, could they?
    Then she opened her mouth and spoke.
    By this time his jaw was dragging on the floorboards.
Marcia’s vocal tone was an impressive high end basso.

Damn!
    He must have been in shock because Shaft sidelined ‘the voice ting’ as a mere oddity and by now was holding his breath, expecting a reprieve in the form of just one pleasing character trait, to salvage the evening.
   
Please.
    He waited to exhale.
    Then all hell broke loose.

A clumsy
waiter spilt wine, stained dress and grievous bodily harm. Marcia may have been skeletal in frame but it took Shaft some doing to pry her off the waiter.

It was comforting to know the old edicts still applied and why Marcia was to be the object lesson in how our basal instincts still dominate even after mankind’s complete domination of the planet and to a lesser degree why women with big feet throw him off his game.

Providence came to his rescue and his bleeper went off - not that it mattered because he would have been out of there before his colleagues in blue turned up.
    A mobile phone call later and he was making his way to the West End, leaving his androgynous, anger challenged, Olive Oyl lookalike date far, far behind him.
    Shaft breathed his third sigh of relief and buried tonight’s incidents deeply in his mind. Ahead of him was the reason for his hasty arrival. The part of Soho Square near Frith and Greek Street was sealed off.
    Taking his time to observe his surroundings, Shaft casually walked over to the police cordon allowing the vibe - the smells, the feel and the gathering crowd’s reaction - to wash over him. He recognized the unmarked Astra’s and the Sprint vans and knew this had attracted the usual clique of hotshot DCI’s. Shaft’s involvement usually occurred when they hit a brick wall or became uncomfortable with the direction a case was taking. A call so soon was unusual.
    He began to step over the cordon and immediately he was approached by a uniformed officer.

He flashed his warrant card nonchalantly, s
topping him dead in his tracks.

Shaft sa
id.
    “I’m Detective Sergeant McFarlane, I need to see your SIO. A Detective Inspector John Duncan?”
    The officer looked around the area behind him, his eyes picking through the milling investigating team all engrossed in their work and bathed in light from powerful halogen lamps.
    He pointed to an area near the wrought iron fence that ran the perimeter.
    “He’s over there sir.”
    Shaft nodded, seeing only an outline at first smoking a cigarette. To his right was a lighted forensic tent with its flap pulled to one side. He could just see the CSI team, in their disposable Noddy suits, capturing as much evidence as possible around the body and blood splashed area. And the area was blood splashed. As if some crazed surrealist artist had thrown buckets of animal blood all over, creating a macabre sense of depth to his composition.
    That couldn’t have come from one man, surely.
    Snatching his eyes away from the carnage, he looked back to the detective, in his pale blue disposable suit and hesitated. The sewer mist was clearing from a slight breeze that had developed and he could just see the high cheek bones, full lips and smooth white skin. John - or did they mean Joan? – Dawson brought the cigarette from his lips with far too much elegance for Shaft’s liking.
    Shit!
    In a dancehall, all shadows and sparse lighting, you could forget yourself with this brother if you were inclined towards skinny women, except she, was a he. Recovery from the shock was slow, and trying not to make his bemusement apparent, he headed in the detectives direction, his curiosity well and truly whetted.
    The area smelled of urine, cars glistened under a layer of condensation enhanced from the street lamps above. Sound from the traffic behind him dramatically diminished some ways along. An ideal place for murder he thought.
    He eased past two uniforms talking to what he imagined were witnesses and came closer to the Detective who was standing alone, sniffling. Feeling as if he shouldn’t penetrate his personal space for some inexplicable reason, Shaft stood there only to see him lift his head to look up at him and watched the tears welling up in his eyes and trickling down his cheeks.
    Shaft swallowed.
    Was this a wind up or what?
    He had left one zone of weird shit behind him earlier and had just walked into another twilight zone. Uncertain of what his reaction should be, he decided to ignore the glistening tears and introduced himself with an outstretched hand.
    “I’m Detective Sergeant McFarlane, Black Book.”
He turned slightly into the shadows his expression even more maudlin and decided his attention should remain where it was and gave him his hand. The detective snapped off his gloves and shook his hand. It was cold but a solid grip.
    “Detective Dawson,” he said with an unusually cadence.“A waste of life.”
    “Excuse me?” Shaft said.
    “A waste of life,” Dawson repeated with more clarity.
    “You know the victim?” Shaft asked.
    “All life has significance, detective.”
    Shaft’s speech was measured.
    “Boss!” he started with care, “You may not realize this,” he lied. “But you have just taken me away from a beautiful woman and a confirmed invitation for coffee with the possibility of breakfast.  It’s not for me to comment on your life philosophy, detective but just tell me why I’m here and if you get around to it, how you got my personal phone number?”
    “Of course, of course,” he said calmly, “I sometimes forget not everyone is as focused on their work as I tend to be.”
    Shaft’s nod of agreement seemed to lament the state of the Metropolitan Police Force personnel as Dawson did. He watched the detective’s red lips annunciate his words.
    “Have you ever realised too late that you were not fulfilling your vast capabilities, detective?” Shaft breathed in to answer but Dawson was already away.
    “That was the predicament I found myself in. My true calling would have been with the Flying Squad.”
    Shaft just couldn’t see it.
    “Nothing can rival the cut and thrust of tracking down the perpetrators using sheer cunning. Analyzing their motives, drives and snaring them because they are slaves to their impulses. Outwitted, outsmarted, outdone.”
    “Right!” Shaft said thinking what next and trying to sound as focused and reasonable as possible. That didn’t work, especially when you were standing in close proximity to a colleague who had a definite sexual thing going on with this investigation.
    He casually stepped out of arm’s reach. Dawson’s orgasmic zeal withered and he shook his head.
    “Instead for my sins, this...”
     He motioned disdainfully to the forensic tent, the investigating teams and the intense halogen lamps. Shaft in the meantime was still looking for some of the boys from Operation Trident to leap out and start rolling around with laughter.
    He was disappointed.
    Dawson grinned.
    “You’ll need this.” The DCI motioned to the Noddy suit with plastic booties to slip over his shoes and a dust guard for his mouth.
    “To answer your question I made my duty more bearable by analyzing cold cases from the Sweeney and a case of yours came up and held my interest.”
    Even if Dawson saw Shaft’s impatience, he wasn’t in the least concerned. He had trapped a captive audience and he had no intention of letting go.
    “This case in point had the Flying Squad in particular, and Scotland Yard in general, very worried, indeed.”
    Shaft groaned, knowing he was about to be dumped on with facts and figures from a closed file he had more than enough knowledge about because he was the one who closed it.
    “Eight jobs around the country, that we know of - four witnesses killed, netting them over five million pounds in antiquities and mystic curiosities, no leads and no arrests. Much later we realised it was all organized by the enigmatic figure of Enoch Lacombe, a Jamaican national, whose followers believed him to be a Voodoo priest of the highest order. A man we knew nothing about until someone in his own group set him up and only then by sheer accident you were able to corner him.”