Bad II the Bone (6 page)

Dawson slipped his gloves back on.
    “Enoch’s right hand man – the one that turned on him – he acquired the team from the South London drug Don called Deacon. Two of that team, got twenty years a piece, Enoch himself the recipient of the sting received three concurrent life sentences and the other two who were instrumental in his capture turned Crown’s evidence and took on the witness protection scheme. Deacon himself escaped conviction completely.”
    “And everybody lived happily ever after,” said Shaft, injecting some sarcasm.
    “Come now,” Dawson snickered. “Endings like that would prove an anticlimax for historians. No, detective, your first witness protection candidate was found murdered a week ago in Poplar and what remains of this gentleman is, I believe, your fourth witness under our protection.”
    Shaft’s expression of unconcern vanished, much to Dawson’s amusement. Head cocked to one side as if he was listening to the grating cogwheels of Shaft’s mental processes change gear, he nodded to himself, pleased.
    The report that had materialized on Shaft’s desk last week didn’t exactly surprise him. Eric
Magar
Tin Bateson was found floating face down in a posh gym in Poplar, his lips torn or sliced off from his face. His first conclusion was men like him couldn’t stay out of trouble even after he was given the opportunity to start all over again with a new identity and a chance to right some of his wrongs.
    And then again if you really got to know him as well as Shaft had over the period of the investigation, you could understand, even condone, his murder.
    He was scum of the lowest order.
    Like a dose of tapeworms that made you constantly scratch your ass to relieve the itch but nothing would until you shat the little parasite out was just an idea of how he felt while he was tracking the skinny bastard down. This untimely death was not peculiar unless you threw in the fact that Dawson’s body was possibly another witness from case file 547/ar.

T
wo dead witnesses from a case that had been closed three and a half years ago, dying violently in the space of a week and he was still fighting the impulse of excitement telling him he had very interesting developments on his hands.
    He brushed non-existent lint from his suit and looked back up to Dawson suspiciously.
    “What makes you so certain this is one of my witnesses?”
    He patted his head with his gloved hands and stared.
    “I take it you still have doubts about my investigative skills. Allow me to show you how I’ve come to my conclusions.”
    Dawson paced away from him and then stopped suddenly, whipping out his handkerchief again.
    Shaft tensed, expecting him to burst into spontaneous tears any minute but he spared him the embarrassment and plopped the dust guard over his mouth
    Shaft shrugged and followed Dawson as he flung open the tent flaps. Even with the mouth protection the smell of sulphur and burnt flesh dilated his nostrils with such force he stepped back.
    “Christ!” He gasped. A veil of fetid rankness rose up like an intervening wall blocking his entrance and making his eyes water.
    “Are you all right, Inspector?” Dawson’s muffled voice sounded concerned. A lumpy orange pool with still recognizable bits of king prawns, pork balls and ale spread across what was now the entrance. He didn’t see it until it was too late.
    “Rass!”
    Shaft looked down at his feet, thankful his plastic booties protected his Gucci shoes and slowly extracted his foot from the reservoir of vomit.
    “The body was discovered by a gentleman wandering down here after a meal,” Dawson commented. “He decided to make his contribution to my crime scene.”
    An involuntary shiver ran up Shaft’s spine.
    “How goes it?” Dawson chirped.
    The two examiners looked up from their grisly work like albino vultures feeding on carrion and shrugged.
    At first glance, Shaft could not be certain what he was looking at, so contorted was the body. It took Dawson, who was moving bits of clothing away from recognizable parts of the corpse with his pencil, to give the dead body a sense of proportion. Crumpled beside the wrought iron fence and a car, the body had evidently not been moved from where it was dumped because of its odd position - legs broken and twisted and left propped on the metalwork of a Mercedes. It looked as if the victim had been planted head first into the ground with immense force. Closer inspection revealed a ragged pulp of flesh and bone where his head should have been.
    No photo-fits possible here then Shaft thought breathing harshly through his mouth as he absorbed the horrific picture.
    What the fuck could have done this?
    “You recognize this don’t you, Inspector?” Dawson asked.
    Shaft nodded.
    Dawson’s roving pencil had lifted the man’s sleeves to reveal a distinctive pattern of scar tissue on his forearm.
    Silently Shaft stood there, staring but not actually looking, his mind retracing the Enoch Lacombe case of four years ago. And experiencing the same feeling he had then, that more was to come.
    It clung to him like the oppressive smell of decay, which would not go away no matter how you burned your clothes and washed your skin.

“Goddamit!” He muttered to himself.

This was not over and he knew it to his core.

4.

Saturday, July 6th

10.20am

P
hase two was a meticulous and emotional business even if you were as hell bent as Y to make it a perfunctory exercise. Trying to destroy the evidence of a one year long relationship was not as straightforward as she thought. A better part of yesterday and this morning was dedicated to throwing away underwear, T-shirts and burning old correspondences between them. But how did you eradicate his smell, his memory? Y had been tempted to bin everything he had attachment to, in a whirlwind of anger anchoring this moment to make it symbolic.
    Y had started this exercise totally distraught, the obvious memories not easy to just ignore but as she continued it became easier.
    This was the final - and not just symbolic - exorcism of the demon that was Tyrone.
    A profound thought tried to sabotage the therapeutic nature of what she was doing and pointed out the futility of it all.
    It seemed to her that no matter who you were, a man or woman, of high moral standing or a cesspit dweller like Tyrone, you touched lives as you traversed the journey, always leaving a part of yourself with or without your consent.
    Y fingered her way through the clothes racks in her wardrobe and pulled out a case in point.
    The Voodoo dress - as Tyrone had named it - and one of her real favorites, deserved to go into the flame if she was following that line of thinking but she couldn’t. Cream colored, body hugging with sections of the midriff missing which revealed portions of her stomach. Short at the back and at the front much longer covering some of her left leg but revealing most of her right.
    Homeboy’s eye candy as Patra would class it. Every time she wore it to an event they ended up not going out and making love instead.
    The smile that formed on her lips was spontaneous and just as quickly she crushed it with a grimace.
    The bonfire roared angrily making Y think maybe she was a bit too ambitious in its construction. Still it felt right. Arms folded, dressed in thick grey sweat bottoms worn low, showing the rim of her designer briefs and with a sweat top zipped up, a shocking red Tee just sneaking a peek over her zipper. She was intently watching the flames gather strength and start licking skywards like dragon tongues. She hunched her shoulders and flipped the hoodie over her short cropped hair although it was a sunny day, distributing her weight between both feet as she did - a habit she had when put in the spotlight or under stress.

Beside her alligator Puma’s, flecked with wood chip and h
umus, was a saw, a hammer, an axe and lighter fluid. This was her attempt at incinerating a part of her past but not so with her memory. That already was scorched with this episode, never to be removed.
    The physical reminders were different.
    Tyrone’s wardrobe of designer clothes formed the bed of the pyre; all his paper work, bills and magazines were at the top and for a long lasting burn were the hacked and shattered remnants of his favorite work chair and table.
    The heat was getting uncomfortable and Y stepped back, only now wondering if it would affect her neighbours, hoping the blackened embers would not accidentally smear someone’s washing. Then again she didn’t care. She’d already been given a visit from the Housing Association bigwigs accusing her of running a business from her home – which she was, but denied with silky smooth reassurance that this was not the case.

Her caring neighbours expected high jinx from her anyway
, so why disappoint. Y smiled, rocking on her feet as if the emotions and hurt were buffeting her body, her eyes stinging and her focus almost captivated by the dancing flames and their ferocity. Just for that moment she stopped dashing photographs into the eager conflagration and held onto the few left in her right hand.
    She resisted.
    Her thumb rubbed over the glossy surface of happier times - or was it false times and artificial happiness? It was as if all her insecurities had reared their collective heads, roaring her inadequacies to anyone who would listen. What did it take for someone to masquerade their affection for someone else for over a year? What kind of focus and hate did that take? Was anything in the past year real, anything at all?

Tyrone had appeared to be the kind of man she could spend her life with.
    She was happy, he seemed happy.
    Suzy had sensed something malevolent that Y had not. And it all became clearer as she thought about Tyrone’s reluctance to be anywhere near them because he had sensed his masquerade had been discovered. Y was supposed to be the strategist, her ability to see how things could go wrong and mitigating against it was a part of her gift but in this instance her own affections shielded her perceptions and that sunk her even deeper into depression.
    Did it mean every relationship she entered into with her eyes closed because her usual astute senses were ineffective? Could Y trust her own judgment in situations of the heart? The wave of pessimism that was lapping at her feet seemed to subside suddenly as an image of Detective Shaft appeared laughing good naturedly at the state she was putting herself into.

For a moment she felt better.
    A set of four-by-six photographs twirled from her hands embedding themselves in the heart of the heat and imploding immediately. Y looked down at the remaining photographs in her hand and for a moment she was transported.
    Y is lying on her stomach naked, the cool white cotton sheets casually strapped over her backside almost reminiscent of her derrière being sculpted from Sicilian marble and the artist capturing every crease and fold of the sheet around it. The ceiling fan above spins out a languid rhythm barely able to cool the room. Not that she cared as beads of sweat evaporated off her back in tantalizing waves of cool, whipped up by the fans. At that moment she was satisfied as she stretched and moaned. Satisfied because the man holding the camera made her dripping wet between her legs at a touch, made her orgasm with his words over the phone, the man who filled her up when he entered her like a hand in a perfectly formed glove. Satisfied he could spar with her and know she was his superior but was okay with that. Satisfied she could be herself in his company. So Y was acting up for the camera like a prima donna but still posing for that telling portrait. Her sense of completeness sparkled from the exposure and even when that memory sliced through the air, leaving Y’s outstretched fingers spinning into the bonfire, seized by the flames, blackening and curling as it melted into oblivion, the power of that memory remained. She hoped that sense of completeness would not be incinerated like the photographs, never to return.
    That’s when her thoughts were drawn back to last night’s, toast and that light that bathed them with a feeling they would never be alone. There was literal magic around them when they were together that couldn’t be denied, something good and true. And that made Y feel there was some higher purpose to her life. She just couldn’t help thinking that broken relationships would be the price she would have to pay for being special.
   She sincerely hoped not.

Suzy’s Apartment, West London

12.35

When
tings nah run
right Suzy’s first port of call was home. The comfort of being able to pick up the phone and call her family, especially her father, had been a life line when she was establishing herself here in the UK. The Wong family had a haberdashery store in Parade, downtown Kingston, Jamaica for over sixty years. Through political upheaval, violence and economic uncertainty, Mr. Wong would be there with Suzy’s mum and two brothers servicing one of the toughest areas of Jamaica’s capital. Mr. Wong was respected and respectful of his home and fiercely patriotic. He came to Kingston when he was three years old with Suzy’s grandparents from Montego Bay. Their parents had worked as indentured laborers in British Guiana, fighting against the odds to get to Jamaica for a better life. If anyone had helped to create the fortunes of downtown’s trading history he had. But she saw them beyond the titles of pioneers; most importantly they were her family that she loved dearly.
    Mr. Wong had taught her to grasp both her cultures and to be self reliant. He just never realised his lessons in freedom had led his daughter to want her own life in a new country just as his great grandparents had. As old school Chinese as he was, he still couldn’t say no to her, even if it meant not having his little lotus flower around him.
    Recovery from the pain of leaving her home and the comforting shoulder of her father was difficult but destiny had called and she was open to the adventure it had to offer her. Nothing could have prepared her to fully except the experience itself and even after everything she would do it all again.
    Remembering Mr. Wong’s parting words, a tear trickled down her cheeks.
   
Deh answer to everything is always inside of you Lotus flower. Just step back an mek it come. Step back an let it in.
    Suzy was keeping herself busy trying not to think about her future and making her world on the outside as orderly as possible, hoping its frequency would impact on the conflict inside. Lynton had just called to say he was twenty minutes away from home and this was her chance to break the bad news. Correction, Suzy chastised herself – a chance to explain the new path she was about to embark on. Suzy met Lynton in Jamaica, and if her family’s wishes had gone to plan, Suzy would be married to a nice Chinese Jamaican boy who owned a thriving supermarket business. In no time she would be looking after kids and helping to run a Cash & Carry store somewhere in the corporate area. Instead, the flow of her personal history was dammed and redirected by a dark-skinned, caring, giant of a man. She had found a kindred spirit housed in the body of a Mandingo with a heart that drummed out the same rhythm as hers whenever they were together. Lynton had swept her off her feet and she had no choice - much to her father’s derision - but to follow him back to the UK. It was meant to be.
    Although her present lack of income could be challenging, that inner voice was calm and composed, almost optimistic. And when her inner voice emanated peace she stayed cool –
nuh fret, cah everyting set
. Even so Suzy couldn’t just break the bad news of her job loss just
so-so suh
. He would be disarmed in a haze of aromatic oils and scented candles.
    Her baby would be pampered, all of those rough kinks smoothed out after a night shift on the tracks, making sure that Network Rail’s infrastructure was intact and that he made a living. He wouldn’t be too suspicious of the treatment – he did receive TLC more regularly than most – and his male mind would be speculating on the possibility of pregnancy. Suzy would let him stew on that point though.
    The lounge in their small, one bedroom flat had been transformed. Towels were spread on the floor with a single bed sized sponge wrapped in terry cloth with aromatic candles burning around the perimeter. The bath upstairs had been run and the bubbles from the orange blossom bath mousse formed rolling banks of foam just beckoning to a weary muscle fatigued body to come hither. Even as she turned off the faucets the aromas were lifting her mood in the process and Suzy just relaxed into an easy wave of optimism induced by the smells.
   
Step back an’ let it in.
    The door opened and her lover was home, his presence filling up their nest and spiking her libido like a Pavlovian trigger.
    “Suzy baby?”
    Tired or not, her mind ran rampant with the thoughts of making love to him as he stepped onto the threshold of home. Suzy would be manipulating all those stimuli she had stored away in her mind that she knew aroused her man and she would be withdrawing them all from her arsenal. The silk ruby long drop camisole was rocking and underneath she wore nothing. The subtle smell of Chanel Allure had misted her body and she let her long black hair tumble over her shoulders. With all of the boxes ticked poor Lynton was caught in this web with his actions mapped out before his own conscious thought could question.
    What deh …?  

She’d give him no time to shower or change, stripping his six foot two frame and kissing his musky sweat dried chest. To her his griminess and perspiration was a heady concoction that turned her on even more than the muscular sight of him. She was just caught up in dragging down his FUBU shorts to his ankles. He was a big man and his erection was magnificent
thing to behold.

S
he took every opportunity she got to hold it in her hand and accommodate its head around her lips and tongue, watching his eyes glaze over and those gruff moans of satisfaction leaving his lips.
    Suzy let the fantasy slide, moving instead down the stairs to greet him. Her bare feet taking the steps with the grace and sensuality her training afforded her. Lynton did not stand a chance. He was standing at the foot of the stairs, arms folded, leaning on the post, a sly grin on his face that slowly unfurled into the hungry stare as he saw something he craved. And at that very moment an idea popped into her head. Maybe she didn’t have to break the news to him just yet.
  

Pink Kitty Kat Strip Club

Central London

21.10
  
    “Cleopatra darling, never thought I’d see you again.” The voice was cultured with an edge of private schooled confidence that reminded you of the late actor Denholm Elliot. “When Freddy said you were here, I had to come down and see for myself.”
    “Damn straight Giles, in the flesh, baby.”
    “And in the flesh I might add you’re looking better than ever.” He held her hand and kissed it.
    Giles Sinton, the seventy year old owner of one of the most sophisticated strip establishments in London. Porn elder statesman, old world gentleman, multi-millionaire and kindred spirit, hugged her warmly. They were in one of the Pink Kitty Kat’s VIP areas with its own minibar, pole and poker table. Giles was dressed in his trade mark Egyptian cashmere jumper and slacks.
    “You’re looking as handsome as ever you old coot,” she whispered in his ear, his favorite aftershave just as understated as she remembered. “Have you stopped dating women one fifth your age yet, G?”
    “Ssshhh!” he whispered, holding her by the shoulders to view her better, “That’s the secret to my longevity amongst other things. Keep it close to your chest. So what are you doing back? I know you enjoyed the job but the spirit of adventure was beckoning to you, I was told.”
    “And I listened. I got some juicy ass stories to tell you over a cigar and brandy but I was enjoying myself so much I lowered my guard and got jacked. My sisters and I have got some catching up to do, some serious shit to smooth out. I thought of you.”
    “I’m glad. Do they dance too?”
    “They’re thick enough and sexy as hell too but this ain’t their style. Besides, the fun stuff I got that covered. I leave the boring ass shit to them. They’ve got their strengths and I got mine.”
    “It sounds like you finally found a family. I’m glad. So when do you want to start Cleo?”
    Patra shrugged.
    “I think we may have a hitch, OG.”
    “Don’t be silly, there is no hitch. Just tell me when you want to come down and start?”
    Patra rolls her eyes over to the blonde in the business suit who was silently watching the reunion.