Flesh and Coin (The Mulrones Book 3) Page 9

  For Caulden, death was swift as a heart attack with his hands around a young girl’s throat.

  *

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Cathy, and rushed not to Hattie, but Caulden. Caulden was silent, Hattie was gasping.

  She checked Caulden for a response, shouting and pinching and eventually slapping him in her panic. She checked his breathing. He wasn’t responding, or breathing, and when she took his pulse, there was nothing, so she pumped his chest with her old weak hands and put her mouth over his, holding his nose, and breathed for him, while Hattie panted behind her, stood up and took a heavy paper weight from the desk that she brought down with all her strength on Caulden’s face.

  “What…?” said Cathy, before Hattie crushed her skull, too.

  *

  Hattie looked down at what she’d done. Looked long and hard at the two bodies on the floor. Two bodies she’d killed. Two people. Two murders.

  Murder… The word resonated in her mind, until it became a shout, immense and so loud she could not escape it.

  So sudden.

  “Fuck,” she said, again and again.

  Why had she killed Cathy?

  Because she was starved of oxygen and not thinking straight?

  Because she wanted to do?

  “Doesn’t matter,” Hattie told herself, her voice still cracking. “Doesn’t matter why, stupid bitch. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t…”

  She caught herself ranting. Tried to slow her breathing, which burned her throat, as did speech.

  Now, she had another problem…explaining two murders.

  You can’t explain this one, girl, she thought.

  She ticked over all the possible scenarios in her head. All the things tying her to this. Caulden and Cathy couldn’t possibly have done for each other, and Hattie had the marks around her neck. Her larynx seemed crushed. Even breathing hurt. She was going to bruise and no matter what she did people would know she was involved.

  But could she get away without being found responsible?

  She’d be in court, for sure. The evidence was overwhelming. She’d have to move counties, probably, even if she got away with it…

  Or she could just skip the court case right now. Leave. Run.

  Run, she thought again. Now there’s an idea with legs, she told herself, and laughed.

  At least I haven’t lost my sense of humor, she thought, trying to find something funny in the scenario.

  Cathy was right there atop Caulden, old Barty, with her crushed head in his lap. Looked like he was getting head from a fucking zombie.

  Hattie smiled, shaky, but she did it.

  Just a bit of fun gone wrong. Shit happened. Zombies gave fucking great head, too, from the look on Caulden’s face, the shock in his dead eyes.

  Hattie bent over Caulden’s dead face and laughed right in his eyes, her spittle hitting his open orbs.

  “Fuck you,” she said. “Got the last laugh, didn’t I?”

  Still shaking, on weak legs, she searched Caulden and took the keys to his BMW. She took his wallet, his expensive-looking watch. She looked at Cathy, but figured the old bitch didn’t have a thing worth taking. She turned to leave the office, looking out of the inside window before she did. It was only then she noticed the fog filling the hall.

  Hattie opened the door to look, a deep frown on her face, and the fog poured into the office, all around her.

  “What?” she said, to no one, because everyone in the room was dead but her. For a second, she thought fire. Her base mind dismissed it immediately, because it didn’t smell like fire…

  Then…there was a smell. A smell she couldn’t place.

  Until she did. A sense, in the end, of her father’s aftershave. Only time he ever wore it was when he’d come at her at night. She suddenly felt sick, roiling, in her stomach.

  The power of the recollection stunned her so deeply her animal instinct for trouble failed her again. She was too slow, and the great sword that took her head off was too fast.

  A fucking sword?

  Her mind flashed this, then, nothing.

  *

  Cathy’s soul watched the shadows take form until they were that terrible thing, the thing she’d seen in dark armor guarding a castle within dream.

  The shadow held out his hand to her, sword held easily in his left gauntlet.

  “Come,” he said.

  “I…I know you…” she said.

  He lifted the visor of his helm, and within there was a void blacker than shades, blacker than hell.

  But something inside shifted. A miniscule swirl within the void, like a glass of water, swilled to one side, like a lopsided smile. She felt…no…she knew that smile, even in the darkness within the fearsome helm, even without a face.

  She knew him. His hand remained steady before her corpse, and her spirit within it. Without further hesitation she took his heavy blackened-steel hand in hers, lighter than the wind.

  X.

  Flesh and Coin

  It felt to Jim as though the moment he put his head down in his own bed the phone rang. In truth, he slept a solid twelve hours right though, and when he looked at the digital clock on his wrist, he was surprised to find it was seven in the morning.

  He answered the call with a grunt.

  “DCI Wayne?”

  “What, man?” said Wayne, not at his best at any time in the morning.

  “Triple murder, sir,” said the voice at the end of the phone.

  That woke Wayne up better than a shot of coffee and a cigarette ever would.

  But now that he was awake, he was wondering why they were calling him. Plenty of DI’s, and if…

  “When?”

  “All indications point to last night. Some kind of love triangle, looks like.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you, DCI Wayne. You…ah…you know the deceased. A Mr. Caulden?”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Caulden, sir.”

  “I heard you. I was expressing shock, young man. Where? The scene. Where’s the scene?”

  “A hospice out in the country, sir. Old—”

  “I know it. I’m on my way.”

  “Sir,” said the young man on the end of the phone before he hung up.

  “Fuck,” said Jim, then pushed himself out of bed and got himself ready. Brushed his teeth, toileted, didn’t shave.

  Had a coffee, a cigarette, no breakfast.

  Got in his car and drove out to Old Oak. Along the way he realized something that made him ashamed and proud in equal measures.

  He was excited. Not sad. Excited. Because whatever the fuck was going on out at Old Oak Hospice was about to come out into the light. He was sure of it. And if it didn’t? He’d hunt down every fucking shadow in the place with a great big fucking torch until he found the bastard thing.

  But what thing?

  “That’s why you make the big bucks, Jim,” he said to himself, pulling onto the gravel drive with the canopy of trees overhead. He was so immersed in his thoughts that he didn’t notice a dirty, rusty, old-style Land Rover drove most of the way right behind him until he flashed his ID to the man at the perimeter and happened to catch the PC glance behind him.

  “Oh, fuckballs,” said Jim.

  “Sir?” said the PC.

  “Let them in, too,” he told the policeman, and drove up to the castle with the Land Rover in tow.

  *

  The Land Rover was so muddy Jim couldn’t see inside. He tapped on the window, getting dirt on his knuckles. The window rolled down and the ugliest dog Jim had ever seen stuck its head from the window, tongue lolling out. The dog that was missing an eye and an ear, and probably hadn’t been much of a looker in the first place.

  The dog was sitting on Ma Mulrone’s lap, and her son, or grandson, maybe, with the tattoos and quiff was driving. No one else.

  Jim figured his business was with the old woman. The dog looked happy. The man with the tattoos looked like he didn’t give a shit.


  Ma Mulrone looked serious as a knife in the kidneys.

  “Got my money?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Figured you’d be sleeping on the job. Followed you down, we did. Nice car.”

  “What?” Jim was on the wrong foot, but he couldn’t quite find a way to get the other on the ground.

  “How much a car like that cost?”

  Jim, finally, got both feet on the ground and his brain in gear. He smiled. Wasn’t every day he met a person who could run circles around him and make him feel like nothing more than an accomplished town fool.

  “Around twenty grand, I reckon,” he said.

  Ma nodded. “It’ll do,” she said.

  Jim thought about telling her she couldn’t take his car. It wasn’t his. Then, he figured if they wanted it, if she could help…

  “Don’t rightly know how I’m going to get you in there,” he said. “It’s a crime scene.”

  “Been to crime scenes before, young man,” she replied, making Jim laugh again.

  “All right. If anyone asks, you’re…a consultant…?”

  Ma nodded. The man behind the wheel grunted.

  “Made a mistake, maybe,” she said.

  Jim wondered if she’d ever admitted such a thing. The look on the man’s face told him no.

  “Got to break it,” said the woman.

  “Mrs. Mulrone,” said Jim, “what exactly is it?”

  “You a superstitious man, Mr. Wayne?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Well, then, when we get inside, I suggest you shut your eyes and ears like a good boy and let me do what needs doing.”

  Jim smiled and opened the door for her. The dog leapt from her lap to the man’s. He petted it behind its one remaining ear and continued to stare out of the muddied windshield as though Jim wasn’t even there.

  The old woman took Jim’s hand and stepped down, and they walked toward the…

  Jim thought castle again. Not a castle, Jim, he told himself. Just an old building.

  “Looks just like one, though, don’t it?” said the old woman with a toothless grin, and the ground, the world, swelled once more beneath Jim’s shaking feet.

  *

  The policeman on the door held out a hand when DCI Wayne and Ma Mulrone reached the front door of Old Oak.

  “Sir…”

  Jim showed his ID and raised an eyebrow.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Don’t ask, and I won’t have to lie. We’re going to the ward. Not the scene. Okay?”

  Even from the doorway, Jim could tell where the scene was. Where the biggest concentration of people was. Wasn’t exactly cop-of-the-year stuff.

  The policeman looked from Jim, to Ma, to Jim again.

  Stepped back and said, “Sir.”

  “You’ll go far,” Jim said to the PC, and led Ma Mulrone into the Old Oak to see the man she’d chained to a bed with flesh and coin. Jim felt his balls tighten as he walked onto the ward. Like the place was cold, and getting colder. The wide window was shut. Two beds were empty, six full with dying men.

  One was awake. Looking lucid. Looking at Ma and Jim.

  “Shadowman?” he asked.

  Ma sucked in her breath.

  “Shit,” she said. It wasn’t what Jim wanted to hear right then. Not at all.

  And when the rest of the sleeping men woke, suddenly, as though called, Jim felt not just his balls tighten, but his guts, too, and his arse. Felt like he was going to shit himself, because suddenly, everyone on the ward was awake, staring at the two of them.

  “Shadowman,” they said, again, again.

  I’m not afraid, he told himself, holding Ma’s arm as much for her support as for his. I’m not afraid, he told himself as he turned, looked to the exit.

  It wasn’t there. Where the exit had been, those wide double doors that were always open, there was nothing but a sea of fog.

  And the truth was, Jim was very afraid.

  XI.

  Shadowman

  Jim remembered being lost in the woods, once, as a child.

  Old woods, places that don’t stand anymore against the sea of houses, fields, new towns, farms…old woods. Hundreds of years, never maintained, rarely seen the touch of a human hand. Rotten trees leaning against other, taller trees. Green on the floor and on the trunks. Quiet places.

  Quieter, too, when he’d been lost in the fog.

  Jim had been frightened, then, a mere boy.

  Now, with the unnatural fog rising, seemingly from the floor, indoors?

  He was terrified.

  “Stay with me, Mr. Wayne, and don’t let go,” said Ma, her thick accent making her command even harsher. He jumped a little, and looked around. He could see nothing but her wizened hand in the fog.

  God, I hope that’s her hand…

  He reached out and took her hand, like a skeleton’s. And with it, the fog dimmed, just a little, but enough so he could see her, if nothing else.

  “What’s happening?” he said. “The fog…fog. Indoors.”

  “Not my doing,” she said, which wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

  “Then whose?”

  She merely shook her head and this time it was her leading him. Leading him to the bed. The empty bed. She pulled, surprisingly strong, and he had no choice but to follow.

  Shadowman, Shadowman…

  The dying, calling through the mist.

  Yet, here, in the fog, with the chorus of the dying all calling for Shadowman, summoning him…the bed wasn’t empty, was it? Wasn’t empty at all.

  There was a man in the bed. The man was pallid, wane. A dead thing, a ghost haunted by deeds and another man’s skin.

  I know what you did, thought Wayne.

  “I know you, Paulie Small, and I see you. I see you.” The old woman’s voice wasn’t weak. Not crooked, nor hoarse. But vibrant. Full of power.

  The man in the bed, the ghost chained with flesh and coin, didn’t deny it. Couldn’t hide it, not even behind his mask.

  That’s a mask…my God…

  Paulie Small flexed his face muscles, like a man yawning. The edges of his face, where it met his jaw, his ears, his thick hair, cracked.

  And then he took his face off. Took that face clean off, peeling it away from his skull.

  Shadowman…Shadowman…

  The dying called, summoned, louder and louder in the fog. But Jim could not, would not look away from the monster in the bed. Ghost or not, the man was surely more a monster than any living thing.

  The man in the bed, the ghost, the shade of Paulie Small, pulled free Charlie Dawes’s stolen countenance with a wet, ripping sound, and beneath was the real man, the ghost of a psychopath who’d killed another man and stolen not just his face.

  Paulie Small had taken Charlie Dawes in life, and in death.

  Jim was weak. Wanted to run.

  Paulie Small wasn’t a withered ghost. Not anymore. In taking away his borrowed identity, the real Paulie Small came, once more, into being.

  Chained still, yes, but horrible. A ghost full of rage, murderous anger…and something strong.

  Jim wanted to run.

  Maybe the old woman holding his hand knew, sensed his fear, because at that moment she grasped Jim’s hand all the tighter, and squeezed with surprising strength.

  “Paulie,” said Ma, speaking to the ghost just like he was another man of flesh and blood. “You always were a cunt,” said the old mother. In her harsh, thick accent the word sounded alien, shocking, coming from such an old woman.

  “Set me loose, Ma,” said Paulie. He wasn’t a handsome man, but not ugly, either. Older than the photos Jim had seen. But evil, oh yes. Something of a demon about the man. A man who would kill, hurt, torture…do whatever he wished…and never for a reason. Never pay a debt.

  A man who’d tried to outrun the devil, hiding behind another man’s face, even in death.

  He’s dead, Jim reminded himself.

  Then why are you still afraid?

&
nbsp; “Shadowman,” whispered the dying all around, now invisible in the thickening fog.

  “Free me,” said the ghost on the bed.

  “Never,” said Ma Mulrone. “But I’ll send you on. Oh…”

  She stopped, and Jim turned his head to see what she was looking at, suddenly, with her one sharp eye.

  “Holy fuck,” said Jim, as a man made of nightmares stepped through the swirling fog, a great sword in his hand.

  *

  Jim was so far out of his depth he didn’t think to stand in the way, to do anything. This wasn’t his world.

  This wasn’t the mortal world, not any longer. It was the afterlife, heaven, spirituality, vengeance, death. A world beneath and below made flesh.

  In silence more terrifying than any primal roar, the dreadknight raised his great sword above his head and slid forward through the parting fog.

  The dying called for him.

  And Jim, in the second before Ma Mulrone acted, understood just how a man could be severed in two without any mortal trace…

  The killer was no mortal.

  Jim stood in the path of that great sword. Couldn’t move at all. His legs, like stone.

  Behind him, unseen, Ma Mulrone’s clever old hands reached down onto the ghost’s bed and snatched something up, which she flicked into the air at Shadowman.

  The face.

  The flesh that had been cut away, once, pulled away just now.

  The man with the black armor and the shadow for a face was unbelievably fast… mere shadow, unencumbered by weight. He took one hand from the sword, stilling the weapon instantly, and with that free hand snatched the face from the fog.

  His face.

  With a sigh, he took the flesh, the withered, leathery mask that Paulie Small had stolen.

  Shadowman, the dreadknight, vengeance himself, placed it over the awful, faceless space…and it fell into his helm, into the shadow. Absorbed within the armor. A moment, a beat, and then the man had a face again. An ordinary face, a nice face.

  The face of the murdered man Charlie Dawes.