Eleven
ELEVEN
Bruce felt a little better after a lie down on the landing carpet and a brief toilet-centric vomiting incident. Now he just felt numb. He pushed open the master bedroom door. The bathroom, hallway and office had so far proven useless. Nothing struck him as odd. The desktop computer in the small green office was password protected and even apparently pneumatic fist protected as the smashed components that littered the desk testified. A framed gold disc bearing the words “Mastah Blastah – Death to Tyrants” had hung above the computer alongside other records credited to acts that he didn’t recognise. He had used it to interrogate the tower unit with little success in furthering the investigation but it had made him marginally happier.
The bedroom was a scene of devastation. Clothes hung from odd corners, strewn about as if a localised hurricane had hit the place. Bruce sat at the foot of the bed; the luxurious white silk bedspread was creased and dark-spotted. He touched one of the dark patches with his good hand; it was still wet. Without thinking, he brought his fingers to his tongue; they tasted salty. He hoped it was just tears and nothing more sinister. Jimmy’s chubby memory flashed through his mind and the nausea came back with a vengeance.
There was a packed bag by the door; a pink and purple gym job, crammed to the gills and bursting out through the zip. He upended it on to the bed and Sophie’s intimate secrets spilled out for his perusal. Bruce ran his fingers through her personal affects, her delicate underwear and colourful garments and make-up. There was a well-thumbed copy of “Fifty Shades of Gray”, a small blue velvet box full of delicate gold chains and rings set with a rainbow of precious stone and a wash-bag crammed with dental products, roll-on deodorant and a couple of sanitary towels. Nothing the least bit incriminating besides the mummy-porn and that was now so ubiquitous it barely even registered.
He sifted through the pockets of the bag which were packed with papers, chargers, little pills in blister packers and a mobile phone that looked brand new. He turned it on and was greeted by a request to set the time. Either it had been wiped or not yet used, but either way it was of no interest. The papers proved very interesting indeed. The first was an unsent letter in an unsealed envelope written in the same purple ink and pet-up scrawl as the note in Jimmy’s wallet.
“Archibald,
I wish you had told me you were going to leave. I can’t take this anymore, I feel so alone! Come back and save me from this emptiness, take me with you, please. I’ll go anywhere, I’ll do anything...
I love you my master,
S xxx”
Archibald... the name rang a bell. So, there was a third man involved now; this was turning out to be more of a love square than a triangle. The next piece of paper proved even more intriguing; a phone number, written in black permanent marker on the torn corner of a napkin next to a single letter A, for Archibald perhaps?
A sudden noise outside startled him; a strange mewling, inhuman crunching sound. Bruce pocketed the letters. He strode swiftly from the room, down the stairs and collected his hat from the cream chair, desperately trying and failing not to look at Sophie’s little limp body sprawled awkwardly in the wreckage of the table. Her mouth was turned up slightly at the edges in a sort of disconcerting, contorted grin that made his legs feel weak. He stumbled out of there as fast as he could and did not look back.
As Bruce walked hurried back to his shitty car along the mercifully empty street, curiosity got the better of him. There was an odd whirring sound coming from the skip across the street. A small, very dead, brown cat lay tangled with a blender. The blades were still spinning through the remains of the cat’s torn throat despite not being plugged in. It was the devil indeed. It certainly seemed satanic, spinning independently, defying logic, like an installation piece by Hieronymus Bosch. The cat’s eyes were stuck opened wide with surprise. A door opened somewhere along the street and brought him back to his senses. Now was not the time to linger.
He returned to the relative normality of his awful, rust-bucket car and drove to the nearest car park to sit for a moment and ponder his next move. As he sat there staring blankly ahead at the families bustling about in the fast-food restaurant, a vibration coursed though his jacket. He answered the phone.
“Bruce von Toose, Private Detective.”
The voice on the other end was instantly familiar. It spoke volumes with tone alone.
“A private what? John, is that you?”
Goddamnit, it was McCoy, the nosy bastard! What the hell did he want? Bruce regained his composure; he’d nearly given the whole game away. He wasn’t thinking straight. Luckily McCoy hadn’t realised that John was not his real name despite the slip. It was time to make nice and kiss some ass or risk blowing his cover altogether. He coughed to cover his tracks.
“Oh, hi McCoy, sorry man, I was just messing around, pulling your pecker, you know how it is.”
McCoy did not sound impressed.
“Where the hell are you Johnson? You’ve missed two days of work with no phone calls, no messages, not even a goddamned email. I should straight-up fire your dumb ass!”
Bruce thought fast.
“Take it easy McCoy, I’m on sabbatical.”
McCoy snorted at the suggestion; his breath rasped loudly through the speaker.
“You’re on sabbatical huh, what the fuck? I wasn’t informed...”
“Yeah man, I was surprised too! I didn’t think the University would be so nice. My grandmother died...”
McCoy butted back in.
“John, don’t bullshit me boy! Those motherfuckers are a lot of things, but they are not “nice”. I saw the Vice-Chancellor earlier; he wants your blood. You know exams start in two weeks! He wants your ass stuffed in a high hat. I persuaded him that it must have been a matter of life and death for such a committed, able member of staff to just disappear.”
It was Bruce’s turn to snort.
“You don’t know the half of it! Thanks for having my back though, I appreciate it. What time do you want me in?”
“Just be here in the morning for 8: 30 as usual you fruitcake. You and your “dead grandmother” better have your excuses rehearsed better than this though or I’ll be scraping you off the ceiling! Jesus... Don’t be late!”
He hung up. McCoy was valuable, in his own way. Bruce’s mind raced; how had he forgotten all about “John Johnson”, his perfect cover story? Strange memories appeared through the fog in his brain like ships passing in the night. No one would suspect that a mild-mannered University lab assistant was actually a moonlighting, hard-nosed private dick that needed to stay one step ahead of the boys in blue.
He pulled out into the traffic trying to recall where exactly “John Johnson”, lab assistant lived. Why couldn’t he remember? It was getting dark again, he was exhausted, he needed a place to lie low. He flicked his indicator on and hung a swift right, cutting across two lanes and narrowly avoiding a collision with a silver Lexus.
He drove around and around the block until the sun had set, racking his brain, but he just could not remember where his safe-house was located. How could he not remember where he lived? How was that possible? Was it the result of some kind of mental trauma?
Eventually, he gave up and pulled back into the fast-food restaurant car park and found a quiet spot at the far end, beneath a row of trees. He climbed into the back seat, swept all of the crisp packets and boxes of cigarettes onto the floor, rolled his jacket into a makeshift pillow and tossed and turned all night in the orange glare of the streetlights, trying to remember, and to forget.