Panic (3 page)

Carl looked dubious. He was no expert, but this did not sound like standard procedure.

Michael caught the look on his partner's face and forced a smile.

"Hey, I'm sure it's nothing. Probably just Ralf cut himself trying something a little more ambitious than frying bacon is all. Don't worry, we'll get you fed yet."

He slapped Carl's gut and got out of the car before the big man could protest, shutting the door behind him quietly.

The
bloody door was about fifteen feet away. Michael crept toward it, muscles tensed, ears straining for any sound coming from inside the building. There was none.

It was only when he was almost at the threshold that Michael noticed spots of blood on the path leading to the door, and felt his pulse quicken.
Trouble had found its way to the cafe, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

He paused, and shot a glance back at the car. Carl was on the radio, his eyes fixed on Michael.

Michael cocked his head to the side. Still no sound. Nothing at all.

Michael thought about the multitude of American cop shows
that were strewn across the television channels; thought about some grizzled homicide detective approaching a closed door, gun in hand, ready to face the danger head on.

On TV, the detective would kick the door open, pop three rounds into the perp's chest and head back to the station to get shouted at by his chief. Michael
didn't have a gun or a chief: what he had was a can of long-unused pepper spray and judgement that hadn't been called upon for so long it had probably rusted over.

He reached for his belt and pulled the spray out of its holster, briefly wondering if the damn thing could possibly be out of date, and as much use as a can of deodorant.

He took another step, and could now see that there was more blood than he had realised at first. A small pool of it gathered around the base of the door. The sight made him waver for a moment, and he felt his nerves getting the better of him.

"Fuck it," h
e whispered to himself, trying vainly to persuade his courage to up its game. Adrenaline kicked in, and Michael stepped in front of the door, peering into the dimly lit café beyond.

His eyes adjusted, pupils widening.

Then he bent double and retched.

*

He ran.

He loved to run.

He very rarely got the chance, not to
really
run. Sure, there were times when he managed to break into a jog; more often into what could best be described as a disappointing
trot
. Hardly ever an outright run.

The main reason,
naturally, was
her
.
She
didn't like it when he ran, and he always got a telling off that left him feeling humbled and fearful. And there were the obstructions, of course. Where he lived, it seemed to be
all
obstructions; all strange shapes and blockages. Pointless corners and walls that were sometimes there, sometimes not. No chance at all to run
there
.

And
inevitably, when he tried, the admonishment was especially severe.

The infuriatingly short occasions on which
he was allowed to visit other places was when he could sometimes up the pace a little, but he had learned the hard way that he could only get so far before he was stopped suddenly, and painfully.

It was torture. Because he wanted to run so very much. Things in the distance were always so much more intriguing, and he worried that by the time he got to them, they would be gone. Running was the only solution, and it was forbidden. It was a source of terrible frustration and confusion to him. He did not understand
why
it was bad to run; only that running had consequences. He
hated
the consequences.

Now, however, he was run
ning, and it was glorious: flat-out sprinting, and the feel of the wind pushing back his ears and the cold numbing his tongue was truly wonderful. Strangely, he found that he suddenly did not care about the consequences. He only cared about the running.

"Bad dog Sniffer!"

She sounded distant, but there was no mistaking the words. The same words he heard most days, though this time there was steel in the tone; menace that could not be overlooked.

It angered him, and that surprised him. Ordinarily that tone meant consequences. At the very least it meant that she would not fish into the paper bag of delicious treats today, and he would probably end up with nothing more to eat than the dry, tasteless pebbles that came out when he was
Bad Dog
. That was usually enough to stop him, but today felt different.

He
felt different.

Felt something stirring inside him, some
thing powerful and irresistible; something that felt oddly like it had been taken away from him and now returned. Something that made him whole.

There was pain, too
: a stinging, incessant stabbing that began in his eyes and seemed to reach back into his brain, tearing at him, making him feel helpless and furious all at once.

He stopped running, and turned to face his master. She approached,
red-faced and puffing for air, and reached for the cord that he had snatched from her hands, the one that hurt his throat and always prevented his attempts to run.

When she was close enough, he put his head down, flattened his ears and stared into her eyes.

And growled.

Mrs
Roberts practically leapt backwards in surprise, and she had to admit, a little fear.

Moments earlier, she had been standing in the tiny St. Davids police station, smugly telling that bitch Glenda Davis that she had very important information about a crime, and that no, sadly she couldn't tell Glenda anything about it, but felt she had to wait to speak to an
actual
police officer.

The look on Glenda's face had been pric
eless.

Mrs Roberts hated Glenda;
hated her not just because she had once had the cheek to accuse Mrs Roberts' daughter of assaulting her son (assault! A playground scuffle, assault!) but more to the point, because Glenda was her only rival as the biggest gossip in town, and Glenda had an unfair advantage.

How was Mrs Roberts to compete when Glenda's job was to answer the phone and have local scandal handed to her on a plate? Glenda got to
know it all: who was drunk, whose husband had been fighting who. Even what went on behind closed doors, even if a husband was beating up his wife! The very thought of it made Mrs Roberts shudder.

Thankfully, the crime rate in the town was so low, so virtually non-existent, that Glenda Davis' gossip never truly even reached
Defcon 3
status (Mrs Roberts liked to brand her gossip thus, perceiving that a
Defcon 5
would get most people in the town murmuring and raising an eyebrow, while a
Defcon 1
would provoke genuine outrage throughout) and now, deliciously, St. Davids had a genuine, honest-to-God
Defcon 1
criminal event, and it was she who knew all about it. Not Glenda.

Just thinking about it made her tremble with delight.

The occasion, however, had been ruined. Barely as soon as she had begun to gloat, intending to draw out Glenda's curiosity for at least fifteen minutes, the woman's desk phone had rung, and she had put on an (impressive, Mrs Roberts had to admit) act of being shocked at some vital piece of news, before telling Mrs Roberts that she would have to leave, as Glenda had some
important
confidential police work to carry out.

Her emphasis on the word
important
made Mrs Roberts seethe. She knew full well what that bitch was implying.

As if that was not bad enough, when Mrs Roberts had planted her hands on her ample hips, preparing to tell Glenda Davis that she was going nowhere, thank-you-very-much, the damn dog had slipped its leash away from her grasp and bolted out of the door.

And now, here she stood, panting and sweating in the misty morning, having been forced into an embarrassing, wobbling sprint by her own dog. Glenda would no doubt be laughing her obnoxious head off.

The very thought enraged Mrs Roberts, and she glared at Sniffer.

The dog was hostile, no doubt about it; its eyes levelled at her in a clear, confident challenge.

She took a step toward Sniffer and faltered as the growl deepened. Then Glenda Davis's irritating, high
-pitched laugh resonated in her mind, and Mrs Roberts set her jaw, took a couple of shuffling, surprisingly agile steps forward, and grabbed the dog’s collar firmly. Sniffer writhed and growled, but there was nothing the little terrier could do.

Mrs Paula Roberts was not about to be made a fool by a tiny dog, no thank-you-very-much, not today.

Hauling the wriggling terrier, Mrs Roberts set off for home, determined that Sniffer would learn that Bad Dogs could contemplate the consequences of their actions tied to a post in the cold garden, and on an empty stomach.

*

"Mary, mother of God," Carl said, his voice an awestruck whisper.

They stood just inside Ralf's café
; just inside a nightmare.

The walls and floor of the café were painted with blood, an impossibly large river of which flowed from the body of Ralf, the owner, who appeared to have had his throat torn out by some wild animal. Ralf lay motionless in the narrow space behind the bar, while in the middle of the room was the body of Father Leary. A shard of porcelain jutted out of the dead priest
’s neck, but it was his face that Carl fixated on in horror: flesh melted into a shapeless mass that clung to his skull raggedly; eyes gone.

The worst of it though, was at their feet, just inside the doorway.

Carl stared down at the decapitated head, and felt the few mouthfuls of muesli he'd forced down that morning trying to force their way back up.

He stumbled backwards into the open air, and sucked in a huge lungful of
oxygen.

Michael had regained his composure, at least in part. "You called Glenda?" He
said, his voice flat.

Carl nodded, gasping
for air. "Yeah," he managed through clenched teeth.

"Good. I t
hink we're gonna need help with this one."

"No shit."

Michael stepped into the bar area, scanning the room. Pieces of smashed plate were scattered over the floor, and the bar stools were toppled, one with a leg snapped clean in two.

He crept carefully around the smears of blood, careful not to move anything, and crouched next to Ralf's body.  The man's flabby neck was torn apart, ripped rather than cut.
Michael looked back at the shards of porcelain still dotted around the floor, and shook his head slowly.

"Both dead
, yeah?"

Carl had stepped back into the café, and his voice made Michael jump. He didn't respond.

"What the fuck happened here, Mike? It's like something out of one of those movies you know? The clown ones, with the guy dying of cancer."

Carl was babbling, and Michael tuned him out. Once upon a time, he had been trained for this, and there was a time he had expected he would be good at it. Looking at the shattered and obscured pieces of a picture and putting it back together.

This picture was horrific, baffling, but there was also something wrong with it. He frowned, lost in thought.

Carl's voice rattled on, approaching hysteria. "I mean, this ain't down town Los Angeles,
you know? This is fucking St. Davids for Christ's sake. Who the hell is going to murder Ralf? And Father Leary! And that thing over there, my God, I-"

"No murder weapon,
" Michael interrupted.

Carl stopped mid-sentence. "H
uh?" he grunted. "The plate-"

"Looks like that's what did for Father Leary alright," Michael agreed. "But this wound on Ralf's neck? No chance. See how it's all ragged and torn up?"

He pointed at the gaping chasm that had been Ralf's windpipe. Carl gulped.

"That wasn't a sharp instrument, at least, not like this."

Michael pointed at the plate.

"And what about
her
? Even if someone did
that
with a broken plate, where's the body?"

Carl shook his head miserably, looking like he might be sick.

Michael stood up straight, both knees clicking, the sound impossibly loud in the oppressive silence. He looked around the room again, searching for some weapon that he had overlooked.

"See if you c
an spot anything Carl," he said. "Any sort of weapon that could have done this. But don't move anything, okay?"

Carl nodded, and began to step gingerly through the room, crouching to look under the small dining tables.