And The Street Screamed Blue Murder! Page 2
Those myriad of shallow tiny conspiracies. Spineless elitist groups who thought it well to manipulate and control what THEY saw as a lower form of humanity. In other words, everyone else. The fear of the Other. Of those without sufficient “breeding” and culture to judge the world properly. That inherent and decadent snobbery instilled in THEM from birth. That THEY were made of the same stuff as Caesar at the Rubicon. THEY masturbated to The Prince, knowing it was written just for THEM. From the great unwashed and their parasitic dole cheques draining the State of its money, to the Middle Class housewife slipping into drunken obesity while watching the ridiculous exaggerated life on afternoon TV. Living her half-life through those silly people, desperately wishing a tall, dark and handsome stranger would pierce the miasma of boredom that was the slow suicide of her so-called “life”.
THEY despised them all.
Lime was more level-headed than most of his co-reporters. He saw the motley assortment of minuscule plots cancelling each other out. He took them all at face value. From the Banking Cartels (Cartels is the correct noun to use here) and the hyena-headed speculators tearing the flesh off the carcass of society with Protestant aplomb, to the tentacles of those organisations who seek to guide us with their obviously deeper genetic-led wisdom. Lime had come to the conclusion and long time ago that the true crank were not those who believed in nine foot Lizard People taking over the world or other mentally-ill fantasists, but those born into power and glory at birth who saw this as anything other than an accident of birth. Those who have converted to any number of “true” faiths and demanded that we should all pay tribute. In money, or blood.
It all came down to the same thing. A thing far beyond the vulgar material construct that was hard cash. A urge that could destroy whole nations and, quite probably, the world.
That thing was named power.
Chapter 4
25th of January, 2011
Alfie Lime's feet moved mechanically, one after the other. Not fast, not slow, with his hands in his pockets and his furrowed brow. He moved piston-like, propelling himself forward in the midst of insectoid cars and camera wielding tourists. Chin jutting out like a drunk trying to appear sober. Not an unusual sight in most cities around the world on a Sunday morning, I think you'll agree. In fact, if anybody had noticed him and made a guess, they wouldn't have guessed that his concentration was nowhere near his extremities, that his limbs were doing exactly what they had been programmed to do.
No, no, no, Lime was, at that moment, living in his interior, his thought cave. If you had chanced to see this awkward spectacle, you may well have wondered what he was thinking. If anything.
Spits of rain gently pricked his face and head, adding further discomfort to his eyes scorched red with tears. The saline liquid seared tracks into his cheeks like an aerial view of some Martian landscape. The wind ebbed and blew around this corner and that in its airy conspiracy with the rain. Lime was completely silent but inside his large square head, he was negotiating with the elements, asking them to leave him alone this one time. Just this one time.
He had panicked. He knew that and felt justified in his limbic brain's reaction. Nothing to be ashamed. What, with all that had happened, he rationally thought knowing somewhere in the tradesman's entrance of his psyche that he was fooling himself. It was just a matter before some part of his mind pulled the fragile pin and went boom.
Once he had felt his heart become disco and not thrash metal and he could feel his thick arms again and he knew own heart (nail hammered through it) hadn't stopped out of shock, he had gone quietly through the motions of examining his hands. The left one had just needed a simple scrub to remove the blood (blood!). The right one was a right state (his words) of bloody tenderness.
As the aftershock passed, the pain had flown into his hands on the wings of a thousand vengeful sparrows. Each one taking a peck. Yet Lime, patiently and with two left thumbs, had managed to unlock his First Aid kit that had been gathering rust and steam in the bathroom. Using his right armpit and his left hand, he had proceeded to crack open a 250ml bottle of medical alcohol which he poured over his injured paw after running it under some tepid water. As the cleansing liquid smothered his raw nerves, a numbing fog descended upon him. He almost followed that fog to its black end, but managed to steady himself by leaning onto the sink. It passed quick enough. All that was left was to slap some gauze on the open wound and wrap it up with bandages and medical tape.
Afterwards, he had returned to the only other room in the flat, sat next to the cadaver and had wept once more, though he would never know if his tears had been for him or the stiff.
Suddenly, he had needed to get out, out in the open. He strongly required distance and space away from the room and its dead girl and her violated heart.
*
Questions perforated Lime's mind. About himself. About Véronique. His reporter's instinct kicked in.
Had she possessed enemies vile enough to thoroughly violate her body in such a ritualistic manner?
Was the murder revenge for something she had done or been involved in?
Who had she really been other than a kindly ageing hooker with a soft downy belly?
Had Véronique even been her real name?
How had the killer executed her without waking him or spilling any blood?
Where were they now?
Were they watching him as he stood there needing a piss, or had the killing been a warning against his own investigations?
Was he the true target?
Which organisation or individual had he pissed off enough to do that to an innocent in his own flat? Had she really been so innocent?
Had he done it?
Why … ?
His mind vortexed as tried it to answer all of them at once. He felt that he would vomit and that his eyes were now at the back of his head. Running and lurching his way to the nearest bus stop bin, he ejected the sparse, mostly liquid, contents of his stomach and crumpled onto the hard pavement. Momentarily, he began to feel his mind clearing and covering his eyes with his left hand, he knew that he had a decision to make. He saw his imaginary actions laid out in front of him. They were streets to be chosen to walk down. Each one with its own outcome. Its own end.
*
Freeze.
#1 He throws himself at the feet of the convoluted, failing and corrupt justice system. It would be as easy as walking into a police station. Then whatever happens at least he would be safer even in jail than out there on his own. Or would he?
#2 Dispose of the body, scrub his apartment clean of all traces and carry on as if nothing had happened. He had seen enough movies that he surely could figure out a way to get rid of a body, after knocking its teeth out and cutting its hands off. But he and at least one other person out there would know that something had happened. and he would be living in fear for the rest of his life, listening out for that knock on the office door.
Flight
#3 Just go fucking AWOL, get out of that country and on a plane to India that very evening. Yet, running is always seen as an admission of guilt by the authorities and when they did find him (and find him they would in this networked communication trap that we now call the global marketplace) that would be that.
#4 Suicide. Each choice would be so irredeemably heavy he may as well bloody top himself.
Fight.
#5 Right, you cunts. This is me talking now. I'm coming after you. Whoever you are. You think that nobody cares for a dead whore. Well, I do. I will use every skill this occupation of jackals has taught me to hunt you down and I will expose you and gut you of all your secrets and I hope I spill blood all over the place and I hope you beg as your tongues ripped from your throats. I will be a burning wind that will cut you down to your knees.
*
Yes. #5 is the one.
See, there was no real choice at all.
Chapter 5
25th of January, 2011
Alfie Lime returned to his rooms that evenin
g for one last time. He removed all his clothes and damn near silently went about his business; memories of things done there, of women awkwardly fornicated with, of nights alone with a book and a bottle. Inundated with memories, his mind made him feel that sickness of nostalgia.
After placing his laptop and what few possessions he had accumulated over his years abroad into an old Swedish rucksack, once given to him by a friend, and a large canvas military kitbag, he donned a pair of marigolds and began to scrub his room and body with the patience of a sniper.
Then, Lime stared at the heart. It glistened raw in the naked bulb light and it seemed impossible that something so ample could have fitted inside the body that was lying on his bed. With great care that seemed at odds with this bear of a man, he removed the nail from the once internal muscle and placed it into a pocket of his rucksack. His one keepsake. A reminder of events.
Lime showered one last time, put on his charcoal pinstriped suit, his woolly hat and donkey jacket and, using an old silk handkerchief, turned the door handle. Closing the door, he gingerly descended the winding staircase and popped the keys into his old postbox.
Lime disappeared down the road.
He did not look back.
*
Alfie Lime tramped about for two and a half days. He passed medieval still-cobbled streets and homogeneous street wall Haussman shops and abodes with their classy on the outside, pokey on the inside glamour.
You might well have seen him, lying on a station bench at Charles De Gaulle Etoile or Auber, if you had been marching on your way to work or with your face squashed against the window of the RER train as it rolled in and disgorged its commuters. To you he would have been just another crumpled mess of clothes with an ill-favoured face on top. Or maybe it was when you were gliding in the brisk evening air through Chatelet Les Halles, arm in arm with your lover. That large man scribbling questions in a notebook amongst the pigeons. I did. I saw him and I doffed my imaginary cap.
Lime's roving led him this way and that. Ostensibly feeling like a marionette pulled by unseen strings to some unknown end. All of a sudden he stopped and raised his head. Above him was the sign for the Metro Station, Strasbourg St Denis. Somebody bumped hard into his arm and he knew that this was where he was meant to be. Looking down at his feet, a ratty pigeon was encircling him. It was a mad looking creature, almost black with grime. Its feathers were ripped out betraying angry scabs and tumours all over its weedy body. Lime observed the mad thing's path, for once not feeling the urge to kick out at one of its pestilent breed.
There had been too much hurt in his life recently.
No need to add some.
Lime was determined only to hurt those who merited it.
The cooing cretin continued to go round and round one last time and then it bungled into the air and took off down a side street. Lime blinked, then smiled, then nodded and followed the flying beastie. He decided to ignore the shrill mosquito buzz that pierced his head as a street caught his eye. After all, it seemed as good a sign as any.
This way, Alfie.
This way ...
*
As soon as Alfie Lime entered Rue De La Mort, he knew it would be his haven. There was something in the way the vivid hues sliced through the never ending downpour. The way the light gripped the place, like a good dose of the shits. There was a iridescence, a stain glass quality, a glow that emanated off every bar window and life famished face that stumbled across his path.
It did not take long for Lime to sniff out and shack up somewhere.
L'Hotel Bordello was exactly the place he needed with its underlying hum of cheap perfume and cat's piss around the place that made him curl his nose. The lobby could have easily been the inside of a small whale with a habit of a dozen packets of French cigarettes a day. The wooden gently curved domed ribs supporting the horizontal ceiling's damp patches, the vague crimson patterned walls accentuated by the bright green shaded lamps and the fastened shut heavy curtains lent the lobby a cavernous ambience.
Sat against the right wall and behind a large counter was, Lime thought, a leering middle-aged Chinese Elvis impersonator. Elvis was smoking a grand cigar which, when he puffed, partially obscured his face with smoke. A bottle of some no-brand rotgut rested on the table by his hands. He was not a man of great height but made up for this cruel twist of fate with his jet black hair-dyed quiff, which stood a good foot above his scalp. Elvis squinted, through suspicion or smoke irritation, as Lime approached and stated his business. He continued to squint as he gave Lime the old up and down then grinned, showing a gap in his yellowing pegs, and picked up the ledger from somewhere under the table. Lime was surprised when the oriental didn't ask for his name, or his passport, but just narrowed his left eye and barked, “Engrish?”
“Yep”, replied Lime, and the snake-eyed fellow scrawled “John Smith” next to the date and barked the price for the night. He seemed happy when Lime stated that he would pay for a week and as Elvis was scribbling, Lime noticed that his lean hands were covered in Thai temple tattoos, he then saw through the cloud of cheap smoke that they started at Elvis' neck. Seeing the look of curiosity, Elvis gave a chuckle.
“No knife cut me now!”, he squawked as he proudly imitated a stab and disembowelling.
*
Alfie Lime sat in front of his French windows on an old chair, its cloth covering in dire need of either repair or destruction, drinking a bottle of wine (as is the custom), smoking and wondering what the night would bring on Rue De La Mort. His room faced out right into the middle of the street and it gave him a good vantage point from which to suss this weird location out. In all his years in Paris, he had never once heard tell of this vital part of the city. It was a mystery.
As the sun finally decided to set and just when Lime felt the pull of his woes once more, the inhabitants came out to play.
It started with a howl.
Then a perverse and violent Mardi Gras unravelled itself from the threads of the shadows.
Figures emerged into the street as a lone accordion struck up a fight with with a violin. This mad polka brought with it physical feelings that twitched and pulled at Lime and electricity crackled through the air as even the buildings swayed in rapture to its sad melodies and swirling tempo.
Lime gripped his chair as outside grins adorned faces, filled not with joy but with lust. The lust to drink until legless and then drink some more, to fight until death, to fuck and rape through the opposite sex and other species. Shots were fired as a jealous tango imploded into a nova of blood and flame, and the street screamed blue murder. Dancers trotted around the body, roses clenched between their teeth as the women stabbed the dying body with their stilettos and someone poured brandy over it as it drew its last breath and another threw a match and whoosh!
A window crashed into splinters as a lady with an eye patch shattered a man's jaw while he was trying to cop a feel of the hairy hole in frilly panties and the music whirled and whirled into a frenzy. Shouts of “Putain!” echoed and bounced off the stone walls of a café and the laughter of the mentally-ill nudged at Lime's ear while the groans of the ravaged and the slapping of balls against buttocks seemed to accompany the devil's melody that tempted.
Chapter 6
15th of January, 2011.
Alfie Lime's habitual route to the newspaper offices took him past Rue De La Fayette. It was not the quickest way, surely, and some might have called it superfluous in its detours, but it let Lime deliberately and methodically think his way through his investigation before he hit the chaos that was the office.
Even at that time on a damp and cloudy morning La Fayette was crowded with people of all creeds and classes. There were the heavily made up Chinese Dragon Ladies selling twinkling knick-knacks from their booths; a perpetual tiding of magpies around them, bargaining this and coveting that.
There were the suspicious Roma females, tanned through dirt and the exposure to the elements, walking the streets with hands outstretched in a begging
gesture. Practised pleading in their eyes and all wrapped up in head scarves and layers of warm garb and shawls that made them appear as plump peasants. Resourceful and cunning.
There were the businessmen and women stomping with self-importance and indifference to their private offices or open spaces. Their smart phones a constant buzz of streaming information that they resented their addiction to.
There were the tea leaves and petty criminals lurking with their hoods pulled down over their lean leopard faces. Waiting for that dozy and clueless tourist or feeble chihuahua clutching fashionista to come into their radar as they reared, ready for the hunt.
Then, there were the undercover policemen patiently hunting the hunters.
Lime crossed the road, glancing up to see the Opera with all its gaudy alto fanfare and firm soprano roots. He ducked down a back alley filled with pharmacies, tabacs and half empty cafés and came to heavy weather beaten wooden door where he punched in a four digit code. The door buzzed and clicked open and Lime, with no conscious effort, made his into the darkness and nimbly, for a man of his size, mounted the scuffed stairs.
*
The GutterPress was both an online ezine with a monthly print edition and was seen, by some, as part of The Great Communist Plot, by others, as a haven for paranoid Right-Wing extremists, and by others still, as an inspired and humourous piece of satirical fiction.
It was, in fact, none of the above.
Inspired by the efforts of other whistle-blower papers and websites, Charles Fort, plus any number of conspiracy theories you cared to mention, The GutterPress wore that evocative line from Oscar Wilde, “We're all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”, as a tag line and was something wholly unique. It took its anti-censorship stance to the nth degree, enraging people from the Right, Left and Centre, the Rationalists and the New-Agers and drew its contributors from the murky pool of international rogue finance, to the wilderness of the beastly fairytales of crypto-zoology.