And The Street Screamed Blue Murder! Read online

  One thing stood out. Nobody knew where the constant flow of money came from.

  Not even the Editor.

  Oh, there were rumours, alright.

  Are there not always?

  The most common one was that the cash was donated by a sympathetic Swiss industrialist, named Von Sydow, in penance for his family's support for the German National Socialist Party's book burning during the ideological cataclysm that was the Second World War. The other whiff of psychotic gossip was that an anarchic cyber-collective hacked into the bank accounts of the rich and spoilt and filtered the money to the paper that way. This ambiguity had led some of the suspicious and jealous in the “alternative” media community to label The GutterPress an Illuminati stronghold, filled with misinformation to keep the sheeple silent and pliant, or a gatekeeper rag.

  This did not bother Lime, or any other member of staff, and had become an in-house joke, with posters of the pyramid and eye on the dollar bill gracing the walls and stickers with the phrase N.W.O. STOOGE gracing the covers of laptops. If ever confronted on such legends, Lime would always shrug and make, “Woo-woo!”, ghost noises. To be honest, most of the staff didn't dwell on where their money came from as long as they were damn well paid at the end of the month. They were all deep down inside just happy to be part of something truly special. Of course, this only came out when they were drunk and with at least over a thousand hits a day on the website alone, who could blame them.

  *

  The humble sized main office was hardly buzzing with activity when Lime entered. Three of the four scattered reporters, cum editors when need be, were surfing and skimming the internet for, yet more, info to back up their possibly outrageous and libellous claims. They were flitting between the broadsheets, The Online Resistance Movement and videos of Spanish webcam girls stripping. The other one was tapping his knuckles into his PC's keyboard with a spurt and an exclaimed “Fuck it!”.

  “Morning, you bastards!” sung Lime as he collapsed into his foam and metal chair.

  The replies varied from guttural grunts to:

  “Morning, Baldy!”

  "What! What!”

  "Alright, you dirty girl!”

  Stroking his head once more for luck, Lime then stretched his back before leaning forward and switching his PC on. The machine groaned and wheezed into life. The background noise was filled with the incessant tap tap tap of fingers hitting keys, mouses being scrapped along mouse pads and the second hand noise pollution of old skool rave tunes blasting out of headphones, along with the odd groan or cackle. A rum bunch they were, at no mistake, and Lime loved them for that.

  No moral making idealists here.

  Just the dishonourable art of muck raking.

  *

  Lime felt a hand on his shoulder. It was his closest comrade and drinking compadre, “Bamboozle” Bangs. A man in an eternal black suit and shirt combo, his medium length still dark hair, always brylcreemed back, and a face that had been lived in. All topped off with the classiest pair of black and white brogues that you have ever seen. The man's love and consummation of alcohol was only matched by his passion for classic hard-boiled crime fiction. This obsession had brought Bamboozle to be a reporter for his local paper the Hartlepool Gazette when he was younger.

  However, after a spate of boredom and a prank involving a stuffed hanged monkey and a French visiting party, he had been asked in no uncertain terms to “get the fuck out of here”, to which Bamboozle had stuck his two fingers in his bosses faces and quietly replied “Was going anyway … ”. Then, after a couple of jobs working for English language papers in Poland, which ended with him needing to get out of the country fast or marry the daughter for the local ex-leader of the Politburo, The GutterPress was waiting for him with open arms. It was really the only place he could have gone.

  “Grumpy's looking fer you.”

  “Oh yeah. Well, I'm here now.”

  "How's yer head?”

  "How's yours?”

  Then they grinned, a gigantic holy grin, at each other and Bamboozle tapped his arm and wandered off back to his seat. It did not take long. There was a flurry of activity coming from an adjoining office and a squat figure stood in the doorway, hands on hips, outlined by the light from a lone naked bulb.

  “Lime! Here now!” barked the diminutive figure.

  Lime blew out all the air from his lungs and elevated himself off the chair in a big show of making a reluctant effort. If the Editor-in-Chief wanted to see him, then it was always serious. Bad Ju Ju. Lime knocked on the open door and entered. The office looked as if it had been ransacked, but then, it always looked that way. Sat behind the desk on a high chair was the German-American midget, whose workday bad temper had earned him the name, “Grumpy”. It was a name he had embraced. He wasn't nasty, just inclined to being in an ill-mood and the more he showered one with insults, the more he liked them.

  He knew his job and when it came down to it defended The GutterPress and his staff with the tenacity of a elephant defending its cubs. He was fighting exactly five lawsuits against The GutterPress with the best international lawyers in Paris and that year had only just began. When asked where the money came from he would puff on his cigarette and shout “Santa-fucking-Claus!”. The staff wouldn't have any other boss and, once they were in, he wouldn't have any other reporters. It had, in fact, been his idea to open the offices of the newspaper in Paris. Legend had it that Grumpy had spouted “It's a big world out there, boys. Let's invade Paris just like Great Uncle Rolf!”.

  Grumpy gestured to a chair opposite him with his stubby hands as he puffed away on a filterless cigarette and pushed his tortoise shell glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. Lime sat down into the chair, noticing its deliberate lowness, and intertwined his fingers.

  “Let's cut the crap, you big bald bastard. Does the name McKnight mean anything to your fat head?

  "Why?”

  "Look, I know he was one of your sources. Seems someone else knew too.”

  "What …?”

  "McKnight's been murdered.”

  Lime froze and his jaw dropped.

  “Yeah, that got your attention, didn't it. You're just all fucking ears now, ain'tcha.”

  "When?”

  "When?! Who gives a fuck when. The jock's gone, Limey Lime. They found his body floating down one of those piddling streams that you island monkeys call rivers.”

  "How do they know it was murder?”

  "You mean, maybe he was sad at having to give his priceless secret information to no-good giant like yourself and in a fit of remorse decided to end it all by going for a ill-fated swim?”

  "Something like that.”

  "Well, there just happened to be a noose around his neck. That might have been a give away. Even for your knuckle dragging bobbies on the beat.”

  "I guess it was.”

  "Oh, and his eyes, ears and tongue were cut out.”

  "Jesus.”

  "Don't blaspheme you goddamned atheist.”

  "See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. Looks like a ritualistic killing.”

  "You watch too many movies, Lime, you know that?”

  "So you keep telling me.”

  "Yeah well, be careful. Life don't have no happy ending. Lime.”

  Chapter 7

  29th of January, 2011

  Alfie Lime awoke to the morning of the night before with a bang.

  His thoughts were clouded by a lack of sleep and a momentary unwillingness to believe that the scenes that had filled his mind from the night before were not a dark reverie.

  Listen:

  “Now.

  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... I’m back.

  The pale sun is rising over the damp rooftops like some long forgotten eye of an Egyptian god, its wan golden light brings me back to gravity and I close my eyes for a second and wait and feel all my bones and marrow realign themselves as the living flesh wrapped around them tightens and stretches and I pull in the tendrils of mind-stuff that are still
leaking out all around me. It is the beginning of another day. Another beautiful day in Hell.

  In the beginning was ...

  What?

  I realise that I am as thirsty as my throat is dry. Dry is a word describing a physical sensation is different from wet which is another word. I know that and I must sit up.

  Now!

  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was “Now!” (or was it “Fuck!”).

  Then there was a Big Bang.

  The Cosmic Cum-Face.

  And there still is.

  Forever.

  Good Morning.

  Where I am is softly lit and quiet. My paisley curtains are semi-open and the cold morning late winter’s light flows through coloured weave of the material not designed to hold water but working adequately at letting those particles (or is it waves?) of information that show me the state that the world is in today. I blink and wipe some night shit eye-crust from between my olfactory and optical sense organs. The dust that falls, the spider gods crouched in their webs in the corners, the damp patch in the ceiling, all working together to create itself living moment after moment.

  My room is moderately sized and suits the purpose that I have assigned to it, being the place where I stay. and all in all it seems to prove its worth on a fairly regular basis. No doubt. Never an ill word muttered from it. Never a sharp comment. A four-walled box that works hard at being what it is. Four-walled. Four. A solid number, it is a number of the material world for the mystics, a world that keeps you, that traps you. Not so the mandala-like circle. Looking through the round window, the window of consciousness. The soul.

  But the soul is so unreliable don’t you think?

  A tap drips a drop of rust flecked water into the porcelain sink in the small kitchen where I sometimes bake my hash cakes and fudge.

  Then there is a Big Bang.

  In the distance there are still screams of terror and pain, and gunshots penetrate the air sending their waves out and around until the noise weakens enough for us not to care as the law of entropy prescribes and there are sounds akin to females of the species undergoing forced penetration or maybe an operation on the usually internal, now surprisingly, external dull-coloured bodily organs with no anaesthesia and I hear the crackling laughter of fires raging all around me and I feel safe.

  Yet, here in this room it is quiet.

  About time I shook the old cobwebs away.

  Gravity hits me and I am truly a sad person again.”

  *

  Lime knew that he must try to act, not as a man in the grips of mental disintegration, but as one who was normal. Once he had shaken and run his head a couple of times under the small sink in his room, his thoughts dwelt on what to do next. He pulled the broken pieces of himself together once more.

  Right.

  First things first. When he had left his apartment he had wisely spent his days emptying out his bank account, wrapping the bills in free newspapers and stuffing them into the bottom of his kitbag in case of theft along with the twenty ounces of silver that he had kept hidden in his room for emergencies like a good little conspiracy theorist. He had also purchased a cheap and untraceable mobile phone and sim card and transferred each of the most important numbers from his old phone by hand to the new one. Before he had wiped his old one clean of information, he had turned it on and checked it for one last time. There were twelve text messages, fifteen missed calls and three phone messages. Almost all were from Bamboozle.

  One brought a smile where had been none.

  “Lime! Don't do this to us, you fucker!”, was all it had plainly said.

  The familiar abuse from his boss had meant that, at least, somebody cared.

  Then Lime left it on a bench for someone to find and use and maybe lead whoever was after him on a wild goose chase. Maybe. For a while, at the very least.

  That morning he scoured the newspapers left outside his door for any inkling of information connected to either himself, or poor Véronique. Nothing. As yet. His experience as a reporter had taught him that the story would be big news. Splattered all over the papers and TV. Such a killing. Strain forced tears out as his brow crinkled and he banged his fists into his temples in an effort to remember and to accept.

  He really needed coffee.

  *

  The cramped dining room was filled with four solid tables and four chairs around each. The sickly salmon coloured walls sweated with the condensation billowing out from where the kitchen seemed to be. The air was heavy with the stench of a thousand cockroach farts. A young skeletal thing with the lightest blue eyes that Lime had ever seen entered the room and took his order for a coffee as, after the wallop of the previous night, there was no way his stomach would be up to food without a rebellion.

  Lime realised, as a soft mote of dust caught suspended for an eternal moment in a column of six-rayed starred light, that all around him was information carried by light and sound waves and particles and chemical reactions in the brain that cross infinitesimal distances of nothingness to show him the darkness of his morning coffee. The soft hum of electrical appliances filled the air with whispered sizzling background music. Toaster murmurs. Oven low talk. The clicks of a system turning on. Turning off. and again through ticking of seconds, minutes, hours, days, years that hammer down on us with every respiratory motion.

  Then he realised that he hadn’t even sipped his coffee yet was going to need to take a shit, as he farted and the flatulence felt warm and not a little soggy in the soft cotton of his generic boxer shorts. He gently sniffed the perfumed air as particles of his own faecal matter wafted up his nose taking with them a chemical signal that was not pleasant nor unpleasant but brutally compulsive and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

  His coffee was black and steaming in the morning chill and he stirred the spoonful of sugar in slowly as the gravity and the forces of nature conspired to create a spiral of bubbles. and he breathed and stirred. Breathed and stirred. The light that reflected off the surface of the coffee was a mesmerising chiaroscuro of browns, blacks and whites. The smell of the fresh beverage, a smell that could have tempted Adam himself, made him feel like weeping at its beauty and he broke his contact with it as he feared, for an instant, that he would be lost forever in its unconscious pools and swirls.

  He really needed that coffee and began to sip at it, when he noticed that there was one other person in the room with him.

  A tiny framed old lady dressed in bright hues, a Trilby under which lay a equally vibrant headscarf and with, what appeared to be, ruby red slippers. She had twinkle in her eye as she raised her cup in greeting gesture and hoovered down a light American cigarette. Lime remembered seeing her in the lobby the previous day and he smiled back.

  The lady was reading a thick old book and she turned each page with a grand flourish, as if conducting an unseen orchestra into bursts of symphonic ejaculation.

  Then something else caught weary attention. It was a hole in the skirting board. Poking out from that hiding place were the whiskers and nose of a rat.

  Like him.

  A creature in hiding.

  And the best way to hide was to become invisible.

  Chapter 8

  29th of January, 2011

  With his meagre rucksack packed and his money and silver stashed in the wall safe provided for in his room, Alfie Lime braced himself and set out into the chilly wet morning air. He planned to die that day and had started to grow a beard in memory of himself. As he stomped through the shabby lobby, he heard Elvis' voice yap at his heels, “No phonecall for you! No message for you! Nobody love you!”.

  He realised as he stuck his chin defiantly into the atrocious air that the bad days were here and that it was up to him to change them back, if not to the good days, ('cause let's face it, they are as mythical as an honest politician) then at least to days with moments of joy. A life of fleeting instants before death. Yes, that'll do.

  It hadn't taken him long to get focussed and his
scavenging reporter's gut onto the scene and know that the best place to start was at the beginning. That was where he was going to. The beginning. The place where he had first clapped eyes on the now cold body that was once poor Véronique.

  Véronique.

  Let me in.

  I can see him, head down against the elements, hands in pockets, a walk of purpose. Except for when the urge to smoke takes him. He likes to pace and smoke while he's thinking. Me too.

  He wound his way through the theatrical streets stopping only once to type in a single message into his plastic phone.

  Bamboo. It's me. L.

  Within seconds his phone began to buzz and tremble and Lime pressed the receive button and placed it to his ear.

  “Hello, Bamboozey.”

  "Well, well, well. They seek 'im 'ere, they seem 'im fucking there.”

  Lime breathed out a chuckle of relief as the crow's feet surrounding his eyes deepened into the troughs of a real smile.

  “Listen and don't ask questions. Something's happened. Can't explain what … yet but I've got a gut feeling exploding in me and telling that it's connected to the fuckers who killed McKnight. Can you dig up those files out of the office and copy them onto a memory stick? My password's mumstheword. All one word.”

  “Will do.”

  "Send me a text when you've got them. Tell no one, Bamboo. Got that? No one. I'll be in touch.”

  "Right-O.”

  Click.

  Bamboozle knew the proverbial score. He would enter the phone number under a false name.

  Mum's the word.

  As the streets became steeper and in the distance long stairwells took over from flatter side alleys, the walk became more taxing. Lime could feel his arteries pounding and pumping that energy around his heart. For a moment, he imagined a nail hammered into it. What that must feel like.

  When he looked up and there was Pigalle in all its daytime nakedness. Peepshows, lined the streets, where one could get someone else to do the tugging if one had the readies. The work places of strippers, hostesses, pole dancers and bouncers of all the shades of the l'arche de la ciel populated by sexually frustrated Arabs. Sordid sex shops with their tantalizing peek through the gap in the door and leather crotchless panties on window display. The utter dullness and conformity of the Twenty First Century sexual imagination of these places never stopped offending. Lime saw them as palaces to the banality of the human spirit. As fake as a silicon implant and a lot more expensive if you happened to buy a glass of house piss in the wrong one. You should be prepared to be either broke or beaten when you left.