And The Street Screamed Blue Murder! Read online

  These signs were chance events, nothing more.

  They revealed to him that life is chaos and nothing more.

  “Should we not, all of us, smash the mirror of reality before us into a thousand little daggers that pierce the untruths of power and ego that sit in the corner of minds, talking to itself and playing with children’s dolls?” he mused to himself out loud.

  “Yet!” he barked at a passing young student who brushed her long freshly washed brunette hair over her face to hide from this lunatic.

  “If life is nothing more than the unsatisfactory, fleeting and frustrating, should we not embrace these aspects and not try to escape from them?”

  He whirled around as others scuttled by him as he sat on a bench in the small artificial park in Les Halles.

  “Let's take the kingdom of heaven by storm and make peace with the animal inside! Let him out once in awhile? The Black Dog sniffing around the cemeteries of ancient India. Pissing up against the doors of a church” he chuckled to a manic pigeon and crossed his legs.

  “Should we act with eye for a eye or just shrug and say c'est la vie while stroking ourselves in apathy?” he asked a pointy-nosed doctor in tweed who looked away and pulled his jacket protectively around his chest.

  “As our ideas of the universe shift from nature to an eternal judge, to a sea of information forms, I have to ask myself two simple questions” he thought, his top leg tapping in thought.

  “One: Which is more holy, a shit-eating fly or a plastic cup?”

  “Two: Why has my brain not melted?”

  *

  Les Halles was the perfect place to meet Bamboozle. A dead man would not be noticed amongst all the craven shoppers, groups of teenage girls and boys strutting their latest peacock purchase, shops selling Chinese made goods at extortionate prices and American fast food joints. As Lime turned a metallic corner, he saw his friend was there before him. This was good. It gave him time to observe that which was going on around them. On the fringe. He now had to focus, to let that natural spark of madness that had possessed him in the park slip away. A gang of young black studs swaggered next to him, bellowing like bulls. Chic and bright young things in promising tight jeans and high boots. A tall white suit sipping a Pastis while reading Le Monde. The odd tramp sniffing his fingers while going through the bins. No one appeared to be doing anything - dodgy. No one was staring at Bamboozle. Cannot be too careful. THEY had committed the atrocity in his room. That meant that THEY could certainly find his friend.

  Whoever THEY were.

  Lime did not even know if THEY were a THEY, or a HE or a SHE.

  Who knows what Véronique had been up to?

  A jilted lover?

  Lime glanced one more time as he had been taught to as a child. Look right, look left, look right again then cross. His friend had got his face buried in a book. He only looked up as Lime's heavy shadow fell over his shoulder. Lime had the urge to hug his friend of the best part of a decade. He kept it inside, of course, knowing that any attention drawn could damn him. He was deceased now and British enough to know that understatement was most important in a time of crisis.

  As Lime dropped down into a seat, his friend pushed a Belgian beer towards him. At its side was a memory stick which Lime pocketed in a single swift gesture.

  “Got you one in. Don't expect any more charity, Caspar.”

  "I won't.”

  The news had finally broken of Lime's self-inflicted demise and this had led the police to his old gaff where the now rotting corpse of the prostitute had been found. The French and international media had leapt on the story picking its bones clean. An old picture of Lime's face was on every TV channel. Luckily, news being the constant shuffle of information that it was, it would all have blown over in a week.

  Bamboozle slammed his thin volume shut and turned it around in his hands showing Lime the title and author's name.

  “Dead good it is too. If you excuse the pun.”

  They made eye contact for the first time and smirked at each other. It was as if none of the rotten events had happened. As if it was just a normal weekday night. It broke Lime's heart and he fought back the volcano that had just rumbled in his guts. He took his beer and felt the coolness trickle down his throat taking him away from his plight for an instant. Putting out the fire in his belly.

  “Work has been in a right fuckin' state since you passed on over t' th' other shore. Grumpy's after someone's blood.”

  "No change there then”, croaked Lime, pulling himself together.

  "We've had the fuckin' coppers around threatening t' shut us down. Confiscating documents. The works. They can't, of course, not with Grumpy's lawyers on th' case, but things are getting more difficult, mate.”

  Dear old Grumpy.

  Lime sat in silence as he friend continued talking.

  “We've run up into a brick wall on this. People are shy t' talk now, Y'know what I mean? and the British government've connected you to th' McKnight killing. The bastards. They're saying you were a dangerous paranoid. I've been through the first degree over there, let me tell you. Don't worry. I didn't say owt.”

  Lime knew that, but he did not how to make his apology for causing all the palaver. No, it was not him. It was THEM. He wished he could have sorted it out himself without dumping his beloved colleagues in the big barrel of shite. Bamboozle had come at great risk to himself and Lime would be hung, drawn and quartered before letting any more badness happen to someone he cared about. Imaginary blows rained down upon the heads of his unknown enemies.

  “So,”, Bamboozle clapped his hands, “what's th' lowdown, you stiff?”

  Bamboozle loved to talk in Noir-speak. Lime guessed that his friend secretly wished to have been a gumshoe. More Chandler than Magnum. There was something in the glory of the tortured dead beat, the loser, that attracted men like Bamboozle. Lime could definitely see their point. Especially now. The world was a stinking and corrupted place. Those books and films were an exaggeration but the rotten nut of truth was in there. A black and white chiaroscuro of society's soul. Even the hero was a weakling. All motivations degraded into a kleptocracy that Lime, Bamboozle and others like them had been fighting against since they had begun to think for themselves. Lime realised that he was now living it. This story.

  Lime took a hearty in-out breath then he told Bamboozle as much as he allowed him to know. Staring into those hardened and worried blue eyes he relived that morning in all its brutal glory. He watched as his friend covered his mouth with his hand, rubbed his face and leant back when he got to the gruesome details as if wanting to flee the imaginary scene in his head. Lime left out the details about the strawberry blonde and waved his friend's questions away when he asked where Lime was kipping. The less Bamboozle knew, the better for him.

  “So I take it, you reckon it was those cunts who done for McKnight?”

  "Seems likely.”

  "Don't it?”

  "I need to know if th' girl, … if Véronique was caught up in this somehow”, Lime blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  "Or, if she was just random. I haven't ruled out a psychotic ex-lover either.”

  "Seems unlikely though, eh? Although ... that whole thing with th' heart and th' nail.”

  "Bamboozle, me old chum, it's a funny old world.”

  "Tell me about it …”, he chuckled then gingerly pulling a couple of Lime's chin hair's out by their roots he said, “and what's with this fluff on yer face, you hippie?”

  Chapter 14

  “So, where do we go from here?”.

  That was the last thing Bamboozle had asked.

  It had been one reassuring question. It was the “we” that had become the comfort blanket on which to rest his weary head. Grumpy and Bamboozle would be out there digging and digging and digging like a couple of famished mutts in a graveyard even though the chances of coming up with any leads at all was as slim as a catwalk model turned sideways. Grumpy would not stand for having one of his own disgracef
ully forced into the eternal retirement of the afterlife and knew some people in the British Embassy and Lime pitied them. Bamboozle had a couple of informers in the Gendarme who owed him big time for uncovering a scandal involving an officer, a human trafficking beef and a gaggle of child prostitutes.

  This gave Lime enough liberty to go stalking into the Véronique's world.

  There was one big problem with that plan. The rat. That ugly fucker had not only seen and talked Lime but, he suspected, would be quite accommodating with the information regarding his own inquires about the strawberry blonde to whoever came demanding. He may even had taken his own initiative and gone opening his trap to someone first. It was a risk Lime had to take. He needed to find that blonde and fucking sharpish..

  What was it Maria had said?

  “ … whatever that needs to done, make sure you do it damn quickly”.

  Damn straight.

  Come Hell, war, pestilence or a shitting tsunami.

  Lime moved through the late evening throng of human beings feeling more solid as a ghost than he had ever felt in his miserable life. He was becoming concrete smoke behind the veil of the everyday world. It was true that the colours around him had begun, ever so faintly, to fade. An exquisite mist followed him everywhere. He just trudged on blindly feeling the fatigue of his situation with every footstep.

  The idea of taking the Metro flitted through his head but he had left his Navigo pass stuffed in a trouser pocket at the scene of his unfortunate but fraudulent departure from the world of the living.

  “Well.” the thought came to him;

  "When in Paris, do as the Parisians do and fare dodge.”

  *

  The newspaper headline in front of him talked of strikes. Yet another French strike. Forces bigger than state or government were controlling things now. So, the government had taken a couple of their sweeties away from them to be in line with its Lord and Master, the market, and the many were screaming and throwing a fit. Only for themselves. Those Caviare Bolsheviks also seemed to have forgotten that they were the privileged few who had full-time employment and safe places to work and protection from unemployment. A middle-class revolt all pretending to be Socialist working class. A tinpot fraud. Plastic food.

  At least it wasn't his face looming out from the front page. Lime pulled his hat down further and his scarf up over his chin. If it was the bastards who he thought it was that were after him, then they would be equally unhappy with too much exposure. Too much light could destroy them. Like a vampire and sunlight.

  The inside of the train was surprisingly clean yet reeked of the burning rubber of the brakes as the driver, obviously embarrassed by his lack of participation in the universal bowel movement of bureaucracy happening in hotspots all over the Republic, tried to kill the passengers with his frantic driving and as the train hurtled to a stop bodies were catapulted into the poisoned air and flew across the body of the train to crash crumpled into some other put upon individual just trying to stay alive one more day, just one more fucking day.

  It was typical underground train that could have been in any city in the end days of the once mighty Western empire. Furrowed middle-class brows that worried about the children of Haiti threatened with gang rape yet wouldn't throw ten cents for a homeless guy. Gum chewing blacks straight off whichever boat looking here and there for the good life he'd heard so much about. If only they could avoid the gangs of Neo-Nazi thugs and politicians ready to stomp them physically, or bureaucratically, into the dirt. Post-modern spectacles and leather boots that needed no feet for them to walk. Young and affluent graduates with a chic conformity, hair tied back in ponytails that accentuated the giraffe long neck and drew the eyes down the pert nipples under the just-so jumper. Little metal boxes that contain a whole CD collection yet have no connection to the listener but the thumping of beats to keep everyone else at bay in sonic self-defence. A squat middle-aged Chinaman corner-eyed the young ladies with all the subtlety of plank of wood and, as he stretched, took indiscriminate photos of the effete pointy-nosed beauties around him with his phone to empty later onto clean hotel sheets. A pick and mix of cultures standing nose to nose, from the bearded and skull capped to the heart-shaped shaved pussy that eyed each other with the distrust reserved in the past for the most deadly of enemies.

  Then Lime saw him.

  The creature shuffled onto the train, knocking into seats with his one short leg Igor shuffle, hair poking out from his skull in lumps, raised right shoulder touching cabbage ear. and he sat in front of me.

  Yes, me. Not Lime. Me.

  Not directly, see, just one row in front but that was enough. He looked about the carriage, all shifty-like and crinkled his nose and Lime saw the chimp in him. Bad genes for that primate baby. Uh-huh.

  Then it hit him.

  That (Poor? No, not poor, he seemed perfectly happy to me) bastard was one of us! Holy shit! Mutated fucking apes! Evolved apes! Look at us in our hubris, thinking that “evolved” means more advanced. Just because we are aware of ourselves. So, therefore awareness is good. Goody-goody-good. and weren't we just the pinnacle of life with our choo-choo trains and nuclear power stations and wheelbarrows and computers and fizzy drinks. Weren't we just?

  He had the realisation that we had forgotten that evolution is just the adaptation of DNA to its environment and vice versa. All we had done was adapt to shopping centres and daytime TV and the lie that violence was something other than life and the mind-numbing impotence that being satisfied leads to. Was a common bog-standard here-kitty-kitty house cat more “advanced” than the more vicious and proud Sabre-Toothed Tiger that once roamed these streets?

  And now Lime felt the pull into the realm of folly once more and he thought to himself:

  “I am a symbolist who believes no more in abstract forms but life shall be my symbol now and death and the moon and the tempestuous sea as it crashes against granite endlessly carving it into new masterful shapes and nebulas that spin with the glory of starlight and the eyes of storms that bend trees to their wills and the swallows that cross the equator in droves and the salmon who need no taxis to get back to where they came from.”

  But Lime did not notice the two darkly clad albino businessmen behind the door in the next carriage. Luckily for him, he was sat with his back to them and they did not notice him. If he had seen the two gaunt and looming twins, he might have - in a mere blink of an eye - seen a tentacle jut out from behind their dark glasses, the suckers all spasming. Or a hand pushing through their chests bulging their overcoats. Or the screams of cats being flayed alive blasting out of their head phones.

  Luckily for him, he did not.

  *

  The little Asian boy had appeared out of nowhere or so it seemed to Lime who had been too engrossed in his cascade of thought and plots crashing into the rocks of dead ends and risk. All those “What ifs?” circling his head like stars flying around a dazed cartoon character who would had just been smacked around the noggin with a frying pan. Lily's reaction. The rat's loose tongue wagging to all and sundry. Others, who would recognise him from the TV or newspapers, now matter what his short excuse for a beard covered.

  The boy had begun to follow Lime up the street towards The Lotus Bar and stuck to him like a good Asian beggar. The only thing that may have sent the boy packing was a good whipping but had Lime even noticed him he neither the stomach nor inclination for such a violent action against a needy innocent.

  “M'sieur, M'sieur! Je m'appelle Hassan!”

  Lime carried on seemingly in a daze as he dilly-dallied as he made the connections and stalked his plans.

  “M'sieur … Harry ...”

  The big man stopped suddenly.

  He woke up from his reverie then, oh boy!

  Frozen in time on the edge of precipice.

  He suddenly remembered the little smoking boy from outside the shop at Death Street.

  He toppled back into the world and turned his head to look down on the little creature. A s
crawny child of the Indian sub-continent, about seven years old and all dressed up in ill-fitting cloth was tugging at his elbow and grinning like a friendly skull.

  “Mister Harry, my name is Hassan!”

  He was clutching a brass hash-pipe in his other hand, a magnificent S-shaped object it was too, the end was sculpted into the shape of a dragon into which was thrust a cigarette that had burnt down halfway. The child named Hassan puff-puff-puffed away.

  “What did you call me, son?”

  "Harry, Sir. Mr Rocco, he send me to look after you.”

  "Rocco?”

  "Yes, Sir. Rocco played his music and here I am and he say 'Don't let him out of your sight, Hassan!' and I say 'Yes, Sir!'”

  The proud urchin clicked his heels and stood to attention raising his hand to his forehead in salute. Lime continued staring downwards with a deflated sense of bewilderment. He felt smaller than the child.

  The child just looked at the shame-faced man and held his hand out. Lime took it and the child led the man up the hill. The tamer of an angry giant and the next thing Lime knew they were stood across the street from The Lotus Bar which, judging by the dodgy techno pounding and shadows cast in motion against the red light, seemed to be in full swing.

  Lime looked over at the vibrating building and felt powerless and impotent and scared. He had had enough. It was time to quit.

  It was time to …

  Hassan felt the man's hand go limp and he cocked his famished head to one side and winked at the lumbering hulk. The boy nodded and silently let go of the meaty hand then he crossed the street towards the bar. Lime stood open-jawed, watching the little creature and then it came from nowhere. Cleansing laughter. Lime let it come unable to stop that holiest of feeling that takes you out of the world and into a mad place. Tears came as the laughter penetrated his heart and his stomach felt like a spin dryer and all the buildings and the road and the parked cars shared the joke, that one cosmic gag and he bent over holding his stomach and through his smarting tears he saw Hassan turn around once more before he passing into the entrance and he flashed Lime the “OK” sign and he too was giggling and his eyes shone and haloed as light crackled and forked forth from them in time to the beat of the music. A concerto of light.