Cucumber Coolie (3 page)

“We met earlier?” I tried to think back to people I’d seen today. Drawing blanks all round.

“In front—in front of your apartment block. You… you gave me a business card and told me to ring the police then to ring you. But I need to speak to you.”

And then it came to me. The floppy fringed nutter who’d approached me outside my own home earlier. “Ah yeah. It’s… I remember vaguely, yeah. Look, have you contacted the police?”

“I can’t contact the police. They… I can’t. They won’t let me. They won’t—”

“Look, sir, I… I’m sorry but I’m really busy with a… with a client right now.”

“I—I saw you in Chiquitos. Followed you there. I know you aren’t busy. Please. Please help me. Please.”

My cheeks burned. The muscles in my arms tensed up. Jesus Christ, this guy was
stalking
me? Who was this guy to stick his nose in my personal business? “Contact the police. Please do not ring this number again or I will contact them for you.”

“But I can’t, I—”

“Have a nice day, sir.”

I cancelled the call. Whistled out a breath of relief.

Danielle poked her head over the top of the desserts menu. “Trouble?”

“Weird nutjob following me around and asking for help. Says he can’t contact the police.”

“Standard junkie by the sounds of things.”

I smiled. “Hey! You’re learning. Good one. So, er… where were we?”

“Commitment,” Danielle said.

“Ah yes. Commitment. That old chestnut. I… Look. I’ll do what I can. I… I’ll try harder. Try to figure this shit out.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Hey, you heading to Martha’s tomorrow?”

I searched my mind for the right answer, from the perspective of someone good with girlfriend stuff. “I… I think I should even though I’d rather not. You can come along if you want.”

Danielle chuckled. “Pro tip: don’t ever make a girl feel like a tagalong. But no. You go. Have a boozy night with Martha. It’ll be good for you.”

I raised my eyebrows and ate the last of my tortilla chips. “Good for me? Have you seen the speed Martha drinks at?”

“Well I’ll be round to nurse you with a bacon buttie and… whatever else you want in the morning.”

She nudged my leg under the table.

I grinned.

Maybe this commitment thing wasn’t so bad after all.

FOUR

He looks at his watch.

12.54 a.m.

Six minutes to go.

He crosses one leg over the other and stares at the black metal box opposite him. He is disappointed with how little Subject A’s husband has attempted to fight back. He listens to his watch tick away, wonders if Subject A’s husband has called the police.

He smiles. Course he hasn’t called the police.

It’s all fun to imagine, anyway. Fun to hypothesise.

He hears shuffling in the black metal box. Shuffling and struggling. He almost sympathises, as he sits there and waits for the time to come. Seven hours locked away in that box was unimaginable.

Even worse was seven hours of being locked away in that box preceded by all kinds of experiments.

Fun for him, though. All part of his tests.

All part of his movie.

He taps his black loafer on the tiled floor and whistles. He looks at his watch again. 12.55. God, why does time go so slowly when he is waiting for something? Why can’t it go slowly when he’s enjoying himself with the subject? When he’d taken her out of the box before and beat her almost to the point of death, why did that have to go quickly?

Ah well. Just the way of the world, it seems.

He rubs his hands together and waits. He tries to think of all the other last bits of fun he can involve himself in before one a.m. arrives. He could have another go with his knife. Or he could even bring his hose out to play.

No. He has to prepare. He has to ready himself for the big event.

He hops from the wooden bench and walks over to the rusty old tap. With every step he takes, he can hear her muffled screams, her bound hands scratching her fingernails against the metal box that she’s inside.

That pleases him. He wants her to be aware of the next step.

The final step.

He attaches a green hose to the rusty tap. Unravels it, his heart pounding as he gets closer to the box. He hopes the hose reaches. He owns many hoses, and some always came just short. Shit. He’d better have brought the right hose along. He’d better have brought it, or he’d just have to settle for strangling her by hand.

The hose reached the metal box.

He sighs. “Phew.”

Death by hand is totally underwhelming compared to what he has planned for Subject A.

He rests the hose beside the metal box and he steps back. The box shakes slightly from side to side. Her scratches get more intense, her muffles turn to cries.

“Nobody is coming for you it seems,” he says. “But the next husbands will learn their lessons. They’ll learn to play the game. Learn to stick to the rules.”

Her scratches get louder. Her cries turn to drowned out screams.

He shakes his head. If she just accepts her fate, this whole procedure would be a whole lot easier on her.

Death is only difficult when the mind makes it so.

And, okay. When it’s fucking painful.

Which it is going to be.

He glances at his watch. 12:58. He has to time this right. Get this wrong by a minute and his entire schedule goes to pot. And he isn’t a man for breaking routine.

He zips up his black coat. Checks to see his black gloves are still on, that the plastic hand protectors are on underneath. All on. All clear.

“All ready for lift off.”

He reaches down for his Canon camcorder.

Dims the lights to add to the mood.

And then he points the camera at the black box, so mythical, so
beautiful
in its absurdity.

He hits record.

He walks slowly towards the box. Moves the camera around the room, showing off the smashed tiles on the floor, the filth on the walls that he has added himself for effect. Tomato relish, not blood, in case you’re wondering. As for choosing relish over ketchup—more gooey bits in it. Adds to the authenticity.

He steps forward. Moves the camera to the left, to show off the hosepipe attached to the tap.

And then he moves the camera away from it, back to the other side of the room. Towards the spanners. The hammers.

And then back to the hosepipe.

Just teasing.

He creeps over to the tap and he turns it on. Just as he does, he hears Subject A shout out, loud and clear.

Perfect timing. She should be an actress. A horror movie star.

Hmm. Funny, really. She kind of is already.

At least, she is definitely going to be in the morning.

He follows the green hosepipe, follows its snaky trail, and he ends up opposite the black box.

He points the camera at the box. Presses it up against the front of it as the scratching continues inside, as the moans go on.

He reaches down. Picks up the nozzle of the hosepipe. His hand shakes when he imagines the husbands watching his tapes. The way he has organised it, it is genius. Because although he is filming this part now, after all the torture and all the… modifications, he has made sure to edit it in a more effective order.

The husbands will see the death of the subjects first.

And then they will see the highlights of the last twenty-four hours, if they can stomach them.

He rests the nozzle of the hosepipe at the side of the black box. Checks his watch.

1 a.m.

Time to work.

He opens a hatch at the front of the black box.

“Hello again,” he says. He speaks through a vocal modifier, so everything he says will be impossible to comprehend by the police, by anyone.

Subject A stares back at him and shouts. Screams.

He points the camera at her. Points it at her bloody, shaven head. Makes sure all her facial cuts are on display, makes sure that the bruises around her neck from the hose fun are on show.

But most of all, he shows off the mouth.

His gaping, toothless work of art that is her mouth.

“Don’t worry, my dear. Your husband has failed. He has failed, but he teaches a lesson to the next husbands, the next wives, the next partners. This is what failure looks like. This is what happens when you don’t fight hard enough.”

The words roll off his tongue. Improvised, unscripted. He is a star himself.

“This is what happens when you fail to please Hose,” he says.

He holds the camera still for a few seconds. Holds it, as the lens clouds up with Subject A’s breath.

“The journey is over for you, my dear. But thanks to your husband’s ineptitude, it is just about to begin for someone else.”

He lifts the hosepipe.

Shoves it down her trachea until she pukes.

He smiles. Holds the camera as still as he can.

And then he turns the nozzle on and lets the water flow into her body, into her lungs, full blast.

FIVE

The smoothie business was never roaring when it was pissing it down.

And today, it was pissing it down harder than ever.

People were crammed under the entrance of the town hall. Across the cobbled town square from me, Ben Best’s jacket potato van had its windows covered and its doors locked.

Ben Best was probably rubbing his hands, the fat bastard.

Or rubbing his dick while he got a chance.

I checked my watch. Almost one p.m. I couldn’t wait to get off today. Just had to stick around for the inevitable two p.m. rush of schoolkids on their summer holidays, then I could get out of here. Prepare for a boozy night at Martha’s.

I pictured all the things I could be doing instead of drinking beer at Martha’s tonight and my heart sank.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like my best mate. Just I needed some alone time. Danielle was very… constrictive. Always liked being around people. Probably something to do with her job at Spaces call centre, where she was on the phone yapping away all day. Needed to carry that level of interaction over into her personal life.

Me? Serve three smoothies a day, force a smile or two, and I was burned out.

But hey. There were always other days for GTA Online.

A gust of wind sprayed a wall of rain into my face. I cursed, wiped it from my eyes.

When I looked down Friargate, I saw somebody coming my way.

I squinted. Squinted in sheer disbelief.

That dark hair. That annoying smile.

And those sunglasses, even though it was darker than the average bloody night with the thick grey clouds above.

Lenny.

“Oh shit. Oh shitting shit.”

I went to reach for the barrier to pull over the window but I knew I was already too late. Lenny had seen me. And there was no way the bastard
wouldn’t
persevere.

Detective Inspector Lenny Kole was pretty much the definition of an idiot. He was a walking example of why natural selection just wasn’t a thing. Up until a few months ago, he thought Al Qaeda was a type of food poisoning acquired from “trips over to those funny Arab places.”

I’m honestly not kidding.

But he was also, somehow, one of the top detectives at the Preston police station. Not that it said much. He sponged off people like me. Bounty hunters and private investigators who had contacts in the criminal underworld. He’d paid me to do jobs many times in the past. Any job that he was just too lazy and dumb to go ahead and investigate, he’d throw loads of money at me.

And of course, he’d take the credit for the job.

“Blakey!” he said. His bleached white smile got even whiter as he waded through the torrential rain, his clothing dripping like a drowned desert rat.

“Lenny Kole. Pleasure to see you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He plonked the soaked arms of his suit jacket on the metal counter of Groovy Smoothie. Sent a mini waterfall dripping into my stall. “Ever the flatterer, Blake. Ever the flatterer. So, how you keeping? Keeping good? Bad? A little in the middle?”

“I
was
doing good,” I said. “Then I saw you.”

He burst out laughing. Slapped his hands against his knees. “That’s… God, you’re comic gold, Blake. If you weren’t some kind of local Batman or Superman, you could go into comedy. Actually, Spider-Man was a pretty funny guy. In the comics. I swear he was a stand-up comedian or something. Wasn’t he?”

I held a straight face. “I don’t think he was, no.”

“Ah, whatever. Anyway, what can you get me?”

I looked around at my fruit and veg. Tried to figure out the most disgusting but most expensive concoction I could hand over to Lenny. A man who just didn’t have the balls to admit anything was “too disgusting” or “too expensive.”

“Cucumber Coolie’s good for a day like today,” I said.

“Cucumber?” Lenny said. He moved his glasses away and wiped the sweat from the bridge of his nose. “They do cucumber smoothie mix?”

I stared at him and a little piece of me died inside.

I chopped up some cucumber. “So what brings you here?”

“Ah, you know. Just in the area.”

I plopped the cucumber into the blender. Added a pinch of sugar. “In the area? You work in Preston, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re always in the area. Technically.”

“Yes.”

I nodded and started the blender after adding a few more ingredients. “O-kaay.”

Lenny scratched at his nose. Looked from side to side. “Yeah, I er. I thought I’d pop by to tell you some good news.”

“Oh really?” I tried to figure out what good news Lenny might have for me. “You’ve got a terminal illness?”

“Harsh, Blake.”

“I guess that was a bit harsh. Sorry. Go on.”

He loosened his collar, seemingly oblivious to the rain. “No, I er… Well I’m up for a promotion! A promotion to a DCI role!”

I finished blending and poured the coolie into a clear plastic cup. “You… And that’s supposed to be good news?”

“No, Blake, I said I’m getting a
promotion
,” he said. “Me. I’m being promoted.”

“Oh I heard you loud and clear. And I repeat my question: Lenny Kole being handed more responsibility is supposed to be good news?”