Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [44]
Duff Alley gets very empty, and the conversation there becomes very muted. They get drunk, huddle together, and after dark they whisper that Iron Kurt has come for them. And now I’m
shit
scared.
Another trip to the piss-stained steps outside Michael’s flat. He’s almost the only one left, and I need to know what he knows. To find out if he can reassure me. Keith left for Cork. William found a winning lottery ticket in the street and moved to the Caribbean. Some other Gardaí told the Duff Alley crazies to get out, so they’re meeting somewhere else now.
When I knock on the door, I hear a wet thudding noise from inside. When I try the handle, it’s unlocked. When I should turn and run away, I push it open and walk in.
The sickly sweet smell of blood on the air. The acrid spike of human waste. The cloying taste of someone else’s sweat. Michael lies in a crimson-splashed, naked tangle in the middle of his living room floor. The carpet around him soaked black with blood. Legs splayed at an unnatural angle, and pink-yellow ribbons of intestines running from the split and tattered gash that yawns between them.
He twitches, and I realize he’s still alive.
“Michael? Can you hear me?”
Whimper. Twitch. One eye creaks open and fixes me with a stare of utter agony and shock.
“Who did this? What the fuck’s going on?”
“It … Kurt … didn’t …”
“Kurt? You’re sure? Christ.”
“Said … name … site … to punish … I didn’t …”
I should be calling an ambulance. I should be calling my colleagues. “Where is he now?”
Michael’s eye looks down. Pleading. Betrayed. “You said … wouldn’t … website … I … good …”
He thinks I did it. “I didn’t tell him,” I say. “Jesus, Michael, I wouldn’t even know how. I swear to you.”
“He … told …” Michael smacks his lips. Dry mouth. Lost too much fluid already. Bleeding out. Dying.
“What did he tell you?”
“No … he asked … who … gave my name …” Smack. Smack. “I … told him … you …”
As Michael’s head drops to the carpet, something thumps out in the stairwell and my heart jumps into my mouth. Again I think about running, but I don’t. Again I think about calling the station, but to tell them what? That some kind of phantom is stalking lunatics on my beat?
I step outside, check the stairs with shaky steps and trembling hands. And there’s nothing there.
When I come back down to Michael’s flat, the body is gone. So is the blood that soaked the carpet a moment ago. Is the smell gone as well? I can’t tell. But there’s no sign that Michael was ever here. And was he—could I be imagining it? Could all this be in my head, a product of my own fear?
Fuck. Fuck.
When I search the flat, I can’t see any of the protective trinkets the others had. He was an unbeliever.
I’m not. Not now.
When I walk away from Michael’s, I see the tall figure of a bald man watching me from the trees on the far side of the park across the street. He’s massive, and bare-chested. The dark outlines of tattoos that litter his skin flicker and swirl like flames. He points at me, long and hard, then slides back into the undergrowth.
So now it’s been four days since then, since I called in sick. Since I barricaded myself into my flat, to wait for the end. In the yellow glare of the forty-watt bulb, in the air that reeks of stale sweat and fear, I’m protected by a butcher’s knife and an Iron Cross. A spray-paint swastika on every wall. A replica of one of those Nazi imperial eagles they’d carry everywhere in those films. Terry’s foil-lined box with his tableau of half a dozen toy German WWII soldiers.
Maybe they’ll help me. I certainly won’t step beyond their protective radius.
Because Kurt is coming to kill me. His creator. To close the circle. I’m the last one he’s looking for here. And he won’t let me go. I know it.
Soon I’ll hear his footsteps on the stairs. Slow, heavy, deliberate.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
THE DEATH OF JEFFERS
BY KEVIN WIGNALL
Heg the Peg was the end of it. Marty