Murder Club - Mark Pearson [17]
Bible Steve patted the young woman on the head. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, darling. Don’t worry, Bible’ll see you all right. He’ll see you snug,’ he said with a wink.
He took his hand off the wall and staggered a little further down the alleyway. Bright light spilled from a lone restaurant further ahead.
The Lucky Dragon restaurant. Cantonese. Bible Steve staggered towards it and put his hand on the glass, peering in as he fought to keep steady. The nearly finished bottle of whisky swayed in his left hand as if to counterbalance.
He didn’t recognise the figure staring back at him, reflected palely in the glass of the restaurant window. It had the face of a wild-haired and heavily bearded man. A French rugby player came to his mind. But he couldn’t remember his name. This man’s hair, though, was lank, greasy and matted. The beard covering most of his face was like a tribal shaman’s mask. He had on a battered and soiled army greatcoat with layers of equally filthy clothing beneath. His eyes were like coals. Sore, cracked and flickering with residual heat, but near to winking out as his eyelids closed. He shook his head and growled. He peered in the window, scowling at the diners within, who regarded him with an equal mixture of horror and disgust. An elderly Chinese woman shook her hands, gesturing at him as if to shoo away a large rodent.
Bible Steve blinked again and then snarled and banged on the window.
‘A corruption! A plague!’ he shouted. His native tongue broader now than earlier that day. His voice raspy with the rawness of the whisky and his outrage. ‘And the Lord says that he who eats with the pigs shall be as swine. Consumption and damnation is your bill. And ye shall pay it in punishment and in death!’
He banged on the window again. The Chinese woman leaned out from the doorway and shouted at him.
‘I call police! I call police! You go now.’
Bible Steve looked across at her and belched. ‘Madam, I shall gladly go now, as per your instructions.’ He belched again.
He looked down at the bottle of whisky in his hand, now empty, and tossed it imperiously to one side. Then glared at the woman once more. ‘As per your commandment, so mote it be!’ He fumbled with his trouser zipper and pulled out his member. ‘If you want me to go I shall go. And great shall be the mic … the mic …’ Bible Steve said, struggling to find the word and then grinned showing a full set of yellowed teeth. ‘Great shall be the micturation!’ he said and began to urinate powerfully on to the window, splashing down onto the pavement. The Chinese woman hopped, horrified, back into the restaurant, flapping her arms and shouting like a startled crow.
Bible Steve looked down and grinned again. ‘And the Lord looked down at the waters that came to pass and he was pleased,’ he said before falling backwards to crash unconscious on the floor, a river of piss still flowing toward the kerbside.
A short while later and in the distance was the faint sound of an ambulance siren. But Bible Steve didn’t hear it. He was snoring like an elephant, and the buzzing, for a while at least, had stopped in his brain.
Above him clouds scudded past, revealing a full moon that hung even lower and fatter in the sky now, its pits and craters clearly visible to the naked eye. Yellow, seemingly, like ancient wax, swollen and pregnant with omen.
The Chinese woman looked up at it and made another gesture. Warding with her fingers and muttering under her breath. She looked scared.
She had every good reason to be.
11.
DR KATE WALKER lifted the eyelid of the man lying supine on the cot in the holding cell and shone a small torch in his eye.
The man’s pupils contracted but he continued to snore. Loudly. She looked over at ‘Slimline’ Matthews and shook her head.
‘Sleeping Beauty here won’t be round any time in the near future.’
‘Not surprised.’
‘Get someone to look in on him in the morning.’
‘The amount of booze he had in him, probably take a day or two before he’s fit for questioning. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘You know him?’
‘Oh yeah. Keith Hagen