Spares. Michael Marshall Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ be in the mountains by lunchtime, who knows where by tomorrow. That's what you should do. To be frank, Jack, you're not the guy you used to be — and I mean that as a compliment. I don't look at you and think “Christ — a psycho” any more. You've already fucked off the guys who owned your Farm. Topping that by paying a visit on a certain spaghetti-eater of our mutual acquaintance isn't such a hot idea.’

      ‘What makes you think I'd do that?’

      ‘Your head gives you away. It glows when you're about to do something stupid. And that would be really stupid.’

      ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It would.’

      When I was outside Mal's door I hesitated for a moment. I'd seen a lot of bad things happen to friends, admittedly usually while Rapt, but none of them had ever truly gone away. Sometimes I could feel them, just out of sight, as if I could turn my head quickly and catch them for a moment, bright and backlit and eternal.

      On the other hand, if I didn't do this now it wasn't going to happen at all. I unlocked the door and opened it. The apartment was cold and it hadn't really been that long: while I wasn't expecting the smell to be bad, I wasn't anticipating enjoying it.

      I was surprised to find it wasn't there at all. Slightly relieved, I shut the door behind me and crossed the room. I stopped abruptly halfway.

      Mal's body wasn't there.

      I stood there stupidly, waving my head this way and that, trying to see it differently. I couldn't. His body simply wasn't there. Closer inspection revealed that the floor was clean, with no sign of the blood, bone chips and brain smear which had been there the night before.

      I checked the john, Mal's sleeping area, the cupboards. The latter were stuffed full of Mal's patented brand of junk. Everywhere else was empty.

      Mal's body had been taken away, taken by someone who'd unlocked the door and then locked it again behind them.

      The only person who could have known about it was someone connected with the killer – whose own body had not been in the bottom hallway when I'd entered the building.

      Leaving Mal's apartment unlocked, I ran downstairs a flight and knocked on the door from behind which, for once, no music was coming. After a pause it opened. The rat-faced man stood and glared at me.

      ‘What you want?’ He looked nervous as hell.

      ‘Have you seen anyone go upstairs in the last twenty-four hours?’

      ‘No. Been too busy fucking your mother,’ he said, and pushed the door back at my face. I stuck my foot in the jamb. It probably hurt, but I was too wired to notice. Rat-man's head appeared again. ‘Go 'way before trouble starts, man,’ he advised, face pinched.

      ‘It's already started,’ I said, kicking the door straight back at him and crunching it into his nose. He clattered back into the hallway and fell somewhat awkwardly on his head. I strode a couple of paces into the apartment, which smelt bad, looking for more fun. Rat-face's friend appeared in another doorway, recognized me, darted back the way he'd come. I followed, and found myself in a room with a gun pointing at my head.

      Sitting at a table in the corner was a large black man, head shaven, the whites of his eyes luminous in the gloom. A line of blue LCDs was tattooed into his scalp from front to back, blinking softly in the twilight. His features were broad and brutal, and his skin was greasy. He stared impassively at me. Narcotics were spread out in front of him, arranged into piles of various sizes. I'd interrupted a buy – no wonder people were kind of edgy. I stood still. It seemed the thing to do.

      After a moment the big man lowered the gun. He looked at me a little longer, moving his head slightly as if trying to catch a glimpse of me in a different light. Something about him struck me as strange, though I couldn't put my finger on what it might be.

      Rat-face reappeared raggedly from the hallway and started squawking, hungry for blood. ‘Say adios to your brain, motherfuck,’ he snarled, and my head was suddenly knocked forward as he jammed the barrel of his gun into my neck.

      ‘Ain't no call for that,’ the big man said mildly. ‘Leastways not until we find out what he wants.’

      ‘I want to know if anyone saw someone go upstairs since last night,’ I said, trying to avoid looking at the man's flashing head. I thought I could hear it blinking on and off like a car indicator.

      ‘Well?’ the man said, raising his eyebrows at the other two men. In variously bad tempers but with apparent sincerity, the men denied having seen anyone. The big man looked back at me. ‘This be anything to do with the dead dude in the hallway?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And who the fuck are you?’

      ‘No one in particular,’ he said. ‘Just passing through, doing a little deal with my new friends here. I ain't seen anyone either, and I didn't recognize the bag of bones lying downstairs. You want him, you can find the body in the bins behind the back of Mandy's Diner out on the edge.’

      ‘You moved it there?’

      ‘Surely did. It was lowering the tone.’

      ‘Okay,’ I said, starting to back out of the room.

      ‘Now I'm going to blow his face off,’ said Rat-face, getting excitable again. The big man tutted.

      ‘No you ain't: can't you get that into your head?’

      Rat-face stuffed his gun into the front of his pants and squared up to me instead. ‘Okay, well Marty and me'll just beat the shit out of him, then. Okay?’ He glanced at the black man for confirmation, and I wondered what the power structure was here.

      Marty looked less than enthusiastic at the prospect, and quietly relieved when the big man shook his head. ‘You welcome to try,’ he said, ‘but the dude has the Bright Eyes and in my experience they tend to be some crazy motherfucks.’

      He winked at me, and went back to sorting his piles of drugs. Rat-face glared. Marty had taken a step backwards at the mention of Bright Eyes, and took another as I turned to him. I walked unmolested through the gap and out of the apartment.

      Back in Mal's I stood for a while, wondering what to do next. Then I noticed something, and walked slowly to where Mal's display hung on the wall down by the window. When the sheet of cloth was pulled away it confirmed what I'd suspected.

      The display had gone. The board was still there, covered in tiny holes where pins had been, but all of the photos and notes had been removed. I let the cloth fall again.

      Who'd done this? Not Mal. He wouldn't have had time before being killed. And why would he take it down? He was a cop. It was his work. He was entitled to have what the fuck he liked on his walls. So who?

      Whoever cleaned the place up.

      Or, I thought, maybe it had happened earlier than that. When I'd come back to find Mal dead, checking whether his board was still intact had been the last thing on my mind. Perhaps the fumbling Suej had heard was a scrabbling as they ripped everything off of the board.

      Either way, it begged questions: why remove evidence of what Mal had been working on? What did that have to do with me?

      Answer, nothing.

      So СКАЧАТЬ