Free Sonata of the Dead by Conrad Williams Page A

him.
    ‘Pleasure’s all mine,’ he said absently, trying to catch the barman’s eye.
    He ordered cocktails for the both of us – whisky-based, unfortunately – and he tucked into his lustily while I held mine at arm’s length and eyed it suspiciously.
    ‘What’s this again?’ I asked.
    ‘Manhattan,’ he said. ‘Best cocktail there is.’
    ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said, and slid it over to him. ‘Too complex for me,’ I explained. ‘Too… brown.’
    ‘Racist,’ he spat, and gladly received it.
    Good barman alert: he’d spotted this drinks awkwardness and stepped over to ask if I’d prefer something else.
    ‘I’ll have a Vesper Martini,’ I said.
    ‘Christ,’ said Clarke. ‘No matter how much you try, the call won’t come.’
    ‘What call? I’d accept any at the moment, to get away from you, the mood you’re in.’
    ‘Barbara Broccoli. Drink your fanboy drink. Bloody amateur.’
    I looked at Clarke’s hands while he drank. They were small and neat and very pink, like boiled crab claws peeled back to the meat. I wondered if he smelled of anything under that bourbon – of his latex gloves, perhaps, or the juices that invariably coated them.
    ‘Shaken?’ the barman asked.
    ‘Stirred, actually,’ I said, pointedly.
    ‘Let’s get to it then, Double-O Seven,’ he said. ‘I’m having one more of these then I’m catching a cab home for lamb chops and a blow job.’
    ‘You know why I’m bugging you,’ I said. ‘Martin Gower. Anything you can tell me about him?’
    ‘Well, should I tell you anything, of course,’ he said, spearing olives on a plastic skewer, ‘upstairs would carpet me so fast I’d have rug burns bone deep.’
    ‘I know,’ I said. The same old game. The ego massage. The long, slow waltz towards a back-scratch promise. We did all that, but the theatre wasn’t over. He flourished a napkin and wiped his mouth with it, his eyes never leaving mine. He had slightly protuberant eyes that made him look perpetually surprised. He folded the napkin and placed it on the table. One more sip of his cough syrup cocktail and:
    ‘Calling card. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?’
    ‘Not necessarily. Just anything out of the ordinary. You know, anything exotic, anything that might give me some direction.’
    ‘Guy gets carved like a Sunday roast and you want exotic.’
    ‘You know what I mean. Why dismantle someone like that? It takes time. It takes effort. Was it done to disguise something? Conceal something? Or is the butchery its own message? A clue in itself?’
    ‘A come on? You’re assuming this guy wants to be caught?’
    ‘Not at all. But it crosses your mind from time to time.’
    ‘There’s been nothing like this. This is a first. It won’t be the last.’
    ‘No,’ I said, feeling a shudder work its way through my legs. ‘I know that.’
    I wondered if the business of the suits and the pricey drinks and the bluster and blague were part of an act. I thought Clarke one of those people who had to inhabit a character. If he’d been a reporter he’d have met me in a boozer wearing a raincoat. Maybe he was lonely. He never volunteered anything about his private life, beyond the broadest of brush strokes. Neither did I, and I didn’t because I didn’t want people to know how utterly desolate my life was. My grim little cycle of vodka and cat food and photographs of ghosts. Maybe lamb chops and a blow job was code for Pot Noodle and a wank. Maybe he was really, really good at yoga.
    ‘It’s interesting what you said about disguise. Concealment.’
    I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘Why?’
    ‘I found a puncture wound. Very small. Back of the neck.’
    I had a vision of a body on a meat hook, and gave voice to it.
    ‘No,’ Clarke said. ‘Nothing like that. This is smaller. Clean too. A meat hook would show tearing where the weight of the body has worked against it.’
    ‘Fatal wound?’ I suggested.
    ‘Again, no. This was designed to