Free Fletcher by David Horscroft Page B

Centre Animal Shelter. Horse racing in reclaimed France, sailing regattas off Mauritius—mainly self-obsessed, rich survivors passing the time and broadcasting it to anyone who cared, without any real competitive edge to it. Still, it was something to bet on and some people just can’t say no to that.
    Two failed calls, followed by a twenty-four second connection, followed by eight more failed calls. Finally, several hours later, a two-second attempted dial to the armed forces. It probably hadn’t even started ringing.
    Open and shut, then. Cartwright owed money to the wrong people, and the wrong people decided to do something about it. Totally unrelated to Rourke. Everyone grab a drink and go home.
    Not a snowball’s chance in fiery Fucksville.
    I’d been to the shelters once, late at night, while following a lead. The dogs had barked incessantly, which helped drown out the sounds of drinking and revelry on the basement level. They hadn’t liked my attitude. I hadn’t liked the way their fingers weren’t all broken.
    The shelter was not responsible for Cartwright. Im-fucking-possible. Their enforcers couldn’t organise a shanking in a shiv warehouse. I arranged my collected pages in order from least to most worn and started to read.
    Several unique phone numbers could be made out. I called them, sequentially, and noted who answered.
    “You’ve reached the Arcadia Retirement Home Reception.” Hang up.
    “Hi! You reached NutCase Repairs. Our operating hours are between—” Hang up.
    An automated phone sex number, a laundry service and a local grocery store were the next three most recent scribbles. Cartwright clearly had a habit of transferring numbers from the computer to the pad before dialling them.
    God, old people are inefficient.
    I wasn’t actually complaining this time. I spent some time dialling around the options of the phone sex line—not that I liked her voice, God no, it was ghastly—to see if there were any less-legal services hidden in the system, but it seemed clean. I circled NutCase and the laundry for further investigation before taking the right pills and wiping out on my sheets.
    I woke several times, sprawled awkwardly and uncomfortably, before mind-staggering back to sleep in a shadow-slurred haze. My mind was restless and didn’t like to idle.

#0799
    “It’s times like these that I wonder if there’s some statistical sweet spot of hostages murdered vs. hostages brutally maimed.”

10: Welcome to Salem
     
    I finally woke into a rare hallucination. They happen occasionally. My brain spends so much time playing jump rope with reality that it occasionally forgets which gear to start in. There was a cracking, scraping noise, and I tracked the movement of some nameless creature behind the tiles on the wall, which bubbled and writhed at its passing. A skitter-chittering of rats could be heard, but with the deeper timbre of a far larger beast. Eventually concrete and tiling began to crack and fall, and two clawed, ivory bone-paws reached through. The creature was soon to follow.
    It was a massive, skeletal rat, sporting bleached, hollow eye sockets and a fleshless grin. The spine clicked as it leaped onto the back of my chair. The tail wrapped around one of the stiles, and it spoke.
    “I Am Not A Metaphor.”
    Its voice carried the wails and screams of all my victims. The rat sprang onto my face and began to crawl down my throat, before my brain decided to reboot and give reality another shot.
    I blinked and licked my lips, the feeling of bone sliding over my skin already a bizarre and imagined memory. I looked at the time on the bedside clock and decided not to bother trying to sleep again. Four hours was enough.
    I rolled out of bed and showered up before grabbing breakfast. I had an hour—at least—before I could make those calls, so I spent the time catching up on small details I often overlooked. I clipped my nails—not too short—and flossed meticulously before shaving, twice.