The Absent Man Read online

  ‘Thanks, lad.’ Gordon spoke, breadcrumbs crashing to the table. ‘This is bloody delicious.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  They sat in silence as Gordon demolished the hot snack, even taking the time to pick the crumbs off the tray and pop them into his mouth, like the final sock into a full washing machine. Once it had been swallowed, he reached his freshly washed hands around the mug and drew the coffee in.

  ‘Smells good.’ He smiled. ‘Not like that shite from Starbucks.’

  Bermuda chuckled, as he was sure all the high street coffee shops tasted exactly the same. ‘Tell me about yourself, Gordon.’

  Gordon took a few more sips of his coffee and then placed it down carefully. He sat back, the buttons on his tatty shirt opening slightly, showing thick spools of chest hair.

  ‘I wasn’t always a gross mess.’ He smiled with self-deprecation. ‘Aye, I had a family once. A wife, beautiful lady named Linda. We were married for, oh it must have been twenty years. University sweethearts. You know how it goes.’

  Bermuda nodded but refused to interrupt. He gently sipped his coffee as the eccentric man continued.

  ‘We tried but couldn’t have kids, so we focused on our work. She was a scientist and worked for University here in town. I worked for the Herald.’

  ‘The paper?’ Bermuda interjected, the logo of the paper appearing in his mind’s eye.

  ‘The very same. Usual puff pieces for a few years, but then I started getting meatier stories. Some real investigative journalism. That was when I really had to confront my problem.’

  ‘Your Knack?’

  ‘My what?’ Gordon sipped his coffee with confusion spread across his face thicker than his messy beard.

  ‘Sorry, the Knack. The ability to see the Otherside.’

  Gordon’s eyes were blank.

  ‘Creatures and beasts, usually confined to the shadows. Creatures like Argyle.’

  ‘Aye, you boys call it ‘the Knack’?’

  ‘I work for an organisation that monitors that world and their impact here. We get advances in medicines and science, et cetera, and they get to escape their world. It’s a shaky truce, but it exists for now.’

  ‘For now? You don’t like it?’

  ‘I think it’s very dangerous. Six months ago, an Other nearly brought this world to its knees. I watched him kill a colleague of mine like he was swatting a fly. Eventually we managed to stop him, but he was pure evil – an evil that I don’t think is worth keeping the door open for.’

  Gordon polished off his coffee and looked at Bermuda with pleading eyes. Bermuda smiled and motioned to the young waiter for another. Despite the man scrunching up his face, the bistro machine roared into life.

  ‘Like this bastard killing those women.’

  ‘You know about that?’ Bermuda sat forward on his chair, needlessly lowering his voice.

  ‘I am homeless, Bermuda. Not crazy.’ Gordon suddenly shuffled in agitation. ‘Linda told me I was crazy. Told me that science dictated that there were no monsters in the dark. That the creature that lived in our back garden couldn’t exist due to its nutritional needs not being met. No matter what I told her, or my boss, they just labelled me crazy. One by one, they turned their backs on me.’

  Bermuda felt sympathy rattle through him like a lightning bolt. He could relate to this man. One wrong turn and he could have been looking in a mirror.

  ‘But I’m not crazy. I know I’m not and you have confirmed it.’

  The waiter, with a slightly friendlier demeanour, placed another coffee down in front of Gordon, and a few extra dipping biscuits. He collected the tray and left. Neither of them even registered it.

  ‘So, what do you know about the killings?’ Bermuda spoke in hushed tones.

  ‘He’s been here before. About thirty years ago. I didn’t cover it then, I was still relatively new, but I had access to the stories. It was fascinating. Every one of them had their heart removed.’

  ‘Yeah, sounds like our guy.’

  ‘But it isn’t a guy. It’s one of those … what do you call them?’

  ‘Others,’ Bermuda stated with a tinge of hatred.

  ‘That’s it.’ Gordon turned and started rummaging through one of his bags. ‘Look at this.’

  He removed a large folder, a thin, worn string holding it together as papers hung out of the side like an overstuffed sandwich. It slapped down on the table, shaking both cups of coffee, before Gordon rummaged through its contents.

  ‘I did some digging. Despite them telling me that I was crazy and it couldn’t be possible, I tried to find further proof – further evidence that it wasn’t human.’

  Gordon was frenzied, flicking page after page of scrambled notes over, so indecipherable they reminded Bermuda of the books back in the archives. Eventually he stopped and slapped a newspaper article in front of Bermuda.

  It was dated July 12, 1926. The grainy paper had withered – a gentle rub and it would smudge like a moth. The ink on most of the article itself had run, pooling together like that blood from Emma Mitchell’s chest. The photo and the headline were still, all things considered, in decent condition.

  The article was from the New York Post.

  The headline announced the opening of a new nightclub, one of many to hit the famous city during the well-documented ‘boom’ period, where flapper girls and mob bosses ran roughshod over the country and every bank was setting the economy up for the biggest crash since Nicholas Cage’s career.

  The photo was grainy but sure enough, a host of scantily clad women stood in a row, ready for the can-can theme to kick in. The apparent owner, fat and well-groomed, stood with a beaming smile as he shook hands.

  With Kevin Parker.

  Bermuda sat upright, like he had just sat on a pin. Parker’s face, this time twisted into a happy grin, was clear as day. The suit looked the same, just without the extra trimming of blood. On his arm was a beautiful woman, her dark skin only highlighting her beauty. She clung lovingly to his side as his arm protectively ran around her waist, clutching her floral dress.

  Was that the one? The one he must find?

  The spoons on the table began gently rattling the saucers, and it was only then that he realised he was shaking.

  ‘That’s him,’ he finally managed to gasp.

  ‘Yup.’ Gordon nodded firmly. ‘That right there is the man you are after.’

  ‘I have to go.’ Bermuda fished into his pockets and pulled out his wallet. He removed the final few notes, a measly twenty-five pounds, but he slapped it down on the table.

  ‘I don’t need your money, Franklyn. Your time has been enough.’

  Bermuda refused to collect it. He gently folded the picture and slipped it into the inside of his pocket. He then leant forward, his palms against the table. ‘Gordon, don’t go too far, okay? When all this is done, I will come back for you.’

  ‘Aye. I am hardly likely to go jet-setting, am I?’ he motioned to his body and mishmash of loose possessions.

  Bermuda smiled. ‘I will come back for you. I promise.’

  Bermuda pushed himself back up and made for the door. McAllister already had images of Parker from CCTV. But now, with this piece of evidence, she might finally believe him that Parker wasn’t what they thought. That the man killing those women wasn’t a man after all.

  He was something else.

  Bermuda gripped the handle of the door and pulled it open when Gordon called after him.

  ‘Just catch this bastard.’

  Bermuda stepped out through the door and into the rapidly fading sun, determined to do just that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  McAllister sat at the desk opposite the incident board, her head planted firmly against the wooden table and the will to live dripping away like a leaky tap. The photos of smiling women were pinned symmetrically across the wall like trophies. Below them, photos of their nightmarish ends.

  The desk before her was a makeshift pillow of paperwork and hard wood and s
he squeezed her eyelids harder together, willing herself to come up with the answer.

  Strachan had already read her the riot act; her disdain for Agent Jones was apparent, and the fact he was still actively investigating the case was clearly pissing her off. McAllister had reported in to Strachan for over two years now and knew full well the wrath of her superior. If Jones was to solve the case before them, she was pretty sure Strachan would have a heart attack.

  What she gathered from the monumental roasting from her boss was that she needed to start coming up with viable leads quickly as staking out the Necropolis and waiting for another woman to die were not good enough. The press had smelt a story and Detective Chief Inspector Alex Fowler wasn’t one for shying from the cameras. Strachan had her orders, and with gravity usually the deciding factor in which way the shit travelled, her anger was taken out on McAllister.

  She sighed deeply, slowly rising up from the desk. A sheet of randomly scrawled notes and messy doodles flopped from her forehead, the sweat sticking to the paper. McAllister peeled it off and dropped it onto the rest of the paperwork, none of it making any sense or pointing in any direction.

  The entire case was like a constantly spinning compass.

  DC Butler had gone to follow up a potential eye witness to the murder of Emma Mitchell. A fifteen-year-old girl had watched in horror from behind the curtains of her bedroom as this killing machine had brutally removed the woman’s heart in front of her.

  Two other neighbours, whose craving for the spotlight far outweighed their bravery, also spoke about the murder to the local news team.

  Both had said the killer had removed her heart with his bare hand.

  Both had been scared shitless by McAllister when they were sat across from her in the interview room.

  Slumping back in the chair, her body ached for a glass of wine. McAllister knew it was becoming a problem but refused to acknowledge it. There were more important things to worry about right now than her ever-increasing reliance on several bottles of wine. Or her need to confront anyone who possibly rubbed her up the wrong way. Or to seduce and screw random men at a second’s notice.

  She snapped back to the room, locking her long list of character defects away along with the reasons for them.

  Focus on the now.

  Focus on finding this bastard.

  After what felt like a few more hours of staring blindly at the wall and seeing nothing, she looked around the office. A sea of blank screens and empty chairs. The team had slowly filtered out and home to their lives, all of them with something or someone to care about.

  There was nothing waiting for her except several glasses of wine and another evening under the overarching wing of failure. Rubbing her temples, she sighed again, pushing herself up from the uncomfortable chair and slipping her arms into her blazer.

  She was doing no good to anyone sitting here.

  With a heavy heart, she walked out of the incident room, clicking off the light and accepting the failure of the day.

  Another day where they had failed to catch Kevin Parker.

  Another night of murder awaited them.

  It was just after eight o’clock. That would mean there was roughly three to four hours before another innocent woman was ripped from this world, and all McAllister could offer was an apology and a toast from her wine glass.

  It was days like to today when she questioned whether she was the detective her superiors thought she was. Maybe she had been once – before everything that happened. When she had had Ethan in her corner and an entire future riding on her. But now, her job was just a place that surrounded her with horrors while she waited to drink them all away again.

  She had no hope of catching Kevin Parker. She was just too scared to admit it.

  Resigning herself to failure and taking on the responsibility of the deaths still to come, she strode through the doors to the police station and stopped at the top of the concrete steps. A couple of officers walked out from behind her, sending her an unreciprocated greeting as they marched towards their beat and another freezing night watching over the city of Glasgow.

  She slowly descended the steps, unsure of how to greet the handsome smile that welcomed her at the bottom of the stairs. McAllister shrugged it off, pulling on her armour and taking purposeful steps towards Bermuda Jones.

  ‘Very brave of you. Coming here.’

  ‘I have something you need to see.’

  His response had her intrigued, and she followed him as he turned and walked off, heading towards the one place they both knew as sanctuary.

  McAllister settled into the booth at the back of the bar. The red leather seat that lined the wall had seen better days. The table, old and scratched, wobbled gently, a number of folded coasters stuffed beneath it. Two chairs, both on their last legs, sat opposite her. She watched as Bermuda walked over, his fingers clutching a pint of Doom Bar and a glass of wine along with a manila envelope.

  There was something about him that was different.

  A spring in his step.

  He set the glasses down and removed his jacket, draping it over the back of one of the chairs before lowering himself into the other. She noticed the flashes of ink that lined the bottom of his neck and the cuffs of his sleeves. She had a blurry flashback to their night of misguided passion, remembering the tattoos that covered his body.

  And were there scars too?

  ‘Cheers.’ Bermuda broke her concentration, gently tapping her glass.

  ‘Aye.’ She took a deep sip, the frustration of the day disappearing as quickly as the wine. ‘What’s got you all excited then?’

  Bermuda tapped the envelope.

  Curiously, she gently eased it open and slid out the tatty paper clipping. She scanned the article, some nonsense about a new bar opening in New York, when suddenly her eyes bulged.

  It was him. The same man from the CCTV.

  Kevin Parker.

  McAllister’s eyes flashed to Bermuda, who raised his eyebrows and nodded. He calmly sipped his pint as she stared in amazement. A fruit machine somewhere behind them sprang to life, followed by a few cheers as money fell from it. A lucky punter scraped it out, promising his supporters a free drink as McAllister slowly lowered the photo, her hand shaking slightly.

  A few more moments of disbelief passed in silence.

  ‘How?’ she finally managed.

  ‘Remember how I told you that there is more going on than what you can see. And how I told you that I work for an agency that monitors and maintains a truce between our world and another.’

  She nodded slowly.

  ‘I wasn’t lying.’

  ‘But … but …’ McAllister stared at the paper.

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s like that moment all over again when you find out Santa isn’t real. Everything I told you was true.’

  ‘But it can’t be.’ McAllister spoke, more to herself.

  ‘This isn’t the only world,’ Bermuda offered. ‘And it certainly isn’t the most dangerous one. There are creatures and things I have seen from the Otherside that would haunt your dreams.’

  ‘The Otherside?’

  ‘That’s what we call it. It has some official name, but I leave that to the higher-ups. The creatures that come from it, they are all clumped together and known as Others – except Neithers.’ He had lost her, causing him to sigh. ‘Basically, this guy right here, he looks and acts human. But he isn’t. Not by a long shot.’

  McAllister necked the rest of her wine and rocked back on her seat, the beaten leather providing little comfort for her back. She ran her fingers through her matted hair and stared in disbelief. Her eyes watered; the realisation that her reality had been shattered by a single photo was beginning to overwhelm her. She placed a hand on the table to steady herself, trying her best to breathe heavily. Bermuda’s fingers slid over her hand and she grasped it tight.

  ‘It’s okay.’ His words were calm.

  She breathed deeply and wiped away the tears with her other ha
nd before shaking her head and returning to him. His handsome face greeted her with a warm smile and he stood, striding across the empty pub to the bar and getting them another drink. She gratefully clutched it upon his return, the glass shaking as she battled the fear and excitement of having her mind blown. A few more moments passed in silence when she finally looked up at him.

  ‘Please explain.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Bermuda took a big swig from his glass, wiping the foam moustache that optimistically clung to his lip.

  ‘Everything.’

  Bermuda nodded and started from the very beginning, telling her how for his whole life he had seen monsters. How he had told his alcoholic mother, who had just dismissed him and blamed it on his deadbeat drug addict father that he had never met. How he had tried to hide from them, that he had seen monsters sitting on the end of his bed, their eyes shiny and grey.

  The years spent as an outcast until he met Angela, their whirlwind love and marriage, the birth of his beautiful daughter – which he noticed caused her to fidget on her seat. How his wife had slowly turned on him, worrying that his behaviour and beliefs were putting their daughter in danger, and the soul-crushing sound of a padded cell being shut with him on the wrong of it.

  The months spent in a cell protesting his sanity that he could see the truth that encompassed this world and that everyone else was blind. The realisation that all he was doing was pushing his family away and vindicating their diagnosis.

  The divorce.

  Before he could continue, Bermuda felt a tear trickle down his cheek. The painful trip down this heartbreaking road had caused him to finish his drink.

  McAllister slid out from the booth and returned moments later with a fresh drink for them both. She settled back in, her face and eyes filled with wonderment, as if listening to a ghost story around a campfire.

  Bermuda wet his whistle and continued, telling her about the doorway which had opened in his cell and beckoned him through, the dark, ashen world that had flickered to him like a grainy TV with a dodgy aerial. The eyes that had latched onto him, the moment he had realised he was going to die. Everything had still been fuzzy, but he had felt himself being carried back to the light, and he had crossed the divide once more and was in a small town in Morocco.