Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“We have certain questions,” they say together, nonchalantly waggling a subpoena. “Questions of a certain nature. Concerning a certain matter. Although we are not authorized to release any further information at the present time.”

There is no struggle. Q not being guilty of anything, – other than a cheap haircut and a sexual trajectory that had roused latent curiosities, perhaps – no need for a struggle. “I am not the person who crucified Mrs A,” Q informs them, forearms wrapped around his head…

… beneath the ethereal lighting of the interrogation room, Q continues: “People are happily killing each other, cheerfully maiming themselves. And I am genuinely fearful for this city and any future implications for its general populous. Death is being interwoven, intimately connected on some level I don’t understand. My findings have surprised me on many levels. I never knew there were so many deaths of a suspiciously transvestite-based nature, for instance…”

Chief Inspector S bends forward, removes the gilt-edged silver coffee spoon from his mouth with a confounded sigh and guffaws through a quick-fire series of shuddering jowls and crumpled face-skin: “So what is it you are trying to tell me exactly?” he says, voice incredibly loud, expression extremely close up.

“People are dying,” Q tells him. “Some are vanishing. Others are being co-opted by the ghosts of the formerly living.”

“Who are these people exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are these people now?”

“I don’t know that either… but their lives form part of the wider investigation.”

“And how wide has this investigation got?”

“At least twice as wide as it is long.”

Droopy-eyed and sanguine, Chief Inspector S appears to be wearing a white turtleneck pullover and gold chinos, a prize Smith & Wesson half-cocked down the front of his pants like an utterly meaningful trophy. On his feet: a pair of tartan espadrilles tapping enigmatically to a soundtrack of smoothly-syncopated swing standards recreated by an authentic orchestra of recognized legal experts…

“Have you managed to reach any firm conclusions yet?” Chief Inspector S asks.

“Absolutely none,” Q confesses, “of any firmness whatsoever…”

… more deaths…

Frozen motorcylists. Electrocuted clergymen. Castrated hoteliers. Barbecued spouses. Casually skinned multi-storey car park attendants … Q occupying chairs, manipulating desktop toys, looking at women adjust themselves through digital binoculars – from high vantage points… slouching in gay revue bars, starting to feel like James Stewart at the end of Harvey… encountering an unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves – in a gay revue bar – who tells him: “Come with me and you will find the answers you seek…” before sprinting unhelpfully in the opposite direction. Following a high-speed jog through the futuristic ruins of the city, Q tails the unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves to a back street, down a side alley, through a sliding door, up dark creaking steps, into the grubby hallway of a communal spa which – Q guesses – is probably funded by an anonymous pervert millionaire for his own private purposes: the enjoyment of watching strangers conduct themselves nakedly, in private, via a two-way mirror system…

… behind the reception desk: a young Asian woman with the high-browed demeanour of Virginia Woolf, wearing a tartan turban.

“Who are you?” she demands in a refined voice, rich and plummy with strong overtones of Merlot. “You don’t belong here. What could you possibly want?”

“Well,” Q explains, “entanglement is weaving a path through time, very strongly, rather like an incendiary device… I do have some graphs and charts and other illustrative material to demonstrate this point… but outside of the investigation, my life is an empty canvas minus myself and prior to this I was desperate, down-on-my-luck, back against the wall, hand to mouth, mouth to hand, always questioning myself: what am I saying? who am I? what is my destiny? why won’t she answer my calls? has she rekindled her relationship with a former saxophonist? because in essence, you see, I have been sucked into a vortex by all the beautiful absences in my own life, so many beautiful absences I couldn’t possibly list them all, well, maybe I could, but it would take a very long time…”

– only partway into one of the longest sentences he had ever attempted, Q notices the young Asian woman striking her turban violently against the hard, glossy edges of the reception desk. She pauses momentarily, gazes around, forehead glistening purple. Realizing she is still conscious, she repeats the action until almost completely concussed…

… in the steam of the communal spa, the unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves reclines on a long pinewood bench: naked except for a trilby hat now, his body improbably misshapen. The man signals with expansive homosexual mannerisms towards a half-raised portcullis framed by two portable cannons. Inside the gates: a stone-cold cold stone room, malevolent scarlet wallpaper, the smell of tepid piss, the ambience carcinogenic. Volumes of unread books line every wall, a dark archive of unremittingly obscure easy reading tomes. Over a grand piano, the vast imprint of a swastika, surrounded by a series of portraits, minor Scottish poets lounging indignantly in the semi-nude…

… suddenly: the fearful drone of traditional bagpipe music… 12 figures dressed as Judas Iscariot expressing a slight feeling of bewilderment via a Highland jig… behind them, a gnomic man in sparkling jackboots and the habit of a nun. From inside his habit an epic pause ensues. Lowering the hood he reveals: the over-sized head of Princess Margaret. On her face a severe expression. Q having seen a similar expression on the faces of several other people lately. Friends. Family. Lovers. Lawyers. Paramedics. Magistrates.

There’s another pause, not quite as epic as the last…

“My name is Herr Schmaltz! ” cries Herr Schmaltz, visibly demented. “/ have recently undergone a complete face transplant and – during the same procedure – had my colon medically revised. However, originally I came from Newark, New Jersey, where I trained to be a violist. But when I moved to Leipzig and became the world’s smallest basketball player, they accused me of decapitating my nephew during a violent sex call… then proceeded to arrest me for something I didn’t do… then questioned me about my relationship with a comatose futures trader… then offered me cocaine, an incredible pay rise, and a part-time shot at redemption in the Scottish hills… I quickly became very Scottish and having a head for business I quickly became a millionaire too… now, having returned in partial disguise, I shall awaken dormant memories of love and crime and death… and nobody shall penetrate the heart of my dark secret…”

… dialing the emergency services at the bottom of the fire escape, Q briefly ponders the significance of the incident…

… that evening, staring down at his manual typewriter, drinking camomile tea. In front of Q: a blank page. Six months later, the same blank page still in front of him, an empty teacup in his hand… the telephone spluttering in the ever-dimming dimness. Q picking up, as is his custom. A voice answering like a diseased hooker from a recent weekend in Amsterdam. “If it looks like a duck and talks like a duck and walks like a duck,” the voice advises. “Then, in all honesty: it probably is a duck…”