David Jackson - Marked

Harold stares at the object in disbelief. Is it really what it looks like?

When the place erupts again — the screams of horror, the yells of fear and confusion, the sounds of people retching and vomiting — Harold knows he is not mistaken. Everybody else has seen the item for what it is.

A human head.

Geoffrey doesn’t move for several minutes. He remains on the street corner, a huge smile on his face as he dreams about how he is going to break his news to Stuart.

That boss of yours? Antonio? The one who took you for a drink? The one you think is so good-looking? Wanna know something about him?

And then it hits him. How bitchy his imagined words sound. His smile drops away, to be replaced by immense sadness at his planned cruelty to the most important person in his life.

Because what he realizes then is that Stuart was being honest with him all along. There was nothing to it. A harmless drink with the boss — that’s all it was.

I need to make it up to him, he thinks. I should go back there right now and tell him how sorry I am for jumping to conclusions and being spiteful. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

He almost wants to run across the street and knock on the restaurant window and blow Antonio a kiss for his unwitting part in all this. But he doesn’t. Instead, he turns away, feeling that he is a happier and wiser man.

Agamemnon seems happy too, although maybe not so wise, buried as he is in the trash that the drunk spilled onto the ground. Geoffrey tightens the leash and tries to yank him away, but the dog continues with its burrowing into the mound.

‘Aggie, come on! What the hell have you got there?’

Geoffrey takes a few steps closer. He sees that Agamemnon is concentrating on one particular garbage bag, ripping at it with his front paws and teeth.

‘Aggie!’

He heaves on the leash, dragging the dog backwards as its claws scrabble on the sidewalk for purchase. It’s only once Aggie is out of the way that Geoffrey gets a good look at the item of interest now exposed to the air.

It looks like. .

Geoffrey brings a hand to his mouth as he utters a high-pitched giggle.

Well, it looks like. . An ass. A tush. A pair of buttocks. All by themselves.

It has to be something else. A part of a store mannequin, maybe. Something like that. It can’t just be-

But when he steps closer and sees the tattoo of the angel at the base of the spine, its wings unfurled over the wound-ridden globes of flesh, when the aroma hits him and he is instantly transported into a butcher’s store, when his dog continues to strain to get back to its feast of raw meat — that’s when he knows this is no dummy.

And that’s when he scurries to the curb to empty his stomach.

She hears the voice, but it seems just a faint drone in the distance. She doesn’t catch the words.

She stares at the television, but the pictures make no sense. They are just blurs of color.

There’s a cup of tea on the table in front of her. It’s cold and untouched.

Her senses are almost closed. They will stay that way until things are right again.

Something touches her shoulder. The voice repeats, louder and more insistent this time. The words are forced into her head.

‘Nicole. Come to bed. You need to get some sleep.’

Sleep. What is that? Why is that important? Doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he understand?

She stays where she is. She would sit here for ever if she knew it could make a difference.

Detective Second Grade Callum Doyle is feeling good about this night. Even though he’s reaching the end of an October day that has been dismal and gray enough to thump misery and depression into the most optimistic of souls, Doyle has no complaints about it. To Doyle this could be the first day of spring. He could be witness to lambs gamboling and daffodils pushing their heads above the earth and the sun getting its ass into gear with some seriously overdue illumination. Doyle is so full of joy he could sing. And does, in fact. ‘Norwegian Wood’ by the Beatles, for some reason. It’s not exactly tuneful, but he belts it out anyway, ignoring the grimacing of his partner in the car passenger seat.

The reason Doyle is so buoyant tonight is that he has caught a homicide. Which is not to say he relishes the thought of staring death in the face, or of the consequences of death for the innocents who are left to deal with it. Far from it. What’s important here is the symbolism. The fact that the Police Department is willing to entrust its lowly detective with solving a crime of such enormity. Which might sound odd, given that’s exactly the kind of thing Doyle is paid to do.

It wasn’t so many months ago that the relationship between Doyle and his employers was less than amicable. He was being given all the shitty jobs — the cases nobody else wanted to handle. Cases that served to keep him occupied but out of the limelight and out of everybody’s hair. It got so bad that Doyle was seriously considering abandoning his police career.

And then he got a break. Second fiddle on the murder of a young girl in a bookstore. He was meant to be doing the menial stuff, freeing up the other detectives to do the real investigatory work. But it turned out to be a whole lot more than a simple homicide. It grew into something gargantuan that threatened to chew Doyle into tiny pieces and spit him out. It could have been the end for Doyle.

But he survived. He came through it, not exactly unaffected by his experience, but in the NYPD’s eyes something of a hero. And since that time he has become a cop again. A true detective rather than a helping hand. Back on the cases that matter.

Like this one, for example. A homicide. Handed straight to Doyle as soon as the call came in.

After what he’s been through, how tough can a case like this be?

Doyle practically jogs into the Chinese restaurant, he’s feeling that good. He doesn’t wait for his partner: he’s not even aware that the kid is struggling to keep up.

Doyle still doesn’t know what to make of LeBlanc. He’s probably a perfectly good cop, but he’s young and he’s inexperienced and he has this aura about him of not knowing what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t even dress the part. He goes for trendy instead of functional. Skinny ties and pointy shoes and stupid designer spectacles. When you’re in need of an authority figure to follow in a moment of crisis, this kid with his waxed blond hair is almost certainly the last person you’d consider.

Inside the restaurant, Doyle’s ebullience subsides a little when the first person he sees there is a guy called Kravitz. It would have been difficult not to spot Kravitz, seeing as how he’s nearly six foot seven tall. He’s unnaturally thin too, which makes him appear even taller. Or his height emphasizes his lack of musculature. Either way, he’s a man of mismatched dimensions. He looks to Doyle like someone who should permanently have a basketball under his arm. ‘Ah,’ people would say, ‘you’re a basketball player.’ And they would no longer question his freakish frame.

Kravitz is a cop. More specifically, he’s a member of the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force — a mouthful that is usually condensed by his fellow cops to the more memorable Homicide South. Doyle bears no grudge against this cue-stick of a man; it’s his partner — a more meagerly proportioned individual called Folger — who is the one to watch. Doyle’s last run-in with the poison dwarf is still fresh in his mind.

Steeling himself, Doyle moves toward the center of the activity. Kravitz is the first to notice Doyle’s arrival, his eyes turning on him from his lofty position like a lighthouse scanning the seas.

‘Well, well. Hello again, Detective.’