Питер Мэй - Lockdown

MacNeil watched in disbelief, frozen by horror. He heard a solitary voice whisper, ‘Oh, my God!’

‘Only in life can we find death, and only in death can we find life.’ The man in black suddenly dropped his hands level with his face. He paused for just one moment before gouging with his mouth at the bloody mass he held in them. Gorging himself on it.

Someone in the crowd vomited. There were just a couple of voices raised in disgust or dissent. The only other sounds were the guzzling and snorting of the man on stage as he fed on the contents of his hands. Then just as quickly as he had begun, he finished, dropping the remains of his meal into the bundle on the table. His face was smeared red around his mouth.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he called, and he retrieved his props and vanished in a flourish back through the door from which he had come.

The lights immediately plunged low, and the music started where it had left off, assaulting the body and the senses. The sea of masks rose and fell in a frantic, stormy swell.

MacNeil was shocked and shaking, and wanted to throw up. He turned back to the bar and the waiting whisky and found the barman grinning at him from behind his mask. ‘Quite something, eh?’ he shouted. He was enjoying the revulsion written clearly on MacNeil’s face. ‘Who was it you were looking for?’

MacNeil threw back his whisky and banged the glass breathlessly on the counter. ‘Ronnie Kazinski.’

The barman frowned for a moment, then enlightenment dawned. ‘Oh, yeah. You mean the crem guy?’

It took MacNeil a second or two to realise that crem meant crematorium . ‘That’s him.’

‘Why don’t you ask Foetus Man?’ he shouted, flicking his head towards the stage. ‘They’re big pals, those two.’

The corridor behind the stage led to toilets at the far end. MacNeil could smell stale urine the moment the door from the club closed behind him. But it muted the assault of the music, and for that he was grateful. A harsh yellow strip light reflected off dull linoleum, and MacNeil brushed past framed black and white photographs of some of the celebrated performance art which had made the club its name. The dressing room was the last door on the left. A sign said Private . MacNeil pushed the door open, and Foetus Man turned from the wall mirror above his dressing table, still cleaning the mess from his hands and face with hot, wet towels.

‘Can’t you fucking read?’

MacNeil crossed the room in two strides, grabbed him by his lapels and slammed him hard against the wall, knocking all the breath from his lungs. ‘Yeah, I can read. And right now I’m going to read you your fucking rights, you sick bastard.’ He held him pinned to the wall with one hand and showed him his warrant card with the other. ‘I’ll figure out the charges later. Body snatching, foetus theft, murder, maybe. Someone as sick as you should be locked up for a very long time.’

‘Hey,’ Foetus Man protested. And he started to laugh. ‘Come on, man. You didn’t think any of that was real, did you? I mean, give us a break. I’d have chucked up all over the joint.’ He nodded towards the bloody bundle still sitting on the dressing table. ‘It’s just jam and bread roll. Can’t stand the canteen food, so I bring my own packed lunch.’

He pulled himself free of MacNeil’s slackening grip.

‘It’s just performance, man. People like to be shocked. They like to think it’s real. But deep down they know it’s just a bit of fun.’

‘You call that fun?’

‘It’s pushing the boundaries. I’m engaging the audience, provoking an emotional response. It makes them question stuff, stretches their limits.’

He sat down again and continued wiping his face, and MacNeil watched his reflection in the mirror keeping a wary eye on him.

‘I mean, where would I get a foetus from, man? I got the idea watching this documentary about a Chinese guy who did it for real. I mean, really did it. Now, that was sick. Me? I just enjoy a sandwich.’ He finished cleaning himself and stood up. ‘Was there something else you wanted?’

MacNeil looked at him, filled with anger and contempt and a large residue of the revulsion his performance had induced. He tried to focus on what had brought him here in the first place. ‘I’m looking for Ronnie Kazinski,’ he said.

Foetus Man shrugged. ‘Ronnie who?’

The dressing room door opened, and MacNeil looked past Foetus Man into the mirror and saw the reflection of a young man in jeans and a leather jacket. He was not a tall man, and he had managed to emphasise the smallness of his head by gelling thin black hair down over his skull. For a moment MacNeil thought he knew him. There was something familiar in the high cheekbones and wide-set eyes. He had bad skin, pasty and white, that looked as if it hadn’t seen daylight in months. An odd memory flashed through MacNeil’s mind. A woman’s face behind a net curtain, features made mean by generations of poverty. And he remembered where he had seen this man before. A smudged image on a faxed printout. Ronald Kazinski.

Kazinski stopped in the doorway and saw MacNeil’s reflection looking back at him. His eyes flickered to meet Foetus Man’s and he knew immediately he was in trouble. He turned and ran, sprinting back up the corridor like a man possessed, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. MacNeil went after him, slower, his big frame lumbering through harsh yellow light until he hit the door at the far end, bursting through it into the glowing sea of masks and the assault of the music. Kazinski had cut a swathe through it towards the stairs at the far side, and MacNeil followed in his wake, shouldering bodies out of his way as he went, until finally the sea parted voluntarily before him.

He took the stairs two at a time, and the heavy metal door was slamming shut as he reached the landing at the top. The bouncer with the bald head and the leather waistcoat stood in his way. He put a hand out to stop him. ‘Where do you think you’re going, pal?’

It took the merest flick of his neck, MacNeil leaning forward as if to kiss him. He felt the bridge of the man’s nose splinter beneath his forehead and the bouncer staggered back, a look of astonishment in his eyes. The back of his head smacked into the wall and his mask turned red as blood soaked into white cotton. MacNeil heaved the door open and was out into the night. He heard the clatter of overturned bins, a smell of stinking refuse whipped up on the edge of an icy wind. Light spilled across the courtyard from the open door, and he saw the shadow of the fleeing Kazinski as he dived up the alleyway towards the street. Rats scurried and screamed underfoot as MacNeil ran after him.

When MacNeil emerged from the alley, Kazinski was sprinting up the centre of Dean Street, being rapidly swallowed by the dark. He was like a hare to MacNeil’s bulldog. MacNeil saw him turn into St. Anne’s Court, a narrow pedestrian street between tall brick buildings, and knew he was going to lose him. But as he reached the corner, he saw that there was something going on beyond the far end of the lane. The flicker and glow and crackle of flames. Voices raised in laughter and howling derision. Looters. Kazinski pulled up and glanced back towards MacNeil, caught between the devil and the deep blue. MacNeil could almost hear the wheels grinding as Kazinski tried to decide which was the lesser of two evils. But he found a third way instead. A narrow passage that ran south, at right angles to St. Anne’s Court, opposite the shattered Georgian windows of what had once been a cake shop. It was no more than three feet wide, and he hurtled down it, covering twenty yards or more before realising that the opening into Flaxman Court at the far end of it was choked with upturned bins and debris tipped from the windows of looted offices. MacNeil heard him curse in the darkness, and slowed to a walk to try to catch his breath. There was no way out for Kazinski. He’d turned into a dead end and wasn’t going anywhere.