Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

equilibrium. She took such pleasure in the sublime, detectives. Such true ecstasy in the radiance of the Classical era. She would weep – truly gush with tears – upon reading a solitary passage of Petronius or Sulpicia. She surrounded herself by beautiful things. She wanted to be graced by angels. It was a Paradise: a portal – a doorway to a different age, a better age. I was raised like a noblewoman’s child; the progeny of an emperor or a Caesar. I believed there was the blood of the ancient gods in my veins and the passers-by and pilgrims who took up residence with us did nothing to tell me of the well-intentioned lie that had been woven around me. Reality hit hard when it came. But Procne, for all her eccentricities, created a better world for me to grow up in. I was nurtured in a time of wisdom, philosophy and elevated thinking, detectives. Whereas you were raised in Scunthorpe. Tell me, whose mother was negligent?’

Neilsen closes the folder. He has to admit, he has a point.

On the radio, Amanda from the BBC is telling her listeners that police are continuing to dig at an abandoned farm near Humberside Airport. A spokesman for the press office can neither confirm nor deny that the dig is in connection with missing schoolgirl Bronwen Roberts, last seen more than twenty years ago …

He’s saved from giving it any more consideration by the sudden trilling of his phone. Answers with a forced jolliness, so that DC Andy Daniells doesn’t feel mistreated.

‘Andy, how’s it going? I was wondering, do you think—’

‘HMP Holderness,’ says Daniells, breathlessly. ‘There’s been a stabbing.’

Neilsen glares out at the water. ‘Cox?’

Daniells huffs a dry laugh down the line. ‘There’s blood on the ceiling, Ben. And some author’s got himself caught right in the middle of it all.’

Neilsen looks at the book in his lap. Locks eyes with the photograph. Chews his cheek, and wonders. ‘I’ll meet you there.’

TWENTY-TWO

Annabeth is curled up on the sofa. Her phone is going crazy. Ringing. Pinging. Bleeping and dingly-fucking-bingling and generally doing all it can to get itself smashed to bits with a brick. One message. Two. Now a call. Another. Vibration after vibration …

She pulls the blankets over her head. She feels weak. Giddy. Sick. She can’t face it. Whatever has happened since she phoned in this morning to say she wouldn’t be coming in, and made her weak protestations to Rufus that he should just go, just leave her there, behind the bathroom door … whatever has happened since, she doesn’t care.

She can only fool herself so long. She wriggles, hotly, damply, out from under the folds of the quilt. Locates her phone.

Urgent messages from Mark, her supervising officer. He doesn’t care if she’s bleeding from her eyes, she needs to get to work pronto. Her ‘writing course’ has turned to shit. Griffin Cox has been stabbed. Her writer friend has got caught up in a fistfight with an inmate. Mr Windsor has three cracked ribs and is missing two teeth. He needs her to come in, to get her story straight …

Beads of cold sweat stand out on her exposed skin. Icy water trickles down her back. She half chokes on a sob, and then she hears the bang-bang-bang on her door. Suddenly a child again, she wants to hide beneath the bedclothes. Wants things to go back to how they once were. Wishes it so badly it becomes a prayer.

‘Annabeth. It’s me. You have to let me in …’

Gasping for breath, half drunk on fear, she makes her way to the door and cautiously pulls it open.

Rufus is standing on her doorstep. There’s a bruise on his cheek. His hair is sticking up wildly. And he’s holding out his hand. Holding it up, like a waiter with a tray.

On his palm, cool and glassy and unmistakable, the object thrust into the folds of Rufus’s satchel.

A little strangled gasp in Annabeth’s throat as she realizes what she is seeing.

A snow globe.

At its centre, amid the glitter and snow, two figures. They are hand-carved. Beautiful, in their way. One is a fat man, on his knees. The other, a woman; perhaps still a girl. She is reaching up, something sharp in her tiny pink hand.

Rufus closes his fist around the glass. Shakes the bauble with a faint hiss of apology.

Opens his palm.

The snow inside the glass falls red.

TWENTY-THREE

She leans over him, her blue, latex-clad fingers probing the yellowing edge of the wound. Makes a little clucking noise. Pushes, firmly, against the puckered skin, held together by a lattice of stitches and gauze. Her hair, dark and wiry, tickles his bare chest. He gets a faint whiff of her. She smells old. Doughy. Near her mouth there’s a lingering trace of last night’s wine and the spicy red-pepper and hummus wrap that she had for lunch.

It takes Griffin Cox all of his considerable willpower not to retch.

‘Hmm, not bad … some minor signs of infection … odd bruising pattern … unusual to see just one injury here – I believe the modern criminal favours a “typewriter” approach, multiple penetrations, not the one, deliberate … hmmm …’

Cox ignores her. Makes a great demonstration of biting his lip and holding back his whimpers. He can take the pain of the inspection, but it is his proximity to somebody whose very DNA seems past its sell-by date that creeps beneath his skin. He feels as though his personal space is being penetrated by somebody with the potential to drag him closer to the grave. He feels the same way about mature adult women as most people do about newborn children – albeit in reverse. Some sniff the crown of a baby and feel enervated, regenerated: suffused with the fountain of youth. Cox sees mature skin as corrupt: decrepit; putrid. Each breath in robs him of his virility. He lets out a low moan: pitiful, weak. Is gratified to see her take a gentler approach to