while I went in too, to look for my comrade in beta world, but Detective Z was gone – I retraced my steps. I waited. Cleaning staff were making a thorough job of the whole of the front-of-house area. After a while I was able to detach my senses from the sights and sounds of the world I had entered – I found myself back in the basement of the institute, the big wall-mounted monitor was a flickering field of static. I was quite alone.
Chapter 16
THE VULTURE’S NECK
Detective Z sidled his power-suited avatar into the side entrance and looked around the foyer. When he saw the poster - Chloe ‘Cold Fury’ Andretti versus ‘Calamity’ Jade Power - he froze. The poster struck hope and fear in equal proportions. He looked at Chloe’s opponent, ‘Calamity Jade’ it said, but it was Lorna.
This had all the parallel meaning and synchronicity of a dream where totemic detail, personal to one’s own life, was woven into a creaky storyline in order to impart a secreted message that was always floating just beneath the surface of the conscious mind. And yet the lizard brain persisted: he was a detective, he was trained to hunt for meaning and sift for clues, and he was on the trail of a multiple murderer or murderers.
He had been here at Vernon Reach the previous day, and by working back down the time-line from the place where the victim was left, out on the mud bank, then there ought to be, at some point, evidence implicating a perpetrator of these crimes, a real person - for Detective Z only believed in real people committing real crimes, despite having to buy into Professor Sprawl’s wilder theories, just enough to move forward with his investigation. He was sailing under a flag of convenience, AKA the crazy flag.
He had stood for several moments in the foyer of the Babadrome staring at the poster. Maybe now was the time to discover the worst. Fear and hope: hope and fear – a combination of sensation that had eluded him for so very many years as he had shuffled through a numbing fog of despair since Lorna’s disappearance.
Yes, it was Lorna.
He methodically removed the thumbtacks, folded the shiny paper and put it in the pocket of his coat, feeling strange doing so. Then he turned around and went back outside; here he found Darren to be gone. I’m here to do a job, and this might be my only chance – better get with the program, Detective , he thought, and set off to find a way down to the riverfront and the mud bank where the dead woman had been found.
Detective Z had in fact entered the Loa. He was no longer sitting alongside Professor Darren Sprawl back in the basement of the Institute, for he had turned sideways to the cavalcade of the senses that comprise everyday reality. Besides, he was following a trail; his detective’s sensibility now utterly attuned to identifying the progenitor of darkness, the Baron Samedi and his minions, the murdering bastards who were dumping their handiwork on his west London patch, the fuckers who had taken Lorna, taken her and turned her into some circus act performing in a cage. He would find her, and bring her back. And bring back the sack of shit responsible; either that or dispense some kind of ‘on the spot’ retribution. Exactly how - he had yet to figure out.
The same gravel path led down to Thames, on one side the Babadrome, on the other the same sewage facility only this time the prevailing breeze took the stink out over the river. The light was failing, or maybe it was always twilight in this place, and the detective saw, to his disappointment, that the tide was up and the shingle and mud where he had stood yesterday was beneath swirling brown water. He did however notice something new – a narrow track snaking off around the headland. It was a windswept and isolated place but nevertheless Detective Z felt compelled to follow the track through the long grass and samphire. A seabird screeched close by.
‘Vernon Creek’ said an old wooden sign nailed to
Chapter 16
THE VULTURE’S NECK
Detective Z sidled his power-suited avatar into the side entrance and looked around the foyer. When he saw the poster - Chloe ‘Cold Fury’ Andretti versus ‘Calamity’ Jade Power - he froze. The poster struck hope and fear in equal proportions. He looked at Chloe’s opponent, ‘Calamity Jade’ it said, but it was Lorna.
This had all the parallel meaning and synchronicity of a dream where totemic detail, personal to one’s own life, was woven into a creaky storyline in order to impart a secreted message that was always floating just beneath the surface of the conscious mind. And yet the lizard brain persisted: he was a detective, he was trained to hunt for meaning and sift for clues, and he was on the trail of a multiple murderer or murderers.
He had been here at Vernon Reach the previous day, and by working back down the time-line from the place where the victim was left, out on the mud bank, then there ought to be, at some point, evidence implicating a perpetrator of these crimes, a real person - for Detective Z only believed in real people committing real crimes, despite having to buy into Professor Sprawl’s wilder theories, just enough to move forward with his investigation. He was sailing under a flag of convenience, AKA the crazy flag.
He had stood for several moments in the foyer of the Babadrome staring at the poster. Maybe now was the time to discover the worst. Fear and hope: hope and fear – a combination of sensation that had eluded him for so very many years as he had shuffled through a numbing fog of despair since Lorna’s disappearance.
Yes, it was Lorna.
He methodically removed the thumbtacks, folded the shiny paper and put it in the pocket of his coat, feeling strange doing so. Then he turned around and went back outside; here he found Darren to be gone. I’m here to do a job, and this might be my only chance – better get with the program, Detective , he thought, and set off to find a way down to the riverfront and the mud bank where the dead woman had been found.
Detective Z had in fact entered the Loa. He was no longer sitting alongside Professor Darren Sprawl back in the basement of the Institute, for he had turned sideways to the cavalcade of the senses that comprise everyday reality. Besides, he was following a trail; his detective’s sensibility now utterly attuned to identifying the progenitor of darkness, the Baron Samedi and his minions, the murdering bastards who were dumping their handiwork on his west London patch, the fuckers who had taken Lorna, taken her and turned her into some circus act performing in a cage. He would find her, and bring her back. And bring back the sack of shit responsible; either that or dispense some kind of ‘on the spot’ retribution. Exactly how - he had yet to figure out.
The same gravel path led down to Thames, on one side the Babadrome, on the other the same sewage facility only this time the prevailing breeze took the stink out over the river. The light was failing, or maybe it was always twilight in this place, and the detective saw, to his disappointment, that the tide was up and the shingle and mud where he had stood yesterday was beneath swirling brown water. He did however notice something new – a narrow track snaking off around the headland. It was a windswept and isolated place but nevertheless Detective Z felt compelled to follow the track through the long grass and samphire. A seabird screeched close by.
‘Vernon Creek’ said an old wooden sign nailed to
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