Zodiac's toy by John Jones (best free ereader .TXT) 📖

do it in my sleep? or someone from the other flats might have came in and.." Lee stared at him.

"Did you really just say that? Someone came in in the middle of the night and put the body on the sofa. While they were at it they may as well have tidied up".

"But it was on the floor just there," he pointed to where there was blood.

"Shall I just ring forensics and ask them? Can bodies get up and move around?" Ray just stared, confused, remembered last night, but the notion of alcohol clung on by its fingernails and convinced him.

"You need to get rid of it soon before it stinks the place out, then the other residents are gonna start asking questions, and now that Gary's gone I think I might want to take over, so when clients come in I don't want them coming here choking, so get rid of it". He turned and headed for the door.

"Oh come on Lee I can't do this by myself. I don't know what to do with it". Lee sighed.

"Alright, I'll think of something, but lock it away in the back somewhere until we decide...oh and go back to your Carolines and get the sledgehammer. I'm gonna need to get into Garys. And what's happened to Shane?"

 

It's too early, he thought, she'll still be mad with me, so he slowly made his way along the roads until he could do nothing but walk up the path. He was tempted to pace up and down, build up courage, but realised that would look suspicious to nosy neighbours. He saw the shiny new lock and rapped on the small window in the middle of the door.

I only want the sledgehammer, he thought. Justthesledgehammerjustthesledgehammerjustthesledgehammer...nothing else, but when the door opened, and she stood there with a face like thunder, the realisation of what happened, and what could have happened overwhelmed his mind.

She was in danger and could have been slashed up. Her and Wayne, and I would have been tortured and killed.

...but Blotto was dead, as was Gary, and Lee didn't pose a threat to her now. She was blissfully unaware.

She was safe.

Ray stepped in and hugged her, tears welling in his eyes. Caroline's eyes widened, and he stepped back, composing himself, face reddening. She was speechless for a few seconds.

"Ray," she said, "giving me a hug isn't going to make me forgive you. And what's got into you anyway? breaking down doors to get in and giving me a hug. You've not done that in years".

"I've come for the sledgehammer," he said.

 

It took three strikes and Gary's door crashed open. Lee handed the sledgehammer to Ray and nodded to Shane's flat.

"Might as well open Shane's". Ray went down to the flat and took seven strikes to open it, then realised he could have looked in Nugget’s pocket for the key.

"Fuck," said Lee, entering, looking at all the electrical equipment, and in the living room the phones on his desk with a plethora of missed calls. He sat down on the swivel chair, putting his hands behind his head.

"Where do I start?"

 

The array of weapons was spread before Ray in the living room, and he just stared at them as though he'd never seen anything like it before. He wound up in the bedroom looking at the safe in the bottom of the cupboard, and the money around it because it wouldn't fit inside. Bundles of notes, some loose.

He wondered if Lee knows about it, he thought. Maybe he could get away with pocketing some. Or perhaps all.

A knock came on the door and Ray frowned. Did he really just hear someone knocking on the front door? Another one told him the answer. Whoever was there could probably see all the weapons laid out. He walked out to see a pensioner standing there.

"Hi," he said, "Do you have any daggers?"

 

That night Ray decided to sleep in Shane's bed. He didn't like the idea of sharing a flat with a dead body, and wedged a chair against the broken door and settled down to sleep in the inky blackness. When silence descended it didn't last long, because out there, in the corridor, there was shuffling. Walking without feet leaving the floor, and breathing. Breathing that stopped outside the flat. There was the click of a lock. Not his, but Lee's, and more shuffling.

Ray closed his eyes tight, and his mind managed to convince itself in a last vestige attempt to believe that somehow it had something to do with alcohol, some normal explanation. His mind succeeded.

 

"Ray!" came a cry from Lee's flat in the morning, "Ray get the fuck in here!" He threw on yesterday's clothes and hurried inside. Lee wasn't in the living room, but he found him in the bathroom.

Nugget's body was in the bath, his face looking towards the door, the gaping wound facing the ceiling.

"Ray, why would you do that? Some sort of fucking joke".

"It wasn't me,"

"Oh it wasn't you. Just like it wasn't you who threatened Gary and threw a phone at him,"

"No Lee it wasn't! I didn't do any of that. And I didn't drag Nugget's fucking body and put it in your bath!" he said, red-faced.

Lee just stared at him. "Fine," he said, then out of the corner of his eye, saw movement in the bath.

"What the fuck is that?" he said, as something moved around the wound. He stepped cautiously closer, as did Ray.

"Crabs," said Ray. Small pink and yellow pea crabs the size of one pence coins crawled out in the hair and over the face.

"Crabs!" said Lee, "Where the fuck did they come from?" Ray stared. He had no answer. Lee continued:

"Isn't it usually maggots or something? But crabs. What the fuck?"

"That body needs to go," said Ray.

"Fucking right it does," said Lee, "but how...hang on...I've got it, but we need to wait until tonight. We'll take it to the roof, or the highest floor, dump it out of a window. Oh and by the way, I found these in my pocket. They’re yours". He handed Ray the zodiac cards. "I'm not staying in here today. I'll be in Gary's trying to work out what the fuck to do to take over”. He walked out, Ray looking at the cards. Lee must have gathered them together and brought them back, he thought, convincing himself.

There was beer in Shane's fridge, and temptation threatened to overwhelm Ray, but he refused and opted for a cup of good old-fashioned tea instead, and sat at the table where he spread the cards out and began to read parts of them:

The Libra card...you may put on a brave face, but that is as far as your mettle takes you...sometimes the scales of justice will be balanced in your favour... all you need to do is believe...

The Gemini card...Beware of your maniac friend, the one who returns...you are a dog amongst wolves...redeemable, but a challenge.

The Virgo card...your penchant for cigarettes and alcohol...there will be no taking of the cherry, because there would be no purity...when you believe in horoscopes, things will be more endearing and humble.

The Taurus card....stop smoking and drinking and try to be happy...be happy for your sister. I know you are jealous of her...It's fine to be realistic, but it's also fine to believe.

The Aries card...there is potential...Rams don't like apes that like botany...you can come to understand the wisdom of the planets.

The Pisces card...Pisces understands your negati...Fuck it, Ray thought, standing up, his lack of belief attacked but not down and out. It's all coincidence. It's all coincidence.

What else could it be?

He made his way out and into Garys flat where Lee was looking puzzled over papers on the desk.

"Lee," he said, "I need a phone". He didn't look up, frowning at numbers on a page.

"What?"

"Can I have one of the phones?" Lee looked around. There were phones around the place.

"Take your pick. Some of them are screen-locked though. You'll need a pass number. Those on the window ledge I've found you can get straight in. Take one of them," and Ray did, walking back into Shane's flat, fiddling around with it.

It wasn't long before he was on the internet, reinforcing his belief by sceptics who didn't believe in astrology.

Absolute nonsense...Anyone who believes in it wants their head testing... Pseudoscience...preposterous...

Ray was surprised at the vehemence of some of the sceptics. Almost as if they 'knew' it wasn't real. Sceptics that would say that they do not know, but then proceed to speak as if they did know, and anyone that didn't agree with them was an idiot. It seems they had all the answers, when even Ray knew they didn't. It was their opinion or nothing, and covered their ears with their hands to opposing views. My opinion is the only one that matters, because I 'know' the truth.

Even Ray's sceptical non-belief didn't go that deep. Although his mind wasn't closed 100%, probably 99.8%, the door was unlocked.

If astrology was scientifically proven to be real, then he would have no choice but to accept it. Yet, he guessed, the hardened sceptics wouldn't, and would keep their hands over their ears.

Like them, he would find it very hard to deal with. Years of non-belief embedded in the mind would take an astronomical shift in mind-set. Yet it was doable, and in some people probably impossible, but Ray was not as hostile to people who believed in it. He called them airy-fairy nonces with their heads in the clouds, but beyond that he had not given it much thought. He didn't laugh at them like some sceptics, didn't poke fun at them. If they believed in it then fine. To Ray it was 'all a load of bollocks', and he wanted to believe it still was, the weight of other people's scepticism and their arguments against and his own reasoning that it was coincidence and fallacy, all served to reinforce his astrological non-belief.

Sometimes, however, he did feel it cracking. The door in his mind sometimes opened very slightly, only a fraction, enough to let in a sliver of light, to then close again. The key to locking it though, was long lost.

 

He gathered the cards and put them in the kitchen drawer, finding that Shane had left his phone behind. He also gathered all the weapons and put them in the bedroom, in the drawers and cupboards, some he had to leave on the floor.

Shane, he thought. You can come back now.

I'll have to find out my new number, he thought, and give it in to Ambroses, and Caroline, but Caroline could wait, she was still probably annoyed with him.

After five minutes of confusion with the phone, he discovered his number, wrote it down on a piece of paper and closed the door as best he could to make it look locked. It opened by around two inches, but he guessed nobody would really notice, and even if they did it wasn't an invitation to just walk in.

He walked down to Ambroses and found Allan Chandler, still with a bandage on his wrist, and handed him his new phone number.

"Ah, Ray, new phone number...any chance you could do a few hours now?"

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 38

 

How on Earth did Gary do it? Lee thought, juggle every pie he had his finger in. Some of the phones had been ringing, and he had answered to find people asking for more time to pay back what they owed, and some had an excuse as to why, but Lee found himself telling them to take as long as they liked. They treated that with suspicion.

"You sure Gary? really?" but Lee knew that to simply step into Gary's shoes was something he could not do so easily, knowing that in such a situation, in order to get there on his own merit, he would need to pare down Gary's operations, and keep it simple.

He'd heard that many times. Keep it simple. The answer to many things in life, he'd heard, because once you start