Shred - Cuts of Flesh #1



  Shred

  Jacob Prytherch

  Copyright 2012 Jacob Prytherch

  Thank you for your support.

  This is a work of fiction, all resemblance to actual people, names, places and events is coincidental.

  Cover photograph by George Hodan - https://www.facebook.com/hodanpictures

  Special thanks to Kathryn Perkins for editing.

  For news about projects old and new please visit:

  https://www.facebook.com/jakeprytherch &

  https://jakeprytherch.wix.com/main

  This novella is the first part of the six part Cuts of Flesh series.

  Contents

  December 4th

  December 5th

  December 6th

  December 7th

  Shred

  December 4th

  Sleet ran in molten rivulets down the glass of the large town house, flowing like minute glaciers in a huge crystal delta, before splashing onto the slabs below. The pathway ran through the tangled garden towards a front gate that swung in the breeze, its paint flaking off and falling away like ancient skin.

  If anyone had been looking they would have seen a shape detach itself from the large dark shadow cast by the cherry tree that stood bowed over the brick wall that surrounded the residence. They would then have seen it tilting what must have been its head to look upwards at the one pale light that shone from the house, spreading out from a small desk lamp sitting by the window, illuminating the overweight and stress creased features of the middle aged man within.

  If anyone had been looking...

  It was another suspected adultery, of course. That was all Aleister Ward was asked to do these days. Times were hard and it seemed the best cure for the all-encompassing depression that was gripping Britain was to fuck whoever walked past. Maybe he was being too cynical but it was easy to be when all he ever saw was the seedier side of life: cheating, theft, assault... and he had seen so much worse when he had been on the force. It had been part of the reason why he had left. That last case had been too much. The things those people had done, the shapes they had made...

  He took a deep breath and tried to push the memory back into its little mental cabinet. Therapy, alcohol and an ill-advised and short lived cocaine habit had done nothing to help with purging those images from his head, so all he could do was try to shove them to the back of his mind and pretend they weren't there. The bleeding elephant in the room. It hadn't been the only reason he had left of course, though he was in no mood to think about Lucy either. If he dwelt on the past he'd never get anything done. He knew that from experience, as he'd found out after she'd gone...

  He focussed his eyes back on the screen in front of him, taking another sip of the coffee that sat next to the keyboard. It was starting to taste like tar due to the amount of granules he usually put in each cup. He had long ago given up on spooning it out and now simply tipped it in from the jar, covering the bottom of the mug with a little mound that promised to shunt his fatigue away, at least for half an hour, before it inevitably came flooding back.

  The email was from a ‘Jacqueline Webb’ and was merely an inquiry about services, rates, and a couple of reasons why she suspected her husband was doing the dirty on her, along with cataloguing a few other strange behaviours. It had been sitting in his inbox for a couple of days before he had finally got around to looking at it, as he had been trying to mop up the details of his last case, which hadn’t gone as well as he had expected. The husband in that case hadn’t been cheating but rather had been trying to learn how to dance as a surprise gift to his wife. After the client had found that out she didn’t want to pay up, as Aleister had ‘ruined the surprise’. Well she had paid in the end, he’d made sure of it, but only after a lot of wasted time on his part. Being self-employed was a real struggle sometimes.

  The email was neatly laid out and polite, leading Aleister to suspect she was from the west side of Wyldston, where the well-off gathered amongst tree lined avenues and petite pocket parks. When he saw the address at the bottom of the enquiry he saw that he was right about the wealth but wrong about the location. She and her family apparently lived in a farmhouse somewhere along the road to Northbridge, meaning that the house had most likely cost the best part of half a million pounds. Quite why someone of such considerable means had chosen Aleister over the more reputable and quite frankly more successful private investigators was beyond him, yet he wasn't going to complain. A job was a job and if it would help to keep the bailiffs away from the house for a few more weeks, so much the better.

  The email also indicated that the couple had a son, a seven year old. Aleister hoped for the boy's sake that he had some engrossing hobbies to distract him from the bouts of screaming that were most likely filling the house on a daily basis. Jacqueline had alluded in her email to having confronted her husband about his behaviour and in his experience such an argument regularly flared up again after it had died down, resurrecting itself like a phoenix from the flames of mistrust and betrayal. He and Lucy hadn't often had such arguments but when they had, the fallout had been terrible...

  “Enough,” he said to himself. It was all getting a little too familiar. He coughed gutturally as he pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up, still feeling the remains of the cold that had started in November, hanging around like an old friend even though it was now a couple of days into December.

  He glanced at the clock and saw it was a quarter to six. Holly was a little late but would surely be coming home soon. He downed the remains of the coffee and brushed his green shirt down a little, scattering the crumbs that had gathered on him throughout his afternoon period of 'work' onto the floor. He immediately admonished himself. Idiot. He’d have to sweep those up now. It would have to wait though as he’d promised to cook something special for Holly to make up for missing her exhibition. She'd asked him why he hadn't ended up coming, somehow forgetting it despite the five or six times she had reminded him. She'd even played the 'all the other parents are coming' card that usually crowbarred him away from his work, or search for work, but to no avail. He really had intended to make it and had told her as much, even though her charcoal work always set his hair on end for some reason. Yes it was raw, fanciful and dark... but it was still just carbon on paper, nowhere close to real, and yet he had a more extreme reaction to it than some of the real cases he had dealt with in the past.

  Olives, that's what he needed. She loved olives. Something with olives...

  After a few minutes searching through recipe books he found something that fitted the bill, so he headed downstairs to the kitchen and set to work.

  Holly wandered in at quarter past seven, which was later than he'd asked her to be back but earlier than he'd thought she actually would be. She gave Aleister a withering look, dumped her sodden black coat and headed straight upstairs, her tattered jeans and Cure t-shirt also soaked from the sleet. He knew she'd be down soon though, as the sanctity of family meal times was one of the few reminders of their time with her mother Lucy, and they both made the effort to stick to it.

  He busied himself with setting the well scuffed beech dining table ready for dinner, before filling two bowls with some linguine. As he spooned the thick red sauce over the top, he noticed that the black olives peeking out seemed almost to be like clots in a pool of decaying blood...

  Why did I think of that?

  The sound of Holly's heavy boots on the hallway floor as she came back downstairs pulled him from the gruesome reverie.

  “How was your day?” he asked as he carried the food to the table, weaving slightly to the left to avoid the low hanging light fitting that he had always meant to change but never had. It wouldn’t have been an issue for
most people but Aleister stood at close to six foot three, so he had hit his head on the round metal shade more times than he could remember. Holly didn't reply, simply slumping down in her usual seat and sighing. He placed the dish in front of her, hoping some decent food would ease the tension. It seemed to have turned out better than his usual attempts at cookery.

  “What's that?” asked Holly, staring down at the dish with her arms crossed as she tapped her feet under the dinner table. Aleister looked down, as if reminding himself. She was still angry. Her mother had been the same... every time he had stepped out of line it had been a long road back. Not that he had begrudged her that, after some of the things he had put her through.

  “It's... puttanesca. It's Italian,” he replied, walking over to the drinks cabinet and pouring himself a shot of vodka. He felt on edge but had no idea why, as if he were a player on stage who had no desire to act.

  “A sauce on pasta is Italian? No shit,” she said, her black painted lips curling in mock disgust.

  “Watch your language,” said Aleister, turning quickly towards her, almost spilling the vodka in his hand. She frowned, but held her tongue. Maybe she had just said it to get a reaction. Was that good? Seventeen years and he still had no idea about how to handle her, no matter how many parenting books he read. No, he didn't read them... he skimmed them and put them on his bookshelf as if they could bleed knowledge into his psyche from their simple presence. He was a fucking mess.

  “Sorry love,” he said, sitting down next to his own dish and pushing the vodka aside for the time being. It probably wouldn't help matters.

  Holly picked up her fork and started idly mixing the pasta with the sauce, staring resolutely at her plate. Perhaps her hunger was overriding her anger, as he'd hoped it would.

  “Pass the black pepper... please,” she said eventually, glancing up with her green eyes, lined (as they often were nowadays) with purple eye-liner under her shock of electric blue hair. It was her latest image, but Aleister had lost track of whether she was Goth or Emo or some other tribe. It was all the same to him, as he'd never even really been much of a modern music fan, preferring the works of masters such as Shostakovich or Mussorgsky, even though it was Holly who had the musical talent, ironically. She had picked it up from her mother, who had spent many afternoons composing intricate, beautiful melodies that once finished were never played again. She let them drift away as if they were the sweetest of dreams, too pure to be held onto. Another trait, another daily reminder of what they had lost. No, not lost... of what had disappeared.

  The rest of the evening passed in silence, with Holly retreating to her room after dutifully washing the dishes. She did however give him a small peck on the cheek before heading up, a peace offering that meant more to him than a thousand words. He vowed to himself as he settled back into his armchair, listening to Shostakovich's 4th and starting on his third shot of vodka that he would try harder and be more available in the future, maybe even cancelling a few low paying jobs that he had lined up so that he could take Holly away on holiday somewhere... maybe to Japan, a destination she had always wanted to travel to.

  With his mind made up, he decided to milk the cash cow from earlier, Jacqueline Webb. Payment in advance, well within her means but at a grossly inflated rate to his usual charges. Premium service. He sent the email, and waited.

  The reply came barely ten minutes later, at around nine. He would start tomorrow.

  December 5th