Post Mortem, Gary Bell [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

for some months and rarely bothered to use in favour of my mobile. A flashing red light told me it was a local call from inside the building. Percy. Annoyed by the interruption, I lifted the receiver and put it down again, cutting it off.

A few seconds later, it rang again. This time I slammed the receiver down. After months of absorbing Zara’s good moods, it seemed that I was succumbing to her foul ones as well.

‘Now who’s being dramatic?’ Zara said. ‘You should answer.’

‘He has legs, doesn’t he? If it’s so important he can climb the bloody staircase.’ As if someone had heard my suggestion, there came a timid knock at the door. ‘What?’ I called.

It opened, revealing a lad of around twenty years old, an intern from the clerks’ room. He cleared his throat, simultaneously flushing and flinching. ‘Um, Mr Peck sent me up with a message.’

I lowered my voice to something almost apologetic. ‘Which is?’

‘There’s somebody downstairs asking to see you. He’s been told that we close in ten minutes and to make an appointment, but he seems quite … insistent.’

‘Did he give a name?’

‘Oh.’ The young man turned from pink to purple. ‘Not you, Mr Rook.’ He pointed to Zara. ‘He’s here for you. He says his name’s Fred.’

‘Fred?’ She frowned. ‘I don’t know any Fred.’

The clerk tugged at his skinny tie. ‘I’ve got to be honest, he doesn’t look much like a Fred. He says you messaged him at the end of last week asking him to come in and see you. On Facebook, apparently.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t message anybody on –’ Her jaw dropped. She looked towards me, eyes wide behind her glasses. ‘It can’t be.’

‘Surely not,’ I said.

It was.

We made it to the bottom of the staircase in a queue of shuffling barristers and sidestepped back into the reception area.

Zara coughed. ‘Fred?’

He turned round sharply, a teenager dressed in a mismatched combination of wraparound sunglasses and an oversized winter coat, a snapback cap and scarf; all that was missing from his ludicrous disguise was a novelty fake moustache. He assessed Zara for a moment, then gestured to me. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Elliot Rook,’ Zara said, ‘another barrister. It’s OK. We’re on your side.’

I wasn’t entirely sure that we were, but I nodded in agreement all the same.

I took the two of them back up to my room and closed the door behind us; the elusive ‘Fred’ had lowered the brim of his cap a half-inch further with every barrister we’d passed on the staircase, and now it was pressing straight down against his sunglasses.

Zara offered him a seat as she perched lightly on the edge of my desk. ‘You can lose the disguise, Mr Pickett.’

Even through the shades, he appeared to be looking up at the corners of the rooms.

‘There are no cameras in chambers,’ I said, taking my own chair. ‘The majority of our clients wouldn’t approve.’

He removed his shades, cap and scarf slowly, cramming them into the pockets of his massive coat, but didn’t take the seat. Instead, he picked up the Rubik’s cube that had been forever rolling around my desk and paced in a jittery circle. With the puzzle in his hand, he looked very young, a college-aged boy with a strong nose and soft skin, incredibly dark eyes and hair shaved at the back and sides. I could see why he didn’t want to go to prison; he probably weighed as much as my right leg.

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ he asked. ‘Either of you.’

‘I think you want to,’ Zara said. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.’

He shrugged, fiddling with the cube.

‘Would you like us to get you a solicitor?’ I asked.

‘No. No solicitor. I came to see her,’ pointing at Zara, ‘I don’t know you.’

‘You don’t know her either.’

‘Yeah, well, she looked fit on Facebook.’ He eyed me up and down. ‘You don’t.’

A glower crossed Zara’s face like a passing cloud, but she pulled it back; it was obvious from the quake in his throat that his bravado was fuelled by chronic nerves. ‘What do you need from us, Omar?’ she said.

‘Or should we call you Post Mortem?’ I asked.

‘You can call me Fred if you like. I need to get into that witness protection. I need someone to speak to the feds.’

‘Feds are American,’ Zara replied, ‘and this isn’t The Sopranos.’

‘But you do want me to snitch on my crew, don’t you?’ he asked sharply. ‘Why else would you get me here?’

‘Your crew?’ Zara leaned forward from her perch, hands clasped on her lap; she looked much shrewder than she had only half an hour ago. ‘That’s just the thing, Omar. Are the Cutthroats still your crew at all?’

‘Cutthroats?’ He laughed coldly. ‘That was just a stupid name the kids used. They’re my neighbours. E10. We came up in the same tower. Schoolmates. Safety in numbers.’

‘Safety in numbers?’ I said. ‘Those numbers seem to be growing exponentially, don’t they?’

He continued pacing, eyes on the puzzle in his hands. ‘The whole scene’s blowing up. We were brothers, you know? Tight. Now, I don’t even recognise half our crew. It was meant to be a way to earn a living, like, independently. None of that nine-to-five managerial bullshit.’

‘And let me guess,’ Zara said, ‘now you’re getting ordered around and you don’t like it?’

‘Such as the order to get yourselves sent to prison,’ I added.

He stopped pacing. Instead of answering, he tossed the Rubik’s cube onto the desk, where it rolled to a stop behind Zara. I did a double take; the thing was solved.

‘Who’s giving these orders?’ Zara asked.

He shook his head. ‘I tell you that and we’re all dead, believe.’

‘But that was the plan, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘To get yourselves sent to prison?’

Again, he didn’t answer. His eyes had fixed onto the beer I’d opened earlier, which was still effervescing quietly. ‘Got one of them going spare?’ he asked.

‘Here.’ Zara impatiently crossed the room to her own bottle, passed it to him, and