Fletcher by David Horscroft Page A

any of us just snap like that?”
    Four years ago, I had spent two weeks narrating my life with the help of several skulls repurposed as puppets. I hadn’t gone crazy, but I’d just failed to find a reason not to do it. If Jake considered a simple murder-suicide as a nasty business, I pitied his imagination.
    “Oh, I don’t know Jake. I like to think people are good deep down. Made in God’s image and all that. Could I possibly get all three addresses? Every little detail helps.” My simpering tone was beginning to grate my own ears.
    He sniffed, and I could hear him jolting out of his musings.
    “Sure, sure. Anything to help. It’s paula-dot-c, that’s the letter, at brown-dash-brown-dash-agents-dot-com, s-stortz-zero-four, that’s ess-ess-tee-oh-arr-tee-zee, at flashmail-dot-com, and finally john-dot-rourke, with an e on the end, at railtech-dot-org. Got all that?”
    I hung up. I didn’t need anything else from him. I called the laundry briefly, with the same cover story, and was told that my grandfather’s shirts had been ready for over a month.
    “Oh, it’s the memory thing, see? I’ll come get them this afternoon”, I lied. There didn’t seem to be anything useful there. I hung up and turned back to my notebook.
    [email protected]
    The connections between Rourke and Cartwright were stacking up. I had no idea when Cartwright had been murdered, but the decomposition put the ballpark at around a month ago. Alastor and John had probably been murdered in the same week. Upon comparing the dates, I could see that the email had been sent three days before Rourke’s murder-suicide. I wrote all onto a white board, drawing a connective diagram with John at the centre. Rourke, RailTech, Cartwright.
    Tingle, tingle, tingle.
    I put together a fake email account—[email protected]–and sent an email to Paula. I used the same cover, and asked if anything had been investigated. Several minutes later I got a response.
    To whom it may concern.
    We at Brown & Brown are very sorry to hear about your grandfather’s troubles. We tried to contact him after he stopped coming into work, but were unable to do so. Unfortunately, there was no investigation into his complaints towards NutCase Repairs. It was totally overshadowed by the unfortunate incident in flat 202 with Mr and Mrs Rourke.
    We wish Alastor the very best in his recovery.
    Paula Cockburn, Managing Agent
    Brown & Brown Agents
    Who had Cartwright seen? I assumed they were repairmen or, at the least, were doing some repair-esque work on the building. I wondered if, and how, it tied into Rourke. I was still thrown by the bizarre blend of brutality and intelligence that had gone into the old man’s murder.
    I need the green eyes on this one.
    I took some photos of my work and went to get my bags. I had one or two experiments to run before the evening.
    ***
    As the sun dipped, I headed towards the Midnight Hour. Valerie accosted me at the door, refreshing my senses with the scent of torched skin. She was decked out in tight black garb, her face daubed with red occult symbols. I knew better than to ask if it was her blood. She wrapped her arms around me and slurred into my ear.
    “Welcome to Salem. We’ve been expecting you.”
    ‘Sah-lem’. It wasn’t the alcohol, nor was it the witchery . She mispronounced it because she knew how much it rankled me. I pulled my nails—still a little rough from the morning’s clipping—over her fresh burn marks and satiated myself on the quick gasp.
    “Be nice,” she continued. “Dante got his hands on a fresh batch of witchery . If you’re nice to me, I’ll share… Be nice.”
    I continued the hug until I’d removed the smile from my face. Witchery was notoriously hard to get hold of, but fantastically fun. The synaesthesia was just the tip of the iceberg; the drug hijacked the skin’s heat receptors and transmuted the reaction into a cascade of endorphins. Warmth became a wave of satisfaction;