Hub - Issue 21 Read online

  He fell silent, took another slug of the rum, then waved the glass in an eloquent gesture that slopped some of the spirits over the floor. “Like that. On and on like that. And the one man, right, the younger one? He was saying you don’t mean that, you don’t mean that. And the other man was all like where is she? Where is she? Scared. Really scared.”

  I had to be careful with the next question: careful not to let it sound like an accusation. “You didn’t think of going in?” I asked.

  Joseph shot me a bitter look. “No,” he agreed. “Didn’t cross my mind for a moment. You know why, detective inspector? Because I hear worse than that every day. Much worse than that. The I-love-you-I-hate-you-I’ll-fuck-you thing is the oldest shit in the book at the Paragon. I kept on walking. None of my business. All I do is change the sheets, and that’s nightmare enough for anyone right there.

  “But then when we turned the key and looked into that room…” He was staring at nothing, and his face was set hard. “It wasn’t any kind of love that did that,” he muttered. “Love can turn into a lot of things, but fuck! There wasn’t a square inch of him that hadn’t been - - ” He gave up on that sentence, shaking his head rapidly like a dog trying to get itself dry. “It takes a lot of hate to do that. To keep on hating someone after he’s already dead.”

  He didn’t say anything more, and I let the silence stretch for a long time – long enough to feel uncomfortable to me, although Joseph Onugeta didn’t seem to notice it. His eyes were on the ground, and they were narrowed to slits. He was trapped in the past, I realised: reliving the day of the murder in his mind, even before I arrived. And seeing that, I saw that the potent mix of unhappiness and fear that I’d been sensing as I waited at the flat’s front door had come from this room. They were Joseph’s. He was telling Merrill the truth when he said that he was too sick to go to work: he’d just been less than candid about what was making him that way.

  “Joseph,” I said, although I wanted to stop now and get the hell out into the fresh air. “You didn’t see her? You never got a glimpse of her, going into the room or coming out?” It was a question I’d already asked, but given his state of mind it was worth one more throw of the dice. Since he couldn’t get away from these memories, maybe if I kept hovering around the edges of them some kind of enlightenment, some kind of clue, would come to me.

  “I’ll know her if I see her,” Joseph said, tapping his glass – now empty again – against his right temple. “Because I saw her in here, afterwards. I’ve been dreaming about her. She’s not a woman, though. Not a real woman. It sounds stupid, but I don’t care. I’ll say it anyway. She’s got a devil face. Long red hair. Tall as a man, strong as a man. And a circle, here, over her eye, like a crater. Like a little bomb hit her and left a crater. Or like someone shot her and the bullet bounced off.”

  The hairs rose on the nape of my neck as he talked. He was describing Myriam Kale: he’d even got the chickenpox scar. I knew better than to mention her name at this point: working with Gary Coldwood had left me chary enough of police procedures not to pollute the evidence.

  So I changed the subject, but not by very much. I was starting to feel a little scummy for walking Joseph through these horrors, even though it was clear that these visions and revisions were what his days chiefly consisted of right now. I wanted to finish what I’d come for and get out of there.

  “Joseph,” I said, “the desk clerk, Merrill, said something to me that didn’t get a mention in the police evidence. He said another man came into the Paragon, a little later than Barnard and Hunter. An old man. By himself. Does that ring any bells with you?”

  “Yeah.” Joseph nodded, filling his glass again. “I bumped into him, on the corridor. I was coming out of a room, with an armload of sheets and stuff. Next thing I know, I’m going backwards instead of forwards. I hit him and bounced off.” He sipped at the rum, swilled it around his teeth and gums. “He wasn’t an old man, though. I don’t know where Popeye got that idea from. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he was solid. Like me. And he walked like - - you know - - like a big strong guy walks. All swaggering. That wasn’t any old man.”

  I’d got what I came for. More than, in fact: I had the beginnings of the case that Jan Hunter was paying me to make. Whether it would be enough to raise a path instead of reasonable doubt in a jury was another thing entirely, though.

  I stood up. “Thanks, Joseph,” I said. “I really appreciate you talking to me. It’s helped me a lot.”

  Joseph didn’t answer. He found the remote again, unfroze the TV image and went back to staring at the silent morality play. Meanwhile his father came back into the room as if on cue, holding the door wide for me as a signal that my audience was over. I stepped back out into the claustrophobic hallway, leaving Joseph staring at Mike Baldwin’s last moments with no obvious emotion.

  “You see what he’s like,” the old man said, looking at me with mournful appeal.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  “He doesn’t go into work, he won’t get paid.”

  I took what was left of Jan Hunter’s stash out of my back pocket. Two twenties. I gave one to the old man, then after a moment’s internal struggle I gave him the other one too.

  “He needs to sleep,” I said lamely.

  “Yeah,” said the old man, pocketing the notes, “but if he sleep, he dream. If he dream, he see her. Then he wake up and he punching holes in the walls. Maybe you kill her, mister detective?”

  “She’s already dead,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah. But maybe you kill her again?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  It seemed easier than saying that I didn’t really do that stuff any more. And that even if I did, I was starting to wonder whether Myriam Kale might be too big for me.

  About the Author

  Mike Carey is a prolific writer of comics for DC, Marvel and a number of independents. He currently writes X-Men, Crossing Midnight, Ultimate Vision, Ultimate Fantastic Four, and Faker, among others. His first Felix Castor book – The Devil You Know – is shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and his screenplay Frost Flowers (starring Holly Hunter) is currently in pre-production. He can be found at www.mikecarey.net.

  Dead Men’s Boots (from which Takes a Lot of Hate is taken) will be reviewed in Hub next week. If you can’t wait that long, pick up issue 5 of DeathRay Magazine (out now) and read all about it, along with an interview with Mike.

  Reviewby Alasdair Stuart

  Crooked Little Vein

  By Warren Ellis

  Published by Morrow / Avon

  $21.95

  One of the most successful writers working in comics today, Warren Ellis’ books are defined by their strong sense of social justice, willingness to play with the conventions of the genre and moments of tremendously raw, honest, emotion. His ten volume political science fiction series Transmetropolitan is amongst the finest comics published in English in the last twenty five years. Similarly, his contemporary take on Thunderbirds-style ‘rescue fiction’, Global Frequency stands head and shoulders above many modern thrillers as an intelligent and original take on the genre. He’s a stylistic polyglot, shifting gear from comedy to horror to science fiction to thriller and back again without pausing for breath.

  Which is both the greatest strength, and most crippling weakness of his debut novel Crooked Little Vein. It follows Mike Mcgill, an ex-Pinkerton detective who has never been what you could call lucky. If the case is filthy, twisted, depraved or nine times out of ten, all of the above, Mike will catch it. He deals with lunatics, he’s a physical wreck and he’s losing a war with the rat in his office. Mike is not having a good day. His day isn’t improved when the White House Chief of Staff (Who to Mike’s disappointment is not Leo from The West Wing but a demented old man who likes doing unspeakable things with monkey bi-products) hires him to find the other Constitution of the United States. The one bound in alien skin.

  This is bad, even by Mike’s standa
rds. Aided by a polyamorous sex researcher named Trix, Mike dives into the crooked little veins of America, searching for its black and twisted heart. What works in Crooked Little Vein are the same

  things that always work with Ellis; the main character. Mike is a splendidly down at heel, perpetually horrified innocent abroad in a world which cheerfully disgusts him more with every passing day. He’s an oddly endearing figure, a man gentle enough to be horrified and hard enough to try and push back against what he’s seeing. He has the same rage that many of Ellis’ other heroes, ranging from Spider Jerusalem to Richard Fell, have at the world but he’s a rabbit caught in headlights, unable to turn away. His relationship with Trix only brings this to the fore. Ellis writes banter like very few authors can and the easy, back and forth between the two is completely natural and often very sweet. Unfortunately, especially for an author who normally excels at female characters, Trix fares a little worse. Using her polyamory as much as a means to punish Mike as to try and educate him, she sails suspiciously close to stereotype, a hard as nails Goth girl with a heart of gold and a kinky streak a mile wide.

  However, it gets far, far worse from there. The people Mike and Trix meet along the way never rise above the stereotype, from the gay bodybuilding cop who invites them to a very unusual party to an incredibly thinly veiled Bush family analogue. Where each one should have been well rounded and defined, each instead is a more hysterical caricature than the next, a blood and fluid soaked pantomime that instead of emphasising the central conflict of the book only trivialises it. This isn’t helped by the fact that Ellis wheels out the ‘old, mad, powerful, scared of women’ villain type not once but twice in the novel, with the White House Chief of Staff arguably the biggest offender in the novel. There’s a moment early on where he delivers a line of dialogue so terrible that it takes a conscious effort of will to get past

  it. It’s worth that effort, but the novel spends a lot of time recovering from that moment.

  Crooked Little Vein has moments of brilliance. Mike’s conversation with a serial killer high above Nevada, the most unsettling Godzilla movie you’ll ever see and an oddly poignant interlude about a pirate radio station are all amongst Ellis’ best work. However, he can never maintain the tone, at times almost seeming self-conscious about working in prose for the first time. No easy shot is left untaken, no cheap gag is left unused and the end result is just that; a cheapening of what could have been a fantastic novel.

  Warren Ellis has a huge future in prose but unfortunately Crooked Little Vein never quite works. Dedicated fans, odds are, will love it. Everyone else may find themselves less than impressed.

  Coming Next Week:

  Fiction: The Mechanism by Ian Johnson

  Interview: Shaun Hutson

  Along with the latest fantasy DVD reviews, and a feature on the graphic novels of 2000AD.

  If you have enjoyed this week’s issue, please consider making a small donation at www.hub-mag.co.uk. We pay our writers, and your support is appreciated.