Music of the Night, page 32
He hadn’t fallen asleep since, but perhaps he had been locked in the room for more than twenty-four hours. It was impossible to know.
At first he had assumed it was either a practical joke or some sort of a game; was he supposed to figure out how to escape?
It was definitely a game. Someone else’s game, and there was no escape.
He had been out drinking with a friend, but he couldn’t remember how or when the night had ended.
However, he now had this unspeakable feeling, magnified by the only sound he could hear; the thundering echo of his ever-accelerating heartbeat.
What bothered him the most was who this particular friend had been: the guy he had lied about to the police years ago, resulting in the friend spending time in jail, for no reason.
He had of course apologised, repeatedly, and they had put aside their differences, or so he thought. But now he wasn’t so sure.
The lies had been instinctive and horrible, and he had regretted them ever since.
Perhaps this was his friend’s ultimate revenge.
A cruel joke for cruel lies.
Funnily enough, at this moment he didn’t miss the warmth and sparkle of the sunshine, or the salty scent of the sea. Most of all he missed the sounds, any sounds. The noise from the street, the indistinguishable voices at the bar, the unexplained sounds of the night-time in his house, the simple ticking of a clock. His wristwatch was missing.
He was afraid.
The silence scared him.
But what scared him the most was knowing how long his friend had been in jail, completely innocent: 433 days.
To be read while listening to 4’33” by John Cage
A Death in Four Parts
Shawn Reilly Simmons
1
The knock came just as Xavier Mendoza put pen to paper for the first time that day. It was an old-fashioned way of composing music but the fastest means of transferring the notes from his mind into something people would understand. He flung the felt-tipped pen at the grimy window of his third-floor walkup as the music slipped away from him. There was more knocking and then his chair legs scraped the kitchen floor as he heaved himself from the table and lurched towards the apartment’s door.
“What is it now?” Mendoza seethed as he swung it open. “I am working, as if you didn’t know.”
Ruby stood in the doorway, a foil-covered bowl in her hands. “I brought soup. You have to eat.”
Mendoza sighed. “I have no time. I have a deadline to meet.” He gazed at the bowl and couldn’t remember if he’d stopped working to eat the night before, or between which hours he’d slept.
Ruby moved through the narrow doorway, clutching the bowl tightly. She glanced into the kitchen at his unruly stacks of paper, jagged notes scrawled and then discarded onto the floor. “You can eat the soup while you work.” Ruby was a slight woman with pointed features and small feet. Mendoza thought about the mice that scurried across the floor of his mother’s basement whenever she came calling. He’d seen Ruby’s bare feet a few times, and much more of her too, but not recently. Not since the commission that had come out of the blue for a new Xavier Mendoza composition.
He took the soup from her just as the door across the hall opened, revealing his bleary-eyed neighbour, just waking up at half-past noon.
“For the last time, keep it down out here!”
“Go back inside, mole,” Mendoza growled. “Before I shine more light on you.”
“Shut up, old man,” his blinking neighbour snorted before retreating into his dark apartment. A moment later the wail of an electric guitar pressed its way into the hallway.
“Thank you for the soup, Ruby,” Mendoza said, raising his voice over the noise. “I would invite you in but I must have a draft of this composition completed before Monday and it’s…”
“Thursday?” Ruby asked, as if she wasn’t sure.
Mendoza looked at her, alarmed. “It can only be Tuesday, no?”
Ruby dropped her eyes to the floor and shook her head. “I hope you like the soup.”
The guitar came to a sudden stop and the mole man banged loudly from inside his apartment door, causing Ruby’s shoulders to jump beneath her faded sweater. She’d told Mendoza she’d danced on Broadway once, but he wasn’t sure if she meant in a show, or along the sidewalk. He hadn’t thought to ask her much about how she ended up living at Musica, the apartment building designed to house the city’s struggling artists at a rent they could afford.
Mendoza’s lip curled as he glared at the closed door, then down at her. “Go away, now. Please. I can’t work in all this madness.
2
The mewling of a cat on the fire escape woke Mendoza. Raising his head from the kitchen table, his cheek flat against the scarred wood, he tried to remember when he’d decided to put his head down and sleep. The cat rose on its back legs and scratched its paws at the glass, trying to find a way into the apartment. Mendoza watched it for a few minutes, wondering why it would want to.
A low groan escaped him as he attempted to stand, dull pain radiating through his limbs, his mouth brackish from stale coffee and old soup.
Mendoza groped the wall for the light switch then stumbled to the sink, drinking metallic-tasting water directly from the faucet. When he first moved to the city he lived in a very different part of town. He never could have pictured just twenty years later living in a place like Musica, accepting charity in every form it could be given. His debut symphony as a young composer was a runaway success, gifting him every luxury he could imagine, and a lifestyle all too easy to get used to. When he couldn’t quite top that first work of staggering genius, his phone stopped ringing as often, and eventually his commissions dried up along with his accounts. By the time his third divorce was settled, the music in his mind had stopped playing. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t force the notes to reveal themselves. Stephens, his former business manager, recommended he move to Musica, telling him it was an artists’ refuge, a place for Mendoza to reinvigorate his creativity, surround himself with fellow musicians, and stop focusing on romantic entanglements and rediscover his muse. Mendoza wondered how much other bad advice he’d taken from Stephens over the years.
Standing up from the sink, Mendoza looked towards the window. The cat had moved on, spooked by the light, or the groaning man inside. He did not notice the trail of blood leading from the kitchen into the hallway until he turned back to the table to continue his work.
3
Mendoza worked until dawn. The music in his mind vibrated his skull, and it was all he could do to keep his hand moving as fast as the notes were revealed. When he closed his eyes, he could see them sliding by on the insides of his eyelids. His pulse skittered as he worked, and he pressed his free hand to his chest to make sure his heart was staying on the inside. The long-neglected fire inside him was lit, and Mendoza stoked it relentlessly through the morning hours, burning from the inside out, until he collapsed from exhaustion onto the kitchen floor, sheets of music falling around him.
He wept with relief and curled his legs into his chest, having reached the end of his composition. The gift that had abandoned him so many years earlier had returned. He’d created something just as good, if not better, than his debut. He was saved.
The blood on the floor had dried to a dark red. Mendoza sat up on the linoleum and wiped the tears of joy from his face. Ruby’s thin knock sounded at the door.
Mendoza sighed and picked himself up from the floor. The pain he’d felt the night before had been replaced by a tight elastic feeling in his limbs. He walked stiffly to the door.
“More soup, Ruby?” Mendoza asked, looking down at his neighbour. He kept the door mostly closed, only sticking his head through the gap into the shabby hallway. Ruby looked more alive, less like a mouse and more like the cat scratching at his window.
“Have you seen Cruz?” Ruby asked.
“And who might that be?”
She glanced at the door across the hall.
“Ah, Cruz,” Mendoza said through the gap. “I will say with every pleasure, no, I have not.”
Ruby slid her eyes through the gap. “He owes me.”
“A debt you might have to consider irretrievable,” Mendoza said.
“Can I come in?” Ruby asked, her bony fingers pinning back her thinning hair over her ear.
“Sorry,” Mendoza said. “It’s a bit of a mess in here right now. Work and all. Raincheck?”
Ruby gave him a smile, revealing a gap where a tooth used to be before her fingers moved to cover her mouth. Mendoza closed the door before she could say anything else.
Mole man’s body was still in the bathtub. Cruz, apparently his name.
Mendoza wondered how long it would take to cut him into smaller pieces and flush him down the toilet. Maybe he could feed some of him to the fire escape cat. Or maybe he’d take a little bit of him out every day in sandwich bags and drop him in different dumpsters around town.
Surely no one would miss Cruz, a man who never emerged from his dingy apartment in this forgotten wasteland of a building while the sun was shining. Mole man was some kind of musician, Mendoza supposed. He’d heard him returning late at night, drunkenly banging his guitar case against the banister as he navigated his way up the stairs, waking Mendoza up more often than not.
Mendoza didn’t remember confronting Cruz during the night. He was in the throes of a creative frenzy, where nothing mattered besides getting the notes out of his brain and on to paper. He’d tried to picture finding Cruz out in the hall, envision the rage it must have taken to crack the man’s rodent-like skull. Which is apparently what happened. He’d found no blood on his own hands. Mole man’s end had brought about a new beginning, had relit Mendoza’s creative fire.
Mendoza closed the bathroom door and went back to the kitchen. The composition needed to be put into order and read through again.
4
Mendoza slipped into his one remaining suit on Monday morning. He was overjoyed at the prospect of moving out of Musica and getting back to his previous life. This time he would be more appreciative, more cautious, less inclined to fall in love and entrust his fortune and gift to everyone who came into his orbit. His new composition was his ticket out of his current misery.
He glanced at Cruz in the tub as he finished brushing his teeth. “You and I are both out of here soon, old boy.”
The familiar knock on the door caused his mood to slip briefly. “Ruby,” he muttered under his breath as he stepped from the bathroom.
“I just wanted to wish you good luck,” Ruby said. She stood in the hallway in a silk nightgown, one thin strap slipping from her shoulder. Mendoza opened the door wider, allowing her to enter. She slid her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. He was tense at first, but then felt himself relaxing as she pressed her flesh close to his.
“Odd time for a social call,” Mendoza murmured. “And attire.”
“I knew you had that big meeting today and just wanted to wish you well,” Ruby said, pulling away from him and heading towards the kitchen. “You finished your work?”
Mendoza glanced over his shoulder at the bathroom, and at the faint trail of blood under his feet. He’d tried to wipe it up, but he could see places where he’d missed in the morning light. “It’s done.”
“Good,” Ruby said. “Coffee?”
Mendoza watched the silky gown press against her bony frame as she moved around the kitchen, making a pot of coffee and glancing at the neat stacks of music on the table. “I’m going to have to go soon, Ruby. I don’t think I’m coming back. Ever.”
Ruby frowned as she poured a cup of coffee and set it on the counter near him. He watched as she slid open a drawer and pulled out a knife.
“From what I’ve heard, you’ve always been lucky,” Ruby said. “Cruz, on the other hand. He ran out of luck.”
Mendoza glanced at the knife in her hand. “What do you mean?”
Ruby set the knife on the counter and went to kiss him. Mendoza pulled away from her.
“Stephens can’t wait to get his hands on, well, this.” Ruby gazed at the stacks of music on the table. “He’s been angling for your big comeback. His well ran dry right along with yours until he landed this deal. He did come up with a few new tenants and a little extra cash for me to get to know you better.”
“Stephens?” Mendoza said as a loud knock sounded on the door.
“He’s very generous. With your money. Ask your ex.”
“You know Stephens?” Mendoza said numbly, backing away from her.
“A dead composer’s work is more valuable than a live one’s. Add a murder scandal on top of it…? Sorry, but you’re an easy mark. I do like you, Xavier. I’m glad you finally finished your work. Your time at Musica is over.”
Ruby picked up the knife and stabbed herself in the stomach, bright red blood spreading its way across the pale silk gown as she fell to her knees.
“Police, don’t move.”
Mendoza watched Ruby fall to the ground as the police officers pushed their way into his apartment.
“He stabbed me,” Ruby said.
Mendoza could tell she was going to be fine, the smile obvious behind her eyes. She’d only be a dancer, never an actress.
The officer closest to Mendoza raised his club, and everything went dark.
Bombay Blues
Vaseem Khan
1
The body was slumped forward, still seated on its padded bench, face down on the keys, one arm dangling below, one held crookedly in his lap. It was obvious from the damage to the back of the skull that death must have been instantaneous, the bullet’s impact thrusting him forward onto the piano.
Blood had splattered across sheet music held open on a carved wooden stand.
Persis turned to the hotel manager, a small man with receding hair and a pencil moustache. He dabbed at his sweating jowls with a sodden handkerchief. Despite the ceiling fan, the room was sweltering. Bombay was caught in the grip of the hottest summer in a decade. Many had already perished.
But none like this, she thought. “Who found him?”
The manager coughed uncomfortably beneath her gaze. His name was Sharma and he had been the one to call the Malabar House station some twenty minutes earlier.
“Elsa,” he said. “She’s one of our maids. She came in to clean the bathroom –” he pointed at the adjoining door – “saw him and…” He tailed away.
“What time was that?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“That’s very precise.”
“Don was on his regular break from his set. Every evening from nine to nine-twenty. I noted the time when Elsa came to fetch me.”
“So he was murdered in that fifteen-minute window.” It wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway, and wiped his forehead.
She wondered what it would do for the Taj’s reputation once word got out that one of the world’s most famous jazz musicians had been murdered in the hotel. No doubt many would flock to the place because of the notoriety.
She turned back to look at the body of Don Rollins.
She’d seen him in the newspapers, of course. Who hadn’t?
Over the past two decades Bombay had become a magnet for jazz musicians, particularly black American pioneers of the genre, fleeing persecution in their homeland. Bombay had laid out the welcome mat and now every club or hotel worth its salt boasted its own resident quartet, quintet or – in the case of the Taj – a nine-piece extravaganza led by the now-late Rollins.
Independence may have been three years in the past, but thousands of foreigners remained in the city, congregating in the hotel’s grand ballroom each evening with the Indians who, not so long ago, had been at their beck and call.
Or, at least, with the better class of Indian.
The Taj’s doormen, towering Sikhs to a man, had strict instructions to keep out the riff-raff.
Some things hadn’t changed with the changing of the guard.
The door opened behind them and Archie Blackfinch walked in, his black doctor’s bag swinging by his side.
The tall, dark-haired Englishman nodded at Sharma, then smiled warmly at Persis, green eyes crinkling behind black-framed spectacles.
She looked away, not wanting him to see her expression.
Blackfinch, a crime scene specialist with the Metropolitan Police in London, had spent the past year seconded to the Bombay force – at their request – helping to establish a forensic crime lab in the city. He and Persis had successfully worked several high-profile cases together. Something had passed between them during that time and now the dominant emotion engendered by his presence was confusion. She’d fought too hard to qualify as India’s first – and, to date, only – female police Inspector to throw it all away on an affair of the heart.
Besides, Blackfinch’s oddities made him as infuriating as he was attract—
“Is that who I think it is?”
“Yes,” she said.
He whistled, then set down his bag, dropped to his knees, unearthed a pair of gloves and snapped them on.
“Mohammed, set up the camera.”
She hadn’t noticed Blackfinch’s young assistant enter. The rake-thin boy looked barely old enough to be wearing long trousers. His head was weighed down by a ridiculous stack of Brylcreemed hair. A moustache looked scrawled on with a crayon.
They waited as he set up his camera and tripod and photographed the body, and then the rest of the scene, the flashbulb popping loudly in the small room.
Once he was done, Blackfinch moved forward and gently lifted Rollins’s head, examining the wounds.
“He was shot twice, one bullet in the back of the neck, one in the skull. He was shot at close range.”
