The Ashes of an Oak Read Free

Jim. ‘Do me a favour and clear the area would you? At least thirty feet.’ He took out a cigarette and lit it.  ‘Christ! You’d think they’d seen this show a thousand times already.’
    Steve shrugged. ‘Same show, new cast. Always pulls the crowds.’
    They both knelt down next to the body. The grey blanket had already soaked up more blood than it could cope with. A bullseye had appeared in its centre.
    Frank lifted the blanket and they both looked beneath it. ‘Jesus, Jim. You said a stab wound. This is a medical class going on here.’
    Jim pursed his lips. ‘I guess that’s why I’m not a detective, Frank,’ he shouted. ‘It’s those little details that I tend to miss.’
    Robinson Taylor had been opened up from his groin to his sternum. His shirt had been cut like tissue paper and, like some landed fish, his guts had tipped out and lay on the pavement next to him. A pool of overripe blood lay in the wound. The stench of faeces and blood bit at Frank’s nostrils and rested on the back of his tongue.
    Steve took out a cigarette and lit it to get rid of the taste and smell. ‘That’s just very unfuckingnecessary,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to stab someone, do it, but don’t stand in the middle of Pitkin and play doctor.’ He gagged and turned away.
    Before Frank dropped the blanket he took a look at the face. Not even his own mother would recognise the man now. His thin, bloodless lips fell across his teeth, which suddenly seemed too big for his mouth, like slugs, while his half-closed eyes saw nothing and gave nothing out. His pinched nose was as waxen and pale as the rest of his face.
    ‘I’m willing to bet nobody saw it either,’ he said. He went back to Jim. ‘Anybody come forward?’
    An ambulance pulled up. The paramedics climbed down and went to the body. They took one look, exchanged a couple of words and returned to the cab.
    ‘Nobody seems to have seen a thing,’ said Jim. He pointed at the crowd. ‘But feel free to ask.’
    Frank sighed. ‘You still aren’t funny.’
    Frank cast an eye at the crowd. He wanted to slap every single one of their faces and tell them to stop feeding off the remnants, but they were remoras, grabbing the sharks’ leftovers in this litter-strewn, grey, cavity of decay. If there was one thing that was going to make them feel alive, that would sustain them through the day, it was someone else’s death.
    ‘You,’ said Frank. He crooked a finger at a middle-aged black man who was more likely than not wondering where the hell he was going to get his next fix now that the shop had closed. ‘What did you see?’
    ‘Nothing.’ The man didn’t take his eyes from the blanket.
    ‘You know this man?’
    The man shook his head. ‘No.’
    ‘Then there’s no point you being here is there. Give your name to the officer and beat it. Hey, Tanner.’ The uniformed cop came over. ‘Take this guy’s name and send him on his way. In fact, take everybody’s name and get them the fuck out of here.’
    Tanner stuck out a thick hand and pulled the man over.
    Frank shook his head hopelessly. Same toilet, different shit. Brownsville.
    It was the same day over and over. He rolled the figures over in his mind. They were tattooed on his brain that he could see on the back of his eyelids whenever he closed his eyes to sleep at night. He was stained. Nearly nineteen hundred murders in New York last year. Five thousand rapes, fifty-seven thousand assaults, one hundred and fifty thousand violent crimes. We haven’t evolved, he thought. We like to pretend we have, but we’re just a hair’s breadth away from being the animals we really are. We still leave out scent one way or another, we’re still driven by the need to eat and fuck and we’d still kill to get that last piece of meat.
    Some people said that the difference between us and the animals was the ability to reason. In his book that was called premeditated. That was it. All these people and not one of them gave