Chapter 4 - Murder Among The Glazes

AMONG THE DENIZENS of Frangea chipped crockery found its way by natural erosion from the parlours of the grand to the lesser parlours of those not too proud of cracks and hard usage.

 

Yet there came a time when enough was enough and a favourite bowl lost its will to live and shattered into curious fragments like a parting of the ways. Some pieces, usually the larger, were gathered together and thrown away whereas the smaller were ground down to become part of the landscape and were forever lost, detached for all eternity from what they once were, though still linked by some tenuous phenomenon some called entanglement.

 

The shards that remained however took on a new life. It was not simply enough to be landfill or decorative surprises in concrete walling. Some awaited rediscovery as historical artefacts, or puzzles of the past.

 

Some became symbols of broken lives in need of mending, a wrong put right, an outrage avenged. Tears that should never have been shed.

 

Wackie Mandrake had an eye for colour, especially the bloodshot left one, and a taste for patternwork. He could see a rough triangular shape glazed on one side with chrome yellow and passionfruit pink and somehow it would blossom into a great vase of extraordinary beauty. In a frenzy of searching every single piece of this masterpiece might be recovered, glued and displayed as something of meaning. It would be like, he hoped, the bringing back of departed ghosts.

 

That summer was a time when biscuitware and toned clays in a kaleidoscope of bits rained down upon Wackie in his rummaging among other people's leavings. His rucksack bulged with findings and in his eagerness to return to the work table of his dusty shack in a cleft of the bay he tripped and added a few more puzzle pieces to his horde.

 

"You've been busy," his friend and non-silent partner in the game of fragments said as Wackie disburdened himself of his pickings. Pieces were rough-sorted there and then as Mold Ampit watched on, a beer can in one hand and the other on a hip in a pose of casual watchfulness. Around them in the shack were the prizes of a decade of searchings. The glory of the collection was a dinner plate, four fifths complete, wired and netted together in a patchwork of endeavour. A foot across it was with the most vivid blood red patterning that looked like murder among the glazes. Except where there were missing bits. A bullet hole shape ominously told its own story. Vases there were too on shelves, things that seemed to start with the base and then give up less than halfway up as if the maker had become tired of their creation and moved on to other more rewarding projects.

 

"I got another bit of the chrome yellow," Wackie said.

 

"Lemme see," Mold replied, sliding onto the workbench by his friend. The wooden top was covered in dried glue and curious stains and now glinted with pieces of ceramic puzzles that enthralled these men for the stories they might unfold.

 

Mold Ampit reached up and took down off a shelf a tired vase base that glowed with colour, most especially an intense yellow.

 

It looked for all the five pieces stuck together more like an ashtray to him than a glorious receptacle for precious liquids Wackie insisted it was meant to be. Mold placed it carefully next the fragments that had been scooped out of his friend's rucksack.

 

There was the precious piece Wackie crowed over. A curved, edged thing, glowing that familiar yellow. With trembling fingers he drew it to the piece to see how they matched. Mold could see the new piece had a lip to it, a rounded edge that showed a significant detail of its true shape. Wackie, admitting this, held the lipped piece above the serrated base edges and imagined the rise and swell of the body of this most glorious vase, picturing sinuous curves and a graceful outline that once might have adorned a gilded mansion of the Faceless Ones. It was an inspiring dream and lifted his spirits with the ambitious imaginings.

 

Mold Ampit was not so optimistic.

 

"Let me try," he said and tenderly prised the curving shape from his friend's trembling fingers.

 

Turning the base round and round thoughtfully, a familiar flaw presented itself. The shadow of the piece he held cast a knowing silhouette upon the table beside a life's work, for how long had his dedicated friend taken to gather those five other fragments?

 

Mold tilted the new piece so the smooth edge was uppermost, twisted his wrist so it hovered above the base and then slowly, knowingly, let the lipped fragment descend upon the other. There was a clink and a coming together and a transformation, for the new piece fitted perfectly on one of the jagged edges.

 

The two men stared at this revelation for it fitted so snugly it held itself in place.

 

"It's an ashtray," Mold said quietly, reverently.

 

"A dainty little thing, ain't it?" Wackie responded and there was vivid sarcasm seeping into his voice. Then he swept the pieces onto the floor, visions of a glorious vase shattering in his mind's eye and he walked out of the shack, shattered in soul too. The ghosts of the past remained hidden from his sight, broken and scattered and lost.

 

"There is something amiss among the powers that be when a good man like that is suffered to have his dreams tossed aside so cruelly," Mold muttered to himself, resuming his beer. "A sure sign this world's running out of time."

 

***

 

FOR SOME THE gloom of a beginning day was the usual way to start as the sun rose over a withering sameness that never seemed to end.

 

Sallmer Weet lived his life in pain. The very act of brushing his hair was a symphony of agony and the putting on a pair of shoes was torture most merciless.

 

He lived alone now in the sprawling settlement that was Cherryball Flats, the largest urban development in the whole of Frangea. His wife of thirty years had failed to sympathise with his complaints and left him, taking two grown up children with her and the income they brought into the house. Thus Sallmer Weet was obliged to do something to pay the bills himself, yet he was in no fit state to do anything.

 

"Where does it hurt today, Mr Weet?" the doctor residing in Low Clinical Way asked kindly, bracing himself for a barrage of complaints.

 

"What level of pain are you asking about?" the man replied with humourless sarcasm. There was a tiredness to his voice which was a dismay to hear.

 

"The most acute."

 

Ever since that day when something went wrong with the water supply in the Metalloid District in the south east of Cherryball Flats there had been cases popping up here and there of intestinal disorders or nerve damage. The doctor had treated a lot of them himself, quite successfully at the time. Of course contamination from old abandoned mine workings was to blame. Mount Syzywyg and the surrounding hills had been honeycombed a century or so ago by fortune seekers who brought distilling and purifying methods with them that at best were unregulated and at worst pure poison. Knowing some of those methods allowed the doctor to prescribe the right treatments, flushing systems and pepping up ailing organs till they worked like new.

 

Yet here he was again. Sallmer Weet. A walking catalogue of ailments, shredded nerve systems and internal disorders that defied every treatment in the book.

 

Blood tests confirmed contaminants had lodged in various places but transfusions and purgatives seemed to have no effect on the man's constitution. He refused to get well. Agony was his constant bedfellow and had been for over five years. It was almost as if he did not want to get well.

 

"Today," Sallmer Weet said, breathing hoarsely as he spoke, "it's my elbows, the little finger of my left hand and some vague spot near the right hip that seems to throb constantly, whether I move or not."

 

"Yes, I noticed the peculiar way you were holding yourself when you entered the examination room."

 

The usual routine was gone through, prescribed painkillers were administered, though with minimal effect, and Sallmer Weet was literally written off for another month of medical payouts to keep what little life he lived afloat for a while longer.

 

"Before you go let me tell you this," the doctor said, "I'm going to try something a little different. A bit of a longshot and out of the ordinary, but you're not responding to treatment in the way I'd hoped."

 

"And what's that, doctor?" the man said. There was such a pleading look in his eye any suspicion of malingering could not survive in the most cynical of hearts.

 

"Well, you see, Mr Weet, that's one of the things about it. If I told you it would undermine its potential effectiveness." With that he smiled, touched the man's trembling hand gently so as not to aggravate anything and closed the door on this most stubborn of patients.

 

Doctor Falt had studied a series of monographs on psychosomatry, auto-suggestion and even a few papers on hypnotism. The mind was a tricky beast as any highly paid Minder lodged in Consultation Alley would tell you, for the trickier the more expensive the treatment fees. Yet Doctor Falt was a believer in the intimate association of mind and body, two inseparable organisms that impacted each other every second of living existence. If one were failing in a way that seemed inexplicable then it made sense to him to look for problems elsewhere. To do so he had to play a curious game with his patient, a mystifying almost teasing way of guiding the suffering man into a more favourable state of mind.

 

Once his patient had departed the doctor felt an urge to peer out from a curtained window that overlooked a roadway some distance below. He stood there, very still, watching as vehicles trundled by and pedestrians wandered like little colourful insects trained to march back and forth on the many unknown errands that bespoke a bustling neighbourhood. Then at last he caught sight of the slow-moving shambling and awkward gait of his erstwhile patient as he endeavoured to cross the road.

 

The car that hit him seemed to briefly lose control before impact. There was a screech of brakes, a few distant screams, and then Doctor Falt slowly closed the curtain, turning away from the road accident as if there was nothing he could or would do to help.

 

Instead he returned to his seat and carefully lowered himself into it. He still had Sallmer Weet's file open upon his desk. He found himself staring sadly at the distorted face a moment on the top page, then closed the old-fashioned cardboard folder before filing it in a lower drawer where it had never resided before.

 

Then he rang through to reception.

 

"Pammy, hold all appointments for the rest of the day will you. I feel a desire to get blind drunk."

 

"Will do sir," came a small and only slightly surprised voice. It had been a while since the doctor had made such a request. The last time, if she remembered rightly, was when his divorce papers came through.

 

That was the thing about gloom.

 

One could never quite get rid of it. There was always some residual bit left over that seemed to attach itself to someone else, shifting the burden, the guilt, the misery. It was a thing that demanded to be carried at all times, weighing down worlds constantly until a blessed ending intervened.