?Dreams signify different thing to different people?, said Dr Berlinski, folding a discarded cigarette into a ashtry. Realising the crudeness of the action Berlinskin looked at her questioner again ? Sorry filthy habit, better than self harm, if more expensive. It may count as a form of finacial self harm though. Anyway I digress?. She tidied her desk, setting the collections of papers and magazines in to neat small towers, plotted carefully across the desk, leaving a sharpened pencil directly in front of where the good doctor would normally sit. A carefully prepared flight cockpit, with Berlinski in the pilots seat, was the normal order of the day. But the hour was getting late, and the light was touching the back of the horizon, stalking at ground level amongst the buildings that could be seen through the large Victorian windows of her office. ?Yeah dreams, some see them as the purging of fears, or issues, while others as magic interventions. The later, you know tend to be wierdos and kooks, the former the worrying kind."
The detective who had witnessed Berlinski's absent minded, unguarded behaviour and frank comments, looked on with a sense of reserve that diskliked her free and blousy manner. The dective thought, if it was not for her eduction, then Dr Berlinski would be uncouth, slovenly and possibly even loud mouthed. She was a enigma, that was for sure. The detective continued ? Any insight you could give would be a real help. We have a potential string of homicides, and we are at a loss to understand, who has commited these crimes, and why. What connects the victims? Our only clue, has been the messages, that have been left at each crime scene. We thought at first a psychologist might know have been able to help, but they said that the message made no sense and were full of the language and symbolism of dreams, and thats how we came to you. We wanted a dream doctor.?
Berlinski smiled, her lips lifting to show the teeth behind, her floppy hair switching like a horse tail over her nose. ?Well, if you are looking for a dream, then look no further darling?. The Dective felt a sense of mild impatient irration rise in him and he did not take the obvious bait. But it was clear the woman was obsessed with herself. Her smile faltered in the silence. ?Yes doctor, if you don't mind I can read you some of the messages and leave them with you, in case something comes to mind. The Dective had pressed to his side a leather satchel bag which he now lifted on to the desk, setting it carfully down and undoing the leather straps. He slid the papers out and began searching through them. He stopped and read aloud ? The cities turned to crystal and I was running through the tunnels, beams of light were like railing spears, I turned to you, so desperate to stop you but you had already become a swan, and the ground became a lake, and I a heavy rock began to sink. Curse you, you changed the rules of reality, and I knew that I would never stop you, so I found your waking body and took from it. ? He folded the paper. "It might interest you to know, Doctor Berlinski, that the body was found with its brain hacked out. The head was literally spooned out like a melon. Hardly a pretty sight. At first we thought it was a serial killer, the level of violence and bizarre message, with no apparent motive that was economic or obviously personal. Just a fruit cake killing. But according to the psychologist, it bears no hallmarks of a serial killing. I did say, serial killing, because obviously there are twelve others with this type of crime fingerprint. Let me read you another: ?The summit became the face of a flower, and the world a leaf of golden green, I walked across the one moment mountains and brought flames to your eyes, you receeded into a seed, and a whispered to you but you said no?. The body that was found, was just as gruesome as the first, though in a different creepy way. The murder is inventive, the body was crushed into a cinder block, and burnt like an overdone piece of toast. Missing of course its eyes. The message seems to play some twisted role in the death,I feel sure, but I have to tell you Doctor, I can't really work out how."
Berlinski took stock of her thoughts for a moment. She looked down at her cream blouse and felt the pearls that ringed her neck. The dectective noticed her chipped nails, that reminded him of the perfect paintwork on an expensive car that had been rather carelessly treated by its oligarch owner. ?It's definitely the language of dreams. It makes sense in those terms in a broad way, but of course each dream consist of its own dialectual variant, as it were? We can only dream in our own terms, even if the words or symbols are similar in sound to those of others, they are still uniquely our own. Your psycholigist was right, in referring you to me. A smart guy, what his name. I might know him.
The Doctor paused and drew out another cigarette, pushed it to her mouth and began smoking with relish. She was momentarily transported elswehere, the pure addict in its enviroment. As happy a python in its warm tank. She broke her own spell ? what did you say his name was, I might know him. At one time I was thought well of in that department, quite popular? ? she sighed, and continued ? the good old days, gone too soon are'nt they dectective. Why do flowers rise so beautifully only for that beauty to fall so spectacularly. Its like raising pigs for slaughter, really fucking ugly, in view of what fate knows is awaiting them round the corner.Its so cruel, is it not!. Any way, where were we??
The Dective looked at her, pondering her thought process and peering into her past. Apparently a happy one, with her tights round her ankles and every cock up her arse she could cram there. Well at least she now has booze and cigarettes.Anything to keep those old prying fingers busy. He thought, do old pythons get drunk in the tank? Well this old reptile certainly did.
? the guy you refer to is actually a woman.|? The doctors face fell further, more signs that the past was moving at incredible speed away fron her. Her world had gone, her moment faded out like a notes on the breeze. Life is just vibrations, that rattle for a while then peeter out.
The doctor pulled herself together. Nothing was going to be kind to her today. She could'nt even recall happier days without being reminded of the unhappy present. She subliminally shook her self, and her ample form mildy shuddered. Her body was like a jelly under a winding sheet, in that blouse, thought the dectective. Grey dead flesh and lots of it. ?If it helps, it reminds me of some poetry she said. ?The similarity is quite striking.? The doctor turned away from him and retrieved a book from the oak book shelf that lined the wall behind her like a vine creeper. She opened the book and flicked throuhg its pages, until she found what she was looking for. She turned her face suddenly level with that of the dectecive. ? I knew I would find it?, she said triumphantly ?its here in a book of strange and obscure poets. I was at Oxford University in England you know, before I came back to America. A sweet smile developed on her face ? let me read it out to you detective? Preparing herself for her best actorial delivery:
?I stood along side the linnel white drapes at the window
my breath a wind upon the glass
beneath me rolled the bathers, watered and leisured among the admiring grass
such stock of men who, pinnioned with frivolities ride
and I the secluded reader of the words that are pressed deep inside
I fall just inches below resentment as bathers now come half waisted before the water,
a beaker of light, with their towels drawn before the edge of the lake,
a strange fringe upon the shore
and their bodies are revealed in hardness before the delicate fabric of the day,
while. I, a watcher in a set, stir downward and the sun runs through the clear water pearls
that finger across their shoulders,
the water is calm before their trembling bodies and I draw ever forward in attention that can never drain?
The watcher out of the wooded window.
Some excitement flickered into the eyes of the dectective, ?Yes it does have that quality about it. Being half on the edge of sense and surrealism. Who wrote, it can we speak to them?"
The Doctor closed the book sharply. ? I am afraid no, dectective, it was written a long time ago, and its author Erskine Candeed is very much no longer with us. He was a sometime student of the same college as I attended in Oxford. Not much is know of him, other than a few poems. I aways liked what he wrote, all of his poems have a kind of blurred image feel to them, and its a jolly romp of young boys by the lake swimming, and it kind of appeals to me. Men are so sexy when they are that age dont you think?? The Dectective looked a little round eyed.
?Anyway,..." she continued, ?The watcher was not him you know, he was not a repressed old queen. It is actually a woman. I heard the tale, when I was in Oxford. Erskine knew her, she never left the window that overlooked the lake, where the bathers came every summer, and she looked upon the possibilities of love below her, that were never to be hers. Sad really, it's a kind of his tribute to her and the life never fulfilled. She was a kind of modern princess in a tower. Her father locked her away from the hurts of this world. Odd how that act of safety produced its own harm. I just think we are just born to suffer and can never escape that fate. So why try??
? So he is not a fag dectective, just a sensative man who wrote a kind of love poem out of the pain of the young girl.?
The detective looked at her for a moment ? I dont think his sexuality is important. I am not sure that sex is even important to our killer. And by the way I am quite gay Dr Berlinski, but I think admiring the beauty of young boys is a lttle insensative and crass for a grown women like yourself. Can we, actually, see how the poems and the messages the killer has left are related? As I think you are right, there is a sound that comes from the messages and the poems that is the same.?
The detective shifted his stance and began again? I am not sure how we can use this link, who knows of the poetry of this man?
Berlinski reined herslef in, slightly sobbered by the uexpected admission from the detective, who was obviously becoming annoyed by her slightly free manner. ? I only have one of his poems in this collection of works that I read from, there are others I know, as I heard them when I was young, but I have never been able to find them in print.? she paused ? perhaps the messages are quotes or paraphrases from his poems? It might make a kind of sense. But I would have to dig around a little to see if I could find any more of works. Or find somebody who has. Oxford would be a good place to start, he wrote them there, and they have a love of the old and obscure in such places. I should look for his other poems in earnest.?
She wetted her lips, ? It might take me a few days and then we could get together and discuss matters. An impeshness shining out from her eyes. She stared at the the dectective in a kind of way he guessed would give a straight man a hard one. Unguardedly the dectective mumrmed, almost in a trance of horror and alarm under his breather, ? A dick is dick, right??
The night always shines after the rain. It momentarily washes away the dirt, and clears the streets of prostitutes, drug addicts and bums. Rain nourishes everything good else but poisons low life. The air smells clear and there are no sounds just after the rain has ceased. Everything is an awe. The world is free again of infestation. Dectective Munrowe enjoyed the stillness after the storm. He had been called to a new murder scene. Inside was a young woman who was very dead.
The dectective approached the patrol man outside the small bungalow that was turned red by the flashing police sirens of the cars parked on her lawn. If she was alive, Munrowe thought, she would be pretty pissed off to see her flowers crunched under the tyres of police vehicles, they jutted out under the wheels like the little yellow hands of children under a fall of masonry. Were not flowers meant as tributes for the dead? If so this was just more violation of the poor woman.
?So what gives patrol man?, as the Dectective nonchalantly flashed his badge. He obviously had far too much practice of this at crime scenes.
The patrol man removed his hat in response to end of the rain storm and the approach of Munrowe, brushing off the water, that had gathered on the cloth hat he wore. He was young, his uniform pressed, his shirt clean and his skin bore a kind of newness that removes the growth of years everytime he shaves, and leaves him baby bright.
?Got a lady inside. Been turned inside out. The Coroner and the guys have never seem anything like it. Like she has been rumaged through. We got no leads, body was found by a postal worker who noticed that on two consecutive mornings that the door was open in the same fashion. I think he got quite a suprise when he walked in. He is recovering, I hear, from shock.?
The Dectective looked at him ? Is the coroner still here??
?Sure?, said the patrol man, he's just packing up. His meat wagon is over the road."
The Detective looked about him and found what he was looking for, he marched purposesly towards where the coroner was standing. So as to prevent him leaving the detective called out ahead of himself. ? Dr Swan, its dectective Munrowe, can I have a few words with you??
The Coroner was a large man in his early sixities, close to retirement. The men at the station were not sure if he would reach retirement on account of his weight, he was a kind of Orson Wells in his
declining years. He was known as the Coronary behind his back. Some people thought it funny to mimic him picking up the phone ? Welcome to the office of the Coronary.?
The Detective halted infront of him, flicking open his note book. ? Doctor, can you tell me how the young woman died??
The doctor felt through his beard with his fingers to aid his thinking, ? Not really, detective. I can tell you she is dead but that is about it. Its not that just that she was pretty messed up is side, like somebody slid their hands into a sock draw and mixed up all the pairs. Its more fundamental than even that. As peverse as it sounds, its more like she never lived. She was dead before she was rearranged, in the sense she was never alive. Its the darndest thing.?
The dectective looked puzzeled ?Can you be sure, what does that mean exactly? How can somebody never be alive.?
The doctor stood still for a moment. ?Closest thing like it is a still birth. I was a hospital doctor, before I specialised in the medacine of the dead. Still borns have a look to them. I will get her cells, blood, and tissue examined, but it just has that hall mark to her corpse. Oh, and there is also the creepy message that was left at the scene. I dont think I will ever forget it. You will want to write this down detective. ?My lips are black with pain, this is the season of the still born rain?
The doctor looked uncomfortable for a moment, ? It's the strangest case I've have ever seen. And what the hell is the still borne rain?"
The detective drove home, his thoughts buzzing like flies in his head. He was almost unaware of his surroundings and could not account for how he had gotten in his apartment. It had been three hours since he had visited the bungalow on Palmero Drive, but things were still no clearer in his mind. His thoughts were interupted by the phone beginning to ring.
?Munrowe here? he answered.
?It's Dr Swan, I rushed the blood work and thought I might just catch you.? The doctor sounded highly animated. ?Christ, it's stranger than I thought. The cells of that women, showed no corruption, no signs of aging, no replicative mutation. Its like she is straight of the factory floor. The body had no signs of use. I am about to go through the night and perform a full autopsy, but my premlinary findings are out of this world dectective. ?
The Detecive thought for a moment. ?Doc, is it possible that you could do me a favour, and have a look at some other cases for me? There have been a number of other strange killings, and I would not mind you taking a look at those bodies. I will email over the details before I hit the sack for the evening. But as soon as you can, can you let me know what you find??
