Help
This is an introduction to my first book(100th attempt).
It's based in South Africa. A private investigator is hooked on heroin. His wife disappeared seven years ago and he is at the brink of suicide. A new case bubbles up from underneath the surface of the crime stricken city that is Cape Town, but this one is different.
Here goes:
7:00 AM
Cape Town
Constantia
The alarm clock droned in the slightly balding man's head as he woke from ghoulish nightmares. Needles lined his low coffee table in the living room of his medium-sized house in the middle of Constantia. The yellow-brown ooze lay where he had left it the previous evening, in the tablespoon next to his lighter. He groaned as he struggled up and flung his legs from the leather couch's arm onto his Persian-carpeted floor. Rubbing sleep from his semi-shut eyes he looked for his coat. After donning his coat he gathered his needles and stuffed them into a plastic shopping bag. He would incinerate it before he left for work.
This man was known to not too many as ex-state private detective: Lazarus Meine. It didn't say much for the South African police, but he was one of the best they had had. And he knew it, that's why he resigned when they didn't give him a raise. His kids were both overseas, a daughter and a son that both took after their mother. They had eradicated him from their memories. Just as well, he supposed. His wife had disappeared almost 7 years ago now. Gone without a trace. The one case that haunted him day and night, and his failure was just intensified every time he shot up. Yet, of course, he saw no end to the heroin.
He strode over to the kitchen with his heroin filled spoon, being cautious not to spill any of the precious liquid, and readied the things he needed to make coffee with. He didn't take any sugar with his coffee, only a spoon of heroin. He took his lighter out of his pocket and held it up under the spoon. The liquid began to bubble as soon as the kettle had finished boiling. He carefully set the spoon down, his hand still shaking, and prepared his coffee. Adding the heroin spoonful.
He stumbled back to the couch, the only couch, and sat down with his coffee. Pulling out his cigarettes and his phone he noticed a new message. He ignored it for the time being and lit a cigarette, cherishing his morning fix of caffeine, nicotine and heroin. Like a wake-up blast thundering through his body. He needed that every morning, no matter how long he slept he always woke up feeling like a dead man. Sober or not it was always the same. Eyes that want nothing but to stay shut, legs and arms that want anything but to move. Mornings were hell.
He glanced at his phone. It was a message from the office.
INFORMANT: WAKE UP YOU OAF. THERE'S A NEW CASE. MURDER. GET TO THE OFFICE.
He frowned. He didn't like insults. He finished off his coffee and nipped his cigarette, stuffing it into his coat pocket. I probably smell like a beggar dressed in dog shit. He thought sourly. He didn't have the willpower for a shower though. He gathered his wallet and keys and headed for the door. At the door he put his arm up to the switchboard and put off all the power. Fires were his worst nightmare, he didn't need something like that after coming home after a long days work. He frowned again. It came naturally to him. He walked out the front door and closed it behind him, locking all the locks and making sure they were locked.
His car, an old, badly maintained Corsa with faded protocol police signs, stood in the driveway. The one thing the police had given him when he had left the force, and a shit load of money, but that they didn't give willingly. He smirked at the thought. In his car he lit up the nipped cigarette. Savoring every drag as per usual in the mornings. Odd, he thought, I'm sure the car was full of shit yesterday. But he never knew half the things he did when he was strung out. And cleaning his car wasn't the weirdest of them by a long shot.
The "office" wasn't really an office at all. It was just a safe-house, sort of a place to shoot up, stash and get jobs from his computer. It was in no way linked to him, a perk from being a former cop, and it was in an industrial area: Paardenisland.
He drove for a hour before getting onto the M5 motorway. He pulled onto the road and nearly got pushed off again by a truck. "Fucking, c**t-hole!" He screamed from behind his windows. Putting up the middle finger and making sure it was in plain sight for the guy to see. The guy just hooted and waved. Lazarus cursed some more and then thought about how his country had lost all respect for cops. He turned on the radio. "-discovered that yet another murder victim has been found dead on a high school campus in Cape Town. The cities politicians are rife and livid whilst the public cries out for justice. Where are our detect-" He switched it off again. "Fucking media," he shouted in the confinement of his car, "Always poking their dirty noses where the shit stinks worst, and then before they even get to smell it properly they fall face first into it then they can't fucking get the facts straight because their eyes are filled with it as well!" It was his release. One of many. Screaming to himself. He had stopped wondering whether and just accepted the fact that he was either already insane or sliding down the slippery slope towards it.
He turned left at the traffic lights into the industrial park, one of many lining the outskirts of Cape Town. His office loomed before him, a simple door and a light were the only things adorning the wall of the building. He got out of his car on locked it. At the door of the office he stuck the key labeled "1" into the thin door and twisted. Hearing the click he twisted it again in the opposite direction and then again. Superstition.
He opened the door and came upon another door; steel. It had four locks and he quickly unlocked them all. His head was spinning and he needed another fix quickly. He ran back to the car and grabbed two needles from his cubbyhole and locked his car again. He walked to the steel door and shoved it open with difficulty. Inside the room was dark and had a stench that he himself could barely handle, but he knew that adaptation was one of the reasons that humans were the most successful species. He knew that he would very quickly, with the help of a needle prick, forget that the smell was ever there.
He strode to his desk after locking all the doors behind him and switching the light on. He carefully set the needle down and went on a search for a spoon. After a few minutes he found it and boiled up 5ml of pure heroin. He had a special dealer. An Afghan. It was pure, he had been assured. He shot up and almost immediately stopped shaking. His eyes bulged at the rush as the drug entered his bloodstream. The room started to vibrate, or it was his eyes, he wasn't sure. He imagined that he could see the dust particles floating in the air.
After a few minutes he recovered from the initial rush and slumped back into the tall-backed office chair, slumped back into reality. He engaged the power button on his PC. It started with a low hum, soothing to his brain. Sounds played around in his head while he waited for the machine to work. He heard strange guttural knocking noises and saw ambient filings of dust shimmering in the air that seemed like living colonies of worms. His gaze tore reluctantly from the sun shining through the window slats that enabled him to see the dust and lazily fell on the screen again.
He punched in his password and waited again for it to load. His eyes wandered around as if they had a life of their own. The speakers blasted the welcome sound and he nearly fell out of his chair, reaching for the volume knob. He turned it down. He opened his e-mail system that had cost a fortune since it needed such high level security and saw the message that the Informer had sent him. Files with all the info on the murder. It was a young one; the worst kind for him.
The kid had last been seen on April the 16th and then found three days later in a tool shed on campus. He had been tortured and then murdered. He wondered what kind of sick freak would do something so terrible. He printed the files and put them in a folder. Time to solve a murder case, he thought, nothing new, just another sick fuck I have to catch and put behind bars.
Advice?
This post has been edited by Nomadicus: 27 July 2012 - 10:30 PM
