Текст книги "Deviance"

Автор книги: J. F. Penn

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Chapter 11

They emerged on the second floor overlooking a stage area with a raised dais and a pole that stretched up to the ceiling. A mixed-race woman in a leather bikini hung upside down and as she spun around, Jamie saw her back was a tattooed garden of exotic flowers that curled and bloomed across her skin. It was beautiful, complementing her curves and, judging by the flash of cameras in the audience, much appreciated.

Blake's eyes were fixed on the dancer as she slid around the pole in an acrobatic and sensual display of strength and flexibility. Jamie understood his fascination, because the woman was stunning. She knew that her own release came in tango. She wondered if Blake would look at her like that if she danced for him. But that was a side of her life that she kept private – for now at least.

The music finished and the dancer stepped off the dais to be mobbed by fans asking her to sign photos. Jamie found it interesting that most of these fans were women, many in plain clothes. Perhaps they wanted to find the courage to expose themselves as she did, to ink their skin and be proud of their bodies.

They finally made it to the front of the queue and Jamie introduced herself and Blake.

"We're looking for a friend of ours who has gone missing," she said. "You might know her as O. She has a –"

"Octopus tattoo," the woman said, cutting off Jamie's words. "I know her. She was meant to be here today, part of our performance team, but she didn't show up. There are plenty of girls ready to take her place but she was missed by the fans. She has quite the following from Torture Garden."

"Do you know if her tattooist is here?" Blake asked. He smiled and Jamie watched as the woman melted in the face of his charm. She had to admit that a tiny part of her was jealous, but if they could use his good looks to find O, it was worth it.

The woman leaned closer.

"He is here, actually. All the way from New Zealand. I'm on my break now, so I could take you to him and maybe show you around a bit." She brushed her hair back from her face and touched Blake's arm, looking up into his eyes. "I'm Minx, by the way."

Of course you are, Jamie thought, managing to keep quiet as Blake accepted her offer of help.

Minx led them through a central area reserved for artists engaged in more traditional tattoo methods. A Polynesian man used a small hammer to drive a stick into a man's shoulder. Each stroke was deliberate and the man underneath looked as if he was barely coping with the pain. Yet he remained unmoving, determined to go through this initiation as generations before him had done.

"The word tattoo comes from tatau in the Polynesian language," Minx said. "It means to strike and mimics the sound of the hammer hitting the stick. Modern tattooing uses machines, of course. They can do far more pricks per minute than tattooing by hand, but it's all so clinical these days."

Winding through the halls, Minx stopped at a booth dedicated to implants. The walls were covered with objects that could be put under the skin. The man running the booth had a row of beads in his skull, raised bumps like a dinosaur spine. A raised cross implant with bulbous ends sat in the middle of his bare chest, skull tattoos erupting with flame on his pectoral muscles.

"Hey Zee, d'you know where Tem Makaore's stall is?"

Zee turned and his eyes were kind, soft brown like a puppy and Jamie instinctively warmed to him, despite his unusual looks. He bent to kiss Minx's cheek and smiled at Jamie and Blake.

"He's down the back of the vaults 'cos he booked late."

Jamie leaned closer to examine some of the items on show. There were different sizes of horn from little bumps to several inches, as well as thin batons and rings. Zee noticed her interest.

"Skin is remarkable," he said. "You can stretch it over things and it will accommodate. So you can embed a small object at first, a round marble, for example, and the skin will stretch around it. Over time, you replace the small object with a larger one. Or you can have silicone injected to stretch it slowly into shape."

Blake pointed at a row of long metal spikes for skull implants.

"How can you possibly sleep with those in?" he asked.

Zee smiled at the question, keen to talk about his art. "The implants in the skull are actually metallic studs so the spikes can be attached by day and removed at night."

"That's pretty cool," Blake said. "Not sure how well it would go down at the office though."

"People are trying all kinds of things these days," Zee said. "Braille implants for example, to enable blind people to enjoy body modification. There's also a rise in magnetic finger implants which act like another sense. The wearer can feel magnetic fields, from portable electronics to invisible magnetic fields. Split tongues are requested more in these days as dragons have seen a resurgence in interest.

"Ultimately, I'm a skin artist, and the bodies I work with are temples to my god. I create the implants that result in a changed shape. I carve away excess flesh to leave an artwork behind. I restructure to create." He pointed at a photo of an ear reshaped into that of a cat. "Individuation is the point. To be set apart from mundanity. I mean, look at our developed world. How many people are trapped in lives of quiet desperation? I help people escape that through embracing their power. I match the outer body to the inner vision of self."

"It's fascinating," Jamie said. "I hope we have time to come back later."

They walked away from the stall, heading down the stairs towards the vaults.

"Zee's lover died a few years back," Minx said as they descended. "He had the ashes put into that hollow cross and implanted them over his heart."

Her tone was respectful, both of his choice to implant and his method of remembrance. Jamie understood that need to have the dead so close they could not be forgotten, even for an instant. Ashes could be made into glass and diamonds now, turned into tribute jewelry. She had also heard that they could be mixed with ink and used in a tattoo. That thought actually appealed to Jamie. Polly had understood the attraction of the macabre and would have laughed about it.

The vaults level had an eclectic range of stalls ranging from tattoo inks and equipment to a cabinet-of-curiosities shop, selling animal skulls, taxidermy, and art made from human teeth. The buzzing of her cellphone caught Minx's attention and as she answered, she pointed Jamie and Blake towards the back of the vaults, waving them away.

"Maybe you can say goodbye after her next show," Jamie said with a smile as they walked down the corridor.

"I don't think I could keep up with her," Blake grinned. "This place is amazing, though. I keep wondering how much of this will end up in the British Museum eventually, part of British civilization in the twenty-first century. Future academics will be musing over the tribal markings and obscure implants from this age, as they do over ancient peoples."

Several booths hung with Maori and Polynesian designs sat in the corner of the vaults, the distinctive use of white space highlighted in bold black to create koru spirals and geometric shapes. It was quieter down here, the sound of the bands muted by thick walls and flooring.

Three men stood near one of the booths, drinking bottles of beer. They turned as Jamie and Blake approached, their faces marked by tribal tattoos, their body language aggressive. Jamie took a deep breath.

Chapter 12

"We're looking for Tem Makaore," Jamie said, although Blake was clearly looking at one of the men more intently. He had distinctive facial moko, the blue-black ink curving around his chin and jawline, bisecting his nose with geometric shapes, sweeping up from his eyes like the wings of the dawn. His lips were fully tattooed and the fierce markings made him look like a warrior from another time, incongruous against his black t-shirt and jeans. Jamie had a fleeting desire to see if the ink continued on the rest of his tightly muscled body.

"I'm Tem," the man said, his face breaking into a smile. The warrior persona dropped away. "Kia ora. What can I do for you?"

"A friend of ours, O, is missing. We wondered if you'd seen her?"

Tem frowned.

"Of course, I know O. I'm super proud of her ink and I don't get to do such extensive work too often. We met for a drink last night about eight and she was meant to come by today, but I haven't seen her since then."

"We're worried about her," Jamie said. "Did she tell you anything about where she was going after you met?"

"No, but I wouldn't expect her to. But she wanted to talk about new ink, which means something has happened in her life. Something has changed. You see, the soul can't speak in words." Tem smiled, his eyes wistful, and Jamie wondered at the bond between tattoo artist and the skin he worked on. "The soul can only speak in symbols and patterns and every person will choose something different. Or, if they choose the same symbol, the meaning will be different."

"What did she want done?" Jamie asked.

Tem gestured for them to come closer and see some of the designs on the wall of the booth.

"She only had vague ideas and it's bad etiquette to ask the meaning of someone's tattoo," he said. "It's possible that the person themselves won't know what it really means." He pointed to his facial moko. "To try and put these markings into words will lessen their power. But you have to understand that to tattoo or modify your body is to embrace the shadow side of yourself. That's why many can't do it.

"Most people cannot bear to look into that darker side, preferring to keep the mask of normality. But to repress the shadow for too long will mean it eventually has to escape in other ways. Into compulsions, into chaos." Tem looked at Jamie, his dark brown eyes as tangled as an ancient wood. She saw secret things hidden in those depths, a glimpse of an older world. "I think O's octopus has been dominant for too long and to change, she has to ink something new. But I can't tell you what. She wanted to know how long I was in town as we'd need several sessions. But she was ready to walk through the fire again."

Jamie tilted her head to one side, his words puzzling her. "What do you mean by that?"

Tem pointed at the tattooing instrument on the bench. "That is for pain but also for change. After all, nothing worth doing is entirely painless. Friendships fade, marriages break apart, families splinter, but your body is yours until the end. What you do to it will be with you every day until you breathe your last. So you mark your skin to mark the path through the fire of life, and after the change is complete, the wound is bandaged and you can heal."

A picture on the wall drew Jamie's eye. A woman stood side on, her arm lifted to reveal a tattoo that opened up the inside of her body as if she were clockwork. Behind broken ribs, cogs and wheels turned, pistons pumped and over them lay a network of bones and skin. It was a macabre optical illusion of a steampunk hybrid. Next to her was a woman with blonde hair, her dark eyes staring into the camera from a face of blue and purple swirls, her whole body encased in ink.

"She was born with a skin condition," Tem said, noticing Jamie's gaze. "Her skin blistered and scarred so she started tattooing as a way to claim her skin back. If people were going to stare anyway, she decided to have them stare for good reason. This is the outward expression of her inner self, an alchemy of her physical curse and the archetypes within her mind. We are embodied souls, after all."

"What happens at the end?" Jamie asked, thinking of the implant of ashes they had seen upstairs. She pointed at Tem's heavily tattooed forearms. "When your body dies, is that the end of the meaning to the images?"

Tem looked serious. "In my culture, yes." He nodded. "The spirit lives on, but after death the body is buried, returned to Papatuanuku, Mother Earth." Tem paused for a moment. "But others revere the physical form. I've heard of specialists in skin preservation, those who work with the bodies of the dead to keep tats for family or gang affiliation. I've also heard rumors of a skin trade, a black market for inked skin. Fetishists mostly." He shook his head. "But after what I've put onto people's bodies, nothing surprises me these days."

Jamie thought of the missing and the dead so far. All were inked.

"Do you know where we could find someone like that in London?" she asked.

Tem shook his head. "Really not my thing. I prefer live bodies to work with, skin I have permission to ink." Tem pointed along the corridor. "Go see the taxidermists. They have their own little community." Tem looked at Jamie, meeting her eyes. "And come and see me when you make your decision about what you want inked."

Jamie blushed under his gaze, wondering what it would feel like to have his strong hands inking her skin. Part of her wanted to find out.

"Thanks for your help," Blake said, breaking the moment. He shook Tem's hand. "We really appreciate it."

They walked away from Tem's stand towards a corner of the convention hidden amongst the arches. Here were the cabinet-of-curiosity shops where strange objects were sold alongside herbal remedies, and taxidermists displayed their wares. The people who sat on the stalls generally wore black, many were tattooed, and Jamie wondered at the crossover between the groups. Was it a fascination with death or just with skin?

They walked around, trying to get a sense of who to speak to. One stall displayed beetles and spiders, butterflies and frogs pinned on boards, their remains spread out for viewing. The vibrant colors of the shiny carapaces and wetness of the skin made them look like they had recently been caught and mounted. Jamie was reminded of Damien Hirst's Last Kingdom piece, which placed dead insects in exact rows, a rainbow of colors of the dead. Was it all just memento mori, Jamie wondered, to help us remember that we are all animated dust waiting to return to the earth?

Blake wandered over to an area with pieces of furniture that had been modified to incorporate taxidermy animals. He bent to a red wingback chair to examine two young foxes, stuffed as if they were playing and mounted into the hollow back. Jamie turned to another stall nearby.

It had animal heads mounted on wooden bases, but they weren't in the style of hunting lodges where old men boasted of their kill. These heads were embellished with colorful beads and jeweled flowers, embroidered silk and ribbons. Each piece turned the animal into a celebration of life. Jamie stopped to look more closely and a young woman came out from behind the table. Her hair was ash blonde, tied back from her pale face with a garland of flowers. Her eyes were intelligent, slightly wary, as if she expected criticism for her work.

"Hi," she said, her voice timid. "Can I help you?"

"These are beautiful," Jamie said, and she found herself meaning it. The initial revulsion of these dead bodies had been replaced by fascination for the beauty of the objects.

"Thank you," the young woman said. "I mostly make custom taxidermy for collections and private museums, but my passion is turning the dead into flower gardens." She pointed at a deer's head. "And of course, no animals are ever killed for the purpose. I only use roadkill."

Jamie thought of this young woman walking along the edge of a quiet road in the countryside, waiting to stumble upon dead animals.

Blake wandered back over from the chairs to join the conversation.

"Can I ask what your fascination is with taxidermy?" he asked. His attention made the young woman bloom a little. Her eyes darted away from his handsome face and back again. Must be tough to get a date when your house is full of dead animals, Jamie thought.

"Ultimately, it's about respect for the animal and for life itself," the young woman said, her voice growing stronger as she talked. "You can get closer to it than you ever could in life. I study anatomy so I can get the dimensions right and make sure the muscle shapes are clear. And it's also art, creating something that will make people think. Perhaps it's the ultimate blend of science and art, chemistry and sculpture."

"Is there much of a community in London?" Blake asked.

The young woman nodded enthusiastically. "Oh yes, we have meetups and classes. It's quite a scene. The tattoo conventions mostly have a section for us as well, so we get to meet new people all the time."

"We're looking for someone," Jamie said. "He – or she – works with human tattooed skin, preserving it after death. Do you know of anyone like that?"

"There is a man …" The young woman hesitated, her eyes guarded. "He doesn't really advertise but I've been to his place once – a while ago. He might not be there anymore."

"We'd really like to try and track him down," Blake said. "Can you give us his address?"

"It's more of a squat than a residential place," she replied. "Out by Limehouse Cut."

Jamie pulled out her smartphone and opened a map application. The young woman showed her an approximate area.

***

As they walked out of the convention, Blake turned to Jamie.

"That place was not what I expected, but it makes me want to mark my skin." He touched his gloved hands together gently. "With something more than scars." He thought about the runes in the Galdrabók, how they would look on his caramel skin. Would inking them on his body help him to claim their power or perhaps even tame his curse? He looked at Jamie. "What about you?"

"When we came in here, I was still unsure. But now I have a clearer idea. I want birds on the wing." Jamie touched her neck on the right side. "Maybe here, down my shoulder onto my back."

"Escape? Freedom?" Blake said, thinking that tattoos on Jamie's skin would also be damn sexy. "A desire to transcend this physical life, perhaps?"

Jamie grinned. "It's rude to ask the meaning of someone's tattoo."

"Even one that doesn't exist yet?"

They walked to Jamie's bike and she pulled a second helmet from her pannier. "Can you come?" she asked, offering it to him.

Blake hesitated. Every hour he was away from the museum was another nail in the coffin of his research career. He looked down into Jamie's hazel eyes and saw that she needed him. Her friend was missing and perhaps he could still help find her.

"Of course I'm coming," he said. "I work in the museum with a load of mummified remains. I can't miss out on meeting a real-life skin preserver."

Chapter 13

Thirty minutes later, Blake shook his head as he pulled off the motorbike helmet, running his gloved fingers over his buzz cut.

"That is too much fun," he said, handing the helmet back to Jamie. "Even if I have to ride pillion."

"One of the pleasures of life," Jamie said. "Not really enough open road around London though."

She looked up at the sixties concrete block in front of them. It had been a technical college once, later abandoned and now inhabited by an eclectic group of artists, many of whom also lived in the building. Some might call them squatters but in this part of East London, turning a derelict building into something this productive was akin to a miracle. Rejuvenation of the old Docklands was happening slowly and the artists were often the first to move in.

"Nice place," Blake said with raised eyebrows as he stepped gingerly over a bare needle on the broken concrete path.

"Let's take a look inside," Jamie said.

She pushed open the front door to reveal a neglected corridor strewn with the detritus of people living rough. Cardboard boxes and string, a folded blanket and old tins of beans. It smelled of stale sweat and sweet marijuana smoke. Music thumped through the building and they followed the noise along the corridor to the back of the structure. It had a deafening bass that Jamie recognized as "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails. A hymn to finding God in desecration and violation, a song to bring alive the crazy in anyone. A song she remembered playing as a teenager bent on escaping a mundane existence, desperate for something more than suburbia. Strange to hear it again here.

A metal door barred their way. Jamie rapped on it, but there was no chance that anyone would hear them inside with that racket. She pushed at the door but it was firmly locked from the inside. She hammered with her fist as the song came to an end, but no one came to let them in. The bass kicked in on the next song and their knocking was drowned out once more.

"Let's go round the outside," Jamie said, and they walked back out.

The building was on the edge of the Limehouse Cut, a waterway that ran from the River Lea down to the Thames. The sun sparkled on the slow-moving water, bringing a moment of beauty to this urban junkyard.

"Come look at this," Blake said, as he walked towards the side of the building. A ramshackle houseboat was tied up there, its moorings rusted and weed-covered from its long-term berth. He pointed at the name of the boat, the paint chipped and faded but still clearly visible.

"Pyx?" Jamie said. "I don't get it."

"It's one of the oldest doors in Westminster Abbey," Blake said. "Anglo-Saxon and over a thousand years old. What's more interesting is that it has panels of skin upon it that some believe were from the bodies of flayed criminals, left there as a warning to those who would attack the church."

They walked along the narrow path behind the building. Huge windows dominated the back section and a door stood open a little further on. A man stood on the back step blowing smoke rings into the air, his eyes closed in bliss as the bassline pumped from the studio behind him. He was tall and thin, his body held with the slumped posture of one who worked hunched over most of the time and often had to bend in the presence of others. His limbs were long and gangly, as if he had never had the nutrition to help him grow into them. His skin was pale, his head closely shaven and smooth, reflecting the sun.

His eyes flicked open at their approach and he quickly stubbed out the cigarette.

"Please wait," Jamie shouted, waving at him.

The man stepped inside the studio and Jamie ran to the open door, reaching it as he tried to force it closed. She wedged her foot into the crack.

"Please," she shouted above the music. "We only want to talk to you."

"I don't have anything here. No money, no drugs," the man pleaded, his face desperate as he tried to push Jamie out. Blake stood behind her.

"We're not here to take anything," he said. "We're looking for a friend and we heard you could help."

"I'm a private investigator on a missing persons case," Jamie added. "Please just talk with us for a second."

The man's features softened as he realized they weren't there to steal from him. Jamie could understand his anxiety in this part of town.

"Alright," he said, moving back from the door. "Let me turn the music off."

Jamie and Blake stood by the door as the music quietened and the man returned.

"Great album," Jamie said. "I always loved Trent Reznor."

"Forgive me, I don't get too many visitors in this part of town. Most are here looking to score." He took a deep breath. "I'm Corium Jones." The man's features softened and he held out a hand. The skin was red and raw with evident chemical burns but Jamie shook it without flinching, meeting his eyes as she did so.

"I'm Jamie Brooke and this is Blake Daniel."

"What can I help you with?" Corium asked.

"We were at the tattoo convention," Jamie said, "and heard that you provide an unusual service for those with body art."

Corium nodded, a wry smile on his lips.

"Yes, people pay me to preserve their tattoos after death," he said. "It's a growing industry. After all, they may have paid thousands to emblazon their skin with meaning in life and so they want to pass that on somehow. Their lifetime stories are inked into their skin, and they don't want it to rot away. They can't imagine the worms devouring it, or the fire consuming it. Skin preservation is an ancient art with few of us left. And, of course, much misunderstood."

"Can we have a look?" Jamie asked, glancing behind him into the dark of the studio.

Corium paused and Jamie felt the intensity of his gaze as he assessed her and Blake. Perhaps he sensed the death around them both, because after a moment, he stepped aside and waved them in.

The room had several workbenches with tools lined up neatly on one side. There was a vat of salt in one corner and a skin pegged out on a frame in the shade of an open window, the faint blue lines of a tattoo barely visible on the opposite side.

The smell of chemical preservative hung in the air, reminding Jamie of the studio of Rowan Day-Conti, the artist who had worked with the plastination of dead bodies. She shuddered when she remembered how the Jenna Neville case had ended for Rowan, trying to keep an open mind about what they might find here.

"How does your service actually work?" Jamie asked. "Do you cut from the bodies directly?"

Corium laughed. "I don't deal in bodies, only in skin. My clients pay for services, the skin arrives, usually rough cut in medical boxes. I prepare it, mount it as directed and then return it to the specified address. There's actually no personal contact – except with the skin, of course."

He stepped to a bench and indicated a piece of what looked like leather.

"This one is ready for mounting." He stroked the edge of it, his face showing pride in his work. "You can touch it if you like. It's very soft. Young skin, I think."

"So you don't actually know where the skin comes from?" Blake asked.

"Not at all," Corium said. "It's not my job to ask, either. I merely act as the preserver."

Jamie shook her head slowly. The man's words seemed logical in one way, and he was just a leather worker of a kind. But how could he touch these skins and not feel that they were once a thinking human?

"Can I ask what body parts you work on?" she asked.

Corium went to a row of shelves and pulled out one of the large photo albums stacked there. He laid it on the table and flicked it open.

"These are some of my favorite works," he said, a note of pride in his voice. He turned the first page. "These are the most common. Full-back tattoos which result in a rectangular finished piece, or two longer panels, depending on how close to the spine the skin was excised. There are also cross shapes where the shoulder and arm pieces have been saved."

Jamie swallowed her revulsion as she looked down at the pages, but the pictures were artistic, the skin turned into something beautiful. There was incredible skill in the ink and the colors: a waving riot of flowers that seemed to grow across the skin with blooming roses and curlicues in a feminine design.

A gigantic pair of strong angel wings, each feather inked in detail, the size of the skin indicating it came from a large man.

A tiger prowling through a verdant jungle, its eyes staring out at the viewer.

There were quotes, too. In one, calligraphic handwriting flowed across the skin: I'm the hero of this story. I don't need to be saved. It seemed terribly sad that the hero was no more.

"Then there are the full-sleeve tattoos which result in a long tapering shape," Corium continued. "Very pleasing to the eye."

He indicated a lion's head in profile, its mane rippling over what had been muscles in life. A school of hammerhead sharks swimming over a submerged ancient city.

A list of coordinates with passport pictures and snapshots of faraway places.

A kaleidoscope of galaxies and stars in hues of cobalt blue, luminous greens and pinks.

The variation was incredible and Jamie could see how preserving these works of art was as much of a skill as inking them.

"I also have a number of head tattoos, which are more or less oval in shape, although it can be hard to get the edges right on those. They're the main ones," Corium raised his eyebrows, "but now and then I get some more intimate parts. Quite unusual, I must say."

Jamie looked at the shelf of photo albums.

"How long have you been doing this?" she asked.

"Since I was a child," Corium said, and the look in his eyes spoke of the deep loneliness of the misfit. "It started with taxidermy of small animals and tanning of found hides, but then one day a dying friend asked me to help preserve a part of himself and I couldn't say no. My reputation spread in the tattoo community and here in London these days there's no shortage of preservation work. There are also people who are willing to pay a lot of money for human leather products, from unmarked and inked skin."

Corium ran a hand across his smooth head. "I want ink myself of course, but I suffer from the tyranny of choice. After all, I have all these examples of fine art and I can't decide what I want on my own canvas. We have such a small amount of space and to get it wrong would be …" He shook his head and sighed. "Well, I can't abide the thought that my own legacy would be inferior to the skins I work on all day."

While Corium spoke, Jamie could see that Blake had wandered down to the far end of the studio to a tall bookcase. He bent more closely to look at the books, and then turned to call back to them.

"Could you tell us about this particular book?"

Corium's head snapped round and his eyes narrowed. He had the look of a man who would protect his domain at any cost.

"It's an early edition of Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius. For a very private client." His voice was cold as he stalked down the studio, Jamie following close behind.

The shelves were mostly filled with photography books of tattoos and body art, with others on taxidermy and skin preservation. But one shelf had a thin book bound in soft leather. The pattern inked on the skin looked like dragon scales in hues of purple.

"Is it bound in human skin?" Blake asked.

"Anthropomorphic bibliopegy is a great tradition," Corium said. "Anatomy texts bound in the skin of cadavers, judicial proceedings bound in the skin of murderers –"

"Lampshades made from the skin of murdered Jews …" Blake whispered, looking more closely at the books. "Where do you draw the line?" He turned back to look at them and Jamie saw his blue eyes were steel-hard. "May I touch them?"