The Burning Man by Christopher Fowler

Author:Christopher Fowler [Fowler, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, Humour, Suspense
ISBN: 9781448170210
Goodreads: 23644670
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Published: 2015-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Land looked at the address again and decided that there must have been some kind of mistake. After alighting from the tube at Finsbury Park, he had watched in horror as a man urinated against the window of a bread shop in broad daylight. Following Bryant’s directions, Land turned off the main road into some kind of fenced-off truck park where grass struggled up between broken cobbles, making his way between dog turds and iridescent puddles of oily water, towards a row of penumbral railway arches. He found himself standing beneath the one that had been marked on his page, and looked about for signs of life. From the shadows, a bedraggled rat watched him uncertainly.

Bryant had assured him that someone would appear, but all Land could see were petrol drums, leaking ten-litre cans of ghee, piles of wood, shattered yellow house bricks and several sawn-off green lamp-posts knotted together with baling wire, looking like outsized sticks of asparagus. He leaned against the remains of an old blue Nissan lying on its roof and waited. From somewhere nearby came the sound of a cat having a fit.

The door of the Nissan suddenly opened and caught Land on the backs of his legs. Out crawled what appeared to be a spherical ball of grey rags. A reek of ammonia filled the air. Land looked down in horror as the ball unravelled and stood upright, revealing something that could possibly be a turnip four hundred years past its sell-by date or a very small, very wide woman. ‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

Land looked around, panicked. ‘Where is who?’

‘Arthur.’ The turnip-woman looked around to see what he was looking for. ‘He’s supposed to be with you.’

‘He sent me along by myself.’

‘That’s cheating.’

‘He’s a busy man.’

‘He’s my husband.’

Land was beginning to feel an uncomfortable prickling on the back of his neck that warned him he was out of his depth. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Esmeralda.’

‘What do you mean, he’s your husband?’

She spelled out the words slowly and loudly, baring blackened teeth. ‘Try. To. Follow. What. I’m. Saying. He. Is. My. Husband. I. Married. Him.’

This was all too much for Land, especially as it had now started to rain hard. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just told to come here and— How could you be married to him?’

‘It was a citizen’s marriage.’ She rubbed one filthy finger over the other in a peculiarly witchlike gesture. ‘He doesn’t know we’re betrothed, obviously. I don’t want to make him over-emotionable. But it’s legally blinding. Not here, just in an obscure part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the matrimblial laws are very different. That’s where I met him, during the reign of the Emperor Franz Joseph. I was a Hapsburger. With onion rings. Of course, that was before I fell on hard times. Arthur had the most beautiful eyes, like goldfish bowls filled with Toilet Duck. And his teeth were like stars. They came out at night.’

She’s a raving loony, realized Land. Bryant’s done it just to wind me up.

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