Dead Eyed by Matt Brolly

knocked again on Klatzky’s door, as loud as he felt able considering the time of the morning. When there was no answer, he placed the card into the chrome slot in the door. Klatzky’s lies helped assuage his guilt for invading his friend’s privacy.
    It was not a pretty sight. Klatzky lay naked on the bed, next to the black-haired student. Both of them were comatose, not even stirring as Lambert crossed the room.
    ‘Simon, it’s Michael,’ he whispered into Klatzky’s ear.
    Klatzky didn’t stir. The room stank of alcohol, cigarettes and something else Lambert didn’t want to consider at that moment. He lifted Klatzky’s head from the pillow. A line of dried vomit trickled from the right-hand corner of his mouth, down his chin and onto the pimpled flesh of his body.
    ‘Wake up, Simon,’ said Lambert, slapping the man gently on his cheeks. He didn’t want to wake the sleeping student, fearing that she would scream on seeing him there. ‘Simon, wake up,’ he said, through gritted teeth.
    No response.
    He considered pulling Klatzky from the bed and kicking him into wakefulness but knew it would be pointless. Instead he scribbled a note on the hotel stationery, instructing Klatzky to contact him as soon as he woke.
    Back in his room he chided himself for allowing Klatzky to accompany him on the journey to Bristol. On the laptop, he noticed an entry from one of May’s junior officers he’d not spotted before. A robbery had occurred at a local church three weeks before the murder. Part of the missing inventory included a package of incense. May had not shared this information with him. The church was located in Weston-super-Mare, the same town where Haydon’s father lived, the same place May had instructed him not to visit.
    Giving up on sleep, he showered again and changed. Downstairs, he arranged for a hire car to be delivered to the hotel. He ordered a light breakfast of scrambled eggs and wholemeal toast and ate alone in the hotel’s restaurant. He told the tired-looking receptionist that Klatzky would be checking out that day and gave her the pass key to Klatzky’s room. ‘You may need a few reminder calls to get my friend out of bed,’ he told her.
    The hire car arrived at six-thirty a.m. Five minutes into the journey his phone rang.
    ‘Inspector May,’ he said, turning on the phone’s hands-free system. ‘You have incredible timing. You’re not watching me, are you?’

Chapter 12
    Lance didn’t know the injured man’s name and didn’t want to know. He just wanted him to be quiet. The man lay in the back of the van, his friend motionless next to him. They were two strangers Lance had first met the day before, hired to do one job which they had royally fucked up earlier that night, a job Lance had been supervising.
    The roads surrounding Frenchay hospital were quiet in the early morning, and they managed to make quick time away from the place. The injured man howled in pain. On removing him from the hospital, they’d had to rip out the morphine drip which had been pumping painkiller into his system at intermittent intervals. The injured man’s black skin had turned a shade of blue. He writhed in convulsions as if Lambert had shattered his leg that very second. He’d been due for an operation that morning. The consultant had mentioned pins, and metal plates. Lance kept stealing glances at the damaged limb in his rear-view mirror. Alien in size and colour, the leg was bent at an odd inverted angle. No wonder the guy was in agony.
    ‘Can you shut him up?’ demanded Lance.
    ‘What do you want me to do? Put a pillow over his head?’
    Lance could barely hear the second man over the din of the howling. The comment may have been sarcastic, but everything considered it would probably be the best thing for him.
    Five minutes from their destination, a safe house in Bedminster, Lance called the number he’d been given. He told the person who answered, a third man whose name he didn’t know, their