Deadly Burial

Now, I’ve realised that you get paid, either way. The results don’t matter for shit. The fans don’t care if you lose every week – it doesn’t hurt your character, or your mythos, or your reputation, because they don’t believe any of it’s real in the first place. Kayfabe is dead. There’s some more lingo for you: ‘kayfabe’ is what we call the alternate reality that professional wrestling presents. It’s the reason that bad guys and good guys (we call them heels and babyfaces) aren’t supposed to be seen in public together, doing shots in a bar when they were fighting to the death just three hours before. It’s the reason people went crazy when Hulk Hogan was the first man to bodyslam Andre the Giant. It’s the reason kids like me used to go to the Sportatorium and watch the greats flying off the top rope, seeming to move in slow motion through the air, and dream of being just like them.

These days the fans just want to find out what’s going on backstage so they can one-up their friends in the chatroom with their fucking insider knowledge. They want to ask you about your broken marriage when you’re trying to smile for a picture. They want to talk to you like you’re on their level, even though they’re a fat fucking teenager who’s probably never even seen a girl naked, except online.

So if you’re one of those overweight nerds, and you’re a little sore reading this, I don’t apologise. Go outside. Get a girlfriend. Join a fucking gym. But if you are one of those people then I know you’re dying to hear about the Milwaukee Meltdown, because that’s what you all ask me about most of the fucking time, those that have the balls.

So I’m going to get straight to it.

If you’re a pro wrestling fan then you already know about what happened. But I’ll explain it anyways, because it’s important, because it’s the reason I got fired, although it’s not the reason my life turned to shit, because my life had already turned to shit way, way before that.

The Milwaukee Meltdown was when I reached rock bottom. When everyone found out just how far Vic Valiant had fallen.

Sunday (#ulink_52e671bf-df83-5807-9b57-b7a2f2b9f08e)

Sigurdsson recognised the feeling. It settled so gently around his shoulders, like a lightweight cloak, familiar and barely perceptible at first. Then, slowly, it would begin to cling to him, like a cold damp sheet sticking to his flesh. Then it would tighten, closing insidiously around his throat and chest until he couldn’t breathe, as though he were embraced by a nightmare creature. A parasite, feeding upon his fear.

He felt it now, as he sat inside the little passenger ferry, trying to calm his breathing even as the vessel bobbed and lurched on the irritable sea between North Devonshire and the island of Salvation, his destination. Maybe it was the pressure of the investigation he would be spearheading, the prospect of dealing with a distrustful local police department that resented the interference of ‘mainlanders’ like him. Maybe it was the fear of his career continuing to spiral down the toilet as his DCI sent him on yet another joke assignment… professional wrestlers for god’s sake! He’d taken a load of stick from his colleagues, especially those who hadn’t forgiven him for his formal complaint against Townsend, which was pretty much all of them. Maybe it was the pressure of grinding out a living surrounded by colleagues who despised his attention to detail, his determination not to cut corners or sacrifice his professionalism for anything. Townsend had been a corrupt bastard anyway, as well as an utterly incompetent policeman.

But he knew it was none of those things. It was his own mortality that drove DI Chris Sigurdsson to suffer from panic attacks.

He was afraid of death.

He rode the convulsions of the modest craft, envisaging his own freezing and watery demise, a bloated corpse floating facedown into an anonymous harbour somewhere. He imagined another mortuary, another human being reduced to an assemblage of guts and meat on a sterile table in front of him, organs extracted and laid out like the pieces of a grisly board game.

He thought about strychnine poisoning.

The sort of thing that only happened in films, or Agatha Christie novels. A drug that caused the muscles to spasm uncontrollably, twisting the victim into excruciating contortions, lips peeling back into a grotesque grimace as their heart was strained beyond breaking point and they literally died of exhaustion.

Apparently it had happened while the ageing performer was in the ring. The crowd had thought it was part of the match. The paramedics had thought it was a massive heart attack… until a post mortem had been conducted and revealed a filigree of injection scars in his rump, upper arms and lower abdomen, and enough of the drug in his system to kill off a horse.

A pro wrestler, his body failing him, using steroids to cling on to his musclebound physique, or maybe to simply make it through another show… somehow he had contrived to instead pump himself full of a substance that would ensure nothing but an agonising suicide. But was it an elaborate self-destruction, or just a tragic blunder? Or… had someone deliberately switched the syringe?

DCI Wells had anticipated some media interest, given the victim’s fame in pro wrestling circles, and had dispatched Sigurdsson to assist with the investigation. He would liaise with Inspector Carin Mason, who at thirty-four was a few years younger than him, having also progressed rapidly within the force, although she hadn’t yet taken the CID exams to become a fully-fledged detective.

Sigurdsson’s fingers drummed uncontrollably against his thigh, a pulsing blob of nausea gyrating in his stomach. He needed something to distract him. He thought about striking up a conversation with the ferry’s other passengers, a group of young lads sitting opposite him. Maybe they could tell Sigurdsson a few things about the island. The detective had never visited Salvation and knew very little about it – Wells had called him earlier that day and he’d had scant opportunity to prepare.

He knew from a Google search that the place was five square miles in size, with a population of under two thousand people. He knew that it used to house a convalescent home for soldiers, which had closed down decades ago; today it was a privately owned seaside resort. He knew that its main attraction was its enormous wild rabbit population; with no natural predators to regulate their numbers, the creatures had spread all over the island, attracting hundreds of tourists each year to pet and feed and photograph them. There was a rabbit-themed amusement park, a rabbit-themed gift shop, and all manner of rabbit-themed merchandise. People even called it ‘Bunny Island’.

He also knew that in the 1990s a serial killer named Leonard Spitt had terrorised the small community, brutally killing six young women. Whether because of this incident, or simply because of the rising popularity of foreign holidays and the gradual decline that had affected all British seaside resorts, he knew that the island’s popularity had dwindled, and that today it was rundown and dilapidated.

He decided against making small talk and instead glanced around at the boat’s shabby interior, looking for anything to occupy his racing thoughts. He thought about disease, about the germs and bacteria scuttling invisibly across the grubby surfaces, across his legs, ascending his torso to crawl into his nostrils and his eyes…

He shuddered and knotted his fingers together, wringing his hands painfully to try to focus his mind, watching as his fingers turned in some places red, in others white. The colours of blood and bones.

‘Are you here to see the show, mate?’

One of the boys had addressed him, a skinny youth with dyed black hair swept severely across his face, almost hiding his eyes.

‘The show?’

The teenager looked embarrassed as his friends sniggered.

‘Oh, sorry. I thought you might be here for the wrestling too… just wondered if you wanted to share a taxi there with us. Never mind.’

‘Is the wrestling on tonight?’

‘Yeah, bell time was seven o’clock. We’re running late because of this knobhead.’ He playfully smacked his friend’s shoulder, and received a blow back in return. ‘We had tickets for last night’s show too, but it was cancelled.’

‘That’s a shame – why was that?’

One of the other boys, with a chubbier frame and a shaved head, interjected.

‘Vic Valiant had a heart attack in the ring! It sounded fucking intense. The show got called off and an ambulance turned up and everything.’

A suspected heart attack was how the papers and internet had thus far been reporting Schultz’s death.

‘Will be weird tonight to see if they mention it,’ the boy continued.

‘Do they often have shows on the island?’

‘No, this is a special double-weekender – AAW is doing like a cross-promotional thing, and they’ve got some proper big names over from America. The winner of the tournament gets a shot at the title next weekend!’

‘AAW?’

‘All Action Wrestling,’ grinned the lad in response.

‘The island seems a strange place to hold a big tournament.’

‘Not really,’ said the third member of the group, as though keen to get involved in the discussion. ‘The promoter was born here, so it’s like a sort of coming-home show for him. They normally tour all around the south west, and we try to get to as many shows as we can. Plus the island’s got a really cool history anyway.’

‘Yes, I’m a tourist myself,’ Sigurdsson lied. Much easier than trying to explain that he was a policeman investigating the death of one of their heroes, and that the gathering storm was too severe for air travel to the island, and so his DCI had thought the passenger ferry would be quicker than trying to organise a speedboat. Sigurdsson suspected Wells just couldn’t be bothered. ‘I heard about the rabbits and thought it would be an interesting place to go.’

‘Yeah man,’ said the third boy. Sigurdsson realised they were all wearing T-shirts that were something to do with the wrestling promotion, bearing names and slogans he didn’t understand. This boy’s said ‘Maniac’ in blood-dripping letters above a stylised AAW logo. ‘You know the story about those, don’t you?’

Sigurdsson shook his head, and the lad’s face lit up with malevolent glee.

‘The story goes that the island used to be a secret poison gas development site during the war. That hospital? They weren’t just rehabbing old soldiers, man. They were testing fucking gas on ‘em, nerve toxins and all sorts.’

Sigurdsson felt the noose of anxiety slowly tightening around his neck as the youth continued.

‘The rabbits were all kept there for the testing, underground. Then when the place got bombed in the forties, the rabbits escaped and overran the island, and bred like… well, you know.’

He sat back smugly, as though he had just unveiled an ingenious conspiracy theory.

‘You’re full of shit, Joe,’ the shaven-headed boy responded, and they all laughed.

Sigurdsson forced a smile too. His forward view was obscured by the ship’s wheelhouse, but through the window he could see the swirling mists ahead of them begin to darken, as if giving form to some imagined horror.

‘Well, have a great time at the show, boys.’