Back Moon Over Soho
Chapters (23)
  1. Other Books by This Author
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Epigraph
  8. Chapter 1 - Body and Soul
  9. Chapter 2 - The Spice of Life
  10. Chapter 3 - A Long Drink of the Blues
  11. Chapter 4 - One-Tenth of My Ashes
  12. Chapter 5 - The Night Gate
  13. Chapter 6 - The Empress of Pleasure
  14. Chapter 7 - Almost Like Being in Love
  15. Chapter 8 - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
  16. Chapter 9 - The Forcing House
  17. Chapter 10 - Funland
  18. Chapter 11 - These Foolish Things
  19. Chapter 12 - It Don’t Mean a Thing
  20. Chapter 13 - Autumn Leaves
  21. Chapter 14 - I Woke up this Morning
  22. Historical Note
  23. Cover

Mickey the Bone’s full name was, according to his driver’s license, Michael Adjayi. So a Nigerian family then, and according to his date of birth Michael had just turned nineteen.

You’re mum’s going to be really pissed with you, I thought sadly.

He had a slew of cards, Visa, MasterCard, bank card, and one for the Musicians Union. There were a couple of business cards including one from an agent—I jotted the details down in my notebook. Then I carefully returned everything to the evidence bag.

It wasn’t until quarter to three that a junior doctor turned up and finally pronounced Michael Adjayi definitively dead. It took another two hours, once I’d declared the body a crime scene, to get the doctor’s particulars, obtain copies of the relevant documentation, the paramedic’s and the doctor’s notes, and get the body downstairs and safely into the mortuary there to await Dr. Walid’s tender ministrations. That just left me with the joyful last part where I contact the victim’s loved ones and break the news to them. These days the easiest way to do that is to grab someone’s mobile and see what comes up on the call log. Predictably Mickey had had an iPhone. I found it in his jacket pocket, but the screen was blank and I didn’t need to open it up to know that the chip would be trashed. I put it in a second evidence bag but I didn’t bother labeling—it would be going back to the Folly with me. Once I was sure that nobody was going to interfere with the body, I called Dr. Walid. I didn’t see any reason to wake him so I rang his office number and left a message for him to get in the morning.

If Mickey really was a second victim then it meant that the magic jazzman killer, and I was going to have to think of a better name for him than that, had struck twice less than four days apart.

I wondered if there’d been a similar cluster among Dr. Walid’s lists of deaths. I’d have to check when I got back to the tech-cave at the Folly. I was just debating whether to go home or fall asleep in the mortuary staff room when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello.” I said.

“This is Stephanopoulis,” said Detective Sergeant Stephanopoulis. “Your particular services are required.”

“Where?”

“Dean Street,” she said. Soho again. Of course, why not?

“Can I ask what the case is?”

“Murder most horrid,” she said. “Bring a spare pair of shoes.”

Past a certain point, black coffee only gets you so far and if it hadn’t been for the nasty smell of the air freshener my surly Latvian driver used I might have fallen asleep in the back of his mini cab.