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Excerpt The Specialist Click here for special offer - download three chapters, free!
Chapter One TASMANIA
The bicycle was the penultimate temptation. It was European, a top-of-the-line touring bike, sleek, exquisitely designed and engineered. The rich crimson of fresh blood, and not a single scratch to mar the finish. Even the saddle leather was pristine, although sensitive nostrils could, perhaps, detect a subtly blended odor of saddle leather and . . . femininity? The specialist’s fingers roamed along the lines of the bicycle with a lover’s touch, caressing, flickering, almost as if such a touch could rouse a tactile response from the machine. Temptation surged with all the urgency that a new lover can create, almost explosive in its intensity at one point, before being throttled down, choked off by the coldness of logic. “Careless,” the specialist whispered. Still tempted, still rapt in the sensuality of the machine, but yielding to the power of the mind, the strength of the intellect over the ferocity of emotion. Still, there was time. Fingers continued to caress, eyes following with a languorous gentleness overlaid with intensity. Nimble fingers plucked at a pedal, ears pricked to the whisper of perfection as the rear wheel spun in a smooth, effortless blur of crimson spokes. “Careless,” the specialist whispered again, and this time the whisper was almost a moan, vibrant with sexual tension as if the bicycle could react to such, could somehow respond, somehow ease the frustration that ebbed and flowed like a great, inner tide. “No.” And again . . . “No!” Stronger this time as intellect began to win. “NOOOOO!” And the frustration took the voice up almost an octave even as one hand released the sleek bicycle frame and grabbed at the handle of the well-padded vise as if to try and crush the ultra-light tubing in a single wrenching yank. Breath almost sobbing, now, but controlled—always controlled—the specialist forced the hands to become steady; eyes closed with mental efforts aimed at stillness. Slowly the breathing steadied, the sensitive fingers relaxed from an almost claw-like cramping. “Careless. It would be just toooo careless,” the specialist whispered, and reached out to pick up first the auto-darkening welding mask, then the thick welding gloves, and finally the slender, almost delicate handpiece of the cutting torch. There was a pause then, because one hand had to be removed from its protective glove to wipe away a single, minute tear before the specialist could fire up the cutting torch and begin the intricate and difficult job of dismembering the bicycle. The job didn’t need to be difficult, of course. But the specialist was, after all, just that—a specialist. Sloppy work could not be tolerated. Nor was it. When the task was completed, there was a carefully-arranged pile of blood-crimson pieces of space-age tubing on the workshop floor. Even the wheels had been first denuded of their spokes, then sectioned into precisely-measured small arcs. The specialist gave the pile a few final adjustments, then devoted some time to carefully sweeping up the workshop floor until it was as pristine as it had been before the bicycle had arrived. As pristine as it had to be, because a sloppy workplace leads to sloppy work. No great haste to dispose of the crimson heap, the specialist decided. The hard part of that job was over with, now. A glance at the wrist revealed it to be nearly dinner time anyway, and it was . . . appropriate . . . to have dinner before the fun job, the delightful job of disassembling the bicycle’s rider. A slow smile was followed by a tongue licking delicately at perfect white teeth. Anticipation, the specialist thought—certainly not for the first time—was often the best part. The very best part. Dinner was simple; a small, hopping-off-the-plate-rare wallaby loin steak, an equally small baked Kennebec potato, and a fresh garden salad with just a tinge of olive oil. Tree-huggers and passionate, ill-educated greenies might scream blue murder about eating the country’s national symbol, but wallaby—and kangaroo meat generally—was essentially cholesterol free and wondrous tasty in the bargain. Especially if personally harvested and properly dismembered into choice segments specific to their purpose. Whole saddles of young wallaby for roasting, loin and haunch steaks for the grill. Too many Tasmanians, thought the specialist, made far, far too much of the ubiquitous wallaby pattie. Vastly over-rated, but then, just about right for most Tasmanians and their decidedly pedestrian palates. And with the simple meal, of course, the requisite, celebratory glass of Piper’s Brook wine, the finest produced in Tasmania and shockingly expensive at least by conservative local standards, but worth it. True quality could never be appropriately priced, the specialist mused, savoring each sip and making the glass last right through the meal. Dessert was a small salad of hand-picked fruit, which the specialist savored while deciding where to start with the remaining, satisfying but also necessary, task of the evening. First, of course, knives to be honed. Nothing so crude as a meat-saw or cleaver; the specialist was a self-confessed neatness freak, a purist, and where possible always preferred hand-tools for any task they could deal with. A final, delicious sip of the wine, just to cleanse the palate of the fruit syrup, and the time had come. First there was the vaguely undignified business of climbing into the disposable paper coveralls, but getting the knives perfect took enough time to forget that small issue. Then, out to the other workshop, where the already-occupied stainless steel table and its pleasures awaited. The specialist stood outside for just a few moments, savoring the pleasures ahead while using every possible sense to scout the surroundings, ears cocked for unexpected sounds, eyes scanning what there was of the horizon for any hint of vehicle lights or some poacher or wallaby-hunter’s spotlight. Almost wasted gestures, really; the risk of anyone wandering to this isolated spot even in daylight was remote enough. At night it was almost laughable. Still, the specialist took the time, expended the small, necessary effort. Carelessness has many faces, and succumbing to the lure of the bicycle would merely have been one of the obvious ones. Field-dressing the body had also contained a modicum of risk, but once done, on an isolated bush track far from usual human travels, the elements of risk disappeared virtually overnight. This part of the country teemed with Tasmanian Devils, truly world-class scavengers. By dawn, the specialist knew, there would be no sign of the gutting but a thrashed-up area where the devils had fought over the spoils. Once eviscerated, the human carcass does not significantly differ from that of any other large quadruped. Broken down in meatworks terms, there are forequarters, hind quarters, loins, shanks, and all the other cuts. But the specialist deviated from meatworks procedure in that only surgically-sharp knives were used to dismember the young woman’s body that graced the stainless steel table. And it was done, logically enough, with very deliberate precision. First the head, tidily separated at the base of the neck, then placed on a convenient shelf to oversee the rest of the operation with sightless, ice-green eyes that were partly shrouded by still-splendid, tumbling masses of wavy blonde hair framing a face of once-exceptional beauty. Then . . . Wrist and ankle joints first, then those of the knees and elbows, then the slightly more difficult shoulders. Each succumbed in its turn to the precision, and each was then placed, almost reverently, to one side as the butchery continued. When only the torso and thighs were left, the specialist paused to run sensitive fingers down the nubbled spine to the still-remaining soft hollows above the buttocks, admiring the sleek, soft texture of the pale skin there. No nude bather; this specimen’s tan paused where bike shorts had snugged the muscular buttocks. The muscle tone was splendid, clearly the result of years spent cycling. The woman’s passport, identifying her as one Hanne Larsen of Esbjerg, Denmark, revealed travels throughout Europe, North America, and northern Asia, and it was not difficult to believe she had done most of her traveling by bicycle. A great deal of travel for someone only twenty-two, and the specialist’s mind went walkabout to speculate about how many men had shared this muscular body in how many countries. Certainly more than a few; the Larsen girl’s bush had been pruned to a crisp shortness, edges carefully shaped to accentuate the labial lips. She had probably enjoyed all the sex, too. At the peak of physical fitness, far from home in what, to her, must have appeared exotic, romantic places. Yes, there would have been men. The speculation shifted up a gear to march into the dozens, then back to precision as a latex-clad finger slipped into the short-cropped fur for a final, suddenly exciting check. A virgin! Logic denied it; the firm pressure of an intact hymen against the finger shouted, “Yes . . . yes!” Both disappointed and exultant now, the specialist looked over the dismembered sections of Hanne Larsen with new interest, this time surveying the various joints with the calculating vision of a proper butcher. And a thought. What might they taste like . . . small medallions of tenderloin from close inside that spine? And could the rounded globes of that rump be properly slabbed into thick, succulent rump steaks with a crisping edge of fat to give just the right flavor? And how difficult might the skinning be? One thing to dismember a carcass, but skinning became an individual issue between species. A sheep, for instance, especially a youngish one, would yield its entire skin to a single knife-cut and a few well-place thumps of a fist on the inside, but a deer did not give up its hide so easily, and a ‘roo or wallaby was more difficult yet to separate from its soft pelt. But a human was more like a pig, the specialist mused, lips curving at a half-remembered written description of human flesh being termed, “long pig” by some totally forgotten cannibal tribe or another. That accepted, skinning became more a matter, then, of removing the rind just before cooking, or of slashing its edges and rubbing in salt and spices to make it crisp into crackling. The specialist’s eyes opened, fingers of one hand already reaching for the sharpest, most slender of the knives even as the other hand drew into focus one hip and thigh joint with the rounded knob of bone shining in the clean lamp-light. The deed was harder than the thought, but . . . do-able. It took a few tries, but the final one produced a perfectly acceptable butterfly chop, if one slightly different in shape to what would be produced from a real pig in a real butcher shop. The rump proved more difficult, and both buttocks were in one- and two-inch slabs before a suitable, really acceptable, rump steak could be displayed. The tenderloin was easy, once neatly removed from the surprisingly small lower ribs and the vertebrae. And with no skin to worry about, it sliced as neatly and easily as that of a deer, although the color was subtly different. More like pork tenderloin, which the specialist thought was somehow appropriate. And the speculation about the skinning proved correct, too, although more difficult to judge now that the carcass had already been dismembered. It might have been considerably easier with it all in one piece and hanging by its heels. That might be the way to go next time—a quick kill, swift evisceration, then immediate hanging to cool and stretch the muscles and sinews. The specialist thought there would be insufficient useful cuts of meat in the forequarters; like those of a wallaby or kangaroo they were relatively minor by comparison to the rest. But . . . perhaps a small shoulder roast? Not, it quickly became obvious, without a more traditional dismemberment, and probably the use of a meat saw, which offended the specialist’s sense of routine. It could be done, but . . . And the mind switched to the other problem, that of timing. Relatively exact temperature control was required for proper cooling and stabilization of such a large carcass, especially if the skin was to be left intact for later. And that might mean waiting until midwinter, which was far, far too long to wait. Besides, while the theoretical season for this sort of game was open and year-round, the easiest and best times were certainly the Australian summer months between November and April. These were the months when potential was enhanced by the burgeoning flocks of backpacker and bicycle tourists, who fled the snows and cold of North America and Northern Europe for the warmth and sun of Australia. The specialist’s mind had already begun speculating about the design and specifics of a mobile cool-room as the first trip began to dispose of bicycle and rider into the unknown depths of the abandoned mine-shaft not far from the shack and sheds that had, themselves, only just survived the abandonment. Essentially, it was a silent if prolonged operation, requiring surprisingly many trips from the dissection room and workshop. A few of the metal parts pinged once or twice off the sides of the shaft, but the meat and bones slid away to oblivion with a satisfactory silence. In no case could the sound of any actual landing be heard; the bottom was far, far below, where the shaft had encountered a natural fissure that extended God only knew how far below the plateau. And of course there were earlier disposals to cushion the landings. Last to be dropped were the woman’s personal effects: the purse, the traveling gear, the jewelry. The final cleanup, with brushes and brooms and lashings of pure rainwater from the tanks, took substantially longer. It was rising dawn when the specialist—not in the slightest bit sleepy—headed back down off the escarpment. The powerful four-wheel-drive slithered and scrambled and bounced, often leaning precipitously as it descended along the virtually trackless route down a usually dry creek bed, then eventually moved cautiously across an overgrown paddock to where junction with a minor bush track could be accomplished with hardly a trace of its passage. Once safely home in the large, federation-style house, resplendent with twelve-foot ceilings and far too large for one person living alone, the specialist plopped the tenderloin—the only cut to escape the mine shaft—straight from cooler to proper refrigerator. Then it was time to shower quickly and change for work. It was while the even white teeth were being flossed and brushed that the mind made the transition to Monday morning . . . with faint overlays of that evening’s anticipated filet mignon for tea—dinner, in North American terms. That thought provoked a brief interlude of futuristic planning, but it was only brief. First . . . today. A quick shopping trip would be needed, of course, but the croutons and fresh bacon could be got during lunch break, and it would be unthinkable to consider ruining a good filet with some jazzed-up sauce or another. The specialist wouldn’t do that to any good steak, much less this exquisite offering.
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