Alias Zodiac13

Alias Zodiac13

Mike always listened to his answering machine first thing in the morning. For some reason, all his phone-calls were at dead of night, as if the callers wanted to sabotage his beauty sleep. Listening to the messages – timed to last only sixty seconds; after that people had to phone again if they wanted to add something – had often spared him the effort of solving people’s problems for them. Sometimes they called again and screamed at him for not phoning back. Then he would tell them that he hadn’t listened to the messages yet. That usually took the wind out of their sails. And anyway, what had seemed like a mountain the previous evening usually turned out to be a molehill in the sharp morning light.
The machine made its usual electronic noises. There was – miracles do happen – only one message, but it upset his day before it had even started.
“Mike, this is Gilda. Pick the phone up, damn you…...I’ve got to talk to you. Meet me at the café at ten sharp tomorrow morning.”
Gilda was one of those annoying people who never give up once they get the bit between their teeth. It hadn’t taken Mike long to realise this, but by then they were living together and she was gradually taking over his life. Why had he let her do that?
“I was besotted by her,” he had told his pub cronies after she left. “I couldn’t make the decision to call it off, but she did.”
Gilda had waited until he was asleep one night, packed her things and left. No explanations No apologies. Not a dickybird.
“You didn’t give her what she needed,” someone suggested.
“If you mean sex, you’re wrong. We were perfectly compatible horizontally.” As Mike said that he wondered if it was true. “I have no idea why she left. Unless…”
Mike went over their final weeks together. Gilda had become introvert, pensive. That was totally out of character. She had put a new password on her notebook and he could no longer get into it. Her excuse was that someone at the press office had cottoned on to it and she wasn’t taking any chances. So why didn’t she tell him what it was?
“You don’t need it, do you, darling? The fewer people who know it, the better.”
Mike could think of no contra to that.
Apart from sending him a note after leaving to say that her brother Franco would call for the rest of her stuff, that had been the end of the relationship. Franco had duly turned up and carried away two huge sports-bags filled with clothing and shoes. While collecting Gilda’s things together Mike noticed that all her files and papers had already gone. You would have thought a woman would be more interested in her clothes. Not Gilda. In those final weeks she had spent whole nights in the study writing e-mails and printing documents he was never allowed to look at before she left the house next morning. He had once tried to steal a glance by forcing the briefcase open, but she had called out “Hands off, Mike!” as if she could see through the wall.
About three nights after the last traces of Gilda had been removed, Mike heard glass breaking downstairs. Someone uninvited was getting into the house. Stopping only to take his pistol out of the bedside table drawer and make sure it was loaded, Mike crept down the carpeted stairs and, sticking close to the wall, found the way into the living-room without turning on a light. The glass door onto the patio was wide open; its shattered glass was strewn over a wide area. Being bare-footed, Mike could not move nearer unhindered. He looked around for other signs of damage, but there were none. Then he looked at the large mirror over the marble fireplace. Still dripping down the glass was the word “Zodiac13”. It appeared to be written in blood. Or was it ketchup or lipstick? Mike examined it more closely. It was blood, and a sharp splitter of glass lying on the ledge below was obviously the tool used in the process. The outlines of the letters were etched into the glass.
Apart from the gruesome sight of all that blood, Mike was naturally puzzled by the message. He remembered Gilda’s preoccupation with horoscopes. In the old days he had often enough made fun of her for reading them, especially the ones on any online website purporting to tell the future.
“Can’t you live without that rubbish?” he had asked her many times.
“Can’t you just mind your own business?” she had usually snapped.
Now he knew that Gilda was writing horoscopes he felt no differently. He didn’t really take her seriously, even now.
Mike called the police before getting dressed hastily. He would have liked to do some investigating himself, but the police inspector and his assistant arrived before he had time.
“This is the fourth case we’ve had this week,” he explained. “We were hoping to get nearer solving the mystery by getting here double quick. How long is it since you heard the glass shattering?”
“It can’t be more than half an hour,” Mike explained.
“Well, don’t touch anything and leave the glass where it is. Our forensic experts will examine the bigger pieces for fingerprints, though it’s doubtful whether we’ll find any. We didn’t in the previous cases.”
The room and the patio buzzed with activity for several hours. The mirrors at the previous break-ins had also been smeared with blood and the message “Zodiac” followed by a number.
Mike chewed over the meeting he had had with Gilda. She had been distressed, even desperate, and had talked in riddles.
“There were 12 of them,” she had told him. “And now there are only eight. I’m terrified.”
“Eight what?” Mike had wanted to know.
“You know. Eight signs.”
“No, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to.”
But Gilda wasn’t going to stop now. She told him there was a society of 12 engaged in secret business deals. She did not know the nature of the deals, but could guess. They communicated by horoscope. When there was vital information to be passed on, coded messages would be published on a specific online horoscope page that she was, as liaison officer, editing according to instructions. For instance, if the message was “Sell all Acorn shares, it would be written as “Beware of falling oak trees.” Each of the twelve members of the society occupied a sign. None of them knew which sign someone else belonged to.
“Couldn’t they just send each other e-mails, or meet in the park or something?”
Mike decided it was no wonder that Gilda had gone off the deep end.
“No!” Gilda insisted. “That wouldn’t work. They were all supposed to remain anonymous. That’s why they employed me. Because I already had the horoscope blog and they decided that would be a perfect disguise. It had to be secretive, for obvious reasons.”
“The reasons aren’t obvious to me. It sounds more like Kiddies Own stuff,” Mike had scoffed.
“Well it isn’t. That’s why I left you. I had to go into hiding.”
Mike though it more likely that she was being treated for hallucinations, or had a new lover, or both. He’d heard some excuses in his time, but that took the biscuit.
Irritated by his own failure to enter into the spirit of things, he broke off their meeting as fast as he could, but not before Gilda had told him that Libra, Gemini, Pisces and Aquarius had been liquidated.
Now, three days later, with blood coagulating on his mirror, it began to dawn on Mike that Gilda might not have been fantasizing. If that was the case, then it was probable that the message on the mirror was meant for her. He decided to phone Franco and leave a message for her to phone him.
Only minutes later Gilda was on the phone.
“Can we meet?” he asked her.
“No. I can’t leave this place. It’s too dangerous.”
“I want you to see something.”
“What?”
“A message. I think it’s for you.”
“What kind of message?”
“One written in blood. Doesn’t that make you curious?”
“Curious is not the right word. Anyway, what does the message say?”
“Zodiac13.”
Gilda gasped and Mike instantly regretted having told her.
“What’s up, Gilda? Thinking of that parlour game again?”
“Gemini was 12 and Pisces was 9…..”
“Well, you’re only the negotiator. You told me you didn’t have a sign.”
“No. But that won’t stop them.”
“Stop who?”
“Them. The ones who gave me the code.”
“What code, for heaven’s sake?”
“Zodiac13.”
At that moment, Mike heard the headset bang against something. He heard gasps and thin cries for help.
Then there was silence.
The detective inspector found Mike still staring at the handset in his hand. It was issuing an engaged tone.
“Something the matter?” he asked Mike. “Something to do with this case?”
“Zodiac13 has just been liquidated,” Mike replied in a stony voice.
“I’ll get you a stiff drink,” the inspector offered. “You look as if you need one.”
But Mike’s thoughts were far away. He was wondering how he could tell that particular story without risking his own neck.

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