‘It’s not, you know, it’s not like here,’ and he waved a hand around to include the zebra-skin wallpaper, his new friends, the small brown vial on the coffee table. ‘It’s more like,’ and his face lit up as he remembered the word, ‘like a willage.’
Jed turned to McGowan. ‘Willage,’ he said.
McGowan tipped his head back. ‘He’s a long way from home.’
‘Maybe too far.’
Now McGowan turned to look at Jed and Jed saw his own face twice. ‘You don’t know how right you are.’
‘Don’t I?’
They stared at each other for another ten seconds, then McGowan smiled. There was nothing humorous or well-meaning about the smile. McGowan had simply chosen it from among a number of possible reactions.
‘You know something?’ Jed said. ‘I’ve never seen you without those glasses on.’
With one swift motion McGowan reached up, took the glasses off and tucked them in his pocket. His eyes seemed pinned wide open. Too much white. The irises looked oddly suspended.
Jed nodded. ‘Now I know why you wear those glasses.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘You’d frighten too many people with them off.’
McGowan liked that. He liked it so much that he decided to laugh. Jed laughed with him. He looked at Creed. Creed had just produced a pile of leather stuff and dumped it on the coffee table. Handcuffs, harnesses, ankle-holsters, studded chokers, and a mask with no eyes and a zip for a mouth.
‘Uh-oh,’ McGowan said.
Reaching forwards, Jed picked up a see-through zip-lock bag. Inside was an assembly of metal rings and leather straps. The label said THE FIVE GATES OF HELL. Five? Why five? he wondered. Wasn’t one enough? And then he put the bag back on the table.
Creed was showing some of the pieces to the tourist and explaining how they worked. His tone of voice objective, dispassionate, as if they were kitchen implements or gardening devices. Then, without altering his voice, he picked the handcuffs up, snapped them on the tourist’s wrists, and flipped the key through the air to McGowan.
‘Uh-oh,’ McGowan said again.
‘Hey,’ the tourist said, ‘you guys are choking, right?’
Creed didn’t appear to have heard. He was looking at McGowan.
‘Choking,’ McGowan said. ‘We’re choking.’
‘Hey, come on, you guys,’ the tourist said. ‘Get me out of this, OK?’
McGowan reached out and picked up the mask. He dangled it from one finger, swung it slowly backwards and forwards in front of the tourist’s eyes. ‘Only if you put this on.’
Creed was nodding.
The tourist was well built, stronger possibly than either Creed or McGowan, but there was a pleading look in his eyes now, like a dog that knows it’s going to be kicked. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I put this on.’
Jed left the room to go to the bathroom.
When he returned, the lounge was empty. He walked down the hall and stopped by a door. Through the crack he saw McGowan holding the tourist down on a bed. The tourist was lying on his stomach, his face twisted to one side. He was naked, except for the mask. McGowan had a gun in his hand and he was pushing the muzzle through the zipper and into the tourist’s mouth. Creed sat on a chair by the window, gloved hands in his lap, one wrist resting on the other. His face had switched to automatic. He looked up and saw Jed standing in the doorway.
‘Want some?’
The tourist might’ve been cake. Jed shook his head.
Creed smiled. Not so much a smile, perhaps, as a slackening around his mouth.
‘That guy,’ and Jed nodded at McGowan, ‘he’s a psychopath.’
‘But he’s loyal,’ Creed said. ‘He’s very loyal.’
Jed turned. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Suddenly Creed was standing next to him. So suddenly that Jed jumped. He wasn’t sure how Creed had covered the distance between the window and the door.
Creed slapped Jed on the shoulder, a gesture straight out of the boardroom. ‘Get some sleep. I don’t need you till eleven.’
It was seven-thirty when Jed climbed back into bed. Sharon was still asleep. There was shine in the wings of her nose. Her breath came in puffs, ruffling her top lip. He lay down under the single sheet and closed his eyes. Sleep slipped through his fingers. His body itched where the cotton touched it. He had to keep scratching. Always a different place.
‘Where’ve you been?’
His cock tightened at the sound of her voice. ‘I had to drive somewhere.’
‘What time is it?’
‘I don’t know. Eight.’
‘Christ.’ Both her eyes were still shut. One dark breast spilled sideways across the sheet.
He bent down. Bit the wide nipple. Tugged on that glossy skin until her eyes stretched wide and her chin tipped back. He slid between her legs.
She pushed a hand down. ‘I’ve got my period.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
But she twisted round and took him in her dusty hands, he felt the blood pump past her fingers. He heard a clock strike eight. And closed his eyes. Soft shapes colliding, exploding. One colour bled into another. Like bacteria. Her mouth round him now, her teeth grazing that tight skin. Her back so hot, and slick as ice. Their sweat pooling on the sheet. And then the slow ink spreading outwards and the wheels turning and a voice, it was Vasco’s, warning him. He must record. He must record again. To protect himself. To lay himself open. To what? From what? Which rat leaves which ship. That slow ink again. His vision flickering, black round the edges, gaps in the tape. Loyalty and silence. Two wheels, round and round, he couldn’t take his eyes away, and this time it’d be like worship, I dreamed that we were made of gold, he’d seen too much, his eyes were gold, they’d have to melt them down. Turn the clock back. Tell an old truth. Lie. Truth. Maybe it had been like worship then, worship that begins in love and dovetails neatly into hate. Bacteria and radios. Zebra walls. Leather masks and foreign names. Moscow. Brussels. Ollie. Vasco. Vasco? He called out, but the bus had gone. He was alone. Those five gates of hell, he’d be put through every single one of them. Would he? He couldn’t see round the next bend, he must record, tapes were periscopes, his only chance, and the slow ink stolen and the wheels turning, and everything remembered, everything proved, he was whispering now, ‘Why five,’ he was whispering, ‘isn’t one enough?’ and a voice came back, a woman’s, Sharon’s, ‘One what?’
Teethmarks
Nathan called Dad long-distance from Seaview Lodge. He didn’t say anything about the letter that Harriet had written him. In fact, he didn’t mention Harriet at all. He just said he was thinking of coming home for a couple of days, if that was all right.
‘Is that all you can manage?’ Dad said. ‘A couple of days?’
‘I’m working, Dad.’
‘Well, try and get here early. I go to bed at nine.’
He took the train down, even though it was twenty-six hours. He wanted to know exactly how far he’d come. He wanted the distance to count. They were held up just north of the city, repairs on the line, and by the time he reached the house on Mahogany Drive it wasn’t early any more, it was after midnight. He tried the front door. It was locked. He tried the french windows. They were locked too. He checked the other windows, knowing at the same time that it was pointless. Dad had always been fanatical about security at night; he even bolted the inside doors. Three years away, all those miles, and now he couldn’t get in. He had to laugh. But it wasn’t funny, not really.
When his laughter had gone, he realised that something was different: lights were showing in the windows. In any other house this would’ve been normal, but in theirs it was eerie, unnatural. Dad worried about electricity, how dangerous it was. He never went to bed without making sure that every single appliance had been switched off. He couldn’t sleep if he thought there might be a plug in a socket somewhere. He was always having visions of the house catching fire at night. All this light spilling on to the driveway, it just wasn’t like him. It was asking for it. Nathan’s heart began to jump. Suppose something had happened. Maybe that was why Dad wasn’t answering. He knocked on the door, but much harder now. And he was calling too. ‘Dad? Dad?’