Bad Angels

by Rebecca Chance

  He beamed.

  ‘Directly below us is another apartment that I also own. It is smaller, of course, but it has four bedrooms, and a very nice living room with a big projector screen to show films. What I propose is that these charming girls – Valerie, Lori, and their lovely friends – should install themselves down there when the party up here begins, make themselves comfortable, watch perhaps some films to get them into a romantic mood—’ He gave the girls, who were all furnished with champagne by now, a large, theatrical wink.

  ‘ – and then my players will be able to visit them early in the evening, if they feel they can be discreet.’ He smiled in anticipation. ‘I will be screening White Christmas and It’s A Wonderful Life in the cinema, so they might be able to slip away if their family are settled in and distracted. I have had a staircase put in, of course, which gives access to the apartment below.’

  ‘What about you, Father Christmas?’ Lori asked saucily.

  ‘Will you be joining us downstairs?’

  Grigor looked genuinely horrified.

  ‘I will be screening White Christmas and It’s A Wonderful Life!’ he repeated, as if this were answer enough. He polished off the rest of his drink and shook his head in disappointment.

  Sergei rushed up to refill his boss’s glass.

  ‘We will have lots of food, lots of drink, lots of fun,’ Grigor continued, a little more subdued now, as Lori bit her lip in embarrassment at having made such a faux pas. ‘Gifts for the children, for everyone. And then, night will fall, the children must go home, the mothers must take them, the men stay on to party, and we all come upstairs for a nice get-together.’ ‘Some of the girls should put on a show,’ Diane said decisively. ‘Boys always like a show.’

  ‘A Christmas show!’ another girl said excitedly. ‘With naughty Christmas fairies! We can spank each other with our wands and wear all red and white – and Santa hats! I can get my wings out! Ooh, Diane, can I organise it?’

  ‘Course you can, Kesha,’ Diane said with a nod of approval.

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘Christmas fairies! How charming!’ Grigor’s smile was back, as big as before. ‘I love this idea!’

  He hooked his finger in the air to summon Kesha, who came over swiftly: taking her red-nailed hand, he kissed it with old-world courtesy.

  ‘I am very glad,’ he said pointedly to Lori, ‘that one of Diane’s young ladies fully understands and embraces the spirit of Christmas.’

  Dasha

  Grigor would have been extremely distressed to realise how little his estranged wife was, at that precise moment, embracing the spirit of Christmas. Dasha Khalovsky was sitting in a hired Rolls-Royce, being driven from Chelsea to Canary Wharf, smoking like a chimney: twin curls of vapour issued from each nostril every time she huffed out a breath. Dasha was the living exemplar of the dictum that rich men wanted their wives to dress like expensive Russian prostitutes; from her hair, bleached and dyed a colour of yellow never found in nature, to the leopard-skin stack-heeled stilettos that gave her an extra six inches of height, Dasha was a triumph of artifice. Her large, round, high, impossibly youthful breasts were of the kind known as ‘bolt-ons’, because they were so completely out of proportion with the rest of Dasha’s body, like a cantaloupe melon cut in half and stuck onto her with Krazy Glue.

  As far as the rest of her body went, however, Dasha was old-school. She didn’t bother with facial peels or micro dermabrasion; she simply airbrushed her complexion every morning, building up a layer of foundation that was as heavy as stage make-up and needed the same kind of industrial-strength cold cream to remove. Her narrow, Tartar eyes were heavily outlined in black pencil and fringed with layers of lash-building mascara, her thin lips equally outlined with brown lip pencil and filled in with pale pink gloss. Under her tightly belted Roberto Cavalli zebra-print pony skin coat, her body, though not overweight, was saggy. Dasha’s idea of exercise was chain-smoking and scheming; she wore her little pot belly like a mark of pride, considering that it symbolised the two children she had given her husband.

  Bastard, she thought viciously now, stubbing out one Sobranie Black Russian cigarette in the built-in ashtray and tapping out another from her antique Fabergé cigarette case, rose gold heavily decorated with yellow gold cartouche in swirling patterns, fastened with a cabochon sapphire. It had been a present from Grigor years ago, and Dasha had not been particularly happy with it. She didn’t like old things. She hadn’t set her sights on Grigor decades ago, hooked and landed him like a big fish, and then worked like hell by his side to make him one of the most successful businessmen in Russia, to end up with old things as gifts. Dasha liked things new and shiny and covered in diamonds: that was the new Russia. You made your money and you flaunted it. She had made such a scene that Grigor, shrugging in resignation, had told her how much it had cost, and Dasha had promptly fallen silent.

  Still, that’s the last old present he ever got me , she thought in satisfaction, flicking her Cartier lighter, firing up her fresh Sobranie. Dasha usually preferred American or British brands, but no one else made cigarettes like these, black with gold trim, strong and rich. Besides, everyone knows they’re expensive. Which is the most important thing of all.

  Dasha shifted restlessly on the leather seat, impatient to get to her destination. Leaning forward, she banged on the Plexiglas between her and the chauffeur with the back of her heavily ringed hand; it was as if she’d hit it with a knuckleduster. The chauffeur swiftly pressed the button to slide the panel down.

  ‘There’s an intercom, madam,’ he started. ‘You just press the button and—’

  ‘When do we get there?’ Dasha broke in; she was just as prone to interruptions as her husband. The new Russia, the Russia of the oligarchs, was in a perpetual hurry, eager to sweep any and all roadblocks out of its way, wanting instant gratification; its citizens had experienced so much deprivation for generations, seen their parents ground down underfoot by the system into bleak grey dust, and were determined not to let that happen to them. ‘We should be there by now!’

  The driver glanced quickly at his satnav under the peaked cap he was wearing.

  ‘Just a minute more, madam,’ he said nervously, as the Rolls swept with stately grace round a corner, past a series of glittering steel and glass buildings, and came to a halt outside a white-painted frontage which, unusually for the area, offered no floor-to-ceiling windows that would allow passers-by to see inside; instead, its windows were smaller and filled entirely with opaque white glass, allowing in light but no vision. The entrance door, grey-painted, had a small, brushed-steel panel beside it, with the lettering ‘Canary Clinic’ on it in the most discreet font imaginable. If you had to ask what it was, you shouldn’t be entering at all, because you certainly couldn’t afford it.

  ‘Wait,’ Dasha said economically as the driver opened the door for her. She hoicked up her tight Alaïa bandage skirt well over the knee, without which she wouldn’t have been able to move, and climbed out of the Rolls, smoothing the skirt down again.

  ‘I’ll keep circling, madam,’ the chauffeur said, as Dasha walked towards the Clinic door with a visible shrug; she had absolutely no interest in how a driver would manage to wait for her indefinitely on a street completely painted with double yellow lines.

  She hit the door buzzer with one terrifyingly pointed acrylic nail, varnished clotted-blood red, and didn’t take her finger off it until the door swung open. A nurse Dasha hadn’t seen before, square and pale in her white uniform, stood in the entrance: she opened her mouth to say something, but Dasha mowed her down, storming past her. Un-belting her coat, she slipped it off and threw it at the nurse.

  A Polack, she thought contemptuously, instantly identifying the nurse’s features. A lazy, stupid Polack.

  ‘I’m here for Dr Nassri,’ Dasha announced. ‘You’re expecting me.’

  ‘He has only just arrived himself to meet you, Mrs Khalovsky. I’ll see if he is ready,’ the nurse said politely, her accent c
onfirming Dasha’s analysis of her nationality.

  ‘It’s Madame,’ Dasha snapped. ‘Madame Khalovsky.’

  Russian aristocrats in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had spoken French to each other, rather than their native tongue, considering it a marker of their sophistication. Despite her solid petty bourgeois origins, Dasha had learned to parrot a little French, and insisted on being called ‘Madame’ for much the same reasons.

  ‘I’ll go straight through – I’m in a hurry,’ she added contemptuously; I don’t have time to wait around for a lazy Polack nurse to lumber back and forth. ‘He’s in his office, right?’ She nodded at her heavy pony skin coat, held in the nurse’s arms. ‘Hang that up, and stay the fuck out. This is private.’

  Without waiting for an answer, she strode down the white-tiled corridor, her metal-tipped spike heels clicking loudly on the floor, the beige bandage skirt constricting her movements; long practice enabled her to balance with enviable ease on a potentially slippery surface. The surgeon’s office was at the far end, its door closed, and Dasha threw it open with a dramatic slam, bouncing it into the wall and making a picture rattle on its hook.

  Hassan Nassri was standing with his back to the room, rummaging through a filing cabinet. He spun round, his heavy dark eyebrows drawing together in a frown.

  ‘Aniela! What on earth—’ he began in an angry voice. On seeing Dasha, however, he caught himself short.

  ‘Madame Khalovsky!’ he corrected himself, wrenching his mouth, with a visible effort, up into a smile. ‘A pleasure, as always! I’m not quite sure why you wanted to see me so urgently – the Clinic is closed until the New Year, as I told you on the phone – I hope it’s not some sort of medical emergency?’

  His eyes went to Dasha’s breasts, outlined in her tight gold-beaded sweater, whose clinging fabric left nothing to the imagination.

  ‘They look excellent,’ he observed, giving them a long, assessing stare that only a plastic surgeon could have got away with. ‘May I?’

  ‘Sure,’ Dasha said with another shrug, dumping her black and violet crocodile Birkin bag on his desk and fishing out her cigarette case. She actually disliked the Birkin; it was stiff, with sharp corners; she preferred a softer bag. But this one had been not only violently expensive, but limited-edition, which meant that women’s envious glances followed her constantly when she carried it. That, naturally, outweighed any minor objections she had to the style.

  She raised her arms as Dr Nassri came towards her, hands outstretched like a groping drunk on a dance floor, and carefully weighed her breasts in his palms, his fingertips reaching up the sides to feel for any scar tissue.

  ‘They feel very good,’ he said, nodding with professional satisfaction. ‘Absolutely even, the implants exactly where they should be. What are your issues?’ He looked, momentarily, wary. ‘You don’t want to go bigger, do you, Madame Khalovsky? I couldn’t honestly advise—’

  ‘Shit, no,’ Dasha said, lowering her arms and lighting a cigarette. ‘I can barely find clothes to fit over them as it is.’ She stuck the Sobranie in her mouth and cupped her breasts herself for a moment, contentedly, red-tipped nails flashing. ‘But I love them. They’re what I always wanted.’

  ‘Madame Khalovsky, this is a non-smoking facility,’ Hassan Nassri said nervously. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you to—’

  Dasha walked over to the open office door, slammed it shut, and turned around to look at the plastic surgeon, dragging on her cigarette with one hand, the other planted on her hip.

  ‘Also,’ he said, even more warily, ‘as a plastic surgeon, I can tell you that smoking is extremely damaging to the skin – you remember that I advised you that healing after your operation would be more problematic because smoking reduces your circulation—’

  His voice was tailing off, however, under Dasha’s implacable, black-ringed panda stare. Her spider-leg lashes flapped once, a long, slow, dismissive blink, as she watched him trail to a halt.

  ‘Why are you here, Madame Khalovsky?’ he asked. ‘If it isn’t anything urgent to do with your breast enlargement, why have you summoned me out of office hours?’

  Dasha took an equally slow inhale on her Sobranie, pinched shut her narrow lips, and exhaled the smoke through her nostrils, looking exactly like a dragon which had been reincarnated as a Russian oligarch’s wife.

  ‘I know what you get up to,’ she said flatly. ‘I know your dirty little secret.’

  Nassri might have been intimidated by Dasha’s money and power, but he was one of the best plastic surgeons in the world, and he knew it; clients flew from all over the globe to have him work on them, and paid through the nose for the privilege. He turned down a whole third of would-be patients who presented themselves in his office: his philosophy was that the ability to select patients correctly was equally as important as his ability to perform operations successfully. His patients had to be financially secure, and have realistic expectations of what the surgery could achieve. Some people had Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and would never be happy, no matter how much work they had done; others were physically unsuitable. Heavy smokers, people with congestive organ problems, whose lungs were too weak for a general anaesthetic, all of those were absolute no-nos – though it’s the ones you turn down who complain the most, Nassri thought wryly.

  No experienced doctor at Nassri’s level of professional expertise had difficulties dealing with conflict; a man who spent a large part of his day rejecting potential patients was not going to be bounced into any sudden response. He sat down behind his desk, swivelling his chair to face Dasha full-on, and steepled his fingers below his chin.

  ‘Madame Khalovsky,’ he said quietly, ‘anyone could say to anyone, frankly, that they knew their dirty little secret. It is a timeworn opening gambit, used, if you will permit me, by blackmailers hoping to provoke their victim into blurting something out. If you have anything more specific—’

  But, without taking her eyes from him, Dasha had stepped forward and pulled something out of her open bag. She tossed it contemptuously on the leather-topped desk.

  ‘Play it,’ she said laconically.

  It was a DVD in a plastic jewel case, its shiny pale blue surface unmarked by any handwritten label. Nassri shrugged, and said with a small smile:

  ‘Well, okay. I think I can acquit you of trying to give my computer a virus, Madame Khalovsky.’

  Unsnapping the case, he took out the DVD and slid it into the appropriate slot on his hard drive, pressing the return key when the prompt asked if he would like to play it. A couple of seconds later, the smile was wiped from his face as he stared at the image; filmed in black and white, but effectively rendered in flickering shades of grey, it was of a woman, lying on an operating table. She was clearly unconscious; her eyes were closed, her body slumped in an unmistakable attitude of total muscle relaxation. Beside her stood a man in a white coat and a disposable mask, which he was pulling down with gloved hands to hang around his neck by the elastic cord which had held it in place. The room was compact, its walls white-painted and blank; it looked not like an operating theatre, but a place for patients to recuperate.

  The man, his face exposed now, was clearly Dr Nassri. And now he took hold of the sheet that was covering the woman from the neck down and pulled it to just above her hips, exposing her breasts, huge and artificially rounded, the scar of very recent surgery clearly visible. He peeled off his gloves, one after the other, slowly, like a man performing part of an elaborate ritual, and began to unfasten the top button of his surgical coat.

  Sitting behind his desk, the colour draining from his face, leaving his smooth brown skin with an ashy tinge, Hassan Nassri shot his hand out to his keyboard in a compulsive gesture.

  Dasha’s voice cut him short, its edge diamond-sharp.

  ‘You don’t stop,’ she commanded, dragging on her cigarette. ‘You keep watching.’

  Sagging back in his chair, Nassri watched himself onscreen, his expression anguished. The Nassri wit
h the unconscious woman, however, looked serious, as if he were concentrating very hard on something: by now, he had unbuttoned his coat completely, and it hung open as his hands went to his belt, undid the buckle, and began to unzip his trousers...

  There was no sound coming from the computer’s speakers except a low fizz of static, no attempt to zoom in on the scene. It had clearly been recorded on a security camera positioned in the room. A faint moan was audible now, however; it was coming from Nassri, as he watched himself pull his penis through the slit in his boxers, lick his right palm, and start to pleasure himself as he stared down at the unconscious woman lying on the gurney below him. With the other hand, he reached out and touched her nipples, one after the other, back and forth, careful not to pull, or to do anything that might damage the surgery he had just performed; but, all too clearly, he was highly stimulated by what he had just created – the oversized, artificially round bosoms.

  He was rocking back on his heels now as his hand moved faster and faster on his cock. His eyes closed, his mouth dropped open, his head bobbed back and forth like the tip of his penis, which was just visible above the tight, stimulating wrap of his index finger and thumb on his shaft. A moment later, he was craning forward, his right hand bending, pointing his penis directly over the woman’s rounded stomach. The moans grew louder and louder: a second later, he yelled:

  ‘Look at those tits! I’m the best! I’m the king of tits!’