Deadly Sins

by Laura Read

  ‘I don’t believe you. You attacked her. You made that fucking deal with her the other night and –’

  Vincent slammed Sean against the wall. He pressed into Sean’s injuries and made him cry out in pain. ‘It wasn’t me, detective. Get that into your thick head. Why the hell would I rape her? Why the fuck would I want to do that? Stop sticking your nose into things that don’t concern you. Go back home to your shitty little apartment. I’ll see you at the club tomorrow – unfortunately we’ll need more security because right now we’re at war.’

  He let Sean go and bent down to pick up Angela’s belongings. Sean didn’t retaliate, even though he wanted to because he knew in his gut that Vincent had attacked Angela. He couldn’t prove it though, and he couldn’t win a fight with the wounds Vincent gave him the other night. He felt powerless.

  Vincent threw open the gate and slammed it shut again, walking back to the club’s entrance. He started to wonder whether it was possible to frame Webster for Dominic’s murder as well as the assault on Angela. Sean actually might prove useful: he could plant false evidence – hair or something – suggesting that Webster was Dominic’s killer. Then Sean’s investigation would be over and he’d disappear, perhaps leave town for good, and he’d stop lusting after Angela.

  Vincent frowned and slowed down when he saw a black suitcase positioned next to the doors. A bright yellow piece of paper was stuck to the side of the case, which said, ‘I believe this belongs to you.’

  ‘Tony?’ Vincent yelled, looking around for his man who should have been on the door.

  He noticed Leon’s car parked next to the entrance, so presumably Tony had gone back into the club to help Leon with Angela.

  ‘What?’ Tony asked, coming out of the security office with Leon and Angela following him.

  ‘Here,’ Vincent said to Angela, handing over her coat and bag, hoping no one thought it looked suspicious. ‘They were near the alley.’

  Angela looked at him gratefully, hoping Leon wouldn’t question why she didn’t have her belongings with her.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Vincent asked Tony, pointing to the case. ‘Why weren’t you on the door?’

  ‘Shit. Sorry, Vince. I was helping Leon. I don’t know what that is.’

  Vincent was curious and went over to unzip the suitcase. A repulsive stench rose from the case as he crouched down and worked the zip open around the edge. He prised it open to find body parts inside, caked in dark, thick blood: limbs hacked off a man’s torso and a grotesque head with the eyes carved out lying on top. Vincent recognised that it was Marcus, the snitch from Webster’s club.

  He quickly zipped up the case again, looking around to see whether anyone else had seen the contents. He couldn’t see Sean lurking down the street; hopefully the detective had gone home. He smiled to himself, hiding his grin before standing up to announce that Webster must have killed Marcus. Webster had just provided Leon with more ammunition to kill his former partner.

  10

  Shatter

  Love and life are poured out: shots into a glass, consumed too quickly, spirit warming the back of the throat. From a careless hand a glass slipped off the counter, falling through fingers in slow motion. The glass descended; dismay and trepidation filled the stranger’s heart. If time could stand still, the vessel would be saved, remaining whole and unchanged. Yet the glass shattered when it hit the ground.

  Angela turned her gaze to the scarlet cocktail she idly stirred with a thin black mixer, her thoughts lost in an alcoholic smog, mixed emotions swirling in a whirlpool of intoxication. For countless days, she’d drowned her memories and fears with drink, disguised her bruised body and mind, and once more adopted her steel coat of apathy. Her face held a certain sadness, an aura of desolation. She felt as if everyone judged her for being weak; they secretly stared at her with pity in their eyes.

  She let go of the mixer and watched it spin around her glass, a seemingly autonomous entity swimming through a blood-red ocean. Alone on her side of the bar, she sat perched on a barstool cushioned with red leather, the music in the upper floor of Febrile drowning everyone else out. The bar was encased in translucent glass through which lights shone up into the wraith-like faces of lost individuals, all seeking answers to life’s questions at the bottom of their glasses.

  Coming out of her stupor, she glanced at the clock behind the bar, noticing the hands were as disoriented as her head. The numbers those metal hands reached out for in order to capture time were invisible ghosts, had been removed, their presence an impression as opposed to a perception. She guessed it was about quarter to three and turned her head towards the dance floor to gain confirmation.

  The crowd was thinning but still large, bathed in red flashing lights: an ocean of flailing limbs. She watched strangers dancing without a care, closing their eyes to the problems they faced in the world outside, their forms smothered in a humid mist of body heat rising up from the lowered level of the dance floor. Two pairs of steel steps led people down to the dark pit where lights, silhouettes and movement intermixed, rapidly changing illusions reflected in the mirrored walls.

  Her eyes scanned the room, over the heads of the dancing crimson waves, and settled on the two men in the distance guarding the doors. Security had been tightened in the club during the last fortnight. Webster managed to evade those sent to kill him and no one knew where he was hiding, not even the police who were looking for him in relation to Dominic’s murder.

  The guards blended into the dark walls like shadows awaiting animation, watching and waiting, ready to spring to life. Seemingly neither man drew breath, both pairs of eyes resolute, scrutinising the crowd. Vincent’s watchful eyes were the darkest: sinister pupils swimming in dusky irises, dark in contrast with his ghostly face, violent soul imprisoned beneath. Sean’s blue eyes conveyed his doubts and anxieties, and his underlying need for something more.

  His eyes met Angela’s across the room and she felt her heart leap. She held his gaze, neither wanting to be the first to break the strange spell that they’d cast together. She wondered whether she’d fallen for him and whether he felt the same way about her. How long would their relationship last though, if they acted on their feelings?

  They looked away at the same time, Sean to scan the room once more and Angela to look down into the depths of her drink, the confusion about her feelings for Sean unnerving her. They hadn’t spoken in days, although Angela kept questioning whether she owed Sean the truth.

  She would never be able to trust him though. She had been taught since childhood that the police were the enemy; they didn’t let people live the life that they wanted and it wasn’t in their nature to be honest. If she placed her faith in Sean, it would only hurt her later when she discovered that he dealt in lies.

  Yet not trusting anyone caused her to hold back from having a relationship. Was trust something that she needed to look beyond so she could discover love? She was tired of perpetually living in a world where only lust existed, not knowing how lust and love could coincide.

  Again she looked up from her drink towards Sean, weighing up the possibility that there might be something between them, more than just sex. She knew that soon he would disappear: leave town, be killed, or imprisoned if the police learned of his treachery. Confusion and ambivalence clouded her mind. She didn’t want to think about Sean or have emotions invading her head. If only for one more night, she needed to lose herself completely and continue to forget her world.

  She picked out the black mixer from her cocktail then picked up her glass. Closing her eyes, she drained the drink and placed the empty glass down on the bar. She imagined she felt the fluid travel down her throat and filter through her body, so she could arrive at that final stage of drunkenness where her limbs became numb and she felt like she was floating; where she perceived everything as if she knew exactly what would happen next, although she was powerless to change the future.

  She stepped off her barstool and pretended that she glided towar
ds the dance floor, sliding her hand along the length of the chrome handrail as she descended the steps. In the back of her mind she told herself that she didn’t care what she felt for Sean and she shouldn’t believe that he had feelings for her. Right now, all she wanted was to forget her surroundings, feel hollow of all feeling and revel in the ecstasy enhanced by her last cocktail.

  Soundwaves carrying from the speakers swam over her body, immersing her in their vibrations. Her long hair danced across her shoulders as she wove in and out of the mass of dancing bodies to seek a space enclosed by the warmth of strangers. Her altered mind suggested that she could float across the floor embraced by endless bass, perhaps until death seized her soul from the musical haze and her limp body fell to the ground never to move again.

  She stopped in the middle of the crowd and a man turned around to face her, smiling enticingly. He was taller than her with tanned skin and dark hair curling to the nape of his neck. His unbuttoned chocolate shirt exposed a smooth expanse of lightly freckled skin.

  She stepped in closer to him and he slid his hands over her shoulders and down her back to rest on her hips. In unity, her hands traced up his back until her fingertips rested on his shoulders. She leaned in to press her lips against his neck, breathing in his warm spicy musk.

  She watched Sean’s reaction over the stranger’s shoulder. She couldn’t deny that she wanted him any longer; he stirred emotions in her heart that she’d never felt. From his reaction, she knew he had feelings for her too: hurt briefly filled his eyes before he looked away, pretending he hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. It felt strange to have him watch her performance, but she wanted to find a way to bring him closer to her. Maybe hurting him would make him jealous, and he would realise that he wanted to be with her.

  She leant back to stare into the stranger’s eyes before kissing him, tongue penetrating his mouth to taste him. His arms encircled her, trapping her in their depths. She quietly moaned as he bit down on her bottom lip. They moved in time to the music, bodies swaying in unison. When she was able to look up again and see the effect her performance had on Sean, he was no longer standing next to the doors.

  ‘Do you want to get out of here?’ the stranger yelled in her ear.

  Angela stopped searching for Sean and turned back to the man, her mind swimming back from the depths of fantasy to focus on reality. ‘I need to get my coat. I’ll meet you outside,’ she told him.

  The stranger kissed her in parting then disappeared, making his way through the haze of body heat and black dancing shapes. She stood in the middle of the dance floor, dizzy, thinking about the endless unknowns of sleeping with strangers.

  Were all the men she’d slept with just as lost as she was, searching for something, replacing the missing pieces of their hearts with sexual fulfilment? Were they searching for love, comfort, intimacy, a relationship, friendship, perhaps looking to escape and indulge for one night, or seeking a brief conquest? Or were their motives more complex, as her thoughts and actions were?

  She watched the dancing crowd, invisible intentions, conclusions and consequences twisting their way around the room, interweaving and strangling the minds of the discontent: those who wanted to be elsewhere, who played with others’ minds, searching for ways in which to be happy. The unseen strings of fate avoided those who were content, who danced with happiness enveloping them. She envied those joyful few, those who remained blissfully ignorant of the horrors of humankind.

  Her dark thoughts wove tightly around her angst-ridden body, thorns of her past cutting in deeper. In the last few days she kept thinking about how she was sick of her decadent family, how they chased power and made blood sacrifices to get what they wanted, and how she suffered because of them. She hated them instigating violence to take what they wanted. She despised the lovers she’d taken and the men who abused her. Her heart was blemished, black with cloying sorrow, dying in a secluded plot where the sun didn’t shine and life didn’t grow.

  A man dressed in black walked towards her, his features worn and cold, hair bleached, footsteps resolute as he wove through the crowd. As he reached inside his jacket, she noticed a spider etched in black ink on his wrist. She realised too late that it was Webster, who aimed the gun firmly gripped in his hand directly at her.

  Sean watched Angela down drink after drink, then as she consumed another man’s appetite. He’d heard rumours about her sexual cravings, but he hadn’t been sure whether to believe them before tonight. There was no sign of desperation in her eyes; instead they filled with an unspoken longing, and possessing another man didn’t seem shameful to her.

  The stranger swathed himself around her like rich material, giving up control to her as if he had no life of his own. He was a parasite desperately clinging to her.

  Perhaps she embraced him to regain some semblance of power? Her hands snaked around his frame before she kissed her prey’s neck, her dark eyes focused on Sean’s while her mouth devoured the stranger’s warm flesh.

  Sean looked away from the sight, not sure exactly how he felt – maybe slightly aroused but entirely uncomfortable watching the display. As he glanced away, he caught sight of a tall man entering the room, who skirted the edge of the dance floor and scanned people’s faces: searching for someone.

  He seemed out of place with bleached hair and a tailored pinstripe suit. Imprinted on his wrist and trailing across his hand was a spiralling tattoo: a spider with its legs woven across an expansive black web. Sean gestured to Vincent, realising who the man was, but Vincent had already seen him and was shouting into his earpiece to warn the rest of his men.

  Sean ran onto the dance floor, watching Webster as he strode down the steel steps towards Angela, his eyes wide and transfixed by her. The mass of people too thick to circumvent, Sean struggled through the crowd, shouting at people to get out the way. He passed Angela’s seduced stranger calmly heading towards the exit; the man stank of cheap cologne and sweat.

  Sean’s still-injured limbs and torso were battered by bodies as he shoved people aside, dividing couples and groups of friends. Finally he reached Angela, who was staring straight at Webster and his raised gun. She looked at Webster with empty eyes, her body still, resigned to her fate, accepting what was to come.

  She seemed like a stranger to Sean. When they first met, she was confident and passionate; now her eyes were full of sadness and suffering. Perhaps she rescued him for the price of losing herself: the consequences of saving him had broken her. He wished that he could save her, from the intended bullet and from her blackened heart.

  The gun fired, heard but unseen in the darkness of the club’s pit. Sean’s body slammed into Angela’s side and they fell in what seemed like slow motion, silhouettes either side of them running and screaming, the blinding red lights continuing to flicker across the shadowy floor.

  Sean rolled on top of Angela to protect her life with his. They were too numb from shock to sense whether they were in any pain. A second shot rang out in the dim of the room and the glass wall behind them shattered into a thousand shards, which dispersed around their bodies. Further screams ensued as two more shots were fired, the screaming louder this time.

  The room became deathly quiet, the speakers silent. Angela and Sean turned to see Vincent with a gun in his hand standing over a collapsed body on the steel steps. Blood trickled down Webster’s face onto the stairs, his limbs splayed awkwardly in his graceless fall.

  ‘Thank you,’ Angela mouthed to Sean.

  Sean turned back to her, watching her eyes fill with tears as she shed the fears that she’d tried to suppress for days, waiting to hear that the man she’d marked to be killed was finally dead. She looked destroyed, her previous confidence obsolete.

  Sean didn’t understand the meaning behind her tears, but he longed to understand her sadness, to ask her what she felt, to console her without worrying about who was watching. He could sense that Vincent was looking at them, and he moved to help Angela off the ground. As his hand gripped hers to p
ull her up he recognised that as once she had saved his life, now he had saved hers too.

  He knew that he’d fallen for her. He’d leave town in a few weeks though, and he couldn’t afford to lose everything he’d worked so hard for over the last couple of years. He wanted to say something to her, but experience told him to suppress his feelings. The last time he trusted a woman, she’d crushed him and he lost everything. He couldn’t risk being vulnerable again.

  Angela frowned when she felt Sean pull away from her, a cold distance appearing between them once more. She let her concern fade when Vincent walked towards them, hoping she could sober up and adopt the solemnity appropriate for the aftermath of Webster’s murder.

  Vincent went straight to business, not voicing concern for their wellbeing. ‘Sean, call up your friends. Just tell them the facts and that I acted in self-defence. Don’t tell them what happened a fortnight ago. Tell them that you’ve no idea why he was shooting at people.’ He paused. ‘I’ll call Leon...’ Then he looked at Angela. ‘Try to sober up for when the cops question you. Shut yourself up in an office and I’ll fetch you when the cops get here. Hopefully no one will remember who Webster was shooting at...’

  Sean headed towards the offices, dialling a number on his phone, but Vincent grabbed Angela’s arm when she went to follow him.

  ‘Stay away from him,’ he said under his breath. ‘He’s a cop; you can’t trust him. Stop looking at him like he’s forbidden fruit.’

  Angela glared at him and tugged her arm out from his grip. She said nothing, choosing to walk away instead, not knowing what to say. She didn’t want to promise that she’d keep her distance from Sean; she was somehow attached and she couldn’t escape from the way in which she was drawn to him.

  A couple of girls standing in the corridor stared at her as she walked past, and she looked away from them, glaring down at the scraped laminate floor. She needed another drink.