This stank of a cover-up by people who had an interest in not letting the public know how Sonja Kerensky had died. If the girl he had spoken to – and he had to assume it was Teresa Monk – was right about Sonja’s death, a certain Mr Meredith Parry-Evans was in line to answer a whole lot of difficult questions. That is, if the truth ever came out.
And Andreas Hunt was out to make sure that it did.
On his way out, he rang Parry-Evans’s private secretary at the House of Commons. He was ‘out of the country on a trade mission, and won’t be back for some time.’ Very convenient.
Hunt scooped up the scrap of paper with Sonja Kerensky’s address on it, and pushed his way through the swing doors, whistling with a savage glee. Andreas Hunt was on the case.
There was a pimply constable standing outside the entrance to the block of flats where Kerensky had lived, but that didn’t pose much of a problem to Hunt, whose youth had been thoroughly mis-spent. He simply went round the back, and got in through the boiler room and up the back stairs to the fourth floor. Getting into the flat was a bit harder, but the month he’d spent in prison for refusing to pay a fine hadn’t been wasted after all. You met some very useful people inside.
The door swung open with an eerie creak, reminding Hunt of the sound doors make in Hammer horror flicks when Igor invites the victim into Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory. But Hunt was in no mood for macabre jokes as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He walked through the living room and towards the bedroom, scanning the scene: it was like a dress-rehearsal for Armageddon. Furniture overturned, the curtains torn down from the rail, papers knocked off a table and scattered like dead leaves on the forest floor.
He wrapped the handkerchief around his hand (you couldn’t be too careful about leaving fingerprints) and turned the handle of the bedroom door.
Oh my God, screamed a voice inside Hunt’s usually cynical brain.
There was blood everywhere: on the bed-sheets, the floor, in a big dried-up pool on the carpet, surrounded by a white chalk mark the boys from Forensic had drawn to remind them of the position of the body. It had even fountained up the wall at one point, and there were two bloody palm-prints smeared down the Laura Ashley wallpaper, as though the dying girl had tried to claw herself to her feet before finally collapsing on the floor. The windows were tight shut, and the air was full of the nauseating, metallic stench of blood.
He took several deep breaths – he didn’t dare throw up, not here – and wondered where to start looking. What was he looking for anyway? He was no private investigator. But maybe . . . an address, a bit of paper with something meaningful written on it, a name . . . the address of Teresa Monk. He felt guilty about her: he was convinced she was dead, or worse – perhaps he should have contacted the police instead of taking matters into his own hands . . .
He rummaged in his jacket pocket and found the newpaper cutting. He smoothed it out and took another long, hard look at the photograph of Sonja Kerensky. ‘Vice-girl found slain.’ She’d certainly been a remarkable-looking woman: masses and masses of bright blonde curls hanging to the waist; huge, pale-coloured eyes with blonde lashes; creamy skin . . . The photograph was an old publicity shot from the days when Sonja had had a ‘respectable’ job as a photographic model. Even so, she was wearing nothing but a smile – still, it was a tasteful shot: she was lying face-down on a bearskin rug, just like one of those baby pictures only much, much sexier.
She was laughing into the camera and her knees were bent so that her feet kicked merrily in the air above her toothsome backside, dimpled and plump to just the right degree. Her nipples were hidden in the soft fur, but she was propping herself up on one elbow, so that her breasts hung down and Hunt could see that they were soft but firm, creamy-white and flawless. Her other hand was pushing her mane of golden curls seductively back from her long, slender neck.
An irresistible picture of her, rolling over on to her back, giggling and pulling him on top of her, leapt unbidden into Hunt’s guilty mind. He felt extremely uncomfortable, having impure thoughts about this poor woman who had just been horribly murdered, and yet . . . to look into that face was to feel sex surge through his helpless body; to gaze upon those breasts, those gently curving buttocks, was to feel the prick rearing inside his pants, nudging its head against the underside of his waistband, demanding release.
He was still looking at the photograph when a soft, sexy voice behind him spoke his name:
‘Andreas Hunt . . .’
His heart was in his mouth as he turned on his heel to confront his discoverer, a plausible excuse already forming in his devious journalistic brain.
But he wasn’t ready for this. No, not this.
Could Sonja Kerensky have had a twin sister? He knew in his heart that she hadn’t. He’d read the cuttings. She was an orphan, no brothers and sisters, no family at all. Alone in the world. And now she was dead. Stone dead, with not a drop of blood left inside her poor drained corpse.
And that self-same girl was standing in front of him, smiling and beckoning him towards her.
‘I . . . who . . .?’
‘I think you know who I am, Mr Hunt. My name is Sonja. Sonja Kerensky. I like you, Mr Hunt, and I think you like me too. Would you like to have sex with me? I won’t charge you for it. I never make my men pay if they can satisfy me sexually. And you can satisfy me, can’t you, Andreas?’
Her voice was like the distilled essence of pure sex, charming his too-willing prick as an Arab charms the deadly cobra with sweet, deceptive music. Hunt knew that this was ridiculous, horrible, macabre. He knew it had to be some sort of trick. Dead women don’t just get up off their slabs in the morgue and come back to their apartments to seduce the first man who happens along. Dead women don’t walk. And dead women don’t smile at you and unzip your flies and pull out your prick and begin to suck it, to suck it like an angel . . .
He was speechless with mingled fear and excitement. Only moments before, he’d been paralysed with nausea at the thought of what had happened to this girl. He was still paralysed, but for a very different reason. He looked down at the girl as she knelt before him fellating him and wondered, wondered how this could be happening to him.
He stared at her, touched her hair, caressed the smoothness of her white neck – and it was all real solid flesh. A little cool, perhaps, and clammy – like the flesh of a small child fresh from bathing in the sea on a summer’s afternoon. But real breathing flesh, none the less. The natural gold of her hair gleamed in the autumn sunlight filtering through the Venetian blinds, and he thought of the dulled eyes and matted hair of death, the blood; and the last foetid breath that belches from the corpse as it is lifted into the coffin.
And he thought to himself: how can this be death?
The girl was sucking away enthusiastically at his rigid tool, and he took her small white hands and placed them on his balls, showing her what he wanted her to do. She looked up at him and gave him a look of gratitude as she began to massage the two ripening fruits between his legs. The coolness of her hands and mouth seemed to soothe away the heat from his burning prick and balls; and yet he could feel his excitement growing, feel his reason ebbing away, his willpower draining out of him. He was now her prisoner, utterly – and he no longer cared. He wanted nothing more than to live within the pleasure-palace of her body.
He felt the pressure of her lips tightening about his prick, urging him on to orgasm; felt the incredibly sharp points of her teeth sliding over his hypersensitive glans; but he didn’t care what she did to him: he just wanted it to go on and never ever stop.
The sound of footsteps in the living-room came too late for Hunt to pull out of the girl’s mouth and make himself decent. And so, when the door opened a second later, his prick was still firmly lodged between her soft pink lips.
Hunt gazed into the eyes of three detective constables and wondered how the Hell he was going to explain why he was indulging in oral sex with a dead woman in the middle of her blood-spa
ttered bedroom.
Except, of course, that all they could see was a mad journalist, standing on his own in the middle of the room, his erect prick thrusting obscenely out of the front of his trousers.
When Hunt got home from the police station, he thanked his lucky stars for friends in high places (that was one less favour he’d be able to call on in the future) and for the deplorable and very fortunate fact that all three detective constables had been drinking heavily and couldn’t swear on oath to what they had seen. He only hoped the story didn’t get back to the editor, who would be bound to start making pointed remarks again about ‘nervous exhaustion’ and ‘overwork’ – which was a polite way of saying that he thought Hunt was about to fall off his trolley.
Perhaps the editor was right. Perhaps he really was inventing all these bizarre incidents in his own, increasingly nutty, brain. Perhaps Sonja Kerensky had just been an hallucination. Perhaps he ought to forget about Cheviot and Parry-Evans and take a holiday. A sun-kissed beach and Mara’s nut-brown nakedness within arm’s reach . . . it sounded better and better, the more he thought about it.
Mara was in the bath, looking irresistible as ever and drinking Bollinger champagne out of a cracked tooth-mug.
‘What’s the celebration?’ he asked, sliding a hand under the bubbles and toying with her right nipple.
‘I’ve got the chance of a publishing deal!’ she giggled, unbuttoning his shirt and caressing his chest with a soapy hand. ‘A book on the power of crystals, for a new occult publisher. Maybe even a video to accompany it! Isn’t it great?’
Hunt began to undo his belt.
‘Yeah, great. But . . . why crystals?’
‘They contain a very powerful psychic force, you know. They can heal or harm, or tell the future . . . I’ve become very interested in them over the last few months. Anyhow this publishing company up in Chester rang me today. Seems they’ve heard of my reputation as a psychic, and wondered if I might be interested in writing for them. I haven’t signed up yet but I’m so excited! Funny thing is, I’ve never heard of the company. But who cares? Come on, have some champagne and climb in!’
Hunt wondered why the hair was standing up on the back of his neck; but he banished the feeling from his mind and kicked off his shoes, socks and underpants, leaping into the foaming water with such gusto that a tidal wave sloshed over the side and left a soapy pool on the bathroom floor.
Sitting at the opposite end of the bath from Mara, Hunt picked up the soap and began to rub it over her tits, lathering them until they almost disappeared under the bubbles, save for the pert pink nipples which protruded through the foam like the pink snouts of baby animals. She sighed with pleasure and retaliated by reaching under the water and playing with his cock. It responded in an instant to her familiar touch, growing and hardening between her gently teasing fingers.
Overcome by lust, Hunt lunged at Mara and fell on top of her, almost pushing her under the surface. Giggling like children, they struggled in the water until at last Hunt’s superior strength won the day and his prick slid into Mara’s slippery cunt like a warm knife into butter.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad day, after all.
After they had eaten, they drank a little more champagne and switched on the TV. More boring news about the EC, plans for a UN peacekeeping force in some Godforsaken banana republic, nothing worth listening to. Until the last item, which made Hunt prick up his ears and shush Mara into indignant silence.
‘A bizarre incident occurred before this afternoon’s Under-twenty-one international at Wembley,’ began the announcer, ‘when a naked woman ran on to the pitch and attacked Wayne Empson, the England captain. She attempted to bite his neck before being apprehended by police. She appeared in court later this afternoon and has been remanded in custody pending psychiatric reports.’
The naked girl being led away turned her face momentarily towards the camera, and Hunt almost dropped his glass of champagne.
He was looking into the face of Anastasia Dubois.
The chapel at Longton Grange women’s open prison was not usually a popular haunt for the inmates. Sunday morning service generally found ten or fifteen women in a chapel designed for two or three hundred: four or five of these would be prison officers, and most of the rest were only there because there was sod all else to do on a Sunday morning.
Under such trying circumstances, the job of prison chaplain was not an easy one. The Reverend Neil McCallister was an earnest, grey-haired man who regarded the prison chaplaincy as a vocation, if not a penance. Apart from anything else, it wasn’t easy being the only man in a prison full of sex-starved women. If suffering was good for the soul, his place in Heaven was assured.
Preparing for Sunday morning service could easily have been a depressing experience, but Neil McCallister did his best to be enthusiastic about it. Maybe this Sunday the chapel would be packed to the doors. But he never really quite believed it. Which was why he was so surprised to turn round and see the chapel door swing open a good half-hour early, to reveal six prisoners, none of whom he recognised. Unescorted prisoners, at that. And that was strictly against prison regulations.
They were singularly attractive young women, no doubt about it. Rev McCallister had never married but he could still appreciate a pretty girl. Hard faces they had, though; and that was such a pity. Still, if they taken it upon themselves to come to him for spiritual guidance, all was not lost . . .
‘Can I help you, my dear?’ he enquired of the leader of the group, a tall brunette with muscular arms and a very nice bust, much of which was clearly visible as she had unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse.
She did not answer but just kept walking towards him, an odd smile on her face. McCallister began to feel slightly nervous. Maybe they were going to beat him up?
The woman was standing right in front of him now. She was half a head taller than him, and looked to be a good deal stronger. She raised her right arm, and beckoned to the other girls, who came forward and stood in a circle around the cowering vicar, who held on to his pile of hymn books for grim death.
‘My dear, won’t you tell me how I can help . . .?’
He had no opportunity to say anything else, as they ripped off his cassock and stuffed the end of it into his mouth, to shut him up. They threw him to the ground and pinned him there, grinning maniacally but conducting their fiendish defilement in an eerie total silence. He writhed about as the tall girl stuck her hand up the leg of her knickers and he saw the knife-blade gleam in the candle-light.
But it was no good trying to wriggle free. They slashed at the fabric of his clothes and tore them from his trembling body.
O Lord no, not that, please, he prayed silently. But it was too late. As they ripped off his trousers and underpants, his penis began to twitch and uncoil into rebellious life. The women were mocking him now, rocking with silent mirth as they saw this not-so-holy man so easily aroused, so easily led astray. And they began to undress.
As the tall girl stepped out of her knickers and forced him to sniff the damp, fragrant gusset, McCallister groaned and almost shot his load. He hadn’t felt like this for years. He hadn’t had sex for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like, what the need felt like.
And as the naked women closed in around him, he looked beyond them and saw that there were more and more of them, flooding silently into the chapel.
As the first girl sat down on his prick, and the others began to lick him and nibble the flesh of his neck with their sharp white teeth, he had a strange thought which almost made him laugh: he hadn’t had a congregation as big as this in years.
15: The Call
It had been a frustrating day. Hunt had got precisely nowhere with his enquiries about Anastasia Dubois: he’d drawn a complete blank with the police station, the magistrates’ court, the lot. And the more he fetched up against a brick wall, the more convinced he became that he was dealing with a conspiracy of silence.
In desperation, he’
d told the police everything he knew about Dubois and Cheviot, Teresa and Sonja and Parry-Evans. The Detective Inspector he’d spoken to had made encouraging noises, but Hunt wasn’t fooled: he was damn well sure that the minute the door closed behind him, they’d torn up his statement and chucked it in the bin. ‘We’ll look into it,’ they’d assured him. Well, he’d heard that one before and he wasn’t holding his breath. He wouldn’t be surprised if the bloody Police Commissioner was in on it, as well.
What made him even more suspicious was his own editor’s attitude. Admittedly he had no hard evidence about either Cheviot or Parry-Evans, but he did have the tape-recording he’d made of Teresa Monk’s telephone call. The editor was normally ready to take a chance, to tell Hunt ‘Go for it,’ publish and be damned. But, instead of the enthusiastic response he’d expected, Hunt was greeted by a stony wall of indifference which – if he wasn’t very much mistaken – masked something else entirely. The rancid stench of fear.
Fear? Fear of what? And why? The libel laws had never held any terrors for the Morning Chronicle in the past.
Hunt stood by the bar in the Groucho Club and tried to look like a rising star of investigative journalism, instead of a frustrated hack rapidly subsiding into an alcoholic stupor. Bright young things and eminent literary figures rubbed shoulders all round him, but he didn’t give a stuff. If it wasn’t for the prospect of going home to Mara’s soft tits and tight cunt, he’d have been totally fed up.
He beckoned to the barman:
‘Another whisky, please. And make it a big one.’
The ice-cubes clinked invitingly in the amber fluid, but he just held the glass and gazed sightlessly into it for minutes on end. There must be some other way to get at the truth.
It was only the commotion in the lobby that brought him back to his senses and made him glance round. Through the double doors, he could just make out a tangle of three wriggling female figures, one of whom was obviously the club’s rather sexy receptionist. There was a great deal of squealing and shouting. By now everyone in the club had turned to watch the riveting spectacle. Not one thought to go and lend a hand.
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