by Shaun Hutson
The flat itself was one of a group of four in Kensington, not too far from Kensington High Street. She knew that the other people who lived as Plummer's neighbours were well off. One was a lawyer, another a judge. She wasn't sure what the woman who owned the bottom flat did. Something in the City, she thought. It was ironic that a man of Plummer's means should be sharing the building with two people who, effectively, worked on the opposite side of the law to him. The apartment was worth, Plummer had told her (repeatedly), around three quarters of a million. He owned two houses in Belgravia as well, both of which were in the process of being converted into flats. He fancied himself as a landlord.
He reached across and picked up his glass of Jack Daniels, tiring of his game with Carol's hair. She heard the sound of his expensive ring clinking against expensive crystal as he picked the glass up. He took a sip and then swung himself out of bed.
'Where are you going?' she wanted to know.
'Don't be so nosey,' he told her, disappearing into the en suite bathroom. He emerged a moment later carrying a small rectangular box which he held out to her. As she took it from him she noticed that the lid of the box bore the legend: GARRARDS JEWELLERS.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her open it.
The pendant was solid gold, twice the size of a thumbnail. The light from the bedside lamp caught it and sent golden beams radiating from it.
Carol opened her mouth in awe as much as surprise.
'It's beautiful,' she said, not taking her eyes from the velvet lined box and its costly contents.
'Put it on,' said Plummer, watching as she took it from the box and fastened it around her neck. It hung invitingly between her breasts. 'Do you like it?'
'Thank you, Ray. It's gorgeous,' she told him, touching his cheek with her fingertips. She stroked his hair, but again Plummer pushed her hand away.
'I got it today,' he said, reclining on the bed, not bothering to cover his flaccid penis. 'Probably cost more than you earn in a year.' He smiled.
'You pay me,' she reminded him. 'You could do something about that.'
'I don't pay you. Scott does.'
'He pays me what you tell him to pay me.'
Plummer brushed a hand across the front of his hair.
'You still seeing him?' he wanted to know. 'Or should I say are you still fucking him?'
'I see him occasionally,' she confessed. 'It's all over between us, though; it's just that I can't seem to get around to telling him.'
'Does he know about you and me?' Plummer wanted to know. For a moment she saw a flicker of uncertainty on the older man's face.
'Would it matter if he did?' she asked.
It would make it easier for me, splitting up with him if he did.
'I suppose not,' Plummer said. 'It's just that he's a bit unpredictable. Flies off the handle a bit quick, sometimes.'
You're scared of him.
The realisation brought a slight smile to her lips and she touched the locket almost unconsciously. It wasn't the first gift he'd bought her. She had a solid gold Cartier watch at home, endless amounts of silk underwear. He'd even taken her to Paris for a weekend about six weeks ago (she'd told Scott she'd been visiting relatives in the North). Of course she couldn't wear any of the things to work, Scott would want to know where they had come from.
'You shouldn't spend your money on me, Ray,' she said, looking at the pendant again.
'It's only money,' he said. Plummer enjoyed spending, enjoyed buying her things. He enjoyed impressing her with his wealth. Besides, she was a very good-looking young woman; he liked being seen with her. A number of his friends had remarked on her good looks, good figure. They envied him and he liked that. It was a good enough reason to hang on to her.
For the time being.
'Someone's got to look after you,' he said, stroking her hair.
'You're going to look after me?' she asked, smiling.
You're going to help me escape the life I hate?
He smiled.
'Who else is going to do it?' he wanted to know.
No one. She knew that. He was her only way out and she didn't intend to let him go. Whatever she had to do to keep him happy, she would do it.
Happy, was that the word? Perhaps satisfied was more apt.
'Take care of me, Ray,' she said softly, her eyes filling with tears. She leant forward and put her head on his chest.
Be careful, the mask is slipping.
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer.
'Don't worry, darling,' he said, his face impassive. 'I'm here.'
So make the most of it while you can.
The phone rang.
'What the fuck…' Plummer hissed, looking at his watch and then across at the bedside clock, as if to reassure himself of the time.
2.36 A.M.
The ringing continued.
'Shit,' he grunted and reached for the phone, picking up the receiver. 'Hello.'
'Ray Plummer.'
He didn't recognise the voice.
'Yeah. Do you know what fucking time it is?' he snapped.
'Shut up.'
'Who the fuck are you talking to…'
'Shut up and listen.'
'Who are you? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't hang up.'
'Because I've got something to tell you, you cunt. Something to your advantage. Now shut the fuck up and listen.'
EIGHTEEN
Plummer sat up, the receiver pressed tightly to his ear, his eyes narrowed.
'Listening?' the voice chided.
'Yeah, go on,' he rasped.
Carol looked at him and mouthed 'Who is it?' but he raised a hand to keep her quiet.
He concentrated on the voice, listening to every syllable in an effort to work out his caller's identity. If it was somebody pissing about he'd have their fucking head.
'You're probably wondering why I called,' said the voice.
'Just get on with it. What do you want?'
'Patience is a virtue, Plummer. Now, do you want to hear what I've got to say, or shall we stop now?'
'You couldn't tell me anything I wanted to know anyway.'
'Oh ye of little faith.'
'Are you going to get to the fucking point, or what?' Plummer's initial bewilderment had turned to anger. He felt tempted to slam the receiver down.
'The point is you are about to be shat on from a great height,' the voice told him.
'By who?'
'Ah, now that's why I called. Interested now?'
He was about to shout something down the phone when the caller continued.
'Whoever has the most money controls London, right? Whether it's you or one of your… associates. You all own property, clubs, gambling places. You own people. I'm right, aren't I? The one with most money stays in control.'
'Yeah,' Plummer said slowly.
'Ralph Connelly is about to receive a shipment.'
'Of what?'
'Cocaine.'
'That's bollocks. Connelly doesn't deal in drugs. He makes all his cash by laundering other people's money. He does some of mine, for fuck's sake. I knew you were full of shit. Get off the fucking line…'
'Cocaine worth twenty million pounds. The shipment's coming in six days from now.'
Plummer hesitated.
Twenty million.
'Why should I believe you?' he asked.
'Don't. It makes no odds to me but twenty million, you'll agree, is a lot of money. By my reckoning that should make Connelly top dog.'
'How did you find out about this cocaine?'
'That's my business.'
'Then why make it mine too?'
'Just call it personal reasons.'
'You want a cut,' Plummer said, smiling thinly.
'I said it was personal.'
'Look, any arsehole could ring me and tell me something like this. There's still no reason why I should believe you.'
'Connelly bought a warehouse in Tilbury about a week ago, didn'
t he?'
Plummer paused for a moment.
'Yeah, he did.'
'What would he want with a fucking warehouse? Like you said, laundering is his business.'
'And business is good. Why would he want to start up with drugs?'
'Like I said, twenty million is a lot of money. Would you turn it down? He was offered the shipment by some people in France.'
Plummer stroked his chin thoughtfully.
'How do you know all this?' he asked, even his anger receding now.
'That's not important. What I do need to know is, are you interested in the cocaine?'
'Yeah, I am. Twenty million…'
The caller cut him short.
'I'll be in touch soon.'
He hung up.
'Wait,' snarled Plummer. Then, hearing the buzz of a dead line, he slammed the receiver down. 'Cunt,' he hissed. Watched by Carol he clambered out of bed and padded through into the sitting room to pour himself another drink. Who the fuck had called him? he wondered. His interest had been aroused. Twenty million notes. Jesus. That was interesting. He smiled.
He might not have smiled so broadly had he realised his flat was being watched.
NINETEEN
Scott replaced the receiver and sat staring at it for a moment.
He would ring again in five or ten minutes.
Outside, the wind had dropped slightly but the rain had intensified. It slapped against his window, the constant spattering like a thousand birds pecking at the glass.
Try again now.
He reached towards the phone.
No. Leave it.
Instead he hauled himself out of bed, angry that he'd been denied the welcome oblivion of sleep. He crossed the small bedroom to the dressing table, which bore a motley selection of after-shave bottles and deodorant cans, some empty. There were wage slips, too, piled up in order and weighed down with an ashtray still full of dog-ends.
There was a framed photo of himself and Carol.
He picked it up and ran his glance over it, his eyes pausing every so often to look at her face.
The picture had been taken about eight months earlier. They had managed to get out of London one night and spent two days in Brighton. The weather had been good and the picture showed Carol in a bikini, her arm around his shoulder. He'd asked some bloke sitting near them to take the picture, relieved when it had come out so well.
Christ, she was lovely.
He touched the photo with one index finger, as if to feel the smoothness of her skin. The warmth of that day seemed a million years ago as he stood listening to the rain hammering against the windows. He put the photo back and wandered through into the kitchen, where he retrieved a bottle of vodka from one of the kitchen cupboards. He took a glass from the draining board, then returned to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and poured himself a large measure.
He used to give his father a drink. After the first stroke, a couple of shots seemed to put the old bastard in a better frame of mind. After the second one, dropping him in a vat of the stuff wouldn't have helped.
Fuck him. Forget about him.
He'd tried, but it had proved surprisingly difficult. When he remembered his father it wasn't as the wasted, comatose figure he'd watched over in hospital or the cantankerous sod he'd been forced to put up with for ten months. He remembered him as the sometimes abrupt, sometimes lonely but often funny man he'd shared his flat with for two years and eight months before the first stroke. Prior to that the old boy had lived in a flat of his own in Muswell Hill. He'd been forced to move out when it had been taken over by a new landlord.
Why the fuck had this particular spectre returned to haunt him, he wondered? Why was he thinking about his old man when the only person he truly cared for was Carol?
Perhaps it was the loneliness that made him think.
He felt lonely now, sitting on the edge of his bed, the drink cradled in his hand, listening to the rain. He thought how his father had once confided to him what he felt. And it was fear of that feeling which remained firmly embedded in his mind. Scott needed someone. No, not someone; he needed Carol.
He reached for the phone and jabbed out the digits of her number, just as he'd been doing for the past half-hour.
He just wanted to hear her voice.
The phone went on ringing.
Just let me hear her.
Perhaps she'd pulled the connection from the socket so she wouldn't be disturbed.
Pick it up.
Maybe she'd put the phone under a stack of pillows to muffle the ringing so it didn't wake her up.
Come on. Come on.
The ringing continued until he slammed the receiver down in frustration.
Perhaps she was ill.
Perhaps she wasn't there. She might have been hurt on her way home. She could be in hospital now.
What if…?
He downed what was left in the glass and poured himself another, gulping half of it down in one swallow.
She was not there. He knew it. Felt it.
Then where?
He gritted his teeth, his breath coming in short gasps.
Where was she?
He looked across at the photo on the dressing table. She smiled back at him.
Scott shouted and hurled the glass across the room. It hit the wall and shattered, spraying shards of crystal in all directions. Vodka dripped from the wet patch on the paper.
He wondered how long it took for loneliness to become despair.
TWENTY
16 APRIL 1977
The tumour was as large as a man's fist.
Dexter looked at it lying in the metal dish, a huge collection of dead cells, darkish brown in colour, tinged a rusty red from the congealed blood which coated it. It had been taken that morning, from the skull of the dead man they had found in Ward 5 the previous day.
Now Dexter observed the tumour and tapped a pen gently against his chin, his thoughts running pell-mell through his mind.
'What about the others?' he asked.
Colston sighed and shrugged his shoulders, pulling up a chair beside the desk.
'Four out of the five are exhibiting similar symptoms to those of Baker,' he said. 'I checked them over this morning before I did the autopsy.'
'Damn,' snapped Dexter, getting to his feet. He crossed to the window of his office and looked out over the well-manicured lawns and the tall trees that swayed in the wind.
'Is there anything we can do?' he asked, without looking at his companion.
'If the tumours are developing at the same rate then I could operate, try to remove them. We'd at least save their lives,' Colston told him.
Dexter watched as an intern led two patients across the, lawn, one of them kicking a football ahead of him like an excited child.
'You said four out of the five were exhibiting similar symptoms,' he said quietly. He turned to face Colston. 'What about…'
The other doctor shook his head, cutting him short. 'So far no change,' he said.
A slight smile creased Dexter's lips.
'Then we're doing something right,' he said, clutching this small piece of optimism as a drowning man clutches the proverbial straw.
Colston sucked in a deep breath.
'And we're also doing something very wrong,' he said. 'That's the third death in as many months. If the tumours in the other four continue to develop…' He allowed the sentence to trail off.
Dexter returned to his desk and tapped the five files stacked in front of him.
Each one bore the note: WARD 5 in its top right hand corner. Below that was the name of the patient.
'What do we do?' Colston wanted to know. 'Stop?'
'Certainly not,' said the other man indignantly. 'It will work, Andrew. I'm sure of it.'
'Then at least modify the process until we see the progress of the other five.'
Dexter shook his head again.
'The other four,' he interjected. 'You said one of them was still all right.'
> 'It might just be a matter of time before a tumour develops there too…'
Dexter interrupted again.
'No,' he said with conviction. 'It won't. I just believe it won't.'
'Because it's what you want to believe.'
'Do you blame me?' he snapped.
There was a long silence, finally broken by Colston. 'No, I don't blame you,' he murmured. 'And don't worry, I'm not going to back out on you. Not now.'
Dexter smiled appreciatively and picked up the files marked Ward 5.
He flicked through the first four relatively quickly.
It was the last of them that interested him.
TWENTY-ONE
The needle, almost six inches long, had been pushed through the girl's nipple, inserted with clinical efficiency through the fleshy bud.
George Kinsellar turned the page of the magazine and proudly displayed another double spread, this time of a young girl with several metal rings through her vaginal lips.
'What about that?' Kinsellar said. 'Be like shagging a scrap-metal yard, wouldn't it?' He chuckled his throaty laugh which ended as usual, with him hawking loudly, chewing thoughtfully on the mucus for a moment and then swallowing it again.
Kinsellar was a thick-set man in his early fifties, his face pitted, his hair thinning.
'How can anybody get their rocks off to something like that?' said Scott, shaking his head, taking the magazine from the older man and flipping through it. He finally dropped it into the supermarket trolley he was pushing and continued walking up the long aisle between the high shelves.
The warehouse was in Holloway and Kinsellar had owned it for the last six years. The bulk of his business was done with Ray Plummer's organisation, although he supplied a number of the other firms in the capital with videos, books, 8mm films and appliances. Fifty per cent of what he sold was illegal but business was booming. He followed Scott around, making notes on his pad of what the younger man was ordering.