Cry of the Needle

by Radford, Roger

  Tring noted that his beaming chairman had chosen not to wear a mask, thus making him instantly recognisable to the cognoscenti. Seated on Proctor's right was the chairman's imorata, the cynosure of all eyes, and an object of lust not only for Tring, but for many of the other periwigged pundits in attendance at this court of affectation. Sharon Proctor was simply stunning. Her gown of steel-blue satin matched the eyes that blinked coquettishly beneath a tall powdered wig. He stared at her for some minutes, entranced by the way she raised her silver-sequinned mask whenever she tired of an admirer's attention. The professor thought the whole shebang must have cost the King and Queen of the Rococo a huge amount of the sterling equivalent of ducats or Ancien Regime louis d'ors.

  Still holding his mask to his eyes, Tring edged through the throng towards the regal couple. When directly in front of them, he lowered the mask gradually, as if reticent to reveal his identity.

  ‘Ah, Jonathan,’ Jack Proctor enthused. ‘Welcome, my boy, welcome to my humble abode.’

  ‘Thanks, JP,’ the scientist said as warmly as he could. He felt a bit guilty about not buying a present, but then what could one buy an ostentatious multi-millionaire that he did not have already? ‘Happy birthday and all that.’

  ‘Thank you, my boy, now eat, drink and merry. That’s an order.’

  Tring smiled gracefully and then turned his attention to Sharon Proctor. He noted that she had not yet lowered her mask. The steel-blue eyes seemed to bore through him. ‘Hello, Mrs Proctor,’ he said blandly.

  Her white-gloved hand hesitated a little before it glided downward. The high cheekbones and ample bosom, embellished as they were by fake beauty spots, made Tring catch his breath. She was achingly beautiful.

  ‘Why, hello, Jonathan,’ she smiled warmly. ‘It was nice of you to come. I see you’re unaccompanied.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I don’t have a female companion at present,’ the scientist shrugged.

  ‘We’ll have to do something about that won’t we, Sharon,’ Proctor beamed knowingly. Winking, he added, ‘and my wife’s got a few friends who are footloose and fancy-free. By gum, lad, some of them are real crackers.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sharon Proctor agreed, ‘I’m sure one of my friends would love to meet you. Do you see that young lady in the corner…in the red dress?’

  Tring followed the line of her gaze and looked over his shoulder. ‘You mean the one with the gold mask?’

  ‘Yes, her name’s Fiona. She’s very pretty, and unattached.’

  It was more like an order than a suggestion, thought Tring. Still, considering the inaccessibility of his hostess, he was game for anything reasonably attractive. ‘Thanks, I’ll get myself a drink first and maybe chat her up later.’

  ‘Splendid, Jonathan, splendid,’ Proctor enthused. ‘There’s nowt so depressing as a wallflower at a party. You get stuck in, dear boy.’

  Tring smiled bashfully. It was indeed a long time since he had got stuck in. He turned his head to say something to Sharon Proctor, but the mask had returned to base. ‘Er, Fiona, you say… thanks.’

  Two double whiskies and a half-hour later, Tring felt confident enough to make his first approach to the recommended Fiona. By this time the period music had given way to pseudo rock and the grand ballroom was a sea of gyrating bodies. Most of the revellers wore masks, some with huge hooked noses, and he could not help being reminded of the freaks in the Star Wars disco. Fiona, too, was still wearing her mask, a gold lamé full-faced affair with a cut-out mouth and deeply indented chin. He was by now close enough to check her neck. She was definitely no scrawny mother hen. The breasts, too, looked tight-skinned and youthful. She was dancing with an elderly man who was much shorter than her and clearly looking the worse for wear. The professor chose his moment and, lowering his mask, entered the fray. The older man, his face ruddy and puffed, seemed glad to defer to the interloper.

  ‘May I?’ Tring said.

  There was barely a nod from Fiona. Her eyes seemed to signal acquiescence but she did not break her dance routine. Tring, like most very tall men, felt more than a little awkward when it came to dancing. The two doubles, however, had contrived to loosen him up. The next dance, thankfully, was slow and she did not deter him from holding her close. She was quite tall, for which he was grateful. He tended to fight shy of petite women.

  ‘Is there any chance of seeing what’s beneath the mask?’ he whispered into her ear.

  She hesitated a little before replying, ‘You might be disappointed.’ The voice was sweet and the accent bore a hint of rural Cambridgeshire.

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’ he said boldly.

  She held him at arm’s length and then slipped off her mask. Her demure smile begged his opinion.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said appreciatively. And she was. Her face had the freshness of a country girl with its high and slightly reddened cheeks and pert nose, and her medium length blonde hair provided a suitable frame for the large hazel eyes that sparkled mischievously.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, pulling him closer and burying her face in his cheek.

  ‘You’re Jonathan, aren’t you,’ she whispered. Her breath bore the scent of cachou.

  ‘Yes, how did you know?’

  ‘Sharon told me all about you.’

  ‘Nice things, I hope.’

  ‘She said you were like Little Bo-Peep.’

  ‘I’m not that desperate,’ laughed Tring, visions of his brother’s Falkland follies rising to the fore. ‘Anyway, maybe I’m like Georgie Porgie.’

  ‘Do you kiss the girls and run away?’

  ‘Not when they’re as pretty as you.’

  She smiled demurely. ‘My name’s Fiona,’ she said, nestling closer.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ said Tring, deciding it served no purpose to reveal that he already knew this. Allied with the effects of drink, the sheer proximity of her lithe body made Tring feel light-headed. They danced silently and sensually until she suddenly held him at arm’s length. ‘I’m afraid I have to put this back on.’

  ‘But why?’ Tring shook his head. She was too pretty to cover it all up with that ugly mask.

  ‘There’s someone I’m trying to avoid. I’m sorry, I can’t explain.’

  After donning the mask, she pressed herself even closer to him, as if offering some kind of recompense. Tring’s slightly befuddled mind fought to come to terms with it all as he felt her body grind into his. He knew she could feel the physical aspects of his arousal and it made him slightly embarrassed.

  ‘It’s okay, Fiona,’ was all he could think to say.

  At the end of the dance, Tring felt the mask scrape his face as she kissed him on the cheek. ‘I must go and powder my nose,’ she said urgently. ‘I’ll be back shortly. Wait for me by the bar.’

  The professor stood dumbstruck for a few seconds as she swished away. He could not get the feel of her body against his out of his mind, and yet her insistence on wearing a mask for the rest of the evening concerned him. Who was she afraid of? Maybe there was an angry old boyfriend around at the party. Tring could look after himself, although he abhorred any kind of violence except that permitted on the rugby field.

  Eventually, curiosity and a thirst that needed slaking led him to the bar. Propping it up and dressed somewhat incongruously in the scarlet cassock of a Cardinal was Philip Brown, the beady-eyed company finance director and a veteran of Proctor extravaganzas. The Bacchanalian popinjay was sloshed.

  ‘How goes it, Jonathan?’ he gushed. ‘Bloody good party, mate. See you dancing with that lovely girl in the red dress. Bit of all right. Hic.’

  ‘You look terrible, Phil. Here, take this.’ The scientist thrust the silly mask into his colleague’s hand.

  ‘What am I going to do with two masks?’

  Tring ignored his inebriated colleague and ordered another double whisky. The drink burned its way down his throat, and within a few seconds he, too, was feeling somewhat woozy. He also felt a little maudlin, for he did not believe his secretiv
e masked companion would return.

  Suddenly he felt a hand tug at his cuff.

  ‘Ah, the Lady in Red, herself,’ blurted Brown.

  ‘Oh, hello, Fiona, I—’ Tring was cut short by the slender finger raised to her lips. The hazel eyes stared at him beseechingly from within the golden visor. She pulled him away from the bar and led him firmly out into the lobby.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked groggily.

  Within a few seconds they had descended some stairs, swirled along a narrow corridor and entered a musty room on their right. Once inside, he heard the door being locked. And hear was all he could do, for the room was pitch black. ‘What’s going on?’ he bleated.

  ‘Shush,’ came the urgent reply, followed quickly by the pleasant odour of cachou as she pressed her lips against his. Pinning him against the door, she attacked his mouth voraciously with her tongue. She had removed her mask of course, although she might still have been wearing it for all the difference it made.

  Tring felt himself harden, the tight breeches making his ardour almost exquisitely unbearable. Almost on cue, his companion’s busy fingers deftly undid the constricting buttons and released their captive. He groaned as she slid down his body, the rustling of her dress almost deafening in the blackness. Her mouth and tongue quickly brought him to the verge of ejaculation. She stopped suddenly and then squeezed him hard. ‘Fiona,’ he groaned as she dragged him to the floor.

  Still gripping his penis, she lowered herself onto it and began pumping rhythmically, her groans almost drowning out his. Tring, almost suffocated by the dress that had billowed over his face, gripped her buttocks hard. She had obviously prepared herself for she wore no underwear. The professor, his other senses honed by his virtual blindness, reeled under her onslaught. Soon they were making so much noise that he was sure they’d be discovered. He could not recall having ever experienced such a sexual high.

  The beast with two backs continued its thrashings until it was totally spent. Fiona, her sweet breath caressing his ear, lay atop him for what seemed like an age.

  Tring was the first to speak. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he croaked, ‘that was unbelievable.’ He felt her finger against his lips, followed by further frantic rustling as she raised herself from him. He heard the door being unlocked, followed by a chink of light entering the room. This was succeeded by a flood that blinded him temporarily before the blackness returned.

  Tring lay where he was for some minutes reflecting on the most bizarre event of his life. His lover had come and gone like a thief in the night. Whoever she had wanted to avoid, it certainly hadn’t been him. He figured that she had desperately sought sex, and yet was obviously petrified of being caught in the act; hence the cover of darkness. Still, the subterfuge posed as many questions as it answered, and he felt he needed to find out more about the mercurial Fiona.

  The scientist eventually hauled himself to his feet and readjusted his dishevelled clothing. He opened the door and peered into the corridor. It took a couple of seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light. To his relief no one was around. He closed the door gently and made his way groggily to the men’s room, which, thankfully, was empty. Tring washed his face in an attempt to clear his addled brain and then straightened the preposterous wig. Bleary-eyed, he gaped at his pallid face in the mirror. Coincidentally, the band was playing A Whiter Shade of Pale.

  The exhausted professor, satiated but confused, rejoined the throng in the ballroom, where the dancing Proctors appeared to be the centre attraction.

  Of the mercurial Fiona there was neither hide nor hair.

  A world away from the frivolity, but on the fringe of the same county, another man was about to engage in a little fancy dressing of his own. Kieran Kelly entered a toilet adjacent to the Plane Tree Centre day surgical ward at Whipps Cross hospital, extracted a freshly starched blue theatre gown from the plastic bag he was carrying and quickly donned it over his own clothes. He then tied on a mask and left it dangling around his neck. There was little reason to suppose that anything would go wrong, thought the Irishman. It had all been so easy to discover the best way to achieve his immediate aim. He had simply told his local pharmacist that he was writing a screenplay and needed some info on how the main protagonist would go about procuring certain drugs from a hospital. The chemist knew him well and was totally unsuspecting of any ulterior motive. He had even given him an old copy of MIMS, the monthly index of available drugs. Everyone loved a writer.

  He had already carried out a dummy run the previous evening, and it was amazing how accommodating people could be, especially hospital porters. They appeared to know everything, but were not suspicious by nature. Chatting to one, he had received an unwanted biography of the man’s life, along with information that there were only five security guards covering the hospital’s forty-eight acres over a twenty-four hour period. By the time he had finished with the man, he knew all he needed to know and had made a friend for life. It was truly amazing what Irish blarney could achieve. Within a few minutes of them parting, he was in and out of the laundry with the surgeons’ gear bearing the hospital’s moniker.

  A vast Victorian edifice, the hospital was one of the busiest generals in the country. There were hundreds of doctors who coursed through its corridors on a daily basis. It would have been asking too much of the staff of the dispensary to be able to identify each and every doctor.

  Front, thought Kelly as he swept into the day unit, all one needed was front. ‘Nurse, quickly,’ he ordered, ‘I need a blank drug chart right away. I’ve got an op in five minutes. And I need four epidural syringes.’

  ‘You surgeons are all the same,’ said the nurse, a West Indian with a thick Jamaican accent, ‘you’re always forgetting something.’ A paragon of efficiency, she scurried away to fulfil his request.

  ‘Thanks,’ he called out, ‘you’re a diamond.’

  ‘Not even me husband call me that,’ she called back to him, noting that she wouldn’t mind assisting such a handsome man in theatre. Within a few seconds, the pseudo surgeon was on his way out of the unit replete with chart in hand and syringes in pocket.

  So far, so good, thought Kelly, as he made his way to the dispensary. The biggest test was about to come. He had been advised that his fictional protagonist should act with belligerence. If the dispensing pharmacist thought he was facing a surgeon in a fit of apoplexy because some nurse or other had not procured him the drugs needed in the operating theatre, then that pharmacist would be more likely to hand over the necessary without requesting written documentation. Basically, it wasn’t only the public who were frightened of stern-faced physicians.

  ‘Act with authority, Kelly,’ he muttered to himself. He approached the dispensary window. Glancing down at his drug sheet, he called out in demand mode, ‘Four vials of brietal sodium and four of Triamerol, and be quick about it.’ The pharmacist, a weedy looking young man, visibly appeared to quake before scuttling away to bring him his request. Inside a minute, the Irishman’s request had been fulfilled and he was heading towards the toilet again to rid himself of his surgeon’s paraphernalia. It had all gone like clockwork.

  Kelly was about halfway along the corridor when his heart suddenly skipped a beat. Swiftly approaching him was a familiar figure. The Irishman instinctively ducked into an alcove. Thankfully, Dr Martin Townsend seemed engaged in animated conversation with a couple of housemen. As the trio passed him, the Irishman’s eyes fleetingly engaged those of the man he held directly responsible for his wife’s death.

  Townsend’s were rheumy and tired, and he looked like shit, thought Kelly. The doctor’s nose was a bulbous kaleidoscope of brightly coloured veins. He knew a lush when he saw one. The Irishman did not look back, but carried on walking down the corridor, patting the vials in his pocket. ‘A couple of these are for you, you bastard,’ he mouthed silently.

  CHAPTER 7

  The following day, thankfully, was a Sunday, and Jonathan Tring slept later than usual. He awoke sometime after three i
n the afternoon, still in his frippery but minus his wig. The mother of all hangovers was beating a drum roll in his head. He vaguely remembered being driven home by a colleague, although he was too far gone to remember anything other than that the Good Samaritan had had the face of the devil. Whoever it was who had helped him up the stairs to his flat and guided him to his bed at least had had the sense to disconnect his phone line. Tring looked forlornly at the disconnected cord in his hand. Old Chigwellians seconds had been robbed of their star forward that morning and they had been probably trying like mad to contact him. It was the first time he could recall letting them down, and it made him feel even worse.

  The professor slid the cord into its socket, scratched his unkempt thatch like a demon and staggered into the bathroom. ‘Tring, you look like shit,’ he told himself in the mirror. At least he was recognisable, which was more than could be said for most of the aliens at Proctor’s extraordinary party. Had it all been some kind of dream? Had he really allowed himself to be debauched in pitch darkness by a country girl with whom he had exchanged only a few words? Who was she? Where was she? Somehow he felt the Proctors had all the answers. After all, they had set him up with her.

  The urgent ringing of the telephone brought an abrupt end to his musing. It was Abe Klein.

  ‘How goes it, my fine English friend?’ The voice was bright and breezy.

  ‘Could be better, Abe,’ he groaned. Tring didn’t believe Klein had ever been hung over in his life. He’d abstained at Oxford. Jews don’t drink, his friend had once said, because getting stoned was bad for business.

  ‘You sound like shit. What happened?’

  ‘I was savaged by two pit bulls, and one of them was in heat.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  The professor cackled. ‘Neither do I, actually.’

  ‘Listen, Jonathan, you can tell me all about it on Friday night. Rachel’s making her usual chicken soup and stuff. She won’t take no for an answer.’