I ignored her, and looked back towards the light. On the stage the girl had had her underwear torn off her and she was naked. She was a skinny girl, thirteen or fourteen, with small white breasts and pubic hair so light it was almost invisible in the white glare that was making her squint. She was limply struggling to free her hands, as the two men began to paw at her, pulling her legs and elbows apart as she tried to close in on herself. Once again the auctioneer stepped forward and told them to be careful. One of the men got down on his knees, and forced his head between the girl’s legs.
I looked at Chortney and saw his hand tense beneath the coat.
‘Go on,’ he said, though I could hardly hear him. ‘Try it.’
I told myself not to be stupid, but my body was tense, ready to go for him. Then I felt Juliet Chortney’s hand on my thigh. I felt the tug of her fingers as she pulled at my jean buttons. She kissed the side of my neck and my hands clenched on the table, but her husband was still looking me in the eye.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Please. Just move your hands.’
I kept my hands still. Getting shot wouldn’t change anything. My eyes went to those of the girl on the stage, trying to send some sort of compassion to her. I wondered what was going on in the minds of the people, the men watching this, and decided that they thought it was a show, that the girl was acting. But I knew she wasn’t. Natalie had been up on that stage. I kept my eyes on the girl’s eyes, but when one of the men stood up in front of her, forcing her legs apart, and the other moved behind her, I pulled them out of focus. It made me feel guilty to do this, as if I were abandoning her, but I wasn’t able to watch what was happening. They were both standing now, both pressed against her. All I saw was a haze of lights and a mass of dark shapes, but I couldn’t shut the sound out, which was so loud it cut through the yelling of the crowd like a siren through traffic. The girl managed to keep it up for probably no more than five minutes, but to me it sounded like it would never stop. Then it was just noise, and shouting, and I don’t know how long that went on for. After a while all I became aware of was a feeling in my stomach, which was one of sickness and disgust, laced with the thought that if I’d been allowed to see this, I was in deep, deep shit.
Eventually the noise died, the focus began to break up, and there was a movement to the small bar just behind us. I came back into the room, sat up a little and looked at the stage. For a second I thought that the girl had gone but she was still there, lying on the front of the stage. Now there were three men, different men from the ones who had started. I hadn’t noticed the change. As the noise evened out, Juliet Chortney stopped what she was doing and sat up.
‘He must be a poof,’ she said to her husband.
‘That true, mate? We don’t cater for your sort here, sorry about that.’
I ignored them and looked back at the girl, who was conscious but still out of it. The men moved away from her and the doorman came forward and picked her up. He carried her off, through a door at the back. She wasn’t moving much. As soon as the stage was empty, Juliet Chortney disappeared from the booth, and headed through the crowd. I saw her step onto the stage before going through the same door the girl had been carried through, and then I turned to Curtis.
‘What do you feed them?’
‘Huh?’ He’d been turned to the stage but now he looked at me.
‘What do you give them, dose them with?’
‘Oh,’ he said, as though I’d just asked him what sort of oil he put in his car. ‘Rohypnol. Benzodiazepine. You heard of it?’ I shook my head slowly. ‘You probably have. Rooties. The date-rape drug, they call it. Causes almost complete memory loss. Sometimes flashbacks, but not always, and never very clear. Sure you don’t know it?’
‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘It’s very popular Stateside, which is where I get it. Made in Mexico. It’s effective and almost untraceable, unless you’re looking for it of course, which isn’t likely, at least not over here.’
Curtis stood up and I nodded to myself. I thought about Natalie. She had said she could see things. Now I knew what they were. Now I knew why jumping in front of a tube train had made sense to her. While I was thinking, Curtis had stepped behind the bar. He came back with a bottle of Canadian Club and a glass.
‘And Juliet Chortney finds the girls?’
‘Very good,’ he said. He bowed his head in apparent appreciation of my logic. ‘Yes. But the boy too, don’t forget the boy.’ Curtis picked up his drink and downed it, before pouring himself some more from the Club, and half-filling the empty glass.
‘The boy? He’s been hiding here?’
‘Here and there. A right babe magnet he is. Or used to be, when we let him out. Can’t any more of course, too dangerous, but he’ll soon be back in action. He can sometimes get three or four girls at a time if he’s at the right club. You know, you’ve seen him. Give ‘em some pills, tell them it’s a party. It was even better when young Lucy helped him, it made them feel more secure to have another girl along.’
‘Lucy,’ I said. ‘Oh yes. Now why don’t you tell me about her?’
Curtis stopped, and I waited for him. He looked almost wistful. ‘You know what happened to Lucy. The poor kid was in love with her, you know? Wouldn’t let me so much as touch her – though she would have made me a small fortune. We had a few arguments about it, believe me, to begin with, until she began to prove useful. After a week or so she was even good at getting girls back here on her own. Young girls, they just want to be told what to do, they want to be told that they’re where it’s at.’
I nodded to myself again and thought of the girls at Nicholas Court. Had Finch got them along here? Was he planning to? ‘And so when you get them back here you just dose them up, that it? Before…this?’
Curtis looked reflective. ‘The trick is to get them to swallow the stuff before we get ‘em back here, or any of the other venues we use. We use the house for that usually, if we can’t get it down them before. Stick it in some vodka. After that, only after, the mind’s a complete blank until it wears off. It really is amazing.’
‘And afterwards you just dump the girls?’
‘We drop them off in the morning with a few quid in their pocket. They’re none the wiser and no harm done. Usually,’ he added.
Curtis sat back in his chair and stretched. ‘Still early for me,’ he said. Then he made me drink the measure of Canadian Club sitting in front of me, and when I’d done it he made me drink another, and another after that.
I drank what I was told to drink, pretending I was gagging on it, finding it hard to swallow. But Canadian Club was a good choice, it went down easily. I was wondering just what Curtis planned to do with me once I’d drunk enough of it not to be a problem, when my eyes were drawn to something in the crush. It was a fisherman’s hat, moving my way. I saw the boy pushing through the crowd to our table, where he immediately started to say something to Curtis. But whatever it was he never finished it. The words disappeared and he turned to me.
Finch hadn’t expected to see me sitting there. It jolted him like a cattle prod. It was a second or two before he was able to take in my presence. I looked up at him, and his jaw began to tremble. I could see his mind going back to that night, when he’d seen me on the street at four a.m., and the look on his face was the same. Horror, and shock. But this time he didn’t run away.
‘You bastard,’ he managed to say. It was almost a whimper. ‘You fucking, fucking bastard.’
He still thought it was me, that I’d killed the girl he’d been in love with. I was there that night, and he’d seen me in Camden and at York’s. He couldn’t think who else it could have been. I thought he was going to break down, to collapse on the floor, but instead he launched himself across the table at me, sending the drinks flying, managing to get his nails into my neck before I could stop him. It hurt, but that was OK. He was lying across the table, trying to throttle me, but he didn’t have the strength. I got my hands under his armpits. I pushed back
in my seat and twisted him round towards Chortney, slamming Finch’s thin body against him and Curtis.
The two men both put up their arms to protect themselves. As Finch slid back across the table his hands were wrenched off my neck and he tried to get hold of my arms. I shifted to the right, trying to slide out of the booth. I didn’t know what sort of a chance I’d have of getting out of there, but it was better than no chance at all. There was only one thing Curtis would do with me if I didn’t get out. I hadn’t had any Roofies, there was only one way of making me forget what I’d seen.
The upholstery on my left ripped open as the gun in Chortney’s hand went off from underneath Finch, who was twisting round to try to get to me again. I made a move along the bench but Curtis shoved the table forward, sending it hard into my guts. Again the bench-back to the left of me jolted as another bullet went into it, closer this time. I got my hands on the table and forced it forward, against Curtis, as far as I could, and just managed to get my shoulder beneath it. As I did so I was vaguely aware that the music had gone off, that there was more light than before. I didn’t stop to think about it. I planted my feet and launched myself up and forward, upending the table, sending the kid to the floor, ramming it straight into Chortney and Curtis as hard as I could. I saw the gun in Chortney’s raised hand, above the table top. I grabbed for it, but only succeeded in knocking it down onto the floor where the kid was lying. While Curtis reached for it I lunged to the right, towards the crowd, which was splitting open now, scattering this way and that. I could hear shouting and screaming, my eyes were full of people rushing, chairs going down, tables being knocked over and drinks flying everywhere.
As I staggered up from the mess of Curtis, Chortney, Finch and the table, my left foot caught a broken glass, which sent me lurching towards the ground, up against two legs that had been running towards me. I sent a fist out wildly, trying to find my feet before Curtis’s hand found the gun. I caught the guy in front of me in the groin, doubling him up, but then there was another guy, in the same dark trousers. I swung for him too, still trying to get up from my knees, but then there was yet another guy. I managed to make it to my feet, and sent out a right that only found air. But I wasn’t going to let them just take me, I was dead anyway whatever happened. I was about to launch another swing, aiming at the nearest face, when I noticed that all of the three men standing in front of me were police officers.
I stood, surrounded by the three men. The lights were full on. I looked through them. There were about twelve uniformed officers in the room, all in flack vests, four of them armed as far as I could see. Ken Clay stood in the middle of the room, shouting, telling people what to do. Behind him, two were blocking the exit I’d come through while several more were streaming across the stage to the back door, where the girl had been carried. Those still in the room were shouting at the crowd of people to lie on the floor and not move. Most had already done it, their hands behind their backs, some of them already cuffed. I stopped trying to lay hell into anyone and turned round.
Chortney was still on the bench, his hands on his head, covered by an officer holding a pistol. Curtis was slumped on the floor beneath me, his back against the upturned table, blood streaming down his face where the table had broken his nose. I hadn’t even noticed that. Next to him was the boy. He was also leaning back against the table, his shirt and the top of his trousers soaked with blood where Chortney’s bullets must have gone through his stomach. He had the gun in his hand and he was pointing it at me.
‘Give it up!’
It was the nearest armed officer. He was pointing his sub-machine gun at Lee Finch, from no more than fifteen feet. Lee didn’t move.
‘Put-it-down-slowly.’
The kid still didn’t move, even though I could tell that holding the gun upright was costing him a lot of effort. I spread my hands out and took a step back, looking into his already pale face. The room went silent.
Finch’s gun was pointed at my chest. His finger was tight on the trigger. I tried to find his eyes.
‘I didn’t do it, Lee.’
I heard the rattle of metal as the guy beside me tensed. I held a hand out to him. I shook my head.
‘I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.’
‘You must have. I saw you there, you were following her, taking pictures…’
The gun in Finch’s hand twitched. There were tears beginning to run down his cheeks, almost colourless now. His jeans were soaked from sitting in a puddle of blood.
‘I didn’t do it. And I know that it wasn’t you either.’
He looked surprised, but still wary. Beside him, Curtis didn’t move. ‘Then who was it?’ He was almost breathless. ‘Who did it to her? Who then? Who was it, who…?’
I was about to tell him when the gun he was holding wobbled. The officer beside me took this as a sign that the boy was about to shoot. Once again I could feel him tense and once again I managed to stop him opening up by holding my hand out to him. But it didn’t make any difference. The hand holding the gun moved down slowly towards the floor, as if the boy were a toy whose spring was winding down. His head rolled gently to the side. His eyes stayed open but after a few seconds I could tell he wasn’t seeing anything. The man beside him still didn’t move. The boy had let the gun fall only a few inches from Curtis’s hand.
I looked down at Curtis and found his eyes. They were small and empty. Then I looked across at the gun and his eyes flickered down to it too.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Please. Go on, George. You can make it. Please.’
But the only movement he made was to shift his leg out of the way of the thick, dark pool spreading slowly towards him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When the lift got to the fifth floor it told me where I was, the doors opened and I got out, before padding along the carpet to flat 516. I knocked. After a few seconds Mr Bradley opened the door for me, and we shook hands. I followed him into the apartment where he told me he had just put a jug of coffee on, and he asked me if I wanted one. I thanked him and he walked into the small kitchen area.
It was about noon. At nine that morning the Bradley family had been informed by telephone of the events of the previous night, and told that a police officer would call on them later that afternoon, or the next day; when certain tests had been carried out on the dead boy, specifically to see if his semen matched that found on their daughter. The police were confident that it would, but needed, of course, to check. At five minutes past nine I called the family myself and told them that I was more than happy to come round in person, and give them an account of what had transpired the night before. I took the coffee Mr Bradley handed me and perched on one of the chrome stools at the breakfast bar, setting the cup down next to the cardboard file I’d brought along.
I’d come straight from Camden, where I’d met up with Olly. I bought Olly breakfast, which really was the least I could do. It was Olly I had to thank for getting me out last night. He’d called the police. He’d gone back to the kebab shop with the money I’d given him, hoping to score with his unexpected bonus. He’d used the password, Jeffrey, and been handed what he thought was a wrap, but was simply an address. The Merlin’s Cave, it said, Margery Street. Olly was about to shrug his shoulders, bin the address and find something on the street, when George Curtis had rushed into the shop from the back.
‘I heard him say to the geezer on the counter that they’d caught that snoopy twat,’ Olly told me. ‘So I knew he meant you. I heard him say he was going to deal with you, and by the look on his face I could tell how. So I thought I’d better come to your rescue, like.’
Olly had thought about coming to the place on the piece of paper himself, but instead he did something as natural to him as synchronized swimming for cats. He called the police.
‘I’ve been after Curtis for years,’ Ken Clay told me, half an hour later. We were sitting in the light, airy foyer of the Bradleys’ building, with only the gurgling fishpond to keep us company. ‘He’s be
en in the background of a few drug busts. We’ve known about his illegal drinking holes for a while but we’ve never been able to pin him down to one long enough to get anyone in undercover, see what he was really doing. I always had the idea he was probably paying one of our lot for tip-offs, but I could never find out who.’ I had my own ideas about that but I let them ride. ‘When your mate Olly told me what he’d heard, and that you’d gone off like you had, I knew it was our chance. We got a man in, Myers, using the password Olly gave us, and we were waiting outside. He saw that you were in difficulties, shall we say, and he also caught the last dregs of what had been going on in there. He called us and we called in the cavalry, and Myers got the door open from the inside. The rest, you know. We found a shitload of that drug they were using. Curtis was pushing it, and that’s one of the ways he got people along to his club – he’d only sell it from there. God only knows what he’s been responsible for. We found that, as well as Ecstasy and the usual porn shots he was selling. A good night for us.’ Clay sat back and gave a good scratch to about half of his chins. ‘For once, Billy my boy, you’ve actually done me a favour. I’m sorry for the way we went for you over this, but you know the drill. I couldn’t give you an easy time just because we were friends, could I?’
Clay turned his attention to some holiday brochures in front of him, which he’d picked up on the way. He’d already told me that he was surprising his wife with a trip to the Caribbean for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
‘Friends! Jesus!’
I shook my head and laughed all the way to the lift. When I got there I turned. ‘You sure this is a good idea?’
‘The only way, Billy. The only way.’
Mrs Bradley was resting on one of the two sofas, and she gave me a quiet smile as she said hello. She was sitting with her daughter’s head in her lap, casually stroking the girl’s hair, pushing it behind her ear. Emma was very still, her brown eyes looking at me nervously, a little embarrassed. It looked to me that she’d been crying; probably with relief. Mr Bradley looked relieved too. There was something lighter about the way he moved, as he eased himself back into an armchair. Behind them, the door to the roof garden was open, and I cast a glance towards the soft array of flowers out there. The roses were the same shade of crimson as those in the Bradleys’ garden in Ravensey.
Hold Back the Night Page 27