He perched on the ledge to the far left of the chair, still not looking at her, legs crossed, relatively relaxed, the sweet soul of reason. ‘I don’t want you to kill her,’ he added conversationally, as if they were simply man to man in a bar, discussing a friendly proposition of mutual interest. ‘It would be dreadful if you did. What you have to do is wreck that smile, tooth by tooth. I mean, there must be a way of poisoning them at the root, just like someone did with mine. Murder them and that fucking smile. No anaesthetics, of course.’ He looked at his watch, businesslike. ‘How long do you think it will take?’
‘I thought it was you who wanted treatment,’ William said. ‘I want to treat you.’
‘No. How long will this take?’
The obscenity and seriousness of the revolting suggestions finally penetrated William’s shocked and sluggish mind. He punched John Smith on the jaw. The blow jarred his wrist, seemed to recoil like a heavy gun, thumping into his shoulder as if he had missed contact with flesh and hit the wall instead. He was as fragile as paper, all height, no density, no skill for a fight. John Smith returned with a punch to the abdomen and a series of kicks to the legs. The room swam; he was on his back with John and the fat man leaning over him solicitously, so easy they were scarcely short of breath.
‘You forgot to tell him something, Mr Smith, sir,’ the fat man whispered. Their expressionless faces mesmerized him, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the fat man’s enormous boot, pinning his forearm to the ground with enough pressure to hurt extremely.
‘Oh, that,’ John Smith said carelessly. ‘I forgot to mention that. Silly me. If you don’t do what I say, my friend here is going to stamp on your hands. Pulp them. Your precious hands … and you do love your hands, don’t you? You even have fucking drawings of your own hands about the place, like other stupid idiots have portraits. Pulp. Not a whole bone left, even the little ones. I hold, he stamps.’ William swallowed the scream. The foot pressed against his arm relentlessly; the pain increased. Then the fat man held his right hand lovingly, tut-tutting under his breath, bent the fingers back until William gasped. He could picture his hand dismembered, all those complex bones rearranged in a pattern of red on the clean white floor.
Sarah’s voice, sounding resigned: ‘Better do as you’re told, William. You need your hands.’
‘Why?’ William screamed. ‘Why?’
‘Because she’s a thief,’ John roared. ‘A fucking thief.’
‘You aren’t a thief, are you, Sarah?’ The body on the chair seemed to wilt and remained utterly silent. It perturbed him almost more than anything else. Smith’s smell was a disgusting mixture of adrenalin and scent. William hated him.
‘And it’s not called Sarah, it’s called Julie,’ the fat man stated, then clamped his mouth shut, aware of speaking out of turn. William looked at him. Of the two, he might be the one with conscience.
‘She’s—’
‘Shut up, William. If you don’t do what they want, they’ll do it themselves.’
Yes, they would.
They seemed impervious to the sound of her voice, both of them jittery now, anxious for something to begin, as volatile as crazed insects, mad with captivity. William was on his feet, hoisted without effort in arms that felt like girders, standing upright, clasping his hands and gnawing on a knuckle as if he were a baby instead of the puppet he felt. The fat man was handing him the white coat. The door was locked, the building was empty, and that mystery person in the chair, his lover, his best friend, seemed to encourage them by her very compliance. And his hands, his trembling hands. He could not live without his dextrous, sensitive hands. His mind went back to the bonfire, the last time he had worried about his hands, wondering then if he would risk them, for love, for rescue, for his living, for his pride, for anything. The fat man was holding out his white coat. It reminded him now of the uniform of a butcher: high-necked, double-breasted stiff white cotton, the better to absorb the stains. If I don’t do it they will; better me than them; what will they do if I renege? He imagined an amateur let loose with a high-speed drill. Mind in overdrive, brain going tick, tick, tick, like a bomb, making his voice sound as clear as a voice that belonged to some other person entirely, another kind of man. The Inquisition’s torturer, paid by the hour, with an agenda all of his own.
His hands were stinging as he pulled on the gloves that would make the allergies worse; his hands remembered pain in the way he hoped the mouth did not; hands were impossible to mend. Why did Sarah fail to deny she was a thief, and a thief of what? Affection? Lust and trust? For the slow passage of time expended on putting on the gloves, he hated her, too. For all the trouble and the disquiet she brought along with her reassurance; for never letting him know her. Never letting him be needed or letting him near. The resentment was temporary, gave him that distance he needed to think.
‘There’s one thing I need to establish,’ he found himself saying. ‘I mean about your priorities, Mr Smith. I presume you aren’t coming in for treatment tomorrow, even though I have blocked out the time, so I’d like to be paid, please. And for this. Two thousand, minimum. Be fair. I can’t keep myself on less.’ He needed them to believe he was a torturer paid by the hour; he needed, in one way, to think that himself. There was a nod in response, a glint in the eye suggesting admiration, a hint of true minds meeting. The hatred burned like a furnace beneath his skin. ‘And there’s another thing,’ he continued, ‘which I need to know before I start. Priorities. I can’t do two things at once. Sure, I can disfigure her, but simply pulling teeth will take two minutes. What is it you want? A wrecked mouth and pain? Or do you just want me to take out her teeth?’
‘Pain,’ said John Smith. ‘Pain and all the rest. But pain.’
‘I can, as you suggest, poison at the root, so they drop out later. Very painful too. Will that do?’
‘Yes. That’s what I told you. Drill in the poison. Do it.’
He prevaricated. He tried to say that the injection he proposed was disinfectant saline – they didn’t want her dead, did they? No syringes, John Smith said, not unless I say so. Only needles for stitching. They would ration what he could use: scalpels and drills, the elevator for extraction, the clamp he used to keep the mouth open. It seemed that John Smith had made an inventory of the equipment and was not going to let him use a syringe. John Smith wanted him to use the drill without the water coolant. He liked the idea of a tooth glowing hot. Impossible, William said. This one works with the water or not at all.
One lie, another lie. They let him give her an antibiotic; dries the saliva, he said. They all seemed to be getting along fine, even cheerfully. William popped the pill into her mouth, watched her swallow obediently while he tried to communicate with her eyes, pretending he was talking to them, but talking to her.
‘Reminds me of the Inquisition,’ he remarked. ‘Or any era when the professional torturer was employed. They were never paid enough. Needed a union.
The fat man laughed uncomfortably; John Smith didn’t. Remember what we talked about, Sarah? Remember walking in the park? Remember what I said a good dentist would do? Put on a show … a performance. Avoid destruction. Trust me.
‘Stop talking.’
By now the identity of the patient was totally irrelevant. She was just a thing. John Smith could look at her now, arranged himself to watch. Fascinated and disgusted and determined. The aspirator in her mouth made its liquid slushing sound and, unable to delay further, William found his scalpel.
They wanted blood; they should have blood. Apicectomy of the lower central and lateral incisors. He found himself lecturing under his breath: this is the second line of treatment after root-canal surgery has failed. And why does it fail? Because it is impossible to prepare and fill the apical third of the root, for whatever reason: because it is persistently infected; because there’s a broken instrument blocking the canal, so you can’t reach it from the occlusal surface, so you have to get in there, through the gum. As if poisoning the roots.
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He would concentrate on the lower front teeth. They were so much less visible; it was the upper buccal surfaces that were the aesthetic hallmark of the mouth, but John Smith would not think of that once distracted by blood. William pulled down the lower lip, held it with a lightly weighted clamp. A clamp holding the mouth open and an uncontrolled, hanging lip made a person look subnormally stupid; Smith would like that. He fussed with the equipment as long as he dared, mincing round it, delaying until he could not delay. Apicectomy was safest on the incisors and canines. He cut an incision across the gum level with the emerging teeth. Perfect gingiva; perfect teeth; he winced as he did it. Then he began to cut down behind his incision in a chiselling motion, keeping his hand steady and his eyes focused on the task. He released the gum and the periodontal ligaments, revealing the root of the tooth and the alveolar bone. He could never do this without being reminded of a precise butcher, shaving meat from the spine of a carcass. Such central teeth; such a lot of blood. Maybe the blood alone would satisfy. He had the horrible thought that he had overdone it and maybe it would have sufficed to cut a single flap for a single tooth rather than four. He peeled back the section of gum and ligament neatly. The gum flapped over the lower lip; the effect was garishly hideous. Stay still, Sarah; stay as still as you can so I don’t make mistakes.
The movement of her head was limited by the chair; she was rigid with pain but braced against it. The aspirator slushed at blood; he kept on adjusting it. Keep still: this is difficult enough without an assistant, especially under such watchful eyes. Her head seemed fixed to the back of the chair, heavy and immovable; there was, so far, an appalling control in her, co-operating with him, understanding, he hoped – oh, God, he hoped she understood. She was staring, fixedly, at the light, as if it could save her. Staring, but she could not keep her tongue still: it moved incessantly, poking over her lower teeth in her open mouth, interfering and insulting.
‘Make her stop that,’ John said, his only words in minutes. ‘Make her bloody stop.’
‘She can’t stop it. No-one can.’
‘Cut it, then.’
‘No, there’s a better way.’
William had never done this before, but he had seen it done. He took a long, curved needle with silken suturing thread, stuck it straight though the forward flesh of the tip of the tongue, doubled it back and tied it round the prominent third molar to the left. The wisdom tooth was gone: he could secure the thread without much difficulty. There – did that look savage enough? The gurgling, gagging sound in the back of her throat had all the makings of a scream. He adjusted the aspirator again. That was what it meant to be tongue-tied.
He continued to chisel, revealing more bone. More blood. John was restless, waiting for the drill, shouting for it. William could no longer avoid the drill. Bloodlust was not enough.
The appalling thing was that he was proud of his technique. He could not do this without being absorbed.
Cannon crawled through the basement window and crept up the stairs. There was something wrong with his left arm: it functioned, but badly – no force in the grip. Outside the surgery door he listened and heard, briefly, the high-pitched whine of the drill. There was a strange, distorted, semi-human sound in the wake of it; a pause for either discussion or argument; the unmistakable sound of Johnny’s guttural laughter; the sucking noise of the aspirator, louder than anything else, and, again, that deep-throated moaning like someone mimicking an animal. Would they kill her? Would Johnnyboy watch as William’s hands were smashed to pieces? It would hardly bother what passed for his conscience to do that to a dentist. Was it Johnny himself who wielded the tools of torture? No, he would always delegate under threat; no-one understood that about him. And what, from the other side of a heavy locked door, could he do about it? They would hear if he called the police. There was no time to call the police – it was too late for that and this was his task, not theirs. It had nothing to do with anyone else. It had to do with Johnny suborning everything Cannon had and everything he was, maiming and corrupting his friends in the process. If only he could make the anger so cold. Then there was the drill again, followed by that same unbearable, inhuman sound.
Cannon was back in the basement. Almost a second home, he knew it so well, knew what an arsenal it was. He was calmer now, cool even, aware of the left arm throbbing. Let’s play a game, Johnny, the way we used to, remember? One of those boyhood games. We did it before; I can do it again, even though I promised I wouldn’t. He would have to remember his instinct to get the mixture right. Potassium permanganate crystals; throatwash. The sugar, in a well-handled, sticky packet left ready for someone’s tea. The malfunctioning sterilizing kettle for dental instruments, which would contain it. Fate provided the tools. William never threw anything away. It was insane. He could destroy them all, but anything seemed preferable to the sounds Sarah made.
The purpose of the apicectomy is to sustain an apical seal at the end of the root, to prevent the invasion of bacteria … Once the apex of the tooth is exposed, excise. They would have the smell of burning, which was not burning but dentine dust. The apex of the first incisor was easy to find, marked by a bulge. ‘I’ve isolated the roots,’ William said. ‘Now I’ll poison them.’ The bleeding was still copious. He thought only of the technique; ignored the tongue that strained against the knot; the hands in the shackles turning bruised and blue, the wrists raw with burns. It was a final cruelty that she could neither clench her fists nor scream. Her eyes had the vacancy of a dying dog he had once moved to the side of the road, careful of the bite. Tears flowed quietly from her eyes into her hair. The lead X-ray apron he had laid across her chest as extra ballast to steady her was littered with debris. He pushed away the high-speed drill.
‘Why are you doing that?’
‘Slower drill. Hurts more.’ Slower drill because the high-speed would lock itself in the bone. The slower drill did less damage: John Smith would be more familiar with its vibrating sound. Choosing the site carefully, he began to drill not the root but the bone. Denser, harder; marginally less painful. Look out for the mental nerve; damage that and … The drill had a different, vibrating, droning, louder but less sibilant sound. It echoed in his ears; he could feel it in his own bones.
They needed more blood and he needed an excuse to stop. He let the burr of the drill catch the inside of her cheek, watched as all that copious blood supply responded to the wound. It would take him a while to mop up. Perhaps, by then, John would have tired of this, but he looked on with the rapt attention of a keen student. The fat man huddled in a corner with a handkerchief held against his mouth, but still warily observant of what William did rather than what the patient suffered. The flaps of the gum still hung over her lower lip. Unless John tired, he would have to move on. Drill further holes in the bone, big enough to see through. Windows into the mouth; the drill again; the fine spray of healthy bone.
‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s enough for now.’
‘No,’ said John, standing over him. ‘It isn’t enough.’
William took the elevator he used to raise a tooth for extraction, deftly punched a hole in the atrium of her mouth. Blood poured out of her nose.
There was a bucket for the mix, crystals and sugar, treated with respect, but hurriedly. Three parts to one, and he was filling up the spare space with lumps of plaster. No detonator; this little mix required none. Cannon was hurrying up the steps, like an anxious cook with a meal for the master, the sterilizer kettle upturned, his finger blocking the aperture in the lid. A fire – he could simply start a fire with this. Why not? But he had to get through the door and get her out. William, too. And he would have the advantage, because no-one but he would be expecting the bang, if it worked. They would be dazed. He was visualizing the layout of the surgery; he had been in that chair often enough to know it by heart, always conscious of his surroundings, always trying to catch sight of something new to avoid the Siemens letters on the overhead light. You should decorate this ceiling with wi
ld colours, he had suggested; make a distraction. Or I could paint my face, William had said. But there was nothing wrong with William’s face. It was a kind and gentle face, worried and infinitely reassuring. Sarah’s, too, if it was still recognizable by now.
Cannon remembered the layout: the chair round the corner not in line with the door; the little seating area; the window further beyond. He let a little of the mixture trickle out of the sterilizer as he walked backwards, slowly, leaving a snail-like trail to the basement steps, then skirted round it and placed the upturned container close to the surgery door. It sat unsteadily on a small heap of mix, looking untidy and harmless. Cannon hesitated. A piece of homemade explosive like this was not entirely predictable: it might simply burn; it might do so much more than he intended. All he could think of was the fact that the fragments had no choice but to travel in straight lines and not round corners. Still he hesitated. Cannon, you always over-react, you stupid creature – you do too much or too little, nothing by halves … No judgement of your own responses, indolent or frenetic. Sarah’s voice from the back of his head, scolding with affection. And then, as he hesitated still, that terrible, gurgling sound of agony. He ran to the shelter of the basement stairs and flattened himself against the wall. Hesitated again, watching the flame of his lighter.
Staring At The Light Page 29