by Roger Quine
‘Shouldn’t I be punished?’ she prompted, seeing how the lump in his trousers was increasing in the steamy silence.
‘Yes, my dear,’ he said, clearing his throat a little. ‘I do believe you should.’
She turned, cast a beckoning look at him over her shoulder, thrust her bottom towards him, and leaned forward across the top of the low cupboard. She inched her skirt up and moved her feet apart so he could see her peachy pink pussy clutching two elegant fingers, and the mouth-watering globes of her bottom.
‘Use your hand,’ she breathed, pushing her fingers deep and wriggling them luxuriously inside herself.
Skase coughed, stepped forward, and then quickly raised his hand and slapped her bottom.
‘Harder,’ she urged, sensing he’d want to hear that, and he slapped harder, making her squeal.
‘That’s better,’ she said, wiggling her bottom at him as her fingers spread and plunged. ‘I like it. Again, please.’
Skase was smiling his superior smile as his hand swept down again.
‘Owww!’ she squealed, hips circling, fingers spreading, opening to him.
The hand struck again, and then set about a regular rhythm.
Her firm cheeks were stinging and quivering, the blotchy handprints colouring to a rosy glow as her wrist flexed again and again, burying the two fingers deeper each time. ‘Go on,’ she breathed, ‘go on...’
He placed his hand between her shoulders to hold her steady, and she felt the weight of his palm as it whacked down across her poor buttocks.
‘Oooh!’ Susie whimpered a mixture of pain and pleasure she didn’t have to fake, and as her hips rocked with a will of their own her thumb found the tiny hardness of her clitoris, and she kept it poised there, and began driving her fingers in and out in time with his slaps until she was beyond the ability to fake the climax that was upon her. Skase read her reactions perfectly, prised the cheeks of her bottom apart and thrust his released erection between her glistening fingers, sinking into her clutching depths with one smooth lunge.
Despite her swirling emotions of abhorrence for the loathsome man, Susie shuddered and came, grinding her bottom back into his groin. She knew she had to make him come too, and so she writhed on his erection and was rewarded with a grunt from over her shoulder and his fingers digging painfully into her hips. As he erupted inside her Susie suddenly swivelled and swept her elbow up.
It was a desperate act and one in which she had little faith of success. But her elbow did crack a direct hit against his temple. She felt no pain but he reeled away, his seed fountaining over her bottom and thighs as she straightened and turned in readiness for his counter-attack.
But he crumpled instantly to the floor, his injury compounded as his head struck the wall as he slumped in a useless heap, his deflating penis lolling from his open trousers and leaking the last of his viscous emissions onto the expensive carpet.
Suddenly panicking, and thinking she might vomit, Susie dodged over his sprawled figure and ran to the phone on his desk.
Chapter Nineteen
The editor’s office was silent, apart from the gentle rattle of the keyboard as Susie’s fingers flew across the keys. Somehow she couldn’t go down to her own desk to type. She’d told the deputy editor that it was a matter of not being able to face the people down there just now, and she’d understood completely. ‘You just stay up here where no one will stare, and we’ll take it off downstairs, send it to the subs from there.’
To be honest though, it was for Harry.
She’d never be able to sit at that desk again without thinking of him, and she certainly couldn’t have held her emotions in check well enough and long enough to write the story that had to be written. The story that Harry himself should have written, and would have written if things had ended the other way around.
And she could still hear his voice, telling her never to use the keyboard on her desk for anything important. Perversely, she was determined to follow his instructions now he would never know about it. And so she sat up there in the big office, alone apart from the WPC waiting outside. ‘Just for your peace of mind,’ the detective had said.
The rest of the police, who’d arrived very quickly in response to her desperate call, were long gone now, and had taken the groggy editor with them after handcuffing him. The investigating officer had arranged for the tapes to be taken from the small annex; all except two, that is, which were carefully tucked away in her raincoat pocket.
Skase had denied everything, especially any involvement with or knowledge of Harry’s death. He’d even refused to admit that he knew where the Inspector was still chained up. Policemen were still searching for the cab driver who’d picked Susie up, in the hope that he’d be able to guide them to the location, as she put the finishing touches to her first big story.
Tomorrow’s leading headlines would not be about the death of Harry Anderson, but about the arrest of their editor as a corrupt mastermind who’d been using threats, blackmail and violence to achieve his own ends, which were mainly centred around massive financial gain, together with the freedom to behave as perversely as he chose. It also appeared probable that Skase was the silent owner of the club in which Susie had been the star turn, as well as of the escort agency for which she had worked, although she said nothing, deciding it might be prudent not to mention these matters to the police. Part of her didn’t want to think about everything that had happened to her in the last few weeks. Not for a while, anyway. So she’d skated around certain parts of her story while making her statement, and she was pretty sure no one would ever know.
In fact the only person who knew anything more than what she cared to tell them had been Harry, who she thought had been setting her up and trying to get rid of her but who had almost certainly been incriminated by Skase, who was trying to get rid of them both. Poor old Harry. And if she’d trusted him, then perhaps he’d be alive and Skase would still be on his way to prison.
The final irony, she typed, was that all his efforts, all his misdeeds and all his crimes were misdirected. He ruined himself and others in pursuit of a criminal dream. The drug he was searching for and the millions it was worth, simply did not exist. They were nothing more than the product of a sad and fevered imagination.
She picked up the phone and called downstairs. ‘Finished. It’s on the system. I’m going home.’
Although the thrill of seeing her first big story in print should have excited her enough to stay and wait for the proofs at least, if not the actual first editions, she was desperately tired and emotionally drained. What she wanted was to go home, not to the little one room bedsit she’d rented, but to her own warm comfortable flat and her own bed.
In any case, the whole sorry business depressed her so much she didn’t want to read about it any more, especially when she already knew what she’d written.
Tomorrow would be soon enough.
With a sigh she turned off the light, and as the door closed firmly behind her Skase’s office was plunged into darkness.
Chapter Twenty
The train rattled soothingly but had none of its usual effect; her body was drained of its normal exuberance and the regular drumming vibrations passing up through the seat had no impact on her whatever.
She was glad the police had sent a woman officer round to her little bedsit to collect a change of clothes. She knew they’d take the opportunity to have a good look round but she wasn’t worried about that; she’d hardly been there for more than a few nights and used it for nothing but sleeping and showering. And she was grateful to take off the uniform skirt and the crumpled shirt that still bore the Inspector’s perfume and reminded her of the evil woman every time she breathed it in. After that putting on her own soft underwear was a delight, and wearing her own blouse and skirt seemed to add a little more distance to the events of the day.
But it was all still there, closing in on her dreams ever
y time she drifted off to sleep as the train clattered across points and junctions.
Eventually the train reached her stop, and even at that late hour there was a taxi waiting at the station, and she was soon opening the door to her own flat, home at last, safe and more or less sound.
It was cold, and she felt the emptiness of a building left deserted, even if it was only for a few days; she knew from the feel of the place, as well as the silence, that the flat upstairs was empty as well.
She couldn’t bring herself to turn the television or radio on, for she knew what she would be hearing about on the late night news bulletins, so she chose a CD, made herself coffee, slipped a familiar old T-shirt on and went gratefully to bed.
She slept most of the night, disturbed by dreams in which the Inspector had chained her face down across a table and was beating her savagely with the crop while the editor pushed himself vigorously into her from behind. She awoke sweating, and lay awake for a while before drifting off to another troubled sleep. This time she was back in the film studio, and the Lurkazoid was real, not a man in a suit, with a huge greeny-brown erection jutting massively from its loins. He caught her on the sand and fell on her, forcing the dribbling point of it between her legs so she woke up screaming and sweating.
She woke again half an hour later, snapped from her sleep by the cold shock of an ice-cube slipping up inside her. The little Japanese man had been using his fingers and tongue very skilfully up until then, and she could feel the heat and dampness between her legs. She drifted off again enjoying a gentle arousal, her hand moving listlessly, fingers lightly stroking the slippery heat.
She dreamed again, flitting images that stirred memories and sensations, shadow-boxers who entangled her in the ropes and ravished her, an old man who accosted her in the upstairs flat and mistook her for its rightful occupant. And then she was woken, as she had been so many times before, by a knocking sound from above, as her healing dreams gradually led her back to a time and place which was comfortable and familiar, and her hand slipped between her legs as her drowsy brain listened to the steady rapping from upstairs.
Then she realised it was daylight, that she was awake and the persistent knocking wasn’t dreamt, but real. She sat up with a start, and realised at once that the noise wasn’t coming from the bedroom directly above her head, but was drifting down the stairwell. Someone was knocking very loudly on the door upstairs.
Natural curiosity quickly got the better of her natural desire to lie in bed all morning, and she was up in seconds. A quick glance at her alarm clock told her it was late morning. Carefully she opened her front door a crack and immediately saw Annie, the girl she’d tried to rescue from the flat upstairs and who started the whole thing off. She was coming down the stairs, looking back up over her shoulder, but Susie must have made a noise because the girl turned swiftly and looked right into her eyes.
‘He’s not there,’ Susie said hastily, hoping not to be thought nosy, and hoping to sound as natural as possible.
‘Oh, I didn’t want to see him,’ Annie sneered. ‘I just came for my things. I left in such a hurry I left half my stuff behind and forgot to take a key. Do you think he’ll be coming back today?’
‘No, I meant he left a couple of weeks ago, after you. I don’t think he’s been back since.’
‘Oh.’ She looked downcast. ‘I just wanted a few things – you know,’ and she shrugged.
Susie wasn’t sure she did know; from what she remembered the place had looked pretty much empty when she stupidly went up to investigate. But still. ‘I may be able to help you on that,’ she offered, and when the girl looked curiously down at her she beckoned her in. She didn’t want to mention her previous visit to the flat upstairs, for obvious enough reasons, but she briefly explained what had happened when she moved in originally, and suggested that the keys for both front doors might be the same. She offered the girl her own. ‘Try this,’ she said, holding it out, ‘and see if it works.’
‘Oh, okay then,’ she said uncertainly, stretching out her hand slowly, as if reluctant to take it.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Well I, er, I feel... Oh, it’s silly really, but will you come with me? I just feel a little nervous about going in uninvited. After all, I did walk out on him.’
‘Yes, but he’s not an ogre is he?’ Susie half expected her to say yes.
‘No, but...’
‘But what?’ Her curiosity – her reporter’s curiosity – was stimulated once more, and she wanted to know more about the strange goings-on upstairs.
‘Well...’ She looked shrewdly at Susie, and then went on. ‘It was quite an ordeal, you know. At the end.’
‘I suppose it must have been.’ Annie looked inquisitive, and Susie remembered she was supposed to be pretending that she didn’t know what had been happening above her. ‘It was, um, quite noisy, really,’ she added, realising she was only making things worse. ‘When you were all up there, I mean.’ She smiled apologetically.
‘Oh, yes, I suppose it must have been.’
‘With the television and, um, everything.’ She gave Annie another little smile, and to her surprise and consternation the girl burst into tears. ‘What is it?’ she asked, wondering how she should react. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she mumbled between sobs and sniffs. ‘Just relief that it’s all over, I suppose. Being here and talking about it brings it all back...’ and she broke down again.
Susie felt a little helpless, and then fetched some tissues. ‘He seemed okay to me,’ she said, as she guided the sniffling girl to the sofa. ‘Not that I did any more than pass him in the hallway once or twice.’
‘He is – was... well, I thought so too...’ More sniffles into the paper hankies followed.
‘But?’ Susie prompted, keen to hear how such a girl could become a prostitute, especially after her own recent skirmish with the profession gave her a more than passing interest.
‘Well, we met at work,’ she sniffed. ‘I was his assistant and, and he was handsome and the rising star, destined for great things. Everyone said so, and we got on well, and one thing led to another – you know what it’s like, working late together?’
She didn’t, but she said she did anyway. Encouraged, the girl continued.
‘We became an item. It was nice at first. Very nice, in fact. But then he got obsessed with this one project. It took him over completely, so that he was always at work, always talking about work or thinking about it, but very offhand when he was there, arguing with people, not doing what he should have been doing because he was chasing this one idea. And then about a year ago he went berserk, behaving even more strangely, and they fired him. But he didn’t get another job. Oh no, not him. Instead of getting another job he just started work at home, on his own project.’
She started crying again, and Susie put an arm round her shoulder. ‘Come on then, Annie,’ she said soothingly. ‘Let’s go and get your things while we know the place is definitely empty.’
Annie nodded, sniffed, and stood up.
Moments later she started with delight as the key turned in the lock, reminding Susie to be surprised as well. Walking into the short hall she remembered, her mind filling with memories of the layout of the flat and especially of being in the bedroom. She quickly dismissed the memory and asked casually, ‘So, what job did he have that he could do at home?’ pretty certain of what the answer would be. But she was very wrong – so very wrong.
‘He was a biochemist,’ Annie said calmly. ‘He did research work.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Susie could hardly believe what she’d just heard. ‘He was a what?’
‘A biochemist,’ she repeated, not noticing the stunned look on her companion’s face. ‘It sounds grand, but it isn’t really.’
‘But don’t you need a laboratory and equipment?’ she asked, her mind racing ahead.
‘In there.’ Annie waved towards the kitchen.
Susie hadn’t been in there during her previous visit, and when she pushed the door wide she wished she had. For this was no ordinary kitchen, with cupboards and kettle and toaster, but one filled with glass jars and rubber tubes and curly glass pipes, and small electronic devices. She knew at once that this was the source of the clinking and clanking late at night. He wasn’t an obsessive polisher of pots and pans, as she’d imagined, but a mad scientist rattling jars.
‘So – so what was it then, this, er, project? The one he was so obsessed with?’ She was hoping she was wrong, but pretty sure she wasn’t.
‘He was trying to perfect a drug to counter impotence in men,’ Annie replied, her voice indicating a lack of interested. ‘One that would make them last for hours on end when having sex.’
‘Why would he want to do that, if Viagra exists already?’
‘Because it didn’t a year ago.’
‘When he suddenly went berserk?’
‘Exactly. He said his product should have been the first to hit the market, but he blamed everyone for a lack of support. The whole forgotten genius bit. You see, when he started he was doing it all alone, on the quiet, it wasn’t part of his job. He was supposed to be working on something to do with blood and bleeding and operations, but then he found this side-effect. But his bosses weren’t interested and told him to concentrate on his proper project. So he said nothing more about it, but he was secretly working from here all the time, and they fired him when they found out – just before he’d finished his experiments. All it needed was clinical trials, but they wouldn’t go along with it.’
She started sobbing again, and Susie felt compelled to give her a little cuddle.
‘He said they didn’t deserve to have it after the way they treated him, and we’d do it ourselves.’
‘Go on,’ Susie prompted carefully, knowing she’d stumbled onto something big, and not wanting to blow it now.