by Michael Kerr
He sat and ate slices of ham, dipping the blade of a knife into a jar of mustard and spreading it on the pink meat, then folding the pre formed squares into rolls. The hot, yellow paste burned his mouth, and he relished the fiery effect on his tongue, gums and lips. Pain, in moderation, was a stimulating sensation. As a child, when his mother or Leroy motherfucker Brown had beaten and burned him, he had learned to withdraw within a part of himself and not entirely dismiss, but contain the discomfort, to absorb it and partially close down the neural pathways that transmitted the messages from distressed nerve endings to the area of the brain that converted them into physical awareness, and hence, subsequent suffering. Without knowing how, he had self-taught himself to meditate and drift into an almost trance-like state, and was able to hold his hands over a candle flame and repeat and repeat the mantra: ‘It does not hurt...It does not hurt’, as his flesh burned. He looked at the palms of his hands. The still livid scars were not stigmata like the wounds made on the hands of Christ by the nails used to crucify him. This was tissue that had been repeatedly damaged to build a certain level of immunity to diminish the pain from fists that would pummel him, and the cigarette ends that were stubbed out on his body.
He washed and dried the mug, plate and knife and put them away. Settled at the table again and inspected each article of clothing that he had removed from his prize. The blouse held the scent of cheap, flowery perfume, and the lacy black panties had a faint smell of her sex. The stockings and skimpy suspender belt led him to believe that this slut was fully aware of her sexuality, and dressed to advertise it, no doubt to lead men to the honey pot that her unfurled legs would disclose.
Her handbag was small and made of black patent leather. Inside it was a hairbrush, tail comb, make-up bag, a mobile phone, a packet of mints and a purse. He removed the phone and the purse. The Nokia reminded him that he had a call to make. First, he opened the purse. There was a single debit card, a twenty pound note and some change, and a small photograph of a middle-aged couple standing either side of a young girl cradling a kitten in her arms. That would be her with her parents. All he would keep was the cash and the phone. He doubted she had a lot of funds in the bank. He could easily obtain her pin number from her and withdraw what she had, but to be filmed by the ATM’s camera would entail his wearing a balaclava or disguise, and he just wasn’t that desperate for a few quid. None of what he did was with monetary profit in mind. Although he would have no doubt found use for Villiers’ payoff, had the plan not gone awry.
Putting the purse, handbag and clothing into a carrier bag ready for disposal, he went up to his bedroom and stripped off, before switching off all the lights, lowering the trap and pulling down the loft ladder. He took electric hair clippers up with him, and a cheap store-bought wig, that was long and flowing and almost blood red in colour.
He had been busy getting the roof space ready for a new tenant. Using MDF, he had erected a partition to isolate the trapdoor area from the rest of the room. He had also boxed-in the water tanks and put up a false ceiling to create a low room that was not recognisable as being a loft. The finishing touches had been black plastic sheeting tacked to every surface. The overlapping material had been taped. The killing room was now perfect. No blood or other secretions, hairs or any trace evidence would be left. He would be able to remove any of the plastic and replace it, should the necessity arise. And the appearance of the room was dramatic. All that he had installed was a new single mattress, still in its protective cover, a portable chemiloo, and a baby alarm so that he could overhear any sound that was made. He was refining the way in which he would keep live prey. He would even feed this one properly, to keep it healthy and attractive. The first had become emaciated and ugly and not pleasant to be around. Only its abject suffering had been of some consolation. But this one was not – to his knowledge – a whore. She was an aside, to use as a sex toy, and to cover from head to foot in pornographic art that he could and would not practise on paying customers.
Julie did not know if he had left or not. For all she knew he might be only feet or inches away, watching her, wearing infrared goggles that she had seen being used to great effect by some killer in a cellar in the movie The Silence of the Lambs. Oh, good God, please don’t let it be some raving lunatic who plans to flay me alive and make a garment out of my skin. She wanted to cry, to scream and beg for her life, but instead, was still and silent and too terrified to even produce tears. Her whole body felt paralysed. It was as though a drug had left her fully aware, but unable to move a muscle. Her mind had been almost scrambled by circumstances that she could not fully comprehend. And the darkness compounded her fear and sapped her of all hope. She took deep breaths, a little surprised to find that there was air to breathe in the absolute blackness of the chamber or room in which she was incarcerated. This could be death, or the far off quadrant of an ancient galaxy that no longer had stars to break the perfect obscurity of its existence. The deprivation of all light was an unrelenting and profound experience. Was she blind? Or had her eyes been covered? With her hands still bound behind her, she could not check. She bent her free leg, leaned forward and rubbed her face against her knee. There was nothing impeding her eyes. Surely if he had blinded her, she would without doubt be in a great deal of pain. She blinked rapidly. No irritation. This was just a windowless room, or perhaps she was underground. She had no way of knowing. And having been rendered unconscious, she could not hazard a guess at what length of time had passed since she had been abducted. He may have driven her a hundred miles away from the city. She had no idea whether it was night or day. He had stripped her of all that individualised her as a human being. She was naked, alone in an unknown place, and was not a person to him, just ‘bitch’. He had stolen her identity and reduced her to little more than a trapped animal entirely at his mercy. She had the feeling of being a laboratory rat, or a victim of alien abduction, to be experimented on by unsympathetic beings who did not view her as a feeling, sentient entity.
When the light came on, she closed her eyes against the brightness and felt her stomach begin to churn. Was this it? Had he come to murder her?
“Look at me, bitch,” he said.
Opening her eyes to at first no more than slits, then gradually wider as they adjusted to the light, Julie stared in wonderment at the figure standing before her. Bar his face, hands and feet, he was totally covered in tattoos. On his chest was a life-sized head of a wolf, and spreading out from it were intricate patterns that she knew to be of Celtic design. She was speechless. He was a work of art, and although petrified, she could not help but study the spirals and circles and images that somehow dehumanised him. Even his penis had illustrations upon its entire turgid length.
“Like what you see?” Lucas said, basking in her gaze of wonderment.
“I...I...”
“Lost for words, huh? Never seen anything quite like it in your miserable life. Consider yourself honoured. The only other people to have seen me like this are now dead.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll take it one day at a time. This is the world of here and now. Much of what happens will depend on how you behave. Take a look at your surroundings. You have a mattress and a toilet. I will also bring you a blanket, a toilet roll, and a jug of water. If you look up into that corner,” he said, gesturing like a tour guide pointing up to a fresco by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, “you will see a white box. That will relay any sound you make to where I will be listening. You need to be fully aware that you only get to fuck-up once. If you damage anything, or give me a single reason to be displeased by you in any way, then I will cut pieces off you, or release rats into the room to keep you company in the darkness.”
“I’ll do whatever you say,” she said, and meant it.
“Wolf,” he said. “Don’t forget to use my title. Now sit up straight while I shave your head.”
Julie did as she was bid. He knelt down beside her and u
sed scissors to shear off her blonde locks, and then employed battery-operated clippers to finish the job. He then positioned a red wig on her head and pressed it to her skull to fix it in place with double sided tape.
“Much better,” he said, settling back on his haunches to admire the transformation that a change of hairstyle and colour could affect. She was pretty. Her blue eyes and the wig clashed in a curiously engaging way. Her lips were full and well defined, and her nose was patrician; straight and strong. He looked lower. She had a soft, curvaceous body, and her breasts were of medium size, balanced, and sported small rose-pink nipples. Without any doubt whatsoever, she would be a more than pleasant diversion to keep and use as a canvas for his work, and so much more. There was only one other minor detail to take care of. “Open your legs,” he said. “We need to rid you of that ugly tangle of blonde hair.”
Julie did as she was told, and found it almost impossible not to squirm and pull away as the vibrating cutter nipped her pubic hair off to leave her crotch shaven and unguarded.
“You look like a cheap whore,” he said. “Is that what you are, a promiscuous slut who offers sex for payment?”
“No. I work in a laundry…Wolf,” Julie mumbled.
“I’m going to free your arms,” Lucas said. “When I do, turn over and kneel.”
This was an affront, but not something she did not have plenty of experience of.
He took her quickly, slapping against her well-padded buttocks, further aroused by her sharp intakes of breath and grunts of pain, which his hands caused as he dug his fingers into her breasts, crushing and twisting the pliable mounds.
Julie went rigid and felt ice form and race down her spine at the strange guttural howl that her abuser emitted as he ejaculated.
With arteries pounding and swollen at his neck, Lucas leant back and bayed at the black, plastic ceiling. For just a second or two it was velvet sky above him, and the naked, low wattage light bulb was the moon. He was part man, part wolf; a singular and majestic creature. There was an instant when he wanted to turn the prey over, enclose its white throat between his jaws and bite it out. The urge was almost, but not quite irresistible. He pulled away from her, let the fever in his brain cool a little, and once completely in control again, told her to sit and face him.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” he said.
“Yes, Wolf,” she answered dutifully.
He grinned. “I think you will serve me admirably. Would you like me to leave the light on?”
She nodded, not knowing if he was taunting her.
“Very well. And remember, do not repay my kindness by any acts of vandalism. Idle hands make for the devil’s work. You are on probation, bitch. Just shackled by the ankle, you have the freedom to go to the toilet and not suffer the discomfort of being bound and gagged. You need to know that the last woman to be kept here did not fare as well as you might. She was a fallen woman, and I reduced her to little more than a living skeleton, before mutilating and finally strangling her to death. Hold on to the thought that you can survive this experience, if you do not work against me.”
He left her, vanishing as if by magic behind a screen as black as its surroundings, to return a little later with a plastic jug full of water, a blanket, toilet roll, and a sandwich wrapped in cling film.
He said nothing. Went back behind the screen and reappeared with a hand brush and dust pan and proceeded to sweep up every hair he had shaved from her head and groin, before once more disappearing.
Left alone, Julie sat unmoving for an unknown length of time, then used the toilet, drank some of the water, and even unwrapped and ate the sandwich. Her head still hurt, and her breasts were sore. She huddled under the blanket and attempted to digest the horror of what was happening to her. At last the tears came, and she cried until sleep mercifully took her into a state of unawareness.
He listened to the echoing sobs that issued from the speaker next to his bed. He smiled. It was comforting to have a new guest residing just beyond the ceiling, only a few feet above him. She would come to know that each breath she took, and every day that she continued to live, was courtesy of him. He held the key to her fate. She would soon look upon him as her personal god; a deity who was all-powerful, to be obeyed without question or suffer his wrath. It would not harm to give her false hope and infuse her with the belief that she may survive. Like a drowning man, she would hang on to any flotsam that could keep her afloat above the surface of a raging sea. Very few people were accepting of their fate. The mind searched for an alternative to total despair in the shadow of hopelessness and death. With hardly a grain of incentive it would latch on to a more favourable outcome than it was actually facing. The optimism of man was grounded in the ability to practise self deceit. He did not personally subscribe to that. Acknowledging his mortality gave him the incentive to take all that he wanted from a world that he would not see the start of a new century in. There was no right nor wrong, or good and evil. There was just love and hate in an existence to be enjoyed by doing whatever it took to make passing through it pleasurable and less mundane. He was an absolute law unto himself, and would act in any way he saw fit. Fuck the world, it was his playground.
Dressed again, with his captive’s belongings and hair in a large carrier bag, and her mobile phone in his pocket, he left the house and drove first to a nearby canal, to park and walk along the deserted moonlit towpath, stopping twice to pick up old bricks from its border, which would soon be knee-high in the nettles and bracken that were already emerging from the dead leaves and rotting vegetation. New life sprouting amid the dissolution. Sitting at the edge of the canal, feet hanging down and his heels against the rusted pilings that reinforced its banks, he placed the bricks in the bag with the clothing, handbag and hair, squeezed out the air and knotted the top, before punching holes in the plastic with his car key. Once satisfied that the bricks would weigh the evidence down, he tossed the bag out onto the oily, motionless surface of the stagnant water, to watch it sink into the filthy, neglected and disease-ridden artificial watercourse. A few bubbles burst on the surface as the bag slid beneath it to be carried down to the slime that had swallowed much refuse and many secrets since Victorian times. Lucas chose to imagine that the thick mud held weighted corpses and weapons, as well as the more mundane plethora of defunct refrigerators, bicycles, shopping trolleys and appliances that were dumped by riffraff that were not concerned with the environment; pigs happy to live in shit of their own making.
He took Julie’s phone from his pocket, thumbed it on and punched in the number of New Scotland Yard.
It took less than fifteen seconds to be put through to the incident room dealing with the murdered whores.
“This is Detective Constable Brent, sir. I understand you have some information for us.”
“Wrong, DC Brent. My information is for the cop who was in charge of the operation at the Natural History Museum, no one else. I’m talking about the dummy that was waving a gun around. You know who I mean?”
“Yes, but he’s not on duty. I―”
“No buts, dickhead. I’m the man you are after. Give me a direct number to reach you on. I’ll call back in five minutes, and I strongly suggest you have him on the line.”
He memorised the number he was given and switched off the phone. Got to his feet and walked back along the towpath towards where he had parked the van. After exactly five minutes, he called again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Beth turned the conversation around. The three of them had gone through almost the entire bottle of malt whisky, and it went without saying that they would be staying the night as Ron’s guests.
“Why Elvis, Ron?” Beth said, having heard nothing but Presley’s voice issuing at low volume from wall-mounted speakers for over two hours.
“Beats me,” Ron said. “I always liked his voice, and seemed to build a collection of his albums without consciously doing it. He’s a part of my past. A girlfriend I had way back used to have videos of
all his naff movies. He must have grown on me. I felt a sense of personal loss when he bowed out on the sixteenth of August, nineteen seventy-seven. He was a real legend before he died, and has become an even bigger one since. It shows that even a poorly educated truck driver from the back of beyond can rise above all expectation and make his mark on the world.”
“So you’re a real die hard fan?” Matt said.
“I suppose so. It isn’t something I’ve ever tried to pull to pieces and make sense of. A lot of things just are. And the big events and passing of people who were larger than life in sport, politics or showbiz bring it home to me that I’m only a very inconsequential part of whatever this thing called life is all about.”
“Most of us need familiar landmarks and surroundings to feel secure in,” Beth said. “It’s a way to hold on to the idea of continuity and permanence. When someone we know or has been in some way important to us dies, then a part of us is diminished, and we are reminded that all too soon we will be nothing but a memory to others.”
“Are you trying to depress me?” Ron said.
“No, Ron. Just saying it how it is.”
The big man scratched at his beard and nodded. “The trick to getting by is to not take it too seriously,” he said. “I don’t view anything that happens as being personal. When my father was dying of cancer, he said that it was just a bad roll of the dice. He looked on life as a poor gamble with the odds stacked against him. He considered all the awful stuff as being the ‘House’, and knew that in the end, the house always wins.”
“Is that how you see it?” Beth said.
“Yes. The older I get, the more I look back over my shoulder instead of forward. I remember the boy and young man I used to be, who thought that the future was always going to be better than the present turned out. I think that the majority of young people are looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. They eventually wise up to the fact that there isn’t one. Trouble is, without the dream of it, we only have cold, hard reality staring us in the face.”