by Morton Bain
‘I feel it appropriate, given the extraordinary allegations that have been made, to go to extraordinary lengths to refute them. To that end, I’ve invited Mandy, one of the women I’ve been trying to help, to come to church this morning and speak to you directly. Mandy, would you mind standing up?’ Mandy, 36-32-38, £100 per hour, will consider anal, stands up. She’s occupying a seat in one of the front pews. She’s about five eight, with long brown hair. Pretty face. Late twenties. ‘Mandy, thankyou for coming to church today. Can you tell me – and my congregation – how I’ve been working with you over the last few months?’ Don’t blow it, I think. Don’t blow it.
Mandy clears her throat and says: ‘Yeah, you’ve been helping me a lot recently. Telling me about God, and how I can have a better life.’
All it will take is for her to start giggling and I’m fucked, I think to myself.
‘Have I on any occasion behaved inappropriately whilst trying to help you?’ I ask the girl.
‘Sorry?’
‘Have I done anything other than speak to you about ways in which your life could be improved?’ I say.
‘No. You never tried to sleep with me or anything.’
‘And the other women you know who I’ve also tried to help – would they say the same thing?’
‘I think so. I mean, yes. They would say the same thing.’
‘Thankyou Mandy. You’ve been very helpful.’ Mandy stays on her feet for a few more seconds, before sitting down. Directing my attention to the congregation I say: ‘I hope Mandy’s testimony will help to clear things up for you all. I’m aware that this is a somewhat unusual deviation from the normal order of service, but I hope you understand that these are quite extraordinary accusations that have been made . . .’
As I’m greeting my parishioners as they exit the church at the end of the service, I sense my introduction of Mandy into proceedings has done more good than bad. Those who refer to the massage parlour scandal mainly offer words of encouragement. Marjorie Sanderson, who could probably turn tricks herself quite profitably, bats her eyelids and puts a hand on my arm as on the way out. She says, ‘We feel dreadfully sorry for you at this time.’ I make a mental note to see if I can offer her a more personal ministry in the near future.
The following day I receive a phone call from the bishop responsible for my diocese. He doesn’t tell me who has tipped him off about the massage parlour stink, which I resent, as I’ll now have to mistrust everyone in my congregation. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to it,’ Bishop Green, a balding homo tells me. ‘Nevertheless, I’d like to pop in for an hour at some point in the next week. I have to be seen to be taking this matter seriously, even if I’m happy that you’re just the victim of some poisoned soul.’
‘Sure,’ I reply.
Sure. Sure, sure, sure. One thing’s sure, and that is that Jake is going to pay for this. He was going to get bumped anyway, but now there’s revenge to throw into the mix. I can’t kill him yet, though. This one has to be really well planned. And I can’t kill my wife just now. I’m too distracted to have to deal with a domestic upheaval. Plus, if she died just after this church fuss, it would look too odd to too many people. No, it has to be someone else. My thoughts turn to Kim Catcheside. I fire up my computer and punch her name into YouTube. I’m presented with seemingly endless thumbnails of clips featuring her. I click on the third one down and a moment later I see her being interviewed on a breakfast TV programme. It’s all hair flicking and pouting, and she seems to speak a language called Bullshit quite fluently:
Interviewer: ‘So, Kim, you must be really excited about the release of your last album?’
Kim: ‘Yeah, well it’s like amazing. I mean it’s great. This album really speaks to my heart . . . I mean speaks from my heart. It’s a thankyou to my fans, it’s a come-on to people who aren’t my fans. I’m just so pleased about it.’
Interviewer: ‘You created quite a stir in New York recently, when you appeared at the premiere of “A Forgotten Promise” wearing that dress. What do you say to people that claim you were being deliberately exhibitionistic?’
Kim: ‘What do you mean?’
Interviewer: ‘Exhibitionistic – that you wanted to show flesh for the sake of it, to get a reaction.’
Kim: ‘Oh, well I think if you’ve got a good body you should be happy to show it off.’
I switch off in disgust. This bitch is definitely going to get it. I type ‘Kim Catcheside address’ into Google, and what do you know, an article comes up that gives her address. A second website confirms that Wensley Road is where she lives – either that or they’re both wrong. I chuckle, and write down the address.
At midnight of the same day I park my car on a road that runs parallel with Wensley Road. My bag of tools is on the passenger seat beside me, and I retrieve a knife from it and step out onto the road. I’m aware that there’s precious little planning that’s gone into this kill – I don’t even know if the bitch is going to be in – but I’m desperate for the smell of freshly spilt blood. It’s like I’ve been walking around with a boner for a month.
I walk past Catcheside’s house. Confirmation that I’ve got the right place comes in the shape of a Porsche Cayenne parked in the driveway – just the sort of silly car a silly star would want to be seen in. There’s one light on, on the ground floor, coming I guess from the living room. I carry on to the end of the road, then turn and walk back the way I’ve just come. The street is quiet; no people, nor cars on the road. When I reach Catcheside’s house I take a quick look around me, then crouch and run to the window with the light on, ducking beneath it. I wait for about a minute, listening for footsteps, then rise to peer into the window. I’m in luck. Catcheside is sitting on a sofa facing me, painting her nails. Beside her a large, well-built man is asleep, his head back, mouth open. I’m guessing this is the boyfriend.
That wonderful American term ‘home invasion’ springs to mind. Catcheside’s home is about to get invaded, and its occupants terrorised. How to approach this challenge? I could knock on the door and start slashing as soon as it’s opened. A possibility, but I’d lose the element of surprise. The house’s occupants could even just not open the door. I decide to try one of my favourite sexual practices, the rear entry. There’s a gate between the right hand side of the house and a fence. Keeping low, I creep over to it and try the latch. It’s unlocked, and I slowly open the gate. I slink down the narrow walkway between house and fence. When I reach the back garden I check the windows at the back of the house, and am pleased to see that there aren’t any lights on. I check the ground for water bowls or bones – anything to indicate a dog in residence – and see nothing of this nature. The rear of the house has double doors opening onto a wooden deck on the right hand side, and a regular sized door on the left. I try the latter door’s handle, and to my delight discover that it is unlocked. Holding my breath, I open the door a fraction. It scrapes a tiled floor, making a sound that to my ears seems deafening. The door opens onto the kitchen, that much I can tell even in the dark as I open the door fully. I creep into the room, checking as I do so that I still have my knife – one with an eight inch blade – in my pocket. The kitchen’s other door is open, and leads onto what must be a hallway. A left turn should take me straight to the room I’m after.
As I enter the hallway I can hear the sound of the television. It sounds like some sort of chat show is on. Catcheside is probably watching herself on television. If so, I don’t care; the sound is helping to mask the sound of my footsteps. When I get to the door to the living room I pause for thought. I’m going to have to knock two people out very quickly, and I don’t think I’ve had a former life as a ninja and certainly haven’t had martial arts training in this lifetime. I decide to go straight for the big boyfriend, who I’m hoping is still asleep. Slit his throat, and then, while he’s trying to keep blood off the floor, go for the idiot. I raise my knife, take a deep breath, then spring into the room. The oaf is nearest me as I run in, and I’ve s
lashed his throat before he’s even had time to open his eyes. As I’m using the knife Catcheside starts screaming, but not for long, because within moments I’m on her, and I quickly manage to catch her jugular. I step back. The boyfriend has by now got to his feet, but he’s bleeding profusely and doesn’t look very steady. Catcheside stays seated, making a gurgling noise as she tries to stem the flow of blood. It looks like she’s wearing a bright red scarf.
I’ve got the better of them; the question is whether to flee or wait until they’ve died. I decide to wait. It won’t take them long to bleed out, and I can’t risk a freak rescue or survival resulting in me being identified. The man moves towards me, an arm raised. I use a leg to keep him at bay and a few seconds later he collapses backwards onto the floor. I look at Catcheside, who seems to have lost consciousness. ‘Caught in a trap . . .’ I sing softly. It’s the title of Catheside’s most recent hit. I hope she appreciates being sung out with her own lyrics.
Five minutes later I’m satisfied that the couple are dead. They’re both lying in pools of blood, eyes open. I retrieve two snooker balls from my pocket. By sheer coincidence the next two in the series are blue and pink, making their allocation easy. I open Catcheside’s mouth and pop the pink in, before moving over to the boyfriend and giving him a big gobstopper to suck for eternity. I decide to torch the house. It’ll bring the emergency services to my victims sooner than otherwise, but also ensure that any forensic evidence I might have left is destroyed. I haven’t taken my normal precautions on this sortie. I look around for a cigarette lighter. Not finding one I head into the kitchen to see what there is there, returning shortly with matches. There’s a huge stack of ‘Hello’ magazines on a coffee table, and I start tearing pages out of a bunch of them, crumpling these up. When I’ve got about twenty balls of paper I pile them in a stack next to one of the fabric sofas and start applying lit matches to it. Soon flames are jumping high, licking hungrily at the sofa. I run upstairs to the bathroom and grab both toothbrushes. As I’m coming back down the stairs I hear a phone in the hallway ringing. On a whim I pick up, answering with ‘Hello? Angel of Death speaking.’ The caller says, ‘What?’
I laugh, put the phone down without disconnecting the call, and leave the house.
Chapter Twelve
Thoughts of Jake are interrupted for a week by a trip to Spain with Joey. Courtney doesn’t come because he doesn’t like flying much and anyway, has overstayed his UK visa and is only going to be making one-way trips from England until he solves that problem. We fly into Vigo and on the drive from the airport to the hotel I’m surprised by the greenery of the landscape. The outskirts of the city look like Wales without planning controls, with cheaply-built concrete houses clinging randomly to steep hills amidst plenty of signs of small-scale agriculture. I’m thinking this place looks a bit fucked up, until, turning a corner, I’m rewarded with a view of the bay of Vigo. It’s one of the many rias that rip gashes out of the coastline of this part of Spain, the result of glaciation millennia ago. I feel giddy when I realise how high we are, the road descending steeply towards the city and harbour. In the distance the other side of the bay is just visible, mainly discernable by green slopes at higher altitudes. The logic of this area for drug smuggling becomes visibly apparent. The coastal incursion I’m looking at will undoubtedly extend, narrowing, for miles, offering plenty of convenient unloading points.
‘Impressive, huh?’ Joey says.
‘I read something about the British and Spanish navies having a big battle here a couple of hundred years ago,’ I reply. ‘I can kind of understand that now.’
As we near our hotel in the older part of town the city takes on a more conventional European feel. Lots of older stone buildings, wooden shutters and smart apartment block entrances wedged between cafes and pharmacies. There are lots of pharmacies. Pharmacies every hundred feet it seems.
‘Pharmacies everywhere,’ I say to Joey. ‘Is this a nation of hypochondriacs?’
‘I know they like their drugs,’ he replies with a grin.
As we’re waiting to check in I do what I normally do when I’m waiting in public, checking out tits and bums where worthy. It is like any other mid-priced hotel; lots of glass and marble and tacky staff uniforms – uniforms worn by the uniformly unctuous. I’m looking at the arse of a women who if you’d asked me to guess I would have said was thirty-two when there is a blur of movement out of the corner of my eye and a man walks past me and out of the main entrance. Something about the shape of his back strikes me as being familiar, but I can’t immediately say why. My attention moves back to the arse.
It’s later that evening that it suddenly hits me. From behind, the man who walked past me in the hotel lobby looked like Jake. I marvel at how a back can contain enough original characteristics to link it to a single individual. Question of course is, was it Jake that I’d seen? Impossible, I tell myself. Even if he was keeping an eye on me, there’d be no way, without the help of a major intelligence agency, that he’d have known that I was going to be going to a certain city on a given day and staying in a particular hotel – he’d even have had to know when we were going to check-in. An alarming thought occurs to me. Granted, he couldn’t know all this, but if he did – if he did then he’d be capable of finding out all about my crimes. The thought distracts me sufficiently that I don’t hear Joey address me. ‘What?’ I say when I realise he’s trying to communicate with me.
‘I was just telling Jose here about that hooker with three breasts, and how you almost lost her.’
‘Oh, yeah. Close one.’ I grin briefly.
We’re sitting in one of Vigo’s better restaurants. Around the table are five men, including myself. Apart from me there’s Joey, Miguel and Jose – the latter duo our Spain cocaine contacts – and Jesus – Miguel and Jose’s Colombian contact. We’re munching pretty passable food and talking – mainly about nothing in particular but occasionally business. Business talk has caused the odd bit of confusion. The Spanish speakers keep referring to coke as ‘salt’, which causes problems when I actually want someone to pass me the salt. Jose tells me to wait until later, that I shouldn’t snort coke at the table.
After dinner we move on to a bar. Most of us start drinking spirits. Jose passes me a wrap of coke within ten minutes of arriving. Poor chap seems quite concerned I might have taken his earlier caution the wrong way. Within half an hour the booze we’ve consumed, added to the wine we’ve had at dinner, loosens our tongues. Jose, who with his round glasses and slight frame looks more like an accountant than drug smuggler, airs the moral conflict he’s having with drugs. ‘Do you ever wonder if we are doing a wrong thing selling drugs?’ he wonders.
Joey’s hoarse laugh shows where he stands on the matter.
I don’t have any morals, so I really couldn’t give a shit, but I know what to say if I want to pretend to be normal. ‘My view is that the State shouldn’t be interfering with the right of the individual to consume whatever he wants,’ I say. ‘That being the case, I don’t have a problem helping people to do something I think they should have the right to do legally.’
‘So you think . . .’ Jose begins, his accent making a real mess of ‘think’, ‘you think if you don’t agree with a law you don’t have to stick to it?’
‘Pretty much . . .’
‘Yeah, but if everyone think that way, then there would be riot in the street.’
‘I’m relying on the fact that most people don’t think like I do,’ I reply.
‘What if everyone start thinking like you tomorrow?’ the Spaniard asks. ‘Would you then stop selling drug and obey the law?’
‘If that happened I’d buy as many guns as I could and take to the hills,’ Joey butts in. ‘Fucking damn right.’
‘Good point,’ I say, addressing Jose. ‘But it’s a hypothetical scenario, so I’m not going to lose too much sleep thinking about it.’
Jesus takes a hit of whichever drink he’s drinking and chips in: ‘There is the world of pri
ests, and there’s the real world. Where I grow up, if you follow the Bible you don’t live past the age of twelve.’
‘Ah, but we are priests,’ Joey says with a grin.
Jesus laughs. ‘Very funny!’
Miguel says, ‘No they really are. Crazy, hey?’
‘Really?’ the Colombian says. ‘What went wrong?’
‘Something went very right,’ Joey says.
Jose says something to Jesus in staccato Spanish, then turning to Joey and myself says, ‘I was just telling Jesus here about the whores. Your import game.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Joey nods. ‘You know, you gotta diversify in business.’
Jesus’ face lights up. ‘Where these women come from? What part of the world?’
‘Mainly Eastern Europe,’ Joey says. ‘They all come from there, actually.’
Jesus: ‘When they come to England, why don’t you get them to carry drugs? Take care of two things at the same time . . .’
‘I never thought of that,’ Joey concedes. ‘But Eastern Europe isn’t Colombia. It’s not Drugs Central.’
‘Heroin,’ Jesus says. ‘Much easier to get heroin to somewhere like the Ukraine than to England. Closer to Afghanistan. Customs officer who can be bought off.’
Joey looks at me. ‘Never thought of that,’ I say.