Plastic

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Slavstars employs a great number of illegals who work for cash in hand, so no-one reports them if they suddenly go missing. Which means that your ‘victim’ probably doesn’t even have an identity. The good doctor Azymuth does, of course. He has a criminal record. You know what companies like Slavstars actually do?

  ‘Don’t talk to me as if I were a child. You’re going to tell me they’re linked to organised crime.’

  ‘That’s rather an old school idea, gangsters keeping their stars strung out on drugs and making snuff films – which incidentally don’t exist and never did, except in the minds of rabid politicians – but the public loves a good horror story.’ He settled wearily back into his sofa, and seemed in danger of falling asleep. ‘Actually, they give kids the chance of a better life, teenagers who grow old fast in the decaying cities of the Eastern Bloc. They help stupid little girls and boys who have nothing to trade except their looks. Most of them work for a few years and retire with more money than they ever dreamed of. A small handful screw up and ruin it for the rest. Recently one of the girls made a mess of things and was punished. Even you must agree that it’s only fair to penalise the ones who try to cheat the system.’

  ‘So you allowed someone to choke her to death as a punishment.’

  ‘Good God, it’s nothing to do with me,’ he complained indignantly. ‘Now, if you want to make a point, go to the police and tell them what you know. They’ll file your report with all the others. You’ll have done your duty, they’ll have done theirs and everyone can forget about it.’

  ‘The police wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Why not? You look so terribly respectable.’ He made the word sound dirty.

  ‘Perhaps I was. I don’t think I am now that I’ve been seen stabbing someone in public. Besides, I got myself arrested this morning. A very young police officer told me to stay out of trouble.’

  ‘You might want to take his advice.’

  Elliot wouldn’t get rid of me that easily. I remembered that his bedroom contained more leatherwear than the average MTV set, and gambled on him having much darker secrets he wouldn’t want exposed.

  ‘If I did go to the police I’d have to give them the names of people I’ve talked to, and I don’t suppose you’d want to be involved.’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘But I would give them your name.’

  He reached a decision. ‘If I explain something to you, will you just disappear and leave me in peace?’

  ‘You’ve got yourself a deal.’

  He peered at me from half-shut eyes. ‘These new adult stars, Russian, Romanian, Lithuanian, asylum seekers, economic immigrants – they arrive along the south-east coast of England homeless and broke. How would you feel, coming here for a better life, only to find yourself stuck in Margate on £50 a week? The young ones are met by industry reps, or they answer ads offering auditions in adult magazines. The top companies give them cash in hand and a little plastic.’

  ‘They get credit cards?’

  ‘Cosmetic surgery. Simple stuff: chemical peels, blemishes removed, breast augmentation, pectoral implants, features tidied up to make them more photogenic. They’re used in movies, supplied with money and places to stay, then dropped when they can’t perform or when they start looking too used. Azymuth did the facial nip-and-tucks.’

  ‘And what’s your part in all of this?’

  ‘Oh, barely nothing at all. I just do the psychological evaluations, see if the new employees can be trusted, check that they’re up to the work. It’s simply a bit of freelance, entirely above board. Although, of course, none of us would be needed if the public didn’t require its fantasy figures to look like comic book characters.’

  ‘So you and Azymuth are employed by the same company. And I suppose the girls get passed around amongst you?’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting. It’s a professional business, no different from any other. Workers don’t handle the merchandise. Everything was fine until the directors realised that this building was still half-empty. You know, it’s difficult finding somewhere suitably attractive to film. Nobody wants to watch their fantasies being played out in council houses. Well, some do but that’s a niche market.’

  And after they started filming here, in a property they already leased, the next logical step was to start using the building to dump their troublesome trash. Every corruption escalates unless it’s stopped. But why here? I wondered. Why would they kill a girl in a new building when you could dump her out on the streets? Bodies are found in parks and canals with depressing regularity.

  ‘It’s interesting to consider the psychological implications within a society that requires constant stimulus to continue functioning. But perhaps that’s for another time. I think we should draw this little chat to a close.’

  ‘You can’t cloak this in fancy psychology,’ I said. ‘You’ve taken money from people who destroy lives.’

  ‘Oh come on, one has to end the burden of responsibility somewhere. You buy products manufactured in sweatshops that impoverish and shorten the lives of millions. There’s no point in beating your breast about it if you’re powerless to initiate change. Pour me a bloody drink, for God’s sake. Don’t just stand there like some kind of sitcom charlady.’

  I spilled Courvoisier into the largest glasses I could find. ‘I have nowhere to go,’ I told Elliot. ‘Dr. Azymuth is dead because he wouldn’t tell anyone where I was. I owe him something.’ I passed the glass and watched him drink.

  ‘Don’t be so naïve. How do you think the doctor found his beautiful apartment? They gave it to him as payment. He knew there would always be an element of risk.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Were you even listening to me? The doctors have consultancies on the board of the estate corporation, who lease the land from the MOD, who are pals with the ministers who smooth the way for new legislation. The estate owns the entertainment company, and indirectly owns the clinic, and the men from the ministry, the board members, the corporation directors and the company managers probably all drink together at the bloody Garrick for all I know. While you’re on your little crusade, why don’t you check out the corner penthouse? That’s where they do all their filming. Ask your little friend down there, the one in the yellow container who watches us all the time.’

  ‘What’s Stefan got to do with it?’

  Elliot was leaning alarmingly to one side. He made an attempt to perk up, opening his eyes wide. The effect was pretty scary. ‘He used to help sign up the talent. Hanging around the pubs in Dover and Folkestone, chatting up the ones he thought had a bit of potential. He’d give them a contact number, tell them how they could make good money in London and get a cheap place to stay. Where do you think your little friend Stefan comes from?’

  ‘He told me he’s French.’

  ‘That’s probably the first place he remembers, arriving across the border in his mother’s arms. He’s Moroccan. His sister’s still out there peddling her fanny on the streets of Marrakech. And as for Azymuth, he could bore for bloody England, going on about how he and Stefan saved poor little Petra from the clutches of the police.’ Elliot took a swig of brandy and closed his eyes. For the first time, I realised that he was as scared as Azymuth had been. He seemed relieved to have someone to talk to.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I prompted.

  ‘Oh, the doctor went down to meet Stefan from the train at Waterloo. He used to follow the boy around like a love-sick puppy, it was all rather disgusting. So, Stefan arrived from the coast with Petra, who was travelling without a ticket, and there’d been a row with the inspector. She was pretty feisty, used to looking after herself. Before anyone could call the police, Azymuth paid the fine and smoothed everything over. Petra said she had come via Afghanistan, although how she got through the Pakistan border I’ve no idea, given that the Americans are crawling all over the place accidentally shooting children. She said she had nothing except the clothes she stood up in and a dusty old book she kep
t clutched to her bosom, probably some volume of religious claptrap passed down by her grandparents – they all have those.’

  ‘Stefan and Dr. Azymuth brought her here?’

  ‘Not at first. First they settled her in a bed and breakfast place over in Victoria, where they keep all the boys and girls, so if their charges got into trouble there wouldn’t be any connection with the company. No-one is ever forced to do it. They choose for themselves, and most of them are thrilled to bits.’

  ‘So what went wrong with Petra?’

  ‘I imagine she decided to leave but Mr. Rennie wasn’t ready to let her go. After all, she was an investment. Azymuth had been paid well for the work he’d done on her, making her more photogenic.’

  I recalled her body lying on the floor. She had perfectly rounded, high breasts. ‘Did he give her breast implants as well?’

  ‘Not that I know of. She was a star earner, but difficult, moody. Rennie’s accountant set most of her money aside in a deposit account so that she couldn’t suddenly take off.’ Elliot was half asleep and starting to spill his brandy onto the couch.

  ‘Then Petra must have had some money hidden away,’ I pushed, trying to keep him awake for a few moments more.

  ‘Well, that’s what Rennie thought. The girl wouldn’t own up, and from what I understand the whole thing turned nasty. That’s why you’ve got to go now. The next time they come back, they’ll come for you.’

  ‘You and Stefan are the only ones who know where I am.’

  ‘And I’d have to tell them in order to protect myself. You can see that, can’t you? It’s nothing personal, strictly business.’

  A thought had been nagging at me. Why had Petra gone to Azymuth’s flat at all? Why had she jumped me? Because she needed help or because she thought I was someone else? Had she expected to find the front door locked and the doctor away?

  Then I remembered that she had spoken. Even with the collar around her neck she had tried to tell me. ‘I need to get –’

  I could only come up with one answer; despite being terrified and in pain, there was something in Azymuth’s flat she needed before leaving.

  I realised that I’d been wrong about the key. It belonged not to Petra but to Azymuth, and it fitted something in the bedroom. Petra hadn’t arrived with it – it was already in the flat and she couldn’t find it because it had fallen behind the bed. Perhaps she had searched for it before, but this time had been caught, questioned, tortured. Somehow she’d got away and tried to find it again.

  The bookcase key. Whatever Petra had come by to collect was in the bookcase in Azymuth’s bedroom.

  I had to go back there.

  But I also wanted to see inside the penthouse, where Petra had made her films. I could take pictures on Lou’s phone. Elliot was losing his battle to stay awake. He had begun to slide off the leather sofa. I sat beside him, waiting for his eyelids to fall and stay shut.

  I’d given up taking Temazepam to sleep, but it had proven worthwhile crushing up a whole blister-pack of them and keeping the fine white dust inside the gold teddy bear on my charm bracelet. I’d come up with this idea on the train, watching other passengers dozing. The powder had settled on top of the brandy like chalk dust, refusing to mix, but in the half-light and his anxiety for a drink, Elliot hadn’t noticed a thing. I could see the white rime left on his glass.

  I lifted one of the oil lamps from the floor and tiptoed away from the snoring form sprawled half on the floor. On the hall table I found a large bunch of numbered keys. One, I felt sure, would belong to the penthouse.

  I raised them as quietly as possible and left, pulling the front door shut behind me. As I wearily returned to the hallway, rainclouds snuffed out the last vestiges of afternoon sunlight. It felt as if I was surrounded by those everlasting staircases by MC Escher, ones which would never allow me to reach my destination, and never entirely escape the determined grip of the Ziggurat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Set

  I SHOULDN’T HAVE had the brandy. I hadn’t eaten, and the drink went straight to my head. I meant to go directly to Azymuth’s flat and find out what the key fitted, but I wanted to see where they did it – where they made the films. If I hadn’t gone there I’d have been back sooner, and everything would have turned out differently.

  The dark clouds were shrouds that slowly enfolded the settling red sun. Moving through the deepening shadows, I felt like a housebound sister of Van Helsing, mistakenly venturing into a nest of urban vampires. My stomach hadn’t stopped churning since I returned, but there was a part of me that deliberately drove on into the darkness.

  Sunday was surely the best time to take a look around. I wanted to enter forbidden territory, to see what had been kept hidden, so I headed for the penthouse. According to Madame Funes’ plans, the corners of the seventh floor were occupied by the four largest penthouses, all supposedly unfinished and unsold. The two at the far end had no front doors. Dustsheets lay over unpolished marble floors. The third was the Ziggurat’s main show flat. Its view across the river swept from St. Pauls to the Savoy and the Houses of Parliament, with the misty blue-green of Hampstead Heath rising in the distance.

  The door of the fourth corner penthouse was still locked, but as I had expected, one of Elliot’s keys opened it. Opaque plastic sheets covered a hideously glitzy black-and-gold lounge suite that looked like a cross between a lingerie box and a Russian brothel. Globe lamps hung on steel-whip arms in nudging retro-eighties irony.

  Fascinated, I tore open the covers and revealed the room in sections.

  A partially bubble-wrapped stack of giant framed photographs stood against the wall, distant Asian women with their legs spread wide, frozen-faced Chinese girls in fetishistic corsets, unblemished teenaged girls sprawled on sofas with their pale buttocks raised invitingly. They were dream-people, consumer goods no more obscene than photographs of sports cars shot in dancing beams of Italian sunlight, or close-ups of unpeeled lipsticks in the windows of Boots.

  No personal mark had been left in the room. There was nothing here that would incriminate for anything more than a lack of taste. I tried the bedrooms, but the beds had been stripped. In one room, shiny fake-silk bedding lay screwed up in a bundle. The sheets were fleshy mauves and purples, the unsubtle colours of arousal and intimacy. Empty boxes, polywrap and polystyrene sections littered the floor. There were hundreds of empty DVD cases, virgin discs waiting to be digitally inscribed with pornography. The acts that had taken place here left a stale trace in the air, a faint ghost-image you could glimpse in half-light, fading heat-marks of desire.

  In the wardrobe, I discovered a safe with its electronic locking facility disabled, and inside, layered in more bubble-wrap, was a heavy stainless steel object with a long wide barrel that looked like something from the sleeve of an old rapper CD. I was surprised by the weight of it. I had never touched a weapon before, and it felt dangerous. There was a gold sticker on the side reading ‘Smith and Wesson 669 Double Action Automatic’, as though it was a museum exhibit. There was a cartridge box, too, and when I checked inside I noticed that twelve bullets from the top layer were missing, so it was safe to assume the gun had been loaded and was ready for use. There had to be a safety catch somewhere, but nothing looked very likely. It was tempting to peer down the barrel, but I didn’t trust myself to do so, like standing at the edge of a cliff and trying not to jump.

  I decided to take it with me, even though I wasn’t sure where to keep it.

  Petra had been here, patiently sitting on this bed or perhaps on the lounge sofa, to be filmed by digital low-light cameras, everyone just doing a job, waiting to get paid and hoping to get through the experience with some slight sense of respect intact.

  Petra had come back to Azymuth’s flat, either to rob it or to collect something she had left behind. It meant returning even after she had reached a decision to leave for good, but her need had overcome her fear. But they – one of Rennie’s employees, Stitch-Head – had follow
ed her into the building and killed her before she had a chance to collect what she had come for. Her punishment, and the silencing of the doctor, should have been the end of it. Instead, it had made matters worse. Because there I was, in the wrong apartment, on hand to see Petra left for dead, and the doctor had told his client about me.

  No more extemporising; I needed a plan.

  I went back down to Malcolm’s flat and put the automatic in a kitchen drawer. It seemed to belong with other steel utensils. Besides, it was too heavy to carry about, and frightened me. I could now return to Azymuth’s apartment and search the bookcases. If I was unable to find what the girl had left there, I would have to admit defeat and go to the police. The problem was that in Britain, at least, Petra didn’t exist. She had no criminal record, no identity, no employment records. She paid no taxes, held no permanent address, had no family members resident in the country. I would have to prove she lived before I could prove that she died.

  ‘Hallo, love, I thought you’d gone.’ Mr. Ashe, the gas fitter, was standing on the landing of the stairs armed with Waitrose bags full of rubber tubing that looked like something out of an operating theatre.

  ‘No, I was just... out shopping.’

  ‘No luck?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘No shopping bags. Unsuccessful trip?’

  ‘Yes.’ I hastily headed on up the stairs.

  ‘You know we’re testing the gas tonight. You can’t stay in the building.’

  I paused and studied him suspiciously. ‘What about the other residents?’

  ‘There’s no-one else left here now. I’ve just been round the whole place. I only came back for these.’ He indicated the hoses. I knew Elliot was home, but he would still be unconscious. Perhaps Ashe didn’t have keys for all the apartments. ‘Come on, it’s dark, I’ll take you downstairs.’

  ‘I have to get something too,’ I said, trying to buy time.

  ‘Then I can wait, it’s no problem.’