What about motive?
The attack had been frenzied and post mortem. The killer had been angry with Lisa. I cast my mind back over my own liaison with Cecily. Putting off speaking to her because she made my flesh crawl had got me into this mess in the first place. I couldn’t scruple to examine my relationship with her now if it might yield clues to her behaviour. What had Cecily wanted from me? Initially she’d wanted me to hurt her, but when I refused she turned the tables. She craved blood and suffering with sex the way other women needed to be held and told you loved them when it was over. Yet it was my reaction to the pain that had pleased or irritated her the most. Had Lisa disappointed her in some way with her reaction to Cecily’s games? Had Cecily’s punishment for a perceived transgression gone too far? Might Lisa’s death have been an accident?
I now felt certain Cecily was Lisa’s killer, however it had come about. With Tori’s safety at risk I could not afford to give her the benefit of the doubt. If she’d killed once she could kill again.
Which made the motive for Tori’s rape – what? Because she was with me? To kill our relationship? To get back at me? Or was it vanity to assume it was about me? Didn’t Tori and Cecily loathe one another?
Why she did it mattered less than whether it was over. I didn’t know whether I should be fearful for Tori’s safety now I knew her rapist might also be a murderer.
And I had no evidence to prove any of it.
I closed my eyes and pinched my nose against the onset of a headache. What was I going to tell Dean? More to the point, how was I going to tell Tori?
When I opened my eyes, the throb of pain counter-pointing this new problem, I spied Cecily at the bar. She seemed to be with a group of women friends. I wondered if Ashley knew where she was. The anatomy of cheating has always escaped me. I watched her laughing and joking with her friends and wondered if she’d have the gall to come over and confront me. I doubted it. She’d always had one face in public and another in private. I suspected she’d save up some pithy comment for one of our uncomfortable encounters on the landing.
Perhaps that was how I could trap her? Could she be cocky enough, confident enough to confess all, thinking herself safe and immune from prosecution? And could I manipulate her into telling the truth?
Which brought me back to motive. Shit. My head was really starting to pound now.
To further complicate matters, Christmas was only four days away. My lover and my business partner would kill me if I ruined the festivities for them. Both had plans I was to be a part of. Much as I loathed putting it off, I had to delay trying to resolve this. Maybe distancing myself would help me come up with a plan of action Dean would agree to? All I had to do was contrive a way to stick close to Tori over the next few days and she would be safe. I watched Cecily making her way to the doors, confident of having achieved tonight’s objective: rattling me.
She’d achieved a lot more than that, and none of it to her advantage.
I set out to track down some painkillers.
I’d make it my New Year’s resolution: bag Tori’s rapist and Lisa Moran’s killer. Find a way to get the goods on Grey and the Chief Super. Sounded good. Now all I needed was a plan.
15
“Tell me that you’ve cleared your calendar for Christmas.”
“I promised I would and I have. I’ve a few things to finish on Christmas Eve morning, then I’m all yours till January second.”
“You won’t regret it.”
My family estrangement meant I’d deliberately worked through past Christmases. Lack of a partner gave me nothing to stay home for. This year Dean was closing the office early to spend time with Craig, and for the first time I was spending Christmas with a lover and her family. My only reason for leaving my suspicions – no, certainty – till later was that Tori would kill me if I ruined things.
“I’ll see you at eight for Dean’s party?”
I woke from my distraction. “Hum? Yes, of course.”
D & C were hosting their annual Christmas soirée. Now all was forgiven, we had been invited. I’d arranged to pick Tori up at eight.
My wool-gathering made me miss what she’d been saying. She repeated kindly, “You’ve met my parents, Randall, they don’t bite.”
Let her think it was nervousness. Better that than the truth. She changed the subject.
“What do you want for Christmas?”
“A new watch.” The manufacturers had lied about it being water-resistant.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m not. That was the best sex I ever had! A buggered watch is a small price to pay.”
She threaded her arms around my neck and wove her fingers through my short hair, teasing out strands of it, wrapping it – and me – around her fingers. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I want?”
“Nope. I already bought you something.”
Her eyes lit.
“No. You’ll have to wait till Christmas Day.”
She pouted.
“What if I don’t like it?”
“You will. Should I get something for your folks?”
“A bottle of wine to go with dinner would be fine.”
“Red? White? Rosé? Sparkling? Still?”
“Buy whatever you like, it’ll go with something. There isn’t much they don’t drink.”
“If you’re sure that will be enough. They are hosting and cooking for the whole day.”
“What do you get for your parents?”
“My mother always wanted perfume or clothes, my father only wanted the money.”
“You do still get them something?”
“A card.”
“Randall!”
“Ask me if I’ve ever had one back!”
“Keep sending the cards, Randall. Some day we’ll spend Christmas with them.”
“I doubt it, but it makes a nice Christmas wish.”
“Is a watch is all you want? How about some curtains to brighten the place up?”
I put my finger in my mouth and made gagging noises. It’s a standing joke that my apartment is more masculine than D & C’s house. Wood, marble and stainless steel make up the solid surfaces, leather and suede the soft furnishings. There are wood panels and emulsioned plaster walls – no wallpaper; no curtains – I have aluminium Venetian blinds; and no carpet – it’s cork floored throughout. I don’t possess a vacuum cleaner. When it gets dirty, I take a mop to it. The only fabrics are the bedclothes, towels and my clothes. And the tailor’s dummy the body armour lives on when I’m not in it.
It isn’t a place I spend much time in. Tori was horrified at first, but she says it’s grown on her. It doesn’t distract her from the most important thing – me. (What a flatterer!) She still can’t resist making jokes about the paucity of my possessions.
“I’ll never persuade you to move in with me, will I?”
What had brought this on? “I like the arrangement we have.”
“If you lived with me we could share a bed every night.”
“We already do.”
“Never the same bed two nights running!”
“I didn’t know that bothered you. Does it matter so much where we sleep?”
“Think about it, Randall. Regular meals, cooked for you. Laundry done…
“Tori, I don’t expect you to stay at home and be the good little housewife while I’m the breadwinner. You’d hate it! I’m not saying I wouldn’t mind somebody to do my chores. I’m just not prepared to make you my domestic slave to make that happen.”
“Think of the financial aspect. We could rent your place out. Make heaps of cash.”
“Is that what this is about? Money? Put my rent up. Don’t stand on ceremony because we’re a couple. I’m not going to demand a joint bank account. If you need it…”
“I don’t. Much.”
“Then what? Aren’t you happy? Is it that you think I’m not committed?”
“I know you’re committed. It’s just…
“Tori,
I love you, you know that.”
“Do you think I’ll leave you again?”
“Yes… No! I don’t know!” I threw my hands in the air. “I just can’t live with anybody.”
“Because of Gina?”
“No. Gina was just the proof.”
“It always comes back to her, doesn’t it?”
Shit! Shit! Shit! I really didn’t want to be having this conversation.
“Tori, I’m over her.”
“Really?”
“Really. I just need my own space. I don’t want to resent you. I would if I felt I had no escape.”
“So you need to escape me now?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, that’s how it sounds.”
I took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. “I meant a metaphorical escape.”
The look of betrayal in her eyes told me anything else I said was going to be the wrong thing. I’d been so intent on handling her carefully, first because of the rape, then to ensure she was back for good, that she thought she’d tamed me. I was entirely to blame for the fix I suddenly found myself in, and I couldn’t begin to think of a way out of it that wouldn’t totally fuck up my life. So I did the only thing I could.
“I have to go to work.”
I grabbed my jacket and left. I didn’t dare look back.
I was distracted all day after my uncomfortable parting with Tori. I resolved to try and make it up to her at the party. It was something I would have to address, and sooner rather than later if what we had was to continue.
In my crap mood I must have swept the note aside when I opened the door. I was late. The only thing on my mind was a shower, before I threw on the Master Hand tux and collected Tori for Dean’s party. If she’d forgiven me.
Towelling my hair and howling along to Original Sin by Pandora’s Box, I came back into the living room, noticing the slash of white against the tan of the cork. I assumed that Tori had been up while I was in the shower and slipped a note under the door when she found the door locked.
Reading it disabused me. I sat down hard, missing the chair, ending on the floor. The message was simple but devastating.
“I don’t think Tori likes my dungeon. Perhaps you d like to trade places?”
It was typed and unsigned, but it didn’t take a genius to guess who’d written it. I threw on the clothes I’d laid out, no time to find something more appropriate. What the hell would be appropriate anyway? I grabbed my car keys, turned everything off, locked up and raced out.
Cecily’s new house wasn’t far. I’d never been there, but I knew where it was. The place was in darkness, but I wasn’t fooled. The door opened at a touch. It took me a while to find her dungeon. Like a fool I started at the top of the house; Cecily, traditionalist that she was, had converted the cellar. A door opened into it from the cupboard beneath the stairs. The only light in the house came from around the edge of the trapdoor.
I walked down steep, narrow, wooden stairs. The kind people end up with when they convert loft space. I was uncomfortably reminded of the Tori I’d found last time I used similar stairs. Was I more angry than afraid by the time I reached the bottom? I don’t know. I do know I was wishing for Kevlar and my gun when I pushed open the faux gothic door and walked into her fetish room.
“Randall! Good of you to come. See, Victoria, I told you your beau would come riding to your rescue. Did you park your white charger outside?”
Tori, in the simple satin sheath dress she’d bought for the party, was fastened to the wall by twists of wire. Her spike-heeled shoes stood on a table top, spotlit like trophies. Her hair was dishevelled, but she seemed in one piece. She looked how I felt. Angry and afraid. Duct tape covering her mouth prevented her from saying anything.
“Let her go, Cecily. Stop this before you go too far.”
“Ah, Randall, been there, done that.”
“Tori’s rape. Lisa Moran’s murder.”
Tori’s eyes widened. She redoubled her struggling.
“Bravo! It took you a while to put two and two together. Was it the perfume that threw you? For shame. It was a ruse! Really, Dean needs another partner. All those lovely muscles have crowded out everything but average intelligence, I fear.”
I started towards them. Cecily reached down and plucked up a mini blow torch, the kind cooks use to caramelise puddings. Lit. She held it dangerously close to Tori’s hair. “You’re mistaking who’s in charge. Back, or Vicky finds out how Michael Jackson felt.”
I backed up so fast I bumped into the door.
“I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. I don’t really want to hurt Victoria again. She was always a means to an end. Do exactly as I tell you and I’ll let her go.”
“You expect me to believe you? After admitting to abduction, rape and murder?”
“Assault, not rape. And she didn’t report it and is quite over it, thanks to you. Abduction? Perhaps. Murder? Erotic asphyxiation was the coroner’s official report, wasn’t it? A regrettable accident.”
“Semantics. I’m not convinced.”
“Then you’ll just have to trust me. I am, after all, the one with the blow torch.”
“What do you want, Cecily?”
“What I’ve always wanted. You. Ever since we broke up, I’ve been searching for your replacement. Nobody came close. They either chickened out, went back to their safe boring little lives, or they enjoyed it. Where’s the fun in that? In beating someone who wants to be beaten? Or cries like a baby when you flog them then thanks you for it! Only you would do. No one else has your tolerance for pain. No one else hated what I did to them but was still so in the moment that they fucked me masterfully while they bled.”
Jesus! What must Tori think of me? I’d sanitised what had gone on between Cecily and myself when I told her about our relationship. While essentially Cecily was telling the truth, it hadn’t happened the way she was spinning it. Not in my memories. Had I really fucked her while I bled? Tori would never trust me again!
“You should have seen her, Victoria. On the night I beat her black and blue with that paddle, she had the self-possession to get herself out of the cuffs. No begging or screaming. She swore a few times, that was all. She was magnificent! She’s wasted on vanilla sex and airheads like you.”
Tori snarled something through the duct tape. Cecily ignored her.
“You never did come after me, did you? That’s how I knew you didn’t hate me. You were just waiting for me to make the right move. Be clever enough to win you back. You even cut your hair for me. I appreciated that. I really did. Then she came back.”
She glared at Tori, blow torch perilously close.
“Cecily…”
She wasn’t listening.
“Set your car keys beside Vicky’s shoes and go to that table over there.” She indicated a long scrubbed oak trestle. “Put on the collar and wait for me. Since you care for her so much, I’ll take her home. Then I’ll come back and we can play. Together. The way we were meant to be. She doesn’t know where this place is. A blindfold will ensure we remain undisturbed. She remains unhurt. We all get what we want.”
“I don’t want you.”
“No? You’ll change your mind. You want Tori safe, don’t you? So you don’t love me. I can live with that. Hate is as powerful. It will do just as well, and I can make do. It’s either that, or Tori will have to learn to Moonwalk. I don’t think they’d let her dance at the Paradise with third degree burns, do you?”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Try me.”
I couldn’t let her do this. If she had both of us captive there was no chance. She’d completely lost it. Could I make it to Tori before..?
I didn’t get the chance. When I didn’t immediately comply, she turned the blow torch on Tori’s bare shoulder. Tori jerked away, trying to scream through the tape. I did it for her.
“NO!!! Jesus! Stop!”
She turned her attention to me and moved the torch away. A patch of
livid burnt skin, blackened in places, proved she wasn’t willing to compromise.
“Keys, Randall. And if you aren’t fast enough, it really will be her hair next time.”
The smell of burned flesh convinced me of her sincerity. I threw my car keys at the shoes. One of them fell over but all three items stayed on the table. A post-modern still life.
“Very good, Randall; that wasn’t hard, was it? Now the rest, please. I really will take her home. You have my word. Have I ever lied to you?”
I moved over to the table to show willing. The collar was like a dog’s, leather, studded with metal. No way was I putting that thing on!
“Will you burn me too? When she’s gone?” Keep her talking. Think. Buy yourself time.
“Perhaps.” Shit! She really was considering it! “I have more interesting things I’d like to do to you. I’ve had a long time to think about it.” She looked at me consideringly. “A mark of my good faith.” She ripped the tape from Tori’s mouth. An earsplitting shriek bowed my head in shame. I’d promised to protect her and I’d failed.
By the time I could bring myself to look at her, Tori was swearing. Cecily applied an ice pack to her shoulder.
“Do shut up, Victoria. You’re trying my patience. I promised you’d be safe if Randall did as she was told. It’s Randall’s fault you were hurt, not mine.”
“You were the one that burned me, bitch!”
I wasn’t going to let her blame me for her sadism! Angrily I strode towards her again.
She went from solicitous to aggressive in the blink of an eye. I hadn’t taken two steps before she turned the blow torch on Tori’s injured shoulder. Tori’s scream went through me like a blunt knife. My knees buckled.
“STOP! Please!”
Just like that, she was all sweetness and light and the ice pack was back on Tori’s shoulder. Seeing me on my knees pleased her. Hearing me beg pleased her even more.
“The collar, Randall. Put it on.” I looked at the ground. When I didn’t move she tsk’d. “Maybe it’s true what they say, you really can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
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