I push past his secretaries and his personal assistant and crash through the door. Aintrell is sitting in one of the green armchairs, talking to a grey-haired man in an expensive suit with a briefcase balanced on his knees. Aintrell flashes the big smile and gets to his feet as I walk towards him. There is something large and pointed and crystal on a low sideboard and without breaking my stride I pick it up and bring it smashing down on his forehead. It makes a crumpling sound and blood streams down his face. He doesn’t moan or groan or look me in the eye like the girl did, he just drops to the floor. His right arm flops along the carpet, palm upwards and I stamp down on it and crush it with my heel. He looks as if he has passed out but I don’t care because there’s nothing I want to say to him. I kick him hard in the ribs and I feel something crack. It feels good. His visitor looks at me in horror and jumps to his feet, the briefcase thumping onto the thick carpet, and he backs away with his hands up. I step towards him with the crystal whatever-it-is raised above my head and he says ‘please’ in a soft voice and I’m about to hit him when Ruth screams ‘Leif, no,’ and she jumps at me and tries to grab my arm and I drop the weapon.
I turn my back on the man and walk quickly out of the room, elbowing one of the secretaries in the chest when she tries to stop me.
The lift isn’t there and I kick the doors until it arrives and I pace around as we descend, blood lust roaring in my ears. Ruth sits in the middle of the floor and stares at me as I stalk around her. She has stopped talking to me because I’m not listening anymore. The lift tells me it’s hot outside and that Green activists have claimed responsibility for an explosion in the World Trade Centre and I pound the speaker with my fist until the flesh is cracked and bruised and bleeding and the metal grille is bent and silent.
The lift doors open and two teenage girls back away when they see me, hands to their mouths. I push through them and one of them screams. One of the security men at the door has the phone pressed to his ear and he nods when he sees me and says something and hangs up. He walks from behind his desk, hands up as if he’s going to go for my throat, but with a big smile on his face, the sort of smile you give to elderly relatives when you’re not sure whether or not you’re in their will.
‘Mr Ableman, can we have a word with you, please?’ he says ingratiatingly, motioning another of the uniformed guards to move to my right. I keep walking and he makes to stop me and I kick him hard and fast between the legs and the air explodes from his lungs and I’m out of the door before he starts yelling.
Pedestrians give me a wide berth as I storm down the street which is just as well because I’m not looking where I’m going. All I can see is the girl, defenceless in front of me, the burning iron in my hand, the way her mouth opened and the way she said ‘please.’ She wanted me to hurt her, she wanted it and I wanted it and my blood was still racing with the thrill of it.
I step off the pavement and there’s a squeal of brakes and a blaring horn, but I ignore it. Then the driver winds down his window and begins cursing me and for the first time I become aware of him. It’s a taxi and the driver is red-faced and obese, a limp ginger moustache and watery blue eyes and he swears at me and gives me the finger. Something snaps inside my head. My feet feel light as I walk over and there’s anger burning in his wet eyes but I know it’s nothing compared with the searing hatred in mine and I start to kick his door with the full force of my body behind it. Once, twice, three times, and with each blow the thin metal buckles inward. His mouth falls open and for a second he’s too stunned to react and then he fumbles for the door handle. I step back and wait until his foot hits the road then I kick the door with everything I’ve got and his leg makes a snapping noise, like twig breaking. All the colour drains from his flaccid face and he makes a sound like he’s going to be sick and then he starts to cry.
I turn my back on him with contempt and carry on down the road. I can hear cars slow down to look at me as drivers cancel their autopilots but I don’t care. Nothing matters. A police observation saucer wings down and examines me with its twin telephoto lenses and analyses my heat profile with its sensors and then it pulls away until it’s hanging fifty feet or so above my head, and it follows me as I walk. There’s a bubble in my head, a thick membraneous thing that’s getting bigger and bigger and squeezing my brain and I know that when it bursts I’ll be okay but right now it’s just pressing my brain against my skull and inside the bubble is the girl. And the pain. And the desire.
I hear running footsteps and somebody calling my name. I look over my shoulder and it’s Herbie, running like a madman, arms flailing and chest bent forward as he hurtles along the pavement. I keep walking and when he catches up he’s gasping for breath. Herbie, like me, is too used to the luxury cars and the private planes to be running down the street. ‘Leif, what’s wrong?’ he asks.
‘You know what’s wrong,’ I say, venom in my voice.
‘Tell me,’ he says.
‘They were going to run the whole disc, right to the end,’ I say. ‘And they means you. You and Max and Aintrell.’
‘Why would they do that?’ he asks. There is sweat pouring down his brow, and he loosens his tie. There are damp patches under the arms of his baggy black suit.
‘I don’t know why. Maybe out of morbid curiosity to see what happens. Maybe to get rid of me so they don’t have to settle my contract. Maybe because I know what they’re up to. But it doesn’t matter why.’
Herbie looks confused and he puts his hand on my shoulder, trying to slow me down, but I shake it off. I don’t want to be touched. By anyone. But least of all by someone I don’t trust.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he says. ‘Nobody is trying to hurt you, Leif, Believe me.’
‘I don’t.’ I am seconds away from hitting him, I can feel it. My fists tighten and I imagine how it would feel driving them into his face. It feels good. Maybe he’d enjoy it. Like the girl did.
‘The way I heard it everything was going okay and then you came out of it early and that you started attacking everybody,’ says Herbie. We step off the road again, crossing a street, me without looking, Herbie holding his hand up to stop cars and grinning apologies, almost skipping to keep up with me. ‘What makes you think they were trying to kill you?’
I stop in the middle of the street, oblivious to the impatient blaring horns and verbal abuse.
‘My cat told me,’ I say and he looks confused but before he can say anything I head butt him in the face, enjoying the feeling of my forehead smashing the bridge of his nose. His blood splatters on my clothes and he reaches up to hold his nose to stop the flow and as he does I drive my knee between his legs and he goes down, retching. I leave him lying on the tarmac. I don’t care any more. It’s as if I’m seeing everything through a red film, a bloody veil over my eyes. I bang into an old man and he staggers back and holds a lamppost for support, a small boy pedalling past knocks against my leg and his handlebars jerk from side to side as he tries to regain his balance. I hear a siren in the distance, getting louder and louder. I walk faster and break into a run.
I take a left turn and a right and then another left and then I’m in a street I don’t recognise, a street of overflowing dustbins and littered pavements and dark, uninviting alleyways. There are tall, brownstone buildings that have been allowed to fall into decay, peeling paint and rotting wood, either side of the road, towering above me and blocking out most of the sunlight. The pavements are busy with housewives talking, children playing with toy guns, dogs barking, men slouching against doorways with watchful eyes and hands in their pockets. Some of them look up at the police robot observer as it shadows my movements. I stop running because I’m starting to attract attention but it doesn’t make any difference and I realise that’s probably because I’m splattered with blood. I pull out a handkerchief and wipe my face and keep on walking.
Ahead of me I hear another siren and in the distance I see a police car turn into the street so I immediately turn left into an alley. It’s dar
k and cold as if sunlight had never ventured there. There are piles of rubbish, damp cardboard boxes and black plastic bags and the smell of stale fish and vomit. Something dark and furry runs away on silent feet and Ruth sniffs contemptuously.
Ahead of me I see a long, thin rectangle of light where the alley leads to another street and I keep my eyes fixed on it as my feet tread on God know’s what. Suddenly I am aware that I’m not alone, three figures to my left. They could be men or women, I can’t tell. They’re whispering and there’s a flash in my head and I’m back in the cell, looking at the brazier, and the figures are wearing robes. I look for the girl but she’s not there, just Ruth looking anxiously up at me and telling me to run. I ignore her, she’s not real. Only the girl is real and I can’t find her. The figures move towards me and I ask them where she is but they don’t answer. Maybe they don’t realise that I’m real. I hold out my hands to show them that I’m on their side and one of them grabs my wrists and another hits me in the face and then one of them kicks me in the stomach. My arms are twisted behind my back and I try to kick out but they move so quickly, they seem to flow around me and then I feel a jolt in my chest and I find it hard to breath and I feel sick. Somebody goes through my pockets and I feel my wallet go and then my legs are kicked from under me and I hit the floor. I try to get up but I’m kicked in the ribs and I bite my tongue and my mouth is filled with the taste of wet, salty blood. My arms are wrenched high behind my back as they rip my jacket off and then something thumps me on the back of the neck and then my head explodes in a pure white flash and then it’s……………
…………dark. A deep, enveloping darkness into which gradually creep small red circles like donuts that whirl around in random formations. The circles elongate and twist and form lips, pouting red lips that keep on forming the word ‘please’ over and over again.
‘Leif please, please wake up.’ It’s Ruth, but I don’t see her among the galaxy of lips. ‘Please, Leif, please.’ I open my eyes and the lips disappear but it’s still dark. There’s something cold and hard pressing against my left cheek and something hot blowing on my right side and the smell of fresh, crusty bread. I can’t feel my left arm at all, it’s as if it’s been hacked off at the shoulder. Maybe it has and I’m bleeding to death. I try to remember where I am because this could be a Dream or it could be me coming out of a Dream, it’s impossible to tell.
I close my eyes again and the whirling lips are back, speaking with the voice of the girl, and I open them again and blink. There’s something bitter in my mouth and I spit it out and it runs down my left cheek and I realise I’m lying on the ground, my arm twisted underneath me.
‘Leif,’ says Ruth. ‘The police will be here soon. Come on.’
I roll over onto my back and my arm flops free and begins to tingle as the blood flows back. I can feel the damp cold ground under my legs and there’s a breeze blowing the hairs on my thighs and I grope down with my good arm and feel my bare skin.
‘They’ve taken my trousers,’ I say through cracked lips. ‘They’ve taken my bloody trousers.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ says Ruth. ‘Now are you going to get up or what?’
I force myself into a sitting position. I’m naked apart from my underwear. I mean, for God’s sake, I can understand them taking my wallet and my watch, and maybe my jacket, but what is anyone going to do with my socks? The anger has gone now, I’m just cold and miserable and hurting. I graze my knees as I get up.
‘OK?’ asks Ruth.
‘OK,’ I say. It hurts when I talk. I reach down and ruffle her ears and she pushes her head up against my hand and purrs.
‘I was worried for a while,’ she says. ‘You were so angry. I’d never seen you like that before.’
‘It was a rough ride,’ I tell her. We walk to the end of the alley but I keep to the shadows. ‘What am I going to do?’ I ask Ruth.
‘A cab is your best bet,’ she says. ‘You’re in no state to walk. And you’ll probably get picked up if you try. At least the spy in the sky has gone. It went shooting after the men that attacked you. But it’ll be back, and so will the police.’
Yeah, she’s right. As usual. I stand in the dark, pulling back each time pedestrians walk by, and after ten minutes I see a cab pull up and drop off a young girl in a tight tiger-skin effect dress that makes the hair on Ruth’s back stand up on end. I wait until she’s paid her fare and then I dash out and slip onto the back seat before she has a chance to close the door. She giggles and peers through the window at me and Ruth snarls at her and spits.
I slide down the seat as far as possible but the driver has seen me through the driving mirror and he turns around in his seat to get a better view.
‘Out,’ he says. ‘Get outta my cab you perv.’
‘I’ve been robbed,’ I say. ‘Just get me home and I’ll get you your money.’
He points his finger at me and if it wasn’t for the bulletproof screen behind his seat he’d be poking me in the chest. ‘We ain’t going nowhere. Get outta my cab or I’ll call the cops.’
‘I have money,’ I insist. ‘I have more than enough money, I promise.’
‘Out,’ he says. He’s not listening to me and that makes me angry. I’ve spent more in a day than he’ll earn in his lifetime. In a dozen lifetimes. This ignorant slob is nothing, he’ll never amount to anything, never achieve anything, and he’s going to throw me out into the street. I slam my hand against the toughened glass and it smears with blood. My blood or the girl’s? I don’t know anymore, and I hit the glass again and again. ‘I’m a Dreamer, you bastard,’ I scream at him. ‘I’m a Dreamer and you’re nothing. Do you hear that, you’re nothing. Now take me home.’ Spittle drips down my chin and I can feel my cheeks flaring and I’m mad, so mad that I could kill him if I could reach him. I hammer with both hands and I can see the fear in his eyes and he turns back and instructs the autopilot and the car starts. I collapse back into the seat and close my eyes but when I do the red lips appear and there’s a humming noise in my ears and somewhere in the far off edges of my mind I can hear Ruth calling me. When I open my eyes again the cab has stopped and the driver is out talking to two uniformed policemen. We’re not parked outside my building and I’m not that surprised. I try to get out of the offside door but my way is blocked by a third cop and so I make a break for the other door but they grab me by my arms and frog march me into the police station.
‘This is going to end in tears,’ says Ruth sadly as she walks behind us. I try to trip them up and shake them away but their grip is tight and one of them thumps me in the kidneys to quieten me down and I stop resisting. For a moment I flash back to the girl and the way she was held by the robed figures and the way she gave up struggling and how later she appeared to want the pain, to welcome it.
The doors hiss open and I’m taken down a long corridor, my bare feet sliding on the shiny floor, the policemen not speaking, not even looking at me as if I was just a parcel being delivered. At the end of the corridor is a green-painted metal door and another officer unlocks it and I’m taken through it and down a flight of stairs. It’s too narrow for us to go three abreast so one of the officers walks ahead, the other holding both my arms. The stairs lead to another corridor with a line of metal doors leading off to the left. Each of the doors is black with a small hatch about head height. They are obviously cells. The corridor is lit by fluorescent lights set into the ceiling and covered by metal mesh but my vision seems to ripple and I can see burning torches on the wall and my unspeaking captors are wearing rough woolen robes and as they unlock a door with an electronic key card I see a brazier in the corner of the cell and there are manacles hanging from the walls and a figure in red is poking a metal rod into the fire. I begin to struggle but claws bite into my arms and my head is forced down so that all I can see is their feet. They’re wearing sandals, and the floor is damp stone, and then I’m thrown forward so that I lose my balance and fall down onto my knees. I scream and twist around to try and grab the knee
s of the man behind me but a fist clubs against the back of my neck and it’s……..
……….light, harsh and painful when I open my eyes. The source of the pain is a square of perspex in the ceiling behind which there is a bright circular fluorescent light like a huge eye glaring down at me. I’m lying on my back and when I try to move a jolt of pain courses through my neck. There is no pillow, I’m lying on a thin plastic mattress about an inch thick which is on a raised concrete step at the side of a cell. I slowly raise myself up and get to my feet. My legs hurt and there is a large, red mark over my stomach. The cell seems to have been designed so that anyone in it would be incapable of doing themself any damage. The walls are encased in a thick, spongy plastic, soft when pressed and so smooth that there is nothing to grip. There are no obstructions at all on the walls or ceiling, the only breaks in the monotony being the mattress on its concrete pedestal, a toilet bowl set into one corner made of thick white plastic, and the cell door.
It’s a cell for potential suicides, which gives me a good idea of what they think of my state of mind.
I’ve no sense of time anymore, I don’t know if it’s day or night. I suppose that the fact the light is on suggests that it’s day outside, but maybe they leave the light on all the time so that they can see what I’m doing. The hatch is sealed shut and there are no obvious signs of observation cameras but I’d be amazed if there wasn’t one behind the perspex in the ceiling.
Ruth is sitting by the door, concern on her face. ‘How long have I been out?’ I ask her.
She shrugs. ‘A couple of hours,’ she says. ‘I didn’t think they’d hit you all that hard.’
‘You should have seen it from my point of view,’ I answer, but she’s right. It wasn’t just the punch, it has more to do with nervous exhaustion, every fibre of my being, mental and physical, is aching and I want to do nothing but sleep. I sit down on the toilet and put my head in my hands, massaging my temples. I can feel the blood pounding through my head as if an artery is about to burst. When I open my eyes again the girl is lying naked on the mattress, her hands tied behind her back and her hair over her face so that her lips are hidden but I can clearly hear her say ‘please, please’ and then I wipe my eyes and she’s gone.
Dreamer's Cat: a sci-fi murder mystery with a killer twist Page 16