Deadly Pretty Strangers: US Edition

by Max Thorn

  Ariadne dabbed her eyes. “So are you looking for my children?” The steady gaze returned.

  “Maybe one of them.”

  “I know that someone has died. What will you do when you find her? Give her a jolly good telling off? Hand her over to the police?”

  “How do you know that it’s one of the girls?”

  “Well it’s bound to be, isn’t it? Look at the trouble I got into.”

  “I don’t know. The police are already looking. At the moment it’s a mystery. No one knows the circumstances.”

  “Will you tell me if you find her?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Ariadne slowly extended a leg around the back of my seat, pulling it closer until my knees were against the sofa.

  She leaned forward. “Could you get me out of here?” Her right hand reached down to my groin.

  “Are you sure that that’s what you want?” I said, trying not to react to her touch.

  Slowly her left arm extended behind me, her long fingers pressing gently between my shoulders, pulling me closer. Her right hand held me through my pants and she breathed into my ear, “I know you’re attracted to me.”

  “Any man would be.”

  Her lips brushed against my cheek. Her other leg had moved higher above the cushion with an acrobat’s flexibility and now her calf was at my lower back, pulling me tightly toward her. The wristband was flashing red. She slid off the sofa, her skirt riding up as she sat on my lap. No underwear. Her bare thighs closed around me.

  Like a frog who doesn’t move from a gradually warming pan of water and eventually boils to death, I’d been happy for her to seduce me, imagining that I could always just leave. Her mesmerizing tone and innocent face gave no hint of danger. And the perfume and wine stopped me from noticing that the water was approaching boiling point. I didn’t feel threatened, even though I’d told her that I was searching for one of her children involved in a death.

  The door to the observation room opened suddenly. In a flurry of white coats, the three technicians rushed in. One of them quickly unrolled a pouch of equipment on the floor—the anti-venom syringes, I guessed. Darren and the other technician held taser weapons loosely at their sides.

  Darren spoke firmly. “Please let him go Ariadne. You know this isn’t agreed behavior.”

  “For goodness sake Darren, I’m just going to kiss him.” She glared at the technicians. “If you shoot your toys you might cause another accident. Just relax.”

  No one was relaxed apart from me. I looked at her beautiful face, the gray-green eyes, felt her breath on my skin, heard the deep purring of her voice and her cool hand on my cheek. She kissed me deeply, her soft lips holding mine. But now I wanted her to be Christmas.

  She breathed into my ear, “Help me find my children.”

  TWENTY

  “I was on the point of asking her to let me go,” I explained to Christmas as she drove us on the expressway, mostly in the outside lane, mostly breaking the speed limit. The first twenty minutes of the journey had passed in near silence. As our speed increased, I decided the explanation for my intimate embrace with Ariadne couldn’t wait.

  “Really? Darren rather thought that you were about to restart her one-woman population explosion.”

  “I know. He wasn’t pleased.”

  “Darren is more than not pleased. He’s furious with you. He says that she had her legs wrapped around you, your groin pressed to hers, while she kissed you passionately. He said, another minute and you would have been engaged in full penetrative sex, on the sofa, regardless of his warnings to you and the fact that you had an audience of three men with tasers.”

  “She kind of ambushed me.”

  “Why didn’t you keep her at arm’s length?”

  “I was trying to build rapport with her. I was being friendly.”

  “Are you always that friendly at the rapport-building stage?”

  “I don’t usually get the opportunity. I honestly didn’t notice what she was doing until she’d got me properly entangled. And some of the rules were a bit contradictory, like not being rude or discourteous. I hadn’t realized how awkward it would be to reject her.”

  Christmas flapped her hand in frustration, slapping my upper arm with her open palm in annoyance. The car moved a yard sideways in the fast lane. She put both hands on the wheel.

  Staring straight ahead she said, “I know we’ve only just met and it’s a bit early for me to claim you as a partner, but I don’t expect to sleep with someone after a two-year drought and then THE VERY SAME DAY, they’re almost having sex with someone else.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “And a sixty-five year-old someone else. That’s not the sort of competition I’m expecting.”

  “She looks early forties.”

  “True. She does look great.” She growled with irritation and hit me flat-handed again. “That knickerless bitch is incorrigible. You’re definitely not seeing her on your own again.”

  “And she’s strong too. I’m not sure whether I was being seduced or violated.”

  “If it was seduction, then I’m letting you out right here in the fast lane. And I won’t be slowing down.”

  “Then it’s pretty clear I’ve been violated.”

  She smacked me lightly again. “You realize I’m obliged to have dinner with Darren now?”

  “Is it a romantic thing?”

  “It is on his part. And do you know what? If I have to wrap my legs around him, get him fully aroused and then mount him to avoid being unkind or rude, well I might just do that.”

  “I’m really sorry Christmas. I completely underestimated her.”

  “Do you know what we’re going to do when we get back?”

  “Get some dinner?”

  “We’re going straight to bed. Then dinner, and then back to bed.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And that right there is your biggest problem.”

  “Unable to argue?”

  “Wrong priorities.”

  Christmas drove home like we were on the final lap of the British Grand Prix, so it wasn’t too late by the time we eventually got out to dinner.

  * * *

  We ate at a small Italian restaurant off Charing Cross Road. Christmas was by now a little more relaxed about my encounter with Ariadne.

  “She asked me if I could get her out of there.”

  “How ridiculous! Where would she go? What would she do? They treat her like a queen there. They fear her, respect her, and worship her. She has a vast retinue pandering to her every need.”

  “Perhaps she wants freedom.”

  “Rubbish! She goes out all the time. She’s always accompanied, but they take her more or less wherever she wants to go, into the town, even on holiday. She has a big team around her if they’re outside.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They indulge her. She gets whatever she wants. My father says that eighty percent of HomEvo’s commercial patents are the result of research based on her. She’s the most intensively studied individual on the planet. Bone and muscle treatments, skin therapies, fertility treatments—all developed from insights gained from her genetic variations to ordinary Homo sapiens. She’ll never leave HomEvo and the company’s board of directors will make sure she never wants to leave.”

  “She’s starved of intimate companionship though.”

  “Not when you’re visiting she’s not. And she’s been offered the op. Removal of the venom glands, pinned and capped canines. Then she can have as many intimate relationships as she likes, with contraceptive support. It’s her choice. All she has to do is give up her special ability for slaying people with a snap of her jaws.”

  “So why doesn’t she have the operation?”

  “It’s quite a thing to give up, don’t you think? She’ll still have her physical strength, but losing the ability to kill in seconds would probably be a little like a man agreeing to castration. There’s no going back.” />
  “Castration is losing the ability to create life, not end it.”

  “Yes, and she covers both ends of the continuum—creating life by the busload and ending it just as easily.”

  “Isn’t that true of anyone wielding a knife or a gun?”

  “You can put a gun down and use it later. The op is irreversible. It’s a stark choice and she’s chosen lethality over intimacy. It makes sense when you understand her true nature.”

  “Which is?”

  “Ruthless and self-centered.”

  I pondered this while we drank wine.

  “She seemed to know all about me getting chased across the moors. How do you think she knew? Did you speak to Darren or anyone else about it?”

  “No. Not a word.”

  “What about your father?”

  “I haven’t discussed it with him. We kept silent about you by phone and email in case we were being monitored. That’s why he gave you a handwritten note.”

  “Then she must’ve been told directly by the gang or someone who knows them. Or perhaps Darren was told.”

  “I’ve no idea, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon.”

  * * *

  In bed later, Christmas fell asleep easily after a day of driving and fraught nerves. Her soft, steady breathing beside me was comforting. I looked at her face, the brow no longer furrowed, eyebrows relaxed, lips unpursed. More than pretty.

  I thought about the picture of Aleksy at dinner with his young blonde murderer. One question circled around constantly in my mind. If Ariadne had nine adult daughters and possibly any number of granddaughters, why wasn’t London waist-deep in fang-poisoned men? How could Aleksy be the only one? I went to sleep on a full stomach and troubling thoughts; a bad combination.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I was in the whispering gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral; the circular balcony at the base of the dome. Looking over the iron balcony rail, the thirty-yard drop to the tiled floor below made my head spin. I’d been there before and experienced the dome’s amazing acoustic effect. On that occasion, standing near to the wall, I’d heard a friend a little over ninety feet away on the other side of the gallery tell me that she was going back to Brazil. Spoken quietly, almost as though she hoped I wouldn’t hear, her words came to me as clearly as if she’d been standing next to me.

  This time I was alone. Though my peripheral vision seemed blurred, the gallery appeared to be deserted. I listened to the groans and clattering noises collected by the dome from the city outside, amplified in the vast cathedral space.

  The sound rose and sank and then suddenly coalesced clearly into a question, “Where are all the dead men?”

  “What?” I asked, clinging to the balcony rail and looking across to the other side of the gallery.

  There was no one. I decided to walk round. Perhaps someone was lying on the floor on the other side. As I turned, I came face-to-face with a grotesque, thick-veined, new-born head, four fat legs sprouting from the base of its skull. It towered over me, the face inclined aggressively toward mine, mouth open as though mid-sentence. Behind the head its withered body hung like a lifeless, gray, ribbed sack.

  I said, “Your brother killed my dog.”

  “You’re safe. I’m not on solids yet,” it said with a voice exactly like Dave Slaughter’s, “and besides, I love dogs. And whales.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course.” Its eyes bulged and the mouth moved slowly, “So where are the dead men?”

  “Probably in the crypt downstairs.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. The men killed by human spider bite.”

  “I have no idea,” I replied. It must have been the anti-anxiety tablets that Christmas had been giving me, because I felt no fear. Just curiosity.

  “Death is a sad fact of life,” the creature said gravely. “Half a million every year in this country. Old age mostly. Only a small percentage are premature. So you should be able to see a representative distribution across the country in direct proportion to the size of the local population. Local variation is what you should be looking for.” It scuttled around the gallery.

  I followed, saying, “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “If there’s a pile of murdered men somewhere, they should turn up on a map. A big heap of unusual deaths, all in one place.”

  “What map is this?”

  The creature’s voice boomed, “You’ll have to make the map!”

  “How can I make a map of something I don’t understand?”

  In a milder tone, it explained, “Get all the deaths over a period of years and put them all on the map. Then look for a big pile sitting somewhere where it shouldn’t be. Or maybe a circle of many deaths, out of proportion to the local population. If a village has a thousand people in it, you won’t expect fifty of them to die from spider bites, will you? Unless there’s a gigantic family of killer spiders living nearby.”

  “That sounds like a great idea.”

  “Look at the size of this head—it’s full of great ideas. But I’m getting hungry.”

  I backed away.

  “Relax, I’m still on milk. What I need right now is a breast the size of a house. I think they must be milking all of the post-natal women in the south-west to feed me.”

  “You have an amazing sense of logistics, Babyhead,” I heard myself saying, “and data analysis.”

  “Yeah, well us monsters, we’re not just ugly faces, you know.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  In the morning I awoke with Christmas’s arms around me. We made love.

  Afterward she said, “You were dreaming again last night.”

  “Was I scared?”

  “No. But you called my name.”

  “How embarrassing.” I could see that she was pleased though.

  We got up to make breakfast.

  From the living room window I saw two uniformed police officers down on the street, walking slowly on the opposite side of the road. Their fluorescent yellow over-vests and uniforms bulged with equipment and holstered pistols. A physical presence to reassure residents after the café incident.

  I thought about Ariadne and her family. Nine venomous daughters. Perhaps a hundred lethal granddaughters. But just one dead body. Suddenly the Babyhead dream came back to me.

  Over breakfast I said, “Do you think you could introduce me to your number crunching specialists?”

  “I suppose so. They’re a little under the radar though. Not too keen on strangers. Some of the stuff they get involved in is…questionable.”

  “So they’ll work for cash then?”

  “Who doesn’t? What are you after?”

  “I need someone to get some data together and do some analysis on death rates.”

  “Well generally speaking, they’re more interested in analyzing the thoughts and actions of registered voters. But we can give them a try.”

  Christmas’s doorbell rang from the street. It was a delivery. Books and a hat.

  Opening the boxes she said, “I wish retailers wouldn’t use artistic license,” as she put a very wide-brimmed black, felt hat on her head. “Flipperty-flopperty just turns out to be floppy.”

  “It looks great.” I was reminded of the four pictures of the blonde girl in the Chinese restaurant. “What are the books?”

  “The Origin of Species and Ideas and Opinions.”

  “Let me know how they end.”

  * * *

  An hour later, we arrived by cab in a quiet street in east London. Christmas led me down a row of high-sided Victorian-era warehouses. No windows at street level, just plain brick wall. At a steel gray door, four steps down from the sidewalk, she pressed a buzzer on a perforated metal entry box. Its camera lens stared dead and unblinking.

  She announced flatly, “It’s Christmas.”

  An electric click and the door sprang forward an inch. I heaved it open and we stepped inside, onto a metal grill landing, closing the door behind us. Clanking down steep metal
stairs into the basement, we held onto the cold handrail.

  The noise of office bustle, occasional shouts and plastic-scented air warmed by electronic machinery came up the stairwell. Television light flickered against the basement walls below.

  As we turned at the stairway corner, a large basement room the width of the warehouse came into view. Widely spaced columns supported the building above. Small glass-partitioned offices were in darkness along one wall. The main floor had around sixty people working at computer terminals.

  On the wall at the end of the room, fifteen separate screens in a three-by-five block showed television channels reporting political and news events. A single large screen above them showed the hottest topic from one of the screens below. A red ribbon of text saying, From Germany, hung below a well-fed bureaucrat who was speaking emphatically. The translation scrolling below him showed a garbled message about protecting export markets.

  A vast video screen with the display title Operations Overview, took up the rest of the wall, showing panels with scrolling totals against bar charts, viewer surveys and statistics.

  On the longer wall, a projection screen showed a video of a man in drab military uniform, arm raised, shouting to a rally in a foreign country, his audience wrapped in thick coats of cheap puffed-nylon and fur-lined hats with ear-flaps.

  I looked at Christmas as we came down the last few steps, “It’s not just large data is it?”

  “I told you. Under the radar. Psych-ops is a big thing here,” she whispered. “Influencing opinion. Making things happen. But let’s not get into that right now.”

  A tall red-haired man with a thick beard approached us as we reached the bottom of the stairs. The beard said forty-five; the uncreased eyes of an untroubled conscience looked a decade and a half younger. He wore rimless glasses, an off-white, heavy linen shirt, ox-blood colored chinos, and nothing on his feet. His soles were black from the city dust on the shiny red linoleum. His body odor reminded me of moorland sheep. He embraced Christmas and kissed her on the cheek.