Hearts of Stone

by Mark Timlin

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘No worries. It’s not a secret. Anything that comes up, you know.’ I could be coy with the best of them.

  They knew all right.

  ‘So what do you two do?’ I asked.

  ‘The same,’ said Hughes. ‘This and that.’

  They were being coy, too.

  We drank our beer, and chatted about cars and clothes and women, like real men do, until just after ten Seeley said, ‘What you doing later?’

  ‘Going home to bed,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get much kip last night, and I’ve been working all day. I’m knackered.’

  ‘Want to come out, have a laugh?’

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I’m fucked.’

  ‘We’ve got something that’ll wake you up.’ He touched his nose and winked.

  I knew I might never get another chance so easy. ‘Is that right?’ I said.

  Seeley grinned and nodded. I said goodbye to my bed for another night.

  ‘All right, you’re on,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll do some in the motor,’ said Hughes.

  ‘Do we need two cars?’ I said.

  ‘Where do you live?’ asked Seeley.

  ‘Local. Just round the corner.’

  ‘No, you’re all right. I’m close by. We’ll go in mine. I’ll drop you off after.’

  ‘Come round my place, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to change. I feel like a right scruff next to you two.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Seeley.

  So we all left. JJ gave me a dirty look as we went, but I couldn’t help all that.

  12

  Their car was parked about a hundred yards down the street. I watched them walk towards it, then got into mine, started it, indicated, pulled out, and flashed them as I went past. I looked in the mirror and saw them pull out behind me, and I kept going slowly until they caught up. I took it easy on the short run to my place. I parked at the kerb outside, and the black Cosworth slid to a halt behind me. I got out and walked back to their car.

  ‘In there,’ I said, pointing at the house when they joined me on the pavement.

  Hughes looked at my Jag parked up in front. ‘Whose is that?’ he asked.

  ‘Mine,’ I said.

  ‘How many cars have you got, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Just the two.’

  I think he was impressed, and I enjoyed that.

  We all went inside, and up to my flat. ‘I’m going to take a quick shower,’ I said.

  ‘Got a mirror?’ asked Seeley. I went into the bathroom and hauled my shaving mirror off the wall, wiped it off with a towel, and took it out to him. I grabbed the strides from a dark blue suit, a shirt, some clean socks and shorts, and dived back for a quick splash. I towelled down and put on the clothes and went back into the living room. I wondered if they’d gone through my stuff in my absence. I didn’t care. There was nothing for them to find.

  When I got back, Seeley had cut out three lines, each as thick as my little finger, on the mirror. I was going to have to go for it whether I liked it or not.

  ‘You didn’t waste much time,’ said Hughes.

  ‘Didn’t want to miss out on the goodies,’ I said.

  ‘Spoken like a real junkie,’ said Seeley, rolling up a new fifty into a tube.

  I watched them scarf up a line each, then I took my turn. It was primo gear. I felt the familiar rush, and tasted metal at the back of my throat. ‘Good stuff,’ I said.

  ‘Only the best for friends of ours,’ said Seeley.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  I went and chose a tie equally as colourful as the ones they were wearing, and knotted it, then tugged on my suit jacket, slipped my feet into a pair of soft, black leather loafers, fetched my wallet from the bathroom, and I was ready.

  ‘OK, then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go if we’re going.’

  ‘Where do you fancy, Pat?’ asked Seeley as we went downstairs.

  ‘There’s only one place to go when we’re carrying,’ said Hughes.

  ‘Sonny’s?’ asked Seeley.

  ‘In one.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ I said.

  ‘You’ve never been to Sonny’s?’ said Seeley. ‘You’ve never lived.’

  ‘Then I haven’t lived. So where is it?’ I asked again.

  ‘Round the back of Beak Street. You’re going to like it there.’

  We drove up to town in Seeley’s Cosworth. Inside, it was the twin of mine, black leather and all. He was proud of his driving, you could tell, but he drove too close, and at every set of lights he ended up in the wrong lane. I didn’t say anything.

  Sonny’s was the kind of place I didn’t think existed anymore – I don’t know why, I just didn’t. It was in an old crooked house squeezed in between two modern office buildings in a street off Beak Street. The place was quiet when we arrived, with the windows curtained tightly. There was no nameplate or sign to indicate that there was anything unusual inside, just a plain black painted wooden door at the top of three whitewashed stone steps. Seeley rang the doorbell. When an almost invisible shutter opened, I half expected him to say, ‘Joe sent me.’ He didn’t. He said nothing, but the door opened immediately.

  Inside was an entrance hall decorated with the same flock wallpaper that they had in my local Indian restaurant. The door had been opened by a big geezer in a tuxedo, who accepted Seeley’s fiver tip like it was his right, and said, ‘You know the way, gents.’

  Seeley and Hughes obviously did. I just followed, still buzzing from the coke, along the hall, down two steps, and we were there.

  The club itself had been formed by knocking through all the rooms on the ground floor. There was more flock wallpaper, a dark red carpet, Burgundy leather furniture, a small stage, and a dark wooden bar along one wall. George Shearing was playing Honeysuckle Rose softly through the speakers at each side of the stage, and draped across a lot of the furniture were the real attractions of the place. Half a dozen or so women ranging in age from their teens to their early thirties, in various stages of undress. As we entered the room they recognised Hughes and Seeley, and we were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of the friendliest whores I’ve ever seen, all saying hello and rubbing themselves up against our heroes like they’d just liberated Soho from the German army.

  One of the girls, a big blonde cruelly corseted in a black basque with a leather micro-skirt and black fishnets on a pair of legs that seemed to go on forever and a day, said, ‘Who’s your friend, Roy?’ Giving me the once over like I was a fish on a slab.

  ‘This is Nick,’ said Seeley. ‘You want to take care of him, Kylie?’

  ‘If you’ll take care of me first,’ she said with a flutter of false eyelashes.

  ‘Get behind the bar and get us all a drink and I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

  ‘What’ll it be?’ asked Kylie.

  ‘The usual, please, darlin’. We’ve had a good week. We’re celebrating. And give us a dry cloth while you’re there, there’s a love.’

  He took a plastic baggie of coke from his jacket pocket. There was enough to get a coach party high – and then some. Just as well, I thought, as I saw the girls’ eyes light up at the sight of it. The blonde did as she was told, and went behind the bar and handed Seeley a folded Irish-linen glass cloth, then lined up enough champagne glasses for everyone, took three bottles of Moët from the fridge at the back, and expertly removed the corks without flooding the place. She filled the glasses, and everyone helped themselves.

  Meanwhile Seeley wiped the bar top with the cloth to make sure it was dry, then poured out a pile of charlie from the bag, and crushed down the rocks with the edge of a credit card, and pulled out a line about a yard long across the polished surface. Then the trusty fifty came out again.

  ‘There you go Steph,’ he said, and handed
it to a dark girl in a red miniskirt and a red see-through blouse which made her breasts look like they were covered in blood, and which turned her nipples the colour of raspberries, and she hoovered about six inches off the line up her nose.

  ‘Me next,’ insisted Kylie, and she took the note from Steph and bent down to snort up her share, and showed a cleavage deep enough to lose your car keys in. She took her hit, and stood back and said, ‘Champagne and coke make me so horny.’ And gave me a look that could have blistered paint, and dived into her champagne again.

  ‘You’ve had a result, mate,’ said Ray. ‘That Kylie’s a great fuck. Believe me, I know.’

  Terrific, I thought. The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. That’s all I need.

  We all took our turns at snorting the coke. Afterwards I grabbed Seeley and said, ‘What’s this place all about, then?’

  ‘It’s all about tarts, mate. What does it look like?’

  ‘Are we the only ones here?’

  ‘It’s early yet. It doesn’t really get going ’til one or two in the morning. Then it’ll be buzzing, you’ll see. Are you going off with Kylie, or what?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. What’s the deal?’

  ‘They’ve got rooms upstairs. It ain’t the Ritz, but it does.’

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘If you’ve got to ask, you can’t afford.’

  ‘Bollocks, Roy,’ I said. ‘How much?’

  ‘A couple of hundred, two-fifty. But it’s worth it, believe me. Especially with her.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Don’t think about it too long. She’s a popular girl. I’d go case with her myself, but I fancy that Steph something strong. Anyway, don’t worry about money. Just have a good time.’

  ‘I’m not worried about the money,’ I said. I wasn’t. I just wanted to know the score. Old habits die hard.

  I took a sip from my glass and lit a cigarette.

  Kylie came out from behind the bar and joined us.

  ‘Got one for me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll just bet he has,’ said Seeley with a leer.

  ‘I meant a cigarette, Roy.’

  ‘Course you did, sweetheart. Only joking. Now I’m going to leave you two alone to get acquainted while I go and have a word with Steph.’

  ‘Go on, then,’ said Kylie. ‘I want to find out all about your friend Nick.’

  ‘See you then,’ said Seeley, and took his glass, and made tracks for the girl with the red see-through blouse.

  ‘I meant it, you know,’ said Kylie. ‘I do want to know everything about you.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ I said.

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Don’t you like me?’

  ‘Sure I do.’

  ‘Then let’s have another drink.’ She stretched over and hooked an open bottle of champagne. As she did so her leather skirt stretched tightly over her buttocks. One up to Kylie. She knew exactly what she was doing. She topped up my glass, and then hers. ‘Cheers,’ she said.

  ‘Cheers,’ I replied, and we touched glasses. She looked at me over the rim of hers as she drank. A long bedroom look through wide, cornflower-blue eyes. She stroked her other hand slowly down her body from breast to thigh, feeling every curve, and licked her lips.

  ‘You remember what I said about coke and champagne?’ she said.

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘It was true, every word of it.’

  ‘I guessed it was.’

  ‘And now I’ve had both.’

  ‘So you have.’

  ‘And now I’ve got an itch in my cunt that needs scratching.’

  ‘Any candidate for the scratcher,’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You. You look like you might be good at it.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘I bet you could scratch me raw.’

  ‘I could try.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hate to break up the party.’

  ‘It’ll still be going on when we get back.’

  ‘OK, let’s go then,’ I said.

  So we did.

  I grabbed the champagne bottle, and Kylie took our glasses and her handbag from where she’d been sitting and we made for the exit. On the way I caught Seeley’s eye and held up the bottle and pointed at it. He gave me a letter O with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. I flipped him a wave of thanks, then Kylie and I went out into the front hall, through a door halfway along, then up two flights of steep, narrow stairs, along a dimly-lit corridor, until Kylie opened a door on our left, leaned in, and switched on a light.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘Be it ever so humble…’

  13

  The room was small and very clean. It was lit by two wall-mounted fixtures covered with tiny lampshades. The walls were decorated with plain beige paper, dotted with framed sporting prints that someone obviously thought gave the place a touch of class. Someone had been wrong.

  The floor was covered with a dark brown carpet, and matching dark brown curtains were drawn tightly across the windows. There was a handbasin against one wall, with a fresh cake of soap on top of a pile of folded flannels behind one tap, and a white towel draped across the front of it. Above the basin was a mirror about two foot square, with a shaving plug next to it, and a short, opaque, unlit fluorescent tube above the mirror. On the carpet underneath stood a metal waste bin.

  The bed was a threequarter double covered with just a white sheet, and two pillows at the head. On one side of it was a small table with a glass ashtray centred on it, on the other a single straight-backed chair with a thin duvet in a flowered cover folded on it. Against the wall opposite was a dark brown corduroy-covered armchair. I put the champagne bottle on the bedside table and Kylie placed the glasses and her handbag next to it. I sat on the edge of the bed and felt a rubber sheet through the thin white cotton. All in all it was like any cheap room in any plastic hotel in any city in the world.

  ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said Kylie.

  I looked over at her and she winked and pulled a face.

  ‘You don’t really live here, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you kidding? I’ve got a lovely flat in Brewer Street.’

  ‘A bit noisy down there, isn’t it?’

  ‘Double-glazed.’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘You’re making me sound like an estate agent.’ She stood in the centre of the room and smiled at me. ‘So what are we waiting for?’

  ‘How much is this all going to set me back?’ I asked.

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘It matters.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. Roy always picks up the tab for his friends.’

  ‘Does he?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘He’s a generous bloke. This is his champagne, remember.’ She picked up the bottle and held it up to the light. ‘That’ll do,’ she said and filled our glasses, and gave one to me. She went over and peered in the mirror. I saw her pull another face into it, like she didn’t like what she saw. She looked OK to me. ‘I wish we had some more coke,’ she said. ‘Oh, hell, not to worry.’ And she drained her glass and put it in the sink.

  She came and sat next to me, kicked off her shoes and pulled up her skirt, and undid the suspenders that held up her stockings. She was wearing a musky perfume, and the heat from her body radiated the smell of it until it seemed to fill my head. She rolled down her stockings, pulled them off, then dropped them on the floor. She leant over and kissed me. Her tongue filled my mouth and she bit my lip. I watched as she stood up again and undid her skirt and let it fall to the floor and stepped out of it. The basque she was wearing ended just below the sw
ell of her hips. With it she had on only a tiny black lace G-string which hardly covered the mound of her blonde pubic hair. She struck a model’s pose then turned around.

  ‘Unhook me,’ she said.

  The corset was fastened with about thirty hooks and eyes, and it was so tight it was hard to get a purchase on the slippery elasticated material at the back.

  I finally got it undone and she shrugged out of it, and tossed it on to the armchair and turned and came into my arms. She was soft and hot, and I stroked my hand down her back and she shivered and rubbed her crotch into the top of my thigh, so that I could feel the pubic bone.

  ‘That feels good,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ I said back, and stroked her some more.

  ‘Nick,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been a very bad girl,’ she said.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, I need punishment.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, I deserve a good spanking.’

  I pulled her away from me and looked at her. She lowered her eyes demurely.

  ‘So that’s what you’re into,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Have you done it before?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So you must like bad girls.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  ‘Will you tie me up?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. What with?’

  ‘My stockings.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Tie me up and gag me and beat my bottom until I come,’ she said. I could feel her trembling, and smell her woman’s smell under the musk of perfume.

  I did what she wanted. I tied her wrists tightly with one of her stockings, and gagged her with the other. As soon as I started she begged me to stop, but I knew she didn’t want me to. And, besides, I was starting to get into it. I left her tiny panties on; somehow she looked almost more naked wearing them.

  By the time I’d forced the stocking into her mouth and knotted it behind her head she was writhing on the bed like she was really scared, and I pulled her across my knee and started spanking her. She was all over the place trying to get away, but I wouldn’t let her. She was moaning and growling through the gag, and I could hardly hold her she was so strong.