by Noel Amos
The Judge's gavel rang loud in the confined space. She was a well-preserved blonde of indeterminate years. Her features were soft and pretty but her voice had a ring of Scottish steel.
'I formally state that the proceedings in this court are empowered by the self-regulatory body of the business community of the City of London and, as such, are not subject to the common law of the land. In other words, the prisoner may like to note, we play by the rules that I choose to impose.'
'So it's a complete farce,' said Tom with some vehemence. He hadn't meant to say anything but the words had spilled out of their own accord.
'Shh, Tom,' whispered a voice behind him. Petra. Thank God he had one ally.
The Judge was glaring at him, her pale curving lips set in a thin line of disapproval. 'One of the rules I impose, Mr Glass, is that the accused says nothing unless he is asked a direct question. I am quite capable of rendering you incapable of speech and I won't hesitate to do so. I believe Ms Petra Rosewater has volunteered to say something on your behalf at the appropriate time, is that so?'
'Yes.'
'Yes, madam.'
'Yes, madam.'
'Very well. You'll get a turn at some point. Now let's get on with it. Prosecutor Hawk.'
It was the first time Tom had set eyes on Gossamer Hawk and he boggled at the statuesque blonde who now confronted him. Her tall, curvaceous figure had been squeezed into a floor-length gown of black velvet with a swirling cape and upturned collar. Her lips were a slash of crimson, the same shade as her long, sharp fingernails - one of which quivered an inch from his face as she struck a pose worthy of the wicked queen in Snow White. If it hadn't been that Gossamer was blonde the resemblance would have been remarkable, thought Tom. Apart from the bosom, of course.
Gossamer's cleavage was unmissable. Behind the curve of her outthrust arm, the exposed swell of her two incredible breasts was framed in a décolletage so extreme that it was a wonder her dress remained in place. The magnificent alabaster globes pushed out against the velvet, white on black, a mesmerising display of fleshy temptation. Tom was stunned.
'Lecher!' she screamed at him. 'Traducer of innocence! Immoral, shameless wrecker of lives! I'm going to strip life bare and expose to the court the detestable foundations of your worldly success - which is nothing less than a barbarous assault on the female sex!'
Tom heard the words but was hardly able to make sense of them such was the volume and intensity with which they were delivered - and the incongruous sight of those two shivering orbs thrust beneath his nose. The creamy flesh danced before him and his eyes feasted on the hypnotic display. Could it be that the skin tones of her left breast, just at the point where black velvet cupped and enfolded, were shading to pink? Was this the delectable rim of her areola peeking into view?
'Madam,' screamed Gossamer in theatrical outrage, 'observe the foul beast! He's staring at my tits!'
Barely suppressed sniggers came from the shadowy figures observing the entertainment. Tom smiled.
Crash! came the sound of the Judge's gavel, silencing levity.
'Sergeant!' barked the Judge and Amy Tooth strode forward. Gone was the ghastly Sex Police shell-suit. She wore a black PVC basque, fishnet stockings and thigh-high leather boots. She grinned into Tom's face and kicked him in the stomach as hard as she could.
There was a collective intake of breath as Tom pitched forward onto the floor and one high-pitched cry of anguish which, had Tom heard it, he would have identified as coming from his sole supporter, Petra Rosewater. But Tom was lost in private agony, doubled up on the floor, the breath knocked clean out of his body, a whistling in his ears and bile in his throat.
'Get him on his feet,' ordered the Judge and Amy Tooth doused him with a bucket of water. Assisted by Sergeant Gloria Just, she hauled him upright.
'You'd better put him in irons, Sergeant,' said the Judge. 'I can see he's going to be trouble.'
As the two officers of the Sex Police shackled his feet to bolts in the floor and his thin wet clothes clung to his shaking frame, Tom's spirits sank to their lowest ebb. The court, as he had always suspected, would offer him no justice. It had the power to strip him of his company, his wealth, his future in business and send him out into the world a ruined man. But first there was this public ordeal which had only just begun - a piece of vengeful theatre whose drama was his pain and shame and utter humiliation.
It was with numbness in his veins, as if he had been injected with an emotional anaesthetic, that he listened to the Prosecutor's opening statement. Her contention that his discovery, naked and aroused, in the street by a departing audience of play-goers was the culmination of years of depravity made no impact on him. Her argument that his business morality should be measured by the deficiencies of his personal life passed him by. So too her declared intention to trace the threads of chauvinism and sexism that had led him to base his success on the exploitation of women. His entire sexual history, it seemed, was to be dragged out in court and held up as evidence of his culpability. So what? thought Tom.
But when the principal witness for the prosecution entered the room, the anaesthetic ceased to work.
Eve Biscuit took her place in the spotlight, head bowed and refusing to meet Tom's eye.
If Tom had ever nurtured a hope of deliverance, it died at that moment.
Chapter 50
Cassie led Petra to a dark corner of a pub two streets from The Primrose Court. The younger woman was shaking so much Cassie had to support her round the waist.
'Put that inside you,' she said, pressing a glass into Petra's hand. The triple brandy disappeared in one swallow. 'That's all you're having. You'll need your wits about you tomorrow.'
Petra stared at her wide-eyed with torment. 'Is it always like that?' she said. 'Why didn't you warn me?'
Cassie did not reply. There was no way to warn someone about a trial at The Primrose Court.
Eve Biscuit had given her testimony in a monotone, staring at the floor. She looked up just once, when Tom said to her, 'Eve - how could you?'
Her eyes filled with tears and her soft swollen lips quivered.
'Gag him,' said the Judge and Amy Tooth and Gloria Just advanced on him.
He'd fought them then and reinforcements had arrived, beefy women with ham-like thighs and melon-sized breasts jiggling in their PVC corsets. Petra was aware that the members of the Corrections Committee around her in the gloom were relishing the action. Tom pushed Sergeant Just onto her back and ripped Amy Tooth's bodice so that one creamy breast bounded free to shake and shiver in the harsh light as they struggled. Then the big women arrived and pinned Tom's arms behind his back, bending them up and twisting them so that at any moment Petra expected to hear the crack of bone.
Amy forced a rubber ball into Tom's mouth with relish and Gloria secured it with a leather thong, lodging the bung deep in the angle of his jaw.
Petra found herself on her feet. 'Madam, I protest!' she shouted. 'It's inhuman to tie him up like that! He might suffocate.'
'Silence!' snapped the Judge. 'Or I'll gag you too. It's Ms Rosewater, isn't it?'
'Yes, madam.'
'Obviously you didn't pay attention to my opening remarks. This is not the Old Bailey or even the local magistrates' court. The accused has no rights here beyond those I choose to bestow on him. The same goes for his representative, so I'd advise you to keep silent.'
'But—'
'Rest assured, Ms Rosewater, if he turns blue I shall remove the gag. There is no satisfaction, even to me, in trying a corpse. Now let's press on.'
And so Petra had been forced to watch in silence as the case was advanced against her employer and mentor. Gossamer Hawk put her histrionics to one side and proceeded methodically, with the aid of Eve Biscuit's testimony and video evidence, to lay bare Tom's duplicitous love life. Despite herself, Petra was fascinated. She knew nothing about his teenage seduction of his brother's fiancée or of his affair with his university professor's au pair which had resulted in
his tutor fleeing the country.
Dr Madeleine Flint testified as to the nature of Tom's memory loss and confirmed that Nurse Biscuit had been assigned night and day to his care - with the express purpose of encouraging him to reveal his sexual history in detail. Almost all of these conversations had been captured on camera.
Television monitors on the tables before the Corrections Committee now relayed the tender moments of pillow talk between Tom and Eve. Petra was appalled but she watched and listened all the same.
Most of all, though, Petra watched Tom. He had his back to her, with his arms pinioned behind him - Gloria Just had tied his forearms together for good measure - and his feet were shackled to the floor some eighteen inches apart. The thin cotton clothing had dried on his body and was moulded to his back. It clung to the hard contours of his thighs and buttocks like a second skin. His head was held high and was looking upwards, beyond the lights that beat down on him, off into the vaulting darkness.
Petra followed his gaze and saw to her surprise that there was a gallery above their heads. It was packed with female spectators. They hung over the balcony, their eyes glued to the proceedings below. The trial of Tom Glass was the most popular spectacle in town.
The afternoon drew to a close. So dramatic had been the testimony, so prurient the detail of one man's love life, the day seemed to have been transmitted in fast-forward time. Petra listened as Gossamer Hawk probed with relish Tom's takeover of Euphoria Records.
'So you see, madam, that by offering Chas Cross the nubile body of a teenage girl - whose mother and father, incidentally, he had separately exploited and betrayed - the prisoner Glass was able to take control of a leading record company of the day. If I may, madam, I would like to request an adjournment until tomorrow. Then I shall embark on Thomas Glass's abuse of his new position to systematically defraud Shani and the Shagbags of their royalty income and of the copyright to their own songs.'
'Very well, Prosecutor,' said the Judge, 'I think we've all had enough excitement for one day. Sergeant Tooth, you can take the prisoner down.' She paused and looked meaningfully at Tom. 'And when I say "take him down" I mean it in every sense.'
For a moment Petra did not understand but as Amy Tooth unbolted Tom's foot, he turned towards her and she gasped. Outlined in his prison pyjamas was a monumental erection, every bulge and ridge in his straining tool clearly visible under the harsh lights.
Then, up in the gallery, Petra noticed a small dark woman with a long nose. Between the railings of the balcony she could see that the woman's thighs were spread and her skirt was hitched up to her waist, exposing a nude and hairy pussy which she was blatantly fingering. The woman next to her, a large brunette with soft curly hair, was offering the same display, her sex fully on show, the labia long and wet as she played with them. Petra was shocked that these women had come here for such a purpose - to flaunt their nudity and to masturbate in front of Tom. Perhaps to excite him so much that he would lose control and be punished.
Amy Tooth swung her hand and cracked Tom across the cheek as hard as she could. Gloria Just kicked him violently on the knee and he pitched forward onto his face. The pair of them flipped him over onto his back and Amy yanked the pyjamas down to his knees. His big cock was thrust weeping into the light, the foreskin peeled back to reveal a gleaming head purple with blood and frustration. Amy lifted a slim jackbooted foot and held it poised for a moment over the twitching bar of flesh that jutted from Tom's loins. Then she ground it down.
Gouts of spunk shot from his shaft, spattering over the floor and glistening on the black leather boots of the harpies of the Sex Police.
Around the room, the spectating, masturbating women sighed in unison.
Chapter 51
Fiona looked at Tom's supper tray and said, 'You ought to eat more than that, you know. You've got to keep your strength up.'
Tom gazed right through her as if he hadn't heard a word - which was true enough. Since Amy Tooth had walked all over him with her jackboots, a ringing noise had been reverberating through his head like a fire alarm.
With a tut-tut of contempt, Fiona removed the tray and stalked off, leaving her bruised and bedraggled prisoner to the solitude of his bare cell.
Tom shook his head from side to side, as if trying to dislodge water from his ears, but the noise rang on. He closed his eyes and the sound whistled through his entire body like a great wind, blowing with it memories of the day's events. The humiliation of his ordeal in The Primrose Court burned within him. It was not so much the beating, the exposure of his body or the shame of his final incontinence that hurt. Even the betrayal by Eve Biscuit was something he knew, in time, he could harden himself to.
It was the sudden certainty that had taken root in his mind as he had listened to the litany of his so-called sex crimes - the certainty that, in a weird and twisted way, Prosecutor Hawk was right. He was all those things she accused him of being - a moral degenerate, a selfish manipulator of women, an empire-builder fuelled only by greed and self-gratification. That most of his victims - if they could be called that - were fair game and had a thirst for sensual pleasure as profound as his own, was no excuse. He swore to himself that, however he emerged from this ordeal, he would police his future behaviour himself.
He threw himself on his mean bed and, with the wind still rushing through the corridors of his mind, succumbed to sleep.
The Chief Executive's penthouse was on the tenth storey of the Glass Mountain building. During the week Tom lived above the shop, as it were. It was very convenient. Personal visitors used a separate entrance and were rushed to the top floor in an express elevator.
The door buzzer took Tom by surprise. It was nearly nine in the evening and he'd just come upstairs from the office. Everyone else had long gone. Even the cleaners had finished their stint.
'Tom, it's Christina,' said the voice through the intercom. For a moment he couldn't think who that could be. He hadn't seen Tina for many years. Not since Chas Cross had spirited her away to his island in the Bahamas and the Shagbags split up. He pressed the button to let her in.
She'd changed somewhat. Her face was fuller, her figure too. But her eyes were the same caramel brown and her hair, now cut to her jaw, the same lustrous blonde. A pretty teenager had blossomed into a lovely woman.
Tom began to say as much but was frozen to the spot when another figure stepped out of the lift.
If anything, Shani had changed less than Tina. She wore a smart white business suit and carried a briefcase. Below the hem of the short skirt, her long legs were as thrilling as ever. Their cafe au lait sheen set Tom's heart thumping as of old.
Numb with shock, Tom ushered his unexpected guests into his spacious living room. The sun was going down and light flooded through the glass wall which gave onto the balcony. It was so bright the breathtaking view over the City streets and down to the river was blotted out.
'Would you like a drink?' he asked.
'No,' said Shani. 'We've come for a business meeting.'
'Oh,' said Tom. Their business together was done with years ago.
Temporarily blinded by the sun, Tom could not see clearly what Shani was doing as she set her briefcase on a low coffee table and opened it. She picked something out of the case and pointed it in his direction. The light glinted on metal and Tom knew exactly what she held in her hand. It was a gun.
'Don't say anything, Tom,' said Shani's low mellifluous voice. 'I don't want to shoot you but if I get angry I might.'
'What is there to get angry about, Shani?' Tom was sincerely puzzled and sincerely afraid. 'The lawyers finished business ages ago. You both agreed to the settlement.'
'That was then,' said Shani. 'We've had time to think about it and we think you owe us a bit more. Now shut up and do what I tell you. Take your clothes off.'
'But, Shani—'
'Do it,' she hissed, a red spark flickering in her midnight black eyes. Tom's stomach turned over. He began to unbutton his shirt.
Naked, with a pistol pointing at his stomach, Tom had never felt so vulnerable - or so small.
Shani laughed. 'Memory plays funny tricks, I guess. When I last looked between your legs things were built on a different scale. You'd better give him the stuff, Tina.'
Tom watched with alarm as Tina took a surgical cuff and hypodermic syringe from the briefcase. 'Don't worry,' she said as she tied off his arm and made him bend it. 'I know how to handle this. Just keep still.'
Tom would have thrust her aside but for the thought of the mad glint in Shani's eyes and the little gun shaking in her fist. He said nothing as the needle sank into his flesh.
Within seconds, it seemed, he felt a glow seep through his veins. A drowsy, soppy glow like the effect of a hot bath and a large gin. Suddenly the tension and stiffness had gone from his body. He felt weak and rubbery and relaxed. 'Wow,' he heard himself say, far off, as if he were someone else.
'That's better, isn't it?' said Shani, and when he looked into her face this time he didn't see rage and resentment but a ripe, tempting sensuality. Those black eyes seemed to be brimming with carnal promise. He ached to kiss her dark full lips as he had once done. She had been incandescent in bed, it came back to him vividly.
'Look at him now,' said Tina and he realised she was gazing at his cock. It reared up from his loins as eager and stiff as a teenager's.
'Then let's get on with it,' said Shani.
Tom sat in a daze as the two women spread a plastic sheet on the floor. Shani removed her jacket and pulled on a thin cotton overall and rubber gloves. Tina hauled him to his feet and he realised as Shani rushed to help that he could hardly move a muscle of his own volition. With some difficulty they laid him on his back on the sheet.