by I K Watson
She thought of Butler listening to it all and imagined his expression should he burst in. She laughed out loud again. The DS might have dreamt of her in such a position. For a moment she wanted him to walk in just so she could see the look on his face.
“Sam, you better get in here,” she called out and Mr Lawrence’s smile widened.
She felt the heat radiating from her body and the colour rising in her face, just as Mr Lawrence wanted, but she laughed again in the knowledge that it was out of elation rather than embarrassment. Mr Lawrence had got it wrong. She was leading him on, too far gone, invincible, and nothing else mattered. What was it he wanted? Giddy with euphoria and with the room starting to slant this way and that, she tried to bring back the notion of what she was doing and why she was there at all. Even as she frowned in concentration she knew there were things she had to do and defiance returned with a steely look. Mr Lawrence smiled knowingly.
She lay back, without hesitation, and in that same moment drew her knees apart.
“It’s such a mysterious place,” he said. “A little Milky Way, a spreading supervulva.”
“You shouldn’t be looking, not really. I shall have to arrest you and take you in. I feel strange, like I’m swimming.”
“Relax. Do what you want to do. It’s the wine, you see, or rather, what is in the wine. I should market it.”
“Oh, Mr Lawrence, my head is spinning and I’m out of control. Why haven’t you seduced me, Mr Lawrence, like the others? Did you fuck the others, Mr Lawrence?”
“In my own way, my dear.”
“Are you going to fuck me, Mr Lawrence?”
“In my own way, my dear.”
He put aside his brush for the painting was complete and just right. Those questions in her dark eyes were answered by a subtle smile that left the faintest of dimples on her cheeks, an enigmatic expression – alluring and aloof – that hinted of triumph.
She watched him move from behind the easel and shuffle to the very edge of the studio. There, using a steel lever, he prised up a long floorboard. He moved again and pulled the hook and tackle along the rail until it hung directly over the narrow opening. He used the controls to drop the hook. The steel groaned and squealed as pulleys turned on their blocks and released the chain. As each clashing link fell over the wheel the chain extended with a clanking and screeching that reverberated through the room.
She sat quite immobile and watched a brick wall rise from the floor until it stood as tall and as wide as a door. Clumps of dusty black cobweb dropped from the crumbling edges and settled on the floorboards.
He moved back to the sofa and extended his hands toward her. She reached up, childlike, and took them and he pulled her to her feet. “I feel so shaky,” she said and began to wobble. He slipped an arm around her waist and held her steady. Her skin beneath his cold hand felt smooth and warm. He stroked that infuriating hip, that ball-andsocket joint, and realized that he no longer found its prominence disagreeable. In fact, this tall skinny figure had grown on him. “Let me show you,” he said and guided her to the wall.
“The wall, Mr Lawrence. It’s the wall in your picture…in the other room!”
She leant against him, a long streak of Indian amber. She was living in a distant place, a place called rapture. He could see it in her eyes, not that they were slipping for they were wide and fixed on the dusty bricks.
He caressed her slight breasts and tugged gently on the extended nipples.
“Oh, Mr Lawrence, what are you doing?”
“Indulge an old man, just this once.”
He dropped his hand to her behind – that flawed wonderland that had given him so much grief in the painting – and traced between her buttocks until, finally, he cupped that seat of genesis and let his middle and ring fingers slip upward. Unconcerned, perhaps even unconscious of the source of this digital sensation, she began to gyrate and writhe and swell until she ended up on tiptoes.
“Oh, oh, Mr Lawrence,” she said.
He pulled his hand away and her feet came down to earth.
“I think it’s time to find Mrs Harrison.”
“Shall I get dressed again?” she asked, surprising him. It wasn’t simply the way she said it, which was lucid, but what she said as well. That she could put words together that made any kind of sense, was extraordinary.
“Not necessary,” he said. “We would only have to take them off again.”
With his hand gently resting on her right buttock, he directed her to the cellar door.
Chapter 35
Mr Lawrence pulled away the sealing tape then led the way down the dangerously dark and narrow stairway, reaching back to hold her hand as she placed one tentative foot after the other on to the crumbling steps.
“It’s wet. The steps are cold and wet.”
Again her words and observations surprised him. Should he come across a girl like this again he would need to stiffen his cocktails. You could never generalize with women; some were even more difficult than others.
They reached the ground safely and he threw a switch and forty watts from a bare dust-encrusted bulb threw its dim glow on the chamber. Save for a discarded mattress and the dark lumps of rotting rats and cats – some no more than stiff fur shells – it was an empty room. The walls were damp and decaying and clusters of black cobweb hung from the flaking edges. In parts the flooring had given up to black compacted earth. On the far side was the black hole that the wall of bricks had left and, as Mr Lawrence had observed once before, nothing could escape a black hole.
“Be careful now,” he said as he led her into the narrow passage. “There’s no lighting until we get to the end.”
“It smells horrible,” she said.
“I’ll light some joss sticks.”
“I like joss sticks,” she said. Once again he caught hold of her as her legs gave way.
At the end of the passage he pushed open a solid door and threw another switch. The room was bright and reasonably clean. The brick walls on three sides were sealed and whitewashed and the floor, although lumpy, was covered with green linoleum. The other wall was screened from floor to ceiling by a heavy curtain patterned with threads of red and gold. Mounted on a steel tripod a spotlight threw its intense beam on to an examination couch that came complete with thick foam wear-resistant black vinyl top with an elevated platform that avoided finger accidents – or so the advertisement had promised. Next to the couch stood a gleaming portable trolley and a high stool. She steadied herself on one of the twin fixtures at the bottom of the couch. “A bed,” she managed.
“It is. Why don’t you get on board and rest a while?”
She nodded enthusiastically and he helped her. For a moment her feet dangled, until he lifted her legs up over the side. She lay back. “That’s better, isn’t it? You’ll feel better now.”
She nodded again but already he noticed that her eyes had lost their previous lustre. Already he could feel the heat radiating from the spotlight on to her skin as he lifted her legs into the stirrups. “Many years ago this place belonged to the shop next door. It was owned by an old lady, Mrs Meacham, who sold wool and knittingneedles. But her shop was knocked down to make way for the new road up to the council estate. For some reason, perhaps the lack of funding or, more likely, contractors on the fiddle, they only filled in the one room. This was left completely as it was. If some of the bricks hadn’t been dislodged during the building work I would never have discovered it.”
From the trolley he produced a white apron that he tied around his middle.
“I mentioned before how small your breasts are.” As though it meant nothing at all he leant over and stroked them again and gently pulled a nipple between thumb and forefinger. “If we let the pregnancy continue they would fill out and your nipples would get bigger too.” She struggled with the idea and her frown was exaggerated. She turned her face from the penetrating light and said, “I’m so tired.” “I know, but try to stay awake a little longer.”
; Her eyes were slipping now; nothing seemed to have a definite beginning or substance, everything was animated. Even his voice seemed distant.
“Gosh,” she said. “That tickles.”
“I thought it might. Maybe it will wake you up a bit.”
He worked a shaving-brush around her groin.
“It’s cold and wet, Mr Lawrence. What are you doing?”
“Nowadays, as I understand it, shaving has gone by the board. Maybe it’s part of the NHS efficiency programme that we hear so little about. But I’m just an old-fashioned man. I believe today’s term is the Brazilian. Perhaps it has something to do with the cutting down of the rainforests. Now, this will tickle again.”
She felt the cold lather and the bristles of his worn brush and then the razor and the slight tug as hair was cut away.
“My goodness, you haven’t been to your beauticians lately, have you? I suppose we could call this Bikini Line, should we require a title. Did you enjoy the show, by the way? I forgot to ask. I did notice you in your box in the Carrington.”
“That feels funny.”
“There we are, all finished now,” he said as he used a towel to dry her. “Didn’t want to get lost in the bush, as they say in Zululand and maybe even Mumbai.”
Her eyes settled again and she smiled sweetly as he bent over and examined her vagina, inserting two fingers into her vaginal canal. He placed his bandaged hand on her abdomen and applied a little pressure while he searched for the position of her uterus. A little smear from the end of his bandage marked her stomach.
He fumbled around in his trolley for it was full of boxes and instruments – forceps, dilators, pessaries, speculums, suppositories and Aquagel lubricating jelly which he preferred – he did like to be up there on the cutting edge. He toyed with the adjustable speculums and tried to recall what he used on Margaret Domey – small, medium or large – but it wouldn’t come back and he settled on small. Once, not long ago, they resembled a duck’s bill but now they were more like adjustable spanners used by filthy plumbers to unblock drains. As he opened her vagina her mouth dropped open more out of shock than discomfort and her frown turned to a grimace as he used the dilators on her cervix.
“Oh, oh, oh,” she uttered and tried to sit up, failing even to rise to her elbows.
Without looking up he said, “It’s true that women the world over are all alike, even women from the subcontinent and that’s a surprise. Only the Orientals are different, so I’m told, by my barber, believe it or not – for everything about them is on the slant and that wouldn’t do at all. As the old Duke of Edinburgh – Philippos the Greek – might say, it would be like putting a round peg into a slitty hole.”
He replaced the gleaming instruments and wiped his hands. “And now,” he said. “You wanted to see Mrs Harrison.”
Mr Lawrence moved to the curtains and drew them apart, first one then the other, fussing with the rope fastenings that held them to the wall.
It was a scene out of hell and she laughed at it and Mr Lawrence saw the funny side too and joined in. He couldn’t remember the last time he laughed out loud.
“There’s Helen!” She pointed a shaky finger. “And there’s Margaret. And there’s Sandra too!” torsos were held above the slime had dried out and the skin and tissue on their faces had shrivelled and peeled so that eyes bulged and lips were pulled back. On others, rotting flesh had fallen away so that a cranium glinted here and a clavicle there. Some of them were covered in green mould and their wrappings were straining under the growth. The abdomens, from navel to crotch, had been sliced open and pulled apart and left gaping and viscera and mucus and fat and streaks of clotted blood had congealed and filled and tightened the transparent film.
“There you are. I told you you’d see her again.”
She smiled happily and watched the light bounce from a scalpel in his hand. The light danced on the blade and held her attention. She watched it move closer until it hovered just a few inches above her pubis, more prominent now, still smarting from its recent attention. She heard his voice. “I’m going through the walls of the abdomen into the uterus. You can watch. Sandra managed to watch the entire operation.”
She felt the blade against her belly.
“It’s cold,” she said and giggled like a schoolgirl.
“Julius Caesar was born this way,” he said.
In her drug-induced sleep Luscious Laura lay face down on the bed. She had barely moved. On tiptoes and with a gentle touch he pulled a sheet and tucked her in. She would sleep soundly through the night. He carried his case down to the shop. Everything was in order now; the loose ends had been tied and everything was done.
Above the rooftops the sky haemorrhaged through the December darkness. Along the High Road Christmas decorations winked and rocked in the strong wind. Dishwashers and freezers were tied in Christmas ribbon. It was the age of the gadget, of starvation and obesity, of ignorance and information. It was the age of madness. For a moment he paused as the girl’s image came back again – just as it had after their initial encounter – the amber princess, the colour of the gods. It stemmed from an old Arabic word – ambergris – perfumed oil secreted by the sperm whale.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Mmmm,” he thought. Sperm counts had halved since his father’s day and sperm whales faced extinction. Helen’s was a new face.
Helen, Mrs Harrison, smiled from the latest posters stuck to the bus shelters next to the pictures of Japanese fishermen harpooning the sperm whales.
In front of him, blocking his way, a drunk lurched.
“Penny for the guy, mister. A cup of tea?”
“Guy! Guy! You idiot, that was last month! Where do you people come from?”
He came from Liverpool or Newcastle or somewhere else north where the accent was as painful as bloodstained piss. Mr Lawrence swung his heavy case and the drunk went down, bleeding.
Chapter 36
Rick Cole woke suddenly with the image of Donna Fitzgerald superimposed over the darkness of his room. The dream faded slowly as he groped on his bedside table for the glass of Teacher’s he’d taken to bed. He leant back against the headboard and waited for the alcohol to kick in. He lit a JPS and brushed the odd spark from his chest. His mobile went and he heard Sam Butler.
“Rick, thank Christ! I’m in trouble. I’m parked up at the back of the Gallery. Help me out.”
“Talk to me, Sam. Sam?”
But Sam Butler had gone even though the line remained open. Cole finished his drink in one and stubbed out his JPS. Anger hardened his features. He knew without being told that the job had been compromised. Now it was limitation time. And without any doubt at all it was going to take every trick he knew to keep them all in the clear.
He poured another drink and headed for the bathroom. A dozen things went through his head and they were all to do with Chief Superintendent Marsh. He’d had Cole in his sights for years and Sam Butler might have given him the ammunition.
He turned the shower to hot until it hurt and washed away his thoughts of Butler and Marsh. He emptied his glass and brought back instead those last illusive impressions of Donna Fitzgerald. On the High Road traffic was thin. The Carrington slid by. He slowed by the shop, the Gallery, but it seemed as spent as the rest of the road with no movement in the windows and just the dummies looking out, Father Christmas and his assistant. But the assistant was naked. The Christmas lights blinked on the mannequin and Cole looked twice. He’d never known a shop-window mannequin to have hair before. Christ, how thing changed. Forget the nipples that poked you in the eye, they were really going for reality nowadays. He wondered, fleetingly, whether it constituted an indecency charge.
He made a right and then another and passed the only shop in the run-down street. The window was lit, but dimly, and the dolls in it were the colour of snow. Dark round eyes stared out of anaemic faces. A cat’s quivering tail caught his eye as it curled around one of the heads.
Now there were offices on his left, abandoned, t
heir windows boarded, doors chained and padlocked. And then he saw the shadow of Butler’s car and pulled up before it. His headlights blazed on the windscreen.
“Jesus, Sam!”
DS Butler raised his hand and motioned toward the shop’s blistered gate.
“What the hell happened?”
“Hit, through the window. Didn’t see it coming.”
“You need an ambulance.”
“What I need is for you to get in there. It’s been hours!”
“She’s in there?”
Again Butler attempted to point toward the gate but his hand fell away. He was leaning forward, slumped against the wheel, his arm hanging loose and useless. The hole in his head was dark. A swelling had increased its depth. Blood seeped out, congealed in yellow fat. His mobile lay in the passenger seat. He was holding on, hoping for a reprieve. This business could end his career. He’d gone out on a limb, compromised the entire operation and placed his colleague in danger. Butler had his wife and baby on what was left of his mind, and somewhere at the back of it, maybe, in an area more damaged than the rest, was Anian Stanford.
“I’ll make the call,” the DS managed. “I just need a minute.” Cole nodded. Despair and panic clawed at his gut and as he pushed open the back gate he felt a cold sweat collect on his forehead. The gate scraped loudly on the concrete path. He crossed the small garden of bare dirt and reached the door, surprised to find it unlocked. He’d been ready to kick his way in.
Behind him, in the car in the street, DS Sam Butler passed out again.
The door opened on to a studio. The main lights were out but illumination squeezed through a small kitchenette at the far end. There were boxes of books and paintings on every available surface. There was a sofa and an easel holding a large canvas and a box of paints beside it. And in the tray was an oval palette with globules of paint arranged around the edge and in the centre a mix of flesh tones. Cole looked at Anian and she looked back, life-like, with that familiar petulance in her eyes. But in her pose with one leg raised against the other and her dress riding her thighs she looked special. Whatever else Lawrence was, he was an artist.