Marisa broke the silence. ‘What do you want?’ Her voice was frightened but controlled. There was no hint of recognition in it.
‘Turn—’ Angel’s voice caught in her throat. She freed it with a sharp rasp. ‘Turn around and go back into the house.’
‘If it’s money you want, we don’t keep much in the house.’
‘Turn the fuck around and do as I say.’
Marisa reluctantly obeyed. Angel followed a couple of paces behind her. When they reached the back door, Angel warned her, ‘You say one word other than what I tell you to say and I’ll put a bullet in you.’
They entered a large kitchen with a stone-flagged floor, a beamed ceiling, an oak dining table and an Aga. Warmth flowed from a log-burner in a tall fireplace. It was a cosy scene at odds with the images that gnawed at Angel like hungry rats. ‘Go into the hallway,’ she whispered.
Angel recalled how the first time she’d stepped into the hallway, she’d gazed wide-eyed at the landscape paintings and portraits hanging on the walls, the glittering crystal chandelier suspended from the high ceiling, and the grand staircase with its ornate rails. She’d been apprehensive, not because she felt in danger, but because she felt way out of her league. The hallway was bigger than the house she’d grown up in. What could she possibly have to say that would be of interest to people who lived in a house like that? She needn’t have worried on that score. Herbert and Marisa hadn’t invited her there for her conversation.
Angel’s gaze lingered on an oak panel under the staircase. You wouldn’t have known it from looking, but the panel was a door. If you pushed on it in the right way, it slid back to reveal a stairway leading down. The low babble of a television drew her attention to a half-open door. With the gun’s barrel, she prodded Marisa towards it.
Nothing much had changed in the lounge since Angel had last been there. The room was full of the same valuable-looking antique furniture. Dark red leather sofas were positioned on either side of the fireplace. A thick rug covered the floorboards between them. As far as she could tell, the only new addition was a cabinet with a television in it. But there was one thing missing. Whenever she’d been there before, a silver box had stood open on the coffee-table, displaying a colourful array of pills, capsules and powders. Herbert had never been able to get it up without the help of Viagra and cocaine. Ketamine had quickly become Angel’s drug of choice. Not because it aroused her, but because it numbed her to what was happening.
Herbert wasn’t in the room. Angel gestured with the gun for Marisa to return to the hallway. ‘Call Herbert.’
Marisa gave Angel a searching look. The questioning fear in her eyes suggested it had occurred to her that maybe this wasn’t just a simple robbery. Angel could see her trying to work out who she was, but no suggestion of recognition came into her features. Angel had screwed so many men that their faces had all blended into one more or less homogenous mass over the years. Doubtless it was the same for Marisa when it came to all the girls and boys she’d raped.
‘Herbert.’
It gave Angel a thrill of satisfaction to hear the tremor in Marisa’s voice. In the past, Marisa had been the one in control. Now the tables were turned.
‘What is it, darling?’ Herbert’s voice – a thin, reedy voice at odds with its owner’s stocky physique – came down the stairs.
‘Tell him to come here,’ hissed Angel.
‘Can you come here please?’
Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Breathing out an annoyed sigh, Herbert said, ‘I was about to get in the bath. If this is about that bloody dog, I’ll—’ He broke off with a sharp intake of breath on seeing Angel. He’d changed into a dressing-gown, tied loosely at the waist. He clutched its hems together as if shy of showing his darkly hairy chest. Angel almost let out a caustic laugh. On every previous occasion she’d been to the house, Herbert had always been the first to get naked. She motioned for him to stand beside his wife. ‘W…W… What is this?’ he stuttered, the blood leaching from his cheeks. ‘What do you w… want?’
‘I’ll get to that in a bit.’ Angel was invigorated by Herbert’s fear, her voice strong and commanding. ‘Right now, I want you to open the basement door.’
‘This house hasn’t got a basement,’ said Marisa.
A smile like a blade thinned Angel’s lips. ‘Lie to me one more time, bitch, and it’ll be the last thing you ever say.’ She pointed at the oak panel. ‘Now open that fucking door.’
Marisa and Herbert exchanged a glance. At that moment, both of them knew they were in serious trouble and it showed.
‘Do as she says,’ said Marisa.
Herbert pressed the panel at mid-height. There was a click, and as the panel slid aside, the basement exhaled a faint, stale breath. He switched on a light, illuminating cobwebby bare-brick walls and a flight of steep, narrow stone steps with an iron handrail.
‘You go down first,’ Angel told Herbert. ‘Try anything funny and I start shooting.’
Angel’s heart pounded against her ribs as she followed Herbert and Marisa. She’d only been down those stairs once before. Her body had walked out of the basement later that night, but her mind had remained trapped there. She’d spent the years between then and now trying to blot out the memories of what happened, of what she’d done. But there was no blotting it out. It was as though she was stuck in a nightmare from which there was no waking up. As she stepped into the basement, she half expected to be confronted by a naked, ketamine-addled ghost of her fifteen-year-old self. But, of course, no such thing happened. If it had, she would have screamed at herself,
Don’t do what they want. Don’t fucking do it!
Angel’s gaze swept over the whitewashed walls, the racks of dusty wine bottles, and the bits of old furniture. The rug and cushions were no longer there. Neither was the video camera. But then that hadn’t belonged to Marisa and Herbert. It had belonged to a man whose name she didn’t know. A man who, unlike Angel, had wanted to make sure he never forgot that night. Herbert and Marisa, Stephen Baxley, they were perverts of the worst kind. But that man was something more than a simple pervert. The first moment she’d looked into his eyes, some instinct of self-preservation had told her he would have given no more thought to killing her than crushing an insect under his heel. There would have been no pity, no remorse, just a slight distaste at having dirtied his shoe. More than all the others, he was the one she wanted to track down.
‘Look here,’ said Herbert, mustering enough courage to meet Angel’s eyes for a fraction of a second. ‘I don’t know what you want, but whatever it is, you’re not going to get away with it.’
Now Angel did laugh, an empty, harsh sound. ‘Who said I gave a shit about getting away with it?’
‘Who are you?’ asked Marisa.
‘Don’t you recognise me?’ Angel pulled back her hood. ‘Take a good look. Imagine me with long black hair and blue eyes. Then try to imagine what I might look like if I hadn’t spent the last fifteen years shooting myself full of junk to try and forget you sick fucks.’
Marisa scrutinised Angel for a long moment. Finally, a light of recognition flickered in her eyes. ‘Angel!’
‘Who?’ said Herbert.
‘The girl Stephen was infatuated with.’
Herbert’s eyes bulged as he remembered. ‘It was you! You murdered Stephen. And now you’re here to do the same to us.’
‘That wasn’t me,’ said Angel.
‘Liar!’ Herbert clapped a hand over his mouth as though he couldn’t believe what he’d said.
‘Believe me, I wish it was me who’d killed that bastard, but it wasn’t.’
‘So what’s this about?’ said Marisa. ‘Is it blackmail? Because if it is—’
‘I don’t want your fucking money,’ broke in Angel, her lip curling at the idea. ‘I want names.’
‘What names?’
‘Don’t fuck with me. You know what I’m talking about. I want the name of every scumbag who’s ever come to one of your little parties. But most of all, I want the names of the two men other than Stephen Baxley and your husband who were in this cellar
that
night.’
Marisa compressed her lips into a silent line. The fear in her eyes had been replaced by fatalistic defiance. The air between her and Angel seemed to vibrate with tension. Herbert opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut again as Marisa shot him an acid glance.
‘I’m going to count to five,’ said Angel. ‘And if I don’t start hearing names by the time I’m finished, I’m going to put a bullet in one of you.’ She began to count with slow relish. ‘One… Two…’
Marisa held Angel’s gaze with grim intensity. Herbert’s panicky eyes darted back and forth as if looking for a way out.
‘Three… Four—’
‘Wait!’ gasped Herbert, holding up his hands, palms facing Angel. ‘There’s a book in my desk, in a hidden compartment—’
‘Don’t you say another word, Herbert!’ growled Marisa, shaking her finger at him as if she was scolding a naughty child.
‘But it’s just a list of clients. Even if she went to the police with it, what could they do?’
Marisa shook her head and heaved a breath. ‘You always were a bloody fool. You just don’t get it, do you? She’s not here to find evidence to put us in prison. She’s here to kill us.’
Herbert’s bottom lip trembled. Fat tears welled into his eyes. ‘Oh God, oh God.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Herbert, are you really going to let a common slut reduce you to a blubbering wreck? Stand up straight and look her in the eye.’ Marisa glared at Angel. ‘You don’t have a clue what you’re getting into. The people in that book will destroy everything and everyone you care about before they let you hurt them.’
‘They can’t hurt me any more than I’ve already been hurt.’
A smile of disdainful superiority curled Marisa’s lips. ‘Oh what a pathetic, ignorant little cunt you are.’
A quiver passed down Angel’s arm into the gun. Marisa’s smile was as oppressive as the basement, leaching away her confidence, making her doubt whether she had the strength or the will to carry her plan through. Then the images of what had happened there came crashing back in on her. And she knew that regardless of strength or will, regardless of anything, she had to do what she’d come to do. ‘I may be a junkie and a whore, but at least I’m not a child-rapist.’
‘Mark Baxley might feel differently. That is, if he could remember what you did to him.’
A pained rage sucked Angel’s face white. ‘I only did what you and your friends forced me to do. What I had to do to survive.’ Her forehead twitched with uncertainty as the full import of Marisa’s words swept over her. ‘Mark Baxley.’
‘Oh, yes, didn’t you know? Didn’t Stephen tell you? That little boy was his son.’
A kind of dazed horror clouded Angel’s eyes. ‘You people aren’t human. You’re…’ She strained to find the words to express the depths of her disgust. ‘You’re the slime of the earth.’
‘You should be grateful to us. You’re only alive because we let you live.’
‘You should have killed me and put me out of my misery.’
‘Believe me, if it had been up to me, I’d have shot you full of drain cleaner and dumped you in the sewer where you belonged. But Stephen wouldn’t hear of it.’ A patronising sneer came into Marisa’s voice. ‘He was quite intelligent for a working-class type. But when it came to you, he was a love-blind fool.’
‘Love?’ Angel’s voice was shrill with incredulity. ‘He let you rape me. He forced me to take part in the rape of his son! Is that what you call love?’
‘No, that’s what I call business.’
‘Is that what that night was about, business?’
‘Business, money, pleasure. It all comes down to the same thing – getting what you want. Nothing else matters.’ Marisa looked at Angel with a pitying contempt. ‘That’s what you people with your poor pathetic lives pretend not to understand. Until you have a taste of it yourselves. Then, all of a sudden, you’re like rabid dogs, ready to bite anyone who gets in your way.’
Angel had heard enough. She panned the gun back and forth between Marisa and Herbert. ‘Take your clothes off.’
Marisa crossed her arms. ‘No.’
Angel’s finger twitched on the trigger. ‘Take your fucking clothes off!’
‘OK, OK!’ cried Herbert, pulling off his dressing-gown. He shivered in awkward nakedness, his penis shrivelled with fear to almost nothing.
Marisa gave him a look of utter contempt. ‘You’re almost as pathetic as her.’
‘I’m trying to save our lives!’
‘I’ve already told you, Herbert, nothing you say or do…’ Marisa trailed off with a sigh. ‘Oh, what’s the bloody point?’ Her gaze returned to Angel. ‘Either shoot me or fuck off. Because you’re not going to get another word—’
Marisa was cut off by the concussive boom of the gun. The bullet slammed into her chest, punching right through and shattering a wine bottle behind her. A whoosh of air flew out of her lungs as she hit the floor. She tried to take a breath, but choked on the blood flooding her throat. More blood pooled from under her blouse. With a piercing scream, Herbert threw himself down beside her, pressing his hands against the wound, vainly trying to staunch the bleeding.
‘Where’s your desk, and how do I open its hidden compartment?’ Angel demanded to know.
Herbert showed no sign of having heard. Wail after wail burst from him. His naked body shook and streams of foaming saliva flowed from his mouth, as though he was suffering a seizure. Angel repeated her question, but there was no getting through to him. She took aim at the back of his head and pulled the trigger, splattering Marisa with blood and skull fragments. He collapsed across her body in a deathly embrace. A silence almost as deafening as the gunshots descended over the basement. For a long moment, Angel stared at the corpses. Then, like someone surfacing from a dive that had taken her far deeper than she’d expected, she sucked in a great, gasping breath. Her gaze travelled the basement again. She hated the place almost as much as she hated its now dead owners. She would have liked to tear it apart brick by brick, so that no one would ever be able to go there again. But even if she’d been able to do so, she knew it would accomplish nothing. Whether or not the basement physically existed, it would always be a part of her and she a part of it.