Authors: Kim Newman
‘What you don’t understand,’ she had been told, ‘is that your sister is a specialist.’ The policeman, displaying no relish for it, had tactfully and patiently explained that Judi had come by her bruises at the hands of clients who had bought her and paid for the privilege of using her as a punching bag. This was worse than Anne had been prepared for. Prostitution, she could just about understand; the rest was beyond her fantasies, beyond her experience.
She had argued with Judi for hours in an interrogation room, overseen by a police matron who read
Cosmopolitan
and looked like a more dangerous Angie Dickinson. Anne had tried to get Judi to name names and swear out complaints against the men who had gotten their rocks off beating up on her. Judi had calmly insisted on protecting her sources of income. Unlike their father, she did not want a ‘rat jacket’, a reputation as an informer. Of course, the NYPD did not sic Hugh Farnham on her, so she never found out just how tough she was.
Now, Anne realized how typical Judi was of the family. Their father had a Nobel prize, Cam was supposed to be the best in his field and she was herself acknowledged as on the rise. Judi had chosen to be sado-masochist hooker, but she was determined to be the best, most professional sado-masochist hooker in the world. Given a few more years, she would probably have made more money than any of them.
Anne felt a warm, wet touch at her throat. Still asleep, Nina was trying to kiss her neck, licking at a patch of skin with catlike absent-mindedness.
Embarrassed, Anne lifted the girl’s head. Nina woke up just as the taxi driver found the address he had been given.
‘I was dreaming…’
EVENING
I
t was the kind of quietly well-off residential street where mass murderers live, unnoticed behind the Neighbourhood Watch stickers, until someone turns up a toenail in the rosebeds. The houses were well-maintained, nineteenth-century and 1930s flourishes kept in good nick by careful owners, but there was an overwhelming drabness to the buildings. In the twilight, the only real colour came from the bright estate agents’ notice boards posted outside almost every home. The whole street was for sale. This was an expensive part of town – upper upper middle and lower upper – and even the family cars parked in drives were high performance models. But the cracks were beginning to show. There was a stream of rubbish clogging the gutters, as if a parade had passed by with waste-paper substituting for tickertape. A few years ago, that would have been the mark of the scruffy Camden council, but now the rot was creeping into well-heeled Westminster. Even prosperity was not what it had been.
It was not Belgravia, but it was certainly well-off, thank you very much. Quite apart from the usual expenses, mortgages and service charges would be punitive around here. The media and entrepreneur types attracted to the district were unlikely to be rich enough long enough to buy a permanent stake in the prestigious postcode. Anne knew; she had lived in a street like this for a few months, sharing her flat with that psychopath from the BBC, and had had to move on when the
Newsweek
commissions petered out.
Amelia Dorf ’s house was different. Nina knew it right away, and led Anne across the road to it. It was set apart from its neighbours, like the manorhouse of a village. Built as a home for a large and prosperous mid-Victorian family, the five-storey pile had not, like all of its neighbours, been converted into almost affordable small units. The already formidable garden wall was topped with spear-tipped railings that were probably sharpened every day. The wrought-iron gates might have been expressly designed to keep out the most determined and well-equipped lynch mob.
Anne knew that all this meant money, and in an inexhaustible supply. Bank balances like international telephone numbers. Amelia Dorf. She would look through the files when she was in the office. Anyone rich enough to live in this house must have made the news some time in her life.
Nina dealt-with the entryphone that had replaced the bell-pull. A snake-neck swivelled above, and a closed circuit camera peered down. A green light winked, and the gates rattled mechanically. Nina pushed them inwards, and they were through before the buzzing stopped. The gates locked behind them.
In front of the house there was a lawn. The centrepiece was an eight-foot tall evergreen topiary dildo.
The front door was open by the time they got to it. Nina and Anne were let into the house by a large and solid man who looked slightly Scandinavian. Anne guessed that he spent most of his days in a gymnasium and knew all the correct Latin names for the muscles he had developed. He wore a quilted floor-length dressing gown that could have passed for a formal ball dress in old St Petersburg. Nina knew him.
‘Hello, Anders,’ she said, chucking her shiny black coat into his hands, ‘this is Anne.’
Anders ignored Anne, but carefully folded Nina’s coat with the casual reverence usually found in dry-cleaners or the very best restaurants.
‘You’re early.’
‘It said five on the invitation Amelia sent out. It must be past that now.’
‘Typical of you, Nina. No one comes at the time on the card. That’s why we always invite for two hours early.’
‘I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault.’
‘It’s hardly considerate, you know. We’re not really ready.’
Anne took off her own coat, which he took willingly and hung up. She kept her handbag though. Turning from the coat racks, he stared into her eyes in the manner recommended by most ‘How to Impress Girls’ handbooks. Anne almost laughed.
‘Anne,’ he said, lowering his glance to her chest, ‘you have startled eyes.’
Anne raised an eyebrow.
‘You’ve lived many times, I can tell. We’ve met before. In the French Revolution.’
Nina chipped in, ‘Anders was the Marquis de la Somewhere-or-Other.’
Anders took her hand, and kissed her middle knuckles.
‘Of course,’ Anne said, pulling her fingers free. ‘How could I forget? How is that pain in your neck, citizen?’
He looked up, and really looked at her this time. There was a tracery of little scars under his jawline, as if someone had scooped out a pouch of flesh with sharp fingers. He looked too young for plastic surgery, but Anne suspected he was just vain enough to take self-perfection to expensive lengths.
‘Now whose eyes are startled?’ she asked.
He started ignoring her again. Nina pulled at his heavy sleeve, perhaps harder than she had meant to. His collar shifted, and Anne saw thick muscles with more scars.
‘Clive?’ said Nina. ‘Is he here yet?’
‘I told you. You’re early.’
‘But doesn’t he stay over sometimes?’
‘Sometimes, but not now. I’m staying here now. And a few others. Daeve Pope is here. Clive is with Mr Skinner on business. They’ll both be along at tea-time. Do you mind? This is expensive, antique.’
He shook his arm free of her hold, and hugged himself. Anne caught a look of nausea under his patina of health and vigour, as if he could not bear to be touched by another human being.
‘Ciao, Nina,’ said a short young man, stepping out from a room, ‘who’s your friend?’
He came into the light, grinning. Anne put his age at about thirty, but he was wearing the striped blazer and straw hat of a public school prefect, and his slightly fuzzy chin suggested he had not started shaving yet.
‘Anne,’ Nina said, ‘this is Daeve Pope. He’s a writer…’ Nina had been about to say ‘he’s a writer too,’ but Daeve cut her off. ‘Perhaps you’ve seen my work,’ he said, ‘I do essays for
Kerrang
and
Metal Hammer.
I’m interested in thrash metal.’
Daeve had a cigarette case out. He offered it around too quickly for anyone to accept, and stuck a fag in the corner of his mouth. The cigarettes were a brand Anne did not know, but they must be extra king-size because they were disproportionate, like props from a science fiction film about shrinking people. As he lit up, Daeve looked like a nearly adult-sized child.
‘Just thrash, of course. I do not tolerate glam in any way, shape or form. It’s the only thing left in rock and roll with the balls to blast and the dick to come through.’
‘He’s a good writer,’ Nina said. ‘You can tell.’
Daeve puffed a cloud of smoke, and hung his head on one side, posing. ‘Remember,’ he said to Anne, suddenly shaking his head up and down so that his boot-black hair flopped over his face and pumping the air with an angry milkmaid’s fist, ‘just thrash.’
He grinned, tossing his hair back, and took another drag, slipping back into his room like a jack in the box.
Nina looked at the door Daeve had closed behind him, then at Anne. She shrugged. Anders, who had frozen like a stone lion while Daeve was in the passage, came back to life and turned into the sinister butler from an old Boris Karloff movie.
Anders led them down the sparsely furnished hallway, and ushered them into a large room. It was a windowless den, decorated with paper chains and Chinese lanterns. There was a fully dressed Christmas tree, with baubles, lights and presents, and an open fire in an alcove the size of an upright piano.
Behind a glass-topped desk sat an elegant woman in her forties, with purple-streaked hair coiled in a psyche knot and Morticia Addams make-up. She was wearing surgeon’s gloves and delicately shaping a Paramount mountain of white powder in front of her. It looked like flour, but a fistful would be worth what Anne had earned in the last year.
There was a naked child squatting by the fire, looking like a tattooed savage in the echt-psychedelic light from the tree and the blaze. He was playing with a pile of expensive toys. He flew a foot-long, perfectly detailed model of Concorde in his hand, and gingerly crash-landed it among the burning logs. He pulled his hand out of the flames quickly and sucked his slightly singed fingers.
The plane’s wings melted first, dripping gobbets of molten plastic. Then the beaked body bent downwards and flopped onto the logs. The boy thumped the floor and crooned in ecstasy. He reached for the starship
Enterprise.
Anne recognized him. It was Derek Douane, the twelve-year-old ex-choirboy of ‘Christmas Caroline’ fame. He had his face on the cover of every girls’ magazine on the stands. Not since Little Jimmy Osmond had Anne been so personally sickened by a pop singer. Before ‘Christmas Caroline’, he had had a big hit with a vomitous reggae cover version of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’.
‘Ahh, Nina,’ said the woman at the desk, Amelia, ‘thank you for coming. And, as requested, you brought a friend.’
She got up and shook Anne’s hand. Her glove was talcum-powdered with cocaine. Foreign surname or not, she sounded as Anne had once imagined all English women sounded, like Jenny Agutter or Julie Andrews.
‘This is Anne.’
‘Anne. You’ll find us amusing, I hope. And rewarding.’ Wrinkles of perturbation appeared on her white forehead. ‘Do I know you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
…Anne knew her now. Amelia Dorf. She had seen her before at a press conference. She was on a women’s committee formed to oppose the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The GPA. The Global Peace Something. Alliance? Agency? Activists? They wanted the West to stockpile as many atomic weapons as the East, and had, in the Gorbachev era, been darkly muttering about the increasing threat of Third World nations with a nuclear capability. Amelia would not remember her. She was just one of an audience of journalists. No, Anne knew that Amelia thought she was a familiar face (and voice?) because she had known Judi…
‘Ahh, you’re American?’
‘Canadian,’ she lied.
‘Canada, right. Where the Mounties come from. Do make yourself comfortable. We won’t really be starting for a while, so we can get to know each other better before the others arrive. Nina, you know where the drinks are kept. Get us all something would you.’
Amelia sat Anne down on a giant cloth marshmallow, and sunk cross-legged on the carpet next to Derek. She wore a leotard that showed off her concentration camp figure, and knee-length alligator-skin boots.
‘This is Derek. He’s staying for Christmas because he can’t be with his Mummy and Daddy.’
The child star turned and looked at Anne with Neanderthal hostility. His pupils were shrunk to pinpoints, and half his face was red from being too close to the fire. Amelia plucked a paper napkin from one of the several cardboard dispensers scattered around the room and wiped the spittle from his chin. She threw the napkin into the fire, where it flared like a meteor next to the softening spaceship.
‘You know, bitch,’ said Derek in his not-quite broken voice, ‘your tits aren’t big enough.’
Amelia slapped him with an open hand.
‘Don’t be vulgar, Derek. Anne is our guest. We must make her feel at home.’
Derek didn’t mind being slapped at all. He hugged Amelia, and whispered in her ear. She giggled indulgently, and pushed him away.
Embarrassed, Anne looked into the fire. The bridge of the
Enterprise
was distorting, pulled out of shape by weights inside the model.
‘Can you hear the screams?’ asked Derek, baring his teeth like the fly-eating madman in the old
Dracula
movie. ‘That’s what I like the most. The screams. At my concerts, I make girls scream.’
‘I’ll bet you do.’
The model in the fire fell apart with a hiss and some plops. Parts of it sizzled, and the logs spat like burning sausages. The stench of burning plastic stung Anne’s nostrils.
‘That scream there,’ said Derek, reaching out to catch the unheard shriek. ‘That’s Captain Kirk. When the
Enterprise
caught fire, he knew he was going to die and wanted to do all the things they wouldn’t let him do on television. He slashed up his captain seat, and whacked Mr Sulu in the belly and shat on Chekhov’s face. He was going to fuck Lieutenant Uhura, but his cock caught fire and dropped off. It was plastic like the rest of him. He’s melting down into a puddle with the rest of his crew. The blob there is Kirk’s cock, and Spock’s ears, and Uhura’s twat, and Dr McCoy’s left leg, and bits of ground-up dilithium crystal. All the crew are just a screaming glob of burning plastic now. Just the same as their starship…’