Before The Killing Starts (Dixie Killer Blues Book 1) (9 page)

'What else have we got
that's about the diameter of a pencil?' he said, staring at her exposed
breasts. 'But softer.'

'Hey, Chico,' Juan
called from the other side of the room.

Chico
pulled his eyes away from Ellie's
breasts and turned to face him. He raised an eyebrow as if to say:
this
better be important
.

'You're never going to
get a good grip on those nipples. They're way too soft.'

Chico
made a show of taking a closer
look. 'Damn. You're right. What are we going to do? You need to get a good firm
grip if you want a nice, clean cut. We don't want any ragged edges.'

'Leave it with me,' Juan
said with a grin.

He disappeared out of
the room for a minute. Ellie heard a faucet running and then he came back in
with a paper cup full of water.

'Let's see if this
helps,' he said and threw the cold water over her breasts.

Ellie tensed as the
water hit her and knew without looking down that it had the desired effect.
Please
let it be about the humiliation.

'There you go,' Juan
said. 'Always works.'

'Much better,' Chico said. 'Much easier to get hold of.'

'Just one more thing,'
Juan said, as Chico was about to take hold of her nipple. 'Is it okay if I
video this on my phone?'

Chico
nodded and slapped the secateurs
against his palm impatiently while Juan got his phone out and tried to find the
video icon.

'Is it going to spurt or
just sort of dribble out?' Juan said, once he'd located it. 'The blood I mean.'

'Hell, I don't know,' Chico said.

'Spurt, I think,' José
called from behind them, although they both knew he was guessing.

'It's just I don't want
to get too close if it's going to spurt,' Juan said. 'I don't want to get blood
on the phone. I only got it yesterday.'

'You should have got
some of those peel-off screen protector things,' José said.

Chico
had had enough of this crap. Juan
would ask to do a sound test in a minute if he didn't get on with it. He turned
back to Ellie and gripped her nipple hard between the fingers of his left hand
and pulled. She felt her bladder release its load and felt a warm, almost
comforting, wetness soak into her jeans, a dark stain spreading out from her
crotch. Her whole body started to shake. He carefully placed the open jaws of
the secateurs around her nipple and closed them ever so slightly until they
just held it but without breaking the skin. Ellie stopped making the frantic
noise in the back of her throat and went rigid, not daring to move or even make
a sound. Chico pulled her nipple harder still making her gasp and adjusted the
position of the jaws as if he was trying to make up his mind about what was the
perfect spot for the cut.

'She's wet herself,'
Juan said, as if Chico hadn't already noticed the dark stain about twelve
inches below his hands. He moved round and panned down with his phone, then
back up to her breasts.

Chico
let go of her nipple and threw the
secateurs back on the table in disgust.

'Jesus Christ, you two,'
he shouted, 'how am I supposed to do this with you interrupting me every two
seconds? I feel like somebody's picked me up and dropped me in the middle of a
kindergarten. You'll be asking if I can hold your little peepee while you go
weewee next.'

Juan stopped the video, a
look of disappointment on his face. He tried to delete what he'd already taken
and ended up deleting a whole bunch of other stuff. José looked at his feet and
said nothing.

'I think we need to just
get right down to it,' Chico said. 'She's not going to tell us anything if we
keep fooling around like this.'

Ellie couldn't believe
what the maniac was saying. If they'd just get the gag out of her mouth she'd
tell them anything they wanted to know. How the hell was she supposed to tell
them anything? She nodded her head violently up and down, desperately trying to
make eye contact with him so he could see her desire to do whatever he wanted.

But he wasn't looking at
her—he was looking down at the table next to her. Looking at the knife. Making
up his mind. How did he expect her to tell him what he wanted if he wouldn't
take the gag out of her mouth?

'Do you like movies?' he
said.

She nodded, her head in
a floaty sort of daze at the bizarre twists and turns of his mind.

'I've got something of
an obsession about them, myself,' he said, sounding like he was about to tell
her a bedtime story. 'It goes back to when I was a young man. Maybe I'll tell
you all about it one day. I could tell you now, if you like?'

He looked at her as if
he was expecting an answer. He raised both eyebrows expectantly and then shook
his head.

'No, maybe another time.
I should probably go for counselling and all that psycho-babble.'

Tell the guy to book
you a double session, in fact make it the whole damn day,
she thought.

He picked up the knife
and felt the tip with his thumb. A bright red prick of blood appeared. He wiped
it on his pants leg.

'How old are you?
Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?'

She nodded.

'Then you weren't even
born in 1970 were you?'

She shook her head.

'That was the year the
movie
Soldier Blue
came out. Maybe you've seen it?'

She shook her head
again.

'I wouldn't bother,' he
said. 'It's very dated now, but at the time they called it the most savage film
ever. The thing is, you young people have such high expectations nowadays, you'd
probably think it was quite tame. But I remember it well.'

He pricked the end of
his thumb again. Another bright spot of blood appeared and he wiped it gently
on her breast, starting at her collarbone and running all the way down to her
nipple in a wavy line. She shuddered and the whole body tremble that had
momentarily subsided started up again.

'There's this scene,' he
carried on, 'where the soldiers attack an Indian village. Revenge for something
or the other, it doesn't matter. And the soldiers do all kinds of dreadful
things, raping and killing and all the rest of it. Kids getting trampled by the
horses. One woman gets her head chopped right off by a soldier's sword.'

Ellie looked at him in
horror. His eyes had glazed over; he seemed to be in a dream, re-living the
movie in his mind.

'But there's this one
part in amongst all the killing and everything else that really sticks in my
mind.'

He seemed to snap out of
his reverie and looked directly at her. Maybe to make sure that she was giving
his story her full attention.

'One of the soldiers
gets hold of an Indian woman—and she's naked of course—and he wrestles her to
the ground . . . and then . . . he slices off one of her breasts with a knife.
A long curved knife, just like this one.' He sliced at the air in front of her
eyes with the knife as if cutting off an imaginary Indian’s breast.

'You might not think
it's much, but it was really shocking at the time.'

She didn't know whether
she wanted to cry or scream or laugh at this madman. What the hell was he going
on about?
She might not think it was much? It sounded a pretty big deal to
her right now.

'José, slacken off the
rope,' Chico called. 'I'll never get a proper grip on her tits while they're
stretched almost flat like this.'

José let about a foot
out and her arms dropped, mercifully relieving the screaming ache in them. But
her breasts dropped back into place as Chico predicted, giving him plenty to
get hold of. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and bent forward and
dabbed her dry.

'Won't get a good grip
if they're all slippy either,' he said.

Almost gently he took
hold of one of them and lifted it slightly, exposing the pale underside but not
stretching it flat like it had been before. He put the tip of the knife in the
crease where it met her rib cage and pushed gently. She felt a sharp prick of
pain. She closed her eyes and felt the tears start, stinging the back of her
eyes.

'I can do this nice and
quick or slow and careful. You decide,' he said, pushing again with the tip of
the knife, harder this time, breaking the skin. He squeezed her breast hard
digging his nails into the soft flesh.

Uncontrollable sobs
wracked her whole body. Hot, salty tears ran down her cheeks and dripped off
her chin onto the top of the breast he was holding up. Her nose was starting to
block up with snot and soon she wouldn't be able to breath. She'd suffocate if
they didn't get the gag out of her mouth soon.

'What's it gonna be,
Ellie? How about a foxtrot? Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow . . . slow, slow,
quick, quick, slow . . .'

Juan circled the stool,
his camera extended towards her, his tongue in the corner of his mouth in
concentration.

'A crying shame to cut
off such a lovely thing,' Chico said, working the tip of the knife into her
flesh.

'Don't worry, she's got
another one,' Juan said and everybody laughed. Except Ellie of course.

Chico
let out a short, playful laugh and
gave a quick flick of his wrist. The blade opened up a three inch cut on the
underside of her breast faster than the eye could follow. Ellie screamed behind
the gag and started choking. She couldn't get enough air through her nose. He
pulled the knife away, let go of her breast and dropped the knife back on the
table. She looked down and watched the blood pouring down her stomach from the
stinging cut, soaking into the waistband of her jeans, mingling with the piss
and the sweat and God knows what else. Anybody sniffing her snatch blindfolded
would have concluded she'd had one, seriously bad day.

Juan ducked and dived
around Chico with his camera trying to get the best view.

'It's just a scratch,' Chico said and clamped his hand over her mouth and nose. She bucked wildly against his hand
but it was like bucking against a brick wall as it fell on top of her. He put
his other hand around her throat and pulled her tightly into his body. He heard
and felt her gagging noisily in his hands, remembered as if it were only
yesterday the dreadful sounds of his father choking to death on his shoulders
in the desert, and when he felt the thrashing start to subside, thought
enough's
enough
and pulled his hand away, ripping the rag out of her mouth as he did
so.

She heaved in a great
lungful of air and started coughing and choking. Chico gestured at José who let
the rope go completely and her arms dropped like stones. Her whole body
crumpled and she folded in two at the waist, her whole body heaving and
shaking.

Chico
looked down at her sweat-soaked
back, breathed in the acrid smell of fear rising from her armpits and left her
like that for a minute. Then he grabbed a handful of her hair as best he could
after the mess Juan had made and pulled her back into a sitting position.

She started to say
something but he put a finger on her swollen lips. She couldn't help herself
wincing.

'Shush. You've got just
one chance to make things right here.'

She nodded dumbly.

'I want my money back—'

She kept on nodding like
her life depended on it, which it probably did.

'—and I want Dixie's head on a spike.'

Her mouth dropped open
in surprise. Had she heard him right? He carried on before she could find the
words to say anything.

'Not literally, of
course.' He chuckled.
Chuckled
, after what he'd just done. 'I might do
that later. But I want you to bring him to me.'

He thought for a second
and smiled at her.

‘You know, I really like
you, so I’m going to make it even easier for you. If you think it’s going to be
a problem getting him back here’—he gave a soft,
you’re only a woman after
all
shrug—‘you can kill him yourself.’ He held up a finger. ‘But I want
proof.’

'Why can't you—'

Chico
shook his head. 'I think he's in
the wind now. And if I'm right, I won't be able to get close to him.'

'But—'

He put his finger on her
lips again. She shuddered at his touch. 'I'll let you know when I want to hear
ifs
and
buts
. I’m already cutting you a lot of slack here. I know you two
had something going. You can get close to him. I can't. He trusts you.'

Ellie started coughing
again and covered her face with her hands.
If only you knew.

'I don't know what the
situation is between you two now, and I don't care. You've got a straight
choice. It's him or you. And remember, I found you once, I'll find you again
and next time we'll do this for real.'

He turned to Juan and
José. 'Get her cleaned up and bring her upstairs. And get that stupid phone out
of my face.'