Authors: Peter Corris
‘That’s right. But I ran into a man named Grey who’s working for the mob you’ve been playing games with. He doesn’t want to play games; he thinks you know more about his operation than you should. He wants you dead.’
‘So he sends you to do the job?’ Kelly murmured.
‘No, Jesus, It’s too complicated a story to tell you now. Come on, this is ridiculous; you look very nice in your outfits but I’m freezing my arse off. Let’s quit the playacting and start thinking: I’ve got contacts, I can arrange a few things.’
Mountain wasn’t listening. ‘I had to imagine that part,’ he said. ‘The car thieves coming after me. Grey, you say? Good name, wish I’d thought of that. I wonder if I got it right otherwise?’
‘I’ve seen your synopsis. You got it pretty right.’
‘What about the people who supply the drugs to Dee and her crowd? They must be after me, I left clues.’
I shook my head, but I had to think of something to say instead of just sitting there like a trussed-up bale of wool. I sensed that his sympathies were with action and danger; passivity could be fatal. ‘I don’t know about them. God knows, Artie Henderson’s not a very reliable associate. If they’ve got on to him somehow they could be getting close. Christ, Bill, how much trouble can you handle? And
it’s not just you, there’s …’
He gripped my jaw and ground the bones together. ‘Yes, Hardy? There’s who?’
Gripped like that I couldn’t talk and it was no time to mention Erica anyway—Kelly would regard someone else’s suffering as just part of the fun. Mountain went on grinding my face, but Kelly got impatient. He’d let go her nipple, and it looked as if she was jealous of the attention I was getting. She wandered away towards the whip rack; her bare buttocks above the tops of the shiny boots were a little flabby and there were bruises, precisely patterned, across them. Mountain gave my jaw a vicious twist and let go. He expected an answer.
‘You’re a sick man, Bill. I’ve seen Dr Holmes and he wants to talk to you. Maybe he can help. I’m sure he can help keep you out of gaol.’ Mountain didn’t react, and I only had the one card left to play. It was risky. I lowered my voice so Kelly couldn’t hear. ‘Erica wants to help too.’
My dry throat had brought the sound out in a harsh croak that carried more than I’d intended. Kelly came back in a few long strides. ‘Why’s he whispering?’
‘He says Erica wants to help me.’
She laughed that cackling hoot again; it was a cruel, twisted sound full of pleasure at the thought of pain, and contempt for anything gentle. ‘Erica,’ she spat, ‘if I had her here now I’d take her yellow hide off.’
‘Yes,’ Mountain said. ‘You could. Where is she, Hardy?’
Looking up at the pair of them, I took a mental vow of silence. Nothing a rational person said could possibly make any kind of sense to them; they were travelling in a private dreamland signposted by drug fantasies and guided by obsessions that might have started in the womb. Kelly’s fingers were sliding up and down a long, thin cane, and she was looking at Mountain with a rapt expression. He glanced at her and then down at his own body; the change that came over his face made me draw in breath sharply. He seemed to be filled with revulsion. He
ran his hands over his chest and clawed at his nipples and the thick, grizzled hair. Kelly watched him, breathing hard.
‘Have you slept with Erica, Hardy?’
I shook my head. ‘You’ve got bigger problems, Mountain. You’re headed for a padded cell, years of being treated like a child …’
‘He has, he has!’ Kelly almost shrieked. ‘He’s sucked her and she’s …’
Mountain jerked the cane out of her hand; he acted decisively and then seemed to go dreamy again. It was eerie to watch his body following his mind in its wafting fluctuations. He flexed the cane and newly-tightened muscles moved under the old slack skin on his upper body. He looked down at me and spoke slowly, dreamily. ‘I’ve finished the book.’
Kelly pouted. ‘You didn’t tell me.’
Mountain’s face seemed to dissolve. ‘I loaded up on speed and I blasted for thirty-six hours straight. I did the whole thing in thirty-six hours.’
‘How does it end?’ I said.
The face took on puzzlement briefly, then ecstasy. ‘Don’t know. Didn’t read it when I finished. I want to celebrate.’
‘Come on!’ Kelly screamed. ‘Come on!’
Mountain stepped forward and lifted the cane. I shrank away, pressing my back against the wall. Kelly swivelled around on one spiked heel and Mountain moved with her. They bent over, undulating like jazz dancers, and he slashed her savagely across the buttocks.
I was staring and I might have made some sort of noise. Mountain came out of his near-trance long enough to look at me. ‘This is private,’ he growled. I saw his arm swing back and then I could see the hairs on his hand, and then it felt as if one of those giant metal balls demolishers use had bounced off my skull.
T
HE
drug cut through the pain or the pain cut through the drug, I don’t know which. I was in a state somewhere between consciousness and oblivion and slipping back and forwards between the two. I was closing my eyes a lot, because the things I thought I saw when I had them open were worse than the things I thought I saw when they were closed.
I heard a lot of yelling and opened my eyes. I saw two people moving around each other, hitting and screaming. I closed my eyes.
‘You bastard!’ she screamed as the whip hit her. She must have gathered saliva because I heard her spit it at him. He responded with a very hard slap.
‘You shit!’
Swish.
‘Turd! You shit-sucking turd!’
I kept my eyes closed. The shapes on the backs of my eyelids were definitely better, softer. But then my eyes stung and watered, and I had to look again. I’d seen people gripped by passions and lusts beyond their control before. In Malaya I’d seen men who were drunk on killing focus their whole being on the act. I’d seen opium smokers transfixed by the details of pipe preparation and tendrils of smoke in rooms that smelled of rat. I’d seen kleptomaniacs who trembled and wet themselves as they approached the objects they intended to steal, but who became coldly efficient at the critical moment. The passion of Kelly and Mountain was like that: an enclosed, excluding force field with its own laws and excruciating satisfactions.
The energy and excitement they generated and consumed threatened to spill over and seek some other outlet. It was distinctly uncomfortable being the only other outlet around. The drug was giving me the horrors, first of sight, now of sound. I couldn’t stand the screaming and grunts. I crooned to myself dopily, and for a time everything became calm and quiet. I felt nothing; I was asleep somewhere soft and white.
Then I was awake again, and feeling pain everywhere. I had the power of movement back, although my vision was distorted and blurry. I struggled to get some give in the ropes, but there was none. I looked wildly around the room as their grunts and groans increased in tempo and loudness: the door was twenty feet off and shut tight; there was a whip on the floor a few feet away but, with me trussed up like that, it was about as useful as a Mars Bar.
Then I doubted that I was conscious, because I could see Mountain and Kelly in triplicate up on the bed. Six people on one bed. The Mountains were teasing the Kellys, moving up and down, advancing and withdrawing. The Kellys hammered with their free fists. The Mountains ignored the blows. They tensed and drove down. The Kellys screamed and flexed so hard the Mountains had to pin them with their whole bodies. Three free arms flopped over the side of the bed, and I could see the hands clenching and unclenching.
The images faded and I heard only sound, distantly, as if it was coming from another room—Kelly screamed and Mountain began to roar to blot out the sound. ‘Finished,’ he bellowed. ‘Finished! Finished!’ Then he yelled the word in French, and ranted away in what sounded like German, but could have been Russian or Polish for all I knew. His pounding rocked the bed and seemed to shake the floor. The room filled with the screams and roars and bumps. My vision came back, and in single image, but the action seemed suddenly to go into slow motion. I saw Kelly bend her arm and move it back to claw at the end of the
mattress. She pulled out a knife with a long, broad blade and her knuckles cracked under the strain as she manipulated it in her palm. She got it right and jerked the arm and drove it down hard into Mountain’s back; he bucked and the knife came free and she drove it down again. The muscles in Kelly’s arm bunched and danced as she tugged the knife free and dug it in at a different angle and in a different place. Mountain arched up and yelled something that died in his throat. He flopped down on top of the woman and she dug and slashed at him. The blood spurted and flowed out of him; it puddled on the bed and dripped down onto the floor and flowed thickly across towards me.
Kelly sobbed and moaned and tried to get free of the corpse. She kicked and thrashed and it rolled clear of her. Her breath was coming in harsh gusts from her mouth and sibilant whistles from her nose. She hacked at the wrist rope, holding the knife the wrong way; the rope came free, but she cut herself in the process. Then she slashed through the ankle ropes, and cut herself some more. When she got to her knees on the bed, she was a nightmarish figure, streaked and smeared with blood from her head to her pubic hair. Her eyes stared wildly around the room. She pushed Mountain’s body off the bed, and it fell with a thump.
I was struggling like a madman, almost dislocating my shoulders in the effort to get my hands under my feet and up in front me. Fear of the knife drove me; my only idea was to have some protection from it, even my tied hands. I got my hands clear; it felt as if I had crushed some vertebrae to do it and I’d certainly skinned my wrists up to the forearms. I pressed back and levered myself up to an almost standing position against the wall. She saw me and screamed. Maybe I screamed too. She launched herself from the bed, and came at me with the knife raised above her head. Her mouth was wide open, and her tongue protruded like a black snake.
She stumbled, re-gained balance and came on with the knife descending. I yelled this time for sure and pushed off the wall like a swimmer on the last turn; I lowered my head, went in under the knife, and butted her in the stomach driving as much of my weight into it as my trembling, cramped legs would permit. She staggered back and dropped the knife. I went to my knees but struggled up again. She was sagging, coming forward and I butted her again, and her own falling weight helped drive the wind and limb control out of her. She crumpled down to the carpet and lay still.
I scrambled across the floor, grabbed the knife and wriggled to the nearest corner like a hunted beast. I crouched there and panted, looking at the fallen woman and still feeling defenceless despite the knife. I gripped the handle with my feet and sawed through the wrist ropes, then I cut my feet free with a hacking chop that seared into my left ankle. Dee Kelly started to moan and move. I swapped the knife into my right hand; my vision was red-filmed with fear and pain and horror. She got to her knees and lumbered towards me as I pulled myself up. The blood-caked hair stood up on her head and her eyes bulged. I threw the knife away and did what Dempsey did to Firpo when he had him on his knees: I swivelled and put everything into a short left that landed flush on her blood-daubed jaw. Her head flicked back and she flopped to the floor and lay still.
W
HEN
my heart rate had slowed to a hundred and my eyes were back in their sockets, I dragged myself over to look at Bill Mountain. His eyes were staring open and his jaw was locked in a dropping, askew position. In death, he looked depressed.
I rolled Deirdre Kelly’s eyelids back and everything appeared to be normal under them. Her pulse was strong and her tongue was free in her mouth. A concussion at most. Her outstretched foot touched the whipping post, and I tied her ankle to it with a piece of bloodstained rope just to be sure.
Opening the door and walking out of that room was like hiking down a country trail on a mild Spring day. The passageway smelled of tobacco and marijuana smoke but there was no blood underfoot or on the walls. The party was long over and the apartment was a shambles, except for the bar, which had been tidied and cleaned. All the bottles and glasses had been washed, corked and stacked away. I wandered into the bathroom and found my clothes there, bundled up. I climbed into the space capsule shower and ran the water to scalding hot; I lathered and rinsed until all the blood was off me and I was clean and pink. The cuts on my wrists weren’t bleeding but the one on my ankle was. I wadded up a paper napkin and put it over the cut under my sock.
It was way past the time I was supposed to call Grey, but I wasn’t worried about it. I felt sure the trusty answering machine would be on the job and I had things to do first. I dressed and went to the bar for some whisky. I didn’t notice the brand, but the scotch was the best I’d
ever tasted. I had a short jolt, and then poured a long one and added some ice. I carried the drink with me, setting it down carefully and not marking surfaces as I searched the apartment. In the kitchen I found my gun; it was loaded and untampered with. I couldn’t find the cassettes or Mountain’s manuscript anywhere, and that left only one place to look.
As soon as I entered the black room I knew that something else had happened; there was a feeling of finality in the room such as a stage has at the end of a play when all the actors are out there taking their bows. Mountain lay exactly as I’d last seen him, but Kelly had stretched herself out at full length, leg, body and arm, and had reached the knife. Then she had rolled over onto her back; she probably hadn’t even bothered to sit up. The knife lay by her outstetched hand and her throat was cut to the spinal cord.
I was glad I’d put on my shoes because the carpet was a sticky mess over most of its surface. I picked my way across the driest patches, and searched the bed. There was a concealed panel in the headboard, behind the fastenings for the ropes and chains. I worked on it with my pocket knife, and eventually splintered and prised it open. Inside was a big manila envelope containing a couple of hundred pages of typescript; a smaller package held two sound tapes and one video cassette.