Innocent Blood (9 page)

Paul woke up and they were still driving. The journey was taking for ever. He opened his mouth to shout at Bryan to stop but years of conditioning kept him quiet under the blanket. His resentment, simmering all day and stoked by the merciless teasing he had received at school, slowly hardened into a familiar hatred for Bryan and the disgusting things he made him do.

His formal sex education had been limited to an embarrassing lesson involving anatomically correct plastic models of the human sexual and reproductive organs the previous term, a mumbled conversation with his dad about ‘protection’ and a clip round the ear and a few stern remarks from his nan when she’d caught him kissing a girl after school near the local café. He knew more about sex than they could ever imagine and their coy words and assumption of his innocence had once made him feel superior. But now he knew that what he was doing with Bryan was very wrong and if his family and friends ever found out he would become an outcast.

He had a recurrent nightmare about his secret being discovered in which he was in the showers at the swimming baths with Bryan. They were naked and doing what Bryan liked best, except that Paul was trying to explain that this was a public place and someone might walk in. Bryan ignored his pleas and carried on but Paul could hear voices outside. They grew louder and he recognised his dad, then his best friend Victor, calling for him. There was a blue plastic curtain across the shower with a gap at the bottom and he could see feet coming nearer and nearer but Bryan still wouldn’t stop.

The nightmare always shocked Paul awake as the curtain was pulled aside. He would lie in his bed in the creakily silent house trying to work out how to end it all. But Bryan had photographs, dozens of them. Paul’s face was in full view though Bryan’s was blacked out and it was obvious what they were doing.

The first time he saw the pictures he’d cried and Bryan had called him a sissy. At their next meeting Bryan had shown them again and talked about what it had been like the first time, when Paul was a ‘little boy’. Looking at them added a new twist to their ritual. Paul hated it; he hated what he was made to do and the person he had become, but most of all he hated Bryan.

Sometimes he fantasised about killing him. He had started to carry a knife, a sharp one with a wooden handle that his mum had bought from Woolworths years ago. A steak knife she called it. In his fantasies he would stick it into Bryan while he screamed like a pig, or chop bits off him slowly. But in reality Paul cut himself, little nicks on his arms and legs that he passed off as scratches, the result of falls from his bike.

At night he put the knife under his pillow so that it was there when he woke from his nightmare in a sweat with the long hours to dawn stretching ahead of him. That morning he had put the blade at the bottom of his school bag and packed his holiday project, reading list and sports kit on top.

A smile twitched his lips upwards as he slipped his hand down the side of his duffle bag and touched the familiar wooden handle. He let his fingers rest there, comforted despite the jolting of the car and smell of exhaust fumes that were making him feel sick. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about what was going to happen next. Paul drifted into a daydream where he forced Bryan to leave him alone by using photographs of his own, taken with the Instamatic
camera he’d bought on holiday. It was packed in his duffle bag next to the knife but, confronted now with reality, he didn’t know whether he would have the courage to use it.

The car slowed and his stomach tightened. There was a familiar sound of large gates being opened and he realised then that Bryan had lied to him. They weren’t just driving somewhere deeper into the woods. He’d been brought to Nathan’s house, though Paul knew that wasn’t his real name. The idea made him want to cry. He hated ‘Nathan’ even more than Bryan because despite his small build and polished manners, he was a sadistic bully. The gates clanged shut behind them. As Bryan eased the car forward Paul sneaked his hand out from beneath the blanket and aimed the camera blindly through what he hoped was the rear window. He pressed the button, wound the film on and pressed again.

Bryan stopped the car, climbed out and walked away without letting him out. Paul heard a distant murmur of voices and sat up in a half crouch. Without looking he aimed the lens through the side window towards the house where he imagined the men to be standing. He snapped a picture and risked another just before Bryan returned to the car. By the time the back door was unlocked the camera was safely back in his bag.

‘Leave that bag with your bike.’

‘Can’t I bring it with me? It’s got all my homework and stuff.’

Bryan shrugged as if he didn’t care one way or another and Paul lifted the duffle bag onto his shoulder, his right hand casually draped inside the half-open top. The house was large, with a landscaped garden and swimming pool. The first time he had come here he’d been eleven and in awe of his surroundings; now it was familiar and he was conscious only of the locked gates and high walls around him.

Paul followed Bryan along the terrace and over an expanse of neat lawn to the pool. It was screened by a trellis that acted as a windbreak while providing privacy. Within its shelter three men were leaning against the poolside bar. Two were tanned and already in swimming trunks. The third was their host. He recognised Paul and gave him a welcoming wave.

‘Paul. I’m so glad you could find time to come and join us. I’d like you to meet my friends – Alec and Joe. They live abroad but are visiting for a few days. I’ve told them all about you and they really wanted to meet you. Say hello.’

Paul looked at the strangers. Joe was tall and looked like a film star. He had very white teeth and a friendly, foxy smile. Alec obviously thought himself a tough guy. He was short and square and ignored him.

‘Here’s your drink, a Coke with ice – that’s right, isn’t it?’

He saw the men exchange glances and knew that there would be a large shot of vodka in it. It was meant to be a secret but he’d worked it out years ago. The alcohol no longer made him woozy unless they gave him more than one drink but it did help him to relax.

‘Come over here, Paul.’ Joe raised an arm and then dropped it lightly on his shoulder as he came to stand between the two men.

‘You can put that bag down; no time for homework now!’

Everyone but Alec laughed and the strap was eased off his shoulder.

‘Bloody hell, it weighs a ton!’ Alec’s voice was coarse and he swore, which Nathan never did.

Paul sipped his drink and searched – without success – for signs that there would be other boys joining them. He started to panic. Surely they couldn’t all want him. That had never happened before. He looked around nervously for his bag and saw it lying on a sun lounger. It
had fallen onto its side and he was worried in case the camera fell out.

‘Drink up; that’s it, then you can have a swim. It’s a hot day.’ Nathan sounded like a kindly uncle. Perhaps he didn’t want him today. Perhaps he only wanted to show Paul off to his friends, like a curious specimen.

‘I haven’t got my trunks.’

They thought that very funny. Joe lifted his hand from his shoulder and ruffled Paul’s hair.

‘No need to be shy,’ he said, ‘you’re among friends. I tell you what, why don’t we all go skinny-dipping?’

He put his drink on the bar and pulled down his trunks. Paul saw a flash of white buttocks as he sprinted to the edge of the pool and executed a perfect dive. Bryan joined him. They stood in the pool, water up to their chests, their legs foreshortened, and looked expectantly at Alec, Nathan and Paul.

‘Come on!’

Alec jumped in with his trunks on creating a tidal wave that washed over the terrace and splashed Paul’s blazer and school trousers.

‘Now you’re wet anyway. Why don’t you take off those damp clothes and spread them out. They should be dry for your journey home.’ Nathan came up close to him, hands raised to touch him. Paul backed away until his calves hit the sun lounger and he sat down abruptly next to his bag.

‘I don’t want to.’ He could feel tears in his eyes.

‘It’s not like you to be shy.’ Nathan still sounded kind. ‘Is it because there are four of us? You don’t need to worry about that. You know I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you, not here in my house.’

Paul shook his head as his mouth turned down and a tear escaped onto his cheek.

‘Oh, don’t cry.’ Nathan knelt in front of him, a hand on his knee, stroking. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll love being in the water; it’ll make it all so easy. You wait, you’ll really enjoy yourself.’

‘Come on, Purse, for fuck’s sake! I thought you said he was ready and willing.’ Alec shouted from the pool and Nathan turned on him angrily.

‘It’s Nathan, remember? Keep it clean and keep quiet. He’s only startled but he’s a good boy, aren’t you, Paul? Ah, I know what you like – here.’

Nathan took two crisp ten pound notes from his wallet and placed them carefully on his leg. Paul’s right hand had strayed into his school bag and he refused to pick up the money. He’d grown used to the availability of so much easy wealth but it meant little to him now because he’d realised too late that it had never been easy money. What was about to happen would be horrible and embarrassing, not least because he could no longer stop his body from reacting. He was mortally ashamed.

Nathan took the money and folded it into Paul’s blazer pocket.

‘There’ll be more later.’

‘There’ll be more now.’

Joe lifted himself easily from the pool and went over to a nearby chair. He wiped his hands dry and reached into a sports bag.

‘Here. Have you ever seen one of these before?’ He lifted up a large note. ‘It’s twenty pounds.’

Paul kept his eyes away from the man’s naked body.

‘I know. I had one from my nan when I won the first year prize.’ Paul didn’t know what he was boasting about, the money or the school prize.

‘Good for you! How about this one, then?’ Joe passed him a note with $50 on it.

‘Is it real?’ Paul held it up to the sky to check for the metal strip, his school bag momentarily forgotten.

‘Oh yes. It’s what Alec and I are paid in where we come from, and there’s more…if you’re a good boy.’

Paul turned the money over in his hands for a long time then looked up at Nathan and Joe, tears still wet on his smooth cheeks.

‘Adorable,’ Joe murmured, ‘just like you said.’

‘And a very good boy too,’ Nathan agreed, wiping the wetness away from Paul’s face with a clean white handkerchief. ‘Come on, my dear; let’s swim while it’s still warm.’

Paul put the money away and started to undress. Behind him in the depths of the pool Alec leant across to Bryan and muttered in a low voice.

‘You found us a fucking expensive whore. He’d better be worth it; you know how I hate to be disappointed.’

Bryan tried not to look concerned.

The phone call was worrying.

As he replaced the receiver, the man in the immaculate white shirt with diamond-studded cufflinks reflected that it had been years since he’d heard anything of Alec. Although he knew he was living on the south coast less than thirty miles away, they had no reason to contact each other, quite the opposite. The secrets they shared were better left dead and buried and they both knew it. But now one of the men who worked for him had been approached by Alec, who’d used their historic association to try and put pressure on him for help. It was unexpected and particularly unwelcome as, since Joe had got religion and told him he could no longer handle Alec, he had assumed the responsibility himself. He had thought it would be simple.

But Alec hadn’t changed with age. The man was still a risk-taker with appetites he found hard to control, rather like the Maidment of old really but with a predilection for a different type of flesh.

Thinking of the major made him frown. The man was too principled to be trusted and were it not for his own knowledge of certain…how to describe it…indiscretions in his youth, Maidment would have been a difficult man to control. As it was, he’d found it surprisingly easy to encourage him to push his scruples to one side when it mattered.

No, Maidment had given his word and was aware of what would happen to his precious reputation if he so much as whispered a hint of what he knew. Alec was another matter. The man who was so proud of his diamonds couldn’t understand how he had once allowed Alec to get so close. Of course they had interests that some might consider shared but Alec’s tastes were gross whereas his own were refined. It was a relationship that he deeply regretted. There was no such thing as a code of honour where Alec was concerned. The law of dog-eat-dog governed his little world, which meant that if he ever ended up in the wrong hands he would be a liability.

What to do about Alec? The thought preoccupied him as he ate the supper his housekeeper had prepared for him before going home to continue whatever moribund life she led. He imagined it to involve back-to-back TV soap operas interspersed with trips to the pub with that tub of lard husband of hers. Still, she was a discreet and efficient worker and her husband managed the limited work required of him outside without breaking anything or getting in the way, so he allowed them to manage his household needs.

He left the tray with his dirty crockery next to the sink to be dealt with in the morning, even though it would have been easy to stack the dishwasher himself. He didn’t stoop to menial tasks, having lost the habit after years in the Far East. His fingernails were manicured, the skin on his hands soft and perfectly kept, rather like his life.

His ordered existence was exactly to his liking, with interference from no one. He had power and was known, by those who needed to know, to be ruthless if crossed. Over the years he’d done precisely as he wanted, and had even grown rich on the back of it. But now Alec had surfaced and made contact; he really should have known better.

William had rung him two days before with the news that Alec was in town asking for a favour. Apparently his regular supplier had let him down and he needed goods urgently. William had sent him off with a warning to keep away but had then wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to help Alec out; at least that way they’d know what he was up to. It was an interesting thought and the man mulled it over as he sipped his iced whisky, so cold that it numbed his lips, just the way he liked it.

There were only three choices really: to get rid of Alec once and for all – tempting but very risky. He could humour him, give him enough to keep him away from other contacts, but that had risks and would strengthen their connection. Or he could ignore him; after all what sort of a threat was he really? A tiny cog in a machine of which he had limited understanding. Except that Alec had been involved in one of his very few lapses of judgement and that made him a liability.

He decided to leave things alone for a few days and see what happened; there was no rush. He knew where Alec was and could arrange for him to be dealt with however he chose, whenever he chose. In the meantime, he had his own needs to consider. William’s call had awoken in him desires of his own and it was time he paid him a visit. He owned the house William ran and enjoyed owner’s perks. Yes, he could definitely hear London calling.