Bleeding London

by Geoff Nicholson

  EATING OUT

  Mick Wilton had never watched another man masturbate before and he was a little uncomfortable about it now. It felt intrusive and perverted. He had no problem about intruding on Kerry Slater, indeed that was to a large extent the point of the exercise, but he did not like to feel that he was perverted. Seeing his victims in these naked, intimate moments gave him a raw power over them. He wanted that power and he revelled in it, but he didn’t want to have to pay too high a price for it. He didn’t want to lose himself or become irredeemably dirtied in the process.

  It seemed strange to Mick that a single man should have such a big house all to himself. Slater lived in Islington, alone apart from a trio of plump, long-haired cats. They had the complete run of the house but they didn’t account for why he needed so much room. What did he do with it? Not much, as far as Mick could tell. Slater worked long hours in his study, and although he went out most evenings, he usually returned quite early, and always alone. Mick had watched him conduct a couple of dinner parties, quite elaborate meals for six or eight guests, and there had been one occasion when a woman had come round by herself in the evening. Slater had cooked again, but she hadn’t stayed the night and he’d given her a brotherly kiss before putting her in a taxi.

  The house was a stack of small, untidy, shabbily furnished rooms. The living room was welcoming enough with its collection of old, lived-in, unmatching furniture, but Mick thought a man in Slater’s position ought to be able to afford a three-piece suite and fitted carpet. The kitchen was well-stocked and well-equipped, but it was a tip. The cooker was filthy, the sink was full of dirty pans, the huge stinking cat tray was in front of the door out to the garden. The dining room, where the dinner parties had taken place, wasn’t so bad since it wasn’t used very often, but again Mick thought some new wallpaper and, say, a fancy glass and steel dining table would have done wonders. But the bedroom, in a way, was the worst of the lot. This was the place where Slater was now masturbating, exploring his body with his chubby hands, and it was a horrible, bad-smelling, depressing place. Old clothes were bundled together in corners, dirty cups and glasses lined the bedside cabinets and the top of the chest of drawers. Newspapers, books and junk mail were piled up beside the bed. The windows were locked and it was a long time since fresh air had penetrated the room. This was not a seducer’s bedroom, rather the bedroom of someone who had resigned himself to a life in which masturbation was to be the dominant form of sexual expression. He certainly looked as though he’d had plenty of practice.

  Kerry Slater was a fat man and maybe that was why his penis looked so small. Its end was livid purple, quite a different colour and texture from the rest of his skin. It looked like an afterthought, something hastily added to the thick trunk of his body. The rest of him was smooth, loose and baby pink, though there was nothing babyish about his prematurely bald head, his spectacles, nor the indecent way he was currently lolling naked on the squashed floral sofa under the bedroom window. He had recently emerged from the bathroom thickly wrapped in towels and a robe, and having slowly, painstakingly dried himself off he had turned to the business of masturbation, a simple enough process that he was making into quite a big production.

  He had begun by rubbing some oil into his penis and that had brought it up and into life. Then he’d opened a drawer in the dressing table and pulled out a magazine. Mick couldn’t see exactly what the contents of the magazine were but Slater found them compelling and stimulating and they drove him onwards. He peered over the pages long and hard, and his tongue peeked out of the corner of his mouth and his lips got wet. But the magazine wasn’t enough, or maybe Slater just didn’t want it to be enough. He reached into the drawer again and produced what looked like a giant test tube, with a fitting at the open neck and a length of attached rubber hose that ended in an egg-shaped bulb. It was some sort of erotic suction device and Slater inserted his penis into the business end of it. The curved plastic acted like a lens, magnifying the organ it contained, and as Slater repeatedly squeezed the rubber bulb it did look as though the erection was becoming stronger, filling more of the tube. Slater’s face became a cartoon of sexual pleasure, and Mick had to work hard not to burst out laughing at the comic effect.

  One of the cats wandered into the room. Slater shooed it away, then with the penis developer still in place he shimmied across the worn bedroom rug, past the walk-in wardrobe, and turned on the TV set and video. There was already a tape in the machine and at once the image of a naked woman appeared on the screen. She was good-looking, oriental, but definitely not Japanese. Mick could tell the difference these days. She looked as though she came from the Philippines or Thailand, from the sexual proving grounds. She had a smooth, youthful face and she was pleasuring herself in a way that was different from but compatible with Slater’s own method. She was putting her fingers into her vagina, swirling them about, then removing them, putting them up to her mouth and licking them clean.

  Slater looked ready, more than ready, to come. Time was getting on. Mick feared he might be late for his reservation at the Morel, but even so he didn’t rush. With the porn still playing on the screen, his penis still in the suction device, he tottered across the room to the dressing table drawer again and this time got out a pair of women’s panties. They were white, creased, not especially small, not especially sexy. Mick wondered for a ridiculous moment whether Slater was going to put them on, and he was relieved when he only pressed them to his nose. He sat down again on the sofa, breathed heavily through the panties, pumped the suction bulb energetically, accelerating all the while, until there was a sudden stop, then a few obscenities said through gritted teeth, and he fell back on the sofa, released and relieved. He stayed there for some time, motionless, breathing very steadily, and Mick thought he might be about to doze off. But then Slater stirred himself, pulled himself together, turned off the TV, put away the pump, the magazine and the panties and proceeded to get ready to go out. His dressing was as swift as his masturbation had been prolonged and he was out of the house in five minutes.

  At last Mick was able to emerge from his hiding place in the walk-in wardrobe. He stretched himself a little deliberately and theatrically as he stepped into the bedroom. His sense of intrusion was all the greater now. He was standing in the very space where Slater had so recently stood, naked and sexually aroused. Mick still felt uneasy yet he knew this was the place he had to be. He began to search Slater’s house. He had already briefly passed through it on his way to his hiding place, and he had previously spent a fair amount of time staring in through the windows, but now he had time to check it out more thoroughly.

  As he searched, Mick discovered all sorts of new information about Slater, though how much of it he would be able to make use of was uncertain. He looked at cheque stubs, credit card statements, share certificates, insurance policies, in an attempt to see how much money Slater had and what he did with it. It appeared he didn’t do much. His outgoings were tiny compared to his worth.

  Mick looked at Slater’s passport to see how far he had travelled. There were no great surprises. He’d been around: to Hong Kong, to Chile, to the States half a dozen times, to India, Singapore. These places didn’t come cheap. Mick wondered if Slater travelled alone, and if not who his companion was.

  He found several photograph albums containing pictures of Slater and his friends, and sure enough there were faces there that Mick recognized, Philip Masterson and Justin Carr, though Jonathan Sands was absent. Most of the photographs showed mixed groups of people at parties, weddings, picnics, race meetings, country house weekends, beach holidays. The occasions always looked lavish. There were raffia picnic baskets and bottles of champagne. There were boats and classic cars. People wore blazers, boaters, tweeds.

  Slater was not photogenic. He looked old and blob-like in the pictures, moon-faced and surprised by the flash. In almost all of them he had a drink in one hand and plate full of food in the other. In one bizarre, unlikely picture he was on a footb
all pitch, dressed as a goalkeeper, standing between the posts, but he still managed to be holding a champagne bottle.

  Mick observed Slater’s tastes in books, records and videos: the latest thrillers and biographies, serious classical CDs, Humphrey Bogart, Jean Renoir and the American musical.

  There were a few recent postcards and letters that Slater had received, but they were not very revealing, thank-you notes from people he’d taken out to dinner, a card from his mother on holiday in Italy. There were some bills, a couple of uncashed cheques from magazines, but Mick couldn’t make much out of them.

  In the study there was a good collection of cookery books, books about food, and restaurant guides, the tools of his trade. And in the filing cabinets Mick found sheafs of newspaper cuttings, Slater’s own work, generally with his owlish face peering out above the by-line, looking well-fed and self-satisfied.

  And so Mick returned to the bedroom, the arena of Slater’s solitary, baroque sex act. Hiding in the wardrobe had given him some familiarity with Slater’s clothes. They were smart and expensive. He ran to suits and sports jackets, grey flannels, handmade shoes, but they were all neglected. Trousers and coats were casually thrown into the wardrobe and left to fester and crease; there were several wrapped around Mick’s feet. A lot of items seemed to have trails of food down them.

  The wardrobe didn’t really fascinate Mick, however. He’d seen enough of it. He went to the dressing table drawer and found a whole heap of magazines with titles like Inspiration, Teenage Lovers, Mirage. They were a good deal filthier than their bland titles suggested, but nothing particularly illegal.

  Mick found a man’s wet-look G-string, a pack of condoms perilously close to their sell-by date, poppers, and a couple of ludicrous Polaroids that showed Slater naked. They might have been snapped by a partner but Slater could equally well have done them himself with the help of a self-timer. Mick considered stealing them. They might have been useful as negotiating points, but Mick didn’t want naked photographs of Slater in his pocket, and in any case Mick felt his negotiating position was pretty well impregnable. But he couldn’t resist having a sniff at the pair of ladies’ panties that had brought Slater such rapture. Mick took them from the drawer, held them to his nose and inhaled deeply. He could smell nothing. If they had ever been worn by a woman she was either very clean or it was a very long time ago that her juices had flowed.

  Naturally Mick had no idea of what the Morel restaurant was actually like, nevertheless he tried to picture Slater having his meal. For no good reason he imagined a place straight out of forties Hollywood; the tables set in booths, waiters in evening dress, the women in strapless satin and a jazz combo playing in the corner. Mick had never been to such a place, wasn’t absolutely sure that they existed outside of the movies, but he thought they must exist in London, if anywhere. He wondered how long a meal there would take, whether professional restaurant critics ate quickly and lightly and then went home to write up the experience, or whether they had a good, long blow out and got completely ratted and only tried to remember it the next morning. It didn’t matter. It was only an item of curiosity. Whenever Slater got home Mick would be ready for him.

  There was a neglected, dust-covered piano in the living room. The stool and the lid over the keys were solid with books and old magazines. Mick swept the debris away, opened the piano and played a few choruses of ‘Chopsticks’ before becoming bored. There was still a lot of time that had to be filled before Slater returned.

  Mick sauntered into the kitchen and began to make preparations. He went to the refrigerator and transferred its contents to the kitchen table. There was butter, margarine, mayonnaise, some bacon, half a lettuce, a pint of stock, a tub of live yoghurt, some left-over curry, cottage cheese, salami, some bottles of Belgian beer. It wasn’t nearly enough so he turned to the freezer and removed frozen steaks, sausages, ready-made stews and sauces, little plastic boxes of puréed fruit. He gave each item a good bashing in the microwave until they were at least defrosted, probably half cooked, then he went to the cupboards. He was pleased that Slater was so well stocked.

  Mick found exotic items like juniper berries, dried limes, star anise, cardamom seeds, cloves. He didn’t know what half the stuff was but he got it all out of the cupboards and arranged it on the table. There were much more mundane and familiar items too: bags of sugar and flour, macaroni, rice, lentils, all kinds of canned foods. Next came the pickles and preserves: anchovies, pickled walnuts, mango chutney, piccalilli, squid in brine, Gentleman’s relish. Finally he arranged the liquids, bottles of flavoured oils and vinegars, ketchup, Worcester sauce, Tabasco, soya and oyster sauce, Angostura bitters. The table looked full and abundant though there were some surreal juxtapositions. Mick wondered what kind of appetite Slater would have after his evening out.

  Mick began opening things. He unscrewed the lids from jars and bottles, tore open boxes and packets, took a tin opener to the canned goods. Sharp, distinct, pointed smells began to rise from the table: sweet, acid, vinegar, meat, fish. He found a few cans of cat food, chicken and rabbit, plaice and cod, liver and hearts. Their smells were stronger than the rest of the foods, but not noticeably less appetizing. The odour of the cat food brought the three cats running to the kitchen, and Mick had his work cut out to round them up and keep them out, eventually pushing them into the dining room and closing the door on them. The scene was set. Mick had nothing to do but wait.

  Slater came home a little before midnight. He travelled by taxi and he was alone as ever. Mick heard him make several drunken attempts to get the key in the lock of the front door, only succeeding at the fifth or sixth try. Having entered the house he went straight into the living room, poured himself a whisky and sat down to make a few notes about the meal he had recently finished. Mick was in no hurry. He sat in the kitchen and continued waiting but that soon became a very dull pastime. Before long he heard a gentle snoring that seeped out of the living room, and it annoyed him a great deal. The feast was ready. Where was the guest of honour? He took a bottle of HP sauce and hurled it at the kitchen wall. The impact was thick and wet, the viscosity of the liquid muting the sound of breaking glass, but he hoped the sheer violence of the smash was enough to rouse Slater.

  Sure enough Slater woke up and dragged himself to his feet. He was used to hearing a few bangs and breakages around the place, that was the price you paid for living with three cats, and as he went into the kitchen he called their names, ‘Brûlée, Caramel, Fraîche, what have you destroyed this time?’

  He knew something wasn’t quite right, but he stood in the doorway for a while, still drunk, looking for the cats, peering under the table and round chair legs, and it took him a long time to realize that something had been going on in the kitchen. Then he looked up, saw all the food spread out, and simultaneously a voice behind him said, ‘Good meal?’ and Mick slammed the door shut.

  Slater turned slowly, with equanimity, and he managed to look at Mick without revealing any sign of surprise or alarm.

  ‘It wasn’t a bad meal,’ he said with abundant composure. ‘But I’ve had better. I’m sure you have too.’

  Mick had to smile. Slater was quite a cool customer and he admired that, although too much cool could raise the stakes to a needlessly high level. If a man was too busy being cool he mightn’t realize just how serious you were about things.

  Slater surveyed the kitchen more carefully and said, ‘I take it this isn’t one of your mainstream burglaries.’

  ‘Very observant,’ Mick agreed. ‘What did you have to eat at the Morel?’

  Hesitating only for a moment, Slater said, ‘A spiced monkfish and lemon sole terrine, followed by pork loin stuffed with boudin noir.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘Competently cooked but lacking heart, I felt.’

  ‘How was the atmosphere?’

  ‘Formal, perhaps a little severe.’

  ‘Did you have a dessert?’

  ‘A tarte au citron which I found munda
ne, although I know that many diners claim to find it absolutely spectacular.’

  ‘How was the wine list?’

  ‘Good on the New World but a shade overpriced,’ said Slater.

  ‘Just as well you weren’t paying then. How was the service?’

  ‘Efficient, if a little fussy.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Mick.

  Quietly, politely acquiescent, Slater sat down at the crowded kitchen table. He tried hard to focus. The drink was still clouding his system. Wasn’t the threat of danger supposed to make you instantly stone-cold sober? He tried to settle in his seat.

  ‘I hope you’ve got room for a little something extra,’ Mick said.

  ‘Always,’ Slater replied.

  Mick took the gun out of his pocket and let Slater get a good look at it. Slater shivered, but still with enormous self-possession he said, ‘Unless you actually want to kill me, you’ll have no need whatsoever for the gun.’

  Mick nodded, slipped the gun away then placed an empty white plate in front of the seated Slater. Mick reached for an opened tin of tuna fish and sloughed its contents on to the plate, then took a bottle of maple syrup in one hand and a squeezable bottle of hamburger mustard in the other and doused the fish in these contrasting liquids. When the containers were empty Mick gestured for Slater to start eating. He did so, neatly, efficiently, without complaint or apparent distaste.

  ‘Where I come from,’ Mick said, ‘we don’t go out for meals much in the week. If we go out at all it’s only on a weekend and that’s only if it’s somebody’s birthday or anniversary or something.’

  ‘I know,’ Slater said, continuing to eat. ‘I’ve written about this. That’s why restaurants go bankrupt so regularly in the provinces. That’s why the provinces have so few good restaurants.’

  ‘Maybe if we poor provincials had better restaurants we’d go out more often.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Slater. ‘But I think it’s more a question of culture, in the broadest sense.’