Me having sex, me drunk, me feeling guilty, me fucking up a case, me fucking up a relationship, me fucking up my life, on and on, one scene or clip or photograph quickly jumping on to the next, the divine, choral music rising in crescendo, tears streaming down my face – on the screen and here, sitting in front of it – every life I’ve ruined, and none more so than this one right here, in this position, having allowed himself to come to this, this utter, fucking, wretched waste of a single fucking strand of sperm...
Finally I’m up off my feet, kicking the television, a boot right to the middle, but I’m closer to losing my balance than knocking it over, so I take a better kick, soul of the boot, and the set tips backwards, and then I lift it, pick up the set, pulling the plug out as I do it, and toss it away to the side.
‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuuuuck!’
The set smashes against the wall, with the final chord of the oratorio, or whatever the fuck that was we’ve just been listening to, then it settles with a crash, and suddenly the room is silent.
Dead silent.
Hands on my hips, head down. Eyes open, but I can barely see the floor through the tears. Jesus. Wipe my eyes, sniff, hand dragged across my nose, straighten up, finally. Turn round.
Clayton is up out of the seat. His face is dead. The face of a man delivering the final, crushing blow. The face of a man getting a job done. Perhaps the face of a man doing a job that, in the end, was so easy there’s barely any satisfaction to be had.
He taps the barrel of the gun against his fingertips.
‘How does it feel?’ he says.
I give him nothing, except slumped shoulders. The women are no more than a couple of yards away, but they might as well not be there. At least, I think they might as well not be there. But he’s in control. Everything is happening for a reason. Everyone is here for a reason.
‘How does it feel?’ he repeats. ‘To be on...’ He laughs, humourlessly. ‘I shan’t, I shan’t. Too easy, too easy...’
And now, like a fucking wasted piece of washed-up useless sphincter skin, in the shittiest generic movie you ever watched, I fall to my knees. Head down, shoulders down, hands uselessly at my side.
‘I’m leaving,’ he says. ‘This is an awful country. Going to the dogs. I mean, there are a lot of awful countries out there in the world, but it’s time for me to move on. I rather fancy being the outsider. Living on the fringes, detached from society. Somewhere I don’t understand the language. Bosnia looks nice... No, I’m teasing. It’s fucking awful. No wonder you found it so easy to fuck up people’s lives there.’
I’m staring at his feet, though I can feel his head, tipped to the side, staring at me like some kindly old uncle, standing over the lame dog before he puts a bullet in its head.
‘Just a couple of small details to sort out before we’re done. The presence of the two ladies won’t have passed you by, I take it? You obviously got my clue.’
I don’t lift my head, don’t stare at him. I should be doing everything I can to save them, but I feel so empty, so bereft. I just want it all to end. Clayton can win. He can have what he wants, he can kill who he likes, just so long as I’m one of them.
‘Obviously, it won’t take much. One on top of the other, blonde on blonde, faces pressed together, then bound so there’s little breath to take. A last few gasps, and then... well, another fine addition to the intriguing case of the Bob Dylan Murders. After that, time for just one more. You get it, don’t you? I mean, you know what we’re talking about? You understand your own death...?’
Time slows. Every sentence, every word, is another reach of his hand down inside me, ripping out my heart and my lungs and my stomach and my everything else.
‘Self Portrait,’ I say, the words forced out, and the fucker almost squeals with pleasure.
‘Bravo, Sergeant, bravo. Self Portrait. Excellent. Still, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Look at me. Look at me, Sergeant. Come on.’
Slowly I lift my head. He’s three yards away. Why don’t I just go for him? He’s got the gun, and the chances are he’d get the shot off and I’d be downed before I got to him. But I don’t care anyway, do I? Right?
You don’t care, you wasted piece of fuck, so why not just have a go?
‘Before you die, I’m going to do you a favour. That’s the kind of man I am. Decent. No, really, I’m perfectly decent, I really am. So, what is this favour, you’re asking? Well, I’m going to give you the chance at redemption. How does that sound? Surely, everyone wants redemption?’
I’ve got nothing to say. I’m just the puppet, limp and useless before the master, waiting to do as I’m told. Is there anything I wouldn’t do now, just to get this over with?
‘Oh, I found them, Sergeant, don’t you worry. I heard you tell poor, dear Philo your story, and I went to Bosnia and I found them. I found the ones you left behind, the ones who hadn’t died. They hadn’t forgotten. Of course they hadn’t. And they certainly remembered the photographer, the Scottish photographer, who couldn’t get an erection. One of them said it might have been funny if it hadn’t been so tragic.’
He pauses, enjoying the moment. He’s been planning it long enough, and now is his time. He has the floor, the arch villain has his stage on which to monologue.
‘Haven’t you always wished you could have that night back, Sergeant? A do-over? I mean, really, haven’t you relived it a thousand times? Ten thousand. When you relive it, when you think about her lying there, does it give you an erection?’
I see the gun move in his hands. He’s baiting me, possibly wary of me snapping, and getting ready to deal with a charge.
‘Well, now’s your chance.’
A smile, and I really don’t know what he’s talking about. And then slowly, his head and the gun turn towards the two bound women.
‘Now we already know you’re happy to sleep with the good doctor. But Sgt Harrison... I don’t know, I felt you left so much on the table when you sat together on the couch. So much potential lost. So, Sergeant, this is your chance for salvation. It has been my intention all evening to kill them both. To trap them together, blonde, indeed, on blonde. But I will spare them, or rather, you can spare them, if you do what you failed to do to that poor woman – who would otherwise still be alive today – in the Bosnian forest.’
I hold his gaze, from my position of abject poverty, and then look round at Harrison. We stare at each other across the short distance of the room.
‘Fuck her, Sergeant,’ he says from my right, his voice suddenly cold, zigzagging back and forth as it does, as he plays me. ‘Fuck her, or she dies.’
49
Gun in one hand, he takes out his phone with the other, looking at me expectantly.
‘Well, Sergeant, we have film of so much else! When this footage is used in the documentary of your life, you want the final moment of triumph to have been captured, don’t you? The scene of deliverance. Every good film has one.’
Brady has her eyes closed. She’s crying. I wonder where her daughter is. At least we have that, at least Clayton hasn’t dragged us all so low, that there would be a twelve year-old girl sitting here, subjected to the X-rated garbage of my life.
Harrison is steady. Good on her. Not taking any of this arsehole’s crap. She’s worth a hundred of me.
‘Take her gag off,’ I say. Looking at her, not him. The words could be an order, but I’m so bereft of spirit, so damned empty, they sound like a sad and hollow last request.
‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘Intriguing. Well, yes, why not, eh? That rather sounds like a plan. It’ll make lovely television. I hope you’ve got a decent script though, there’s the potential it could be maudlin. No one enjoys maudlin.’
He goes behind her, finds the end of the piece of tape strapped around her head and across her mouth, and then quickly unravels it, ripping it out her hair at the end. She cries out at the shock of it, then quickly bites her teeth, pressing her lips together, annoyed she made the sound.
I don’t doubt Clayton.
He’s a calculating, weird, sick fucker, but strangely there’s some code about him. I trust him in that. If I do as he’s telling me, he’ll let them live. If I don’t, we all die.
And so, as I look at her, I’m not thinking about the awful night in Bosnia. I’m thinking about a few evenings ago, sitting on a sofa with Eileen, desperate to sleep with her, as turned on as I’ve ever been. Maybe even more turned on than usual, given I was having to deny myself.
Here, in the demon’s pit, with two bound kidnap victims and a mad fucktard with a gun in his hand, and me on my knees, utterly crushed, I’m forcing myself to think about watching lesbian porn with my best friend, trying to force some life into what is currently the deadest organ in my body. Or, at least, tied for dead last with my brain.
‘Don’t trust him,’ she says, her voice hard and cold. ‘You can’t fucking trust him, Tom.’
Jesus. She’s not going to make it any easier. She doesn’t want me to do it.
Of course she doesn’t want me to do it!
I already had words in her mouth. I imagined her telling me she’d really wanted me to do it on Saturday anyway, I imagined her encouragement. Something to make it easier. Something to cause a spark.
‘I can’t let you die,’ I say. Head down, staring at the carpet.
‘We’re all going to die anyway.’
‘I believe him,’ I say, looking up.
Behind her he squeals quietly, and the sound stabs into the side of my head. Squealing with delight.
I just want it all over. All of it. For me to be dead, and for the sergeant not to be dead with me.
‘Don’t you dare, Tom,’ she says. ‘Don’t you dare do what he wants.’
‘Tut tut tut...,’ comes the voice from behind. ‘Now, now, Sgt Harrison, you have to remember your place in this little drama. Maybe you don’t know the story, perhaps that’s the trouble. The Sergeant here was forced to rape someone, or else the victim would be shot. She, in her desperation, pleaded with him to rape her. Questionable, then, of course whether you could call it rape in my book, but let’s not get into legal technobabble...’
Just shut up. Please. Stop talking.
‘So, if we are to truly offer the sergeant redemption, you have to go along with it, Sgt Harrison. This isn’t about you, you know! Nor, I should add, is it about me. Let Sgt Hutton do what he has to do. You know –’
‘Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! I’m doing it!’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ he says, faux shocked. ‘Extraordinary!’
And I approach her on my hands and knees. Jesus fucking Christ. There’s your next fucking metaphor. There’s your life in one all-consuming instance of desperate awfulness.
I glance up at her as I come to the couch. A last look and she closes her eyes. Clamps them shut. I rest my arms on her legs – she’s wearing jeans – hesitate, and then part her legs.
Pushing forward into the abyss, even though I know I’m not going to be able to do it. I know I’m not, and it’ll be for exactly the same reason as before. It’s not a matter of whether I should. It’s not a matter of playing along to the gunman’s whims. My penis is no more willing now than it was back then. And Jesus, why would it be? If it couldn’t get an involuntary erection in my mid-twenties, it sure as fuck isn’t going to now.
I reach out, hand on the zip of her jeans. This, for some reason, feels like the Rubicon. We’re here, we’re fucked up and messed around and used, and we’re fully clothed. As soon as I start undressing her, this is it. Cross this line, and nothing stops until I’m lying on top of her and my useless fucking cock has made its final decision.
I need to recapture the feeling. This is where I wanted to be the other night. She was right there, next to me, the most unbelievably erotic situation I could imagine, and I was desperate to put my hand on her thighs. They were there, naked, pressed against mine, and I couldn’t touch.
I squeeze them, press my head against her left leg. She is steady. Tense, but not a hint of a tremble. She’s not telling me to stop anymore. He’s controlled her, just as much as he’s controlled me these last few days.
As if to remind me of his presence, he squeals again. I look up, and there he is, out of reach, gun in one hand, phone in the other. He lifts his eyebrows at me in encouragement. We’re all friends in this together. I look back up at Harrison, eyes still closed, face set hard.
The past floats away. It’s gone. Dead and gone. I’m not reliving the past, any more than I’m giving myself redemption. All I’m doing is giving in to the whims of a fucking freak.
Why did I even start thinking about it?
There are tears on my face, and I press my head more firmly against Harrison’s thigh. Just for a second. Then finally, finally, I make a decision and grow some fucking balls for the first time since walking into the room.
It’s not about making a grab for the gun, attempting some dramatic act that turns the scene on its head, leaving the women released, and me standing over Clayton. Just the balls to finally not do what this lunatic is telling me to.
I get to my feet, lean forward, press my face against Harrison’s cheek for a second, whisper, ‘Sorry,’ in her ear, then kiss her briefly on the lips and stand up.
She looks up at me, her expression suddenly changing. I glance at Brady – the last woman with whom I’ll ever have sex – almost forgotten, bound and gagged on the sidelines, no more than six inches from Harrison, and then finally I stand upright and look at Clayton.
‘What’s this?’ he says, the phone lowering.
‘I’m done.’
‘You’re done?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm... well I think that means I put a bullet in your head, and then strap the two women together, shortly afterwards leaving this place with all three of you dead. Are you sure that’s what you want? Are you sure you want it on your conscience, the very last thing on your resume?’
‘How many bullets are in the gun?’
‘Curious,’ he says. ‘Just the one. Why?’
‘Give me it.’
He smiles. Has a look about him like he’s on fucking Crackerjack.
‘Ooh, interesting. Explain.’
‘My death, this whole thing, this was to be the last act in the Bob Dylan Murders. Self Portrait. Well, the video isn’t a self-portrait, really, is it? You made it. If a self portrait is what you want, I have to die by my own hand. So give me the gun.’
The eyebrows are lifted again.
‘And how –’
‘We’re renegotiating. I’m not going to do what you want with the Sergeant, but I’ll do this. Give me the gun, I shoot myself, you free the women, and then you can be on your way. Live whatever life you’re going to lead. I’ll be dead, I won’t care.’
‘I’m not sure I entirely understand the concept. So I give you the gun? And you kill yourself? And not me?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why would I trust you? Why wouldn’t you just shoot me?’
My shoulders are slumped. I’ve had enough. Can barely even bring myself to talk.
‘I’m already suspended. This would be just what I needed. A murder trial for putting a bullet in your face. I’m done, Mr Clayton. You win. It’s all yours. All of it. Every fucking thing you want out of this. If you want to put a bullet in my head, then on you go. Here I am. But I thought you might take a little more pleasure out of me doing it to myself.’
His lips are pursed. Thinking about it. And I’m not lying. I don’t care, I really have had enough. I want out of here, and this is the best route.
‘I just don’t want to take Sgt Harrison, or Dr Brady, with me. Give me the gun, you’ll get your Self Portrait, and we’re done.’
‘Hmm...,’ he says, and now the phone is back in his pocket, the gun lowered, and I can see he’s thinking about it. I’ve nothing else to add though. Not trying to persuade him, not trying to do anything further.
‘Very well,’ he says finally. ‘Yes, yes... Let’s try this. Sounds exciting. Two
foes taking each other at their word. Rather splendid.’
He pauses, there’s a genuine look of curiosity about him – he’s finally, after all this time, considering something that wasn’t part of his plan – and then he holds the gun forward.
‘Gosh,’ he continues, ‘I do believe I’m rather nervous. That hasn’t happened in quite some time.’
And then the gun is in my hand.
I don’t know guns, been such a long time. This seems old, the kind with a barrel. Like the old Westerns, or Clint in the Dirty Harry movies. But smaller. I push the barrel out and check, and sure enough, one bullet. All he thought he’d need.
Not a shooter, Clayton. He kills with malice aforethought and absurdity and grotesquery. A bullet in the head isn’t for him. Except when he has manipulated someone else into putting the bullet in their own head.
‘You have the gun, Sergeant,’ he says.
‘Tom!’
I don’t look at her. Eyes on the gun. No fight in me. I’ve given up. Just want it all to be over. And it could be over if I killed him. At least, this little drama would be over. But I trust him, as much as he seems to have trusted me.
If I kill myself, then the sergeant, the doctor and the doctor’s daughter, wherever she is, this invisible, kidnapped girl, will all be safe. I kill him, well yes, the women will still be safe, but it leaves me standing here with a gun and more blood on my hands. It doesn’t matter what Clayton has done – and the chances of us finding proof of all of it will be damned slim – I’ll still be the police officer who put a bullet in the head of an unarmed man. The investigation, the media, the trial, the bullshit. And I’d still be here, in this fucking awful world of injustice and terror and famine and illness and war, I’d be on my way to prison, and all those fuckers out there who mistrust us and everything we do would have one more giant excuse for hating the police.
DS Hutton Box Set Page 103
