Death is the New Black

by Dominic Piper

  I listen to his bullshit and watch helplessly as he gropes Sara once more. He kisses her mouth and licks her face. Her skin glistens with his saliva. He pulls at the bow on Sara’s baby doll and it comes undone. Shortass smiles. It’s not a nice smile.

  Inexplicably, I start to feel profoundly sorry for Isolda.

  28

  THE WENDY HOUSE

  For a second, I think there’s a dog scratching at the door, trying to get in. I can also hear a sound like a small electrical motor. Jennison notices the noise, quickly re-ties the bow on Sara’s baby doll and props her up against the back of the sofa. I think she’s asleep. I hope she’s not dead. He nods to Shortass who walks over to the Regency doors and opens both of them wide.

  What comes in through the door is, under the circumstances, such a surreal sight, that I wonder if it’s a side effect of whatever’s whizzing though my blood. Then I realise that it’s so surreal that it can’t be.

  It’s an old woman. If I had to guess her age, I’d have to say somewhere between ninety and one hundred and ten. She’s in a hi-tech electric wheelchair. It looks expensive. It’s sleek, matt black and well designed with four grey castor wheels and two bigger wheels with white tyres that are powered by an electrical engine of some sort.

  As she proceeds into the room, you can hear lots of small hydraulic engine noises. On the left side of the chair there’s a small platform supporting two blue gas cylinders, presumably containing oxygen.

  There’s a green plastic tube coming out of one of the cylinders, which terminates in a transparent plastic mask, held to her face with a length of green elastic. I wonder why the chair doesn’t tip over due to the weight of the cylinders.

  I can hear her strained breathing and there’s a strong smell of antiseptics. On the right-hand side of the chair is a small, see-through compartment full of drug bottles and dressings.

  Her skin is sallow and waxy, her hair white and brittle. She’s operating the chair using a joystick in her right hand. She’s wearing a huge, and under the circumstances, ridiculous flowery hat that you might have seen at a wedding in the 1950s.

  As she passes Sara, she does a rapid ninety-degree turns so that she can get a good view. She stares at Sara for four or five seconds, but doesn’t say anything. I spot an intravenous drip going into the rear of her neck, but can’t see where it’s coming from.

  After she’s inspected Sara, she trundles past Jennison then positions herself to the left of the sofa he and Sara are sitting on. She’s now looking directly at me.

  No one is saying anything, but everyone’s looking very respectful and happy. It’s as if the Pope has trundled into the room wearing a flowery hat. I decide to break the silence, just for the hell of it. I look straight at Jennison.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your fiancée?’

  He grins but his eyes are dead. ‘What a funny man.’ He gives a little nod to Shortass, who walks pasts the old woman, turns towards me and gives me an almighty punch to the face with one of his big fists.

  It lands right on my cheekbone and knocks me on my side. I hate being hit there. I’m almost certainly going to have a black eye from that. I notice that it hurt quite a bit and wonder if the sedative effects of the drugs are very slowly wearing off. Jennison turns to the old lady.

  ‘Mummy. I’m just going to show Mr Beckett the Wendy House. Can you look after Sara and make sure she doesn’t hurt herself?’

  How Mummy is going to do that, I can’t imagine. She takes her oxygen mask off. She’s going to speak!

  ‘I’ll make sure the little whore doesn’t do anything.’

  It’s quite a shock when she speaks. I’d expected a frail little-old-lady voice, but she has a nasty, deep, cawing, grating East London accent that drips with venom. She seems to get short of breath immediately and puts the mask back over her mouth.

  The electronic sounds coming from her wheelchair are filling my head. Are they really that loud or is it me? My face is throbbing from Shortass’s punch. I don’t like leaving Sara here with her, but I have no choice. This is not looking good. She leans over precariously and slaps Sara across the face.

  ‘Little bitch and whore!’

  What the hell? Jennison watches as Shortass grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet. I feel instantly dizzy and close to passing out. Little white lights dance in front of my eyes. I take a few deep breaths. Jennison stands, leans over his mother and gives her a kiss on the top of her flowery hat.

  ‘Won’t be long, Mummy. Dolly’s back. She’s taken the day off work to come and see you. She’s just having a bath and getting changed.’

  ‘A bath? Was she sweaty? That girl needs to lose some weight,’ says Mrs Jennison, whom I’m beginning to dislike.

  I had wondered where Isolda was. I thought she might be a tad more proactive in all of this. Perhaps she’s trying to avoid seeing Sara. Perhaps she’s trying to avoid seeing me.

  I thought I was recovering slightly, but as we all go out of the front door and walk across the courtyard, I feel groggy and disorientated again. It’s not very sunny now, but it’s still too bright for me and I have to squint to see where we’re going.

  I try to work out what time it must be. From the position of the sun in the sky I’m guessing that it’s somewhere between six and seven in the evening. There’s a strong scent of some sort of flower in the air. Don’t know what it is. Nice, though.

  We walk down the side of the house. For a moment, I think we’re going to the lake and they’re going to drown me, but we stop before that and I have to smile when I see where we’re going.

  It’s like a fairy-tale cottage. It has a tiny wooden front door, a window either side with wooden shutters, a genuine thatched roof and a small brick chimney. The whole thing is maybe ten feet tall and there’s certainly no first floor. I’m assuming it must have been built as a folly of some sort or maybe as a plaything for spoilt kids. I expect a witch to come out and greet us.

  Shortass holds my arm as Jennison open the front door. It takes him a while, as there’s a Yale and three mortice locks; obviously a security conscious witch.

  As soon as we’re inside, you can tell that no one lives here. The air is dead. It’s not a dirty place and it’s been kept tidy, but it has no atmosphere. I suddenly feel groggy and lean against a wall. Shortass doesn’t like this and pulls me away.

  There’s a small kitchen ahead of us, but we’re not going that way. We turn right, into a sitting room. There’s a chintzy three-piece suite, a small desk and a glass-topped coffee table. Shortass shoves me down onto one of the chairs. I’m starting to get used to this happening. I feel vomit start to rise up into the lower part of my throat, but luckily it doesn’t get any further. That point on my shoulder where the needle went in is hurting again.

  I look around the place and wonder why I’m in here. It’s all very well coordinated. There’s a design on the sofa covers and cushions – a sort of plum, yellow and cream spider web thing – that’s also featured on the curtains. The curtains are open slightly. I can’t see the shutters on the windows. Instead of glass, there are sheets of metal. There’s a fireplace, but the chimney is sealed off. This is a prison.

  I’m still finding it difficult to keep thoughts going. I start thinking about Klementina. She had amazing hair. I try to think of things I can talk about to her. I’ve been to Sweden on several occasions, but can’t remember where.

  Jennison asks Shortass to go and make some coffee. Shortass disappears. Jennison sits opposite me. It’s the first time we’ve been alone. I’m obviously no threat whatsoever to him in this state and he knows it.

  He stares at me in a way I don’t like. It’s almost sympathetic, as if he knows what’s going to happen to me and feels sorry for me.

  ‘What is this place?’ I say, surprised at how my voice sounds.

  ‘Be patient, Mr Beckett,’ says Jennison, getting himself comfortable on the sofa. ‘We’ll be getting to that soon enough.’

  I can hear Sh
ortass clanking around in the kitchen. I can hear a kettle start to boil.

  ‘I was telling you about my prison days, wasn’t I. Do you know, I still dream that I’m inside? The relief when I wake up is incredible.’

  ‘Well, you’ll soon be back there for real.’

  Either I just thought that or he’s ignoring me. I’m feeling a little panicky. I want to know what’s going to happen and where all this is going. All this maudlin chat and prevarication is beginning to irritate me. Maybe that’s the intention.

  ‘There was one thing that kept me going in prison. Do you know what it was, Mr Beckett?’

  I look at a print that’s hanging above the fireplace. It’s Victorian, I think. It’s of two sickeningly cute fairies leaning across a toadstool, kissing each other. Eskilstuna: that was one of the places I went in Sweden.

  ‘It was the fact that when I got out, I was going to make the bastard that put me inside suffer. DS MacQuoid. And then I get out and the bastard’s dead! His wife’s fucked off to the States; the whole revenge thing became too much trouble, too complicated. If his wife had still been in the country, she’d have been dead meat; after I’d had my fun with her, of course. I didn’t even know about his fucking daughter. Didn’t even know she existed. Can you believe that?’

  ‘I know all of this. Isolda told me. Could you shut up for a minute? I don’t feel well. Did I ask you for water?’

  I’m sounding more lucid. I must be recovering. A sudden millisecond of double vision tells me I’m not there yet.

  ‘Well, you know that Isolda wanted these fashion shows MacQuoid’s daughter was doing well and truly fucked up. Well, that was the least I could do for her.

  ‘Everything Holt did was starting to cause her pain. Anything to make her happy, you know how it is. I just slung my lads a couple of hundred each. It was nothing to them. Just a bit of fun, considering what they were used to doing, d’you get me?

  ‘Timmy out there; he broke into her flat. He was a bit out of practice, but he still managed it without a single person noticing, least of all Miss Holt. He’s a good boy. Skilled. That put the shits up her; someone breaking into her flat but taking nothing. I thought that one up. Isolda told me Holt had a nervous breakdown or something. In the past, I mean. I know the type. Jittery. Easily spooked.

  ‘I know the police. I know what your average plod would think if some bint told them that someone had been breaking in but took nothing and she had no evidence. They’d think she was a bit mad and then she’d think she was a bit mad, too.’

  Shortass reappears with a tray with coffee things on and places them on the glass-topped coffee table. Three powder blue cups and saucers and a large lime green cafetière. No biscuits, which is a bit of a disappointment, but otherwise very genteel.

  He pours the coffee out and carefully pushes a cup and saucer towards me, a surprisingly polite gesture coming from someone who’s already savagely attacked me once and then punched me in the face at his boss’s request.

  ‘All the other stuff. It was choreographed, that’s the only word for it,’ continues Jennison, proudly. ‘Little incidents that could happen to anybody. Women get called bitch, slut and whore all the time. It’s just part of normal life for women all over the world. Who’s going to know if one of those incidents was planned or not?’

  I take a sip of coffee. It’s not bad. I start to feel a little better. I’m still not up to anything, though. If I was functioning properly, these two would already be dead. I keep having to wipe tears from my eyes. Jennison continues his monologue. He’s proud of his achievements and just has to tell someone about them.

  ‘And then Isolda just happens to mention it. Just happens to mention it! That Miss la-di-dah Holt’s original name was MacQuoid. I felt sick; I’ll tell you that for nothing. I thought that it couldn’t be, d’you know what I mean? But that surname. Rare, that is. I’d never heard that surname anywhere else. Have you ever heard of that surname? That bastard’s daughter, and my girl was her bloody assistant. I check her on the Internet and it all fell into place.’

  ‘So you decided you were going to abduct her.’ That was weird. I can hear my voice in my ears.

  ‘I detect a sneer in your voice, Mr Beckett. You clearly don’t understand me. It’s to do with morals. It’s to do with right and wrong. MacQuoid send me to prison. That was wrong. I missed my daughter growing up. That was wrong. My wife fucks around and then kills herself. That was wrong, too. So many wrongs.

  ‘So when I come out, MacQuoid has to die. That is morally correct. But he’s already dead. His wife is out of the loop. But now I’ve got his daughter. It’s like a natural law. It’s the law of the jungle. I was owed his daughter for what he did to me. Is that too difficult to understand?’

  ‘She’s got nothing to do with your sad criminal career, you inadequate shit. Let her go.’

  Shortass starts to get up, but Jennison raises a hand to stop him.

  ‘I can’t do that, Mr Beckett. Let her go, I mean. She’s going to be my new mistress. My girlfriend. My wife.’

  All my smart comments die on my lips. Jennison looks pleased that I’m shocked and speechless.

  ‘That’s why I brought you in here; to show you where she’s going to live. To show you how much you’ve messed up. I may be getting on a bit, but I’ve still got what it takes to please the ladies. Can you imagine what DS MacQuoid would think? He’d be rolling in his grave. Me, Tommy Jennison, banging his daughter. And it won’t be just me, either. I like to treat my men. I like to keep them sweet. Give ’em a nice little gift every now and then. Of course, we’ll have to keep her medicated. But that stuff she’s on now, we can’t keep her on that forever. She’s no good to me on that. We’ll just put something else in her food every day. Not too little, not too much.’

  He laughs and rubs his hands up and down his thighs. Shortass has a laugh as well. I feel sick.

  ‘It’ll just be like having a little toy. Like one of them sex dolls, but real, you get the picture? I’ve going to have me a really bloody good time, Sonny Jim, a really bloody good time. So’s Timmy here. And Derek. It’s sweet. I couldn’t have asked for anything more sweet than this. She looks like one of them models in a magazine. Certainly out of Derek’s league; and Timmy’s too, truth be told. Old MacQuoid’ll be rolling in his grave. He’ll be rolling in it every time I have her. Bringing my boys in on it just makes it better, understand? More satisfying. More revengeful.’

  He cackles to himself, his false teeth whistling.

  I close my eyes and exhale slowly. I feel suddenly and inexorably depressed. I have completely failed this client. I have completely fucked up. It couldn’t get any worse than this. A young, intelligent, successful woman asks me to investigate some incidents of harassment and a couple of days later she’s the drugged-out concubine/prisoner of a wig-wearing, seventy-year-old animal with false teeth and a withered arm. Good work, Beckett.

  ‘With all no respect, you’re a complete simpleton,’ I say, probably risking another punch from Shortass. ‘You’re never going to get away with this.’

  That was awful. I never usually drift into speaking in clichés.

  ‘Oh yes I am, Sonny Jim. Think about it. Who knows she’s here? Who will ever know?’

  This is a difficult one to think about in my state. Who knows Sara’s here apart from this lot? Well, me, for a start, but I don’t count; not at the moment. At some point she’ll be reported missing, probably by Isolda if she’s devious enough and I think she is. But I’m forgetting Rachelle Beauchesne. That incident will point the police in Sara’s direction. They’ll look at her Twitter account. If Rachelle dies, it’ll be a murder inquiry. They’ll be looking for Blue Suit and won’t stop until they find him.

  Isolda, of course, will have to hold it together should she be interviewed by the police. Would she buckle under that type of pressure? She’ll be upset and falling to pieces, but then the police would expect her to be like that. She did a damn good job of pretending to be Sara Hol
t’s biggest fan. It certainly fooled me, but then my judgment was clouded by lust.

  So it’s certain the police would investigate. Someone will doubtless launch an appeal. It’ll make the news. Sara’s mother and stepfather will come over from the States. They’ll put pressure on the police. The police will ask for witnesses. They’ll want to speak to anyone who might have seen Sara in the previous forty-eight hours or whatever. Who would come forward? If Eve Cook saw an appeal like that she’d go straight to the authorities.

  She’ll tell them how I commandeered her car after Sara was grabbed. She’ll tell them how I rescued Sara, how she dropped us off at Exeter Street. She’ll show them my business card. They’ll check my flat. They may not find signs of a struggle, but forensics might find something, some proof she was there.

  But it’s unlikely they’d find any evidence of Jennison’s goons. They’d have been too careful. They’d have worn gloves. All of the evidence and testimonials might even point to me, and if I turn out to have vanished into thin air, they might think it’s case closed.

  As soon as I discovered Sara had been grabbed, I went straight over to Maccanti. Melody, Sara’s MTA2 would tell the police, if they thought to ask, that I’d barged into the offices and was having some sort of altercation with Isolda.

  But Melody suspected that there was something going on between me and Isolda and it could be interpreted that we were having a row. I’d said as much. I said we were having a lovers’ tiff. I don’t know whether she believed that or not. Did she know about Rachelle? Isolda and I left, but where we were going would be anybody’s guess.

  Any reporting of Sara’s going missing would hopefully attract the attention of DI Bream. She’d try to get in touch with me. When that failed she may or may not look into it.