by Ophidia Cox
“You want me to take that wand out?” she offered.
Victor winced slightly as he stood up. “Leave it a bit longer. I’ll see how I manage.”
He indicated to the arena. “There’s a staff-only area up there on the scaffolding. It’s a bit more private.”
They made their way up to the arena, to a path where a rope with a Staff Only sign hung across the entrance. Victor had been walking in a very uncomfortable fashion all the way. The ball on the end of the apparatus snagged lightly against the rope as he stepped over it, making him wince. The wince and the metal weight bobbing from the length of his tackle set up a hot throbbing in Sylvia’s groin. He stopped and leaned against the platform. “I think you’d better take it out now. I don’t fancy climbing up there with it in.”
Sylvia unscrewed the side-arm and slid the wand out, slowly so he could savor the feeling of all the little bumps on its surface.
“Thanks. Every so often I get the idea of wearing one of these full-time. Always turns out to be too much.”
The sun had not yet set, and Sylvia hoped it wasn’t strong enough to tan. She’d have a hard time explaining a bondage harness pattern on her skin if she went swimming or had to get changed at work.
Up on the platform were a few plastic sun loungers. Victor settled back onto one of the loungers and closed his eyes. Sylvia took the seat beside him.
“Is this all your sideshow, then?” she asked. Perhaps if she talked to him, he might let slip something that would give her some clues, not that she really expected there was anything for there to be clues about. It seemed a polite thing to ask, at any rate.
“It’s everyone’s, really. The Sideshow wouldn’t be the Sideshow without the freaks. But it was originally my idea.”
“You like people calling you a freak?”
Victor shrugged and opened his eyes briefly. “Why not? A rose by any other name would still be full of earwigs.”
Sylvia laughed, taking the opportunity while he wasn’t looking to ogle the curves of his stomach and chest. Strange how she wouldn’t even have dared thinking of trying anything with someone like this before she’d come to the Sideshow. Yet now she’d done things so outlandish, she’d never even known she was into them. She didn’t know how she might feel about this when she got home, or tomorrow when she was back at work, but it felt good and that was enough to go on for now.
“I lived my life as two different people before I started this sideshow. Only the person I was in private with the people I trusted enough to reveal myself to, and at taboo public events, where I wore a mask like you do now, was the real one. The other was a flimsy cardboard facade. It was liberating to ‘come out’ as it was, and be true to who I was for a living.”
Victor paused. He looked at Sylvia, and she wondered if he could read anything from the expression her mask hid. “I understand that some people like having that facade, that it makes them feel secure, like a hole to hide in when the world seeing your all is too much. I respect your decision to keep the mask on if you never want me to know who you might be in your other life.”
Sylvia glanced at the proceedings in the arena below. She leaned toward him, resting her weight on her elbow. “You’re not going down there so Vaughn can whip you tonight.” Sylvia took hold of his wrist and gently extended his arm behind his head, where she manacled it to the scaffolding with her police handcuffs. “Because I’m your master for now, and I want you all for myself.”
“My dear lady,” he replied with a sideways glance and a lecherous chuckle. “I’m afraid to say I do think you’re being exceptionally greedy, as there is rather a lot of me, and certainly plenty enough to go round had you been willing to share.”
Sylvia slid her knee up and over his waist. The metal frame of the sun lounger groaned in protest as she sat astride him, encompassing his great girth with her knees, sliding her hands over his chest and reveling in how big and soft he felt.
“Victor.” Sylvia hesitated. “Are you with anyone? Seriously, I mean? Is it you and Vaughn, or you and the Hermaphrodite Twins?”
“The Hermaphrodite Twins? They’re great fun and game for anything, but they’re more interested in each other than anyone else. Vaughn’s the best dom I know, and he’s a genius at inventing things. He comes up with all that electrosex stuff. You know the act Marvin does? All Vaughn’s ideas and inventions. He likes to test them on me, but to tell the truth, he’s more interested in the ideas and the results than having a relationship. He wouldn’t understand a concept like monogamy because it’s important to him to test his creations on as many people as possible to gauge how effective they are.”
“So you’re not involved with anyone?” Sylvia stroked one finger down his cheek and across under his double chin. His was an unconventional form of beauty, but she doubted there’d be a dearth of appreciators of it in such an environment as this. “I can’t believe that.”
“I’m not as straightforward as you might think.”
“You going to explain how?”
“I’m a switch, for a start.”
“A switch?”
“A switch. You know. There’s dominance and submission. Most people do either one or the other. Purists argue that if you’re a switch it’s not real BDSM, and sneer at you. I’m ninety percent sub and ten percent dom, which means most of the time I love to play just the sort of games you’ve been treating me to. But every so often I get the urge to play the game from the other side for a change.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” said Sylvia. “Surely there are other switches you can find with the ratio the other way round.”
“Then there’s the other thing.”
Sylvia glanced away from him. The crowd below had changed their motion, and people cleared the way for two policemen to pass. More costumed performers? Another act? One of them pointed at the scaffolding.
Victor frowned, but his expression slowly changed to amusement. “Oh, what the hell’s Vaughn thought up now?”
“Oh, shit!” said Sylvia. They weren’t from the Sideshow. Those weren’t costumes they were wearing. One of them was Baxter. The other...he was Simmons. As she sensed the vibration of one of the men mounting the ladder to the platform, Sylvia scrambled off Victor and sat back on the other sun lounger.
“Wait there, please.” Baxter climbed up onto the platform. He gave Victor a long stare, his face twisting with patent disgust. He consulted a notebook. “Are you Victor R. Maynard?”
Victor pushed himself up onto his elbow to get a better look at the two coppers. “Who’s asking?” The realization that something wasn’t quite right had started to dawn on his face.
“Sir, you’re under arrest for possessing banned software with intent to supply. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”
Baxter advanced on Victor and grabbed his free arm.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Victor’s tone was indignant. “Take your hands off me!”
Simmons made a lunge for Victor, who flung off the pair of them. The two cops sprawled back on the planks. The image Sylvia had of Victor didn’t quite match up here. Victor was strong. She wouldn’t have guessed it from the way he’d behaved before. He’d seemed so soft and compliant, vulnerable almost, in the way he let other people dominate and ridicule him.
She turned to the two policemen. “Baxter, this is under control. Stop this at once!”
“Shut up, whore!” Baxter’s lip had split. Bloody spittle hurled from his mouth when he shouted at her. His hands shook and a furious pallor had taken hold of his face. He pulled Victor away from the scaffolding. “Whose handcuffs are these?”
“They’re mine,” said Sylvia, and she unhooked the mask from behind her ears and pulled it away. “It’s me, Sylvia Price. Pikesley sent me undercover here. I was managing just fine until you came in here and blew my cover.”
“You what?” said Simmons. He and Baxter stared in disbelief at Syl
via. She watched their eyes move down, to take in her ludicrous costume, and felt heat flood her face once more. But when she turned to look at Victor, his face was so full of anger and hatred, it was almost a physical pain to be unmasked before him. The shame she felt about the way she was dressed and the way he wasn’t dressed at all was immaterial.
Chapter 5
Sylvia charged into the police station, having hurriedly changed into the underwear and t-shirt and boiler suit in the locker room at the Sideshow. Unfortunately she hadn’t thought to bring any sensible shoes, and had driven in bare feet and had to put on the boots she’d worn with her costume when she arrived.
“Hi, where’s Maynard?” she asked the receptionist.
The woman’s expression changed to amusement. “That circus bloke? If he’s not careful, they’ll be charging him for indecent exposure too. Interview room three.” She pointed.
Sylvia thanked the receptionist and hurried through. She opened the door without knocking.
Pikesley and Baxter looked up from the table. Victor sat at the other side of it, wearing a paper suit of the sort they give to desperately suicidal people to prevent them from making nooses out of their trousers. “Constable Price!” Baxter exclaimed. “There’s an interview in progress!” He slapped his hand down on the recorder in the middle of the table.
Pikesley scowled at Sylvia, but said in a diplomatic tone, “Price was meant to be undercover at the scene. She might have information on the case.”
Sylvia took a chair at the side of the table. Baxter pressed the record button on the device on the table. “Seventeen fifteen. Constable Sylvia Price has joined the interview.”
“Mr. Maynard is entitled to a solicitor,” Sylvia pointed out.
Pikesley rolled his eyes in a tolerant sort of way. “Mr. Maynard is aware of his entitlements.”
“Okay.” Sylvia glanced at Victor. “I’ve been undercover there. I’ve not seen any evidence of anything illicit going on there. What have you got on him?”
Pikesley held up a sealed plastic bag with the corner between finger and thumb, as though he feared its contents might give him a disease. “Circular barbell, double zero gauge, unusual design, internal threading, of the sort worn in a Prince Albert piercing. It has your DNA all over it, Mr. Maynard, and it was found at the crime scene.”
The bag landed in the center of the table with a light tap that seemed at odds with the physical bulk of the thing. Inside the plastic Sylvia recognized the thick sickle curve, deep burgundy gold at one end and merging through rainbow hues to rich indigo at the other.
“I’ve been speaking to forensics. Their boss down there says this thing’s a piece of highly specialized work. It’s made from something called anodized titanium, which I’m reliably informed, is extremely hard and difficult to work into jewelry of this sort. You’ll see on the underside here is a manufacturer’s mark. Forensics tracked down its providence and I just telephoned the maker. She was able to tell me it was a custom job commissioned by a client five years ago. She only ever made the one, and it’s absolutely bona fide unique.”
“I know it’s unique,” said Victor, his voice strained. “Considering it’s unique and traceable, don’t you think it would be rather stupid of me to leave it somewhere it would incriminate me for something, ignoring your opinions for the moment on whether or not I’m guilty?”
“What crime scene?” said Sylvia. “What’s going on?”
“Baxter and Simmons dug up a whole stash of memory banks with all manner of banned software on them in the boot of a car at the garden festival. Mind imprints, terrorist memes, bomb-building instructions. That was in there with it.”
“It can’t have been,” Sylvia countered. “I was with him the whole time.”
“You were with him, doing what exactly?” Pikesley looked at Sylvia in a penetrating way.
“Investigating the Sideshow undercover for any evidence of illegal activities, like you told me, sir,” she replied calmly. “If that’s the only one of its kind, he was wearing it up until about three thirty this afternoon and it went missing some time after that.”
Victor interrupted. “Somebody stole it.”
“Stole it?” Pikesley demanded. “Who’d want to steal that? Baxter, when did you and Simmons find those banks?”
“It was nearly four o’clock, sir.” Baxter’s fingers fidgeted on the table in front of him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pikesley snapped his head round to face Sylvia. “Price, are you sure it’s the same one?” He pointed to the evidence bag on the table.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re sure?” Pikesley’s mouth was a stern line, his eyes filled with threat.
“I’m adamant,” said Sylvia. “That’s the one I saw, and it went missing at three thirty this afternoon”
Pikesley scowled and slammed his fist on the table. “Interview terminated seventeen fifty-five. You two, take Maynard downstairs.” He glared at Victor. “I want your mug shot and fingerprints and scent signature then you’re free to go. But don’t think this is the end of this matter!” Pikesley bundled the sheaf of papers into the folded card file on the table in front of him and kicked back his chair and turned to the door. “Price, I want to speak to you, privately.”
Sylvia made eye contact with Victor briefly as she followed Pikesley and Baxter, and Simmons led him to the stairs. His face was inscrutable.
Pikesley slammed the door to his office once Sylvia was inside. “What d’you think you’re playing at?”
Sylvia looked at him as though he was mad. “I’m doing my job, sir?”
He hurled the file to his desk, where it landed, scattering its contents and sending the photograph of Pikesley’s wife and kids crashing into the wall. “Don’t be disingenuous! We would have had it nailed on him, if you’d not walked in and said those things!”
“But the jewelry couldn’t possibly have been at the scene of the crime, because it had gone missing earlier, and Maynard was with me all afternoon. I’d have noticed if he’d planted a load of memory banks in a car. He’s not done anything wrong, sir.”
Pikesley flailed his arms inside his expensive jacket. His eyes showed way too much white. “Price, have you even looked at him? There should be a law against people abusing their bodies like that!”
Sylvia bit back a retort. “Sir, it’s his body. Isn’t it his personal choice to do what he wants with it? It’s hardly relevant to the accusation.”
Pikesley’s lips pulled back over his teeth. “Why are you protecting some freak-show fatty?”
“Sir, did you know that dolphins have nasal sex and that there are more gay giraffes than there are straight ones? Or that when dogs have sex, they get stuck together?”
Pikesley scowled. “What idiot told you that? Animals aren’t perverts. They obey the laws of nature. Go to a zoo and see for yourself.”
It occurred to Sylvia that last time she had been to a zoo she had seen three monkeys wanking. “Look, however you want to–” Sylvia cut off before she got to discriminate. “Sir, we’re investigating the Sideshow for criminal allegations, not Mr. Maynard’s lifestyle.”
For an instant, anger blazed in Pikesley’s eyes then he recovered himself. “I want you off this case.” His voice remained controlled and yet menacing. “I have reason to believe you have personal investments in persons involved that mean you will no longer be able to handle it objectively.”
Angry thoughts about when Pikesley had tried to get her to plant that device in the Sideshow surfaced in Sylvia’s mind. She nearly said something, but she clamped her jaw shut and controlled the urge. She had no witnesses.
“I understand you’re due some leave that you’ve not taken. I suggest you take it now, and use it to rethink your attitude before you come back.” Pikesley turned to go, but stopped midstride. “Baxter said when he and Simmons found you, you were dressed up like some kind of hooker.” Pikesley swept a deprecating gaze up and dow
n Sylvia. “When I said to go undercover, I didn’t mean it literally. Call yourself a detective. You’re more like a defective.” A humorless guffaw burst from his mouth at his own joke.
His words and his cutting stare would have made Sylvia hate herself once, but now they didn’t. Perhaps something had changed. Perhaps she was simply numb from what she’d felt when Victor saw her take off her mask. Pikesley thought he was something big, but he wasn’t. He was just a nasty, spiteful man who thought himself better than everyone else, whom fortune had inserted into a position of authority.
Why should it matter what he might think of her? Why should she play his petty games and succumb to his intimidation? He could take her job away from her if he really wanted to, but that was the limit of his power. And Sylvia was starting to feel her job maybe had no meaning any more, not if her job had become conniving and doing the wrong thing. That wasn’t what she’d wanted in a career when she’d joined the police. Pikesley was a horrible person, and it didn’t matter that he had a good and prestigious job. Victor was a decent, honest person, and it was irrelevant that his line of business was considered disreputable and low.
Victor was the boss of the Cyberkink Sideshow, although one might not have guessed it on first impression. Respect for him motivated his staff. Sylvia recalled how Vaughn and the other bidders all seemed to have dropped out when Victor had bid on her in the auction. Pikesley’s staff afforded him no such respect, and he motivated them with insults and threats, blackmail even. If any of the other freaks from the Sideshow were called to court to bear witness against Victor, Sylvia could see that every one of them would offer his or her support and rally round to defend him. Were Pikesley to be accused of misconduct or felony or some such thing, there would be no such solidarity in his ranks. He ruled them with an iron fist and built walls around himself.
