“You don’t want to do this,” said Eva. She stared them out until one and then the other backed away. She walked on. When Eva reached her car, she shot them a parting look before getting inside the car and starting the engine. And then she drove away. By the time Eva reached the A127, Eva had dialled her mobile, and set the phone to loudspeaker. The haze was clearing. But she still wasn’t done.
“Eva?” said Lauren. “I thought you’d have drunk all that wine in Southchurch by now I didn’t expect to hear from you tonight.”
“I almost did,” said Eva, keeping her eyes on the road as the Alfa cut through the slow-moving traffic. “But then I realised we left your biggest problem still in the game. We need to think how to deal with him, don’t we?”
“Eva,, you’re full of surprises.”
“I must be learning from you,” said Eva. “You know what I was thinking?”
“What?”
“I was thinking that we should face Jamie together. Deal with him that way. Make him face what he’s done.”
“Like we did with the hitman?”
“Kind of. Only this time we aim for subtle. At the start at least. First we talk.”
“Talk? Didn’t we try that a while back? Jamie doesn’t talk. He lies his way out of trouble, remember.”
“I know. But this time we’re going to clear the air once and for all. And don’t worry. If he tries anything we’ll deal with him alright.”
“Deal with him? If you’re intent on dealing with him, then I’m in all the way. You’re driving. Where are you going now?”
Eva wasn’t planning on giving Lauren any further inroads into her life than she had already. “Get some rest, Lauren… because tomorrow, we’re going to finish this.”
“Eva, you’ve been worth every penny.”
“Get some rest and I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Eva ended the call. Ever since Lauren had come back, Eva had felt neither comfortable not safe. But it still didn’t mean Lauren was a villain. Just a victim of herself, of her own mind. Either way, Eva knew she had to be on guard so she wasn’t consumed. The changeling Lauren, and the selfish violence of Blane. The final fuse had been lit. Now Eva had to hope she could handle the fallout, no matter which direction it came from.
Twenty-one
Carberry Close, Basildon.
The noise of the returning party came with hoots of bravado and the sounds of drunken stupidity. Dan had been finished almost twenty minutes. He was seated upstairs in the spare room, the room they used for storage, and he was ready. He’d been waiting for them, watching from the window. He realised he was becoming like Ronson, another window watcher. The thought gave him reason for a grim smile. Ronson, aka Mr Delusional, the man abandoned by his family, seeking to protect the daughter he couldn’t reach. Protecting the girl down the street was his next best option. The only option he had left. And now, having taken his place in the window, Dan knew was doing the very same thing.
“Here they come,” said Mark. Dan glanced left to see the shadows coming from the mouth of the street. The gang walked merrily, some meandering and bumping into their companions, while others seemed more fleet of foot. Some had duties to attend to, performing for the camera. Others had been allowed to drink more, because they could get away with it behind camera. Dan noticed the two women at the head of the pack… They walked quickly, heads angled down. They seemed nervous, even. The starlets about to perform. Mr Bleach walked close beside one of them. They wore unseasonably long dark coats, probably in honour of their rebellious styling and affected bad attitudes. But all Dan saw was a bunch of posturing idiots, a set of toxic pond scum doing whatever they could to continue their debauched lifestyle. The ASMR video wheeze was probably the latest in a long line of scams, and finally, this one had paid off, and they were going to mine it for all it was worth… even if it meant involving children to make a buck. Not all ASMR was bad, so they had told him. He reckoned that was true. But this bunch were rotten to the core.
Dan looked once more towards the Mellot house and saw the girl looking from the window, her small pale face silhouetted in the soft pink glow of her bedroom. The storage room was dark – almost pitch black – she would never see him – and Dan looked at her, silently willing her to stay home. As the noisy gang got closer, the girl disappeared from view and drew her curtain. Dan drew breath in relief. He looked at Mark when they heard the key click in the lock downstairs. The kid looked edgy, but he gave Dan a nod to say he was fine. He was with Dan all the way.
A clamour of voices and footsteps spilled into the hall, echoing up the stairwell. But before the door shut, another set of footsteps came racing along the pavement outside, the clap-clap-clap of boots on concrete audible long before Dan saw the man coming. They must have heard it downstairs too. The voices died down and the gang stopped their advance into the house.
“Who’s that?” said one of the women.
Dan recognised the figure as he slowed down, walking into the light spilling from the front door. It was the tall man from before. The man in the bandana. The man looked exhausted from running. “Neil?” said a female voice. “What’s the matter?” Dan saw one of the women in long coats walk onto the front lawn. Neil leaned over his knees and sucked in some air. Dan wasn’t sure who the woman was at first. Her hair was long and flat and neat. Then he saw it was lilac and almost certainly a wig. The honeyed, soft, smoky voice told him all he needed to know. It was Lady Bleach in costume, all but ready for the filming.
“The guy from before… he came back,” Neil said, wheezing.
“What? Ronson?” said a male voice. Probably Bleach.
“No, no. The bloke who came round with all the questions. The man in the leather jacket. I don’t know how, but he got in while we were setting up. He threatened us. Told us to clear out. I knew I had to warn you…”
“What?” said the girl. “He got in the house?!” Dan watched Bleach join them on the front lawn.
Lady Bleach’s face was struck by the light. She was dolled up to the nines, make-up bordering the extreme.
“The thug in leather came back. I thought Ronson would have called him off.”
“I thought the little worm would have let it go after landing himself in hospital.”
The tall man shook his head.
“No, Olly. This guy means business. He wants to shut us down.”
“Shut us down?”
“Jennifer Soul, the subscribers, all of it. He knows about the subscription service, too. They’ve done their homework. They know everything. Then he said something cryptic, something about you two bringing in that little girl from down the street. He made it sound dark. But I know it can’t be like that. You haven’t got anything lined up for that girl, have you?”
Olly Bleach looked to his girlfriend. The woman replied without a pause.
“The kid was interested in what we do. I don’t see the harm in her making a short ASMR video if she wanted to.”
The bandana man frowned. “But just ASMR, right. Just making sounds.”
“Absolutely,” said the girl. But not even the bandana man seemed convinced.
“We can’t talk about this out here,” snapped Olly Bleach.
“So you did invite the kid?” the guy looked at Olly.
“She wouldn’t have been involved in anything for the subs. AMSR. She would have a had a can of coke, and watched Jen or Donna make a safe video. Relaxation only.”
“Come on, Olly,” said Neil. “That’s still not cool. We all know what the clickers want. Girls on camera, acting like they’re getting off with an ear mic.”
“She would have gone home before that,” said Olly. “No more discussion. The subject is closed. Now get inside the house.”
The bandana man stayed on the lawn, hands on his hips.
“Would she have gone home before that?” he said, his eyes on Lady Bleach.
Dan watched the woman shrug “It would have been up to her.”
“Jesus, Jenny. You
need your head checked.”
“And that’s why you’re not running the business, Neil. Entrepreneurs have to take risks.”
“Not those kind of risks…” The tall man looked at the house and craned his head up at Dan’s dark window.”
“You can stand out here if you like, Neil, but we’ve got some money to make.”
“Is he still in there?”
“What?” said Olly.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you… I came looking for you… I think we’ve messed with the wrong guy. He knows about the girl.”
Bleach stared up at the dark windows. His eyes passed over Dan’s face. For a moment it felt as if they had seen each other. A moment of connection. And then his eyes moved on, still searching for him. “Everyone, get inside and shut the door. Donna and Jen. You stay down in the living room. The rest of us will go and check the house.”
“Like hell, I will,” replied Lady Bleach. Dan heard the booze in her voice.
The other girl backed her up. “The channel’s got my name on it. I’m looking for him too.”
“The more the merrier,” whispered Dan.
He heard them storming into the hallway. The front door slammed. They listened as the kitchen door slid open and slid shut. They heard footsteps rumble through the living room, the toilet and every conceivable space, including the back garden.
“Upstairs!” shouted someone. It sounded like Lady Bleach.
Dan looked at Mark. “There’s eight of them now. You stay behind me. I’ll deal with all of it.”
“We’re boxed in,” said Mark.
“But this isn’t their territory anymore, Mark. And we’ve still got the element of surprise.”
Feet thundered up the stairs. They heard the first bedroom door fly open and slam against the wall.
“Bloody hell… what’s he done?” said a voice.
“What? Let me see,” said another.
As they spoke, another door creaked open in the room right beside theirs. There was more shock, more loud swearing. Exactly what Dan had expected. But with their last-minute doorstep tip-off, they knew exactly who had caused the carnage. And so they’d moved straight from shock to fury. Not a disaster, but the dynamic had certainly changed. It would have been better if the bandana man had found them earlier in the pub instead of hyping them up on the doorstep. But whatever, Dan would deal with the cards however they fell. He heard some of them in the room with the bed, the red satin sheet and the rubber skeleton, their perfect arrangement all thrown awry. He heard others, still in the first room, discovering what he’d done to their equipment, peeling back the layers of destruction. While Mark had been searching for the paperwork, Dan had found a big shelf unit full of semi-technical looking props and microphones of all kinds. Dan had been through it, worked out what looked like the most expensive, the most valued, and then had dealt with it accordingly. He’d heard a lot about ear mics. They seemed to be exclusively an ASMR thing, so they went first. He dealt with every item without emotion, dispatching them as they had dispatched Ronson. After he was finished, nothing much remained of use. Apart from the shelf unit. And as each piece was broken, put beyond use, he had put it back in place on the shelf, all nice and neat. They’d called him a thug. Dan knew people had always seen him that way, and while there was no little thuggery in smashing up their kit, Dan still liked to think of himself as a little better than that. He was into justice, a righter of wrongs. Occasionally, thuggery was required. But only when strictly necessary. And even then, he liked to dispense it with a little flair.
He heard them coming, their feet stomping to a halt outside. The door burst open and Dan stood ready by the window, arms folded, serene.
Olly Bleach stood in the doorway, looking like he’d spent some time modelling himself on the Malcolm McDowell character from A Clockwork Orange – right down to the eyeliner. Dan wondered if the make-up had been done in the pub for the video shoot. For the first time, the Bleaches’ whole look made sense. They were violent scum like those in the movie. Not physically violent, no, but ready to discard any rule or civility to achieve their aims. They were anarchic, without a visible trace of goodness. Dan saw the emotion shining behind the man’s eyes. His outrage was wild but still pathetic. The man was on the verge of tears.
“What the hell have you done? You’ve destroyed everything! You’ve broken into our house! We could have you arrested.”
They filled the doorway and the hallway beyond it. Jenny Bleach stood in her lilac wig, wearing a black greatcoat worn over some kind of shiny sequined number. The other woman wore a short silver wig, and her clothing didn’t look any classier.
As Dan looked at Olly Bleach, holding a small knife in his hands. Small and sharp. The kind used for peeling potatoes or coring an apple. Dan’s serenity faded by a degree. He looked at the woman, Jenny Bleach, saw the tear tracks and the running mascara. Her eyes burned into him with something close to hatred. Dan smiled back.
“It’d certainly be interesting if we called the police, wouldn’t it? You with that knife in your hands, all this filming equipment here, the girls dressed up like rejects from a Soho basement.”
“Screw you!” shouted Olly. “Everything we do here is legal, and above board. Everything!”
“You’ve destroyed our business,” said the woman. “Our channel has subscribers from all over the world! What do you do for a living, eh? We help people! What do you give the world?”
Dan’s smile became a smirk. “Now you’re rhapsodising about it, let’s look at what really you do.”
“I told you. We do ASMR. Do you even know what that means? Probably not, because the words contain more than one syllable. It means Autonomous—”
“I don’t care what it means. You still can’t hide behind it. ASMR is about stimulating sensations of peace and relaxation. What are you trying to stimulate? I don’t see what therapy and helping people has to do with dressing up like hookers and filming porn.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “We help people. We just work for a specific market. It’s all still therapeutic. We’re still helping people… but now… you’ve cost us our business and harmed our audience.”
“Your audience? The only kind of therapy those sleazy types get is entirely self-administered. I don’t even want to think about it. You know exactly what market you’re serving. And that’s why you’ve got a subscription service. To upsell your sleaze, charging more for harder content… And tonight. What was the plan? The real plan? Why did you hurt Ronson like that? You could have killed him!”
“Don’t exaggerate,” said Olly Bleach. “We just wanted to make him stop and think.”
“Stop and think? He’s got fractured ribs, a broken nose, a dislocated shoulder and a punctured lung!”
The man paled as Dan spoke. The others around him looked at Bleach’s back and then amongst themselves. Bleach seemed to sense it. He shook his head.
“I want to know why you did it. So he’d get rid of me and my questions? That’s part of it. But you wanted him out of the way for tonight’s shoot, didn’t you? He’s been in your way for a while.”
“That’s our business,” said Jenny. “We don’t have to tell you anything.”
“And you, Jenny. You look a little undressed for tearing paper and scratching wood. Judging from all the lube tubes and toys you’ve on those shelves, I take it some of your subscribers like their relaxation with some pretty interesting images.”
“They get what they pay for,” said the other woman. “That’s their choice.”
“You’re right,” said Dan. “This wasn’t any of my business… until I saw first-hand just how low you people are prepared to go. I couldn’t give a rat’s backside if you want to flash your wares and sell your flesh to the lowest of the low for a few easy pounds. That’s your call, sad and sick though it is. But you’ve been a bad influence in this street for a long time. And before you hurt Renton, you’d been intimidating him for months.”
“He’s
scared of his own shadow. His fear has nothing to do with us,” said Jenny.
“Your screwing around, loud as you like, at all hours, your constant late night parties, they’re all bad things. But your aggression towards Renton had the man desperate for help. But I still didn’t believe how bad you were until I saw it with my own eyes. I heard it too. You almost killed him! And worse, you’ve been grooming that kid…”
“What?!” said Jenny, shaking her head. “Grooming! You make us sound like…?!”
“Sound like what? Paedophiles? I don’t know what you are. I’m not sure you even know yourselves…”
“How dare you!”
“Ronson saw it all. Ronson was afraid of your intentions towards her, more than he was afraid of your intimidation. And he was right, wasn’t he?”
“That’s what this is about? You’ve smashed up our equipment, destroyed our livelihood, on account of Ronson telling you that we wanted to harm that girl?” said Mr Bleach.
“I smashed it up because I know. I know you invited her here tonight.”
“Who told you that?” said Bleach.
“She did.”
Dan’s words hung in the air.
“We’re not like what you’re implying,” said Bleach.
But the man’s voice was strained.
“Tell me. What am I implying?” said Dan.
“That we would be interested in that kid… sexually…”
“Is that what I implied? Or is that what it is?” said Dan.
“You can’t even bring yourself to say it. You were bringing her in here to show her it was okay.”
“I was going to let her make an ASMR video of the girl combing her hair!” said Jenny. “What’s wrong with that? People already make videos like that. Why couldn’t she?”
Play With Fire Page 31
