Erotic Amusements

by Justine Elyot

  Laura whirled round, her face hard. “So what?”

  Michelle seemed prepared to say anything now, perhaps needing to keep this little piece of human connection, to avoid being alone.

  “Cordwainer gave me to him.”

  “What? What the hell are you on about? I don’t care about all this shit. I care about Rocky.”

  “I was Cordwainer’s property and he gave me away to your father. That’s why I gave the story to the Gazette. I was so angry with him.”

  She was crying again, convulsively.

  Laura stopped, on the verge of indecision, too embroiled in conflicting emotions to fully feel any of them.

  “You mean…you were shagging my dad?”

  “Cordwainer used to have parties. I was the entertainment. Your dad was a regular.”

  “Jesus, I don’t want to hear this.” But Laura could not move, her fascinated revulsion rooting her to the spot.

  “I loved Charles, but he didn’t love me. He gave me away to your father.”

  “Like…a present?”

  “Yes, like a present. I wasn’t supposed to have feelings. I wanted him to know I did. I have feelings. I have value.”

  “You wanted revenge?”

  Michelle nodded miserably.

  “Well, you’ve got it, haven’t you? And now two men might be dead.”

  “I didn’t call that cop, though. That was nothing to do with me.”

  Laura’s stomach lurched unpleasantly. The idea that Rocky might be lying in the hospital morgue right now as a direct result of her call to DCS Rhodes was not an appealing one. It reminded her of her immediate mission, and she picked up her handbag.

  “Yeah, well, there’s no accounting for my dad’s taste,” she said brutally. “It always was trashy. I’m going now.”

  Accident and Emergency was busting at the seams, each cubicle full, with every chair in the waiting area occupied by somebody needing attention. Laura found it easy to slip past the harassed nurses and look at the chart on the wall.

  Bay Three had the name Cordwainer crossed out and replaced. Either he was dead or had been removed to Intensive Care or another ward.

  Bay Six had “Anderson—head injury” scrawled on the whiteboard.

  Laura headed for the bay with the police officer standing outside the curtain. That would be Rocky, all right.

  “You a relative?” asked the policeman as she reached to slip beyond the drape.

  “Are you?” she snapped. “I’m a friend,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “Girlfriend.”

  “Really?” The policeman looked interested, but she ignored him and walked on through.

  Rocky was propped up on pillows, his head bandaged, his face locked into a deep scowl.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he growled as soon as he registered Laura.

  “I might ask you the same question,” she retorted, but her acerbic words hid floods of blessed relief, coursing through her, lighting her up with weak-kneed joy. “Heard you got into a spot of bother. Just wanted to make sure you were…” Her voice tremored. “Okay.”

  “I’m fine,” he muttered. “I want to walk out of here, but bloody PC Plod out there won’t let me go until I make a statement. Do you know what happened?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I remember walking down into a boat, and that’s it. Don’t know what’s happened to Flipp. Don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Flipp’s left,” Laura said, making sure she had Rocky’s undivided eye contact before adding, “with her husband.”

  Her words did not have the revelatory impact she was hoping for, though there were certainly signs of agitation on Rocky’s face.

  “Are you fucking serious? That evil cunt has got his hands on her again?”

  “You knew?”

  “Of course I fucking knew. We’re lovers, Laura, partners. We talk to each other. What, you thought it was some big secret, did you? Was it you? Was it you that called in and shopped her? It was, wasn’t it?”

  Rocky was swinging his legs around out of the bed, heedless of the fact that he was wearing only a hospital robe.

  “Rocky. I did it for you.” Laura backed away.

  “Don’t move. I’m not going to kill you. Yet. Sit down.”

  Laura sat down in the room’s moulded plastic chair.

  “What exactly happened, Laura? What did you do? What do you know?”

  “I saw a missing persons thing with Flipp’s photo on it. I called them up. It said she was ‘vulnerable.’ I know that means a person who’s mentally ill or whatever. I wanted to save you, Rocky. I thought you might be in danger.”

  “I think you know me well enough to know that I can look after myself, Laura. You did it to split us up, didn’t you? Out of spite. You called Rhodes and got him down here.”

  “He’s Flipp’s husband,” pleaded Laura. “He has a right to know.”

  “He’s an evil bastard who kept her prisoner, played mind games until she didn’t know which way was up and abused her. She was lucky to get away. And now he’s got her back.” Rocky ran hands through his hair, pulling tufts of it free from the bandage. “Where is she? Where are they? Was it him that knocked me out?”

  “I don’t know.” Laura shrugged. “Cordwainer was there too. He was shot.”

  “Cordwainer? Was shot? Look, we have to get out of here. I have to find Flipp.”

  “You’re under police guard and you’re naked under that gown.”

  “Yeah, well…” Rocky opened the bedside cabinet, locating his clothes. “The nakedness is easily dealt with. As for that copper—you owe me, Laura. Get rid of him.”

  “How?”

  “Use your imagination. I don’t care.”

  “Why should I do anything for you?”

  Rocky reached out, cupped her face, tilted it up towards his, holding it firmly.

  “Because you want to,” he said. “Because you have a hell of a lot to make up for. Because underneath all the queen-bitch attitude, I know there’s a worthwhile person.”

  “You don’t.” His last words cut her to the quick. She needed to prove herself to him. “Okay,” she said quietly, and he let go of her.

  Five minutes later, Laura was haring through the open waiting area with the police officer in hot pursuit, roaring at her to give his hat back.

  Meanwhile Rocky, dressed and ready for action despite his sore and bandaged head, took advantage of the chaos and the perennial staff shortages to sneak off out of an alternative exit, reaching for his phone and calling Flipp’s number.

  The desk sergeant frowned at the buzzing phone in front of him.

  “Yours?” he asked Flipp, who stood miserably cuffed on the other side, beside an eye-rolling Rhodes and the officer in charge of the armed operation.

  “Yeah. Can I answer it?”

  “Well, you do have the right to one call.” The sergeant shrugged.

  “Who is it from?” Flipp asked, grabbing at the air with anxious fingers. “What does the display say?”

  The sergeant picked it up. “Rocky.”

  Hyperventilating, Flipp jerked her head to indicate that she wanted to take the call.

  “Switch it off,” snapped Rhodes.

  “She does have the right,” the sergeant reminded him. He put the phone against Flipp’s ear and switched it on.

  “You’re alive,” she blurted, her throat jumping with sobs.

  “Flipp, where are you?”

  “Police station…please come…he’s got me…need you.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Rhodes snatched the mobile from the sergeant’s hand and ended the call before pocketing the troublesome item.

  “Ahem, is that your property?” the sergeant enquired, with a hint of iron behind the politeness.

  “It is now,” Rhodes snarled. “This is my body. I have to take her back to London today. Fill in whatever forms you need to process her and then we’re off.”

  “One moment, Chief Super
intendent Rhodes,” said the officer in charge. “Name?”

  Flipp looked up boldly. “Philippa Jane Rhodes.”

  The two local officers looked at each other, eyebrows high, then looked at Rhodes.

  “No relation?” the sergeant asked mildly.

  “No,” said Rhodes, at the same moment Flipp answered in the affirmative.

  The officers exchanged a further bemused look.

  Flipp, full of bravado now she knew that Rocky was alive, spoke again. “I’m his wife. He forced me to marry him. I was only sixteen and I didn’t have any parents living for him to ask consent. My aunt was my only living relative, and she just wasn’t that bothered what happened to me. He kept me like a pet. He abused me. I haven’t committed any crime. I’m innocent of everything except escaping from him. Please believe me.” Her pleas turned to shrieks as Rhodes’s grip on her upper arm, already tight, became agonising.

  “She’s a fucking liar,” he said, with a failed attempt at suavity.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” The officer in charge frowned. “I really think I need a word with my chief super. Would you give me a moment?”

  The sergeant was left to entertain Flipp and Rhodes while further advice was sought. He passed the time making an inventory of Flipp’s few possessions and keeping a close but subtle eye on Rhodes, who seemed about to overboil into a seething vortex of rage.

  “Let me go, Pete,” said Flipp. “You can’t get away with this.”

  Before Rhodes could answer, another policeman entered the custody suite, dragging a protesting woman by the arm.

  “Oh.” Flipp turned around in surprise. “It’s you. Mind out, officer. You might harm her unborn child.”

  “Oh, do fuck off,” said Laura loftily before turning back to her captor. “My father will fuck you up, you know. He’s a good friend of Commissioner McRae. I really advise that you let go of me.”

  “What’s the charge?” sighed the desk sergeant, envisaging an endless desert of paperwork ahead of him that day.

  “Obstructing a police officer in the course of his duties,” the constable snapped. “She made off with my bloody hat. I was standing guard in A&E at Goldsands General.”

  “Right. And the bloke you were guarding?”

  “Shit.” Laura’s policeman clapped a hand over his mouth, realising his dereliction of duty.

  “That’d be me,” said another voice, its owner lurching through the double doors into the suite as if drunk.

  “Rocky,” gasped Flipp and Laura ecstatically.

  “Oh, what the fuck?” raged Rhodes. “Thank Christ I don’t have to work down here. You’re all bloody clueless.”

  The chief super and the officer in charge appeared amidst the confusion to be subjected to a clamour of information. From the hail of conflicting stories, they managed to pick up the very strong possibility that Flipp had been framed for the attacks and was the reluctant, runaway wife of Peter Rhodes, who had come to abduct her back into his clutches.

  “Look,” said the chief super, looking long-sufferingly at each person in turn. “You do understand that we have very little to corroborate any of your stories. Mrs. Rhodes, your fingerprints are on the weapon.”

  “Call me Flipp,” she said, pouting. “And haven’t you noticed that my wonderful husband has been wearing gloves all this time? He’s a fucking detective. Who better to commit a fit-up? Come on.”

  The chief super turned to Rhodes. “You have to admit,” he said, almost apologising, “it does sound fishy. You understand I’ll have to look into this further.”

  “You’ve got nothing. Not a shred of evidence. You can’t keep me here.”

  “Who gave me this, then?” demanded Rocky, tapping the side of his head. “Flipp’s hardly going to do it, is she? And I’d swear on the Bible that she didn’t have a gun when we went down on to the boat.”

  “What’s your word worth?” Rhodes wondered aloud.

  “He’s got a point,” Laura added unhelpfully.

  The chief super put a hand up to his temple and massaged it. “You might as well all sit down. It’s going to be a long day.”

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s very weak. But he has regained consciousness. I’m not sure he’s up to visitors, though.”

  The nurse’s voice was low and soothing.

  “I’m his fiancée. We only got engaged last week. Please let me see him.”

  “Well…all right. But you mustn’t overexcite him. He needs to rest. He’s not out of the woods yet.”

  Michelle walked past the police officer guarding the private room and stood in the doorway for a moment, breathing deeply, before entering.

  Cordwainer. The biggest, baddest bad guy in town, the man she had loved.

  How surreal it was to see him lying, helpless and weak, in a hospital bed.

  Michelle’s heart disobeyed her strict injunction to remain hardened, and she found herself rushing to his side and crouching at the level of his closed eyes.

  He opened one, then shut it again and moaned.

  “I’m hallucinating,” he muttered to himself.

  “No, Charles, you aren’t,” she whispered. “I’m here. Michelle. Miss Object. Except I’m not your object any more. I’m my own woman.”

  “Right on, sister,” breathed Cordwainer, sardonic even this close to death’s door. “Here to finish me off, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You should. I would. If I were you.”

  “You aren’t. You don’t understand what it is to care for people, and I’m sorry for you. You might die without knowing how it feels.”

  “I hope I do. I hear compassion sucks.”

  “You have the chance to do something good for somebody. One chance. It could be your last.”

  “Oh, please.” He tried to lift a hand to the call button, but his arm failed to complete the task. “Go.”

  “There’s a policeman outside. I’m going to tell him you’re up to giving a statement. And you’re going to tell him the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? I could give you a hundred moral and ethical reasons. But I know they wouldn’t appeal to you. So I’ll give you this one instead. If you tell the truth about who shot you, I’ll go to the Gazette and tell them that everything I said was a lie. All done in revenge, from a rejected lover. Even the papers I gave them—I’ll say I forged them. I’ll take every word back.”

  “If I’m dying, it scarcely matters, does it? Besides, I was going to come and get you and force you to do that anyway.”

  “This is easier, though, isn’t it? You don’t like complications. Let’s keep it simple. You tell the truth about Rhodes—because you aren’t particularly implicated in any of that—and I’ll go to the press. Even if you do die, your reputation is salvaged to some extent. But you won’t die. You’re immortal. You’re untouchable. The unsinkable Charles Cordwainer, right?”

  His mouth twitched. “Right. Well, why not? Rhodes is a liability anyway. He’s one sacrifice I don’t mind making. Get that policeman in. I’ll talk.”

  While Rocky was being interviewed, Flipp and Laura sat at distant ends of the waiting area, watching Rhodes pace the floor, looking like a man in the throes of demonic possession.

  “Wedded bliss,” drawled Laura, looking up from her plastic tea. “Bet you’re glad I got you back together.”

  Flipp gasped. “It was you. You bitch. Rocky doesn’t want you, you know. He never will. Deal with it.”

  “Rocky will be going down for a very long time if I get my way,” snarled Rhodes. “Forget about him. You’re my wife.”

  “I want a divorce.”

  “You aren’t going to get one.”

  “This isn’t Afghanistan, Pete. Of course I can get a divorce if I want one.”

  “If anyone should be filing for divorce, it should be me. You’ve cuckolded me. You’re an adulteress.”

  “So divorce me, then. I don’t care.”

  “What, reward your behaviour with half of my incom
e? I don’t think so, love. Where I come from, bad girls get what’s coming to them.”

  “Where you come from? Where’s that? Misogynyville?” Flipp appealed, despite her instincts, to Laura’s better judgement. “For God’s sake, Laura, even you must see that this man is a fucking psycho. I’d help you, if it was you he’d come for. Don’t you feel at all bad?”

  Laura fidgeted with her empty cup, peeling the shiny plastic into sharp strips.

  “What can I do?” she asked eventually. “I don’t have any power.”

  “I suppose not.” Flipp slumped back, turning her face to the wall.

  “Once this bunch of muppets have finished pissing about, we go straight back to London,” Rhodes vowed, still pacing. “Straight back home, for a proper reunion, eh, Phil? A tender moment, husband and wife together again.”

  “That’s not the way I’d describe rape and false imprisonment, you delusional freak.”

  “She’s joking,” Rhodes told Laura. “That’s her sense of humour. Sick. You see what I have to put up with. But I do it ’cause I love her.”

  “Aww,” said Laura mechanically.

  Suddenly a flurry of detectives burst through the room, towards the interview suite where Rocky was being held.

  “What’s happening?” Rhodes wanted to know, but they ignored him. He turned to the desk sergeant, who was pretending not to eavesdrop. “Cordwainer must be dead. Must be a murder rap now. I’ll sort it out for you, Phil. You’ll be okay. It was self-defence. I told them that. You’ll get bail.”

  “Pete, stop it. Just tell the truth.”

  Flipp leaped to her feet as Rocky emerged from the interview room flanked by police officers.

  “What’s happening? Are you okay?”

  He nodded and tried to stand by her, but Rhodes leaped between them, until one of the detectives stepped in front of him and held up a hand.

  “Peter Rhodes, I’m arresting you for attempted murder, assault, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.”

  Flipp clapped her hands and whooped, flinging herself into Rocky’s arms so hard that he staggered.

  “What the fuck?” bellowed Rhodes, over the rest of the spiel. “You can’t do this. You just can’t do this.”

  Rocky spoke quietly into Flipp’s ear. “They had a statement from Cordwainer—he told them Rhodes pulled the trigger, and he was the one that knocked me out. We’re cleared. We’re free.”