by Bella Mackie
When women prepare to give birth, they pack a bag to leave in the hallway. I did something similar while waiting for Lee to get in touch. I had a medium-sized Celine tote bag in a lovely chocolate brown which seemed perfect for the job, given that it was roomy and not too flashy. Classic Celine. Inside went my rope, some gloves, which I hoped looked less murderer in a dark alley and more fashion victim, a large-brimmed wool hat which made me look slightly like I was attempting detective cosplay, and some disinfectant wipes. It was needlessly organised to have packed a bag without having a date nailed down, but I was getting to the stage, as I did every time the killing drew nearer, where I was getting impatient and jittery.
I spent ten days doing aimless runs around London, crisscrossing bridges and hauling myself up hills in a bid to get rid of some of the nervous energy. I spent an evening with Jimmy at the pub, where he repeatedly laughed at me for gazing off into the distance. I told him I was waiting for a guy to call, which wasn’t exactly a lie. I took to putting my phone on airplane mode for hours at a time, so I couldn’t check it constantly for any new messages. It began to be excruciating. And then one Friday morning, I woke up to a text from Uncle. It had been sent at 3.48 a.m., and simply said, OK, miss smug I’m bored. Let’s go out.
I sat straight up in bed and re-read it. Then I put my phone down and took a long shower, did 100 squats and made coffee. Only then did I return to the phone and compose a reply. Once I’d written it, I decided it was too early to send. I guessed Lee would still be asleep, and I didn’t want to look too eager. Only at lunchtime, when I left the office and had space to think, did I check my response and hit send.
I promise what I have in mind won’t be boring. Meet me Saturday night at the Tube station. Mile End, midnight. Text me when you’re there. Don’t be late.
Two hours later, I got a text saying, Had to look it up on a map. This better be good. CU there.
I had a date planned for Friday night but I cancelled it. It might have taken the edge off, but I needed the edge. I wanted to feel hopped up. I was so bored of waiting around for these people to get in line with my plans. The immediate run-up was always the delicious bit, knowing that there would soon be another one down, watching the list get smaller, seeking out any reaction from the family that I could find. It could leave me feeling euphoric for days. Of course, this was mixed with a sliver of fear that the plan wouldn’t work, that I’d have to start all over again. But that’s what made it so heady. If it went well, I could rearrange the date. But he seemed a little drippy, texting that he was disappointed not to see me and adding a sad emoji, so it was unlikely.
On Saturday, I ran from Shadwell to Battersea and then back to St Paul’s, my app telling me that I’d scored my fastest 15 km run. Feeling slightly in need of a rest, I sat down on the cathedral steps for a bit just watching the tourists mill about. Another runner did the same, sitting a few steps away and stretching his legs. He smiled at me, and I smiled back without meaning to. He was handsome, in a slightly ruddy way, but with something a little more about the eyes than his posh demeanour initially suggested. I could see he was lingering, and realised with annoyance that he was working himself up to say something, so I got up and headed for the Tube. Shame really. He was potentially not completely terrible, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to sit and play romance on the sun-drenched steps of a church. Today was not that day. No day was that day for me actually. At most, we’d have fucked once or twice and then at some point he’d have asked me to go to Putney to meet his friends after rugby and I’d have had to delete his number. Better to opt out of that particular horror sooner rather than later.
* * *
At a quarter to midnight, I wrap my coat tightly around my body and fish my hat out of my bag of supplies. Luckily I have a good head for hats. You either do or you don’t, if you look bad in one hat you will look bad in them all. Too many women think that they look cute in bobble hats. They do not. Nobody wearing a bobble hat conveys anything other than a desperate wish to look cute in bobble hats. Those abominations aside, hats suit me fine and this affords me an extra layer of much-needed anonymity. The trusty wig shop in Finsbury Park has done me proud, tonight I am a marvellous jet-black-haired siren. I’m confident that nobody is going to spend too much time looking for someone else in connection to Lee’s death, but I also won’t be strolling into the place where he dies linking arms with him. A hat and a wig are a nice precaution.
I wait for his text in a nearby pub (genuinely the first and last pub I’ve seen in East London to have been completely untouched by gentrification – it was refreshing not to see a sad old stag’s head on the wall or a pile of tatty board games in the corner), half expecting him to forget or find a better plan. But he texts at five to midnight, saying that he’s outside the station.
Great. Meet me on Bushell Street, I text back. Two minutes later, a black Mercedes four-by-four pulls up. I wince slightly, there’s no way to hide his arrival in that monstrosity.
The driver opens the door for him, and he emerges into the night. Lee is wrapped up in an enormous sheepskin coat with a large dragon stitched across the back. His black cowboy boots have a snakeskin effect, clearly he’s broken out his fanciest pair for the evening. He looks around for me, and I let him waver for a minute as I stand in a doorway just yards away. He’s away from his usual stomping ground and he’s vulnerable. I want him to know it. To understand I’m in charge here. I am leading the way. So I linger for a few more seconds as he looks increasingly self-conscious, wondering whether he’s been stood up, or worse – he might have been set up. I can see him weighing up whether to retreat back to the safety of the car and lock the doors. Just before I can see he’s about to cut and run, I step forward and quietly whistle, as though to a lost dog.
Lee looks over and smiles in relief. Coming towards me, he reaches out, grabs my hand and kisses it. ‘Thank God, this place is a fucking dump and I thought I’d wasted a journey.’ I withdraw my hand as gently as I can and return the smile, forcing my mouth to curl upwards. ‘Nice hair, suits you. Makes you look younger. Hop in the car, we don’t want to walk around here, babe, I’m wearing a Patek Philippe which would pay for a house in this neighbourhood.’
I tell him that the walk is mere minutes and tease him lightly about being a coward. His frown tells me that he doesn’t much like it, but he signals to the driver and the car pulls away.
‘How does it work?’ I ask as we started walking. ‘Does he just wait for you wherever you go, or do you pay him by the hour and sometimes have to get the night bus home with the rest of the masses?’
This makes him throw his head back and roar with laughter. It is always easy to make Lee laugh. It basically just involves saying something about how rich he is. I guess the concept of a night bus was funny if you’d never had to actually take it.
‘My boy Ke works round the clock for me. I’m a busy man and time is money, as they say. Nowhere he can’t get me in twenty minutes, and for what I pay him, he’d happily wait around in the motor for days. I’ll give you a ride home later, if you’ve been a good girl.’ Thankfully, I am very much not about to be a good girl, so the ride home will go unclaimed. We turn the corner and reach the archway which is the entrance to our final destination. Well, his final destination.
‘Ta da!’ I say, and throw out my hands. Lee looks slightly horrified and stops still in the street.
‘I’m not being funny, babes, but what is this? A tunnel or something?’ I roll my eyes, and beckon him to hurry up.
‘Look I know you’re unused to clubs without butlers, but you’re also, in your own words, bored. This place will freak the fuck out of you, but I guarantee you’ll enjoy it in the end. Just try it, your trusty driver is only round the corner if you need to run back to Chelsea.’
‘You better make sure it’s as naughty as you say it is,’ he mutters as he follows me down the stairs and into the club.
To my relief, it’s heaving now, the bar area has a queue
three deep and there are already people beginning to get undressed as we wait for a drink. I take off my hat, and subtly feel the front of the wig with one finger for any slippage. Lee has brightened up immensely in seconds, surveying the crowd. It might not be what he’s used to, but he knows debauchery when he sees it. His coat is over his arm (he’d refused to check it in, half-jokingly telling the bored cloakroom assistant that it was a one-off Gucci commission and he’d never trust her with it) and he’s standing straight, sucking in his stomach a fraction. However much men over 50 hit the gym, there’s always a slight thickening around the gut. A nice little reminder every time they try to look down at their dicks that they are losing their youth. I can see his eyes narrowing as he scans the room, already looking for bodies he wants to explore. If I left him right now, he’d have hardly noticed. I grab us double vodkas and steer him further into the room. I’d already decided that I was going to let him play for a bit. He could have his last meal, there was no need to rush it all.
‘The main room is tame,’ I say, and gesture towards a side door. ‘Let’s try the private areas.’ The man couldn’t be more willing, practically jostling me to get on. The first room we go into has a wall of glory holes and Lee makes a face, ushering me back out. ‘I’m not into watching women suck cock if it’s not mine, you know?’
Holding back the urge to insult him violently, we move on. The next room is more of a success. There’s a mock cell with three women inside who are making a big, and frankly overblown, show of trying to get out while a man stands naked, taunting them. I yell to Lee that I need to go find the loo and leave him to it. He barely looks round as I walk away, already striding over to the bars and saying something to one of the women. I give it fifteen minutes, long enough for him to do at least one disgusting thing, but I still prepare to be confronted by the worst when I return. But when I come back to the cell, Lee is gone and there are new people in the room playing sexy prisoners. Pushing down a mild sense of panic, I rush into the next room and find him lying face down on a table where a woman in a balaclava is thrashing him hard with a whip. His jeans are round his ankles, I assume because he didn’t want to take his boots off, and his black shirt is rolled-up around his armpits. The whole effect is so absurd that I almost pity him and have to stifle a laugh. Lee has his head turned towards me but his eyes are closed in total bliss, so I don’t interrupt. I just stand there, slightly detached from the scene in front of me, watching my uncle getting spanked by a woman who looks like she’s just robbed a bank in a budget porn film. Oh Mother, if you could see me now.
Eventually, a few other people come into the room and a subtle tension starts to build. It becomes clear that there’s a queue forming for the bench, and one man makes a small coughing noise to alert Lee to it. Queuing. The one peculiar British sensibility that cannot be disregarded, no matter where you might be. He looks up with a grunt when he realises that the whipping has stopped, and reluctantly rolls off and pulls up his trousers. The man impatiently waiting his turn hops up onto the bed and lies there expectantly. No wipe down between sitters, I notice.
‘Where next?’ Lee asks me, straightening his shirt, grabbing his coat and taking the drink out of my hand. ‘This place is wild, you weren’t wrong. I’ll have to hide those fucking marks from the wife for weeks. Not that she’ll take much notice. Unless it involves curtain fabrics or raising money for suckers, she’s not too interested in anything these days.’
Is that an oblique reference to the death of their son? I’d not mentioned it to Lee of course, and truth be told, I’d almost completely failed to connect this man to Andrew in any way at all since I’d started zoning in on him. If Lara had felt the loss of her child deeply and agonisingly, Lee seems not to have noticed. People grieve in different ways of course, and I could see that these nocturnal escapes might be the way he coped with it all, but looking at him now, it feels unlikely. I suddenly feel a surge of rage at the way Andrew seemed to have been completely wiped out of his father’s life. Completely irrational, given that I was the person who made it happen. But I was not the person who raised him, and even in the brief time I’d known my cousin, I could see what damage his family had wrought.
‘Do you have kids?’ I ask, as we enter a room where a woman is walking across a man’s back wearing dangerously sharp high heels (so many of the rooms were filled with women debasing their male companions).
‘Private play!’ she barks at us, while continuing to drive her shoe into his buttock. We back out, giggling, and walk on, towards the room I had marked as ours.
‘Nope,’ says Lee, without looking at me. ‘We had two. One died as a baby, poor fucker, and one not so long ago. But he didn’t want anything to do with us. Thought we were evil for having money. Didn’t stop him enjoying it until he didn’t though. Wife hasn’t taken it well, but what can you do but carry on, no matter how it breaks you? She’s used it as an excuse to hide away, and I’ve carried on with life.’
We reach the entrance to ‘our’ room and I pause, not knowing what to say to a man who wrote off his son in just three sentences. Lee and Simon were brothers in every sense.
‘What’s this then? Is this where we really get going?’ he grins, and pushes open the door. That was fucking risky of me. Had he been even 5 per cent less of a monster, he might have been too upset by the question to enjoy the occasion and I’d have lost my chance, probably permanently. Lucky am I, to be dealing with a man capable of discussing his dead son and immediately wanting to carry on seeking his own pleasure. The room is empty, probably only because it was the furthest from the bar. Lee goes to turn on the light, and I see that the stool is still in place. I take a deep breath through my nose and set my bag down on the floor. I put my gloves on, in what I know looks like a commanding way, and speak. ‘This is my room now. You’re going to do what I want, aren’t you?’ He smiles again. ‘Actually, that wasn’t a question. You’re going to do exactly what I want. NOW.’
Lee makes a mock salute and I stare at him, not blinking, until he lowers his arm.
‘Take off your clothes,’ I say, as I get the rope out of my bag and start to make the knot. He does as I say, having some difficulty with his boots as predicted. While he fumbles, I finish the knot and check it for security. With a smaller rope, I loosely tie up his hands, so that he’ll have a false sense of security and assume that the knots could be easily relaxed. ‘Stand on the chair and let me have a proper look at you.’ He’s clicked into the role he wants to play now and becomes immediately obedient. I stuff the knotted rope into his mouth and walk around him, noticing the large cobweb tattoo over one bicep. Seeing initials on the side of his arm – KA. His mother. If my mother would be horrified to see me now, I can only imagine how Kathleen would feel. His buttocks are surprisingly firm, I see, with deep tan lines he could only have developed from frequent tanning beds. I force myself to look at his penis, raised as it is in anticipation. To have avoided it would have looked weak. I take the rope out of his mouth and shove it into his hands. ‘Safe word?’
He grins again, and tells me that he rather likes saying ‘Barbados’, which is fine, since I won’t be respecting any word he’s chosen. ‘You could charge for this. You’re not the full-on model experience but you’re thorough,’ he says, looking up at me. I ignore him and put the noose over his head.
‘I’m going to tie you up to this hook, and you’re going to jerk yourself off as it gets tighter. I’ll control the level, and I’m going to watch you getting closer and closer. You’re going to squirm and wriggle but you’re going to carry on. Don’t waste my time with anything less than the full show. And when you’ve finished, it’s my turn.’
I place the end of the rope around the hook and complete another knot, allowing myself a moment of pride in my craftsmanship. I hold the ends of the ropes in my hand and begin to tighten the noose by pulling on them gently. Lee begins to stroke himself, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. I pull harder, and his eyes fly open, but I urge him on with a r
ough bark. I keep my hand steady and let him get accustomed to the pressure, as his neck bulges slightly and his face grows redder under the perma tan. After thirty seconds, he’s groaning as I tell him to go harder. And then, as I lean closely towards his flushed face, I kick the stool out from under his feet. He drops suddenly, and I let go of the rope. My knot holds, and Lee starts to lash out with his feet, writhing and twisting so much that I have to move away fast. His hands are grabbing his neck, clawing at the rope, but I move behind him and pull them down hard. Important not to leave marks. It doesn’t take long, you know. Fast but agonising – for him but also for me as I check the door every few seconds. His eyes look like they’re almost popping out of his head, and his tongue is hanging swollen between his lips as he desperately tries to get air. I think for a second about telling him who I am, but I can’t be bothered. I’ve never cared about Lee. Killing him is a means to a bigger end and he doesn’t warrant an explanation. Within forty seconds he’s unconscious and then he’s dead. Looking at my watch, I see the whole thing has taken less than four minutes, as Deirdre the first aider in Peckham had so obligingly disclosed. Ta da! Fairly disgusting man dies in a fairly disgusting way. Hardly momentous. Except for him, I suppose.
Once I’m sure he’s dead, I get moving fast. Had someone walked in during our little game, I could’ve told them that this was a couple’s room and they’d have left no problem. But this would be harder to explain. I untie his hands and wipe them down with antibacterial wipes. I move the stool a tiny bit closer so that it would appear he’d knocked it over himself and I pack up my stuff carefully, leaving only the rope around his neck. I’d only handled that with gloves, and he’d held it for a minute so hopefully that would be enough. I put my bag over my shoulder and take one last look at the figure behind me, hanging still now. Shame they didn’t let you take phones in here, a last photo to remember Uncle Lee might’ve been nice. Not one to frame though – he looks pretty grotesque. I shut the door behind me, and walk down the corridor, where people are congregating, kissing, flirting. A tall man wearing an animal mask leans against the wall and looks me up and down as I pass him, reaching out for my hand and lightly brushing my fingers. I don’t stop walking, wondering which horny stranger will find him. Would it be that girl in the assless trousers, or perhaps the couple in cheap masquerade masks who both could’ve put in a few more hours at the gym before wearing such unforgiving latex? It’s up to the gods now, but I fervently hope that whoever it was had the foresight to go to the tabloids. Hat firmly on, I go back to the cloakroom where I retrieve my phone and head out into the night.
