by Kim Newman
'The drug?'
Clive swallowed. 'Yes, she never paid…'
'Never. I think not, Clive, but let that pass. Heroin is interesting stuff. You supply only the finest, don't you…'
Someone made a joke Anne did not get, '… only the best, because graded grains make finer flour…'
And Daeve said, 'Heroin, it's what your right arm's for.'
There was only one sceptic in the crowd. Toby Farrar. It was his first 'entertainment', Anne remembered. He had not learned the applicable procedures yet. He stepped forwards.
'Who the fuck are you, fruitbat?'
He pulled at Skinner's empty coat sleeve. The expensive item slithered off his back like a shed snakeskin. It fell to the floor. Skinner's shoulders expanded. He grew taller.
The circle reformed, around Skinner and Farrar. Anne was part of it now, with Derek Douane on one side, and Jeane Russell on the other. Should they join hands?
Farrar knew what he had got into now, and stood to attention. He was still holding the coat sleeve. Skinner prowled around the man, his head in close like a drill sergeant chewing out a quivering private.
'Who the fuck am I, friend? I'm just another fruitbat, Major Farrar.' His head bobbed independent of his body. 'No one at all really.'
Skinner raised his hand to Farrar's face, and put his thumb in the officer's left eye. He pressed, just hard enough, and drew back from the falling man.
Farrar swore, and got up, holding his hand over his face like an eyepatch. Red tears stained his cheek. The hand came away bloody. He had not lost the eye, but the upper lid was neatly sliced. Toby Farrar's wife would think he had been in the wars.
'Clive, what is your complaint against this girl?'
'Credit… she wanted credit…'
'And?'
'… and that's not the way… not the way I do business.'
'Of course not. You all know Clive Broome, don't you? He's an honest businessman. His terms are hard, but equitable. Cash for drugs.' Clive winced. 'Or cash for sex. Cash for pain. Cash for anything, really. Anything you want. He provides quite a service.'
Someone muttered, '… the swindling bastard!' It was the man who had first joined in when Clive started on Nina. Obviously, he wanted to see blood, and didn't much care whose it was.
Now Clive was in the circle with Skinner. Farrar was back with the rest, holding a handkerchief to his eye. He had been converted.
Anne did not like Clive, did not care what happened to him. If he had had anything to do with the way Judi died, then she wanted him to suffer as much as possible. Did that make her the same as Amelia as the others?
'What's wrong?'
'I told you, Clive. I'm disappointed. You are promising. But you don't have a philosophy. You don't have purity.'
Skinner put a hand on Clive's shoulder. Anne knew he was not disappointed or annoyed or anything. He was just playing. He was just hurting people for his own amusement.
Or maybe there was more to it?
'What do you want from me?' Skinner asked everyone. 'What do you want from your Games Master?'
There was quiet.
'Do you want to be entertained? Do you want to be hurt? Or do you want to learn? Do you even know what you want? You must want something, or else you are nothing. Nothing at all.'
He stood by Nina. She was curled up in her chair, head down, coughing a little.
'This girl, Nina. You want to see this girl suffer? You want to see this girl hurt? To see this girl hurt herself? You want to see… to feel… what?'
It was Amelia who came forwards. She was the representative.
'Yes, Mr Skinner,' she said, 'take her. Then show us something. Show us something we will never forget. Help us know ourselves.'
'Very well. Clive?'
'Yes.'
'Give me some heroin please'
'What?'
'Heroin.'
'But…'
'I think you can trust everyone here. They all know what you do for a living.'
Clive searched his pockets, as if looking for a train ticket. Someone laughed. It was obvious he did not have pockets full of drugs.
'You have some, of course?'
'My car…'
'Yes. The compartment under the passenger seat in the front, right? Very clever. The keys please.'
Clive fished them out of a pocket, and handed them over. Skinner looked around, and picked his man.
'Major Farrar?'
Farrar came forwards. He was not in pain now, but he still had a red tear of blood on one cheek. He looked like a lopsided clown.
'It's the BMW. You'll have to peel back the carpet. It should be easy. Clive?'
'It's in a malteser box.'
'Good. You understand, Major? Bring the heroin here.'
Farrar knew how to obey an order. Skinner crouched in front of Nina.
'Now you'll get what you want. I'll look after you.'
She shrank in her seat. Again, Anne felt she ought to do something but could not think of anything.
They all stood around in silence. The computer salesman suggested they play 'Twenty Questions' or 'I Spy', but a glance from Skinner shut him up.
Farrar came back with a small boxful of heroin. Skinner picked out three sachets.
That's too much,' said Clive, 'she might…'
'So?'
The dealer almost smiled, and visibly relaxed. He was out of the circle. Nina was in it again.
Skinner gave Nina's handbag to Amelia. She emptied it on the floor, and picked out the junkie kit. Bent sugar spoon, a length of rubber tubing, and hypodermic needle. She dumped them on the arm of Nina's chair. The syringe was a proper hospital model, not a disposable pipette.
Skinner laid out the sachets in a row next to the kit. Nina was too far gone, too traumatised, to pay any attention. Even heroin could not reach her.
'Clive,' said Skinner, 'do the honours.'
'I'm not very good at this. I just sell it, I don't use it.'
'Very wise, I'm sure. But you must be familiar with the business end.'
'Yes. I'll need a bigger spoon.'
Amelia handed him something from a silver service. He examined it. It was unusual, a dinner-size replica of a teaspoon, with a carved apostle at the end of the handle.
Clive spilled some of the powder as he heaped it in the spoon, and could not hold it steady over his lighter flame, but finally he got it liquefied. The spoon would be ruined.
'It's a good idea to mix it with citric acid,' he said. Nobody offered him a lemon slice from their perrier.
Amelia rolled up Nina's torn sleeve and tied the tourniquet tight around her upper arm. Veins stood out bluish against pale skin. Anne saw the beginnings of tracks.
Nina was still pliable, uninterested in her situation.
Clive drew the heroin into the syringe, filling it to capacity.
'She'll overdose,' he warned.
'Not if she's strong enough,' said Skinner. 'Give it to her. She doesn't have to use it. The decision is hers.'
Nina bent and unbent her bare arm. She looked around. She was coming back.
'Clive…'
'I'm here, Nina. Here's your smack. It's all right now, all right.'
'Uh?'
'You don't have to pay. It's all been taken care of. Now, be a good girl and take your medicine.'
He put the syringe in her hand. It rolled in her fingers, but she quickly got a hold on it. She smiled.
'Nina, it's up to you,' said Skinner.
'Nina,' said Anne, 'don't…'
Skinner swivelled to look at her. His eyes were nothing special, but he was fearsome. Perhaps he was the Monster?
'Don't what?' he said, smiling.
'… don't…' Anne tried to say.
'Don't die?'
'… no… yes…'
'It's up to her, isn't it?'
Anne could not say anything. Skinner was looking at her, and she felt a caress of terror. Was she to be next in the circle? The Games Master was ta
king an elaborately casual interest in her. After a long moment, he turned away, and paid attention to the current victim.
Nina held the syringe properly now. A drop appeared at the tip of the needle. No air bubbles. She looked at the others, she looked at the syringe, she looked at Anne.
'Don't… please.'
Nina broke. She erupted out of her chair, yelling, and charged for the door. She shouldered her way between Anne and Derek. The child, laughing, fell over. Anne was jolted, but Jeane Russell held her up with a painful grip.
Nina was out of the door, and the syringe gone with her. The cry receded, and her clattering footsteps became distant. She had gone upstairs. Nobody moved.
It was a big house. Anne knew Nina could easily find a place to kill herself in private. Poor thing.
'Clive,' said Skinner, 'you, and this girl - Anne, isn't it? - you go and bring Nina back. Stop her from wasting herself if you can. It's important. We'll keep the party going while you're gone.'
Clive knew enough to do what he was told. He took Anne's arm and dragged her out into the hallway, towards the stairs.
She did not fight.
Inside, she was cold.
The Games Master knew her name. Skinner knew who she was.
SIX
HE DID NOT know why but, upstairs, Amelia's house reminded him of a jungle. It was remarkably clean and well-maintained, and all the lights worked but Clive felt as if he ought to be wearing a pith helmet, and carrying a hunting rifle that could bring down a charging rhino at fifty paces. With the American girl as a bearer, and that dopey cunt Nina as rogue quarry, this was a skew-whiff safari.
Every time he had been led through the house previously, it had been different. The mix of the original architect's unusual commitment to the concept of asymmetry, the previous inhabitants' rabid fetish for amassing ridiculous quantities of Victorian bric-a-brac and '30s kitsch, and Amelia's own declared desire to keep her environment in a state of constant flux had turned the place into a confused and confusing labyrinth.
'We'll never find her,' he told the girl, Anne, 'let's just hang about out of earshot for a few minutes and go back.'
She looked at him in a queer, incisive way he did not like at all. He wondered who the fuck she was.
'I don't think that guy Skinner would like that.'
'So?'
'So you're scared of him. All of you are.'
'That's not true.'
It was not true. Was it? Mr Skinner was weird, unpredictably dangerous, even, but he was just…
Just what?
If anything, Mr Skinner should be scared of him. After what Clive had done for him, he would be forever in his debt. In his power.
'I can handle Mr Skinner.'
'Yeah,' she said, unconvinced, 'right.'
'Let's try and find the second floor. The lights are on up there.'
'This is the second floor.'
'Not in England.'
'Oh yes, you people have to have a nothingth floor.'
There was something about the girl. She was not a loser, like Nina, or a sickie, like Amelia. She was sharp. Clive had got so used to being able to fool everyone in this circle that he was unnerved by her obvious clear-sightedness. The rest were wrapped up in a fog, from drugs or cracked minds, but Anne knew exactly what was going on.
Of course, there were some things she could not know about.
She had got him on Mr Skinner, though. Really, he had to admit that the man scared him. Clive liked to hurt people as much as the next person, felt the need to confirm his power over others, but Mr Skinner was a specialist, an expert. He could hurt capriciously, pointlessly, even against his own interests…
Like now. Mr Skinner needed Clive, and yet he was punishing him, making a great show of his obsolescence. This search party was crazy.
'Why you?' Anne asked him as they climbed the stairs. 'You're his type.'
Christ, did she know everything he was thinking? He suppressed the urge to respond, to tease an answer to the question out of himself. He did not want to think about it.
For what was he being punished?
The second floor landing was spacious, a gallery almost, but much less cluttered than the lower parts of the house. Passages fed off left and right. As far as they could see, the walls were plain white, with evenly spaced-out black doors. It all looked like an enlarged version of those laboratory mazes they let rats loose in.
He decided that Anne was probably a very good cunt. Americans were all easy. Except Judi. She had been difficult.
Perhaps this expedition did not have to be a total waste. He had screwed girls who hated him before, and had always got something out of it.
He stepped near the girl, and put an exploratory hand on her hip. He tried his nicest smile, and prepared to whisper his suavest come-on line.
'You have a lovely smile,' he said, 'may I taste it?'
She took his wrist between thumb and forefinger, and held his hand up between them as if gripping a putrid fish by the tail. She turned her thumb- and fingernails in and pinched, probing for painful pulses between the bones. She let go.
'Look, Clive, I don't like what you do for a living, I don't like the way you treat girls at parties, I don't like your taste in shirts and I don't like the way you look. Therefore, I suggest we concentrate on finding Nina.'
He could not help asking himself: what was wrong with his shirt?
'What's the point?' He said, rubbing his cuff over the place she had gored him.
'Maybe we can stop her hurting herself.'
'It's too late for that. I know a lot of smackheads. She's got to have stuck it in her arm by now. She's dead, only she'll be able to move around for a bit longer. Not much longer.'
'You kill many this way?'
'Fuck off,' he said, suddenly angry. 'Who do you think you are, Joan of Arc? I'm just like anyone else. I sell people what they want.'
'But you have to make them want it first. You have to make them want to die.'
What was this girl doing at one of Amelia's dos? She certainly did not blend it with the crowd. Clive thought she might be a rare type of pervert who gets off on vociferously condemning all the vices she actually practises. He had heard of that brand of peculiarity before. But she did not strike him as a girl who would get much pleasure out of flagellating herself with self-loathing and trembling hypocrisy. She was more the grit in the cream type, born to be a pain in the backside, always getting at you.
'Okay,' he said. 'Let's stop arguing and find the girl. I still think she's on this floor. She'd want the lights on.'
'Fine. But the corridor is lit up both ways. Which did she take?'
'It doesn't matter. She'll be in one of the rooms. We can go through them easily. I reckon they only have one door apiece, so she'll be trapped. Not that she'll be able to do much about running away. She'll be on a bed somewhere, out of her skull.'
They took a passage to the left, opening each door in turn and flicking on the interior light-switches for each room. This floor apparently was a private gallery of some sort. The first room was hung with explicit 18th century paintings, depicting the classical rapes of chubbily nubile girls by an assortment of animal and half-animal deities. The second was a showroom for garish '50s juke boxes.
'Have you noticed,' said Anne. 'There are no windows.'
'Amelia is nutty. She's always having the builders in to fiddle around with something or other. She must have had this whole floor bricked up from the outside.'
'Why?'
'I told you, she's nutty.'
The next room was full of mounted animals. They were stuffed and posed in all manner of positions, demonstrating sexual unions between incompatible species. It was supposed to be funny, but Clive thought Amelia's kinkiness could get monotonous after a while. Anne did not pass comment, and he shut the door.
'What is it with this Skinner?' asked Anne. 'What does he do?'
'He's just…just rich, I suppose. Rich and twisted.'
&nbs
p; 'There's a lot of that about.'
'I know.' Clive wanted to go on. He had never had anyone to whom he could talk about Mr Skinner. Not even the Sergeant Major. Not even Judi. There was no one he could really trust. 'But he's different…'
'What do you mean?'
'Amelia and the others. They're just playing. Mr Skinner is serious. With him, all this… all this stuff is important, almost as important as being alive…'
'And you? Do you like these games?'
She was good at asking questions, he realised, good at getting answers. Just like Judi. He did not like that.
Judi had always tried to rub his nose in parts of his life he just wanted to let lie there and be profitable. He was glad he had got rid of her. Admittedly, she had been the one who left, but, in the end, he had been the one to do the getting-rid-of. Poor Judi. Poor old, dead Judi.
He opened a door.
'Jesus Christ!'
The room was a walk-in freezer. Hanging from ceiling hooks were butchered human carcasses. The opened door jarred one, and they swung to and fro, bumping into each other like the elements of an executive toy. Lifeless knuckles scraped the floor.
Anne reached in and turned on the lights. The fridge was not as cold as it ought to have been.
'Bacon, I suppose,' she said.
She touched a corpse. He could see now that it was a distorted papier mache sculpture, luridly coloured in red. The ribs were wooden struts, thinly papered over. The cooling coils on the walls and the spreading stains on the floor were painted.
'Francis Bacon, I mean.'
'It's fucking sick!'
Clive had thought it would be Judi and Coral again, on a much larger scale. Even the Sergeant Major would have problems with this much cuntmeat.
Actually, after the first shock, the sculpture did not look real at all. The limbs were out of proportion, and you could read the newspaper headlines under the thin red paint. But, somehow, it was worse than real.
Who the hell had Amelia got to make this anyway?
'Nina,' Anne shouted. 'It's Anne. I want to help you. It's all right.'
Her voice did not even echo in the passages.
Around the next bend was darkness. The lights were not burning.
'She must have stopped here,' Anne said, 'or doubled back.'
