Act of Exposure (24 page)

A memory of
Carl came to her. Carl Candel lying face down on the bed, the metal
rod sticking out from between his buttocks, the redness, the
blackness of the marks on his skin, and the terrible smell of
half-cooked flesh.

The shudder
that came to her had to be endured. So too did the going
upstairs.

Archie Ringer
breathed a huge sigh once Wee Willy had closed the office door
behind him.

He had needed
those fleshy lips around his penis, had needed to close his eyes
and ride a swell of pleasure in order to forget he had ever met
Lance Vector, the tabloid leech.

'You had no
business publishing that under my name. I did not, Mr Vector, give
you permission to reproduce that article, and I did not
specifically say that it was I who noticed that Stephen Sigmund was
dressed as a woman.'

No matter how
much he had shouted, Vector had sneered and tossed what looked to
be about a hundred pounds on his desk.

'Your cut, old
chum. Spend it on your vices - or your boys.'

'You had no
business...'

Vector had
looked at him in disgust, then turned his back and opened the
office door. He had paused before going.

'Nice little
business you got here, Archie. Take care now. You know the only
reason you're not front-page news, is because your clientele own
the paper. But, as you no doubt also know, they do tire of things.
One club this year, another one next year. And then, Archie old
chum, beware! Beware, old chum, because old Lance will come to get
you!'

Archie had told him to get out. He had only wanted the
journalist's opinion of his writing. If
he
had published the article, it would
have been in a gay magazine and he would not have divulged names.
But Lance had told him he needed to put in the name of the person
concerned in order to stress the point he was making. Lance Vector
had lied and had published without his permission, and Archie felt
guilty about the way things had gone.

Vector himself
had been unsettling enough. But he was a mere shrimp in the big
scheme of things and didn't even know it. But Archie knew it. There
were bigger fish than him; cruel, monstrous ones with cold eyes and
teeth that could bite.

The other man
came to see him. He wasn't the man himself, the man who owned the
club as well as a newspaper and employed Archie to run it. But he
was one of his minions - one of his more forceful minions.

He was smooth
to look at, this other man, his skin nut brown, his hair black,
tied at the nape of his neck, and hanging in a tangle of curls down
his back. His eyes were like hot coals - a scalding yellow
bordering on orange. An unusual man. A dangerous man. All the same,
Archie could quite easily have fancied him. But you didn't make
sexual overtures to that sort. You waited for them to make sexual
overtures to you, and however they wanted it, you complied.

Charwallah was
dangerous to know and even more deadly if you happened to be the
subject of his latest mission. Not for the sleek Anglo-Indian the
crude obviousness of the gun or the knife. Archie had it on good
authority that Charwallah made a study of ways to kill, ways to
have men tormented before they died. Apparently he was a bit of a
history buff with a specific interest in the more gruesome killings
of the past. Charwallah's recent visit had been the last straw. In
a threatening tone, he'd asked Archie about the night he'd spotted
that damned MP in that female get-up. Takes one to know one as they
say. Charwallah had asked who the bloke had been talking to, what
he'd had to drink, who he'd gone off with.

He'd told him
that Sigmund had come in with Valeria, a ripe black tart with looks
that most men would die for. He'd also told him that Sigmund, with
blonde wig flying, had gone off with his exotic dancer, Jezebel
Justice, whose real name was Carmel. He described her black hair,
her long legs, and the disdainful look in her ebony eyes.
Charwallah looked keen to know her better.

'Where can I
find this woman?'

At the time he
was asking the question, Archie had no option but to speak in a
very high voice on account that Charwallah was crushing his balls.
Charwallah's fingernails, which felt as if the natural ones had
been replaced with ones made from steel, were digging into his soft
flesh.

He'd given him
the address. He'd had no option.

The event had
completely unsettled him. Wee Willy had helped him to forget - up
to a point. Carmel had entered the room and, on seeing her,
Archie's nervousness returned. He did his best to appear calm, even
friendly. Anything she asked him he would answer regardless. For
once, she seemed quite keen to see what went on upstairs, and he
would show her that too. But, poor girl, he couldn't possibly tell
her that something nasty was on her trail.

'This way, my
dear.'

Archie
Ringer's voice was as hushed as their footfalls on the
thickly-carpeted stairs that led from the club below to the more
private establishment above.

Abby followed.
She would do anything he wanted until she judged the time right to
ask him about the article he had written. For now, although alert,
she allowed herself to enjoy the opulence around her.

Rich oak
panelling lined a wide landing, and brass picture lights emphasized
bob-tailed horses in eighteenth-century paintings. Mahogany doors
with brass handles and brass numbers ran down a warmly-lit
passageway.

'Good evening,
Mr Ringer, Miss Carmel.'

The sudden
voice came from a silver tray that passed her at waist level and
held an ice bucket with champagne and two glasses. Its appearance
startled her. Where had the voice come from? As it continued along
the passage, she could see the short, stocky legs and body of the
dwarf she had seen earlier.

'That's Wee
Willy,' said Archie, with a grin.

'Really?' Abby
raised an amused eyebrow. 'There's not many who'll admit to that,
now is there?'

It was easy to
laugh. Laughter hid the apprehension she was feeling. Here she was,
upstairs in some sort of inner sanctum where only the most revered
of Archie's clients ever went. What did they get up to up here? Was
she entirely sure she wanted to find out?

Aware that she was keeping a very obvious gap between her and
Archie, she was also telling herself to relax.
Go with the flow
, she told
herself.
Think of Stephen. Think of his
body, naked, his penis erect and waiting for you
. Coolness born of determination and affection took over.
Suddenly, Archie didn't seem so bad.

'In here.'
Archie's wide smile exposed a mouthful of bright, white teeth,
outdone only by the flash of gold fillings. He stooped slightly and
unlocked a door marked private. He reached in. A light came on.

'In here,' he
said again, his teeth gleaming like a light beckoning ships onto
rocks. Odd, she thought, that she'd never seen him smile like that
before. More sincere, somehow. Archie was a strange man, his face a
mask he assumed for the public who frequented the bar below.
Tonight, that mask had slipped a little. There was an odd liquidity
in his eyes, a wetness around his mouth that made his lips look as
if they were made of saturated clay. He looked jittery, as though
something had upset or even frightened him.

His palm was
clammy against her back as he guided her through the door and along
a narrow passageway of blue and beige, a cool, modern atmosphere as
opposed to the richness of the more public landing.

The pictures
that adorned these walls were soft, contemporary watercolours that
depicted shapes rather than recognizable things.

He paused
before the first one, an odd concoction of tangerine cubes overlaid
with swirling circles of white and blue. 'Do you like it?' There
was mischief in his eyes, but she knew she had to answer.

'There's a
certain quality about it. I would say it was calming,
peaceful.'

His smile
yawned across his face. 'It's a facade,' he said. 'It is a mere
mask to what lies beneath the surface - just like people - just
like us.' A sheen of sweat seemed to tremble on his forehead.

His arm shook
and his hand wavered as he took hold of the picture frame. Amazed,
Abigail watched as the picture opened up away from the wall. It was
a trick of sorts, not really a picture frame at all. The whole
thing was a small door. Behind the door was a pane of glass, and
beyond the glass was a room.

'This,' said
Archie, waving his hands in a flamboyant fashion, but biting his
lip, 'is where my most valued clients act out their fantasies.'

For a moment
Abigail froze, her eyes bright as she stared at the glass and the
room beyond where two figures were absorbed in an act of domination
and submission. Obviously, the window was a mirror to those within
the room.

Ever alert to
useful information, she heard what Archie had said, but more
importantly, she understood the implications. Men, she judged, were
at their most vulnerable when indulging their most depraved
desires. With careful teasing, a man could be made to divulge his
most important secrets without being aware that he had done so.

'Fairytales
turned to fact.' Her eyes met Archie's. She spoke slowly. 'Fact can
be stranger than fiction - but very arousing.'

'Then look,'
he said as she drew near the glass. 'Look and see if you can
imagine what he's feeling - what she's feeling.'

Even though
she didn't particularly like being near Archie, she put up with it
for the sake of seeing the room on the other side of the glass.

Coolly,
calmly, she watched what was going on.

Archie pressed
a button just beneath the edge of the glass. The silent tableau
suddenly became vocal.

'You are a
dog, aren't you? Nothing but a dirty little dog.'

The voice was
female, the woman it came from almost six feet tall, her body bound
in strips of studded leather that left certain squares of flesh
unfettered and open to view. Her hair was golden brown and tied
into a high ponytail that reached almost to her waist.

False, Abigail
decided.

Cringing on
all fours at the woman's feet was a man wearing nothing but a thick
dog collar. A chromium chain ran from the studded collar he wore
around his neck to her hand. His head was hanging down, face
unseen, and he was wailing.

'Please.
Please.' It was a pitiful sound, a sound begging for more rather
than for less. He got what he asked for, yelping like a beaten dog
as a black-booted foot connected with his ribs.

'Damn dog! You
are a disgrace, you mangy whelp. Think you would like to be more
than you are, don't you? Think you would like to be a dirty little
dog, don't you?'

'Please...'

The word was
lost on a wail as the woman who held the chain leash shoved the toe
of her boot between his thighs and pressed his drooping sac against
his body.

'I know your
sort,' went on the voice. 'I know you'd like me to get on my hands
and knees and for you to bump up and down on me. But you're not
going to; because I'm not going to give you pleasure. You're going
to pleasure me!'

Spellbound by
the scene before her, Abigail watched as the woman took the length
of chain down over the man's back.

'Put your
hands behind your back,' the woman ordered. 'Get up onto your
knees.'

Abigail
gasped. Before her eyes, his face bathed in ecstasy, was Douglas
Dermott-Embledon. What price now Government departments? she
thought.

She saw him
flinch as the woman brought the chain through his legs and looped
it around his stiff member before taking it back through his legs
and fastening it at the back.

The eyes of
the would-be peer rolled in his head, and a low groan grated from
his throat.

'Now,' said
the woman, smiling with satisfaction as she leant back in a leather
Chesterfield chair and viewed him through the valley formed by her
naked breasts. 'Now you will pleasure me.'

With that, she
opened her legs. Obviously, her costume of crisscrossed strips of
leather was designed with such an occurrence in mind. From within a
bush of black hair, the pink lips of her sex shone with sexual
moisture.

On his knees,
Douglas walked forward, his penis throbbing and his eyes fixed on
the yawning divide.

'Get to
it!'

The voice was
as sharp as the sound her leather whip made as she laced it across
his shoulders.

'Yes,
mistress. Yes.'

Douglas bent
his head. His tongue licked delicately at her flesh before she
grabbed the back of his head and pushed him onto her.

'That's
better,' she cried, and laughed as she jerked her hips up and down
on the chair, and laid the whip, with increasing ferocity, across
his back.

Could he
breathe? Abby asked herself. Was he likely to drown in the nectar
that poured from the woman's fully-bloomed flower?

'Enough!' The
woman's order made her wince.

The man in the
room huddled over like a frightened hedgehog. It was, Abby
supposed, a stance he was expected to take, and had probably
assumed many times before.

'I think this
one's almost finished. We'll stay and watch, shall we?'

Abigail only
nodded. She had almost forgotten that Archie was even there.

Through the
glass, she saw the woman stand up, spread her legs and brace
herself. Douglas was still trussed up, and still on his knees.

'Get on
it!'

Vicious
fingers with black-painted nails dug into Douglas's silver-grey
hair. His face creased up and showed his age. Forcefully, his head
was pushed once more onto her sex. She was tall, though not tall
enough for Douglas to accommodate her entirely. He had to bend his
head back, and as he bent his head, he groaned. The chain that
wound around and around his stem and his balls, pulled more
tightly.