Captives (10 page)

    He might not have smiled so broadly had he realised his flat was being watched.

    

    

    Scott replaced the receiver and sat staring at it for a moment.

    He would ring again in five or ten minutes.

    Outside, the wind had dropped slightly but the rain had intensified. It slapped against his window, the constant spattering like a thousand birds pecking at the glass.

    
Try again now.

    He reached towards the phone.

    
No. Leave it.

    Instead he hauled himself out of bed, angry that he'd been denied the welcome oblivion of sleep. He crossed the small bedroom to the dressing table, which bore a motley selection of after-shave bottles and deodorant cans, some empty. There were wage slips, too, piled up in order and weighed down with an ashtray still full of dog-ends.

    There was a framed photo of himself and Carol.

    He picked it up and ran his glance over it, his eyes pausing every so often to look at her face.

    The picture had been taken about eight months earlier. They had managed to get out of London one night and spent two days in Brighton. The weather had been good and the picture showed Carol in a bikini, her arm around his shoulder. He'd asked some bloke sitting near them to take the picture, relieved when it had come out so well.

    Christ, she was lovely.

    He touched the photo with one index finger, as if to feel the smoothness of her skin. The warmth of that day seemed a million years ago as he stood listening to the rain hammering against the windows. He put the photo back and wandered through into the kitchen, where he retrieved a bottle of vodka from one of the kitchen cupboards. He took a glass from the draining board, then returned to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and poured himself a large measure.

    He used to give his father a drink. After the first stroke, a couple of shots seemed to put the old bastard in a better frame of mind. After the second one, dropping him in a vat of the stuff wouldn't have helped.

    
Fuck him. Forget about him.

    He'd tried, but it had proved surprisingly difficult. When he remembered his father it wasn't as the wasted, comatose figure he'd watched over in hospital or the cantankerous sod he'd been forced to put up with for ten months. He remembered him as the sometimes abrupt, sometimes lonely but often funny man he'd shared his flat with for two years and eight months before the first stroke. Prior to that the old boy had lived in a flat of his own in Muswell Hill. He'd been forced to move out when it had been taken over by a new landlord.

    Why the fuck had this particular spectre returned to haunt him, he wondered? Why was he thinking about his old man when the only person he truly cared for was Carol?

    Perhaps it was the loneliness that made him think.

    He felt lonely now, sitting on the edge of his bed, the drink cradled in his hand, listening to the rain. He thought how his father had once confided to him what he felt. And it was fear of that feeling which remained firmly embedded in his mind. Scott needed someone. No, not someone; he needed Carol.

    He reached for the phone and jabbed out the digits of her number, just as he'd been doing for the past half-hour.

    He just wanted to hear her voice.

    The phone went on ringing.

    
Just let me hear her.

    Perhaps she'd pulled the connection from the socket so she wouldn't be disturbed.

    
Pick it up.

    Maybe she'd put the phone under a stack of pillows to muffle the ringing so it didn't wake her up.

    
Come on. Come on.

    The ringing continued until he slammed the receiver down in frustration.

    Perhaps she was ill.

    Perhaps she wasn't there. She might have been hurt on her way home. She could be in hospital now.

    What if…?

    He downed what was left in the glass and poured himself another, gulping half of it down in one swallow.

    She was not there. He knew it. Felt it.

    Then where?

    He gritted his teeth, his breath coming in short gasps.

    Where was she?

    He looked across at the photo on the dressing table. She smiled back at him.

    Scott shouted and hurled the glass across the room. It hit the wall and shattered, spraying shards of crystal in all directions. Vodka dripped from the wet patch on the paper.

    He wondered how long it took for loneliness to become despair.

    

    

    

    The tumour was as large as a man's fist.

    Dexter looked at it lying in the metal dish, a huge collection of dead cells, darkish brown in colour, tinged a rusty red from the congealed blood which coated it. It had been taken that morning, from the skull of the dead man they had found in Ward 5 the previous day.

    Now Dexter observed the tumour and tapped a pen gently against his chin, his thoughts running pell-mell through his mind.

    'What about the others?' he asked.

    Colston sighed and shrugged his shoulders, pulling up a chair beside the desk.

    'Four out of the five are exhibiting similar symptoms to those of Baker,' he said. 'I checked them over this morning before I did the autopsy.'

    'Damn,' snapped Dexter, getting to his feet. He crossed to the window of his office and looked out over the well-manicured lawns and the tall trees that swayed in the wind.

    'Is there anything we can do?' he asked, without looking at his companion.

    'If the tumours are developing at the same rate then I could operate, try to remove them. We'd at least save their lives,' Colston told him.

    Dexter watched as an intern led two patients across the, lawn, one of them kicking a football ahead of him like an excited child.

    'You said four out of the five were exhibiting similar symptoms,' he said quietly. He turned to face Colston. 'What about…'

    The other doctor shook his head, cutting him short. 'So far no change,' he said.

    A slight smile creased Dexter's lips.

    'Then we're doing something right,' he said, clutching this small piece of optimism as a drowning man clutches the proverbial straw.

    Colston sucked in a deep breath.

    'And we're also doing something very wrong,' he said. 'That's the third death in as many months. If the tumours in the other four continue to develop…' He allowed the sentence to trail off.

    Dexter returned to his desk and tapped the five files stacked in front of him.

    Each one bore the note: WARD 5 in its top right hand corner. Below that was the name of the patient.

    'What do we do?' Colston wanted to know. 'Stop?'

    'Certainly not,' said the other man indignantly. 'It will work, Andrew. I'm sure of it.'

    'Then at least modify the process until we see the progress of the other five.'

    Dexter shook his head again.

    'The other four,' he interjected. 'You said one of them was still all right.'

    'It might just be a matter of time before a tumour develops there too…'

    Dexter interrupted again.

    'No,' he said with conviction. 'It won't. I just believe it won't.'

    'Because it's what you want to believe.'

    'Do you blame me?' he snapped.

    There was a long silence, finally broken by Colston. 'No, I don't blame you,' he murmured. 'And don't worry, I'm not going to back out on you. Not now.'

    Dexter smiled appreciatively and picked up the files marked Ward 5.

    He flicked through the first four relatively quickly.

    It was the last of them that interested him.

    

    

    The needle, almost six inches long, had been pushed through the girl's nipple, inserted with clinical efficiency through the fleshy bud.

    George Kinsellar turned the page of the magazine and proudly displayed another double spread, this time of a young girl with several metal rings through her vaginal lips.

    'What about that?' Kinsellar said. 'Be like shagging a scrap-metal yard, wouldn't it?' He chuckled his throaty laugh which ended as usual, with him hawking loudly, chewing thoughtfully on the mucus for a moment and then swallowing it again.

    Kinsellar was a thick-set man in his early fifties, his face pitted, his hair thinning.

    'How can anybody get their rocks off to something like that?' said Scott, shaking his head, taking the magazine from the older man and flipping through it. He finally dropped it into the supermarket trolley he was pushing and continued walking up the long aisle between the high shelves.

    The warehouse was in Holloway and Kinsellar had owned it for the last six years. The bulk of his business was done with Ray Plummer's organisation, although he supplied a number of the other firms in the capital with videos, books, 8mm films and appliances. Fifty per cent of what he sold was illegal but business was booming. He followed Scott around, making notes on his pad of what the younger man was ordering.

    The magazines were stacked up to three feet high on shelves that reached almost to the tall ceiling of the warehouse. Light struggled to penetrate a skylight which was so filthy it was nearly opaque. Inside, the place smelt of newsprint. As he pushed the trolley, Scott couldn't help but smile to himself. Whenever he visited this place (usually once a month to check up on new stock and place his order) he couldn't shake the feeling that, pushing his trolley around amidst shelves piled high with books featuring every kind of sexual perversion, he was like a shopper in some depraved branch of Sainsbury's.

    'Some of this new stuff that's been coming in is fucking ace, I tell you,' Kinsellar said, making another note. 'Especially the German stuff. The krauts certainly know what they're doing when it comes to porn.' He chuckled, hawked and swallowed. 'I got a load of videos in the other day. You've never seen anything like it. Birds eating each other's shit. I was fucking amazed.' He smiled. 'I just kept thinking, "I hope they got it right on the first take". I mean, it's difficult enough getting an actress to cry on cue, isn't it? But to shit on cue.' The sentence disappeared beneath that mucoid chuckle.

    Scott continued pushing the trolley, his mind elsewhere.

    Carol wouldn't be in until eight that night.

    He had another nine hours before he could ask her where she'd been last night when he was trying to call her.

    They rounded a corner and began down another aisle.

    'You're quiet today, Jim,' Kinsellar noticed at last.

    They don't call you flash for nothing, George, do they? thought the younger man.

    'Business bad, is it?'

    'Business is fine.'

    
It's me that's fucked up.

    'You still seeing that bird that works at the club?' Kinsellar wanted to know. 'Whatsername…'

    'Carol,' Scott said, reaching for another magazine and flipping it open. He studied the first few pages, looking at the girls lying on a bed, their fingers thrust deep into their vaginas, their labia spread wide for the prying camera. He dropped the magazine into the trolley and walked on.

    'Yeah, I'm still seeing her,' Scott said wearily.

    'You don't sound very enthusiastic.'

    Scott rounded on him.

    'What do you want, a fucking blow-by-blow of the last two months?' he snapped.

    'All right,' Kinsellar said, taking a step back. 'No need to bite my fucking head off. I just wondered if I could help. If you wanted to talk about it.'

    'Stick to selling the mags, George. Being an agony aunt doesn't suit you,' Scott rasped.

    'You young blokes are all the same. Think you know it all when it comes to women, don't you?'

    'I wish I knew something. Anything. I don't understand them.'

    'You and every other bloke around, my son,' Kinsellar told him. 'I've been married twice, lived with two other birds, the last one for fifteen years, and I'm still none the wiser. But I've seen more of them than most.'

    'Are we talking crotches now, George?' Scott said acidly. 'Well, come on, let me have it. Let's hear some advice from the world's number one cunt expert.'

    'Somebody really did rattle your cage this morning, didn't they?' Kinsellar said. 'You had a row with her, is that it?'

    Scott shook his head.

    'No, I haven't had a row with her,' he said. 'That's the trouble. We've hardly spoken in the last couple of weeks.' He suddenly became aware that he was opening up to Kinsellar. 'Fuck it, why am I telling you?'

    'A trouble shared…'

    'Fucks up two people instead of one. I know,' snapped Scott. 'Now can you stop asking me questions about Carol?' He glared at the older man.

    Kinsellar shrugged and followed him in silence for a few paces.

    'You still shagging her?' he asked at last.

    Scott spun round, his eyes blazing. He grabbed the older man by the lapels of his jacket and hurled him up against one of the bookshelves, his face only inches away from Kinsellar's.

    'No more questions,' he hissed through clenched teeth.

    Kinsellar tried to nod but Scott's fists beneath his chin prevented that gesture.

    'All right,' he croaked.

    Scott held him a moment longer then pushed him away.

    A large figure appeared at the end of the aisle. Six-four and over sixteen stone, he was Kinsellar's nephew, biceps and chest hardly covered by the T-shirt he wore, muscles pumped up by years of loading and unloading lorries and generally helping with the older man's business. He looked at his uncle then at Scott.