Suzie and the Monsters (14 page)

John Smith has been trying to loosen his bonds, but I’ve had lots of practice tying people up. He hasn’t achieved much with his struggles. I jump down and slide my knife between his left cheek and the cord, which I cut carefully. Once the gag is removed, I set a bottle of water beside him with a straw. He takes a sip. He hasn’t bothered swearing at me, which I guess is a good sign.

‘You’ll really let me go?’ he asks.

‘The offer stands, but now you only have seven hours left to get out of the country.’

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Ask your questions.’

‘Why did you try to kill me?’

‘Wasn’t nothing personal. We were just sending a message.’

‘To whom?’

‘Dave, of course.’

‘Dave? Waterfront Dave?’ He nods. ‘What’s Dave got to do with this?’

‘No idea, but when I saw you sniffing around Alex’s place... well, everyone knows you’re Dave’s girl.’

‘I didn’t know that. I take it you’ve seen me dance?’

‘Yeah, couple of times.’

‘It’s always nice to meet a fan. Who do you work for?’

‘Valon.’

I’ve heard the name. Another Albanian trying to take over a slice of the London action. ‘Why was he after Alex?’

‘No idea. Valon just wanted me to bring him in for a chat. Certainly didn’t want him dead. He’s been right pissed off since he heard about that. Did you kill him?’

‘Yes. Okay, last question, where can I find Valon?’

He snorts, perhaps at the idea that anyone would want to find Valon, or perhaps because everyone except me already knows. ‘Vauxhall Vicki’s,’ he says.

I’ve not heard of it. As far as I can tell, he’s been telling the truth, except when he agreed to leave the country. ‘Thank you, John Smith. I’m sure I’ll kick myself later for not asking more questions.’

Then I stab him in the neck, piercing the jugular, and bend down to enjoy a few mouthfuls of the dark, delicious blood, ignoring his yelling and weak struggles.

The Dark Goddess (Monday)

There is a temple in my heart, a sacred vision dedicated to the Dark Goddess. I have courted many aspects of the Divine Mother during my life, but only three goddesses have established a permanent residence therein. The Christian God was scoured from my heart and soul by my husband, and the temple door sealed against all masculine gods the day I betrayed him, but fortunately the fractures in my psyche admitted the solace and seduction of the feminine.

To the east as I enter the temple, the goddess Aphrodite, crowned with wild golden curls and silhouetted against the rising sun, emerges unclothed from the sea, a dawn birth in foaming waves. She strides through the water towards me with confidence and a warm sensuality.

To the west is a dark forest. Not the savage wood that Dante awakes in, although I’ve never been able to banish that image entirely. A river coils playfully around rocks and between the roots of trees, and glistens merrily in the light of the full moon. It is here that the goddess Artemis bathes with her handmaids, a secret gathering only glimpsed through the surrounding trees.

To the north is a doorway into a chamber, the sumptuous four-poster bed inside laid with sheets of scarlet and gold. The goddess Lilith awaits here unseen, her presence tangible and the promise of pleasures certain.

The rules of this place are simple. The goddesses must be equal, in power, beauty, wisdom. The balance between these identities must be maintained. Too often in the past I have chosen, as Paris did, and suffered greatly through grief and guilt. The love that Aphrodite brings can both create and destroy me. The vengeful fury of Artemis makes me a ruthless hunter but will cleanse me of my lingering humanity. Lilith, the defiant seductress, offers forbidden ecstasy, but to pursue her is to be consumed by her.

No, the goddesses should be acknowledged, respected and welcomed, but not embraced. They reach out to me as occasion demands.

To the south, a woman sits at a writing desk, her quill sparking with irrepressible wit and humour. She was my first true love. Indeed, she was the woman who taught me to love, who showed me it was possible to succeed as a woman in a man’s world. Poet, spy and lover, my beautiful, passionate Astrea. She is my anchor to humanity amidst these terrifying divinities.

I believe that, had I ever met Ada, Countess of Lovelace, I would find that enchantress of numbers here beside Aphra, weaving algebraic designs out of steam and poetry.

In the heart of the temple, at the eye of the storm of the unquenchable appetites of my goddesses, is a space of calm, a place where I have discovered the possibility of inner peace. The reality of inner peace is more elusive, of course. In a way, it’s another of the absolutes of this place that is welcomed but never embraced, for how can I ever find inner peace when harpies scream in the raging vortex outside — memories of agony and hatred, of far too much blood, and an insatiable thirst for more.

But for five minutes now and then, or more, sometimes even an hour or two, I can exist wholly or partly in that space. It’s particularly useful in queues, and in waiting rooms, or sitting at desks while someone taps on a computer or fills in forms. In other words, the nonsense time that ordinary human life seems filled with, intervals too short to fill with useful, constructive thought or activity.

This very different from travel time, where there is freedom to read, to listen to music, to plan, even to create.

*

Having thrown the blood- and oil-stained floral print dress into the bin, today I am dressed as a dark goddess: black corset, laced tight, black tiered skirt, Dior sandals, hair braided back in a ponytail, but with a few strands left loose. Mascara, and Illamasqua Pristine again — I adore the black lipstick. This was a dramatic look even in Comatoes.

I start the day with a pot of tea in Le Pain Quotidien, then it’s purchasing Eurostar tickets for Wednesday morning, into town to my usual travel agent to book flights from Paris to Owen Roberts via Havana. I visit my lawyer to arrange for my flat and car to be sold, all my bills settled, accounts closed, the proceeds going to Refuge. I don’t want to leave any clues to my future identity, and with twelve million plus in my Caymans account I can afford to burn my bridges. I do take as much money out of Suzie Kew’s accounts in cash as I can get away with, of course.

About one o’clock I stop by Sarah Bartlett’s basement flat near Crystal Palace, which I shared with Nina until four years ago, and one of the bedrooms is still technically mine. I visit here once or twice a month to collect rent from her and to sort out bills. Nina is a librarian and looks the part, cute, bright blue eyes and shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair, and very bookish, John Lennon glasses with the round lenses, but if you lift her skirt you’ll find nothing between you and heaven. That’s one of the reasons we get on so well — we both prefer to go commando. I always have done. It’s just a shame she doesn’t have a bi-curious bone in her body. Or maybe it isn’t. I wouldn’t like to be a victim of her aromantic caprice.

She’s not the first sexyaro to catch my interest — I have always been attracted to people with unusual sexuality, whatever that means — but she is the first I’ve known whose libido borders on hypersexuality. It’s not addiction or OCD or bi-polar, and she’s certainly not a sociopath. She’s very well balanced, is usually very professional at work, and is perfectly content to lose herself in a good book. We often curled up on the sofa next to each other (almost but not quite touching — oh cruel proximity!) for the evening, sharing a bottle of wine, watching television or just reading quietly.

But when the mood takes her she’s like me, she’s a predator, and surprisingly skilled at flirting with men, given that for her it’s an absurd role play, a necessary deception to get what she really wants: sex. Pure, simple, casual sex, long and multi-orgasmic. If wishes were fishes... On Saturdays we would go clubbing together and look for a young couple, innocent and beautiful, that we could split up, Nina seducing the man, the woman victim to my own more exotic charms and talents. It was always entertaining to watch them reunite afterwards, jittery with guilt and excitement, exhausted from a long night of insistent pleasure and, in the woman’s case, usually bloodloss too. Even more fun to make love to them one last time in full view of their partners, to really stir up feelings of jealousy and betrayal before sending them home. Of course, some couples enjoyed it, a few even became regular playmates, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many broke up afterwards.

I’m often envious of Nina’s ability to take what she wants from her prey while avoiding any emotional intimacy. I can’t do that. Well, I can if it’s a one night thing, sex with a stranger, guy or girl, or other, I’m not fussy (unlike Cleo, whose emotional and physical biases seem to be skewed in opposite directions). But I can’t sleep with someone I know without getting emotionally involved, and unlike Nina I can fall in love, and I love to be in love, no matter how much it will hurt me in the end. Poor Nina. It’s not that she can’t love, or doesn’t want to, it’s just that the men she takes a liking to, the ones she can talk to and laugh with, between marathon sex sessions, all turn out to be incurable romantics. Bastards.

When I arrive, I’m not entirely surprised, having timed my visit deliberately, to find her bent over the kitchen table, an athletic and rather well-endowed man hammering away enthusiastically from behind. Nina has always been a fan of the lunchtime fuck, and I think she makes a special point of doing it on Mondays, knowing that that’s when I’m likely to drop in. She knows how much it turns me on to watch her and not be allowed to touch her. Her young lover pauses when he sees me, but she orders him to keep going. I put the kettle on to boil, and sit down at the table, close enough to kiss her if I dared, and watch her flushed expression evolve from need to ecstasy to satiation as the orgasms tear through her. A couple of minutes later the stallion at her back reaches his shuddering conclusion with a groan of pained intensity.

As soon as he withdraws, his mighty cock rapidly diminishing inside its condom, it takes Nina less than a minute to pull her skirt down, fix her bra, fasten the buttons on her shirt, and touch up her make-up, hiding all visible evidence of what has just occurred — except for a relaxed, happy glow. ‘Bravo!’ I say, full of admiration, and hand her a mug of coffee. ‘You smell good enough to eat,’ I add, breathing in the aroma of sex and sweat that wraps around her like an aura.

Nina laughs. ‘I’ve got someone waiting to do exactly that, in,’ she checks her watch, ‘twenty minutes. Hurry up!’ This last is yelled through to the bathroom where her recent lover is cleaning up.

‘Speaking of, how’s it going with Andy?’ I ask.

There’s a flicker of irritation across her face. ‘I don’t think it’ll last. He’s starting to get really clingy.’

‘Give him a chance. If he tries to kiss you again, kick him in the balls and tell him I told you to.’ Nina grins. ‘And you might want to tell him how great he is in bed. Men can’t hear that often enough.’

She frowns. ‘This is why I hate relationships. There’s all these stupid rules.’

‘You’re so good at getting men into bed, why is it so hard to keep him there?’

‘Because I like Andy. I don’t understand why he has to make it so complicated.’

‘Trust me,’ I tell her. ‘This isn’t complicated. You have no idea what complicated is.’

We chat over coffee for another few minutes while her lunchtime lover dresses, then she practically kicks him out of the house and runs to her car. She blows me a kiss as she drives past.

Sarah is thirty two, now, and it’s increasingly difficult to pass myself off as her, although I think I can pull it off for another six years. She’s still useful occasionally. This morning, for instance, she bought a phone, a simple one, anonymous, for emergencies. The main purpose of Sarah and this flat is to provide a fixed reference for her two-year-old daughter. Alexandra may be fictional, but she has a birth certificate and a passport. She even has my eyes, thanks to some very careful editing in Photoshop.

My other imaginary daughter, Anabela Green, is twelve and lives with her now equally imaginary mother in a lovely top-floor flat in Paris with a fantastic view across the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower. My elderly and ever loyal friend Isabelle and her family look after it for me, and stay there whenever they’re in Paris. Since I look too old to be Anabela and far too young to be Violet, I always have to check with Isabelle that it’s safe to go there.

It’s a long day, with lots of walking and waiting and much time spent beneath the city. I miss my iPhone with its music collection. There’s nothing like a salsa soundtrack to add a bit of adventure to a simple journey. Instead, I take pleasure in the image I present, and the startled, and often admiring, glances directed at me. When starved of distractions, I seek serenity in my interior temple.

In the evening I kill time at the cinema. I was hoping that the latest Underworld was still showing, but I’m out of luck, so I end up watching The Hunger Games. Katniss the hunter, armed like Artemis herself with bow and arrow. Rue, the little girl from last year’s disappointing Colombiana, clothed in flowers. It’s not a bad film, but it makes me miss Cleo. Solitude is pain, and the cold, dark night sinks its cruel teeth into my soul as I walk through the quiet streets and squares back to the hotel.

In the temple in my heart, I stand to face my long-ago love. Her quill pauses its fiery dance across the page, and she looks up at me with inquisitive humour. I crack open the floodgates: ‘My passion will admit of no restraint, ‘tis grown so violent,’ I cry, ‘and fair Cleo’s charms each day increase to such a killing number, that I must speak or die.’

Aphra listens to this melodramatic outpouring with sad and serious eyes. ‘What mischiefs she would do, if she should live!’ she replies eventually, and returns to her scribbling. But her words themselves are mischievous, ambivalent with warning and encouragement, and my conflicted soul keeps me awake through the long night.

It Had Better Be Tonight (Tuesday)