The Society Of Dirty Hearts (29 page)

“A nice man!” Julian’s voice was rank with incredulous revulsion. Reassured, however, he removed Michael Ridgway’s disc and, very carefully, as if it was something fragile and precious, inserted it into the DVD player. The TV flickered into life, showing the adjoining room. Michael Ridgway was pacing agitatedly up and down beside the bed. He was middle-aged, balding, paunchy. Nobody out of the ordinary. Nobody you’d give a second glance. He stopped pacing when the chauffeur entered with his hands on Susan Carter’s shoulders, guiding her in front of him. The chauffeur closed the door, leaving her alone with Michael Ridgway.

Michael Ridgway looked at Susan Carter and she looked back at him. A minute passed, two minutes. Neither of them moved, spoke, or even seemed to breathe. Julian might’ve thought the DVD was faulty, if it hadn’t been for Susan Carter’s eyes. They were alive with fear. It seeped out of them, seemed to seep right out of the screen into his heart, pleading for help, for mercy. Suddenly, as if acting on some silent signal known only to himself, Michael Ridgway lashed out, hitting Susan Carter full in the face. Without a sound, she collapsed to the carpet and lay with her eyes closed, motionless as a doll. Michael Ridgway stared down at her a moment, his eyes blank and dead, like a shark’s. Then, straddling her waist, he hit her again, and again, and again, mechanically, relentlessly. To Julian, the beating seemed to go on for hours. He flinched at every blow, but didn’t turn away from the screen. Something was building inside him, something he needed. Finally, Michael Ridgway stopped and stood off Susan Carter. Except she wasn’t recognisable as Susan Carter anymore. Now she was recognisable only as something dead. A piece of meat. Michael Ridgway’s chest heaved, but his expression was calm, almost serene, as he looked at himself in the mirror, then looked through the mirror directly into Julian’s eyes. There was no spark of connection. The eyes were as unrecognisable to Julian as those that’d glared out of his Grandma Alice’s possessed face.

The screen went blank. But Julian continued to stare at it, trembling, pressure building inside him until he couldn’t contain it any longer. In an eruption of white-hot fury, he lunged at Mr X and drove the knife into him fully to the hilt. A scream croaked in Mr X’s throat. His body spasmed into a tight, foetal ball. Then he lay silent and limp.

After that, in a kind of semi-conscious frenzy, Julian started tearing the house apart, searching vainly for his DVD or any clues to Mia’s whereabouts. In one room, he found a trunk of dildos, lubricants, whips, chains, leather wrist and ankle restraints, and other sex paraphernalia. In another, he shuddered at the discovery of a cupboard neatly stacked with latex gloves, duct tape and plastic wrap. He was in the kitchen, flinging stuff out of a cubby-hole so that he could get to a trapdoor, when Mike Hill arrived.

“Hello,” Mike called from the hallway, his voice uncertain, perhaps even a little afraid. “Julian, are you there?”

“In here,” Julian shouted, yanking at the trapdoor’s handle.

Mike gasped when he saw Julian. “What happened to you?”

“Help me open this.”

“Why? What’s down there?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Quivering tendons stood out on Julian’s neck as he strained to lift the trapdoor. He pitched backward as the handle slipped through his sweaty, blood-stained hands. “For fuck’s sake, help me.”

“No. Not until you tell me whose house this is, and whose car that is all smashed up outside, and why there’s a dead dog in some kind of-”

“There’s no time,” Julian interrupted breathlessly. “Don’t you understand? She might be down there.”

“Who’s she?”

“Mia!”

Mike’s eyes widened. “Mia Bradshaw?”

“Yes. Now help me.”

They both bent to grasp the handle. Faces reddening, arms trembling, they lifted the thick, wooden trapdoor. Stairs led down into darkness. There was a switch inside the hatch. Julian flicked it and a bulb flickered into life down below, illuminating a dirty concrete floor. The stairs led to a large, low-ceilinged cellar full of exactly what you might expect to find in such a place – a well-stocked wine rack, a tool bench, some dusty old furniture piled in a corner, a row of shelves crammed with cleaning products, rusting cans of paint, boxes, and glass jars full of nails and screws. Julian’s eyes scoured the room. He rushed over to the furniture, and started flinging chairs and tables aside. They concealed nothing.

“There’s nothing down here,” said Mike. “It’s just an ordinary cellar.”

“That’s exactly what he wants you to think.”

“Who?”

Without replying, Julian turned to the shelves and swept his arm along them, sending their contents crashing to the floor.

“Stop, Julian.” Mike caught hold of Julian’s arm and pulled him away from the shelves.

“Get your fucking hands off me.” Julian wrenched his arm free, hitting the light-bulb with his hand. Shadows whirled wildly around the room. The bulb flickered and Mia’s face leaped at him out of the momentary darkness, pale and blood streaked. With a gasp, he recoiled against the tool-bench.

“Okay, enough is enough,” Mike snapped. “I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know now.”

Julian wasn’t listening, he was staring at the floor, eyes narrowed. There were parallel scuff marks on the concrete, as if the tool bench had recently been moved. He dropped to his knees and felt around under the bench. His fingers detected what was hidden to his eyes. “There’s another trapdoor here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Help me move this bench.”

Julian and Mike dragged the bench away from the wall, revealing a recessed metal handle. They heaved the trapdoor open, releasing a warm puff of air as fetid as the breath of a nightmare. Mike put the back of his hand to his mouth. “It smells like something died-” He broke off as the full import of his words swept over him.

Again, stairs led down. Again, there was a switch inside the hatch. Again, a light came on when Julian flicked it, illuminating a concrete floor. As Julian started forward, Mike said, “Maybe you shouldn’t go down there. Maybe we should call the police.”

“No police,” Julian retorted, scowling. “Not until we know for sure what’s down there.”

The smell grew stronger with every step they descended, until the air seemed thick with it. Julian could hear Mike swallowing hard behind him. Julian felt no urge to vomit. After what he’d witnessed upstairs, it would take more than a bad smell to sicken him. “What the hell is this?” Mike said in a low, nauseated voice, when they reached the second cellar.

A table stood adjacent to the foot of the stairs, its surface cluttered with unused hypodermic needles and brown medicine bottles. Several pairs of police-style handcuffs and leg-shackles dangled from nails above the table. Six human-sized cages lined one of the walls. In each of the first four cages there was a camping-bed and a bucket. It was too gloomy to see what was in the final two cages. Julian picked up one of the bottles and read its label. “Diamorphine.”

“Heroin,” said Mike, taking the bottle from him. “Looks like it was stolen from a hospital.”

Julian squinted into the darkness, thinking of Joanne Butcher. “Heroin for an overdose nobody would find suspicious.”

“More like for getting girls hooked on, then making them work for a fix. A sex trafficking operation, that’s what this is, isn’t it?”

“This is The Society of Dirty Hearts.”

“What’s The Society-”

“There’s someone in the last cage,” exclaimed Julian, darting towards the rear of the cellar. A dimly visible figure lay on a camp-bed, swaddled in blankets, head buried beneath a pillow. Julian’s voice trembled in the gloom, half fearful, half hopeful. “Mia!” The figure didn’t move. He frantically rattled the cage’s padlocked door, calling Mia’s name again. Still no response.

Mike’s lighter sparked to life. The wavering flame extinguished Julian’s hope. “It’s not her,” he said, staring hollow-eyed with disappointment at the wisps of red hair curling out from under the pillow.

“Who is it then?”

A name came into Julian’s head. Ginger. “We need to get this door open.”

“Wait here.” Mike dashed away. He returned after half-a-minute with a hammer. It took ten minutes to smash the padlock open. The figure on the bed never once stirred. Julian ducked into the cage and removed the pillow. As he’d suspected, it was Ginger. She looked dead. But when Mike felt for a pulse in her wrist, he said, “She’s alive…barely.”

“What do you think’s wrong with her?”

By way of explanation, Mike pointed at a row of fresh needle marks on Ginger’s inner forearm. “Help me move her. She needs to get to a hospital.”

Looking at Ginger’s sunken, pale bluish face, Julian felt no antipathy. But neither did he feel any sympathy. You were right, he thought, I’ll never understand. “Okay, but first I have to show you something upstairs.”

“There’s no time. She could die.” As Julian turned and headed for the stairs, Mike added, “Do you hear me?”

“I hear.” Julian started up the stairs.

Mike pursued him, catching hold of his arm. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you care?”

“Yes I care. That’s why I need to show you this.”

“Show me what? What could be more important than that woman’s life?”

“The truth,” said Julian. “Only the truth.”

Chapter 24

Julian scanned the columns of figures on his computer screen, silently tallying. He wrote a number down and stared at it, unable to tear his eyes away until the whistle blew for knocking off. He took a bottle of whisky out of his desk drawer, poured himself a measure, swallowed it, and poured another. He tensed at a knock at his office door. “Come in,” he said in a low voice, almost as if he didn’t want to be heard. He drew a little breath of relief when Jake entered. Not for the first time, Julian was struck by the change in his appearance. He was barely recognisable as the boy who’d staggered off into the forest all those months ago, bruised and bloodied. His shaved hair had grown out. His face was fuller, healthy-looking. He wore the blue overalls of a machinist.

Jake glanced at the drink in Julian’s hand. “Bit early for that, isn’t it?”

“I’m celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“The business is back in the black for the first time in over two years.”

“Hey, that’s brilliant.”

Julian poured Jake a shot. They lifted their glasses simultaneously and emptied them. “Y’know what, we should head into town tonight,” suggested Jake. “Celebrate properly.”

Julian shook his head. “I’ve got too much work to do.”

“Aw, come on, Jules, take a night off, kick back for once.”

Julian’s gaze strayed to the photo on the office wall of his mum in her bridal dress. “You sound like my mum. She’s always telling me I push myself too hard, that I should take a holiday.”

“She’s right.” An expression of almost childish eagerness lit up Jake’s face. “Hey, we could go away together to Spain, or somewhere like that. I’ve never been abroad before.”

Julian swabbed the scratch of guilt Jake’s words inflicted with another shot of whisky. “Maybe in a few months, when things have settled down here. The business is only just back on track. I can’t afford to take my eyes off it right now.”

Jake sighed, but nodded agreement. “I guess you’re right.”

Again, Julian’s thoughts travelled back over the past several weeks and months, to the change in Jake that’d been gradually occurring ever since he’d taken him in and given him a job. There’d been times when Jake had irritated, even infuriated him with his sullen, often perverse obstinacy and quick temper. There’d been times when he wondered whether Jake would ever be able to adjust to a regular life with a regular routine. He was fairly certain that even a couple of weeks ago his unwillingness to go along with either of Jake’s suggestions would’ve been met with a display of angry disappointment. But suddenly the balance of his personality had shifted. The torrent of grumbling complaints from his line supervisor had dried to a trickle, then stopped, and finally been replaced by cautious praise. The old expression of shifty distrust in his eyes had been replaced by something more open and direct. Jake Bradshaw, it seemed, had left the building. Jake Harris had arrived. “Come on,” said Julian. “Let’s lock up and go home.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Jake said, as they made their daily round of the factory floor. “I heard on the radio that another one of them’s killed himself.”

A familiar tightness came into Julian’s throat. “Which one?”

“That doctor they locked up for killing one of them girls they thought Ridgway killed. They found him dead in his cell. He’d cut his wrists and his throat. How many’s that now?”

Julian counted them in his mind. Tom Benson had been the first. When it came out that he had a taste for cocaine, prostitutes and sadomasochistic sex, in rapid succession he lost his job, his wife and finally, after jumping off The High Bridge, his life. Some sleazeball, closet homosexual politician with a penchant for underage boys was next. He gassed himself in his car. After him came a businessman who enjoyed playing the role of an entrepreneurial philanthropist in public and murdering young girls in private. He gave himself both barrels of a shotgun, after his name was connected to the deaths of two girls previously attributed to Michael Ridgway. Then there was a solicitor who after having sex with Joanne Butcher had watched while she lay dying from a heroin overdose. And then a teacher, a judge, two priests. All so-called decent, honest people. They OD’d, jumped off buildings, and hung themselves, and nobody went to their funerals. “Eight.”

“There’ll be more before this is over. They still haven’t found half the fuckers on those videos. Imagine what it must be like to be one of them, sat at home with your wife and kids, or whoever, just waiting for the coppers to come knocking.”

Julian didn’t need to imagine. He knew what it was like to live with that. He knew how the sick feeling welled into your throat every time there was a knock at the door, every time the phone rang, every time the post arrived, every time you opened your eyes.