Infernal: Bite The Bullet (5 page)

Well, if that was the price of victory over the
frighteningly boorish and inexplicably sexual Mr. Sanctimonious, it was worth
it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, I told myself, even as I trudged wearily
into my apartment an hour later with blisters on my feet. I only hoped the club
hadn’t maxed out my credit card with suspect charges, and I made a mental note
to cancel it first thing in the morning.

Having zapped the cold noodles from earlier in the
microwave, I slumped on the couch and stabbed at them with a fork, with only
the images of Konstantyn’s dancing and the confused tangle of nothing-fits
thoughts for company. Was I getting any closer to finding out who murdered
Daniel? At least I knew the connection between the studio and the club: Raider
was providing Infernal with dancers, and judging by what the Friar said about
bidding wars and ‘private dances’, there was more than just dancing going on.
Hell, the clientele were getting in on right there, for all to see. Infernal was
some kind of a sex club. I didn’t want to think about Daniel working there, but
why else would Gracie have given me the card?

She was lying about knowing my brother, or holding
back what she knew. Had Daniel got caught up in that scene? Was that what
Gracie was trying to tell me, without telling me anything?

The thought of my brother putting himself up on
that stage, even selling himself to the highest bidder, opened old wounds
inside of me, but we’d been dragged up on London’s mean streets. I was no
innocent. I’d fought against the low expectations life, and our strung-out
mother, had set for us. Daniel had never been that strong.

And the big, scary Ukrainian? First the peace sign
on his arm the same as on Daniel’s neck, and now that damn tattoo. It couldn’t
be coincidence. I needed to get closer to him. Close enough to get more than an
angry warning from him, close enough to talk. Either he knew something, or he
was potentially in danger himself.

A thought struck me and I set the noodles aside.

I hadn’t come away empty-handed.

I still had the first photo of Lazarenko’s back,
though the focus was off. Shame the creepy Friar made me delete the best one. I
blew it up on my laptop for a clearer look, and cast my eyes over the tattoo
centred on Konstantyn’s back. In the centre of the serpent was a triangle with
a line through it and a dot. There was writing too, high on his shoulders, that
I hadn’t noticed when he’d been on stage. I couldn’t read the Cyrillic script,
but the image of the snake creature with the symbol at its centre was instantly
recognisable. Though I hadn’t seen that serpent in a long time, there was no
mistaking the resemblance to the one I remembered from my childhood.

I toed off my heels and pulled the dress over my
head, dumping the silk at the end of the couch, and dragging the laptop onto my
knees. Googling ‘snake eating itself’ threw up a Wiki page for the ouroborus, an
ancient symbol representing the eternal cycle of death and rebirth.  I searched
triangular symbols too, and Google coughed up a bunch of images eerily similar,
but none exactly like the one at the centre of the snake.

Twitching with nervous energy, I was on the brink
of discovering something significant. But what? How was a bunch of ancient
symbols going to help me?  

I blew out a breath and chewed my lip, knowing
what my next move needed to be. It was the last place I wanted to go, but I would
have to bite the bullet and pay a visit to the other bearer of that iconic snake
image: my mother.

Not wanting to even contemplate the possibility she’d
been involved in her own son’s death, I focussed on the letters on Konstantyn’s
back instead, tracing the Cyrillic symbols onto a paper napkin from my take-out
order. I found a Ukrainian keyboard online and ran the phrase through a
translator. ‘Faithful unto death’ was the translation that flashed up, and I couldn’t
help feeling pleased with myself for figuring it out. Not that it helped.

What had I expected it to say? I killed Daniel
Raines? Sighing a frustrated groan, I scrubbed a hand through my hair, messing
the loose waves even more, and pushed the laptop closed as I stood. I was too
tired to figure it out.

Crawling into bed, I wondered what I was getting
myself into. Whatever, it was worth it, to get justice for my brother. With my
thoughts whirring, I expected a restless sleep, but no. Either my mind was a
cruel tormentor or the kindest ever, because, in spite of myself, I dreamt of
Lazarenko’s body.

The following morning, I pulled a heavy,
cable-knit sweater dress over my dance gear. To get my boss, Peter, off my
case, I’d taken to force-feeding myself and hiding under baggy clothes. I
stuffed another butter croissant into my face, and to ease its passage, I
visualised myself shoving the pastry down Peter’s throat until he choked. I
washed it down with the dregs of tepid coffee from my mug, wincing at the
bitter aftertaste. Over time I was regaining my modest curves, and today the
baggy sweater was to fend against the icy turn in the weather, not my eagle-eyed
boss.

Shouldering my work hold-all, I turned to leave, and
ripped October’s page from the calendar on my refrigerator door as I passed.

A new month, and the rent was overdue on this
pokey flat I still refused to call home. I’d held onto the two-bed for longer
than I could afford it, refusing to acknowledge Daniel wasn’t coming home. Giving
up the apartment we’d shared felt like giving up on him.

Eventually though, without our dual income, I’d
had to let our old place go. It’d always been out of my league anyway. London
rents were astronomical, even for people who made a decent living, which I
didn’t, but Daniel’s music video gigs had paid-off unbelievably well.

Now, on my own, I was struggling to keep up with
the rent, and subscriptions to my dance classes had dwindled. I knew why. It
was because the clients sensed me going through the motions. It was your
passion that kept them coming back, week after week, and I couldn’t deny I’d
lost that.

You felt passion dancing with Konstantyn
Lazarenko.

He’s dangerous.

That dream you had about him last night… you
were doing more than dancing.

That was nothing, just a dream, a hangover from
visiting that sex club.

If you get through the auditions with him, your
money worries will be taken care of.

You shut up. We’re not having this
conversation,
I told myself.

I slammed the front door, locked up the basement
flat and took off towards the underground station at a fast clip.

This time of the morning, the commuters were
pouring from the foggy residential streets, headed silently, purposefully in
the same direction, never making eye contact, never exchanging smiles. They
reminded me of zombies, lurching towards their dreary jobs in the city. As
kids, Daniel and I used to play a game, greeting every grim pedestrian we
passed with a cheery hello, just to see if we could get a reaction. Now, I’d
become one of them. I’d moved house, but I hadn’t moved on. Four months, and
the pain of his absence still clung to me. Life went on around my grief. The
clocks didn’t stop, the neighbours’ dogs still barked, and the bills kept on
coming, while I continued to wake in a sweat from the nightmare of Daniel’s
body in the morgue. It was always the same: the pristine white sheet pulled up
under his battered face, and the sick irony of that peace sign branded on his
neck. They hadn’t let me pull down the sheet to look at the rest of him, but
the pathology reports had painted a graphic, bloody picture. In my dreams I saw
it all.

Last night had been different, though. I’d still
woken in a lather, but for once it hadn’t been Daniel’s body making me sweat. I
suppose I should’ve been thankful to the Ukrainian for that small mercy.

You’re an idiot, creaming yourself over a
killer. He’s got your mother’s tattoo on his back, and that can only mean one
thing: bad bloody news.

Everything my mother touched turned to ash, inside
of a crack pipe. Was Konstantyn involved in drugs too?

That would be a deal-breaker.

You have to have a deal before you can break it.

Lost in thought, the station snuck up on me. The
line split two ways. I could get into work early and sweat out my sexual
frustrations in the gym. Or I could go the way I’d planned all along: to the
Old London Secure Forensic Psychiatric Unit, where a meeting with my mother was
sure to put a dampener on my pathetic fantasies.

I studied the broken veins on the security guard’s
face as he went through my purse.

“First visit?” he asked.

“Yeah.” My eyes roamed the cluttered cabin while I
adjusted my ponytail and shifted my weight on my feet.

“Don’t worry, it’s not like they show it in the
movies.” He gave me a gap-toothed smile.

“What, no shaved heads, padded cells or lobotomy
scars?”

His laugh was as rough as his East-End accent. “Exactly.
I’m going to have to hold onto this, my darling,” he said, waving my phone in
his sausage fingers.

“You’re confiscating my iPhone?”

“No recording or internet enabled devices.
Standard rules for visiting the forensic unit. You can have it back on your way
out.”

I nodded. What choice did I have?

He gripped my purse in both hands and slid it back
across the table.

“Thanks,” I said curtly, closing the catch and
hitching the strap over my shoulder. I’d hoped to get a photo of my mother’s
tattoo, to compare it with Konstantyn’s, and to show her the photo I had of his,
but that wasn’t going to happen.

“You’ll need this,” he said, handing me a
laminated card on a red lanyard.

I eyed it curiously.

“Your security pass,” he said, “so they let you
back out.”

“Got it,” I said, nodding and slipping the cord
around my neck.

“You’ll want the Laburnum unit. Follow the path
under the trees and it’s the single storey red-brick on your left. Ring the
buzzer and John will let you in.”

Laburnum was a poison, wasn’t it?
Bet they
reserve the dodgily named wards for the murderers
, I thought, letting my
feet carry me where my mind didn’t care to follow. Crushing the fallen laburnum
seeds beneath my shoes, I took consolation in knowing that much as I dreaded
this visit, my mother would hate it more. She’d been crystal clear about
wanting no contact whatsoever with her one remaining child.

An over-chatty male staff nurse led me to her
closed door. “The psychiatrist increased her medication, and we’re just now beginning
to explore her past traumas in therapy. She refuses to discuss her time in the
cult though, so it’s great to finally meet a family member.”

I stopped dead. “I’m sorry. Did you say the cult?”

“Her escape. The reason she immigrated to England.
Oh –” Seeing the confusion in my eyes, his cheeks reddened. “I assumed you knew.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. My mother wasn’t
just a closed book. When it came to me and Daniel, she’d always kept her
secrets chained, padlocked, encased in ice and sunk deeper than the Titanic.
She’d never mentioned anything about a cult, only that she’d run from my
abusive father before I was born.

“Anyway. Your mother’s being kept in isolation
now,” the nurse said.

“Why?”

The colour in his cheeks deepened to a sickly
purple. “Since the outburst at the funeral.”

“She’d just buried her only son,” I said,
searching his eyes for compassion. I wasn’t even sure why I felt a need to
justify what my mother had done. I’d been livid, and relieved when the police
escort restrained her and took her away. All the same, I knew what it was to
lose your closest family. If I’d had the excuse of insanity, maybe I’d have
torn apart that serene chapel with its stink of incense and flowers and death.
Part of me envied her the outburst.

“She threatened to tear that man’s throat out with
her teeth,” the nurse said.

I had no answer to that. When it came to murder,
my mother had history. She’d shown exactly what those teeth of hers were
capable of.

“Is he planning to press charges?”

The nurse shook his head.

“Well that’s something. May I go in?”

He nodded. “You’ll be on CCTV the whole time, and
I’ll be right outside the door. This is a panic button,” he said, pressing a
small round device into my palm. “If you feel uncomfortable or threatened, just
press it and we’ll be right there.”

“Thank you. I’ll be fine,” I said, attempting to
reassure myself as much as him.

The room was bland, in a way only institutions can
be: beige walls, plastic chair, boring patterned bedspread, a wilted plant on
the sill of the barred window. The woman who birthed me sat on the bed with her
bony knees drawn up to her chest and straggly wisps of hair framing a once-beautiful
face. It was as though an artist had sketched shadows all over the childhood
memory of my mother. She ignored me, until she realised I wasn’t the regular
kind of visitor. Then she showed her fangs.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she spat, “I
told you not to come.” She shouted towards the closed door, “I said no
visitors, you incompetent sons of bitches. Get her away from me!”

“Yep, and I’m thrilled to be here too, mom.” I
dragged the chair over and sat on the hard seat.

She pursed wrinkled lips. “Did you bring me
cigarettes?” Her voice was deep and dry as a husk. In her heyday, she’d sounded
sexy, like Lauren Bacall. She’d been angular and alluring, mysterious even,
with her distance and stiffly given affection. Now, raw-boned and ravaged by
drugs, everything about her seemed withered and hollow.   

“No cigarettes, sorry. They’re not allowed
anymore.”

“Not allowed?” She sneered, baring nicotine
stained teeth. “You always were such a goody two shoes.”