Authors: Colum Sanson-Regan
Martin looked at them both. Zoe didn’t make eye contact, just pushed her face into Ozzy’s sweaty t-shirt. Ozzy gave a wink and a smile and took a swig from his beer bottle. When he smiled his brow creased and deep lines shot out from the corners of his eyes. Martin saw him for a moment as an old man, making lewd comments to younger men about the busty woman at the shop counter, nudging them into uneasy assent with his elbow in their ribs.
Martin drank from his bottle and looked around. Besides Ozzy and Zoe, he had no connection with anyone else in this densely packed room of revellers. And how much did he know about Ozzy? They had known each other for a few years; he was the only person besides Alison that Martin could call a good friend. And yet within a few hours of meeting Zoe he had found out more about her than he knew about Ozzy in years of friendship. Or maybe there just wasn’t that much to know about Ozzy. Well, he hadn’t thought that he was the kind of guy who would go a swingers club.
So, who knew? Not me,
thought Martin.
Well, he doesn’t really know me. Maybe we don’t know each other at all.
“Yeah sure,” he said, “might as well see what it’s all about.”
Outside looking for a taxi, Martin could see the tide of alcohol had come in and the city street was flooded with bunches of people clinging to each other, laughing, shouting, guys with red eyes and shirts undone, girls stumbling in heels, police standing by, and ambulances lined up at the end of the road. It was still pretty early too, only turned midnight.
“How far is it?” he asked as a taxi pulled up alongside them.
“Really not far,” Ozzy said and climbed into the back seat with Zoe, leaving Martin to get in the front. Ozzy told the driver an address and they were off. Within minutes the taxi had stopped and Ozzy was telling the driver to wait, that they would be back in a minute, Martin would sit with him.
“Just gonna get changed mate,” Ozzy said, as he and Zoe slipped out of the back seat.
“Am I—” Martin started, but the door shut before he could finish his question. The taxi driver sat mute, staring ahead, and Martin fished around in his head for things to say. It didn’t seem natural, the two of them sitting next to each other silently, looking straight ahead at a road that wasn’t moving.
Martin turned in his seat. The driver looked Indian, with tight greying hair, thin strips of grey stubble straps holding a thick straight beard, like an extension of his chin. His upper lip had no hair. The grey of his hair and beard spread into his face and his dark skin had an eerie pallor. His eyes had a yellow tinge. Maybe it was just the light, but to Martin he looked like a zombie from a Bollywood movie. He wasn’t moving. It was hard to put an age on him but Martin guessed he had died some time in his early sixties.
“Hey. The chances are,” Martin said, “that you and I will never meet again. I hardly ever come into the city these days, and there are thousands of taxis, right?” The driver didn’t turn his head, just looked sideways at him. Martin couldn’t read his expression. Besides his eyes, nothing in his face or body had changed. He continued. “Now Ozzy won’t be long getting changed, he’ll just throw a t-shirt on, so while it’s just you and me, you can tell me. You don’t have to go into detail, but what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? What’s the thing you’ve done that you’re most ashamed of?”
The driver shifted his gaze back to out of the windscreen. He didn’t make a sound.
“There must be something, just one thing, that when you think about it, it tears you up inside, something you wish you didn’t have to carry around. I won’t tell a soul, it won’t go beyond this moment. Tell me, go on.” Besides the sound of traffic passing, Martin couldn’t hear a thing, not even the sound of the driver’s breathing. He straightened up in his seat, once again looking out of the windscreen.
“Okay, I won’t even look at you, just go ahead and let it out. Honestly now, I won’t tell a soul.” The silence and stillness continued until the back door opened and Ozzy got back in the car.
“She’ll be down in a second.” Sure enough, Ozzy had just put another t-shirt on, but also his black leather jacket and a new red bandana. The smell of fresh aftershave circulated around the stale air of the taxi. Martin turned around in his seat.
“Are you sure this is cool, me coming with you guys?”
“It’ll be fine. You should check it out if you’ve never been. I mean, once we’re in, you won’t hang out with us, you can do your own thing. We usually split up anyway.”
“Really? How does that, em, well, don’t you get jealous?”
“She was the one who introduced me to it. She was a free spirit from the start, so who am I to try and change her? But the first few times, yeah, I thought I should, you know, hang around with her, but it soon became obvious I’d be better off finding my own fuck. That way there’s no jealousy, because I’m too busy to think about her. Thing is, when we get back afterwards we always have a crazy time ourselves. It’s like fuel; the feeling lasts for days.”
Martin glanced at the driver. He still hadn’t moved a muscle or shown any sign that he was hearing what was being said. Zoe was approaching the car. She had changed into a short skirt and heels, with the same netted top. Her legs were pale and rather shapeless, her calves were stocky, and her knees and ankles were thick. She carried a little backpack over her shoulder. She had put more eye make-up on, black lines around her eyes and her lips were a bright red. As she opened the door Ozzy gave another address to the driver who nodded, pressed his fare button and pulled out onto the road. In the back Zoe leaned into Ozzy, working her hands under his jacket and hugging him, and he kissed the top of her head. Martin watched the numbers of the fare go up and up, and the street lights approach and pass like the same frame of film repeated.
***
Chapter Ten
Henry’s phone rings. It wakes him. The sun is shining a line down the bed through the curtains and it blinds him as he sits up. The sheets cling to his skin, the thin material rising with him off the mattress then peeling slowly away from his sweaty back as he leans forward and reaches down to the end of the bed. He can hear the phone vibrate somewhere on the ground, rattling on the bare boards. His head throbs and he closes his eyes as his hands feel around in the tangle of clothes at the end of the bed. Pockets, loose change, crushed cigarette packet, wallet, phone. He opens his eyes to look at the display. Unknown number. He answers.
“Hello? Hello, is this Mr. Bloomburg?”
“Speaking.”
It’s a woman’s voice. In her mid- to late forties, Henry reckons. There is something dark and cracked about its tone, like a dry river bed.
“Mr. Bloomburg the detective?”
“Speaking.”
“I’d like to hire you.”
Henry closes his eyes again.
Well, she doesn’t sound upset, this isn’t spur of the moment, she’s thought about it. I bet it’s a follow job. She sounds tired, like it’s the end of the day.
“Okay, well, what does it involve?”
“I want you to follow my husband.”
“Do you think he’s having an affair?”
“I know he is.”
“Well Mrs. …”
“Call me Maya.”
Maya, not a common name. Maya, the illusion. Henry has an image of her. Dark complexion, thick black hair, brown eyes.
“Well, Maya, I will be in my office in, eh, fifteen minutes if you want to call back then and well, I can take some details and tell you what I do.”
“Fifteen minutes? Did I disturb you, Mr. Bloomburg?”
“Is that okay for you, or do you want to call later?”
“I’ll call in fifteen minutes, thank you.”
“Okay, talk then.”
Henry flops back onto his bed with his phone still in his hand and pulls the cover over his head. Ten minutes. Ten minutes more.
The pounding of the digger on the road outside starts. A hydraulic arm, arched like a steel insect on the skin of the city, jabbing the street. Henry counts the impacts. Fifteen. Then a rest. Other sounds drift into focus, and symphonise the dull drone of the city, before the machine attacks again, and they scatter. Over and over again. The digger has been outside his apartment for what seems like weeks. It’s moved a few feet. No, he’s not going to be able to rest. He gets out of the bed and pulls off the sweat-covered sheets.
In the small dingy kitchen the window looks out to a brick wall opposite. Henry pulls up the window, letting the humid air of the alley into his narrow kitchen. He pulls out sheets from the washer/dryer and puts the others in. He goes back into the dark bedroom with the one solid bar of daylight cutting across the bed and puts the clean sheets on. The mattress is still damp with sweat.
Back in the kitchen he lights a cigarette from the gas ring and puts the kettle on to boil. On the counter is a map and he leans over it. The city. Red dots and blue dots. Blue is where the girls lived. Red is where they were when they disappeared. He calls Kramer.
“Anything today?”
Kramer sounds flustered. Henry can picture him, empty coffee cups sitting on case files and print outs, crumbs on the keyboard, an officer standing at the desk, waiting for him to finish the conversation.
“Yes. One. Here it is, Bloomburg, but then I gotta go. It’s em, it’s … Hollie Mandell, been missing for three days, reported late last night. Age twenty-two, last seen at the Brunel Centre on Jackson, never got home.”
Henry puts a red dot on the map.
“Home is?”
“Home is 44 Alderton, West Brunel. Bloomburg, you getting anywhere? Still chasing your ghost?”
“Kramer this is why I don’t work for you anymore. You would’ve pulled me off this a long time ago.”
“You bet your ass I would’ve. You’re looking for connections that don’t exist, Bloomburg, I work in the real world.” Kramer hangs up.
Henry sticks a blue dot on Alderton. There are golden stickers for where bodies are found, but he hasn’t used any yet.
Henry puts the cigarette to his lips and leans out the window. The wall opposite doesn’t have any windows, just dirty brick right down to the alley below. He exhales and watches the smoke. The sky above the roofs is low and grey, like a lid pulled tight.
The kettle boils. The phone rings.
“Hello, yes, I’m in my office now.”
He pours the water from the kettle into the mug as Maya starts to explain. She’s been married to this guy for six years. During the last two years he has been doing a lot of business which he won’t tell her about. He doesn’t pay attention to her the way he used to, and when he does it is through big overblown gestures—masses of flowers, expensive gifts, bought, she is sure, out of guilt. They had often talked about how once Kayleigh, her daughter from another marriage, was gone to University, they would have so much more time for each other, and the house would be theirs for the first time.
As she talks, Henry opens the fridge and takes out the remains of last night’s take away. The sauce has solidified and the noodles are clinging together in a tense cluster. He pokes the formation with a fork. But it hasn’t worked out that way, they spend less time together now than they ever did.
“… And I know, I just know he’s having an affair.”
“Has he had an affair before?”
“No. Mr. Bloomburg, I have a question for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you good at your job?”
“Maya, I’ve been doing it a long time. I always find out what people want to know. Sometimes the client wishes they hadn’t asked the question, but that’s not my job. My job is to find answers. What does your husband do for a living?”
“Security.”
“For who?”
“For a chemicals firm.”
“Which chemical firm?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, well, I can follow him and report what I see to you. Have you asked him straight out is he having an affair?”
“No.”
“Well, that might just save you a lot of money.”
“No, I don’t want him to know I know.”
“Okay.”
He throws the noodle box into the sink followed by his cigarette butt, which sits smoking on the sticky mound.
“Okay, it all sounds pretty straightforward.”
As soon as he hears the words he knows he’ll regret saying them.
***
Chapter Eleven
When the taxi stopped they got out near an old pub whose windows were boarded up and whose door was covered in graffiti. They walked down a dark side street to a double door which had a small logo above; the outline of a five-pointed star with “The Sugar Club” written across it.
Ozzy knocked on the door and it was opened by a burly bouncer dressed in long black coat with a scrunched-up face like a long eared bat who gave a nod of recognition to Zoe and Ozzy and squinted his eyes at Martin, looking him up and down before standing aside and letting him pass.
They stepped inside to a brightly lit but short corridor where there was a ticket booth. It looked like an old cinema booking office. A woman in her fifties behind the glass with her hair tied up in a bun greeted Zoe and Ozzy with a smile and took their money and then asked of Martin, “Single male? Is he with you two? Now normally love, we don’t admit single males after 11:30, but seeing as you’re with these two, I’ll let you in.” She pointed to the laminated entrance fee card stuck against the glass of her booth, and as Martin paid asked him did he have a locker. Martin shook his head and looked confused, she put her head to the side and said, “Ah, it’s your first time.” She smiled and leaned forward, raising her eyebrows and speaking slowly as if addressing a child, “Do you want me to show you around love?”
Ozzy said, “It’s alright, I’ll give him the grand tour, show him the ropes,” winked and steered Martin away from the booth and toward the door at the end of the corridor.
Through the door the light changed. It was much darker. There was a slow pulse of music, not loud enough for Martin to hear what song was playing, more of an ambient background noise, a dull thudding with a slow swampy movement of music around it. As his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room, he saw the dance floor and low couches, and a bar on the far side. There were some people on the dance floor, gathered around in little circles. Rising from the centre of each little cluster was the top of a shiny pole going up to the ceiling. There was movement on some of the couches, and Martin could see a few people standing at the bar.
Ozzy leaned into him. “So this is the bar. No alcohol, but they do some good cocktails, just won’t get you drunk. This is like the get-to-know-you room, if that’s what you’re after. Through there—” he pointed to a doorway on the other side of the bar, “—are the separate rooms. Each one has got a different thing going on. Come on, I’ll show you.” Zoe was already walking toward the bar. They walked after her and Ozzy said, “Baby, I’m just going to show Marty what’s what. I’ll do a cocktail.” She didn’t turn around.
Martin tried not to stare at the people who were fondling each other on the couches. There was kissing and groping, buttons undone and straps eased off shoulders. In the dim light it was hard to see any faces.
The doorway had a thick curtain hanging over it and Ozzy held it back as Martin walked through its musty smell and into a hallway. The hallway was painted black, with two red neon light strips on either side, running along the join of the wall and the ceiling and the wall and the floor. At the entrance of three rooms the line broke and framed the doorway. Large windows looked into each room.
Martin followed Ozzy down the corridor. Through the first window was a room with a table. On it, a man with a black eyeless mask lay on his back. Black straps pulled tight over his white soft bulging torso as a woman squashed into a PVC bodice whipped his trembling goose-bumped skin. Her dyed red hair stood up from its roots with every strand held in place by sticky hairspray, and her skin was a yellowed tan like smoke-damaged leather. The flesh of her arms and shoulders wobbled with every stroke of the whip. Through the glass Martin could hear the man calling out in muffled exaltation through the closed zip of his mask. On a bench against the wall another man sat huddled over, skinny and balding, his hand furiously pumping in his lap as he watched the woman from behind, concentrating on the movement of the rolls of flesh trapped in the PVC skin, on how the hem rose above her drooping cheeks when she delivered each blow.
The next window showed about five or six people, stripped naked in a room with two desks and a few office chairs, all writhing and pushing against each other, men with sweaty foreheads and beer bellies and women with closed eyes and faces scrunched up. On the walls there were maps of the world and posters of cityscapes and a flow chart with the line rising steadily then ending in a peak. The lights in this room were much brighter than in the hallway and gave skin a pale and almost transparent tone, emphasizing even more the red flushes and marks and stripes where the skin had been slapped or grabbed or scratched. Martin could see ribs and shoulder bones, fleshy thighs and fatty necks. Right in front of him a man whose bum cheeks were covered in black and grey downy fur was getting up from a kneeling position between the legs of a woman lying on one of the desks, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. As he stood he turned slightly and his penis stuck out at a low angle beneath the overhang of his belly, performing a tired salute. The woman’s legs were spread, and without the man’s shoulders to rest upon, they hung down, not touching the floor and Martin saw her puffy lips frame a loose drooling vagina, breathing like an unconscious bearded mouth. The man moved to the side of her and leaned over to kiss her, while kneading the big breasts which lay spread over her chest, spilling down onto her side.
Martin took his gaze away from the room and looked to either side of him. There were other people in the hallway, looking through the windows, safe in the knowledge that they couldn’t be seen. Martin asked Ozzy, “Where do you usually end up?”
Ozzy motioned toward the end of the hallway. “I’ll show you.” He went ahead, walking quickly, and Martin followed.
The last window showed an empty room, just a bed with a bare mattress and bare walls, like a jail cell. Through the curtained door at the other end of the hallway and they were in what looked like another bar, but this one had bamboo furniture and brightly coloured tie-dye sheets on the walls with TV screens between, showing a woman in her early twenties rubbing oil over her tanned and toned naked body, her lips inflated into a pillowy pout, her eyes encouraging the camera to come closer, come closer. There were some figures sitting around one of the tables, Martin could make out two heavily built guys with broad shoulders and big arms. The others there were girls, it seemed, but the bulky frames of the men were blocking his view.
“Back there is all a bit fat and over fifty. Upstairs you got some private rooms. Usually, like if a couple hooks up, a guy or a girl or another couple or whatever, they can go in to one of the private rooms and not be disturbed. Policy there is you can’t go in unless invited. There is one big open room upstairs too, a kind of free-for-all, doesn’t always happen, but when it does, well … And downstairs, that’s something else.”
“Cellars and dungeons?”
“You got it. Cages, chains, proper whips, weights—”
“Weights?”
“For hanging off piercings.”
“Ah! Shit!”
“Wipe-clean areas too, it’s worth checking out just for the sound effects.”
A wave of laughter came from the table and Martin saw one of the women lean to the side to look at Ozzy and him. Her eyes flicked off him in a second and lingered on Ozzy, scanning up and down, before she sat back into the group and joined in the laughter. He said to Ozzy, “Hey, I feel like I should at least have a drink in my hand, let’s go back to the bar.”
When they got back to the darkness of the bar room, Martin scanned the room for Zoe. He ordered two cocktails and the guy behind the bar asked did he need rubbers or booster. Ozzy said rubbers, yeah, and bought a handful of flat foil pouches. He gave Martin two and they clinked glasses.
“I’m gonna leave you to it,” Ozzy said and walked back through the thick curtains.
Martin leaned against the bar and sipped his drink. The smell of the sweet syrupy cordial hit the back of his throat and his stomach turned. As he put his hand to his mouth and wondered whether he was going to vomit, a black man in a red cowboy hat and no shirt approached him. He was tall, easily a head over Martin and he smiled and said, “Hey, you lookin’ for some banging? Wanna make a fast fuck? That’s why you’re here right? I got a lady in the play-room lookin’ for some deep connection man. You come up, yeah?” The hat cast a shadow over his eyes and his wide smile gleamed in the dim light.
Martin straightened up. “I’ve just got to find a friend, then yeah, I’ll be there.”
“You don’t need no friends, man.”
“Ha, yeah, sounds good, I will come up in a minute.”
“You better, man, you don’t wanna miss this pussy.” He brought his hand down on Martin’s shoulder and held it there for a second as his smile got even wider, then turned and went through the door.
There was moaning coming from a huddled shape on one of the couches, a rounded back like someone burrowing. People were finding what they were looking for, finding the places to do it, and the people to do it with.
Another man approached the bar. He was shorter than Martin. The dim yellow lights of the bar reflected on his bald crown, giving the skin on his head a sickly iridescence. He was suited in grey, and his fingers were short and stubby as he tapped on the bar. He moved his head from side to side, whistling tunelessly as he decided what to drink. He nodded to Martin and Martin returned the nod. After he decided and the barman was pouring, he said to Martin, “You all right?”
“Yeah, all right,” Martin replied.
“That guy’s a bit full on, isn’t he?” inclining his head toward the door the black man had just walked through.
“He is, he is.”
As he paid for his drink and sipped from the glass, Martin saw that his hands were much smaller than his own, like the hands of a child. Martin wondered for a moment if there was something in the lighting of the room that was skewing his sense of proportion, whether the shadows were playing tricks on his eyes. The man whistled again, then smiled.
“Ashley,” he said, “Ashley Morris is my name.”
“Martin.”
“Nice to meet you Martin. You here with someone or—”
“Well, yes, but they’ve, em …” He looked around again, hoping to catch sight of Zoe. There was no-one dancing around any of the poles now, and the shadows held figures he couldn’t make out.
“I’m here with my wife and another couple we know. Over there.” He pointed to a sofa on the far side of the room. Martin had to focus for a moment before he saw two ladies and a man laughing. They were all fully clothed, they could have been in any bar in town.
“You’re welcome to join us if you want. That’s Ted and Rosie, they’re lovely. We met them here a while back. Ted’s got a print shop, doing quite well for himself, and Rosie’s got a lovely set of jugs.” He sipped at his drink and checked Martin’s left hand. “Not married, eh? Not found the one yet? Well you know, you never know when you’re going to meet her, the trick is knowing that she’s the one. I knew the second I saw Ellie. She got onto the ski lift and I knew she was the one for me. She even had her goggles down, I still knew. We hardly said a word. All she said was how amazing it was to be above the trees and what a beautiful view it was, and I knew. Explain that. Now I own a company manufacturing ski lifts. Explain that.”
Martin thought of Lucy. She’d laugh at him for being in a place like this. She’d want to hear the details. She’d tease him for being perverted, but say she liked it, really.
“If you ever fancy skiing then I can recommend some real quality resorts. Here you go. You never know. Stranger things have happened.” Ashley Morris offered Martin his card. Martin took the card and when Ashley invited him again to join the table, he declined, saying thanks but he should track down his friends.
“Well, mate, we’ll be around. Lovely to meet you, really lovely to meet you,” said Ashley and walked back to the couch where his wife was now kissing Ted who was doing well for himself in printing. Martin took out his mobile phone to check if Alison had texted or called. It was 00:46. There was a message waiting.
Good night x.
The barman was standing behind him.
“You can’t use your phone here. You have to turn it off. No calls or pictures.”
Martin held down the Off button and the message disappeared. The moaning from the burrowing back on the sofa near him was getting louder. A snorting and gasping had started, too. Martin put his phone in his pocket, took his drink from the bar, and walked through the thick musty curtains. As he passed the windowed room in the black hallway he saw the woman still whipping the pale lumpy red-striped skin of the faceless man, him still tied in the same position, her hand raised above her head exactly as she was when he first saw her, the skinny balding man still hunched over his jerking fist. The bodies had moved in the other room. There were more in there now; legs straddled the office chairs, flesh was flattened against the tables, the bright light sinking into the pale skin, exposing sinews and veins and rolls of fat. In the last room two women in their sixties were kissing, mouths open and tongues waggling, both with lacy knickers and breasts which hung loosely. Around them, three men were tearing open condom wrappers and squeezing and tugging at their flaccid penises. Martin opened the next set of curtains.
In the room with the bamboo chairs, the two big guys were standing and kissing, grabbing at each others’ crotches roughly with their pants around their thighs, and the girl who had checked Ozzy out was crouched behind one of them with a finger wedged between his cheeks and the other hand in her pants. There were two other women at the table, and as Martin passed he saw their eyes look up then slide right off him. On the flat TV screens the woman was still rubbing oil and gesturing, on a loop.
Suck me, Terry,
said one of the guys to the other, and Martin walked through the next door to a stairwell. He went up.
On the next floor was a series of closed doors behind which Martin could hear thumping and moaning, clattering and random shouts and groans. And then on his right was an open doorway. He walked through.