Act of Exposure (28 page)

'No,' he shook
his head as he eased her towards the door. 'I'm not, and at this
moment in time, I don't really want to inform them that I'm giving
in my notice. My absence will be enough to declare my
intention.'

The door was
left open. Archie's feet were moving as quickly as his flitting
eyes. 'Come on! Come on!'

Abby stopped
dead in her tracks. 'I can't. Not yet.' She grabbed Archie's arm.
'If you're not the owner, Archie, then you're not the
blackmailer.'

'Blackmailer? Of course not. Not really. I only manage the
place. Someone comes in and attends to the tape room. I have
nothing to do with that side of the business at all.' He looked
slightly offended.
Cute
, she thought.

'So who is the
owner?'

He stared at
her. A fine film of sweat erupted all over his face. He shook his
head very vigorously. 'I can't tell you that. You see, I lied about
the man who tried to get into your room. I know who he is. Know how
dangerous he is.' Archie might be sweating, but his face was
white.

Abby reached
out, held his arm, and let her fingers dig through the expensive
material and into his meagre flesh. 'Where is the tape room?'

For a moment,
she was afraid he would not answer. His eyes moved first. He jerked
his head in the same direction as his eyes were looking. 'There,'
he said hoarsely. 'Third room on the left.'

'Is there a
key?'

He hesitated,
stared at her as though he was considering his reply in the
greatest detail. Finally, he reached into his pocket and with a
very shaky hand, passed her a thick, shiny key. 'I'm not supposed
to have a copy. The man who takes care of the room lost it one day.
I took advantage of the situation - just in case.' Suddenly, his
bottom lip began to tremble. 'No one knows I have a copy. My life
would be worth nothing if it were found out. The man who looks
after the tapes is the same one who kills.' He bit his bottom lip.
His upper one trembled.

She didn't
have time to sympathize. Dangerous as it might be she had to probe
further. 'Well, I won't be telling anyone, Archie.' Brushing past
him, she headed straight for the door of the indicated room.
Perhaps in there she could learn a lot of what was going on.
Perhaps in there was the face of the man behind the Swan and
Swallow investment scam. In just a moment she might know enough to
clear Stephen's name and to get Rheingold released from jail.

Archie turned
to go, then thought better of it. 'Will you be all right, Carmel
love?'

Now it was her
turn to pause. This man's intervention with Bennet was much
appreciated. She nodded. 'Yes, Archie. I'm fine. I'm grateful for
you saving me from Paul the Perv. Thanks a lot.'

He looked
sheepish. She sensed he had something more to say. 'Be careful,
Carmel, darling. I don't know whether you know it, but you're being
watched. I know his name, but I refuse to go into too much detail.
We've already seen what he did to one of my best boys. If I could
I'd kill him myself. But I'm not that brave, and anyway, he's in
the pay of the owner and he's very dangerous.'

Abby felt
suddenly cold. Key in hand, she hesitated before the door Archie
had indicated. 'Did he also kill Carl Candel?'

Archie
shrugged. 'I don't know for sure. It's more than likely considering
the circumstances.'

'Circumstances?' Abby frowned.

'Yes. The
circumstances of Candel's death. The killer's a bit of a history
buff. Likes to update old practices. Wasn't there a king that was
killed by having a red hot poker shoved up his Manchester?'

Even without
the hint of rhyming slang, Abby would still have known what he was
referring to. She'd found the body, after all.

'Do you know
what he looks like?'

He nodded.
'Oh, yes. I know that all right. As I told you, he's the man who
used to look after that room. He's got yellow eyes, and I hate
him.'

She remembered
the eyes in the audience, remembered Stephen had said he thought he
was being followed. She had accepted that as a natural occurrence
in view of the crime with which he had been charged and the media's
obsession with such things. But it hadn't occurred to her that she
was being followed too. If the man who had tried the handle to her
bathroom hadn't mentioned her real name, she would have assumed he
was only a stage door Johnnie - a nut, but still only a stage door
Johnnie. According to what Archie had just said, he was anything
but, just like Paul Bennet was more than a policeman. Were they all
working for the "owner"? And who was the "owner"?

Archie waved
and was gone. She stared after him for barely a moment, then turned
and pushed the key into the lock.

Blue and grey
shadows fell across surveillance screens and two computer
terminals. Along one wall were a series of shelves containing tape
after tape.

'Good grief!'
She said it softly, then closing the door behind her, went straight
to the shelves and ran her finger across the plastic spines of the
tapes.

Each was
numbered. Each was labelled. Somewhere, she decided, there had to
be a book which would list the numbers. Against each number she
would hope to see a name, perhaps even a one-word description of
what they were up to on the tape.

After perusing
the tapes and finding nothing that she could recognize as having
any bearing on Stephen's problems, she turned her attention to the
desks on which the computers sat. She rifled through the first
desk, but when she came to the other one, she discovered that the
main drawer was firmly locked. It had to be locked for a
reason.

'Damn!' She
said the word only softly, and yet it still seemed loud as it
echoed off the cold grey walls, the plastic and glass screens, and
the no-nonsense metal desks.

She needed a
tool to open it, and there was nothing in this room that looked
usable. Kicking off her high-heeled shoes, she raced on bare feet
back along the corridor to the room where Paul Bennet still lay on
the floor. She heard him groan, and hoped he wouldn't be coming
round just yet, but to ensure he didn't, she retrieved the black
rod she used for her act and gave him another clout.

The black rod
did the trick, and Bennet slumped into silence once more, but it
would be of no help in opening the locked drawer.

Quickly, she
scanned the room. At the end of the spit was a locking pin secured
by a thin chain. A bolt and a wing nut held it onto the main frame.
In a matter of minutes she had wrenched it free.

She was about
to leave the room when she heard Bennet groan again. Obviously the
force of her blow was not as great as Archie's had been. So that
she could continue what she was doing in peace, he had to be
restrained. A wicked smile spread over her features.

With all the
strength she possessed, she dragged Bennet to the spit on which he
had been so keen to tie her. It had a ratchet affair at each end so
it could be lowered right to the floor. Once that was done, it
wasn't too hard to heave Bennet into the metal cradle. Before
closing the upper lid over him, she undid his zipper and pulled his
trousers down to his knees. Once the grid of metal bars was over
him, she rewound the ratchets so he was raised to the level of her
waist.

His penis lay
crumpled against his pubic hair. If she'd wanted to, she could have
shaved it all off, smeared him with something nasty, or painted
weird patterns along his shaft, but she didn't have the time.
Instead, she turned him over so that his penis hung down through
the bars. In the other part of the spit cradle, a square had been
cut in the bars so that his bare bottom stuck through, white,
flaccid and extremely vulnerable.

She smiled
triumphantly. His purpose had been to have her bottom poking
through that hole. Once at his mercy, he would have crisscrossed
her flesh with a series of pink stripes. But first, he would have
humiliated her by shoving first one implement up her backside after
another. He would then have taken photographs - just as he had
before. Well, now it was his turn.

One of the
whips that lined the wall had a fairly thick handle. Feeling
revulsion, but also the thrill of revenge, she eyed his ugly
behind, then, after parting one cheek from another, she pushed the
handle of the whip into his anus - just as she had done to
Hardiman.

As his
buttocks tightened, he groaned, but did not regain
consciousness.

She clapped
her hands together as she surveyed her handiwork. Ideally, she
would have liked to have photographed him and sent the snap to his
superior officers, but there wasn't time. Perhaps there was another
way, she thought, as she eyed the surveillance camera that blinked
its red light in the corner of the room.

She went back
along the corridor to the grey room with its monitors and recording
equipment. First, she forced open the drawer and found what she
wanted, a small notebook. Then, she fathomed out how to record what
the surveillance monitors were seeing.

Whirr went the
tape, then click went the eject switch once she'd taped what she
wanted.

She retrieved
her shoes, left the room and went down the stairs. The main bar was
in semi-darkness and empty. Two of Archie's boys had gone to
dispose of the body in the carpet. Archie himself had flown the
coop, and only a barman was still there. He was hanging onto the
bar he usually tended, a half tumbler full of spirit clenched in
one hand. Before him was a half-drunk bottle. He was talking to
himself and didn't notice her.

She followed
her normal procedure. At the small red terrace house, she went in
as Carmel and just as dawn was breaking, came out as a young
man.

Before leaving
the house, she had phoned Stephen and told him what she had. She
also told him that, in her opinion, whoever owned the club had not
only recognized him on that first night he had been dressed as a
woman, but had orchestrated the supposed act of lewd behaviour. The
owner, whoever he might be, was also not prejudiced against murder.
'I'll be with you right away,' she told him.

'Be careful,'
he replied.

Because of the
events she had so far experienced, she was more cautious than usual
as she left the lane at the back of the house.

With a quick
glance, she saw the black car, and at the sight of it, slunk back
into the scrubby damp bushes that poked out through cracks in the
wall. Through the shifting leaves of the evergreen, she studied the
car and attempted to ascertain who the driver was. The car's
windows were tinted. The task of seeing the features of the driver
was hopeless.

Remembering
what Stephen had said about a car having driven away on the fateful
night of his arrest, she dropped her gaze to the number plate.
There was a "G" and there was an "I". It was definitely a
personalized job. It had to be the car used that night.

Now it was no
longer necessary to see the features of the man who was driving.
She knew instinctively that he would have yellow eyes. Danger
threatened. She had to get to Stephen, yet she knew that this man
was waiting for her. Even now he was getting out of his car. Would
he come her way, or would he go around to the front door? Either
way, she knew if he saw her she was dead. Regardless of her
disguise, he would know it was her.

Just when she
thought she would have to make a run for it, a taxi came by.
Immediately, she was out from cover, waving her arms and shouting
like fury.

The driver
stopped. 'Okay, Okay. I saw ya', mate. Where d'ya wanna go?'

She gave him
Stephen's address. 'Don't spare the horses. There's an extra tenner
in it for you if you can lose that car behind us.'

The driver was immediately all wide-eyed enthusiasm. 'Phew!
I've never been asked that before.
Hill
Street Blues
here I come!'

Deep brown
eyes glanced quickly into the rear-view mirror in time for the
driver to see Charwallah racing back to his car. 'I clock the guy,'
he cried excitedly.

Breathless,
Abby glanced back too. 'Good. Now lose him!'

'You bet!'

The driver,
whose career in driving had not always been strictly legal and had
always been somewhat reckless, pushed the pedal to the floor. The
car lurched as they took the bends, whizzed down the small streets
between rows of parked cars, skidded round tight corners, and
pelted out onto the North Circular.

Cars gave way
and blew fiercely on their horns as the taxi driver cut them up,
swerved from one lane to the other in order to get an advantage and
put a big gap between them and their pursuer.

'What you
done, mate?' he asked, his eyes and voice bright with
excitement.

'Nothing,' she
replied, her fingers gripping her seat as the driver threw the car
from one traffic lane to another. 'It's what that guy in the big
black car wants to do to me that's the problem.'

'Oh really?
What do he wanna do to you then, mate?'

'Kill me. He
wants to kill me.'

She said it in
an even voice, and instantly knew that it was true.

Lance Vector
had been watching Abigail Corrigan's place all night. Nothing had
happened and he was feeling gloomy about it.

For most of
the night, he had gazed transfixed up at her window, had dozed
occasionally. When dozing, he imagined her, her breasts spilling
out of a bra that was obviously two sizes too small. He liked to
picture her like that, liked to think that her flesh would be
bursting against its forced constraint. It excited him and made him
come in his hand all the more quickly.

Sighing, he
tucked his member back inside his trousers and wiped away the
stickiness from his right hand. Another tissue was tossed out of
his open window. His crisp, white handkerchief that his mother
spent so much time washing and ironing was still in his breast
pocket. She never commented that it appeared hardly used each time
he put it in the wash. He also ensured that he bought his own box
of tissues. That way he didn't get asked awkward questions.