Nirvana Bites (22 page)

I went back into Robin's. He was wrestling with the hose, jamming it on to the tap, his arms and legs rigid as he battled with the force. Water was spurting out from round the neck of the hose, soaking Robin and most of the kitchen.

‘It's OK,' I said, reaching over and turning off the tap. ‘It's over.'

‘What the fuck's going on?' he gasped, grabbing a filthy tea towel and dabbing the laptop as more water poured from him, forming a puddle on the floor.

‘Petrol-soaked rag through my letterbox, I reckon,' I replied.

‘Shit, Jen,' he breathed, pausing in his ministrations to look up at me. ‘They know who we are and where we are. We're way behind them.'

‘Don't you think I know that?' I snapped. ‘I'm working on it, OK?'

The damage wasn't too bad. The inside of the door was charred. The paint on the walls of the hallway was blistered. Otherwise there had been little to burn apart from the rag they had used and the coconut-matting doormat. The smell was foul, but I didn't think it would have had the chance to penetrate the inner doors to the flats.

‘They must have done this while we were sitting in Robin's kitchen,' I grimaced, shivering at the thought.

‘Fag end, was it, Judy love?' a voice asked. I turned to see Mrs Vance standing in her doorway, watching us. She'd packed her geriatric frame into a yellow ra-ra skirt and red leotard, through which her breasts drooped like spaniel's ears. A tiara sparkled in her orange hair.

‘Done that myself before. Nearly set fire to me bed more than once, ain't I, Derek?' she called over her shoulder into the shop. Derek's moonlike face appeared behind her and peered at me. ‘That's why I won't let him smoke,' she added in a conspiratorial whisper, as though this made perfect sense.

Mrs V had just bustled back into the shop when I heard the bell on its door ping again. Derek appeared at the end of my path, with Tyson straining at the end of his leash.

‘Weren't no fag though, was it?' he mumbled, shifting his feet and avoiding my eyes. ‘It was them.'

‘Who, Derek?' I breathed.

There was a long pause. Derek looked off up the road. Tyson cocked a leg against my gatepost and pissed a river.

‘I see things,' Derek said. Tyson tugged at the leash and Derek allowed himself to be propelled away before I could even frame the question.

I went inside, but I didn't stay long. I scribbled a note to Mags to explain the char-grilled nature of our hallway and pinned it to the door of her flat. Then I had a quick slash, picked up the keys to Stan's penthouse and cycled off towards Docklands.

I planned to ransack Stan's flat. I was assuming that wherever he'd disappeared to, it wouldn't be his own home. There would have to be something somewhere that would give me the clue we needed. If I had to tear his place apart brick by brick, I would find it.

Unfortunately, someone else had the same plan. Even more unfortunately, they had decided to carry out their plan at the same time as me.

I didn't want to be seen, but I needn't have worried. The area had its usual deserted-film-set feel to it. I chained my bike to an ornamental lamppost outside Stan's block and used the key to open the smoked-glass-and-chrome door. The lift purred to the top floor. There were two keys to Stan's door. I tried the Chubb first, but it wouldn't turn. Strange… Maybe Stan had forgotten to double-lock the door when he had last left. Or maybe…I eased the Yale into the lock. It turned. I inched the door open and peered inside. Through the gap I could see the inside of Stan's flat in the kind of state I expected it to be in half an hour
after
I arrived. Books, CDs, videos and magazines were strewn across the floor. Drawers were open, their contents scattered. I slipped inside, leaving the door ajar. From the direction of Stan's bedroom I could hear the sounds of someone giving the same treatment to his possessions in there.

I know. I know. I should have backed off. I could have hung around outside, waited for whoever it was to come out, maybe tried to follow them. But it wasn't enough. I'd come for something more concrete than just checking the face of a bad guy. The time had come for direct action. I was tired of being the victim.

I tiptoed across the thick carpet to Stan's bedroom door. I velcroed myself to the wall and peeped round the corner. The intruder had his back to me as he rummaged through drawers, sending the contents flying. He was medium height with short spiky blond hair. He had the physique of a body builder, bulging biceps straining at his white T-shirt. Whatever he was looking for, he obviously hadn't found it yet.

He opened the fitted wardrobe and pulled out some clothes. He paused for a moment, then plunged his hand into the furthest recesses and pulled out a zipped bag on a hanger. He opened the zip and pulled out a full-length black leather crotchless bodysuit, with a mask and hood attached. I recognised it as the outfit I'd always seen Stan wear on the Scene. He must have recognised it too. He held it up and laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. Holding the suit taut by the hood and shoulder, he tilted his head backwards and sank his teeth into the suit at the point where the neck would have been. He wrenched and tore at it, growling like a pitbull. Up to that point he'd seemed methodical and efficient. Now he seemed maniacal and psychotic.

I still could have got out of there. He would never even have known I'd been there. I didn't leave for one of the following reasons: I still didn't have anything concrete; I was so terrified my legs wouldn't function. Take your pick.

Hannibal Lecter tossed the bodysuit aside. Directly opposite the door, right next to the kingsize bed, was a swivel mirror in a pine frame with a drawer underneath. He crouched and tugged the drawer open. I watched him reach inside and pull out a large brown envelope. I stared at his reflection in the mirror as he opened the envelope, looked inside and gave a slow smile of triumph. His face was all bones and planes and shadows, with deep-set, predatory eyes and a thin mouth.

Sometimes evil people look like butter wouldn't melt. I've seen photos of serial killers who looked cute and wholesome. Just because someone is capable of extreme cruelty, you can't assume it's going to be obvious just by looking at them. This guy was an exception. You only had to look at him to know that here was a man capable of unspeakable acts of viciousness.

He raised his ice-chip eyes to look at his reflection. In that instant, I realised my own reflection was also there in the mirror. He realised at the exact same moment. Our mirror eyes locked.

I didn't know which of us moved first. He wheeled around as I hared across the room back to the open front door. But he was faster than I was. I screamed as he grabbed me from behind. A beefy arm locked round my neck, choking me, as he began dragging me backwards. I flailed wildly, but he had me off-balance. I tried clawing his arm away from my throat but I had no chance. I swept my right arm back and managed to grab his crotch. I sank my fingers into the denim of his jeans and gripped like a vice. He gave a strangled yell and released my neck, but only so he could punch me on the side of my head. White lights exploded as I dropped to the floor.

I thought I'd had my chips for sure this time. I looked up directly into his bulging crotch as he stood astride me, hands on hips. Before I had so much as a chance to whimper, there was a tumultuous crash. A beast the size of a rampaging rhino leapt into the room, cannoned into Muscles and sent him flying backwards. I raised myself on one arm and stared in disbelief. It wasn't a rhino. It was a rottweiler. And not just any old rottweiler. Tyson was in the act of saving my life for the second time.

Muscles was no pushover though. He was on his back with Tyson slobbering over him. His arms strained to hold Tyson's massive jaws at bay. Then he raised his legs into Tyson's belly and gave a mighty heave. Fourteen stone of rottweiler sailed through the air and slammed against the opposite wall. Muscles scrambled to his feet and shot out of the door. Tyson heaved himself up and would have charged after him, but the door slammed closed before he got to it. The poor brute crashed against the wood head-first and sat back down on his haunches, dazed. I knew how he felt.

‘No, Ty,' a familiar voice admonished. ‘'Snot your manor. You'd get lost.' The enormous animal whimpered and flopped down on to the floor at his owner's feet.

My right eye was beginning to close. From the other I saw another figure approach. In all the confusion I hadn't seen him until now.

‘Ali,' I croaked. ‘How the fuck…?'

‘Followed you in the transit.'

I hauled myself into a sitting position, waiting for the room-tilt to correct itself.

‘But how…?' I indicated Derek and Tyson with a nod, and then wished I hadn't as hot stabs of pain shot through my skull.

‘Here you go, Derek,' Ali said. He pulled out a packet of fags from the pocket of his denim jacket.

Derek took them, opened the packet and extracted three fags. He put one behind each ear and lit the third.

‘We wanna go home now,' he said.

My life for a packet of cut-price fags. I know it seems churlish, but there was a little part of me that felt cheapened by the exchange.

Ali helped me to my feet. There was a deep throbbing in the side of my head. I fought the urge to be sick.

‘Wait,' I groaned as he began to lead me to the door. I staggered back into the bedroom. The brown envelope lay on the bed where Muscles had thrown it when he'd spotted me in the mirror. I lurched over and picked it up without looking inside.

Once we were on the road, Derek and Tyson filling the back of the van with smoke and dog, I opened the envelope. Inside there were twenty-odd Polaroid photos. Fairly standard hard-core S&M stuff. Not the kind of pics you took down Boots to be developed.

There were three characters.

There was a woman, naked apart from thick leather straps securing her to an upright metal frame. The straps cut into her flesh. The spread-eagled position left her immobilised and vulnerable. Oh – and she had a dick. Her long blond hair obscured her face in a lot of the shots, but she was instantly recognisable. It was Della.

There was a man, hooded and masked in a leather bodysuit. There was no mistaking the staples in the only flesh visible. Stan was doubled over a bench, his wrists and ankles cuffed to the ends, his legs splayed wide open.

In all of the photos, the third character was torturing the other two, sometimes with whips or burning candle wax. In some of the photos he'd placed electrodes on their balls or nipples. The image of Della's face contorting with pain filled me with horror. Yet this was in all likelihood consensual, including the ones where the third guy was buggering Stan as he hung over the bench, his arse in the air.

The third player in this macabre tableau was wearing black leather trousers with straps over his shoulders, studded with vicious-looking metal spikes. An enormous scarlet dildo – at least I hope it was a dildo – thrust out from his pelvis. His body rippled with sculpted sinews and glistened with oil and sweat. He had short spiky blond hair. Muscles.

If he'd been looking for these photos now, it could mean only one thing. With Della dead, they could be considered evidence. It was the search, even more than the pictures themselves, that implicated him in her murder.

I stuffed the photos back in their envelope and stared at the windscreen, my heart thudding. I turned to Ali.

‘Did you see?' I asked.

He nodded. ‘So who took them?'

I was amazed the question hadn't occurred to me until then. Too taken up by the subject matter, I suppose. Too much to think about. But I could at least try to identify the one person whose face we could see but whose name we didn't know.

‘Go through the Blackwall Tunnel,' I said. ‘I want to go back via New Cross.'

Ali hadn't only borrowed our neighbours – both human and canine – he'd also had the additional presence of mind to borrow Nick's mobile. It was in the glove compartment. What a guy! The phone was answered on the third ring.

‘Cathy,' I gasped, relieved to be speaking to a person, not a machine. ‘It's Jen. I need to see you. Urgently. I could be there in half an hour. Is that OK? Please, please say it'll be OK.'

‘Honey,' Cathy soothed. ‘Calm down. Are you all right?'

‘Yeah. Well, no. I mean – Cathy, please can I just come round?'

‘Of course you can, Jen. I've got a client in an hour, but I could put him off…'

‘No, no. There's no need for that. It'll only take two minutes. Thank you, Cathy.'

I left the others in the van and ran up the concrete steps of Cathy's block, adrenalin enabling me to ignore the waves of pain ricocheting round my skull.

Cathy opened the door wearing a red satin robe, underneath which I knew would be her working gear.

‘Jenny,' she gasped. ‘Your face! Sweetheart, what bastard did that to you?' Interesting that she assumed it was a bastard, not a door.

‘This bastard,' I replied, handing her the photos. ‘Do you know him, Cathy?'

Cathy flicked through the Polaroids with a professional eye, unfazed by the content.

‘Gunther,' she said. ‘Gunther did that to you? He's an evil piece of shit, Jenny. What are you doing hanging round with a guy like him? He's dangerous.'

‘Don't I know it. Tell me about him, Cathy. Is he German? Swiss? Belgian?'

Cathy handed me back the photos and leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her ample breasts.

‘You're getting confused with the Muscles from Brussels, Jen. Gunther's from the north-east. He's the Muscles from Scunthorpe. His dad was a German prisoner of war. His mum was one of those women who got tarred and feathered for fraternising with the enemy. He's a nutter, Jen. You stay away from him.'

‘I would if I could, Cathy. Believe me. But right now I don't have that choice.'