Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (10 page)

"Please," he keeps saying, spilling the word into Lindsay's mouth like icing on his kisses, "please, oh please, please."

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S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

"What? What do you want?"

"Everything. You." He flaps an arm out to the side, weakly searching for the lube and then struggling to flick the cap up because his hands are shaking so much. Lindsay takes the bottle and does it for him, wets his hand and slides the long middle finger inside. It's for sensation rather than practicality, for once, and he's not sure he's doing it right until Valentine makes a little noise like a mewling sob and puts his hot fingers around Lindsay's wrist, to hold him there and urge him on. He gets up to three, and Lindsay wants so badly to go four, five, ram his whole hand in there and break the little bastard open, but not tonight, not tonight.

"Are you leaving now?" Lindsay asks hopefully, between his drunken kisses. He's kissing him like he sucked him, slow and deep and wet and insinuating things he doesn't mean.

But: "Never," Valentine says, kissing back with his arms wrapped round Lindsay's body like bony anacondas, "never never never." He's so happy he's glowing, he's almost on fire. Lindsay's furious with himself. In seconds he's got the kid thrown onto his front, his hands bound to the bars on the headboard with a couple of Lindsay's ties. He fucks the kid roughly until he's in tears, he bites his shoulder and his fingers stab bruises into his hips and he scrapes a harsh red line down his spine with the barrel of his gun and imagines how it'd feel to shoot him in the small of the back, and he feels slightly better.

***

The alarm buzzes him awake at seven in the morning, and Valentine's still asleep like a corpse. Lindsay leaves the bathroom door open when he showers, and he still won't wake up. He flings the curtains open and gets no response. He sticks a Charlie Parker CD in the stereo and turns it up as loud as he dares so he can hear it downstairs while he's making a cup of coffee; when he returns Valentine's
still
asleep, although he appears to have come out of his coma for a few seconds at least, to drag a rumpled pillow over his head.

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C H A P T E R 7

Lindsay sits on the bed to pull his socks on (still no sign of life) and when he's done that he leans over and gently removes Valentine's slack grip on the pillow so he can lift the corner and get his lips right next to his ear. "I love you," he whispers, and waits, and waits, and then laughs. Still nothing. He's definitely asleep, then – which is good, or he'd never hear the end of it,
never
be able to take the lie back. "You lazy fucking sod, wake up," he says more loudly, punctuating the 'up' with a sharp smack on the kid's bare backside that finally gets a muffled groan and a half-hearted bit of kicking as Valentine tries to disentangle the covers from round his feet.

"Gerroff. Mm. Mornin. Whassatime?"

"In English?"

"Fuck off. Give me coffee."

Lindsay lets him have the rest of his coffee and he drinks it even though it's black and unsweetened and no longer really hot enough. It's become a sort of ritual, Lindsay realises with a bit of a stomach-lurch, any time he has to get up early, this sharing-coffee thing. He makes a mental note to pour
two
cups next time, it's all getting far too disgusting and cutesy.

He finishes getting ready. In the mirror, he can see the kid inspecting the raw red mark on his left wrist where the tie was knotted too tightly and slipping in his sweat. Maybe
not
so cutesy.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Stupid question, really. Getting bruised just makes him act all smug and delighted, like they're Scout badges. "You could've woken me up
before
you got dressed, where's the fun in watching you put your tie on? ...Oh,"

he adds, lamely, when Lindsay crosses the room and unwinds one of the ties from the headboard to re-knot around his neck. "Right. It's a bit creased."

"Doesn't matter, you can't see it that much." He pulls a tank top and jacket on to cover the worst of it. "How's that?"

"Fine," he says, then he suddenly sits up in bed, all lit up with an

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apparent brainwave. "Here, you should give me a job in your company. Bet I could sell a house in a
second
. I could sell
anything
, I'm a charmer. Or, y'know, if you want, I could sit under your desk and suck you off through meetings and boring phone calls. Either one."

Lindsay imagines what it'd be like having the kid there, all too-tight t-shirts and stupid patchy hair and forgetting other people can't hear the music when he's singing along to something obnoxious on his Walkman, and promptly cracks up laughing. "You must be joking. I'll be bankrupt in an hour."

"So? We'll just nick it back. Are we Bonnie and Clyde or not?"

"We're not."

"I'm
bored
," Valentine says, all quiet and petulant. He's actually pouting. Lindsay clatters around the room looking for his glasses to hide how amused he is.

"How can I give you a job?" he says, checking the drawer on his side of the bed. "You're meant to be missing, what's everyone gonna say when you turn up in a bloody estate agent's in Llandudno?"

"I can do a disguise! I'll get a new name. I look different, anyway, my eyes are different, and my hair, and I'm not so fat as I was."

"Are you kidding? I doubt you can even
spell
fat, never mind retain it."

"Eff ey tee, smartarse, and eff you. Whatever, I'm
definitely
skinnier than I was."

"Yeah. That's the Lindsay Brown diet, that is. Lots of protein and plenty of exercise, works a treat."

"You're disgusting sometimes, you know that?"

"Sometimes. Have you seen my glasses? Oh, you shit." He snatches them off Valentine's face and makes his escape. Halfway down the staircase he does an about-turn and races back up to give Valentine a kiss goodbye, only because he knows he'll just go on and on about it for days if he doesn't.

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C H A P T E R 7

That's a fairly normal morning.

***

"There's a Mr. Parker on the phone for you. Says you're expecting him."

It takes a moment for the name to click, then Lindsay rolls his eyes and takes the call in his office. "Hello, Bonnie."

"Hey. I'm bored."

"And I'm busy. Fuck off, please."

"I'm getting cabin fever in here."

"Read a book. Watch a film."

"What, the entire collected works of Gogol and Lars Von Trier?

Riveting. No thanks. Ain't you got nothing good?"

"I'll stop off at Blockbuster on the way back. What do you want?"

"High School Musical 2."

"...No."

"You're such a Scrooge. Okay, then get me that one about that man who does that thing."

"No."

"I'm
bored
, though. How come you've got to go to work, anyway? We're loaded."

"Don't be a brat. It's just to keep an eye on things, I only come once a week."

"You fucking don't."

"Wha- oh. I'm hanging up now." Click.

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Later:

"Marcus Bolan for you."

"Thanks. ...Yeah, hi. Your names are getting worse. Is this important?"

"What are you wearing?"

"You
know
what I'm wearing."

"Make something up."

"Pink tutu."

"Oh, yeah, now I'm hard. You're crap at this."

"I'm busy."

"Ain't you gonna ask me what
I'm
wearing?"

"No."

"So, I was thinking. You should talk to me in Welsh."

"What? I can't speak
Welsh
, you berk, I'm from Keighley."

"Ain't you picked nothing up from living here?"

"Only hello and goodbye and swears and road signs and stuff."

"Talk dirty to me in Welsh road signs, then."

"Why?"

"It's like German, innit?
Everything
sounds like filth in Welsh and German, don't matter what you're actually saying. Come on."

"Um. Gyrrwch yn ofalus."

"What's that mean?"

"Please drive carefully."

"Yeah, it's not really working, is it? Do another one."

"Dw i'n dy garu di, cariad."

"What's that- oh fuck, hang on, I've gotta go, I'll phone you back."

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C H A P T E R 7

"Please don't," Lindsay says, but the line's already dead.

Later:

"Mr. Newman for you, from HSBC."

"Thanks. Hi, Numan. You're funny."

"I'm sorry, sir, is this an inconvenient time?"

Shit. "Sorry, no, I thought you were a different Mr. Numan." Shit.

Later:

"I've got Mick Richards on the phone, shall I put him through?"

"Can you take a message?"

"He says it's urgent."

"Ugh. Okay, put him through. Hello?"

"I'm bored."

"You shit, you just got me in trouble with the bloke from HSBC."

Valentine's laughing a bit. "How'd I manage that?"

"His name's Newman like Paul, I thought he was you mucking around."

"Did you tell him what you were wearing in graphic, humiliating detail?"

"No. What do you want? Why did you hang up on me before?"

"I was trying to cook something, it was all getting a bit sixteen-sixty-six."

"You burn my house down and I
will
shoot off your balls, is that clear?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"And I mean it, don't phone me again. I'm busy."

"What are you doing?"

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"Finding you a flat."

"Ha ha ha. But what if, right, when you come home, what if I ain't wearing nothing but Nutella?"

"Your double negatives make me want to kill you."

"But what if?"

"I'll throw you in the shower and make you wash it off, then I'll fuck you, and
then
I'll kick you out."

"Don't you like Nutella?"

"I
hate
Nutella."

"You're weird. Peanut butter, then. Honey. Marshmallow fluff. Jam.

Lamb vindaloo?"

"I can work with that one."

"Might sting a bit."

"That's your problem, if you're gonna stick it all up yourself and hope it gets me going."

"Will it?"

"Maybe you should just, you know, wear
clothes
."

"I'll wear a pink tutu, if you want."

"No thanks. Bye."

That's a pretty normal day.

It is
not
going to be a normal evening.

***

He answers the phone as he's turning the car up the drive, and he doesn't bother to look at the screen because he already knows who it is.

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C H A P T E R 7

He's wrong.

"Fuck off. Oh, hi, Mum." Shit. "Sorry. Did you... what? No, I was out.

Working, where d'you think? What... oh. You met him. Yeah. Yeah... what? No.

He said
what
? No! Jesus. What do
you
think? No. He's just pissing around.

Sorry. He's... no, hang on a minute. No.
No
! He works for me, he just needed a place for a couple of weeks. Yeah.
Yes
, Mum. I'm trying to help him find a place now. No. No. Come off it. No. Well, then he was just kidding, then, wasn't he?

Mum. Mum. Hello? Shut up a minute. Mother. What? Christ. Do I
look
gay?

Yeah, I know
he
clearly is. Do I look like him? No. Oh, come on. I don't care what he said. He's got a lousy sense of humour, then. No. Mum.
Mum
. No, he's
not
my fucking boyfriend, am I thirteen years old? Sorry. No. Bye. I don't care, I'm not. I'm going. Bye."

He drops his phone, getting out the car, and swears a blue streak at the top of his voice, then he drops his keys and repeats it all over again. There aren't any neighbours to hear it and there's a kind of delirious freedom in that; he trembles and curses and spits and throws his phone onto the lawn in a temper, and he really really needs to kick something, ideally Valentine's face, but the only thing near enough is his stupid West Ham football, so that sails over the edge of the cliff instead and buys the little bastard some time.

He slams the kitchen door open, slams it closed, slams his case down on the floor so hard one of the clasps comes loose.

"Bad day?" Valentine says, mildly, handing him a steaming cup of tea.

He goes back to lean against the counter, just watching Lindsay, and there's something in his expression that indicates he's about to say something aggravating, like he sometimes does when they argue and he's hoping to wind Lindsay up enough to throw a punch, something smug and frustrating like,

"Calm down, little man." Lindsay decides if he gets "little man" turned back at him one more time he's going to break Valentine's nose, and that's only for starters. Instead Valentine blows on his own cup and takes a careful sip, looking at him all the time, then says, "Temper, temper."

Maybe he intends for the smile in the sound to make it less infuriating

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but it doesn't work, it's probably the worst thing he could have done. Lindsay hurls his mug down but it doesn't even have the decency to shatter, it just bounces off the lino and floods the crooked bit in the kitchen floor with tea, which
really
makes Valentine laugh, so Lindsay sweeps last night's drip-dried dinner plates off the draining board in a clatter of crockery. He's momentarily pacified when some of these
do
break. But:

"Are you five years old?" Valentine's saying, all arched eyebrows and calculated smirking, and then he's saying nothing at all because Lindsay's raged across the kitchen at him, snatched away his mug and covered them both in scalding tea, and has him by the throat up against the wall. The buzzing burn in his fingers is screaming at him, but he ignores it.

"Care to tell me what you're playing at?" he says. He's surprised his voice sounds so even, considering the inside of his head feels like trying to navigate a fairground funhouse when you're drunk and high and really really fucked off. Valentine doesn't answer, he
can't
answer, he just makes a sort of gurgly choking noise, so Lindsay relaxes his grip enough to let him breathe but not wriggle free.