Suzie and the Monsters (6 page)

‘It’s possible. Did I scratch her too? My orgasms can be pretty intense.’

His cheeks flush bright red this time. ‘Er, no, she claims you bit her afterwards, but she also claims that you drugged her somehow, and her husband too.’

I’m silent for a few seconds, my face an angry frown. ‘That’s the last time I let someone talk me into a threesome.’ Sighing, I add, ‘I don’t know, maybe they were high on something. Louise’s husband flaked out, and she was pretty wild, wanted all her neighbours to see us making out.’

‘Did they?’

I shrug. ‘Maybe.’

He studies his notes for a minute, but I don’t sense any suspicion from him, just bewilderment. ‘How old are you really?’

‘Twenty two.’

He shakes his head, although he clearly didn’t expect any other answer. ‘You’ll need to come down to the station to make a statement.’

‘First thing tomorrow.’

He nods. ‘Thank you for your time, Miss Kew.’

I give him a friendly smile and close the door.

*

It’s raining. Has been all day, and although I went for a run this morning I have no desire to go out again. During the afternoon it just gets worse and worse, wind hammering at the windows and rain lashing the glass. It creates a suitable atmosphere, however, while I read Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In, which as usual is better than the films.

In the evening I phone Alia. ‘Any info?’

‘Maybe. Dodgeson Home Security are well respected for their use of integrated state-of-the-art intrusion detection systems. Seems quite a few other outfits subcontract this kind of work to Dodgeson, but it’s expensive. They also do safes and panic rooms, and, ah, let me see, “multiply redundant communication with Dodgeson Home Security main office”. They promise to respond to a “Priority 1 Alert” within 10 minutes by air, and can have a ground force in place within 30 minutes. Those times are my estimate.’

‘Ground force?’

‘Apparently they’re authorised to respond with “non-lethal containment weaponry”, whatever that means.’

‘Probably nets and stuff like that.’

‘And after they catch you they hand you over to the police.’

‘Hmm. So the guard is really just a glorified receptionist?’

‘Yes, but he’ll also make sure the equipment is functioning, check for footprints, and so on.’

‘And probably write reports about annoying girls who’ve never heard of Vanessa Redgrave?’

Alia laughs at this. ‘I have to go. Take care, sweetheart,’ she says, and is gone.

Screwing The System (Thursday)

At one o’clock in the morning, the rain not stopped but at least diminished to a fine mist, I head out to the Fortress of Alex via the 24/7 supermarket. The night is dark, no moon, no stars, not even the distant glow of the city. There are no streetlights out here in the countryside. I’m dressed in a black Nike running suit with a hood, my hair tied back and hidden, and I have a small black backpack, also Nike. I see better in the dark than a human could, but even so it’s all shadows and deeper shadows, and I make my way cautiously to the wall, trying not to slip or leave footprints in the mud.

The wall is a new construction, three metres high with a pale render that makes climbing difficult, and in this wet weather there’s no friction. However, the spikes embedded in the top of the wall, intended to make entry more difficult, provide a useful grip. Whoever designed this didn’t have diminutive pole dancing vampires in mind. It’s not easy, but I am able to pull myself up and perch uncomfortably on the wall, overlooking the house and grounds. I stay there, motionless, for fifteen, twenty minutes, studying the deep shadows, identifying paths, bushes, the house; the sole light in the little hut by the gate where the guard sits reading. Here and there are red pinpricks of light indicating electronics of some sort, and a faintly illuminated mesh, the laser trip-wires revealed by the mist. I can see one or two ways to get to the house undetected, but I know nothing about the defences inside.

My presence on the wall is undetected. From my backpack I take a large bag of birdseed and a pair of scissors, which I use to cut open the bag. Then I sow the seed, flinging handfuls as far out across the lawn towards the house as I can, I don’t want to lose balance. The wall is about twenty metres from the house, and I guess I’m only covering about half the distance, but that’s good enough. I work my way around the wall, stopping every few metres to study the ghostly laser lines and throw more seed, until there’s no more seed, and anyway I’ve reached the gate and have to work my way back again.

Satisfied, I return home and get some sleep.

*

At seven o’clock, wearing the black running suit again, still damp from the morning’s activity but it’s still raining, a light drizzle which the weather forecast says will clear up by lunchtime, I set out for a run, around Alexandra Park, then along the railway line to Finsbury Park, and back up and through the woods to East Finchley.

I stop at Dan and DeCarlo for an espresso, and take it around the corner and along to Muswell Hill Police Station to make my statement. I am polite. I am calm. I do not say that there should be a law against bi-curious women.

At nine o’clock I’m a free woman again, and run home, back along the railway line and through the park. After a quick shower, I dress in my other running suit, Nike again but this one grey, shoving the black one into the washing machine before I leave.

*

At eleven o’clock, I’m perched in a tree with a good view over the wall, watching through binoculars. I’m pleased to see it’s the Vanessa Redgrave fan. He doesn’t look happy at all. He’s walking round the house glowering at the birds, starlings and sparrows mostly, feasting on the lawn. Sometimes he chases them away, but they don’t go far, or for long. A car pulls up at a the gate, Dodgeson Home Security, and two men in suits are allowed into the grounds. All three men walk around staring at the birds.

A flash of light in the trees beyond the house catches my eye and I refocus the binoculars to find myself looking at a man watching me through binoculars. I wait for him to lower them so that I can see his face, until it occurs to me that he’s waiting for me to lower mine, and it also occurs to me that he may not be alone. Hiding my face, I drop down from the tree and hurry back to my car and drive away.

Back home, I phone Alia. ‘There’s someone else watching him now.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know, but they saw me, maybe even saw my face and car.’

She mulls this over for a while. ‘I don’t like how complicated this has got. My feeling is that he’s got something, stolen, found, I don’t know, that someone wants badly. This type of security doesn’t make sense otherwise.’

*

Six thirty in the evening, I’m waiting at the side of the road, at the point where I lost him last Saturday, when the Vanessa Redgrave fan drives past in his blue Ford Mondeo. This time I am able to follow him easily, keeping a distance of course, as he crosses the river heading south and east around the edge of the city for fifteen minutes before heading in along the coast road. He turns off soon into an area I don’t know, poorer terraced houses, generally in good condition but paint on the doors and window frames chipped and scratched, gardens in need of tending. Lots of net curtains, boys playing football, teenage girls dressed like cheap strippers, old women carrying bags of shopping from the supermarket down the road. A little depressing without being rough.

I drive past as he parks, and watch him walk over to a house with a faded red door. There are no lights on inside, and he has the keys, letting himself in, and there’s a progression of lights switching on as he works his way inside and upstairs to the bedroom and back down to the living room, the sudden flickering of a television. I watch all this for half an hour, and there’s no sign that anyone else is home, and it’s half past seven so unless he has a wife working evenings or nights he probably lives alone.

Then he leaves the house, leaving a light on in the hallway, and he’s no longer dressed in his uniform. He’s not in any hurry. It’s dark now and I follow him easily, keeping to shadows, down the road to the pub. Watching through the window, I see him greeting a couple of mates, then heading over to the bar, ordering pints all round. He’s going to be there for a while. I return to his house, working my way along the alley at the back of the terrace until I’m sure I’ve found the right place, the light in the hallway, no other sign of life. This is more difficult than it sounds. The gardens backing on to the alley have high walls and gates, so I have to jump up and down quite a bit.

There’s no obvious alarm system, a little ironic for a security guard, and the back door has an old mortice lock that is easy for me to pick, so I’m inside quickly, unlikely to have roused any suspicion. A quick survey of the house confirms that he lives alone. The place isn’t without decoration, but there’s a lack of warmth and coordination. It isn’t untidy, but there’s nothing about the place that says ‘I am ready to be judged.’

His uniform, and one or two to spare, are hanging in the wardrobe in his bedroom. There’s a thin wallet on the table in his bedroom with the Dodgeson Home Security logo on the front, containing photo ID and a plastic card with a chip. The ID says my Vanessa Redgrave fan is Dominic Wright. It’s a strange wallet, and eventually I realise that the wallet is specially shielded to prevent the cards inside from being scanned. Paranoid, but clever. The kind of paranoia that suggests that even with this wallet I wouldn’t penetrate the security very far.

*

The girl in his living room is a fantasy come true, impossible, perfect, naked, beautiful breasts rising and falling with the heavy breathing of sexual excitement, legs spread wide and up over the arms of the chair, inviting him to stare between her legs at the place where her fingers are playing. The rage that possessed him in the instant that he discovered the intruder is abruptly gone, leaving a different rage, a powerful hardness that has him loosening his belt, dropping his trousers and Y-fronts, revealing his magnificent cock, proud and hungry, ready to give that slut-girl the taste of a real man.

But there’s something about her eyes, glittering with an exotic need as she watches him, that distracts him from his target. It’s her eyes that he sinks into as he kneels in front of her, grabs her hips, pulls her towards him, her honey-brown eyes so calm, so secure, so deep. Suddenly he starts to cry, grieving for a world of tranquil beauty that he has longed for all his life but never found.

I blink, startled. I’ve never made anyone cry like this before. I examine him for a minute, until I am sure that he is indeed caught in my spell, even though he has taken it strangely. ‘Shh,’ I say. ‘It’s okay.’ I get him to sit in the chair while I get dressed again. White shirt and socks. Blue knee-length skirt and cardigan. Black, sensible shoes. Only a hint of make up. School girl Suzie.

‘Do you have any children?’ I ask. He does. ‘Any daughters?’ Yes again. ‘How old are they?’ Sandra is seventeen, Liz is twelve. I’m lucky tonight. ‘Has Sandra ever been to the Dodgeson office?’ No. Good. ‘Okay, Dom, the girl in the chair just now was just a fantasy, a dream. I am your daughter Sandra, I look like her, I sound like her, I’m staying with you tonight and you’re happy that I’m here. You’ll do anything to please me, to make me happy. I want to visit the Dodgeson office, and you will take me. Okay?’ Okay. ‘Excellent. I’m going to count to three, and you will wake up. One... Two... Three... Hi, Daddy!’

‘Sandra?’ Suddenly he grins, a transformation into joy, and he grabs me and hugs me fiercely.

‘Dad! I can’t breathe!’

‘Oh, sorry!’ he puts me down, then his eyes widen with shock as he realises that he is still naked from the waist down. He reaches hastily for his clothes and gets dressed hurriedly, apologising the whole time.

‘Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m sorry I interrupted your dream, it looked like a good one.’ I give him a wink and he blushes.

‘Er, have you eaten?’

‘Not yet. I may have a bite later. I was hoping you could show me around your office first.’

‘I guess that’s okay, although they sometimes get stressed about visitors. Why do you want to go there?’

‘School project. Need to write an essay about terrorism and security.’

He frowns. ‘We don’t have anything to do with terrorism or that kind of security.’

I laugh. ‘I know! But you do all sorts of surveillance and stuff, don’t you?’

‘Well, yes. Not me personally.’

‘But there must be somebody there I can talk to?’

‘Oh yes, there’s always somebody there.’

‘Great, let’s go!’ I grab his car keys and head out.

*

‘So where are you posted these days?’ I ask him in the car. He didn’t object too strongly to me driving (I certainly don’t need the police pulling us over), and occasionally gives me directions which I know already.

‘Some place out in the country.’

‘Is it a big job? Some international?’

‘No, it’s just some guy’s house.’

‘Is he a millionaire or something?’

‘I guess so. Dodgeson’s isn’t cheap. But he’s not splashing his cash.’

‘So, what’s he need all the security for?’

‘Dunno. It’s a strange one. We don’t normally have a guard at home jobs. It’s a pretty boring job, really, just standing there all day.’

‘Do you get inside the house at all?’

‘Just the entryway, unless there’s an emergency, which there hasn’t been.’

‘Why the entryway?’

‘If there’s a false alarm, such as people walking around the house, then the system needs to be reset from inside the house. Minor stuff, like birds setting off motion detectors,’ and he chuckles for a second, ‘can be reset remotely from the head office. I just radio it in.’

‘Birds?’

‘Yeah, we had hundreds of them today. Don’t know what was going on. A couple of guys from head office even came out for a look.’

‘So, for birds you radio the home office, but for people walking around outside you have to reset the system inside the house?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How do you reset the system? Fingerprints? Retinal scan?’