The Basement (12 page)

There's a king-size bed in the bedroom with a mirrored built-in closet and I stand for a while looking at my reflection in the mirror and wondering what Sophie and Ed get up to under the quilt.

The furniture is clean but shabby as if they've had it for a while, and the carpet is worn in places.

There's a small television set in one corner opposite a long leather sofa and one wall is covered with bookshelves so I figure that the Turners are more into reading than watching. I smash the TV with the crowbar and pull all the books off the shelves. I take a large carving knife from the kitchen and rip the sofa to shreds, then I attack the quilt and the bed until there are feathers everywhere. I pull all their clothes out of the closets and I throw them on the floor and then I stand on the bed and urinate over them. The fridge in the kitchen is full of food and I throw it around the living room and pour milk over the books and then I go into her study and trash it.

I take a lipstick from the dressing table in the bedroom and in big capital letters I write “HOW DO YOU LIKE IT, NIGGER?” across the mirrored closet. It's a nice touch, the Nigger bit. Just in case he thinks it might be a couple of homeboys out to feed their habit. That and the fact that nothing has been stolen should point in my direction. I mean, he is a detective and all. I actually feel guilty as I stand and look at the word nigger written in red. It's not that I'm racist, I pretty much treat everyone as inferior, but it'll make Turner mad. Real mad. I toss the crowbar into the middle of the living room and go home.

I pace as I wait. It's calming, the repetitive steps soothe my conscious mind, allowing my subconscious to roam free. Pacing is liberating. I guess that's why caged animals pace in the zoo.

It sets them free, in their minds at least.

I start off by running through some of the dialogue for Checking Out but it doesn't feel right and I wonder whether I should just scrap the project and move on to something else. I know I should start work on The Bestseller but there's something stopping me. Maybe it's Marcinko. Maybe I need another ending for it. Something like a beautiful cop with impossibly blue eyes falling for the killer. Maybe even becoming his last victim. I like that idea and I play with it for a while, but Ed Turner keeps intruding into my thoughts. Turner would make a good character in a movie. Tall,

well-built black cop, Wesley Snipes maybe, with a beautiful journalist wife, trying to make it together in the big city. I go with it as I pace, and pretty soon I come up with a plot. It needs a short, snappy title and I get that, too. DNA. Everyone knows about DNA analysis, and they know it's used to solve crimes, but there's something, I don't know, rap-like about it, as if the name belongs to a group of black teenagers with hoods on their sweatshirts and gold chains around their necks. Yeah, DNA. Love the title. The plot's good, too. I picture Turner pretty much as he is in real life, but I'd maybe lose the spectacles. I've got the feeling recently that he only wears them for effect, that there's nothing wrong with his sight and that the lenses are plain glass. Maybe he thinks he'll get promoted faster if his bosses think he's the studious type. He's an ambitious man, Sergeant Turner, and I think he sees me as one more rung on his ladder to the top.

Okay, so the plot of DNA goes something like this. A middle-aged black detective, Turner without the glasses, who works the drugs beat has personal problems at home, a delinquent son and a wheelchair-bound wife. Picture Sophie, without the use of her legs. He loves his wife, but she's no longer able to have sex, so he seeks solace with hookers. He's ashamed at having to pay for sex, but there's no other solution. The hookers like the detective - he's basically a good guy -

and several become informers for him. The detective makes love to one of the girls, but they're disturbed by her pimp who has been beating her up. The detective fights the pimp, warns him to leave the girl alone, then leaves. The detective returns to his wife. The following day the hooker is found brutally murdered. The Medical Examiner discovers semen in the girl and runs a DNA analysis on it. The detective knows that unless he can find the killer, he will himself become a suspect. He tracks down the pimp, who knows that the hooker was alive when he left, but the pimp too has been murdered. The detective is being set up by a drugs kingpin he's investigating.....and all the evidence points to the detective's guilt.

It's a great first act, but before I can take it any further there's a hammering on the door. I look out of the window and am surprised to see that it's getting dark outside. I switch the main light on and go to the bedroom alcove, then I open the door. I put the chain on first but I needn't have bothered because as soon as I slip the lock he kicks the door with all his weight and the wood splinters. The screws are ripped out of the security chain and when he kicks the door a second time it flies open.

Turner isn't wearing his glasses and there's a wild, almost manic, look in his eyes. I step back into the middle of the room and he slams the door shut. For the first time I realise he's carrying the crowbar, swinging it from side to side like a club. His upper lip curls back into a cruel sneer and there are flecks of foamy saliva on his lower lip. Turner has lost it and if I'm not careful he's going to go too far. “What's wrong?” I ask, holding my hands out in front of me. “What have I done?”

“You know what you've done,” he says and lashes out with the crowbar. The curved end slams into my stomach and I double over in pain.

It's hard to breath but I have to get the words out. “I haven't done anything,” I say.

He grabs me by the hair and pulls me forward, then swings me around and hurls me into the wall by the door. The back of my head hits the wall, hard, and I feel my legs go weak. Turner slashes at my legs with the crowbar and he catches me on the left knee. The pain is intense, worse than my throbbing stomach and pounding head, a stab of agony that paralyses my entire leg.

Turner lifts the crowbar and brings it down towards my head but I throw myself to the side,

stumbling because my injured leg can't support me. I fall forward and try to crawl into the middle of the room but Turner plants his foot in the small of my back and starts to beat my right arm with the crowbar.

I scream and roll to the side but the foot keeps me pressed to the ground. I beg and plead for him to stop and I keep on shouting that I haven't done anything wrong.

“You think you're so fucking smart!” he screams. He stops hitting me with the crowbar and the foot moves off my back. I pull myself forward with my hands but I haven't got more than a few inches before he kicks me in the ribs. I feel a rib crack and I try to roll away from his feet but I end up stranded on my back like a upturned turtle, unable to move.

“Please stop!” I shout, but he kicks me again, harder this time. Pain sears across my chest.

Jesus, I had no idea it was going to hurt so much. He stands over me waving the crowbar and for one terrible moment I think that he's going to bring it crashing down on my skull. For the first time I think that I might actually not get out of this alive. I raise my hands to shield my head but he switches his target at the last minute and wallops me across the chest. Tears of pain well up in my eyes and I almost pass out. Turner raises the metal bar again but then throws it away. I hear it crash against the wall and then he drops down on top of me, his knees either side of my waist. He grabs my hands and pulls them down and then slaps me across the face so hard that my teeth rattle.

I accidentally bite my tongue and my mouth fills with metallic-tasting blood that I have to swallow so that I don't choke. He hits me in the face again and his right hand reaches behind his back and reappears with a revolver. He cocks the hammer with his thumb and then shoves the barrel it into my mouth. The metal scrapes against my teeth and I gag but he pushes it further into my mouth.

“I'm going to blow your fucking head off, Waller!” he screams.

I try to shake my head but I can't move. I can see his finger tightening on the trigger and I start to shake. This wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to go this far.

“You came into my home! You trashed my home!”

I try to swallow but my throat is too dry. The gun sight is pressing against the roof of my mouth and my stomach heaves like I'm going to throw up. He's heavy and most of his weight seems to be on my cracked rib but all I can feel is the metal in my mouth. His trigger finger is still tightening and there's a blood lust in his eyes and I know that I'm only seconds away from dying on the floor,

the back of my skull blown away by a cop's bullet.

Suddenly Turner goes quiet and I can see the tension visibly slip away as if he's gradually gaining control of himself, as if he's finally realised the enormity of what he's doing. He's still angry and his face is still filled with hatred and rage but the urge to kill has gone.

“You ever go near my house or my wife again and I'll kill you, Waller,” he says, pushing the gun barrel even further down my throat. “I'll break every bone in your fucking body and then I'll make you eat this fucking gun. Are we clear?”

I blink. I can't speak, I'm choking on his Police Special.

“Are we fucking clear?” he shouts.

I nod. It's all I can do.

Turner stares at me, then slowly takes the gun out of my mouth. His eyes never leave mine as he gets to his feet, then something in him snaps again and he kicks me savagely in the side. Once.

Twice. A third time. He draws back his foot to kick me again, then stops. He spits down at my face, the phlegm splattering across my lips. “You're not fucking worth it!” he hisses, then turns his back on me and walks out of the room.

I lie on my back for several minutes, trying to catch my breath. I gingerly touch my side. It hurts bad, but I don't think it's broken, just cracked maybe. My knee hurts like hell, but I can still move my leg. I roll over cautiously because I'm still not sure how hurt I am. Under the bed the red light of the video camera gleams like some half hidden predator.

* * *

You put your eye to the peephole and watch. The peephole is almost as exciting as the video,

probably because it's live. She's actually there, only feet away from you, living and breathing and not knowing that you're watching her every move. Sure, the videos are a turn-on because they show the power you have over your captives, that you can make them do anything you want, but there's a different power in watching them without them knowing.

She sits on the bed and examines the chain as if by staring at the metal links she'd discover a weak point. You smile as she works her away along the length of chain. As if you'd be stupid enough to give her a chain that could be broken. And if she were to break the chain,

what then? Where would she go? She's certainly learned her lesson about going near the door.

You admire her spirit: by the time most of your victims had been captive for as long as Sarah, they usually just lie on the beds staring up at the ceiling, resigned to their fate.

Perhaps it's because she's a mother, maybe this is some reflection of her maternal spirit. You change eyes, using your left eye to watch as your hand seems to develop a life of its own and slide between your legs. It's so exciting watching her there, sitting and scheming, trying to find a way to escape from your clutches. No one has ever escaped. And on one ever will.

She's yours to do with as you want. Until death do you part.

You shiver with anticipation. Soon it will be time for the best part.

* * *

I take a long sip at the gin and tonic and watch myself on the screen, limping out of the court building with a high-powered lawyer on each side. The scene doesn't look as hectic on screen as it was in real life. At the time I felt that I was about to be engulfed by the story-hungry media pack and there seemed to be dozens of flash guns going off everywhere I looked. The TV seems to make everything seem smaller. I lean forward and place the glass on the coffee table, grunting because my side still hurts a bit.

On screen I stop and take a deep breath and a cluster of microphones are thrust under my chin.

There's a flurry of shouted questions and one of the lawyers raises a hand, appealing for silence so that I can make myself heard.

A lone voice pipes up above the babble. “What are you going to do with the money, Marvin?”

I smile and a few of the reporters laugh. “I'll invest it wisely,” I say, with a rueful smile. My arm is in a sling, but, like the limp, that was more for the jury's benefit than for mine. The arm healed quickly, and the knee only hurts if I twist it. I'm almost one hundred per cent fit, but my lawyers reckoned that every in court grimace was worth another $50,000. They knew what they were talking about. Three million bucks is what I got from the city. Three million dollars. And that doesn't include the $250,000 I got selling the video to 60 Minutes and the money my agent got selling the rights around the world. The video has become almost as famous as the Rodney King footage. Turner kicking the shit out of me. Turner walloping me with the crowbar. Turner sticking his gun in my mouth.

“How do feel about Ed Turner, now?” asks a blonde TV reporter, her smile blindingly bright.

I shrug. “There isn't much I can say. But at least he's no longer employed as a police officer.”

“Will you be going to his trial?”

I smile. “I think I've seen more than enough of Ed Turner, don't you?”

The reporters laugh. “What are you going to do now, Marvin?” asks one.

“I've got several projects in hand,” I say. “My agent has already had enquiries from several Hollywood studios and I'm hopeful that I'll be moving to the East Coast before long.”

My agent. I like the sound of that. In fact, once the existence of the video became known they were queuing up to take me on as a client. For once they were chasing me and not the other way around. There are more questions but the lawyers hustle me away. We'd already sold the exclusive rights to the story to one of the supermarket tabloids for big bucks and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in a suite in the Plaza Hotel, spilling my guts.