Thin Air (31 page)

‘Fuck!’ Dex put his head in his
hands. ‘I fucking heard something.’

Lorrance leaned forward over the
seat, making the leather creak. ‘What did you hear?’

‘A voice. It’s nothing. I was
hallucinating. It was creepy down there.’

‘And did you complete your
task?’

Dex rubbed his face with his
hands. ‘Yeah.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Is it safe,
Rhys?’

Lorrance leaned back. ‘Quite
safe. Join me in the back here. We can’t return to the party yet -
not enough time for us to have driven to a hospital.’

Dex clambered over the seats,
and took the joint from Lorrance’s hands. ‘I need that. Give it
here.’

Lorrance observed him coolly.
‘You’re the one I trust, Dex. You have done well tonight.’

A cold fist seemed to close on
Dex’s stomach. Had this been a test? ‘What happened? How did he
fall?’

Lorrance laughed. ‘Very easily,’
he answered.

Dex narrowed his eyes.
‘What...?’

‘He said he would die for me.
And he did.’

Dex sucked furiously on the
joint. ‘This is bad, Rhys, very bad. I don’t want any part of
things like this. It’s all getting out of hand.’

Lorrance reached out and stroked
Dex’s hair. ‘No, it’s just time for a change. Life is a series of
cycles, each different from the last.’

‘You can’t trust those people
who call themselves your friends. You don’t know one of them won’t
talk.’

‘I do know. Don’t worry. You
must learn to trust me. Haven’t I always been right in the past?’
Lorrance laughed softly to himself.

When they returned to the party,
it seemed like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The music
was up again, the laughter, the shouting. People had walked across
the smear of blood on the cracked tiles, which was the only
evidence of the young man’s demise. Dex felt nervous, sick, afraid.
He went out into the garden and sat there for over an hour, smoking
dope and swigging from a bottle of bourbon. His mind was curiously
devoid of images, although the words he thought he’d heard in the
cellar of the old lodge occasionally flashed across his
consciousness. ‘They never found
me
, Chris.’ Dex knew that
somewhere, the body of Little Peter lay hidden from view. It had
to, didn’t it? People didn’t just disappear.

Around two a.m., Lorrance came
out of the house and swam into Dex’s field of vision. He was
dressed in a soft cream jumper and dark jeans. He looked young, his
golden hair catching the starlight. Dex stared up at him, blinking.
‘I can’t live with this, Rhys. I...’

Lorrance made an irritated
gesture. ‘Dex, there’s someone who wants to meet you, someone
important.’

‘I don’t want to meet
anyone.’

Lorrance sighed, grabbed Dex’s
right arm and hauled him to his feet. ‘Pull yourself together,
there’s a good boy.’

‘Rhys...’

‘Come on.’ Lorrance’s gaze was
steady, commanding.

Sighing, Dex followed him into
the house. ‘What is this, Rhys?’ He felt in no condition to meet
anyone, let alone someone who was important to Lorrance.

Lorrance said nothing, but took
Dex into his study, which he always kept locked during parties. The
room was lit dimly; a fire burned in the hearth. A large,
florid-faced man sat in the high-backed chair at Lorrance’s antique
desk. He was smoking a pipe, and his eyes, within their wads of
flesh, were like an eagle’s, as if they could see for miles or
through walls. Dex had never seen the man in person before, but
knew who it was: Lester Charney. Behind him, stood a tall,
attenuated dark figure, whose posture was slightly hunched. This
second man looked foreign, being dark-skinned, but Dex could not
place his nationality.

‘Well, Les, here he is, our
golden boy. Dex, this is Lester Charney.’

‘Golden goose,’ said Charney,
appraising Dex with his aquiline gaze. He was surrounded by a sweet
smell of perfumed tobacco. His body was ponderous, but Dex had the
impression it could move very quickly. He had never been afraid of
anyone in his life, not even his brother Gary, and he wasn’t afraid
now. The feeling went deeper than that, to evoke a primal instinct
for survival. You could not flee from this man, and you could not
fight him; the only choice was to serve. Such ideas were alien to
Dex, who prided himself on his autonomy. Even in his stupor, he
recognised that he had been brought before the dark heart of the
empire; its emperor.

‘All right,’ he said by way of
greeting.

Charney blinked mildly. ‘You are
a great asset to us,’ he said. ‘And perhaps will be greater still.
A pity you abuse yourself, but that can be changed.’ He signalled
to Lorrance, who went to a cabinet and returned carrying a very
small glass of a milky liquid, which he offered to Dex.

Dex laughed uncertainly. ‘What’s
this?’

‘Drink it,’ said Charney. ‘I
want to talk to a functioning mind.’

The dark man behind Charney
neither moved nor spoke, but kept his attention wholly upon Dex. He
looked like a vulture, waiting for something to die. Dex, realising
he had no other choice, took the glass and swallowed the contents.
The taste was indescribable, yet not entirely unpleasant. It sent a
rush to his brain that made him stumble backwards, but sobered him
almost immediately. He was sensitively aware of his surroundings,
the three men who observed him.

‘That’s better,’ said Charney.
He took a long draw on his pipe. ‘You push yourself to the limit,
in body and mind, but just how far are you prepared to go?’

Dex brushed his hair from his
eyes. ‘What do you want?’

‘An answer to my question: how
far?’

‘I’ve got where I want to
be.’

Charney laughed softly. ‘So
little ambition? You’re not even on the first rung of the ladder.
You’re praying at its feet.’

Lorrance put a hand on Dex’s
shoulder. ‘You’re being given a chance,’ he said. ‘You must take
it.’

‘A chance for what?’ Dex
squirmed away from Lorrance’s touch.

‘A chance to be more than just a
minor celebrity who will be burned out within a few years,’ Charney
said. ‘Rhys is very pleased with you. He has spoken to me about
you.’ He chuckled, in a disturbingly avuncular manner. ‘I think you
remind him of a younger, more idealistic form of himself. Is that
right, Rhys?’

‘He has fire,’ Lorrance said
softly and turned to Dex. ‘You have anger. You despise the world,
and your music has power. That can all be honed into something
greater.’

‘We are always alert for people
such as yourself,’ Charney said. ‘We are a select group, and
extremely particular about whom we involve in our operations. We
are the hub at the centre of the wheel. You are being invited to
put the hectic spin of life behind you and sit at the centre of
stillness, where all is controlled. Do you understand this?’

Dex nodded. ‘Money runs the
world. I know where you’re coming from.’

Charnely nodded. ‘And are you
with us?’

‘Why me?’ He displayed his palms
to Charney. ‘I’m not like you. I’m not part of your world.’

Charney grinned. ‘You are. And
Rhys believes you are more like us than you know. You’re just the
raw material, which it is our job to shape and polish. Now, answer
me. Are you with us?’

Dex shuffled his feet
uncomfortably. ‘I’m not into this kind of thing.’

Charney drew in his breath
slowly. ‘There
are
fates worse than death. What you saw
tonight was nothing. Now, are you with us?’

Dex glanced at the dark man
standing behind Charney’s chair. He knew then that should he answer
in the negative he would be destroyed. Nothing as crude as murder,
or even a fatal accident; something worse. This was what his
weekends of gratification had led to. He had walked into the hot
and humid jungle, hungry for sensation, and had inadvertently
wandered into the territory of the tigers. They had been watching
him all along from the shadows.

‘Whatever,’ he said. At that
moment, all he wanted was to escape that room. ‘Whatever you
fucking want.’

Lorrance and Charney exchanged a
glance. Charney was expressionless. ‘I generally trust your
judgement, Rhys, but have to confess I do not find this candidate
entirely suitable.’

‘He
is
the right raw
material,’ said Lorrance. ‘He must learn.’

‘Then teach him,’ Charney
murmured, ‘and bring him to me when you’re done.’

Lorrance bowed his head.

‘I appreciated your gift
tonight,’ said Charney, leaning back in his chair. ‘It was the
sweetest thing.’ He kissed his fingertips. ‘I feel utterly
sated.’

‘My pleasure.’ Lorrance put a
hand on Dex’s back and steered him towards the door.

Dex felt chilled inside. He was
sure that in some way Charney had drawn strength from the anonymous
boy’s death. He glanced back at the desk. Charney and his dark man
were conferring. Lorrance and Dex had been dismissed.

Outside, Dex said, ‘What the
hell was all that about?’

Lorrance stroked his cheek.
‘Can’t you guess? You’re being admitted into the club.’

‘Like the fucking Masons, or
something?’

‘Something,’ said Lorrance. He
leaned forward and kissed Dex on the mouth. ‘Don’t let me down.
Charney will be disappointed.’

Dex was surprised by the kiss.
Lorrance had never touched him in that way before. ‘What do you
want of me?’

‘Commitment, truth, courage. In
return, you’ll learn about power. You’ll have what you want from
life, whatever that may be.’

‘Rhys, you shouldn’t have done
this to me,’ Dex said. ‘Why didn’t you ask me first? I don’t want
this.’

‘It’s too late.’

I fucking realise that. You had
no right.’

‘No right?’ Lorrance laughed in
genuine amusement. ‘I made you, Dex. I can do with you what I like.
If you think otherwise, you’re far more stupid than I gave you
credit for.’ He stroked Dex’s hair. ‘Be angry, if you like, for
that is part of you. Live it. But know you can trust me.’

He left Dex standing in the
hallway of the house, the party tumbling around him. Dex felt
nauseous now, and confused. What had just happened might have been
a dream. If only it had been. The effects of the potion he’d
swallowed were diminishing; his senses were fuzzy, his limbs
prickled. He needed to sit down.

In the drawing-room, he
collapsed onto a sofa, his mind curiously blank. For some time,
perhaps hours, he stared at the ceiling. Sounds rose and pounced
like waves; music, voices, the purr of fabric against flesh. He
could smell the sweat of everyone in the house. He could smell
their dissipation, their lack of awareness, their self-centred
terror. On the other side of the gate was truth, and the gate was
the word ‘whatever’.

There were no weekend parties at
Emmertame after that. If any of Lorrance’s guests or staff
mentioned to friends or family what they’d seen that night, it
never leaked out. They were all conspirators. Zeke Michaels had not
been a guest that weekend, and Dex doubted he’d ever been told what
had happened there.

Dex knew that something had
marked him, something beyond what he understood about the world. He
waited for a summons from Lorrance, for the education that Charney
had spoken of to begin. He lived in dread of it. When the accident
had happened in the hall of Emmertame, Dex had not felt that
affected by the young man’s death, perhaps because of Lorrance’s
influence, but afterwards this was not the case. He was haunted by
it, and sickened by the callous way in which Lorrance had dealt
with it. Dex had become part of this world, and had come to hate
it. He was not the person Lorrance believed or wanted him to be. In
his youth, all Dex’s songs had been full of fire against the very
things he now did himself, the world in which he moved. He had
become part of all he had despised, and worse. It had happened
insidiously, crept up on him, bit by bit, until he was fully in the
thick of it.

Often, Dex thought of confiding
in Jay about what had happened that night at Lorrance’s, but
couldn’t bring himself to. Despite her sassy worldliness, she now
seemed innocent to him. He couldn’t involve her. It wouldn’t be
fair. She was part of the sacrifice he must make to cleanse
himself. He wrote songs about that night, every detail of it,
lashing himself and the world he inhabited, the world run by people
like Charney and Lorrance, to whom life meant nothing and power
meant all. Dex had lost sight of any spirituality in his life, and
now yearned to rediscover it. This would be the new album. Through
music, he would tell the world a few truths, albeit concealed in
parcels of words that only a few might unwrap. Words came more
easily now. Language was a tool he could wield with mordant
precision. If this gift came from Lorrance and his overlords, Dex
would use it to expose them. He was withdrawing his consent to
Lorrance’s schemes. Dex knew the path he had chosen might mean his
own destruction, but he could see no other way. Unless he fought
now, he would be lost. He knew his weaknesses.

Lorrance must have sensed Dex’s
withdrawal, but undoubtedly viewed it was a temporary reaction. He
would, after all, be confident of his power over his
protégé
. A month or so after the party, he called Dex on his
mobile (he never liked Jay to know when he’d called), and asked how
the tracks for ‘Songs to the Shadow’ were going. ‘I’m exorcising
ghosts,’ Dex had said.

‘Nothing too gloomy, I trust,’
Lorrance replied.

Dex was filled with the urge to
rebel, which had often been his undoing in the past. ‘Perhaps you
should hear them.’

A pause. ‘Yes. Come to dinner
this Sunday.’

After he’d broken the
connection, Dex considered he might have spoken unwisely. Before
Sunday, he made a few changes to the lyrics, encoded their meaning
more cryptically.