Act of Exposure (12 page)

'Abby. Someone
is trying to smear me. I'm positive it's all to do with the Swan
and Swallow affair. Effectively, they've put me out of the picture.
By questioning my private morals, they're automatically questioning
my public integrity. Innocent I may be, but I need your help to
prove it. I feel trapped, Abby. I need you.'

Her heart and
her body ached for him. For the first time since she had known him,
Stephen sounded a little lost. He had cause to be. Public outrage
had been stirred and it would take a lot of courage to face his
accusers. Friends and acquaintances would fear for their own
reputations if they were seen to defend him. Liberal thought and
deed would drown in a flood of homophobia. He would need her. He
would need her badly. Nothing would stop her from helping him.

'What do you
want me to do?'

'I need to see
you, but I don't want to come to chambers. That chap Vector's still
snooping around. So are a host of others. Will you come here?'

Vector!
Abigail bit her lip. She came to a decision. 'All right. Give me
your address.'

So far in
their relationship, neither had ventured into the other's
territory. Their meetings and sexual adventures had mostly been
outdoors or in the more seedy parts of town. That was the whole
point of their games. Such surroundings heightened arousal and the
sense of danger, of being found out. But danger had come from
another direction, and Stephen had been accused of something that
was not true.

Now, without
caring about the consequences, she was going to meet him in his
town apartment.

'Seven. This
evening?'

'Yes. Yes.
That's fine.'

Just after
putting the phone down, there was a knock on the door and
Christopher Probert walked in.

'Abigail. Good
morning.'

As she
answered his greeting, Abby folded up the piece of paper on which
she had written Stephen's address, and pushed it into her
pocket.

She had the
distinct impression that Christopher's eyes had followed her
movements. The chill smile of his thin lips widened as his gaze
transferred to the newspaper that still lay on her desk. He came
behind her, his arm deliberately brushing against her breast as his
finger tapped on the face of a surprised-looking Stephen.

'Another bites
the dust, I see.'

'Another what,
Christopher?' Her voice hinted at disdain. She held his eyes with
her own.

'Another MP.
Can't keep their hands off nubile buttocks and hard dicks, can
they? All tarred with the same brush, they are. All keen for a bit
of bum breaching in stinking lavatories. Serve him right, arrogant
bastard.'

Abby rose to
her feet. Her head was high, her eyes were bright with battle.

Recognizing
the familiar stance, Christopher took a backwards step.

'Why is he an
arrogant bastard, Christopher?'

Her voice was strident and as firm as the one she used in
court when cross-examining a particularly tight-lipped
witness.
Ask questions. Keep them short,
succinct. Let them do the talking. More lucid talk gives way to
more sharp questioning
.

Christopher
blinked. Instinctively, she knew he would try to be evasive. It was
too late. Her steely nerve was intact, but his was blunt and
cracking. Christopher could not help saying things that would
enable her to assess the sincerity of his answers.

'It's him that
keeps pressing for a public enquiry into the Swan and Swallow
affair. The case would be blown out of all proportion if he had his
way. As it is, justice will be done, Harold Swallow and Gustav Swan
will be exonerated, and...'

'The taxpayer
will foot the bill, Mr Rheingold will stay in prison, and those
behind the whole sorry affair will get off scot-free.'

Christopher,
whose eyes flitted between her breasts and her face, now blinked
and looked nervously towards the door.

'Justice will
have been done.' A smirk came to his face. 'Well, there's no chance
of a public enquiry now, is there? It was only Sigmund pushing for
it, and he's likely to be too busy preparing his own defence to
meddle in other affairs.'

Abby's blue
eyes blazed. 'Is that why you were at lunch with Medina Frassard?
Is she pulling your strings, Christopher, or is she pulling
something nearer your heart but below your waistline? Are you
fucking her, Christopher? Is she giving you pussy in exchange for
favours?'

Probert's pale
face went paler. His eyes seemed to sink deeper into his eye
sockets. 'That's none of your business. She just wanted some
advice.'

'You can't
give her advice. We're in the same chambers, and I am acting for a
client in a libel matter. It's not ethical.'

'It was personal, not professional.' His retort was hot and
snappy. He didn't linger after he'd said it -
in case
, she said to herself,
I ask some more pertinent
questions
.

Abby sat down.
She frowned. Probert's nervousness troubled her. She'd never liked
the man. He was slimy, he was toady. She recalled some sleaze about
him from his college days, something about an affair with a senior
lecturer and the death of her husband. They had called it an
accident, but sometimes she wondered...

Abigail looked
again at the lurid headline, and tapped her fingers against the
face in the photo.

In that
instant, and following what Christopher had said, she knew why
Stephen wanted her to come and see him, knew what he wanted her to
do.

As
confirmation of her disgust, she would have thrown the paper and
its offending story into the bin if the name beneath the headline
hadn't caught her eye.

"
Our man in the
know
," it said. "
Lance Vector
."

Him! Vector,
who had had the nerve to ring her and ask her to lunch. Now she
wished she had accepted his invitation, if only to pour soup over
his head or drop hot coffee into his lap. She imagined the
whiteness of his penis turning red, glowing as the hot coffee stung
the skin, trickled through his pubic hairs, and licked like tongues
of fire at his balls.

Cruel
, she thought,
you're being cruel
. She
had not thought herself capable of such vicious thoughts. But for
Stephen she would be anything. Proving Stephen's innocence was
paramount. She would do whatever it took to prove that innocence.
She would sell her soul, sell her body. Anything.

Sweet words came to her mind when she thought of him.
Descriptions of how he looked came to her. Tall, dark haired, brown
eyed. Hard, well defined muscles, a tight, flat stomach, strong
thighs. Between those thighs hung the silky sacs that made him
male, the twin generators to that rod that rose so hard and so
proud when he looked at her, when he touched her. Lust, need,
desire. Those three words came to mind. So did love. She loved him.
So far, such knowledge had stayed hidden in her mind, reined in
like a prancing horse. But soon, very soon, she would have to tell
him, the world and everybody. She would have to admit it to
herself. Their first night together at the Railway Hotel came
easily to mind. So did visions of his body. So did the memory of
his penis entering her body -
her
body - a
woman's
body. Could she really imagine that beautiful
penis, so obviously male, so obviously made for fucking women,
entering the body, the anus, of some spotty, diseased rent
boy?

The boy
concerned was lying. He was a blackmailer. He had to be.

She felt sore.
Sore inside from all her sex with Stephen, and sore now at the
youth who had blighted their arrangements and what they felt for
each other. She could not - would not - believe it.

In the cold
greyness of the multi-storey car park, Lance Vector swung his dark
blue Lotus out of the parking bay and in behind a buff-coloured
Mondeo. Ahead of the Mondeo, Abigail Corrigan sat at the wheel of
her light grey Mercedes.

It wasn't in
her mind to worry about who might be following her. There were too
many other problems, too many questions in her mind about what had
happened to Stephen for her to concern herself with what lay behind
her. All she was worried about was what might be facing her.

Lance swung
out of the car park behind her, following her through the city.

She drove
quickly away from streets where concrete slabs of offices sparkled
with squares of brightly-lit windows. Out on the motorway, the
sun-bright orange of lines of snaking sodium lights blinked past as
they moved from one part of the city to another.

A light
drizzle mutated what Lance was seeing out of the windscreen. The
vision of her, naked, helpless, was clear in his mind.

In a street
that spoke of stockbrokers, lawyers, and six-figure salaries, he
saw her pull up and park. Quickly, he turned off his car lights and
slid into the kerb behind her parked car. Ducking down as low as he
could, he watched to see where she was going.

White pillars
fronted the door of the Regency-style house where Stephen Sigmund
lived. Abby's heels were the only sound in the street. Her head was
high as she sniffed the evening air. Not so many car fumes now, not
so many smells of a city at work. Night and excitement were
approaching with the darkness.

Some might
have surmised that in the circumstances it was only to be expected
that such an eminent QC would be visiting him. But Lance knew
otherwise, and such knowledge angered him. She was his. He had
earmarked her as his from the very first time he had seen her. But
Sigmund had got there first, and Sigmund, he told himself, had to
be destroyed.

He smiled to
himself. The plan was already in operation. A little inside
information about his legal defence passed to the people who wanted
to know, and Sigmund would be no more. The idea thrilled him.

I wonder
, he thought, as he gazed up
at the brightly-lit first-floor window,
if
I could get in there from around the back and hear what they are
saying
.

He looked at
the street ahead of him, then twisted round in his seat to look
behind. It was a long street, and he was feeling lazy.

Surveillance equipment
, he thought to
himself.
That's what I could do
with
.

He was about
to make a note to himself about looking into such things, when the
mobile rang. Staring at it as though he wished it wasn't there, he
let it ring six or seven times before he picked it up.

'Where are
you?' asked the voice on the other end.

Because his
mouth felt so incredibly dry, Vector licked his lips before he
answered, and when he did, he lied.

'At my place.
I've just pulled up.'

'Get your ass
here. Now!'

'Sure. Right
away.'

He slammed the
phone back into its carrier.

'Yes sir. I'll
be there right away sir, because I know that you're a right fucking
bastard, sir!' He ranted to himself and with jealousy gnawing his
groin, he glanced only one more time at the brightly-lit window
before restarting the engine and pulling away.

He should
report everything - everything - he had seen to the man who had
phoned him. But he wouldn't. He was grateful for his livelihood,
but Abigail Corrigan aroused delicious sensations that lingered in
his groin, set his prick to hardening, and his anus to tightening.
And anyway, it was Stephen Sigmund alone that he was supposed to be
watching.

As instructed,
he handed his most recent taped surveillance of Stephen Sigmund to
his editor, Squires, who frowned at it before putting it into a
drawer. The drawer was then locked.

Vector turned
to leave.

'Don't go. He
wants to see you.'

He did not
protest or say anything. He just nodded and closed the office door
behind him.

The man Lance
went to see existed on a higher plain than the editor. He was the
owner, he was powerful, and also completely ruthless. He was the
only man who truly made Lance feel nervous - even more so than his
mother.

When Lance
walked into the owner's top-floor penthouse suite, the man had his
back to him and was staring out through the window at the London
skyline. He did not bother to look round as he spoke. Lance was
vaguely aware that he was not alone, that another man lurked in the
shadows. The man blended well, except for his eyes. There was
something unusual about them, something Lance preferred not to
notice.

'You did a
good job, Vector.' The voice of the man he had come to see was
slow, his words precise - a bit like a pre-recorded tape.

'Thank you,
sir.'

'However,
Vector, this job is not yet finished. I require you to keep an eye
on him. I want to know his movements. I want to know every move he
makes, every day, all day. I want to know details of how he intends
to defend himself. I believe that Abigail Corrigan QC is defending
him. I want you to catalogue their meetings, but stick to him more
so than her. I don't want him to contact any other possible
witness. This is one case that must be followed through to the
bitter end; until he is ruined, humiliated, his status and his
career destroyed. It is important that he is left with no
credibility at all. Do you understand that?'

'Yes sir.'

'You will give
the tapes to Mr Squires, your editor. He will ensure they get to
me.'

'Yes sir.'

'I also have
another job for you to do. No one of any consequence. Just small
fry. A man named Carl Candel. I'll give you the details later.'