Damned If You Do (17 page)

None of this made any sense – but my brain, which only four days before had been about as useful as a jellyfish at a rodeo, suggested I explore some more. I scrolled through the next five pages, then exited and clicked on the second option:
CONTRACTS
. A different database loaded, and a sub-menu offered me a bewildering series of choices. But one word caught my attention, having been mentioned both by Death and Skirmish:
standard.
I clicked on it, and read:

My body reacted to this new information by pumping out adrenaline. The adrenaline told me that I had discovered something important, but my head couldn't work out what it was.

So I thought about it. I remembered that during my adult life I often sought excuses for my behaviour. I convinced myself that circumstances were in control of me, that I had no choice but to do what I did, that I never had time to step back and consider my actions. I argued that because there was no time to consider anything, I couldn't be held responsible for my actions; and if I couldn't be held responsible, I could do what I liked with impunity. I was so stupid back then, I might as well have been a corpse lying in a coffin, knocking out idiotic messages to its neighbours.

My adrenaline was merely reflecting the fact that every action has consequences; and that, in signing the contract on Monday without considering the alternatives, I had behaved like a complete airhead. But even as my confusion and humiliation reached their peak, a small voice in my brain was whispering that in the details of the contract, there might yet be a way out of this mess.

I exited twice, clicked on
REPORTS
, then on the first directory in each subsequent menu until I found what seemed to be a pertinent filename:
FALLING
-08/99.
TR
. This is what it contained:

It took me a moment to associate this data with the woman who had committed suicide on Monday, but the realization was far from comforting. It only accelerated the sickness rising within me, and the more I flicked backwards and forwards through the menus on screen, the more I felt like a creature from another planet.

*   *   *

In the blackest moments of depression following my breakdown, I regarded the world as an enormous filing system. I saw it as an infinitely large room filled with great, grey cabinets, each cabinet with billions of drawers, each drawer containing numberless folders, each folder holding countless documents and sub-documents. I perceived a labyrinthine network of cross-references so complex that no-one could possibly understand how even one single part interacted with another. How could they? The subject-range contained information from the smallest subatomic particle to the universe itself.

And though individuals might claim to be separate from this process, they were integral to it. They were either its administrators, responsible for labelling, classification and control; or they were nothing more than anthologies of statistics, stacks of useless documents crammed into cabinets of skin and bone.

I must have been crazy.

*   *   *

In the corridor below, the door to the stairwell opened and the pushbutton timer clicked on. I turned off the computer, stood up quickly, and tipped the chair backwards. It struck the column of document wallets, which toppled over. Some files spread over the carpet; others slid close to the fire. I panicked and scrabbled around trying to reconstruct the pile, ignorant of the original order, but indifferent to the possibility of replacing documents in the wrong wallets.

Steps tapped heavily on the iron spiral staircase.

One of the wallets was smoking. I had to decide quickly whether to place it back on the pile and face the consequences, or to trash it. I threw it into the embers and poked it until it caught fire. I couldn't tell what was inside – I had no way of knowing whether it contained my contract, or a Life File, or the Chief's shopping list – but I took the risk and did it anyway. The destruction of information gave me an immense, and surprising, sense of relief.

The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs.

I heaped the remaining documents onto the column, keeping only the Life File. I studied it casually as the door opened.

‘Hello,' said Death, surveying the desk, the column of files, the now blazing fire. ‘Where's the Chief?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Have you finished?'

I nodded. ‘But nothing here makes any sense.'

‘Tell me about it,' he said flatly.

Crackers

Amy returned the video (but not the equipment) a couple of weeks after I'd set the whole thing up. By this time I'd already discovered and documented enough evidence against Ralph to complete the case. It was possible that he saw me a couple of times – one afternoon I'd noticed him casually looking around as he turned a corner, and on the previous weekend he'd used his rear-view mirror far too frequently – but in less than a month I'd recorded or photographed bullying, blackmail, a mistress, a lot of unfriendly persuasion, and that little spot of torture down by the railway. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

But it was the video I was really interested in. My desire repelled and excited me in equal measure, but could not be resisted. It gave me back some of the control I'd lost during the breakdown; and I wanted to see how Amy had changed in the last seven years, whether her tastes were still the same. I wanted to know, too, if she had found the excitement she was looking for. I had so many questions.

She sent me the answers in a brown padded bag, unbroken, unedited, uncensored.

*   *   *

White noise, a blurred pink-and-white image, then her hand retreats from the lens. Her face is pale but her expression is neutral. The fear only shows in her eyes, which are wide and black. She is fully clothed.

‘What the fuck are you doin'?'

She turns around and walks slowly to the bed.

‘Get lyin' down, you dizzy cow.'

It's a four-poster bed. The curtains at the foot are drawn back. Red curtains. They look to me like labia. She climbs onto the bed, as if penetrating her own genitals, and lies on her back with her crown pointing towards the camera.

‘You wannit this way round tonight, doll? ‘S'fine by me. Whichever.'

She lies motionless for several minutes, not even turning her head to see what Ralph is doing. But I can see. I see a small, muscular man stripped to the waist, revealing a chest covered in coils of black hair. His face is not unattractive, but it's unbalanced by the long scar and twisted nose. His voice is strong. I watch as he admires himself in the mirror, combing his black hair, scratching his chest. I see him take four lengths of rope from his pocket and toss them onto the bed.

She flinches, slightly.

‘'Ang on. Forgot the fuckin' tape.'

‘Don't,' she says as he leaves the room; and she lets the word hang there, as if to say any more might bring him back.

But he returns anyway, and sits on the bed next to her, and strokes her face. Then he produces a roll of white insulating tape from behind his back, and grins, and she says for the benefit of the camera or simply for herself,

‘You don't have to do this. I don't
want
you to do this.'

And he says nothing as he takes the rope and ties each of her limbs to the four posts, and tears off a length of tape and winds it three times around her head, covering her mouth, lifting her crown gently each time. When the work is finished, he takes her cheeks in his hands and says quietly,

‘I'll do what I fuckin' like.'

She moans as he exits again; but then falls silent, stays still.

Five minutes pass. Nothing happens. Another five. She remains motionless. After a quarter of an hour she turns her head, so slightly that the camera barely registers it.

‘Keep fuckin' still. If I want you to fuckin' look, I'll tell you.'

He waits for another minute, then returns and sits at the foot of the bed, level with her shoulders. He kisses the tape over her mouth with short, stabbing movements like a bird pecking at seed. He repeats the action on her wrists and ankles, where the rope bonds are tightest. The blood rushes to her arms and legs as though he's transmitting some disease through his lips, through the tape, and she writhes a little, and he notices, and he stops.

‘Fuckin' bitch.'

Another fifteen minutes pass, maybe more. Sometimes he approaches her but doesn't touch. Sometimes he places his hand on her face, or her breasts, or her legs. When she responds with any sound or movement, he interprets it as desire.
You wannit, don't you? You like it.
When she doesn't respond he calls her
fuckin' cold bitch,
and he says
who else is fuckin' you?
and
Not good enough for you? You won't get better while I'm still breathin',
and he presses a little harder against her face, or breasts, or legs, until she moans with pain. Then he stops, and strokes her hair over and over, and says robotically,
Sorry, doll, sorry, doll, you know I don't mean it.
And he leaves the room like a little boy, with shoulders slumped and head bowed. She wriggles against the bonds when he's gone.

When he returns, he is carrying a small, white plate. The plate contains crackers and butter, and a sharp knife. He sits on the right edge of the bed and eats the crackers greedily, spilling the crumbs on her clothes, stopping only to abuse her verbally, or to pat her on the arms and legs, like a man joking with his friends in the locker room. Sometimes he breaks a biscuit over her body and rubs the crumbs into her clothes, laughing, telling her how stupid she looks; but when she writhes or moans or shakes her head, he stops again and repeats the mantra of apology.

When the crackers are finished he uses the knife.

‘I don't love no-one but you,' he says. ‘I mean it. No-one else.'

And he runs the blade of the knife around her breasts and down to her crotch, pausing at places that suit him; then along her legs and arms, slowly, carefully. And I can't see if the edge makes contact with her skin, or if he holds it a millimetre above her, the millimetre that denies her the relief of safe contact and threatens her with visions of short, downward stabbing movements. At last he holds the knife to her face, and now I see that the blade doesn't touch her skin, but is suspended an inch above her eyes.

‘If you leave me, I'll fuckin' kill you … You say
anythin'
to
anyone
—'

He waves the blade over her mouth, the point close to her nostrils. One brief contact, and the blood will flow. But he doesn't touch her. He waves it more violently, to demonstrate his intention, then flicks the knife up in the air like a baton, and catches it by the handle.

‘You're a fuckin' borin' cow anyway. No bloke on earth could get a stiffy lookin' at you. An' if you leave, I'll make sure no bloke does look at you.'

And it might all be over. He cuts the cords tying her to the posts, and she curls up into a ball, her body shaking with inaudible sobs. After a while, when she considers it safe, she gently removes the insulating tape from her mouth, whining with pain when it tugs at her hair. But he has one final desire to fulfil. He pulls down his tracksuit pants to reveal a pair of black Y-fronts, then takes out his flaccid lump of flesh and waggles it at her shivering back, taunting her like a child:
It's your last chance to see it. Won't get another.
And when she continues to ignore him, he shrugs his shoulders and starts to piss on the bed by her head, so that the drops splash against her hair, onto her neck.

She pulls away violently and stands up, enraged.

‘You're fucking
mental.
'

‘'S'way you like it, doll.'

‘Fuck off.'

‘When I want to.'

‘Fuck off
now.
'

He recognizes that he's lost control of her, of the situation, and the humiliation prevents him from apologizing or remaining. He directs the rest of his stream onto the carpet, tucks away his penis, pulls up his pants, and leaves – pausing briefly in the doorway to reassert his authority.