Destroying Angel (12 page)

‘So you’re going to France?’

‘No, you are. There’s an eleven o’clock ferry from Portsmouth to Caen. You’re on it.’

‘But—’

‘Work can wait a few days. You’re a freelance, aren’t you? I’m better employed here seeing how things develop, and besides, it’s not often I get the chance to be the plaything of a man with a mind as twisted as Paul Berner’s. I always thought of him as the sort of pig who’ll make you suck him, bend you over for a thirty second stuffing from the rear, and then refuse to help you come. He’s actually quite imaginative, and definitely perverse.’

‘Slut,’ Paulette said playfully.

Robin Riddell stood looking out from his parent’s tower block flat high over the lights of west London. Ever since Monday afternoon he’d been unable to get what had happened out of his mind. Lust and guilt warred in his mind, creating feelings so strong that sleep was impossible. The girl Susan had actually sucked his cock while Taz was fucking her, an act dirtier than anything he had done before. Okay, he was no virgin; he’d fucked Clare and had Jilly after her birthday party. Jilly had also helped toss his cock for him when Taz wasn’t around – not once but several times. Susan had been different, rude, uninhibited: sucking and fucking with a frantic eagerness. And she’d fingered herself and come in front of them, not caring at all what they saw.

The thought of Susan’s tits sent his hand to his cock. They’d been big and firm, with good-sized nipples. As fine as any he’d seen in magazines, and he’d not only had a good feel but put his tag across them. That thought started his guilt again. They’d held her down while they tagged her, and she hadn’t stopped struggling until it was too late. It had been a joke though, and she hadn’t minded in the end, laughing and showing it off, obviously proud of herself.

Again, it wasn’t the first time. Jilly had had a ‘Taz’ tag put on her bum more than once, and the first time they’d held her with her skirt up and her knickers pulled well down. She’d giggled all the time, though. Feeling puzzled and confused, he started to stroke his penis. Whatever they’d done, the memory was too much to ignore.

An orange glint somewhere out among the lights beneath him caught his attention. It came again, moving, flickering, clearly not a streetlight. It was somewhere down by the canal, among the industrial estates of Park Royal:

Fire.

Forgetting all about his fantasising, he hastily grabbed his clothes. As he dressed, he watched in absolute fascination as the fire sprang up. It caught fast, the orange flicker becoming a line of flame, then a great gout as something exploded. Fire-engine sirens cut across the night, flashing blue lights moving along the Westway into his range of vision.

Fully dressed, he grabbed his bag of spray cans from the top of the wardrobe. The flat was dark, his mother sleeping; undisturbed by the distant wails of the fire-engines.

He shut the flat door carefully and made for the lift. This time he was determined; he would leave the ‘Fire Ghost’ tag while the flames still burned.

Then they’d notice it: they had to.

Half an hour later, he was pushing his way through a gap in a fence that led onto wasteland across the canal from the burning warehouse. The place had been easy to find; orange flames reflected in the sky and occasionally visible along roads or between gaps in buildings. A great pillar of smoke also showed against the stars, a black column to guide him to his destination. Near his destination, anyway; Robin had no intention of risking getting caught and reasoned that it would not be until morning that the far side of the canal was investigated, if at all.

His torch illuminated a path across the wasteland, the gradually dying fire throwing weird shadows of orange and black across the scene. Unlike the last fire scene, there were no great heaps of rubble to provide convenient surfaces for tagging, and it was some while before he found a brick wall that suited his purposes. A distant cluster of bright violet-white streetlights illuminated the surface, giving him enough light to go about his work.

With the thrill of illicit activity that tagging always gave him, he selected the red can and began the careful work of spray-painting. He was a good artist, he knew: maybe the best in the area. Certainly far better than Taz or Beadle. Finishing the red, he started to add the orange, getting halfway through the second word before a noise made him spin, his heart leaping into his mouth.

He froze. Behind him, as tall and lank as Taz, hands thrust deep into the pockets of tatty jeans, spiked red hair like a halo around his head, was a man. Robin could make out very little of his features, but something told him that he had just met the real Fire Ghost.

Ted Gage stood looking at the wreckage of Crazy Joe’s Carpet Madhouse. The scene was depressingly familiar, the only difference being that it was less than a mile from the last fire. There was soot and charred wreckage in a sea of filthy water, police of various sorts going over the mess, reporters and onlookers standing outside the cordon of police tape. This time Detective Superintendent Julia Keeson herself had come down. She was trying to dispose of the media, a job that Gage was glad not to have, for once. Otherwise her presence was a nuisance, although at least it meant she got to appreciate the difficulties he was labouring under from first-hand experience. Paul Berner was also there, talking to Susan MacQuillan. Gage found both Berner and MacQuillan somewhat irritating, to say the least.

‘Sir,’ someone called.

He turned to see Sergeant Yates coming towards him.

‘Something you should see, sir,’ Yates announced. ‘There’s some graffiti on the far side of the canal.’

Gage went with the sergeant, interested in anything that might provide the slightest clue. Having found their way to the opposite bank of the Grand Union canal, they were directed onto a strip of wasteland that separated the canal from a main road. There, plastered on a brick wall, was the legend, ‘Fire Ghost’.

Robin Riddell leant eagerly forward across the stained Formica of the café table. Opposite him, his leg cocked up onto the bench and a cigarette dangling carelessly from between his fingers, sat the man on whom Robin had styled himself. Thin, lanky, his red hair formed into spikes, the Fire Ghost was pretty much as Robin had imagined him. He also had restless eyes and a wide loose mouth that gave the impression that he was amused by everything around him: a cynical, knowing amusement. He had also told Robin to call him Paul, a confidence which filled him with pride.

‘Quit?’ he laughed, in response to Robin’s question as to whether he felt it would be wise to stop fire-raising while he was ahead of the game. ‘No way. Why should I? They’ll never catch me, and it’s my life. It’s fun. I enjoy it.’

‘There’s a lot of cops after you,’ Robin insisted, awed by his new friend’s coolness.

‘Who cares?’ Paul replied easily. ‘They ain’t going to catch me, like I said. See, there’s two types of guy in this world: the winners and the losers. I’m one of the winners. Seven times now, and they ain’t had a sniff. It’s easy. Pick a target they ain’t expecting, find a side with no cameras, wait until the soft sods are all asleep, and bang!’

‘Neat. When are you going to do another?’

‘Maybe soon, maybe not. I’ll tell you, because I can see you’re a bit like me. You don’t give a fuck for the pigs or any of these lah-di-dah shits who think they know what’s right. I’ve done places down the East End and up Lee Valley and around here. Next one’s going down on this big estate in Merton. I’ve looked it over. It’s a snip. You can come and tag it if you want.’

‘Really?’

Paulette drew her car to a stop in the central square of Choray. The village was tiny, no more than a couple of dozen houses, several of which had signs declaring their owners to be vignerons; wine makers. None had claimed to be a co-op. Trying her halting French at the single small hotel, which appeared to lack even a name, she discovered that the place she wanted was a mile outside the village on the road leading south.

She yawned, deciding to have lunch and an hour’s sleep before tackling the co-op. The ferry trip and the long drive across France had been tiring, leaving her feeling hot, sticky, and in need of sleep.

The hotel had space, despite its small size, and even managed to provide an adequate lunch. Finding the room comfortable and provided with a shower, she locked the door, washed, dried herself and fell naked onto the bed. A minute later she was asleep. She dreamt of Annabella de Vergy, picturing herself tied over a trestle at the dominant beauty’s mercy. The image was so vivid that, when she woke up, she was unable to resist masturbating.

In her fantasy she was Annabella’s pet slave on a plantation, being beaten while spread naked on silk sheets. Even when she came she was no more than half-awake, returning to a more peaceful sleep afterwards. By late afternoon she once more felt ready to tackle the world and left the hotel, taking the road south.

The co-op was obvious. Set on the brow of a hill where the land began to fall away towards the Cher valley, the great structure of concrete and wood made a sharp contrast with the squat buildings of yellow limestone in the village. As she stopped on the verge, she saw that the co-op had an air of bustle and industry quite different from the sleepy atmosphere of Choray and the other villages she had passed through since she had left the autoroute at Blois.

She stepped from the car and adjusted her clothes and hair. She and Susan had worked carefully on her image. If the co-op was involved in a major fraud, they were hardly likely to welcome journalists and might well not even welcome casual passing trade. The best bet had seemed to be to hope that the manager was male, in which case he was highly unlikely to refuse Paulette’s polite request to be shown around.

To maximise her chances, Paulette had dressed carefully. Her striped T-shirt clung to her braless breasts, giving the occasional hint of her nipples and exaggerating the breadth of her chest. It was also tucked tightly into her cut-down jeans to show off the trim lines of her waist. The jeans were also tight, hugging her bottom and the swell of her pussy; the frayed shortened legs allowed just a hint of her bottom-cheeks. The idea was to give an impression of unintentional sexual display; a naïve girl dressed for a summer’s day, and unaware of the effect of her choice of dress.

A welcoming sign at the gate removed her first possible obstacle, advertising local wines and wines from the south of France. Visitors buying and tasting the co-op’s produce were clearly welcome. The appearance of the suited man among the people working in the yard removed her second. The instant he saw her he flashed his white teeth and his eyes glinted in a way that was more than familiar to Paulette. At no more than five and a half feet, slim, and so dapper as to seem more in place at a wedding reception than in the yard of a wine co-operative, he presented an image she regarded as typically French.

‘Ah, mam’selle,’ he welcomed smoothly, making Paulette wonder what it was about her that was so transparently British, and then realising that the number plate of Susan’s car was visible to him, ‘may I help you?’

‘I was wondering if I could taste some of your wines?’ Paulette asked, thankful that she was not going to have to try and communicate in French.

‘But of course,’ he replied, his smile even broader. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. Christian Charrier; I am the manager here.’

‘Paulette Richards.’

He took her hand and kissed instead of shook it. ‘Enchanted,’ he leered. ‘Or is that wrong in English?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Ah, I am so clumsy,’ he went on. ‘To know the words of a language is one thing; to speak like a native, quite another.’

‘No, really, you speak very good English.’

‘Thank you, but you flatter me,’ Charrier continued, casually taking her arm. ‘Perhaps you would permit me to personally show you around?’

‘Fine,’ Paulette answered, feeling somewhat taken aback and wondering if she hadn’t overdone the look of sexual availability.

He led her into the low whitewashed building that bore a sign indicating it as the tasting room, and poured two glasses of a fresh sharp white wine. She made a polite comment, although she would have preferred something with more flavour. Charrier responded cheerfully, explaining the background of the wine and then leading her through a connecting door into the main body of the co-op.

Paulette looked round, wishing she had a greater knowledge of wine, and wondering how she was supposed to find out whether or not the co-op was involved with fraud. Great tanks of concrete, fibreglass, and stainless steel stood around the spacious room. To one side, a machine that was evidently a bottling plant clicked and whirred. The two men operating it cast lustful glances at her.

As Charrier continued the tour, Paulette started to feel very self-conscious. It was obvious that Charrier was chatting her up, and obvious that the workers knew it. Maybe they even regarded it as a familiar routine, judging from the knowing looks that were passed without much concern for whether she saw or not. In other circumstances she would have made a polite excuse and left, but she needed to be able to study the co-op. As they returned to the tasting room, Charrier became bolder, allowing his hand to stray onto the curve of Paulette’s bottom and passing a remark that was clearly intended as a compliment on the size and firmness of her breasts.

Paulette found herself at once flattered and repelled. Charrier certainly had charm and an open, appreciative attitude to her which she found refreshing. On the other hand, there was something oily, almost serpentine about his character, and physically he was not really her taste at all. She liked men to be big, muscular, and strong enough to dominate her physically without really thinking about it. Charrier was only a few inches taller than her and bony, although his bronzed skin and sinewy hands suggested at least some strength.