Duffy (17 page)

Then they turned him over on his back. As they did so, the towel seemed to fall half off him and his erection lurched sideways into view.

‘Oh, what a naughty boy,’ commented the girl down that end. ‘What have we here?’

Duffy didn’t feel he needed to answer that one. The girls continued working on him with their oil and their breasts. The way the oil got wiped off his body on to their breasts seemed very nice indeed to Duffy. Everything, in fact, seemed very nice to Duffy, especially the way the girl down the bottom end was getting nearer and nearer his cock. Every so often her forearm seemed to brush it, nudging it into ever harder erection. She didn’t actually touch his cock, though. He remembered vaguely that there was some legal nicety to be performed before they would actually wank him off. Yes, that was it: the client had to propose the idea. Duffy wondered at the form of words. Eventually he tried,

‘I’d like you to go on doing that.’

Quick as a flash the lower girl replied, without stopping her handiwork,

‘You want relief?’

Of course, that was the phrase, Do you want relief? He nodded.

‘Relief’s ten.’

He pointed at his pile of clothes, and the girl at his head went over, rummaged for his wallet, and showed him the two five-pound notes she was taking. Meanwhile the lower girl took a dollop of oil and started smoothing it into his cock and balls. Ah, that was bringing him some relief already, he felt. The girl at the top end started rubbing her tits enthusiastically over his chest.

‘I think it’s time for a nice surprise,’ said the girl at the bottom end, ‘so close your eyes.’ The girl with the big tits helped him by holding her breasts over his face, running them up and down a bit and then settling the nipples softly on his eyelids. Even when the girl at the other end momentarily stopped rubbing him, his cock still pulsed and soared. He heard a cupboard door click open, then shut, and wondered what she was doing. Maybe she was getting out a box of tissues.

The larger girl’s nipples were pressed tight against his eyes. The girl at the end pulled a couple of times more on his oiled cock; then he felt something being gently slid round the base of his balls. Maybe some oriental device to make coming more exciting, he thought.

‘You can look now,’ said the girl at the bottom end. The nipples were removed from his eyes and he looked down the length of his body. What Duffy saw then was the most frightening thing he had seen in his whole life.

Looped around the base of his cock and his balls was a thin copper wire. The wire met and crossed over itself where his cock joined his stomach. At each end of the wire were wooden handles; the slimmer girl was holding one in each hand. It was a garrotte. She said to him very quietly,

‘Don’t move, copper.’

The other girl went across and pushed open the door. In walked Big Eddy Martoff. He was smiling.

8

E
DDY GENTLY TOOK OVER
the wooden handles of the garrotte from the massage girl. He nodded his head towards the door and the two girls went out. Eddy went on smiling.

‘What about my ten quid?’ asked Duffy. ‘My ten quid for relief?’

‘Oh, this could give you relief from everything,’ said Eddy softly, ‘from absolutely everything.’ He tugged very gently on the garrotte.

‘And another thing,’ said Duffy, acting anxious in an attempt to stay cool. ‘Why does everybody keep calling me “Copper”? I’m not a copper, you know that. Why did you tell them I was a copper?’

‘Such semantic niceties, Mr Wright. At a time like this, too. I don’t think the girls would have enjoyed having you on so much if I’d told them that you were only an ex-copper. I don’t think they would have put their hearts into their jobs quite as much. I trust, by the way, that there was nothing wrong with the service you received up to the moment I came along?’

‘Absolutely no complaints,’ said Duffy. ‘I’ll always come here again.’

‘I’m so glad.’

Eddy looked down at Duffy’s groin. Depleted by fear, his rig now lay like a large snail, its head flopping sideways across his thigh.

‘Well, we do seem to have lost our enthusiasm, don’t we?’

‘What about my ten quid?’ said Duffy. It was the only way he could keep his mind off horrifying possibilities.

‘I think that’s the least of your worries.’ Eddy, equally, was determined that Duffy should keep his mind on horrifying possibilities; he tugged gently on the handles; the thin copper wire bit slightly into the base of Duffy’s cock, and gathered his balls up tighter together.

‘Now, Mr Duffy, you have bought cheese in your time, I expect?’

Duffy had.

‘Then I expect you will remember how they cut cheeses. Not the soft cheeses, but the hard cheeses. Cheddar, Cheshire, that sort of cheese.’

Duffy did.

‘Well the wire they use for that is the same wire which is currently threatening to do you a serious injury.’

Duffy thought about foot-high barrels of Cheddar being sliced vertically in half. Even enfeebled old ladies on the cheese counter didn’t break sweat. The wire just slipped through the Cheddar as if there were no obstacle at all. Duffy wasn’t sure that he would ever be able to face cheese on toast again.

‘Now, Mr Duffy, I admit that meat offers rather more serious resistance than cheese. All those sinews and bits of muscle and veins to sever. But I’m sure we’ll discover that roughly the same principle applies. What’s the betting I could tug your tassel right off with one pull?’

Duffy had run out of complaints to take his mind off what was happening. He lay there silently, staring at Eddy’s powerful wrists, at his fingers on the handles.

‘You do realise, Mr Duffy, I hope, that if I pull these handles it will be curtains for you? I don’t just mean that you will be kissing your dubious masculinity goodbye. You will be doing that, of course, without question. But you will probably die as well. Did you realise that?’

Duffy croaked a quiet no.

‘Oh, yes indeed. You see, the area I am, what shall I say, hovering over, is one of the major nerve centres of your body. Normally the body is quite unable to cope with the severing of the genitalia. Quite unable. The shock is simply too enormous. Very few people have ever survived such an event. Of course, it’s possible that by warning you in this way, your body will have the opportunity to build up some resistance to the forthcoming shock. But I’m not an expert on the nervous system, so I’m afraid that I can only hazard this opinion.’

Duffy wanted to vomit; he wanted to shout Sadist, Murderer, Shit, Bastard, Fuckpig, and anything else that came into his head. But he was unable to utter a word; his eyes simply remained fixed on the backs of Eddy’s hands.

‘I suppose the general public would probably approve of my action if they saw it as removing a homosexual from the community.’ Eddie was in a musing vein. ‘After all, I don’t really believe that a lot of the legislation Parliament gives us is a reflection of popular demand. For instance, the people have never been in favour of the abolition of hanging. Yet Parliament decided that hanging should be done away with. I call that fundamentally undemocratic, don’t you, Mr Duffy? Oh dear, we have gone quiet, haven’t we? So what about homosexuals, Mr Duffy? I mean, do you really think that most people in this country
approve
of homosexuality? I don’t. I think most people in this country think it’s disgusting. But does our Parliament understand this? No. And why? Because, of course, our Parliament is stuffed with bents who are frightened for their jobs.’

‘In the same way as Parliament is stuffed with murderers who are frightened for their necks?’

‘Very good, Mr Duffy. I was beginning to be afraid that this was turning into a monologue. Yes, you’re quite right, my comparison does not extend all the way. But I’m sure I’m right about the homosexuals in Parliament. I remember one I was at school with. Frightful fellow. Always off behind the cricket pavilion. He’s an M.P. now – completely safe Tory seat somewhere up in hunting country. Now if his constituents knew, I bet there’d be an awful scandal.’ He paused, and seemed to ponder. ‘You see, what chaps like you don’t understand, Duffy, is that the British people hate bents. They really do. Think of all the nasty names they have for them. There aren’t any nice names, are there? Give me a nice name, Mr Duffy.’

‘Gay.’

‘Gay?’
Eddie chuckled. ‘You don’t look very gay to me, Mr Duffy. You’ve never looked very gay to me. I shouldn’t think you looked very gay when the coppers had to come and kick your door in to rescue that poor unfortunate youth from your clutches. I understand he was a black kid as well. That does seem to me to be taking a very unfair advantage, Mr Duffy.’

‘Was he working for you, Martoff? Or did you subcontract?’

‘I couldn’t possibly tell you a thing like that. Anyway, I don’t employ queers.’

Not even twenty-five year old black ones who look younger and can act like the Royal Shakespeare Company, thought Duffy.

‘Still, I don’t want to get drawn into discussing the wider social questions which might be raised by you being bent. We could go on all night once we embarked on such subjects. One issue simply leads on to another.’

‘Has anyone ever told you you ought to go on Any Questions?’

‘What a charming thought. I wonder how you get on to the panel?’

‘I think the normal way is to blackmail a few radio producers and stab their wives.’

‘Duffy, you are a witty fellow. You know, I’m rather enjoying our conversation.’ Eddy smiled again. He was a keen smiler. ‘But anyway, I suppose, since I seem to have you currently rather at a disadvantage, that I’d better ask why you are still soiling my pavement with your presence? I thought I told you, quite plainly and clearly, to avoid walking on
my
streets.’ Eddy wasn’t smiling any more. ‘I seem to remember instructing you in copper language, so that even you would be able to understand, to get off my patch.’

‘You burnt down my client’s warehouse,’ said Duffy.

‘Ah,’ said Eddy. ‘I think that’s rather jumping to conclusions, don’t you? I should imagine that if there were a third person here, I could probably sue you for slander. Yes, I’m sure I could. Not that I’d get much money out of you, I suppose. You haven’t got private means by any chance, Duffy?’

‘You must be joking.’

‘Well, I am really. So there wouldn’t be much point in suing you. I’d merely end up with my own legal costs to pay. Suing you really would be like trying to get blood out of a stone.’

‘What did you want to burn McKechnie’s warehouse down for? You won’t get any money out of him that way. All those King Kong masks and novelties and hats going up in smoke. I can’t understand you, Eddy. What sort of money do you think McKechnie can get for a load of charred kids’ toys?’

It was the only way Duffy could think of to play it. Not exactly play the innocent, that never fooled anybody. But play the smartass who doesn’t really know as much as his opponent. People enjoyed outwitting smartasses.

‘Duffy, I repeat, I did not “burn McKechnie’s warehouse down”. Unless you want to get into trouble we had better adopt the formula “McKechnie’s warehouse burnt down”. The intransitive mood, please, it’s much less contentious.’

‘Well, now that his warehouse has burnt down, he’s going to have even less money to pay you off with. I can’t understand why you did it – sorry, I’ll rephrase that – I can’t see that the sad loss of one of my client’s warehouses will produce any immediate benefit for you.’

‘Very well done, Mr Duffy. I’m talking of your language, of course, not your thinking.’

‘What’s he got now? Just another warehouse packed with toys and novelties. That’s all his capital assets. Plus a rented office. You might make him, I mean, he might decide to scram and, er, sell out to you. But what good is a burnt-out warehouse to anyone?’

Suddenly Duffy saw what he should have seen earlier. Insurance. Of course, that was it. When he first set up business he used to tell clients that the best security they could buy themselves was insurance. Naturally, McKechnie’s stock would be insured. So, instead of pushing for a hundred quid a fortnight or whatever, Eddy helps McKechnie liquidise half his assets in one go by burning down his warehouse. McKechnie gets the insurance money, and Eddy demands it all, presumably under threat of something very nasty happening. Eddy also agrees to take over the lease of the warehouse, or what is left of it, on terms not too disfavourable to himself.

The only trouble with this idea was that the warehouse was full of porn. Insurance companies would hardly pay for the replacement of
that
stock-in-trade. So McKechnie wouldn’t get any money. No: more likely, Duffy realised, was that only parts of the warehouse were full of porn. McKechnie probably ran a legit business as well for the sake of cover. Most of them did. So what happened if his warehouse burnt down was that he got compensated by the insurance company for the loss of his legitimate stock, and – with a little encouragement from Eddy – he got prosecuted by the coppers for his cache of
Colour Climax.
McKechnie ended up with cash to hand over to Eddy and got the push from the coppers at the same time. And all for the price of a box of Swan Vestas. If that was how he’d worked it, it was bloody clever. But would Eddy have known what was in the warehouse beforehand? Well, his slogan was ‘Knowledge is Power’; Duffy wouldn’t have put it past him.

The last thing Duffy wanted to do, though, was let on to Eddy what his guesses were. His best hope was to carry on playing the dimwit smartass to the end.

‘Or maybe you want to build on the site of the warehouse?’

It was the sort of idiot’s suggestion which appealed to Eddy. He chuckled to himself.

‘I’m afraid you simply don’t understand business, Mr Duffy.’ And then, indulgently, ‘I might want to build on it at some future date, yes, that could be a possibility.’

Eddy appeared to be thinking. His grip on the garrotte slackened a little. The wires round Duffy’s rig relaxed a bit.

‘I think I must consider what to do with you,’ he finally said. ‘My father always told me as a boy that a rushed decision was usually a wrong decision. I shall have to think about you for a bit, Duffy. You’ll bear with me, of course. Georgiou,’ he shouted.