Thin Air (30 page)

The first time Dex visited
Emmertame, he’d been astounded by the luxuries; the best food, the
best drink, the best drugs. The parties took place over long
weekends when Jay had believed Dex was at the studio recording, or
else rehearsing with his band.

The evening always began with a
sumptuous meal. It would be eaten off the long mahogany table in
the room that on more sober occasions served as a board-room, where
Lorrance would hold meetings of a different kind. There would be
presents for the guests at every place-setting: wraps of coke, a
few joints, colourful little sweets. Lorrance seemed to want the
meetings to have a mysterious flavour. He would toast the powers of
the universe that had given him his wealth and position, and invite
his guests to petition these same powers for boons of their own.
The strange shadow guests, in their dark suits, would sit there
apart from everyone else; watching, perhaps supervising. Dex called
these people ghosts; all they did was haunt. Lorrance said they
were business colleagues, but what kind of business? Dex sensed
that Lorrance too was wary of these people. He rarely kept his eyes
off them for long, as if afraid they might slink off into some
corner of the house, perhaps to plant bugging devices or poison the
water.

After the meal, the drinking
would continue, spiced with whatever narcotics were available. Even
now, Dex could only recall impressions of those times; the
sado-masochistic shows in dim red light, the press of hot flesh
against his own, reeking breath, the scent of abandon, beyond all
care. Young women would stagger drunkenly through the rooms,
clutching half empty bottles of vodka or whisky, giggling together,
falling upon whichever famous bodies they could find. And for those
with alternative tastes, there were beautiful youths, with knowing,
hard eyes and skilled hands. Dex had no doubt that every forbidden
desire could be gratified in that house. Lorrance would pride
himself on it.

On Sunday mornings, the
revellers would come to, puffy-eyed and sick. Lorrance, on the
other hand, was one of those people who seemed to shrug off the
effects of drugs and alcohol. Perhaps his body was pickled in a
cocktail of substances that generated energy. He never looked ill,
and would take his breakfast at ten o’clock - in the garden in
summer, or in the heated conservatory in winter. His guests would
mill round the house dispiritedly, departing gradually in their
cars. By mid-day, the house would be empty, although Dex might
sometimes stay until Monday morning, when he would return with
Lorrance to the city.

‘Look at them,’ Lorrance would
say as his guests drifted away. ‘So easily sated and depleted.’

Dex would not comment, for he
felt he was the same. And slightly soiled. He was relieved he could
never recall the weekend’s events in detail.

It was inconceivable that
Samantha and Lacey Lorrance could even be a remote part of this
world. Samantha would invariably return late Sunday afternoon.
After a moment’s frowned contemplation, during which she might have
sensed a strange taint in the air, she would shrug off whatever
bothered her, smile brightly and chatter on in her high voice,
attempting to groom out her East End inflections.

‘Oh, look at this, Rhys,’ she
would say, fluffing out some fragile garment from her purchases.
‘Innit lovely?’

‘Charming.’ Lorrance would kiss
her on the cheek and offer her a gin and tonic and she’d always
say,

‘All right, though it’s a bit
early.’

She would supervise the staff
while they cooked dinner, unaware that since dawn a battalion of
cleaners hired from the city had been scraping and sweeping the
remnants of the two day party from the rooms. Dex had even known
Lorrance call in a decorator at short notice, after an unfortunate
episode of projectile vomiting from one of the guests.

Samantha twittered about the
house, bringing with her a completely different atmosphere, a kind
of innocence. Dex was at once repelled and fascinated by her. She
had a healing presence, albeit one that grated on his nerves.

Lacey might sometimes appear on
Sunday evenings. Samantha went out of her way to curry favour with
the girl, attempts to which Lacey seemed oblivious. Lorrance
appeared uncomfortable around his daughter, perhaps because he
realised she was far more astute than his wife, and might therefore
spot evidence of what went on in the house. The situation couldn’t
have lasted; that much was obvious. It was almost as if Lorrance
was dicing with fate, pushing to the limit the risk of
exposure.

The weekend began as any other.
Music throbbed from various rooms, interspersed with high-pitched
laughter and drunken shouting, and the sounds of running feet. Dex
lay in a drugged stupor on a sofa in the main lounge, while a
faceless person - and he couldn’t even remember if they were male
or female - expertly fellated him. Dimly, he was aware of a pulsing
roar outside that sounded like a helicopter. That might be
possible; he’d seen the dark men arrive that way.

Shortly afterwards, Dex heard a
commotion in the hallway; shouting then, unmistakably, screams.

Dex struggled out into the hall,
and at first saw only a melee of people and buzzing activity that
made no sense. Then he realised they were all milling around
something on the floor: a male body, lying face down, its limbs in
an eerie approximation of a swastika. A couple of girls were
screaming, repeatedly, monotonously, with hardly a pause for
breath. Others were talking fast, gesticulating wildly, but no-one,
for some reason, knelt down to check for a pulse.

Lorrance appeared at the head of
the stairs. He looked terrifying, like a vengeful god; tall, golden
and powerful. ‘Shut up!’ he roared and everyone did. He descended
the stairs slowly. He wore a long, striped silk dressing gown and
leather slippers, but otherwise seemed perfectly groomed. His eyes
were cold. At the bottom of the stairs, he shouted, ‘Move!’ and
flapped his hands at the crowd. ‘Get out of here!’ They backed into
the rooms from whence they’d come; chastened demons. Only Dex
remained. He and Lorrance stared down at the body on the floor, a
young man Dex did not know, but felt he should recognise. ‘Who is
it?’ Dex asked eventually.

‘Some tart,’ Lorrance
answered.

‘He looks very dead,’ Dex said,
wobbling on his feet.

Lorrance nodded. ‘It would
appear so.’

‘Should we... call someone?’

Lorrance fixed him with a gaze
that seemed at once blazing and icy. ‘Who, his fucking mother?’

Dex winced away from the blast
of words, shrugged helplessly.

‘He’s just a little slag off the
streets. We dump him. Can you drive?’

Dex laughed, a nervous reflex.
‘Drive?’ He couldn’t say any more.

‘Just a couple of miles down the
lane. We’ll take it slowly. There’re no police around here who
aren’t good friends of mine.’

‘But what will you tell
people?’

‘That we took him to hospital.
He’s only dead to us, Dex.’

‘No, Rhys, I can’t.’

‘You can.’

‘No, this isn’t right.’

Lorrance fixed him with a stare.
In his eyes, Dex saw infinity stretching back; a relentless void.
‘You have no feelings,’ Lorrance said quietly. ‘Not about
this.’

Dex looked down. There was a
body on the floor; they’d have to deal with it. The dead boy had
always been dead for Dex; he possessed no personality and no past.
Whatever he’d thought or felt a moment before had vanished.

Between them, Dex and Lorrance
lifted the body into a soft approximation of standing. They
arranged the limbs, so it looked as if they were supporting the boy
tenderly for the short, slow walk to Lorrance’s car. It was
possible to believe he was only unconscious. A couple of the floor
tiles were cracked where the body had hit them; they were smeared
with blood. The rooms were hushed around them, as if every
party-goer was afraid and holding their breath. Sounds echoed
hollowly. The body weighed heavily against Dex’s shoulder. He told
himself, ‘this is a dead person’, but could feel nothing in his
heart.

In the car - a sleek silver
Mercedes - Lorrance sat in the back, his arm around the body. Dex
backed the vehicle out of the garage, and saw two tall, indistinct
figures standing in the driveway, illumined only by the crimson
glow of a cigarette. ‘Who are those people?’ Dex asked. He could
not see their faces.

‘They are friends of ours,’
Lorrance answered. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

The two men appeared to watch
the car as it left the estate, but it was difficult to tell. In the
rear view mirror, Dex could see only shadows. There was no sign of
a helicopter on the field before the house.

Out in the lanes, Dex found it
surprisingly easy to drive. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘The forest,’ Lorrance answered.
‘I’ll direct you.’

They drove along in silence for
a while, and all Dex could see in his mind was those two shadowy
figures on Lorrance’s driveway. The image eclipsed even that of the
body sprawled on the floor. Dex swallowed with difficulty. He
glanced in the mirror and saw Lorrance’s face. He was gazing
placidly out of the window at the passing countryside, apparently
without a care in the world.

‘Somebody might find the body,’
Dex said. He wanted reassurance.

Lorrance shrugged. ‘Unlikely.
The place where it will lie for eternity is on my land. My land is
private.’

‘Someone from the party might
say something.’

Lorrance laughed coldly. ‘About
what? The ones who remember anything clearly in the morning won’t
want to be involved. They know better than to try and make trouble.
Don’t worry on my account, nor your own.’

Dex was unnerved by Lorrance’s
insouciance. He had always believed that truth leaked out
eventually, that it was an unwritten law of life, no matter how
long it took.

‘Turn off here,’ Lorrance said,
indicating an old five-bar gate. Dex turned the car’s nose towards
it. The headlights illumined a wide track, leading between a high
avenue of elms. A chain hung heavily from the gatepost. Dex could
see a padlock.

‘Have you got a key, Rhys?’

‘Nowhere is out of bounds to
me,’ Lorrance said. He opened the car door, got out, and the body
slid heavily into the vacant seat.

Dex drummed his fingers against
the steering wheel. Lorrance had his back to him. He could not see
what happened with the gate, but how could Lorrance have had keys
on him? He was still wearing only a dressing-gown.

Once Lorrance got back into the
car, they drove a short way into the woods, taking a left turn to
crawl up a narrower track. Then Lorrance directed Dex to stop the
car. Outside, the night was still and fragrant, although there
seemed to be noises in the distance that Dex could not identify:
heavy sounds, like muffled booming.

Carrying the body between them,
the two men walked for some minutes along the track, until they
came to an old ruin on their right, which had once been a lodge of
some kind. Perhaps a gamekeeper had lived there. Moonlight picked
out few details, other than the bulk of the crumbling walls, the
slick shine of ivy. The roof had gone, but the ceiling of the
ground floor ensured the lower rooms were in darkness.

‘There’s a cellar under the
lodge,’ Lorrance said. ‘Take my torch and put the body down
there.’

Dex did not appreciate the
suggestion. ‘Aren’t you going to help me?’

‘No. Hurry up.’

Dex studied the ruins. They
seemed watchful, slightly malevolent. He suspected Lorrance might
have made use of them before.

‘Get on with it,’ Lorrance said
coldly. ‘Don’t waste time.’

Reluctantly, Dex began to drag
the body towards the shadows. Piles of masonry covered the ground
near the open front door, and littered the floor of the interior.
Dex shone the torch around. Sticks of furniture remained, and
unidentifiable rags hung from the rafters. He couldn’t just throw
the body down the dark stone stairs. If this boy must die without a
name, without mourners, it seemed the least Dex could do was carry
his remains into the cellar. He still wasn’t convinced this was a
good place to conceal it. Kids might come here. But there was no
sign that anyone had visited the place recently.

Dex’s feet slipped on the damp
steps, but he kept the torch beam directed straight ahead. He
didn’t want to look around this place. The atmosphere pressed down
upon him, watchful, perhaps scornful. He hastily arranged the body
on the floor, which was covered in rubbish he didn’t investigate.
This was Lorrance’s problem, not his. He was just helping out.

But you’re part of this, a sharp
inner voice reminded him. You’re a conspirator.

‘Shit,’ he said aloud. For a few
moments he squatted, hunched, on the floor, his elbows resting on
his knees. It was as if he’d been floating in a dark ocean, and now
it had closed over his head. He’d always known Lorrance was
ruthless, but this was something worse. Why had he agreed to help
Lorrance dispose of the body? He should have walked away, yet back
at the house, Lorrance’s compelling gaze had over-ridden his own
feelings.
Someone will find this body
, he thought,
someone will
. Then someone might say something, someone with
a conscience. Did anyone at Lorrance’s parties have
consciences?

A voice came out of the
darkness, ‘They never found
me
, Chris.’

Every hair on Dex’s body stood
up. For a moment, he could not move, then adrenaline flooded his
body and he was up the stairs like a bird, fumbling his way through
the dark ruins. It was Little Peter’s voice he had heard. Little
Peter, a ghost who had never been laid to rest.

Back in the car, Lorrance had
just rolled and lit a fat joint. ‘Took your time,’ he said as Dex
flung himself, panting, into the front seat. ‘What’s up? Saw a
ghost?’