Two Faced (Harry Tyler Book 2) (19 page)

Dawn shook her head. One of the other masked men had picked up her digital recorder from the bedroom.

‘This is the only thing here of any value,’ he grunted. He began to fool around with it.

‘What now?’ said another voice.

The man astride Dawn looked down at her. She turned her head to one side. She no longer wanted eye contact. He looked up at the brother with the camera.

‘You know how to use it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then film this.’

He moved his body backwards so he was sitting on Dawn’s hips then leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. Dawn tried to scream but couldn’t make herself heard through the tape. The man took off his black leather glove and put his hand on her left breast, squeezing it through her blouse. Dawn started to thrash about and he slapped her round the face. She stopped and started to sob again. The man removed his other glove, throwing both on the floor, and then slowly undid the buttons of her blouse. He paused to admire her breasts, pulled down the straps of her bra and began to fondle them. Dawn began to struggle again. He slapped her so hard she went dizzy.

‘I’m going to fuck you,’ he said bluntly. ‘So you either take it or you get hurt and you still get fucked. You understand?’

Dawn couldn’t answer. She just turned her head away from him, trying to separate her mind from her body. The man ripped her bra open, stood up and moved behind her, clutching her shoulders and dragging her towards the settee. He lifted her up and forced her face down over the arm. She felt his hand pull up her skirt and rip it off, tearing the zip and the button away. He jerked her panties off. Dawn was naked from the waist down. She heard the sound of his zip, felt him thrust her legs apart then winced as he entered her roughly. She squirmed. It was hurting. Another pair of hands clasped her behind then moved up to fondle her breasts as the first man thrust into her like an animal: hard and fast and brutal. He must have lasted ninety seconds before she felt the hot rush of his spunk, but it had seemed so much longer. He pulled out. She felt a blob of semen hit her above her spine as he jerked the last drop over her. At least the nightmare was over now.

‘My turn, move over.’ A second penis plunged into her, thrust twice then pulled out. ‘Better idea,’ the man said. ‘Ever have it like this before?’ He lubricated his cock with saliva and rammed it into her anus. ‘Yeah, I bet Bernie loved giving it to you up the pooper.’ He slapped her buttocks hard. ‘He loves fucking people up the arse.’ He pushed it in hard. Dawn tried to scream in pain. Mercifully, he pulled out of her. She could feel him wanking against it. ‘Don’t miss the cum shot!’ he instructed the brother, who was filming. ‘YES!’ he gasped as he ejaculated over her cheeks.

‘Your go,’ he grunted to the third brother. But David declined. Secretly he thought this was sick, but he wasn’t going to rock the boat. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want sloppy seconds.’

‘Well, you hold the fucking camera while I rag it,’ said the fourth man.

The cameraman had the biggest cock of the lot and took the longest to come. Dawn lay motionless. The pain had spread into an all-over numbness. This night would haunt her for the rest of her days. When he finally came, one of the others – she thought it was the first man again – grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head up. He spoke quietly.

‘You tell that maggot we want our money. One word of this to the Filth and I’ll come back and cut yer eyeballs out. You understand?’

Dawn didn’t. She blacked out. Nicky Nelson threw her head down.

‘Where’s my gloves?’ he asked. ‘Come on, we’re out of here.’

Dawn regained consciousness as they were leaving but remained bent over the arm of the settee. ‘Christ,’ the first man said. ‘She was a dry fuck.’

‘Fuckin’ bitch.’

‘The maggot’s whore, what d’you expect?’

They closed the door quietly behind them as they left.

Bernard’s mobile rang repeatedly. Whoever it was wouldn’t leave a message. Finally he received a text message: ‘Maggot, fucked your bird last nite. She was gr8. Wanna c the film? Answer phone in ten mins or other people will.’

Bernard rang Dawn’s work number immediately. When her line went through to voice mail he tried her friend Rene.

‘Oh, hello, Bernard, haven’t heard from you in a while. Dawn? No, luv, she phoned in sick. Have you tried her at home?’

He rang the home number. No answer. Bernard felt sick. His mobile rang, caller details withheld. He answered but didn’t speak.

‘Maggot, it’s your loving brother Nicholas. Spoken to your slut yet?’

‘Wha, what have you done?’

‘Just taxed you on what you owe.’

‘What have you done?’

‘Tight little pussy, ain’t she? Charles said her arse was a lot nicer.’

‘If you’ve hurt Dawn I’ll kill you.’

‘Listen, you fucking maggot, give us what you owe us or this film goes on the Internet.’

‘What film?’

‘The film of four masked men fucking the arse off her indoors in her own home, that film. We’re thinking of calling it “Slip It Up With Slipknot” or maybe “Whack it up the chocolate starfish – confessions of a maggot’s slut”.’

‘I’m gonna kill you all, Nicky. You hear me? You’ll all DEAD.’

‘I’m quaking. Listen Mr Smart-arse, Mr Global Entrepreneur, Mr Investment Man. You pay up or next time I CUT – HER – OPEN. You hear me, maggot? You ring the old man and tell him you’ve got our money or I’ll cut her.’

The line went dead.

H
arry Tyler was annoyed rather than concerned about Dawn. OK, she’d had a bit of agg, but why hadn’t she left him a number? Why hadn’t she even tried to call? He needed her! He had another ghost on his conscience. He’d sent poor Mickey to meet his maker, on a job he could have done himself. The Jack Daniel’s bottle in the kitchen was looking tempting, but he couldn’t bring himself to drink the hard stuff on a Sunday morning. Not alone, at any rate. At 11.30am he walked around and bought the papers. Even they pissed him off. Why was there nothing to read in the
News Of The Screws
any more? He’d bought the
People
for the SP, but West Ham had lost yesterday and he didn’t need reminding about it. At midday, Harry settled down to watch
The Gangs Of New York
on DVD. Half an hour later, he was on his way to The Park Tavern pub in nearby Aveley, kidding himself that he needed to get some proper tucker inside him, but knowing full well he was going to find some company and lose the rest of the day on the sauce. And if a nice barmaid took his eye then maybe he’d be out all night too. Fuck Dawn. If she couldn’t be arsed to bell him then given half the chance why should he bother keeping it in his trousers?

Harry was unlucky. He missed the last roast beef dinner in the house and settled down with his pint at a table near the stage to tuck in to a nutritional, Atkins-friendly bag of pork scratchings. There was a singer on, an old-fashioned chirper crooning Tony Christie numbers to a backing track. A pair of Goths to his right were making snidey remarks about him under their breath. Harry clocked the bird. If she washed off the mascara and had her hair done she’d be half a sort. She caught his eye and smiled.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s not my cuppa tea.’

‘Mine neither.’

‘You look like a Phil Collins type of guy.’

‘You’re lucky I don’t hit women.’

‘No offence.’

Harry down his last scratching. ‘None taken. Just kidding.’

The juke-box kicked in as the cabaret ended. As the singer stepped off the stage, Lady Goth stood and shook his hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That was wonderful.’

He beamed with pleasure as she went on: ‘You’ve taken entertainment back to the 1950s.’

The Goth smiled so sweetly that the singer didn’t even realise she was taking the piss.

‘That was cruel,’ said Harry. ‘But funny.’

‘Thank you, firm but fair, that’s me. I’m Daisy by the way, and this is Stewart.’

‘I’m Harry, Harry Tyler, and I’m only grumpy ’cos me dinner’s a bit flat.’ He gave what was left of his lifeless pint a swirl.

‘Get you another?’ Stewart asked.

‘Sure, ta, but tell ’em to change the barrel.’

‘Come and join us, Harry Tyler,’ Daisy commanded. ‘Don’t be shy now.’

Harry did as he was bid, casually taking in as much of her as he could without showing out. Daisy had large, pendulous breasts, but his eyes were distracted by the black and silver medallion nestling between them. It was an upside-down star shape, dangling on a silver chain. He looked closer. The medallion had Hebrew lettering and the fine outline of a goat’s head.

‘Yes, they are quite splendid knockers and they’re all mine,’ she said.

‘I was actually clocking the pentagram. What’s all that about then? You into Marilyn Manson and all that old bollocks?’

‘It’s called a baphomet, actually, but Marilyn? Hardly. He’s quite amusing but entirely plastic. Stewie and I, we actually are Satanists.’ Daisy paused for Harry to react negatively. He didn’t. ‘Some of the bands on the Goth scene are OK, like King Diamond and Killing Miranda. They’re genuine, most of them just play at the shock-horror image to sell records. Most black metal outfits are tossers.’

Stewart returned with a tray of drinks.

‘Cheers,’ said Harry.

‘So who do you listen to, Harry Tyler?’

‘All sorts. Rancid, Linkin Park, The Libertines, Fause, Hendrix, Maninblack, Zen Baseball Bat …’

‘They’re cool,’ said Stewart.

‘So are you Ozzy Osbourne fans?’

‘Not for what he stands for, which isn’t much, but because he’s funny,’ said Daisy. ‘I read that someone went up to him once and asked him what he thought about black magic, and Ozzy said, “I prefer Milk Tray.”’

Harry laughed. ‘When he did Live Aid some snooty producer asked him what he was going to sing and Ozzy replied, “Food Glorious Food”, which I thought was class.’

‘Quality,’ said Stewart.

‘So if you missed your lunch why not have a couple of rolls?’ asked Daisy.

‘I’m on the Atkins.’

‘So, brittle bones and kidney stones.’

‘No, just meat, eggs and cheese for most meals.’

‘Funny. Bad breath?’

‘No complaints. But on the down side my blood type is now bacon.’

‘Who makes you laugh, Harry?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Most of all, angry people,’ he said finally. ‘John Cleese, Billy Connolly, Jerry Sadowitz, Chris Rock, Alexei Sayle when he started and was eaten up with envy and class hatred, Dennis Leary …’

‘Bill Hicks?’

‘Yeah, of course Hicks, and Sam Kinison, who was even better, a real bilious bastard. All that rage works for me much more than slapstick or the surreal stuff. I get off on raw emotion. Milligan had a lot of anger in him, I think.’

‘What do you do, Harry?’ Daisy asked.

‘Oh, a bit of this and that, ducking and diving. Trading, investing, import, export, dealing, y’know the sort of thing.’

‘That reminds me, Stewart, you’ve got to see Gill in Colchester about some puff this afternoon, don’t forget.’

‘Oh yeah, I’ll get going.’

He stood up and downed a Screwdriver.

‘Do you mind if I stay here and chat to our new friend? He seems fun.’

‘No, no. That’s fine. But, Harry, you’d be doing me a big favour if you made sure Daisy gets home OK. We’ve only got the one set of wheels.’

‘No worries, I’ve got nothing on.’

‘Cheers. Laters.’

‘I’d like to see that,’ said Daisy.

‘What?’

‘You with nothing on.’

He laughed. She was kidding, surely? He didn’t push it.

‘So tell me about you,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m twenty-six, educated at grammar school, I work in publishing.’

‘And you worship the Devil?’

‘Ha ha. We don’t believe that Satan is a real person stomping about in some fiery hell, Harry. There isn’t any big red bloke with horns and a trident in a flaming pit, just as there isn’t a Father Christmas, or a fairy grotto at the end of your garden, or a kindly old God with a big white beard and a choir of angels singing “Hosanna In Excelcis” every time he lets rip with a thunderclap.’

‘That’ll come as a shock to the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

‘Fate, astrology, Mystic Meg … it’s all phoney baloney. Do you read your stars, Harry?’

‘Sometimes. That Shelley von Shenkel seems to get it right.’

‘Von Strunckel. So you think the stars in the sky affect your life?’

Harry opened his mouth but said nothing.

‘You think that the shape of a constellation millions of light years away on the day you were born can decide whether you’ll get along with wifey twenty-odd years later?’

‘Not when you put it like that, it sounds pretty silly.’

‘It’s mumbo jumbo, and you know it. But so are all those grand concepts like destiny. There is no destiny. You make your own life, Harry, your own luck. Satanists believe in free will.’ She paused and smiled. ‘Life without a safety net.’

Life without a net! Wasn’t that Harry Tyler to a T? Now he was really interested. ‘What else?’

‘We believe that Christianity and all the other bullshit religions try to suppress man’s true nature. Right now Islam is the worst, but none of them have much going for them. I mean, big fat Buddha … if you had to have some superstition in your miserable life, wouldn’t you rather believe in Thor or Zeus? At least they’ve got some spark. But no, all the sheep jump on the latest trend instead, like the Kabbalah, and it neuters them as human beings. We don’t want Madonna reciting the Cobb-a-lers, we want her hitchhiking naked or down there on all fours on a lead hovering over a saucer of milk.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Christianity is a slave religion, designed to keep us in our place.’

‘So it’s best not to invite you to my next Born Again rally?’

‘Make it Born Against and I’ll be there.’

‘You really hate Christianity?’

‘It’s a regressive, repressive, spirit-sapping moral dictatorship. The Church says things like pride, indulgence and carnal desire are wrong. Why? We say they’re natural and we should all enjoy them, revel in them.’ She held his stare. ‘If you felt like asking me into the pub garden now just so you could stick your tongue down my throat and give my tits a nice long squeeze, then why shouldn’t you do it? I could say no and that would be the end of it, or I might say yes because I might fancy you too and it would be wrong to suppress our true feelings.’

‘Got it.’ Harry smiled. He looked as innocent as a secondhand car salesman. ‘Do you fancy sitting out the back for a while, just to get a bit of sun?’

Daisy laughed. ‘Why not?’ she said.

‘Same again?’

‘Do you think they’d run to a caramel machiatto?’

‘Yeah, generously served with a side-order of Belugan caviar. I’ll get some more beers in.’

When Harry walked out with the beers, Daisy was sitting at a wooden table. Apart from a couple of youngsters on the slide, there was no one else about.

‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Harry said. ‘I’m not religious. I’m with Rose Tattoo on that: don’t turn the other cheek, ’less you want it beaten in … But I do think religion gives society a moral compass, rules and regulations.’

‘That’s an opinion.’

‘Religion gives us a code of behaviour, thou shalt not kill and all that.’

‘Yes, except that class of parasite you call priests seem quite prepared to bend those rules to suit whatever the ruling elite wants from them. Thou SHALT kill for oil; thou SHALT steal the money we’ve earned from our pockets and call it taxation.’ She paused. ‘Do you like people, Harry?’

‘Guess so. I’m a people person.’

‘You wanna live like common people, like Jarvis?’

‘Yeah, although my singing reference of choice would be Nicky Thomas.’

‘This is where we differ. I don’t like people. Most of them are sheep, Harry. They’re told what to think and what to do. I have no time for the herd mentality: buy the
Sun
, watch
EastEnders
, vote Blair … bah, bah, baahhhhh.’

‘And how wrong were we to do that? I voted for a Labour party – out of family tradition, admittedly – and we ended up with Holy Joe and a souped-up SDP. These people actually look down their nose at the working class. They hate our tastes, our opinions, even the jobs we do. Fuck the dignity of labour, New Labour is all about spin and media studies and lining the pockets of the lawyer class. I detest them. They’re worse than the Tories because they are so fucking sanctimonious. And I suppose you’re right, the herd mentality is to blame. People don’t bother to think things through for themselves and we got taken in, conned. There is a simmering resentment in the country, there’s a lot of anger out there, we ought to be talking revolution, but Blair is still ahead in the opinion polls. His government is built on transparent lies, why can’t the voters see it?’

‘Most people don’t know what they’re doing or why they’re doing it half the time, apart from a dim sense of duty or tradition. They go from the cradle to the grave without challenging any of the received wisdom. Our rulers don’t need a matrix to keep us in check, Harry. Joe Public is blinded with soap suds, pseudo-celebrity and all the other weapons of mass distraction.’

‘That’s it. Thick as shit, some people. I do like smart people, I don’t suffer fools.’

A wicked smile flashed across Daisy’s face. ‘So, immediately you’d discount any members of the human race who are stupid.’

‘I wouldn’t say discount. I don’t like being with dummies, but then I don’t like being with posh people either, the kind who think they’re a cut above everyone else. I’m choosy about the company I keep.’

‘What about black people?’

‘What about them? There’s good and bad in everyone.’

‘My mum used to sing us a song when we were kids.’ Daisy cleared her throat and began to sing. ‘There’s a new world coming/We’ll build a better place/There’s a new world coming/We’ll stick with our own race/Yeah, there’s gonna be a new world and it’s gonna happen soon/And you know you’ll never see another coon.’

Harry laughed uncomfortably. ‘I dunno if I agree with that. Would the world be a better place without Chris Rock or Smokey Robinson? I don’t think so. And what about Sugar Ray? Ice T? Eddie Murphy, Marvin Gaye, Mohammad Ali, Desmond Dekker, Tyra Banks, Prince Buster, Samuel L Jackson, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin …?’

Daisy shrugged. ‘That was my mum, not me. It’s the weak I can’t stand. The morally weak; the parasites, the criminal. In nature the undesirables are cast out of the tribe. And those who commit crimes against others know they have to face the consequences; that’s the way it should be, whereas in society now the people who commit the crimes are treated like victims.’

‘Where every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints,’ said Harry. ‘That was The Rolling Stones in “Sympathy For The Devil”.’

‘Yeah? Well they got it wrong.’

‘What was your mum like, Daisy? When she wasn’t running her klaven, I mean.’

‘An absolute bitch.’

‘Really?’

‘I hated her. She never had a good word to say for me. As soon as I hit puberty she turned into a monster. She had a tumour cut out of her neck when I was sixteen and I was praying for the knife to slip and cut her fucking head off.’

‘You’re not normal.’

‘Who’d want to be?’

The kids left the slide and ran into the pub.

‘What do you believe in, Harry?’

‘I don’t know any more. Every time I discover the meaning of life they change it.’