Dead Bad Things (6 page)

  Sarah got up and went to the bureau. It was an old piece of furniture, possibly an antique. Sarah remembered it from her childhood. Once she'd watched her father slamming her mother's head repeatedly against it during an argument over shopping.

  She opened the top drawer and began to riffle through the papers she'd found there, bored and restless, looking for something to distract her darkening thoughts. A few days ago she had noted a couple of envelopes stuffed with Polaroid photographs inside the bureau. At the time she had not been able to examine the photos – she was due at the station, and just nosing around as she finished her morning orange juice with no real aim in mind.

  She dug deep and found two envelopes. They were slim, brown, and obviously old. One of them was badly torn and the contents were threatening to spill out.

  "Come on, then," she whispered, juggling the envelopes as she took them out of the drawer. She almost dropped the torn one, and this was all the invitation the photos needed to wriggle free. They spilled to the floor like thrown playing cards, scattering at her feet.

  Sarah bent down and grabbed them, creasing one or two but not really caring. She was certain they weren't important: just more of her father's shit. The same old stuff he had been hoarding for years. The house was filled with such items, and she was tempted to call in a house clearance company to have the lot taken away without even giving it another glance. Or was that just something she told herself to stop her from being afraid of what she might find?

  Slowly, she fanned out the photos in her hands. The first one showed her father, much younger than when he had died. He was naked except for an old-fashioned bobby's custodian helmet and a avaricious smile. Sarah's mother was kneeling at his feet; her arms were trussed up tightly behind her back and bound by what looked like coils of nylon rope. Her father had an erection. Her mother was staring at it. Her lips were slightly apart. There was fear in her eyes. The image was slightly degraded, and nothing was too clear, but the look of absolute terror in her mother's eyes was unmistakable. Sarah had seen it before.

  She always looked like that when she knew her husband was going to rape her.

  "Jesus…" Sarah was hardly surprised. As a child, she had seen far too many examples of the man's abusive nature – had even experienced it first hand, several times. But this was something new. She had never known him to
photograph
any of his activities. The risk of the images getting into the wrong hands was too strong, and exposure would surely ruin his carefully-cultivated reputation as an officer of note.

  The muscles in her jaw ached. She was grinding her teeth. A photograph like this meant nothing, of course; it was simply a kinky shot of two married people playing sex games. Hardly something new amongst the police, who tended to let off steam in all kinds of personal ways.
But…

  What if he had recorded other things. Bad things.
Dead bad
things
, as the old bastard had called anything that did not fit into his fucked-up sense of right and wrong, his twisted world view.

  Sarah carefully slipped the photographs back into the envelope, and then she replaced both envelopes inside the overstuffed drawer. She would examine these more closely later, when she was alone. She had a day off before rotating back onto the day shift; there was nowhere important she needed to be. She had even briefly considered cancelling her rest day and calling into the station, maybe to relieve someone who had better things to do, a family and friends to spend time with, a real life to lead. But not now: not any longer.

  It seemed that she too had better things, more interesting things, to occupy her time. The old bastard must have been looking at these old photographs not long before he died. She could think of no other reason why they would be so easily found; surely he would usually have kept them under lock and key in his office space in the cellar?

  Sarah returned to her seat and sipped her coffee. It was lukewarm, but it tasted good. Maybe she would brew up a fresh pot, just to keep her going as she went through her father's belongings. Because wasn't it about time she did that? Hadn't she been procrastinating for long enough?

  The day stretched ahead of her, filled with potential. The secrets of the house beckoned. Beneath her feet the cellar swelled with darkness, forbidding her entry. The windows shone with burnished morning light. Now all she had to do was ditch Benson, so she could finally get down to business and reacquaint herself with her father.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Trevor looked at the boy and frowned. What was his name again? Ah, yes: Derek. Not a very memorable name, but with a surname like Pumpkiss, Trevor could hardly be choosy. He much preferred his stage name, Dove, but that was all in the past now. He doubted he could ever go by the name Trevor Dove again – not after what had happened. Not since he had been exposed.

  "You OK?" Derek was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and scuffed baseball boots. He'd taken off his shirt when he had accidentallyon-purpose spilled red wine on the sleeve. It was a lame move – far too obvious – but Trevor had pretended to fall for it. The boy was charming, in a low-rent kind of way, and he had a beautiful smile. Nice white teeth. The shapeless figure of an adolescent.

  "Sorry… yes, I'm fine. Just thinking." He tried to grin, but his face refused to move in the right way and it probably looked more like he was having a stroke.

  "Thinking?"

  "Yes."

  "I see. I like a man who thinks."

  Trevor tried not to laugh. As seductions went, it was pathetic. The boy clearly read too many porn mag letters pages, spent too much time on internet forums. "Is that so?"

  "Yes. It is. I like
you
… I like you a lot."

  There you go: he'd moved into second gear.

  Trevor took a step towards the boy, moving past the large sofa and standing near the polished oak coffee table. He'd already refilled their wine glasses but neither of them had taken a drink since the spillage incident. Trevor reached down and picked up his glass. He took a large mouthful of merlot. Nice. Like the boy and his bright white teeth. His soft white skin.

  "Come here," said the boy. He had lowered his voice; his eyes were shining. He was trying to be the alpha dog. Once again, Trevor held back a surge of laughter.

  "OK," said Trevor, moving forward until he was standing only inches away from the boy. "Here I am." Trevor towered above the boy; he was a head taller.

  "Yes, there you are." The boy lunged. He was clumsy and graceless, but didn't even realise how inept his moves were. He thought he was being so smooth, so in-control. His mouth crawled across Trevor's face; his hand grabbed Trevor's crotch, rubbing it.

  Trevor tried to throw himself into the act – he really did. Derek was wonderful to look at, and he had one of those cute little skinny-fat-boy pot-bellies. Yet he was narrow of build, and his skin was coloured a shade of white which took the breath away.

  "What's wrong?" The boy pulled back, but he kept his hand pressed against Trevor's cheek; his other hand remained down there, stroking gently. "Don't you like me?"

  This time Trevor did laugh. It was a small sound, and very brief. The boy removed his hands from Trevor and took a single backwards step, pretending to sulk.

  "No. Really. I do like you. I'm sorry, friend… it's just that I've been through a bad time, a really shitty time. It's affected… well, you know. My responses." He held the boy's gaze, almost challenging him to react.

  Derek sat down heavily in the armchair. He stared at his feet, and then picked up his glass. "So it isn't me, is that what you're saying?" He looked even more like a little boy and Trevor at last began to feel the beginnings of a red-rushing wave of desire.

  But God, he was so fucking shallow. So self-obsessed. "No," said Trevor. "It's me. Really."

  Derek smiled. "Well, how about we just take it slowly and see what happens. I've never failed yet, you know." His lips were red. It was the wine, of course, but Trevor kept thinking of blood. Fat lips covered in blood.

  His desire fled; the red rush faded.

  "I think that's a good idea," said Trevor. "How about I open another bottle?"

  He went through into the kitchen and took a fresh bottle from the wine rack above the sink. The place was clinically clean – not a dish out of place or as much as a crumb visible on the work surfaces. Trevor had always been slightly obsessive, and these days those qualities were focused on his housekeeping. Back when he performed on the stage, speaking with the dead, he had been obsessed with his outfits, his hair, and his carefully crafted repertoire with the audience. Now that he had left the stage behind, he had turned to other, more prosaic obsessions.

  He opened the wine and let it breath, staring at his face in the kitchen's many reflective surfaces – the stainless steel oven, the clean glass of the microwave door, and the highly polished side of the toaster. What he saw there saddened him: he had lost a lot of weight and was starting to look his age. The showman in him was disappointed that he'd let himself go, but the rest of him considered it a suitable punishment for what he had done. Why should he look good when his life had turned to shit?

  Trevor felt like punching his reflection, but knew that he wouldn't bother. He didn't want to hurt his knuckles.

  He heard the boy – Derek, damn it; his name was Derek – moving around in the lounge. Probably checking out the bookshelves (there were a lot of copies of Trevor's own book,
Heart of
a Dove
, in the house, but they were stored in boxes; the publisher had allowed it to go out of print long before the rumours began and the book had ironically started selling again), or perhaps riffling through his CDs. There was no money lying around; Trevor was far too wise for that. He'd been turned over before, in a similar situation, so he no longer kept cash on the premises unless it was locked in the safe.

  Sighing, he picked up the bottle and walked back through into the lounge.

  Derek was standing looking at a poster. He had unrolled it and was holding it with both hands, reading the text. His thin fingers gripped the edges lightly, and his face was obscured by the big square of glossy paper.

  Shit, thought Trevor. I thought I'd locked all of those away.

  But did he really think that, or had he left one out for whoever he brought back from the club to discover? Like a test, just to see how far they would go.

  Derek glanced up from the poster. He was smiling. "Oh my God. It's you, isn't it?" He turned the poster face-out, as if Trevor had no idea what was printed there.

  But he did. Of course he did. It was one of the posters from his last tour – the one which had come to a disgraceful end in Bradford. He looked at the image of himself: a gaudy little queen in a pastel suit, with bouffant hair and a cheesy smile, motioning with his hands. He looked ridiculous, but he hadn't thought so back then, only six months ago. Back then he had thought he looked fucking great.

  But that was then, when he could still contact the dead. Now that his gift had deserted him, he felt like he was no longer Trevor Dove, professional psychic. Indeed, that was why he now went by his loathsome, comical real name: Trevor Pumpkiss.

  "Put that down," he said. "Please. Just put it away."

  Derek, sensing that this was serious, rolled up the poster and placed it back on the shelf where he must have found it. "I'm sorry. It is you, though, isn't it? You're that psychic bloke, the one who…" A look of surprise crossed the boy's face, as if for the first time in his short life he had suddenly become self-aware.

  "The one who they say raped his kid brother?" Trevor handed him the bottle. His hands were steady. The boy's hand, when he reached out to take the wine, was not.

  "I… I didn't mean anything."

  Trevor shook his head. "Don't believe everything you read in the gutter press, friend."

  Derek put down the wine bottle and then returned to the armchair. When he sat down, his naked torso gleaming pale and delicious in the soft light, Trevor finally felt a twinge of genuine passion. "Let's start again," he said, smiling at the boy. "Like we've only just met. How does that sound?"

  "I'd like that." Derek's smile was slight yet knowing; he licked his lips before sipping more wine, just as he'd done in the small basement club near Call Lane, where they'd met at the bar. "I'd like it a lot."

  "So tell me about yourself." Trevor sat on the floor and crossed his legs, as if squatting at the feet of an idol.

  "There's not much to tell." Derek's left eye twitched; it was a subtle movement, but a dead giveaway that there was indeed a lot to tell. "I left home at fifteen, after my dad beat the shit out of me for being gay. After that I drifted through a succession of empty relationships, taking on dead-end jobs to pay the bills. There was a brief time when I lived on the streets. Then, one cold winter evening, I was picked up by an older man who gave me a bed in return for a blowjob. That's when I realised my calling: that I was just a dirty little whore." A grin crawled across his mouth: sleazy, unpleasant, making him look old and used up. "I stayed there for a year, honing my skills." He smiled, but it lacked any real humour. There was a glistening darkness trapped behind his eyes, and for the first time Trevor thought the boy looked as if he had substance. "He taught me everything. Then I left him to make my own way, and much later I met you in the Crimson Club." This smile was more natural; it played at the edges of his mouth, making him look even cuter (and once again younger) than he actually was.