Director's Cut (14 page)

“I can't. I can't,” he said, not really trying.

“Yes, you can. You can. There, didn't I tell you you could?”
She was a furnace, a slippery furnace. And he was sweating. All at
once sounds seemed louder. He could hear the rustle of her hair, a little
moaning from her lips, the slip-slap of things farther south.

“Let it come,” she said with burning breath. “It doesn't matter. Feel
my stomach against yours,” she whispered against his ear and he felt it
turn wet. The sensation wasn't altogether pleasant. Water found its way
into his ears very easily. For that reason he never went swimming or
put his head under in the bath. Luscious Laura went on, “Feel my
thighs against yours. Feel my perfect breasts with their perfect nipples
brushing your chest. Tell me if you can, that all this isn't worth twentyfive
quid!” And then quickly, like someone selling insurance, she
added breathlessly, “No hidden extras. VAT – vagina, arse and tits –
included in the price, and there’s ten percent off for pensioners.”
He laughed out loud.

“What is it? Is it something I said?”

She settled back against his arms, the hint of spearmint and wild
flowers quite agreeable.

But the spit in his ear was still giving him trouble.

He said, nevertheless, “You know, Laura, without speaking of
looks, you are very beautiful.”

“Yes, I do know that, Mr Lawrence.”

She snuggled closer and closed her eyes, safe. Her breath was soft
and warm.

He fell asleep thinking that he ought to kick her out before he did.
When you are older courtships should be longer. It takes time getting
used to waking next to a nightmare: open mouth slobbering and
spitting, zoo noises rattling, breath corrupted by life. Younger things
smell younger and taste fresher. Older people should get out before
falling asleep. It saves the younger people unnecessary brain damage
in the morning.

And yet, and yet, it was too late now, for he snored a satisfied
snore.

His erection woke him for it was so unusual. Pounding. Detached.
Sweat poured from him and collected on his chest, a salty pool,
another Dead Sea. He felt utterly wrecked. The sex tonic was taking its
toll. There is always a price to pay, old timers would tell you, and they
knew a thing or two. If it happened again – and you never knew for
even this chance came out of the blue – he would stick to walnuts and
red peppers and what was it? Ah yes, Heinz baked beans with sausages
in tomato sauce. An old-fashioned tin that needed a tin-opener; razor
sharp lids that could slice off a finger and often did.

Life is so…grey, without the red.

He heard his own voice. “My Goodness, what's happening?”
The dark vixen leant across him. “It's all right. You had a dream.
You shouted out. Golly gosh, Mr Lawrence, what horror world do you
sleep in?”

“I'm all right. Just a dream, as you said. I disturbed you. I'm sorry.”
“Don't worry. It's only four. Only half way through my shift. Shame
to waste it.”

She was still glued with him and her, more of him, than her.
“Did you hear it, in the night?”

“Hear what?”

“It sounded like a baby crying.”

“It was probably a cat. They sound just like babies, in the night.”
Her breasts brushed over him, her nipples traced cool ticklish paths
across his chest, through the pool. Her hand pulled him gently against
her curls and she whispered, “We can try something else if you like. I
can turn over if you like and you can try it that way or, if you like, I
can eat you.”

“Gosh, a second coming, and some say I am not a religious man.
But that's the trouble with Chinese food,” he said, making time while
he made up his mind. “You want to eat again so soon afterwards.”
He gave in to her first suggestion, that dark taboo. Perhaps because
it housed that tighter place and tightness was the thing. And pain, of
course, for there it lay. That fine flame-throwing moment, that swift
stab of bliss, for just an instant, too short an instant, and then it was
gone and then, only indulgence mattered.

But it wasn't easy, even with Luscious Laura, whose stumps had
been shattered by a thousand googlies. But the pills she'd fed him had
produced a wicked leg-break, and she squealed quite loudly, loudly
enough for him to worry about the neighbours on the growing
Richmond Park council estate.

His concern for the neighbours ended abruptly as an explosion of
light from a large torch held them in its silver beam. Behind it the dark
outline of a huge man was just visible. The stocking on his head
rounded his shape even more. As the giant figure approached Laura
yelped and dived beneath the sheets. But she could still hear his voice,
filled with muffled accent. It might have come all the way from Leeds,
or some other God-forsaken place.

“Where is he? The two-timing bitch!”

The sheet was ripped away leaving them cowering, quite

defenceless. The heavy torch rose above them and the crazy beam
zigzagged across the room before at last settling on Laura, first on her
quivering breasts and then on her quivering curls. A giant hand
reached down to part her legs and the beam focused its full intensity on
her sticky wicket.

“It's a girl!” The muffled voice was full of surprise.

The torchlight went out. They heard heavy footsteps on the stairs,
then someone falling and cursing and then movements in the shop
below and moments later the brass bell ringing out the slamming of the
shop door.

“Blimeeey!” Laura sighed her relief. “Who was that? Did you know
him?”

Beside her, Mr Lawrence breathed his own relief. “No, I didn’t.”
They crept down the stairs to the shop. The blinking neon opposite,
red and green, threw the shadows of the ballerinas in the window on to
the far wall. They danced. The paintings gathered the light and the
painted faces glinted grotesquely. Their bodies glowed red and then
green and the green picked up the muscle tone and deepened the
hollows.

“How did he get in? I saw you lock the door.”

“These thieves of the night crawl through the crack beneath the
door. Even the trusted brass bell let me down tonight. We need garlic,
lots of it. It won't keep out the burglars but we can throw it at the cats!”
He threw the bolt on the door and turned back into the shop. She'd
perched herself on the counter. Her legs dangled. The volcanic light
poured in, framing her in its glow.

“Everything's so red and fiery down here,” she whispered. “Just
like hell.”

“It is hell, my dear. You can smell the sulphur, hear the clank of
chains…” He pointed to the faces in the paintings and then up to the
overhead tackle. “See!”

The red turned to green and she became a corpse and her slick
became a rotten streak of pus. He shivered at the unholy sight which,
of course, was holey too, and he held his breath, waiting for the light to
turn again and fill her veins with blood. As the red took hold she
smiled at him, wistfully. “Come on, Sir Lancelot, you’ve frightened
him off, whoever he was. Bring your helmet and, if you think you need
it, your shield, and let's go back to bed.”

The grey December light crawled in with the dawn, adding its gloomy
touch to the bedroom. The windows were frostbitten even though the
central heating had banged throughout the night. The bedroom was
warm and stuffy. In her sleep she had thrown off the bed covers and
lay naked, face down. Her breathing was gentle, her sleep untroubled
by the creeping light.

He wondered whether he'd snored and checked his chin for froth.
His hand remained dry and for a while he lay there pleased with
himself.

She looked paler, mixed with buff-yellow. From the hollow of her
back the curve of her behind was breathtaking. There could be no finer
single line. Stroking it seemed natural. His stalk was still alive,
stabbing at the air, made immortal by nocturnal witchery and a handful
of pills. He wondered how many men had been inspired by such
delight, how many had been led to disaster while drunk on such
abandon. He was, nevertheless, aware that the circadian clock was
ticking. He was feeling jet-lagged from his ride with Laura, or it might
have been the pills, or the unlikely excitement of the night. Whatever it
was, with the exception of his dong which was out of control, he was
beginning to flag. Even the bedroom door opening made no difference
to that.

Paul's face appeared, bright and early, his happiness reaching
through the specks of dust held in the heavy air.

“I'm home, Mr Lawrence. Let out early for good behaviour. Gosh,
Mr Lawrence, you should be proud of that! A Kodak moment, without
a doubt.”

The spell faded slowly, leaving Mr Lawrence befuddled. He tried to
smile politely but it wasn’t easy. One of his hands rested on Laura's
behind, the other was full of his enthusiasm for it.

Paul looked from right to left then settled on the bed again.
Mr Lawrence said, “How in God's name do you people get in? I
bolted the door!”

Paul winked. It was obviously a trade secret.

The day before Paul discovered he had not much in common with
Michael Faraday or Georg Ohm, DC Anian Stanford stood in Jack
Wooderson's office in Hinckley Police Station.

“Why me, Guv? I'm part of the team.”

The Inspector liked the Guv bit. It tickled him. He also liked the
fact that Anian Stanford was standing before him looking faintly
manhandled and fragile. He enjoyed the moment, stretching it out. He
flicked a speck of white from his uniform. It might have been
dandruff, but his face was flaking too. The dark blue threw up
everything that was wrong.

“I'm sure we'll manage, Anian,” he said, not even trying to conceal
his delight.

She looked over his desk piled with paper. Muddled, disorganized,
it mirrored the man. She sat down without invitation and smoothed her
skirt over her knees. A defensive move. The thought annoyed her. She
said, “That's not what I meant.”

Wooderson wanted a cigarette and thought about a walk to the
garage. He said, “There's someone out there who doesn't like women,
that's all I know. You must have heard.”

She nodded. Of course she'd heard. Half the world had heard by
now. One woman had a breast cut off and another needed fifty stitches
to keep hers on.

“And then there's the bomb. They're stretched, calling in all the
spare. We'll give it till Monday. If nothing breaks by then I'm afraid
you'll have to go. It's out of my hands. DI Cole is due in this afternoon.
I'll confirm it with him.”

She coloured up, reddish-brown, hardwood.

Wooderson loved it. It stirred a memory. But that was wrong. The
thought was always with him, day and night. Her bony thighs wrapped
around him, her groin pressing against him and her hair, flashing along
her parting, black as coal and charged with static. It was a gutless
sensation. Like bereavement but worse. Time didn't make it easier. Not
when he had to see her every day and listen to her conversation with
the others, particularly Butler with whom she had formed some kind of
attachment.

“Look,” he said. “Believe it or not, I don't want to lose you.”
“Why don't I believe you?”

“Anyway, even if you do go and, there's still what, three days? If
anything breaks here you'll be back. I'll bell you personally. I've still
got your number somewhere.”

He'd said it for a response, nothing more. Control could get her day
or night. It went with the job. You couldn’t get away from the job. She
said sharply, “Does your wife know you've still got it?”

Wooderson grimaced. The mention of his wife dulled the memory.
“Get out of here. Go and iron something. Maybe that chip between
your shoulder blades.”

She glared across the desk.

The coldness between them, the result of fall-out, the radiation of
bodies that had got too close, felt like the curious chill of too much
sun. Looking at him now, nicotine stained, ruffled, even a faint trace of
dandruff on the blue, she wondered what she'd ever seen in him. Even
his aftershave hung around like a cheap cigarette. He looked like a
civil servant or a banker who knew there was nothing else till
retirement. That sort of acceptance dragged on the face as well as the
soul. And the booze he drank the night before and, from the bottle in
his desk during the day, came at you from every pore and every breath.
Before long, she knew, he'd be history.

But right now, that wasn't soon enough.

She left him looking gloomily out of the first floor window.
The city that he could see was dripping under a belt of cloud, the
colour of a body on a PM slab, once the blood had been hosed away.
DC Anian Stanford was convinced that Inspector Jack Wooderson
was a loser, a man who'd climbed one rung too many. Sooner rather
than later he would be found out. Unfortunately, she found out too late.
In a vindictive sort of way, the way in which lovers part, she looked
forward to his downfall.

Her origins lay in the subcontinent, but they were long gone.
Thought of occasionally, particularly now that Asians were winning
Booker prizes and making inroads into films and TV, but it was more
out of sadness than anger. She never wanted to wear a sari, for Christ
sakes, but she never knew where she belonged. She called herself
British and, that's what her passport said, but the British never
accepted that and never would. She was born in England and raised in
England but that didn't mean a thing to the Anglo-Saxons. They were
islanders, removed from the rest of the world. As far as they were
concerned she was from over there, somewhere, and owned a corner
shop or a takeaway. And the sooner she got back the better they'd like
it.

She had never known her parents. Just hours old she'd been found
outside a Catholic orphanage. Anian had been written on the cardboard
box. For all the nuns knew, the box might have carried exotic fruit
from Asia. Anian might have been the name of a prickly pear.
At a year old she'd been adopted from our Blessed Lady's Home by
the Stanfords, an English, Catholic, working class family that had a
ready made sister for her. Lisa Stanford was two years older and white
but in those days blacks and browns could go to whites and no one had
a problem.