Fools for Lust (4 page)

Is the tape recorder on?

OK.

Well, you know I'm guilty, so why do we have to go through all this rigmarole? I confess: I did it. I killed Tony Blair. I killed the Prime Minister.

Come on, you know this isn't like another Sarajevo or another Dallas. Just a crime. A petty crime. Sure, the headlines will loom large but in a few weeks things will fade of their own natural accord. Just another damn politician, after all. Lots of others where he came from. The status quo will soon return. I'm not kidding myself, I know it won't change anything.

Actually, I'm quite ready for jail. At least we don't have the death sentence any longer. I know the food will be no great shakes, but at least I reckon I'll be able to catch up with all my reading. Life sentence, no doubt. That's fine with me. I deserve it. Well, I did kill a man. I'm happy to do my time. After all, that's part of the deal, no?

You want to know why? Oh, of course.

Yes, I suppose I owe you some form of explanation.

You? The police, the newspapers, the public.

Do I really have to?

It's a rather private matter, after all.

And it's not as if I was denying anything. I'm guilty. One hundred per cent. You have it on camera. You have the weapon, my confession. Can't we leave it at that?

You want it to make some sense. I see. Well, I can assure you I'm not insane, and there's no need for any psychiatric investigation. I've never had much respect for psychiatrists, psychologists and all that ilk. A useless race. A bit like social workers. They invent the sheer causes for their existence. A real con, I tell you.

Political?

Well, not really.

It wasn't Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, the Russians or the IRA I did it for. Or even less the Israelis, even though I'm Jewish (well, the only time I've visited a synagogue, I was 11 years old and had to be dragged screaming by my father to make up the male numbers for some religious ceremony). No, no political motives whatsoever. I swear.

Give you a clue: if Labour hadn't been in power, it could well have been William Hague, or Portillo or whoever would have been at 10 Downing Street. See, I'm an equal opportunity assassin.

A thirst for fame or notoriety, then?

No. You're still cold.

Although, ironically, I reckon now that I'll momentarily be in the public eye, my books will probably sell a bit better than they used to. Not that it will do me much good. Criminals can't profit from their crimes, can they? Didn't they devise a law for that? Or was it in the United States only?

You seem puzzled?

You shouldn't. I've an explanation, really. It's a bit convoluted, I admit, but it makes perfect sense.

Must I now?

It's just that I'm rather tired, you see. It's been a long day. Naturally, I've been living on nerves since this morning knowing what I was going to do and some of your colleagues were a bit rough after they seized me. Overenthusiastic, I'd say. And I wasn't resisting arrest in any way.

No, not tea. I just hate this cup of tea for all occasions thing. So damn English. A can of Coca-Cola, yes, that would be much better. And some chocolate. Milk chocolate. Any kind. Bring my sugar levels up and, oh, while you're at it, a couple of Disprin-soluble tablets. I'm getting a bit of a headache in here. It is a bit stuffy, wouldn't you say. Water? No, I'll dissolve them in the Coke. It works every time: my miracle cure for all ailments. Have you ever tried it? Maybe the way the caffeine interacts with the Disprin. Gives you an instant boost, clears your mind. Sounds almost druggy, eh? Curiously enough ‘I've never been into soft drugs. At all. Tried some of course, but they just had no effect on me. Rather disappointing. For you too, no, would have made good headlines “Crime writer on drugs assassinates Prime Minister”. Sorry.

Ah, that feels better. Thanks.

I suppose I'd better tell you now, then. The sooner the better and I'll be left to get some sleep, I suppose.

But I know you're going to be disappointed.

It's a rather ordinary story, I fear.

A woman.

It was because of a woman.

No. Not her, Cherie. You must be joking. That mortician's smile would deflate a man's hard on instantly!

Mind you, so did his own smile-by-numbers sincere expression of choice.

No. No. Don't get excited. I was just being facetious. I'm not gay. The Prime Minister's smile and my past erections have nothing in common. Wouldn't want the country to go on another anti-gay pogrom, would I?

A woman.

A real one.

A beautiful one.

Who knew how to provoke erections and what to do with them with tender loving care.

Yes, I know, sometimes I get a tad too lyrical. It's the way I am, the way I write. What can I do about it? Some reviewer even once said I was a romantic pornographer. Damn right. And proud of it.

A woman.

Her name was Edwina.

Why am I saying ‘was'?

Her name is Edwina. It's a bit of an old-fashioned name. So she calls herself Eddie. A bit ambiguous, but who cares. Took me ages to find out that Eddie actually concealed Edwina. She'd decided it was her turn to pay the bill when we ate out one evening, and I spied the truth on her credit card. Edwina O'Callaghan. A name like that you'd imagine some old Irish biddy or worse. I'd actually heard of her vaguely some time before we actually met, and the name alone gave me a completely wrong impression somehow. I imagined her middle-aged, dowdy, supercilious, just not my type of person.

It was a shock meeting her the first time, I can tell you.

As you know, my books don't sell in great quantities. I'm strictly second division. I have to supplement the income with a fair bit of arts journalism, reviews, the occasional well-paid travel piece. So, like most jobbing writers, I'm always looking out for new markets or publishing opportunities.

An American company specialising in mail-order recipe and gardening cards and part works was making a foray into the crime and mystery field and was trying to devise some form of whodunit product which people would subscribe to. Their London office was in charge of development. They needed writers to dream up whodunit plots in novella form, longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. A length I, for one, particularly enjoyed but which seldom proved commercial due to a sparsity of outlets. I wasn't into traditional mysteries where the detective hunts down the clues and later by intellect and much eccentric ratiocination assembles the suspects and reveals the guilty party. I'm more into dark streets, femmes fatales, emotions and murky psychology. But the money was good. Three grand for just a third of a book and the rights to the material reverted to the author fairly quickly. In addition, the whole concept of the scheme and the way it was to be sold by mail order only sounded rather dubious to me, and I estimated there was even a good chance it would never get off the ground once the company's marketing boffins had analysed, market-tested, focus grouped it and all and the writers would be three grand to the better and with a story they could sell again.

Edwina O'Callaghan had been recruited to find a dozen or so authors to pen the various booklets and I'd heard through Mark Timlin she was not averse to darker stuff, as long as the whodunit elements were present. I thought to myself the task was not impossible and also a gentle challenge. I could construct the plot in reverse and hey presto! easy money.

I was wrong. Like all the women who think writing a Mills and Boon romance is a cinch! It was bloody tough, and I was no good at it. We'd spoken over the telephone. She didn't sound as old as I thought. She had sent me the project Bible, and I had churned some tongue in cheek opus out. Even as I finished it, I knew already all the elements required were present but it had no heart, was just an exercise in style. Shouldn't even have put it in the post to her. She was a pernickety and fastidious editor and tore my contribution to pieces and suggested we meet up so we could discuss her numerous suggestions for the rewrite.

My initial reaction was to chuck the whole thing, accept the kill fee and move on to better things. There was this publisher in America who was keen on my tale of erotic adventures set in New Orleans, a place I knew well and inspired me to much literary excess. I was eager to get started on that story. It was closer to my heart than some damn whodunit set in the Home Counties where the butler didn't do it (it was actually the priest – who wasn't really a priest – I'd made into the culprit).

But I agreed to meet her.

Call it gut instinct or fate or whatever you believe in when it comes to matters of the heart, lust and the flesh. I was sort of curious to see the face behind the voice and that decidedly old-fashioned, conservative name. Although nothing could ever have prepared me for what was to happen.

Edwina O'Callaghan.

Fiction editor.

Just call me Eddie, she had said.

A few days later, we were in bed together. The middle of the day. August sun blazing beyond the lace curtains of a hotel room in a concrete monstrosity of a building near one of the main railway stations.

We had become lovers.

Lust at first sight, you might say.

Oh yes, she was married.

At that stage, blind as we were and slaves to our desires, just a fairly minor consideration.

I suppose I have to provide you with more details. Intimate ones. Personal stuff and all that. Or you just wouldn't understand my reasons. For the assassination.

I suppose so.

Well, Eddie was special.

Very special.

What can I say? That I was consumed by her like no one before. That the initial fire of lust soon changed into mad love, beyond any border I had ever crossed before when it had come to women. That she was different, like a dream literally come true.

No, I haven't a photo of her. She insisted I return all of them after we split.

You wouldn't understand, anyway. These sort of things are so irrational, I realise. Beauty is so much in the eye of the beholder.

You'd tell me she was too slim, didn't really have much in the way of tits. 34A, actually, which for 5ft 9 isn't that opulent. That the way she wore her hair, in a frizzy perm, was no longer in vogue, even if it ever had been. That her arse was maybe a bit too large and square. That she walked a touch funny, bent forward. That there was a scar on her left cheek and she should have worn some form of make-up to minimise its presence. That her teeth were crooked.

And if you knew, which you would have eventually, what with all your investigative powers, that she shaved her pubic hair, you would have said, no doubt, that women with smooth crotches have a sluttish nature.

But also, it's all in the details, you see, there are things in a woman that are beyond description. They match your own emotional make-up and when the respective elements line-up together it just goes boom, quietly, boom, forever, boom, boom there goes my heart.

Silly, no?

I fell in love with Eddie and there was no safety net.

I think she fell in love with me too, initially.

It's so difficult to explain.

Eddie's nipples. That shade of pink beyond paleness that moved me so hard, delicate, sad, unique, touching. They never did get very hard, instead as we made love the pinkness spread in concentric orbs outwards until the whole area from breast to throat was flushed in a strong hue of desire.

Eddie's eyes. A brown-eyed blonde. The dark colour like a pool of sorrow in which my eyes would lose themselves attempting to reach the sheer depths of her thoughts.

Eddie's mouth. Her lipsticked lips tightening around my glans with hungry tenderness, taking the sacrament of my vile meat deep inside her with benign acceptance. Tongue caressing my shaft, delineating my cock's corona like a geographer quietly mapping new territory to be explored, invested.

Eddie's words.

The way she would say ‘Jesus' when I entered her and again and again on every stage on that road to orgasm, the word a holy or rather so wonderfully blasphemous punctuation of our frenzied sex.

Eddie's sounds.

The moans. The sighs. The deep breaths. The times she would actually stop breathing between thrusts, anticipating the next surge of unadulterated lust or pleasure, in order to magnify its impact, diffuse its terrible, unforgiving waves throughout her whole senses.

Eddie's movements.

The way she would adjust her position so that my hardness would dig even deeper.

The desolating delicacy with which she would twirl some of the curls on my chest in a gesture of tenderness.

The desperate longing in her eyes as we watched the waves of pleasure rise in our bodies as we fucked with animals and the silent way she would acquiesce to my finger invading her even more, crushing the last barrier of her intimacy.

Eddie sleeping. Next to me, her breath shallow, her pale body almost like a corpse, her face at rest, the trace of a contented smile on her still moist lips. The silence, at last. The loneliness of being together. Stirrings again in my stomach and cock. The eternal circle of silence and sex where words were pointless and only bodies spoke the secret language of life.

Head and heels in love, you see.

Captive.

Consumed.

Of course, there were complications. The mechanics of adultery and work make for troubled companions, but then that's no news for you guys. But we managed. We courted disaster on many occasions, took risks, lied a lot, but we were healthy, greedy for more and more sex, and we managed. Breakfast fucks, lunchtime assignments, evening trysts.

Curiously enough, my first indication of future problems in our fevered relationship also had political connotations.

I think we'd been lovers for nearly two months. In rooms, on beds, on floors, wherever we fell onto each other, we never did speak much. It was more motion and deep, significant silences, meaningful looks and all that. But there were also times we acted like normal human beings, went to see a movie together, had a drink in a bar. Eddie suddenly asked me who I usually voted for. She appeared quite concerned. Explained that she'd somehow never gotten round to asking me. My inner radar quickly spotted an obstacle so I fudged my answer. Turned out she was a fervent Labour supporter. Had been since university. But then most intellectuals are. Was actually a volunteer canvasser for her local area. And it had just occurred to her that she might be fucking someone who supported a different political party. All of a sudden, this worried her.