Carnal Acts (2 page)

Heck Rutherford spent a couple of hours walking on the Roman Wall on Sunday morning. He breathed in deeply, his heart thundering and sweat beading his forehead. Before the operation and subsequent chemotherapy, he could walk all day without losing his breath. The surgeon who told him that cancer changed everything had got that right. Then again, the scalpel-wielder’s idiot colleagues had consistently failed to spot the tumour that had been growing in his urinary tract for years, gradually sapping his strength and intermittently nagging at his groin like a piranha with attention-deficit disorder. By the time they finally decided to operate a year back, the growth was a monster, one end rooting around in his left kidney and the other creeping towards his bladder.

‘Hector Hugh Rutherford, you listen to me,’ Ag had said, the night before the operation, one which the surgeon had been less than optimistic about performing. His lower abdomen and groin had been shaved and he’d been given an enema, both of which made him feel that he’d reached rock bottom in the human dignity stakes. He was an innocent back then.

‘Don’t lecture me,’ he said to his wife. ‘This is already bad enough.’

Agnes Rutherford, née Sweet (‘You wonder why I want to take your name?’), was thirty-nine at the time, thirteen years younger than Heck, a primary school headmistress who took no prisoners but was loved by almost all her pupils. She was only a couple of inches over five feet, surprisingly full breasted, and the owner of long auburn hair that a Pre-Raphaelite would have killed for.

‘I’m not lecturing,’ she said. ‘I’m just telling you what you have to live for.’

‘I know what I have to…’ He broke off when she squeezed his arm hard. She looked like a schoolgirl, but she had the strength of a wrestler.

‘You have a wife who loves you more than she loves herself – unusual, that, you know.’ She paused, waiting for him to smile, which he eventually did. ‘And two kids who worship the ground you walk on and are wetting themselves about what’ll become of you. Not forgetting a father who’d happily take your place in this bed, a dog who waits at the door for you to come every night and a cat—’

‘That doesn’t give a shit about me,’ Heck interrupted, blinking back tears.

‘Well, you may be right there,’ Ag said, with a smile.

‘All Adolf cares about is his food. The little bugger sleeps with his paws over the bowl, for Christ’s sake.’ Kat and Mikey, ten and eight at the time, had found the stray kitten in the garden and fallen for it immediately. They didn’t know that the diagonal stripe of black above his eye and the black splotches beneath his
nose that marred otherwise completely white fur had a historical connotation. The fact that the animal seemed to possess the dictator’s character had also been beyond them back then, although both had done Nazi Germany projects at school by now.

‘I’m serious, Heck,’ Ag said, squeezing again. ‘You’re going to come through this and you’re going to be fine. For yourself and for all of us.’

He drew his forearm across his eyes, ignoring the tissue she held out. ‘Oh, yeah, big girl? Whatcha gonna do if I don’t?’

‘You’re a detective chief inspector, not Philip Marlowe,’ his wife said. ‘What am I going to do? Take your pension and run?’

That made him laugh. As if Ag, most devoted of mothers, would ever desert their children. She’d even look after his father until his dying day, despite the fact that she often found David a serious pain.

She leaned over and looked into his eyes. He couldn’t resist the grey-green of hers: they had enchanted him the first time he saw her, at a funfair of all places. After he divorced Lindsey, he used to go to places like that to pick up women. In Ag he’d found a lot more than he’d been looking for – he’d found his saviour.

‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,’ he said resentfully.

‘True. You’d have a year of life, if you were lucky.’

‘I might still only have a year. Shit, I might never come round from the anaesthetic.’

‘Look at me,’ Ag commanded. ‘You
will
come round, you
will
recover, and you
will
be back with us, a better man than before.’

‘Oh great. I’m having a personality transplant too, am I?’

‘You
will
recover,’ she said, smiling but transmitting her full intensity to him. He felt it course through him like a surge of electricity. ‘For me. For us.’

And he did, though it was a close one. Grade three (four being terminal) – a belligerent sod – and stage three, one, zero. The last was good, meaning no metastases, the first less so: it showed the fucker was well advanced. Which meant four months of chemotherapy. At least his hair hadn’t fallen out, but it had thinned,
so he wore it close cut now. And, despite taking the pills they’d prescribed, he’d vomited like a student on the lash. Having spent most of his life as a six-foot-one hunk, he now resembled a vertical stick insect, as Ag had pointed out caustically when he declined one of the no-nonsense puddings she’d started making.

Heck stood on a rock. He had nothing to complain about, he thought, scanning the contours to the north, the last of the dew rising smokily in the sunlight. He was back at work, in a new job, with a new boss and new colleagues. His prognosis, although no better than fifty-fifty after the op, was improving by the month and he’d had no recurrent symptoms. His bladder was the most likely area to have been colonised by malignant cells, so he’d already had an unfeasibly large camera up his dick three times, with another cystoscopy scheduled next month. The first time he really did think he’d gone beyond all the shame barriers, but the cheery nurses and dexterous surgeon helped him through. It didn’t even hurt that much, though the first pee afterwards would have delighted a masochist.

Heck had only been back for six weeks at the headquarters of the new Police Force of North East England – Pofnee as it was already widely known. Starting the Major Crimes Unit from scratch had been challenging and he hadn’t fully shaken off the effects of his wound. He still had pains in his abdomen at the end of every week and walked to work them off. But that did nothing to help the fear that had gripped him. Being a northern man and an ex-rugby player, he hadn’t told anyone – not even his wife. Had the cancer left him unable to do his job?

Ag Rutherford heard the sound of the Cherokee as her husband pulled into the drive. They had moved to a run-down farmhouse ten miles northwest of Corham five years back. Heck and her father-in-law had done a lot of work on it, despite the fact that the former’s grasp of DIY was shaky. Their closest neighbours were fifty yards down the road, Henthaw being less a hamlet than a line of separate houses. She had never liked their home’s name – Whiffler’s Close – but had agreed to keep it
because Heck, who was sentimental off duty, had a friend who’d lived there when he was a kid. Her husband wasn’t great with change and he’d had to cope with a lot of it recently.

She went out as Heck was on his way to the garage, his hiking boots over his shoulder. He was trying ineffectively to push away Cass, their Golden Retriever.

‘Catch any criminal Picts?’

He gave her a long-suffering look. ‘The tribe that occupied the area north of the wall didn’t paint themselves. They were the—’

‘Votadini, aka Otadini,’ Ag interrupted. ‘I do know something about local history, sweetheart. ‘She stepped closer. ‘You look tired.’

‘No worse than usual.’

‘Well, that’s something. Are you going into town later?’

‘No chance. Morrie Sutton’s on duty. Let’s hope he doesn’t cock anything up.’

‘Dad!’ Their twelve-year-old son Luke ran up and thumped his shoulder into Heck’s thigh, his back bent in the approved rugby tackle stance. Cass jumped up, forepaws scrabbling on the boy’s sweatshirt.

Heck winced as he returned Ag’s wry smile, which said, ‘You wanted him to play rugby, now take the consequences.’ His own nose, broken when he was nineteen and not properly reset, was a permanent reminder of the sport’s hazards.

‘Very good, lad,’ he said. ‘What’ve you been up to?’

‘A bit of this, a bit of that,’ Luke said, acting the wide boy from some TV programme. Heck only ever watched the news, sport and the History Channel.

‘Hi, Daddy.’ Kat stood at the garage door, her black hair in a ponytail and pretty face damp beneath dark brown eyes.

‘Not again,’ Heck said. His daughter might only have been fourteen, but she was already showing a worrying propensity for affairs of the heart. ‘I’ll break his legs.’

She laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. He’ll be on the phone again in a
few minutes.’ She held up the ludicrously expensive mobile he’d been talked into buying for her last birthday.

‘Ah, the strider returns.’ David Rutherford came under the retractable door, bowing his head with its bush of demented professor’s white hair. ‘See any interesting birds?’ he asked, with a wry smile.

His father had an encyclopaedic knowledge of wild birds, but he also still had an eye for women.

Heck shook his head in resignation.

‘Come on, you lot,’ Ag said. ‘Lunch is nearly ready.’

‘Are you doing roast spuds?’ Luke asked. His face was a mass of freckles and his red hair was cut short in imitation of his father’s.

‘I might be,’ his mother replied, pulling him away from Heck. ‘Leave your dad alone. He’s knackered himself on the Wall. Come on, Cass.’

Kat slipped her arm under her father’s. ‘You should rest more,’ she said. ‘And spend more time with us.’

Heck nodded, his eyes meeting David’s. ‘I know, pet. I need time to get my head together, that’s all. How about Monopoly after lunch?’

Kat shook her head. ‘Grandpa always steals money when he thinks we’re not looking. Cluedo?’

‘Cluedo it is,’ Heck agreed. If only catching real criminals was so easy; not that he often won the game. He’d been in love with Miss Scarlett since he was Luke’s age and he cut her all kinds of slack.

Gaz was still panting five minutes after he’d come. He was trying to work out what the woman was doing. This time she hadn’t slapped him. He was pleased with himself because he’d made
her moan and scream, but what the fuck was she up to now? He could feel her head against his thigh, but none of the rest of her body. In the light from the open door, he made out a vague shape. Was she doing a head stand against the wall?

Then a familiar figure appeared in the door. All the pride and pleasure vanished. Heavy feet came close. He felt a sharp blade along his throat beneath the balaclava.

‘You do anything except what I tell you and you’ll be having a shower in your own blood,’ the man said. ‘You got that?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Gaz said, his voice embarrassingly high.

‘Good. I’m taking your cuffs off, all right? After that, you’re going to the bathroom. Clean yourself up, especially down there.’ A gloved hand grabbed his balls.

When he was free, Gaz was led on unsteady legs to the other door and pushed through. The door was closed behind him and an external lock turned. The light was switched on. The room was small and there was no bath, only a shower without a curtain in one corner. There was soap and shampoo, but nothing he could use as a weapon – no razor, no mirror to be smashed; even the toilet lid had been cemented against the cistern.

At least the water was hot and there was plenty of it. When Gaz finished, he found there were no towels, only a pile of face cloths. What was the gorilla scared of? That he’d flick his eyes out? The bastard had the fucking cattle prod. Then he had a thought. Maybe they’d taken precautions against him topping himself. That made his stomach flip. What else was in store for him?

‘I’m opening up,’ came the gruff male voice. ‘You don’t need to wear the balaclava now.’

When Gaz came out, hands over his groin, the man was pointing the prod at him and his face was still covered.

‘There are clean clothes for you and more food.’ He laughed emptily. ‘Get a feed down. She might be back any time.’

When he’d gone, Gaz huddled under the covers in the dark and ate more bread and cheese. He and his mates had often
joked about being gigolos or toy boys. The reality wasn’t funny at all. Even though the sex was amazing.

Suzana – she could hardly remember her surname, the Noli family having so little significance for her any more – ran her finger across the tines of the fork. It was a heavy piece of cutlery, steel, she thought, one that must have originally belonged in a rich house. She’d found it beneath a floorboard in the room that had been her prison for months, filling the gap with hair and dust so it wasn’t discovered during the daily searches. The second-floor window was barred and the glass covered with black tape, but she peeled back a corner ever day and had seen winter turn to watery spring, and now the first days of sun. She had no other means of telling the time, just as she had nothing of her own. Her captors had taken everything.

Although she could only vaguely remember her mother’s tear-stained face and the defeated way her father had raised his arm in farewell, Suzana could still see the mountains around the village, snow on the peaks even in early October. She had grown up in their embrace and had been proud to be a ‘child of the rock fathers’, as the villagers called themselves. They were poor, but every family had strips of land on the terraced slopes and a few beasts. There were trees in abundance as well – almonds, chestnuts, even some hardy cherries. The river that rushed down the crack in the mountains kept the small valley fertile, while the ridge at the western end cut it off from the rest of Albania. Even Hoxha’s functionaries had given the villages there a wide berth, in awe of the powerful clans that ran things the traditional way. Deals were done with the communist state, a few lanky boys sent to do their national service and some truckloads of logs driven to the capital.

Suzana, seventeen a month before she left, brought the fork close to her left eye. She could put it out, she could rip apart her cheeks and slash open her breasts – that would reduce her value to the men who pimped her. Only one thing stopped her, and it wasn’t fear for her parents. Once she’d arrived in London – how she had dreamed of that moment – and passed legally through the border control at the airport, her passport had been taken by the shaven-headed brute Leka. Later that day he and three other men raped her. She understood why her father had looked at her the way he did; he knew she wasn’t destined to work in a restaurant or as a cleaner. She had made her decision. The only way to save herself was to be harder than stone with everyone else. She had shed her last tear weeks ago.

There was no mirror in the room, only a cheap wooden bed, a chair for the customers’ clothes – though many of them did nothing more than undo their trousers – and a small table. On it were a box of condoms, tissues, lubricating jelly and a pair of nipple clamps. Two men liked to attach them to her (she still hadn’t got used to the pain), while there was one with breasts larger than hers who clamped his own nipples. There was also a metal waste bin. When she was working, it soon filled up with sodden paper and used rubbers. During the few hours she got to herself, it served as a chamber pot.

The absence of a mirror was a blessing from God, not that Suzana had any faith. There had been an imam in her village since the end of communism – the imposition of atheism had been one of the few things the state had been rigid about – but her family had not gone back to being Muslims. What faith would have helped her in these months of violent coupling, sometimes twenty times a day, often without protection because the customers preferred it that way: she hoped she had passed on diseases to them. The doctor Leka brought in regularly had given her antibiotics more than once, but she wasn’t allowed to stop working.

Even without the mirror, Suzana knew how she looked. She
could feel the swellings on her cheeks and was sure that the bones had been broken that first night when she’d fought until she was subdued. The acne that had plagued her when she was younger was still there, made worse by the chocolate she was given as a treat – the only one. Her nose was broken too, though it seemed to have reset itself in a fairly straight line. The strands of black hair that hung in front of her eyes were greasy. She thought today was her turn for the shower. It didn’t matter. The customers fucked her even when she stank of the previous ones. They were animals, as was Leka. He had looked at her after he stripped her that first night, ogling her breasts but mocking her skinny legs and thin arms. There was more meat on them now as the ‘girls’ – she wasn’t sure how many others were in the house – were fed mostly white bread and tasteless yellow cheese, and on rare occasions salty sausage; but never fruit or vegetables. Her skin was pasty and slack, and she hated herself. But not as much as she hated Leka.

She heard heavy steps on the stair and darted across to the loose floorboard to conceal the fork.

‘Up, bitch,’ Leka said, slamming the door against the wall. He gagged. ‘And take that shit-can with you. Make yourself decent. It’s a festival. There’ll be a lot of customers.’

Suzana carried the bin against her chest, hoping he wouldn’t follow her into the bathroom. He had taken her in the shower more than once, forcing her to bend over until the top of her head touched the cracked tiles on the floor. Instead, he watched her from the door-less entrance as she emptied her waste into the toilet and flushed it, then got under the shower. There was no curtain, but she’d got used to being stared at. She scrubbed herself with the pungent brown soap and rubbed thin shampoo into her hair. She was thinking about what the bastard had said. Plenty of customers. That meant the house would be busy, Leka and his friends making sure the correct money was handed over and the drunken men kept in line.

It was her chance. Tonight. Suzana couldn’t wait any longer.
If she wasn’t free by this time tomorrow, she would mutilate herself beyond all use and recognition.