Discoredia, page 5
“Albert? You cut someone up and only then start using their first name?” Warren wanted to shout but couldn’t, and daren’t. By this point, Warren would have let Mr. Woodrose give away his drugs for free, without any kickback, just to get the lunatic out of his office. But Mr. Woodrose, the thumb snatcher, was a gentleman wasn’t he. He stood up, picked up the briefcase, and placed it on Warren’s desk.
“The case,” Woodrose nonchalantly gestured toward it as he spoke, “contains, as promised, sixty thousand pounds, in crisp, fifty pound, notes. My representatives shall arrive at 2 p.m. on the 31st of December and provide Pandemonium, free of charge, to those who wish to sample her delights, which I am reliably informed, far surpass those of anything else on the market. There are samples in the case should you wish to have them tested prior to the event, but I assure you, they are no more dangerous than the average ecstasy tablet, available from all good High Street dealers. Wouldn’t be much of an advertisement for my product if we were to experience any accidents, would it?”
His smile almost split him from ear to ear and reminded Warren of Batman’s nemesis, The Joker, only that particular grinning psycho was pure Hollywood fiction, and Woodrose was real. Not just real, but here, grinning away like he was on a fucking happy pill himself, and was clearly enjoying getting back into the swing of things after his “sabbatical”.
“Albert will ring you on the morning of the 31st to confirm all is in order and allay any fears you may have. Thank you for your time and I bid you good day. By the way Mr. Lang, take Sir Galahad with Mordred and you will have Mr. Charlton here in checkmate in four moves or less, depending on the competence of the pair of you. I shall see myself out gentlemen.” With that Mr. Woodrose, who never looked at the chessboard at the other end of the room, turned toward the door and left.
Eventually Warren spoke. “That was too fucking intense. Get me a drink and then call all the usual dealers and find out what anyone knows about this fucking nutcase and his Pandemonium.”
He felt sick. Probably would have thrown up if Steve hadn’t been present, his reflex only being subdued by his determination not to lose face. Hesitantly, he opened the case and it wouldn’t have surprised him if it contained a bomb, or perhaps a severed head, but the contents appeared to be exactly as Woodrose claimed. He removed one of the notes from the middle of a bundle, held it up to the light, checked the watermark, the printing, and the silver strip, and satisfied that it was genuine, tossed it back in the case. Sixty grand’s worth of fifty’s would take more laundering than twenties or tens, but that was the least of his concerns.
“We’d better give these samples to Tom and Oddball. Get ’em to test ’em with that kit Tom got in Amsterdam. And I hope to God they’re careful if they decide to try ’em. I know Tom’ll try anything once and Alex will follow him for the ride, but fuck knows what’s in these little bastards. Hopefully they’ll be what that crazy twat says they are and we aren’t looking at ending up with six thousand overdoses on our hands.”
Steve made no reply other than an incomprehensible mumble. He was rubbing his forehead, much as Warren had done when Mr. Dylan, Albert, had made that initial phone call. Warren was about to chide him over his failure to react when Woodrose carried out his barbaric act of finger surgery right there on his desk, but decided against it. After all, it had been over in a flash, and if he had done anything he may have made a bad situation worse. Instead he turned his attention to Mr. Woodrose’s Pandemoniums.
There were five pills, a little larger than an average double stack ecstasy tablet and unusual in that they contained purple flecks of what looked like crystals. Purple Pills, wasn’t that an old rap tune? He thought so but couldn’t be sure. At least the flecks weren’t brown like some of the recent batches doing the rounds at Valhalla and according to who you asked, indicated that either ketamine or heroin had got in the mix. Smacked out ravers neither danced nor drank enough for his liking. The tablets also had no markings, no doves or sharks or whatever was the brand of the month. They were also unusually cold to the touch, cold like the handshake of a psychopath.
CHAPTER 7
“The meeting went well I believe,” said Woodrose, his eyes lingering on Albert’s bandaged hand like a lion pondering its kill.
“I agree,” came Albert’s reply. He moved his hand behind his back as he spoke, “Mr. Charlton seemed most accommodating.”
“As to be expected Albert, as to be expected.” The voice was slow and broken, weak, but Albert knew not to doubt the power that lay behind it. He shuffled uncomfortably, knowing what question would follow. “Did you pick me up a pick-me-up? I expect the choice was limited by the inclement weather.”
A cold bead of sweat ran down the centre of Albert’s back. After dropping off Woodrose he cleaned his hand and then gone out to do his Master’s bidding: a handful of menial jobs and one final task, made all the harder by the pouring rain.
“There’s a girl downstairs but…” he paused, swallowed, “but she is of Eastern European extraction.”
“You could do no better?” The question was laced with contempt yet it was obvious Albert could not have done better. If he could have, he would have. To fail his employer was an inadvisable course of action. Yet the rain had driven all but the most desperate streetwalkers indoors.
“The only alternative would have been a negress. You did say to only take from the lower levels of society, so as not to draw undue attention.”
His response was met with a snort of derision. “And where exactly does this particular Untermensch hail from, Albert?”
“Serbia. She is pleasing to the eye, as requested,” It was an attempt to ingratiate himself that was met with a curved smile.
“She better be, Albert. Though it is the inner, not the outer, that matters most to me.”
“Will you be seeing her soon?” All Albert wanted to do was leave the room but he would be told when to do that; there was little he did of his own volition when in the presence of the man sitting in front of him.
“Of course, I have no reason to tarry. The hunger burns Albert, it demands satiation.”
* * *
Erica sat upon the plush couch and flicked through the TV channels with the remote in her left hand. In her right was a glass of champagne the pudgy guy had given her when they arrived. Shit. That had been a good half an hour ago, and time was money in her line of work. She began working back through the channels in reverse––so much to watch, and nothing worth watching. Accepting what the strange little man had assured her would be a loocrative assignment looked increasingly like a mistake, and she had no idea why she had done it. Her friend Felicity had sneakily taken a picture of the car, and the man in it, when she had been picked up on the corner of Aspen and Ash, yet she couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Having evidence like that didn’t help you if your trick turned bad; just make the job easier for the police afterwards.
Having said that, the guy had done nothing in particular to give her such a bad case of the jitters. And the £50 she had already received, plus the coke in the car, and the champagne on arrival, had all eased her feeling that things were off kilter. But something wasn’t right. Her instinct told her to walk away––the way he propositioned her had been so weird, his vocabulary so archaic, yet before she knew it she was in the car with a rolled twenty up her nose. She wasn’t even a regular user.
“Miss?”
The voice startled her and she jumped, sloshing a small amount of champagne out of her glass and onto her leather skirt. She hadn’t heard anyone enter the room.
“My employer will be with you soon.”
“That is fine, but the longer he takes the more it will cost,” she said coldly.
“I am more than aware of your tariff. As is he.”
“And you told him, no rough stuff or the charge is double? It is bad for future business if he leaves me marked.”
“You have no need to concern yourself with any potential impact on future business.”
With that the man turned, opened the door, and left, closing it behind him and leaving her alone with the most recent batch of X-Factor judges. This was bullshit. The little round man was bullshit. The weirdness of all this was bullshit. And even more the fucking X-Factor and Simon Cowell were bullshit. She turned off the TV and wiped at the spill on her skirt, all the while trying to ignore the internal voice telling her to run.
It was all about the money. She needed the money. Her family, here and back home, needed the money. Her looks, what they were, wouldn’t last forever, and at the moment they were all she had. Scanning barcodes at the local supermarket had been fine until £100 went missing and the foreign girl took the fall while the English student spent his ill-gotten gains on beer and pizza. Arsehole. He offered to take her out for a drink the following weekend. She refused. Finding work after that had proven difficult and not long after the ease of making money on her back, rather than a grubby plastic chair behind a till, had been put to her. She resisted at first, and second, and third, but when the rent was due, and the cupboards were bare, “just the once” had happened, and twice was not far behind.
She was about to check her make-up when she heard the door open. At least this time she hadn’t been caught unaware and she turned to look at who had come in. It wasn’t the little rotund guy from earlier. This was a taller, thinner, man, who didn’t look well at all.
Great, she thought, a fucking pensioner. At least he’ll be done quickly and I can get out of here.
She stood up from the couch and placing one hand on her hip, held up her near empty glass with the other. “Care to join me?”
Her smile went unreturned for only a single second but her usual self-confidence was shaken. She was no great beauty but she knew how to make the best of her assets and normally had men eating out of her hand, particularly when, as tonight, her heels were as long as the length of her skirt.
“Of course my dear, why not?”
His smile was charming and he was impeccably dressed in a shirt and tie––a gold, diamond studded, tie-pin, glinting in the light. He poured himself a drink and knocked it back.
Dutch courage? she thought. Maybe it’s his first time?
“May I see your tattoo?”
The question took her off guard, despite the other man asking if she was inked prior to, in his words, “engaging her services”.
She turned and paused, hoping her arse would interest him a little, as she hated it when a customer struggled to get it up. She carried Viagra with her, but still, it was insulting when a man needed it. To all concerned. Reaching up she moved her raven-black tresses aside exposing the unicorn that reared up at the juncture of spine and skull. Behind her she heard a sniff.
“Would you care to see mine?”
Turning back Erica smiled again, and this time the smiled was returned, immediately. She would have preferred it if he hadn’t. The smile was leering, with no warmth. Granted, she had her share of scares in the past––men who wanted to fuck her, hit her, hurt her, both here and back home. Growing up with the cubs of Arkan’s tigers had not been easy; they learned people skills from their fathers. At least these men paid for the privilege. But this was something else. Something sinister. She told herself to get a grip, and emptied her glass of champagne before attempting to hide her discomfort behind a flirtatious reply.
“Will that be up the stairs? Or right here?”
The man looked at her. He looked less ill now, less pale. Perhaps he was loosening up. Maybe he was under the weather and everything was going to work out fine. Fuck, she hoped he tipped well.
“To sojourn to my private chambers would be futile when I have my collection in here.”
“That is fine by me,” she said as she stepped toward him. At least he smelled nice. She placed her glass on a nearby table and reached for the knot of his tie, “are you going to tell me where to look, or do I have to hunt for them?”
“I’ll show you,” he said as he gripped her wrist with a firmness that made her gasp. “They are over here, my dear.”
She almost stumbled as he dragged her over to what she had taken to be a pair of double doors in the wall. As he swung them open, her stomach flipped and a gorge of vomit, champagne, and cocaine, rose in her throat. Behind the doors was a wall, and upon the wall were a myriad of frames of varying sizes, each one containing a patch of what her gut instantaneously told her was tattooed human skin.
“Oh God, oh God,” was all Erica could bring herself to say as she looked upon the designs: a dragon, a panther, crosses, Celtic knots, a serpent with its tail in its mouth around a dark brown nipple. She struggled to process what she was seeing. All of them not just framed but labeled with names and dates in an elaborate calligraphy.
“God,” he said with a tone of disdain; it was as though the very word was distasteful in his mouth. “He will not aid you. That old charlatan is nothing more than the devil in disguise.”
She tore her gaze from the mosaic of skin, but they traveled only as far as his eyes, eyes which pierced into her own, and began to drink from the bottomless well of terror within. He moaned and cupped her chin with his hand; a whole new level of vitality was flushing his face as tears ran down hers.
Trembling at his touch, Erica felt her calm exterior shatter like a bullet-struck mirror as he whispered into her ear, “Yours will make a nice addition to my collection, once I’ve had my fill of you.”
Without warning a remnant of her personality broke free, a shard of will that refused to go down without a fight. She pushed against him, taking him by surprise. “People know where I am. People know who brought me here.”
The laugh that followed took the small sliver of hope she had summoned and ground it to dust. “No one knows where you are, or who you came with, but me and my friend Mr. Dylan. It was so kind of him to procure your good self this evening for the purpose of my pleasure.”
“But the picture”––she was desperate now––“Felicity took a picture!” So desperate, it never entered her mind that she may have given her friend to the lunatics who wanted to peel the skin from her body and place it on the wall like a picture brought home by a child.
“This?”
He lifted a phone she recognized by its cover. Its cracked screen reflected the cracks that split her sanity.
“What have you––”
Stepping forward he grasped her chin and pushed up on her jaw, cutting off the sentence mid-point.
“Nothing. Other than give the order to have her dealt with. Slowly. And irreversibly.”
Terror engulfed her. She felt her knees buckle as her legs betrayed their allocated purpose. Without their support she slumped to the ground, his hand loosening its grip as she fell.
“As for the car, stolen,” he walked over to a cabinet and opened a drawer “and deposited on some hell-hole estate” she heard a rattle, like cutlery, “where a horde of ill-educated miscreants,” he was heading back toward her now, “will no doubt have lain claim to it,” the scalpel in his hand caught the light.
“Please, don’t hurt me… please.” As she whimpered pleas for mercy she knew they were falling on deaf ears.
“That felt good, my dear,” the man said as he knelt down beside her. “I anticipate that I shall enjoy this.”
* * *
The screaming lasted for at least ten minutes, Albert timed it as he sat outside, and it was a further ten before Woodrose left the room, drenched in blood, and sweat, but looking far healthier than he had in months.
“Clean up the mess and here… I believe this will be yours.”
Albert looked at the bloodstained £50 note before slipping it into his pocket. It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER 8
I love a good dump and I’ve been dumping all day, was one of Alex “Oddball” Harris’ favorite little jokes. The adapted version, which ended with, But when it gets to night, it’s the raver’s time to play! had been one of his first signature rhymes as resident Microphone Controller / Master of Ceremonies at Valhalla.
And dumping he certainly would be. He had a stone road to lay out before nightfall, and the six ton Thwaites dumper he was driving was being a bitch, or to be more exact, the conditions he was driving in were a bitch. Even unloaded, the vehicle sank axle deep into the mud and needed to be “walked” out. Full revs, left lock, right lock, left lock, right lock, the dumper moved side-to-side and snaked forward. Progress was slow, but he nearly got out of the field from where he could change up to fourth, tank it down the road, and get Max to load him up with the JCB.
The little flurry of snow stopped. His thick padded boiler suit was keeping him warm but having to work the steering so much was making his job a challenge.
The dumper pulled free of the mud and onto tarmac.
Down the road to the JCB, pull up, flick the lever to his left toward him, out of drive, handbrake on, and down he got. A quick thumbs up to Max and the JCB’s long powerful arm clawed a bucketful of stone into its scoop; with a twist brought it to the dumper and dropped it in. Usually Alex would stay in the dumper seat, despite it not being considered best practice. Getting up and down was a pain in the arse, literally. More so if it was raining––or, like today, snowing, and the seat became wet.
His mobile was fastened to his tracksuit bottoms, which were enveloped by his bulky boiler suit. The only way he could get to it, without acting like a contortionist having a fit, was to get down to ground level and stand up straight.
Once down he lit a cigarette and checked his phone. Tom had been gone two hours and they needed both dumpers running if the stone was going to be laid through the field on schedule. If the job wasn’t done the rest of the crew, who would be joining them the next day, would be held up.
To see a missed call message wouldn’t have surprised him, as he couldn’t hear the phone over the dumpers engine. All he knew was what Max passed on, that Tom got a call from Bog and shot off for half hour.
