Naked Cruelty

the longer our walk.”

“Wow!” said Carmine, following his wife into the kitchen. “Doc Santini told me she was ruthless. Has Julian eaten yet?”

“Yes. Prunella insists on six o’clock for the children, so Alex gets a breast and Julian gets meat or fish and three veg. At least on his food I didn’t fall down. Prunella gave me full marks. I don’t over-cook the veg, nor give him bloody meat-blood can turn kids off their best source of protein, she says.”

“What about us?”

“We eat at seven-thirty. By then, Julian will be sound asleep. That, I’ll believe when I see it. She made me take him out in the kayak, but he’s not tired.”

“He will be. What’s for our dinner?”

“Swedish meatballs and mushroom risotto. And a salad.”

“Prunella’s going to want to stay forever. Did I tell you today that I love you?”

Her beautiful smile lit up those cool eyes. “Every day, as soon as you smell the dinner. I love you too. And thank you, thank you for Prunella.”

She was making up her “pickle solution” as she called it; he pressed his lips against her flushed cheek and stole away to visit the nursery.

His younger son was slumbering peacefully in his crib; when Carmine leaned down to kiss him, inhale the inimitable smell of properly cared for babies, two chubby arms came up to touch his face, and the eyes opened, too clouded with sleep to arouse fully. Daddy smiled into them, and they closed; the arms fell. Both his sons had strange eyes, Alexander James Delmonico’s even more peculiar than Julian’s: silvery-grey, with that black ring around the irises made them piercing, unsettling. Alex’s eyes reminded Carmine of Kemal Ataturk’s, exactly the same in an even darker face. Not an unpleasant similarity; Ataturk was regarded as the founder of modern Turkey, and had beaten a British army nearly half a million strong at Gallipoli during the First World War. Well, Alex wouldn’t have that tortured man’s life, but it was interesting. Blame Desdemona, really. Her extreme fairness had to show somewhere in her sons.

And back to the little sitting room adjacent to the kitchen, where they sat to have a drink before dinner and unwind. I am blessed, thought Carmine, taking the glass Desdemona held out.

He couldn’t wait any longer. Didus ineptus let himself into Melantha Green’s second floor apartment with his lock picks, then gazed around familiarly: he had been in here before. Melantha was another neat and tidy girl-he loathed mess!-who lived on her own and considered that her black belt in judo gave her all the protection she needed. So while other girls were fitting more locks, Melantha had decided that one dead-bolt was fine. As indeed it was, provided that the predator was an amateur with locks. Whereas this predator was an expert.

Today’s methodology was different. The piece of duct tape for a gag remained, but in place of twine there were manacles and chains. Appropriate, really. His first black woman, and his first venture with chains-chains probably not unlike those that had encumbered her slave ancestors. A fresh thought, not the one that had prompted him to switch to chains.

When the bedroom yielded no surface he could use, the Dodo located a folded up card table in the living room and carried it to the bedroom, there to employ it as a place to put his tools, neatly arranged. The silenced.22 went under a bed pillow, the duct tape, manacles and chains accompanied him back to the living room. There he began his careful transformation from just another guy into Didus ineptus: folding his clothes in a stack on top of his tennis shoes, removing a few items from his body, and then, admiring himself in the full-length mirror on the bedroom door, touching himself up with the greasepaint, a perfect color match to his skin. On went the surgeon’s gloves, after which he cleaned his prints from everything he had thus far touched.

Finally, about a quarter of six, he was ready, black silk hood over his head, poised behind the front door. He knew this one was a self-defense expert, so it was important not to give her any chance to use his body weight against him. She came in at five of six. The tape was over her mouth and the manacles snapped on her wrists within seconds; then he struck her on the jaw with a clenched fist. Her knees buckled. He propelled her, semi- conscious, to the toilet, pulled her panties down and sat her in place, a part of him astonished to see that those panties were sexy red lace. She groaned.

“Piss, Melantha,” he said. “You don’t move until you do.”

Sagging forward on the seat, she urinated. Didn’t the news programs say he never spoke? Why was he speaking to her?

The idea of the chains had come to him when he first set eyes on her bed, an old-fashioned brass one with stout posts and bars. While she was still groggy he tethered the manacle chains to the top of the bed.

“Manicure time,” he said.

Her feet went into socks, her fingernails were clipped down to the quick and collected. After which he left her bedroom and went to look at her bookshelves: hundreds of books! Melantha was a final year medical student at Chubb. There! That one was great, just right for his collection. He brought it back to the bedroom, drew up a chair, and sat down.

Melantha moaned; he was there at once. “Waking up, are we?” he asked, slapping her face. Her dark eyes rolled, then cleared; she gasped.

“Yes, I’m Didus ineptus,” he said, “and I’ve come to do all kinds of things to you.”

She couldn’t scream or talk back to him. The duct tape was in place. But she didn’t need to ask him her most important question; he had already answered it by speaking. Didus ineptus intended to kill her.

He raped her for hours, vaginally and anally, with penis and fist, using his cord around her neck time and time again, retiring to his chair to read, returning for another assault. He pinched, pummeled, pounded.

“I am not a pervert,” he said to her. “My only instruments belong to my body.”

Melantha’s mind began to wander as the strangulations went on; so intent was he on what he was doing that he almost missed the change begin in her eyes. She was lying half on her stomach, but this next one would be the last. He flipped her over-the chains allowed that-and pulled the hood from his head. The eye slits were too frustrating to retain it at such a moment. When she died, her eyes must be looking into his face. And, in case this was the ultimate of all experiences, he paused to snap on a condom. Buried in her, choking her, eyes locked on hers, he watched the life slowly die until he understood that all he had left was her shell. The bitch had escaped him! The orgasm never came.

As he left the bed, tossing the unfilled condom on to the card table, the front door lock gave a dull thunk as the dead bolt turned and fell back. The Dodo’s hand went under the pillow and emerged holding the.22 pistol.

“Melantha? Hi, honey,” said a man’s voice.

He was halfway across the living room when the Dodo shot him in the throat, and he collapsed, dying, in a gurgling heap. But that was not satisfactory. Reaching him, the Dodo stood over him and shot him between the eyes.

That taken care of, the Dodo unchained the lifeless girl and replaced everything in his knapsack, tucking his souvenired book down in one pocket. The load was heavier now that he had added chains to it, but on the whole the weight was worth it. He had almost come inside her; that he would definitely come later as he held the book he knew, but it was a disappointment nonetheless.

At four in the morning Didus ineptus stole out of the place, wriggling on his elbows across the grass of the backyard until he reached the shelter of the side fence, down which grew a row of small pines. There he waited long enough to be sure that he was undetected, then he crawled on hands and knees to the front boundary. On his feet now, he ran across the road and into the deep shadows of the street’s maple trees. From there, it was a short run to Persimmon Street, where his car was parked. As soon as he reached it he got in and put the knapsack on the back seat floor. But he didn’t drive away. No, he’d wait until other cars were growling into life; only then would he drive away. A good night, all considered. He had always wondered how he would cope with an intruder. Now he knew. No sweat.

The bodies were not discovered until noon, when a friend had gone to see why Melantha hadn’t attended the morning’s rounds; she was meant to be presenting a case to Prof. Baumgarten- important.

And Helen was back with the Dodo.