game: the freedom from choice. When you met your host, you could say ‘No, thank you’, of course. But if you ended it then and there, it was your loss… and your cost. He always accepted what he had paid for, and had found that there was an important lesson there, too – don’t prejudge things. The regulation-pretty girls were fine, but they were the least eager to please, the least imaginative and the least welcoming. On the other hand, the best session he’d ever had was with a sixteen-stone, sixty-two-year-old black lady who had jumped straight on to his dick and fucked him raw for three hours straight. He could barely walk for days afterwards. Thinking about it later, he’d decided that it was probably the best sex of his life, even better than the Peruvian triplets he’d enjoyed in Chiclayo one time. He’d tried to re-book her, but that was not allowed. Serenissima’s strict rule was that everything was a one-time-only arrangement.
Another agency rule was no artificial time limits – once you come, they go. He therefore knew all about the dangers of getting too excited too quickly. The one encounter where he had felt short-changed had lasted barely five minutes, from start to finish. The boy had deliberately brought him to a frenzy in record time. The little whore had then spat out his juices, got dressed and was out the door almost before Hogarth realised what had happened. It was, he thought ruefully afterwards, probably one of the most expensive blowjobs in history.
From then on he had always made sure that he got value for money. As part of his pre-Serenissima ritual, he now reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a packet of tissues. From a bag on the back seat, he fished out an Armenian porn mag that he had acquired on his trip, and propped it up against the dashboard. With a contented sigh, he unzipped his fly and got to work.
After a couple of minutes’ uncomplicated pleasure, he had completed the job. Dropping the used tissues out of the window, he felt sated, and wondered if he might not just go home. But, before he could reach a conclusion, there was a click, the passenger door opened, and a modest frame slid into the seat next to him. There was a glimpse of flesh and the sound of leather against leather.
‘I see you’ve started without me,’ said an amused voice.
‘Well…’ Hogarth gasped as a cold hand gently grasped his still exposed member.
‘Leave the talking to me. Just sit back, eyes front.’
He did as he was told, bringing his breathing under control as the hand was replaced by something else. Hogarth let his mind wander, relaxing completely as he was gently brought back to life.
Several minutes later, the oral ministrations came to an abrupt end. He opened his eyes, but found it hard to focus.
‘Get out of the car.’
Slowly he did as he was told.
‘Face the windscreen. Hands on the bonnet. Spread your legs.’
Hogarth moved around the front of the car, watching his reflection in the cool Galway Green paintwork. From behind, he felt a pair of hands roughly undo his belt buckle and push his trousers to the floor. His underpants quickly followed. A hand came up between his legs, caressing his balls. Something cool tickled his anus. He was completely hard again now, and poised to explode. Don’t rush it, he thought. Slow down.
When the explosion came, however, it was at the base of his neck, rather than in his groin. He tried to push himself up off the car, but instead found his head being smashed back on to the bonnet. His nose exploded, and blood mixed with the tears welling in his eyes. Dazed, he felt his legs buckle. His vision blurred and then there was darkness.
‘Wakey, wakey!’
Hogarth regained consciousness as a bottle of water was poured over his head. Confused, with a throbbing ache behind his eyes, he took a moment to remember what had happened. Slowly, the world stopped spinning around him. He was lying face down, on the car bonnet, with his arms raised as if in surrender. The bonnet still felt warm, suggesting he hadn’t been unconscious for long, and there was a sickly smell in his nostrils. Grunting, he tried to push himself up, but to no avail.
He was stuck.
Literally.
‘Don’t struggle, or you’ll do yourself some serious damage.’
As his eyes regained focus, he saw the knife resting on the windshield. Next to it was a small photograph. Unable to move his head, it was hard to make it out clearly – but he could guess. A hand snatched up the blade and Hogarth clenched his whole body, in anticipation of the imminent blow.
‘Help me,’ he whispered, but only so that he could hear the sound of his own voice one last time. ‘Please, help me.’
Hopping from foot to foot to try to stay awake, Carlyle stood as far away from the body as he reasonably could without looking too much like a wimp. He fiddled with his BlackBerry and looked over at Joe Szyszkowski, who was talking to one of the other policemen attending the scene. Even at this distance, the smell was appalling. He could feel the bile rising in his throat and he was only glad that his stomach was empty.
It was ten to five in the morning and he felt like shit. Those bastard students who rented the flat below him in Winter Garden House had woken him up at two a.m. with their bloody computer war games. It was the third or fourth time this had happened in recent weeks. They would stay up all night playing Mercenaries: World in Flames or Call of Duty: World at War. The first time it had happened, Carlyle literally thought that a bomb had gone off inside the building. It wasn’t much better once he realised that it was only a game. There would be stretches of silence and then a monumental explosion. It was like World War III was taking place right under his fucking bed. Every time Carlyle went to complain, they would sheepishly apologise and call it a night. Then a few days later they’d start again. The fact that he was a policeman didn’t seem to concern them in the slightest. He started giving serious consideration to having the little fuckers arrested for something. Better still, he would ask Dominic Silver to send someone round to trash their games consoles and break their fingers.
Carlyle really needed his sleep: anything less than seven hours and he was in bad shape for the next day. In the event, he had managed to grab less than an hour because, what had seemed like only two minutes after his eyes had finally closed, he had received the call about the body. Joe had picked him up just after four, and they reached the scene in less than ten minutes.
The body had been identified from a marketing brochure found inside the Range Rover. There was the by now familiar knife sticking out of his arse, and a pool of congealed blood extended several feet away from the body. Nearby, an extremely impressive stream of vomit had run almost the whole length of the vehicle.
Joe wandered over.
‘Why is he still here?’ Carlyle asked.
‘They superglued him to the car,’ Joe explained, trying to stifle a giggle. ‘The paintwork is going to be ruined.’
‘What?’
‘He is stuck to the bonnet. They found a jumbo bottle of Lockdown “brush on” superglue.’ He gestured to a small group of officers gathered by the car, lowering his voice a little.
‘Lovely.’ Carlyle already knew that superglue was a more common problem for the police than most people would imagine. Once, in East London, he had been called to a flat where a man in a wheelchair had starved to death after his upper and lower jaws were glued together. The coroner recorded an open verdict, but for a long time afterwards Carlyle wondered what had happened. Was it an accident? Or suicide? They were real teeth, so how could you glue them together by accident? If the guy had done it deliberately, then what a truly terrible way to kill yourself. Or maybe someone else had done it to him? Carlyle had lain awake at night trying to work it through, but a plausible explanation would always elude him. Another time he had to deal with a man suspected of breaking his bail curfew, who had glued himself to his girlfriend in an attempt to avoid being arrested. Carlyle packed both of them off to the station and had her charged with obstruction, before making himself scarce so that he didn’t have to hang around for the business of separating them.
‘Why do you think they did that?’ he asked Joe, gesturing towards the corpse.
‘Presumably to hold him in position,’ Joe replied, ‘so that we would find him exactly like this, with the knife sticking out of his arse.’
‘Just like Ian Blake. And similar to George Dellal.’
‘Yes, it’s the same MO – different type of knife, but clearly the same MO.’
