Heartbreaker (41 page)

Val snaps off the torch. “Does the vomiting take you by surprise or are you able to choose when to do it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on, Gavin!”

“I don’t know what you mean!” I protest, but I do know. And what’s more I know that she knows that I know. Okay, I think, what the hell— it’s no big deal. So long as I don’t have AIDS, what do I care?

“Well, as a matter of fact,” I say casually, “I’ve been choosing to do it. I’ve been worried about getting fat, but I’m not being neurotic here, just professional. I’ve got to look perfect for my job.”

“Sure.” To my surprise she stops playing the dominatrix and looks sympathetic. “But Gavin, you don’t want to get into the habit of throwing up, you really don’t. The stomach acids rot the teeth and it’s not good for your throat either. Maybe you need to talk this problem through with someone.”

“What problem?” I say. “It’s not a problem. I’m just temporarily off my food.”

“That’s the problem. Best to take care of it before it gets a real grip on you.”

“But it’s nothing to get excited about! I mean, blokes don’t get bulimia, do they? That kind of stuff’s just for chicks.”

Val waits for a moment before saying gently: “At the Healing Centre I keep a file of articles from medical journals about eating disorders in men.”

I make some flip remark about sexual equality having gone too far, but she just says: “Are you registered with a GP where you live?”

“No, I go to my manager’s private doctor.”

“Okay, can you ask him to test you for anaemia?”

I hesitate. Dr. Filth tells Elizabeth everything. “Can’t you yourself do the test?” I say to Val.

“I could, yes—you’re certainly in the catchment area of my practice by having this flat in Austin Friars, but I’ll need your National Health number to get you on my books.”

“Fine. I’ll dig that out and come to see you.”

“Don’t leave it too long . . . Have you got any food here?”

“Biscuits.”

“Milk?”

“Yep.”

“Have a glass of milk and some biscuits before you try to go home, and drink a glass of water too—more if you can manage it. And as a precaution don’t drive. Take a taxi home, and when you get back do please eat a good meal which goes in one end of you and in due course comes out the other.”

I say meekly: “Yes, doctor,” and wink at her as she leaves, but when I’m alone I sag back on the pillows.

I’m rattled.

“I’ll call you,” I say later to Carta when we part. After the milk, biscuits and water I’m feeling much sharper—which is just as well, since I only have the cab ride to Lambeth in which to prepare my story.

Of course Elizabeth hits the roof when she hears I’ve been dumped, but when I swear I did my best to avoid the disaster she calms down and demands the details.

I start to inch my way through the minefield. “He arrived in a filthy temper,” I say. “It turned out he’d got it into his head that I fancied Nicholas Darrow last weekend.”

“Darrow! Well, he’s certainly the type that can switch both sexes on, but I wouldn’t have pegged him as having any gay interest. How could Sir Colin have thought—”

“I’m not saying he thought Darrow was responding—he just thought I was smitten. Anyway on Monday he puts PIs on my trail, and they come up with the evidence that I’m shagging Serena—a far worse crime than melting over Darrow. So jealousy runs rampant and before you can say ‘melodrama’ he’s crashing around like a rhino on uppers. Finally he belts me across the face, yells that he never wants to see me again and stalks out. The reason why I’m late back is that I was so zapped by the whole fiasco that I just had to sit down for a while with a glass of wine to recover.”

“I’m not surprised! But maybe he’ll backtrack once he calms down.”

“No chance.” This is the truly tricky part, trickier than avoiding all mention of Carta, throwing in the Nicholas rigmarole and omitting my wimpish fall downstairs. “Colin suspects you and Asherton are connected,” I say rapidly, “and he’s guessed I recruit for GOLD.”

Elizabeth’s language slips. “Shit.” After taking a large gulp of her drink she says in her flattest voice: “Then that’s that.”

“Darling, I’m sorry—I know how disappointed you must be—”

“All that money gone to waste! But how the
fuck
could it have happened? Why should that bugger suspect—”

“Well, of course,” I say acidly, “this is entirely Asherton’s fault—and I’m not just referring to the way he blew the debate. On our way into dinner that night he was stupid enough to collar me for a private interrogation about Darrow, and Colin looked back and noticed. I tried to defuse Colin’s suspicions by saying Asherton’d been making a pass, but Colin’s no fool and I bet it was then he started to wonder about a conspiracy.”

“You think that was the real reason he had you watched?”

“I’m sure he was getting jealous twinges as well, but yes, basically he distrusted me on every front and wanted to know just what the hell was going on.”

Elizabeth knocks back the rest of her drink and holds out her glass. “Get me another, would you, pet?” she says abruptly, but although she’s still furious, the word “pet” signals the fury’s not directed at me.

I’m so relieved I nearly make a mess of refilling her glass, but luckily I have my back to her and she can’t see how unsteady my hand is. My big problem now is that Asherton’ll tell her
I
was the one who revealed the conspiracy by looking so horrified when I first saw him at Hellfire Hall— a dead giveaway of our secret connection, as both Nicholas and Colin instantly realised. But I’ll worry about that later. My prime task right now is to pass Elizabeth’s glass back to her without puking into it. Elizabeth has a revolting taste in drinks. It’s all sweet sherry and saccharine cocktails and treacly liqueurs, and at present she’s treating herself to that thick creamy stuff which looks like whisked sewage.

“All right,” says Elizabeth when I’m sitting down beside her again, “this is the way we’ll play it. We don’t tell Asherton that you and Sir Colin are finished. It’s just too complicated, and now that Sir Colin’s not a candidate for GOLD Asherton doesn’t need to know his latest moves anyway. And we certainly don’t tell Asherton that Sir Colin’s sussed the conspiracy. That would make Asherton a tad nervous in case Sir Colin goes to the P-O-L-I-C-E, and it’s never a good idea to give someone like Asherton extra worries, particularly when paranoia’s already his middle name.”

I’m dead relieved again. If Asherton does try to dump the responsibility for the Colin disaster on me, he’ll get nowhere because this is a subject Elizabeth no longer wants to discuss, specially as she now believes my version of who’s to blame. She’ll just write off Asherton’s attack as paranoia and move on.

However I can’t relax yet—this reference to the P-O-L-I-C-E at once has me sitting forward on the edge of my chair. “God, do you really think Colin’ll go to the police about me?”

“No, in my opinion caution will triumph and Sir Colin will do nothing that’d reveal he’s been seeing a leisure-worker. That’s why you were so clever not to punch him up. If there’d been a fight his injured pride might have lured him into doing something silly, but as it is . . . No, on that score you’re safe enough and so am I.”

I hear the unspoken “but.” “What’s the other score?”

“This is where we get back to Asherton and last weekend’s dinner-party fiasco. Remember I told you that the danger from Darrow wasn’t actually pressing because there was no hard evidence against GOLD?”

“So what’s changed?”

“Well, there’s still no hard evidence. But what now worries me is that this scene at Austin Friars today could get both Darrow and the police involved.”

“But you just said—”

“I said Sir Colin wouldn’t complain to the police about you, and I’m sure I’ve got that right. But I think he could complain to them about Asherton, and Darrow would back him up. All that outrage Sir Colin feels about Asherton and me and you and the conspiracy—it’s all got to be dumped somewhere, and he’ll see Asherton as the only dumping ground.”

“But if there’s no hard evidence—”

“You’re missing the point, dear. The point is that when a wealthy, powerful man like Sir Colin Broune makes an allegation, the police can’t just sit on their derrières and do nothing, and what we don’t need, absolutely
don’t
need, is the police breathing down Asherton’s neck in the run-up to the romp with Gilbert Tucker. If the romp gets rumbled and GOLD goes up in smoke—”

“—Gil’s evidence of how he came to be there would link us both to the disaster.” I try to think coherently. “Do you think the vice squad already have their eye on Asherton?”

“Must do, but the question is what, if anything, they can see. Ash is just one of a load of porn operators, and the Act is so flabby and useless the police can’t do much about them—unless, of course, the Vice get lucky and turn up stuff that’s totally unacceptable.”

“I’d have thought Asherton was swimming in stuff that’s totally unacceptable.”

“Well, up till now I reckon he’s been all right on GOLD. The secrecy’s been well maintained and the goings-on haven’t been too iffy. But that SM group is in a different league altogether. The Vice must have heard rumours.”

“I thought no one ever talked!”

“No one directly grasses him up, but word gets around on the street and the police snouts are paid to pick up rumours. Asherton’s been safe so far because in practice members of SM groups are allowed to do anything short of killing one another, but the trouble is times seem to be changing.”

I remember a report which recently caught my eye in
The Times.
Elizabeth heard the news from Asherton who, she said, was “ever so shocked.” “You’re referring to that S&M group which was arrested en masse the other day.”

“Exactly. All adults, all consenting and all nicked! Now put that new persecution policy from the Vice together with a possible complaint from Sir Colin, and you’ll see where I’m going.”

“The police will hit Asherton where he’s vulnerable.”

“Yes, they’ll try to infiltrate the SM group, and once they do that they could pick up information about GOLD, since there’s a crossover between the two groups—”

“—and that puts us in the frame!”

“Wait a mo, pet, it gets worse. If we’re now seeing the result of the police’s decision to get tough on SM groups, that decision must have been taken some time ago. So supposing the police have
already
infiltrated Asherton’s SM group and crossed over into GOLD? If a cop from the Vice is in the audience when the Tucker romp takes off—”

“—it’s coronary time. But Elizabeth, this is all supposition, isn’t it? Do you really think—”

“I’m thinking that the best way to survive serious trouble is always to prepare for the worst. For instance, supposing we eventually do find ourselves being questioned by the police. We say that as far as you and I knew, Gilbert was just another client. We say that Tommy showed the videos to Asherton and Asherton decided to close in on Gilbert without consulting us. We say that not only were neither of us present at the romp but we knew absolutely nothing about it.”

“Okay, but—”

“That should buy us some time. Then of course we skip to Rio before the police can take GOLD apart and Darrow crashes around trying to identify GOLD as the society Kim Betz belonged to—and as soon as Darrow hears about the mysterious ‘Madame Elizabeth—’ ”

“But could either Darrow or Carta actually identify you now you’ve had the surgery?”

“They might not be able to make a positive identification from a photo, but if they saw me in the flesh . . . Well, I won’t be hanging around for a police line-up, but let me tell you, pet, a forced emigration is
the
last thing I want, and that’s why I’m so bloody livid with Asherton for putting everything at risk.”

This last speech underlines to me that I have to wipe the fantasy of saving Gil by giving the police an anonymous tip-off about the romp. Of course I’d love to be on a plane to Rio with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth would hate it—
she
has to be the one who picks the time to retire and the place to retire to, and if she’s on the run, furious and bitter, she might start to suspect I blew the whistle. Or even if she doesn’t, she might decide to dump me out of sheer rage that I wasn’t finally able to keep Colin sweet and harmless, forever showering us with money while finding physical bliss with me and spiritual bliss through her beloved GOLD.

Meanwhile Elizabeth’s still slamming Asherton. “. . . and I just don’t understand why he should be so obsessed with Gilbert Tucker! All right, I know there’s all that idealism begging to be smashed, but the man’s not young, he’s not a stunner and he’s no satyr in the sack. I mean, I ask you! What’s the point?”

Gut-twisting concern for Gil drives me into wanting to know more details of the romp in the hope that there’s a weak spot I could exploit. Reminding myself that Elizabeth has no idea I eavesdropped when Asherton first revealed his revolting plan, I say idly: “I suppose there’s no chance Gil will fail to turn up?”

“None. You’re forgetting the two of them already know each other after meeting at Bonzo’s AIDS hospice. Ash will simply invite Gilbert over for a drink and say you’re going to be there as well.”

My heart sinks. I know she’s right and this is an invitation Gil wouldn’t refuse. “Okay, so what happens after the drink? I suppose he gets shown the video—is Tommy going to offer a composite of the best session?”

“No, no, he’ll do a composite of the composites to make sure the video’s really mouthwatering.”

“And then?”

“That idiot Asherton’s determined to stage a black mass as a warm-up, but that’s not the problem. Gilbert’ll do that once he’s seen the video. But after that he’s not going to be willing to do anything, and once they use him in the SM games we’re talking assault, GBH, the works. Asherton’s mad, absolutely certifiable, to involve a non-consenting adult who isn’t a waif and stray, but no one’s going to stop him, are they? He’ll get his way, just as he always does.”