Heartbreaker (52 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Gavin

Yet at the same time these are the people for whom Jesus had the greatest compassion—the poor in spirit, outcasts . . . People with crippling low self-esteem, with no value or regard for themselves nor, therefore, for others; deprived, disadvantaged and damaged in their development, maybe as much victims themselves as they are perpetrators of an offence against others; prisoners within their own minds . . . locked into self-defeating patterns . . .

A Time to Heal
A REPORT FOR THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS
ON THE HEALING MINISTRY

Healing is never just cure. What else it is may be either good (e.g. a sign of new life) or bad (e.g. return to function in an unchanged situation). Some people would argue for a third category, indifferent; but that is to forget that there is no neutrality within the dynamic of salvation. We are always either being saved or perishing, whether cured or not. That is the knife-edge on which we live.

Mud and Stars
A REPORT OF A WORKING PARTY CONSISTING
MAINLY OF DOCTORS, NURSES AND CLERGY

So they’ve nicked her.

Of course I knew she couldn’t have got far after I removed the passport and credit cards of her new identity, but I’m told she’d already filled out a passport application for Edith Binns, which turned out to be her real name. She’d also found time to dye her hair red and take her wardrobe downmarket (beige twinset, brown skirt and granny-shoes, according to my cop-totty mole). Let no one say she wasn’t resourceful when under pressure from the P-O-L-I-C-E.

Well, so much for Elizabeth. I don’t want to have anything to do with her now. I just want to get on with my life. But I can’t. Dimly I realise I’m in limbo till after the trial. I can’t move on. But on the other hand there’s no way I’ll back down from giving evidence. There’s got to be justice here. Not just vengeance, which is personal payback time, but justice, which rights the record for all victims everywhere. I want not only justice for myself but for Jason and Tony as well.

I know I have to focus on holding myself together, but I start feeling nervous in case Elizabeth does a sicko-psycho number. She told me once it was possible to will someone to death, and although I thought at the time this was rubbish I now find I’m taking it seriously, particularly when the St. Benet’s team starts to take it seriously too. Old Mr. Exocet-Missile, aka the Reverend Lewis Hall, says the special prayer-group’s praying to repel any psychic attack she may make, but although this is supposed to reassure me, I feel more shitbrickish than ever.

The police identify Elizabeth from the fingerprints they have on file. I never knew she’d done time, but it turns out she was jailed years ago for minor vice charges plus indecent assault on some fifteen-year-old kid. It also turns out that Asherton was fired from his former job in banking, although he never went to prison. I won’t rest until he’s banged up for bloody life, even though the police explain it’ll be tough to convict him of the assault that put me in hospital. That’s because even though I gave them the knife which had his fingerprints on the handle and my blood on the blade, he can always claim he wounded me in self-defence.

But sod that. They’ll get him for multiple murder, and if I have my way they’ll get Elizabeth for commissioning it. My evidence is going to be crucial in showing how the Elizabeth–Asherton axis worked. It can’t be proved conclusively that she turned Jason and Tony over to him for disposal once she tired of them and/or they failed to live up to her expectations as prostitutes, but I can bear witness to the probable sequence of events. And if they can’t prove she commissioned the murders, at least they can show she went along with them. She made a bad mistake when she kept that snuff movie, the video and its case both plastered with her fingerprints.

Now and then I try to imagine the trial when I get to play Gavin Blake Star Witness, but each time my stomach lurches and I have to stop. Sorry, Mum, wherever you are, but at least you’re no longer Mrs. Blake now you’ve remarried and perhaps you can pretend to your new friends that we’re not related. Thank God Dad’s dead and out of it all.

Nicholas and old Mr. Hall—who now tells me to call him Lewis— have asked about Mum, but I don’t want to talk. Robin, the straight psychologist whom I’ve privately labelled Mr. Pass-for-Gay, has invited me to have a chat sometime about my current situation—no delving into the past, just a survey of present hot-spots—but I’m not playing. Sorry, mates, but I’ve got to focus on holding myself together and I’ll do it my way, not yours.

In some ways I’m not doing too badly. I’ve got my money—Susanne’s emergency wheeze worked. I’m out of hospital and convalescing in a brilliant safe house, a large flat at the top of the St. Benet’s Rectory. The house itself has a full security system plus a panic-button which connects directly with the nearest police station so I feel I can relax, and soon I realise no one’s coming after me anyway. With Asherton’s arrest his empire’s collapsed.

On my arrival at the Rectory I’m introduced to Nicholas’s young second wife, Alice, a curvy piece with a nice nature. It turns out she was originally an outsider, just like Carta and me, someone who was lassoed by The Bloke and drawn into the St. Benet’s circle. Alice, Carta and I— we’re all outsiders whom The Bloke scooped up, a tiny fraction of all the millions he scoops up globally in the daily grind of making the world come right, and so when I look at Alice I see someone special, like Carta—another companion for me on the journey.

Alice has done her duty as a clergyman’s wife by making up beds in two bedrooms of the safe house, but I say to Susanne: “Okay if we save on laundry bedwise?” and she says: “I don’t mind.” So that’s all right. Being without sex in hospital has done my head in so as soon as I’m no longer one big flop I do some catching up on lost time.

It’s bliss without the paid sex but weird without all the sexual activity. Even though I’ve got Susanne my body doesn’t know what to do with itself when I’m not shagging her. It’s so used to being revved up—I suppose I’m hooked on my own adrenaline, and what I’m missing now isn’t the sex but the adrenaline rush. I start drinking more to calm myself down, but Susanne watches me like a cat eyeballing a mouse so I know she’ll pounce if I overdo it—and I don’t want to overdo it, I want to get fit and look good again, not just for my own sake but for her sake too. She deserves more than just a pathetic bloke with eating problems who turns himself into a lush.

Curvy Alice, who’s a cordon bleu cook, brings me some delicious snacks to help my convalescence along, but although Susanne and I are invited down for meals in the main part of the house, I always say no. Can’t face anyone except Susanne for longer than five minutes. Can’t even face Carta (now reunited with Sad Eric, yuk, don’t want to think of him). It takes all my energy to face the police. Have to see
them
for more than five minutes at a stretch, no choice, they keep dropping in when their investigation reveals new facts they need to talk to me about—and their investigation has just turned up a new fact which sends the media into overdrive.

The forensic teams have been digging up the floor of Asherton’s S&M dungeon, and they discover that Jason and Tony weren’t the only blokes he snuffed.

I suppose I should have anticipated this. I knew about the “chickens” who were recruited for the S&M games, but I assumed they’d been released afterwards, too terrified to talk. And maybe for most of them this really did happen. But maybe others died during the games, and that was when Asherton realised making snuff movies gave him the biggest buzz of all.

Horrendous.
Horrendous.
I’m shocked to pieces all over again, and this time I feel as if someone’s saying to me: “What are you doing walking around when all these other blokes have died?” Susanne says this is survivor’s guilt and I should get counselling. But I can’t face that. I just blot it out by heading for a high-stress interview which I can no longer avoid.

It’s time to see the Reverend Gilbert Tucker at his vicarage near Blackfriars Bridge.

I’d called Gil from hospital to say I was out of action but I’d phone him later to fix a date when we could meet. (Since Asherton had been arrested by then there was no longer any need to worry about the romp.) That took care of Gil for the time being.

When I finally make the promised phone call I cut off all his questions and just say: “Can I come to your place at six tonight?” and when he says “yes” I hang up. I know I’m being a coward, but in view of what I’ve got to do to him I can’t just chat away about nothing.

I’ve worked out I’ve got to tell him everything, but I’m not being driven by sadism, I’m being driven by a desire to ensure there are some mistakes he never makes again. I’ve got to shock him rigid. I’ve got to drill it into that romantic, idealistic head of his that clergymen are too vulnerable to mess around with prostitutes, and as for falling in love with one . . . No, Gil needs to wise up fast, poor sod, but who would have thought saving him would be so painful? I feel I’m sweating blood before I even arrive on his doorstep.

Susanne comes too, just in case the trip proves too much for me in my weakened state. We take a cab to Fleetside, where the vicarage stands next to St. Eadred’s church, and we arrive at one minute past six. I’m carrying the shopping bag of tapes and looking as if I’ve just come from the supermarket.

Gil joyfully flings open the door.

He looks at me, looks at Susanne, looks back at me again. His shining eyes go dead. His smile fades. If he were a puppy his tail would stop its whizzy-wag and slump deep between his legs.

“Sorry, Gil,” I mutter. “Sorry, but I’ll try and keep it brief. Can we come in?”

When he nods, unable to speak, I add over my shoulder as I pass him: “This is my girlfriend Susanne. Is there a place where she can wait while we talk?”

This practical question helps him get his act together. He shows Susanne into a little sitting-room by the front door and takes me across the hall into a room which is clearly his study. As soon as the door’s closed I hand over the videos. He takes them out of the shopping bag one by one and when they’re all on his desk he stands staring at the pile.

Then I lay the facts on the line.

When I finish he’s frozen with horror and his pallor has a greenish tinge. Great. Just what I wanted. But you poor sod, I’m so sorry.

What’s he going to do? If he breaks down I won’t be able to stand it, I’ll have to cut and run, but that’ll be terrible because afterwards I’ll hate myself. If only we can somehow end this with dignity—

“It’s hard to find the words to thank you,” he says, bringing the agonising silence to an end. “You were a real hero, thinking of those tapes even when you were in such danger. I’ll always be in your debt.”

“No. I got you into this mess so it was right I got you out of it. You owe me nothing.”

We go on sitting in that quiet clerical study with the tapes stacked between us, the remembrance of pornographic times past, but at last he says: “The best thing of all here is that you’ve stopped selling yourself. That’s what I’ve prayed for ever since we met.” He hesitates but manages to add in a firm voice: “I’ll keep praying for you, of course, and I wish you every success in your new life. I hope you’ll be very happy.”

I don’t even try to comment on this. Worried about him breaking down, was I? Shit,
I’m
the one on the verge of being the water-fairy here. Standing up I mumble idiotically: “Thanks, mate. Good luck. Cheers.”

Then I’m out of that study, I’m collecting Susanne, I’m leaving that house in double-quick time before Gil can reduce me to rubble.

“You were right,” I say to Susanne as we collapse into a cab. “Breaking hearts is a shitty activity.” I feel as if someone ruthless has handed me a pair of spectacles which makes it impossible for me now to see people as mere lumps of meat. My capacity for empathy’s been stretched so hard I could yell with the pain.

“I suppose that so long as I was denying my own pain I was denying other people’s,” I say. “Or was I trying to take my pain out on those other people? But perhaps that’s just saying the same thing in a different way.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. I just wish I could talk to Nicholas about Gil but I can’t, it would be a breach of confidence.”

“Oh, stop worrying about that stupid Gilbert! He’ll wake up, realise how bloody lucky he’s been and make sure he gives all tarts a wide berth in future. Happy ending.”

I suppose she’s right. But I still wish Nicholas could learn about Gil’s mess somehow and give the poor bastard a helping hand . . .

The next day I receive a letter addressed to Mr. Gavin Blake, St. Benet’s Church, London EC2, and at the bottom of the envelope someone’s printed PLEASE FORWARD, as if the writer has no idea I’m living at the Rectory.

Unfolding the letter I read: “Hi Gav—I read the news in the papers, oh God all those bodies, who’d have thought he really did do snuffies, I nearly barfed all over my newspaper—listen, I didn’t grass you up, I swear it, I never even found those brochures under the floorboard, I swear that too—well, I swore it to Elizabeth, but oh God that made her crosser than ever—she screamed at me to get out before she got Asherton to fix me, so I packed up, but when I was leaving I heard her on the phone, she was in her bedroom, nowhere near the office where Susanne was, she—Elizabeth, I mean—she was talking to Asherton, telling him to come and get you, saying you had to go the same way as Jason and Tony, and oh God of course I tried to call you, but you must of switched off the phone at Austin Friars or maybe you weren’t picking up, and when I tried to call the house later, the line was dead, I suppose Tommy did something to it to stop you dialling 999, and oh God I never had your mobile number, did I, so there was no way I could get in touch, but Gav I was in agony, truly I was—maybe I should of gone to the police but I’m so nervous of being fitted up—I did call them anonymous but they probably thought it was a crank call and anyway by that time it was probably too late—oh God the relief later when I found out you’d survived, I just broke down and sobbed until my mate at the pub, the one I’m staying with, threatened to throw me out, and I didn’t want that, specially as I don’t know how I’ll ever get another job, but never mind, all that matters is you’re safe, but Gav I just want to say one thing more and that’s this— I know you thought Elizabeth loved you but she didn’t,
I
was the one who loved you and always will for ever but you don’t have to see me again, that’s okay, though if you want to write me a line to my mate’s address (see above) I’d be ever so happy to hear from you and maybe we could have a drink sometime because you’re a great bloke, the best, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, take care, NIGEL.”