Dome of Death - 10. Chapter 10 Gregor MacFife

As I was closing the roof, Frances fluttered vaguely down the stairs in something brief, pink and diaphanous. She yawned delicately. ‘Where’s ArtWorks going?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Why not?’

‘Their stuff’s crap and they’re dodgy. An honest company wouldn’t pay bonuses for access, and then let their display be placed out of sight. Jon reckons it’s a front for something illegal and, judging by the reactions from the improbably named Scumble and Glaze, it’s a scam.’

‘Scam?’

‘Money-laundering, drugs, who knows?’

‘Peter, don’t be tiresome. This is a business and you’re not paid to turn away clients.’

‘I haven’t been paid at all.’

She shrugged impatiently. ‘You’re starting to annoy me.’

She was starting to annoy me, and I was born stubborn. I’d just decided to resign so why couldn’t I have said, It’s your gallery, and packed my bags?

‘I may be annoying, Frances, but at least I'm honest. Crime only pays because people do nothing to stop it.’

‘Forget it,’ she snapped, ‘and get on with your job!’

‘My job’s selling art, not trash. And I intend to get to the bottom of ArtWorks.’

‘In that case,’ she sighed, ‘we’d better discuss it with Gregor. He knows about this sort of thing. He’s upstairs.’

‘That’s a damned good idea. I’m concerned for you too.’

‘And I appreciate it.’

A new article of furniture had appeared in Frances’ bedroom - one of those frames with pulleys and weights for building muscles and eliminating ugly flab. Gregor MacFife was in the process of doing the former, having none of the latter. He was one of those rare men who look as good naked as clothed. Tanned, sleek and well muscled, he looked in his late forties, but Frances had exaggerated; he was only slightly larger than normal.

Finishing a lift, he lowered the weights and offered a firm, sweaty hand.

‘Welcome, Peter.’ His voice was mellifluous, rich and deep - capable of massaging the cares from one’s soul. Equally intoxicating was the even-toothed smile. ‘Just a dozen more and I’ve finished. You don’t mind?’ He motioned me to a chair jammed between the wall and the machine.

I was so close I had to swing my knees sideways to avoid brushing his thighs each time he squatted, and with my head sixty centimetres from his groin I didn’t know where to look. I glanced across at Frances. She was also naked, draped over the bed staring blankly at the wall. Not a pretty sight, so I settled for a crick in the neck and looked up at Gregor’s face. He rewarded me with a wink. Embarrassed, I looked back at Frances whose vacant stare now rested on Gregor.

The room was silent, except for a grunt each time Gregor squatted, followed by a susurration of pulleys when he stood. He was becoming aroused and I could smell his maleness. Aggressive nudity like this was the opposite of the Alconas’ naturalism. I feel sexy with Mad’s family, but it is sexuality without demands, without awkwardness or doubt; the natural, healthy sexiness of life. Gregor’s display was sexuality soiled.

Frances prised herself upright, staring at her husband’s erection, the fingers of one hand caressing her nipples while the other played at her groin. She licked her lips. With one last, well-bred grunt, Gregor lowered the weights, leaned back against the frame and smiled complacently. I stood up, feeling over dressed and glad that I was. This was definitely not my scene. But before I could escape, Gregor threw an arm around my shoulder and squeezed me to him; his body hot through my shirt.

‘It’s an honour to know the man who inspired this magnificent building.’

‘I didn’t inspire…’

‘According to Frances you did. Congratulations!’ He pulled my head across and kissed me on the mouth.

I pulled back, repelled, and wiped his sweat from my lips.

Frances maintained her dippy smile. ‘Peter’s more worried than proud.’

I nodded wildly, desperate to escape the clammy embrace.

‘He thinks someone’s trying to use the gallery as a base for an illegal scam.’

‘No!’ Gregor’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and his hug grew tighter.

‘And he intends to get to the bottom of it. Don’t you Peter?’

‘Yes.’

‘I told him you’d know what to do.’

‘Quite right, Frances.’ Gregor ran a hand through my bristles and smiled, but fortunately didn’t attempt another kiss. I felt annoyed at my intolerance. Obviously, he was a man in harmony with himself. I was the one with problems.

‘You must tell me everything, Peter. But first, a glass of wine?’

Frances poured and Gregor draped himself over the bed, hands behind his head, legs spread, eyes on his erect manhood as though seeking insight from such a powerful life-symbol. I sat on a chair beside the bed and studied my fingers. Frances brought our drinks, then snuggled up beside Gregor as if to reclaim possession. We drank each other’s health while I told him everything, including Jon’s suspicions.

‘Where’s Jon?’

‘At my place.’

‘Where’s that?’

I told him.

Gregor took our empty glasses to a table, put them down carefully, then turned, face serious.

‘You’ve been very perspicacious, Peter. Few people would’ve understood the implications of ArtWorks’ offer. Have you told anyone else your suspicions?’

I shook my head, waiting for the wise words that would make everything clear. Frances’ gaze swivelled from husband to me like a mesmerised chook, a peculiar half-grin playing over her features.

‘Frances,’ Gregor whispered softly, moving towards the bed, ‘you told me Peter was just some dumb fuck of Max’s. That he’d do as he was told. What happened?’ The voice was as caressing as ever, but I didn’t much like the words.

‘Well, that’s what I thought. That’s the sort of boy Max usually chose. How was I to know this one was different?’

I don’t think Gregor liked her tone, because he leaned forward and slapped her, leaving a reddening mark on her cheek.

‘There’s no need to pick on me!’ she whined. ‘At least I was on the ball and brought him to you before anyone else got wind of it. Better than your two gorilla fuckwits who put the suspicions into his head in the first place.’

‘Shut your mouth!’ the voice not so mellifluous. ‘I should have guessed if I left things to you nothing would get done!’ He threw himself petulantly onto the bed.

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Fair? Fair? This is costing me money! You promised that if I got Max out of the way, ArtWorks would be able to move in. I kept my side of the bargain; you’ve stuffed up.’

Blood does run cold, I assure you. My heart felt as though it was trying to pump chunks of ice. Cold sweat ran from my armpits.

Frances fumed. Gregor was pensive. Neither was taking any interest in me so I stood quietly, walked softly to the door and escaped. A hefty rabbit punch brought me to my knees and I was dragged by an ankle back into the room. The tableau remained the same. He looked up.

‘Thanks, boys. What’ll we do with your fairy, Frances?’

‘Get Max’s clothes off him for a start,’ she snapped, clambering off the bed to look contemptuously down. ‘You don’t deserve Max’s things, you creepy little queer. He was six times the man you’ll ever be.’

‘Is that why you had him murdered?’ I don’t know why I can’t keep my mouth shut.

She jammed her foot on my neck. I thought my head would burst.

‘Get those things off him!’ she screamed.

Within a minute I was naked on my knees with both arms too far up my back for comfort.

‘What’ll we do with him, boss? Bury him?’

‘Later. It’s too light now. And why deprive ourselves of a little entertainment? Tie him to that thing.’

Frances crept back beside Gregor and they watched as Scumble tied my wrists to the handles of the weight lifting machine. Glaze hung on the weights, then suddenly let go, jerking my arms above my head, nearly ripping them from their sockets. Scumble kicked my legs apart and lashed them to the base. Stretched out like a flayed skin, swallowing was difficult but that didn’t stop my mouth.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Why what?’

‘Max.’

‘Money.’

‘Haven’t you enough?’

‘One can never have enough.’

‘But - after a while there’s nothing to spend it on.’

‘Who wants to spend it? Money is power and power’s the ultimate turn-on.’ Gregor’s voice had thickened and as if to underline his statement, he grabbed Frances’s hair, pulled her head down and forced his erection into her mouth. ‘You like that, don’t you dear?’

Spittle dribbling from stretched lips, she nodded.

‘Real power is forcing people to do what they don’t want. When you have enough money, Peter, everyone wants to lick your arse, but you’d know all about that.

‘Not my scene.’

‘It’s Bob’s scene though, isn’t it Bob?’

Bob looked unconvinced.

‘Isn’t it, Bob?’

‘If you say so, boss.’

‘I do say so. You let me down today, Bob. You were supposed to calm Mr Corringe’s fears and get everything running smoothly. But you didn’t, did you?’ The voice continued pleasant, the smile still intimate, but I felt sick. Sick, stupid, cheated and scared. Very, very scared.

Bob hung his head and mumbled, ‘No, boss.’

‘You have a choice, Bob Glaze - out into the wide, wicked world - or lick my arse. What’s it to be?’

Bob mumbled something.

‘Speak up! What do you want to do?’

‘I want to lick your arse!’ Bob said dutifully, if a trifle unconvincingly.

Gregor smiled indulgently at me. ‘What a pity you didn’t have the sense to do as you were told, Peter. You could’ve joined our little band and shared the profits.’ He sighed deeply as though with regret. ‘Instead, you had to play the hero.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Frances, how can you add to Bob’s little punishment?’

Frances slithered hot-eyed from the bed, reached into a cupboard and produced a small whip, its thong capped with a shiny metal tip. Meanwhile, Bob had stripped revealing a body devoid of fat. Muscles and bones showed clearly through unhealthy pale skin flecked with tiny dark patches. Some looked red and sore as though he’d caught himself on a barbed wire fence. His half-smile as Scumble tossed him to his knees relieved me of the obligation of pity. Frances landed an expert flick with her whip on his cheek, raising a tiny red welt.

‘Belly up, boy,’ she snarled.

Bob rolled on to his back and was subjected to an elegant whipping on sensitive parts. His body twitched and flinched at every stinging cut, but the only sounds were sharp intakes of breath and heavy grunts of pain - or pleasure, it wasn’t clear which.

‘Walkies!’ snapped Frances. The penitent crawled across the room to the foot of the bed. Gregor raised his legs and smiled across at me as Bob slithered up and buried his head.

Frances maintained the tension with the whip until, having drained all possible pleasure from his employee’s humiliation, Gregor’s attention turned back to me. Bob dragged his twitching body to a corner.

‘What do we do with the shaved, bleached little gay-boy, Frances? Want to fuck him?’

She turned her evil grin on Scumble. ‘Ian, if I remember correctly, the other day you said you’d like to fuck him good and proper.’

Scumble looked aghast. ‘I didn’t mean it literally. He might have A.I.D.S.’

‘Have you?’ Frances asked.

I tried the butch, contemptuous look, but I was jelly. If I was going to die I wanted it to be as painless as possible. I did not want to end up a screaming mess on the floor of Frances’s bedroom, so I lied.

‘Yes. So watch out for my bodily fluids!’

‘Boss?’ The pleading in Scumble's voice was pitiful.

‘Use this.’ Frances passed the unhappy Scumble a realistic, if improbably large purple plastic dildo attached to a harness. The whip she handed to a miraculously resurrected Bob. Scumble stripped, strapped on the phallus and pranced around the room like a lewd satyr. I was untied from the frame, bent over the foot of the bed and refastened. Gregor pulled his legs up to make room. Bob lashed with the whip. The MacFifes watched with tight smiles. Scumble dragged back my head and thrust. I screamed, certain my bowels had ruptured, emptying litres of poisonous slime into internal cavities.

After an aeon of pain greater than I had imagined possible, Scumble stopped pumping, I stopped shrieking, and Bob jerked himself off into my ear. Blood from the whipping was running into my mouth. My back and ring felt as if it they'd been torn open. I'd been reduced to a whimpering accumulation of agony, and vomited over the bed, unfortunately missing the loving couple.

Frances rolled onto the floor, landing on all fours. Her husband followed and mounted her like a dog, barking and woofing in ecstasy. When he’d shot his load, Scumble, minus the dildo, emulated his master. Gregor watched them from the bed, smiling his tight smile at his wife’s barbarous love-making. Desire quenched, Frances snuggled back into her husband’s arms; Scumble and Glaze sprawled over a couple of chairs.

‘That was wonderful,’ Frances moaned. ‘Let’s do it again.’

‘How’s your mother?’ murmured Scumble.

‘Mother’s well,’ was Gregor’s contented response.

A minute later he sat up. ‘Right, you two clean up in the other bedroom, then get shot of the faggot. An accident - or bury him somewhere he’ll never be found. First thing tomorrow go up to his place in the hills and waste his bum-chum.’

‘Sure thing, Boss. No fuck-ups this time.’

Mr Motherswell-MacFife merely grunted.

I spent a long fifteen minutes tied to the bed, face buried in drying vomit, trying to fix my mind on higher things. Could I escape? Not likely. How would they do it? Permanently. I agonised over Jon. I’d got him into this mess. I was alone in the room. If I could get to the telephone I could warn him, but the knots were secure. Sadness overwhelmed me. Was this my final act, face down in vomit on a bed of lustreless lust? How tragic that sex, that delicious gift of the gods, could be reduced to pain and torture. How dire that people like these should profit from their inhumanity. How pitiable that I had no more tears to cry.

The MacFifes were still showering noisily.

Scumble and Glaze eventually reappeared, untied me, fastened my hands behind my back, hobbled my ankles, shoved a dirty sock in my mouth, secured it with tape and half carried, half dragged me down to the gallery and out the back door. After checking the way was clear, I was forced to shuffle the fifty metres to the edge of the cliff. It was about seven o’clock and utterly still. Lurid light from a rising yellow moon trickled under heavy black clouds, already beginning to spit their load.

‘Hurry up, it’s gunna piss,’ Glaze muttered. Enormous piles of rocks loomed like demented pyramids, dwarfing the two bulldozers whose job it was to shovel them into the path of the ever-hungry river in the hope of diverting it away from the suburbs built on sand dunes further south. Scumble hoisted himself into the cab of a dozer, fiddled for a few seconds under the dash, started it up and began pushing a pile to the edge.

‘It’s going to be like it was with your mate,’ Glaze laughed. ‘But tonight I’ll use a shovel instead of a broom.’

I looked down. We were directly above Jon’s drain. If I wasn’t knocked out in the fall I might be able to get away before the bulldozer shoved its load. Fat chance, bound hand and foot! The shovel slapped me in the back.

Three metres doesn’t sound far but believe me, when you’re trussed it’s a bloody long way. I fell on my side in the moist sand, winded, while the dozer, headlights reflecting palely off the rocks, revved erratically and the sky came tumbling down. A frenzied roll got my head under the overhang as a boulder the size of a small car crunched on to the drain and bounced near my legs. There was just enough light for me to make out a vertical slit of deeper darkness. The direct hit had forced an existing gap between two pipes to open wider. It took less than three seconds to roll across and shove head and shoulders into the gloom.

A bolt of agony vaporised all illusions of safety. Something had crashed onto my left foot. Whatever it was must have protected me from further onslaught, because although I could hear the roar of tons of rubble sealing me into my tomb, nothing further landed on the bits of me outside. Gagging on pain, I pulled my hands further up my back and rubbed the ropes against edges of concrete.

Try it sometime. The amount of possible movement is slight, the effect negligible. I fell back on an old trick learned during years as an artists’ model. With a bit of practice you can switch off awareness of time passing, retreating somewhere inside your head where cramp and pins and needles can’t penetrate. It wasn’t quite as easy jammed into a wet and dark crack in a drainpipe, but it worked. After a long time my hands separated. Wriggling to a better position, and with a trickle of hope, I tore off the tape, extracted my gag and tried to drag numbed legs in to join the rest of me.

I think I passed out. My left foot was jammed and the agony so excruciating the brain refused to cooperate. Eventually, wet cold fear clawed its way from entrails to consciousness. My head and shoulders were damming the flow of storm water, which was by now running over my neck and trickling into my mouth. Choking, I sat up too quickly and convulsed in a spasm. My foot! Another wrench brought forth a scream of obscenities.

I recalled the tramper who’d sawn off his right arm with a pocket-knife when he was trapped in a crevasse. That wasn’t an option - I hadn’t a knife. With the toes of my right foot, which Scumble had only hobbled, I scratched away at the sand underneath. Little by little the pressure eased, and with it the worst of the pain. After an interminable time my left foot sank far enough for me to drag it out from under. Terrified I was going to start an avalanche, I dragged cold, twisted, cramped, aching extremities in to join my torso. A momentous reunion.

Tender explorations revealed a cut from ankle to toe, oozing warm sticky fluid. If I hadn’t already chundered I would have. Darkness lets the imagination run free - not a good idea. Fiddling in the blackness, I gave homage to the inventor of nylon cord that doesn’t knot tight, and after separating my feet, used it and the gag to bind the cut foot. Pretty useless, but I imagined it gave protection.

Sitting waist deep in water and having solved the pressing problem of keeping all my bits together, the full horror of the situation clunked into focus. What next? Crawl to the sea? Fighting claustrophobia (I could never make myself slither under the tarpaulin in obstacle races at school in case they sealed all exits and I’d expire) I limped past openings and cracks in the sides too small to squeeze through, not daring to hope.

After the intense dark, the night at the end of the tunnel positively glowed. Crunch. Tonnes of sand and rocks had built up outside, reducing the opening to a wide slit about fifteen centimetres deep. I tore at it with my fingers but it was set like concrete. I was already waist deep in water, the tide was coming in and it had been raining for goodness knows how long so things were not looking good. Stumbling back through the impenetrable blackness I wondered it this was Karma. Was I doomed to return again and again to the same fucking flooded drain? But there was nothing else to do.

I tripped, bashed my bruised and grazed body on the sides, scratched legs and feet on bits of junk, and understood despair. Brain on standby, I groped on and on and on. The drain divided and became smaller. I was crawling. The current swifter. Swallowing filthy water. Which way? The side away from the gallery. I slithered on. A pale glow! I dragged myself into a rectangular shaft about a metre deep faintly lit by a street light. The entrance was one of those concrete spillways in gutters that happily swallow your car-keys but are not much wider than your arm. I suppose I was disappointed, but suspect I was beyond that meagre state.

After another age, reduced to slithering on torn hands and knees, water sloshing around shoulders, barely making progress against the ever-increasing current, another light glimmered. Another shaft, this time circular and about one and a half metres high. I stretched up, exhausted, not caring if I was trapped as long as I wasn’t crawling, cramped, aching, bruised and scraped in that hellhole. Filthy stormwater gushed over me. I shoved my hands against the circular grill, pushed, heaved - nothing. Sliding torn fingers between the bars, I shook them in despair. A movement? Again. Yes! Rotation? After an eternity of heaving, grunting and twisting, the faint feel of flanges lining up with gaps. A final spurt of energy and the grill was up. I slid it sideways, but it was another age before I could summon the energy to haul myself up and over the edge to lie in the streaming gutter; wet, cold, naked, hurting and indescribably happy.