VICTIMS (Deleted scenes from ‘Bitter Legacy’)
GARY
“So . . . ye up for it then, big man?” It was a poor attempt at a sexy purr.
The girl had stopped in a shop door-well. Or maybe it belonged to a group of flats. Either way it created an alcove just big enough for the two of them to crowd into.
If really he was . . . up for it.
“What you chargin’?”
“Fifteen for a hand job,’ she said, Glasgow accent brisk and business-like. “Twenty-five for a BJ.”
She was small and slim-- skinny really, though he was pretty sure her figure came courtesy of a heroin diet. But it struck him suddenly that in the near-darkness she looked quite like her. Same huge eyes in a pointed pale face. Dark hair.
He felt his mouth go dry, his cock starting to fill urgently just from that connection in his head.
“How much for a fuck?”
Her lips tightened.
“A hundred,” she said as if it wasn’t an outrageous figure to screw a junkie like her. “An’ I dinnae do bare.”
His expression melted slowly into an insulted sneer. He seemed that desperate did he? Or . . . she didn’t fancy the look of him.
That echo of past humiliations was enough to push his temper.
Yeah, he wanted a screw . . . he’d been offshore for a month for fuck sake, and he hadn’t had much in the way of female company before that. But he wasn’t going to let himself be ripped off by a cocky little cunt like this.
He looked around restlessly, already regretting letting her draw him out of the pub. The road was dark, an alleyway really, off the orange-neon main street in front of the harbour, and he could hear dimly, the swish of the odd car passing out there, anchoring him to real life.
He’d flown in to Aberdeen on a chopper that afternoon, gagging for booze and a fuck, ready to hit the town, and they all knew from past happy experience, that the cheapest alcohol and the readiest prossies were down by the docks. It wasn’t just local whores; others came in from Glasgow and Newcastle too at certain times of the month; sometimes there were Eastern Europeans who looked more like models than hookers. They all thought it was worth getting their knickers off in the freezing Aberdeen nights to work the big foreign ships that came in. That and there were the roustabouts like him, bursting onto dry land from the oil rigs, euphoric and flush with cash.
Like every trip, he’d shared a taxi from the heliport with the lads, crossing the city to the Blue Lantern, and they’d been knocking it back there till now. They were planning on sleeping in the railway concourse if they could get away with it . . . just a few hours till the early train to London.
But . . . he had an itch to scratch now and she seemed to have been in his eye-line for the past couple of hours, like she’d targeted him and liked what she saw. Some women liked a big bloke.
But maybe, he thought bitterly, he’d got that wrong.
He was past the first happy high of inebriation and onto the plateau of false sobriety, but he knew his reactions were still too slow, letting her lead him on like this.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t like her at all.
She had a rat’s face, he thought, little and sharp, and her hair was stringy. Thin.
“Hand job then,” he said disgustedly because the little bitch really had led him on. Last trip he got a forty quid fuck bare, and she’d moaned and carried on like she loved it. Who gave a fuck if she was pretending? It got him off.
He pulled down his fly and hauled out his half hard prick.
The girl raised an eyebrow and smiled half-heartedly.
Insulting cow.
“Well go on then.”
“Pay up front.”
He glowered at her again, tempted to just belt her one, hurt her, but he didn’t want the hassle. He reached into his wallet and handed her fifteen pounds.
She stuffed it into the pocket of her pink plastic-leather coat and to his astonishment, emerged with a single surgical glove, thin off-white latex, the type doctors used.
“What the fuck is that?” he gaped as she pulled it on expertly.
“Save you wearing a rubber.”
“You can’t even do a hand job . . .?” He spluttered with disgust.
“I got a cut on ma finger today . . . got tae be safe.”
He fumed at her silently but the latex clad hand was already clutching his prick, pulling expertly.
She couldn’t be any more detached, even down to that symbolic barrier between her skin and his. But somehow that stirred something again . . . deep down. Memories of wanting so much and getting so little back. Of humiliation and useless, all-controlling want.
He groaned and pushed his hands up on either side of her head, braced against the wired glass of the door behind her, pumping his swollen prick into the twisting tunnel of her fingers.
The little road they were in smelled of decay – stale rubbish, rotting food, rat shit, urine. But he didn’t care.
He didn’t care that he was getting off in a filthy back street with a junkie hooker who despised him as much as he despised her.
In his head now she was doing it, loving him back, working his dick because she wanted him so much. That much . . . He came hard, semen gushing and spurting over uninterested latex.
The force of his orgasm, the blinding release of tension after weeks of nothing but the odd furtive wank, almost knocked him over.
He slumped against her on rubber legs, but in seconds she’d slid out from under him, already walking away, heels clicking on the uneven pavement.
“Ta very much,” he heard her say. “All yours.”
In his dazed repletion, he didn’t properly register what was happening when he felt the back of his leather jacket being lifted up and away from his body, letting icy air hit his sweat soaked back. And then it was far too late to regret anything.
MARIA
“That’s all very well darling, but you know how Granny gets when she decides you’re avoiding her. I’m not going to be the one to tell her again.”
Her phone was tucked precariously between cheek and shoulder as she slid out of the driver’s door of her car, bumping her bag and briefcase over the handbrake as she hauled them behind her. She was just too tired to do it properly, Smithson and Chanel or not.
“It’s not as if I chose to have the hearing then Mummy. You should know better than anyone. It’s the luck of the draw.” The dull slam of her car door crunched in the silence of the empty street. The air smelt damp.
Her mother ranted on.
“Felicity and Henry are coming up. Even though Henry has a vital board meeting and there could be a suggestion of a hostile . . .”
And on.
She was lucky, she thought vaguely, tuning out the cut-glass moaning, that she had a reserved parking space for the BMW directly outside the mews house. But still somehow it always seemed to be a production to get across those few yards from the car, inside the front door.
She dropped her keys and swore softly as she bent to pick them up from the pavement. Felicity had all the graceful genes. Unsurprisingly.
But she had other advantages.
It was unfair though, she pouted, as she wrestled with briefcase, bag and door keys in the sickly light of the street-lamp. Mummy despised women who sat on their arses all day and didn’t use their minds, yet even though she was climbing the same greasy pole as her mother had once climbed, using any edge she had to get up there above the others, she was the one getting it in the neck for pursuing her career. While Felicity was lunching and grooming and spitting out tedious kids.
“Look . . .” She interrupted at last. “The CPS may be reasonable. Maybe we can avoid going to trial. I really want to be there Mummy.” It sounded genuine. Saying the right thing at the right time was automatic. Like breathing. Her mother made an appeased sound. “So I may be able to make it. Or if not, I can try to drive up on Saturday sometime.” Then, the softening up for reality. “But . . . you know . . . if there are complications . . .”
Her mother sighed. “We may not see you at all.” Mummy was usually much easier to reason with, but, she reminded herself yet again, Granny was coming for the weekend. And, Granny, denied anything, was a horrendous old bitch. “It’s been weeks since you’ve been up to the Grange. Hotspur’ll have forgotten what you look like. How long is it since you took him out and let him have his head? You really should let us sell him. It’s not right for a horse of that calibre not to be challenged every day.”
She scowled. Hotspur was a low blow and not one Mummy used often. But the prospect of a weekend with that vicious old harpy had clearly taken a blowtorch to her mother’s usual icy reason.
What made it worse was that, in this case, she actually wasn’t bullshitting. She really did want to make it to the Grange, because God, she’d even choose a weekend finessing Granny to get some breathing space from Dan.
She’d honestly believed he understood the parameters. But last night, he’d proved he was no more in control of himself than any of them. It was too soon to move though, so she supposed she’d just have to reset the rules. Impose some distance.
Her neck was beginning to cramp. Finally, she accepted defeat and let the bag and briefcase drop to the greasy pavement, using her free hand to liberate her phone. She stopped and drew a breath.
“I have to go. I’ll call you once I have a better idea, okay?”
Another sigh, wrenched from the depths of gloom. “All right darling. Good luck with the case.”
She turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. But she stopped for a moment on the second step.
“Night, Mummy.” The line went dead.
She picked up her bag and case with relief, and took the step up into her front hall, pushing the door open with her arm. And it was then, just as she had both her feet on her hall mat, that a heavy weight slammed into her from the back, force propelling her forward and flat, her head hitting the floor with a sick, dizzying thud, breath shocked out of her. Following her down, pressing her face and neck into the carpet.
“Mummy.” A sneer, full of loathing, distorted by the roar of panic in her ears, but somehow almost familiar. “I remember Mummy.” She squeezed her eyes shut, so instantly petrified she felt her bladder beginning to loosen, her heart bursting through her ribs. The heavy baleful weight on her back made it so hard to breathe. But she scrabbled for something rational, some explanation to give her back control. They wanted her bag. Or it was a dream. She had to stay calm. She had to wake up.
A hand grabbed her hair and yanked back her head, straining the tendons of her neck, until she made an involuntary screeching sound, high-pitched terror and pain. The last thing she saw as she opened her eyes was the open door at the end of the hall and her darkened sitting room, dim and cosy and real, and forever out of reach.
ROMILLY
It was pitch black outside when she left the flat, hating the weird otherness of the early hours of the morning. It never felt that way when she was getting in from clubbing at four a.m. But going out into it was totally different somehow. She felt like the only person in the world.
She yawned, watching the light indicating the progress of the lift up from the lobby, tired irritation rising with it. Given what Dad was paying, you’d think they’d invest in something a bit more efficient, especially for her floor. But she was stuck with this fucking. . . box on a string.
She lived at the top. The penthouse, strictly speaking, though it wasn’t that grand in the greater scheme of things. Just quite comfortable.
And, she thought defensively, as if someone had sneered at her, she worked hard for a living.
Okay… maybe not for a living, but for a career.
Admittedly, at the moment, she earned comparatively little, but she would eventually. She’d be on megabucks eventually, not that the money was relevant. In fact, until a few months ago, she’d been what Americans called an intern which was actually slave bloody labour, in exchange for experience, contacts and a welcoming hand in the door of glamorous careers like fashion, film, PR, media.
She had to concede that poorer people her age could never afford to do what she did to get a break in TV, but well . . . what was she supposed to do about that?
She wouldn’t admit out loud of course-- to anyone but her parents-- that her real ambition had been to get onscreen in any capacity. To be famous. And be recognised. Everyone wanted that though, didn’t they?
She still wondered sometimes if she wouldn’t have been better off trying her hand at presenting on MTV maybe, or reality TV like ‘Made in Chelsea’ or . . . anywhere. Even children’s TV was a launchpad.
But Mum had contacts in News, and . . . it had worked out. She was already presenting bulletins, and yeah, okay . . . it was the shitty end of the stick . . . the bloody breakfast news. Ready to sparkle at half past six! But she’d been promised it was the training ground for better things.
It wasn’t as if she wasn’t taking it seriously either; she was doing a very expensive post-grad course in journalism, on the side, and she’d worked as a dogsbody in the Newsroom for months.
Yes, she knew of course that some of the others had clawed for years to get onscreen, and she sympathised. She really did. Some of them were quite nice. But it wasn’t about being well-connected if you were best suited to the job, was it?
The lift finally reached her floor with a generic ding, and the doors swished open. She stepped inside with an impatient sigh and pressed the button for the ground floor, eyes on the square patterned green carpet beneath her nude Laboutins, until the lift doors finally dinged open again to a large, dimly lit and deserted lobby. She clicked quickly over the marble floor, past the dozing security guard at his desk, and out into the sharp chill of the early London air.
It wasn’t, she thought mutinously, as she walked quickly along the deserted pavement, as if it was easy, going to work at this hour of the morning. It made her insides tight with unease. But she had to remember it wouldn’t be for long. Geoff was just waiting a decent interval to promote her to daytime or evenings. He’d never want to let her down. She smiled with mischievous satisfaction. Maybe she’d let him brush against her tits as a reward when he delivered.
She was already getting fan-mail, and a girl had asked for her autograph in Harvey Nichols on Monday. That had been insane!
One day… they’d be writing the news about her. She’d do ‘Strictly Come Dancing’…some vehicle like that, and she’d use it to the max. In no time there’d be stories about her tabloids and celeb sites. Paps following her.
She just had to remind herself it was all going to be worth it, at moments like these.
She pressed her key-fob, and the lights on her car flashed -- a garish orange explosion in the neon-orange murk of the streetlamps. It was stupid but that was always the moment she began to feel safe, reaching her metal cocoon in the dark.
She had regular nightmares for some embarrassing bloody reason, always the same ones. Something making her feel small. Useless. Wanting to hurt her. She hadn’t been able to get rid of them, or the soft toys on her bed that got her through them.
A few more anxious steps and she had the driver’s door open, throwing her Hermes bag into the footwell on the passenger side. It was a Saab, only a couple of weeks old, a birthday present from Dad, still with that unique new car smell. She’d asked for a BMW, but Dad said he wasn’t made of money.
“Um…Excuse me…?”
She froze, bent forward into the car, heart seizing like a trapped bird with the utter shock of another voice at this empty time of the morning. Then picking up to a rapid hammering thud. She could hardly be at more of a disadvantage bent over like that. But at least she was in the way of easy access to her bag.
“Sorry to bother you…. but don’t you read the news on the TV?”
Oh… thank fuck.
Her shoulders dropped with relief and she let out a self-mocking huff of air. God, that had been scary. But celebrities always said fans seemed to come out of nowhere. Out of the ground in front of you.
It felt like a bit of a sign though, given what she’d just been mentally grumping about.
This was what precisely she wanted – people noticing her. Singling her out, admiring and envying and loving her, seeing she was special. That was what celebrity was all about wasn’t it?
She was just glad she always put on some makeup before she came out, because fuck o clock or not, she made sure she’d never disappoint her public.
She eased herself back until she was standing upright again and unconsciously smoothed the front of her dress under her open coat. She made sure she was smiling warmly as she started to turn round.
MARGARET
She was running late. At least 20 minutes late, and she was struggling not to sound as impatient as she actually felt.
She was going for immovable, righteous dignity. “Robert, I don’t… Robert…”
She felt like throwing her mobile at the nearest concrete wall, but she had the discipline of decades of negotiations with unpleasant, jumped-up little wankers like this one. So she kept the phone glued to her right ear and listened to Robert bloody Dukes pontificating on and on as she walked, heels clicking emptily on the concrete floor.
But if he thought he was going to threaten her, he was out of his tiny, over-educated mind.
There was a break in his monologue at last, just as she reached her parked Range Rover and pressed the key fob, the car lights pulsating eerily in the grey-on-grey flatness of the underground car park. The place stank nauseatingly of petrol, but at least, she supposed, it swamped the smell of piss
“The answer’s still no, Robert.”
She could see her reflection in the Range Rover’s blacked-out windows and she was pleased to see she looked controlled. No one would be able to guess how contemptuous she felt.
The door remained stubbornly locked when she pulled it, until she realized she must have pressed the button twice, opened and locked it again. Blame Robert
She sighed and pressed again, as Robert continued to blabber.
“No. No I . . . Robert! You can tell the whips I’m not going to do it. There is no way I’m going to back a proposal as reactionary as that…not even to please the ‘Daily Mail’.”
She opened the driver’s door and leaned over to slide her laptop case into the front seat, still half listening to the apoplectic spin doctor on the other end.
“The best I’m going to offer is not to denounce it outright. Unless anyone asks me. In which case I’ll have to be truthful.” She listened again, still standing by the open driver’s door, a small smile on her face now. He really was a moron. “It’s against everything I’ve worked for, so what so you think they expect me to say? No . . .” She swept on majestically. “I have to go Robert. I’m late for a meeting with a constituent.”
She listened again and slowly her smile grew. Bloody bullseye!
“Well it depends, of course, on what’s on offer. Collective responsibility is a different matter.” Another pause to listen, satisfied now. “Yes, all right. We can discuss it tomorrow. Make an appointment with Alison. I’ll be in the House for PMQs then I’m free. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. Bye.”
She laughed out loud when she cut the call, purely because she was alone, and threw the phone into the car’s central well.
She hated what they were doing, of course. Trying to out-macho the government, pander to the public’s hysterical fear of crime, whipped up by sensationalist rags. But it was a perfect opportunity for her personally, because they had to shut her up.
She pulled off her suit jacket and slid into the drivers’ seat, laying the jacket carefully beside her. She prided herself on driving herself everywhere, having no entourage. No one could accuse her of using public money to live the high life. Image was very important, and it didn’t pay to give even the smallest hostage to fortune.
As she pressed the ignition, her mind snapped back to the delicacy of the manoeuvre in which she was currently engaged. The engine purred to life, worth every penny of its extravagant price.
She wanted a shadow portfolio - of course she did - and she deserved it. All those decades of smoke-filled rooms in local and national politics . . . she knew how things worked better than anyone. She’d learned from sharks who’d rip out Robert Duke’s throat without breaking a sweat. But she was the wrong demographic for promotion apparently. Too old. Not sofa TV enough.
Well, if they thought she was going to endorse the leadership’s latest back-of-fag-packet idea, for anything less than a leg up toward the shadow cabinet, they were off their heads.
Handled the wrong way, it would totally destroy her credibility. But of course, she knew how to handle it the right way.
Robert had just made the preliminary move to pay her the price she wanted -- a last resort for them, but she didn’t need their enthusiasm. She didn’t care if they wanted her or not. A shadow Home Office portfolio -- or no deal. Or maybe . . . maybe she’d be willing to accept Justice.
The leadership never had to know that she wasn’t actually making any huge sacrifice in return . . . or much of a sacrifice at all. In fact, they’d be a lot happier not knowing. There were ways of talking round things and maintaining face. It was what she’d learned at the feet of real grown-up politicians who’d do anything for power, not the sly, greedy children in charge now. Power meant you could actually do things. Take control. Help people who deserved it.
She turned on the engine. She didn’t realise she was still smiling until she looked in the rear-view mirror and caught herself at it.
She really did hate the party’s new policy, but she also wasn’t stupid enough to believe they, as politicians who wanted to be elected, could pretend to believe in anything other than unimaginative toughness on crime. Even this party had to tiptoe round a public – hell even the voters in her own constituency – who were pretty much ignorant rednecks when it came down to it.
God, she sometimes longed for a seat in North London. Or a university town. Somewhere intellectual and progressive.
She pushed in the clutch and reached for the gearstick.
The mix of unemployed, blue collar and immigrants she had were so far from what she…
She didn’t understand for a second -- her line of thought so rudely interrupted, her brain stuttering in the face of something so impossible.
Something heavy had been flung round her neck from behind, and there were hands beside her face. She looked down, then up, and there was something in the rear-view mirror, and in that second, she realised it was in the car with her.
The thing round her neck pulled suddenly, tight. The engine purred on.