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With the
I’d told them to let her have some decent clothes as long as she was behaving. When I got there I could see that she was making an effort to impress, she’d obviously been well enough behaved to keep the guards happy. Or maybe she’d been using some other talents to achieve the same ends.
One thing that I’d found while working for Clegg was there wasn’t much time for civilised conversation with the guests. It was a pretty much relentless production line that ran them from the pick up point to the Sales Centre and out. A shame really, I thought, as I looked at Rachel.
They’d put her to work in one of the Prep Centre cells. She was sitting at the table that held her computer. She had a brown manila folder in front of her. “Well, Miss Kernow,” I said. “You look rather better than when I last saw you.” The bruises had gone and the cuts had healed. She’d managed to find a colourful, knee length skirt and a pale blue sweater from somewhere. She looked, well, attractive, in a girl-next-door sort of way. Of course, she still had the leather collar and tag on, which spoiled the effect somewhat.
“They stopped raping me,” she said. “Thank you.”
“That was the deal,” I said. “You write for me and you don’t get raped. I bet you didn’t get as good an offer as that from your regular literary agent.”
She gave me a humourless grin. “Does the same thing go when I give you the script or does that mean you just take your turn then?”
“That’s not very kind,” I said, though I’d been thinking she look a whole lot cuter with the skirt up around her waist and the sweater up around her neck. But that’s what working for Clegg does – it tends to change the way you look at girls. “There will be other projects,” I said. “Maybe we can keep the arrangement going.” I sat down at the desk. “Show me what you’ve done.”
She hesitated a moment before pushing the folder across to me. I opened it. The neatly printed sheets inside were clearly laid out. Scenes, camera angles and shots, dialogue, sound effects, it all seemed to be there. I started reading through it.
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
[Scene
100 : Graphics : Logo and titles
SFX AUDIO TRACK: “Weapon of Choice”
We
see the opening credit sequence, finishing on the logo of Clegg Enterprises and
the title : “CHOICE”
Scene
110 : Exterior
: a car parked in a dark country lane.
FADE-IN
SFX: AUDIO TRACK: “Just what you’ve always wanted”
CLOSE UP OF CAR BOOT LID
We
see the boot lid open. Inside there is a blanket. A hand appears from out of
shot and pulls the blanket away. Beneath is the face of a girl. She is gagged.
VOICE OVER: “She’s here.”
TRACK TO CLOSE UP OF GIRL’S FACE.
Her
eyes are wide in terror. She shakes her head.
VOICE OVER: “This is how it begins for her and, of course, for you.”
Scene
120 : Interior : a dark room with a small circular
podium in the centre.
MIX TO MEDIUM SHOT OF GIRL STANDING ON PODIUM
We
see she is standing with her wrists chained over her head, She
is still gagged.
VOICE OVER: “What you wanted. When you wanted it. How you wanted it. But how do you get just what you want?”
ZOOM TO CLOSE UP OF GIRL’S CHAINED WRISTS & TRACK TO CLOSE UP ON GAG.
Scene
130 : Interior : an office desk and comfortable arm
chair.
SFX: FADE DOWN AUDIO TRACK
MIX TO WIDE SHOT OF OFFICE.
We
see the narrator seated in the armchair.
ZOOM TO MEDIUM SHOT OF NARRATOR.
NARRATOR: “Hi…..
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
I read it through to the end. I expected that there would need to be changes but it looked as though she had done a good job to start with. “This looks fine,” I said.
“Great,” she replied without enthusiasm. “Does it get to win an award?”
I let the irony pass. “I could get you a drink, if you like. I’ve got some vodka in my bag.”
She thought about it for a moment and then said, “Why not?”
I turned around and bent down to get the bottle out.
You should never turn your back on a writer. You never know what will happen to the plot.
What is it with girls, me and drink, I wonder? I mean Amanda brained me with a vodka bottle and it was while I was finding a drink for Rachel that she hit me too.
Not with a bottle admittedly. This time it was the edge of her computer keyboard. It slammed into the back of my head with a very painful impact. I toppled forward over the bag and then fell to the floor. I didn’t quite lose consciousness, which was a shame as Rachel was shouting “Bastard!” and kicking seven kinds of excrement out of me. However, I was sufficiently disorientated not to put up any sort of struggle as she pulled the lead from the computer keyboard around my wrists and the power cable around my ankles.
That was bad enough. Then she jammed the computer’s mouse into my mouth and wound the cable round my head a few times to keep it there.
She’d obviously thought about this a lot, while she’d been writing my script she’d obviously been working on one for herself.
She gave me another kick, this time in the groin. Luckily, with my ankles tied together and the fact that I was coming to enough to try to dodge, she didn’t really manage to land it. Even so the heel of her shoe scraped painfully across my thigh. If my mouth hadn’t been stuffed I’d have given out a cry that should have been enough to bring the whole lot of the guards in. Except, I remembered, they were quite used to gag-muffled cries of discomfort around here, Just to be sure she knotted the cord from the mouse to the one around my wrists and my ankles. That bent me up and I thought she was about to land another kick when she thought better of it and headed out of the cell, locking the door behind her.
Not even a good-bye, I thought as I tried to free myself from the cables while avoiding choking on the block of plastic wedged in my mouth.
Of course it had to be Harry that found me. “I thought you’d given up on this,” he smirked from the cell door. “You’re obviously not safe left alone with a woman – fall too easily for their charms. Why don’t you hang on there for a minute and I’ll see if I can find your lady friend.” Ignoring my grunts of frustration and complaint, he shut the door.
In fairness to the guy he must have mentioned my condition to someone because the Doc came in a few moments later. She set to, untying the cable around my mouth first of all and pulling the mouse carefully out. “Ouch,” she said, “that must have hurt. She might have broken some teeth but I think you’ve been lucky.”
She managed to untie the cable from around my wrists and I sat up, untying my own ankles. “Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” she replied, with a grin. “It makes a change untying someone.”
“Shouldn’t there be alarms going off?” I asked. “You know, wailing sirens, flashing lights, that sort of thing.”
Harry reappeared at the door. “No need,” he said, “she won’t be far away. I just needed to get my tracer. Do you want to come find her?”
“Tracer?” I asked.
“Uh, huh,” said Harry, pulling a small box from his pocket. It looked like a voltage meter. “Those collars they wear aren’t just there to hang their slave number tags on,” he said. “There’s a little chip inside and with this little box we can walk right up to her. She won’t have got her collar off unless she’s found a cutting torch lying around somewhere. Come on. If you can walk that is.”
The Doctor and I followed him out of the cell and down the corridor leading to Despatch. He showed me the box, the needle was pointing off to one side, through the door of a janitor’s cupboard. Harry put one finger to his lips asking for quiet. He took out his wallet and pulled out what looked like plain sheet of paper about the size of a bank note. He picked away at one corner with a finger nail until a plastic backing sheet came loose. He pulled that clear and slipped the paper under the bottom of the door.
A few seconds later there was “Phoosh” noise, smoke started to appear under the door which moments later burst open. A coughing and spluttering Rachel emerged from a cloud of acrid looking, orange, smoke. She ran into Harry’s arms. “Stupid bitch,” he said as he hit her with the edge of his hand on the side of the neck, knocking her unconscious. He let her slide limply to the floor before he turned her over and pulled a cable tie tightly around her wrists. He turned to me. “Had you two finished, or was there something else you needed to discuss?” he asked.
“No we’d finished,” I said. “She can go back in her cell. In fact,” I wasn’t feeling too pleased with her, ”you can tell the team she’s back on the ‘available’ list until further notice.”
“Oh good,” said Harry. “It’s always nice when someone that’s been off-limits becomes available. Do you want to book a slot?”
“Not right now,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ve got a headache.”
Harry laughed, pulling the slowly recovering Rachel to her feet. “Fair enough. She probably has too, but I don’t think it will make much difference to the guards or anyone else that wants to play.” He dragged her off towards the cells. I had some sympathy for her. Then I went to move and felt the pain where she’d kicked me. The sympathy wore off quickly.
It was the following day. Harry and I were sat in a small bar in a hotel overlooking the river. He’d been up in town for a meeting with Freddie. I felt I at least owed him a drink for helping sort out Rachel. He’d been good enough not to make too much of a joke of it around the place, too. He’d been sympathetic about what happened and gave me a bit of a lecture on not turning my back on work in progress. Nothing I didn’t deserve. I wasn’t going to let it happen again.
It was mid afternoon and we were almost the only ones in the room. A group of three girls sat on stools at the bar, chatting and laughing. We took our beers off to a quiet corner. I could see Harry was giving each of the girls an appraising look.
“See anything you like?” I said.
Harry took a pull on his bottle of beer and spoke under his breath. “Hmm, maybe $120,000. The one on the left possibly a bit more than $40k, not sure. Sparky, ought to train well. Easy pick up too, careless with her stuff – see how she’s just left her handbag on the floor. It’s a sure sign - no idea about her surroundings - you’d bag her before she knew anything was happening. Other two might go down well with the eastern Europeans, shape’s all right, weight’s all right. Nothing special though – can’t see them fetching the sort of margins we’re looking for now.”
“Silly of me, I guess,” I said. “I wasn’t really talking shop.”
Harry chuckled, putting his beer down on the table. “Oh, sorry.”
“I sort of meant, what do you do for fun?”
He
stared down at the beer bottle. I wondered if I had touched a raw nerve. “Larry,
you’re right,” he said. “I guess doing this you stop seeing women as fun and
start seeing them just as dollars and shipping weight. Quite a lot of the time
it’s as if they’re not wearing clothes even. You can watch their naked bodies
as they walk by – you’ve seen so many of them stripped, you know what they’ll
be like. The only surprise now when you get them naked is whether they’ve had
themselves tattooed. I wish they wouldn’t do that though, it’s much harder to
shift the ones with marks – especially some of the designs. We had one we
picked up a while back, had so little spare flesh we could barely find space to
put a bar code on her.”
I nodded.
Harry went on. “It’s odd really. You stop
thinking of them as people at all. Take the one in the middle – she’s wearing
an engagement ring. So I’m thinking, watch out for the fiancé turning up at an
inconvenient moment, maybe he’s a possible patsy for her disappearance. That
portfolio case propped up against her stool – looks like she might be a bit
arty – could mean she gets to galleries; great snatch venues, plenty of quiet
corners. Slim build, blonde hair – maybe your
The waitress came over to our table, picked up my empty bottle and put it on her tray. “You boys all right?” she asked. We nodded. “Do you want another beer?” she asked me. I said, “Sure.” Harry shook his head. Two other guys on the far corner of the bar were calling out to the three girls. The girls were ignoring them. Pointedly. “Jeez,” our waitress said, “you’d think this was some sort of slave market the way some men carry on. They treat them like they’re pieces of meat.”
“Shocking,” said Harry. One of the girls span round in response to some remark or other and raised a finger to the two men. One of them started to get to his feet. The waitress went over to try to calm things down. She was standing with her back to us, hands on hips as she argued with the men. “Nice arse,” said Harry, quietly. “She’d be good for some of the spankers we’ve got on the books. Strapped down, with that up in the air, nicely framed with garter belt and stockings, you could see the price going up.” She was pointing at the door. The two men got to their feet and made a few abusive remarks before up-ending a beer bottle and storming out. The waitress got a cloth and started cleaning up. “There,” said Harry, “domestic skills too. The price is going up all the time.”
“We weren’t talking shop,” I chided.
“Eh? Oh, yeah.” Harry was obviously having trouble switching off. He took another pull at the beer.
“I mean do you ever date any of the team? Or is that frowned on? Obviously it’s going to be difficult with a girl from outside the business but there’s a few around Clegg’s operation that look like they might be fun.”
“Well,” said Harry, “I try not to get involved with any of my lot; that can really make life difficult and it’s a sure recipe for fowl-ups in my book. There’s been a few from Rick’s team that I’ve hooked up with. The trouble is when you see them coming out of the shower and think, ‘that’d look nice on the platform’ or when you wake up in the morning next to them and its ‘oh fuck, she’s loose, where are the ropes?’. I guess this job just screwed me up. How about you?”
“It’s funny,” I said, “you’d think with women available any time you want, it’d be like some sort of dreamland. Doesn’t seem to work like that, though. Hang on.” I noticed the waitress coming back.
“Sorry about that gents,” she said. “Was it still just the one beer?”
Harry said, “No I’ll have one as well now, thanks. Do you get a lot of trouble in here? Doesn’t look like the sort of place that you would.”
“No,” she said, “not usually. And usually I’m happy to let them get on with it. The girls can give as good as they get and as long as they aren’t actually fighting and it doesn’t disturb the other customers, I don’t mind. It was just that short arsed guy – the one with the ginger hair – called me a thick bitch that would be better with a bottle jammed up my fanny*.”
“Not nice,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I’m not thick – I’ve got a history doctorate: ‘The Growth of Brewing and Wine Trades in Late 13th Century England’. Only thing is there’s more need for bar staff than there is for historians.” Harry laughed. “I’ll get your beers.”
“Bright girl,” I said as she left.
“Yeah,” said Harry, “always a problem. Mostly they just end up gagged for more of the time. Still worth remembering if any of your accounts comes looking for a medievalist with a great arse.” He grinned and downed the last of his beer. “Still,” he said, “it might be fun to see if I could park something other than a bottle in her fanny*.”
“OK,” I said, “here’s a challenge for you. Get a date, take her out, take her home. Screw any part of her you like but see if you can get through to tomorrow without actually wrapping her in rope or tape and dumping her in a crate somewhere.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said as he watched her bringing us our beers.
She gave him a smile and a warm, “There you go,” as she put them down and left us.
“What about the other
three? $120k of prime cuts,
just asking to be put on Rick’s conveyor. Look at the mouth on that one
at the other end, wide as anything, very nice lips.
“Harry, take your mind off the job for one night. Go date the waitress. Talk to someone outside of our world that you aren’t planning to snatch for one evening.”
Harry smiled sheepishly. “I guess I do get a bit caught up in it all,” he said. “You might be right. I’ll maybe see you tomorrow.” He got to his feet and headed off towards the bar. I downed the last of my beer and started to leave. I waved at Harry as I went by him. “So what do historians do when they finish serving beer?” I heard him saying to the waitress as I left.
I was heading north to find out how Rachel was getting on and to see Rick.
* American readers please note: “fanny” is a British slang word for cunt not arse, what you call a “fanny pack” we call a “bum bag”. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel that Harry didn’t know his way around a woman. J
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