Faced with a pair of erect cocks
The guy signals to Tiffany, miming a glass raised to lips, eye brows raised, head inclined towards her. He wants to buy her a drink, but what he really means to say is, “If I buy you a drink, what chance have I got of a fuck later on?”
Tiffany knows what’s on the cards just as well as the guy, so she appraises him carefully before she gives a response. He’s younger than she is, maybe mid twenties at the most. He’s certainly good looking, the only guy in the place confident enough to approach Tiffany so far. His dirty blonde hair is a shade darker than Tiffany’s, fringe swept back, he’s got deep blue eyes and is close shaven. There’s a lot of the boy he used to be in his features, but his self-assurance makes him all man. He’s wearing black jeans and a slim-fitting black shirt, sleeves rolled up to mid wrist. He’s got the compulsory earring in his left ear.
Tiffany nods and yells, “Beer.” She smiles as she does so, saying, “Yes,” to his unasked question, getting things clear right up front.
The guy orders two beers and they drink and look at each other, leaning in close to each other’s ears to yell and exchange of names — his is Cameron — and, from him, the inevitable, “You look familiar.”
“I don’t think so,” Tiffany shouts, breathing in the scent of his after shave and the tang of sweat.
They drain their beers and Cameron motions to the door with his head. Just as his mate arrives at the bar. The two men converse in the lovers clinch that the intensity of the nightclub’s music forces on all its punters. While they’re making their arrangements, Tiffany texts Karla, who’s still on the dance floor. When she’s touched send she pushes off from the bar and heads for the door. Cameron follows her with his mate in tow.
Outside, the music is reduced to a dull thump that can’t compete with the duff, duff, duff from the cars passing on the street.
“Paul, this is Tiffany. We’re going to catch a cab.”
“Oh mate. No worries.”
Tiffany can see that Paul is disappointed that his night out has come to an early end. He begins to make to go back inside the club and leave the couple.
“Why don’t you share a cab with us?” Tiffany catches Paul’s eye as she speaks.
Paul is sitting on the oversized chair Tiffany occupied yesterday afternoon. Cameron is on the matching couch, staking his claim to a seat next to Tiffany when she comes back with the drinks.
“Paul, for you,” Tiffany hands him a cup. “And, for you,” she says to Cameron as she hands him one exactly the same.
When the coffees are half drunk and the stilted conversation has dried up, Tiffany leaves her seat at the other end of the couch from Cameron. She sits herself next to Paul.
“See, room for at least two in this chair,” Tiffany says, looking at Cameron while leaning in to kiss Paul, her arm snaking around his neck.
Paul takes a while to catch on, his mouth initially stays closed to the pressure of Tiffany’s tongue. His instinct is to turn away from her, but the pressure of her hand at the back of his neck is enough to keep him turned towards her. Paul’s not used to being in this position, but by the time Paul feels Tiffany’s hand brush across his genitals, they are kissing deeply.
All the while, Tiffany is staring down Cameron, who watches, looking uncomfortable but makes no move to look away. Tiffany knows that this isn’t what he expected. It’s not exactly what she expected, either, but she’s beginning to really enjoy herself now.
She surfaces from kissing Paul, satisfied that his cock is now hard under his trousers.
“Come over here, Cameron,” Tiffany says, just to see what he’ll do.
Cameron stands and walks the few steps to the chair where the woman he thought he’d be fucking by now and his mate are sitting together. He stands in front of them, awkward, not sure of what to do next.
Tiffany isn’t really sure either, but she’s not going to stop now.
“Come,” she says, reaching out an arm to Cameron, the hand that’s just been stroking Paul’s cock.
He leans in towards her and Tiffany guides him with her hand at the back of his neck and kisses him. Cameron shows none of the reluctance that his mate did. As they kiss, Cameron kneels so that he’s on a level with Tiffany. His mate watches from the chair, at Tiffany’s side. After kissing Cameron, Tiffany turns back to Paul and then back to Cameron again, keeping a hand at the back of each man’s neck.
“Come with me, both of you,” Tiffany says, her voice confident, her heart racing, her mind asking what the fuck she’s up to.
Both men follow her to the bedroom in silence.
All three are still fully clothed. Tiffany appraises the situation for a moment and then makes a decision.
“Take off your clothes,” she says, as she sits on the edge of the bed and begins undressing.
Cameron is the first to follow her instruction, but Paul’s not far behind. It’s as if they think the first one finished will be the winner. By the time they’re undressed, Tiffany is lying back on the bed wearing just her knickers and faced with a pair of erect cocks.
As they settle to their task, Tiffany relaxes into this new experience. Paul is kissing her and Cameron is using his tongue to bring her hoveringly close to orgasm. She uses her hand to gently push him from between her legs. She doesn’t want to come just yet. She disengages from Paul and turns her attention to Cameron, begins to lick her way down his chest, working her tongue and teeth across both his nipples before licking his navel and then on down to take his cock into her mouth. As she licks and sucks and Cameron settles back to enjoy her attention, she cups his balls in her hand and looks sideways to keep eye contact with Paul.
Paul is watching intently.
Tiffany sucks Cameron’s cock rhythmically, alternately taking him deep inside her mouth and then running her lips along his shaft until her tongue is exploring the tip of his glans and the opening of his urethra. All the while she keeps eye contact with Paul and, finally, she lets go Cameron’s cock, giving it a final lick. She motions for Paul to come over and he lies across the bed and kisses her deeply, their faces centimetres from Cameron’s cock, Tiffany’s hand still stroking it, gliding easily up and down its length still slick from her saliva.
Tiffany takes Paul by the chin with her other hand and draws him closer, all the time kissing and licking him. Their lips work together nearer and then on Cameron’s hard cock. His glans is in Tiffany’s mouth, then Tiffany and Paul are kissing, then Tiffany licks and sucks the throbbing cock, then kisses Paul until, when she kisses him again, both of their mouths are around the cock and, when she pulls back slightly, Paul’s lips are on his mate’s penis.
Paul freezes. Tiffany looks at him, almost sternly, nods and urges him to go on. He takes his lips from the cock and moves in to kiss her again, like it was all a mistake. Tiffany takes his tongue into her mouth and moves their heads back towards the cock, which she’s manipulating with her hand around its shaft. They begin to kiss around the swollen glans again and this time, as Tiffany withdraws, she gently but firmly pushes Paul’s head onto his mate’s cock. She watches as he pauses again and then begins to lick and suck on the erect member. She continues to stroke Cameron’s cock with her hand and feels the brush of Paul’s lips against her fingers.
When they’re finished, Tiffany sees the two mates to her door, brushes her teeth and goes back to her bedroom. She picks up her mobile to check her messages and reads the text from Karla: “Bitch!” but Tiffany knows she doesn’t mean it.
Tiffany sleeps well into the afternoon.
Making us all stupider by the minute
In the morning, Diana’s not speaking to Frank Lambert. He wakes up and she’s already awake, lying in their bed watching the Saturday morning news.
“Morning.” Frank keeps it simple to test the air.
He gets nothing in response, Diana just keeps staring at the TV.
Franks gets up and goes to the en suite to shower. He dresses in their bedroom to the sound of the breakfast TV announcer interviewing an engineering student who’s demonstrating a water-saving way of showering using a bucket.
“This drought’s making us all stupider by the minute,” Frank thinks. Normally he would have shared this observation with his wife and they would have chatted about how crap breakfast TV is, and he might have given her a hard time about watching it, and she would have punched him a friendly one and, who knows where it might have gone from there. But today, Frank keeps his thoughts to himself.
Frank skips breakfast and leaves for work in a foul mood.
In the unmarked on the way to the station, Frank Lambert goes through where he’s at with the disappearance of the boy. Peter Johnson has been missing for just over two weeks now and, though there are reports of sightings almost every day and every day someone calls in to confess or dob in their neighbour, the only thing Lambert’s really got to go in is the pieces of information that seem to point to Chris Baker. There’s a team of cops sifting through the stream of information provided by the public, but Lambert’s got the only concrete lead.
So, does he believe this guy’s Chris Baker is the one responsible for the boy’s disappearance? Lambert knows it’s not possible to discount an accident as the cause of the boy’s disappearance, or that he’s run away, but as each day goes by it’s less and less likely. He would have turned up by now, or someone would have found his body. Lambert knows that sometimes people just disappear, vanish and are never heard from again. Peter Johnson may have just been added to the list of people who will always be just “missing”. But Lambert doesn’t think so.
Lambert’s money is on someone having taken the kid.
Sitting at another set of lights, Lambert hits the horn hard, blasting the driver in front who’s too busy talking on his mobile to notice the light’s gone green. The guy gives Lambert the finger as he sets off deliberately slowly. Lambert considers switching on his blue light and siren and giving the guy something to think about, but decides against it. Instead, he returns the gesture and goes back to thinking about the public servant, Chris Baker. He’s pretty sure he’s involved in the boy’s disappearance. And today he’s in just the right mood to scare the shit out of Baker. Maybe it will be enough to shake something out of him.
Unless you’ve got another little place somewhere
The doctor visits Chris at 8.00 am Saturday.
Chris has been awake all night and wonders that he shouldn’t have just got his stuff together and left the hospital. He has no idea where he would have gone, though. He’s got no car, no money or cards and only the clothes he came into hospital with, five days ago, now. His clothes are blood stained. There’s nowhere he could go without drawing attention to himself and starting this nightmare all over again. Or perhaps another nightmare. This one is so random, so unexpected that the only thing Chris is certain of is that the rationality of what he thought was a normal life has no basis in reality. Normal doesn’t exist. It never did.
The doctor examines Chris perfunctorily. He greets Chris, but otherwise does not speak. When he’s finished, he turns to the nurse hovering behind him says, “Mr Baker is ready to be discharged,” and leaves the single room immediately afterwards. Word has obviously got around.
The nurse advises Chris to visit his GP if he experiences any pain or discomfort and to come back into the hospital in ten days to have his stitches removed. It’s ten past eight and he’s free to go. The Detective said he’d be at the hospital at 10.00 a.m.
Chris doesn’t know what to do. A fragment of a song plays through his mind:
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double.
“Straight to the point,” Chris thinks. He sits on the bed and the song keeps on playing. He can’t get it out of his head.
“Are you still here, Mr Baker?” Chris starts violently at the sound of the nurse’s voice. It’s like a shock of electricity to his chest. It’s eight thirty and the nurse is back in the room that, half an hour ago, was his.
“Um, yes, I guess so.”
“You know you’ve been discharged, don’t you, Mr Baker? You can go home any time you like.”
“Yes, thank you. I was wondering if there’s any paperwork I need to sign? I thought you’d gone to get it.” They both know this is a lie, but Chris is trying desperately to save face.
“No, you’re free to go,” the nurse replies and then, “You need to go, Mr Baker, we have to get this room ready for another patient.”
Chris has no choice but to leave. The nurse accompanies him from the room, shows him the way to the exit. She doesn’t say goodbye.
Chris gets into the back seat of a taxi parked at the rank near the main entrance to the hospital. He gives the driver his address as he buckles his seat belt, doing his best to cover the blood stain on his shirt. The driver sets off, showing no curiosity. Even so, Chris sits crouched in the seat, his body hunched forward to obscure the stain.
Chris waits until they’re about half way through their journey before he tells the driver.
“Um, I need to let you know I haven’t got any money on me. I’ve got money at home, where we’re going, but I don’t have any on me right now.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me when you got in? Look at the sign, mate. I don’t have to pick people up who can’t pay.” The cabbie points at a sticker in the front of the car.
“Look, I can pay. I just don’t have the money on me. It’s at home.” Chris is beginning to regret his belated honesty. It would have been better to have waited until they were in his driveway.
“Well, it better be, mate, or you’re in the shit.”
“Already in it,” Chris thinks, “Way beyond my neck.”
Should I stay or should I go now?
That fucking song’s still running around in his head.
The cab pulls into Chris’s driveway. He’s relieved that the blue light of the alarm system isn’t flashing. At least he hasn’t been broken into while he’s been in hospital.
“Wait here a minute.” Chris gets out of the cab and disarms the alarm, hearing the familiar double squelch. He waits a few moments and then puts his key into the security door, opens it and puts a second key into the wooden door that he’s always suspected is mostly plywood façade. All the while he’s looking around to see if the neighbours are watching. Can’t see anyone.
Inside, Chris picks up his wallet from the hall stand where it’s sat since he left home five days ago. He goes outside and asks the cab driver how much.
“Thirty-five dollars seventy,” is the curt reply. It’s obvious the driver’s still not convinced that Chris is good for the money.
“Here’s forty. Keep the change.”
“Thanks, mate.”
Chris can’t tell if there’s a hint of warmth in the cabbie’s voice. He’s about to thank the driver for cutting him some slack, when he realises that the Ford Falcon is already half way down his drive. Chris goes back inside and sits down.
The house is just as he left it. Nothing has been touched. Since the Detective visited him, Chris has been wondering whether the police might have already been to his house, searched through his things like they do on the TV cop shows. In the taxi, he’s had visions of coming home to find his possessions strewn across every room of his house.
Chris wonders whether he should throw out Christine’s things. He knows the Detective will be around after he’s been to the hospital and he’s pretty certain he’ll want to have a look around. Sooner or later, the cops will be prying into his stuff. But what’s he going to do with Christine’s things? He’s got no car, so the only thing he can do is put them in the bin in the garage. They’ll never look there, of course.
Chris is trapped in his own home. It’s nine thirty. He wonders if Detective Lambert is a punctual man. What will happen when he gets to the hospital and finds out Chris isn’t there? Will he come straight to Chris’s house? How much longer will he have to wait?
The phone rings.
Chris just about jumps out of his skin. “Hello?”
“Mr Baker? It’s Detective Lambert.”
“Shit.” Chris can’t help himself, the word just comes out.
“Not expecting me, Chris?”
“Um, no. Yes. Urrr, you were coming to the hospital to meet me.”
“Yes, but you’re not there, are you?”
“Um, no?”
“Yes, I thought I’d better give the hospital a call, Chris, before I went visiting, see if you were still there. They told me you’d been discharged, so I thought I’d see if you were home.”
“Um, yes, I am.”
“Well, where else would you go, Chris? Unless you’ve got another little place somewhere. Have you?
“No.”
“Well, good then. Now, you sit tight and I’ll be over to continue out chat soon. Ok, Chris?”
“-------.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, Chris. See you soon.”
The Detective hangs up the phone. Chris runs for the toilet.
Chris gets up off the toilet and looks in the bowl. It’s not looking good in there. He wipes, pulls up his shorts and goes back to the lounge room to wait. After five minutes, he’s back in the toilet squirting more watery mess. This time, after washing his hands in the bathroom, he decides to put on a pair of jeans instead of his shorts. He’d put on shorts out of habit when he got home and changed out of his car-crash clothes, it’s really too hot for anything else. But he needs to cover his legs before the Detective arrives.
Chris goes back to the lounge room to wait. Flicks on the TV and dials up and down the channels. Nothing is distracting enough to cover the shiny nugget of anxiety that sits high and heavy in his chest, but Chris settles on a mid-morning show where the male and female hosts stumble through a choreographed chat with a concerned citizen who’s trying to have pit bulls banned. The caption on the screen reads: ‘Pit bulls – menace or man’s best friend’. Whoever does the captions has forgotten the question mark and the drama of the sentence fragment doesn’t distract from the weary waste of time that’s taking place in the TV studio.
“Somewhere in Australia there must be people who actually watch this stuff,” Chris thinks, “Fuck knows who and how.”
He goes back to watching so he won’t be waiting, tries to concentrate on what’s going on on the screen so he won’t have to concentrate on what’s going on inside his head.
Chris wonders again whether he should do some cleaning up before the Detective arrives.
When he finally hears the Detective’s car pull up in his driveway, Chris can’t decide whether to get up and open the door before the knock or wait until after he hears it. He decides to wait until the knock. To open the door now would make him look anxious. Waiting for the sound almost completely does him in, though. Chris is still sitting in front of the TV – it’s a cooking segment now, some stuff they prepared earlier – his gut is so painful just between his navel and the upper reach of his pubes, or at least where they would have been if he had any at the moment, that he thinks he’s going to have to make another run for the toilet. He’s beginning to sweat, streams of it running down his face and neck, soaking the collar of his t-shirt. His chest feels numb and there’s a pain high in his left side over the collarbone. Fight or flight. Chris knows he has to stand his ground, but he wishes now he’d cleaned up.
The knock, when it comes, after a thirty-second lifetime, is an anticlimax. Chris takes a deep breath, he doesn’t know if he’s capable of standing up.
When he gets up to answer the door, Chris decides to slip on his sandals. Somehow it would feel too informal to greet the Detective with no shoes on. His feet are slick with sweat and slide on the leather inners of the sandals as he takes his first unsteady steps, his head light and the weight of his body taking an enormous effort to hold up.
Chris gets to the door and stands for a few more seconds with his right hand on the brass-coloured knob. He doesn’t want to seem hurried, although he’s not sure how long it’s been since he first heard the Detective’s knock.
When he pulls the door open against the suck of the air conditioner, Chris sees the Detective holding the flyscreen door open.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“Who the fuck did you think it would be, Chris?” the Detective answers and he moves towards Chris, forcing him to yield his position in the doorway and making the Detective’s entry inevitable and not of Chris’s choosing.
“Please come in,” Chris wants to say, but he trusts neither his tongue and lips to form the words nor his vocal chords to hold them steady. Instead he steps back into the entry way silently and turns so that the Detective can follow him into the lounge room.
The Detective closes the front door against the heat and the sound of the air conditioner steps up a note as the house is sealed once more.
The Detective refuses a drink and says to Chris, “Sit down.”
Chris sits, as instructed, taking up his spot on the leather couch that faces the TV, legs crossed one over the other. The Detective looks around at the choice of furniture in the room before he makes his choice, sitting at the other end of the couch.
“Real bachelor pad you’ve got here, Chris. Bet you get up to all sorts of things, ay?” The Detective smiles at Chris as he sits back and makes himself comfortable in the corner of the couch, legs apart, arms sprawled along the leather back and arm.
“Yep, I bet you and your mates get up to all sorts here,” says the Detective as he looks around the room. His eyes come to rest on Chris as he finishes his sweep of the room. “Anyone here with you?” the Detective asks, his voice shifting from pally to pissed off.
“No,” Chris says, “Check, if you like.”
“I will when I’m ready, Chris. Let’s have a bit of a chat first though, shall we?”
Chris blinks, swallows and almost chokes, but says nothing.
“Haven’t got much to say for yourself, have you?”
Chris wipes his dripping forehead with the palm of his right hand, holding the Detective’s eyes with his as he does so, hoping that the cop won’t notice. His hand is wet and he’s got nowhere to wipe it, so he holds it in his lap with his other hand, sits legs together waiting looking at the Detective and feeling the sweat on his brow reform instantly.
“Bit hot are ya, matey?”
“Mmmmm.”
“Yair, I blame global warming. You can sure feel it’s warming up around here. It’s been stinking lately,” the Detective opines.
Chris just sweats even more. They both know it’s not global warming troubling him at the moment.
“So, Chris, the day of your accident, tell me where you’d been.”
Now Detective Lambert’s getting down to it. Chris wonders how much he already knows. And Chris knows, no matter what he says, he’s not going to be able to explain himself to the Detective’s satisfaction.
“I was visiting friends.”
“But you’d told work you were ill and couldn’t come in. Taking a sickie were you?”
“You’ve been in touch with my work?”
“Well of course I have, Chris. Wouldn’t be much of a Detective if I didn’t check everything out, would I now?”
“What did you tell them?”
“That you’re a fucking suspected pedophile who could have kidnapped a young boy and done god knows what with him.”
Chris settles back in his corner of the couch and then rocks forward. The sound that comes from his mouth is the low call of a child rousing from a nightmare, the moan just before “mummy”.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them anything. I just said I was inquiring into your accident.”
Chris looks up at the Detective. For a moment his eyes plead for mercy.
“Thank you.” Chris doesn’t know why he says this. He doesn’t believe the Detective, but at least for the moment he can choose to believe that the people at work don’t think he’s under suspicion for that.
“So, where did you go that morning, Chris? I need to know, otherwise I can’t clear you from my books. Until I know that, I have to keep you on my list of suspects. And, between you and me, Chris, you’re the only one on my list at the moment, so I’m a bit reluctant to cross you off, you see.”
As he says this, the Detective leans towards Chris, his right arm sliding along the back of the couch until it’s almost touching Chris’s shoulder. The Detective is smiling.
Chris knows now that there’s a way out of this, but to save himself he has to take the Detective into his confidence. He calculates silently how much he will need to say to make this all end, how much he can leave out, how much of himself he can keep to himself.
The Detective just stays silent.
“Ok, I’m sure you know some of this already,” Chris begins his confession. Look, I had nothing to do with that boy going missing. What’s his name?”
“Peter Johnson,” the Detective says, his eyes saying, “Sure you didn’t.”
“Ok. But, anyway, I had nothing to do with that. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know who said they saw my car near the school. It could’ve been anyone. I go by there every day. And the cameras at the shops. Well, it’s my local shopping centre. I go there, too.”
“Thanks, Chris. Now tell me something I don’t already know. Stop fucking me about and tell me what you were doing that morning. Until I know what you were doing I can’t cross you off my list. Simple as that.”
This is the second time the Detective has given Chris a chink of hope. Chris has stopped sweating. He’s beginning to gain confidence. He’s done nothing wrong. He’s sitting in his own house. He’s done nothing wrong. All he has to do is tell Lambert where he was on the morning of the crash and he’s home free.
Chris makes a decision.
“Why do you need to know? The day I had the crash wasn’t even the day the boy went missing. I don’t see what it could possibly have to do with anything you’re looking at.”
Chris’s words reflect his growing confidence. He’s becoming again the articulate person he usually is – in most situations, anyway. But he just got cocky and his mouth didn’t follow the script his brain wrote for it. He was going to tell the Detective what he’d been up to that morning, or at least an edited version that he’d calculated would get him out from under the Detective’s uncomfortable scrutiny.
Detective Lambert leans into Chris, turning towards him on the couch. He points at Chris as he speaks.
“Just tell me what you were doing that morning you pathetic little creep. I need to know because I need to know, and until you tell me what you were doing I’m not going to be able to leave you alone. And, Chris, if you thought things were feeling a bit uncomfortable right now, let me tell you, you don’t want to piss me off. I spend all day dealing with evil little fuckers like you and, I tell you, if you keep giving me the shits like you are now I’ll do you slowly just for the pleasure of watching you squirm, doesn’t matter if you’ve done anything or not. I’ll just have you because I don’t like smug little shits like you. NOW! F u c k i n g t e l l m e w h e r e y o u w e r e
t h a t m o r n i n g.” The Detective draws out the last sentence, articulating each word with a fury that scares Chris more completely that he’s ever been in his forty years to date.
It takes for ever before Chris regains the ability to speak with any coherence.
“OK.”
For the moment, it’s all Chris can say. He’s concentrating on breathing so that the malignant lump crushing his chest will go away. So that he can regain the feeling in his hands and feet. So that his head will stop spinning and the blackness will recede from behind his eyes.
“OK.” Chris’s breathing is beginning to slow.
The Detective just waits. Slowly, he leans back into his corner of the couch and relaxes, spreads his legs again. Adjusts himself inside his trousers.
Chris can’t take his eyes off the Detective. He tries to stop himself, but he can’t help wondering what the Detective’s cock is like.
The TV, forgotten on the other side of the room, flickers to a news break. The news reader announces a suicide truck bombing in Iraq: one hundred and forty dead, four hundred injured. The pictures of the dead and injured being carried from the scene on stretchers have no effect on either man. TV stations don’t even bother to warn that “the following scenes may offend some viewers” any more. No one cares.
“OK.” Chris is just about ready to begin speaking.
The Detective is sitting comfortably, all appendages in place.
“Um. OK. What I did that morning? I went to visit some friends.”
“Who? Where?” The Detective’s sharp questions interrupt Chris’s flow.
Chris decides to come at this from another angle. “Well, the clothes in my car?’ He finishes the statement on a high note, making it a question. “Well, I’m a cross dresser. I dress in women’s clothes. I went to visit some people that morning …” Chris leaves his sentence incomplete, hoping that the Detective will help him out.
“Who did you go to visit, Chris?” The Detective is obviously going to be of no help at all.
“Some friends. Some people,” Chris corrects himself, “So I could dress.”
“Look, Chris, you’re going to have to do better than that. You’re not making any sense at all now.” Detective Lambert is either very stupid or he’s going to make Chris give him every gory detail.
Chris knows the Detective’s not stupid.
“Look, I went to see these people. I got dressed. I had sex with them. OK? That’s what I was doing that morning. OK? Does that clear it up for you?” Chris rushes through the words. In his mind this clarifies things enough to give the Detective what he wants. Without giving him everything.
“You got dressed and had sex? With some people? What the fuck are you talking about, Chris. So, I know you like to wear women’s clothes. I get that bit, even though I don’t get it at all. But I still have no fucking idea what you did that morning, where, or who with. Now, I’m beginning to run out of patience, Chris. I’ve got a whole bunch of questions and I haven’t even got an answer to the first one yet. All I know is you’re definitely a man with something to hide and the more you try to hide it the more I’m convinced you’re a filthy little perve who’s got something to do with Peter Johnson’s disappearance. So, if you don’t start telling me otherwise in a hurry I’m going to have to bring you into the station and really start giving it to you. Believe me, Chris, you’ve only seen my friendly side. You don’t want to see me when I’m mad. And, right now, I’m getting mad. And, I can tell you something else for nothing, I’m beginning to get the creeps playing house with a fucking perve like you. Maybe we should just go to the station right now, ‘cos I’m beginning to feel soiled just sitting next to you.”
“No!” Chris interjects, he hopes not too loudly or suddenly. Chris knows the conversation is getting close to an event horizon. Unless he steers carefully he’ll disappear for ever. There would be no coming back from being arrested.
“OK. I’ll do my best to make it clear, but this is embarrassing,” Chris goes for the sympathy vote.
“I don’t care if you’re embarrassed, you filthy little worm. I’ve got a missing kid. His picture goes with me everywhere. His parents ring me every day asking if I’ve found him yet. And you’re worried about being a bit embarrassed? Fucking grow up, you stupid cunt. This is serious, and no one cares about you or if you’re feeling a bit shy and embarrassed. You should have thought about that before you decided to do whatever sick things it is you don’t want to tell me you’ve been doing. Now, get on with it. Tell me exactly what you did that morning.” Lambert obviously has no sympathy for Chris at all.
Chris opens his mouth to speak.
“And don’t start with ‘OK’ again. If you say ‘OK’ one more time I might just have to kill you and do the whole world a favour.”
Chris closes his mouth.
“I’m a cross dresser. I have been since I was about ten or twelve. I don’t know why. I just am. I started with my mum’s clothes, underwear to begin with, bras and panties, a bit of lipstick. When I got a bit older, I’d masturbate. When I’d finished, when I’d come, I’d feel so ashamed and guilty. Every time I told myself I’d never do it again. But I always did.”
Chris has decided to give Detective Lambert the whole story. He knows now that nothing short of the whole truth will get him out of this now.
Chris carries on. “As I got older, I began to feel the urge to dress more and more. I didn’t know what the hell was happening to me, really, just that I really needed to dress in female clothes. I didn’t want to do it, I needed to. It made me feel … well, it made me feel right.”
“Wait. Hold it there.” The Detective’s decided he’s had enough. “What’s this got to do with anything? If you’re going to tell me about the boy, just get to it,” exasperation colours the Detective’s voice, “but I don’t want to hear your life story. Save it for a psychiatrist, or your fuck buddy when you go to prison, but don’t tell me about it. I’m not interested. Get it through your thick head, you disgust me and telling me the contents of your filthy mind only makes me more disgusted. Just tell me what I need to know.”
Chris realises that he’s taken a wrong turn. Events are slipping away from him and he’s closer than he’s ever been to being completely out of control.
Chris begins to speak and realises he’s about to say “OK”.
Chris breathes in.
And out.
“I went to visit a couple in Spring Lakes that morning, a man and a woman. I dressed as a woman and had sex with the woman and a friend of theirs. Another guy.” Chris is as concise and specific as he can be.
“Fucking hell! Four of you? And you did it with them? While making out you were a woman? Did they know you were a guy?”
“Yes, of course they did.”
“And people do that sort of thing in Spring Lakes?”
“Yes, it seems they do.” Chris waits for the Detective’s next question. He knows that to offer more now would be dangerous.
“Well fuck me!” For a moment, it looks as if the Detective will crack a smile as he realises what he’s said. But the moment passes and he’s all businesslike. “So, who were these people? Where exactly do they live in Spring Lakes?”
Chris thinks long and hard before answering. He’d give anything not to have to divulge the information the Detective wants.
“Clive and Veronica. They live at 53 Lakeside Drive.” Chris decides not to deviate from the straight path now that he’s on it.
“Last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about the other guy? There was you and three others wasn’t there? What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. Got a phone number for Clive and Veronica?” The sarcasm in the Detective’s voice makes it obvious he doesn’t believe Chris’s story.
“No.”
Chris destroyed the piece of paper with the couple’s address and number on it when he left their house. He knew he’d never need it again. It’s lucky he can still remember their address.
“Well, you haven’t given me much, have you? Let’s see, you spent the morning dressed as a woman having sex with a couple and their male friend. You know their address, but you don’t have a phone number and you don’t have a name for their friend. So, if I go over to visit Clive and Veronica at 53 Lakeside Drive, Lake Springs, are they going to have any idea who you are, Chris?”
“Yes,” is the only response Chris can give. He hopes like hell it’s true, but he can’t be sure.
“And will they be able to tell me who the other guy is?”
“Yes, he’s a friend of theirs.”
“How the hell did you meet these people?”
“On the Internet,” Chris replies.
Chris needs to get in a last word before the Detective leaves his home.
“Oh, and they only know me as Christine.”
“Riiiight,” the Detective draws the word out, makes no attempt to disguise his incredulity.
Detective Lambert’s talking to himself as he walks down Chris Baker’s drive: “Fucking filthy fucking pervert. He tells me he dresses in women’s clothes and fucks complete strangers he’s met on the Internet and he wants me to believe he’s not a pedophile as well.”
Lambert is shaking his head as he talks to himself. He doesn’t know if Baker can hear him. Doesn’t care, either. Lambert doesn’t even look back to see if the guy is still standing at his door, farewelling him like a mate who’s just been around to visit. The Detective is too disgusted and angry to look back. He doesn’t trust himself to keep hold of his feelings if he does.
The thing that worries the Detective most is he’s not sure if he’s angry with Chris Baker for being such a filthy perve, or for being so familiar. Lambert’s not looking forward to going home tonight. God knows what he’s going to say to Diana after last night, but he doesn’t feel like enduring his own confession if he can help it.
Detective Lambert blasts his horn as he cuts off another car pulling into traffic on the highway. It occurs to him that this is the site of Chris Baker’s accident. Having an accident here – now, that would be a coincidence. Lambert speeds all the way back to the station, thinking through what to do next.
His phone rings, sitting on the handsfree, cuts the radio. Lambert answers.
“Detective Lambert? It’s Paul Johnson. I’m just wondering if you have any news for me about Peter.” The voice carries equal parts hope and resignation.
Lambert sighs, inaudibly he hopes. “Mr Johnson. I’m sorry, nothing yet. I’m still going through all the information we have, but we haven’t got anything new.”
There’s silence on the line and the longer it lasts the more Lambert wants to fill it. With anything. But he knows that anything he says now will just cause more damage. Lambert waits.
“Thank you, Detective. Please call us the moment you know something.”
“I will, Mr Johnson. I’ll be in touch right away.”
“Thank you. Good bye.”
As he disconnects, Lambert’s sitting at a red light.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” The Detective’s yell is enormous, head back, makes his throat raw. The woman in the car next to him looks across, afraid. Lambert pulls away at the green light embarrassed. He feels totally fucked up and he doesn’t know how things are going to get any better. Today or any time in the near future.
Sex with both men and women
Chris can hear the Detective talking to himself as he stalks down the driveway, but can’t make out the words. The Detective gets into his car and drives away without once looking up at Chris, who is standing at his open front door watching. When the Detective’s car is out of sight, Chris closes his front door, locks it and walks purposefully to the toilet where he has the noisiest, wettest bout of diarrhoea he’s ever experienced. The farting and the shitting relieve the pain in his gut, but the rest of Chris’s body remains on high alert.
After cleaning the toilet bowl, Chris returns to the lounge room and sits on the couch where, just a few minutes ago, he come out to the Detective as a cross dresser who has sex with both men and women. Chris doesn’t know if he’s managed to convince the Detective that he’s not also a pedophile who’s kidnapped a young boy and done Christ knows what with him. On reflection, Chris wonders about the wisdom of his confession. When he strips it back to basics, Chris realises that telling the cop he’s a kinky cross dresser who likes to go both ways probably wasn’t as far removed from pedophilia as he’d hoped it would be.
Chris just hopes like hell that, if the Detective goes to visit the couple at 53 Lakeside Drive, Spring Lakes, they tell the truth, that Chris was there on the morning he crashed his car. He’s not convinced they will, though. He doesn’t even know if Clive and Veronica are their real names.
Chris thinks again about cleaning out Christine’s things.
He sits and looks at the TV, stares at it through the afternoon movie, a fishing show, footy, an early-evening game show, the news and on into prime time. Had he been quizzed on the contents of any of the programs he would have failed miserably.
No one like that has been here
It’s knocking off time and Detective Lambert should be going. He dials his home number and is relieved when he gets the machine. He leaves a message for Diana telling her he’ll be late.
Lambert gets into his car, parked behind the station. He pulls the map book from the pouch at the back of the front passenger seat, thumbs through the index until he finds Lakeside Drive, Spring Lakes.
“Better go and see if Baker’s story is true,” Frank thinks to himself.
If it is, just maybe Baker doesn’t have anything to do with the boy’s disappearance. Besides, it gives Lambert a reason not to be home.
Spring Lakes is one of those new suburbs on the edges of the city. Time was it used to be all market gardens and a bit of light industrial, a long way from anywhere that anyone with real money wanted to be. Now it’s couples in five-bedroomed houses, living out the quarter-acre dream behind estate walls where property developers have turned fertile earth into billions of dollars worth of brick and tile with hyper-green lawns and discreet retractable clothes lines. No hills hoists in these spacious gardens.
Detective Lambert pulls off the highway and drives through the avenues, boulevards, gardens, lanes, parades, culs-de-sac and drives, searching for Lakeside.
“Fucking poncey wankers,” he mutters as he looks at the map book again, and then swings around out of a cul-de-sac and makes a left and then another to back track towards his destination.
Fifty-three Lakeside Drive is a blond-brick Mcmansion. Two storeys and faux wood exposed beams on the front elevation with everything pointing toward the sky. Whoever lives there has aspirations and wants the whole world to know about them. Their only problem would be getting noticed among the neighbours. There’s one car in the drive, a late model Commodore Berlina, but the doors to the double garage are closed, so Lambert can’t see if there are any more cars inside.
Lambert parks the unmarked behind the Berlina, deliberately blocking the drive. He gets out and walks the paved path to the front door. Security lights flick on as he approaches and Lambert notices lights deep inside the house through the frosted glass panelling either side of the heavy jarrah front door. He pushes the doorbell and hears the distant carillon inside. They sound as if someone’s actually playing the marimba. No tinny electric chimes here. Everything is calculated to let visitors know that the residents spent money building this house – serious money.
The inner door is opened by a woman who Detective Lambert judges to be around his own age. She stands behind the security door, lit by the intense white of the security light. She’s subtly but also obviously made up, her face unlined and attractive. Her hair is black and short, but very feminine. All her jewellery is gold, apart from the pearls around her neck, which are held together with a heavy gold clasp. She is wearing a black sleeveless dress that is pinched at the waist and makes the very best of her slender figure and legs, finishing well above the knee. Her skin is flawlessly tanned. Her nails are perfect, deep red and rounded, almost pointed, the colour matching her lipstick and her toenails. Her feet are bare and her right ankle is dressed with a fine gold anklet.
“Yes?”
Lambert hesitates for a moment as he takes her in. She is, in a word, gorgeous, although describing her to his mates, Lambert would happily make it two words and add “fucking” to the “gorgeous”.
“Detective Senior Sergeant Lambert.”
Lambert fumbles for his ID, eventually bringing it into the glare of the security light to show it to the woman.
“I have a few questions I’d like to ask.”
“What’s this about, Detective? Is everything OK?”
The woman’s response sounds calm, but the appearance of lines on her brow shows her concern. Lambert wonders whether she’s nervous.
“I’m just following up on some inquiries. Nothing to be worried about.”
“Inquiries? About what?”
“Nothing you need to be worried about. Just tidying things up really.”
The woman says nothing. She stands behind the security screen, obviously no intention of inviting Lambert in. Outside, it’s still light, though it’s way past seven, according to the clocks. The heat of the day lingers and stands between the Detective and the woman, like an addition to the house’s security features, making the air dense and difficult to breathe.
“May I ask your name, please?” Detective Lambert decides it’s best to start out polite, at least to begin with. On first look, he can’t believe this is the woman he’s looking for.
“Yes. It’s Hislop. Diana Hislop.”
“I see. Does anyone else live here, Mss err Hisolp?” Lambert slurs the address, hedging his bets, not wanting to get the woman offside whether she’s happily married, a man-hating bitch or anything in between.
“There’s just my husband, Graham. The kids left home a few years ago now and, besides, they’ve never lived here with us, we only moved in six months ago. And it’s Mrs.”
Diana Hislop offers this last bit of information with an arch of her left eyebrow, a slight tilt of her head, daring the Detective to continue his clumsy questioning. Nothing about her is inviting.
“I see,” the Detective says and then pauses. “No one else stayed here with you in the last month?”
“No.”
Mrs Hislop still hasn’t made any move to invite the Detective in. Lambert’s got questions he needs to ask before he can be sure that the woman and her husband aren’t the ones Chris Baker told him he’d visited at this address. Now he’s here standing on the doorstep of 53 Lakeside Drive not quite certain how to broach the subject. One thing he is certain of, if Baker has sent him on a fool’s errand, he’ll do for him, make no mistake. He’s a fucking gonner.
“Is your husband home, Mrs Hisolp?”
“No.”
“Right. Mrs Hisolp, maybe it would be better if you let me in so we can continue this conversation?”
Diana Hislop arches her eyebrow again and makes no move to allow the Detective entry to her home.
“Detective, um …?”
“Lambert.”
“Yes. Right. Well, Detective Lambert, you’ve arrived unannounced on my doorstep at seven o’ clock on a Saturday night. You haven’t told me why you’re here. You’ve given me a quick look at your identification, but I have no real way of knowing whether you’re who you say you are. Now you expect me to let you in so we can keep talking? About what? What are you doing here, Detective?”
“Good question,” Lambert thinks, “What the fuck am I doing here?”
“Mrs Hislop, I can assure you I wouldn’t be troubling you at this time of night, or any other time, if it weren’t important. I guess I can understand why you don’t want to let me in, but I need to ask you some questions that could be a bit, well, embarrassing? And I don’t want to do that out here. Now, if you don’t want to talk to me tonight I can come back another time. I can also give you my card and you can call the station and check that I’m who I say I am if you like. That’s a wise thing to do, Mrs Hislop. But I’d really much rather get this sorted out now, if I can. Probably I won’t ever need to trouble you again if I can just ask you a few more questions.”
Over the road a neighbour’s reticulation comes to life, a few dry shots like an impotent Clydesdale while the air clears from the pipes, and then fountains of water repeated in tessellated patterns across the lawn. Otherwise the street is devoid of life.
Detective Lambert holds up his business card so that Mrs Hisolp can read it through the mesh of the security door. She studies it intently, digesting every single piece of information right down to the mobile number and email address. When she’s finished, she looks up at Detective Lambert.
“Show me your identification again.”
Lambert pulls out his photo ID and holds it up for similar scrutiny.
“OK. Come in,” Diana Hislop says as she turns the key in the security door’s deadlock. She’s still reluctant, this is not an invitation, but at least she’s opening the door.
“Thank you,” Lambert says, as he steps back to allow Diana Hislop to open the door.
“Please sit down, Detective.”
Lambert sits on the edge of the lounge in the family/dining room. Mrs Hislop takes up a seat on one of the chairs at the dining table that is adjacent to the lounge and opposite the breakfast bar that separates the kitchen from the dining area. She turns the chair towards the Detective and sits with her legs crossed, left arm across her chest propping up the elbow of her right arm, the hand of which props up her chin.
“Well?”
“Thank you, Mrs Hislop, for letting me in. This won’t take long, I’m sure.”
“I’m not in trouble, am I, Detective?” There’s a hint of humour in Diana Hislop’s eyes, but it’s hard for Lambert to tell without the creases to give it away.
“No, not in trouble. I really do just want to ask a few more questions.”
“You said your questions could be embarrassing, Detective. I must admit I’m intrigued. It’s half the reason I decided to let you in.” She gives out a short laugh and then stifles it.
“Yes, well.” Lambert is getting flustered. All of this is beginning to feel a bit surreal. He decides to start at the beginning. “Do you know a man called Chris Baker?”
“No. Never heard of him.”
“Well, then, I guess this is where it begins to get a bit embarrassing.”
“Go on, Detective. Or is it you that this is embarrassing for?”
In spite of himself, all his experience, filthy, disgusting people, accidents, mangled bodies, the occasional act of random depravity, Detective Lambert is having trouble talking about what he’s come to talk about with this woman. She’s deluxe. Not classically beautiful, but sexy as all get out and, by the way she’s warming to their conversation, Mrs Hislop is beginning to enjoy the situation these two strangers find themselves in.
“Ok. Do you know a transvestite who calls himself … herself, Christine?”
“What do you mean, Detective. A transvestite? Do you mean a guy who dresses like a woman?”
Is there an adjustment in Diana Hislop’s tone? Has she gone from a wry enjoyment to on guard with this question? Lambert can’t tell, but he feels that something has changed in her aspect. She seems to be sitting more stiffly in the dining chair.
“Um, yes, that’s what I mean. Someone, a bloke, who wears women’s clothes. Do you know anyone like that?”
She seems to have relaxed again now, her shoulders are slightly lower. Or was she ever on her guard in the first place?
“Well, this is an odd question for a Detective to come calling to ask at this time of night. Tell, me, Detective, I’ve just go to know why you’re asking that question?” Diana Hislop is back to enjoying herself.
“Just answer the question, please.” Lambert reverts to efficient Detective, is back in charge again for a moment.
“Well,” the eyebrow is back to arched again, “OK then, Detective. No, I don’t know any men who dress in women’s clothes. Well, not that I know of, anyway. Do you?” She smiles.
“No, I don’t,” Lambert replies quietly. “Just one more question, so I can be sure, Mrs Hislop, so I won’t have to come calling again. Has anyone, a man calling himself Christie who dresses in women’s clothes, been here, specifically last Tuesday morning, the twentieth?”
“I can be quite categorical, Detective. No one like that has been here. Ever.”
There’s a chill in Mrs Hislop’s tone that doesn’t come from the split-system air conditioner, mounted high in the bricks of the wall above the lounge.
“Thank you, Mrs Hislop. I won’t trouble you again, but if there’s anything else you think I might need to know, here’s my card.” Detective Lambert hands her the business card he showed her earlier through the screen of the security door. “Or if your husband has anything to add. When did you say he’d be home?”
“I didn’t, Detective. He’ll be home next week. He’s in Sydney for work.”
Diana Hislop escorts Detective Lambert down the tiled hallway towards the front door. In the entry on a low table is a framed photograph, Diana Hislop, not too long ago by the looks of it, posing in a top hat, bodysuit and fishnet stockings. She’s holding a black cane in gloved hands, doing her best Sally Bowles.
Back in his car, Lambert backs down the driveway of 53 Lakeside Drive. He’s fucking furious.
Her lips and nails are deep red
Late that night Chris Baker sits in his darkened study looking at familiar images, searching for new among the old. He settles on a picture of a woman straddling a man lying prone on the floor and sucking the cock of another man standing in front of her. The woman is a brunette, her lips and nails are deep red and she’s wearing black lingerie and impossibly high heels. The skin of her pubic mound is free of hair and her erect penis is in clear view.
Chris closes his eyes and sees the woman rocking back and forth taking one guy’s cock deep inside her while slurping on the second guy’s enormous erection. As he masturbates, he pictures Christine as the meat in the sandwich and then thinks back to his moment only a few days ago when Christine lost her virginity.
As Chris comes, his semen spraying up his chest between his breasts, reality comes back to him as a sickening wave of depression.
He wipes himself clean and goes to bed to wait for morning.
Both faces are twisted with mock ecstasy
Detective Lambert arrives home late. Diana and the kids have had dinner and there’s nothing in the fridge or the oven for Frank. The kids are at the other end of the house and Diana hardly looks away from the TV when he enters the lounge room.
“Did you get my message?” he asks.
“Yes, Frank, I got your message.” Diana’s voice is impatient and unbelieving. God knows what she thinks he’s been up to.
“Had to go and speak to someone about a case. The missing boy.”
“Look, Frank, I don’t really give a shit what you’ve been doing. I don’t want to know about it. Work, whatever, just leave me out of it. OK?”
Frank turns on his heel, goes into the kitchen to look for something to eat. Diana turns her attention back to the flickering light of the television in the darkened room. Apart from the soundtrack to CSI, the house is silent.
Frank sits in the kitchen and goes over the day in his mind. No progress at work. In the shit at home. He gets a beer out of the fridge and sucks at the neck of the bottle. Frank’s given up on the idea of food. He’s just waiting until the kids go to bed so he can find something better to do to fill the space between now and going to work tomorrow.
Late that night, lit by the glow of the computer monitor, Frank Lambert strokes his dick with his left hand, idly flicking through a series of digital images until he sees one that particularly takes his attention. A young woman is sitting between the stockinged legs of her female friend, holding a vibrator at the lips of the other’s vagina. Both faces are twisted with mock ecstasy. The woman being entered is standing, one hand fondling a nipple, the other with a red-tipped finger resting inside her red-rimmed, open mouth.
Frank looks on intently as he changes hands and brings himself to a climax. As he comes, he quickly glances at the closed door behind him.
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