The Room And The Briefcase: part 2

"Tell John I’m so sorry. And tell him I love him."

‘The Room and the Briefcase’ is the concluding part of an extract from Kristian Johns’s forthcoming book ’11:47′, available next year. Parts 1&2 of the story will be available for download directly to Amazon Kindle devices soon. Read part 1 here.

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“Hello?”

Kyle’s ‘work’ phone had woken him from dozing on the sofa, but he never ignored a call. Not when there was money to be made.

There was no background noise on the line, which meant the caller was indoors, but then again, Kyle never got the kind of calls people made out in the street or on a train. The caller sounded like they had a chest infection or something.

“Hello?” Kyle repeated

“How much for you to visit?” The voice on the other end belonged to an older guy. Kyle could tell these things.

Sounds like the only visit you need is from a doctor.

“Three hundred. I’ll negotiate on overnights but I’m generally not an overnight kind of guy, y’know? You got a name?”

“We have a deal.”

“OK, dude, what are you looking fo—“

*Click*

Kyle looked at the phone and arched his eyebrows. “Well, you’re rude,” he muttered while trying to tame his curly brown hair and wondering if he could get away without showering. A sniff of his t-shirt told him not.

His phone beeped with a text telling him the address, and instructions to arrive in an hour.

He texted his best friend Ian: Got a job. U gonna still be up in a couple of hours?

Almost immediately the reply came back: Sure. Come ova if u want. Have half a cold pizza n beer J

Fifteen minutes later, still damp from his shower, he took one last look in the mirror at the boyish face and slim body that drove so many older guys wild, and satisfied, grabbed his jacket and keys. It was Wednesday night, and midweekers were few and far between lately, so it was a good thing.

Might even go regular? He thought, swiping his wallet over the reader at Pimlico tube station and heading down to the cool, painted concrete of the tunnels below.

He arrived ten minutes early at the address in Kensington. A pretty fucking nice address at that. Kensington’s one of those places where you’re walking down a street lined with townhouses and you suddenly twig that none of them have been converted into flats yet.  This was where money lived.

He’s loaded. Should have said five hundred. Dammit.

The door opened almost as soon as he pressed the bell, which startled him slightly — like the guy had been waiting there. The guy was a well-dressed man in his mid-fifties, wearing a double breasted grey suit with a blue shirt and tie. For some reason he was carrying a briefcase, and Kyle wondered if he’d only just arrived home. He offered his hand

“Hi, there. I’m Kyle, we spoke about an hour ago?”

— and you’re minted and ugly so I’m being polite and hoping this goes regular. Sad fuck.

The man looked momentarily down at Kyle’s hand, and then jerked his head in an ‘in-you-come’ gesture.

Minted, ugly, rude. But minted.

Kyle stepped inside and followed the silent, shuffling man down and immaculately tiled hallway and into a plush living room. They sat on the couch. The man kept hold of his briefcase.

“I usually get the money thing out the way first. Makes it less awkward at the end. That cool?”

The man nodded and produced an envelope from his blazer pocket. Kyle didn’t feel the need to check. The guy had a townhouse in Kensington for fuck’s sake.

For some reason, the guy gave Kyle the creeps, and not just because he didn’t talk. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for a first-timer to clam up. No, this guy was a different kind of creepy. To anyone else, he would have appeared nervous, sitting there, breathing like a phone pest, clutching his briefcase like it was welded to him. But not to Kyle, whose years of experience as an escort —

—whore

— had given him an uncanny ability to read people. Kyle always felt a sense of power when he was with clients, but this guy exuded a powerful aura of control. It made him feel…dislocated…vulnerable.

“So. What do you like to do?” Kyle asked, dismayed to hear an edge to his voice; a slight tremor that turned his vowels to ridges.

The man’s eyes fixed on Kyle’s and his face cracked into a humourless grin and Kyle’s skin prickled with unease as he realised he’d forgotten to text Ian the guy’s address like they always agreed.

“Uhm…you like coke? I have some on me. It’s good for relaxing. Makes you feel like the king of the world.” said Kyle, cursing inwardly as he fumbled his wallet and dropped it on the floor.

The man continued to smile at him, like he found Kyle amusing.

Have a line and focus. He isn’t the one in control here. You are. Always remember that.

“Is it OK to do it on the table? It looks —

— just chop the fucking line and stop babbling!

“—expensive. I wouldn’t want to—“

“Yes.”

The man’s voice was husky, but still went through Kyle like a gunshot. He tried to hide his juddering hands as he knelt over the spotless glass table and shook out more coke than he should have. He chopped two fat lines, pulled out a well-rolled note and snorted. He handed the note to the man, feeling the burn and gagging slightly as the coke hit the back of his throat. The rush was almost immediate — he always bought top-drawer stuff.

The client barked a deep, phlegmy cough as he finished his own line and returned to the sofa, still holding the briefcase.

Fortified by the coke, Kyle knelt up behind the man and began kneading his shoulders. The man inhaled a deep, wheezy lungful as he slumped under Kyle’s expert fingers.

“That feel good, mister?”

The guy nodded.

Course it does, you limp-dicked old fart. You’ve probably come in your y-fronts already. Easy money.

Kyle reached for the hand holding the briefcase, “Why don’t you put that down so you can relax with me on the —?”

“NO!” shouted the man, jumping up, his suit jacket half-off his shoulders. His eyes flashed, and Kyle felt his fear crack open again.

“Okay! Okay!” Kyle held his hand out in an ‘easy there’ gesture but the man stepped back again, his eyes flashing.

“Don’t you dare touch it! Don’t you DARE touch this case!” He hugged it in a pose that might have looked absurd if it hadn’t been for his vicious expression. His face was turning a deep shade of purple and his eyes bulged. He tugged at his collar with his free hand.

“Dude, calm down, I wasn’t going to…are you O—“

The man thudded violently to the floor before Kyle could finish his sentence. Gooey blobs of phlegm splattered from his mouth as he fought desperately to catch a breath. The hand holding the briefcase let go and grabbed at his shoulder. The noise was awful, a rasping, desperate sound like nails down a blackboard

He’s having a heart attack. He’s having a goddamn motherfucking heart attack.

Kyle knew he should do something —

— you’re a rent boy who’s given him drugs.

— call an ambulance, anything, but he was glued to the spot, mesmerised by the horror of watching another human being dying, knowing he should do something, pick up the phone, call out, anything, but torn by the fear of the consequences.

— call a fucking ambulance. Flush the coke and call an ambulance

The man gaped at Kyle with eyes shot through with fear, confusion and blood. He pawed feebly at it the briefcase before his body was wracked with a final, violent spasm, and then he lay still.

Kyle stood rooted to the spot. A wild jumble of thoughts clattered round in his mind: I should check if he’s dead I should call an ambulance I should flush the coke and then call an ambulance I should try and give him the kiss of life I should grab my shit and get the fuck out of here I should see what’s in that briefcase.

The briefcase the man had been so ferocious about protecting.

I should see what’s in that briefcase.

He knelt over the man, heart pounding so hard he swore he could see his t-shirt rippling. He gingerly put his ear close to the man’s mouth. No breath. Not even a whisper.

He slid over to where the briefcase lay upside down on the smooth, varnished wooden floor and flipped it over. It was nothing special: just your bog standard department store job, black leather, with a cheap, gold combination lock on each side of the handle.

“What’s so important that you couldn’t let this out of your sight, eh?” Kyle asked the dead man, searching in his own bag for the screwdriver he always carried around with him on jobs. Police didn’t take kindly to knives. At least if he got stopped and searched he could say he was borrowing it.

A few well-placed jabs, a couple of turns of the wrist and the locks sprang open. It was then, Kyle understood.

He’d often wondered what a million pounds looked like. And now he reckoned he had a fair idea.

He pulled out his phone and dialled Ian.

**EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT OF USB RECORDER FOUND ON THE BODY OF MATTHEW WRIGHT. DATE: June 26^th 2011**

(Shuffling noises, metallic sound, probably from chains. Sound of a man crying)

(Male voice): He didn’t come today, or yesterday, or the day before that. But my today and yesterday might just be someone else’s today. I don’t know. I’ve tried to count the seconds and get some sense of time but I can’t concentrate. I don’t know if he’s coming back. I keep blacking out. I’m so hungry. So goddam FUCKING HUNGRY!

(Screams, shouting, chains rattling)

WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU! COME BACK YOU FUCKING CUNT!

(Sound of crying lasting approximately two minutes.)

Every time I wake up it’s from the same nightmare. I hear the sound of the door in my dreams. It scares the shit out of me, but scarier still is the sick way in which I want to hear it. I just want to hear the door open again. I keep…

(Muffled crying)

…I just keep waking up and seeing it open, but I know it’s not really open because he’s not there. I miss him. It sounds so fucking stupid but I miss him. He’s a monster. He’s a FUCKING FUCKED UP MONSTER

(Chains rattle on each word, as if speaker is pulling at them for emphasis)

…but he’s the only human being I think I’ll ever see again. Oh God, how long till I go? How fucking long till I just black out and don’t wake up. PLEASE. Oh, God, please.

(Crying for approximately thirty seconds. The next two minutes of the audio is also muffled and could not be understood)

…of my fucking life. Oh God, I’m so sorry, I’m so, so fucking sorry. Tell John I’m so sorry. And tell him I love him.

**END OF RECORDING**

BBC NEWS WEBSITE: DATE: 7TH JULY 2011: TIME: 11:47am

KENSINGTON ‘HOUSE OF HORRORS’ REVEALS MORE VICTIMS

It has today been confirmed that the remains of a further five victims have been excavated from the basement of the Kensington address where 53-year-old Geoffrey Hamilton was found dead from a heart attack last week. A postmortem on Hamilton’s body has since established the presence of cocaine in his body at time of death.

In a dramatic twist, the corpse of a young male chained to the floor in the basement of the property. Although official cause of death has not yet been made available, it is suspected that the victim, named as 27-year-old sales executive Matthew Wright, died from multiple fractures to the back of his skull. Speculation that Wright may have taken his own life by repeatedly striking his head against the floor has neither been confirmed nor denied.

In a statement issued by the Metropolitan Police today, Detective Chief Inspector Chris Reynolds said:

“We can confirm that we are still in the process of excavating the basement at 45, Barrington Gardens, SW7 and have so far recovered five bodies in addition to those of Geoffrey Hamilton and Matthew Wright. All are believed to be male and we are awaiting the results of DNA testing to determine their identities.”

The funeral of Matthew Wright is expected to take place next week, when the body is released by coroners.

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