‘Jake.’ David stood a few steps back from the doorway, silhouetted in the sunlight, his feet planted wide, his arms folded. Sally couldn’t see Jake’s face clearly in the reflection, but she could feel the seriousness of his mood. He was wearing a leather jacket and gloves, and was carrying a large holdall. He kept his chin down slightly. She thought of him straddling the girl in the video. She couldn’t get it out of her head how thin the girl had been.
‘David.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to talk to you.’
There was a long pause. Sally’s attention stayed on that holdall. It had caught David’s eye too. He nodded at it. ‘What’s in there, Jake? Brought me a present, have you?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Can I sit down?’
‘If you tell me what you want to talk about.’
‘This.’ He raised the bag. ‘I want to show you.’
For a few seconds David didn’t move. Then he stood back and held out his hand towards the table. ‘I’ve just opened a bottle of champagne. You’ve always had a taste for champagne, Jakey boyo.’
The two men moved to the table, their reflections a shoulder’s width apart. David pulled back a chair and Jake sat down, the holdall in his lap. David got the champagne bottle out of the cooler and unstoppered it, then poured some into a long flute. ‘Just the one, mind. Don’t want my Jakey boy driving under the influence. Would never do. Terrible waste of talent, you with your brains smeared all over the M4.’
David got himself comfortable, raised the glass. Jake raised his in reply, drank. Even in the conservatory Sally heard the hard, metallic clink of it knocking against his teeth. He was nervous. He didn’t know she was here – her car was parked at the bottom of the grounds, out of sight. As far as he was concerned he was on his own with David.
‘Nice camera system you’ve got out front. Records everything, does it?’
‘Oh, yes. Records everything.’
‘I’ve got a system like that. After a week the image gets recorded over. Unless you wipe it.’
‘Yes,’ David said reasonably. ‘But to do that you’d have to have a code.’
‘Yeah. A code.’
‘Which the owner of the system would change on a regular basis. The same way he’d change the code on the security gates. I mean, say, there was someone that person had had confidence in at one point. Such confidence that they gave him – or her – their security code. Say, then, those two people developed differences, little niggles they couldn’t iron out – well, the system owner would be a mug, wouldn’t he, not to change the codes? Otherwise what’s to stop the guy with the codes coming in and misbehaving in the house? Even, God forbid, doing something silly to the owner.’
‘Something silly.’
‘Something silly.’ There was another silence, then he said, ‘What’s in the bag, Jake?’
Sally closed her eyes for a moment, put her head back and drew a slow, silent breath – tried to get her heart to stop throwing itself against her ribcage. When she opened her eyes Jake was opening the bag and everything in the house had a vague silvery glaze, as if it was holding its breath too. Even the big clock on the conservatory wall seemed to hesitate, hold its hand still, reluctant to click forward.
Then Jake pulled a DVD out of the bag. He placed it on the table. David looked at it in silence. After a moment or two, he held out his hand.
‘And the rest,’ he said. ‘Show me whatever else is in there. I ain’t scared of you.’
‘There’s nothing. Just more of the same.’
David nodded. ‘Yeah. Of course. Let me see.’
Jake held the bag out. David took it, gave it a shake, peered inside. Put his hands in and sifted around. He raised puzzled eyes to Jake, as if he still suspected him of something underhand. Jake shrugged. ‘What? What now?’
David gave him a suspicious glare, but he handed the bag back. Sally slowly let out her breath. In her chest her heart was still bouncing around like a rubber ball.
‘DVDs? What are they?’
‘My latest venture.’ Jake inched forward on his chair, suddenly enthusiastic. ‘Jake the Peg’s done every city in the UK – I couldn’t afford to take it out of the country so I had to look for something cheap and I thought, Hey, old man, how about Jake the Peg does the alphabet?’
‘The alphabet?’
‘A girl whose name starts with every letter of the alphabet. She wears the letter on her outfit here.’ He put a hand to his stomach. ‘I got one of those basque things and had a letter A stitched on. A for Amber. B for Brittany. C for Cindi. We’ve got to F for Faith so far. Her real name was Veronica. But serious mahongas. The type they like in the States.’
‘Shows a touching faith in your audience, boyo, thinking they know the alphabet.’
‘If I put the letter on the spine they become a set – a collection. The real fans’ll want to have the whole lot – A to Z – on their shelves.’
David turned one of the DVDs over, studied the back. ‘Very creative. But they do say that about you lot, don’t they? Good with colours, wallpaper, soft furnishings, that sort of thing.’
‘I need some start-up capital.’
‘From me? Well, I would, my old friend, but they say bukkake doesn’t sell any more. Did you know that? Apparently more women are watching porn. Apparently they don’t get off on seeing some slag getting wanked over by twenty men. God knows why, it’s a mystery to me, but you do hear the word “degrading” bandied around, these days.’
Sally massaged her temples. So what she’d seen on the video had a name. Bukkake. Somehow it made it worse, to put a word to it, made it more real. No pretending she’d dreamed it.
‘Course, maybe you could flog it to the gay market – could be a new opening. I mean, it was always beyond me why any red-blooded male would want to watch a bunch of other men jacking off. Where’s the hetero in that formula, eh?’
Jake ignored the dig. ‘I was thinking we’d go forty:sixty. You put in the copying facility, the packaging and the marketing. I put in the product.’
David was still for a moment. ‘Forty:sixty? Who’s the forty?’
‘You. Let them go out at six ninety-nine. The same strategy we had with the last series.’
David got to his feet. He went to the fridge and poured himself another glass of champagne. He closed the door and stood for a moment or two, his back to Jake, as if he was composing himself. Then he came back and sat down. ‘Look, boyo, we had a falling-out the other day when you were here. I was rude, I grant you.’
‘Yeah – you were pissed off.’
‘Pissed off. That’s right. And I told you not to come back. You chose to ignore that. So you must, I think, be asking yourself why the hell I let you back in today. Aren’t you?’
‘I dunno. Maybe.’
‘Let me explain. I opened the door to you for one reason. Curiosity. I’m a curious man, see, always have been. Used to love, as a child, going to the zoo. Nice family outing to see the monkeys playing with their peckers, know what I mean? Used to be curious about that and I’m like that even now. For example, I’m intrigued by the amazing variety of things some of the Kosovan slags’ll shove up their snatches for a few euro. That, believe me, never fails to make me curious. And Jake, my old friend, that’s why I’m welcoming you in here.’
‘Because you’re curious?’
David laughed expansively. He leaned over and slapped Jake on the knee. ‘Oh, I love it – I love your expression. You think I’m going to ask you to pull out your pecker like those monkeys, doncha? Or ram an onion up your jacksy? Don’t worry – I’m not going to ask you that, though I’m sure you would, you being a bum-boy and all. No – I’ve seen your legendary whanger enough times to satisfy that curiosity, eh? Like half of Britain. Sad your one-handed audience can’t applaud, isn’t it? Might make you feel better about yourself. No, Jake, I’m not curious about any of that. And yet I am still curious. Still curious …’
‘About what?’ Jake blurted.
‘About what the fuck you were thinking!’ He rammed a finger hard into his temple. Spittle flew out of his mouth. ‘Have you fucking lost it up here in old Mission Command, boyo, mincing back, trying to sell me my own fucking speciality? I’m the bukkake king, you queer piece of shit. I’m the one got you started. I made you, Jake. I. Made. You.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. Let out all his breath wearily and opened his hands as if he despaired. ‘Honestly, Jake, if you had an extra brain it’d be lonely. Now, get the fuck out of my house. And this time don’t come back.’