His hollowed out, weightless heart hammered at the wickedness of it. This was a progression from the prostitutes he usually favoured. She was an actress, a dancer. And more to the point, another man’s wife.
He found the thought of it simply exhilarating; deliciously wicked. Especially considering that her husband was there in the same room, and had even seemed to connive in his wife’s blatant infidelity. There had been the barest, most minimal of nods. A granting of consent, if not approval. A strange fellow, that Novak. He seemed to take as much delight from their liaison as Dunwich himself did.
They were a racy set, all right, these film people. No wonder his heart was pounding.
And besides, the sound of Will Oakland’s high, vibrating counter-tenor voice disturbed him. It sounded harsh and accusatory to his ear. A bleat rather than a lament. As if the voice itself was the curse that had been visited upon the singer. If there was a warning in the lyrics, the sound repelled him so much that he could not hear it. He preferred to focus his senses on the darkness.
The darkness had a name. Dolores. And a voice. A voice that rode on hot, scented breath and filled his tingling ear with sensation. A voice that touched him like a gentle stroke of passion on the inside of his flesh. A voice that had fingers that stirred and stiffened his cock.
He gasped at the sharpness of his lust. And groaned at the frustration of it. He wanted her now. He would not wait to have her. The darkness would yield completely to him, or he would go mad.
‘No … not here. Not yet,’ the darkness murmured. And in that ‘not yet’ was a promise of fulfilment that would sustain him.
Dunwich could relax now, though there was no relenting in the fierce ache in his trousers. He was sure now where the evening would end. The particular hotel had yet to be decided. Or perhaps they would go to one of the restaurants he knew that were discreetly furnished with private rooms.
The details didn’t matter. What was important was that he knew now how it would end. She had said, ‘Not yet.’
The lyrics of Oakland’s song grew darker and darker. The singer was the victim of a vicious woman who had somehow dragged him down – to Hell, it seemed. There was no wit or charm to the litany of accusations. It was a bitter, self-pitying complaint warbled out by a freakishly high voice.
The darkness withdrew its lips. ‘I have to talk to Novak.’
‘Novak?’
‘My husband.’
While she was gone, he sensed someone looking at him. The indirect glow from the illuminated panels picked out a diminutive form, standing on its own against the wall. It was one of those midget wogs. The one with long hair, the boy. Dunwich shuddered. There was something peculiar about that child.
Hartmann had said the older wog was a brilliant cameraman. Waechter insisted on having him in his crew. The boy was his nephew, apparently. They were Chilean, Hartmann said. Native Indians. Dunwich accepted that Hartmann knew his business. And it was nothing to do with him really. But he didn’t like the way the wog boy was looking at him and it was a rum do having the help here at the party. These film people had a queer way of going about things, that was for sure.
He didn’t like the Chilean connection either. He had mentioned it to Hartmann, but the German had shrugged it off. He said he could vouch for Diaz, and Diaz could vouch for his nephew, and that was good enough for Hartmann.
Well, it wasn’t good enough for Dunwich. Not since the business with the billiard ball.
She was back beside him in the darkness. Her voice went straight for his aching phallus. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where to?’
‘We can go back to my flat.’
‘But what about … Novak?’
‘He has other plans.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying, you have a strange marriage.’
‘Why should it worry you?’ The darkness soothed away his fears with a gentle pressure at the place he needed it most. ‘Novak doesn’t care what I do.’
He groaned. ‘But do you like me a little bit, Dolores?’ He knew that he had revealed his weakness in the question. And he knew in the callous tinkling of her laughter that she would do everything she could to exploit it.
The sound of Will Oakland’s voice grated more than ever. His song of shattered dreams was the last thing Dunwich wanted to hear.
The gramophone played on. Harry Macdonough was singing now, ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’.
Whenever Bittlestone heard this song, he could only think of his proprietor, Harry Lennox, whose Irish eyes never smiled. They occasionally narrowed in a look of low cunning; satisfaction at a rival’s misfortune, for example, or the besting of a supplier in a deal, or any advancement in the irresistible career of Harry Lennox.
No doubt Lennox considered himself a principled man. He was, after all, the proprietor of a principled newspaper. And there was the rub. His principles were largely commercially motivated, which is to say he was ruthless in private and righteous on paper. The one exception was the question of Home Rule, in which he not only held a conviction but also allowed his newspaper to be used as a mouthpiece for it. But the line he held was the same as that of the government of the day (and of all intelligent men, Lennox would no doubt add). It was unlikely to threaten his commercial concerns.
Bittlestone found it unsettling to be in this social situation with his employer. He was wary; nervous of putting a foot wrong. He decided the best course of action was not to say anything unless he was directly addressed. Meanwhile, he had ample opportunity to study the interesting people around him. The most interesting of whom was Konrad Waechter.
He recognized the telltale signs in Waechter: the familiar lightness and precision, the secret vigilance he might even say, with which such men – men of his own kind – carried themselves. And Waechter betrayed himself too by his fluttering eyelids as he presented his cheeks to be very nearly kissed by Jane Lennox. ‘Vell, dah-link, did you like my film?’
Bittlestone smiled to himself. Yes, Waechter was most definitely one of the brotherhood.
Jane Lennox blew out a long funnel of opium-scented smoke. ‘I loved it, darling. You’re such a clever old thing.’
‘You understood vot I voz sayink mit der film?’
‘Of course, darling. You were saying how horribly frightful it is to have one’s eyes plucked out.’ Jane Lennox gave a brittle, broken laugh. Bittlestone detected the welling of suppressed hysteria.
Waechter must have sensed it too. He became suddenly solemn. ‘I voz werry sorry to hear about your fiancé.’
‘Let’s not talk about it now, sweetie.’
Harry Lennox shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was evidently struggling with some dilemma, sensitive to his daughter’s reluctance to dwell on the past, but nevertheless eager to get something off his chest. In the end his dominant nature prevailed. He was a man who spoke his mind, or he was nothing. ‘Did you see him? Here! Quinn?’
‘Don’t mention that man to me, Daddy.’
‘He has a lot to answer for, that’s for sure. Bittlestone, do you not agree?’
‘Oh, I do, Mr Lennox. I most certainly do.’ If in doubt, agree.
‘And will the Clarion be the paper to hold him to account?’
‘Of that you can rest assured, sir.’
‘What’s our angle on this eye attack business? Have you filed your story yet?’
Lennox’s eyes were piercing and expectant. This was a sensational story. The Clarion had been first on the scene. If they could not capitalize on it, they did not deserve to be newspapermen. ‘I was just about to, sir. I thought I might garner a few quotes from the film people first. Herr Hartmann has kindly allowed me to use the company’s telephone to call through the story when I’m ready.’
‘Do you have a headline for me?’
‘I was thinking of …’ Bittlestone hesitated. In point of fact, he had not given a thought to the headline. Inspiration came to him suddenly: ‘Eyeless in Cecil Court. There is a strange irony about it, given that this alleyway happens to be the centre of the English film industry.’ Bittlestone broke off anxiously. It might have been too ‘clever’ for Lennox, too intellectual. Literary, even.