I undressed Sykes and put him to bed. The bruises surrounding the punctures in his arms were the colour of old rose petals. He smelt of smoke and verdigris. His restless hands seemed to have a life of their own and I had to tuck them under the duvet to stop them scratching and clawing. I stood at the foot of the bed for a while, watching him sleep, wondering what the next step would be. He looked suddenly old, haggard, with eclipses under his eyes. His temples were touched with grey and it occurred to me that maybe his hair was dyed.
I took a bottle of vodka from the freezer, a bottle that I had bought in the hope of toasting Fabulina with Sykes after the funeral. I poured some into a glass and downed it straight and then made a proper drink, with ice and tonic. I realized that I hadn’t eaten all day but the concept of food seemed nauseating and bizarre. Shovelling all that stuff into your body to fuel it to go to work to earn money for more. It all seemed like such a cruel and pointless cycle. Drinking made more sense. The smooth slipstream of alcohol that flowed silently into the blood, cooled the heart and deactivated the brain.
I turned on the television. The news was on and there was a shot of the Poole twins being hustled into court. One of them had a coat over his head but the other looked up as he was getting out of the police car. He was looking right into the camera and he smiled. I felt the same disquietude that unnerved me when I first saw them that night in the bar. It was a sensation of fear combined with fascination. I turned on the sound and poured another drink.
‘A large cache of drugs has been uncovered,’ the announcer was saying, ‘along with a variety of surgical instruments. Police are currently excavating the basement in a search for further evidence.’ There was an exterior shot of the building. It was cordoned off with blue plastic tape and there was a policeman guarding the door. I heard a sound behind me and turned to see Sykes standing in the doorway to the bedroom, facing the TV. He had pissed himself. The urine was running down his legs and seeping into the carpet.
‘Take me back. Take me back,’ he kept saying over and over again. His whole body was quaking. I didn’t understand what he meant. Take him back to the bed? Take him back to Fabulina’s funeral? Or take him back into my arms, my heart? I steered him into the bathroom and wiped him dry with a towel. Then I laid him on the bed, put my arms around him and held him until the trembling subsided and eventually he stumbled asleep.
Fabulina was sitting up in a burning coffin. Her hair was on fire and her hands tore at the tie knotted around her neck. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. The red bougainvillea blazed up the walls of Shooters bar. The Poole twins were removing the tattoos from the Scottish barman. He was spreadeagled on the snooker table. They were painstakingly excising squares of his skin with a scalpel. He was smiling and he had a huge bloody hard on. I was searching and searching for Sykes. Sykes was the key. He kept materialising and dissolving until finally, he was nowhere to be seen.
I jack-knifed awake. My hands were tied to the headboard. Sykes had me by the feet. He had a belt looped around my ankles. I drew back my knees and thrust him away. He fell back. I could see his face in the shaft of orange light coming through the open curtains, he looked calm and sober. A siren was screaming in the distance. Sykes advanced and grabbed my legs; I was astounded at his strength. He pinned them down with his knees and then lowered himself down on me so that we were eye to eye. Pinpoints of light. I could feel his heart beating in my chest.
‘I just want you to know what it’s like.’ He took my face in his hands and kissed me. A tender suppliant kiss. ‘You’ve got no idea. Let me show you. Let me show you. Then maybe you’ll understand.’
Sykes didn’t understand that he was presenting me with my greatest fear. The fear that, until that moment, I had not been able to conceptualise. I suddenly realised that the malaise the Poole twins had inspired in me was rooted in a horror of being trapped. Trapped and helpless. And that they were the masters of it. That was the source of their power.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ I said. Sykes stroked my hair and kissed me again. He got up from the bed and I tried to relax as he pulled my jeans off, but I could hear my pulse racing. He bound my feet with the belt to the foot of the bed. Then he went out of the room and I was left alone with myself in the semi-darkness. The ceiling seemed to have dropped. The walls were closing in. The floor arched. I could hear the traffic on the motorway. One of the neighbours was playing Sweet Surrender and in a paroxysm of nerves I almost started to laugh. Then, when Sykes came back with the vodka bottle and a pair of scissors, I was sure he was going to kill me.