Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

'I thought you valued your sense of fair play,' said Pam. 'If you destroy Vince's manuscript, you'll have cheated him.'

'I have no intention of destroying it. He will still be allowed to publish, but the version we'll produce together will be more balanced. I wish to prevent his earlier version from being released, that's all.'

Pam eyed him balefully. 'I don't believe you.'

'I'm hardly fascinated by your beliefs, Pamela. Earlier this evening my men took Vince's apartment to pieces. We found the manuscript on the hard-drive of his computer and wiped it, then destroyed all his disks. We searched his college locker and wiped both of the back-up copies we found there. I'm afraid all his course-work was destroyed in the process. All his research. All his previous writings.'

'Oh no -'

'You forget that I know how he thinks, Pamela. I know his mind. He trusted me. I know how he works, how he researches, how many copies he keeps, and I'm sure he struck two hard copies from the disks. He told me he always does. Now, there were no copies in his apartment, so what has he done with them? Given one to his agent, presumably, so we can get hold of that easily enough. But the other one, there's the mystery. Perhaps that's something you can shed some light on.' Poor Carol Mendacre hadn't been in possession of it. Or if she had, it had burned with her.

'You have no right to involve other people in this,' she said.

'Vince's agent helped to plan these half-baked books, Pamela. She encouraged Vince to spy on us. I think she has every right to be involved. But perhaps you can dissuade the members of the League from upsetting her too badly.' He leaned forward, his generous smile filling her vision. 'All you have to do is tell us where the remaining copy is.'

'I don't know where Vince would have put it.'

'Then I suggest you start thinking fast.' A door at the rear of the room opened and closed. Sebastian rose to his feet. 'Ah, good. There's someone I want you to meet.'

Pam looked up at Barwick, who was performing a hasty shamefaced shuffle out of the way. The pale, hollow-cheeked man who came and stood before her was clad from neck to toe in black, and although he was physically large seemed insubstantial, as if a beam of bright light might be able to penetrate him like a wraith.

'This gentleman is Mr Xavier Stevens, Pamela, and it pays to be his friend. He's here to help find out if you're telling us less than you know. And, I think it's time -' he checked his Carrier Panthere '- to raise the stakes a little. Vincent is still breaking the rules. He's enlisting outside help. So we're going to do the same. And if he fails to meet any one of the remaining challenges, there's going to be a forfeit. You, Pamela.' Sebastian gave Stevens a gentle pat on the shoulder. 'Xavier will forfeit you.'

JASON WENTWORTH raised his throbbing head and looked around. He found himself in a tiny room constructed of sweating bare bricks, propped up in a wicker armchair, surrounded by what appeared to be sequinned sixties' cocktail frocks and wigs. Hanging on the wall was a tattered pantomime cow's head. A broad white bandage was swathed across his bare stomach. When he tried to sit up properly, it felt as if someone was pouring boiling water over his gut.

'Where am I?' he asked weakly. 'Eric? What are you doing here? What the hell's going on?'

'You'll split your stitches if you don't stay still, fidgetty-bot,' complained an ugly elderly man seated at a make-up mirror across from his chair. He was patting the fleshy oval of his face with pink powder, testing bee-sting lips. 'Drink your tea while it's still hot.' He wore a bulging string vest and a lime green ballet tutu. 'You've been in a fight, dear, but you're going to be fine so long as you keep very still.'

'What time is it?'

Eric checked a minuscule gold watch hanging from a pair of rubber breasts above the mirror. 'Ten to three. The security at The Grotto had to make a full report to the police about your 'incident' and of course they lied through their teeth. None of those boys will ever go to heaven. You was stabbed, dear,' he said loudly, as if having a conversation with someone who was profoundly deaf. 'The cops wanted to ask you questions, but the boys got you out. Do you remember what happened, or don't you want to tell me?'

'There's nothing to tell,' he replied, nervously wondering where his multi-coloured dreamcoat had disappeared to. 'Some geezer didn't like the look of my face.'

'It wasn't your face we was worried about. The blade of that knife only just missed your stomach wall. It's a good job you was wearing that jacket of yours. Buggered up the kapok lining.'

'Where is my coat?' He was sure it had been ripped off for the drugs before he had even hit the floor.

'Behind you on the door. I had Malibu Sidney take it off you before the cops turned up. Don't worry, everything's still in it.' Thank God, thought Wentworth. His entire investment was tied up in that mind-altering garment. He realised with a shock that his former pupil had not paid him for the uppers, either.

'What do you reckon on them bandages? I did a nice job, didn't I?'

'You did this? What, stitches and everything?'

'Well, we couldn't let you be taken to hospital while you had God knows what tucked about your person, could we?' Eric explained, lighting a cigarette from the butt of his last. He was performing at the pub tonight for the benefit of a local AIDS charity. The bar would remain open until 5:00 a.m. and the last bleary-eyed patron would stagger out at 7:00 a.m. Not like the old days, when last orders were called at twenty-past ten. He preferred the old days. Ah well. By day Eric worked as a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital, where he also held a position as a bereavement counsellor working in the same team as Betty, but it was the nightwork he undertook performing with his drag troupe that really made the money. This was not the first time he'd agreed to help Wentworth out, but who could resist him? There was a sense of lost innocence and something worth saving about the boy, even though the 'boy' had to be in his early thirties by now. Eric always told his friends that the drag routine helped him to relax, but the simple truth was that he loved doing it. He had been applying his make-up and hoping that Betty would come over to see his act when news reached him that Wentworth had been attacked.

'Did they catch the bloke who did it?'

'Darling, that building has too many exits to stop people from leaving sharpish. You get a kip – I've got to go on in a minute. You're not in any danger. I gave you a couple of painkillers and a strong antibiotic to prevent infection, so I hope you haven't taken anything else tonight. Now it's down to you to rest and stay out of trouble. That means no dealing for a while, Jase, you understand?'

But that, he knew, was impossible, because the second Eric left him he would be up and attempting to head back to the club.

'I've got to get back, Eric. Maudsley will need feeding.'

'The boys brought her over so she could be with you. She's by the door.'

Wentworth winced in pain as he pulled the reluctant terrier forward. He'd named it Maudsley after the famous schizophrenics' home in Denmark Hill where his mother had spent the later years of her life.

'Dog-minder, wound dresser, Jill Of All Trades, that's me, and don't keep calling me Eric, only you and my dear sainted mother know that name and I'd like to keep it that way thank you.'

Maudsley seemed determined not to enter the star's dressing room. Wentworth had to admit that the smell of cheap perfume and hair lacquer knocked the breath from most people.

They were in a converted storage room at the back of a pub in Vauxhall, a few feet from the pungent half-flooded toilets and a cramped bar area where a mixed crowd of two hundred locals, regulars, tourists and slumming yuppies waited for Eric and his well-drilled team to hurl themselves about the stage in shameless abandon. The dressing room was part of the old beer cellar, and was decked in gaudy harlequin rags the colours of a Battenburg cake. Eric gave up his attempt to glue a sapphire-studded caterpillar of eyelash onto his right lid, and studied Jason's stomach in his make-up mirror.