Richard House - The Kills

‘I think you know there’s a little more to it than that.’

Santo blew out smoke. Both men looked ahead at Geezler’s house. Another incomplete project.

* * *

He woke with a headache, and felt more tired on waking than he had when he’d lain down. The room was otherwise empty, and Santo gone. The car also gone.

Santo had left an envelope on a small Singapore Airlines bag. The envelope contained a DVD and a note: Watch the DVD, I’ll call.

* * *

Santo sent two SMS messages mid-morning. Rem had risen properly, showered, and sat on the bed. He watched the sunlight slip across the floor and considered how he was going to get back home. It wasn’t just about deciding the next moment, the next couple of hours, but a larger, more difficult question. Why return? What to do?

After the second message, Rem slipped onto his knees and figured through the small complications of playing a DVD on the motel monitor. He sat on the floor and watched with the sound turned low.

* * *

On the first segment, a small image sank into the screen, large pixels vibrated unevenly, unstable, material shot on a handheld phone. The image dipped and opened to a figure in a doorway, silhouetted by giddy light, a voice, male, off-camera, close and wet: , a white hand pointing into the room.

A woman on her back on a bed, a sheet pulled up over her crotch, her breasts shining, her hand dug between her thighs. A man with a cigarette and credit card was told to , and the woman kicked the sheet back to her ankles.

Rem couldn’t guess her age, young, surely, without doubt, long black hair, dark eyebrows, so that she might be Middle Eastern, he could not be more specific, the camera divided her body into flat plains, light and dark.

Santo, now close, smoking, rubbing his gums, .

Another man, Pakosta, standing over the girl, .

Instructions: .

Pakosta in another shot, closer now, seen from the back, labouring, flopped forward, slow then active, naked on top of the girl. A leg in the way, interrupting. Then on her side with two men, Clark and Santo, the woman propped between them, their skin shining, making one animal out of the three.

.

Pakosta walking into the room, undressing and thrusting his hips as an example. .

A soft downlight now, a different shot a different camera, infinitely more detailed. Pakosta, bleary-eyed, face messed with powder, opening perfumes and smelling them, pouring out the contents. The woman spread-eagled on the bed. Then Clark thrusting over her head.

Pakosta laughing: .

Santo again, aggressive with the woman, working on top, turning her over, hands gripping her breasts, pinching hard, and no reaction from the girl. In this shot it is clear that she is young, clear also that she is not aware of her surroundings.

.

.

* * *

Santo rang about an hour after Rem had watched the footage. ‘Who was she?’

‘This isn’t about the girl.’

‘She was, what? Fifteen? Fourteen, fifteen?’

‘She was working at the hotel. What does it matter? Howell paid for her. You have no idea, and when we came back it was like nothing happened. You didn’t want to know. I don’t think you even asked.’

‘This has nothing to do with me. This is you, Pakosta, Clark, and Howell, and whoever that girl was. It has nothing to do with me.’

‘See. The thing is. That wasn’t the problem. The problem is that Howell had us. He took that footage for pleasure, and he wanted more, and he would have kept it going for as long as he wanted. He owned us once he had that material. He made that happen. The day after we returned he sent us emails with these attached.’

Santo wanted to know what Rem had done with the DVD.

‘We were toys,’ Santo said, his voice unnaturally flat. ‘You get that? Howell. Sutler. Geezler. We were the entertainment.’

* * *

When the news came that Howell had died of his injuries, Santo called Rem. ‘That’s everyone except Geezler.’

‘You’re forgetting Sutler?’

‘You think he survived? They just haven’t found him yet.’

Rem played games with the landlord’s dog, a small wire-haired terrier, to distract himself while he waited for Santo. When Rem blinked, the animal blinked, or it blinked then he blinked — impossible to tell. The woman held the dog to her bosom and cleaned the animal’s eyes then her own using the same tissue, only slightly less hygienic than when she kissed it on the mouth.

He searched for jobs in the paper, found a couple, none too promising, and wondered what time Santo would show. Blinked at the dog, and the dog blinked back. Chimeno’s death, still recent, gave a perspective to the upcoming hearings.

* * *

The car, a Lincoln, sat low on the back axle. Santo leaned against the driver’s door and appeared to be making a call — and sure enough, Rem’s cellphone began to ring. When Santo looked up Rem guessed he could be seen, framed by the window.

‘What’s up with the car?’ Rem asked.

Santo held up a hand in a static wave. ‘Heavy load.’

As Rem came out of the apartments to the adjoining lot, Santo walked about the car and unlocked the boot. The lot, filled with oil patches, stumpy grasses, pea gravel, and building blocks, in-filling for a building long removed, was overshadowed by the brick side of Rem’s building, blind except for one vertical strip of windows.

Santo opened the boot. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve covered his face,’ and showed Rem what he took to be a plaid bedcover. Even when he recognized an area of skin, a white upper arm, it still didn’t register that he was looking at a person. The smell — sharp, sweet — of an animal in fear, some beast that sweated.

Stooped to look into the boot, Rem figured out slowly, rationally, what he was looking at: here, hands bound at the wrist with silver duct-tape; there, a single fleshy bend, a knee; and there, a towel wrapped over a head with a wet and frayed breathing slit, as if a man, and this had to be a man, had chewed at the cloth.

Santo shut the boot with two hands, fingers sprung, with an expression of achievement, a man happy with a sale, or maybe even a little prideful, a man with something to prove. The boot, punctured on the left side with a set of six indented holes, had to be punched down to close. Rem assumed from the hot stink, the arcs of sweat, the natural turn of the man’s head that he was alive, although there were no proper signs, no sound, no evidence of breathing.

The two men stood over the boot, an unsteady edge to Santo, aside from the evidence of a bound man locked in the trunk of his clapped-out car.

‘You know who this is?’

Rem could not move, felt absorbent, like he was taking in water, becoming heavy.

‘It’s Paul Geezler.’

Now Rem couldn’t think — couldn’t manage much more than a blink.

Santo gave a presentational gesture, a what do you think flourish, and appeared, if Rem had got this right, disappointed at his reaction.

‘That’s Paul Geezler?’

Santo nodded, pinched his nose. ‘You need another look?’

‘In your trunk?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Alive?’ Rem couldn’t see, on any level, why or how such a task would be decided and managed. ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Santo. This is insane. You have to get him to a hospital. This is wrong.’

‘I gave him —’ Santo clicked his fingers — ‘can’t remember the name. But, yeah, he had to climb in first.’