Anne Billson - Suckers

I tried to summon up another sneer, but my heart wasn’t in it. I looked through the rest of the feature. It was the same story in each picture: a white-faced, raven-haired, scarlet-lipped woman, clad in an assortment of little black dresses, being subjected to violent and potentially lethal indignities. I wondered how much it had cost to have the fake bloodstains removed from the clothes after the photo session, though not all the pictures had blood in them. In one, the model’s mouth was being stuffed full of lettuce and radicchio. ‘ Le dernier cri de French Dressing ,’ said the text, ‘ but remember to go easy on the garlic .’ Another shot depicted the unfortunate girl being dunked in a bath: her eyes were bulging and her long hair swirled like seaweed around her head beneath the force of the water cascading from the taps. ‘ Still waters run deep ,’ intoned the text. ‘ Careless dress codes can lead to an early bath .’

The last photograph in the series was relatively restrained, but somehow that made it all the nastier. The model was bound to a chair, directly in the path of a beam of sunlight which was slicing through a gap between the curtains. She was snarling again, straining at the ropes which held her fast. Where the shaft of light fell on her bare arm, the make-up artists had applied an unpleasant-looking weal, and the blackened flesh appeared to be smouldering. ‘ Sunburn can be fatal ,’ said the text. ‘ Smart vamps prize their pale skin and use barrier cream to shield their features from the ultraviolet .’

A dreadful idea occurred to me. This was Duncan’s work, his idea of a public confession. He had finally gone and flipped. ‘Don’t tell me these are yours ,’ I said, not wanting to hear the answer.

‘God Lord, no.’ He shook his head rather more violently than was necessary, jabbing his finger at the small print at the bottom of the page. ‘Dino, it was Dino.’

‘Sick- o ,’ I said. I’d seen Dino’s byline before, but had never met him. I didn’t have to, I’d seen enough of his work to know he was a pretentious, obnoxious git — he liked to photograph naked women in compromising positions, adorned with lots of tasteful bondage and tight leather corsets. The prints were usually hand-tinted.

Duncan was now looking down at me with a faint smile, but I could see he was smiling only from a misplaced sense of bravado. The sight of the blood, fake though it was, had turned him pale and sweaty-looking. It was hot and stuffy in the tiny room, but not that hot and stuffy.

‘Duncan?’ I whispered. ‘Duncan? Are you all right?’

He wasn’t listening. He was staring past my head, at the wall.

He said, ‘I think she’s back.’

The occasion demanded a cigarette, so I pulled one out and lit up. There was no ashtray, so I used the floor. Duncan didn’t object. I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed. He was too busy staring at that last picture, looking as though he’d seen a ghost.

I inhaled, exhaled, and coughed. ‘Not her,’ I said at last. ‘Doesn’t look anything like her.’

‘Of course it’s not her.’ He sounded peevish. ‘What do you expect? But look at them.’

I looked again. ‘Just some people in a studio. Just a way of showing the clothes. Some stupid fashion editor had what she thought was a bright idea.’

‘You know there’s more to it than that,’ he said, adding — quite unnecessarily — ‘You were there.’

I protested. ‘You did most of it.’

‘You helped.’

‘Only because you asked me to.’

‘Christ, I wish…’ His voice trailed away.

‘These are just photographs,’ I said. ‘Stupid ones. These people think they’re being deliciously witty, but they’ve got it wrong. ‘I mean, we could cook up something much heavier if we put our minds to it. This is much too restrained. I can’t see any limbs being hacked off. What about the chiffon scarf? The body bags? The burial at the crossroads?’

At each word, Duncan flinched as though white-hot needles were being inserted into his flesh. He had to prop himself up against the edge of the bench. I offered my seat, but he shook his head and instead helped himself to a cigarette. It was a long time since I’d seen him smoking. That, as much as anything, brought home the seriousness of the situation.

When he spoke at last, it was slowly and carefully. ‘I don’t believe this is a coincidence. These photographs are here for a purpose. She’s back, and she wants me to know it.’

I told him he was reading too much into the pictures. There was no need to panic. There had never been any need to panic. We had always covered our tracks. But he wasn’t listening to a word I said. ‘It was the worst day of my life,’ he muttered, staring bleakly at the fashion spread. ‘I don’t know what went wrong.’

Neither did I.

‘I blew it,’ he went on. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

It occurred to me he might welcome the chance to feel guilty all over again. It was high time to nip that in the bud. ‘Don’t be silly. You did what you had to do. So did I.’ I closed the magazine with finality and stared at the cover. A big white baby-soft face winked back at me. ‘Jesus Christ! Do they do that every month?’

Duncan nodded sympathetically, though I’m not sure he grasped the precise nature of my phobia; I’m not sure I even grasped it myself. ‘Gives you the willies, doesn’t it?’ he said, smiling sadly. I forced myself to take another look. Wink or no wink, the cover shot was not particularly unusual, neither was the Bellini logo. On the face of it, the magazine was interchangeable with any of the other new publications cluttering our newsstands: Eva, Riva, Diva, Bella, Nella and Stella , and so on.

I turned to the contents page and checked the masthead. The publisher was Multiglom, a name I recognized as one of the first big companies to plant its headquarters in the Docklands area. None of the other names were familiar. The editor was either Japanese, part-Japanese, or pretending to be one or the other. It figured; Japan was still deeply trendy in media circles.

I flicked through the pages. Faint perfume wafted up from scratch ‘n’ sniff advertising inserts which Lulu had already peeled open and rubbed against her wrists. There was a report on the Milan fashion shows, and an interview with a famous film director who had been commissioned to shoot a cosmetics commercial with a budget exceeding those of all his feature films combined. There were pictures in which debutantes in white satin ballgowns stuck their tongues out at the camera or hoisted their skirts up to expose their legs, and an amusing photo-feature in which the fashion editors had lured some of the Have Nots off the street and into the studio where they’d been decked out in designer clothes. After the shoot, I assumed, they’d had their smelly old rags restored to them and been thrown back into the gutter.

The Night People! fashion feature seemed an aberration, as though it had been thought up by a different editorial team. I was surprised the publishers hadn’t demanded it be toned down; those centre pages were not the sort of thing normally considered suitable for the shelves of a family newsagents.

‘OK,’ I allowed grudgingly. ‘It might not be a coincidence.’

Duncan said nothing. He was fiddling with his thumbnail, doing something unbelievably vicious to the cuticle.

‘I said, ‘If you’re really worried, I could check it out.’

He looked up at last. ‘How?’

I dropped the end of my cigarette on to the floor and ground it out with my heel. ‘I could go and see them. They look as though they could do with some creative consultancy. Lulu says they pay well.’