Without realising he was about to, Mangle tapped ‘Order’ on the screen and held his forearm over the scanner. An electronic beep sounded and an automated voice thanked him for his custom, and told him his purchase would be delivered shortly.
Mangle drank the contents of his glass and went to refill it again. He ran a hand across his face and sat back heavily into the chair. He had no idea what Tazeem hoped to achieve from this, what evidence he could possibly get that would expose what was going on at The Club, and who was involved in the deaths of Latif and Decker. He took another large swallow from the glass and hoped that when the girl arrived she wouldn’t inadvertently give him away.
A few minutes later the door slid open and a different attendant, holding the girl’s arm, ushered her into the room. She wore one of the custom robes and when the door closed behind her she let it slip to the floor. Underneath she wore a black bra and panties, but that wasn’t what caught Mangle’s attention. As she moved towards him, he could see the areas that had been doctored on her video. A large portion of her right thigh looked swollen and inflamed, although make-up had been applied over the top to conceal the damaged flesh.
‘What would you like me do for you?’ she asked in a dreamy voice.
Mangle was immensely conscious of the camera perched silently in the corner of the room. He had been told there was no audio – but was that really true? He leant forward, positioning himself between the girl and the camera lens.
‘Do you recognise me?’ he asked in a soft voice.
The girl blinked but didn’t react, like a computer that had been given an instruction that wasn’t in its program bank.
‘What would you like me do for you?’ she repeated in the same accented English.
Mangle beckoned and she moved toward him and knelt down.
‘Look at me,’ he said to the girl, and holding her face gently under the chin, tilted it so she looked directly into his eyes.
The girl began to repeat her opening line, but Mangle pressed his finger to her lips and silenced her. As she looked at him, really looked now, he thought he saw a flicker of recognition.
‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ he said.
She gave a barely perceptible nod. Her eyes had grown wide.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of me,’ he said, thinking he was the cause of her alarm.
‘They watch all the time,’ she said, her wide eyes swivelled up in the direction of the camera.
‘But they can’t hear us?’
‘No. Have you come to rescue me?’ she asked, although there was no trace of hope in her voice.
Mangle didn’t know what to say. He turned back to the computer and began flicking through the options on her profile screen so that they didn’t appear suspicious to anyone who may be watching. Next to ‘Services’ was an option for ‘Extras’; he selected it.
‘I saw you at the place they first held us, then at the other club, then at the clinic also, but you do not seem like the others. Do you work for them?’
‘No I definitely do not work for them, far from it,’ he said.
The screen filled up with a wealth of sex aids, toys and lubricants, each one priced. A lot were the kind of thing he’d been aware of, that girls bought at those female-only parties. But many looked at the least very uncomfortable, and others downright painful. Some were grossly oversized and others had spiked areas or coarse sections to irritate and embed into the girl’s flesh.
She slid her hand inside Mangle’s robe and up his thigh. Mangle shifted uncomfortably at the unexpected contact.
‘If we do nothing I will get into trouble,’ she said. His robe fell open and she began to massage his cock. ‘And they will be suspicious of you.’
Mangle tried to concentrate despite her touch that caused lust to open up within him. Another option flashed at the bottom of the screen that read, ‘Ultimate Extras’. Mangle pressed it. It wasn’t more sex aids that flooded onto the screen now. Knives, clamps, Tasers, even tetro-dyazine – a muscle paralyser – and other weapons and instruments to deliver pain and suffering were proudly displayed next to their prohibitively expensive prices.
‘Oh my God,’ he said as the sadist merchandise was digitally proffered. The girl took his exclamation as a sign of pleasure and quickened the movement of her hand. ‘No,’ he said uncomfortably, and she resumed her previous pace.
Mangle ran a hand over his mouth as if pondering which items to select, as he again looked at the screen. ‘We could get out. There are guns on here. Jesus.’
‘You cannot,’ Tatiana said sharply, ‘if you order a gun there is only a single shot, and once delivered the doors are locked and will not open until it has been fired.
Mangle continued scrolling through the despicable array of potential destruction. One thing was evident; he couldn’t leave this girl here. It was clear why the three categories of girls had been available. The cheaper end of the scale would no doubt have been brutalised over and over in every way imaginable, and would carry the scars to prove it.
‘There must be another way out. Are the girls led in and out through the main doors?’
‘No. Sometimes they need to bring in more girls while The Club is open. There is a locked door down below, near our living quarters.’
‘How do we get to it?’
‘You cannot. This door is unlocked only when an attendant delivers items. Besides even if you got out of here, if you try to get into a restricted area he would activate the alarm.’
‘But what if he didn’t … are there cameras in the corridors?’
‘No, only in the rooms. The clients wouldn’t believe cameras anywhere else were for their safety and they don’t like to feel exposed.’
‘I can understand why,’ Mangle said as he struggled to formulate a plan of escape.
He looked around the room hopefully for anything that could be used to aid them.
‘Is something wrong?’ Tatiana asked him.
‘What?’ Mangle said. He followed the direction of her eyes. ‘Oh.’ He’d been so caught up with devising a way out that he’d lost his erection. ‘No, nothing’s wrong.’
He scrolled around the on-screen menus and began to place an order. He waved his forearm over the scanner and was thanked for his custom by the automated voice.
‘The attendant will be here in a few moments,’ Tatiana said, her eyes cast downward to the floor. ‘I guess it is time for you to have your fun.’
Mangle got up and walked back over to the mini-bar. He refilled his glass and stood sipping the bourbon. He watched Tatiana. She had curled her legs under her and began to suck her thumb. Not in a provocative way, but like a defenceless child seeking the protection of its mother.
The electronic lock released and the attendant entered. It was like watching a hotel employee deliver room service. He carried a silver serving tray with a circular lid. Tatiana remained in her almost foetal position but she watched the attendant like a field mouse watches an owl.
‘I’ll put this on the table for you, sir.’
‘Very well,’ Mangle said, ‘although, could you wait just a moment which I check everything is there?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ he replied and put down the tray.
Mangle walked over and removed the cover. Tatiana’s eyes were pinned wide in trepidation. On the tray sat a hunting knife, a Taser gun, a syringe and a pistol. She uttered a low guttural moan and closed her eyes.
‘Is everything satisfactory, sir?’ the attendant enquired politely.
‘Yes,’ Mangle confirmed as he ran his fingers across the items.
The attendant turned to walk back out of the door. In one fluid motion, Mangle snatched up the syringe, spun around and stabbed the 3inch needle into the back of the man’s neck before administering the full dosage of tetro-dyazine. Tatiana opened her eyes again and watched as the helpless body of the attendant crumpled to the floor. His head fell across the threshold, preventing the automatic closing of the door.
‘What have you done?’ she said, horrified.
Mangle didn’t answer but grabbed another item off the tray. He aimed the Taser at the metal housing on the underside of the camera and pulled the trigger. Two barbed electrodes leaped from the gun and for several seconds unleashed their surge of power. A crackling sound like broken twigs came from within. Mangle hoped he had managed to fry the camera, and before someone had noticed his assault on the attendant.
‘Get up,’ he ordered. Tatiana got tentatively to her feet. ‘And pick those up,’ he told her, gesturing towards the tray.
Mangle wielded the Taser, which had two remaining shots to fire, snatched her hand and stepping over the prostate yet still twitching figure of the attendant, hurried out into the hallway.
He had feared an immediate alarm and confrontation from several security guards, but if the alarm had been triggered, then it was silent, and any security staff were yet to arrive. Mangle moved to the door at the next room. He had hoped for a switch or button to unlock the door automatically, but the faceplate was smooth and featureless. The attendant must have unlocked it remotely.
He took the large hunting knife from Tatiana. One side had a slightly curved, razor-sharp edge; the other, jagged serrated teeth. Firmly gripping the handle he brought the knife tip down in a stabbing motion onto the lock faceplate. The first blow dented it but bounced off, leaving only a small hole in the metal. He stabbed at the lock again, this time perforating its covering.
‘You cannot chop your way into the rooms. Someone will come, someone will come,’ she wailed, looking from left to right up and down the hallway.
Mangle took hold of the Taser and holding it only a few inches from the hole in the lock plate, he fired. The electrodes impregnated the lock with their ejaculation of voltage. A popping and fizzing came from the compromised lock followed by the acrid smell of burning plastic. A loud crack sounded, and to Mangle’s delight, not only that door, but the doors to all of the other booths opened in unison along the hallway.
The incredulous face of Tazeem stared back at him. He was still robed, as was the misty-eyed girl in the room with him, who sat beside his chair with a drink in her hand.
‘Get up! Come on we have to go,’ Mangle barked and ran to Sadiq’s room.
Sadiq lay robeless on the floor, writhing around with two naked girls, all of them unaware that the door had opened. A bag of white powder stood open, and three huge lines remained on the cocaine-dusted tray.
‘You idiot! Either come now or you’re staying here.’
Sadiq’s eyelids fluttered open as he was roused from his narcotic, sexual fugue state. The girls continued kissing and licking his body.
‘What’s happening?’ he slurred.
Mangle stepped in and slapped Sadiq across the face. He walked back out to the hallway. Either Sadiq would follow, or he wouldn’t, but Mangle wasn’t about to waste any more time on him.
‘Which way?’ he asked Tatiana.
She hurried ahead. Tazeem stood by the door to his booth but the girl who was with him wouldn’t come out. Mangle and Tazeem followed Tatiana, all of them barefoot, along the hallway. Mangle caught a glimpse of a man standing at the doorway of the last booth on the row as they rushed past. A middle-aged man, fully naked, with blood streaked down both arms and legs and also over his penis. Mangle’s stomach convulsed at the sight, but the feeling of recognition as their eyes briefly met stayed with him.
At the end of the hallway Tatiana turned left and rushed on. Tazeem looked back over his shoulder and saw Sadiq stagger out of the booth, trying to wrestle on his robe. Tatiana reached a double door, stopped and waited for the others to catch up.
‘I hope this isn’t locked or we have nowhere to go,’ she said, and pushed against it. To their relief the door swung inwards and she stepped into a narrow metal stairwell. Sadiq was the last one through and they descended to the floor below. On the landing there were four doors: two to their left, one directly ahead and one to the right.
‘Which one?’ Mangle hissed.
Tatiana moved to the door to their right and pushed against it. ‘It’s locked!’ she cried, looking back at them. ‘This is our way out.’
‘I don’t know what it is but I have to check it out. I’ll have Tom move them to a different booth whenever the fuck he decides to show himself,’ a man said as he backed out of a doorway to their left.
Instinctively, Tatiana raised the pistol she clutched. Mangle, Tazeem and Sadiq tried to back out of his immediate line of sight.
‘Don’t fucking move,’ she commanded him.
The startled technician spun around, saw the gun pointed at him, and then the other three people in the hallway, and froze.
‘What is it, Bill?’ a voice from inside the room asked.
Tatiana clutched the gun in trembling hands. Sweat beaded her forehead. Perhaps sensing her hesitancy, the technician half-spun to duck back inside the room. Tatiana discharged the weapon’s solitary round. The technician wheezed and clawed at his chest for a moment before collapsing onto the floor.
‘What the fuck?’ the man inside the room shouted.
Mangle sprang forward wielding the hunting knife, and snatching the handle, threw the door open wide.
Computer consoles sat on desks, and the walls of the long rectangular room were lined with an array of security monitors. Some remained black but most displayed an image from one of the booths on the floor above. A seated technician at one of the desks stared back at him.
‘Open that door back there,’ Mangle snarled, and held out the knife menacingly in front of him.
At first Mangle thought the technician must be in shock, as he just blinked at him. But then he saw his hand snaking under the desk. He lunged for the man but it was too late. Flashing red lights pulsed around the room; the silent alarm had been triggered.
‘You’ll never get away,’ the technician stammered.
‘Maybe not, but how much damage do you think I can do with this before anybody gets here?’ Mangle couldn’t believe he was uttering such words, but he knew he had to sound convincing if they were to have any hope of escape.
‘No … no,’ the man whined.
‘Don’t do that, please.’
‘You’d better open the door now, I won’t ask again.’
The technician’s shaking hands fumbled as he tapped on his keyboard.
‘There, it’s open.’
‘I’ll wait up here till one of them shouts that the door below is unlocked as well. That way I won’t have to risk you trapping us in the stairwell.’
The man squeaked, jerked reflexively and immediately began pressing more keys.
‘There, everything is unlocked. Just go and leave me be.’
Mangle turned away from him; he was reasonably sure the technician was telling the truth. He shouted to the others to go down and make sure they had a way out while he waited by the door of the control room. They filed through the door Tatiana had first tried. Sadiq waited and held it open. Mangle looked back at the technician to make sure the man wasn’t about to try anything, but he had pushed his chair back from the console and was holding up his hands to show he posed them no threat.
‘It’s open, Mangle. Come on,’ Tazeem yelled up. Mangle was about to run for the door when he noticed a bank of DVD drives by the computer closest to him.
‘That’s nothing, they aren’t even used,’ the technician said, before Mangle had a chance to ask anything.
Mangle began randomly pushing buttons to eject the drives. After a few seconds, the plastic drawers began to slide out, each proffering a solitary disk. Mangle snatched five of them, and fled for the door Sadiq held open. They ran down the stairway, and the sound of shouting echoed from above as the door slowly closed after them.
‘Hurry up, they won’t be far behind,’ Mangle urged, as he ran into the welcome embrace of the cold night air.
Tazeem needed no further encouragement, and bolted in the direction of the car, Sadiq only a few steps beh
ind. Mangle took Tatiana’s hand and they ran as well as they could over the cracked and uneven concrete.
They’d barely gone a few hundred yards and were wriggling through the holes in the chain-link fence, when voices from behind announced the pursuing security guards had spotted them. Three shots were fired, forcing Mangle’s already accelerated heart rate up even further. Tatiana cried out. At first he thought she must have been hit, but then realised it was a cry of frustration as her hair had become entangled in the ragged fence.
‘Don’t let them catch me,’ she pleaded as Mangle struggled to free her.
Tazeem and Sadiq ran ahead, and after a moment the sound of a car engine fired up. Mangle prayed they weren’t being left behind, as he tugged the last of Tatiana’s hair free from the fence. She let out a squeal as a clump was torn out at the roots. Two more shots rang out. One impacted a few feet from where they stood, scattering pieces of smashed asphalt.
Tazeem’s Mercedes swung around the corner of the warehouse and accelerated towards them. Mangle risked a glance over his shoulder. The security men were almost upon them. He grabbed Tatiana and ran for the car as another bullet lacerated the air above his head. Sadiq threw open the back door of the car as it skidded to a halt, and they both bundled inside.
14
Tazeem sped away from The Club as fast as he dared. They couldn’t risk attracting the attention of the authorities until they had enough evidence to indict the owners and operators. Being suspects in a murder investigation, and God knew what else by now, driving around with wires hanging down from the steering column where Sadiq had hot-wired the car wasn’t a good look.
Tatiana shivered continually and clung to Mangle in the back seat. The shock of her ordeal and shooting the technician was taking hold. He wrapped his robe around them both as best he could, and tried to ignore the sensation of her thighs brushing up against his own as she wrapped her arms around his chest.
It was the early hours of the morning and there was very little traffic on the roads. Three men in a car wearing nothing but bathrobes and a girl in black lingerie made for an unusual spectacle, so Tazeem chose sleepy suburban roads as much as he could for the route back to the bungalow. He was certain no one had followed them back. He hadn’t seen another car on the road for over ten minutes now and they were almost home.