Last Rites Page 10

  ‘Adult content,’ Amy murmured and clicked on the entry. Two scantily clad blondes appeared holding signs that read share files and enjoy videos. There was a light blue sign announcing enter here. Amy clicked on it.

  MEGAROTIC porn appeared before her. Below it there were thumbnails accompanied by descriptions.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she murmured.

  The second picture in the column was of her own face.

  SLUT GETS ASS FUCKED AT ORGY.

  Amy could feel herself shaking. She prepared to click on the image, not really sure if she wanted to see it or not. Finally, she did.

  SLUT GETS ASS FUCKED AT ORGY she saw displayed over the small screen where it announced buffering video. Amy waited. She heard the voices a millisecond before the image appeared and, instantly, she realised that she was looking at herself on the screen.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ she gasped.There was a section to the right of the screen marked RELATED VIDEOS. Amy saw her own image in all ten of the thumbnails there too. One of the captions was the same, another read DIRTY SLUT ENJOYS GANGBANG. Another proclaimed WHORE LOVES LESBO PLAY AND THEN ASSFUCK.

  On the main screen, she could see herself writhing with pleasure, framed by the two girls she’d been with the previous night but their faces were pixelated out, only hers was visible, slicked with perspiration and contorted in pleasure. But this time, unlike the previous night, she could also see the other figures gathered around the bed. All male. All naked and all sporting very prominent erections. As she watched she could see two of them slowly stroking their stiff members, their muttered words inaudible to her. Like the two girls on the bed with her, their faces were also pixelated and unrecognisable.

  Amy felt as if she had been dipped in iced water as she watched the clip. She tried to swallow but her throat was too dry.

  As she watched she saw the camera pan down, a little shakily, the full length of her body, from her tousled blonde hair to her breasts that were gleaming with saliva. Then further, towards her neatly trimmed mound that was partially hidden by one of the girls’ heads. Finally the user of the camcorder moved the camera all the way down to her feet and back up her shapely legs once again.

  When the tape reached the point of the first anal penetration Amy paused it. She stared at the image before her, her veins still feeling as if they were full of iced water but an undeniable warmth now between her legs, as if seeing the incidents of the previous night had aroused her in spite of herself. She flicked the play button once more and watched as the first young lad climaxed, spurting his semen into her anus.

  Then she switched it off and sat staring at a blank screen for long seconds. She was about to watch the remainder of the tape when her phone rang.

  26

  North London

  Peter Mason sipped at his coffee and noticed that his wife was watching him over the rim of her cup.

  ‘I must have seen more of you since we split up than I did when we were living together,’ Natalie told him.

  Mason smiled.

  ‘It seems like that,’ he agreed. ‘But then again, I’ve had a lot to tell you just recently.’

  He put down his cup and held her gaze for a moment longer.

  ‘I really do appreciate this, Nat,’ Mason told her. ‘The way you’ve been there for me. The way you’ve listened. I know I had no right to expect it.’

  ‘Like you say, who else were you going to tell?’ She took another sip from her cup then put it down. ‘This school in Buckinghamshire, Langley Hill,’ she began. ‘How much do you know about it?’

  ‘It’s one of the top private schools in the country. A slightly better class of pupil than I’ve been used to.’

  ‘You always said kids were kids, it didn’t matter where they came from.’

  ‘I think it helps if they don’t come from sink estates,’ Mason said, flatly.

  ‘What happened to your youthful socialist zeal, Pete? The “everyone is equal and entitled to an education” rant you were so fond of when I first met you.’

  ‘It’s easy to lose your idealism when you’ve been beaten almost to death by the kind of people you used to spend your life defending.’ He reached for his cigarettes and lit one. ‘Besides, idealism is for the young. When you get to my age ideals are a bit like old photos. You have them but you don’t like showing them off.’

  ‘Can you adapt to the way they teach at this private school?’ Natalie offered almost apologetically. ‘It is going to be a complete change and you know you’re not very fond of change.’

  ‘The school must think so or they wouldn’t have offered me an interview, would they? Moving from public to private sector teaching isn’t a problem unless you allow it to be. Like you say, kids are kids.’

  ‘Even rich kids?’ Natalie mused.

  ‘I’ll have to see, won’t I?’

  ‘What time do you leave in the morning?’ she enquired.

  ‘I’ll leave early,’ he informed her. ‘Make sure I don’t get stuck in traffic. I shouldn’t have any trouble finding the place. They sent a map and, apparently, it’s almost impossible to get lost.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s hope they’re right. They said I could have lunch with them after the interview. Have a look around the school.’

  ‘And what if you don’t like what you see?’

  ‘If they offer me the job I’m taking it, Nat. No matter what.’

  ‘Ring me and let me know how it goes.’

  He nodded and took another puff on his cigarette.

  ‘What’s the nearest town to the school?’ Natalie wanted to know.

  ‘A little place called Walston,’ Mason informed her. ‘Some sleepy little market town I’d imagine. A picture postcard place.’ He smiled. ‘I can’t wait.’

  27

  Walston, Buckinghamshire

  Amy Coulson sat at the desk in her bedroom, her eyes fixed on the screen of the laptop.

  The MSN dialogue boxes seemed to fill the screen.

  WOT A SLUT

  SLAG

  UR A DIRTY BITCH

  And a dozen others that she could see just by sitting where she was. If she read lower then there were dozens more messages of a similar ilk, all emblazoned in accusatory letters. The fact that some were accompanied by smiley faces didn’t really make her feel any better.

  WAIT TIL UR MUM N DAD FIND OUT

  Of all the messages, that was the one that burned with the most painful clarity.Amy gazed at it again and sniffed. She wanted to cry but felt that there were no more tears inside her. She’d been weeping almost uncontrollably for the last four hours, her desperate sobs occasionally interrupted by bouts of furious anger.

  She’d tried to phone Andrew Latham several times (the first occasion being after she’d discovered the recording of herself on the first of the four sites that he’d posted it on) but to no avail. Latham wasn’t answering. She’d had a text from him. It was still plastered across her mobile now.

  SILLY GIRL

  She picked up the mobile and flung it away angrily. It slammed into the wall close to her bed, several hairline cracks spreading across the display screen.

  She would have rung the others too but she didn’t have their numbers. Only Latham’s. She’d spoken to the two girls before but only to discover their names. Sammi Bell and Jo Campbell. The blonde and the brunette. Simple as that. Nothing else. She didn’t really care either. As far as she was concerned they were to blame as well. Perhaps they had known what Latham was going to do when he’d invited her to the party. Maybe they had been as willing to share in her humiliation as he was.

  Except he wasn’t sharing in it, was he? He had engineered and overseen her humiliation. His anonymity was still intact. His and the two girls and the other four who had been present the previous night. No one knew their names or identities. Amy was the only one recognisable in the video, God help her.

  She wondered why Latham had done this to her. She had never harmed him, never caused him any pain. Did he hold her in so much contempt that this kind
of public humiliation was second nature? Was that why he had posted the video on so many different websites?

  LIVESEX

  MEGAROTIC

  PORNHUB

  XVIDEOS

  PIMPBUS

  He had put links to all of them on his Facebook page, the bastard.Anyone clicking on the networking site would have instantly been able to find the other sites and, to her distress, many obviously already had.

  She looked at the site names, all minimised at the bottom of her screen. When she clicked on each one an image of her surrounded by her tormentors appeared. In the first she was on all fours with a figure behind her, his penis deep inside her anus. Amy clicked on the site and closed it. In the second she was still on all fours but this time there was thick white semen oozing from her backside. She closed that site too. The third image showed her with a penis in her mouth, her eyes closed in ecstasy, her tongue poised on the bulbous head of the erection. The fourth was of her lying on her back while two of the boys masturbated close to her face.Amy closed those two as well.

  Again she sniffed but, once more, no tears came. Amy sat back on her chair, her eyes still fixed on the screen.

  WAIT TIL UR MUM N DAD FIND OUT

  She swallowed hard as she read the message once again.

  WAIT TIL UR MUM N DAD FIND OUT

  At last, more tears did come, trickling slowly down cheeks that were already damp with moisture.

  What would they say? What would they do? A tiny voice inside her mind told her that they need never find out but a louder and more dominant one insisted that it was only a matter of time before her humiliation was discovered.

  And then what?

  They won’t throw you out. They won’t judge you.

  But then Amy knew that her own humiliation would pale into insignificance compared with the shame they would feel. Her dad would probably shout at her, tell her she was stupid to be fooled the way she was but, in time, he would forgive her. Her mum would also be angry but, in time, they would both accept what had happened. Wouldn’t they?

  But even if they did forgive, they would still be ashamed. They wouldn’t tell her that but she would feel it in every angry glance, hear it in every heated word.

  And Amy knew she couldn’t carry a burden like that. She got to her feet and padded across to her bedroom door. She was alone in the house. Her dad was on night shift, her mum wouldn’t be home for another hour or so, longer if there were any unexpected admissions to the local A and E where she worked as a sister. Amy knew that she wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Barefoot, like a penitent trudging towards longed-for salvation, she made her way down the stairs and headed towards the back door. From there, she moved towards her dad’s shed.

  All she needed was inside.

  28

  North London

  Mason couldn’t sleep. Despite the two Valium he’d taken an hour before retiring, he still couldn’t drift off into the oblivion he wanted so much. He tried to tell himself that it was the excitement that was hampering his rest. The adrenalin coursing through his veins at the thought of his interview the following day. He knew what success in that interview would mean. Not just a prestigious job in one of the top private boarding schools in the country but the chance to begin a new life. A fresh beginning away from the city he had lived in all his life but had come to hate so passionately.

  Only in the last few hours, alone and in the silence of the night, had he begun to contemplate what failure would cost him. If he didn’t get this job then what else was there? Search endlessly for other positions in the capital? Move to another part of the country and just hope that something turned up? Because things just didn’t turn up, did they? Not in real life. Not in his life anyway. Why, he wondered, couldn’t things just run smoothly?

  Why had he been attacked and almost killed?

  Why had his daughter died of viral meningitis?

  He sat up in bed and shook his head, as if that action would dispel those thoughts. He gazed into the gloom of the bedroom, one eye on the dormant TV set perched on a cabinet on the far side of the room. Unable to sleep, he jabbed the appropriate button on the remote and images appeared on the screen. He flicked agitatedly from channel to channel. News. A history programme complete with sign language for the deaf. A documentary about motorway safety and baseball. Fucking baseball.

  Mason sighed wearily and swung himself out of bed. He wandered through into the kitchen and filled the kettle, propping himself against one of the worktops as he waited for it to boil. He screwed a cigarette between his lips and reached for his lighter. He flicked it and found he was out of fuel.

  ‘Shit,’ he grunted and took the cigarette out of his mouth for a moment before deciding to light it from the flaring blue flame of the gas hob. He sucked hard on the cigarette then blew out a stream of smoke, watching it unfurl in the air like an opening flag.

  He wondered if it was too late to ring Natalie. Too late to burden her with his doubts and anxieties.

  She’s probably asleep.

  He checked the clock on the oven.

  It’s not her business any more. It hasn’t been since you walked out on her. Despite the fact that you’ve seen more of her since you left hospital than you have since Chloe died.

  He wondered if he would miss her once he got the job at Langley Hill.

  (If he got the job at Langley Hill.)

  And decided that he would.

  And if you don’t get the job? What then? Do you crawl back to her? Hope that she’ll have you? Hope that she’ll forget what a selfish, gutless fucker you were after Chloe’s death?

  The kettle boiled and Mason poured the hot liquid onto a tea bag, stirred it around a little then dumped the bag in the sink. He carried the mug into the sitting room and crossed to the window, gazing out into the street below.

  He wondered why neither of them had ever found anyone else after they’d split up. Natalie was still a very attractive woman and yet she’d managed to avoid any emotional entanglements and he himself had never even been close to stumbling into another relationship. Had he done the wrong thing by leaving? Should they still be together?

  Yes. And Chloe should still be alive.

  Mason sipped slowly at his tea and, once more, tried to force the image of his daughter from his thoughts.

  Coward. Can’t even face her in your mind. Just like you couldn’t when she was dying. When she needed you.

  He turned away from the window and sat on his sofa, gazing blankly into the air. From the bedroom he could still hear the TV set, the words drifting languidly to him much like the smoke from his cigarette that was forming, shroud-like, around his head.

  A single tear rolled unannounced from his eye and trickled down his cheek. Mason didn’t even bother to wipe it away.

  29

  Walston, Buckinghamshire

  Margaret Coulson dug wearily in the pocket of her coat and pulled out her front door key. Even as she pushed it into the lock she shook her head irritably. The walk from the bus stop to her house normally took less than ten minutes. The entire journey from the hospital only took thirty minutes but not tonight. It had taken her more than an hour and a half to get from work to her home. First she’d been delayed at the hospital because of a car accident, the two victims having been brought in only minutes before she was due to leave. Fortunately neither of them were hurt too badly, Margaret mused. The worst injury was to the driver who’d suffered a fracture of his left wrist and some deep cuts to his face. The passenger had suffered only minor cuts to her face and neck but was in shock. No one else had been involved.

  Despite the relative simplicity of the injuries, the delay in the arrival of a doctor to attend to them had ensured that Margaret was already late by the time she got on the bus to begin her homeward journey. When the bus then succumbed to a flat tyre five minutes after leaving the stop, she realised that it was just one of those nights.

  Just one of those nights. Margaret turned the key in the lock and
wished that she could be as philosophical about the delay. She was already tired. She hadn’t been sleeping very well during the last two or three nights and a friend of hers at work had given her a couple of sleeping pills to ease the discomfort. She had been hoping to try them out a lot sooner. She was on the same shift for the next week and, in many ways, she preferred the late hours. Except on this particular night. When she was on early shift she was at least home with her husband during the day and she saw more of her daughter too. Perhaps, she thought, trying to salvage something from what had been a lousy night, she and Amy could even have lunch together some time this week.