Matthew stepped onto
the scales. Trish, the coordinator, read out his weight. He'd lost three
pounds, bringing him to his target weight. He got the loudest cheer of the
night. He smiled modestly. Under cover of writing down his achievement on his
Weight Warriors pocket card, he looked the women over.
He'd
already had four of them: Angie, Claire, Jane and Sonia. He could have had
Trish too, but he never did coordinators. They were inclined to be vengeful and
more intelligent than their clients. If he got Sharon in the sack tonight, he wouldn't have
to come back next week. He glanced at her. She blushed. He looked around the
room. Angie simpered, Claire grinned, Jane looked down, and Sonia refused to
catch his eye. A good haul. Of course, they were oblivious to their collective
nature, each thought herself the only recipient of his attentions - these women
didn't boast about sex. He could never have got away with it if they did.
Sometimes, when he looked at women, he saw them composed of food. Claire, the
fast food queen, with vanilla milkshake flesh-tones, and hair the stringy,
bleached texture of reconstituted French fries. Jane: cocoa-colored skin and
candy pink lips. Sonia - a dairy maid with dimpled hands like cheese fingers,
and acres of creamy curves.
He
timed his exit so Sharon
was shoulder to shoulder with him. More accurately, her shoulder - mottled but
solid, like prime beef sausage - brushed his elbow. She was nearly as wide as
she was tall, and her blonde moustache showed how inefficient facial bleach
could be. Matthew wished she waxed. Smooth skin was much easier to transmute in
his imagination, especially with his eyes closed.
'May I
offer you a lift home?' He spoke gently, both to avoid startling her if she was
skittish, and to ensure the other women didn't overhear.
Tonight Sharon
would be his J-Lo. He hoped she wasn't a grunter. It was hard to imagine
Jennifer's sultry tones and lavish love-gifts of Rolex and iMac, if the woman
beneath him was honking and squealing. He hoped she wasn't a virgin either. He
hated the tedium of it, and deflowering was always followed by much emotional
guff. He began to hum under his breath, 'I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky,
lucky, I should be so lucky in love.' Sharon
giggled.
Five
hours later, tired and smelling of the magnolia shampoo that was all he could
find in Sharon 's
bathroom, he escaped. It was easy to get away.
'Sharon , I'm so sorry, I
don't know what came over me. You know I'm getting married soon? It's why I'm
at Weight Warriors - to lose weight before the wedding. I just couldn't resist
you, but please ... can we pretend it was just a wonderful dream? I love my
fiancÈe and although she could never match up to you
physically... well, she's blind, and so ....' No fat woman ever impeded his
departure once he mentioned the sightless bride-to-be.
He sat
in the car and dictated a long message to Liz's mailbox. Now it was over to
her. Tonight's Fat Fighters was his last meeting in Stroud. He would be home
with her in three hours. They'd have two weeks together before it was her turn
to come up here. He swung the Volvo around Stroud's rain-slick streets. Overweight
women appreciated a big safe car. The seduction started there, in a seat that
didn't cramp them, riding a suspension that didn't groan under their bulk, with
space to relax and appreciate how Matthew attended to them. The car was his
introduction to their bedrooms - and it worked every time.
Lazily
he calculated the takings. Twenty women in five weeks. Monday night: Weight
Warriors - six women. Tuesday night: Lighter Ladies - six women. Wednesday:
Yoga for Weight loss - only three women bedded there, a disappointing score.
Thursday's Fat Fighters - five women, all of them coy and respectable. His
quota was met; twenty bed-post notches meant he could go home to Liz and relax
for a while. He grinned to imagine how much money they would make from these
lovelorn fatties, then scowled, remembering the strenuous evening with Sharon . Catching sight of
his forehead in the rear view mirror, he relaxed it immediately. Women fell for
his boyish, tousle-haired sensuality. He couldn't afford frown lines.
For a
while now he'd been wondering how they would make their money when he couldn't
do this any more. Nobody stayed young and charming forever. He found it ever
more wearisome to superimpose imaginary women on the chunky bodies he seduced.
He'd never failed yet. But one day, morbid obesity would defeat him - the
tickle of a walrus moustache would not translate in his mind to the silky
tresses of a visionary inamorata and he would wilt ... forever.
Liz
said not to worry. She said she was thinking about what scam to operate when he
ceased to conquer weight-challenged women. He should feel reassured, but he
didn't. Suppose Liz decided he was expendable?
He
pushed the thought back into the mental crevice from which it had crawled and
resolved to think only about money. Money was his aphrodisiac: if all else
failed he could imagine the women - Buddha-like - were composed of soft buttery
gold. Infinitely attractive. Then the bigger they were, the better.
*
'Good morning, may I
speak to Miss Claire Henderson, please?'
'Speaking.'
The
voice was bright, conveying feminine bubbliness. There was nothing to suggest
the speaker was six stone overweight. Liz pondered that, as she continued the
conversation. Very few women had fat voices.
'Miss
Henderson, are you able to speak privately, or would there be a better time to
call you?'
'Why,
what's this about?' Most of the bubbles had popped now, replaced by flat
urgency. Liz always wondered how many of them expected what was coming next.
What proportion of the large unloved had a premonition of certain punishment
for their one horizontal transgression? Suppose she just said, 'Two weeks ago
you had sex with my Matt. You must have known he didn't want you for your
looks. Now he wants payment for services rendered and I'm ringing on his behalf
to collect.' How many would pay up? But that would be the lazy approach. Dear
Matt had worked hard, now it was her turn.
'Miss
Henderson, I'm afraid it's not good news. Mr. Matthew Helme has asked me to
contact you on his behalf. Are you alone?'
'Yes.
Yes I am, what's wrong?' Now the voice was leaden - old, and at least as heavy
as its owner.
'Possibly nothing. I do not wish to alarm you unduly, however ...' Liz allowed
the pause to grow, opening a crack in the universe through which the woman's
worst fears could crawl. '... I am sorry to say Mr. Helme has a communicable
disease.' Another pause. Sometimes the women rushed to fill it, sometimes they
were mute. Neither response reliably predicted their future conduct. Some
garrulous ones baulked at Liz's fees and refused her appointments, while silent
ones could cave in swiftly, handing over cash for three or four 'repeat
treatments'.
'He is
deeply ashamed. He has paid for you to have a private consultation with me to
establish whether he has transmitted any infection to you. This consultation
will be completely confidential and avoid the need for you to visit your doctor
or a clinic for sexual diseases.'
Liz
used 'clinic for sexual diseases' to shock the women into submission. Miss
Henderson was no exception. She accepted the first appointment offered to her.
Liz hung up before the woman could bid for reassurance. Time for a reward: she
hit the media player button on her laptop and the rich sound of JosÈ Carreras singing Nessun Dorma filled the room. She loved
Carreras - he had a voice bigger than himself, unlike Pavarotti whose voice was
smaller than the man.
The
Regency office in which she sat was a sweet gem of architecture. Mellow brick
and paned windows wrapped her in the comforting illusion of old money. It was
on a short lease, of course. Six weeks. The scam always started with the short
lease. She flicked through the spreadsheet, checking the future office rentals.
After
Stroud, it was Taunton .
Matthew - dear boy - would have bedded all the lardy ladies he could manage,
and Liz would spend a fortnight dispensing placebo treatments at £500 a pop from an office in a barn conversion. Then
Telford, a rather austere but impressive office there, and then they'd be off
to Spain .
Matthew would need to restore his tan and Liz liked the Algarve . It
gave her a chance to inspect the half a dozen villas which brought in enough
genuine income to keep the taxman at bay.
She
logged onto the Internet and updated the appointment diary. When Matt got up,
he'd be able to see how many of Stroud's largest ladies were already wriggling
in the net. Then she checked her e-mail account.
Normally she was good at spotting spam, but this time a message got past her,
and she found herself confronted by a hideous image. A pale, huge woman, to
whom a robe clung in obscene detail. It molded over lumpy nipples that showed
bruise-purple through the white fabric. It clung to vile curves, delineating
not just their general form but hugging even the cellulite craters and deep
ominous dimpling on the woman's upper arms and thighs. Her legs were spread and
between them the seaweed tendrils of pubic hair smeared nightmare undertones on
the wet cloth. The woman's expression was blank, her eyes were closed, her skin
maggot pale.
Liz
stared, transfixed with horror. Her thoughts whirled round the giantess like
sparrows caught in a storm. It would be better if the behemoth were naked. The
clothing gave spurious dignity to her gargantuan ugliness. It was terrible to
think people paid to look at this vileness. Even worse - was this the kind of
thing darling Matthew had to deal with? Poor boy, no wonder he was exhausted at
the end of a seduction period. Suppose a woman like this rolled on top of him
in bed? He'd never get her off.
She
shook her head free of the gruesome picture, deleted the e-mail, hit the pause
button so Carreras vanished in mid-note, and moved on to the next call. Angie
Blake was about to have a nightmare come true.
*
Matthew checked the
diary. Liz had surpassed herself. Every woman he had penetrated in Stroud had
taken up her offer of a free private consultation with Dr Elizabeth Cavella. He
wondered if any would dare refuse the treatment Liz prescribed: three courses
of sugar pills discreetly posted on receipt of check.
Today
he had to go to the Carvery for lunch. He'd be back on duty soon and he needed
to be at least thirty-five pounds overweight for the Taunton diet circuit. The thought of eating
made his gorge rise, but he'd force down the garlic bread, roast chicken and New York Cheesecake. He
used as much imagination on meals as he did on women. As he ate fried food, he
imagined fresh sardines, charred over a fire on a Spanish beach. In his
imagination the rich sauces became piquant olives, and the creamy, sugared
coffee turned to sharp wine from an Algarve vineyard.
*
Claire Henderson was
a nervous eater. Since discovering Matthew might have given her the almighty
hellish clap, she'd put on six pounds. That was the first thing she said.
Liz
sighed before speaking. Far too many of them were like this. Didn't they
understand the severity of their plight?
'If
you have contracted syphilis you need not worry about your weight. Before it
kills you, the disease will reduce you to a bald-headed stick.'
Henderson, whom Matt had nicknamed The Stroud Sow, had gone a vile shade of
dirty white. Her skin was exactly the color of a peeled banana, but much less
appetizing.
Liz
had a special seat for the women. They must be properly cowed and humiliated to
be convinced to hand over money on a regular basis and the seat was a major
instrument of their suffering. An old birthing chair, patented in the 1950s, it
had levers and cogs to realign her victims. They sat down as fat women, and she
turned them into vast mounds of supine blubber. The ultimate refinement of this
nastiness was the way the women were reflected back to themselves in the
chair's chrome surfaces and levers. She polished it herself and transported it
in a van Matthew drove. Few women survived the chair with self-esteem intact.
Once
the Stroud Sow was installed, Liz pulled on surgical gloves and resumed her
patter. In the back of her head she could hear dear JosÈ singing 'Some Enchanted Evening'. The Sow might wish it
was 'I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair' but a simple rinse and run
wasn't going to work for her - she was about to invest in a high maintenance
regime.
'Of
course, you're very lucky to have caught me. In a month's time I'm closing my
private practice. I shall be running a fascinating research program for a
pharmaceutical company - it will take up all my time. I shall support any
clients already on my books but I shall not take on any new ones. Now ...'
She
poked vaguely at the Sow's nethers with a wooden tongue depressor. Then with
great care and ceremony she placed the instrument in a clear bag, labeled it,
and stripped off the gloves. Only then did she return the victim to an upright
position.
'We
should have results within a week, or - if you wish to pay for premium service
- I can have the analysis completed by six this evening. Rapid analysis costs
seventy pounds for the lab and my courier costs are another hundred, so adding
in my time to call you at home tonight ... let's say £200?'
The
Sow, weeping, handed over £200. Liz laid out the
programme.
'If
you should be unfortunate enough to have contracted the disease, you have two
choices. You may go to your own doctor and request treatment or ...,' in the
long pause, the victim's frightened eyes welled again with salty terror. 'I can
prescribe it for you privately, and confidentially.' The Sow's gusty sigh of
relief rattled papers on the desk. Liz continued inexorably.
'Some
cases clear in twelve weeks, more intransigent ones can require twenty-four or
even thirty-six weeks of treatment. Each treatment regime will cost you £500 and is supplied by mail. At the end of a course of
treatment I will send you a small kit to use and return, to see if we have
succeeded in eradicating the disease. Each kit costs £500.'
Here
she paused. The Sow nodded so vigorously several of her chins began random
Brownian motion, shivering sideways or galumphing up and down at eccentric
angles. Liz frowned and continued.
'Today's consultation has been paid for by Mr. Helme. He wishes me to convey
his sincere regret for any distress caused to you. Is there anybody with whom
you have had sexual contact since then?
It was
a hundred to one against, of course, but every so often one of these behemoths
had been inspired by Matt's attentions to trap another man. It was easy to
double the income from one appointment by arranging to 'examine' the poor fool.
The patient shook her head dolefully. That was no surprise, generally if they
were fat, they were also stupid, gullible and naïve. They were scared
to consult their own doctors and they had too little life experience to see
they were being gulled. Normal people, non-fat people, would never fall for
this kind of thing. She knew it served them right.
'Good,' said Liz, 'then we don't have to notify anybody else. If you'd like to
rearrange your clothing I'll ring the laboratory on my mobile and organize a
priority analysis.'
Once
outside, Liz inhaled the wet Stroud air greedily. She would give the pig-woman
long enough to poke through the papers on her desk. If the Sow was inquisitive,
she would be reassured by a letter asking Dr Liz to sit on a Royal Commission,
tickets for the Ballet, a receipt for the annual servicing of a Porsche. All
forgeries, of course. Liz was good at this. She knew how to cover her back.
Even if one of the women had second thoughts, she would remember Dr Cavella had
already left general practice to administer research, so there would be no
obvious way to check up on her credentials.
She
texted a quick message to Matt, reminding him to buy sun-cream for their Algarve trip.
She'd missed a call while she was dealing with the Sow, but when she hit the
replay button there was nothing but a strange underwater sighing, like whale
song. She deleted it.
*
Matt stared dolefully
at his chicken. It reminded him of the ruched hips of a big woman with poor
circulation. The kind of woman he knew only too well. The cheesecake was pale
and flat, like a face with features smoothed by excess weight. Raisins took the
place of small eyes, glinting with hurt and shock. For the first time, he
failed to finish his dessert. He looked at the cheeseboard: crumbly pale slabs,
rich golden mounds, sheeny acres of pallid soft calories, like the spread limbs
of victims. He stumbled from the restaurant without leaving a tip.
*
The Sow was sent off,
lumbering and fearful. Liz turned to lunch. She lifted a vacuum flask of
bouillon from her bag and opened the fridge to extract a box labeled 'medical
supplies - refrigerate'. From it she took a bag of pre-packed salad.
As she
sipped her soup she studied the hand holding her spoon. Wrist-bones showed
elegantly through amber skin that diet and sun kept lean and glowing. Matt
called her his 'gazelle'. She'd never been fat, not even plump, even though for
a while she'd seen a fat woman in the mirror. She despised people who had
blubber, except for sweet Matt of course, when he was bulked up for work. She
knew he worried about the drastic weight swings their scheme required, but
she'd said dieting had never done her any real harm, which reassured him.
Idly
she flicked up the laptop screen, wondering if he'd emailed her. It didn't look
like it. But he had installed a new desktop image. Sweet boy. It was of marble
or perhaps ice. Something blue-white and chilly anyway. The draperies of a
Greek statue? Wind-sculpted snow in the Arctic ?
She shivered, peered closer. She saw a blue hollow like ... a navel? Diagonal
lavender shadows were folds of white fabric drawn across a body. It was a
close-up of the disgusting female she'd seen in the earlier e-mail. It must
have contained a virus that had invaded her machine. How ghastly.
She
slammed the laptop shut. Suddenly she didn't feel hungry. She'd make up a few
treatment packs to post out and then have some salad - she didn't want to get
too thin. She was in control of her food, of course, it didn't control her
anymore. No, she'd learned that lesson. It was understandable that she'd lost
her appetite when she saw that grotesque monster, that hideous creature, on her
computer screen. Involuntarily her eyes turned to the closed laptop and she
shivered again. First work - then lunch. She was managing her diet, she would
eat; she wasn't making excuses to skip a meal. She didn't do that anymore.
*
Matthew felt fat.
Gravity pulled his six course meal down, and his heart with it. He was soundly,
roundly, utterly, depressed. He sat in the car for a while, trying to summon
the energy to drive. Big lunches always did this, drained his vitality and left
him prostrate with melancholy. Eventually he turned the key, wishing Liz would
hurry up and think of another way to make money.
*
Liz looked at the
neat pile of padded brown envelopes - discreet and lucrative. She wondered how
much longer Matt could play his role. One of the women hadn't followed up on
her last test kit by placing a new order ... odd. Liz flicked through the
address labels, unwilling to open the laptop and look at the spreadsheet of
names there. It was Cynthia Edwards, first course completed two weeks ago, kit
used and returned to the PO Box that Liz maintained for just this purpose. Liz
had sent out the standard letter, saying Miss Edwards wasn't yet clear of
disease but a new treatment would probably 'resolve the situation'. No reply.
Which one was Edwards? Oh yes, the Grantham Gargantua. Probably the biggest
woman Liz had ever seen. The chair had creaked and groaned under her weight
like a foundering ship. Rich too. It would be a shame if she didn't pay for a
new course of treatment. Something else about the Edwards woman nagged at her
mind. Manacles. That was it. When Matt got to the huge woman's huge house he'd
found a pair of handcuffs hanging over the front door. He'd wondered what he
was getting into - but it turned out handcuffs were the woman's logo, meant to
show how businesses were manacled to the big software companies. Edwards had
described herself to Matt as the key that unlocked the cuffs of business. She'd
said she hated the way people were tricked into paying for things they didn't
need and couldn't use, just because technology moved so fast.
Her
phone beeped, probably Matt ringing to tell her what he'd had for lunch. She
grabbed it. The same sound again ... eerie sighing, long bubbling ripples like
waves on a beach. It must be a fault. She looked at the screen and saw an image
forming with portentous slowness. Maybe it was an advertisement. Scuba-diving?
Tropical holidays? A beach holiday would be fun - they could skip Spain this time and go to the Caribbean .
The image resolved into a pallid arm, pale as marble, monumental, powerful. It
flexed and turned as though reaching for something. It dripped water. The huge
wet hand plunged out of the screen, fingers spread wide ....
Liz
felt her throat constrict. A vast power squeezed her airways shut. Scooting
backwards on her wheeled chair, she tried to escape the pressure on her throat.
Her hands fluttered around her neck, the bird-like bones no match for the
strength that held her. Terror congested her face and panicked her heart into
surges and troughs. By degrees she quieted until she sat still, eyes wide and
dark, staring at nothing. Her hands fell to her sides, shaping a gentle
composition of loss. Even in death she was elegant.
*
Matt felt a bump. Had
he run over something? Surely he'd have seen it though. He glanced in the
mirror. Nothing in the road. Another bump: harder. Was something trapped
beneath the car? A third bump, this time a bang on the grille so violent it
made the steering wheel shudder. He thought he saw a vague white shape. He
shook his head hard. Too much food had made him slow. He needed to pull over
and work out what had happened.
The
next blow struck the car from behind, so it jumped forward, kangarooing along
the road. In the rear-view mirror Matt could see a huge dent in the boot. He
struggled to regain control, but the vehicle jounced along as though pummeled
by a giant fist. Fenders crumpled and dints the size of footballs appeared in
the bonnet and wings. Within seconds the car had banged off the road and
embedded itself in a grove of trees. The airbag inflated and deflated, but Matt
was past saving. His neck had snapped and his head hung at an obscene angle,
eyes gazing sadly down at his well-nourished frame.
*
'Sarge,
you remember that Edwards woman?' W.P.C. Carter asked.
'It'll
be a cold day in Hell before I forget her,' said the Desk Sergeant. 'The
nastiest suicide I've ever seen. What kind of person handcuffs themselves to
the steps at the deep end of their own swimming pool?'
'A
rich person?' quipped Carter before returning to her task. 'Anyway, there's a
report here that relates to her. Except ...'
'Except what? Don't start what you can't finish, and that includes sentences.'
The Sergeant had an aphorism for every situation.
'Well
... you know that vehicular death I queried? The man who'd driven his Volvo
into a wood? The reason I asked for details was the trace evidence suggested
he'd hit somebody. No victim was found, but Scene of Crime Officer reported it
was a person wearing a cotton garment impregnated with chlorine. They found
blood, pool-water, and clothing scraps adhering to the car.'
'Did
they really?' The Sergeant paused for a second, shook his head, and carried on
filling in the Day Book.
'The
Edwards woman had cuts on her legs and hands, remember? When we queried them,
the pathologist said they were 'inconclusive'. They must have happened post
mortem, because they hadn't bled, but there was no evidence of anything in the
pool that could have caused them.' W.P.C. Carter wasn't sure where she was
going with this conversation. She didn't like anything about it. The Edwards
suicide had been a grim business.
They'd
been called to the house by a hysterical cleaning woman. Cynthia Edwards had
climbed into her pool, cuffed herself to the steps and sat down to die. She'd
been a big woman, huge in fact. They'd had to drain the pool to get her out.
There was no obvious reason for her to have killed herself. She was rich and
solvent, and apparently she'd seemed happy enough recently. Her business as an
internet technology consultant was lucrative enough for her purchase a
substantial mansion on the outskirts of town. Until around three months ago
she'd even been a member of some diet club. She'd recently visited a Harley Street
clinic, which refused to disclose anything - except to say the health concern
which had brought her to them was a false alarm. She had not been unwell and
was not suffering any disease that could have triggered a death-wish.
The
immense bulk of her, sitting implacable and pale, under the lucent water had
haunted the officers called to the scene. There was something horribly powerful
about her, even in death. Something stubborn and forceful projected from her,
and surrounded the scene with a tangible, threatening misery. Worse than all of
it was Kylie in the background, warbling 'I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky,
lucky ....' You had to be irredeemably sick in the head to commit suicide to the
sound of Kylie Minogue.
'So -
the way I see it, Sarge - we've got a car that drove off the road after hitting
somebody wearing cotton clothing and dripping pool water and we've got a dead
woman in a pool wearing a torn cotton robe, with lots of cuts and grazes.
Doesn't that sound odd to you? The only problem is, we found Cynthia Edwards
dead, about ... um ... two days before the crash.'
'W.P.C. Carter, if I were you, I'd keep my wilder imaginations to myself.' The
Sergeant moved closer though, to peer over her shoulder at the fax. 'What's
that then? That's not a hit and run report.'
'No,
it's not. It's a murder. Elizabeth Cavella; the wife of the man who died in the
car crash. She was found strangled in her office earlier today. The analysis of
the fingerprints on her neck shows the killer was very large and covered in
chlorine.'
'Odd,'
said the Sergeant.
'Mmm,
something else too,' Carter shivered. 'The same music playing at all the
scenes: the swimming pool, the car stereo and the laptop - all belting out
Kylie Minogue, singing 'I Should Be So Lucky'.
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