The Camp Read online

  He looked at her again. She was cute, petite, but he did not recognise her, just a feeling of distant familiarity as though they had met somewhere once. One of the commune girls, perhaps. He took another drag on his cigarette, it tasted sour and he stubbed it out in the bedside ashtray. His headache had subsided and he became aware of another sensation, a much more pleasurable one. In the half-light he glanced from the girl to himself, smiled at what he saw. This was something he had been lacking for weeks.

  Slowly he stretched out a hand, touched the girl’s flat stomach, ran his fingers down it until he came to the elastic of those panties, and hesitated. He wished he could remember who she was? But did it really matter? She would not be here on the bed with him if she wasn’t willing.

  She stirred, he felt her limbs move, tense. And then her eyes opened and she stared up at him, met his gaze, and there was an expression of puzzlement on her pert features. A smile, a forced one, her tiny fingers closing over his own and removing them from her underwear, gently but firmly. She said, ‘All in good time, but aren’t you forgetting something?’

  His mouth dropped open. In one second his companion had become a total stranger. He must have been mistaken about having seen her somewhere before, so what the hell was she doing with him in unfamiliar surroundings?

  ‘Who are you?’ His voice sounded husky, a hoarse whisper loaded with uncertainty.

  ‘I’m … Cindy.’ A pause as though she had had to search for a pseudonym, even now wasn’t certain about it. She struggled up into a sitting position, looked round the room. ‘This must be your place because it certainly isn’t mine …’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Alan replied because it was the easiest way out. She didn’t know it, neither did he, so it became his grubby flat from here on and saved a lot of problems. ‘You came back here with me and you were so tired you fell asleep.’ That sounded feasible.

  ‘I guess so.’ There was a slight tremor in her voice. ‘I do sometimes go back to a client’s own place if he wishes it.’

  ‘Whatever are you talking about?’ Watching her closely, this had to be either a joke or a sinister trick. ‘What do you mean … clients?’

  ‘Customers.’ Her reply was sharp now. ‘Men like you. Are you still drunk?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, it wasn’t like a hangover, more muzzy, dulled his thinking. ‘We … we went to a restaurant, didn’t we?’ A vague recollection of sitting in a crowded room, eating with this girl, and then his mind went blank again. Okay, a restaurant; they had eaten together, maybe met there and afterwards come back here.

  ‘I … think we did have something to eat out.’ She seemed as uncertain as he was. ‘You must have slipped something into my drink?’ There was venom in her tone now, a direct accusation. She looked across the room to where her clothes were draped untidily over a chair. ‘I don’t like those kind of tricks, mister, and I’m leaving right now!’

  ‘Hold it!’ He grabbed her arm, pulled her back, felt her start to struggle. ‘You’re not going anywhere. I want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘You’re stupid,’ she retorted. ‘You thought you could get what you wanted for nothing, for the price of a meal and a knockout drop. Try anything and I’ll scream the place down. The police will come and you’ll be charged with rape. Get it?’

  Alan felt slightly sick and his headache was starting to come back, a pounding in his temples and his earlier arousement had gone. ‘Just tell me what all this is about,’ he sighed. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘What do you want?’ She raised her voice. ‘Let me spell it out for you, mate. I’m on the game. I’m a prostitute, if you’re that thick and don’t know what it means. My fee is thirty quid and you have to wear something. Those are the rules. Got it? Make your mind up or else I’m off now. You’ve wasted my time.’

  His vision blurred, the room tilted, righted itself again. She wasn’t kidding, something told him she was speaking the truth. She had no reason to lie. ‘I get it,’ he said, closed his eyes, opened them again. She was still there, sitting up on the bed, the fingers of her free hand hooked in her flimsy underwear. For thirty pounds she would pull them down … He released his hold on her, moved off the bed.

  ‘Well?’

  He walked towards the door. The key was still in the lock, its orange tab with the number 24 painted on it hanging down. He could have unlocked it, told her to get the hell out of here. And in five minutes she would be back with the police. It was a trap of some kind, he didn’t understand it, didn’t waste time trying to. He understood one thing only – he could not afford to let her go. The lock clicked, the key scraped as it was withdrawn.

  ‘Hey, what’s this?’ The girl who called herself Cindy was on her feet. She was clearly frightened now, backing up against the wall, holding on to her panties as though she feared they might be ripped forcibly from her body. ‘Don’t you dare touch me or I’ll scream.’

  ‘Scream all you like.’ He jerked a thumb towards the window. ‘Nobody will hear you in all that din, or if they do they’ll just think you’re screaming like a dozen other birds out there because the big wheel, or whatever it is, is turning their guts upside down. Go on, scream and see for yourself.’

  Oh, Christ, he could have punched her stupid little face, knocked seven sorts of stuffing out of her. She was up to something and now it had backfired on her. The stupid scheming wench, she wasn’t going to get away with it. For some reason she was here so she could bloody well stay.

  ‘Look, tell you what,’ she was trembling, starting to panic, ‘I’ll let you have me for free if you’ll let me go. Please!’

  ‘No deal,’ he grinned, held up the key and dangled it, let it clink on its fob. ‘I’m not sure whether I want to screw or not. I’ll give it some thought. But, in the meantime, you won’t be going anywhere. Understand?’

  She nodded and began to cry.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.’ Professor Morton flicked through some notes on his desk, sipped a lukewarm cup of vending machine coffee, then felt for his pipe in his pocket. Signs which Ann Stackhouse had come to recognize; the other was well-satisfied with what he had read.

  ‘It’s working out, then?’ She fidgeted with a shorthand notebook on the opposite side of the desk, dog-eared a page and straightened it out again. She kept her eyes on the blank page.

  ‘Absolutely.’ He paused to get the long-stemmed rustic briar alight, puffed out clouds of aromatic Cavendish tobacco smoke and let the pipe dangle from a corner of his mouth as he spoke. ‘The Evanses are still discussing their plans for the Big Trek south. They’re sweating in winter clothing and feeling the intense cold!’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘But, as yet, they still have not plucked up the courage to venture out-of-doors. We’re watching them. Just as we’re keeping a close eye on the hippie and his girlfriend.’

  ‘What are they up to?’ In a way she did not want to know, pitied them in spite of her experience at their table a couple of nights ago. The fellow had stunk like a pigsty and they were both confirmed drug addicts. Maybe it was their own drugs, she attempted to appease her troubled conscience and failed miserably. Oh, God, it was like working in a Nazi concentration camp, carrying out bizarre experiments on human beings. Where was the difference? There wasn’t one, except that this was supposed to be harmless. If it wasn’t, she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.

  ‘The girl is convinced she’s a prostitute,’ Morton laughed again. ‘My God, you wouldn’t find a better one in a red light area! He’s confused, is keeping her prisoner in case she fetches the police and accuses him of kidnap and rape. We’ll have to watch the situation closely in case he becomes violent. This one’s a double experiment, their drugs and ours, a kind of drug cocktail, if you see what I mean.’

  She did, only too well. Suppose the guy got violent, killed his girlfriend. Or had a heart attack. They were venturing on unknown territory, the results could be catastrophic.

  ‘What ab
out Beebee?’ It was a direct question, he was watching her closely. ‘I thought you were going to fix him last night? This morning he appears perfectly normal, went swimming in the pool then spent the afternoon on the beach. What went wrong?’

  Ann kept her eyes on her jotter, hoped he did not notice how her hands trembled slightly, did not reply immediately in case the tremor in her voice gave her away. At last she said, ‘I was all ready for him but he only had a coffee. Apparently he had eaten fish and chips earlier. A junk food addict. And, anyway, his girl walked out on him and I thought I’d better speak to you first. We were lined up for another double experiment and I wondered if you still wanted me to go ahead with a single.’ It sounded plausible and her lover did not appear to notice.

  ‘But of course!’ He raised an eyebrow in mock astonishment that she should even think otherwise. ‘Beebee could be the most interesting so far, according to the report which you submitted on him.’

  Ann winced. She had betrayed a confidence, exceeded her duty when she had no need. She didn’t know why. Possibly because of Tony but within 24 hours her feelings had changed. Yesterday he had been the champion of Mankind in her estimation, one about to instigate a psychological revolution within their own species. Today he was cruel and ruthless. The end justified the means, but suddenly the means were unacceptable to her.

  ‘Take the Evanses, for example.’ He was leaning back in his chair, enveloped in a haze of pipe smoke, basking in his own success even at this early stage. ‘Conventional, below average intelligence. Food, beer, fags and football for him. Your Mr Working Man at the lower end of the echelon. For her, drudgery at the sink and dreaming of an exciting lover on the side. Their combined fantasies produce the New Ice Age. A couple of hippies who have deliberately sunk themselves to the depths of the social scale, class masochism. She becomes a whore, he totally confused keeps her prisoner. A combination of cannabis and C-551. Now, Beebee … how will he react, particularly having just been jilted by his girlfriend? Will he go in search of a woman? Or become a suicidal recluse?’

  ‘It’s horrible!’ She could not disguise her disgust, her fear. ‘If anything happens …’

  ‘It won’t.’ He was leaning forward now, watching her closely. ‘But if it should then it won’t be our fault. We have taken every possible precaution. The chalets are bugged, we have men ready to move in at the slightest sign of trouble.’

  ‘We could be too late,’ she snapped.

  ‘Nonsense.’ His mouth hardened, his eyes were chips of ice beneath the hooded brows. ‘Look, one cannot start becoming emotionally involved. We have picked out a number of people, at random, from the register of guests, working on the little we know about them. Mostly the only information we have is their occupations, albeit a guide, but little more. You went to town on Beebee, chatted him up, the result of which was some very useful data. Take him tonight!’

  It was a clipped command, a whisper with the power of a shout. She felt its force, found herself nodding. ‘All right, Tony. I was only trying to be helpful.’

  ‘Leave that side of it to me. You have the easy part, one tablet dropped into food, the drug dissolves immediately. No taste, undetectable. We do the rest. I don’t honestly see what you are worrying about.’

  ‘I guess I’m overtired,’ which was certainly true. Two nights in succession spent at the luxury cabin chalet and neither of them had slept more than a couple of hours. The professor, though, seemed indefatigable, no trace of tiredness. Alert and ruthless. She found herself shuddering. ‘I’ll see to it.’

  ‘Good girl.’ He relaxed visibly. ‘Maybe we could meet in the wine bar about ten. They do some excellent bar food.’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ her eyes dropped back down to her jotter, ‘I think I’ll get an early night tonight. Just for once.’

  ‘Of course.’ A kindly smile. ‘Tomorrow night, then?’

  She detected concern, a lover sensing that perhaps an affair was not going well. ‘All right.’ She rose to her feet. The meeting, the briefing was over. Now it was back to the restaurant and the other half of her dual role. Her nerves were at full stretch and that wasn’t solely due to C-551.

  ‘Hi!’ Jeff Beebee looked up with a smile as Ann Stackhouse joined him at the table. Tonight she was not wearing her usual spotless white overall, instead a long summer dress graced her slim figure. She had obviously been to the hairdressing salon today, he thought, and it was nice to kid yourself that she had done it for you. She hadn’t, one had to be realistic, for this was only a camp dinner date and she probably took advantage of single male guests buying her an off-duty meal. Still, it was a nice thought.

  ‘You’ve been lying in the sun all day.’ She admired his tan, his skin was the kind that browned rather than turned a typical holidaymaker’s lobster red. ‘And I’ve been stuck in a stifling office from nine till seven.’

  ‘Long hours.’ He played with his fork nervously. ‘I know. During the summer months I often start at eight and work right through till dark. You have to because there’s so many days during the bad weather when you’re laid off. What’s it like spending your days working with food? In your case you certainly haven’t put on any weight!’

  They both laughed. She was uneasy again, that creeping feeling of guilt. In her handbag was the tiny grey tablet. Conjuring, sleight of hand. So easy. The waitress interrupted them with the starters; fruit juice for Ann, consommé for her companion. She unclipped the bag on her knee, clicked it shut again. Leave it until the main course. Procrastination because something more than her courage was failing her. It’s harmless, and in any case we’re monitoring every experiment closely. Failing that, there’s an antidote. This is just another job, for the good of Mankind.

  Small talk, she was having difficulty in concentrating. The conversation briefly touched on Gemma and he dismissed it nonchalantly. ‘Just think,’ he grinned, ‘if she hadn’t walked out then I wouldn’t be dining with you tonight. I’d have her complaining about everything under the sun. They say it’s an ill wind … By the way, I wasn’t over-impressed with the minced beef last night.’

  ‘Oh!’ She thought for one awful moment that she might be blushing.

  ‘Nothing to do with the beef,’ he went on, ‘just that I seem to have gone off meat these days. Once it used to be ham or corned beef for snap and then steak or chops for dinner when I got home. But lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about meat eating. I mean, we breed animals just to slaughter them, confine them throughout their life and pump them full of ghastly chemicals. Then there’s the trauma of the abattoir. Exploitation, that’s what it is. And if we aren’t killing them for food then we’re experimenting on them. Inject this one with formula A and that one with formula B, and see how they react. Meaningless research, probably to find out how some face cream reacts on the skin, whether or not it’s cancer-causing. If you stop to think about it, you find you go off eating meat. At least, I do. I mean, how would you like to be experimented on?’

  His words took her right in the stomach, balled her intestines for a second or two. She found herself looking anywhere but at her companion. Oh, Christ, he’s guessed! Don’t be bloody stupid, girl, you can read that sort of thing in the newspapers every day. Demonstrations, protests. ‘Experiment on humans, not animals!’ Then some nutter would go and inject arsenic into frozen turkeys in a supermarket or into chocolate bars. Which is virtually what I’m doing now. She squeezed her bag shut again.

  ‘I’ve told you all about Gemma,’ he looked at her over a forkful of lasagne, ‘and bored the … the life out of you. Now it’s your turn to get your own back. Tell me about your boyfriend?’

  Joking but there was an underlying insistence, a curiosity that went deeper than casual interest. She hesitated, saw Tony Morton in her mind, silver-haired and watching her with a stern disapproving expression out of a haze of Gold Block smoke. Tell him you’re spoken for, Ann!

  ‘I don’t have a regular boyfriend,’ she forced the words out, ‘I had
one once and he bored me.’ She knew she was blushing now, embarrassed because she was lying. I have a man old enough to be my father who screws the arse off me and I let him because he’s my boss. He buys me anything I want. I’m a prostitute just like that girl in chalet 24 thinks she is.

  ‘Your hobby is disappointing prospective boyfriends, then?’ She detected a new eagerness in him, tried to ignore it but found herself looking into his eyes and smiling back at him. Don’t be silly, you’ve only known him a day and this isn’t really a date. Yes, it is, and you lied to your lover to keep it.

  ‘I guess I’ve been too wrapped up in my career,’ she found herself saying. ‘I put my degree before boyfriends at college. The same went for work. Right up until now.’ Oh, God, what a fool thing to say.

  ‘Cordon Bleu?’

  ‘No, biology.’ She was done with lying.

  ‘Biology?’

  ‘I was set on being a chemist. I changed course. But let’s not talk about work and that sort of boring stuff.’

  They both ordered peach melbas to follow. C-551 didn’t work in cold substances, she reminded herself. The coffee was her last chance. She unclipped her bag and left it open.

  ‘I’ve just got a thing about building,’ he continued. ‘Not just a case of putting up a garage or an extension for somebody, but designing it. Doing your own thing in a drab world where everything comes to size and people like to live in square boxes and add little boxes to them.’

  ‘Coffee, sir, madam?’ The waitress was back again.

  ‘Please. Black for me.’ Ann glanced at Jeff and her hand beneath the table shook slightly.

  ‘Oh … iced coffee, please,’ he replied.

  Oh, thank God, and to hell with Tony Morton! Relief surged over Ann and for one brief moment she felt slightly faint.

  They lingered over their coffee. The conversation had lagged, it was as though he had something to say but did not quite know how to put it into words. Stirring his cold coffee, staring into its muddy depths in search of inspiration. Glancing at his watch. 10.45.