Nip n tuck, p.19
Nip 'n' Tuck, page 19
‘Some surgeon could talk us through it over the phone.’
‘Yeah! The way they land planes in the movies when the pilot’s died,’ Victoria said animatedly.
‘How would we get them into the surgery?’
‘Kidnap them.’
I tossed back another shot. I would need to down the whole bottle to think this could ever work. ‘Trouble is, kidnapping requires a cool head, a hard heart, good timing and, if the police get wind of it, Olympic sprinting.’ I sighed. Freeing an arm from around her shoulders, I reached for the phone.
‘What are you doing?’
Suspecting that we were lacking many of the talents necessary for success as Criminal Masterminds, I began to dial 999.
Victoria’s face went ashen. She slammed her hand down to cut the connection. ‘No! For Christ’s sake! If we report him to the police Sven will have me killed.’ Her voice was eerily shrill. She wrenched the receiver from my hand.
I realized she was serious. ‘You mean he’d hire a hitman? I hate the man too, but is he really capable of that?’
With tentative fingers my sister probed her face. Her famously beautiful features now resembled a relief map of some war-torn wasteland. ‘I went to his house to confront him about Marrakech. I threatened to report him to the police for mutilating her and this was my warning …’
With the perfect timing that eludes most of life, there came from somewhere at the back of the house the unmistakable sound of glass shattering, then the spine-chilling crunch of heavy shoes moving across splintered shards. The whisky tumbler fell from my sister’s hands. My toes curled up like dead leaves in my shoes. The door thwacked open to reveal a hulking beast of a man, as hirsute as he was bulky, a rattlesnake tattoo coiled around his biceps.
Cystitis, childbirth, divorce – these are jewels in life’s crown compared to the sheer terror of confronting a psychotic hitman in your own living room. How did I know this man was dangerous? Well, call me Sherlock Holmes, but not even London is cold enough to be wearing a balaclava in June. There was also something potentially explosive, something barely contained about him. He approached, his movements jerky and violent. Body odour with a tang of onion (and was that car oil?) began to fill the room. A mossy tongue lolled in a lopsided mouth, the top molars all missing, save for one furry green fang.
As the creature I assumed was Sven’s hired hitman began to lunge towards me, I shank back, petrified – until I realized it was extending its hand to shake mine. ‘Bruce the Tooth,’ he said jocularly, in a thick, redneck accent. ‘Ex-con number 14567 Gainsville Maximum Security Prison. So pleased to make the acquaintance of you fine ladies. Gee, I’m sorry. How rude’ He ripped off his balaclava, to reveal a low simian forehead wormed with scars and a lank ponytail. He scrutinized my sister. ‘You ain’t Marrakech, are ya? You sure do look like her photo, but … You must be her sister.’ (Victoria’s battered spirits seemed to rise remarkably at this mistake.) ‘That gal sent the cash to hire me some good lawyers. They won the appeal – not only got me off of Death Row but proved me innocent. Marrakech done give me this here address. Apologies for the grand entrance. Force of habit,’ he rasped, in a ten-packs-a-day voice a couple of cartons shy of lung cancer. ‘I’ve come to thank her for savin’ me from Big Sparky.’ He ground his prognathous jaw and welled up a little. ‘If there’s anythin’ I can ever do for her, she’s only gotta ask.’
Victoria attempted to straighten her appearance. ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but actually I’m her mother.’
The man broke into a one-tooth smile. ‘Well, then, ma’am, that there goes for you too.’
My sister and I looked at each other, our eyes widening. This guy could be the best thing since slim regulars. It was like finding the toy surprise in the cereal box.
‘Well, actually,’ Victoria said, ‘now you mention it, there is a little something …’
27
I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Almost Like You’re Here
MEN ARE PERFECTLY agreeable and totally wonderful as long as you never let them within a ten-mile radius. After twelve years of marriage my only other insight is that, when meeting a soon-to-be-ex-husband, it’s best not to resolve your differences with firearms.
To this purpose I asked Hugo to meet me on neutral turf, a seedy hotel (patrons were kindly asked to check in their chainsaws at the door) in King’s Cross, an area of London culturally enriched by a diverse selection of prostitutes, escaped felons and British librarians. There was a greenish-grey tinge to the evening air as if it were about to rain. I waited for Hugo in reception, next to the spindly racks containing cheap postcards of London attractions.
When my husband pushed through the revolving doors, I looked at the handsome forty-five-year-old man I’d once loved so deeply – and was shocked to feel a profound pang of grief. When, I wondered, had it gone from ‘Fuck me!’ to ‘Fuck you!’? It was just one of life’s hiakus, like ‘from womb to tomb’. As Hugo approached, I looked down on our marriage as though it were a dead corpse on a mortuary trolley. We stared at each other blankly, like two people passing on up and down escalators.
‘Thank you for last night,’ I said, steering him into the dingy bar.
‘I wasn’t with you last night.’
‘That’s why I’m grateful.’
‘Is that the kind of sarcastic tone you’re going to adopt for the duration of this meeting?’ He called for coffee, then slid across the stained velvet banquette of the nearest booth and took in his sordid surroundings. The only other patrons were a couple of cockroaches the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger, sitting around cracking their knuckles, and a few million intestinal parasites.
‘Where the hell have you brought me?’ Hugo produced a monogrammed handkerchief and wiped the pock-marked laminex tabletop before gingerly resting his designer-jacketed elbows upon it. ‘Your solicitor called me today.’ His gaze lingered on me and he sighed. ‘Oh, Lizzie, dearest, where did our love go?’
‘To the Oxfam charity shop, with the rest of your stuff,’ I said, stiffly.
I slipped off my cardigan and Hugo’s eyes fell to my newly flattened chest. ‘They told me at the clinic you’d had an explantation. Why, for God’s sake?’
‘Well, curiously enough, the thrill of carrying around two pounds of cancer-inducing silicone in your chest cavity palls quite quickly.’
‘Do you know what those boobs cost me, Elisabeth? They’re etched on to my Visa bill for ever!’
‘You should have just left the price tags on them, then.’
‘It’s not just that I paid for your operation! I made a huge emotional investment in you and in our marriage. And now I’ve lost everything. Twelve years of wedlock and what do I have to show for it? An overdraft, a failing professional reputation and a broken heart. I’ve a good mind to sue you for the cost of those implants!’
‘Litigation. Ah yes, well, I’m glad you brought that up, Hugo, because there’s the little matter of my niece. Tell me, did you think Marrakech was going to be happy when she woke up with her big breast surprise?’
‘Your sister signed the consent form.’
‘Sven tricked her into it.’
‘What? I didn’t know anything about that!’ Hugo’s famously luxuriant hair began to clump in damp spikes on his increasingly pale forehead.
‘How is it going to look in court when Marrakech tells the jury how she was lying there, unconscious, when against her wishes, her trusted uncle gave her a breast augmentation? She’s only fifteen. My lawyer says you need to have her informed consent … not a form signed by an uninformed mother.’
‘Sven, her mother’s lover and agent, remember, came in during the operation and said, “Make ’em big and perky. She insists on becoming a top model.” So that’s what I did. I believed she wanted them.’
‘You know how much she hated having big breasts!’
‘For God’s sake, Lizzie, if I hadn’t operated on her—’ he broke off while the barman deposited our two cups of coffee – brewed, I suspect, at the outset of the Second World War – before whispering ‘– one of Sven’s butchers would have.’
‘Couldn’t you see that he might be lying?’ But I already knew the answer. My once honourable husband had turned into the kind of doctor who went blind once the cheque cleared. ‘Can you imagine the scandal? Dr Hugo Frazer, who cannot be named for legal reasons—’
‘Elisabeth,’ he interrupted, in clipped tones, ‘if you really want to torture me, ask me to renew our wedding vows.’
‘You know, maybe it would be good if you did some time in jail, Hugo. It’d be an effective weight-loss plan for you.’
Hugo sucked in his stomach. ‘You’ve got the house, the children and custody of the Merc convertible. What else can you possibly want?’
‘Actually I have a little surgical request.’
He slurped morosely at his stewed brew and grimaced as though drinking warm sputum. ‘What else do you want taken out?’
‘Not for me,’ I added hastily.
‘Well, for whom, exactly?’
‘Sven.’ I took a sip of my coffee, as scalding as the look my husband was now giving me. ‘Yes. Lipo, botox, a butt lift, oh, and breast implants.’
My husband spluttered into laughter, spurting coffee down his shirtfront.
I met his gaze defiantly. ‘I’m pleased to see that Sven’s predicament is affording you such hilarity,’ I said, in Hugo-speak. ‘We kidnapped him over six hours ago. He’s prepped and ready for surgery.’
My husband levelled me with a peculiar stare. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Yup.’
‘To say that you’re psychotic, Elisabeth, is to indulge in the drollest of understatements. First your hostile TV hysteria, in which you denounce me to the entire world, and now this. How could you ever think I would countenance doing such a diabolical thing?’
‘You do it to women every day. Including your own relatives.’
‘Breast implants on a man?’ he said, stupefied. ‘I can’t do it. It’s – it’s mutilation.’
‘Exactly.’ I lifted my T-shirt and pointed to the two-inch scars etched for ever beneath my breasts. ‘You will give Sven surgery.’
Hugo hunched belligerently over his coffee. ‘You can’t make me.’
‘No,’ I admitted, ‘but he can.’
I nodded towards the darkest corner of the deserted bar, where Bruce the Tooth sat slouched over his Budweiser. He tipped his baseball cap. You could dimly make out the slogan on his born-again T-shirt: ‘Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust in Him’ – Job 13:15.
‘’Less you cooperate, Doc, things could get very Last Judgement,’ Bruce the Tooth called out, by way of greeting.
‘Is he threatening to kill me?’ Hugo scoffed, trilling his fingers impatiently.
‘Well, sir, I find “killin’” too broad a term. Let’s just say that there’s gonna be an arbitrary deprivation of life.’ Sauntering over to our table, Bruce the Tooth smashed a bloated fly with his fist, its innards splattering on to Hugo’s sleeve. He picked up the insect and dropped it into Hugo’s coffee cup. ‘I call it “goin’ postal”.’
‘Jesus Christ. He is going to kill me!’ Hugo recoiled, eyes swivelling around the bar for witnesses, or preferably a SWAT anti-terrorist squad.
‘“Police Find Plastic Surgeon’s Head. Body Still Missing”,’ I said, rattling a spoon around my cup. ‘Now that’s what I call a headline.’
‘A headline. I geddit.’ Bruce snorted.
‘Listen, my good man, whatever my wife has offered you, I can treble it.’ Hugo steepled his hands, fingers entwined in that doctorly way, as though about to make a diagnosis. ‘I have always found Americans to be so reasonable, so good with people … I’m sure we can do a deal.’
Although my ex-husband extended his hand, Bruce the Tooth pointedly refused to shake it. His muscular tattooed arms remained firmly knotted across his heavily furred ribs. ‘Hey, do I look like a fuckin’ people person? Pardon my French, ma’am.’
‘Yes, it’s probably best for a man like you to keep your arms folded. Otherwise your knuckles would drag on the ground as you walk.’ Hugo slid abruptly across the booth.
‘Fine, don’t help us, Hugo,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘As long as you’re prepared for the testicular trauma and compound fractures that will no doubt follow.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ Bruce the Tooth drawled. ‘I ain’t never castrated a man I didn’t like.’
‘Don’t try to intimidate me. The answer is no,’ said Hugo, recoiling from Bruce the Tooth’s natural marinade of oil and onions. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a vat of penicillin I need to go and soak in …’
We watched him stride through the squalid foyer into the dusk. Then we followed him past bag-ladies holding animated conversations with invisible aliens and participants in what appeared to be a public urination festival against the eastern wall of the British Library. The air was gauzy with heat and car fumes. Beyond the towers of St Pancras, welts of grey cloud bruised the sky. A summer storm was simmering on the horizon.
Hugo was walking faster and faster, glancing furtively over his shoulder. Bruce the Tooth panthered behind him, weaving in and out of shadowy doorways. I reached my car and skidded out into the traffic. By the time I caught up with them, Hugo was virtually sprinting. Scrabbling to open his car door, my husband only had time to turn and scowl like that famous bust of Stalin before he was star-fished on the pavement. As I drew up, Bruce the Tooth flicked my husband effortlessly over one shoulder and threw him, as if he were a bag of golf clubs, into the back of my people-mover.
Rent a psycho: believe me, every girl should have one. Bruce the Tooth had attitude – and he knew how to use it. But then again, so did my half-sister. I’d left Victoria alone with Sven who was tethered helplessly to an operating table. I floored the accelerator. I’d known for a long time that life didn’t imitate art. But I had a curious feeling that mine was about to imitate The Jerry Springer Show.
28
Relying on the Kindness of Passing Serial Killers
AS A GENERAL rule, ‘Do you know who I am?’ is almost always the wrong thing to say when you’re being held hostage by a six-foot-five felon with a switchblade.
These pompous words ensured that Hugo got another punch to the guts before being dragged through the basement stairwell of the Longevity Clinic, thrown into the lift and hauled into the fourth-floor surgery. It was a Sunday evening, and Harley Street was empty – no one would hear the muffled moans that were emanating from the operating theatre. I muscled open the swing doors to find Sven spreadeagled, stark naked, on the slab, arms and legs strapped down. Despite the gaffer-tape gagging his mouth, there was a scream of dismay in his terrified eyes. White curlicues of depilation cream had been squeezed across his eyebrows.
Victoria, skirt rucked up, spatula in hand, was sitting astride his bare tethered thighs, hot-waxing the model agent’s bikini line. Little runways of pale flesh had been mown through his pubic growth and upper thigh forestry. They looked red and raw and prickled with blood.
‘Do you think I should go for the full Brazilian? He likes shaved pussies. A little “beetle bonnet”, he calls it, don’t you, sweetie?’ she reminded her ex-lover. Sven began to writhe on the table, struggling against his restraints. All this time I’d thought he was a top-order predator, the male equivalent of the Great White Shark, but Sven looked more like a Great White Prawn. Victoria pointed at his shrunken appendage, which seemed to wither even more. ‘Now that’s why you’re supposed to judge people on their personalities. Scrub up, Doc,’ my deranged sister ordered Hugo, her tangled hair falling over her flushed face. ‘It’s time for Sven here to get in touch with his Inner Model.’
Victoria’s dishevelment was at odds with the deep sense of purpose and determination radiating from within. ‘Good thing you finally made it, Hugo,’ my sister continued, conversationally, ‘because I was about to start the lipo without you. It seems quite easy. Just make a cut, shove a tube in, wobble it around until you hit a pocket of pale yellow globules, then suck ’em up through a straw, like a McDonald’s shake. Sluuuurrrrp. Right?’
Hugo’s head suddenly tilted backwards as though he feared his eyeballs might fall out. ‘Lipo?’
‘Yes. There’s a vacuum cleaner in the hall. But I didn’t want my patient to die from shock. Then I wondered if I should get started on the botox,’ she said, conducting an invisible symphony orchestra with a syringe.
‘Botox,’ Hugo repeated, dumbly.
‘Yes. I was all ready to inject him, but what if I gave him too much? Wouldn’t his larynx become paralysed by the bacteria? And then he’d stop breathing, right?’
Beside me, Hugo gasped.
‘And we don’t want to kill him – well, not quite yet,’ my sister decreed, and leaned forward to remove the depilatory cream with two deft sweeps of her pretty little hand. As Sven’s eyebrows came off on a tissue, he made a noise like a deflating tyre. ‘We’ll start with the breast implants, I think, as a payback for what you did to my daughter.’
Sven was shaking so much he looked to be in the advanced stages of Parkinsons.
‘Perhaps we could shave a little off his tailbone, Hugo? To give him the sort of slender waist he demands of his models.’
Bruce the Tooth snorted gleefully. ‘An eye for an eye …’
‘Yes! And a face lift for a face lift. Why not? The face is just peeled off the bone. They pull the skin right up over your head like a Spandex polo-neck,’ Victoria informed her victim casually.
‘The smartassed sonofabitch is a platinum-plated dick-fondler, right?’ said the Tooth, getting carried away. ‘Well, why not just give him a world-class dong? The biggest damn dong in the world.’
‘Oh, you evil genius!’ my sister thrilled. ‘The phallic equivalent of Pinocchio’s nose. When he gets out of bed in the morning he’ll have to be careful not to tread on his own willy. He’ll need a truss-fund!’ she cackled.
Sven made a squeak like a lost puppy. Rancid sweat was oozing from every terrified pore.
