Reckoning Point, стр. 68
Frantically he tries to convey this to Roland as the door closes again.
“Pssst!”
Roland looks at Lev.
“Shhh, you’re dead,” hisses Lev in a stage whisper.
Roland seems to misunderstand, takes it as a new threat as his eyes pop wide.
Lev drops his chin to his own chest, lets his head loll, pokes his tongue out of the side of his mouth for good measure. Looking up, he nods at the boy.
And, oh God and hallelujah, the kid seems to understand, as he slumps his own head backwards. Lev isn’t happy with this, he can clearly see the rise and fall of Roland’s chest, but it is darker over where the boy sits, and the doctor’s tread can now be heard on the stairs.
It isn’t ideal, nothing about this fucked up scenario is, but it will have to do.
And to Lev’s surprise, when the doctor reaches the last step and comes into view, he doesn’t notice that one of the people he has locked up is missing.
“It’s tiresome, all this work,” says the doctor as he comes to stand in front of Lev. “I’m getting older, I should be thinking about retiring, but how can I, when people like you are still in my town, messing it up, bringing it into the gutter?”
Lev stops wrestling with his ties for a moment and looks up at the doctor. The man is getting old, he can see it now, how the hell did he manage to bring him and Roland down here? And what does he mean when he says Lev is messing up his town?
“I’m not sure what you think I did,” Lev says cautiously. Does the doctor know about Joy and her untimely and unfortunate death? But how can he know? And if he does, why wouldn’t he just call the police like any other, normal citizen?
“You are infecting the girls, making them full of filth, making me have to give them antibiotics.” The doctor purses his lips, folds his arms. “It’s not on, it’s just not on. Not here, not in my town.”
Does the doctor think Lev has given them an S.T.I? For some reason Lev is affronted by this. “I didn’t! I’m as clean as a–”
“Not like that!” the doctor barks, and at the sound of his raised voice Lev hears Roland make a little ‘peep’ sound. He keeps his eyes on the doctors face, prays he hasn’t heard the proof that his victim is still alive.
“No, that idiotic thing you do, with the knife, do you realise how much infection that causes in the girl’s bodies? It is irresponsible, it’s stupid.”
Lev feels his mouth hanging open. “You done this because I done that? But the girls agreed, they were up for it, I never forced them!”
“But where does it stop? It doesn’t stop, it escalates you see, son. Don’t think I don’t know, don’t think I haven’t seen people like you before. Twisted … sick …”
Lev sits up straight as another thought comes into his head. “Did you kill them, Gabi and Cilla and …” he tails off as his mind goes blank. “And the … other one?”
“Amber. Her name was Amber,” snaps the doctor. “And she was a law unto herself, so dirty, so dirty.”
“And Gabi and Cilla?” Lev presses the doctor, unable to believe that this man has killed those girls just because they let Lev cut him.
But the doctor has reached the end of his confessional it seems, and as he walks over to the wall to Lev’s right, Lev knows without a shadow of a doubt that this man, this man who calls himself a doctor, is severely unstable, mentally gone. And if Lev wants to remain alive, he needs to get his hands free. Quietly, and trying to keep as still as possible, he starts to struggle with his binds once more.
The doctor walks over to the edge of the room to collect himself. Why is he explaining himself to this foreign loser? The doctor sighs, it’s all getting too much, too messy. His clean ups are not as clean as they once were. He has been too complacent, doing his work too close to home. In his home, for God’s sake. Well, soon it’ll be over. The troublesome girls who cost him medicine and soap and who don’t appreciate his help are gone. The woman who is supposed to be on his team but who behaves no better than the girls she is supposed to look after is gone. And these boys, this foreigner, Lev with his weird, infection encouraging cutting will soon be gone. As will Roland, the simple one, the one who always manages to be in the middle of the trouble, the one the doctor tried and failed to clean up over a decade ago will also be gone. As will the little mixed race girl, the one who filled him with such hope in her lovely mannered way, only to let him down when he realised that she, too, must have been cavorting with all sorts of men to have to come to him for the nasty tests to be carried out, and even then, she hadn’t learned her lesson, seeing as he has been watching her prancing all over town in her tiny shorts, flashing those big emerald eyes at everyone, hanging out