The Abduction of Monica 5: The Importance of Being Monica
by Richard Alexander (Gromets Plaza)
(story continues from The Abduction of Monica 4: The Psychic Detective)
I went for a walk at that point, out through the gate at the rear of the property, through the gum trees up to where the small stream flowed, and where some of our more devious bondage sessions had been practised on clients who had firmly believed they were miles away from Bilboes. I sat on a fallen log and kicked dirt into the water, furious with the way things had gone. How desperate were they that they had to have this crazy Russian psychic on the case already. Where did logic and reason fit in solving cases these days?
Monica and I had been in tough situations before – times when we had depended on each other, and when the other had come through. But something about this time seemed different. The involvement of the Russians – for we assumed such was the case – made it different. This had the smell of organised crime about it, not just some tinpot vindictive harridan like Portia Tang. Besides, it had been a couple of years since her disappearance. I knew enough about her so-called thought processes to know that if she was alive, she would not have the patience to have held off this long before exacting her revenge.
Besides, it wasn’t her style. It was more sophisticated. The gear was all wrong for Portia. She was a ropes and whips person – unsubtle but violently sexy at the same time. In this case ‘patience’ was the word that kept coming back to me. Patience spread over a hundred days. Patience enough to instigate a torture regime that would insidiously get worse and worse. This man had planned and plotted things down to the last detail.
This man... It was a man. A thought occurred to me that there had been no sound on the video – at least no commentary from the person doing the filming. There was no voice over that would betray the sex of the person signing him- or herself “Nemesis”.
The answer came to me in a flash. Warren O’Rorke. Last heard of in the Port Augusta Correctional Centre in South Australia. Why? Because Monica had put him there with some devious computer manipulation of his hard drive and bank accounts. She’d put him away with a trumped up but very successful charge of paedophilia. What more could we want for a motive?
Warren O’Rorke – businessman, property developer, friend to Monica, friend to the looney British aristocrat who had kidnapped Monica before. Friend to Portia Tang who had carried out her own revenge in California and Macau. Warren O’Rorke. God, it was so obvious, except that he was in jail. Or so we all assumed.
I was so wrapped in my thoughts that I never heard Trish approach through the long grass until her hand fell on my shoulder and I jumped. She sat down beside me. She was wearing a short black leather dress with a zip down the front and boots that laced up the front to her knees. Her hair had yet to be fastened up in the severe style she normally wore as a Domme, and now it fell in a mass to her shoulders. She looked sexy as hell, but that was the last thing on my mind. No doubt some poor bastard would be on the receiving end of her in the near future. If she was as angry as I was at that moment, Trish’s client might regret the day he had picked for an appointment with her.
“Has the psychic circus got too much for you?” I asked, a tad unkindly.
“I know what you mean,” she said, not taking offense. Trish was like me in many ways. We had spent many happy hours in my workshop experimenting with gadgets and inventing new and more devious devices. Trish had a grasp of logic and physical things I had not found in many women. If I had a ‘best mate’ in the household, it was Trish.
“They’re doing their best, Steven.” Her hand remained on my shoulder as I stared at my feet. “We’re all trying to get Monica and Mary back. Isn’t it right to use any method at our disposal?”
“But this Russian girl…? She looks like a graduate from a teachers college, coming along to learn about life from real players! I mean, she rocks up in sneakers and expects to be taken seriously. Haven’t we got a few more theories to follow before calling on the spirit world?”
“Don’t be so goddamned judgemental. Anyway, she doesn’t talk to ghosts.”
“Really? You’re an expert now?” My voice was heavy with sarcasm.
“She channels energies…” Trish realised how ludicrous her alternative spin sounded and we both laughed. “Maybe communicating with the spirits was a more credible explanation. But seriously, Steven, what have we got to lose? She was available, she knows these Russians – what’s the harm?”
“Trish, you know what I think about this stuff.”
“You’re a guy.”
“And you’re an… honorary guy! You think the same as I do! The world turns on physics and rationality – on cause and effect. Things happen because something makes them happen – something which obeys certain laws. You don’t run around ‘channelling energies’. These people aren’t normal. They have…”
“A screw loose?” But she smiled when she said it.
“No… I don’t mean to be nasty or derogatory. We’re all flawed to some degree or other. We all have our weaknesses. People hear voices all the time. It’s just that in the more extreme cases these people go out and kill someone. In lesser cases they call it schizophrenia. In the least bothersome it’s just having an invisible friend.
“Look at you, for example. Somewhere in your past you got the bondage gene. You get a kick out of tying up people and dominating them. With good luck and good management you’ve been hooked up with people who also have the bondage gene and who like being tied up and dominated. Symmetry in nature, but flaws, nevertheless. The only thing about this Russian chick is that she’s managed to convince people that her disconnected or re-arranged neurones have resulted in a beneficial skill. No normal person understands it, so they humour her and let her have her way.”
“And the results?”
“What results?”
“You missed her CV. She’s been quite successful.”
“Another one of these TV medium things. Find a couple of bodies and you’re an instant celebrity, I suppose. Hook on to a couple of clues the others have missed.”
“She doesn’t do bodies, Steven. Only live people. Dead bodies don’t have energies – not that Sofiya can sense, anyway.”
“You sound like you’re on her side now.”
“No, but what you say is right. We are all flawed – all different. You included. You’re always the one advocating reason and objective assessment. How about giving the girl a bit of breathing space to show what she can do?”
I thought for a moment, conscious of Trish’s arm and the warm comforting feeling of her being close. She continued:
“Sweetie, we’re all stressed. This whole thing is just awful. We know you love Monica. We know what a huge part of your life she is – for you more than any of us girls, for obvious reasons. But give Sofiya a chance. There’s nothing to lose. Yes?”
I nodded, then the thought I had just had about Warren O’Rorke came back to me.
“I bet I know who’s behind this, Trish - Warren.”
“How could he be? He’s been in the nick for two years, with a good many more to come.”
“Supposing he wasn’t?”
“Escaped?”
“Don’t know. But verification that he’s still behind bars would eliminate a big possibility.”
“You’re right. Not just about that, but he really is the sort who would do this. We should get Paul to check it out straight away.”
* * *
It did not take Paul long to establish that my theory was right on the money. Trish and I were sitting with Paul in Monica’s study.
“Escaped? When?” Trish asked, when Paul announced the news after a couple of phone calls.
“Six weeks ago.”
“Oh crap,” I said. “Why the hell didn’t we hear about it? Why weren’t we informed?”
“An escape from a prison two thousand kilometres away doesn’t necessarily make news in Brisbane,” Paul said.
“But surely you’d expect him to be heading back here?”
“We don’t all know of every case that’s on the books at one time, Steven. Other people may have been on the case – I have no idea what steps were being taken to track him down.”
I banged the wall in frustration. The only good thing coming out of this was that it seemed like we had our motive and our man. It meant we perhaps had a little insight into the kidnapper’s thinking, though it was no help in finding Monica and Mary.
“So now what do we do?” I demanded.
“You think,” Paul said. “You think about what this man is like, about who his friends are, about where he might go, what he might do. And you tell us.”
We were interrupted by a knock on the door and Sofiya entered. My jaw dropped.
Gone was the slightly gawky-looking girl in dowdy slacks and white blouse with her blonde hair in a mad tangle around her shoulders. Now her hair was carefully pinned up, and someone had done a deft touch-up with mascara, eye shadow and a dark red lipstick. Jill stood behind her, and I realised what had been going on, though I didn’t know why.
She wore a tightly fitting emerald green dress with long sleeves and a high collar in the Chinese style. It stopped at mid-thigh, revealing sheer black stockings and shiny patent pumps with high heels that Sofiya clearly was unused to. Around her neck was a heavy silver chain which I realised was Monica’s – at the same time as I realised the entire ensemble was Monica’s.
Sofiya walked shyly into the room, tottering slightly on the heels. We all looked stunned at her appearance while Jill quietly smirked in the doorway.
“In order to find Monica’s energies I must become her,” Sofiya said, stopping in the middle of where Paul, Trish and I sat. “I have to understand her, to feel her, smell her, make contact with her. All people leave traces of their being in a room. The longer or more often they are there, the more traces they leave – in their clothes, their books, in things they write, the things they surround themselves with. To sense the energies in Monica I become her,” she repeated.
I think I was too taken aback by the transformation to make sense of what she was saying, though maybe not. It really didn’t make much sense to me even if I had been fully focussed.
“I can do only so much this way,’ she continued. “I need to understand Monica’s thoughts, her feelings, her likes, dislikes, what she does and why.”
I could have been flippant and said that some of us had been trying to figure those things out for years, without success, but I was still tongue-tied by the audacity of the whole process.
“And how are you going to do that?” I asked. Jillian stepped forward.
“Sofiya is going to have a crash course in B&D,” she said quietly, yet with the confidence that Jill has when she has thought something through and made up her mind.
“Meaning?” I asked.
“I will be doing a collaring ceremony with Emma, which Sofiya can watch from the Observation Room, and then you can do your thing with Sofiya.”
“My thing?”
“Sofiya will become a subbie for as long as it takes – well, for a day or so, anyway. I said it was a crash course.”
“But why me?” I hoped my voice didn’t sound whiney. “Get Trish to do it. She’s the real Domme here.”
Jill was about to answer when Sofiya spoke. Her soft Russian accent seemed weird to me coming from her dressed like Monica.
“Men and women have different energy flows, Steven. I can tell them apart, but when I am trying to get into another woman’s energy, it is better that only that woman’s energy is present. I can focus on Monica better if there are no other women present.”
“Which means that you get the short straw, Sweetie,” Trish said to me out of the corner of her mouth, with not a small suggestion of relish.
Oh crap, I thought, for the umpteenth time that morning. Sometimes life in a house full of females conspired against a lone male, and this was one of those times.
* * *
That was how we came to be together in the Observation Room – Sofiya and me. The Observation Room was a central room in the basement of Bilboes, where we could look through one-way glass into three other rooms. Scenarios were commonly acted out in these rooms, and the windows allowed monitoring of those taking part, whether there was active participation by Bilboes staff or the clients were left alone to suffer in some dastardly position.
I had taken Sofiya downstairs and given her a tour of the place while Jill and Emma readied themselves. Paul had departed, seemingly convinced that things were happening at our end, even if nobody knew exactly what or why. He, on the other hand, had a number of leads to follow, and I was glad that somebody at least was out in the real world doing what needed to be done.
I found Sofiya’s wearing of Monica’s clothes not a little unsettling. She had also used a touch of Monica’s favourite perfume, which added to the disturbing effect. She was about the same height as Monica, but with more boyish hips that made the dress looser, while in contrast to her slim waist she filled out the upper half of the dress very nicely, the green satin tight across her breasts. Whatever I might think about lunatic fringe New Age followers, I could recognise a statuesque female body when I saw one.
I had started by showing her the storeroom, with its wall-mounted rows of whips, floggers and paddles, shelves of cuffs, ropes, gags, manacles, spreader bars and chains, and the cupboards full of leather and rubber clothing. Sofiya seemed reluctant to touch some of them, as though she might damage them, or perhaps she was simply unaccustomed to the feel of the smooth supple leather and the shiny latex dresses. They all seemed a bit mysterious, but eventually she seemed to relax – her curiosity overcoming the unfamiliarity and she could not resist holding one or two dresses up against her body and looking at herself in the full length mirror.
We had then moved on to look at the holding cells, with their spartan bed frames or futons on the floor – when there was bedding at all. The walls were adorned with chains and manacles – as if the soundproofed solid steel doors were not enough to contain a recalcitrant inmate.
We looked in on the gym, with its devious exercise machines that were also modified with attachments for securing limbs and for attaching electrodes to the occupant when he or she was not performing adequately. I showed her the Interrogation Room, with its heavy duty bondage chair bolted to the floor, and the Post Room, with the two solid 20 centimetre posts 3 metres apart, also modified with various eyebolts and pulleys to maintain a person in an immovable state.
By the time we had come to the Observation Room, I was not sure what Sofiya was thinking. I did not know if my tour had convinced her that we were running a madhouse for deviants, or whether it had in fact piqued her interest.
“What do you think of it so far?” I asked, deciding I would not die wondering.
“It’s all very interesting,” she replied slowly, as though choosing her words carefully. “I have heard about such places, of course, but I have never seen one. In Sydney I have been working more with squads against drug and people smuggling. It is starting to become big issue here, as it is in Europe. Vladivostok is emerging as new centre for this problem.”
I liked the way she occasionally dropped off the definite article in her sentences, betraying her Russian language roots to a greater extent than just the accent. The accent itself was growing on me. I thought it was kind of cute, notwithstanding that Sofiya seemed only slightly less nutty than a fruit cake.
As we waited for Jill and Emma to appear in the Post Room, I probed a little further.
“How did you come to be in this line of work? It’s a long way from Vladivostok to Sydney.”
She eased herself up to sit on a bench that ran along the beneath the centre window, crossing her slim legs with a faint rustle of black nylon. I suspected the high heels were a little unfamiliar to her.
“It’s an even longer way from Irkutsk to Sydney,” she said with a gentle smile. “I know you think I’m a bit… how do you call it – out of left field. You’re not the first, Steven. I understand that. Maybe when you get to know me a little better. It is very hard to explain what I do or how I do it. Sometimes I surprise even myself.
“I think I got my gift from my father. I was born in Irkutsk – near Lake Baikal in Siberia. My father is Buriyat – indigenous race in that area - but my mother is ethnic Russian. Buriyats have inhabited the area for thousands of years – long before Russians came with their railway and so-called civilisation. Buriyats have always been at one with nature – with wind, mountains, with forests. My father is Shaman. He will tell you that Shamans are intermediaries between human and spirit worlds. They can treat illness and can enter supernatural realms to provide answers for humans. I think maybe I do same thing, but I describe it differently. I call myself empath. I have always been able to tune in to other people, ever since I was child. Whatever you think now, I hope to show you otherwise. I sense you will accept proof even if you do not understand reason behind it. I think you are reasonable person, da?”
I shrugged.
“The girls will tell you so, I guess. I like to know why things happen.”
“Everything happens for reason, Steven. It’s just that you need to know reason for peace of mind. You can’t accept something outside your experience.”
That was it in a nutshell. I was man enough to recognise and admit it. But I still didn’t think it was an unreasonable approach. At least she saw how people perceived her “skill”. I supposed that this was a start. I resolved to hold off any judgement until I had something to judge. I sought a less controversial subject for discussion.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked. Sofiya shook her head. “Girlfriend?” (Well, I had to ask.)
“Not any more. But since you ask, I’ve had both.” She seemed not the slightest bit self-conscious about it. I was surprised. I don’t think I had consciously put her in one pigeonhole or the other, but somehow the answer didn’t surprise me. When I meet an attractive gay woman, I always think what a loss it is for us guys. The knowledge that Sofiya had a foot in both camps was less of a disappointment than if she had been a fully paid-up member of the dyke brigade. I don’t know why my thoughts went down this road – it wasn’t like I had much in common with her.
“So how did you come to be in Sydney?”
“I joined the police in Irkutsk. I guess they found I had a talent. I moved to Vladivostok, became involved in the smuggling trade, as I said, and became part of team working with Australians. I act as translator and advisor and sometimes full detective,” she said proudly, thrusting out her chest as though displaying a sheriff’s gold star. It was a distracting but very pleasant sight.
I was about to go further when a movement through the glass caught my eye. Jill and Emma had arrived. The collaring was about to begin.
* * *
21.05.09
story continues in The Abduction of Monica 6: Collar and Tie
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