The Sweet Smell of Psychosis Read Online Free PDF Page B

while, clenching andunclenching his hands around fictive balls of hard, realistically rubber anxiety. Richard didn't want Kelburn, Reiser, Slatter and all the others to turn up before her – it was unthinkable. He'd be sucked straight back down that plughole of loathsomeness, which connected directly to the sewer of the previous night. He must at least speak with Ursula alone before this happened. He had to capitalise on the Post-it note.
    Richard thought of the private room he and Reiser had been in the evening before. Could she be up there? One of the chambermaids who serviced the room had also been serviced by Bell. Richard found it hard to credit, but the experience indebted her to him. She made sure that a copy of the key was available for Bell, or any of his cronies, when they required sequestration from the rest of the club.
    If Ursula was up there, what could she possibly be doing? The long day of speculation, insecurity and hair-trigger lust was beginning to tell on Richard. He contemplated lurid images of Ursula going down – on Reiser! On Slatter! On Kelburn! On still weasellier, greasier members of the clique. As the phantom figures mounted one another in his mind, Richard mounted the stairs. By the time he reached the fifth floor his heartwas pounding, his visual field expanded and contracted, a squeezebox of perception. Without pausing to summon himself he straight-palmed the door open.
    It crashed back on its hinges to reveal that a small gate-leg table had been set up in the very centre of the room; around this four figures were grouped playing cards. From their clothing and the set of their bodies, Richard recognised the clique members Reiser, Slatter, Kelburn and Mearns – the greenmailer. But when their faces turned to the source of the interruption, Richard saw four sets of near-identical features. Each of them had the same thick-set neck, the same jutting jaw, the same high, white forehead, the same red lips and broad-bridged nose. It was a group of Bells – a belfry. Four sets of black eyes examined Richard for a long, long fraction of a second. They bored into him, as if he were a diseased liver on which they were keen to do a biopsy.
    The sight of the belfry was so incomprehensible, so weird, that Richard fell back against the wall of the corridor, mouthing – rather than saying – ‘What the fu – ‘. He rubbed his eyes; he felt dizzy, nauseous, as if about to faint. He sank to his knees.
    Then a firm hand grasped Richard's shoulder, and a

    firm – yet soft – voice clasped his ear: ‘What's the matter, Richard?’ Richard shook his head, his vision cleared, he looked up into the black eyes, began to recoil – but this time it was the real Bell, the authentic Bell. ‘Come on, come in here.’ Bell lifted Richard up under the arms. Lifted him as easily as another man might pick up a free newspaper, as a prelude to throwing it in a dustbin. It was the first time the big man had touched Richard, and he found it disconcertingly thrilling – Bell was so strong, so adamant.
    Bell dropped Richard in an armchair inside the room. The others had left off their card game. They were still twisted round in their seats, but they no longer had the appearance of Bell clones. They had their own faces back, their own, leering faces. Todd Reiser stood up, brushing the outsize ash-fragments of a joint from his little lap, and said, ‘All right now, young Richard? You were out for the count there for a moment . . .’
    ‘I'm – I'm fine, really. Fine. Just took the stairs too fast.’
    ‘Not feeling the pace, are we young Richard? Too many late nights, too much fun?’ This was sneered. Reiser couldn't do concern.
    ‘N-no, really. It was the stairs, and then seeing you all . . . You all looked like . . .’
    ‘What?’ This was from Slatter, who was openly worrying a cuticle with yellow teeth. ‘What did we look like?’
    ‘Y-you all looked like . . .’ – Richard indicated the big man, who was