Plastic by Christopher Fowler

minute.’ He produced a plastic pocket torch and shone it right in my eyes. When I waved the beam aside he ran it over my body, then flicked it to the floor.
    ‘I suppose you know there’s no power on for the next fifty-four hours. I haven’t seen him lately. Is he away?’
    ‘Who?
    ‘The guy who lives here.’
    ‘I’m looking after the place for the owner, just over the weekend,’ I explained.
    ‘Ah. I suppose he’s off on business. They always are.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘The so-called residents of this block. Our gallant captains of industry. I’m next door to you, corner penthouse of this concrete Shangri-La. North-westerly view. Not exactly Turner’s vision of the river, but north-easterly had already gone. They sold most of these apartments off-plan in Singapore. Absentee owners, all of them.’ He offered a long hand, with fingers that wrapped around mine like crab legs. ‘My name’s Dr. Elliot, by the way.’
    ‘June.’ His palm was unpleasantly moist. I could imagine his testicles sticking to his legs.
    ‘Do you need any light?’
    ‘I think I’ll be getting through the candles rather quickly.’
    ‘I’ve got a good alternative. Follow me. It’s alright, I don’t bite until you know me, ha ha.’
    I realised I was trusting him because his voice was cultured and confident. That’s the class system in a nutshell. The BBC might have Indian newsreaders now but they make damned sure they sound like Old Etonians. Dr. Elliot held open the door for me. ‘Hurricane lamps,’ he suggested. ‘I went out and purchased a job lot from some peculiar Turkish shop in Kennington Road. They’re only pressed tin but they add a touch of gothic atmosphere.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought this building needed any more.’
    ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? A veritable palace of bad dreams. Makes you wonder what the architect was thinking. A Frenchman, apparently. It’s their uncompromising nature that makes them so artistically adroit. And so fucking rude. He must have had a very strange idea of London in his head.’
    He led the way into the darkened lounge, stopping to light a pair of the tin lamps on a sideboard. Weak light burnished maroon walls, picking up the glister of expensive gilt frames. He turned and smiled, a stern thin face framed by endearingly slept-on hair, but the eyes were bothersome because I couldn’t tell where he was looking. ‘At least the water’s gas-heated. I hope you were given adequate warning about the electricity. You’ll be undressing in the dark.’
    ‘I’m not sure I would have come if I’d realised it would be this dark.’ I followed Elliot around the room as he lit the lamps. His apartment was squarer and taller, with windows on two sides, the walls painted in deep crimsons and browns, lined with paperbacks. A gallery led to a sloping ceiling, planked like the inverted deck of a ship. I stopped before the riverside windows to check the view from a different perspective. From here, London seemed veiled in steel grey mesh. Beside the curtains, what I’d thought was a lifesized statue was revealed to be a full-sized cutaway model of the human body, its skull sectioned to expose a quarter of pink plastic brain, one bulbous eye in its socket, a bright crimson rubber heart, blue-grey lungs, maroon liver and coiled intestine the colour of a flamingo.
    ‘Oh, that’s Maurice. He’s a bit startling, isn’t he? 1930s. He came from a medical training college. I’ve grown rather attached to him.’
    ‘You’re a doctor?’
    ‘God, no. I’m not interested in the plumbing side of things. Psychiatric research. Motivational stuff for corporate staff training. Physical and psychological effects of sudden life-change. I organise behavioural experiments on patients, poorly paid volunteers mostly, mess about with their preconditioning, change their diets and stress levels, try to work out what triggers their responses, generally fuck them about until they beg to thank me. What do