I respected myself too much to go into that room, so I walked on and stopped outside ‘The Dark Room’。 I’d heard about dark rooms from my research. They’d sprung up in gay bars during the Seventies, but were now commonplace at these kinds of parties. It could be as innocuous as a room with low light, but it might also be a place for those looking for slightly more transgressive activities. I opened the door slowly, careful to remember that the room might be in use and visitors not always welcome.
Inside, there was a low blue light snaking round the skirting boards. The door closed silently behind me and I stood with my back to it, letting my eyes adjust. I could hear someone wincing, taking gulping breaths, sucking up the air as another sound took over – the sound of chains. Slowly, my eyes took in the scene in front of me. A woman was suspended on a wall, like a rough approximation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Next to her, a guy in just his trousers and mask was holding up a heavy chain and preparing to hit her with it. I held my breath, waiting to see what would happen.
The man drew his arm back, and then raised it fast. The chain shot out of his hand and landed across her abdomen. She screamed briefly, before clamping her mouth shut and closing her eyes. He went over to her and kissed her shoulder, while I watched her manage her breathing. Even in the darkness, I could see a welt forming on her stomach. I guess the rule here was only to mark places on the body which would be easily concealed when back at the office on Monday. Despite what I’ve been doing recently, I don’t get excited by acts of violence, even ones which are done with consent. It’s almost a prerequisite for serial killers to have spent their childhoods torturing animals before moving onto other people, exploring the rush they get when they see others in pain.
That kind of senseless act baffles me. This woman and her bleeding stomach baffle me. Violence and punishment are necessary in certain situations, but I can’t fathom inflicting pain or terror because you find joy in the immediate practice. You find joy in the retribution, in correcting a wrong or in punishing someone who truly deserves it. I am strengthened by what I do. But I’m not doing it because I get off on seeing someone in pain. Yes, watching my grizzled old grandfather getting weaker by the second as his dead, decapitated wife lay beside him held some small reward for me, but that was dwarfed by the chain of events I was setting off. I was eliminating a toxic group of people from society. A family who’d done nothing but take what they could get for themselves, and treat other people with disdain.
My mind had wandered so far away from this dark room that I started when I heard the chain crack again. This time, the woman let out the word ‘mighty!’ and the man dropped the metal rope and picked up a water bottle, raising it to her lips and stroking her hair. Elegant safe word, I thought, as I backed out through the door. The couple had barely glanced my way while I’d been standing there watching them perform. There was tenderness and trust between them. An understanding that whatever went on, it was done as a partnership. I was beginning to see that the sex party community ran on these unspoken guidelines. That you could transgress, and discard the sense of shame that might normally accompany such acts. You could inflict harm and comfort someone immediately afterwards. And you could walk out the door five minutes later, without ever knowing the name of your victim. And sure, shame was suspended within the four walls of this palatial building. But outside? It would be there waiting. If Lee was to die in a place like this, I knew that the Artemis family would do their utmost to conceal and obfuscate. Nobody would strive to understand what Lee sought in these dark rooms. Nobody would look for answers.
I peeked into a couple of other rooms – a couple experimenting with a rubber suit and a group of people awkwardly attempting an orgy but being slightly stymied by the physical logistics of it – but my heart wasn’t in it. And neither were theirs by the looks of it. If Lee was here, I wasn’t likely to spot him in the gloomy rooms, and I didn’t want to look too hard for a glimpse of my masked and possibly naked uncle.
Back in the bar, I struck up a conversation with another woman standing alone. I was drawn to her because I admired her suit, a sharp black tux I’d agonised over buying myself just days before. Standing in a crowded sex party, interested only in tailoring. That was my transgression. I asked how her night was going and she flicked her masked eyes towards me, before shrugging her shoulders.
‘If I wanted to fuck a coked-up banker I’d hang around Liverpool Street station on a Thursday night,’ she said.