by Harper Fox
Silver poured himself a third. A bad idea for early afternoon, but his guts were twisting, sounds of gunfire ringing in his ears. He made a note of the time and place, and hit reply. Yes, I’ll take him. Either that or sit and stare at the inside of his head. Any friend of Drew’s is a friend of mine.
***
Not wanting to compound his recent screw-ups by drink-driving, Silver took a cab to his client’s address. He’d sobered up enough, by the halfway point of the journey, to realise that he’d grabbed the wrong holdall on his way out of the house.
He just barely stopped himself from burying his face in his hands. God help him if this john wanted anything fancy. What was the matter with him? For a minute he contemplated tossing up the job and sending the cabbie to Knightsbridge instead.
But then what? With any luck, George would be way too busy to see him by now, up to his hips in Fenchurch Architects’ new concerns. And Silver kept lube in both holdalls. You never knew who you might meet. He sat back and watched the pavements rush by.
The house was a plain midcentury villa in Kensal Green. Nothing to write home about, nothing to set off alarms. Silver paid the driver, tipped him to wait five minutes after he’d gone inside, and rang the doorbell.
Five minutes was usually enough. By the end of that time, Silver might not be in love with his new client, but he’d know he could get through the deal. If not, a swift exit and agency refund would set things to rights. He seldom had any problems.
Six minutes after entering Leonard Price’s home, Silver glanced at the inside of the front door, and understood that his luck had run out. The cabbie had been generous, or finishing a cup of tea: the taillights were only now disappearing. Silver damped down his response. Leonard had gone upstairs, allegedly to get changed. Maybe he’d had an unruly kid at some point, or a confused elderly relative, or some other reason for deadlocking the place from the inside. All might yet be well. Setting aside the lager he’d been offered, Silver got quietly to his feet.
The fancy lead-paning on the living-room windows turned out to be steel bars. A lot of houses round here had those, a subtle security measure that wouldn’t drag market value down. Silver eased into the kitchen. The rear door solid too, and just as firmly locked. No keys anywhere to be seen. The downstairs bathroom window was a bare a hand-span, and Silver didn’t reckon a cry for help across the bin-lined back alleys would do him any good.
Something that didn’t feel like fear began to pulsate deep in his throat. A sickness, rather, a tired realisation that the best part of his life might still have been to come. That he might be about to miss it. “Leonard,” he said, not turning round, as a hard-muscled shape came to fill the kitchen doorway. “I’ll play any games you like. But do not fucking well lock me in.”
“Noticed that, did you? And here I thought I’d been discreet.”
The bastard was built like a barn door. Not a door made in a gym and reinforced with steroids: this was serious, hard-worked muscle. Silver noted the distinction, added it to the list of obstacles now lying between him and the outside world. “Why the hell would you want to be discreet? Either you’ve got a prison-guard kink or you want to hurt me. If it’s the first, I’ll play along. If it’s the other—I warn you, sunbeam, you don’t get to my age in this game without learning a few tricks.”
“Oh, what are you gonna do, whore? Pepper-spray me to death?”
Silver shifted so that his back was against the cabinets. Sometimes the only option left was to fuck your way out. “Okay, big man,” he said, letting a conciliatory growl enter his voice. “You’ve got your whore. I’m on your time. Let me go find some lube, and we’ll do this.”
Leonard folded his arms. He looked at Silver as if he’d just found him stuck to the sole of his shoe. “You’re disgusting.”
“Whatever you like. You hired me.”
“Calling me big man and sunbeam, like you know me. Talking about lube, like all this is normal or some game. It’s not. It’s not how decent men behave.”
Not the time to point out that upright citizens didn’t trap whores in their kitchen. “Fair enough. We don’t have to talk at all, and I won’t call you names. What do you want to do?”
“I thought I just wanted to kill you. But I fucked my bitch wife when she turned into some kind of fake man, and I might as well try a real one. I might as well do that first.”
Ah, shit. Silver just stopped short of slapping himself on the brow. Getting cut off from your gear was one kind of stupidity. Not connecting the dots between clients, not recognising a shared surname—that was a whole different level. “Oh, great,” he said. “You’re Lenny.” And then, because the jig was up, the time for diplomacy over, added with a scapegrace grin, “Jamie Price’s ugly other half.”
“That’s right. She came home like a hot wind after cleaning out my cash tin so she could have you. Said she was leaving. She went, all right—with my bootprint on her arse. I nearly snapped her neck.”
Silver took a cautious step or two away from him, still covering his back. The kitchen window wasn’t barred, and might yield to a whack from a chair, if he could just get clear space and a second. His combat skills were good, but he really didn’t want to get into it with a pissed-off career soldier. “Jamie’s all right. If you don’t like him the way he is now, it’s time to let him go.”
Chair, sink unit, window. Momentum and angle of strike. Calculations flickering through his mind, Silver lost track of Lenny’s face, and his altered tone took him by surprise. “Do you think it’s been easy for me?”
He got a hand to the back of the chair. “Shit, no. Must’ve been hell for you at times.”
“Yeah, it was. I...” Suddenly Lenny blew out a breath and let his hands drop to his sides. “Ah, fuck it. You’re right. I’m not gonna get her back by messing with you. Am I?”
“Not fucking noticeably, no.” Silver watched, heart thumping, while Lenny made his way to the back door. “What are you doing?”
“Letting you go, man. I never really meant to hurt you.”
“I... don’t think you can let me go now, Lenny. You must know I’m gonna tell someone.”
“Who—the police? Since when do they listen to whores?”
“They’re better these days. And it’s sex-worker, please, if we’re not playing games.”
“Whatever. Just get out of here before I change my mind.”
Silver, in his final piece of stupidity, believed him enough to step towards the door. “I’ll need my coat and bag.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll get them. Hang on.”
Lenny swung round. Something smashed into Silver’s ribs. Dirty kitchen tiles leapt up at him. He grabbed the edge of the sink and broke his fall, half-blocked a neckbreak chop. He hit the floor fighting, looking for any spare bit of Lenny fucking Price he could grab, looking for a ball-kick, an eye-gouge, a throw. A way back to the world, to Oak Vale, to... A boot-toe connected with the back of his skull, and his vision exploded in stars. Red, and then a sickening green-tinged blue. Ah, George. I’ll listen next time, when you tell me to watch my damn back. I’m sorry. The blue turned to black and ate him whole.
Chapter Ten
Silver had been tied up, gagged and blindfolded in the course of both his jobs. He lay breathing shallowly through his nose, denying his brain the rush of oxygen it needed for a flare of panic, allotting himself just what it took to stay alive, alert, thinking. To start testing the exits, systematically, one by one.
Carefully. Let your captor think you’re still out. He could be halfway across the city by now or sitting right by your shoulder. Silver thought the latter: could feel a dip in the thin mattress beneath him, and that was a piece of information for him too, a possible key. No mattress in any of the rooms he’d seen so far, so this was somewhere different, the quality of light making its way through the edge of the blindfold artificial, so a bedroom with the curtains closed, or...
No. The houses on this street had basements. Silver’s heart lurched pa
infully, and he forced his breath to a slower rhythm still. Light through the edge of the blindfold, another key. Lenny too agitated to tie the thing properly. Maybe too pissed off to have done a good job with the ropes. Gently, on the side of his body opposite the dip in the mattress, Silver eased his wrist against the knot.
It tightened. Okay. Okay, good. Another piece of info: his captor was competent and serious as fuck. Relaxing his arm, he ran through everything he’d learned so far. He was naked, on his belly, arms tied above his head. A thin mattress on a small metal-frame bed, from what he could feel beneath him, the kind of camp bed nutcases kept in their basements for God only knew what heinous bloody purpose. He’d been dragged down the stairs, to judge from the aching throb up and down his spine. Kicked in the head, but he knew about that. Nauseated, so probably concussed, but not enough to put him out of action.
And Lenny hadn’t tied his feet. Maybe not as competent, as serious as all that. Silver waited, counting out his breaths. The agency wouldn’t raise the alarm until he failed to check in that evening. All kinds of shit could go down between now and then. Anything could happen at all.
The weight beside him shifted. Silver heard—he’d composed himself and hushed his breathing low enough to hear—the distinct sound of a heavy man standing up from the edge of the bed. He tensed, got a little weight down onto his elbows, ignoring the pain as the tautline hitch closed harder round his wrists. Willed all the power in his body down to his thighs—waited till Lenny took two steps, soles scraping on concrete floor—and lashed out as hard as he could with one leg.
He caught him in the hip. A crash rewarded him as Lenny hit the floor, and then a roar of rage. “You fucker!”
Brief sounds of scrambling, and then the game was done. Two hundred pounds of enraged soldier landed hard on his back, knocking his last hoarded breath out of his lungs. “You fucker,” Lenny repeated in a rasp against his ear. “I’ll break your back like a twig if you move again. I’ll have what I’ve paid for now. I’m having it.”
The gag was foul and tight in Silver’s mouth. It felt like a piece of the same rope that bound him, and he retched dryly before seizing fierce last-minute self-control: if he puked he would choke, and that was way up there on his list of good ways not to die. Lenny forced his legs apart, and he couldn’t bite back a cry of raw misery. Somehow in all his encounters, in this life and the other, he’d managed to avoid getting raped.
How many women in his trade could say the same? He’d seen them, the ones who’d got caught, overwhelmed. He’d broken into a flat to rescue the best, most accomplished and smartest of his colleagues, found her uninjured but intolerably broken, snapped from the inside. He didn’t want this. He shook his head, yelled no as best he could through the gag, just in case Lenny had any doubts.
But Lenny burst into cawing laughter. “What was that, fucker?” His hands closed tight round Silver’s throat. “Whores don’t get to say no. You can’t rape a whore.”
Silver buried his face against the mattress. His last privacy lay in the dark. He sought out his own scent—rank with fear, but familiar—to drown out the bed’s squalid stink. Loneliness seized him, worse than pain. Worse than Lenny Price on top of him, unzipping with a bestial grunt. Oh God, of all the ways not to die, this was right at the top. Not alone. Not like this. Not alone.
Chapter Eleven
I thumped the window of the cab. I tended not to hit things, and Drew and Jamie stared. The cabbie gave me a warning glance over his shoulder. “Hoi.”
“Sorry. Sorry, but the agency won’t give me the fucking address.”
“Where do you want to go, then?”
“Carry on. Keep heading for... Where did you say it was, Jamie? Langley Road in Kensal Green?”
Jamie could barely speak. He nodded, then huddled into his corner of the cab. Andrew, wedged placatingly in the middle of the back seat, looked from one of us to the other. “You know,” he ventured, “maybe it’s good that Silver’s agency won’t hand out client’s addresses. They probably wouldn’t give any info about him to Lenny either. We’ve got no guarantee he’s even with the guy.”
He was trying to reassure me. I tried to be reassured. I blotted out the shops and restaurants flashing past the cab window and substituted Silver, chilling out at home—wherever he lived; I didn’t even know that much about him—with his feet up and a nice glass of wine. He hadn’t returned my insane text about the house in Oak Vale, so I’d blown it there, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except finding out that he was safe. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“Well, that’s not unusual, surely. He wouldn’t want the ringer going off in the middle of a... a session.”
“The agency said they’d check in with him, but they haven’t phoned me back. That policewoman I spoke to, the one who said they’d send a car round to Lenny’s just in case... she hasn’t phoned me back.” I punched the glass again, not meaning to, fear and frustration boiling down the muscles of my arm. “Shit. Sorry.”
“Too right, you are,” the cabbie told me fiercely. “One more of those and you can get the bloody bus.”
“Okay, but can’t you go faster? Is this the best route? Shouldn’t you have taken the Westway?”
“George, shut up,” Andrew advised me kindly. He leaned forward. “Sorry about my brother, mate. Fifty quid in it for you if you can get us there before two o’clock. And first refusal for your firm on half a dozen juicy contracts in Oak Vale.”
I opened my mouth to protest. But Drew would be good for it now, wouldn’t he—the money and the promises, and I marvelled once again at the cherry-spattered shitstorm of life. Peaches and cream, with a side order of pure dread. The cab sped up. I loved Drew for trying. “But Lenny mightn’t have taken him to this place in Kensal,” I burst out, throat burning with the words. “They could be anywhere.”
“Just keep phoning. Like I say, Lenny might not be with him at all, and—”
“He will,” Jamie interrupted, suddenly finding his voice. “He’s like a heat-seeking missile once he’s got you in his sights. He won’t stop.”
“Jamie. Not helping.”
“I am, because I know him. I know he’ll have gone to the house on Langley Road. He does all his dirty work there. He tried to hide the place from me so he wouldn’t have to split it in the divorce, but I found out. He’ll be there.”
Andrew took this in. Then he reached into his smart summer blazer and extracted a packet of tissues. He gave one to Jamie. “This isn’t your fault,” he said. Then, for the second time in recent days, he handed one to me. “And you, Georgie, have got to pull yourself the fuck together. This guy of yours...”
“Silver,” I corrected, as if saying his name out loud could keep him alive and safe. “Aaron Silver.”
“Right. It was only one night, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I snapped back. “What about it?”
“I’ve never seen you like this, that’s all.”
Jamie came to my rescue, though my impulse to push him out into traffic didn’t decrease. You left that damn card for your nutcase husband to find. “One night is all it takes with Silver,” he said. “He made me wish I was thirty years older and single. And George is those things—Silver’s age, I mean. And he’s... he’s ready.”
I hitched forward on the seat so I could look at him past Andrew’s shielding bulk. “Thanks for that,” I said, “but for God’s sake put a sock in it now. Why haven’t the police phoned me back?”
“I can tell you that too, if you’ll listen. My brother’s a copper. They’ve got priorities. Sex-workers aren’t high on the list, no matter how much they might want to help. And an able-bodied male sex-worker who went into a situation of his own accord... They’re not gonna rush to the scene, that’s all.”
“Jesus. They’re not the bloody RAC, are they?”
“No, but they’ll go to a lone female first, just like vehicle rescue. It’s the other side of all that gender stuff Silver talked about. He under
stands. He understood me.”
“What, and you think Andrew and I don’t?”
“No, not completely. I think you’ve got to be in some kind of trade, have some kind of life, that makes you vulnerable in that way, before you...” He gave up, sank his face into his hands. “It doesn’t bloody matter. I could rip my face off for bringing this down on you. You might not understand, but you and Drew just got on with helping me anyway. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I caught Andrew’s glare, reminding me of my manners. Of my basic decency, which had started to dissolve in the acid bath of fear. George is Silver’s age. He’s ready. “How can it possibly be your fault?” I demanded. “A man should be able to take his trousers off in his own home without unleashing Robo-Lenny on the world.”
Jamie gave a raw chuckle. “I suppose so. I swear to God, though, I’ll check my pockets next time.”
My mapper app beeped. Quickly I switched screens. “We’re here. Look, it’s just round the corner.”
“All right, all right.” Andrew spread out his arms in front of both of us. “Jamie, you’re a capable lad, and George is looking a little bit trim these days. But we are not exactly the cavalry I’d want if I was in Silver’s shoes, and he’s probably sitting at home polishing ’em anyway. So if the police are there, we let them deal with it, and if they’re not, we wait. Are you listening, Starsky and Hutch? Got that? Good.”
***
Drew was right: we were a sorry-arsed cavalry, out here on the kerb beside Lenny’s house, not a clue what to do next. There was no sign of the police, no-one to be seen at all in the daytime street. The summer wind that made the leaves dance in Oak Vale only kicked up dust and crisp packets here. Most of the front lawns were concrete. “Urban desolation,” Andrew observed, as if he’d read my thought. “I bet town-planner George here has some ideas about that.”
