by Paul Finch
A row of squarish, yellow frontages faced him from some thirty yards away: abandoned diesels; dented, grimy, daubed with spray-painted obscenities. On the other side of those, corroded rails dwindled off along a canyon filled with underbrush. He turned back to the narrow passage. There was no movement down there now. He glanced up the slope; there was no movement among the trees at the top either. If Gemma had arrived at the suspect lorry, she clearly wasn’t concerned to discover why he’d suddenly dropped off the air. Not yet.
A loud clang diverted his attention back down the alley.
It reverberated for several seconds, but still there was no sign of movement.
Heck moved on to the next alley. This one was longer than any of those previous, the two trains between which it had formed consisting of four or five carriages each, instead of one or two. But it was the figure at the far end that most caught his notice.
He jumped backwards, flattening himself out of sight – until he realised that the figure’s back was turned. Again, he saw a heavy green waterproof, its hood pulled up to a goblin-like peak. But the figure, which was broad across the shoulders – to the point of being foursquare, almost like a rugby prop forward – remained perfectly still.
Inviting him to approach.
Oh, I will … but not the way you want me to, pal.
Stealthily as he could, Heck clambered up through an open doorway into the hulk on his left, and found himself looking down an arched gangway littered with glass, overturned tables and the guts of slashed or fire-blackened seats. Aside from the odd jammed-open door, he could see a considerable distance in both directions. By his feet lay a mass of crinkly, yellow newspaper. It looked like the Daily Mail; its front page lead expressed horror at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Heck stepped over it, advancing quickly and quietly. At the end of the first carriage, in a boarding area filled with more shattered glass and several half-bricks, he paused to listen. There was no sound from outside, but some indefinable concern made him linger. And then he heard it – a plasticky crackling from just behind him.
He twirled, to see a toilet door standing ajar by half a foot or so. Impenetrable green shadow lay on the other side. That crackling again; louder this time. He pictured a heavy waterproof jacket, its wearer shifting position. Was he staring at Heck right now through that open slice of doorway?
Heck had no choice; he charged forward, throwing his shoulder at the door. It barely shifted under his weight; and for a second he completely and absolutely believed that someone was braced against the other side.
And then he saw the truth.
The tiny toilet cubicle had been crammed with plastic rubbish bags. And the intrepid squirrel who’d been investigating them leapt for the broken, moss-covered window and vanished through it in an ash-grey blur.
Heck remained in the doorway for several seconds; head drooped, trying to regain his composure. Then he continued along the train at speed, glancing through one smashed window after another, catching ephemeral glimpses of the eroded bodywork flanking him on either side. He slowed again as he approached what had to be the front of the vehicle, advancing with the lightest footfalls possible. Directly ahead stood the open door to the driver’s compartment. First, Heck sidled to his right, glancing down into the alley. The figure he’d seen ought to be standing just to the front of this position, but now no one was in sight – just an empty gap between the two locomotives.
Swearing under his breath, Heck pushed his way into the driver’s cab. Where once there’d been a bank of controls, all that remained were tufts of oily wiring and rusty rivets where the two seats had been positioned. He slid through the open door and clambered down to the ground, glancing back along the alley, which was still deserted. Only when he advanced into the open did he see the figure again.
It stood thirty yards to his right; as before, its back was turned, but now its left arm hung motionless by its side. The figure appeared to be staring at a half-collapsed siding shed. This time as Heck advanced, he made no attempt at stealth, his feet crunching loudly on gravel. Despite the noise, the hooded figure remained static, refusing to look around – which was faintly unnerving, as was its size. Up close, it looked big enough to break an opponent in half. Heck had a crazy idea about landing a rabbit punch between the burly shoulder-blades, just at the base of the neck, putting the guy out of action before the fight even started, but he didn’t.
‘Police officer!’ he shouted, grabbing the figure’s left wrist, twisting it up and behind the back in a sharp-angled goose-neck.
The figure went down surprisingly easily, gasping with pain, hood flopping sideways.
And Heck saw several things at once: firstly, that though he was big across the shoulders, this guy was late middle-aged and pot-bellied, with a thick growth of grey fuzz on his podgy, florid face; secondly, that he hadn’t heard Heck approach because he was wearing a pair of earphones attached to an iPod; thirdly, he hadn’t moved because he’d been concentrating on an object mounted in front of him on a flimsy tripod – it was an optical level, and it had now fallen over, snapping apart; and finally, the stencilled lettering on the right lapel of his waterproof, which read: DAYNTON HOMES Ltd.
Heck heard a similar shout to those he’d heard before, though now more intelligible.
‘Mal! You got them flaming earphones on again?’
A second figure, also wearing a green waterproof, perambulated into Heck’s peripheral vision. This one was younger, clean shaved and of much slighter build, but his jacket too was emblazoned with the Daynton Homes logo and he was carrying his own levelling instrument at his shoulder. He stopped dead.
‘Oi! What’s your bloody game!’
‘Alright … easy,’ Heck said, releasing his prisoner. ‘Simple mistake, yeah?’
‘Who are you? This is private land … it belongs to Daynton Homes.’
‘I realise that now.’ Heck dug his warrant card from his pocket. ‘I’m a copper.’
The bearded guy had rolled over onto his backside and was gingerly cradling his arm. ‘What’d you attack me for? I didn’t do anything to you …’
‘I didn’t mean … look, I’m sorry. I thought you were … someone else.’
The younger guy had now deemed it safe enough to come forward and assist his overweight chum to his feet. ‘Fucking idiot.’
‘Relax, pal.’
‘I’m not your pal!’
‘Just answer me this … were you lot up on that ridge overlooking the open ground running to Ingley Nook?’
‘Who else? We’re building all the way to the pit cottages. Four phases in the next two years.’
‘Awww,’ the bearded guy moaned, picking up the remnants of his hi-tech measuring device. ‘He’s broken my sodding level!’
‘Gonna cost you, this,’ the younger guy warned. ‘Big time.’
Heck nodded glumly. It looked like his exhaust and headlights would be coming out of his own pocket after all.
Chapter 18
Gracie was wearing her regulation satin hot-pants, her leather thigh boots and a clingy halter-top – the really flimsy one that always enhanced her overly generous 38E bust. She’d applied tasteful make-up and wore her auburn hair in a thick braid, which she’d coiled at the back. It might be spring but it was still cold and damp at night, so she was also wearing a fleecy jacket, which she of course kept zipped down so that her best assets remained in the open.
Chantelle, her junior by twenty years, wore a denim miniskirt which barely concealed her black stocking tops and suspender straps. Her boobs were smaller than Gracie’s but firmer (she liked to boast), so she generally didn’t bother with a bra. Tonight she only had a string vest under her open leather coat, through which you could see her nipples protruding; the chill helped a lot in that respect. Chantelle’s shoulder-length hair was blonde, but only because it was bleached – in fact she’d bleached it so many times now that it was dry and straw-like; so to conceal this she wore it in bunches. She had a feline beauty, s
he’d once been told, so she tried to accentuate this with heavy make-up: black eye-liner, green eye-shadow, deeply powdered cheeks, and a slash of vermilion on her lips. In addition she was tall – statuesque, she always felt – five-eleven compared to Gracie’s five-five; her usual killer heels added to this.
But the pair might have made a more striking picture of sexually empowered womanhood had they not been regulars on the Bradford meat-rack. No matter how saucy the attire, it was always difficult to maintain an aura of real glamour when you’d been raped, ripped off and slapped around as often as Gracie and Chantelle had.
Gracie’s curves were the most eye-catching thing about her, especially when you glimpsed her in the blinking blue and pink strobes of the sex-for-sale district, but when you got close there was no hiding the ashen pallor or the sagging flesh. And you could never conceal the truth about your hands with make-up, the way you could with your face; Gracie’s were so shrivelled they looked more like claws – the long nails and crimson polish she favoured only boosted this illusion.
In Chantelle’s case, even the facial make-up didn’t work. She thought it made her look like a cat, but in fact it made her look like a cadaver. She wasn’t statuesque either, she was gangling – an emaciated beanpole whose sexy clothes would have looked more alluring on a wire-framed mannequin. And it wasn’t as if Butch – who liked to call himself their ‘manager’ – ever offered much advice in this regard, at least none that was friendly, and it went without saying that he offered them zero protection. He kept them in just enough cash to keep vodka in their bellies, speed up their noses and nicotine in their lungs. But if they ever got so stoned that they brought home wages of the Mickey Mouse variety, out came his leather belt with the brass lion’s head buckle, and he’d more thoroughly chasten their flesh than the kinkiest punter ever had.
It was perhaps no surprise that the two girls had thus devised their own strategies to ensure at least a modicum of security. They always worked together now – never apart. That didn’t mean they went off with johns together. There was always that spine-freezing moment when, despite every molecule in your body telling you it was a bad idea, you got into a car belonging to someone you didn’t know and were driven away, watching your friend’s face in the rear-view mirror as it receded into the distance. But they always did their best to vet a punter beforehand and would refuse anyone they didn’t like the look of. It didn’t matter if Butch was vexed when they got home (so long as he never found out they’d deliberately turned a punter away of course); it was better to be safe than sorry.
Another thing they did – and this was Gracie’s innovation – was carry paper and pencils in their handbags. Neither would now ride off with a customer unless the other one had taken a note of his registration mark first, and they always made sure the customer knew this. When she’d first come up with the idea, Gracie had been very pleased with herself. She’d almost thought it a perfect plan. Only an idiot would try something nasty once the girls had got his number.
Or a lunatic, of course – and that wasn’t reassuring.
Because there was no shortage of lunatics around; not when the night came down on Britain’s old industrial cities. This one for example, Bradford, had once been a hunting ground for Peter Sutcliffe, the infamous Yorkshire Ripper. What a terror tale that had been. Despite frenetic police activity, when the indigo sky turned black and these old terraced side-streets ran red with bloody light, Sutcliffe had gone prowling, taking girl after girl, reducing them to lifeless, butchered husks. That had been before their time. The last Ripper victim had died in 1980, while Gracie was at junior school, eight years before Chantelle was even born. But take this cobbled pitch they walked on now, with decayed Victorian arches overhead, a derelict, boarded-up factory to their front and a cavernous, trash-filled gloom behind them, the distant outlines of tramps huddled around piles of burning rags, the flames of which cast crimson phantoms on the aged crumbling brickwork: girls had disappeared from this very spot, and not just during the Ripper’s reign – or so the story told.
Of course, at the end of the day it was needs must. Neither of them was here voluntarily. Not in truth. It was just that they couldn’t get anything else. Chantelle always told people that she wasn’t a bad girl at heart, but that she’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, which now prevented her from getting a real career or looking after her two children, who were in the care of her mother. By contrast, Gracie had held various jobs; she’d been a barmaid, a coat-check girl at a nightclub; she’d once loaded shelves in a supermarket. Alright, she’d been a lap-dancer and a photographic model as well. No doubt the moral majority would have sneered at those two occupations, but at least there hadn’t been any physical contact between her and the customers – not in those early days. It was difficult now, gazing back through the haze of drugs and booze, to work out exactly when that ‘no touch’ rule had been ditched. But what they were doing now was still an earner, even if it was a bit distasteful.
Not that either of the two girls had earned much over the last few months. It was April, but the after effects of a very hard winter were only just wearing off. Snow, ice and fog were never good for business, and the likes of Chantelle had become increasingly desperate. The last few nights she’d driven off with blokes she probably shouldn’t have: a shifty-eyed porcine individual with a thick, spittle-filled beard and bloodstained clothes, driving a grimy old butcher’s van; a more respectable-looking sort, who’d promptly ruined the illusion by telling her before they struck a deal that she had to agree to be cuffed and blindfolded – and had laughed like a hyena as he drove her away.
It was almost inevitable that when they saw the first vehicle this evening, Chantelle straightened up and squeaked with excitement. It was a Jaguar, and it drove slowly along the street, kerb-crawling but barely breaking speed as it passed them by. Gracie tried to scan its occupants, though all she saw were two vague figures, one driving and one in the front passenger seat, and then it vanished round a corner.
‘He’ll be back,’ Chantelle said confidently.
‘There were two of them,’ Gracie replied, vaguely discomforted.
‘Even better. One for each of us.’
‘They’ve gone anyway.’
‘Nah … they’ll be back.’
The Jaguar was back, three minutes later, cruising down the street in the same direction. As before, it drove slowly – perhaps a little more slowly this time. Chantelle ensured she was at the edge of the pavement, head high, hand on hip, such bust as she had thrust outward. Once again, the car passed them. More by instinct than design, Gracie took a scruffy slip of paper from her fleece pocket and a stub of pencil, and scribbled down its registration mark.
The car again vanished around the corner. This wasn’t unusual. Some johns, especially first-timers, were nervous about picking up girls – it took them a while to pluck up the courage. But that knowledge didn’t put Gracie at ease. She folded the paper and slid it into her left thigh boot. When the vehicle appeared a third time, now travelling in the opposite direction, it stopped – but not directly alongside them; on the other side of the road, against the wall of the dilapidated factory.
‘Listen, Chant,’ Gracie said under her breath. ‘Posh gits don’t come down here. You’ve got to be sensible, yeah?’
‘I need to score, Grace,’ Chantelle said from the side of her smile-curved mouth. ‘Maybe you can afford to have scruples. At the moment I fucking can’t, alright?’
But they were both surprised when the figure that had ridden in the Jaguar’s front passenger seat climbed out and came around the car, crossing the road towards them – because it was a female. Quite young, seventeen or eighteen at the most, exceedingly pretty in a fresh-faced schoolgirl sort of way. Her platinum-blonde hair was wild and straggly, and hung almost to her waist. She was very slim, but also shapely – like a dancer. She wore a short black dress, a black cardigan, black tights and white plimsolls. Her arms were folded as she walked quickly but prettil
y across the road towards them.
‘Hi,’ she said, smiling brightly, which made her look prettier still. ‘You guys working tonight?’
‘We could be,’ Chantelle replied.
‘Good, ’cause I’ve got a proposition for you.’
‘We don’t do kids,’ Gracie said in a flat tone.
The girl chuckled – a delightful sound, which implied that the idea amused her but was also wide of the mark. ‘We need a couple of extras for one of our movies.’
‘Movies?’ Chantelle said.
‘Yeah … look, my boyfriend and me, we make porn movies. You know, at our home, and we post them on our website. I say “extras” … but you won’t really be extras. You’ll be working, if you know what I mean.’ She chuckled again – provocatively.
‘You and your boyfriend?’ Gracie said warily. ‘Is that him over there in the car?’
‘Yeah, he’s a bit shy.’
‘But he’s not too shy to post videos of himself online?’
‘That’s different, isn’t it? He can’t see the audience then.’
‘How much?’ Chantelle asked, as if she’d already heard enough to know this was a good idea.
The girl was about to reply when something briefly distracted her – movement in the dark recess behind them. They glanced around: a grizzled, ferrety face had just peeked out from a cardboard box, the sagging walls of which had been reinforced with sheets of urine-yellow newspaper. His eyes were glazed and rheumy; he muttered something incoherent and then reached up a twisted paw to pull more newspaper down over the entrance as he withdrew inside.
