by Claire Askew
Just make it round the turn, Birch thought, taking the right as fast as she could, and upping her pace towards the left. Just make it to the second corner. Then the bright lights of the Grassmarket would appear before her: she’d be able to see a rectangle of road and cars and windows. If she had to scream, someone would hear her. Someone would look up.
But she didn’t make it to the turn. The man was upon her, one hand closing on the back of her jacket collar, hauling her backward into the bottleneck of the close. She made to scream, but he brought his other hand down hard over her mouth. He smelled like dirt and rolling tobacco.
Birch flailed. All four of her limbs were still free, so she windmilled her arms backward, striking downwards at the man’s hips, stomach, groin, trying to land a blow. She tried to plant her legs and resist him dragging her back against the wall, where the shadows fell between the streetlamps and any witness glancing out of their window would have to squint to see anything. As she did this, she tried to assess his strength: the arm that braced his hand over her face didn’t budge, but this man wasn’t muscled like Charlie was. His hands were rough, and he was already breathing hard as they scuffled on the wet paving. He was an older man, she decided, and she matched him, roughly, for height.
‘Fucking Jesus Mary mother of Christ,’ he hissed, flecking her ear with spit. ‘Dinnae make this worse than it’s got tae be.’
Glaswegian, Birch thought. White. Fifties.
With one elbow, she managed to strike him hard in the solar plexus, and she felt him give a little in the middle.
‘Bitch,’ he spat, and the hand that had been on her collar disappeared. Birch brought both her hands up to wrestle his other arm from her mouth: she bent and contorted, trying to squeeze from his grip. But then . . .
‘Fucking stop it,’ the man whispered. He pushed something cold and round against Birch’s temple.
Her first thought was annoyance: she’d almost been free, goddammit. But her second thought was gun. And then that was her only thought: gun, gun, gun, like a chant in time with her pounding heart. She went limp.
‘Jesus,’ the man said again. She’d tired him, she could tell. Now they stood in a strange, frozen pose: her hunched against his body, and him bent around her with one hand still over her mouth, and the other holding the weapon to her head. Birch listened for any sound of assistance: a footstep on the steps above or below them, a noise in one of the tenements alongside. Nothing: only traffic noise, and the man’s hoarse breath.
‘Right,’ he said, after a strange moment of quiet. ‘Fucking tell me where he is.’
Shit. Birch closed her eyes. This was them. This was one of the guys Charlie was hiding from.
‘Who?’
The guy’s hand was still over her mouth. He shifted it to her throat, so she could speak.
‘Where who is?’ Birch spluttered.
The man nudged the gun, pressing it harder against her skull. ‘Dinnae fuck wi’ me,’ he said. ‘Where’s your fucking brother?’
Birch let herself relax in his grip. Just a little, nothing he’d notice. She shifted her feet so they were sprung, not flat.
‘You’ve got the wrong person, arsehole.’ She hoped to God she sounded sincere. ‘I don’t have a brother.’
He shook her. Birch used the movement to further shift her weight, inching the balance of their clinch to her advantage.
‘I said,’ he hissed, ‘dinnae fuck wi’ me. You think I dinnae ken who ye are?’
Birch swallowed. She felt her throat contract against the man’s calloused palm. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Helen Birch,’ she said. ‘And the only brother I’ve ever had is missing, presumed dead.’
The man moved his lips even closer to Birch’s ear. ‘You sure about that?’
Birch twisted her head round. In the chokehold he’d attempted, it hurt, but she was able to swivel far enough that she could eyeball him.
‘Fuck you,’ she said and then with all the force she could muster, she parted her lips and sank her teeth into his cheek.
The man started, twitching his head back and away from her. Birch knew she had one chance, but she’d prepared for it. She brought one hand up and closed it around the man’s forearm, below the gun. She made her right hand into a fist, and drove it up hard under his chin. She felt his teeth clatter, and he spun out, letting go of her throat and reeling back. Now she could get both hands on the arm holding the gun. She dug her fingers in, planted her weight the way she’d been trained, bent her back and flipped him, hauling his weight over the top of her own and bringing him down hard on his back on the wet stone in front of her. She heard the back of his head crack off the concrete, and all the wind go out of his lungs at once: a sound like a mattress hitting wet ground. The gun fell from his grip and made a metallic skitter as it clattered away from them both. Unable to speak, the assailant stared up at her, his eyes wide and his mouth opening and closing like something beached.
Birch leaned down over him. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly sure.’ Now she saw that her assessment had been right. The hoodie had fallen back in the tussle, and the man was indeed about fifty or so: his face hard-weathered, fight-scarred. A tattoo on his neck, in fancy gothic script: Fenton. ‘What is it you want, scumbag?’
She was high on adrenalin, but knew it couldn’t last. A lump was already growing in her throat, and she knew she could go into shock if she didn’t ride the wave of the encounter.
The man spluttered.
‘Speak up, there’s a good lad.’ Stop enjoying this, Helen, she thought. It’s serious.
The man coughed, and the cough sounded thick as soup.
Remembering the gun, Birch glanced around her. It had disappeared into the darkness, and she didn’t have time to hunt for it. But she’d seen it, and felt its snub nose against her skin.
‘Assaulting a police officer, and possession of an illegal firearm? You’re ambitious, I’ll give you that.’
‘It wasn’t loaded.’
The man’s voice was hoarse from coughing, and he was still short of breath, but he was also livid, Birch could tell. Beaten in an unfair fight, and by a girl. Perps always hated that.
‘I’m no’ fuckin’ stupid,’ he added.
Birch snorted, but she knew that time was short now: though still on his back, the man – Fenton – was recovering. For the first time, she realised that he might not be alone, and she needed to get down to the Grassmarket, along King’s Stables Road and into the car without being followed, or attacked by any pals of his who might be hanging around. The adrenalin was ebbing and soon she’d be no good for anything.
‘Really? Could’ve fooled me,’ she said. Time to go. Get out of here.
‘Now.’ Birch leaned down over her assailant, and he flinched. ‘I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you want, but you’re going to leave me alone, do you understand?’
The man blinked at her.
‘I’ve got evidence of all this,’ she said, ‘given the DNA you’ll have left all over me – thanks, by the way, for being such a spitty talker. So I don’t know what your deal is, but I’m frankly fucking sick and tired of you and your pal with the creepy phone calls and the blacked-out car and the flowers, okay? I thought I’d already warned you. Leave. Me. Alone.’
The man stared up at her. She could hear his breath still rattling in his lungs.
‘Do you understand me?’ She realised she sounded like a teacher, scolding a naughty schoolboy. She half expected him to reply, yes, miss.
Instead, the man nodded. It was a slight nod, and dismissive, but it was also her cue to leave.
‘You’ll be hearing from my colleagues,’ Birch said. She straightened up, turned, and walked as slowly and as upright as she dared to the last turn of the close. When she got there, she made herself pause and look back, though the welcoming lights of the street were laid out below her, and she could see pedestrians crossing the bright opening at the close’s foot. The man had rolled onto his side and propp
ed himself on one elbow to watch her. Soon, he’d be able to stand, and then he could look for the gun. He could follow her. Birch plunged down the close steps as fast as she could, half fell out into the street, and ran.
I called Toad from the van. I was frantic, covered in Vyshnya’s blood. Beside myself about Karen. The girls were loaded in the back, crying, freaking out. I drove as calmly as I could and prayed to God I wouldn’t get pulled over and have to explain: three women in lingerie and dressing gowns carrying condoms and bondage gear and envelopes of tatty fivers. I’d brought the metal bar from behind the hatch and Hanna was clutching it. A couple of times, polis cars with the blues-and-twos going tore by, heading the opposite way. For the second time that night, I prayed.
I’d woken Toad, but he answered cheerily, thinking I was calling about the job.
‘Fuck that,’ I said. ‘Skol’ko volka ni kormi, on vsyo v les smotrit.’
This was a code Toad and I had worked out between us. The idiom meant, roughly, a well-fed wolf still looks to the forest. Between us, it meant the shit has hit the fan and I need back-up.
Toad didn’t ask.
‘You can get to my place?’ he asked, in English.
‘I’ve got the van,’ I said.
‘Then come.’
Toad calmed the girls down while I cleaned up. I remember peeling off my jeans in the shower, stamping on them as I scrubbed myself pink and raw, trying to get the water to run clear. Toad lent me a too-big outfit and said he’d dispose of everything for me. I was glad. The trainers I was wearing were brown and hardened with blood, the jeans ruined.
One by one, the girls went home, Toad calling cabs for them. We’d removed all the cash from the building and divided it between the four of us. I tried to give Toad part of my cut, but he refused. The girls stuffed the possessions they’d rescued into bin bags, told the cabbies they’d been at a pyjama party. Hanna went last. She hadn’t looked at me since we’d been outside the stuck door in the sauna’s corridor, calling Vyshnya’s name. She’d sat on Toad’s sofa in silence, her hands clasped together, palm to palm, and stuffed between her knees.
‘I’ll call you, babe,’ I said, as she headed into the stair, the cab waiting outside in the dark.
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘whatever.’
I stayed at Toad’s that night, and he made some calls. Yes, the ambulance had come and yes, the place had been raided, though I wasn’t too worried. Our exit was more rushed than I’d have liked, but I’d been careful. The polis would have found no drugs, no money and no condoms. No information on johns, or on the girls. Only Karen was there to be found. I hoped, for her sake, that she was in police custody.
I reasoned that Vyshnya must be in one of the Glasgow hospitals, but I didn’t dare try to find her. I didn’t want to discuss it, even with Toad. I believed – still believe – that Solomon meant to kill her, or, at the very least, he didn’t care if she died. I couldn’t risk him discovering I’d looked for her, and I couldn’t rule out the possibility that she might have a copper stationed at her bedside, waiting for known associates to appear. Worst of all: she could be in the morgue. That wasn’t something I wanted to know for sure.
We got back into the sauna a week or two later: there wasn’t much could be done about us without evidence, and this was back in the good old days when a degree of blind-eye turning went on. The girls made do in the meantime texting regulars for outcalls, and I kept my head down and listened for rumblings from Solomon. I’d already known to be scared of him before I’d seen how he went to work on Vyshnya, before I’d seen with my own eyes what he was capable of. I walked around like a man waiting for a piano to fall from the sky and obliterate him. But the blow never came. I’d saved the business, I supposed. The police saw what they thought was a sex worker beaten up by her john. They were looking for a punter, not Solomon. I was off the hook.
It was creepy, working there without Vyshnya. I had to become the mother hen as well as the muscle, and the girls were jumpy as fuck. News of the raid spread on the online punting forums, and business was slow to pick up for the first couple of months or so. There wasn’t the good atmosphere there had been: we didn’t joke around as much together, and it didn’t take long for Hanna to tell me she didn’t want to see me like that any more. She stood over me and made me delete all her nudes from my phone. After that it was all small talk: good weekend? Yeah, you? All that shit.
We all missed Karen and none of us talked about it. Or – I mean, I assume the girls talked about it when I wasn’t around. No one knew where she’d gone. She didn’t return anyone’s texts and her phone just rang out, the voicemail message apparently wiped. I asked Izz – on his visits, Karen was the girl he’d always picked – but he was none the wiser. Toad could turn nothing up. I tried to tell myself she’d just skipped town: shaken up by the arrest, or maybe just sick of the work. I knew, somewhere at the bottom of my chest, that it wasn’t true. Karen had helped Vyshnya, Karen had called the ambulance – only I knew different. Karen had got the place raided, and now, Karen was gone.
I thought time might help. It seemed to help the girls. It took us a couple of months, but we learned to do without Vyshnya. The girls shared some duties between them: running out for Red Bulls or wet wipes, making cuppas for everyone during the lulls. I took the sheets to the launderette, I unlocked the place and cleaned the loos and hoovered, and I locked up again after hours. We settled to it, and those couple of months became a year, and then three, and then five. The girls would talk about how Vyshnya was back in Ukraine: she’d gone home to recuperate and decided to stay. I thought it was a fairy tale they’d spun for each other so many times they believed it was true, but I kept quiet. Adultwork got big, and they helped each other tart up their profiles. It brought more punters in, and the girls would bitch about them after appointments, reading out the reviews the men left. The web reviews meant less aggro, too, and my role became even more mother hen, even less muscle. Hanna gave me all my CDs back, left one day and never came back. She only texted me once after that, when I got drunk and told her I missed her: We’re done, okay? Then nothing. New girls came and went, and the dynamic changed. Time should have helped. We’re talking about years, man. Time should have fixed it, but it didn’t. It just made it worse.
Birch made it to the car, twitchy as hell all the way, and kicking herself. How could she have been in such a daydream that she’d had to cut down the close? How could she not have noticed that someone was following her? Had he been waiting for her all day? Had he followed her to her mother’s house? And why didn’t she arrest him, for fuck’s sake? Because of what he might say to her colleagues? He’d have the power to unravel everything once and for all: Rab was already suspicious of her. But she was only thinking all this stuff now, too late. She’d been in such a dwam about Charlie that she couldn’t think straight.
At the bottom of Granny’s Green Steps she’d flinched at a couple, rattling too fast down towards the street, and shrieking. Halfway down King’s Stables Road, a car engine started up right beside her, and she’d heard herself give a little yelp. Under the big road bridge, a busker had been playing saxophone: an eerie tune that sent echoes ringing through the multi-storey as she made her way to the car. The place was harshly lit, which made the night outside feel darker, and between cars and in the stairwells there were deep shadows Birch tried to avoid. She looked behind her every ten steps, but there was no one, or seemed to be no one. She got in the car, and locked herself in.
She drove along the Grassmarket slowly, retracing her steps to look for Fenton, but aware that she wasn’t as attentive behind the wheel as she might be. No sign of her assailant: she’d just have to head for home. South Bridge was a snarl of double-deckers, cyclists weaving this way and that. Every movement in her rear-view spooked her. But as the adrenalin ebbed away, she tried to make sense of what had happened.
Where is he? the man had asked – meaning they didn’t know, not yet. The skull-faced man had cased her house on Monda
y, and maybe again since, and seen nothing untoward. But they clearly suspected she’d hidden him, that she’d helped him, that she knew where he was. Birch felt grateful that, in the heat of the moment, she’d had the good sense to play clueless. But then, she thought, you are clueless. You have no idea where Charlie is now.
But they didn’t either. Not yet.
Birch turned right up Waterloo Place to avoid the chaos of Leith Street roadworks. The buildings fell away and the cemetery arched its back in a dark, spiky mass beside her. Further on, the skyline stretched out to the south, and on the side of Salisbury Crags a little fire was burning. Something about seeing it made Birch shudder. How could she report the attack? The phone calls and flowers were one thing, but the assault of a police officer might trigger more scrutiny from her colleagues than she wanted. She’d have to pretend the man hadn’t known who she was, hadn’t asked her about Charlie. She knew she’d spent two days covering her own tracks, but an incomplete account of what the man had said would be more lying: this time, lying in an official police report. Birch almost laughed.
Not telling anyone about something is fine, she thought, but lying in the paperwork is just not cricket. She remembered how, when she was a child, her mother used to tell her and Charlie not to lie, because there was no such thing as just one. Each lie begat another, and then another, and then another. As a seven-year-old who thought she knew everything, little Helen Birch had scoffed at this. She’d learned from meeting scores of criminals that her mother was more correct than she could ever have known.
‘What are you going to do, Helen?’ she said aloud, then wished she hadn’t. Even her own voice in the quiet bubble of the car made her uneasy.
