Costa Del Crime

by Wensley Clarkson

  DUNGEON QUEEN

  Watch out, gentlemen, Ramona’s all out of dogs to walk

  DUNGEON QUEEN

  The hot weather, cheap liquor and many beautiful people make for a good time on the Costa del Sol. You just have to open the local weekly newspaper SUR in English and turn to the personal ads at the back to find hundreds of private and ‘professional’ people offering their ‘personal services’. Whether you’re gay, straight, bisexual, into threesomes, couples, single ladies, married ladies, guys, gals – you get the picture – you’ll find what you’re after in southern Spain.

  Over in Puerto Banus, near Marbella, there are many bars where ladies and men of the night are available. Simply visit one of these taverns and you’ll no doubt be approached by someone. Paying for sex in Spain can be cheaper than the rest of Europe: some prostitutes charge as little as €50. If you’re a man with a fantasy about having sex with two women, then you can expect to pay around €150 for an hour or two. If it’s a couple you’re after – a man and a woman, that is – you can expect to pay the same or a little more, perhaps €200 for an hour or two.

  It makes the Costa del Sol the perfect location for 38-year-old Ramona, who originally hails from Arizona in the good old US of A. She’s a strong-willed woman with steely matt-black eyes that give little away. When she talks, it’s machine-gun dialogue delivered at such a fast pace and with so little movement of the mouth that the words take a few moments to register. ‘I love sex with men and women, old and young – but not underage, of course. I reckon I’m one of the few professionals who really does enjoy her job.’ This is how Ramona starts our conversation in a spacious apartment overlooking a children’s playground, a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean in the centre of Fuengirola.

  Ramona makes all aspects of sex sound so normal that you start to think that even the most perverse pleasures are thoroughly harmless. She describes herself as ‘a mistress of pain and pleasure’. And no one would want to argue with her on that point. In a society where numerous men and women make money from sex, she genuinely gets off on what she does. ‘I’m not some eastern-European girl forced into prostitution by a bunch of criminals against my will. I actually enjoy what I do and feel no shame about it either.’

  During the week, Ramona entertains clients in her apartment where she charges €125 an hour for ‘any type of sex I feel happy to perform’. Ramona is definitely the one in charge. She even has a five-foot-high cage built in the spare bedroom of her flat. ‘I’ve got a couple of elderly gentlemen who like being locked in their for twelve hours at a time,’ she says in a nonchalant tone of voice. ‘They like begging me to let them out. One of them even likes to clean the apartment naked. He pays me an extra €500 for that pleasure. How many other people get paid by their cleaner?’

  Ramona arrived on the Costa del Sol from Arizona a couple of years back. When I asked her what attracted her to the area, she explained, ‘I had a Mexican girl work with me back in the States and she was always saying how much more relaxed attitudes towards sex were over here. I was getting hassled by the cops back in Arizona on a daily basis, even though I wasn’t breaking any laws because I never had full sex with clients. But I knew it was time to move on.’

  Ramona eventually shipped over two crates of equipment which, she boasts, prove she knows more about sexual extremes than anyone else on the Costa del Sol. ‘I got everything from nipple clamps to colonic-irrigation devices to master-and-slave rubber catsuits and masks. There ain’t nothing I haven’t tried. Each to their own, I guess. To tell you the truth, most of it’s worth trying at least once just to see if you enjoy it. I get turned on to a lot of things that way.’

  Within weeks of first arriving in Spain, Ramona began advertising in swingers’ magazines as well as more traditional outlets such as the classified sections of the local English-language newspapers. She soon found a niche in the market. ‘I quickly started building a good list of clients because I’m good at making sure that men lose their inhibitions. I’m not here to make them feel bad about themselves. I want them to enjoy themselves. That really turns me on.’ Through the swingers’ magazines, Ramona then tapped into a different type of market. ‘I started holding regular Saturday lunchtime orgies with older couples. I didn’t charge them anything because I considered that to be playtime. We soon got five or six couples turning up at the apartment. There was one wife – she still has a great body even though she’s nearly sixty, I guess – and she would lie naked on the dining-room table while we all fondled and kissed her in turn. Then her husband would sit back and jack off while each of the men took it in turns to fuck her. She loved every minute of it and, I got to tell you, she always wanted more at the end.’

  Ramona openly admits to being bisexual, although she says, ‘I really prefer women because they know exactly how to turn me on.’ Nor does she deny being a predatory type. ‘If I see someone I want to have sex with, I make it really clear. I’ll go up to a woman or a man in a bar and just ask them straight out if they want me. It’s amazing how here in Spain no one seems shocked. It’s like they’re all thinking the same thing as well.’ But she also has two favourite girlfriends with whom she spends a lot of time. ‘I guess I sleep with them most nights, and they also work with me when I have a client who wants some type of orgy or S and M scene. It’s much better to work with people you want to hang with.’

  Ramona says she prefers British and German male clients ‘because they seem to understand the point of sexual perversion. They don’t treat me or my girls bad. They always have good manners and they truly seem to appreciate what we’re doing for them. Spanish guys, on the other hand, treat us like cheap whores and that ain’t nice. They also don’t seem to understand how to get real kicks out of the darker stuff.’

  Ramona sees herself as an artist. ‘Listen, I put on a performance and if I come with a client it’s a bonus. But the art is in satisfying that client.’ Ramona is incredibly careful to have protected sex and insists that all clients wash and shower before any sexual activity. ‘If a guy won’t take a shower and use a condom, I show him the door.’

  Only recently, Ramona recalled, three middle-aged British men visited the apartment and each took it in turn to have sex with her. ‘It was fantastic. They were good-looking guys and had a fine, healthy attitude. I have to admit I really got off on having sex with them. They satisfied me in every sense of the word. And afterwards we all went out and had a meal at a local restaurant. They were real gentlemen.’ It was only at the end of the meal that one of the men revealed to

  Ramona they were all serving police officers from the north of England. ‘I scolded them for not bringing their uniforms with them!’ Ramona says her relationship with the local Fuengirola police department is good. ‘They don’t have a problem with me working here because I’m not out on the streets. That’s where the police get angry because they don’t like girls bothering tourists. I got one policeman who comes round here sometimes for some fun. But I have to pretend I don’t realise he’s a cop. Whenever I see him in the street he turns away from me. But I can live with it. A lot of guys don’t like anyone knowing about their little sexual secrets. But hey, that’s cool with me. It’s part of the business. I like my customers happy, not sad.’

  Ramona rarely has a day off, although she does sometimes like to relax on the nearby beach with a girlfriend and watch the world go by. ‘I’m definitely a very sexual person, so sex is never far from my mind even as I’m lying there on the beach. If my cell phone goes off and it’s a customer, I get a real turn-on from hearing their voice and knowing that in a short while I’ll be back at the apartment having some fun.’

  One of the most bizarre requests Ramona has ever had came at the beginning of last summer. ‘I got a call from a guy I know in Marbella who said he had this friend who really wanted to meet me. He told me to go to this big villa on the beach near Puerto Banus and to bring my strongest whips and chains plus some really lethal-looking dildos and other stuff. He also
told me only to wear a leather trench coat with nothing underneath. Wow, I was turned on just thinking about it! When I asked who the client was, my friend said it was just a businessman but that he was very rich and would pay €2,000. For that kind of money I was prepared to do more or less anything…’

  But when Ramona got to the villa and her new client opened the door, she got a big surprise. ‘It was this big Hollywood star – and I mean big. He didn’t bat an eyelid, but just took me by the hand and led me into the open-plan sitting-room area. Inside were three of his male friends plus his wife. They were very polite, offered me a drink and then encouraged me to take all my equipment out of my case. Then I noticed all three men had unzipped themselves and the wife, who was not wearing panties, had lifted her skirt and was fondling herself.’

  What followed was, in Ramona words, ‘a full-blown orgy’. She explained, ‘I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was one of the most erotic experiences of my life. These guys did everything to me and then each took it in turn to service the wife. Then the movie star allowed me to beat him black and blue. We all eventually ended up in this huge king-sized bed sipping champagne and talking about what had happened as if it was the most ordinary thing you could imagine.

  ‘To cap it all, I was given a thousand-euro tip. I felt so good when I left that villa I was tingling all over. Now every time I watch this guy in a movie I keep thinking about what he let me do to him and his wife!’

  Like so many of the dodgy characters ducking and diving on the Costa del Sol, Ramona believes that she’ll eventually make a fortune working the coastline and will be able to ‘buy myself a nice finca in the mountains and disappear completely out of sight.’

  She is very realistic about her professional future. ‘Hey, I’m not getting any younger, and I know there’ll be prettier, harder, hornier women soon trying to grab my business by promising to do things even I wouldn’t go for. That will be when I take off and escape the rat race.’

  Just then her mobile phone goes off. ‘Sure, I can do that, honey.’ She pauses. ‘I’m going to hurt you, baby, hurt you real bad.’ She flicks off the phone and turns to me. ‘Got to get going, sweetheart. See you around…’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  NAUGHTY NIGHTSPOT

  Going to the roadhouse to have a real good time, somewhere near Fuengirola

  NAUGHTY NIGHTSPOT

  It might mean nothing to occasional visitors to the Costa del Sol but, for many of the area’s dodgiest residents, there is a legendary nightspot. It is said that the prettiest girls in all Spain work there, and as such it attracts more criminals than probably any other establishment on the south coast.

  Yet from the outside, any motorist could be forgiven for driving right past it without even realising it exists. Located between Fuengirola and Benalmadena on the old N340 coast road, which used to be the main route along the coast until the inland motorway finally relieved the traffic jams in the early-1990s, its reputation has spread far and wide in recent years. As one regular – a renowned drug baron originally from south-east London – told me, ‘I don’t know where they get the girls from, but they’re always really tasty and they don’t hustle you too much either.’

  First of all, a brief note of explanation for the uninitiated. Strictly speaking, it’s illegal to run a brothel in Spain; but it’s easy to get around the law by owning a bar attached to a ‘hotel’ where the girls take their clients. It’s a well-used loophole, which politicians and police have ignored for years. As one Spaniard explained to me, ‘Brothels have always thrived in Latino societies. There is a demand and they are considered completely normal. Men who use prostitutes are nothing unusual in this country. Prostitutes serve a useful purpose.’ Many Spaniards point to the relatively small number of rapes and sex murders in their country as evidence that this attitude helps cut out such crimes. Others are not so convinced; they say that most wives and girlfriends are simply too scared in this macho society to make official complaints about such attacks to the police.

  On any day of the month, it is said by many who frequent the club, you can walk into the dimly-lit bar area and find a woman with supermodel looks within five minutes. The girls in the club seem reasonably happy with their work. The ones from Brazil and other South American countries are driven by market forces to seek out the richer pastures of southern Europe. Other girls come from eastern Europe plus a handful from the UK and other northern European countries. Many of these prostitutes travel between brothels throughout Spain, changing location every few months.

  Many of the women there, including beautiful blonde friends Tanya, 23, and Denise, 25, from south London, prefer to work in pairs. ‘It’s always good to have one good mate when you work the clubs like us,’ Tanya explains. ‘You’ve got to have someone you trust because everyone around you is scum. It’s the nature of the game.’

  However, both girls agree that it is the best place to work on the whole Costa del Sol. ‘Most of the guys who come in here know exactly what to expect,’ says Denise. ‘Sure, we get the occasional drunk who tries to cause trouble, but the doormen are usually very quick off the mark and they kick any troublemakers out within seconds.’

  Step through the double doors of the club and you enter a twilight world where anything goes. Tanya explained the guidelines to me. ‘None of us are allowed to tout for business. The men have to catch our eye and then start chatting to us. That keeps everything within the word of the law. What usually happens is you spot a fella and you know he’s eyeing you up so you swing your hips past him and see if he says anything. The moment you get a proper reaction, you let him engage you in conversation.’

  But it’s not the conversation that attracts men here. Denise takes up the explanation: ‘Normally, you spend a few minutes just chatting about where you’re from, how long you’ve been in Spain, stuff like that. Then it’s down to the nitty-gritty.’

  ‘“How much?” is usually what comes next,’ says Tanya. ‘That’s when you know you’ve hooked in a punter. I’d say that ninety per cent who ask that question are going to end up in one of the rooms with you within minutes. My going rate is €160 for an hour. Most guys want pretty normal sex and if they want stuff like oral I explain that they can have that during the hour. But, like most of the girls here, we have our rules. Neither of us would do anal. It’s too risky for our health, even with a condom.’ She pauses before continuing. ‘And you know what? A lot of the guys come before they even get down to business, which makes life much more pleasant for us.’

  Tanya and Denise’s speciality is performing lesbian sex with a client watching. ‘That’s the option many girls here prefer,’ Tanya explains, ‘because it usually doesn’t include penetration and nothing more than a bit of half-decent acting.’

  Denise reiterates what her friend means. ‘Look, if me and Tanya get it together for a fella it means not only double the money but half the sex. Girls prefer not to be alone with punters for obvious reasons – even in a hotel room attached to the club something bad could happen. This way, by offering a two-up, so to speak, a lot less gets done. In any case, three quarters of the punters who want a threesome are incapable of performing through drink and drugs.’

  Tanya and Denise also openly admit they ‘have a thing for each other’, which means that being paid to sleep together is usually ‘a bit of a result’. ‘Denise and I are close to each other. We need each other to get through working like this. We share a room together when we’re off duty and we’ve become very good friends. We understand each other in and out of bed. It’s a bit of bonus for the punters because when they ask us to perform together we actually sometimes get off doing it, which many girls don’t. But the truth is that much of the time we just act sexy to keep the punters happy. We prefer doing things with each other in private.’

  They insist they are not gay. ‘I suppose we’re both a bit bisexual,’ admits Denise, ‘but it’s all about circumstance and we just happen to prefer each other’s company at the moment. Do
esn’t mean we don’t both want to one day find the man of our dreams and settle down and have kids and a nice home.’

  But there is one golden rule, which is never broken. ‘What is it?’ I ask. Denise tells me. ‘We never meet the punters outside of these premises. It would be madness, because you never know what might happen. I’ve heard stories about girls who’ve disappeared with rich punters and never been seen again. Apparently some were locked up as sex slaves, flown to Saudi Arabia and later killed. Stuff like that. It simply ain’t worth the risk.’

  One noticeable element missing from the mix in this brothel is the omnipresent pimp who seems to lurk in the shadows for so many working girls on the Costa del Sol. ‘That’s why so many girls come and work here,’ Tanya explains. ‘Pimps are evil bastards taking advantage of weak, needy girls. We certainly aren’t like that, so this place is a real godsend. We’re not making out this place is run by angels with only our best interests at heart, but at least the real scum – the pimps – are kept well away.’

  It is rumoured that the management of the club insist on only a certain standard of girl working at the establishment. A Brazilian firecracker called Stella explained everything. ‘There are rules about how we keep in shape and what sort of outfits we wear. Most of the girls wear platform shoes and skimpy bikinis, sometimes with stockings and suspender belts, but any girl who turned up here in an ankle-length skirt wouldn’t be allowed into the club.’

  Some of the eastern European girls who work here don’t seem as sparky as girls like Tanya and Denise and the South American crew. One of them, a demure, dark-haired 21-year-old called Maria, from Bucharest, explained, ‘It’s much tougher for us because many of us have paid smugglers to get us here by ship or road. Then they keep our passports until we’ve paid our “fares”. That’s usually at least €3,000, which can take quite a while to earn in a place like this. It makes girls like us more timid and scared than the South Americans, most of whom have come here on their own.’