The Business Of Dying

by Simon Kernick

  There was a half-full glass of red wine on the coffee table next to an expensive-looking bottle. A cigarette burned in the ashtray.

  ‘Well, if it’s not imposing, I wouldn’t say no to a drop of that wine.’

  ‘I’ll get you a glass,’ she said, and stepped out of the room.

  I removed my coat and sat down on a comfortable chair, feeling more than a little awkward. It was an odd situation. On the one hand, I was intensely attracted to Carla Graham, while on the other, I saw her as someone who at the very least was withholding information in a murder inquiry and who, at worst, was a suspect. In the end, I found it difficult to decide whether I’d rather fuck her or nick her. I knew I wanted to do one of the two.

  She came back and poured the wine before handing me the glass. Once again I caught the smell of her perfume. I realized, with some horror, that it was giving me the beginnings of a hard-on.

  She sat down on the sofa opposite me, picked up her cigarette out of the ashtray, and looked earnestly in my direction, as if she had no idea why I might be there.

  ‘So, what can I do for you, Dennis? You said there were some things that needed clearing up.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Yeah, there are. Mark Wells, the pimp we’ve charged, suggested that he once gave one of his shirts – a dark green one with a medium-size collar – to Molly Hagger. This would have been a few months ago, and it would have been far too big for her. Did you ever see a shirt like that in Molly’s possession?’

  She furrowed her brow, thinking about it for a couple of seconds. ‘No, I don’t recall anything like that. Why would he have given her a shirt?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just said he gave it to her. I expect he was lying.’

  ‘Why’s it relevant to the case?’

  ‘It probably isn’t. Just something I wanted to check.’ She gave me a puzzled look. ‘What might be more relevant, though,’ I continued, lighting a cigarette, ‘is why you told me at our first meeting that you didn’t know Miriam Fox when I know you did.’

  If my statement had shocked her, she didn’t show it. She just looked put out that I’d effectively accused her of lying, especially as I was sitting in her comfortable chair enjoying a glass of her good wine. And it was good, too.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective Milne.’ No Dennis now. ‘I never knew Miriam Fox.’

  I locked eyes with her, trying to stare her down, but she held my gaze. ‘Look, Carla . . . Miss Graham. There’s no point denying it. I’ve seen Miriam Fox’s phone records. There are five calls logged. Three were made by her, two by you.’

  Carla shook her head, her face a picture of innocence. ‘There must be some mistake.’

  ‘There’s no mistake. I checked. And I double-checked. You had five conversations with Miriam in the last few weeks of her life, and God knows how many before that. Now, I want to know what those conversations were about, and why you wanted them kept hidden.’

  ‘Look, I don’t have to answer questions like this. I want my lawyer present if you’re going to carry on.’

  ‘Do you? Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Yes, I’m very sure. Here you are, near enough accusing me of murder in my home—’

  ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to tie up any loose ends. At the moment, we’re simply two people having a conversation. None of what you say’s admissible in a court of law.’

  ‘So why the hell should I talk about it?’

  ‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to go back to my superior and tell him about the phone records. At the moment, I’m the only person who knows anything about them. If your explanation satisfies me that you know nothing about the murder, I’m prepared to keep it that way; if it doesn’t, I’m going to tell him anyway. At least this way you get your chance to tell me your side of the story without anyone else being involved.’

  ‘So you’re here unofficially? Like the last time we met?’

  ‘I’m here in a semi-official capacity. It could go either way. Now, what were those conversations with Miriam Fox about?’

  She sighed, as if bowing to the inevitable. ‘I suppose I half thought this was what you were coming round about.’

  She finished her cigarette and immediately lit another one, taking a deep drag. I sat watching her impassively, wondering what I was going to hear, and what I was going to do when I’d heard it.

  ‘Miriam Fox was blackmailing me.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About an area of my private life.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She knew something about me that I would rather have kept secret and she was trying to exploit the situation to her advantage. She was like that.’

  ‘So I keep hearing. And this area of your private life . . . what is it exactly?’

  She looked me firmly in the eye. ‘I’m what’s colloquially called a lady of the night, Detective Milne. I escort middle-aged, usually middle-class, men for money. Sometimes I fuck them.’ There was a defiant expression on her face as she spoke, as if she was daring me to criticize her.

  I didn’t bother rising to the bait. I’ve heard plenty of worse revelations than that in my time, although I have to say it did catch me off guard. ‘Well, I suppose it stands to reason. You don’t get these sorts of furnishings on civil servant’s wages.’

  ‘You’re not shocked that a person in my position is involved in something like that?’

  I smiled and took a decent-sized sip from my wine, thinking that this was something of a surreal moment. ‘People in positions a lot higher than yours are involved in that type of thing, though usually as customers rather than suppliers, so, no, I’m not shocked. Is this a regular thing, this escort work?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose it is. I tend to do a couple of nights a week, sometimes more.’

  ‘Is that what you were doing last night?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘So how did some low-level street girl like Miriam Fox find out about your extra-curricular activities? I presume you weren’t moving in the same circles.’

  ‘Let’s just say she found out.’

  ‘How did she know who you were?’

  ‘Two or three years ago, when she first ran away, she was arrested for soliciting and ended up at Coleman House. She didn’t stop long, a couple of weeks at most. She was a very difficult girl to handle and she seemed to have a hatred of authority. I think there might have been problems at home that had helped to shape her personality, but she never talked about them. In fact, about the only time she did talk was to throw abuse. There were quite a few confrontations with staff, including myself, and then one day she decided she’d had enough and walked out. Like a lot of the girls do.’

  ‘Wasn’t it a bit dangerous to suggest to us when we first interviewed you that you didn’t know her?’

  She shifted in her seat and put one leg up on the sofa. It was a vaguely provocative pose, although she didn’t seem to notice it. ‘Not really. None of the current staff were there when she was there, and originally she gave a false name when we took her in. It would have been difficult to check up on it, and why would you have bothered?’

  Which was fair enough, I suppose. ‘And when was the next time you saw her?’

  ‘I never did see her again.’

  ‘But you said she was blackmailing you.’

  ‘She was. Look, I’d really rather not go into details, Mr Milne.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t. But it’s important I know.’

  ‘So you can calculate whether I’m telling the truth or not?’

  I nodded. ‘Basically, yes.’

  She picked up her wine and took a large drink, as if fortifying herself. ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t actually know how she found out. I can guess, but that’s about it.’ I waited in silence for her to continue. ‘Let me start with how it works. My clients tend to be businessmen, men with plenty of spare money. The usual procedure is for us t
o go somewhere for dinner, then back to a hotel, or their place, for the rest. That way, I keep control of the proceedings, and don’t get myself into any situation where I’m unnecessarily vulnerable.’

  ‘That stands to reason.’

  ‘A few weeks ago, though, one of my regular clients – a high-powered lawyer, and someone I’ve been seeing for several years – was caught kerb-crawling in King’s Cross. You might have heard about it.’

  I nodded, remembering the case vaguely, though not the name of the punter concerned. Kerb-crawling wasn’t big news these days, even when it involved such a richly deserving case as a wealthy lawyer.

  ‘Apparently, it was the second time it had happened to him. He’d been caught doing the same thing a few years ago in Paddington.’ She shook her head, as if annoyed with herself for getting involved with someone so unreliable. ‘I was worried. I didn’t need that sort of hassle; not the sort that could easily compromise me. Afterwards, I went round to his place and confronted him. I asked how often he did it and he swore that both times had been one-offs. He was obviously ashamed about it. He was also obviously lying. No one’s that unlucky. So I asked some of the girls in the home if they knew anything about him, whether he’d ever propositioned any of them, more as a matter of conversation than anything else. It was easy enough to do. The case had made some headlines in the local paper, so people seemed quite happy to talk about it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And several of the older ones had had some involvement with him. One had even gone back to his apartment in Hampstead Heath, the same place I’d visited on many occasions. Apparently, he also liked to have sex without a condom, which might have been one of the attractions of using street girls. They don’t tend to be so fussy. So I ended our arrangement straight away. I’m not interested in dealing with people who lie to me and who have such a dubious attitude to the sexual health of both themselves and others.

  ‘Then two, maybe three days after I’d confronted him, I got a telephone call at Coleman House. It was Miriam Fox. She told me she knew that I’d been seeing the lawyer, and that I’d been getting paid for my time.’ She sighed. ‘As I said, I couldn’t honestly say exactly how she found out. I think he must have used her services a number of times, so she’d almost certainly been at his apartment at one time or another. Maybe she found some evidence that I’d been there.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know. Maybe she was leaving one night when I was arriving; maybe she was watching the place and saw me there. You know what some of these street girls are like: they go to a place, then tell their pimp how many valuables the punter’s got, then they plan to rob it. She could have been surveying the apartment for her pimp, and seen me.’ She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. ‘The point is, she knew. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘What did she want from you?’ I asked.

  ‘The same as most blackmailers. Money. She told me that if I didn’t pay her five thousand pounds, she’d expose me to the local authority and the newspapers.’

  ‘That must have given you a bit of a shock.’

  ‘It did. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It just seemed so ... unlucky.’

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘There were other people in the room with me at the time so I couldn’t really say a lot. I got a number off her and told her I’d phone her back. When I did call her back, she repeated her demand for the money. I told her I didn’t have that sort of cash and we had a bit of an argument. Eventually she said she’d settle for two thousand. For the time being. Those were her words. For the time being. I repeated that it was going to take a while. She gave me a week.’

  ‘Did you ever give her any money?’

  ‘I never actually met up with her at all. A week later she phoned me on my mobile – I’d given her the number – and I stalled her again. I said I’d managed to get some of it, but not enough. I told her she’d have to give me another week. To be honest, I didn’t know what to do. I knew it wouldn’t stop with just one payment, that she’d come back to me for more and would keep coming back until she’d bled me dry. I mean, she was a drug addict and she wasn’t going to beat her addiction suddenly. And she was the sort of girl who would have told the authorities anyway, just to spite me.’

  ‘What happened after the other week was up?’

  ‘I phoned her on her mobile and left a message. I told her I was no longer interested in giving her any money and she could go fuck herself as far as I was concerned.’

  ‘That was a bit of a brave move.’

  She shrugged again. ‘It was a calculated risk. I’d given it a lot of thought. I knew she’d probably report me, but I was hoping that neither the authorities nor the papers would take the word of some crack-addicted runaway. And even if they did investigate, I thought I’d probably be able to cover my tracks well enough so that they wouldn’t discover anything. Anyway, she called back the next day and tried to persuade me that I was making a mistake. She was pissed off that I was calling her bluff, and she sounded pretty desperate as well. Perhaps she owed someone some money – her pimp, or somebody like that. In the end, I was almost feeling sorry for her.’ She managed a slight smile when she said this, and took a sip of her wine, more confident, it seemed, now that she’d got this off her chest. ‘We talked for a couple of minutes, she got quite hysterical, called me a bitch, said I’d regret messing her around, and then I just hung up.

  ‘And that really was the end of it. It was the last time I spoke to her. A few days later she was dead.’ She lit another cigarette, and I noticed her hands were shaking a little. ‘That doesn’t sound good, does it? Someone blackmailing me, and then they end up murdered?’ Again, I didn’t say anything, just sat there and let her speak. ‘That’s the reason, or one of the reasons anyway, I didn’t say anything to you. So, now you know. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to tell your superior?’

  ‘Well, it would be difficult to avoid the fact that you’ve got a motive for wanting her out of the way ... but then so have a few other people. She was clearly the sort of girl who attracts enemies. Did you kill her?’

  She looked me in the eye. ‘No, I didn’t. I had nothing to do with it. I might have had a motive, but not a strong enough one. Even if someone had believed her, I wouldn’t really have been losing that much. I’m getting tired of the job at Coleman House anyway. It never seems to be doing anything to improve the lot of the people I’m meant to be helping, and I doubt if it accounts for more than a third of my earnings these days. I certainly wouldn’t kill anyone over it.’ She finished her wine and poured the last drops from the bottle in equal measures into her glass and mine. I doubt if there was more than a mouthful each. ‘Do you believe me, Mr Milne?’

  It was a good question. On balance, yes, I did. Her story sounded plausible. Coincidental, but still plausible. More so than any alternatives I might have thought up, and I was almost certain she hadn’t delivered the fatal blow. She was tall and lithe, but it had been a man, and a strong one at that, who had killed Miriam Fox. That meant that for Carla to be guilty she would have needed to have got someone else involved in the plot, which, as far as I could see, would have defeated the object of it in the first place. And she was right too. All to defend a job managing a care home for delinquent kids? Somehow I didn’t think so.

  I sighed. ‘I’m not going to take it any further, put it like that.’

  ‘But you don’t believe me?’

  ‘I don’t really know what to believe. It’s a pretty strange story, you’ve got to admit that. One minute you’re a high-powered social worker managing a kids’ home, the next you’re an escort girl with a nice line in kinky customers.’

  ‘You certainly know how to make it sound degrading.’

  I gulped my mouthful of wine. ‘Well, isn’t it? Getting fucked for money by middle-aged men who’ll dip their wick with anyone who’ll take the cash off them? It’s hardly what you’d call satisfying an
d useful work.’

  ‘I’m not going to apologize for what I do. I provide a service, nobody gets hurt, and sometimes, you know . . . sometimes it is quite satisfying. And if I get paid for it too .. . it’s all the better, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it?’

  ‘Have you ever paid for sex, Mr Milne? Dennis?’

  I smiled. ‘Why? Are you offering?’

  She smiled back. ‘I’m very choosy about who I sleep with.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s me out then. A nosey, cynical copper’s hardly a prime catch.’

  She didn’t say anything and we sat in silence for a few moments, both, I think, pondering our positions in the world and what we’d actually achieved. It struck me then that the two of us weren’t really all that dissimilar. Both of us were leading murky double lives we’d far rather keep deeply buried. The difference was, I’d kill to preserve the secrecy of mine. At least I hoped this was the difference.

  ‘Do you want another drink?’ she asked me eventually.

  I looked at her, not sure whether she actually wanted me to stay or not. She gave a weary smile back, which I took to mean yes. ‘Are you having one?’

  She nodded. ‘Why not?’

  I watched her as she turned round in her seat and removed a bottle of brandy from a cupboard behind the sofa. Her bottom looked remarkably pert.

  ‘Will this do?’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said as she put two fresh glasses down on the table and poured a hefty slug into each.

  I offered her a cigarette from my pack, but she opted for a Silk Cut. I lit mine and sat back in my seat, thinking that there was something about her story that turned me on. The prim, well-spoken manager who turns into the whore by night. I know it’s the fantasy of a lot of men, and in that respect I was just like everyone else.

  ‘So how did a respectable lady like yourself get into . . . escort work?’

  She took a drink of the brandy and pulled the sort of face you pull when you’re quaffing neat spirits. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘That’s just the way I like them.’