Secret Skin

by Frank Coles

  ‘You have a great club here Faisal. Who would have thought there were so many scantily clad women in Dubai? Are they all yours?’

  Before Faisal could answer, a truly massive man on the table next to us raised his glass. He could have been mistaken for a giant blonde surfer but when he smiled his skin wrinkled with age. His hair wasn’t sun bleached but cropped and white, matched by a neatly trimmed goatee. For a passing moment his clear grey eyes challenged each one of us.

  ‘A toast,’ he called in English. His accent fractured when he spoke, like many Russian expatriates in Dubai his pronunciation mixed both American and English phrasing with a little of the old country.

  There were three tables in total, one to our left and one to our right, three people on each. Everyone raised their glasses, including Faisal.

  ‘To the liberation of finance,’ he said. ‘My favorite pastime.’ He led and we swallowed. Apart from Faisal, who brought the glass to his lips and rested it there a moment, bellowing ‘Aaaah!’ along with the rest of us.

  Eyes watered and everyone laughed, partly duty bound, partly because they were already drunk.

  ‘I stopped after the fifth,’ Faisal said twiddling his glass, ‘But these Russians, they always want to drink more.’

  ‘So are all these women yours?’ I asked again, motioning to the busy club floor. His eyes couldn’t quite focus on me.

  ‘Not all of them no, many of them are freelance. Just like you,’ he smiled smugly and patted my knee, a polite insult, ‘but they all have to pay me something if they want to do business. Everyone who walks through that door tonight will pay me money.’

  ‘That is a good business.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He put down his glass and looked me in the eye. ‘But you should stop asking so many questions about my affairs or I shall be forced to gut you,’ he said.

  He cracked up the moment he saw uncertainty in my eyes. Some of the other table dwellers smiled but no one knew what the joke was. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I am making fun of you. I am not serious.’

  ‘Thank god for that Faisal, you had me going there for a moment old son.’

  His whole face turned up at this and he laughed again. My new friend.

  Someone refilled my glass.

  I noticed the Russian looking at me with an aggressive confidence that was truly terrifying. He had the arrogant aura of a man who can’t be touched. I guessed that anyone there would have done whatever he asked of them. Except me, I didn’t care who he was.

  ‘What the fuck happened to you?’ He shouted, thankfully not at me.

  A familiar dark haired man slumped down into a seat between the Russian and Faisal. He held a bloody cloth over his nose. I didn’t need to see the face beneath those moody eyebrows to recognize the man I’d followed upstairs.

  ‘Some fucker broke my nose,’ he said from behind the kerchief, ‘they’re bringing the car around and taking me to the hospital.’

  ‘Ahh, come here. Let me fix it for you,’ said the big man leaning over to grab his nose. We all heard the crack.

  ‘Arrrggh! You fugging wanker,’ he screeched through his hands, clearly another Brit. He writhed in pain.

  ‘A toast!’ called the big man. ‘A toast to my little friend and his broken nose, may he recover quickly.’ Everyone slugged back their vodkas, a little slower this time I noticed, one of the men next to the Russian tried not to gag.

  ‘Don’t you people do anything else apart from toast bloody vodka?’ said the dark man, ‘Try a glass of wine or a lager some time. Live a little.’

  Faisal said, ‘Don’t worry my friend. We won’t tell anyone about that little girl breaking your nose.’

  The groans of the inebriated gave way to laughter at another’s expense.

  ‘It wasn’t the bloody girl Faisal. It was some bastard at the door. If your people did their job properly they’d be jumping up and down on his head about now. The fucker said he worked for the hotel.’

  Faisal’s mood soured. Who was this man to be able to make him lose so much face in public? ‘Do not worry. If he works for me, we will find him. I will even bring him to your house and you can jump on his head yourself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Now I think you had better go to the hospital.’

  ‘Yes, yes thank you,’ he said, happy to be the centre of attention.

  ‘Yes,’ the big man roared, ‘if you stay here any longer Faisal will get his little twins to break your arms as well.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said, humiliated again, and stood up to leave.

  The big man teased him, ‘They are nearly nine years old, tough bitches, you had better watch out,’ he waited a beat. ‘Look out, behind you!’ he shouted. The dark man visibly jumped but didn’t look back as he stormed out. They all roared with laughter.

  ‘That was funny,’ Faisal said.

  ‘Twins, hey?’

  ‘Not for you,’ he said.

  ‘So how much would one of these girls cost?’ I nodded to the main floor.

  ‘That depends what you want to do with them.’

  ‘How much to buy one of them.’

  ‘Oh not much, depends on the age, younger is more expensive of course.’

  ‘So you don’t charge by the kilo?’

  ‘Hah,’ he laughed, ‘No.’

  ‘Just as well, because what I’d really like is a grown woman,’ I said, ‘Someone like Yasmin, you know? That delicious Lebanese look.’

  ‘Reminds you of someone,’ he said, looking at me through hooded eyes. ‘I remember.’

  ‘So how much?’

  He raised both hands in an I don’t know gesture. ‘That depends,’ he said. ‘If she is young and untrained, not too much. Ten thousand dollars maybe.’

  Tourist prices I thought.

  ‘Does that cover postage and packaging as well,’ I said. That amused him. ‘Can you gift wrap that?’

  ‘I’m sure we can.’

  ‘How about for someone who is already trained,’ I said, pushing it, ‘like Yasmin?’

  He turned his whole body to face me and examined me coldly.

  ‘Why are you so interested in her? And don’t tell me she reminds you of someone.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Who?’

  I hadn’t thought the lie through that far. ‘An ex-girlfriend,’ I ventured.

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘None of your business. How much do you want for her?’

  ‘More than you can afford. She is one of my best earners. I have plans for her future.’

  ‘But she is getting old.’

  ‘Not for what I have in mind Mr. Bryson, so unless you have tens of thousands of dollars in your account, I suggest you drop it.’

  ‘You mean he doesn’t? Who is this pauper Faisal?’ the big man said.

  ‘His name is David Bryson. He wants to buy Yasmin. I think he’s in love with her.’

  ‘In love with a prostitute, aww poor little boy,’ the Russian said.

  My turn to be humiliated. My treacherous face reddened.

  ‘You know prostitutes are like new cars?’ the Russian said. ‘They lose their value the instant you buy them and when you drive them hard they wear out quickly,’ His cronies laughed on cue.

  ‘He just asked to buy her,’ Faisal said.

  ‘Why buy when you can lease?’ said the Russian.

  ‘Exactly, but what is worse for the poor little boy, he cannot afford her.’

  ‘You said no of course?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Poor little boy,’ the big man agreed wiping away pretend tears. ‘But why is he so poor, poor, poor?’

  ‘Because he’s a writer, and we pay them the same as cleaners in this country.’

  ‘What kind of writer?’ the big man said.

  ‘A journalist,’ Faisal said.

  ‘A fucking journalist!’ the big man hollered and slammed his fist on the table, scattering the half full glasses of vodka. ‘And you
let him sit at my table? All of this buying Yasmin talk is bullshit, he’s pumping you for information you idiot. What the fuck is wrong with you?’ he said.

  Cursing in his own language the white haired giant cuffed the pimp around the head. In his own club Faisal cowered, terrified of the big man.

  That pleased me. The Russian treating him the way Faisal treated Yasmin.

  Then the big man turned his wrath on me. ‘I fucking hate journalists,’ he spat, a globule hit my cheek. ‘You know what we do to journalists we don't like in Russia? Birthday presents for our president. We fucking kill them,’ he said making a sawing motion over his throat. He turned to Faisal, ‘Is it anyone’s birthday today? Perhaps your sheikh would like a surprise present? This fool’s head would make a perfect polo puck. Would you like me to kill him for you, right now, here in your fucking club?’

  ‘No—’ Faisal began. ‘Just get him out of here,’ he said to the wiry man.

  ‘I can see myself out,’ I said to the Arabian pimp, but he wouldn’t catch my eye. I didn’t look back.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Faisal’s man escorted me straight through hotel security and outside, where despite the late hour the heat still had the ability to fuse brain cells.

  I sat down on a low crumbling wall nearby, shaken, but pleased by the progression of events. It had been an unhealthily productive night. My recorder had been running the whole time I’d been inside.

  The big Russian worried me. I had broken his friend’s nose and pissed off Faisal. There would probably be no end of trouble for Yasmin and I was the cause of it. Anyone of them could have had it in for me.

  The clientele of the club began to spill onto the street. Closing time. I didn’t want to be there when Faisal and his friends came out. I set off for the main road where the taxis waited, unable to get close to the hotel for the traffic jam of slow moving gawkers.

  Women approached the hotel’s dusty forecourt from all directions. Good looking girls, bargain basement prices, offering one last bang for a buck. They had to keep their Faisals happy.

  Confident men grinned like predators while the women teased and taunted, trying to find the angle that would sell their tired bodies one last time.

  The timid came just to see the sights. While dark others hunted for naïve girls to imprison inside twisted playgrounds the demure wife wasn’t supposed to know about. Violent games would be played out with unwilling bodies, flesh bruised and torn by morning, souls savagely scarred.

  Sick of the place, I forced my way through the thick crowd, pushing through the hairstyles and make up. I should have been more careful. I almost ran into the back of the young blonde screamer and knocked her off her feet.

  A knot of dread gnawed at my stomach as I turned away, hoping she hadn’t seen me. I knew she had.

  She shouted but I couldn’t hear her words. I looked back to see if she was following, she shouted again. I moved faster. I just wanted out of there.

  Ahead of me someone answered her calls, unintelligible words that echoed hers. A signal? I walked quickly, my head lowered, straight into an unyielding hand. It closed and gripped my shirt. The hand’s owner said something I didn’t catch.

  ‘Police! Stay where you are.’ he said again in English. The man in the plain white dishdash held up a badge. I tried to walk away but he pulled me back.

  ‘Criminal Investigation Department, C. I. D.’ he spelled out for me, so I wouldn’t misunderstand.

  ***

  The plain clothes officer was an officer in the Anti-Human Trafficking Department. The teenage girl told him she was a prostitute and that I had attacked her john in a jealous rage. I had tried to protect her I said. Where? The

  Kingston she’d said, Faisal’s place. That’s when he cuffed my hands in front of me.

  Out of sight behind the taxi rank, the cop paraded me before a row of uniformed policemen loitering by their prowlers to his own unmarked white Mercedes. He put me in the back seat. I waited and watched. Like I had another choice.

  From what I could see the policemen around me had been monitoring the busy forecourt all night, like investors watching their portfolio: a football pitch worth of prostitutes and johns making deals. They hadn’t arrested anyone else.

  A few minutes later Faisal came out of the hotel. He began talking to a reed thin officer, who stood with his foot on the sill half-in, half-out of his car. They both turned to look at me in the back of the Mercedes.

  The officer wore a far nicer uniform than his companions, tailored by the look of it. The family resemblance between the officer and the pimp was unmistakable. Faisal was the nautilus version of the skinny man in the peaked cap.

  While the men talked I maneuvered my clasped hands into my pocket and pulled out my phone. I picked the memory card out of its slot, bent forward and slid it into my shoe. If anyone checked the phone’s memory there’d be nothing to find.

  I held the phone between my palms when the pimp’s face appeared at the window to inspect the unknown assailant. Faisal grunted with surprise and said, ‘Bryson. I should have guessed.’

  Yeah, like I should have guessed someone would be waiting for me when I left the club. Naively I hadn’t expected the police. They were protecting the club and the pimps over a trafficked child and the man trying to defend her.

  Fucking hypocrites, I thought.

  I repeated this sentiment to the plain clothes officer during his short interrogation in a backwater police station at the other end of the emirate.

  ‘Even in your country you have this problem,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right, we have crooked cops too.’

  He ignored my statement and sent me in for processing, a cruel and boring punishment, but far from unusual in the Middle East. A succession of seemingly bewildered uniformed officers asked me to sign an admission form and then move it from desk to desk. Occasionally someone stamped it, but nobody could tell me what I was being arrested for.

  Someone took a shot of my yap. One for the family album.

  The handcuffs slowed the circulation in my hands to a trickle. I asked to have them loosened. They said yes and then gossiped some more.

  I asked for water. They smiled, escorted me back to the interrogation room and locked the door. They forgot the water.

  They were really very polite about it though.

  The clock on the wall registered 2.36 am. I made the most of my enforced solitude and fell asleep.

  ***

  The nicely tailored officer from outside the club shook me awake.

  ‘Unnh?’ I said.

  ‘You are Mr. David Bryson?’ he said, checking his notes.

  ‘Yes,’ I said blinking the sleep out of my eyes, ‘although right now I’d rather not be. Who are you?’ I said.

  ‘I am Captain Khadim,’ he said grandly, as if this normally impressed people. ‘I was enjoying a pleasant evening at home with my beautiful wife. And look, now I am here, just for you.’

  ‘Well how nice to see you Captain, it’s very good of you to come all the way out here, but really, you needn’t have gone to all this trouble.’ I said and held up my cuffed wrists. ‘If you’ll unlock these, I’d be happy to let you get back to the Kingston and your beautiful wife.’

  He grimaced and leaned in close to my ear, invading my personal space. ‘Remember this isn’t your country. Do not to mock me Mr. Bryson.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well let’s make a deal, you release me and I won’t tease you about the fantasy wife you left behind at Faisal’s club, how about it?’ He seethed. ‘No? Then maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me what I’ve been arrested for?’

  He didn’t say anything. I sensed it would have been something he would later regret. He liked to be in control.

  He flipped through a sheaf of papers in front of him until he regained composure.

  ‘It says here that you were soliciting a 12 year old girl in the Kingston Hotel.’ My mouth dropped open. This amused him. ‘When a customer of the hotel t
ried to prevent you from dragging the girl into one of the hotel rooms you attacked him with a fire extinguisher and broke his nose.’

  ‘Total crap.’ I said.

  ‘‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ he said, smiling, ‘but it does appear that your choices are limited.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘How?’

  ‘Well for one you are a westerner, who do you think our courts will believe, hmm? You or my officers?

  ‘I could hazard a guess.’

  ‘And you’re not just any old westerner, you’re a muckraking foreign journalist trying to create a career for himself out of the misfortune of others.’

  My turn to grimace. He grinned.

  ‘Don’t you know how much this proud nation despises pedophiles like you?’

  ‘Oh c’mon? You wouldn’t dare tar me with that brush.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I? Men who try to buy prostitutes, especially child prostitutes, are reviled in this country. Our society promotes the family Mr. Bryson, we raise children, we don’t have sex with them.’

  ‘That’s a nice bit of fiction Khadim,’ I said, but it was pointless saying anything, he was enjoying himself too much.

  ‘Do you want to be deported?’ he shouted. ‘Returned to your home in shame, as front page news? The British pedophile scandal in Dubai? Aside from the fact that you will never work again, you will be named and shamed. It will follow you everywhere you go.

  ‘Even your family will disown you,’ he said, expecting a response. He didn’t get one.

  ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘that is if the courts decide to send you straight home. Dubai’s prisons are unforgiving places you know. We have staff there, but really it is the Indians who are in charge, and they hate the British with a passion for all those years held captive as a colony.’

  ‘Oh please,’ I said.

  ‘Have you any idea what they will do to you?’ he said, pausing for effect, ‘A raper of young girls? British? All alone? I doubt you will ever leave, you will be buried here.’

  That was different, that was plausible. He leaned back against the table, cocksure, one leg raised on the chair in front of him. He sighed and shook his head.