The Outcall

by Evelyn Weiss

  3Friday 7 July

  I’m lying in bed. It’s mid-afternoon on a warm summer day, but I’ve got the quilt up over my head. I want nothing: to see nothing, know nothing, think nothing, feel nothing. I can hear cheerful sounds from outside, people sitting in their yards and gardens chatting, songs on the radio, distant hum of traffic. Even a bird cheeping. I listen, and stare into the darkness.

  Who am I?

  If you grow up, I guess, with a family, there is so much that’s given to you – so much that you know belongs to yourself. Your parents, always there. The family home that you know as the place where you began, and where you can go back to when things get rough. A bricks-and-mortar womb. Familiar streets, shops, school. Brothers, sisters, friends.

  I grew up in ten different children’s homes. Officially, I was brought up in just two, but moves of premises, reorganisations, restructurings of the Social Services maze meant that I was never living in the same place for more than eighteen months at a time. And different schools too. Maybe I was lucky: I was never physically abused. But there was never any one person that was always there, that I knew I could always turn to. Every few months another nice social-worker/carer lady would arrive, meet me, ‘gain my trust’. And then she’d be promoted or moved, or become pregnant with her own child, and leave. After a while it got easier. The constant change became business-as-usual. I realised that when I talked to some new, well-meaning, middle-class face about my feelings, my fears, my hopes, it was in the certain knowledge that in six months’ time she would go away to do something else, something more important. And my own face would be erased from her memory, like I’d never been. I realised that I was saying the things I did to these so-called carers not genuinely, but in order to play the part: to act out what was expected of me. I was invisible, as they say, and after a while, I realised that I wanted to be invisible. Not because I didn’t believe in myself, but because I was like a chick in an egg, alive but not yet alive. Waiting for my life to start.

  They wanted what was best for me, they really did. But during all that time only one thing came along that gave me any sense of purpose: doing that St John’s Ambulance course. The instructors didn’t pity me, they didn’t look down on me, they gave me clear tasks which I did successfully, and I actually had the same instructor for three years. Kenneth Cropper. I’ll always remember him. I think back, how much I enjoyed that course, I actually felt like a part of something, a member of the group with the other kids. A weird, one-off feeling for the child that was me. Maybe I had a talent, maybe if I’d had a proper home background I’d have gone into nursing as a career. But nothing like that even crossed my mind. After some attempts at GCSEs – again, doing what I was told, what they expected of me – I tried to keep up with the catering college course they felt was right for me, which is where I met Amrit. He was a lot older than me, and at first it seemed like he had dreams, hopes of something better. We were both rubbish at the college course, cookery is what I’m worst at in the whole world, but he said that wasn’t important. If he finished the course, his uncle would give him a job in his restaurant. “Front of house, that’s what’s important. Losers cook. I want to be the guy who takes the money from the customer.”

  I walked out of the children’s home aged seventeen without telling anyone where I was going. I walked round the corner and seven minutes later I knocked on Amrit’s door. I knew that they would never find me, that the efforts to trace me would not even lead them two blocks away from the home.

  Amrit’s flat was a dump, but living with him was OK at first. His family were not against him seeing a white girl, nor did they try to disown him for what was obviously a fully sexual relationship. On which subject: the sex was pretty crap. Amrit was the original goldfish-attention-span male in bed. Once we were at it, he was desperate to stick it in me straight away. Then 2 minutes of unvaried, rhythmic heaving. If there was music on, he would shag to the beat. Then a brief cry, a groan, and he would roll over and sleep and I would reach for my vibrator.

  The problems came when his family found out I had only just turned seventeen – Amrit was twenty-four. This they did criticise him for, and I recall his father coming round, shutting me in the kitchen in order to talk to his son ‘man to man’ in the sitting room of the flat. I sat in that room for ages, listening at the door, but at first hearing only the pattering of winter rain on the window. But then, raised voices. Angry shouting. And then, a slammed front door. When I opened the kitchen door I was surprised to see his father still there.

  “Cup of tea?”

  “Thank you, my daughter.” He was always a gentleman, Amrit’s father.

  Amrit came back two hours later, after his dad had gone. He’d clearly been thinking and had decided which side his bread was buttered. He gathered all my stuff, loaded it into his car and drove me round to the street where the children’s home was. He left me on the pavement, with all my belongings in the world in three cardboard boxes. I remember looking up and down the street, the avenues of trees like black skeletons against the January sky.

  I hear a noise, and the memory is gone. The sound is the most welcome I’ve heard for days: Jazz’s key in the door of our flat.

  “How’s your Mum?” I ask, hoping she’ll tell me quickly and then I can tell her my story.

  “Much better. Much better than Dad, that is. He’s the one not coping. God, it’s hot. The temperature goes up ten degrees when you come back into London.”

  “It’s been a bloody sauna, the last few days. And you know how I hate being too hot. Jazz – ”

  She looks at me. I see her classy, English face, still so clear-skinned even though she’s just turned thirty; her straight narrow nose, high cheeks: they all say to me – clever, privileged. Well, she is privileged, compared to me: Mum, Dad, home, college. And she used to have a proper job too, at Haringey Council, taking calls, dealing with housing enquiries. Responsible work – but promotion opportunities were zero, so she packed it in. The game was only meant to tide her over until she found a better job. Now it’s eight years later.

  I tell her my story.

  “Think of the positive, Hol. You didn’t do it: they’ve had you inside the police station, and they’ve not charged you. Someone violent, strong, almost certainly male did this. They won’t have a case that would stack up in court against you, they don’t want to see their prosecution case collapse... everything points to them not seeing you as a real suspect. They see you as a witness. They’re sometimes rough on witnesses – and especially, our sort of people. A girl who’s on the game – it’s Us and Them. They don’t trust us to tell them what they want. They want to shake us up. They think we’re like a tree: rattle the branches and everything will drop out.”

  “No. You weren’t there in that police interview, Jazz. They’ve got it in for me. They want to take my prints and my DNA. It will prove that I was there. If they’re being tough with me now, how will they treat me once they know that I was with this Wycherley bloke, and that I’ve lied to them?” As I’m speaking, I can feel all the fears of my nightmares creeping back into me. I see the blood again.

  Jazz jolts me back to reality. “How did they get onto you in the first place?”

  “A witness. Claims he saw me, and that he recognised me because he was an old booking.”

  “Who? Who could possibly be a witness?”

  “Well... the only place, I guess, where someone might have seen me, was the hotel lobby.”

  “At the hotel... mmm. Did you recognise any old punters there? I guess you would have noticed, if you were on the alert for being spotted by people anyway.”

  “Would I have noticed?” I look into her face, and then I check my memory, and my autopilot brain who guided me out of that hotel. And the autopilot is crystal clear, confident. “You’re right, Jazz. I’d have recognised anyone that I’ve ever met before, in that lobby. I’d know, if I saw anyone familiar there. And it must have been the lobby; I saw no-one in the hotel corridor, no-
one in the lift, and no-one outside the hotel entrance.”

  “Is it possible that this guy, whoever he is, saw you, but you didn’t see him?”

  I’m definite, sure again. “No. I was like radar that night, like spider-senses. I was watching everything that was there, all the way out from the room through the hotel to the tube.”

  “So, your witness...”

  “There’s a guy who looked at me – at the hotel reception desk. A total stranger, but I’m sure that it was him who saw me leaving. He was the only person who met my eyes. It was him alright.”

  “And what – he saw you leave the hotel, and then the murder is reported in one of the hotel’s rooms, and he puts two and two together? But in that case, how did he know who you were?”

  “Yes, how? But I know something.”

  “What?”

  “I know he’s lying. I’ve never been with him, never seen him before. He’s telling a deliberate lie about having seen me before, about knowing who I am.”

  “But that’s... not going to be much use... if they get your prints and match them to that room...”

  “No. Like I said Jazz, I’m done for.”

  “No. You’re not.” She smiles at me. Those deep soulful eyes in her pale oh-so-British face, like an actress in an old black-and-white movie.

  “Because, Hol, if this witness is lying, and it went to court, then the prosecution would pick up on that, and he’ll end up in trouble. It’s not worth it for him. He’ll lose his job, he’ll get a police record...”

  “And meanwhile, I’ll be serving life.”

  “No. Don’t you see? Get to him now. Find him. Tell him that you don’t know how he got onto you, but what he told them is a lie, it’s not worth his while to go on with it. Find out how he really knew who you were.”

  “And get him to change his evidence, now?”

  “Exactly. So you never need to give any prints, any DNA. All you’ll get is a police apology.”

  I feel her arm round me, her fingers stroking my shoulder. What she’s saying, my logic brain tells me, makes sense. Yes, a witness could be in serious trouble for lying to incriminate someone in a murder case. Yes, a decent brief could, I guess, use that in court, or probably even before it got to court, to unravel a prosecution case. Stick and carrot. That’s the stick to beat this hotel guy with, and maybe I could throw in some cash for the carrot. Knowing the salaries of London hotel desk staff, I’d guess that my witness could be bribed to change a story to the police, for say, £500?

  “You’re right Jazz. Thank you, you’re right.” I give her a bear-hug. A gleam of hope. But I feel, somehow, that I know that man at the desk already. It was only a two-second glance at him, but I feel in my guts that more than a threat from me will be needed. There was a hardness in his eyes. £500 might be only the start.

  “Let’s go now.” Jazz is always decisive.

  “Really? Right now?”

  “After we’ve showered and changed. Smart clothes. We need to put on our battle dress. But yes, we’re going back to that hotel – we get in there, we speak to him, ASAP.”

  Jazz and I are going up in the lift at Russell Square tube station. We’re scrubbed-up, professional looking. Business suits and classy heels, like women candidates off The Apprentice. A crush of people: it’s six o’clock. The tube journey was hot, stuffy, and it’s even more intense in this lift. As if all the air’s been sucked out and someone’s got a hot hair dryer turned on us. I’m tall for a woman, but I’m standing right behind two six-foot guys. I can see sweat on their necks, while I feel the moisture in the breath of people behind me. Suddenly we’re out into the air, July heat and light bouncing off the pavement. It feels so daunting, going back to the hotel where it happened. But I can do it: with Jazz with me, somehow I know I’ll be OK.

  We cross the road, turn a corner – and there it is, in front of me. I’d dreaded seeing it, but it’s nothing: a bog-standard London hotel, a couple of taxis pulled up outside, someone paying a fare, suitcases on the pavement, fake pot-plants next to fake marble pillars, people standing having a fag outside the revolving doors. We go in, and I’m still feeling OK. The lobby is empty. And we see him, straight away, at the desk. A little shrew-like man, black wiry hair, thin, pale face. Maybe thirty. He’s looking at a screen and tapping a keyboard. I nudge Jazz. She heads straight towards him. I see his name badge – Enver Krasniqi.

  “Mr Krasniqi – I’m Jasmine Cairns, this is my friend Holly Harlow. And we have some private business to discuss with you.” She speaks boldly, directly, without fear. I want to run away, but at the same time I’m admiring her directness, her head-on tackling of the problem.

  He sees me standing half-hidden behind her. He doesn’t look into our faces, but he scans up and down our bodies. ‘Undressing you with his eyes’ is definitely going on here.

  “Private business? Your friend – she is... the, ah, reason for this business?” East European accent. Patronising manner.

  “We’ll discuss everything when you’re able to speak to us.”

  Another desk clerk, a woman, is looking at him. I know that glance. It means “Mister, you’re supposed to be working, but here’s a piece of your private life you’re dealing with at your desk.” And a porter standing near the lift is looking at him too, with a glare that could kill. This guy is not popular with the other staff. But he seems like he couldn’t care less. “Well, we can speak now. Wait for me in the pub across the road. Five minutes and I’ll be with you. My shift is just ending, so you are – lucky, lucky to catch me. Very lucky.”

  We both go back out into the searing heat. It’s the peak of summer, the weekend is beginning, and the pub is bursting with bodies. It seems like every Londoner and every tourist is needing a cold beer, right now. But outside the door there’s a free table on the pavement, in the glare of the sun, and Jazz offers to dive into the sweaty scrum inside and get us some drinks. Amazingly, she’s back in two minutes, with two long glasses of something decadent.

  “Thanks Jazz. A cheeky cocktail?”

  “Dutch courage. And speaking of cheeky cocks, there’s Mr Slime crossing the road to us right now. Definitely, definitely bribeable.”

  “No drink for me, ladies?”

  “You’re welcome to get your own.”

  “I see. You two ladies and me – I thought, maybe, we could be a team, we could help each other? ...” He sits down without buying a drink, looks at us expectantly. For me, looking into someone’s eyes makes me feel sympathy: here is another human being, needy, hurtable. All any of us have in this world is a few years in a frame of flesh. But sitting here in the sun, looking into those cold blue eyes framed in chalky skin, I feel nothing of that fellow warmth. And there’s now been thirty seconds silence, thirty seconds stand-off. Jazz, as usual, breaks the ice.

  “Mr Krasniqi, we think that you witnessed something and reported it to the police. We believe that you told them that you witnessed my friend in your hotel. We’re not here to dispute that you saw someone leaving the Excel hotel. What we do dispute is your claim to the police that you have known my friend in the past.”

  “Known? You mean, fucked.”

  “That never happened.” I but in, angrily. “You’re making it up. I never met you before in my life, you liar.”

  He speaks to Jazz, not to me. “She is very angry, I see that. But this problem is easily solved. I know it concerns a murder, and the police will be very focused on Miss Harlow. So the police may not be interested in whether I am lying or telling the truth about that one little thing, because I have some important evidence. With that evidence, Miss Harlow is – to say it again – fucked.”

  His boldness make my heart sink into my stilettos. I’m roasting in this business suit, but the icy feeling from that hotel bathroom comes back to me. And Jazz – she was calm, until now. But I can see her neck is reddening, face flushing with fury. He’s noticed it too. He waves his hand, as if dismissing our feelings, our fears.

  “Ladies,
ladies, there is a way forward. Good for me, and good for you, too. We may be able to do a deal. But here, with both of you and only one of me... a threesome, you would call it in your line of work? Ha ha. Two on one, that is not fair. I want to see you” – he wags a finger at me – “alone.”

  “OK.” Maybe I shouldn’t give in to his demands straight away like that, but I’m desperate, and if he is offering a deal... and yes, I was right, some kind of bribery is going to be needed here. That bribe, maybe a share of my earnings for a while, is probably what he’s been angling for all along, ever since he spoke to the police. I’ve got the £500 cash with me, for starters. Jazz looks at me with warning in her eyes, but yes, I need that deal, it’s my only lifeline. “OK.”

  “You” he speaks to Jazz “very attractive, very chic. A true English lady. A shame we can’t meet for longer. Maybe sometime?”

  “In your fucking dreams, sleazeball.”

  “Nice manners to go with your fine clothes, Miss Cairns. I will look you up, on the Internet. It will be interesting to read your profile. I’m sure I can find you on EscortNet or GirlsDirect. I’ll take a look at what you’re wearing in your profile photos. Or not wearing. If your profile includes a phone number, then expect a call from me. But you, Miss Harlow, you come with me, right now.”

  Jazz looks at me. Does she feel she’s fucked it up for me, by being rude to him? I smile back as if to say “No problem, we all know that there’s no friendliness here. But there is the chance of a deal. That’s all this guy is after. You’ve not let me down. Thank you, thank you.”

  He stands up. I gulp down the rest of my drink: in this heat I need the liquid, but all I feel is the alcohol in my throat, a hit at the back of my skull. I stand up too, and follow him without a word from either of us. We go back to the tube station, back into the squeeze of the lift. It’s even busier now, and the press of bodies, on this hottest day of the year so far, is suffocating. The lift descends and opens into the passageways of the Underground, hundreds of people all striding along, feet pounding almost in rhythm as we descend a few steps to the platform. My heels ring on the iron grips of the steps and I’m teetering in this crowd. There’s droves of people on the northbound platform, a train glides in and “Mind the Gap” rings out over the tannoy, it’s unbelievable that we might all fit into this tiny sliding tube, but everyone squeezes up, I keep Krasniqi in sight, he pushes his way on, elbowing and shoving, and I do too. The crush in the train is worse than in the lift, and as it starts to move I hold onto a rail above the door to keep steady. I hope the armpits of my jacket aren’t soaked in sweat: I know that my blouse is. I’m looking into the eyes of a middle eastern guy who’s standing next to me, he’s a gentleman, he’s trying to stand back from me, giving me as much room as he can. Dark eyes, deep like pools. Forlorn, sad eyes. I can see the pores in his nose and cheeks, the individual bristles of his beard. A young, fake blond girl is five inches from my face on the other side of me, her skin plastered crudely with make-up, and I can see where it’s cracked and uneven after a day of work and sweat. My nose is filled with a horrible, sharp smell: it’s from the armpit of an old man who’s reaching up to hold an overhead handle, his shirt stained, crumpled, pulled out of his trousers at the waist, I see an inch of the pasty skin of his belly. London.

  The train rumbles on through the darkness. Then King’s Cross, and even more people squash onto this travelling tube of hot humanity, breathe in, rattle on. Pressed up against bodies for two, three stations. We come to Finsbury Park, my home stop, and a lot of people get off, at last I can breathe freely again and I look through the other faces, across the carriage, Krasniqi is still there, still sweaty, still sneering. And the train moves off towards the outer suburbs. Where are we going?

  Wood Green. We leave the train, a long escalator ride up to the surface. We’re out in Zone 3 here, and the outside air is a relief as we leave the tube station, but it’s still sweltering, and the lowering sun blazes onto every surface of metal and glass. I smell hot tar, bad drains, cigarette smoke, car fumes. Traffic streams northbound along Wood Green High Road, out of the city. We’re on the edge of a great divide: to the west, Ally Pally, Muswell Hill, Highgate, Hampstead, open green hillsides looking down on London, parkland, leafy streets, sweet suburbia. To the east, scuzzy twilight bedsit-land. We turn east. We need to cross another busy road. Krasniqi just steps off the kerb, dodges the cars. It’s now past seven o’clock but still manically busy, frantic traffic, drivers hurrying home from a ten-hour day at the office, tired, overheated, end-of-tether.

  Krasniqi walks fast, like a machine: I trip along in my heels, trying to keep up with him. Under my jacket, I feel my skin squeezing out sweat with the exertion. Headache: I should have asked Jazz to get me a glass of water rather than that cocktail. More rubbish on the pavements here, and now we turn down a sidestreet, and another. Crumbling houses with shoddy repairs. Finsbury Park seems like Knightsbridge now. On the next street there’s a guy sitting on the pavement, back against a wall, doing – what? Begging? Resting? Krasniqi steps over the man’s legs as if he’s a piece of dogshit. I do the same, I don’t even glance to check if the guy is OK. Another sidestreet. Halfway along, we turn into what was once a postage-stamp front garden, now piled high with empty cardboard boxes, like the ones that office paper supplies come in. I can see labels “Excel Hotel Bloomsbury” on some of the boxes. And then Krasniqi’s fiddling with a Yale, the door clunks open, and we’re going upstairs in the dark.

  The room is dirty and messy beyond belief. Papers everywhere, piled anyhow on the floor, on the sofa, on shelving up to the ceiling. But the papers all look like A4 office paper, and I realise, once I get over how crowded and nasty it is, that despite dust and muck – many of the papers have blackened fingerprints on them – that these papers are not random: they’re in deliberate stacks, and there might even be some kind of system. Everything in here is white, but ingrained with grime: the walls, the papers, the MDF furniture, the bare floorboards painted white gloss, but stained in overlapping patches where drinks, maybe food, has been spilt over months, years. Filthy. I’m not sure whether he’s a hoarder or an OCD. There’s a cramped desk topped by two large out-of-date computer screens and a printer.

  “Sit there.” There are two cheap, hard chairs; I take the one he gestures to. God, this room is even hotter than out in the sun. The one small window is shut: stale air. He goes through a door but doesn’t close it, and after a moment I hear the tinkle of his piss. I look at the nearest pile of papers. Printed out from a website, that’s obvious enough. I recognise the layout of the top page, it’s a page from GirlsDirect, someone’s profile “Elite Call Girl and Pornstar. Size 10 36G. Body built for sin – and a kinky mind that thinks only of your pleasure! Always in sexy lingerie, stockings & heels. For rates see below. Discounts available for Regulars.” Pages and pages of profiles, printed out. And photos printed from websites, literally hundreds, no thousands of them, every one a pink mass of naked skin. ‘Must get through his colour cartridges, does he nick those from work too?’ I think to myself as I leaf through a slew of paper. The tinkling noise goes on. Every page is covered with grainy blow-up photos of female body parts. Medical-level detail. And he’s scribbled stuff on every photo – names, dates. Every one has the web address printed out on it too. Like someone who enjoys porn, but prefers classifying it to masturbating over it.

  The tinkling stops. I put the papers down, and sit with my arms folded, like butter wouldn’t melt.

  He comes back in the room, hands unwashed. I see again the whites of his hard eyes, his pale face, the grayness of his hotel-chain suit, the white of the walls and the piles of paper. His tie, man-made fibre with the Excel hotel logo on it, is crimson: the only splash of colour in this room except for the flashes of skintone on every bit of exposed paper.

  I don’t want to spend one second more than I have to in this place. I come straight to the point.

  “We can do a deal.”

  “You’re
good at stating the obvious, Holly. Holly – is that what you’d like me to call you? What your friends call you. Your clients. Lucky guys.” The hint of a smirk.

  “Holly will do. And yes, let’s do a deal. I can prove to the police that your story is not correct. You’ve never met me before, and you certainly never incalled me. That’s provable, because you don’t know where I live. So you can go back to the police, please, and tell them –”

  “The truth, Holly?”

  “Forget the fucking truth, Mr Krasniqi, that doesn’t matter either way. I guess neither you or I is the sort of person who fusses about the truth. Just tell the cops that you’ve never seen me before, that you made a mistake, that the girl you saw leaving the Excel Hotel could have been anyone.”

  “And how would you make that worthwhile to me?”

  “I can give you money.”

  He sneers “I have money.” Suddenly, like a magic trick, he produces a roll of cash and waggles it in front of my nose. It’s in a clear plastic bag, maybe a sandwich or a freezer bag. A hot wave rolls over me: the airlessness, the oven heat of this tiny room: my head reels. Because the £200 in the bag in front of me is a roll of crisp new £20 notes, bound with a blue elastic band. I’ve seen the roll, the elastic band, before. It’s what Wycherley put down in the hotel room.

  I grab at it and it’s the magic trick again: the money has gone.

  “How the fuck did you get that?”

  “Holly, Holly. You were the last person to see Mr Wycherley alive, the cops already know that. They just need to prove it. So if I give them this little packet – let’s face it, you’re as good as in jail. You will have counted these notes, checked them, put this little elastic band back on them. The police will find that they are covered with your prints. And not with mine.”

  He sits back, like he’s giving me time for the shock to sink in. Above his head, I see for the first time, he’s printed a photo of me out from the GirlsDirect website – but with this one photo, he’s gone to the trouble to sellotape it to the wall. Like the others, he’s scribbled something under it.

  The nasty smile again. “But I’ll give you all this money, and then you can get rid of it, and the police will – maybe – forget my story...”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “As you say. Yes. Nice that you and I now have that deal that you talked about. And because we have a deal, I’ll give you the first twenty pounds right now. Take your jacket and blouse off.”

  I don’t know about every girl on the trade. But everyone I know has no-nos. Guys who give us the creeps. Guys you wouldn’t screw if they gave you a thousand quid. Or more.

  Krasniqi is one of those guys.

  But I take the jacket and blouse off just the same.

  I can see him eying every inch of my skin and I feel like I was seventeen again, I feel sick to my core. He doesn’t, of course, hand me any of the money. He simply says, in a flat tone “Now the skirt.”

  I slide it down over my hips and it’s on the floor, and it’s like my mind is focusing on something that I can cope with, I’m thinking of the material of my best skirt on that horrible, sticky, painted floor. “The bra.”

  I reach back and unclip the bra. I’m really trembling now; it’s making my nipples shake and I can see him half greedy, half-laughing at my wobbling boobs.

  “Pants.”

  “No. I can’t do this, not like this. Listen, give me a day or so and I promise, promise, you can have the lot. You can shag me for free. But not now. I’m shaken up.”

  And only then it occurs to me: how did he get the money? And two pieces of a jigsaw fit together. No, three pieces. He saw me leave, he went up to the room, he took the cash. Before the police or anyone else got to that room. Bastard, bastard.

  There’s a fourth piece. I’m just too scared, and too ashamed of my naked body in front of his bulging, greedy eyes, to be able to think what it is.

  “Pants. I’m not asking, I’m telling.”

  I start to pull at them but I fumble, this is too horrible. Suddenly he holds something up. It’s an iphone. It must be Wycherley’s iphone. “You see, the money is nothing, really. But this – well, it has the man’s blood on it. And a photo of you, with the time and date, taken by him, minutes before he died. So you are – like I said back at that pub – fucked. Now be a good girl. Pants. I want to see a nice pink pussy, in under five seconds.”

  I’m like a rag doll now. I just obey. And I keep thinking: I’m going to throw up on you in a second, you shit, you shit. How much of a turn-on will that be for you? But it doesn’t happen. And then he hands me the iphone.

  “Frig yourself. With the phone.”

  “No.”

  “You really should. Put some of your DNA on it. It’s sure to help your case if the police think that poor man dildoed you with it.”

  “No.”

  Suddenly his eyes narrow. It’s like something has snapped in him. The muscles in his throat move, the veins in his neck stand out. His hands clench, and it’s an instant shock, like lightning: there’s a punch, a blow on the side of my head. I’m seeing stars, literally. Blackness, and I’m falling sideways. But my muscles tense, strengthen. I don’t fall. I can see his face, like a white mask, and I watch through the stars, I see my own fist rising and catching his chin and I feel his jawbone rocking back against my knuckles, like his neck is a spring, and I can see the whites of his eyes below the irises, as his eyeballs swing back in his head.

  And there’s a voice saying “I’m getting dressed. I am onto your stupid little scam. It’s a criminal offence. You can find yourself out of a job and out of this country in 24 hours. So – you listen to me.”

  The fourth piece of the jigsaw.

  “If you saw nothing more than a woman walking out of the hotel, you could not have known which room I’d come from. You could never have found that money and that phone. So you already knew which room Wycherley and me were in.

  You knew the room, because you arranged that room for Wycherley, knowing it was in order that he could meet me for sex. I’ve heard some of the girls on the game talk about hotel employees who operate your sort of racket. You’ll do this for lots of punters, checking the hotel database, find out about unused rooms, making last-minute room bookings, overcharging the punters, making money on the side. The hotel won’t like you running your own little scam of using their place as a knocking-shop. If I tell them, you’re out of a job, added onto that there’s attempting to lie to the police. In a murder case. So that’s prison for you, or you’ll be sent back to Bosnia or wherever you’ve come from.”

  He doesn’t answer, and my clothes are back on, and I know I’ve beaten him.

  “There’s something else. You knew who Wycherley had booked. Somehow, you had my contact details, and that’s how the police found me so quickly. You gave them my contact details. How did you get hold of them?”

  He mumbles. “Louder.”

  “OK, I saw you arrive, I guessed you were the girl who was going up to Wycherley’s room. Then, when I saw you leave early, looking a mess – I wanted to know what was going on. I went up to the room, like you said. The door was not locked and I went in, I saw him lying there dead. Yes, I took the money and the phone. Later, I looked at his phone, at who he’d phoned. He texted someone just before 10pm – “Can we postpone booking until 10.30pm? Apologies Jonathan.” And he got a text back “OK no problem. See you at 10.30 Holly.” So I knew that that number must be the girl he was meeting. I typed it into Google – the phone number that the text came from. Google came up with a result, a profile called GirlNextDoor, on the GirlsDirect website.”

  Is he lying? I look into his face, trusting nothing. “A website that you just happen, by sheer fucking coincidence, to have printed out every page from.”

  He makes no reply. I attack again. “So did the police ask you, or did you volunteer it, this lie about you being one of my old clients, about how you claimed to know me? Did you tell them some story about how you mad
e a connection between the girl you saw leaving the hotel and that girl there?” I point at my photo on the wall.

  “I just told them I’d met you before. I told them it was a coincidence.”

  “And they swallowed that?” Somehow, their lack of thought and care doesn’t surprise me. Never mind Holly, you’re in control now girl. Tell him what he’s got to do.

  “Ok. Well, you go back to the cops. You say you made a mistake, right? That you got it wrong, you thought it was some girl you’d met, cos she looked a bit like the girl you saw leaving the hotel room, but when you think about it, it wasn’t. OK?”

  “How much is this worth?”

  “Don’t fucking try to bargain with me. I set the deal. What it’s worth is: your job at the hotel, for starters. Me not reporting you to the police, for taking money for booking Wycherley a room that you knew he planned to use for sexual services. Which is an old-fashioned English phrase called Living Off Immoral Earnings. And another old-fashioned phase, which is something much worse, called Perverting the Course of Justice.”

  “But... you’re maybe going down for murder.”

  “No, you fucker, you are maybe going down for murder.” I try to frighten him more by throwing in a bit more legal jargon, although of course I haven’t a clue what any of it means. “Or at the very least an accessory. Conspiracy to murder. You knew that Wycherley would be in that room, at that time. You know that I didn’t kill him. But you might know who did.”

  I walk out with the £200 and Wycherley’s iphone. Krasniqi ended up telling me – and I could see he was shit-scared that I’d tumbled him – that he knew which room we’d been in because Wycherley had come down into the lobby and asked him if he could get him any “extras” for Room 412. I knew that story was bollocks, but I just wanted to get Krasniqi out of my sight. When I’m stronger, I’ll face him and get the full truth out of him. And then, I say to myself, I’ll tell the hotel anyway, the bastard. Or could I? How can one human being enjoy harming another? I think about all those so-called witches, questioned and tortured by the authorities. He enjoyed humiliating me, he relished it like it was champagne. The little shit. And yet... I can’t hurt him in cold blood, just to get my own back on him. I’m not capable of causing harm for the fun of it. Even to him.

  I leave his house, I don’t even bother to shut the front door. And then I’m out on the street again and I realise: I haven’t got a clue where I am. I walk back the way I think I’ve come. Yes, I remember this corner, and this one.

  The heat is still fierce, the evening sun blazes in my eyes. I must be walking back west, towards the tube station. Suddenly I recognise the really busy road ahead of me. I see a cheap café and realise that my mouth and tongue are like sandpaper. I’ve got to rest, drink, right now. I go into the café, sit down, ask the boy at the counter for a large bottle of mineral water. I feel like I’ve run a marathon, and my legs start to shake. Plus, I keep seeing that thin, chalky face staring at my bare boobs, and I feel vomit, like acid, rising in my throat. Right now, I can’t face the tube journey back, the jostling, the people. I can afford to stop for a moment. I know I’ve scared Krasniqi off completely. I’ve won.

  Someone hands me the bottle of water. A familiar voice says to the kid at the counter “I’ll pay.”

  “Jazz! How did you get here?”

  “I wasn’t going to leave you with that creep, was I? I was terrified for you. I’ve never, in all my time on the game, seen a guy I’d trust less. I followed you on the tube up to Wood Green. Of course, I didn’t want him to see me and bugger up your deal with him. But I didn’t want to leave you alone up here in the middle of nowhere with an obvious pervert either. So I kept well back, and he didn’t see me. But then just after leaving the tube station, I lost you, back on the other side of that busy road. There was suddenly a ton of traffic, and by the time I could cross the road, you’d gone. I didn’t know whether you’d gone left, right or straight ahead. So I waited here, this little café has a good view of the streets, I hoped to see you coming back. It was awful, waiting, wondering how you’d got on.”

  “Thanks.” I reach out and hold her hand. I notice that my own hand, my own arm, is red and blotchy.

  “Do I look a mess?”

  “You look hot, very red. Maybe dehydrated. Perhaps being really scared does that to you?”

  “Well, you’re right about one thing. He really did give me the creeps. His flat – like a serial killer or something.”

  “And?”

  “He got me to strip off.”

  “Fuck.”

  “He’d been in that hotel room, you see. The room of the murder. He took the £200 and the guy’s phone. He told me that if I didn’t strip, he was going to give them to the police and they’d find my prints on them, of course. But then I thought, he must have known the room – “

  “Arranged it? For the punter?”

  “Exactly. One of those rackets that some hotel staff run. Backhanders of cash, so a punter can have an vacant room for the night at short notice for sex. Wycherley booked that room with Krasniqi directly, and he was staying at that hotel that night, for the purpose of meeting me. So I told Mr Krasniqi that he was liable to go down for misleading the police, and maybe even being in on the murder. After all, he knew the room Wycherley was in, so he could be linked with whoever broke in there and did the murder. When I told him that, he looked scared. He handed over the money and Wycherley’s phone.”

  “Would he have raped you?”

  “I’m sure of it, Jazz. I’ll drink this, then I need to get home.”

  “I’m already dialling the taxi.”