Bodies By Design: The 2nd Jasmine Frame Novel (Jasmine Frame Detective)

by P R Ellis

  His fingers gripped her thigh pressing into her flesh. If he’d had nails he would have pierced her skin. ‘What are you then? You one of those trannies with a limp dick?’

  Jasmine braced her feet against the floor and pushed back. Her chair slid back and toppled over as she stood up. Greg was pulled from his seat but his grip loosened and he fell forward. Jasmine grabbed her bag and fled before he had a chance to recover, reached the curtain and slipped through. She paused in the dark, catching her breath and hoping that Greg had not seen where she had gone. She felt her way to the door into the corridor and retraced her steps upstairs.

  As she entered the top corridor, the door to room A opened and a figure emerged wearing a costume that seemed to consist solely of long, purple feathers. The figure pushed past her without a word and headed down the stairs. The next performer, Jasmine guessed.

  She reached Honey’s door, tapped, didn’t wait for an answer, but entered immediately. Honey was lying on the couch wrapped in a towelling bathrobe with a whisky glass in one hand. The silver platform shoes were discarded on the floor and the blonde wig rested on her stomach like a contented cat. The silver dress was tossed over the back of the swivel chair.

  ‘Oh, it’s you again,’ Honey drawled without moving. ‘Get yourself a drink and pull up the chair.’

  Jasmine crossed to the washbasin and found the glass she’d used earlier. She filled it with water.

  ‘What did you think of it then?’ Honey asked.

  Jasmine rolled the chair over to the couch and sat down. ‘Pretty powerful. You sing amazingly and you have, well, a presence.’

  ‘Thanks. Anything else?’

  Jasmine could see Honey’s eyes searching her face for a reaction. ‘I was expecting a drag show and I appreciate burlesque, but the strip – not my scene, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the second half yet!’

  ‘You’re on again?’

  ‘Yeah, after midnight. I do a brief résumé then carry on from where I left off with participation from certain… special members of the audience.’

  ‘You mean you do a sex show?’

  ‘You could call it that.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d given up prostitution?’

  Honey looked pained. She leaned forward wagging a finger ‘This is performance art, darling. The crowd love it, I love it and the pay is good too.’

  ‘I don’t want to watch people writhing around on stage.’

  ‘Hmm, aren’t you prim and proper. Come on, you’re trans. Don’t you want a bit of cock action? Don’t tell me you’re a muff-muncher!’

  Jasmine felt flustered, not sure how to respond. Her reactions to sexual imagery were confused and upsetting. She wasn’t exactly sure what she fancied, but she certainly wasn’t going to discuss it with a she-male. ‘Look, I’m here to talk about Xristal.’

  Honey sank back on the couch. ‘OK. I was hoping my act might have had an effect on you, but there you go.’ She took a swig of whisky, swallowed, ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘All you know about Xristal. How you met - everything.’

  Honey’s vast chest heaved as she took a deep breath. ‘I suppose it goes back further than that, to how I got started in this business.’

  ‘OK. Go on.’ Jasmine reached into her bag for her notebook and pen.

  ‘I was in my teens, I suppose, and like every kid I was learning about sex. Like all boys, when I got hold of lads’ mags and porn I wanked over the girls’ tits. Didn’t you?’

  Jasmine scribbled “teen”, “porn”, “wanked”. ‘No. I was disgusted when I first got an erection.’ The recollection of the first time it had happened was still burned in her memory.

  ‘Hmm, I guess that proves you are TS then. Me, well, I loved it but the more I looked at pictures of girls I realised I wasn’t lusting after them. I wanted to be like them. I wanted the smooth face, narrow waist and big tits. But I didn’t want to lose my cock, no way.’ She sipped her whisky. ‘I looked after myself. Shaved carefully, my whole body, and moisturised. Let my hair grow. Started buying sexy girl-wear, but didn’t let anyone see me. School was a bore but I just scraped in to university.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Reading. Not the posh one, the one that used to be the poly - TVU. I wasn’t interested in the course much but I discovered the clubs, including one for gays and trannies where I could go dressed up. I discovered I wasn’t the only one like me. There were other guys who liked dressing as girls who wanted sex with me, and there were blokes who fancied us.’

  ‘Men who would pay?’

  ‘Yeah. Easy money. I dropped out of uni, got a flat, started playing the market and began to do what I’d always wanted to do.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Get my body altered so I looked more like those girls, except for the cock of course.’

  ‘What did you have done?’

  ‘At first? A nose job and my first boobs, then laser hair removal on my face.’

  ‘That must have cost thousands.’

  ‘Yeah, but I was making it. I wasn’t on drugs and hardly drank back then, so all the money I earned went on clothes, make-up and cosmetic surgery. There were plenty of punters who wanted me.’

  ‘And Xristal? Where does she fit in?’

  ‘Later, over eight years ago I suppose. I was twenty two. One night at the club, she just appeared. She was young, attractive, but obviously had very little idea who or what she was or how to dress. I found out she’d slipped out of home, changed behind a bush somewhere and arrived in just about the only female clothes she possessed. Fashion-wise she was a mess, but, god, she was gorgeous.’

  ‘Xristal was about fifteen then?’

  ‘That’s right. She was about the same height as you, slim, shoulders not too broad, long legs, and that shiny black hair down to her shoulders.’

  ‘So, you seduced her?’

  ‘No. No, that wasn’t how it was. We talked.’

  ‘Then you had sex?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘What was it like then?’ Jasmine was convinced that Honey had led Xristal on. She continued to write in her notebook.

  ‘We talked for a while. The next night she came again and we talked for longer. She was mixed up. She didn’t understand these feelings she had about wanting to dress like a girl, to have the body of a girl.’

  ‘So you persuaded her to be a she-male like you.’

  ‘No, I didn’t persuade her. I suppose me and my friends just assumed it. She talked about getting hard-ons and wanking off, so we just thought she was like us.’

  ‘So you and your mates introduced her to she-male sex?’

  ‘No,’ Honey sat up and glared at Jasmine. ‘I knew she was too young. We’re not crazed sex-addicts always after a pull, well, most of us aren’t. For a couple of years, she just hung out with us. Okay, she saw a few of the girls having it off with each other from time to time and she knew I was seeing guys regularly. She knew where the money for the ops was coming from. She was a bright girl and got even better-looking as she learned what to wear.’

  ‘You groomed her until she was old enough to service your clients?’

  Honey’s face contorted in anger. ‘Look, I’m getting pretty fed up with your accusations. I tell you, it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘It sounds a lot like it.’

  ‘You fucking tee-esses. So holier than thou. You think there’s just male and female and if you chop off your prick you’ll change from a man to a woman!’

  Jasmine felt her cheeks heat up. ‘It’s more than that. I AM a woman, but my body’s wrong!’

  ‘Oh yes, the old “woman trapped in a man’s body” story!’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘Well, perhaps it is for you. But male/female, gay/straight - it’s more complicated than black and white.’

  They both sat still, staring into each other’s eyes, as if daring each other to claim the moral high ground. Jasmine recalled all th
e trans people she had known and met. Honey was right. Everyone had their own stories, their own feelings and position on the male-female spectrum. And it was a spectrum, not an either/or. She took a deep breath and sat back, folding her arms.

  ‘OK. Tell me what it was like for you then.’

  Honey held out her empty tumbler, ‘Get me another whisky.’

  Jasmine grabbed the glass and walked across the room, filled it and returned. Honey took it from her and gulped another mouthful.

  ‘Well?’ Jasmine asked.

  ‘I fell in love,’ Honey said softly.

  ‘In love?’ Jasmine could not keep the scepticism out of her voice.

  ‘Yes. Is it so hard to believe? I was still pretty young. I thought I knew what I wanted – a body like a girl but still with working tackle – and I was easy about how I was earning the cash to achieve it. Xristal was beautiful, we got on and I thought she wanted the same as me.’

  ‘And she fell in love with you too, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. We got on well, talked for hours, enjoyed doing things together.’

  ‘And had sex.’

  ‘Not straight away. I controlled myself. She kept urging me to let her make love to me, but I kept saying she was too young.’

  ‘But you gave in.’

  ‘Yes,’ Honey sighed. ‘Just after her seventeenth birthday. She was well over the age of consent.’

  ‘OK, so it was legal.’

  ‘She said she wanted to be with me. I said she should stay at school, go to university, get a career. She asked how she could save for her modifications if she had to pay her way through uni and start at the bottom of some fancy career. I tried to persuade her, and she did stay at school almost until her exams, but she said she couldn’t go on. I let her come to live with me and she refused to have anything more to do with her parents.’

  ‘So you embarked on a life together. What a lovely couple.’

  ‘It was lovely. I paid for her to have her first pair of tits. We moved to London. I was picking up loads of clients. Xristal saw how it worked and asked to join in.’

  ‘Simple, was it? Slipping into a life of prostitution.’

  ‘Yeah. Well I looked after her. Made sure her customers were OK and that she took precautions. I agree I almost felt jealous of those guys who paid for her. She has, uh, had a super body and a gorgeous cock.’

  ‘Just guys?’

  ‘Well mainly guys and she-males. Occasionally we picked up some girls who liked to mix it up a bit.’

  ‘And Xristal went along with all this?’

  ‘Yeah, she loved it. At least I thought she did. We planned our next surgery. She went for vocal cord tightening to raise her voice pitch. I didn’t want that, but I had hip and buttock implants which she didn’t.’

  ‘You lived your fantasy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What about the BDSM? When did Xristal get into that?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly when. I suppose we started playing around early on. I’m naturally a bit dom and Xristal was happy to play games. We began to use ropes and cuffs, picking up odd bits and pieces from time to time.’

  ‘Just a bit of fun was it?’

  ‘For me, yes, it was. But Xristal seem to take to it and started to introduce it into her services to clients. She found she could charge more if she allowed herself to be tied up.’

  ‘Sounds risky to me.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I warned her that someone might really hurt her if she was defenceless. She said she checked out her clients carefully, but I don’t know how. She was a bit of a computer geek.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘We moved round quite a lot, making sure the fuzz didn’t clock us. Sometimes we lived together, sometimes we had separate flats for appointments. Then a year ago we decided to move out of the city. We found the two flats in Kintbridge. That was when Xristal really started concentrating on the BDSM stuff.’

  ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘It worried me and I realised that we weren’t as close anymore. She was changing.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I didn’t really notice it at first. She was just less eager to use her tool. I thought it was because she was taking on too many clients, getting tired, you know.’

  ‘I don’t, but I can try to imagine.’

  ‘Well, the thing was, I was changing too. I was getting bookings in small clubs all over the country, to do my act, so I was away a few nights a week.’

  ‘Then you had a row?’

  ‘No, we had a falling out. I had just got back from having my chin re-shaped and was off the circuit for a couple of weeks while the bruising went down. So I had more time in the flat with Xristal. Then I got the offer of the booking here, long term, nightly. That was when she told me she’d decided to have the full sex-change. I couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘I asked her how she could think of getting rid of her gorgeous prick and balls.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She told me she’d been uncomfortable for a long time and had realised that she was “really a woman”. She said she was just doing the BDSM thing to raise money for the op, in Thailand. She had it booked and the flights too.’

  ‘You hadn’t suspected anything?’

  ‘No. Oh, I expect there were signs, like the voice pitch thing, but I missed them all. It was a complete surprise - and I suppose I reacted badly.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I threw it all back at her. How we’d been a couple, looking out for each other. How much I’d done for her - all that crap. She walked out on me, went back up to her flat and wouldn’t answer the door to me.’

  ‘So that was it? You left and haven’t been back?’

  ‘Yes. I was due to start here the next day. I’ve barely been out of this room since except to perform.’

  ‘Unless in fact you went back to Kintbridge, had another row and killed Xristal.’

  ‘No,’ Honey roared. She leapt from the couch, the wig dropping to the floor and her robe falling open to reveal her huge tits and flopping genitals.

  ‘You didn’t go back to try to change her mind? Have a fight, maybe?’

  Honey grabbed Jasmine’s arms and hauled her up. The notepad and pen flew across the floor. Honey shook her. Jasmine pushed her arms up between Honey’s arms and levered them off her. She fell back into the chair and it rolled backwards until it hit the dressing table.

  ‘You’ve got a temper, haven’t you? Is that what happened with Xristal? All that male testosterone making you jealous that Xristal was leaving you to become the woman she really felt she was.’

  Honey advanced towards Jasmine, fists clenched.

  ‘You killed her, didn’t you?’ Jasmine went on, ‘She had become disgusted at what you did and what you had made her do.’

  Honey stopped and fell to her knees. She covered her face in her hands and sobbed.

  ‘No, I didn’t! I loved her! I didn’t go back and see her.’

  Jasmine wasn’t listening. She was convinced that Honey had somehow got back to Kintbridge unseen and killed Xristal. ‘Then you had to arrange her body to make it look as if one of her punters had killed her.’

  The sobbing stopped. Honey looked up into Jasmine’s eyes. She looked totally bemused. ‘What do you mean? What did he do to her?’

  ‘If you killed her you’d know.’ But Jasmine could see that Honey had no knowledge of what she was talking about, that she had no idea that Xristal had been stretched out on the bed and set alight.

  ‘I don’t know! I didn’t see her again! I told you.’

  ‘If you really don’t know I can’t tell you. It’s police information.’

  ‘You’ve got to believe me!’ Honey appealed. ‘Don’t tell the police I killed Xristal. I didn’t.’

  Jasmine chewed her thumbnail. Her gut instinct told her that Honey was telling the truth. There were none of the classic signs that she had come to recognise o
f a guilty person trying to pretend ignorance.

  ‘Why didn’t you go back to see Xristal? Didn’t you think about her after you left?’

  ‘Of course I thought about her, but I guessed she wouldn’t want me anymore. She would go off and get the chop, take the hormones and that would be it. She’d be a different person.’

  ‘OK. So if it wasn’t you, who did kill her?’

  Honey looked up at her, appealing. ‘How should I know?’

  ‘One of her clients?’

  ‘Probably. I told you I was worried about Xristal letting them tie her up.’

  ‘Why would one of them want to kill Xristal?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps a scenario got out of hand and they didn’t mean to kill her.’

  ‘Was that likely with any of her customers?’

  ‘I didn’t know any of them. Xristal kept her arrangements to herself. Once or twice I saw someone arrive or leave, but I never met them.’

  ‘And they were all blokes?’

  ‘Men or she-males most likely. She did mention having a couple of dominatrixes practise on her, but I don’t know who they were.’

  ‘The police will find it difficult to believe that you didn’t know who Xristal’s clients were. Not if you were so close.’

  ‘You can’t put the cops on me!’

  ‘I have to. You’re the prime suspect.’

  The pain on Honey’s upturned face drove needles into Jasmine. ‘You’ve got to tell them it wasn’t me! I don’t know who she was seeing. I told you we were going our separate ways. I hadn’t realised it, but we were.’

  ‘That’s not very convincing. You’ll need a rock-solid alibi.’

  ‘I was here.’

  ‘Are there people who will stand up in court and say that you were?’

  ‘In court? Surely it won’t come to that. You can persuade the police it wasn’t me, can’t you?’ Honey’s arms reached around Jasmine’s legs, imploring her.

  ‘What about the staff here?’

  ‘They’re not fond of the police. And they’re not around during the day, especially Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the club doesn’t open.’

  ‘So you don’t have an alibi?’

  ‘You’ve got it in for me! That’s what this is all about isn’t it? You’re a transsexual, I’m a she-male, but we both go to the surgeon to get the body we want. You have your cock and balls turned into a cunt and implants to enhance the little tits you grow yourself. You have had it done, haven’t you?’