Desperate Measures

by Stephen Leather

  We talked about Nancy because Nancy had phoned Dao to say how unhappy she was and I said yes, she had been crying with me, too. I said that it might be because she was pregnant and Dao was surprised because she didn’t know that Nancy was pregnant. I said it was a secret and Dao said that was okay, she wouldn’t tell anybody.

  Dao said her young sister was coming to work in London. Her name is Tip and she is eighteen years old. Dao said Tip was applying for a student visa and if she got the visa then she could start working for the agency. I was really surprised because I hate the agency and I hate what I have to do but Dao she doesn’t seem to mind. I can’t believe that she would want her young sister to do this job but she was serious. She said if Tip could get her own visa and didn’t need a contract then she could earn a lot of money. In just two months she could earn enough to build her own house. I think there is something wrong with Dao. Maybe it is because she is smoking heroin that she can not think clearly.

  Dao closed her eyes and sighed as if she was dreaming. I went into the bedroom and got the perfume bottle from her drawer and when I went back into the main room her eyes were open but she looked a bit dizzy. I asked her where she had gotten it from and she said that Sacha had given it to her and then I knew for sure that Sacha is a very dangerous man because I am sure now that it was him who killed Bee. I couldn’t tell Dao what I thought because Dao likes Sacha and does FFF for him which is probably why he gave her the perfume. She said that she liked the smell and that ever since she had been using the perfume, Sacha had been crazy for her.

  Now I think I understand everything. I think Sacha killed Bee and stole her money and her perfume and he gave the perfume to Dao and she used it but she didn’t know that it is magic and that now Sacha has fallen in love with her. Dao was smiling and giggling and she lay back on the sofa and I asked her if I could borrow the perfume for a while because I thought it smelled lovely and she giggled and said of course I could because I was her best friend and that it was thanks to me that she was doing this job and she was making so much money. I put the bottle in my bag and went home. On the way home Vince called me and asked me if I wanted to buy some cocaine and I said yes, I did. I asked him to come around that evening because now I have more than £10,000 in my apartment and I need his help to send it to my bank account in Udon Thani.

  After I got home I had five more customers. One of them was black. His name was Derek and he was from Brixton which is in South London and he spoke just like he was English. He repaired computers and was quite smart and to tell the truth I had quite a good time with him. Jai Dee we say in Thai, which means he has a good heart. Not like Sacha and Yuri and Sergey. They are Jai Dam and Jai Lai and even Jai Sat, which are bad words in Thai.

  Yuri came to collect my money at half past two in the morning. I had £850 for him. He said that next Saturday night there would be a party at the house in St John’s Wood and that all the girls from the agency would be going. He said that Sacha wanted me to do a sex show with Candy and Dao, a domination show with Candy and Dao being the dominant ones and me being the slave. Yuri said he was looking forward to seeing what the girls were going to do to me and he smiled and it was a very cruel smile. I was a bit scared but I know I have no choice. I have to do whatever they say. That is my life now. He told me to give him oral and I did and then he said he wanted to have sex so I went to the bedroom and lay down. He took off his clothes and before I could do anything he was having sex with me. I begged him to use a condom but he wouldn’t. When he went I rushed to the bathroom and spent ages washing myself, but no matter how hard I washed I didn’t feel clean.

  Chapter 82

  Wednesday July 15. I can’t go on like this for much longer. It is too much. I am working too hard. I am tired all the time and I know that if it was not for the cocaine I am taking then I would not be able to stay awake. Now I have to buy cocaine from Vince every day. That is £200 a day I have to spend.

  Last night I went to see Robert. I was so pleased when Natalie called to say that Robert had booked me for three hours outcall. I was very tired when I went to see him because I had already seen six customers but I didn’t take cocaine because my time with Robert is always easy time. We went into the kitchen and he made me a peanut butter sandwich and a chocolate milkshake. He asked me if I was okay and I lied and said that I was because I do not want him to know how much trouble I am in. I know that he would want to help me but I think that Sacha is a very dangerous man and I think he might hurt Robert if he thought Robert was a problem. I do not want Robert to be a problem for Sacha because Robert is a really nice man. We went into the bedroom and Robert licked my toes and stroked me and I tried to relax but all I could think about was how terrible my life has become. Before I went home I hugged him tightly and said ‘I love you, Daddy’ and do you know, actually I think I do love him. I wish he was my Daddy and that he could make everything all right for me but really I do not think anyone can do that for me.

  As soon as I got home more customers started to come. One after the other. You know, now I have seen so many customers that I can not remember their faces. Usually I do not even ask them their names now. I do not send any texts any more at night. I am too tired. Some of my regular customers send me texts saying they miss me and asking if I am okay but I don’t reply any more.

  At two o’clock in the morning Yuri came for his money. I had £850 for him but he said that wasn’t enough. I said no, he could check the book and £850 was half of what I had earned. He said that Sacha had decided that we should give him £250 extra every day for the cost of advertising and protection. That was the new rule. I said that wasn’t fair and he hit me. Really, he slapped me across the face. He said life wasn’t fair and that I was lucky that Sacha let me keep anything because I was just a whore. I didn’t cry even though my eyes filled with tears. I just nodded and said okay because there was nothing else I could do and I gave him another £250. Then he told me to give him oral sex and I did. I wanted to bite, bite, bite and hurt him the way he hurt me, but I didn’t. I did what he wanted and then he went.

  Candy, Nancy and Wanda all called me during the night, crying. They all said that it wasn’t fair that Sacha was now taking half of what we earned plus £250 but they all said that they were too scared to do anything. They all said they hated working every day, too. Before we used to have Sundays off but now every day is a busy day. We never get time to relax or have fun, it is just work, work, work, sex, sex, sex. We are all trapped. We are like farm animals now and we have no choice, we have to do what the farmer wants because the farmer has the power of life and death over his animals.

  Chapter 83

  Thursday July 16. Yesterday was a horrible day. The worst day of my life. I had sixteen customers. The first one came at eleven o’clock in the morning. The last one left at three o’clock the next day. Only one didn’t want sex. Five wanted anal. When Yuri came to get my money he wanted oral and I did what he wanted. I don’t care any more. It’s as if my body doesn’t belong to me any more. Now it is as if everything that happens is happening to someone else and I am just watching it.

  I am too tired to do any laundry and too tired to clean my apartment. I hardly have time to eat. Most of the time I eat noodles that I buy from a small shop near my apartment. They are like MaMa noodles which I eat in Thailand but they are made in Japan. They don’t taste as good as MaMa noodles but I don’t care. I haven’t eaten watermelon for a long time. I hardly have time to eat when I am working. The customers keep coming, like a flood that I can not stop. Before, when Oliver ran the agency, I would call him after each customer to say that he had finished and then I would wait for him to call me about the next customer. But now Natalie calls all the time to tell me that my customer’s time is up and then I have to tell him to go or he has to pay me more money. And then Natalie tells me that I have five minutes or ten minutes before the next customer comes. Sometimes a customer will ring the bell before the old customer has gone so I have to tel
l him to hurry and once I had to put one customer in the kitchen until the new customer was in the bedroom. I can not complain because if I complain then Natalie will tell Sacha and he will punish me.

  After the last customer goes then usually I fall asleep on the sofa, without even showering. I feel dirty all the time. Dirty inside and outside. My insides hurt all the time and I think my itch is back. Sometimes when I go to the toilet there is blood. Not too much but it is blood. I want to go and see a doctor but I don’t want to ask Natalie for time off because I know that she will tell Sacha.

  When I fell asleep I had bad dreams, and then Bee came to talk to me. She was covered in blood and one of her eyes was half closed and she was crying. I couldn’t tell what she was saying to me because she was crying so much. Then she screamed ‘Nancy!’ and I woke up.

  I was shaking because the dream was so real. I phoned Nancy and it took her ages to answer the phone and when she did she sounded really sleepy and I could tell that something was wrong. I asked her what had happened and she was mumbling about Sacha and her baby. I said I’d go to see her and I couldn’t hear what she said so I just put on my coat and ran over to her apartment.

  I kept pressing her bell but she didn’t answer and then I phoned her again and I think she was asleep but she woke up and buzzed me in. I had to bang on the door before she let me into her flat and I could see right away that something bad had happened. She had a bruise on her eye and her chin was red and on the coffee table there was a bottle of sleeping tablets and bottle of Thai whiskey. I asked her what she had done and she was so sleepy she couldn’t say anything. I knew what she had done. She had swallowed lots of tablets and whiskey.

  I didn’t know what to do because she was dying and I couldn’t call for an ambulance because they might tell the police and then Nancy would get into trouble. I tried to get her to drink water but she was too sleepy and she lay down on the sofa and curled up into a ball. Then I phoned Vince and he said he would come right round and he did though by the time he got there Nancy was hardly breathing.

  Vince said we had to keep her awake so we carried her to the bathroom and we stood under the shower with the water cold and then she woke up a bit. Vince told me to make coffee and while I was in the kitchen he made her sick by pushing his fingers down her throat. She threw up a lot and the bathroom was a mess but Vince said we had to get the tablets out of her stomach because once they were all in her blood then she would die.

  We made her drink the coffee and then we kept her walking around and around and talking to her. Vince said she would be okay, he said if she had swallowed Paracetamol then she would have poisoned her liver but sleeping tablets were okay if you got them out of the stomach. After four hours or so Nancy wasn’t so sleepy but she was crying a lot. She said that Sacha had beaten her up and that he had told her that she had to get an abortion. She said that Sacha had found out that she was pregnant and she didn’t know how because it was a secret but I know how.

  I told Dao and she must have told Sacha so what happened to Nancy was all my fault. She said that Sacha went to her apartment and said that she was a whore and pregnant whores can not work so he would get Natalie to take her to a doctor who would take the baby out. Nancy said that she wanted to keep the baby, but now she had no choice. She started crying again and said that she wanted to die. I told her not to be silly but actually I understood how she felt. I want to die, too.

  Vince left us in the morning and I lay on the bed with Nancy, holding her. Then at eleven o’clock in the morning Natalie called my phone and said that I had a customer and I had to go. I took the sleeping tablets and the whiskey with me. When I went Nancy said that she felt better but I felt worse.

  The customer wanted anal and he was very rough. I had no condoms but I didn’t care, I just lay on the bed and let him do what he wanted to do and thought about Ice and how much I missed him. The customer left without saying anything and I got up and sat on the sofa and cried and cried and cried. I phoned Ice and told him that I loved him but that was all I could say because I was crying so much so I hung up.

  So that is it. That is the story of my life so far. Now I know one thing for sure and that is that I can not carry on like this any more. I keep looking at the bottle of perfume that Dao had given me. It is Bee’s magic perfume, I know that for sure. Before I thought that maybe Sandra had killed Bee but now I know for sure that it was Sacha because he gave the bottle to Dao. Sacha is not scared of anybody. He is the most dangerous man that I have ever met in my whole life. I do not know why I have ended up in his power. Maybe I did something wrong in a previous life and this is the price I must pay.

  I think that maybe what Nancy tried to do was not such a bad idea. At least if you are dead then no one can hurt you. I have Nancy’s tablets here and I have counted them. There are thirty-four tablets in the bottle and I think that will be enough for what I want to do.

  Sacha will never let me leave. He will never let me go and live with my son in Udon Thani. He will work me until I am dead. I know that for sure now. He wants me to be his slave. We are all his slaves now. No one can help me. I am sure the police can not help me and the Thai Embassy can not help me. Even if I run away Sacha’s friends in Thailand will hurt me and my family. There is no escape for me.

  There is only one way that I can end this. There is only one way that I can make the pain stop and now I know what I am going to do. Nothing can stop me. I have to do what I have to do. I have decided and nothing now can change my mind. I hope that no one thinks I am a bad girl for what I am about to do. I am not a bad girl. All I ever wanted to do was to help my family and to give them a better life. That is why I did this job in the first place. It is not my fault that everything has gone wrong and my life has been ruined. I am going to end this, once and for all.

  EPILOGUE

  I did it. I did it and now I am happy, happy, happy. I am living in Udon Thani with my son and my life is perfect. Nancy has gone home, too. She is living with her family in Korat. We flew back to Thailand together. The airport is still closed but the Thai Government is allowing Thai people to fly home on repatriation flights. We had to wear masks on the plane and then when we got to the airport in Bangkok everyone was dressed like they were in a science fiction film in blue overalls and masks and plastic shields over their faces. They took us to buses and drove us to a place that looked like an Army camp and we had to stay in a room on our own for fifteen days. They brought us food on plastic trays and we had to clean our own rooms and they tested us for Covid every week. The test was horrible, they pushed a swab all the way up your nose, so far that you can feel it touch your brain. The quarantine was horrible but I had my phone so I could FaceTime with Ice every day and watch Thai soap operas. After fifteen days they let me and Nancy go. Nobody knows that she was called Nancy in London, of course. In Thailand everyone calls her Noy. She doesn’t know what I did to get away from the Russians but I gave her enough money so that she doesn’t have to work any more. I hope she stays in Thailand now because she was going crazy in London.

  It is August now and nobody is dying of Covid in Thailand. Not many people are dying in London, either. Maybe ten a day. It looks like it is over and everything is going to be okay now. I am so glad.

  The only one who knows what I did to get out of London is Candy and she had to know because I needed her help to do what I had to do. I shared the money with her because she helped me. She said she wanted to stay in London. She said she wants to set up her own agency specialising in domination. I think she actually enjoys domination and would do it even if she didn’t get paid. That would be DFF, I suppose. Domination For Free. But she isn’t going to do it for free. She is going to pay for some contracts for Thai girls and bring them to London and train them to do domination. She is building a dungeon in Chelsea and another dungeon in Canary Wharf, which is where all the banks and stockbrokers are. Candy said that bankers and stockbrokers really like domination.

  What I lik
e is what I am doing now. I am spending time with my son who I love more than anything else in the world. He is so happy that I am back and I am happy, too. When I first got home he wouldn’t let go of me for the first few days. Everywhere I went he went with me, holding my hand, even when I went to the toilet. It was because he was scared that I would leave him again. My mum and dad were happy that I was back, too, and they had many, many questions for me. Most of the questions I couldn’t answer, of course, but I tried not to lie because it is not good to lie to anyone, especially to your mother and father who gave you life.

  After Nancy tried to kill herself I kept her sleeping tablets. And I had Bee’s perfume that Dao had given me. I wasn’t sure that the magic perfume would work but I knew that I had to try. Bee had said that the perfume only worked for a short time after you put it on your skin so I waited until Yuri knocked on my door and then I went into the bathroom and dabbed some on my neck and my breasts and then I opened the door and as soon as I did I hugged him like I hug my regular customers and I kissed him on the cheek. He was surprised but he hugged me back.

  It's funny because I wasn’t sure what would happen and really nothing did but when I let go of him he looked at me strangely like he was seeing me for the first time. I smiled and asked if he was okay and he just nodded. I asked him if he wanted the money and he just nodded again. I got the money from the kitchen drawer. There was £800 which was half of what I had earned, plus the extra £250. Yuri took the money and I asked him if he wanted to go into the bedroom and he said yes. We went into the bedroom and we had sex but he wasn’t as rough as he had been before and afterwards he asked me where I am from.

  Everything I told him was a lie. I told him I didn’t have any children and that my family was from Phuket. Nothing I told him was the truth. He told me that he had three brothers and one sister and that his father had died when he was a small boy but really I didn’t care about him or his family at all. I could see that Yuri had changed and I am sure it was the perfume that had changed him He didn’t have the same look in his eye that Simon or Robert has, but I could see that he wanted me. But not like he wanted me before. Before he wanted to hurt me and to have power over me, but now he cares about me. He still wants to have sex with me but now he doesn’t want to hurt me. I asked him if I could have his phone number and I said yes. Then I gave him a sexy massage and while I was doing that I started asking him questions about Sacha and while I asked the questions I made sure that he was hard and then I had sex with him.