Desperate Measures

by Stephen Leather

  He told me that Sacha’s name wasn’t really Sacha. It was Jonas. And do you know, Oliver wasn’t Oliver’s real name either. It was Lam. All the time I had known Oliver he had been lying to me. When Yuri went he was still looking at me strangely and I knew then for sure that the perfume had done what Bee had said it would do. Before I wasn’t sure about Laos magic but now I believe that it works.

  The next thing I had to do was to talk to Candy. Candy is strong. That is why she does domination, I am sure. I knew she would help me and that she would be strong. I didn’t want to tell anyone else because if I told too many people what I wanted to do then it would go wrong and I definitely didn’t want it to go wrong.

  The next day Yuri came around to get my money but I could tell that he wanted sex so we had sex first and again he wasn’t so rough with me. He wanted to know the story of my life so I lied to him and said that my father was dead and that my mother was sick which is why I’m doing this job. He said that he didn’t like me doing this job which was a strange thing to say because he is mafia and he works for Sacha who is making me do this job so then I knew that I could easily get Yuri to do anything that I wanted.

  I was still getting a lot of customers, but it didn't seem so bad because I had a plan. Natalie sent us customers on Saturday afternoon even though we had to go to the party at the house in St John's Wood. The house was Sacha's, Yuri told me that. And he said that Sacha kept a lot of money in a safe in one of the bedrooms, in the back of a wardrobe. Yuri said that he didn't know the combination because Sacha didn't trust anybody. But he said that often Sacha just left money in a cupboard in his study. And Yuri said that there were lots of guns in the house. Sacha liked guns. Yuri was giving me a lot of information because he liked to talk to me. He told me lots of things but everything I told him was a lie.

  I did not feel bad about lying to Yuri. He was not being nice to me because he is Jai Dee, he was being nice to me because Bee's perfume had worked. I talked to Yuri about Sacha, and what a bad man Sacha was. I told Yuri that Sacha sometimes made me have sex with him. I told Yuri that Sacha was causing too much trouble and that maybe one day the police would catch him. And I told Yuri that Sacha said bad things about Yuri, that he didn't trust him and that one day he would do something bad to Yuri.

  I could see that Yuri believed everything that I told him. I think that is because of the magic perfume, but also because Yuri is quite stupid. And also I think that everyone who works for Sacha knows that he is a bad man and that he does not stay loyal to his friends. Oliver Was supposed to be his friend, but Sacha took the agency from him. So it was easy for Yuri to believe me. The Thais have an expression for it - Pak Waan. It means sweet mouth. It is a way of talking to someone so that it makes them feel good. That is what I did to Yuri. I talked to him with a sweet mouth. I told him that the girls would be happier if he was the boss. That he would be a better boss than Sacha.

  We went to the party at the house in St John’s Wood. I had to do the domination show with Dao and Candy. They both whipped me and I had to do oral on them both and then Dao put on a strap-on and made love to me and she was quite rough, as if she enjoyed hurting me.

  Everyone was drinking champagne and taking drugs and like before the agency girls all had to dress like prostitutes while the men all had on suits and the girls with them had sexy dresses. It’s like we were animals to amuse them, that’s how they treated us. Dao stayed near to Sacha and I could see from the way that Sacha was looking at her that the perfume had worked on him. I don’t think Dao understands what has happened, though. I think if she knew how powerful Bee's perfume was then she would start to get Sacha to do whatever she wanted.

  Nancy was really unhappy because she didn’t want to have sex now because she now wanted to keep the baby. I found her crying in one of the bedrooms because three men had had sex with her and now she was hurting inside and there was blood on the sheets. I told her not to worry, that everything was going to be okay, but she just said that she wanted to kill herself. I held her hands and swore to her that I would take care of her and she nodded and then I made her promise that she wouldn’t try to kill herself again.

  The party finished at six o’clock in the morning. Nancy wanted to go home with me but I said that Yuri wanted to take me to his home. She was a bit sad about that but she went home in an Uber taxi with Dao and Wanda.

  When Yuri and I left the party there was only Sacha and three other men in the house. One of them wanted me to give him oral before I went but Yuri said he was taking me back home to have sex with me. Sacha said that I should get some sleep because tomorrow I would be working and I just smiled because I knew that I would never be working again.

  I put some more perfume on as we walked to Yuri’s car. It was a big BMW, black with tinted windows. I got into his car and we drove away from the house, but he stopped the car down the road. We sat in the car and waited until the three men had gone and Sacha was alone in the house. Then I kissed Yuri and said that it was time and he knew what he had to do and he nodded and said yes, he knew.

  He got out of the car and blew me a kiss and then he went over to the gate and pressed the intercom and after a while the gates opened. I sat in the car and waited. I didn’t hear any noise from inside the house but I knew what was happening. Five minutes later Yuri came back, carrying a large bag. He was breathing really heavily and his eyes were hard like glass. I asked him if everything was okay and he nodded. I asked him what he’d done with the gun and he said he’d left it next to the body and that he’d wiped the fingerprints off it. The gun was one of Sacha’s. Yuri had done exactly what I had told him. He had told Sacha that he needed to talk to him and Sacha had given him some champagne and then Yuri had said that he needed to use the toilet and then he had gone to get one of Sacha’s guns and then he had shot him twice, once in the head and once the chest, using a pillow to keep the gun quiet.

  I took the bag off him and opened it. It was full of money. I asked him how much and he said he didn’t know but he thought there was probably at least three hundred thousand pounds. Then he gave me the passports and ID cards of all the girls in the agency. I said he had done well and he kissed me and he said that he wanted to make love to me in the car but I said we should go home first. He drove me back to his house which was in Ealing in West London. It was a small house but quite nice. As soon as we were inside he wanted to make love to me but I said we should do it in the bedroom and that we should drink some wine to celebrate. And I said he should shower and put his clothes in a bag so that we could take them to be dry cleaned to get rid of any evidence and he said I was a smart girl and I said I knew I was and kissed him. He went upstairs while I went into the kitchen to get him some wine.

  When I went upstairs with two glasses of wine he had showered and was lying on the bed. He asked me if I loved him and I lied and said I did. Pak Waan. I kissed him and I gave him his wine and then we clinked glasses and we both drank. He said that he loved me and that he had done what he had done for me and I said I knew and I kissed him again. He finished his wine and then he started making love to me. I said he should lie on his back and he did and I made love to him very slowly and his eyes closed and then he started snoring. He was asleep. I had put four tablets into the wine. I had ground them into a powder in my flat and it was easy to dissolve them in the wine. I pinched him but he didn’t wake up.

  Then I phoned Candy and waited for her to come to Yuri's house. It took her thirty minutes to get there and I sat watching Yuri while I waited. He snored a lot. He was in a deep sleep.

  When Candy came she brought the gun that Yuri had used to kill Sacha. That was our plan. Candy had hidden in the house after the party. She had stayed in a wardrobe and kept quiet while Yuri had killed Sacha and taken his money and the passports. Yuri had wiped his fingerprints off the gun and left it next to Sacha's body. But what he didn't know was that Candy was still in the house. She picked up the gun and she put it in her bag and she brought
it to Yuri's house. Candy brought a carrier bag with her and in the bag were two pairs of the long black leather gloves that she uses for domination. We put on the gloves and then we wiped everywhere clean so that no one would know that we had been there. I cleaned the wine glasses and put one of them away. I put one glass in Yuri’s hand to get his fingerprints on it and then put some wine in it and put it next to the bed. Then we put the gun in Yuri’s hand to get his fingerprints on it, and then we hid it under the bed.

  Candy and I wiped everything that we had touched. Then we started laughing because we knew that everything was going to be okay. I showed Candy the money and she screamed and hugged me and kissed me. We both jumped up and down with joy because we were rich and because Sacha could never hurt us or our families again. And I gave her back her passport and ID card, and the passports and ID cards of all the girls.

  We left the house and as we were walking down the road I phoned Neil, the policeman who worked for the Human Trafficking Command. I changed my voice a bit when I spoke to him but I don’t think I needed to because I am sure he speaks to many Asian girls. He sounded sleepy so I spoke slowly to make sure that he had understood. I told him that Yuri had killed Sacha and that Sacha’s real name was Jonas and I told him where Yuri lived. He asked me who I was but I switched off the phone and broke the SIM card in half and threw it away.

  I was sure that Neil would go to Yuri’s house and the police would find Yuri asleep. Then they would find the gun and they would find his clothes and they would test them and find out that Yuri had fired the gun. There is nothing that Yuri could say because really he did kill Sacha. He would have been surprised when the police had told him that the gun had his fingerprints on it but he wouldn’t have been able to do anything.

  Candy and I walked a long way from Yuri’s house before we took a taxi back to my apartment. We were carrying the money that Yuri had taken from Sacha. It was a fortune. There was actually three hundred and twenty thousand pounds. We split it up afterwards. We gave fifty thousand pounds to Nancy and Candy and I had one hundred and thirty five pounds each. That is enough money for me and Ice to live on for a long, long time. Maybe for ever.

  I didn’t think it was a good idea to put the money in a suitcase when I flew to Thailand so I asked Vince to help me and he did. He used his Smurfs to put the money into his accounts and then he transferred it to my bank account in Udon Thani and he didn’t charge me a commission or anything, which is nice. Vince said that one day he might come out to Thailand for a holiday and I said he could come and stay at my house.

  I don't take cocaine any more. I have lots of energy, and my life is perfect. The only thing I don’t have yet is a man who loves me and my son but I think I will meet someone. I hope so. But I am sure of one thing. I want him to love me for myself and not because I have used Bee’s magic perfume. I want the love to be real, and I want my husband whoever he is to love me because he loves me and wants to take care of me. I still have the perfume, though. Just in case.