Exposed

by Liza Marklund

  ‘There’s a dance-floor, the bar and an area for private shows,’ Patricia said, pulling a plastic bag of make-up out of her locker. ‘I’m in charge of the bar, so I hardly do any posing. Josie did mostly dancing, Joachim wouldn’t let her pose. It made him so jealous.’

  Patricia fastened her red sequined bra at the back, and Annika watched as she rolled up her socks and pushed them into the cups.

  ‘Joachim thinks they’re too small,’ she explained, shutting the door of her locker. ‘Here, put these shoes on.’

  Annika had trouble putting her bra on, she very rarely wore one.

  ‘Does everyone wear a bikini?’ she wondered.

  ‘No,’ Patricia said as she started to apply her make-up. ‘Most of the girls are completely naked, apart from the dancers. They have to wear a thong, because you aren’t allowed to perform naked in Sweden.’

  Annika gulped, bent over and fastened her vertiginous stiletto sandals.

  ‘What sort of men come here?’

  Patricia was brushing her eyelashes.

  ‘All sorts,’ she said. ‘Well, they’ve all got money, I suppose. I usually check their ties, mostly just for fun. They’re lawyers, car salesmen, directors, policemen, estate agents, guys who work for laundry companies, advertising agencies, media companies …’

  Annika stiffened. Bloody hell, what if someone she knew came in? She ran her tongue over her lips.

  ‘Do you get many celebrities?’

  Patricia passed her the bag of make-up.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Slap loads on. Yeah, we get some celebrities. One bloke from telly is a regular. He always comes dressed in women’s clothing, and pays for two girls to go into one of the private rooms with him. So far he’s spent over four hundred and sixty thousand kronor in forty-nine visits.’

  Annika raised her eyebrows, remembering the tip-offs on Cold Calls.

  ‘How can he afford it?’

  ‘You don’t imagine he pays for it himself?’

  Patricia picked up a ring of keys from the make-up table.

  ‘Joachim will be in later. Hurry up, I’ll show you round and explain the prices before the girls arrive. You’ll have to discuss exactly how you’re going to run the roulette table with Joachim.’

  She was standing expectantly by the door. Annika hurriedly applied a thick layer of dark-green eye-shadow, rouge and eyeliner.

  ‘It costs six hundred kronor to get in,’ Patricia said, patting the counter. ‘Guests can also pay for a private room when they arrive if they like. That costs twelve thousand kronor, and they don’t have to pay to get in. Then he gets to choose which girl he wants from the bar.’

  Annika was taken aback.

  ‘You mean … this is a brothel?’

  Patricia laughed. ‘Of course not. The girls are allowed to touch the client, massage him and so on, but they never touch his dick. The guys have to take care of themselves while the girls pose at least two metres away from them.’

  ‘Why the hell would anyone pay twelve thousand kronor just to have a wank?’ Annika said, with genuine astonishment.

  Patricia shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘I don’t care. Anyway, I’m too busy behind the bar. This is the office.’

  Patricia unlocked the door with one of her keys. The room was the same size as the changing room, and contained the usual office furniture, a photocopier and a safe.

  ‘We can leave it unlocked,’ Patricia said. ‘I’ve got to fill in the bar accounts for August. Joachim’s only got the books here until Saturday.’

  They went into the main stripping room, and Annika gasped. The walls and ceiling were painted black, and the floor was wall-to-wall dark red carpet.

  The furniture was all black and chrome, and reeked of cheap eighties design. Along the left-hand side of the room was a long bar-counter, and to the right was a row of black-painted doors leading to the private rooms. In front of them was a small stage with a shiny chrome pole running from floor to ceiling, lending the stage the air of a fire station. The room was windowless, and the low false ceiling was held up by black-painted concrete pillars that only enhanced the sense of being in a bunker.

  ‘What was this place originally?’ Annika wondered. ‘An old garage?’

  ‘I think so,’ Patricia said, going behind the bar. ‘Carwash and repairs. Joachim turned the old inspection pit into a jacuzzi.’

  She lined up several bottles on the counter.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Non-alcoholic champagne, sixteen hundred kronor. The girls get to keep twenty-five per cent of the first two bottles they sell, and fifty of the third.’

  Annika blinked her stiff eyelashes.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ she said.

  Patricia looked over at the stage.

  ‘Josie was great at getting sales,’ she said. ‘She was the most beautiful girl here. She used to drink champagne with the clients all night long, but she never went into the private rooms. But they paid anyway, because she was so pretty.’

  Patricia’s eyes were wet with emotion, and she quickly put the champagne bottles away.

  ‘Josefin must have been rich,’ Annika said.

  ‘Hardly,’ Patricia said. ‘Joachim looked after the money; he said it was paying off the cost of her breast enlargement. That’s why she was working here. And she was only here at weekends, because she used to have school during the week.’

  ‘Does Joachim take money from the other girls as well?’

  ‘No, of course he doesn’t. All the girls are here for the money. They earn a lot, up to ten thousand a night, tax-free.’

  Annika’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘What do the tax office say about that?’

  Patricia sighed. ‘No idea. Joachim and Sanna look after the finances.’

  ‘But if you write down the takings from the bar in the accounts, then they become taxable?’

  Patricia was getting annoyed. ‘Well, there are different sets of books, you must know that! Right, shall we go out to the roulette table?’

  Annika paused. ‘What about me? What sort of money do I get?’

  Patricia frowned and walked out into the entrance hall.

  ‘I don’t know what Joachim’s thinking of doing,’ she said.

  Annika turned her back on the terrible, dark room. She was teetering on her sandals, the heels sank into the carpet, stirring up clouds of dark-red synthetic fibre.

  The roulette table had seen better days. The green baize was scorched by cigarettes and ash. The gaming area, so familiar with its numbers and squares, finally shifted Annika’s insecurity.

  ‘This needs a good brush,’ she said, inspecting the table.

  While Patricia dug out a brush Annika ran her hand along the gilded edge of the table. It would probably be okay, it wasn’t so bad. She wasn’t in the sex room itself, and the entrance hall wasn’t so very different from the hall of the Town Hotel in Katrineholm.

  Patricia showed her where everything was kept, and Annika brushed the table and took out the chips.

  ‘Why are there different colours?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘So you can tell the players apart,’ Annika said, stacking the chips against the edge of the wheel, twenty in each pile. ‘Where’s the ball?’

  ‘There are two, one large one and one small,’ Patricia said, pulling out a cardboard box. ‘I don’t know which is the right one.’

  Annika smiled and weighed the balls in her hand. The gesture felt familiar, and made her feel more confident.

  ‘They spin at different rates,’ she said. ‘I usually prefer the heavier one.’

  She gently spun the wheel anticlockwise, then picked up the larger ball between her thumb and forefinger, held it to the side of the wheel and sent it spinning clockwise. Patricia gasped.

  ‘How did you do that?’ she said.

  ‘It’s all in the wrist,’ Annika said. ‘The ball has to go round at least seven times, otherwise the spin is invalid. I usually get an average of about eleven.’

&nb
sp; The ball slowed down and eventually stopped on number nineteen. Annika leaned over the wheel.

  ‘And when I release the ball next time, I have to do it from the number I picked it up from,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘So you can’t cheat.’

  ‘So how do you work out who’s won what?’

  Annika briefly explained what straight up, split, street, corner, six line and the other bets meant, and what various combinations stood for, and how every type of bet resulted in different payouts.

  Patricia clutched her head. ‘How do you work out how much it is, then?’

  ‘That comes quite quickly,’ Annika said. ‘To start with it helps if you’re good at mental arithmetic, but you soon pick up the different combinations.’

  She showed how she shared out the winnings: twenty chips in each column, halve it, running your fingers down the edges so the rest of the heap follows. Patricia stared at the speed of Annika’s fingers in fascination.

  ‘God, that looks smart,’ she said. ‘Maybe roulette could be something for me after all.’

  Annika laughed and set the ball off again.

  Just then the other girls arrived.

  64

  Sanna, the hostess, was standing stark naked at her counter when the men started to arrive. She smiled and flirted with them, telling them how turned on they were going to be. Annika recognized her voice from the message on the answering machine.

  Once Sanna had persuaded the men to pay, the customers turned to look at Annika. The way they looked at her hit her like bullets, making her feel as though the bra was shrinking and revealing more and more of her breasts. She looked down, staring at the burns on the baize and forcing herself not to cover herself up with her hands. No one was interested in playing roulette.

  ‘You’ve got to flirt,’ Sanna said when a group of Italian businessmen had just gone into the main room. ‘Try to be a bit sexy, for fuck’s sake.’

  Annika swallowed in embarrassment.

  ‘I’m not very good at that,’ she said in far too high a voice.

  ‘You’d better learn. There’s no point having you standing there if you don’t bring in any money.’

  Annika’s eyes flashed. ‘The table’s here anyway,’ she said. ‘Surely it doesn’t make any difference to you if I stand here? Unless you’re charging for oxygen, of course.’

  Deep male laughter on the stairs silenced them.

  ‘I think we’ve got two wildcats in the same cage,’ said the man who was slowly coming down the stairs.

  Annika knew at once that this was Joachim: long fair hair, expensive and slightly unusual clothes, a heavy gold necklace hanging against his chest. He was the sort of man for whom Josefin would have had her breasts enlarged.

  She went over and introduced herself.

  ‘Annika,’ she said. ‘It’s good to be here.’

  Sanna pursed her lips.

  Joachim looked her up and down slowly, nodding approvingly when he got to her breasts.

  ‘You’d be good on stage,’ he said. ‘If you like, we could give you a show-number later on tonight.’

  No one cares about my surname, Annika thought, trying to smile naturally.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but I think I’d better get to grips with the roulette first.’

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Sanna’s right. You have to bring in some decent money, otherwise there’s no point in you being here.’

  Annika’s smile died. ‘I’ll try,’ she said, looking at the floor.

  ‘Maybe you should sit at the bar with the other girls for a few evenings first, find out how it all works.’

  The man was standing slightly too close to her. Annika could feel the electricity of his presence. He was good-looking, she had to give him that. She closed her eyes for a moment before looking up and meeting his gaze.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘that’s a good idea. But I want to see if I can persuade a few customers to stop on their way out.’

  Just then two mildly drunk insurance salesmen stumbled out of the main room. They were sweating and their clothes were dishevelled. Annika went up to them, sticking her breasts in their faces, and put her arms round them.

  ‘Hello, boys,’ she said, ‘you’ve been lucky in love, but an evening isn’t complete until you’ve had some luck at the table as well, is it?’

  She smiled as playfully as she could, her knees trembling. Joachim had his thigh against her backside, and she wanted to scream.

  ‘What the hell …?’ one of the men said.

  Annika took a step forward and escaped Joachim’s thigh, wrapping her arm round the other man.

  ‘What about you? You seem like a lucky guy, a real gentleman. Come and play with me!’

  The man grinned. ‘What do we win, then? Do we win you?’

  Annika managed to laugh. ‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘Maybe you’ll win so much money you can buy any girl you like!’

  ‘Okay,’ the man said, pulling out his wallet. His friend did the same, albeit reluctantly.

  He put a hundred-kronor note on the table.

  Annika smiled nervously. This man had just paid several thousand to drink some fizz and stare at some naked tits, and she was supposed to make all this effort for a pathetic hundred kronor?

  ‘That won’t even send the ball round,’ she said coyly. ‘We play big here, darling. High stakes, big wins. A thousand for twenty chips.’

  The man hesitated, and Annika ran her hand over the table.

  ‘A six line pays out five thousand kronor, and a split sixteen thousand, eight hundred – almost seventeen thousand kronor, in just fifteen seconds. You could win back all the money you’ve spent here tonight.’

  The men’s eyes lit up simultaneously. And it was actually true.

  The each bought a thousand kronor’s worth of chips with their bank cards, and placed them as split bets, a combined total of 1,200 kronor.

  Annika set the ball spinning, hard and fast. It circled almost thirteen times before it started to drop.

  ‘No more bets,’ she said, her old routine coming back to her.

  The ball landed on number 3. With a practised hand she swept the table clean and stacked up the chips.

  ‘New bets,’ she said, glancing at the look of disappointment on the men’s faces.

  They were more cautious this time, betting only six lines and switching numbers, to 9 and 18. A new spin, no more bets, number 16. One of the men won ten chips.

  ‘There you are,’ Annika said, pushing the small pile of chips towards him. Five kronor. ‘Isn’t that just what I said, you’re a lucky guy!’

  The man’s face lit up, and Annika could see she’d got him. Between them the men lost another 3,000 kronor until they eventually settled their final bills with Sanna and slunk out. Annika noted that Sanna wrote ‘food and drink’ on the receipts.

  Joachim had been sitting behind the counter watching her.

  ‘You know how to do this, don’t you?’ he said as he walked towards her. ‘Where did you learn to run a casino?’

  ‘The Town Hotel in … Piteå,’ she said with a smile, and gulped.

  ‘Do you know Peter Holmberg?’ he said, smiling back.

  Annika felt her own smile wobble slightly. Shit, she thought, he’s going to find me out before I’ve even got going.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but do you know Roger Sundström, lives on Solandersgatan? Or Hans on Oli-Jansgatan out in Pitholm?’

  Joachim dropped the subject.

  ‘You’re charging too much for chips,’ he said. ‘That’s not allowed. You’re playing too high.’

  ‘I can adjust the prices to fit the player. No one knows what anyone else has paid for their chips, there’s no sign on the chips themselves. I’m following all the rules.’

  ‘You run the risk of breaking the bank,’ Joachim said.

  Annika stopped smiling.

  ‘There’s only one way for a player to win at roulette,’ she said. ‘That’s w
inning big at the start, and then stopping at once. No one does that once they’ve started to win. It’s a piece of piss, being a croupier. You just have to keep hold of the players until they’ve lost everything they’ve won.’

  Joachim smiled easily.

  ‘I think we’re going to get along just fine, you and me,’ he said, running his hand down her arm.

  Then he went into the office. Annika turned away, with Sanna’s harsh stare scorching her back.

  They’re together, she realized: Joachim and Sanna are a couple.

  The sound of high-heeled shoes on the spiral staircase made Annika look up. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The oh-so-serious television presenter was entering Studio Six wearing a micro-skirt, nylon stockings and a transparent blouse that showed his bra.

  ‘Hello, girls!’ he said in a high voice.

  ‘Good evening, madam,’ Sanna said, smiling flirtatiously. ‘What delights can we tempt you with tonight?’

  The man named several of the girls, and Annika realized she was staring at him. She used to watch his programme, raw, entertaining debates with politicians and celebrities. She knew he had a family.

  The man glided into the strippers’ room with Sanna, and Annika sighed tiredly. The sandals were hurting her feet. She was thinking about taking them off, no one would notice the difference behind the table, but at that moment the Italian businessmen came out again. They looked unhappy. Annika went over and spoke to them in English. That didn’t work. She switched to French, which failed as well. Finally Spanish worked.

  They played until they had lost 13,000 kronor. Sanna looked more and more angry the more the men lost.

  She doesn’t like me, Annika thought. She knows I’m Patricia’s friend, she sees me as an extension of Josefin, which probably isn’t so strange, really.

  She glanced down at her tiny bikini with all its sky-blue sequins. Josefin’s work-clothes.

  ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ she muttered.

  The evening crawled past, sliding into night. Down in the old porn garage no time existed except night, no season but darkness. Annika sat for a few minutes in the changing room under the blue strip-light, her eyes closed as she tried to suppress the urge to cry.