The Rhythm Section--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller

by Mark Burnell

  She looked up. The man before her had emerged from the sea of boozing suits, from the waves of accountants, local government officials and cut-price travel-agents. She checked Bradfield’s contact; he was still perched on his bar-stool, nursing a pale gold pint and a slim cigar.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry. What did you say?’

  ‘You’re straying a little.’

  He wore a suit as badly-fitting as any other she could see; tight trousers eating into a medicine-ball gut, a jacket with spare room at the shoulders, sleeves that ended inches short of the wrist. His face was pink and his neck was coated in shaving rash.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.’

  ‘Nah. At first, I thought I might’ve—you look different with your kit on—but not now. I couldn’t place your face and then it clicked. You work up west, not down here. Brewer Street, top floor, near the Raymond Revuebar. Right?’

  Stephanie was reintroduced to one of her least favourite sensations as her stomach turned to lead and seemed to seep through her bowels, through the floorboards and deep into the earth below. Mentally, she reached for the mask; the hardness in the eyes, the firmness of the mouth, the determination to betray no sign of weakness. But there was nothing there and it showed.

  ‘It’s Lisa, ain’t it?’ The man was leering, enjoying her shock. ‘Remember me now, do you?’

  Truly, she didn’t. He could have been one in a thousand. He might have been every one in a thousand. The pub seemed to shrink, the crowd grew taller, the lights dimmed, until they were the only two people in the room.

  ‘You’ve put some meat on. Don’t look bad on you, neither. You was well thin the last time I had you. But now you got more to sink into, know what I mean?’

  There was no stinging comeback, there was no response at all.

  He lowered his voice. ‘You on the meter?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You working or what?’

  ‘You’ve made a mistake–’

  His bravado was in his piggy eyes, which dropped to her thighs, as much as it was in his voice. ‘I got eighty quid in my pocket says you’ve got something for me down there.’

  ‘I told you–’

  ‘And I’ll go to a ton for a bit of A-level.’

  Suddenly, Proctor was back, standing beside the man, looking at Stephanie, reading her alarm and saying, ‘Are you okay? What’s going on?’

  Once again, the words stalled in her throat.

  Bristling with aggression, the stranger turned to Proctor. ‘Who are you?’

  Proctor stared him down in silence. Stephanie watched the arrogance subside and the confusion surface. The man turned to her and said, unpleasantly, ‘Should’ve told me you was busy.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

  Then he turned to Proctor, in a futile attempt to salvage some gutterborn self-respect. ‘I’m telling you, she’ll cheat you, that one. Bleed your wallet dry and won’t give hardly nothing back. So do yourself a favour and make sure she gives you full value, know what I mean?’

  Before Proctor could protest, he was gone, back into the sea of suits. Proctor looked at Stephanie, grabbed his leather coat from the bench and took her hand. ‘Come on, we’re getting out of here.’

  ‘What about Bradfield?’

  ‘He can wait.’

  * * *

  The wind was brisk along Victoria Street. They stood on the pavement, waiting for a taxi. Stephanie was trembling, a fact that was more disconcerting to her than the cause of it.

  Proctor said, ‘Are you okay now?’

  ‘I guess I’m cold.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I’m shaking.’

  He took hold of one of them. It was icy. She lifted her gaze to meet his. He traced absent-minded lines across her palm. Then his fingers threaded themselves through hers.

  She said, ‘We shouldn’t throw this chance away.’

  He moved closer. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m talking about Bradfield.’

  His cloudy vision cleared. ‘What do you mean?’

  Stephanie smiled at his mild embarrassment. ‘I can get home all right. You should stay. If there’s a chance you’ll find him, you’d be crazy not to take it.’

  Proctor knew she was right. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. He was just some wanker trying it on. It’s happened a million times. I don’t know why it got to me this time. But it’s over now.’

  They were still holding hands.

  7

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like? I’m cooking. Or at least, I’m going to.’

  Proctor appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Stir-fried vegetables with noodles.’

  ‘You’ve been waiting all this time? It’s midnight.’

  Stephanie sliced the leeks that were on the chopping board. Then she placed a pan of water on to the blue circle of flame.

  ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

  ‘Bradfield showed up a couple of hours after you left. He was only there for about ten minutes. I followed him and he went to a place called Gallagher’s in Longmoore Street, not far from where we were, maybe a ten-minute walk. He stayed there until closing time and then went home. It turns out the pub’s his local; his house is right down the same street.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘I’ll go and see him.’

  ‘And what will you say?’

  ‘I don’t know yet but I’ll think of something. Do you want a glass of wine?’

  ‘Are you having one?’

  ‘There’s a bottle open in the fridge.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The glasses were balloons on tall, thin stems. He handed her one and half-filled it.

  ‘Can I ask you something personal, Stephanie?’

  ‘You can ask.’

  ‘I know you told me once that you didn’t want to talk about your family, but would you tell me about them now? I’d like to know. Not for an article—in fact, I promise anything you tell me will be in confidence—but for me.’

  ‘You think a personal appeal cuts more ice with me than a professional one?’

  Proctor smiled and shook his head, the two things coming to a sum total of weariness. ‘I don’t understand you. Every time I think we’re making a little progress, you say something and we’re back to square one.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll try not to raise your expectations again. That way, you won’t ever be disappointed. As for my family history, it’s very boring.’

  ‘I doubt that. There’s always something.’

  * * *

  My father, Andrew Patrick, was a doctor for Falstone and the surrounding area. Falstone is in north Northumberland, not far from West Woodburn, where my brother, Christopher, now lives with his family. The area my father covered was large, even for a rural practice. It is a wild, rugged place and it is perhaps the one thing that I have not poisoned in myself. I cannot rinse my love for it out of me. In the summer, it can be idyllic; warm days and nights where the light never fades—I have read books outside at one in the morning. In the winter, it can be hard and cold. During those months, it doesn’t get light until nine and it’s dark by four. But I have no favourite season when I am there; I love them equally, just as I love everything else about the land.

  Both my parents possessed strong puritanical streaks and so the life we led was hard without ever being uncomfortable. It was an outdoor existence, mostly. They were keen on walking and were both expert climbers, a legacy of my mother’s nationality—Swiss—and my father’s fondness for Alpine holidays. They passed this love on to all of us. We lived for the land and off it, growing many of our vegetables and summer fruits, as well as rearing chickens and a small number of sheep. There were always dogs at home and they were always Boxers; we never had less than two, we frequently had four. All in all, we lived a life that might seem perfect to many.

 
But Proctor is right. There’s always something. And in our family, it was probably me.

  My parents’ puritanism was matched only by their stubbornness. Consequently, our house was a fiery place to be. They argued with each other, they argued with us and we argued among ourselves. Except for David, who was the youngest of us, and who was crippled by shyness. When confronted, he always withdrew deeper into himself. My parents were strict with all of us and often expressed their disappointment at our behaviour or lack of achievement. But by far the largest share of their exasperation was reserved for me, their brightest child and their greatest frustration, a fact that was not lost on me, even at an early age. I under-achieved deliberately and I took a perverse delight in it. I was the archetypal ‘difficult second child’.

  I never cried. I was sullen and cold. When provoked or angered, my resentment was usually silent and ran deep. I rarely forgave, I never forgot. I preferred my company to that of anyone else. The social aspects of family life held no attractions for me. Independence was what I craved. I longed for a future free of the family.

  It wasn’t that they were unpleasant. It was that I was unpleasant.

  My teenage years must have been a particular form of Hell for my parents. I rarely missed an opportunity to anger or disappoint them. I found academic work much easier than anyone else of my age but I frequently failed exams as an absurd act of rebellion. When my parents lectured me on the perils of alcohol, I went through a phase of getting drunk at every available opportunity and, if possible, in public. Even losing my virginity was an act of spite. It was genuinely nothing more. I treated the boy who took it as contemptuously as I treated my parents, whom I told the following morning. They were disgusted, then distraught. I was delighted.

  I think about these things now—the pointlessness of it all, the needless irritation and sadness for which I was responsible—and I try to console myself with the fact that at least there was a reason for it, an explanation. But there isn’t. And now it’s too late to apologize. They’re gone. Dead. And if I hadn’t been such a spoilt bitch and refused to go with them, I’d be dead too.

  There really is no justice in this world.

  * * *

  ‘How did you find out what had happened?’

  Stephanie cupped her glass of wine between both her hands. ‘It was when I was at Durham University–’

  ‘So you didn’t totally under-achieve, then.’

  ‘I was smart enough to know when it mattered and then I’d always do enough to get by. And I wasn’t going to miss out on a place at university. It was a chance to move away.’

  ‘What were you reading?’

  She smiled. ‘German—I was already fluent. My mother was Swiss-German. We were all brought up trilingual. My father was fluent in French.’

  ‘Why didn’t you choose something more challenging?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t really interested. If I had been, I’d have made sure I went to Oxford or Cambridge. But for me, university wasn’t about degrees leading to professions. It was just a phase to be endured.’

  Stephanie poured a small amount of walnut oil into the wok and then moved it over a flame. The vegetables were on the wooden board beside the chopping knife. Proctor was behind her and in this moment, she preferred it like that.

  ‘The night before I found out, I was with this second-year student. He was living in a rented cottage in Sherburn, an old pit village a few miles outside Durham. There was a party, we all got drunk, I stayed over. I didn’t get back to Hild and Bede—my college—until eleven the next morning. I was in my room, changing, when there was a knock on the door. It was another first year, like me. She was ashen-faced, she looked sick. I hadn’t heard the news or seen a paper, but she had. She said the Principal was looking for me so I went across to his office and he told me. I remember how hard it was for him, how he struggled to find the right words.’

  Stephanie turned around. Proctor said, ‘How did you react?’

  ‘Predictably. No gasps, no tears. It didn’t seem real until I saw it on TV. Even at the funerals, I couldn’t absorb it. I kept expecting it to end, for someone to say that it had just been a macabre practical joke.’

  ‘And when that wore off, what then?’

  ‘Then I had to get away. From Durham, from Christopher and his family. From myself. And so I came down here. The rest … well, you know most of that already.’

  ‘You stayed with friends at first?’

  ‘They weren’t really friends, just people I knew. I moved from one place to the next—a couple of nights here, a couple of nights there. To ease the pain, I drank and took drugs. I’d done a bit of both at Durham, but when I got to London, I started to do more. Before long, and without really being aware of it, I gravitated towards similar people. Instead of wine and beer, I started drinking cheap cider and stolen spirits. Instead of a sharing a couple of social joints, I started scoring Valium, speed, coke, heroin. Anything to take me up or bring me down, I didn’t really care which. You know how it is. The habit gets worse, the crowd becomes seedier, the circle becomes more vicious. It didn’t take long for me to run out of money—six weeks, maybe two months, I don’t remember—so that was when I started trading sex for cash.’

  ‘That must’ve been hard.’

  ‘Not as hard as you might think. I was wrecked most of the time and I’d already been screwing a heroin dealer in return for a steady supply of tranquillizers. That was like a stepping-stone to the real thing. I got away from everyone else by moving to London and then I got away from myself by getting out of my head. Selling myself was the price I had to pay for that.’

  Proctor shook his head. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ve tried.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean the reality’s not as titillating as you’d like it to be.’

  He looked indignant. ‘I’ve never thought there was anything titillating about prostitution.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  He saw that she didn’t believe him. She said, ‘Whatever you say. The truth is, it’s dirty, monotonous and depressing. Occasionally, it’s dangerous. But most of the time, it’s as routine as any nine-to-five. Except we tend to work p.m. to a.m.’

  ‘How many days a week did you work?’

  ‘I’d say four to five, averaging five clients a day, at thirty to eighty pounds a go. Some days you get no one, other days you lose count.’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘A mixture of regulars and one-offs.’

  ‘Can I ask you the most obvious question?’

  She guessed what that was. ‘How do I do it with someone I find repellent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The same way a lawyer does his business with a criminal he’s sure is guilty. Dispassionately and professionally.’

  ‘But this is your body we’re talking about.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s not my soul—my spirit—so it’s not the real me.’

  This time it was Stephanie who saw that her answer was doubted.

  ‘What do they tend to be like?’

  ‘They’re mostly middle-aged, mostly married. There are one or two who are nice enough—they tend to be the regulars—but the rest are wankers. Especially the ones who try to bargain. I mean, it’s bad enough without having to explain to some tosser that I’ll open my legs for eighty but I won’t for forty. Then you get the guys who can’t get it up or who can’t come. They’re the ones who are most likely to get abusive. They’re also the ones most likely to cry. But the ones I like the least are the macho ones who insist on the full half-hour—not a minute less—and are determined to try to break some kind of ejaculation record. It’s like some kind of virility test they have to pass. They’re pathetic.’

  ‘Do you have to see so many of them?’

  ‘Why? Do you think I enjoy it?’

  ‘No. But five clients a day at eighty quid a session, that’s four hund
red pounds. Five days a week makes two grand.’

  ‘Let me explain something to you. Firstly, not all punters want, or can afford, the full service, so it’s not eighty quid a time. Then there’s rent. I paid a full rent to Dean West, my landlord. I also paid protection to him. If I’d gone outside him, I’d have had to pay a full commercial rent but I’d also have had to pay someone to take the flat in their name, since no agency is going to lease a place to someone who doesn’t even have a bank account.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s right. No bank account, no National Insurance, nothing. And whoever rented the flat on my behalf would probably have skimmed some more off the top. Then I had to pay the maid—she cost fifty quid a day plus ten percent of what I made. On top of that, I had the cards to pay for. That’s twenty pounds for a thousand and ten pounds to the carder for every one hundred he stuck in a phone-box. And now that British Telecom is clearing some phone-boxes up to four times a day, that’s a hell of a lot of cards we’re talking about.’

  ‘I never really thought about the details,’ Proctor admitted.

  ‘No one ever does. The truth is, it’s bloody hard work.’

  Proctor nodded. ‘It sounds rough.’

  ‘It is.’ When it looked as though he might be about to say something sympathetic, she cut him dead by adding: ‘But not as rough as the ride on North Eastern Airlines.’

  He reached inside the fridge for the bottle and replenished their glasses. She shoveled some of the vegetables into the wok. The oil spat.

  She said, ‘Did you know that they never found David? All the others were eventually identified—God knows how—but David was one of the twenty-eight they never recovered.’

  ‘No. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’

  Stephanie shrugged and seemed surprised at herself. ‘I don’t even know why I mentioned it. I mean, what difference does it make?’

  * * *

  Half an hour later, they had eaten. The topic of conversation had changed and so had the mood.

  Stephanie said, ‘It’s my turn to ask you something personal.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Are you gay?’

  ‘What?’

  She wasn’t sure whether he was merely surprised by the question, or angered by it.