‘What do you think?’
‘Yes, I guess it is.’
‘You were asking me about my website before my world started caving in out there.’
‘It’s alright. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
‘You asked about how you would choose a girl. The site has a page for each one. There are biographical details, which would include the girl’s physical characteristics; her age, height, eye and hair colour, vital statistics, skin colour and nationality. There are a few paragraphs about what they are like, what a good companion they are, what their interests are and what foreign languages they speak, if any. There would also be details of their availability. A few of my girls hold down conventional jobs and can only work evenings or weekends.’
‘What about photographs?’
‘Each girl has a minimum of six photographs. If they want to put more on they can, but the site can’t really cope with more than twenty. The guy who did it explained why, but I didn’t really understand what he was talking about.
‘The photographs are never nude, but just basic glamour shots. I like to show the girls in evening dress, wearing a bikini and wearing lingerie. Those photographs, combined with the physical characteristics, would give you a good idea of what you’ll be getting. Sometimes, if the girl wants to be anonymous, her facial features may be obscured, or the photograph cropped so that you cannot see her eyes, for example.’
‘So this can be a part time thing for students or whatever.’
‘Yes. Six of my current girls are full time university students. Some of them don’t care who sees their face on my site, but most of them do. Apart from the basic details of the girl’s body, there is usually a sentence or two telling you about their personality and interests. Many of these are made up, as they don’t really matter. There is also a section concerning the girl’s sexual preferences, what she will or will not do. For example, some girls are good at role-play or domination, others are not, or they may not like it for some reason.’
‘I take it that their real name is not displayed.’
The waiter announces his presence with a cough and places our meals in front of us. That was quick. Must be the time of day. ‘Here we are,’ he says. ‘Enjoy!’ He has a ring with a green skull on the middle finger of his right hand.
We start eating and the food is quite delicious, if a little too hot. I shall remember this place. Two of the guys at the bar have changed their position so that they can stare at Sakura. I can tell they are talking about her.
‘None of the girls have their real names on the site and the client will never know their real name, unless they care to divulge it for some reason or other.’
‘What was Viola called?’
‘On the site she was just called Natasha. When we needed a surname for an outcall, we used the name Natasha Hart. Oh – and the prices are detailed on the girl’s page, too. There’s the price for one hour, any additional hours, overnight and dinner date. Sometimes the client may want more. They may want to take the girl with them on holiday, for example; that’s a rate that has to be discussed with me.’
‘It that common?’
‘Not too common, but it can happen. Most common is ‘overnight’.’
Three of the guys are now looking at Sakura and laughing. This is incredibly rude, particularly as she’s having lunch. I could be her husband, for all they know. I start wondering how long they’ve been here as they all seem a little pissed. I’m going to change the subject now, to give her a break from all of this.
‘Where did you learn karate, Sakura? That was a pretty impressive display.’
She actually blushes when I say this. ‘Well, you were pretty hot yourself. Not many people could have faced that. I think I cheated you with the towel. I knew when you saw my body it would give me an advantage of maybe half a second.’
‘You were right.’
‘I’m a godan, but I haven’t been to formal classes for a few years now.’
A godan is a fifth degree black belt. No wonder I was having problems.
‘You’d never know it. I thought I was totally fucked there.’
‘But you won, didn’t you. You managed to get me off you and onto the floor. I couldn’t get out of that arm lock. I couldn’t work out what you were doing when you threw me like that.’ She pauses to drink some wine. ‘I’m sorry I attacked you. I didn’t know who you were or what was going to happen. I couldn’t take any chances.’
We sit and look at each other for a moment. The guys at the bar are pushing one of their number towards us and loudly whispering, ‘Go on!’
‘There’s a lot of shit going on with Viola, isn’t there,’ I say. ‘Her and her father, I mean. If she was that afraid of what her father may do to you, someone he’s never even met…’
I don’t mention my chat with Louisa Gavreau this morning and I’m not going to. She and her sister’s theory about that portrait may not even hold water. It’s just a thesis and therefore not worth talking about at the moment.
‘She had a lot of demons,’ says Sakura. ‘Her father was very possessive of her. He would get very angry if she showed any affection of any sort to anyone other than him. She told me how lonely she was in school. She was afraid to make friends. He had warned her not to. He had quite a fierce temper and a controlling personality, so you can imagine the effect of that on a small child.’
This is very complex and I’m having difficulty making sense of it. ‘But her mother was around until she was fourteen…’
‘You know about her mother?’
‘Yes. Someone mentioned it. Couldn’t her mother have done something? You can’t relentlessly bully a kid like that without someone saying or doing something, can you? I mean – what the hell was wrong with her father? I can’t imagine why he’d be so bloody possessive. It just doesn’t make sense.’
We’ve both finished our meals. The waiter takes the plates away and plonks dessert menus on the table in front of us.
‘D’you want a dessert?’
‘Let me have a look.’
As she picks up the menu, one of the guys I’ve been eyeing for the last ten minutes walks boldly up to our table, watched by his giggling friends. He wears a blue suit, has rounded shoulders, a floppy hairstyle and walks with a self-conscious rich kid’s lope.
‘Excuse me,’ he says, more to me than to Sakura. ‘But we were just looking at this beautiful lady’s dress and, well, we were wondering, er, if she had anything on underneath it!’
He gives me an ‘all blokes together’ grin, designed to draw me into this terrific wheeze. His hand is now on my shoulder. He’s big and sweaty and public school, with the social skills of a protozoan. I catch Sakura’s eye briefly. It’s almost funny that this jerkoff doesn’t realise that he’s metaphorically pushed his head into a hornet’s nest, but not that funny.
‘Fuck off,’ I tell him, quietly.
His voice deepens to its true bullying timbre. ‘Hey, come on now. No need for that.’ He looks back at his mates for support. They’re having a good laugh over there. He becomes pally again. ‘It’s just that we could see flesh all the way down the sides of that rather lovely dress she’s wearing and we were wondering if she had any knickers on!’
This brings a huge guffaw from his friends, who are looking at us like we’re some sort of entertainment that the pub has booked for its lunchtime customers.
‘Or a bra!’ he continues, more loudly. He puts on an exaggerated posh voice, though it isn’t that much of a push for him to achieve it. ‘Doth the lady have on any undergarments, forsooth?’
He’s talking about her as if she’s not there. I really can’t stand that. I look him straight in the eye and hold the sides of my seat, ready to push myself up, when the guy from the couple holding hands walks over. He flashes a police badge and holds the guy’s arm above the elbow.
‘Would you mind leaving these people alone, please, sir? Go back over to your friends, there’s a good chap.�
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‘I was only having a bit of fun. We just wanted to…’
‘I heard what you wanted, sir. Come along now. Just go back to your friends and have a drink. Please don’t bother these nice people again.’
He petulantly jerks his arm away from the policeman’s grip and slopes back over to his mates, like a child who’s just had its favourite toy removed as a punishment for some wrongdoing.
I look up and smile. ‘Thank you, officer.’
‘I wasn’t doing it for your benefit, sir. I was doing it for his.’
‘Well thanks anyway.’
He gives me a suspicious look and goes back to holding his girlfriend’s hand.
I order toffee apple and pear crumble with cream, and Sakura has the warm chocolate fondant with a scoop of ice cream. When she’s finished her first mouthful, she looks up at me.
‘Nathan Raleigh had been sexually abusing Viola since she was nine years old.’
I was just about to put a spoonful of toffee apple and pear crumble and cream into my mouth. It never got that far.
13
THE OVERNIGHT OUTCALL
OK.
First of all, I have no proof that what Sakura said is true.
If it isn’t true, I just continue with the investigation until I find Viola. When I find her, dead or alive, I inform her father and that’s the end of the job. But unless there’s some huge, complex conspiracy going on here, I have no reason to doubt Sakura’s word about this.
The only weak link regarding this piece of information is Viola. This is something she told Sakura, who had good cause to believe her, but she may have been lying or tampering with the truth in some other way. Who knows, she could even have False Memory Syndrome. She certainly had enough other problems, so why not that one too?
If it is true, I have to decide whether I want to continue this investigation at all. Financially, on the plus side, I’ve already been given three days’ worth of money at double my usual rate. I’ve done two days already. If Raleigh wants his two thousand back, he can have it, so that’s four thousand pounds for two days’ work, plus having the crap beaten out of me by Mrs Bianchi as a surprise extra. If I stop now, I won’t be seeing the twenty thousand bonus, but if that’s the price I have to pay for not working for a leading scumbag, that’s fine with me. Fuck him.
But what will actually happen if I stop? What do we have? A high-class call girl who’s gone missing and a father who wants her back for God knows what reasons. This is a case that the police aren’t interested in. Viola was a missing person, then she wasn’t a missing person, then she was a missing person again. If you factor in her occupation, then it’s not going to be a high priority for any police force unless someone finds her body somewhere. Plus, if I stop, Raleigh will just get someone to replace me. Worse, he may get Fisher and his goons to take over; a turn of events which I suspect Fisher would be greatly pleased with.
But she may not be dead. She may be out there somewhere, terrified. In one sense, I’m her only hope. But if I rescue her from whatever fate has befallen her, the next stage would be to deliver her to her father, my client, who’s been busy destroying her life for the last dozen or so years. By any standards, that would be a despicable thing for me to do.
There are a few other factors floating around which may or may not be connected to what I’ve just been told.
One of them is Rosabel Raleigh’s suicide. This happened roughly ten years ago. I’ve only got Taylor Conway’s word that it happened when Viola was fourteen, but if that’s true, then Rosabel may have known what Raleigh had been up to with Viola for close on five years before she decided to end it all. Could her suicide be linked to Viola’s abuse? Possible, but even if it is, it doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on the case as it stands at the moment and is probably not directly connected to Viola’s recent disappearing act.
Then there’s Louisa Gavreau’s judgement on Rosabel’s portrait. That’s weird, certainly, but again, I don’t know if it’s true. The portrait would have been painted when Viola was fourteen. It would have been a presence in her life until she finally left home. Was it meant to be comforting for her in some misguided way or was it meant to be some kind of sick threat? I can’t tell.
Would it have been enough on its own to get her on the road to drug addiction and prostitution? Not likely, but you never know. But if what Sakura said is true, it would be a good enough explanation for Viola’s drug use, at least, and for her cutting off contact with her father at the first opportunity, and for her telling him about her prostitution, just to piss him off.
Novak said that he found Viola’s relative enjoyment of prostitution very unusual. Perhaps she turned to it and continued it to purge herself of the memory of her father’s abuse in some way, though that could just be psychobabble on my part, and my psychobabble has been unreliable in the past.
Add to all of this the fact that Raleigh may have been lying to me from the off. All that concerned father stuff could have been bullshit of the highest order. I just want to know what has happened to her and I want her back. Well, he may have his reasons for wanting her back and off drugs, but he may have a hidden agenda. She’s off drugs now, anyway, though he wouldn’t know that. It could be that his story about having a clear head for his big arms deal next week may have been a lie, too. Perhaps he’s in a hurry for some other reason.
Then there’s Tote Bag. I have a strong suspicion that she was set on me by Raleigh or Fisher. I have no proof of this, of course, but it seems the only logical explanation. I can’t imagine why, though, unless it’s just a rich man’s way of making sure he’s getting his money’s worth or he just wants a way of checking on my progress. Whatever, it’s still a very singular thing to do and doesn’t feel right. Plus it’s kind of insulting to my professional integrity and makes me want to break down and cry.
Finally, I mustn’t forget what Anjukka told me about Fisher, cruising call girl sites for the purposes of entertaining Raleigh’s wealthy clients. That may well be par for the course for arms dealers, but I still have to think of it as suspicious and possibly connected to the whole Viola disappearance situation. But in what way, I can’t imagine.
Anjukka. God Almighty, was that only last night? It occurs to me that if Tote Bag was a Raleigh employee of some sort, then he’ll know I was on a date with his PA, which I don’t much care for.
After we left the pub and walked back to her flat, I told Sakura to hold my hand if she felt wobbly again. That arm-gripping thing not only hurt but also looked a little weird. The roads were busier after we’d had lunch. Three minutes passed before she took my hand in hers. People walking by would have thought we were a couple. I’ve pushed her quite a lot today, but I still have to ask her about what happened on the night that Viola disappeared. Even if she’s not forthcoming, at least I’ve got a name now: Natasha Hart.
As we take the stairs up to her flat, she continues holding my hand. Despite her kick-ass performance earlier on and her undoubtedly steely mental makeup, she’s also quite sweet and gives off a surprising air of vulnerability. As we enter her flat, she turns and kisses me softly on the cheek.
‘Thank you for taking me out.’
‘My pleasure. Was that our first date?’
‘Yes. I rather think it was.’
*
I turn over now and watch her sleeping. She frowns a lot in her sleep, as if she’s having a bad dream. At one point, she moans and flings a hand back, hitting herself on the forehead. I pull the sheet off her and slowly kiss her awake, from the neck down to the belly. I lean over and slowly pick my watch up from the floor. It’s ten past three. I still want to get to The Bolton Mayfair sometime today, but I still need to talk to her about Viola.
She smiles at me as she wakes up. ‘I hope you realise,’ she says, ‘that in view of your recent injuries, I was gentle with you. It won’t happen again.’
‘I’ll take that as a warning.’
‘Yes. You should. Stay there.’
When she comes back in, she’s carrying a tray with coffee things, plus a plate covered in amaretti cookies, which she puts on the floor next to the bed. I pull her towards me and kiss her. She pulls away after a few seconds and I’m amazed to see that she’s actually blushing. Then I think maybe this is an act. Perhaps the whole coquettish, kittenish, vulnerable thing is something she can turn on and off at will. Can you train yourself to blush whenever you feel like it? I remember reading somewhere that the very thought of blushing can make you blush. Oh well; act or not, it’s all staggeringly sexy, so I decide to enjoy it for whatever the hell it is.
We sit up and sip coffee like a couple of shy teenagers for a few minutes, then she runs a hand down my arm.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What are we talking about?’
‘Nathan Raleigh.’
Good. I’m glad it’s her that’s brought it up and not me. This whole thing is confusing on a lot of levels and it’s useful to have someone with a bit of background knowledge to bounce things off. I’ll have to keep back some of the stuff I know, though. I’m certainly not going to tell her about Rosabel’s portrait, for example. Something like that would only muddy the waters. I suddenly wonder if each of us is using the other through sex to get information or to get something done. Well, if that’s the case, it was certainly worth it from my point of view.
‘I haven’t really given it much thought yet,’ I lie. ‘I’m not sure whether I should continue, to be honest with you.’
‘But then we’ll never know what happened to her.’
‘That’s true. But – if I find her…’
‘You have to hand her over to Raleigh or you won’t get paid?’
I don’t tell her about the bonus.
Kiss Me When I'm Dead Page 18