‘I have no idea why she should have done that. There was no real need for two deceptions. One would have been fine. But, it did delay my investigation very slightly, so perhaps that was the intention, to muddy the waters a little. I went to the courier company in case they’d sent a bike to her home to pick up the money. If that was the case, I’d have had her address, but she went there in person, so no address, at least not a genuine one, but I got a physical description which tied her to Amelia Finch at the hotel.’
‘I’ll tell you now, Daniel, I cannot imagine why she would have done this. Let me tell you a little about Eleanor Wallis. She’s almost twenty-one and she’s studying for a bachelor’s degree in Diplomacy and International Relations at London Metropolitan University. Her college work always comes first, but she’s available most evenings and virtually every weekend.
‘She’s very good when it comes to entertaining businessmen who want someone to take to dinner and who want everyone to be jealous of them when they see her. She’s intelligent, articulate and can talk about a wide variety of subjects. You would never guess that she was a call girl, which is something that makes her price so high, apart from her looks and body, of course. Your drawing is good, but it doesn’t do full credit to her. If you saw her in person, you’d see why she’s so popular. She’s exquisitely beautiful and has a strong sexual presence. I’ll show you some photographs later, if you like. She’s one of the best at GFE that I have.’
‘What’s GFE?’
Abigail laughs. ‘Girlfriend experience, darling. No rush; kissing and French kissing, cuddling, going out for a meal, or maybe to the theatre. Whatever. Guys want a pretend girlfriend for the night, or maybe even for the week. They want a nice girl. Sometimes they take them on holiday with them. Maybe it’s something they’ve never had in their real life. Maybe they’ve never walked down a street with a beautiful girl on their arm. Maybe they’ve never had other guys being jealous of them, thinking what has he got that I haven’t?
‘You’re a good-looking man, Daniel, but even you must have had difficulties at certain stages of your life with girls. Maybe a girl you wanted to go out with wanted to go out with someone else. Perhaps you didn’t have enough money to take a girl out on a date in the way some girls like it. Maybe some girls just didn’t like you or you were making the wrong choices for various reasons. Now try and imagine what it must have been like for some of the ugly fat fucks that we get!’
She laughs raucously at her own joke and Sakura and I cruelly join in. I like her. You can quite easily imagine going to the pub with her and it being a real laugh. She’s rubbing my leg with her foot under the table.
‘Thank you, Abigail. I feel a lot better about my past failures now.’
‘You’re welcome, Daniel. The more successful and rich and powerful the men are, the more ugly, gross and boring they are. It’s one of the rules of life, Daniel, my love. We’re the happiness safety net for guys like that. Actually, that’s quite good. I might use that on the site. The Happiness Safety Net. Hm.’
‘OK, Abigail. So Eleanor was very good at her work, and there’s no obvious reason why she would have booked Viola for a tantric massage and lesbian experience.’
‘No. If she’d wanted a lesbian experience, she could have taken her pick from a number of my girls for nothing. Christ, I’d have had her myself.’
I take a sip from my coffee, but it’s cold. Abigail notices. ‘Let me get you another. Sakura?’
She turns to talk to us as she makes more coffee. I’m trying to focus, but I keep wondering what she’d look like naked and what her breasts are like without the pointy bra. ‘You see, Daniel darling, all I knew about this was that she rang me up and said she’d decided to quit. I couldn’t bloody believe it, to be honest. She was making a fortune and she was saving it.
‘She planned to take a couple of years off when she’d done her degree and travel around the world. It was so unlike her. She loved the money, too. That’s why she worked so hard. For some girls, the money becomes an addiction. We never talked about it, but I think Eleanor was like that. She serviced more clients than any other girl who’s on my books. She also liked the buzz of wondering what the client was going to be like when she was on her way to a job.’
‘What makes it so odd, Abigail,’ says Sakura, ‘is that both Eleanor and Viola left that hotel without checking out. Eleanor had paid in advance, there were no extras, so the hotel wasn’t that bothered, but it’s still strange. She’d even booked breakfast for both of them.’
‘How did she pay for the hotel?’ asks Abigail.
‘A credit card under the name of Amelia Finch,’ I say. ‘The hotel pre-authorised it and it seemed to pass muster. I can’t imagine where she’d have got it from, though I don’t think it matters that much. It was just a prop in the whole scam, if scam it was.’
‘And she rang you, Sakura,’ says Abigail. ‘She must have given you the whole spiel about wanting to try it with another woman and you didn’t notice anything suspicious? My darling, are you getting old?’
Sakura gives her a quick, insincere smile. ‘No, I didn’t notice anything suspicious. I guessed her age at somewhere in her twenties or thirties. She said all the usual things. She was very convincing. But then we are the ultimate actors, aren’t we, my dear.’
‘If this was her first time doing this sort of thing, I’m not sure she’d have been so convincing,’ I say to Abigail. ‘Do you think it’s possible she’d been coached? I don’t mean in the way she spoke, more in what to say, how to make it sound real? There was a certain slyness involved in the way she manipulated Sakura to suggest Viola to her.’
‘It’s possible,’ says Abigail, nodding her head and ponytail. ‘But then she knows the score about services like Sakura’s. We all do. And Eleanor has done bi sessions in the past. She’s done hetero threesomes and les threesomes. She may well have picked up bi-curious housewife chat from a client and was bright enough to recreate it.’
‘OK. OK. So she can do this and she did it, but the bottom line is what happened that night in the hotel that caused Viola to vanish into thin air and make Eleanor retire and sound frightened? Tell me about her phone call. How frightened did she sound?’
‘Well, it’s not as if her teeth were chattering or anything, my love, but I could tell she was lying to me and wanted the conversation to end as soon as possible. She was trying to disguise the fear in her voice, but she couldn’t. She sounded really rattled, Daniel, which is so unlike her. She’s very placid usually, very calm. She actually clicked off while I was still speaking.’
‘And she’s not answering her mobile.’
‘No. It’s dead.’
I take out a piece of paper I have in my pocket and slide it over to her. ‘Is that her number?’
‘No. I’ve never seen that number before.’
‘That’s the number that was on her hotel booking details. That one doesn’t work, either.’
Abigail frowns. ‘I’m getting worried about her now.’
‘Could you try her mobile number again? Right now?’
Abigail fishes her mobile out from a kitchen drawer and presses the number. She frowns and hands it to me. Nothing.
‘Has she got another mobile? One she uses for family and friends?’
‘She may well have; lots of the girls have mobiles they use exclusively for their work with me, but if she has, I don’t know what the number is. Some girls use the same mobile, but slide in a different SIM card for when they’re working. They usually keep this in their purse. Do you want to see her page on my site? I’ve taken her off public view since she called me, but it’s still on there in the way that these things are.’
‘Sure.’ I’m half wondering if her computer will be a gigantic 1950s model with huge tape drives, but I doubt you could get one of those in the house. The three of us go into the living room, grab some chairs and sit around her desk. I’m disappointed to find that it’s just an ordinary PC, but at least it has a photograp
h of Monroe in a bikini on the side of the CPU.
She types something in the search field and Eleanor’s page pops up on the screen. I say Eleanor, but her professional name is Celia. Celia Valentine. There are ten photographs of her, two of each type; evening dress, sexy lingerie, bikini, see-through baby doll and arty, tantalising, subtle nude. These are professionally done and remind me of the photograph of Viola that Raleigh gave to me. I can feel my heart rate increasing as I look at them and it feels a bit weird that I’m sitting here ogling with two sexy women, but they’re ogling too, so that makes it OK, I guess.
‘Her body is heavenly,’ says Sakura, touching the screen with the tips of her fingers.
‘She has no inhibitions at all,’ whispers Abigail to Sakura. ‘You two should meet. You should meet her too, Daniel. When all of this is over, perhaps the four of us could have dinner.’
‘I don’t think I’d survive it.’
I’m quite pleased to see how close my sketch of her was to the real thing, but the real thing is far more beautiful, as Abigail mentioned. The blonde hair that Declan described seems to be her natural colour and style and she has a ‘girl next door’ smile and demeanour that combines with her voluptuousness to stunning effect. Like Abigail said, you could take her out to some posh restaurant and no one would ever know what she was. An evening with someone who looked like this would be the GFE of the punter’s dreams.
“Intelligent, elegant, beautiful and sophisticated, I will be a passionate, inventive and friendly companion. I’m fantastic company for the theatre or dinner and am able to hold lively conversations about most topics. Apart from my native English, I am also fluent in Italian and French, and am currently studying Arabic and German. I am a natural blonde and I have a slim, athletic figure (though a little on the busty side!) and love all sorts of sports, especially riding, tennis and golf. I’m extremely easy to get along with and if you’re looking for a high quality, very discreet GFE who won’t rush things, then you need look no further.”
Studying for a bachelor’s degree while simultaneously learning two new languages? I’ll bet Eleanor was top of the class all the way through school.
Underneath Celia’s blurb is a box detailing her physical characteristics and sexuality, plus a load of acronyms like COB, COF and BBBJ that mean nothing to me, though I can make a good guess at the last one.
Beneath that is another box that details how much her various services cost. There’s also a thing you can click on to see her reviews. There are a lot of them. This is just like Amazon. I know that most of this stuff here is bullshit, but I still can’t quite square it with the Amelia Finch storyline.
‘What sort of guys booked her, Abigail?’
‘All sorts, really. Businessmen, politicians, rich guys generally. Foreign guys liked her. That classic English rose thing, you know? She was a very popular choice when it came to going on holiday, whenever she could fit it in with her studies. She’s been to more foreign countries than I have!’
‘So – sorry if I’m being naïve here – so these girls kind of work for themselves and are paying you a percentage for being on your site and the reputation that that gives them.’
‘Something like that. But I’m more than an Amazon trader. They need training and advice. Someone like Eleanor; they don’t know all the tricks intuitively, you know? They think they do, but they don’t. Some things they need to be taught. Also, they need a shoulder to cry on sometimes and they also need medical checks and all the rest of it. I do more for them than you could imagine. They could do it without me, but it can be a lonely, depressing, dangerous place when you’re on your own.’
‘And this telephone number down here to book her. Is that your number or…’
‘That’s me, yes. That’s my number.’ For a second she makes meaningful eye contact with me and rubs my leg with her foot a bit more forcefully. ‘The girls would never put their own telephone numbers on the site. That would be asking for trouble in more ways than one.’
‘Well, you know her work rate – did she need to do any moonlighting?’
‘Financially, no. Unless someone offered her some fabulous amount of money for half an hour’s work, of course. I think she’d do it, but then most of us would.’
I look at Sakura. She meets my gaze. She’s thinking the same thing as I am.
‘Do you think there’s the possibility that somebody could have paid her a great deal of money to maybe set Viola Raleigh up in some way?’ I say. ‘To ring up Sakura and pretend to be Mrs Amelia Finch, housewife, who was seeking to expand her sexual horizons? And to then supply Eleanor with a shitload of cash and a false credit card to cover all the expenses? And tell her what to do and when and how to do it? And the end result of it all was one frightened Eleanor and a disappeared Viola?’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Abigail, frowning. ‘Why would someone do that?’
‘I don’t know. But the only alternative to that is that Eleanor had decided to treat herself to a tantric massage with a top call girl on her own time, and thought that the way to do it would be to use two fake identities, one of which came complete with its own credit card, address and telephone number.’ I let this hang in the air for a moment before continuing. ‘I checked the address on her hotel booking, by the way. It doesn’t exist. And after she’d finished, she decided to leave the hotel – which she’d booked into in disguise – without checking out. And within forty-eight hours she’d quit being a call girl.’
‘Well, when you put it like that, lover…’
‘Do you have an address for her? I’ve got to see her. She’s almost certainly the only person who knows what happened to Viola. If she’s in trouble, and I think she may be, I can help her.’
Abigail is plainly reluctant to give me the address. I can’t imagine what the reason must be. Does Eleanor still live with her parents or something? Is she the daughter of a famous politician? I can tell that Abigail is vacillating. I have to push her on this.
‘Listen, Abigail. I’m sure you’ve got a million reasons for not giving out the addresses of the girls who work for you and I can probably work out a lot of them for myself. But there’s plainly something creepy going on here and I’ve got to find out what it is. One girl missing and another gone into hiding; you must realise that something isn’t right. This could come back to you in some way. It could come back to your other girls.’
‘I don’t mean to be rude, Daniel, but would you mind if I had a brief confidential confab with Sakura for a moment?’
‘Not at all. You two stay here. I’ll go and look at your fabulous living room.’
I get up and leave the kitchen, closing the door behind me. I sit down in an extremely comfortable, fluffy pink armchair, clasp my hands together above my head and stretch, getting a sharp twinge in my lower back as I do so. I was peeing a little blood last night and this morning. I’ll give it two more days to go away before I visit the hospital.
I’m a little disappointed to see that Abigail has a modern television in here, but I think getting a black and white model with a nine inch screen and two channels would be pushing it even for her. I can hear her and Sakura talking in hushed voices in the kitchen. I can only hope that Sakura is persuading her to give us Eleanor’s address. When you look at it from Abigail’s point of view, it’s quite logical that she’d be reticent about giving anything like that to me. Apart from the fact that she doesn’t really know me, the whole story we’ve been feeding her sounds strange, confusing and unlikely.
I don’t really know what’s going on myself anymore and I’m trying not to think about it too deeply. I just think that a face to face with Eleanor would clear a lot of things up. This is the closest I’ve been to Viola and I’d really like to bring this job to some sort of conclusion now. I’m also sick of being followed by people.
While I’m waiting, I call a local minicab firm and order a car to take us back to London. I don’t know what Sakura’s plans are, but I’m obliged to make that lunch
date with Natalie. I must remember to type all these expenses into my computer so that I can present them to Raleigh when this is all over.
The kitchen door opens and Sakura and Abigail come in, Sakura holding a piece of paper in her hand.
‘Sakura said I could trust you and I’m trusting you with this,’ says Abigail, nodding at the piece of paper. ‘Please don’t do anything that would frighten her or harm her in any way. Tell her she can come and stay with me if she wants to.’
‘I just want to talk to her. I just need some facts, that’s all. If she can’t help, we’ll leave her alone, I promise. There’s just one more thing. You said she serviced a lot of clients. Do you have their names on some sort of database? I don’t know if I’ll even need this, but I’d like to see a list going back, say, six months, if that’s at all possible.’
‘Now you are asking too much, Daniel,’ says Sakura. ‘Besides, with all the subterfuge that has been going on, do you think you might be seeing a list with many genuine names on it?’
‘OK. I’m sorry. It’d probably be a waste of time, anyway. It’s been lovely to meet you, Abigail.’
‘And you too, Daniel,’ she says, kissing me on the lips. ‘Please let me know what’s happening. You’ve got me worried now. And don’t forget about sketching me one day.’
She passes a small piece of paper into my hand. I slide it onto my trouser pocket.
‘I won’t. And thanks for the address and all of the other information. It’s been really useful. I mean it.’
After Abigail and Sakura have given each other a goodbye grope, I hand Abigail one of my business cards. You never know. I can hear a car outside and it’s the one I ordered. Before we can get out of the house, he toots his horn impatiently.
‘They’re so rude around here,’ says Abigail.
As the car heads towards London, I run over the street details I managed to notice after we’d left Abigail’s house. There was a silver Skoda Fabia parked almost directly across the road that wasn’t there when we arrived. There was a guy sitting in the driver’s seat studiously reading a newspaper. He wasn’t stupid enough to be reading it upside down, but he was stupid enough to have such an expression of studied casualness on his face that it had to be phony.
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