Kiss Me When I'm Dead

by Dominic Piper

  Her eyes are wide open with shock and with her free hand she lashes out and scratches the side of my face. It hurts like fuck; I can’t imagine what the damage will be to my matinée idol looks. She goes for a follow-up, but Sakura is too fast and catches her wrist, locking her arm at the elbow and pushing her into the centre of the hallway, where she staggers from side to side for a few feet. I close the door behind us and wait for the next assault, while Sakura attempts some speedy damage limitation.

  ‘Eleanor. Listen. We’re not here to hurt you,’ she says in a half-whisper. ‘We’re here to help you.’

  Eleanor is not in the listening mood and runs towards the back of the house. I can’t imagine where she’s going. She turns left into some room or other and I follow. Whatever she’s going to do, I can’t have her escaping now and she looks desperate enough to try anything.

  As I get to the door that she’s disappeared into, a solid-looking crystal vase comes flying towards my head. I block it without thought, sending it flying across the room, but worry that it’s broken my wrist. As it smashes on the floor, she runs to the fireplace and returns with a fire poker with a nasty hook on the end. She’s fairly determined to kill me with this and takes a frenzied run at me, slashing wildly from left to right.

  “Intelligent, elegant, beautiful and sophisticated, I will be a passionate, inventive and friendly companion.”

  I manage to get away from the doorframe and into the room, to give myself more space. As the poker cuts through the air again and again, I look around the room to see if I can spot anything I can use against it, like a chair. No chair; at least nothing I can lift up. Insanely, I find myself thinking how pretty she is, despite her face currently being a fierce mask of anger. She’s also been drinking; I can smell her vodka breath from here.

  Sakura follows me into the room and I feel a little safer, though I’m suddenly reminded of her violent reaction to me when I first turned up at her place and wonder if there’s a link here. Women who feel so threatened by certain men that their immediate instinct is to try and kill any male visitors. I have to qualify that; their immediate instinct is to try and kill me.

  ‘Darling, I’m sorry.’ Sakura’s voice is calm and soft. ‘I’m sorry we had to do that, but you wouldn’t have let us in and we had to get in here and talk to you and help you. We had to. This guy here is OK, but if you keep swinging at him with the poker, he might have to do something that will hurt you to make it stop.’

  Eleanor holds on tightly to the poker. There’s no way on earth that she’s going to let go of it. Her knuckles are white, her breathing is ragged and she’s as white as a sheet. She’s also swaying slightly; she’s more pissed than I thought she was. It’s only now that I notice there are loads of empty vodka miniatures on virtually every surface in this room. Who the hell buys that many miniatures? Then it clicks; this must be one of the perks of her job. These are all refugees from various hotel minibars; stuff she’s nicked while the client is showering. It’s not only vodka, it’s scotch, gin, brandy, schnapps and even Campari and Malibu.

  ‘Look,’ says Sakura, reaching into her bag again and fetching out the chocolates. ‘They’re real. We were only talking to Abigail this morning. She told me about these chocolates. She told me about the other ones that you liked. The coconut and curry one; she told me about that, too. We’re friends, darling. You can call Abigail now if you don’t believe me.’

  Eleanor is still hyper and wild. Something has clearly tipped her over the edge and she’s looking rather crazy. The fear and booze is making her shake. She’s dangerous like this, and could get a lucky strike with that poker that could inadvertently kill one of us. What were the sports mentioned in her bio on Abigail’s computer? Riding, tennis and golf, I seem to remember. The golf, if that was true, would give her a good, powerful swing with that poker. She looks fit, too, but she also looks fucked. She’s wearing a wrinkled white linen shirt with various liquid stains down the front and a pair of beige cargo crops, which look like she’s spilled an entire meal down them in the recent past, or puked down them.

  ‘Get out of my fucking house,’ she hisses at both of us. ‘Get out of my fucking house or I’ll kill both of you. Do you understand? Get out now!’

  ‘Darling…’ Sakura starts to say something, but is cut short by Eleanor rushing at her at full speed. She takes a wide swing with the poker, which would have come down hard on Sakura’s collarbone, and probably fractured it, but Sakura quickly sidesteps it and gives Eleanor a hard knife hand strike on the base of her neck. That’s the end of the attack, as Eleanor drops to the floor like a puppet that’s had its strings all cut.

  Sakura and I both take deep breaths at the same time and look at each other.

  ‘That was good,’ I say. ‘Accurate.’

  ‘Thank you. Let me see your hand. I saw you deflect that vase. Very fast. I was impressed.’ She takes my right hand in both of hers and lightly runs her fingers down the side of it. ‘It’s starting to bruise already.’

  ‘Stop touching me in a sensual manner.’

  This makes her laugh. ‘Let’s get her undressed and get her in a bath. She needs to sober up.’

  I pick the unconscious Eleanor up in both arms and follow Sakura upstairs. We’re both assuming there’ll be some sort of bathroom up there. When we find it, Sakura turns both taps on and I take Eleanor into what must be her bedroom. There are empty miniatures in here, as well. We undress her and I carry her into the bathroom and gently lower her into the bath.

  ‘Her hair looks like it could do with a wash. I think it would be best if you do it. Pour some bubble bath in there, as well.’ I hand Sakura a bottle of orange and vanilla aromatherapy bubble bath and she pours a couple of capfuls under the flow of tap water. Eleanor moans as she starts to regain consciousness and she begins to rub the side of her neck, which must be hurting like a bastard. I don’t think it would be a good idea for her to open her eyes, discover she’s naked in a bath and find some guy she doesn’t know looking at her. ‘Can I leave this to you, Sakura? We don’t want to freak her out completely.’

  ‘Of course, Daniel. Perhaps you could go and make some coffee. I think she’ll need some.’

  The first thing I do is to go in the small toilet downstairs and look at my face in the mirror. There are three big scram marks from the cheekbone to the jaw on the same side of my face as the black eye. They’re moderately deep and blood trickles from them. I soak some toilet paper in warm water and dab at my face until the excess blood has gone, then attach a couple of toilet roll sheets to the marks. Just like when you cut yourself shaving, but rather more serious and terrible-looking.

  I stick a kettle on in the basement kitchen and eventually find the coffee things and some mugs. I keep thinking, I’m getting there, I’m getting there. I’m getting there. In three days, too, though I’m not at the finishing post quite yet. I try to remember how long I told Raleigh this would take. I think I told him less than a week. Well, that was accurate enough, I suppose. I’m still rather irked about all the people he has following me, though, and still can’t work out a sensible motive for it.

  While the kettle’s boiling, I run upstairs to the ground floor and go into the room where we had the fight with Eleanor, find the poker and slide it underneath a sofa. I’m not having her touching that again. As I head back down to the kitchen, I can hear Sakura talking in a low voice upstairs. I hope she’s able to get this girl into the right mood to talk to me. And a girl is all she is; Abigail said she was almost twenty-one. Almost. God Almighty.

  I find a tray, put all the coffee stuff on it, plus the box of caramel marshmallows, and take it all into a small sitting room at the back of the house. There’s a small but very well kept back garden, with a greenhouse, a couple of benches and a large concrete Buddha. I wonder if any of Eleanor’s neighbours have any suspicions about her second occupation. It’s doubtful. Erratically timed comings and goings are part and parcel of student life, so they’re probably not bothered.


  This is a nice, sunny room. I imagine Eleanor coming back here after a night’s work and sitting here reading, sipping a glass of white wine. I wonder if she’s got a boyfriend. She’s a university student, so it would be unlikely that she didn’t get offers. Perhaps she doesn’t mix with the other students at all. Perhaps that’s the price you pay. Perhaps she’s regarded as reticent or snobby. I remove the toilet paper from my face and stick it in my pocket.

  When she comes in the room, she’s calmed down considerably and is not brandishing any weapons. She’s still cautious, though, and frowns suspiciously as she looks at me. I have no idea what Sakura was talking to her about up there, but it seems to have done the trick.

  She’s wearing a plum-coloured towelling robe with a big hood, her face is pink from the bath and her hair is still wet. She seems smaller than when she was in attack mode and is actually rather petite. I would guess that she’s about five foot three or so; definitely shorter than Sakura.

  Her complexion is healthy-looking, fresh and glowing, and without makeup she looks about seventeen. She’s much, much prettier than her photographs and despite myself and all that I know, part of my brain is screaming, what the fuck are you doing working as a prostitute?

  She looks like the sort of wholesome, dream girlfriend you imagined yourself going out with (if you were very, very lucky) when you were in school. And that’s just it, isn’t it. Abigail said she was one of the best at the girlfriend experience and now I can see why.

  I smile at her and pour out the coffee. She takes one of the chocolates and pops it in her mouth, giving me a petulant little frown at the same time. She has to be brought down into some sort of peaceful reality again after the shock of our forced entrance and the adrenaline rush of her frenzied attack and its neutralisation. Sakura helps with this. She has a very calming presence and sits on the edge of her seat, completely still. I can feel that Eleanor is still fearful and agitated, but she’s got to trust us both if I’m going to get anything out of her.

  None of us speak for a couple of minutes, then Sakura looks at the box of chocolates. ‘Can I try one?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Eleanor. She looks at me and smiles slightly. ‘You can have one as well, if you like.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ She’s unsure of what’s going to happen or what we’re going to say, and glances nervously around the room.

  ‘Is this your house or do you rent it?’ I say. Well, that’s a crap beginning, but it’s better than nothing. She looks slightly puzzled that I should ask such a thing. She finishes eating her chocolate, drinks some coffee and lights a cigarette, tipping the ash into an enormous ashtray with a picture of the Arc de Triomphe at the bottom. I wonder if it’s a souvenir from some holiday or other. Maybe it was a gift.

  ‘I rent. But they let me do what I like with it.’ Her voice is soft and slightly croaky. There’s also a very slight slurring to her speech, which is not too surprising considering the amount of miniature empties around the place. As she leans forwards to tip some more ash onto the Arc de Triomphe, I have to force myself to redirect my gaze from her full breasts to the floor. ‘All the furniture is mine and I redecorated the whole thing last year. Decorating is my hobby. Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s great, it’s great. The whole place is really light and airy.’ I nod towards a black and white photographic print; a woman in a headscarf cooing at a small bird in a cage. ‘And Silvana Mangano above the fireplace.’

  This comment perks her up a little. ‘You recognise her! Oh wow, I love her and I love her films. I thought she was so beautiful and sexy.’

  Silvana photographs, fridge magnets and the rest were still very popular in Italy, but she’s not so well known over here. ‘I’ve never seen that photograph before,’ I say, smiling at her.

  ‘Neither had I! I just had to have it as soon as I saw it.’

  We talk about her prints, furniture and decorating for a few minutes longer. It’s almost as if our violent welcome had never happened. What I’m in awe of is how she has the time to study for a degree, be a call girl, learn new languages and decorate a house. She must have incredible drive and energy. Then something reminds her of who we are and why we might be here and she looks downcast again. She pushes the tips of her fingers into her eyeballs as if she’s trying to clear a headache.

  ‘I think I’m in deep shit. Do you know anything? Have you heard anything from anyone? Am I in deep shit? I don’t know anything. Tell them I don’t know anything and I don’t remember anything. Am I in deep shit? Everything was going so fucking well. Tell me.’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Eleanor – I don’t know,’ I say, keeping my voice as soft as I can. ‘We’re here because you were in The Bolton Mayfair three weeks ago with a client called Natasha Hart. Natasha Hart disappeared that night and hasn’t been seen since. We’re just looking for her, that’s all. If you can’t help us, you can’t help us.’

  She looks downwards and starts nibbling at one of her fingernails. ‘I don’t know anything about…anyone called that. Sakura told me that this Natasha was one of her girls and that she was worried about her. That’s all I know.’

  She’s afraid and she’s lying. I can’t force her to cough up the info, but I can try and be gently persistent. ‘Why did you tell Abigail that you were stopping working as a call girl, Eleanor? What happened that made you make that decision?’

  ‘I – I didn’t like it anymore. What’s it got to do with you anyway? I can stop if I want, can’t I?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter, Eleanor. I think you’re frightened and I don’t know why. But I know that you booked Natasha Hart for an overnight outcall. You spoke to Sakura here. You said your name was Mrs Amelia Finch. You wanted a tantric massage. You were very convincing. You sent the deposit to Sakura here using a motorcycle courier and you gave the balance to Natasha Hart in the hotel. When you went to the courier place in Chiswick, you used the name Lara Holland. The guy there gave me a description of you and I made this drawing.’

  I show the rumpled facial composite to her. She looks nonplussed.

  ‘When I showed this drawing to the hotel night manager, he recognised you, except he said that you were wearing glasses and had shoulder length brown hair. He told me that you paid for your room and for Natasha Hart’s room, including a breakfast for each of you the next morning, but that you both left without checking out. He pre-authorised the credit card that you used to make the booking. Please, Eleanor, we’re not the police. We’re not criminals or heavies. I’m a private investigator. Sakura here hired me to find Natasha. You were the last person to see her. That’s why we need your help.’

  It’s not the whole truth, but the whole truth can be just a little too complicated sometimes. Luckily, Sakura doesn’t react to this small deception.

  Sakura leans forwards and places her hand over Eleanor’s. ‘Who did you think we were when we came in here and you attacked us, Eleanor? I can understand why you attacked us and we were in the wrong to come inside your home like that.’

  But Eleanor isn’t listening now. She has her head in her hands and she’s crying. ‘I’m so fucked up. I have so fucked up. I was so fucking stupid.’

  ‘Tell us. What is it, Eleanor?’ says Sakura softly. ‘What happened at the hotel?’

  She shakes her head. I light a cigarette and hand it to her. She takes a deep drag and shakes her head again. ‘Please can you just go? I don’t know what I’m going to do but I don’t want you here. I don’t want anyone here.’

  ‘Listen, Eleanor,’ I say. ‘Whatever is it, and whoever you’re afraid of, I can help you. I don’t know who we’re dealing with here, but I assume it’s men, and the sort of men who put the frighteners on women, and reduce them to the sort of state you’re in, are always weak pieces of shit.’

  She looks up at me and laughs briefly through the tears.

  ‘I don’t work for you and I don’t intend to, but I guarantee t
hat nothing will happen to you while I’m alive. But you have to help me with this. I have to know what happened in that hotel.’

  I let her cry it all out and finish the cigarette. I look at Sakura and she tips her head to the side slightly, to indicate that we might be in with a chance for a logical chat now. I’m starting to find this stressful and exhausting. The scratches on the side of my face are stinging and throbbing to remind me that they’re still there. I think Natalie will like these scratches, actually. I must take Natalie out somewhere soon and I’ve got to give Anjukka a ring to get her to ring Natalie.

  ‘We can take it easy, Eleanor,’ I say, as calmly as I can. ‘We don’t have to talk about that night at the hotel. We can just chat about what led up to it. Did somebody approach you about doing this? Is that what happened?’

  When I was at Abigail’s, I put forward the idea that someone had coached Eleanor with the phone call to Sakura and all the rest. Now I’ve met her, I don’t think she’d have needed coaching in much, but I’m sure she didn’t think all of this up by herself.

  I keep getting an image of a shadowy figure looking over Eleanor’s shoulder, telling her what to do and making threats if she didn’t obey. Eleanor isn’t sobbing anymore, but tears are still running down her face.

  There are a few minutes when all three of us are completely silent and still. I’m not going to say another thing. She has to carry this forward herself now. She lights another cigarette and blows the smoke up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t give you an exact date. Abigail would be able to do that if it was really necessary. She keeps all the details of our outcalls on her computer.

  ‘I went on an outcall with a guy called Bill Coleman. He booked me through the site. It was just another job. Nothing unusual about it. It must have been three or four months ago.’ She examines one of the fingernails she’s been worrying. ‘Normally, I wouldn’t have remembered the guy’s name or the hotel, but I remembered this one.’