Say You Never Met Me

by Martin Yallop

  “Don’t you see? This would put me somewhere to meet the strippers, the foreign girls who have sex for money. What is the saying? I would be under covers.”

  “Undercover. That’s not the point, Deborah. This would be really dangerous. You would be exposed to… well, all sorts of things and if you didn’t do what you were told you could get very badly hurt. I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “I wouldn’t do it if you asked me, George. I would do it because I want to find out for Susanna what happens in these places and how the girls come from abroad. That is what you want, isn’t it? That is what Helen whatever her name is, wants to discover isn’t it? And anyway, I don’t have the job yet. There will be an interview.”

  And possibly an audition thought George. He could not bring himself to say why he did not want Deborah to do this. He was not even sure why he felt so uneasy. Nevertheless, there was no getting away from the fact that an attractive, very attractive, girl like Deborah, coming from Bulgaria and speaking near-perfect English would be a strong candidate. If he were a strip club’s HR manager, he would hire her like a shot.

  “Let’s see what Helen thinks first.”

  “Good idea. What’s her number?”

  George fumbled Helen Knight’s card from his wallet. “I’d better call her. She will be expecting to hear from me, anyway. But I tell you, Deborah, I’m very uncomfortable about this. I really do think you would be taking a big risk. Remember what happened to Susanna.”

  “I don’t see how Susanna’s death could have been planned or even deliberate. Most likely they were watching her, saw her in the road and set out to scare her… to make a warning to the girls they control. I shall be expecting problems so I will be careful. We can think of some protection, perhaps. Let’s see what Helen thinks.”

  Deborah took the telephone away from George almost before he had finished introducing her to Helen and the two women spent about fifteen minutes in conversation with Deborah listening intently, her brows furrowed in concentration, for most of that time. Of course Helen was in favour. Deborah was now less enthusiastic but nevertheless resolved to give it a try. George got the impression that she had been briefed on the possible consequences. She rang the number in the advertisement and, after a short conversation, was told to visit the club that afternoon. And of course, she got the job. They had known she would.

  George had spent the day taking the dented hire care back to Kensington, detouring to pay the parking fine demanded by the official-looking notice issued by the private clamping company and taped to his windscreen in a plastic bag. The clamping company cashier had been silent to the point of rudeness, clearly hoping to convey that George was a lower form of life than she was and that he was extremely fortunate to be allowed to pay a fine for parking in a residents-only space. His charm offensive and pleas that he was now actually a resident and would apply for a parking permit had not even drawn an acknowledgement. He left the office just in time to avoid another parking ticket from the same clamping company, the only parking space near the office being occupied with what he had convinced himself was the car belonging to the taciturn cashier. He was still irritated about it as he walked back from the railway station and even more irritated at the lateness, slowness and dirty condition of the train he had taken from London. His second railway excursion since his return to England had been no more satisfactory than the first and the round trip had filled the better part of the day. The worse part of the day did not look too exciting either, because the probation officer had telephoned again to say that she had arranged for him to meet Lance at the Kensington probation office the following week and George wished he had not agreed to go through with what he expected to be a pointless ritual. Deborah was still not back from her interview and Lydia made him a cup of tea without speaking a word. Conrad was apparently out somewhere delivering something to somebody.

  Deborah was far less tolerant of George’s tales of problems and obvious sense of persecution. She scoffed at his list of the trials he had faced.

  “Honestly, George. You should try living in Bulgaria. These things make up a perfectly normal day there, yet you get in a bad mood when a few things don’t go perfectly smoothly. One minute you take all sorts of things in your stride, the next you get upset over trifles. You are very changeable, you know!”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a million different people from one day to the next,” he snorted but his mood was already beginning to soften. Deborah was right and, he realised, Deborah was good for him too, just like Susanna had been. Why had he let that thought come into his head? He recovered his equilibrium and his dignity by making a telephone call to Maurice Blomer. Nicholas had sent the letters and the applications had been submitted. Maurice had called in a few favours himself and been told that approval would be granted in the next ten days. The girls could start making provisional travel plans and Nicholas had better start putting the flesh on the bones of the training programmes he had used to support the applications. And more important, was George in the UK now and when could they have lunch? Deborah was properly impressed by George’s influence and George was restored to his usual level of self-assurance by the warm bath of her admiration. She had hardly had to pretend at all. He would ask about her interview in Soho when he was ready and it gave her more time to mentally edit the details of the selection process.

  In fact, it had not been as bad as she had feared. She had dressed as what she expected a Soho strip club door girl to look like under a sweater and long skirt and carried a pair of strappy stilettos in her bag. To her relief, she had not been asked to strip beyond her underwear. After examining her passport and three-month visitor’s visa and asking her searchingly about her background and reasons for being in London, the boss, Mario, had explained that her job was to get men into the club then make sure they had several drinks. If they wanted a strip show or sex, she would tell the barmaid or the security man and she or he would get one of the freelancers patrolling the area to come and provide whatever services were required. Similarly, she was to call the security man if she had any problem with any customer and the problem would be dealt with. She was a hostess and her job was to talk to men so as to get them to spend money, nothing more. Mario had been difficult to classify. He might have been Italian or Spanish or Sardinian or Sicilian or something else but he obviously came from a Latin country. Deborah thought he was probably Maltese like Tony, the burly security man who had opened the door to her. The door itself had looked anonymous but was framed with faded photographs of naked girls, their modesty preserved by small but strategically placed stars. The tiny cellar bar where she sat with Mario was not much more appealing but she expected it would look a bit better at night with the lights on and more people in it. The need to get the customers to buy drinks was stressed several times and her earnings would be directly linked to how much the punters spent. She was not to get involved with the men or with any of the other girls. This was a business, not a gossip shop and she should stay out of matters that did not concern her. The last piece of information was imparted with a hard stare. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, Mario said they would try her out for a couple of nights and see how she got on. A stroll through the adjoining Great Windmill and Rupert Streets and the side streets and alleys leading off them confirmed that this was the infamously seedy part of Soho with its strip clubs, peep shows and shops, flats and businesses serving the sex trade. She was in the right place and now she just had to discretely talk to as many of the girls as she could and build up a picture of how they came to be there. George had looked at her sharply and winced but said nothing when she told him she had been hired on a trial basis and would start the following evening.

  Chapter 25

  She was met by her fellow door-girl who introduced herself as Angela, and said she came from Poland. Deborah doubted both pieces of information and mentally berated herself for forgetting to give herself a working identity. Angela explained that there were two hostesses because
it was necessary to spend time with a client inside the club and it was at the street that the process began so somebody had to be there. Angela was dressed in a tiny mini skirt, fishnet tights and a spangled bra-top and tottered on six-inch heels. In the daylight her makeup looked grotesque. Deborah felt overdressed in her shortest skirt and tiniest vest top and escaped to the ladies as soon as she could to strengthen her makeup and remove her bra. Angela introduced her to Barbara who ran the bar and the other security man who, unnervingly, was called George. Barbara was overdressed, over made-up and, by the look of her, over the hill. Deborah suspected she had once been a more active participant in the business.

  “What do you drink, love?” asked Barbara. “ You don’t want to have any alcohol or you’ll be off your face before the night’s out, but you tell the punters you are having your favourite cocktail. Then I make it non-alcoholic, see. Orange juice? Okay. We’ll make your favourite cocktail today a tequila sunrise. That’s what you ask me for. The punters have what they like. It’s all the same price.”

  “Two door girls need at least two security men,” Angela explained. “This business is all about one thing,” she said. “The job is to get as much money as possible out of men who are too embarrassed, too ashamed, or, sometimes, too scared to complain afterwards. The most important thing you will learn is how to judge quickly how much money a man is worth. Come upstairs to the door and I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Angela pointed out several types of men as they passed, looking openly or sheepishly or ignoring the photographs and the pink neon sign promising ‘Scandinavian Striptease – Members £10 only’.

  “You can tell the locals, can’t you? The guys who just work around here or are delivering stuff aren’t really interested. They’ll give you a smile or a wink and just keep going. We’re not interested in them. But watch out for men who look out of place – especially foreigners because they have more money. The Japanese always carry loads of cash, which is what you want. We don’t accept cheques or any of your flexible friends. Cash only. If a guy hasn’t got enough cash to pay his bill, Tony or George will go to the cash machine with him. There are three or four around Shaftsbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus. What you really don’t want is a guy with no cash and no cards or whose cards are at their limit. You get them but you have to spot them quick and get them out – if only for their own sakes. They are wasting your time and if a man can’t pay with money Tony and George will make him pay some other way. I don’t like that, so…Ah! Stay in the background and watch me. Hello, sir! If you are looking for a nice way to spend an hour or two, we have the best show around here.”

  “Er… No thanks. I’m just… er… looking around.”

  “Good idea, sir. It’s an interesting area, isn’t it? If you’d like to call in on the way back, we’d love to see you. My name’s Angela and I can be your hostess and tell you what we can offer. See you later.”

  “Er… yeah, fine. See you later… perhaps, er… Angela.”

  “American,” said Angela quietly to Deborah while flashing a massive smile at the departing man. “He’s probably here on business but with his wife. Did you see the mark on his finger where he’s taken off his wedding ring? It’ll be in his pocket. He’s heard of Soho and decided to have a look while his wife is either shopping in the West End or in the Jacuzzi at the hotel. He’s not from one of the big cities – a bit of a country boy but not from the deep South, maybe Virginia or Kentucky, somewhere like that. He’ll be carrying travellers’ cheques and cash – mostly dollars. We accept dollars. We don’t want the travellers cheques but we can take him somewhere to cash them if necessary. There are a couple of all-night money exchange kiosks quite close. He’ll be back unless he gets hooked into somewhere else first.”

  Deborah closed her mouth and blinked. “Wow! You got all that in just a few words?”

  “You’ll soon get the knack. Always remember to think money. If Mario makes money, so do you. You talk sex but you think money. And you close your eyes and ears to everything else. If Tony or George give you the nod, just go behind the bar and out through the curtain and go back to work on the door. The guys will take care of any problems and take the punter out of the back door. It’s not your concern so never get involved.”

  “What about the ten pound strip show. Who does that?”

  “Nobody. Nobody gets a strip show for ten pounds. The rate is at least one hundred pounds and can be five hundred. Depends on how much you think the guy can pay and what you can find out about what turns him on. There are plenty of girls around here at night who will strip. You don’t, ever, mainly because the pay is terrible, only thirty or at the most fifty pounds. Most of the girls are either foreigners who are here illegally and who don’t speak much English or, less often, English girls moonlighting for the extra cash. That is why they strip and you are on the door. You can talk to the men, they can’t. And another tip; never leave a punter alone. You are his hostess. If you leave him you will lose him one way or another. Call over Barbara and tell her what you want for the man. She knows what to do and will bend over you on the side away from him so you can talk quietly without the man hearing. You never get up or move away.”

  “And if one of them wants more than a strip show… if he wants sex?”

  “Same thing. You nod to Barbara; she will be watching and she will come over. Try to find out exactly what the man wants – always easier when he has had a couple of drinks – tell Barbara. She will set up a girl by telephone then one of the guys will take the man to the girl’s flat. There are lots near here. Again, you do nothing except talk to the man and get him to spend money. The tarts are sometimes students, sometimes foreign girls, sometimes women with other jobs who need money but they don’t make much. The man pays us in advance – usually George or Tony – and we pay the girls… much less of course. How much? As much as you can get of course but never less than a couple of hundred pounds for a quick visit. You want to persuade the man to spend the night or ask for something kinky. Money, more money, you see.” The change of subject was disconcerting. “Do you use anything?”

  “Use anything? I don’t… oh, you mean drugs. No, no I don’t. Why?”

  “Good. Stay that way then you can walk away when you don’t need the money anymore. This business if full of girls who have to stay in it because they have a habit they need money for. Most of the tarts and strippers are like that. You stand freezing in winter, dressed like this, but this is the better-paid end of the business, here, on the door. To stay here and not slide downwards you need to avoid expensive habits.”

  “Do you take anything?”

  “Sometimes a little smoke but nothing else. Pretty soon I shall leave. I haven’t told Mario but he knows I have done this for nearly five years and that is a long time. That’ll be one of the reasons he took you on; you’re his insurance in case I leave. In this business you either get out or you go downhill, the odd trick for a customer, then another. Very quickly you are trapped. This job is brutal - it is tricking men out of money, ripping them off, so it makes you very hard - but you can leave if you have enough money. Look, let’s get to work. What do you make of those two guys?”

  “Where? They might be Japanese businessmen?”

  “Malaysian or Indonesian, I think and on business or on holiday. It doesn’t matter. One of them has a camera; an ordinary one – not digital. Here we go. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Are you enjoying your holiday?”

  Chapter 26

  Down in the bar Angela and Deborah sat at a table with both men sipping their cocktails and making conversation about holidays, the airline they had flown with, the hotel where they were staying and their families’ impressions of London while the men drank large whiskeys. Angela was the first to broach the subject of money.

  “Are you interested in a strip show? I see you have a camera. You could take some pictures if you like.”

  The men exchanged glances. Clearly that is what they had been hoping for but
had not known how to broach the subject. “How much for that?” one of them asked.

  “As there are two of you we could do a discount so, with pictures, a thousand pounds – five hundred each. Plus your refreshments and our drinks and for our company. They are all for the inclusive price of the whiskeys. Shall I fix the show? It will be exclusive for you two gentlemen.”

  Another exchange of glances and both nodded enthusiastically. Barbara materialised beside Angela and received a few sotto voce words of instruction. Ten minutes later, the background music changed in beat and volume, the curtains on the little stage parted, the lights dimmed further and the two Malaysians eagerly turned their chairs to face the voluptuous, suicide-blond beaming artificially down at them. They barely glanced at Barbara as she placed fresh glasses in front of each of them.

  “Well, I think you enjoyed that. What other services can we arrange to make your visit more enjoyable? How about a massage? Another drink? No? In that case we have really enjoyed meeting you, haven’t we Deborah, but I had better arrange for your bill and then let you get back to your wives for dinner.” The bill was clearly already ready and Barbara handed it to Angela who passed it to the cameraman with a broad smile. “We can only accept cash, I am afraid.”

  Deborah caught sight of the total as the bill passed her. It read two thousand five hundred pounds. She had been startled enough when the two customers accepted a fee of one thousand pounds for the strip show but knew that was at the high end of the going rate described by Angela. She hoped that her astonishment at the total did not show on her face. She need not have worried. Her astonishment was nothing to that of the two men who burst into an unintelligible torrent of expostulation.

  “This is too much,” one finally managed to say. “You said one thousand pounds!”

  “Plus your drinks which include the cost of our cocktails and our company. Each drink is two hundred and fifty pounds. Each of you had three drinks so the total is one thousand five hundred pounds plus one thousand for the show – with photographs.”