The Damage (David Blake 2) (12 page)

None of us had realised that Maggot had stolen more than usual from the take but I wasn’t going to let the thieving bastard off the hook by admitting that.

‘It won’t do, Maggot,’ I told him, as if that was the reason for my sudden appearance, ‘you know that.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ he admitted, ‘but I was desperate. I’m sorry.’

‘If you were desperate then it was a lot more than a few hundred. How much have you stolen from me Maggot, this year I mean? Tell me, or I’ll ask Kinane to come down here and do an audit on you with his tool box.’

‘Please,’ he said, ‘there’s no need for that,’ and he swallowed nervously, ‘it’s three grand, give or take.’

‘Let’s call it four then, shall we? If you’re admitting three it must be at least five so I’ll be nice to you and meet you in the middle. I’ll do a repayment plan for you and if you miss one payment I’ll get Kinane to drill another hole in your head.’

He looked terrified. Maggot still bore the mark of a close encounter with Finney, who had allowed an electric drill bit to glance off the middle of Maggot’s forehead, leaving a deep red welt, which, over time, had turned into a rust-coloured scar.

‘I won’t miss,’ he said.

‘Good,’ and I got to my feet as if our business was concluded, ‘oh, and by the way, as you’re a man who always knows what’s going on,’ I told him, ‘and since I’m already here, tell me all about Jaiden Doyle.’

‘Eh? Jaiden Doyle?’

‘You’ve seen him around, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ he admitted, ‘what do you want to know about him?’ he looked shifty again already.

‘Not much,’ I said, ‘I just want to know who gave the order to have him shot, that’s all.’

Maggot’s face creased into a confused look. He eyed me suspiciously for a long time, then finally said, ‘you mean to say it wasn’t you?’

So much for Maggot knowing everything that went on in this city, I thought. After I had wasted my time with him I headed for the front door but, when I reached the waiting room, I stopped dead in my tracks. There, sitting on one of the sofas, dressed in a simple black dress and strappy high-heeled shoes was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen in my life. She was slim, yet curvy, and she had long, jet-black hair. I glanced over at her, took in her presence, then instantly zeroed in on her again, the sudden movement making her turn towards me and stare back defiantly. She didn’t look remotely fazed by my presence but I was stunned by her.

Now the girls who worked in our place aren’t dogs, they can’t be. If the punters found them unattractive they wouldn’t keep coming, and nobody would make any money. So our lasses are well groomed and well turned out but they are not exactly Playboy centrefolds. If we described them on our web site as ‘late twenties’ it meant they were really thirty-eight. If we said they were mature, then they were forty-five, at least. They kept their figures by watching what they ate and some of them had gym memberships, but the effects of gravity were there to be seen, in a drooping breast or a broadening of the hips and, without make-up on, frankly one or two of them could look a bit startling up close, but not this girl. She was young, early twenties at most, and classy, you could tell that by her poise alone. It was the way she carried herself. If she hadn’t been wearing the little black dress, I’d have thought she was a lawyer, come to serve us with an order to close the place down. She was so atypical in fact that I think my mouth might have actually been wide open while I surveyed her.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked, which made her sound even less like she belonged here. The voice was cool and gave away her education. What the hell was she doing in our joint?

‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ I managed to say.

‘Have you got an appointment?’ she asked me curtly, ‘if you haven’t I can’t see you. I’m booked.’ There was a touch of the head girl about this one. Her careers officer would have had a heart attack if he’d seen her in here. For some reason she made me feel tongue-tied. Most of the girls in here treated me like I was the boss, because I
was
the boss.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Call me Tanya,’ she told me. It was a command, not a request.

A side door opened and a familiar figure emerged.

‘Hello Mr Blake,’ called Nadia, all formal, like I was her husband’s boss and we’d just bumped into each other at the firm’s Christmas do. It wasn’t that long ago I used to have a laugh with Nadia. She even told me to fuck off once, but then she had good cause. While chasing Maggot through the brothel I accidentally burst in on her and a client while she was in the middle of administering a happy-ending. I don’t know who was more shocked to see me. Actually that’s a lie. The client was definitely more shocked. Nadia was just pissed off that I’d interrupted a delicate moment with him. The punter almost shat himself and that was hardly surprising, as he was a town councillor.

Councillor Jennings had been extremely helpful to us ever since. So much so, I’d even arranged for Nadia to visit him a few times in hotels we booked and paid for; a little reward for services rendered. He was mightily relieved I’d not shopped him to the tabloids, particularly as I’d convinced him we had film of the act. I also made some generous donations to his re-election fund. And Nadia? Well, she didn’t mind. I paid her way over the going rate to go and see the councillor and made sure she got a taxi home on the firm.

Perhaps Nadia felt indebted to me for the extra work, which would explain the formality. ‘Fancy a cup of tea? I’ll make you one,’ she asked.

Normally I’d have said ‘no thanks’ and I’d have gone on my way, but I wanted to find out more about Call-Me-Tanya so I said, ‘Thanks Nadia, milk and no sugar’.

‘Right you are,’ she said quaintly, suddenly sounding like a character from an old Ealing comedy. Nadia disappeared to boil the kettle. I sat down on the sofa opposite Call-Me-Tanya.

‘I’m David.’

‘I said I’m busy,’ she reminded me, ‘but if you wait here one of the other girls will attend to you, in due course.’

I’d never met a hooker before who used the words ‘in due course’. Where did Elaine get this one from?

‘Now that we’ve been introduced, I was hoping we could start over,’ I said.

‘Start over? But I have a booking.’

‘I meant we could be more honest with each other,’ I told her. ‘You could start by admitting you know I’m the owner of this place,’ I said, ‘then maybe I could get your real name.’

‘Maybe I did know,’ she answered, ‘perhaps I just didn’t care.’

‘Oh you’ve established that,’ I said, ‘other girls rush off and make tea for me, Nadia’s probably hunting in the cupboard for digestives as we speak, but not you. You don’t care that I’m the boss and you want me to know it.’

‘I don’t want you to think you own me just because…’

‘Just because?’

She looked me straight in the eye, ‘…just because I let strangers fuck me for money in your brothel.’

I held up my hands, ‘I don’t own anyone. You’re free to leave any time you like.’

‘Really?’ she sounded sceptical. ‘Well, let’s say that for the time being it suits me to work here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.’

I watched her leave. There was something almost equine about the way she walked; straight-backed, head up, long, graceful legs moving in measured steps as she took the stairs down into the spa area. I watched her close the door behind her.

‘Bloody hell,’ and I realised that though I’d said that to myself, I’d done it out loud. I glanced around but nobody had heard me. I walked down the corridor and found Elaine sitting behind her little check-in desk.

‘Tell me about Call-Me-Tanya.’

‘Oh that one,’ Elaine said, ‘not much to tell. She came in here a few weeks back, out of the blue, which was a bit of a surprise.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘She said she wanted to work here, so we had the chat.’

‘The chat?’

‘The one we always have; where I make sure the girl knows what the job entails and can handle the work.’

‘And you were satisfied with her, obviously, or she wouldn’t be working here?’

‘I had my doubts, at first, but she had her reasons.’

‘Which were?’

‘The usual,’ she said, ‘money worries and a twat of a boyfriend. You’ll get the same story from all of them, the lucky ones anyway.’

‘The lucky ones?’

‘The lucky ones have managed to get rid of the boyfriend, so all they’ve got left are the debts. Usually they have no job, no money and no prospects.’

‘And the unlucky ones?’

‘The unlucky ones have all of that, but they are still carrying the useless bloke they’re with.’

‘Why would they do that Elaine?’ I asked, as if she was the fount of all female knowledge, ‘I’ve never understood it. If you know a guy’s a waste of space and is never going to change, why would you stay with him, eh?’

‘It’s a little thing called love, deary,’ she said, ‘not foolish enough to subscribe to it myself these days but I’m aware of its existence. It makes people fall for hopeless cases, men and women both, so you be careful,’ she cautioned.

‘Don’t worry about me. This bloke of hers,’ I asked, ‘ex-bloke I mean. He ever turn up here?’

‘No,’ said Elaine, ‘I’ve never seen him, although…’

‘Although?’

‘She insists on getting the bus home. The stop’s over the road. I’ve seen a big flash car pull up a couple of times like the guy is offering her a lift, but she never gets in.’

‘You get a look at him?’

‘No. He’s got those blacked-out windows.’

‘Does anybody else show up looking for her? Anyone take a shine to her.’

‘Men do, punters I mean,’ she admitted, ‘well they would, wouldn’t they? You’ve only to look at her to see that, but she won’t do regulars. Won’t even see them twice unless I tell her she ought to, and she’s usually so bloody rude to them I’m surprised they stick it. I was a bit worried at first, you know, that she was too beautiful for this place. Girls like her, well, men get attached to them don’t they, fall in love and such like. Remember we had that young Russian girl here? Lovely looking she was, but too pretty really, that one. She had a habit of making men do what she wanted them to, which isn’t ideal, not for us. No, I prefer them plain and normal-looking, like Nadia. She’s got her regulars and she doesn’t scare away the new boys. But I must say, Simone’s been as good as gold since she came here.’

‘Simone?’

‘Tanya’s real name,’ she explained, ‘Simone Huntington.’ It was a name that sounded like it should come with a coat of arms.

‘No trouble between her and any of the clients then?’

‘Like I said, she can be a bit lippy with the punters but I think they secretly love it. I call her “Mistress Tanya”. They’d let her walk all over them in her stiletto heels most of them, even the ones who ain’t into that sort of thing normally, I mean,’ and she chuckled, ‘she’s dangerous that one.’

.......................

T
he ‘Second Chances’ centre was a nondescript grey building that used to house a call-centre before they relocated it to India, so the rent was cheap. We were due to have its official opening, but in reality we had been taking people in for more than a year. You could be fresh from prison that day and we’d have a look at you. In fact, that was the purpose of the place. We’d interview you to see what you could do and you’d get a bed there for a few nights if the manager thought you could be trusted. Without wishing to sound like a total wanker, I was using ‘Second Chances’ to try to put something back into the community – well mostly.

We took guys who wanted to go straight and stay clean, we gave them menial jobs they could handle and we paid them a proper wage for their work. That might involve clearing up derelict patches of land and planting trees or flower beds, mowing lawns and trimming hedges, scrubbing graffiti off walls or painting over it. The really promising guys would visit schools and talk to teenagers about the perils of drug use and the pointlessness of a life of crime.

We didn’t care what you did or how long you served, as long as it wasn’t messing with children. We drew the line at putting kiddie-fiddlers to work in the local community – our lads would have killed them in any case – and we expected you to be drug free. That might sound hypocritical coming from me, after all, it could have been the drugs we sold that started you robbing and stealing in the first place, but that wasn’t the point. We couldn’t employ heroin addicts to mow an old lady’s lawn if they were likely to rob her dinner service afterwards.

We ran the Second Chance centre as a voluntary, non-profit-making business and managed to achieve charitable status on the back of it mainly, I suspect, because my name wasn’t on the submission papers. The money we ploughed in there came from one of our holding companies and the parent was a British Virgin Islands registered trust.

We could also launder money through the scheme because we could inflate what we actually paid for goods and services, or fail to actually declare the true cost of materials we had negotiated a price on. We could place phantom workers on the pay roll too. Soon we had forty ex-cons who were genuinely on our books, most of whom would probably beaver away at this unspectacular work for the rest of their uneventful lives and look gratefully back on the day they were offered their very own second chance, when nobody else would even look at them.