The Damage (David Blake 2) (22 page)

I could tell she was starting to enjoy this little guessing game, maybe because it was about her. Most women like to talk about themselves. Men who understand that can sometimes find a way in.

‘No accent, so you went to a “good” school. I’d guess you have qualifications, a degree?’ She nodded slowly. ‘So I’m assuming something happened?’

‘Like what?’

‘Don’t know,’ I admitted, ‘something bad though. I mean women don’t end up working there…’

‘At the massage parlour,’ she reminded me in a voice that was a little louder than our conversation.

‘At the massage parlour,’ I said it back to her at the same level, calling her bluff, ‘if something good has happened to them. They don’t walk through our door and say “I just got a degree, met the man of my dreams and won the lottery. I’d like to come and work here.”’

‘What do they say?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘Elaine handles all that. She has a good long chat with the girls beforehand, checks that they really want to do it. She makes sure they understand what’s involved. You know that. She had the same chat with you.’

‘You checked, did you?’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t seem too happy about that, ‘and what did she say about me?’

‘Not much,’ I conceded, ‘just something about a guy.’ She folded her arms defensively. ‘Hey, it’s none of my business.’

‘You’re right,’ she told me, then unfolded her arms and took a sip of her wine.

‘Okay then, how about your name? Do I get to know that at least?’

‘Are we pretending you don’t know my real name? Elaine must have told you.’

‘I’d prefer to hear it from you. I’d like your permission to call you by your real name and not just “Call-Me-Tanya”.’

‘Simone,’ she said. ‘Yes, I know,’ she looked a little embarrassed, surprisingly, ‘my mother named me after Simone De Beauvoir.’

‘Oh God.’

‘I’m afraid so. So what does that make her?’

‘Serious, liberal and amazingly posh.’

‘I don’t know about amazingly posh,’ she protested in a voice which just made her sound even more like a Duchess, ‘but yes, she was quite serious. She studied philosophy and I gained the impression she was quite liberal, in her younger days, before she met
him
.’

‘
Him
being daddy?’

‘Him being daddy,’ she confirmed.

‘And what’s wrong with daddy?’

‘Oh absolutely nothing,’ her tone was dripping with sarcasm, ‘he’s perfect; works in the city, with money. Comes home late at night after everyone has gone to sleep, goes to bed and probably dreams about money; the perfect father, never around to stop me from doing anything I wanted to do.’

She was challenging me again, waiting to see what my reaction to all that would be. I suspected that whatever I said would be wrong and she would seize upon it. So this wasn’t just about punishing the ex-boyfriend, it was about putting two fingers up at daddy too. He’d neglected her over the years and ground down her mum, so now she worked in a knocking shop to get back at him. I thought that was a peculiarly female logic, akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face.

‘So that was daddy,’ I said simply, ‘what about this boyfriend Elaine didn’t tell me about.’

‘He was a bastard.’

‘Aren’t all men?’ I asked her dryly.

‘Yes,’ it was my turn to raise my eyebrows, ‘aren’t they?’ She seemed serious, but she was probably just challenging me again.

‘No, not all of them.’

‘Are you the exception?’

‘God no, I’m a total bastard, an eighteen-carat bad boy, the kind of bloke your mother warned you about. You should steer well clear,’ she was laughing again, which wasn’t a bad thing. ‘Should I have lied about that do you think?’ I asked, mock innocently.

‘Might have been a better tactic.’

‘I don’t know about that. Women are always telling men all they want is for someone to treat them right and make them laugh, but that’s total bollocks. They don’t want that at all.’

‘And what do we want?’

‘Something far more stressful, dangerous and uncertain. They want a man to run them bloody ragged, then leave them not knowing where they are. Only then will they be convinced he is the one for them, so they can set about changing him into the nice chap they could have had if they’d chosen better in the first place.’

‘You could be right about that,’ she admitted, ‘judging by my track record, but then I may not be representative.’

‘What about your bastard then? Is he still on the scene?’

‘If you mean am I still sleeping with him? No. Is he still around? Well, he lives in the same city but other than that…’ She let the sentence trail away.

‘Treat you badly, did he?’

For a moment she looked like she might start to cry but she kept it together, ‘very.’

‘Fell hard?’

‘You could say that.’

‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘Which question?’

‘The one about why you work at the massage parlour?’

‘I need the money.’

‘Because of this guy?’ she nodded, ‘what happened?’

‘I told you, he was no good. We were seeing each other. I thought it was love. I loved him so much that I gave him money. We broke up. He didn’t give any of it back.’

‘Was it much?’

‘Enough.’

‘What’s his name, this guy?’

‘Why do you want to know his name?’

I shrugged like it was no big deal to me, ‘Don’t know,’ I said, ‘I might know him, that’s all. I could have a word, about this money of yours, maybe get it back for you.’

She snorted, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he is not the kind of man you have words with. He’s a big scary guy and he throws his weight around. It’s not just women he scares, believe me.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t scare me.’

‘You’re sure about that are you?’ She sounded doubtful, then she looked at me as if seeing me properly for the first time.

‘Well Mr Blake, if you are not scared of my ex, even though I’ve told you what he’s like, then that makes me wonder about the kind of man you are.’

‘The kind who doesn’t like to hear about a lady being ripped off by a thug.’

‘So I’m a lady, am I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not a whore?’ she was challenging me again.

‘I suppose, technically, you’re both,’ I told her and there was a pause while she digested that one, then she laughed again.

‘You’re a charmer,’ she said.

‘I tell it as I see it,’ I told her, ‘and so do you.’

‘Okay, so maybe you’re not scared, but I’m still not going to give you his name.’

‘Why? Regular gangster is he?’

‘He thinks he is.’

‘A lot do in this city.’ I wanted to explain that five minutes alone with Kinane and this guy would be begging for the opportunity to pay her money back with interest, but I didn’t think she’d be impressed by that.

‘I am not going to give you his name because either you would end up getting hurt or he would,’ and she peered at me intently, ‘and I’m starting to suspect it might be him.’

‘What do you care? He stole from you.’

‘It was my fault. I was the fool for lending him the money. And anyway, I don’t want him hurt, not in that way.’

No, I thought, you just want him to find out you are working in a brothel, like that’s really going to ruin his life.

‘You must have lent him a fair amount if you had to work at the parlour to pay off your debts.’

She sighed, ‘I lost my job because of the lifestyle we were leading; the hours and the partying,’ she meant the drugs, ‘I almost lost my apartment, but I knew about the massage parlour, so I thought I would give it a try. I mean, I had nothing more to lose did I?’

‘Getting money from darling daddy was out of the question, I suppose?’

‘You suppose right,’ she said with such steely determination that I let it go, but I couldn’t understand how bad things would have to be between a girl and her father for her to prefer having sex with strangers than go to him for money.

‘How did you know about the place?’

‘The ex told me. I said he was a bad man. We drove past it one day and he said, “you see that place, it’s a knocking shop” and I remember we laughed about the kind of women who worked in a place like that. I didn’t give it another moment’s thought until I had no money and they were going to repossess my apartment.’ She was talking like she was in total control but she had started to unconsciously play with a long loose strand of her hair.

‘I went down there, and I was too terrified to walk through the doors at first, but somehow I managed to pluck up the courage to go inside. Elaine was there, she seemed okay. I mean she’s a tough one, but if you’ve been to a girls’ boarding school you’ve experienced far worse than Elaine.’

She stopped playing with her hair for a moment, picked up her wine glass by the stem, took a long drink and continued, ‘I almost didn’t go through with it, on the first night, I mean. I couldn’t even decide what to wear, isn’t that crazy? I spent ages staring at the contents of my wardrobe, trying to find something
appropriate
,’ and she laughed without humour at the word. ‘I mean the men aren’t down there because of the clothes you wear. It’s not as if you even keep them on for long. I knew that but…’ she trailed away and blinked at the absurdity of caring what she wore in a brothel.

‘But I went through with it. I’d reached a stage in my life where I figured I was never going to let a man near me again anyway unless I made him pay for it. The first night I did five massages. Only one of them wanted more than a “happy ending”. That first time was…’ she took a moment to choose the right word, ‘…difficult, but I made enough money so I went back the next night. After three days Elaine said I could stay.’

‘Because you were earning,’ I meant for the house, and she nodded.

‘Paid off your debts yet?’

‘Not quite.’

‘Will you leave when you do?’

‘Why would I? I have to earn money somehow.’

‘Yes, but you don’t have to earn it like that. I’m not being a moralist here, but there must be easier jobs.’

‘Than working for you, you mean?’ Strangely, I hadn’t actually viewed what Simone did as working for me. I may have been the main guy in our firm now that Bobby was gone but we had a lot of things going on and the massage parlour was just one of them. I’d even toyed with the idea of closing it down, but it was a decent earner so I’d kept it going. I didn’t really get involved other than to count and launder the money. I supposed I was living off immoral earnings, though the money from the massage parlour was a tiny percentage of my income. In the eyes of the law I was a pimp, but really we were providing a service here. Everyone in that place was either a man who couldn’t get sex elsewhere or a woman who needed to earn more than minimum wage. I provided a safe, clean environment to get them together, where no one got robbed or beaten. That was all.

‘Some of the men are okay,’ she said, by way of justification, ‘most of them are polite. Nearly all of them are nervous and that makes them easier to handle. I thought they’d all be cocky, wanting to enjoy it for as long as they could, but they want to get it done and be away as soon as it’s over. There are only some who are difficult, but then there’s always Max.’

Max was the man we paid to sort out anything the girls and Elaine couldn’t handle. He would hang back in the shadows unless there was trouble, but we made sure he was a visible presence. Seeing him there was usually enough to ensure everyone paid up and treated the girls with respect. Max probably had the easiest bouncing job in Newcastle, but occasionally a customer would misbehave and we couldn’t run the place without a man like him on the site, because we couldn’t afford the parlour to get a bad name and attract the wrong kind of attention from the authorities. If there was any bother he’d step in and stop it pronto.

‘A lot of the guys are scared to death,’ she said suddenly, as if she had only just realised it, ‘they don’t want to be there. They
need
it of course, they can’t help themselves. All men are like that, like dogs. They want to get it out of their system and be out of there as quick as they can afterwards.’

‘You have a low opinion of men, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do you handle it then?’

‘With most of them, I just take off my clothes, give them a massage, give them a hand job and that’s all they need. They don’t even touch me and they don’t take long.’

Another sip of wine, then she realised her glass was nearly empty. I refilled it and she carried on. It was funny, I couldn’t get her to talk at all at first, now she didn’t seem to want to stop. ‘Some of them want full sex and I have to let them. I mean that’s what they pay for, but I just lie there and turn my head away. They don’t like it, but they don’t get any more from me than that, ever. They want a Girl Friend Experience,’ and she snorted at the notion, ‘they want me to kiss them, put my tongue in their mouths, they offer to pay more.’