Secret Skin (18 page)

The clientele of the club began to spill onto the street. Closing time. I didn’t want to be there when Faisal and his friends came out. I set off for the main road where the taxis waited, unable to get close to the hotel for the traffic jam of slow moving gawkers.

Women approached the hotel’s dusty forecourt from all directions. Good looking girls, bargain basement prices, offering one last bang for a buck. They had to keep their Faisals happy.

Confident men grinned like predators while the women teased and taunted, trying to find the angle that would sell their tired bodies one last time.

The timid came just to see the sights. While dark others hunted for naïve girls to imprison inside twisted playgrounds the demure wife wasn’t supposed to know about. Violent games would be played out with unwilling bodies, flesh bruised and torn by morning, souls savagely scarred.

Sick of the place, I forced my way through the thick crowd, pushing through the hairstyles and make up. I should have been more careful. I almost ran into the back of the young blonde screamer and knocked her off her feet.

A knot of dread gnawed at my stomach as I turned away, hoping she hadn’t seen me. I knew she had.

She shouted but I couldn’t hear her words. I looked back to see if she was following, she shouted again. I moved faster. I just wanted out of there.

Ahead of me someone answered her calls, unintelligible words that echoed hers. A signal? I walked quickly, my head lowered, straight into an unyielding hand. It closed and gripped my shirt. The hand’s owner said something I didn’t catch.

‘Police! Stay where you are.’ he said again in English. The man in the plain white dishdash held up a badge. I tried to walk away but he pulled me back.

‘Criminal Investigation Department, C. I. D.’ he spelled out for me, so I wouldn’t misunderstand.

***

The plain clothes officer was an officer in the Anti-Human Trafficking Department. The teenage girl told him she was a prostitute and that I had attacked her john in a jealous rage. I had tried to protect her I said. Where? The

Kingston she’d said, Faisal’s place. That’s when he cuffed my hands in front of me.

Out of sight behind the taxi rank, the cop paraded me before a row of uniformed policemen loitering by their prowlers to his own unmarked white Mercedes. He put me in the back seat. I waited and watched. Like I had another choice.

From what I could see the policemen around me had been monitoring the busy forecourt all night, like investors watching their portfolio: a football pitch worth of prostitutes and johns making deals. They hadn’t arrested anyone else.

A few minutes later Faisal came out of the hotel. He began talking to a reed thin officer, who stood with his foot on the sill half-in, half-out of his car. They both turned to look at me in the back of the Mercedes.

The officer wore a far nicer uniform than his companions, tailored by the look of it. The family resemblance between the officer and the pimp was unmistakable. Faisal was the nautilus version of the skinny man in the peaked cap.

While the men talked I maneuvered my clasped hands into my pocket and pulled out my phone. I picked the memory card out of its slot, bent forward and slid it into my shoe. If anyone checked the phone’s memory there’d be nothing to find.

I held the phone between my palms when the pimp’s face appeared at the window to inspect the unknown assailant. Faisal grunted with surprise and said, ‘Bryson. I should have guessed.’

Yeah, like I should have guessed someone would be waiting for me when I left the club. Naively I hadn’t expected the police. They were protecting the club and the pimps over a trafficked child and the man trying to defend her.

Fucking hypocrites, I thought.

I repeated this sentiment to the plain clothes officer during his short interrogation in a backwater police station at the other end of the emirate.

‘Even in your country you have this problem,’ he said.

‘That’s right, we have crooked cops too.’

He ignored my statement and sent me in for processing, a cruel and boring punishment, but far from unusual in the Middle East. A succession of seemingly bewildered uniformed officers asked me to sign an admission form and then move it from desk to desk. Occasionally someone stamped it, but nobody could tell me what I was being arrested for.

Someone took a shot of my yap. One for the family album.

The handcuffs slowed the circulation in my hands to a trickle. I asked to have them loosened. They said yes and then gossiped some more.

I asked for water. They smiled, escorted me back to the interrogation room and locked the door. They forgot the water.

They were really very polite about it though.

The clock on the wall registered 2.36 am. I made the most of my enforced solitude and fell asleep.

***

The nicely tailored officer from outside the club shook me awake.

‘Unnh?’ I said.

‘You are Mr. David Bryson?’ he said, checking his notes.

‘Yes,’ I said blinking the sleep out of my eyes, ‘although right now I’d rather not be. Who are you?’ I said.

‘I am Captain Khadim,’ he said grandly, as if this normally impressed people. ‘I was enjoying a pleasant evening at home with my beautiful wife. And look, now I am here, just for you.’

‘Well how nice to see you Captain, it’s very good of you to come all the way out here, but really, you needn’t have gone to all this trouble.’ I said and held up my cuffed wrists. ‘If you’ll unlock these, I’d be happy to let you get back to the Kingston and your beautiful wife.’

He grimaced and leaned in close to my ear, invading my personal space. ‘Remember this isn’t your country. Do not to mock me Mr. Bryson.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well let’s make a deal, you release me and I won’t tease you about the fantasy wife you left behind at Faisal’s club, how about it?’ He seethed. ‘No? Then maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me what I’ve been arrested for?’

He didn’t say anything. I sensed it would have been something he would later regret. He liked to be in control.

He flipped through a sheaf of papers in front of him until he regained composure.

‘It says here that you were soliciting a 12 year old girl in the Kingston Hotel.’ My mouth dropped open. This amused him. ‘When a customer of the hotel tried to prevent you from dragging the girl into one of the hotel rooms you attacked him with a fire extinguisher and broke his nose.’

‘Total crap.’ I said.

‘‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ he said, smiling, ‘but it does appear that your choices are limited.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘How?’

‘Well for one you are a westerner, who do you think our courts will believe, hmm? You or my officers?

‘I could hazard a guess.’

‘And you’re not just any old westerner, you’re a muckraking foreign journalist trying to create a career for himself out of the misfortune of others.’

My turn to grimace. He grinned.

‘Don’t you know how much this proud nation despises pedophiles like you?’

‘Oh c’mon? You wouldn’t dare tar me with that brush.’

‘Wouldn’t I? Men who try to buy prostitutes, especially child prostitutes, are reviled in this country. Our society promotes the family Mr. Bryson, we raise children, we don’t have sex with them.’

‘That’s a nice bit of fiction Khadim,’ I said, but it was pointless saying anything, he was enjoying himself too much.

‘Do you want to be deported?’ he shouted. ‘Returned to your home in shame, as front page news? The British pedophile scandal in Dubai? Aside from the fact that you will never work again, you will be named and shamed. It will follow you everywhere you go.

‘Even your family will disown you,’ he said, expecting a response. He didn’t get one.

‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘that is if the courts decide to send you straight home. Dubai’s prisons are unforgiving places you know. We have staff there, but really it is the Indians who are in charge, and they hate the British with a passion for all those years held captive as a colony.’

‘Oh please,’ I said.

‘Have you any idea what they will do to you?’ he said, pausing for effect, ‘A raper of young girls? British? All alone? I doubt you will ever leave, you will be buried here.’

That was different, that was plausible. He leaned back against the table, cocksure, one leg raised on the chair in front of him. He sighed and shook his head.

‘You are in profound trouble Mr. Bryson. You have no friends here. You might think you can simply go to your embassy but not for something like this. We will insist that you be punished here as an example to others.’

He gloated. ‘You are probably thinking how different things would be at home now….’

‘No,’ I interrupted, ‘I was thinking how totally full of shit you are.’

Everything about his expression told me I shouldn’t have said that.

‘And what’s more you’re a terrible host. I’m dying of thirst over here.’

‘Do you know where you are Bryson?’ he said.

‘Yeah, some third world brown field site with a first world façade, what do you want me to do Khadim, beg for mercy?’

His eyes said yes. I had to finish this while I had the energy. I shrugged and said, ‘So let’s see, you expect me to break down and cry because you’ve got a neat little story that you’ll never be able to prove?’

‘We have witnesses, of course,’ he said dismissively.

‘Of course,’ I smiled, ‘but witnesses aren’t exactly essential in your laugh-a-minute courts now are they? I imagine verifiable evidence of any kind is just an optional extra once the mighty Captain Khadim has pointed his finger.’

He didn’t respond. Seems no one likes the truth.

‘C’mon, I mean really,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’

‘Is that it?’ He blustered. ‘You will go to court, you will go to jail, and if you live you will be deported as a pedophile.’ He smiled, ‘Bad things are going to happen to you Mr. Bryson. Count on it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He stood with his hands behind his back, chest puffed out, a small pot belly sticking out on his thin frame. He looked like a hurt child.

‘Why?’ he said.

I gazed silently back at him and let a hint of a smile play on my lips. He gestured with one hand, eyebrows raised in expectation.

‘Speak.’ He commanded.

The silence held. My smile grew a little wider.

He stood up, paced impatiently behind the table and grew visibly agitated. His neatly pressed uniform swished with each about turn.

‘Bryson,’ he said loudly, ‘tell me what you are talking about.’

My smile grew bigger still. He paced again then planted his hands on the table and glared.

‘Talk now,’ he said.

He pushed the heavy table out of the way and charged. The skinny man surprised me with his strength. His arms clamped around my neck and he forced me up against the wall.

It’s hard to speak with no air in your lungs. But why give him any pleasure? I stared the captain down and leveled the most condescending smile I could manage until blood rushed to my skin and capillaries puckered in search of oxygen. My head became hot and heavy and my eyes started to close.

‘Tell me!’ he screamed.

I raised my cuffed hands between us and pushed, after a moment of half-hearted resistance he let go.

I coughed and then cackled a little, clutching at my sore throat.

He’d lost control. He was a simple bully, a little man. His eyes darted from place to place with embarrassment. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘First call my editor,’ I croaked, ‘He will confirm I was on assignment for Arabian Outlook not “soliciting prostitutes”. Then I’d like to interview you, to find out why your officers actually appear to be in charge of prostitutes on the street. I’d also like to find out when you intend to arrest the sheikhs who own the hotels, apartments and bars involved in the illegal prostitution rings and human trafficking gangs.’

He settled down. ‘That is speculation,’ he tutted, ‘You have nothing.’

‘Nothing apart from the recorded testimony of prostitutes, pimps and policemen who have told me everything I need to know about this racket, including how the women are trafficked by your department in collusion with known international criminals. If you want the world to see you for what you are Khadim, jackboots and all then go ahead, press these ridiculous charges. Either way call my editor, he can pick me up or arrange a lawyer.’

‘You’re bluffing.’

Only half bluffing. Recordings of prostitutes and pimps yes, policemen no, so long as they didn’t find the memory card.

‘Try me. Dubai’s Anti-Human Trafficking Department is actually the Human Trafficking Department? It’s a dynamite story Khadim, and it’s going to blow up in your face if you carry on with these Gestapo tactics. So come on. Please. Just fucking try me.’

I felt like Dirty Harry asking the punk whether he feels lucky.

He didn’t. I tried to give him a face saving way out. ‘Perhaps someone you trust has been trafficking and pimping behind your back? Lying to you? A cousin, a nephew, a brother perhaps? Faisal for example?’ I said, testing the connection.

His face didn’t reveal a thing. He looked at me for a long time and then said, ‘Give me the number.’

He left the room and I heard him shout at someone. When he didn’t return they moved me to the holding cell.

After a surge of early evening activity the hospital’s private suites became peaceful and shadowy. Martin sat deep in thought, for once not saying anything.

I was tired of talking and thankful for the silence. The nurse hadn’t brought any more pain killers and everything hurt. I slugged back the dregs of the whisky and, not for the first time, wondered about Martin. He’d nearly finished the whole bottle on his own and didn’t seem even slightly drunk.

Maybe this was his version of my morning coffee, never getting high, just topping up the levels so that he could function normally.

The silence lingered. I looked out over the city. The arc-lights of 24-hour construction nearby provided painful stabs of illumination in the darkness. By contrast the mood-lit hotel facades in the distance gave off a soothing back light.