Hard Girls Read online

  Patrick grinned back at him, but the job had been done. Danny Boy wouldn’t be late with the figures again.

  Jennifer James was fed up, and it showed. Peter Bates was like a fucking old woman about the girls and, as much as she understood his worry, she was sick of listening to him go on about it. He owned the premises, so he had to expect to get a tug at some point. He was lucky they weren’t all over him. He had been given a swerve, and he still couldn’t see how lucky he was. He was worrying over nothing. He had made a bad error of judgement, it had happened and it was over. Anyway, she always looked out for herself first and foremost. She knew where the proverbial bodies were buried, and she had the edge on the wealthy boys who were frightened of their carnal relationships becoming public knowledge.

  ‘You’ll have to talk to the girls’ families at some point, Peter, they’re going to want some compensation, and who can blame them? I told you to leave well alone, and you still insisted on doing a Kim and Aggie. Well, now we have to sort out the rest of the girls, and make sure we keep everything and everyone safe.’ Jennifer sighed then. ‘Well, as safe as anyone can be in this game. And we do need to listen to young Danny, he is doing the talking for Kelly so we need to at least look interested. We can only learn from our mistakes.’

  Peter nodded, but he was not a happy man. ‘Fucking animal, if I get me hands on the ponce that killed those girls I’ll fucking gut him.’

  Jennifer laughed wearily. ‘Join the queue, but until he is caught, we need to get ourselves organised. We can safely assume that the bloke needs privacy so working in pairs seems the best option. It’ll give us all a measure of security. What we don’t want is any kind of heavies on the firm. The men who come to our girls will not want to feel intimidated, and a big hairy-arsed bouncer type will do just that.’

  Peter nodded. ‘How are the girls? Have any gone on the trot yet?’

  ‘A few, but not as many as you’d think. What we need now is damage limitation, as the big banks would put it. We need to make sure the girls do not aggravate the neighbours, do not bring unwanted attention to themselves and, most of all, do not allow themselves to be drugged. Though with the majority of them, it would be hard to tell either way. Once this is all over, we can get back to normal.’

  ‘Have you put the word out then, Jen?’

  Jennifer nodded sagely. ‘What do you think?’

  Chapter Four

  ‘I feel like we’re running in circles, we have nothing to go on. Either this person is fucking invisible, or people are just not registering him.’

  Kate and Annie had gone over everything again and again, and there was not one thing that stood out, not one thing that was even suspicious.

  ‘George Markham was like that. A really nondescript little man. But for all that, he was a devious little fucker. The trouble with the working girls is they have so many people in and out of their lives on a daily basis. So we need to start collating details of the girls and the punters sooner rather than later. We will have to talk to them, all of them, and Jennifer James will help us with that, whether she likes it or not. She’ll have their names, addresses and their fucking bra sizes, knowing her. We need to see if the girls themselves have any inkling as to who it might be. Anyone who freaked them out, scared them, or threatened them, has to be looked into.’

  Annie didn’t answer Kate for a while. ‘Do you want me to talk to Patrick? Even though he has ironed out any personal involvement with the arsehole, he still needs to be talked to, we have to rule him out.’

  Kate knew Annie was speaking sense, she just didn’t want to dwell on Patrick’s involvement. She had walked down this road before. ‘You take him, Annie, I’ll take Jennifer James. Bates is no good, as we’ve already found out. He can talk for hours and not say a word, have you noticed that? A born bullshitter. We need to get a list of all the girls in their employ, and also find out who else is running Toms for hire. As we said before, we need to try and find out who might be the most vulnerable. As it happens, why haven’t we heard anything about prostitution in this locality from our own guys yet? I find that a bit suspect, don’t you?’

  ‘A lot of this is suspect, but there’s such a fine line these days between the force and the people they are supposed to be after. Anyway, it’s always the same with vice, no one wants to know. It’s only the nice girls getting bumped off that makes the powers that be sit up and take notice. We both know that if these girls weren’t being brutally butchered no one would give a toss. If they were being killed and dumped somewhere out of the way, who would really notice?’

  Kate knew Annie spoke the truth, street girls were often reported missing, but their lives were so precarious anyway that the assumption was always that they had upped sticks and moved on to a new city. They lived transient lives and, accordingly, they were not regarded as top priority when they moved on. But these girls were being murdered in nice flats, and were in full possession of their families. They were not people whose disappearance would go unnoticed. Yet they were being slaughtered, and there had to be a reason for it. There had to be some kind of common denominator between them and, once they found out what that was, they might then be able to work out who was responsible. But at the moment, they were pissing in the wind.

  ‘You look terrible, Kate.’

  The words, spoken so honestly, made Kate smile. There was one thing you could never accuse Jennifer James of, and that was being indirect. She said it exactly how she saw it. Unless it was about her work, her actual involvement in the said work, or her whereabouts on certain occasions, that is. Jennifer was very close; she kept things she felt were unnecessary out of conversations. She was every Face’s dream employee.

  ‘I feel terrible, but then I am investigating two gruesome murders. It tends to make you feel a bit rough, Jen, as I’m sure you can imagine. After all, you knew the girls personally, so I reckon you must be taking this very hard too.’

  Jennifer didn’t react. Kate wasn’t entirely surprised, Patrick had once remarked that Jennifer James was harder than a monk’s jockstrap.

  ‘What do you mean, you’re investigating? I thought you were long gone from the Bill shop. Or was I misinformed?’

  Kate sighed then. ‘Are we going to fuck about all night, Jen? Only, like you, I’m a bit long in the tooth for the job I once held, but by the same token, my experience is invaluable. So why don’t we have a drink and talk like grown-ups? If you can’t find it in your heart to do that, then you can come to the station and talk to someone else, someone, I might add, who won’t turn a blind eye to your involvement in not only the running of the brothels, but also your obvious involvement in the money that was earned. You’re a money person, Jen, you always were. So cut the crap, I’m not in the mood.’

  Jennifer shook her head in mock despair. She was still a looker, and Kate admired her for her stance. Like any woman in a world that was predominantly male, she had to be quicker, shrewder, and willing to hide her light under the nearest bushel until she knew she was safe to come out into the open.

  ‘Patrick’s like a dog without a tail, why don’t you go and talk to him? You know he can’t cope without you.’

  Kate grinned. ‘Well, he’d better learn. Now, tell me how the flats work, who the regulars are, and how you organise the girls and their earn. I want the truth this time; you and Bates have run rings round everyone else, I want the real deal. I can cause serious aggravation for you even though you are hand in glove with my boss. Everyone has a head that I can go over if need be, remember that.’

  Jennifer walked across her kitchen. It was an expensive one, and Kate knew Jen was proud of it. It was, like the rest of her house, bought and paid for. It was modern, spotlessly clean, and it made Jennifer feel good every time she walked into it. Opening a cupboard she said quietly, ‘Whisky do you?’

  Kate smiled her assent. She took the glass offered her and waited for Jennifer to seat herself at the scrubbed pine table. Jennifer sat down in the chair beside Kate, not opposite, a
s might be expected. Lighting a cigarette, she pulled on it deeply before saying, ‘Honestly, Kate, I don’t think it’s a regular. The girls talk, you know, and I ain’t heard nothing that’s alerted me to a nut-bag. It’s hard these days. There are so many fucking opportunities now for the punters. Years ago, we would have been the only game in town, now we have to advertise on the internet as well as the local papers, and we are still up against it. It’s a fucking hard graft, girl, and the people we employ know that. Some of them have a dabble off the books, and I accept a bit of that, and turn a blind eye. No one can be expected to hand over all their fucking dosh. I mean, it ain’t like they are paying tax, is it? But anything on the off, I would have heard about, and I swear there ain’t nothing been said.’

  Kate sipped her whisky and let Jennifer’s words sink in, they made a lot of sense. The girls always warned each other about any Looney Tunes they might encounter. Even if they hated each other, they wouldn’t see any girl come up against a dangerous punter. It was an unwritten law; they had to look out for each other because they knew that no one else was going to do it for them.

  ‘Some of the girls are paying their way through university, others are doing it to get a deposit for a flat or pay for their drugs. Most are trying to keep their kids and their heads above water. You know the score as well as I do.’

  ‘Why were the girls working the night shift alone? I’ve not heard of that before. Safety in numbers has always been the mantra for working girls. What’s changed?’

  Jennifer shrugged and rolled her heavily made-up eyes. ‘Do you know what, Kate, girls today are a different breed. They want to do their earn without the benefit of competition. They are happy to work alone, it’s a different world now. They take the calls themselves, they email the punters and answer fucking texts. Some of them even have a code on Facebook, they’re on there as cartoons. Avatars. I can’t keep up with them, and I stopped trying to a long time ago. All I can do is warn them and, believe me, I do. But look at Danielle, she had three separate mobiles. One of them was a BlackBerry, Danni was online all the time, she did a lot of her business in cyberspace. A lot of the girls do now. You tell me, in all honesty, how the fuck can I police that?’

  Kate could hear the feeling of futility in Jennifer’s voice. She understood that she was way over her head where the girls were concerned. She had given up trying to keep up, and who could blame her? These girls were computer literate, were part of the cyber-generation. For them it was something to embrace, they were used to it and its convenience. But Kate and Jennifer, like many of their generation, were wary of it, didn’t trust it, didn’t understand how it was now an accepted part of life. They felt that it was something wonderful, but also something dangerous because it was something that was both easily accessed and easily abused.

  ‘I read somewhere, Jen, that there are kids in China who have never physically interacted with another child: their only contact with other kids is through the internet. How scary is that?’

  Jennifer refilled their glasses. ‘Janie was online as well. I think they felt safer, as mad as that sounds. I think they also liked the anonymity of using the computer. It made it less personal for them. Does that make sense, Kate?’

  Kate understood what Jen was saying, but she still didn’t understand how the girls collated their earnings and paid their dues. And, if Jennifer James was watching over them, then that was exactly what they would be expected to do, and do it with the minimum of fuss. So there had to be some kind of legislation in place, Jennifer wasn’t the type to let anything get past her.

  ‘So how did you manage to crunch their earnings then? How did you know what they were averaging? You charge them for use of the premises, and you also take a hefty percentage of their overall wage. So how did you work that out, and how did you know how many punters they averaged, online or off?’

  Jennifer was quiet for a few minutes, and Kate saw that she was battling with herself about how much to actually admit. Kate could understand that, after all, she was the enemy in every way. This time though, they were both after a common goal. So she said as much. ‘I don’t give a flying fuck how much goes through Bates’s hands, or anyone else’s hands, for that matter. I just want to know how you get to the end result.’

  ‘I averaged it on hours. I couldn’t find out anything for certain, so I done it all on averages. As I said, I also turned an occasional blind eye, it’s par for the course in this game. No one can expect them to weigh up for everyone that comes through the door. But I tell you now, Kate, the girls pretty much police themselves. I just work out the average, it’s all I can do given the circumstances. If the client rings in, then I can put them down as a definite. If they text the girls on one of the house mobiles, I can trace that, the same with the online registrations that come through our website. But if the girls themselves give the punters a private number, or a private email, then I am fucked. I can’t prove anything and they know it.’

  ‘How many flats are we actually looking at, just your girls?’

  ‘Twenty in Grantley alone, that’s without the ones spread all over the South East. With different owners. We can’t keep up with the demand, not just from the punters, but from girls asking to be taken on.’

  ‘I’m going to need all the information you have, you do realise that, don’t you?’

  Jennifer swallowed down her whisky. ‘I have it ready for you, it’s out in the hall. And I can email the computer files. All the girls’ names and addresses, all the places we work them out of, everything. I hope you find the bastard, because whoever he is, he needs taking down a peg, sooner rather than later.’

  ‘To be completely honest, we’ve got nothing, Jen. Not a fucking brass razoo. He comes and goes without anyone even noticing. But then that’s par for the course in this game, isn’t it? No one wants to advertise the fact that they have to pay for sexual favours. It doesn’t matter how nice the girls might be, or how up-market the premises they work out of are. The men are still buying the girls’ time, and that’s not something they would want broadcast to the nation.’

  Jennifer grinned then, and her whole countenance changed. She looked younger, brighter and Kate saw the girl she had once been. ‘Now, all the regulars are in the file and so are the numbers we have for them, or their online bookings. I’ve also put in the details from the casuals. I warn you though, most of the men use public call boxes, or internet cafes. But saying that, a lot do use their own phones, even landlines or work numbers. In fairness, the majority are harmless, and won’t think for a minute they are going to get a tug. But, as I said before, the girls all have their own little earners, and I can’t help you with those. Our business is reliant on people’s anonymity, not just the punters’, but that of the girls involved as well. So you’d better understand how hard it’s going to be to get the girls to open up to you.’

  Lisa Blare was petite in every sense of the word. Just under five foot tall, she was well proportioned. Her hair was very long, past her waist, and she had a centre parting that framed her heart-shaped face to perfection. Her eyes were a very light blue, and she wore the minimum of make-up. She was twenty-two years old, but she knew she looked much younger. She dressed the part, from the schoolgirl skirt purchased from Marks & Spencer, to her long white socks courtesy of Asda. Coupled with a white shirt that barely covered her ample breasts, and a navy-blue tie, she knew she was every inch the jail bait her punters desired. She also knew better than to work in tandem, the other girls didn’t like her because she was a bit too pretty and a bit too babyish. Against her, most of the other girls looked jaded. Lisa knew her worth, and she knew exactly how to extract it from her customers.

  Against the odds, and despite growing up in care, Lisa was at university, and expected to earn herself a good degree in English literature in the near future. Meanwhile, she needed money, and she wanted a nest egg, a decent nest egg. She never wanted to be poor again. She knew as well as anybody how important money was, that without it you could d
o nothing. Without it, you had no independence.

  She slipped out of her uniform and hung it up neatly in the small wardrobe. She rented this room for her work. It suited her purpose, and she knew the rest of the house was inhabited by like-minded individuals. She had branched out on her own so she could keep herself and her job as private as possible. She had decided she was better off alone, and she had been right. Now she kept most of the money she earned, and she chose her own hours.

  She glanced at her watch, her last appointment was due any minute, and she checked her make-up and hair before slipping on a grey gymslip and black silk stockings. She forced her feet into impossibly high black stilettos and, lighting a cigarette, she put a jazz CD into the player by her bed. Then, after snorting a big, fat line of cocaine, she sat and waited patiently for her last call of the day.

  Kate was stretched out in the bath, a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was shattered, and she knew she needed to get some sleep.

  Patrick had been leaving messages everywhere and she had not answered any of them. She needed time to herself. She needed to be able to concentrate on what she was doing.

  She was still angry at him, angry that he didn’t see what he had done as wrong. Pat was a law unto himself, and she had been attracted to that side of him but, as the years had gone on, she had come to resent him for his cavalier attitude to the world and the people in it. She knew he laughed at her because she was so straight, as he would put it. But it was how she lived her life, and he knew that as well as she knew that he couldn’t be straight if his life depended on it.