Working privately can be a daunting undertaking; each day you take the risk that some nut job will turn up and kill you. At the same time I was working as a private girl, the Claremont serial killer was wreaking havoc not two kilometres from my front door. I had a constant fear that if this homicidal lunatic ever ran out of vulnerable victims on the streets of Claremont, he only had to phone me, I’d hand over my home address and he could kill me totally undisturbed.
Caller ID was not always entirely reliable, since if a call came through on a landline it could be a central number for a big office or a hotel. In those days mobile phone companies didn’t ask you to give ID for a prepaid card, so a lot of working girls registered sim cards under bodgie names, as did dodgy clients.
One Friday in summer about four pm, we received a booking from a landline. He asked a lot of specific questions about our discretion.
‘I want to be very discreet, so it’s not an agency is it?’
We always responded with the same line: ‘No, you’re stuck with me!’ Usually this throwaway line got a giggle, but he wasn’t laughing. He didn’t seem interested in my prices, he just wanted the address and a description, which triggered alarm bells.
‘Who shall I be expecting?’
‘Oh, just call me John.’ More alarm bells.
He turned up ten minutes late, casually dressed in jeans with a button-down short sleeve floral shirt and a cap. As he turned around to close the door behind him, I could see cable ties sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans.
‘What’s that in your pocket?’ I asked.
He quickly readjusted his shirt to cover the items. ‘What? Nothing.’
‘Well, I definitely saw something, so let’s have a peek.’
He was looking and behaving quite agitated at this point. ‘Look there’s nothing in my pocket, are we going to do this or what?’
My brain was reeling, I did not trust this guy, something was definitely not kosher. Ordinarily, I show the clients into my room, close the door, and ask them how long they were wanting to stay. But on this occasion, I decided to have the conversation in the hall, where the well-hidden phone girl could hear what was being said.
‘So I’ll now take some money from you, sorry at this late hour I can only offer you half an hour. That will be $170, thank you.’ Before I could finish my sentence he had stooped and picked me up in a fireman’s lift. I was staring directly at those dreaded cable ties clearly exposed once again. My feet were on his groin and my stomach was hurting as it rested on his shoulder. He found the bedroom and threw me on the bed.
As he reached for his restraining devices, I kicked him with my seriously pointy shoe right under the jaw, and I screamed, ‘David! David! Help! I’m being attacked!’
The man jumped off the bed in record speed. Of course there was no David, but if I yelled ‘Liz!’ I’m not sure he would have been as deterred. Liz came flying in from another room, and we faced each other in a triangle. I could see what he was thinking: Liz was tiny and I wasn’t much bigger. I’m sure for a moment he considered restraining and raping us both.
Breaking the Mexican standoff, I screamed at Liz, ‘Go call the police, now!’
As she turned to follow my instructions he took his opportunity and bolted for the door.
Relief came over me, I wanted to slam the door shut and double lock it for my own safety. I have no idea why I didn’t, but I ran into the lounge room, grabbed the booking sheet and pen and followed him out to his car. As he got in and sped off I wrote his licence plate number down and ran back inside. Liz was on the phone to the police. I grabbed the phone from her mid-sentence.
The policewoman was sympathetic and very professional up until she realised she was dealing with a sex worker. At that point, her voice seemed to change an octave and her disinterest was almost palpable.
‘Oh, this is a vice issue, you will need to call them, here’s their number . . .’
I wanted to throw the phone against the wall, I wanted to give that bitch a torrent of abuse, but instead I bit my tongue and called the number she gave me.
‘Hello, you have called the Perth Vice Squad, our office hours are Monday to Friday eight thirty am to four thirty pm. If you would like one of our officers to call you back, please leave your name and number after the beep. Thank you for calling.’ Motherfucking bastards.
‘Hi this is Cleo, I have just been attacked by a nut job with cable ties, I got his licence plate number, please call me back on oh eight . . .’
Wednesday of the following week the vice squad finally called me back, only because they’d now had six other complaints by working girls, which means that he must have attacked nine or more, because few girls want to talk to vice. It appears I was his first attempt, then he modified his method for best effect. The police were calling me because I had been the only girl to have recorded his phone number and licence plate.