‘He has some strange ideas,’ I said, joining her on the sofa.
‘And some good ones.’ I looked at her. ‘Oh, come on. You have to admit that as business plans go, matching well-off, middle-aged men with broke teenage girls isn’t bad …’
‘His opinion of it might change after I’ve spoken to him. When are you expecting Daddy home?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘On about the same timescale as Ollie Cartwright. What would you say? Twenty years or so, with good behaviour?’
‘What are you talking about?’
She regarded me for a moment and slipped off her heels, so she could stand up without banging her head. She went to a small desk in the corner of the room and opened a drawer. When she came back to join me on the sofa, she handed me an envelope with my name scrawled across it. She shifted closer until our knees were touching, as though eager to see what was inside. I opened it and poured the pictures out into my palm. They were the same ones that Ricky had found in The Temple. They showed me leaving home with a bag of cash. Buying drugs, anonymously, at the station, entering Cartwright’s building. When I left I didn’t have the bag any more. The final picture showed me staring, directly at the camera.
The car that had been parked behind mine.
‘You took these?’
‘No …’ She laughed. She touched my leg and looked at me with real pity. ‘I don’t find you that interesting.’
‘Explain,’ I said, moving her hand away.
She smiled. ‘After you came to the club screaming sexual harassment, Daddy put a private detective on you.’
‘Why?’
‘You were a threat, but maybe one he could neutralize. Plus blackmail really turns him on. All that power. Anyway, the private dick – that’s what you call them, don’t you? – the dick knew what was up when you bought the drugs, but he didn’t know Imperial Point was where a friend of my father’s lived. He thought you were just some bent cop acting as a middle-man, selling them on. When I saw the pictures I was one up on him. I knew Ollie lived there. I knew you were trying to help Sophie. I knew different …’
There was a rumble of footsteps from the hallway and I turned to see the two doormen bursting into the room.
‘That’s enough,’ said Alicia. They stopped.
‘Miss Russell—’
‘I said fuck off, thanks.’
They trudged out of the room.
She took the pictures from my lap and began sorting through. Reinserting them back into the envelope. ‘My mother left when I was fifteen,’ she said. ‘At sixteen, Daddy decided I should become the face of the business.’ She handed me the envelope. ‘The rest of my anatomy followed soon after.’
I accepted the pictures. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Oh, he wasn’t my pimp,’ she said, impatiently. ‘He just encouraged me to spend time with customers. Get my face out there and make them feel good. As the club got more popular, he got more ambitious. He realized he’d tapped into something here. It wasn’t just the age difference, he said. In a lot of ways that was the least of it. It was the power balance that our customers enjoyed. Things had changed in his lifetime. He said women were more like men now, loud and crass. Premium call girls were a step in the right direction, but watching the men out on the floor, he realized they wanted something deeper. An experience. They didn’t want to hand over old notes in a travel lodge for a dry handjob. They wanted to pay premium membership fees for a club where they could sit down at a table and some pretty thing would join them. Touch their arm and laugh at their shitty old jokes. The question was, where to find the right kind of girl? Young, pretty, na?ve and broke …’
‘Students,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Economic doom and gloom, exploding tuition fees and a town with three universities in close proximity. Daddy says geography’s destiny. He got girls through the door with free drinks then started to give them credit. Once they were comfortable with that he’d lend them money. Payday loans at 60 per cent interest. When they couldn’t pay, he offered them some work. Sex was never mentioned. Never once. He just let them off their repayments to come here and act natural. He’d give them the names and descriptions of certain men, his gold members, and tell the girls to hang off their every word.’
‘And the men paid?’
She laughed. ‘Happily. What’s a couple of hundred a week when they can come here and have someone half their age fawning over them? They don’t even need to talk to anyone. To set anything up or feel seedy. They just buy a drink and sit in one of our reserved booths. It almost feels real …’
‘But some girls did go home with the men.’
‘Nothing to do with us,’ she said, holding up both hands. ‘But of course, Daddy knew that a night of drink and small talk would give us a good enough hit-rate to keep things going. He knew some girls would want to make bigger dents in their loans than others. The kind of clients he had were always going to expect more …’
‘What kinds of people are we talking about?’
‘Businessmen, politicians, press. Even some friends of yours …’
I frowned and she eyeballed me.
‘What’s it worth?’ she said.
‘I might not arrest you on the spot.’
‘Big words for a man holding pictures of himself planting evidence.’
Now I smiled. ‘You don’t know anything about me, Alicia.’ I stood, crouching away from the low ceiling. ‘I’ll take these to the police myself before I’ll be Guy Russell’s man.’
Her lips parted and I heard the strain in her voice. ‘I hoped you’d say that …’ She thought for a moment and stood, went to the desk. ‘This friend of yours …’ She handed me another picture of myself, on the street, talking to Freddie Coyle. ‘He’s a regular here.’
‘I didn’t realize your father was so broad-minded.’ She frowned and I explained. ‘Freddie Coyle’s gay.’
She laughed. ‘If Freddie’s gay then, well, I’m a man.’
‘He’s a regular here?’
‘Like clockwork,’ she said, drawing closer. ‘And I’d rather you didn’t take those pictures of yourself to the police.’
‘Why not?’
‘I thought it was cool, what you did for her.’ She smiled to cover some genuine emotion. ‘I was glad to see it, anyway. Gerry, the private dick, came here the day Daddy was travelling to Dubai.’ She must have seen my face change. ‘You didn’t know? Daddy and Ollie are best buds. They do everything together. I wonder how they’re getting on now? The dick came here while Daddy was at home getting ready. I said I’d pass on the message, the pictures. Must have slipped my mind. I liked your style …’ She looked up into my eyes. ‘I found it inspiring.’ She put her head on my shoulder and whispered into my ear. ‘So I bought a bag of coke, too. I went home to kiss him goodbye and slipped a little something into his suitcase.’
I stepped back.
‘The opportunity of a lifetime. And like he always said, geography’s destiny. So while he’s in a Dubai jail, fighting drugs charges, he’ll have to transfer the business over to me. I see Incognito going in a slightly different direction from now on …’
‘So you’ve got nothing to gain from these coming out,’ I said, holding up the pictures.
‘I’ve got everything to lose. I just wanted to rattle your chain a bit by leaving them at your local …’ She touched the bruises on my face. ‘I hope you didn’t get yourself into trouble, blaming other people?’
‘No trouble,’ I said.
‘Good …’ She was right up against me, looking into my eyes. Then she turned dismissively away like it had never happened. She’d got what she wanted.
‘The night we first met, when you followed me outside to the street …’ I said to her back.
‘What about it?’
‘You weren’t angry that I’d poured a drink on your dad’s head.’
She shrugged. ‘It looked good on him.’
‘You wanted to tell me where Cartwright lived, how to get to him. What happened between the two of you?’