Skin

23

The prostitutes had started when Caffery had arrived in Bristol. Back in London there had been girlfriends, women he’d imagined he loved. Women who’d loved him. One or two he’d even lived with, letting them come to share the little terraced house he’d bought from his parents. The house Ewan had gone missing from. But he’d got to a point, with forty staring him in the face, when he’d come to understand that the only real talent he had with women was knowing how to damage them. So he went to girls he would never see again. Girls like Keelie.

The streets around City Road were busy. It wasn’t even dark yet and already the girls were out. He saw Keelie straight away – she was easy to spot. She’d made it that way by always wearing the same thing: a white Puffa with silver stripes on the side. It was a street technique so her regular punters would recognize her at a distance. It reassured them. They’d get unsettled, she said, if she changed her clothes and her hair, and would start wondering who she was hiding from and if she’d been ripping punters off. He wasn’t going to approach her in the open – didn’t know if the Tokoloshe was sitting out there somewhere in the darkness, watching – and decided to wait in the doorway of a Claire’s Accessories shop, loitering with all the girls’ gewgaws and pink sparkly things until she noticed him.

They went to a room above a pub. Under the jacket she wore a Spandex mini and a silver T-shirt. She was a tall girl with dense, freckled calves that didn’t jiggle as she walked up the stairs in front of him. She’d look like a hockey teacher if it wasn’t for her hair, highlighted the colour of cold beer, or the way her heels spread out and hung over the edges of the slingbacks.

She had a new phone. She was proud of the way she took care of herself: never going ‘bareback’, never faking it – Most of the girls do. They’ve got thigh muscles like crowbars. Grease them up and hold on tight. If he’s drunk enough he won’t know the difference. Not Keelie. She was a professional. Always used a condom. Always made a safety call on her mobile: repeating the name of the punter, his appearance, the car registration and where she was going to be. She’d done it the night they’d been together in Caffery’s car in the alley, but watching her now he doubted she was actually speaking to anyone, standing with her back to him, hip leaning against the sink, one finger holding up the dingy curtain to look out into the street at her colleagues. She probably wouldn’t want to spare the price of a phone call. It made him a little sad to think of this token effort to be tough, sensible. Like it would save her somehow.

‘Why’d you change your phone number?’

She put the phone in her bag and came over to the chair. ‘Why d’you think? I only gave it to repeat clients.’ She leant on the word ‘clients’ as if it would make her sound as if her business was law, or corporate espionage, or interior design. ‘But sometimes they take the piss. Start thinking I run a jerk-off phone line or that it’s cool to call me at six in the morning while their wife’s in the shower or something.’ She lifted one foot on to her knee and unbuckled the slingback. ‘That, or the wife gets hold of the number and starts having an epi at me down the line. Do you want these on? The heels?’

‘No.’

She pulled off the scuffed shoes and kicked them under the chair, then opened her bag and took out a cigarette. Lit it. ‘Look at the smoke alarm.’ She nodded at the ceiling. The padding of a bra had been gaffer-taped to the sensor. ‘That’s what most of the girls round here think of no-smoking rooms.’ She got up, stepped out of her knickers and kicked them under the chair. They had an Ann Summers label sewn inside. Ann Summers. Respectable sex. High-street stuff now. Not like when he was starting out in London – when you had to go all the way to Berwick Street to be sure of finding a sex shop. ‘You’re my last tonight. I’ve done well.’

‘You can keep them on.’

‘The heels?’

‘The knickers.’

‘Eh?’

‘Just talk.’

She eyed him. ‘You’ve paid me now. Once you’ve paid me it’s a done deal. You change your mind and you’re the one’s got to suck it up.’

‘Keep the money.’

She took a couple of drags on the cigarette, looked him up and down. ‘I can’t be here more than fifteen minutes – that’s it. Talk isn’t cheaper than sex. OK?’

‘It’s about a punter.’

‘Oh, no, you’re not doing that. I know you’re a cop, Jack.’

‘Since when?’

‘Always have.’

‘How?’

‘The way you walk. Like you think you’re going to get jumped any second.’

‘Is that why you never look me in the eye?’

‘No. I don’t look you in the eye because you don’t want anyone looking you in the eye. I knew that the first time I saw you. Here’s someone who doesn’t want to be reminded of what he’s doing, I thought. Has to be a cop.’

He shifted on the bed. ‘Can I have a cigarette?’

She held them out. He took one and let her light it. Her nails were elaborate: each had a snowflake motif in silver glitter. The sort of thing a girl could spend hours on and a guy might never notice in his rush to get the needs of his dick established.

‘You’ll want to talk about this punter. I just have a feeling you will.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘You’re lucky I’m paying for your time. I could take you in for the night. Or throw a Section 60 at the street and no one’ll work the whole weekend. That’ll make you flavour of the month.’

She sighed, stood up and flicked the line of ash into the sink. She picked up her knickers and pulled them on.

‘Go on, then.’ She sat in the chair, legs pushed out, toes pointing inwards. Sullen. ‘What d’you want?’

‘You heard about the arrests.’ He lifted a pillow out from under the red quilt and lay back on it, his feet crossed on the bed. ‘Over the weekend. The lad with his head half cut off.’

‘That wasn’t round here. It was the other side of the motorway. Easton.’

‘But one of the players was a punter down here. I think you’ll remember him. Black guy. African. Really, really short.’

She laughed. ‘Chip, you mean? If you’d said it was him you wanted to talk about you wouldn’t’ve never had to threaten me. That sort of thing is free.’

‘Chip, you called him? Was that his name?’

‘Think so. His second name.’

‘Clement Chipeta?’

‘No. He was Amos. Amos Chipeta.’

Caffery had the cigarette to his mouth, but now he paused. ‘Amos? Are you sure?’

‘Yes, the fucking freak. Totally did my head in.’

Caffery lowered the cigarette, staring at her. ‘And,’ he said, his mouth dry, ‘what did Amos Chipeta look like?’

‘You said you knew.’

‘I said he was small. That’s all I know.’

‘Well, he is – a dwarf, I’d say. But not just your usual midget. He was a total freak – you know, real Elephant Man freak. He used to have this parka he wore with the hood up over his face so you couldn’t see what he looked like and he was always hanging around. Watching us. Then one evening he comes over – he’s saved up all this money. Offers me two times my usual and I’m, like, no fucking way! I’m, like, oh, that’s so minging, just the thought of it. No way am I sleeping with a mutant. Not even for twice.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Dunno. Couple of weeks ago.’ She dragged on the cigarette again. ‘So? Are you saying he was connected with the thing in Easton?’

‘Maybe.’

She shivered. ‘Gross.’

Caffery smoked the cigarette, thinking of the figure in the Norway video, hunched over. There is, he thought, a place where myth and reality merge. Amos Chipeta. Maybe the Tokoloshe had just taken a step out of the shadows.

‘Keelie, do you know why he’d have any interest in me?’

‘Yeah.’ She made the word go up and down. Yeee-aahh. Like: Why’re you asking me this Raass question? ‘He wants to be like you, hun.’ She leant forward, head on one side, smiling too widely at him. ‘Wants your mojo, baby. Cos you is cool, Daddy-O.’

‘I’ve got my eye on the clock, Keelie.’

She sighed and slouched back in the chair. ‘He just wants what you’ve got.’

‘Why me?’

‘Cos I’d been with you. He’s jealous.’

‘How’d he know I’d been with you?’

‘Cos I told him. Duh.’

‘You have, what, ten different men a night?’

‘That’s a good night. A very good night. Try five.’

‘Five different men a night. Is he following all of them?’

‘No.’

‘Then why’d he single me out?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘No.’

Keelie let the smoke out of her mouth and looked at him for a long time, almost as if she pitied him. Then she struggled, stood up and dropped the cigarette butt into the sink. It made a small hiss.

‘You want a BJ?’

‘Time’s up.’ He held his wrist over to her to show his watch. ‘Nine o’clock.’

‘I’ll make more time.’

He looked at the side of her face, her eyelashes lowered. He saw the need there and for a moment he wanted to reach for her. But he didn’t.

‘That’s OK. But thank you, Keelie. Seriously. Thank you.’

‘Are we finished, then?’

‘We’re finished.’

He got up, went to the sink and pulled back the curtain. It was late but the sky through the buildings was a fluorescent blue. Almost indigo. It was worse in the summer, this job the girls did. This thing that men like him did. Somehow it felt worse. In the winter it was OK to live in the dark, to keep chapped skin covered and never look in each other’s eyes.

In the summer it felt like an insult.