Twelve Days of Winter: Crime at Christmas

4: Calling Birds

Agnes is in the full throws of simulated orgasm when Tracy finally gets someone to answer their damn phone. The word, ‘Hello?’ pops into her earpiece.

‘Can I speak to the home owner?’ Ignoring the cries of ‘Yes! Yes! Oh GOD YES!!!’ coming from the next cubicle along.

‘Why?’

‘I’m calling from PVSafe solutions: if you could replace all the windows in your house for free, how many would you replace?’

‘Oh for goodness sake: I was in the bloody bath! BUGGER OFF!’ The clatter of a phone being slammed down, then the indifferent ‘burrrrrr’ of an open line.

Tracy groans, unplugs her headset and levers herself out of her seat. Bladder’s killing her. Correction: the baby’s foot in her bladder is killing her. At forty-one weeks pregnant she looks like she’s swallowed a sofa and feels like it too. She picks a wedge of floral-print maternity dress from between her buttocks. Very classy.

She waddles over to Mr Aziz, who sits at a desk by the door squinting at a copy of the Racing Post. Picking the horses he’s going to lose money on tomorrow.

Tracy holds out her hand. ‘Pee break.’

He doesn’t even look up at her. ‘Again?’

‘Yes, again.’

He shrugs and passes her the bathroom key. She only gets paid for the calls she makes, so who cares if she spends half the evening in the toilets? Five minutes later she’s standing at the coffee machine, crunching away on a handful of antacid tablets, waiting for her camomile tea to infuse, sniffing the heady aroma of percolator coffee and wishing to God this damn baby would hurry up so she can get back to proper drinks again. Got enough on her plate without having to give up caffeine and alcohol too. She nods as Agnes limps over. ‘How’s it going?’

The old lady grins, exposing a perfect set of brand-new dentures. ‘Twenty-one so far.’ Agnes leans forward, voice dropping to a theatrical whisper. ‘I’m gonnae get Mr McWhirter one of them cashmere cardigans from Markies.’ She pats her rock-solid blue-rinsed hairdo. ‘And maybe get myself a new hat, from Santa. What about you dear? How you holdin’ up?’

Tracy shrugs. ‘Been better.’ She tries for a smile – risky, because the tears were never far away. Especially when someone offered sympathy. ‘Chloe’s missing her granny, dad’s distraught, and John’s lost his job. . .’ Right on cue her eyes fill up. ‘I’m sorry,’ She sniffs, running a hand over her puffy face. ‘Bloody hormones aren’t helping.’

Agnes doesn’t say anything, just envelops her in a hug that smells of Parma Violets, Mint Imperials, and stale cigarettes. ‘You should go home.’

‘I . . . I can’t.’ Tracy pulls a tatty hanky from her sleeve and blows her nose. ‘We need the money for Mum’s funeral.’ Sniff.

Agnes looks back at the row of cubicles. ‘Tell you what, I’m doin’ fine this month: why don’t you take over my phone for a bit? Be “Sexy Sadie” for a while. Easy money. . . Aye as long as you don’t mind all the screaming.’ She winks. ‘Nothing like it to get your knickers waggin’, though. Soon as you get home you’ll be tearing the pants off that husband of yours.’

Tracy pats her swollen midriff. ‘That’s how I got into trouble in the first place.’

Tracy shifts in her seat. Bloody haemorrhoids are worse than the hormones. Can’t get Agnes’s headset to sit properly either – keeps digging into her ear. ‘I’ve got your big hard dick in my mouth and I’m sucking like. . .’ She stares into space for a moment. ‘Like a vacuum cleaner!’

‘Unnngh, unnnngh, ungggh. . .’ From the other end of the phone.

‘God you’re so big!’ There’s something very liberating about having pretend sex on the phone with strangers. Saying things she’d never dream of saying to John. ‘Oh, yes, like that: I love it when you bite my arse!’

‘Unnnngh, unnnnngh, unnnnnnnngh!’

‘Come on my tits!’

‘Unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngh!’ Pant, pant, pant. ‘Oh God. . .’ Sigh.

Tracy checks the timer – three minutes fifteen seconds. The quickest one yet. For a moment she almost tells him not to worry, it happens to all men at some point, but that’s probably not what Mr Heavy Breathing wants to hear. So she settles for, ‘Oh, you were soooo good! I’m rubbing your spunk all over my big firm breasts.’ A little more post-coital smut brings the call up to six and a half minutes.

‘You know, Dear,’ Agnes leans on the cubicle wall, half-moon spectacles balanced on the end of her nose, ‘you need to slow them down a bit. As soon as they. . . You know. . .’ She makes a euphemistic hand gesture, which is ironic considering she’s spent most of the evening telling complete strangers to fuck her harder. ‘Once they’ve “finished”: they hang up, and you stop getting paid. Don’t go straight for the mince and tatties – tease them. You’ll make a lot more money.’ She looks left and right, like she’s about to impart a trade secret. ‘I always do this big long striptease – they love it.’

‘Striptease is it?’ Daphne McCafferty pokes her head over from the cubicle opposite. ‘I likes to touch myself all over. Gets them all hot and bothered, and it takes forever when you’re my size!’ She laughs, throwing her head back, making her chins wobble. Daphne McCafferty – AKA: Naughty Nikki – sixty-three next April.

The only one not offering up any advice is ‘Busty Becky’, a granny from Dundee with an artificial hip, white hair and a big hairy mole on her chin. She just sits there, clickity-clacking away – moaning into her headset and knitting at the same time. Making a big woolly jumper with reindeer on it, while someone wanks into her ear on a premium-rate phonecall. ‘Ooh, it’s so big!’ Knit one, pearl one. ‘You know you want it. Beg for it. Get on your hands and knees and beg.’

Mr Aziz comes over to see what all the standing around is in aid of. ‘What?’ He’s got his hands in the pockets of his cardigan, stretching it all out of shape. ‘Why am I not hearing the sounds of hot passion?’

Agnes slaps him on the back, making him lose his balance. ‘We’re just impartin’ the tricks of the trade to young Tracy here, aren’t we Daphne?’

‘Aye,’ Daphne grins, ‘we’re gonnae turn her intae a top-flight phone-sex girl. Like in that movie with Rex Harrison and the old geezer.’ Her grin turned into a frown. ‘Oh, what’s it called. . . You know, the one with ‘“I’m gettin’ married in the mornin’”. . .’

She launches into the song and Agnes joins in, all merry and jolly until ‘Busty Becky’ stands, one hand clamped over her mouthpiece. ‘Will you lot keep it down? I’m trying to bugger a solicitor called Steve from Castleview, and he’s a bit flighty about the size of my strap-on.’

The singing dissolves into grins and sighs, then everyone goes back to their phones. Everyone except for Agnes and Tracy.

Mr Aziz frowns at her. ‘How come you’re on the Sexy Sadie line, then? I mean, no offence, but I think you’re a bit young for the phone sex business.’

‘I need the money, it’s my mother’s-’

‘Look, Tracy,’ Mr Aziz lays a hand on her shoulder, ‘I like you and I understand that you’ve got problems, but my customers expect a certain level of service when they phone up. They-’

‘Hoy!’ Agnes pokes him in the chest. ‘Now you listen to me, Kamuzu Aziz, that poor girl can talk dirty with the rest of them. And she needs the money.’

‘But-’

‘But nothin’. If you think. . .’ She stared into the cubicle: the Sexy Sadie hotline was ringing. ‘Well, go on then, Tracy – show him what you’re made of!’

She does, making a big show of the striptease and self fondling. The man on the other end moans and groans and grunts his way to fifteen minutes forty-nine seconds, Tracy’s longest romantic encounter all night by a long shot. She hangs up and beams. Agnes gives her a round of applause.

Mr Aziz shrugs. ‘All right, all right. You can be Sexy Sadie for the rest of the night. Only put more moaning into it. The punters like a bit of moaning.’ Then he shuffles back to his copy of the Racing Post.

Tracy blinks back the tears. ‘Thanks, Agnes.’

‘Don’t mention it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some dodgy double glazin’ to sell.’

Now she’s learned the magic formula, there’s no stopping her. The next call lasts twenty minutes and the one after that a full twenty-five. Do this every night and their money worries would be over. Well, not over, but they’d be able to pay off the funeral.

Maybe Mr Aziz could put her on full time? She could be ‘Spanking Susan’, or ‘Horny Helen’, or ‘Lusty Laura’, or something. Have explicit postcards of her very own plastered over every telephone box in Oldcastle. Not that she’ll pose for the photo herself – it’ll be months before she loses the baby weight, and let’s face it, she was hardly skinny to start with – no she’d do the same as all the other women and let Mr Aziz pick one of his ‘nieces’ to model the thong and stilettos.

The next call is a funny one, and not funny ‘ha, ha’ either. It’s a woman with a growling, furious voice. ‘I know what you are! I know what you are!’ A nut job, phoning up to cause trouble, too stupid to realize that she’s getting charged for every second the call lasts, just like the men who want someone to talk filthy to them. ‘And I know where you are!’

Tracy blinks. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard! I’ve got a friend in the police: they traced the number. I know where you are, whore! You’re a shit stain on the human race, you hear me WHORE?’ There’s more, but Tracy doesn’t listen to it, just kills the line and sits back shaking.

The phone goes again and she jumps, letting out a little shriek. No one notices: shrieks and moans are par for the course around here.

There’s silence from the other end of the phone and then, ‘Is that Sadie?’ A man’s voice; not the mad harpy again. Thank God for that.

Maybe she should try out her new persona: Dirty Debbie?

No, better save it until she’s got her own kinky postcards. Start to build a clientele.

‘You better believe it.’ She goes for deep and sultry, but it comes out sounding a bit blocked up instead. ‘Do you like dirty girls?’

‘You don’t sound like Sadie. . . I want to speak to Sadie.’ There’s something familiar about his voice, but Tracy can’t quite place it.

‘I told you: I’m Sadie. If you’re going to be naughty I’ll have to spank you!’

‘I don’t. . .’ Another pause: he’s thinking about it. He has to be one of Agnes’s regulars, or he wouldn’t know what the real Sadie sounds like. ‘I suppose I have been naughty.’

‘Hmmm, well I think we’ll have to do something about that. Won’t we?’ She launches into her routine, doing the undressing thing while he whimpers and groans on the other end of the phone.

Where the hell does she know his voice from? It’s so bloody familiar. . .

Then he says, ‘Naughty! I’m a naughty boy! Spank me!’ and she knows. Oh God!

She punches the button and hangs up on him. The stopwatch has the call at a little under five minutes. She sits staring at the phone. It starts to ring again.

Go away, go away, go away!

Fifteen rings later, and Agnes is hanging over the side of the cubicle. ‘Are you feeling all right, dear?’ The phone keeps ringing. ‘Is it the baby? Have you got your contractions?’

Tracy drags her eyes from the phone and looks up at her. ‘No. . . Please, can. . . I can’t . . . it’s. . .’ She pulls her headset off and backs away from the cubicle. Her stomach churns – like morning sickness all over again.

Agnes hurries around and takes the call, telling the man on the other end what he wants to hear.

It’s stupid. She’s imagining it. A lot of people sound the same over the phone – especially when they’ve got an Oldcastle accent.

Agnes moans and groans her way to a climax. Only takes ten minutes, she must be worried to end it so quickly. She disconnects the call. ‘What is it Tracy? You can tell me: what is it?’

She points at the phone and says, ‘I . . . I thought it was. . .’ She blushes, picks at a button on her maternity dress. ‘Never mind.’

Agnes grins. ‘I know what you mean. First couple of months I was sure I was speaking to my neighbour, milkman, the boy who works at the bingo hall on Thursdays. . . In the end I just decided, ‘so what?’ They don’t know I’m Sexy Sadie: doesn’t matter if I recognize them, does it? It’s all just make-believe.’ Agnes gets up, then pats the vacant seat. ‘Come on. Sooner you get back on the horse, the sooner you’re earning again.’

Tracy nods. It’s stupid.

She settles back into the seat.

Agnes hands her the headset. ‘That was one of my biggest fans. Calls at least twice a week, poor soul. Wife won’t let him touch her. If it wasn’t for me, I don’t know what he’d do.’

Tracy manages a sickly smile and doesn’t tell Agnes why she thinks she knows the voice. Nor does she dial 1471 to find the number he phoned from. She just sits and stares at the phone, willing it to ring again and erase the last Caller ID record.

It was stupid. It wasn’t him. Her dad wouldn’t ring a sex line to masturbate down the phone at her, not while Mum’s lying in a coffin at the funeral director’s.

The phone rings and she nearly screams. With trembling fingers she puts on the headset, takes three deep breaths, and picks up the call.

Maybe selling double glazing isn’t such a bad job after all.