Murder Most Fab (17 page)

‘Oh, Georgie,’
I said, concerned. ‘Gay-bashed at your age! Why did you put yourself in that
situation? You don’t need to any more, not now there’s me.’

‘I
know. That’s what Sammy said. He said, “The next time you want to prove there’s
still life in the old dog wait till Friday. JD won’t beat you up. For a mere
hundred pounds he’ll have sex with you and enjoy it. You can’t troll down the
towpath any more. You’re past it.” He’s right, I am.’

‘You’re
not past it. Coming up towards it, maybe …’

‘Oh,
thank you, dear! How comforting.’ Georgie leant towards me. ‘Listen, JD. I want
you to find that animal for me and give him a taste of what he gave me. Would
you do that?’

I was
astonished. There was a light in Georgie’s eyes I had never seen before: a
nasty glint of anger and glee. ‘But how would I find him? The chances of
meeting him are very small.’

‘No,
no,’ Georgie insisted. ‘I’m sure he’s a regular. I’ve got a very good
description. Give him a taste of his own medicine.’

‘I’m
going to, mate,’ I said. I understood my punters’ needs.

‘Thank
you, JD. You’re a star.’

I knew
there wasn’t a hope of finding the man but it was clearly a fantasy Georgie
wanted enacted, so I went down to the towpath and punched a brick wall a couple
of times, then showed

Georgie
my bloody knuckles. He almost came in his pants. ‘Oh,’ he sighed, ‘you’re a
marvel, you really are. I shan’t forget this, JD. Here — this is a tip for
you.’

He
handed over an envelope that contained two hundred pounds.

‘Just
be careful,’ I said. ‘You might not be so lucky next time.’

‘Anything
you say. You know how I love it when you come over all masterful …’

When I got home, I told
Catherine the story. She didn’t find it as funny as I did, and she wasn’t
impressed. ‘Two hundred is acceptable, Cowboy, but unless they’re going to
hand over the money they’ve earmarked for the cats’ home I wouldn’t waste my
saliva on them,’ she said decisively. ‘Small potatoes like them might do for
now, but do bear in mind that you and I have bigger fish to fry. Their days are
numbered.’

I felt
rather crushed. I was fond of Sammy and Georgie, and didn’t like to think of
our arrangement coming to an end, but I didn’t tell Catherine that. Instead I
wondered if anything I did would ever be good enough for her. My own
achievements were so often dismissed, waved away with a perfectly manicured
hand or snuffed out in an abrupt change of subject. She was hard to please,
that much was for sure, but she was like my older, street-wise sister and it
remained my ambition to win her approval.

Since
our move Catherine’s confidence had soared. She flourished as a high-calibre
call girl. She was passed between businessmen, recommended to first-time
callers by Madame as ‘Employee of the Month’ and retained for a second hour by those
who had enjoyed the first. The move upscale suited her, and her image evolved
from dolly-bird nurse to sophisticated girl-about-town. Her clothes were still
understated, but expensive and better fitting, while her makeup became bold but
never tarty — russet tones took over from the frosted pastels and she styled
her hair in loose ash-blonde ringlets instead of the old candyfloss bouffant.
Several times a week she went for expensive facials, and her cabinet in our
marble bathroom was full of expensive lotions, scents and scrubs.

‘I wax
the gash, Cowboy. My Arab gentlemen wouldn’t go near me if there was a whisper
of a pube.’

Once a
month we went to be checked by a private doctor in Harley Street.

‘Clean
as a whistle, apart from the cystitis,’ Catherine would declare afterwards,
‘but that’s an occupational hazard.’

Another
occupational hazard, it seemed, was cocaine. We had long been accustomed to
downers like dope, Valium and temazepam, but our new lifestyle required uppers,
too, Catherine said. I’d had my first experience of cocaine on the day we moved
to Camden. When we had unpacked our meagre possessions Catherine called me into
the kitchen where six lines of white powder were lined up on a Tupperware
plate.

‘Prepare
to snort your first line of cocaine, Cowboy,’ she announced. ‘Watch and learn.’

She
inserted a rolled-up ten-pound note in her right nostril and blocked off the
left with the forefinger of her other hand. She hoovered up the line with a
flourish, then threw back her head, inhaling until her lungs could accommodate
no more air. She froze, holding her breath for several seconds, then exhaled
luxuriously through her mouth. She stood up, tall and suddenly Amazonian.
‘Fucking fantastic,’ she said. ‘Now you.’

It took
me a few attempts to grasp that I had to lower the rolled-up note to the end of
the white line while my lungs were empty. To blow instead of suck was very
messy. Blocking off the other nostril and keeping my mouth closed was another
lesson. To get the powder up your snout and hitting the back of the nasal
cavity with a satisfying thud, an enthusiastic whoosh was required. At last I
got a proper hit, and seconds later I was enjoying my first high. I felt regal
and energetic. Suddenly I found it terribly urgent to articulate my euphoria.

‘Do you
know something, Catherine?’ I said earnestly. ‘You and I are fabulous. Let’s
face it, we’re amazing.’

‘I
know, babe,’ Catherine agreed. ‘I’ve always known it.

We
chattered away, describing visions of our high-flying futures, fantasies of
success that led, ultimately, to our joint master-plan for the saving of
mankind. We were still talking at dawn, convinced we were going to change the
world and that nothing else was as important. Until we ran out of cocaine.

‘That’s
the last of the gear,’ said Catherine. We’d been talking for twelve hours.
‘Shall I phone up and get some more?’

‘Has
Robert Kilroy-Silk got a sun tan?’ I replied.

After
that I don’t remember ever being without cocaine. Mind you, we only indulged in
all-night binges once in a while. On a day-to-day basis we were far less
greedy. We just topped ourselves up when necessary Our cocaine supply was
stored in a silver heart kept in a kitchen cupboard, and we would help
ourselves to a line whenever we felt the need of a pick-me-up. Breakfast, even
if it was in the middle of the afternoon, consisted of a cup of tea, a line of
coke and a cigarette. It wasn’t long before we had runny noses and suspicious
minds, but fabulous cheekbones.

‘I
don’t generally pay compliments,’ said Catherine, one night when we’d got home
from our respective jobs and were delving in the cupboard for our reward, ‘and
it might be the drugs speaking, but you kook fucking gorgeous, Cowboy. I reckon
you’ve lost half a stone.’

‘I
wasn’t aware that I was overweight,’ I said indignantly.

‘You
weren’t. But it’s a London thing. You can’t be too thin or too rich in this
town. I think it’s more than that, though.’

‘Am I
pregnant?’ I wondered.

‘No.
It’s better news, even. You’ve aborted.’

‘Well,
that’s nice talk.’

‘Tim.
You’ve aborted Tim at last. The sadness in your eyes has gone. That boring old toff
has finally left the building. He slipped out when you weren’t watching and now
you’re free.’

‘Am I?’
I asked doubtfully, reaching for the cupboard. I didn’t feel as though that was
true, but I’d been dwelling on Tim a lot less recently. I feared that meant he
was only embedded all the more deeply in my heart.

As our drug consumption
increased, the only real serenity in my life came from my Friday afternoons in
Barnes. The fresh air, the predictability of my clients’ demands and the
regular financial rewards that came from such ordered lives gave a timetable,
albeit vague, to my chaotic existence. It benefited me, I felt sure.

As the
months passed we became comfortable with the routine. Relaxed after my clients’
sexual needs had been seen to, I took an interest in the prodigious growth of
Sammy’s passion-flower and expressed concern about the greenfly problem with
regard to Georgie’s mesembryanthemums. My knowledge of plants impressed the old
boys. We sipped our drinks and chewed the cud, much like regulars at a country
pub. We were a happy, carefree threesome, we enjoyed life in the moment, and by
the time I left Barnes I had no doubt that I’d improved the quality of all our
lives.

But not all of my clients
were as easy or comfortable to deal with as Sammy and Georgie. By far the worst
was another regular, a Mr Brown. He was a very troubled man and a bit of a
psycho. For him, sex was an angry matter, and, for the hour he paid me, I was
the focus of his fury. Spanking and restraint, bondage and S and M I could
handle, but Mr Brown overstepped the mark. When he hit me it didn’t feel like
role-play. It felt like he wanted to beat the living daylights out of me.

He
booked me through Madame, and always stayed in room 510 at Claridges. He was a
handsome, well-groomed man in his early fifties. He was invariably naked when I
arrived (apart from his wedding ring), and he handed me my money in silence.
Then it was straight down to business. He made it clear that he preferred me
not to speak. Not a hello or a goodbye.

‘Come
in, undress, bend over. You know what this is about,’ was all he said. The
punishment was administered with his bare hand. He slapped my naked bottom
harder and harder until his palm was slippery with perspiration. Then he slid
one, two and finally three fingers up my anus, swirling and jabbing them about
like an angry plumber trying to unblock a sink. I could tell when he had come
by his gorilla-like grunts, and sometimes from the splash of semen on my back.
‘Now get out, you filthy slut,’ he’d say, as if he meant it. His breathing
would remain agitated while I dressed hurriedly, and left the room feeling that
Mr Brown might lash out at me.

I
muttered the traditional ‘Remember me,’ once I’d closed the door behind me.

‘Look at the state of
you,’ said Catherine, when I got in one night, rubbing my tender rump. ‘Life’s
tough enough without spending an hour with Jeffrey Dahmer every week. I’ll
phone Madame and tell her it’s not on.’

‘No,
don’t do that,’ I said. ‘It’s only his fantasy. I can handle him.’

In
fact, it wasn’t anything to do with professional pride that made me carry on
with my visits to Mr Brown. It was his connection to my true love. Although he
clearly had no idea who I was, I knew him. Mr Brown was no less a person than
Timothy’s father, Lord Thornchurch.

My life
had settled into quite a comfortable routine, with my regulars, my one-offs
and my group bookings filling my days and nights nicely.

I
didn’t tell Catherine that I was servicing Tim’s father. I hadn’t realized it
myself until the third visit, although I had thought he looked vaguely
familiar. It was only when I was bent over the trouser press that I saw the
label on his suitcase. He had obviously forgotten to hide it and I saw, plain
as day, the words ‘Lord Thornchurch’.

I
almost collapsed with shock but remained professional. By the time he’d
finished, I was fascinated by the idea of sleeping with Tim’s father. It was
both horrible and erotic — and also the perfect way to get even with Tim,
despite his knowing nothing about it.

When I
wasn’t doing tricks, I was with Catherine, shopping, chatting or going out on
the town. She enjoyed coming with me to the classier gay clubs. She would
sweet-talk the bouncers into letting us into the VIP lounges, and while I went
trolling about to see if there was anyone I fancied, she would order an
expensive bottle of champagne and tell anyone who chatted to her ridiculous lies
for her own amusement. When I returned to her, I had to catch on quickly or I
might give the game away.

‘I was
just telling these lovely people how I’m Princess Grace of Monaco’s
illegitimate daughter,’ she’d say, ‘but enough about me. Johnny here slept with
Boris Yeltsin last night. Why don’t you tell them about his luminous semen?’

Then it
was my task to improvise a vaguely feasible scenario. If she was feeling
devilish she might interject halfway through with a further complication —
‘Don’t forget to tell them about the moment Sinitta walked in’ — and sit back
to watch me struggle.