Surrender (3 page)

Wolf whimpered and I turned to him. He was sitting bolt upright with the lead hanging from his mouth, head cocked in that inimitable Disney cartoon way. That’s another great thing about dogs: they do their best to be sympathetic to us, caught up as we are in the ugliness of being human, but they never lose sight of their own priorities. It was time for a walk.

I dressed, hunched myself into my walking jacket, and went in search of Wolf’s collar. I forced myself to think dispassionately about what I’d learnt from the recording. Gemma had edited the original and all I’d heard was the damning bit — the five minutes before the cavalry, aka Sean, arrived and dragged Snow out of there. Not that I needed to hear any more, that was for sure. Snow had done it all right. He’d killed Niki. But I already knew that: his confession was just confirmation of what I’d known for a long time.

I looped the collar around Wolf’s head and strung the lead over the back of my neck. I never actually use the lead on Wolf but I do like the feel of the cold chain on my neck. That little quirk is something I don’t share with many people.

What I’d learned from the recording was that killing Niki was a paid job. Snow had said he didn’t do personal and he didn’t do freebies, and so, bizarre as it seemed, someone must have ordered a hit on her. Who would have paid Snow to kill Niki? Had Niki got deeper into the seedy world of strip clubs and prostitution than I’d thought? Did she know too much about the workings of the club — the money laundering, the drugs? Was there someone at the club who didn’t want her breaking out of their control? The club’s owner, maybe?

I hadn’t taken up Niki’s invitation to watch her dance. I’d never been inside the doors of the club, though sometimes, when
I couldn’t sleep, I’d park across the road from it and watch the men enter and exit. I’d looked out for her all her life and it was a hard habit to break. Sometimes I’d see her leave, waving a girlish goodbye to the security guys on the door. Watching from across the street was the closest I’d got to the place. I had no idea who Niki worked with or for.

I had two options: front up to the people at the club and find out about Niki’s life there before she was murdered, or go undercover, get myself hired as an ‘exotic’ dancer and find out what I could that way. I checked out my body in the hallway mirror. The Doc Martens boots, faded jeans and dog-hair-covered hoodie didn’t make for a hot look, and the chain over my neck added a decidedly punk touch, but I knew the twenty-eight-year-old body beneath wasn’t in too bad a shape. At around five foot eight, I was always picked for the netball and basketball teams and my height gives me a leggy look. The actual legs are pretty good too, particularly if I remember to shave them. Wide hips, long torso, flat stomach, and breasts which, though not large, always looked alert and ready for action. I couldn’t claim to be a great dancer but if I held on to that pole like I’d seen them do on TV, I reckoned I’d be able to shake and roll my body around it okay.

I’d just convinced myself that undercover was the way to go when I caught sight of my scowling face. As long as I can remember, well-meaning friends, elderly relatives, colleagues, boyfriends, husbands — they’ve all told me I’d look ‘nice’ if I’d just stop frowning. The more positive tried the ‘You look so nice when you smile’ version. Neither approach worked. I’ve never wanted to be nice and it’s too late to change the set of my face now. I suspect I’m okay looking, but my habitual glower is undoubtedly a man turn-off for all but the most intrepid. And I doubt that men who have to pay girls to take their clothes off are intrepid types but that may just
be a prejudice of mine. Unless I was prepared to wear a paper bag over my head while I danced, or — more difficult option — actually smile at the punters, undercover probably wasn’t going to work.

I whistled Wolf out the door, letting it slam behind me. Immediately I felt better. There’s nothing like being outdoors with a dog trotting along in front of you to lighten your mood. Okay, I decided, I’d just have to front up to the strip club and suss it out that way. Wolf lifted his leg and let out a long, satisfying stream against the lamp post. I stopped with him, admiring, as I’m sure he did, the way the steam swirled into the cool, early morning air.

I’d been so caught up thinking about Snow killing Niki that I’d forgotten the most recent development: Snow’s death. Snow had killed Niki by knifing her in the back. Now it looked like Snow had been murdered in the same way. Although I had no wish to bring his killer to justice, in fact I’d be tempted to shake the hand of the guy who did it, there was no doubt Snow’s death and Niki’s were inextricably linked.

It was no use going to the club until late at night, so that gave me the whole day to finish the report on my last missing person’s job, and fire off the invoice so I could pay the mortgage and fill the fridge. Only one serious problem remained. What the hell does a girl wear to a strip club?

I
settled on what I hoped was a sophisticated look: black silk trousers, open-necked, white silk blouse nipped at the waist with a three-inch-wide, Mediterranean-blue belt. I don’t do heels, partly because of my height but mostly because I like to be able to run if I need to. Checking myself out in the hallway mirror, I was pretty sure I’d achieved the look of a liquorice all-sort rather than one of sophistication but it would have to do. Anyway, it seemed unlikely with naked women dancing around the place that there would be many looks in my direction. What I couldn’t understand was why I felt so nervous about going to the club. What was I afraid of — being hit by flying pussy?

I found a TV park outside, locked the car and headed towards the neon lights of the unoriginally named Pussy Galore. Two imposing men in fine charcoal-grey suits stood guard at the door, hands clasped in front of their groins and legs slightly apart, the way they must be trained to at security guard school. Actually, I reminded myself, they probably learnt it at karate school and I should wipe the smart-arse sneer off my face. Samoan, well over
six feet, broad-shouldered and flashing wide smiles of perfect white teeth, they made the kind of handsome pair I could, after six months of abstinence, happily imagine as bookends — with me as the book.

As I passed between them into the entrance alcove I made a real effort to erase my scowl. I even attempted a smile. One of the Bookends, surprisingly quick for a guy of his size, slipped ahead of me, barring the interior glass door with his arm. I’m pretty sure my scowl returned.

‘I have to stamp your hand first,’ he said, indicating my clenched fist. ‘Then I’ll buzz you in.’

He manoeuvred his bulk behind a little plywood island and I felt like a five year old holding out the back of my hand. He applied the stamp with a studied concentration, throwing me a shy smile as he let me go. Sheesh! I’d been expecting scowls, sneers and crass gestures. Instead I was being treated with deference and a polite but low-key welcome. It made me uneasy.

‘It’s ladies’ night,’ he smiled, as if that explained everything.

A button was hit somewhere and the opaque glass doors etched with reclining pussy cats slid apart. My Bookend lifted his eyebrows in the time-honoured Pacific gesture, and motioned with his head that I could enter. I glanced back at the guy still on the street and in that moment a look, maybe a signal, passed between them. I stepped into the club and the pussy-etched doors slid closed behind me.

My first thought was that the place was on fire. After the cool evening air, the blast of heat was like stepping from a plane on to the tarmac in the tropics. Roils of smoke swirled around me and flame-red horizontal LED lights flickered and spun directly into my eyes. The bass was so loud my teeth buzzed with the vibration. I took a step forward and could make out a dozen or so semi-naked
girls seated around a catwalk the size of a gangplank. Perched on stools in chattering groups of two and three, the girls resembled a flock of Easter chicks fluffed up in pretty, pastel feathers. Faux-harem silks wafted dreamily in the warm air of the industrial blow heaters. The occasional pussy-cat tail was absentmindedly swirled like a skipping rope.

I circumvented the gangplank, smiling at girls who looked back at me with blank disinterest. If any were wondering why a single woman was at a strip club, they kept their interest well hidden, but my appearance did seem to set off a domino effect of languid movement. Several of the girls slid off their stools and began shifting their weight from one foot to the other. They might have been dancing or just trying to get their circulation back after sitting for too long. For the first time in my life I felt overdressed.

I made my way to the back of the room where two tomato-red vinyl sofas were installed at right angles to each other. A girl appeared at my elbow. She was naked except for tiny lace knickers that glowed the startling greenish white of a skeleton in a ghost train ride.

‘Hi, I’m Chloe, I’ll take that for you,’ she offered, draping my coat over her arm. She looked about seventeen, wore dramatic Egyptian-style eye make-up to complement her sunbed-bronzed skin. Her hair was held off her face by an Alice band made incongruous by the enormous metal ring with flashing stars pierced through her right nipple. I winced, clasping my hands to keep from cupping my own breast in sympathy.

‘Thanks. And could I have a drink?’ I asked, reaching for my wallet.

She flashed her teeth which, like her knickers, radiated a startling, ghoulish green-white. ‘Sure. You want to buy me one too?’

I’d been wondering how I was going to get to talk to the girls about Niki but at this rate it might be easier than I thought.

‘Okay.’ I hoped I wasn’t making some ghastly blunder. For all I knew, agreeing to buy her a drink was a euphemism for an all-night orgy.

‘I’ll just take a swipe of your credit card now, and then at the end of the night I’ll give you a receipt. You don’t have to worry about anything while you’re here, because it’s all taken care of.’ She voiced exactly my suspicions. Misinterpreting my hesitation she added, ‘Don’t worry, everything you spend here will appear on your bank statement as a donation to the Feline Protection Services.’

‘Great. I’ll have a red wine and yeah, sure, you order what you want for yourself.’ I shrugged and passed her my credit card, mentally adding up my credit balance and hoping for the best.

As Chloe clicked off towards the bar the music changed to a deep, throbbing, sexual rhythm. I glanced behind me at the DJ who sported a brilliant red pubic-like strip of hair down the centre of his otherwise butt-naked pate. I followed the direction of his gaze. A short, tidily dressed Asian man was leaning towards one of the girls on the stools, a proprietary hand on the back of her neck. She was looking away as he spoke, but then obediently slid off the stool and clambered up on to the catwalk. She took custody of the pole and began swaying around it, her tiny hot pants and lace bra so luminous a diffuse halo outlined her body. She walked four steps to the pole at the other end and swayed some more. I had a horrible suspicion it was my entrance that had set this enervated movement in motion.

The Asian man had settled himself in a prime watching position next to the stage, but all his attention was on his mobile which he thumbed intently. I scratched at the door of my memory for anything Niki might have told me about this guy. Gordon?
Gordy? Something like that. I think she said he’d inherited the club from his uncle. He glanced up as a group of young men entered. They formed a huddle on the far side of the catwalk, their movements jerky and nervous, their laughter loud and forced. The girl on stage didn’t seem to register them. Gordon went back to his texting.

Chloe leaned over, tits swinging like udders, and placed my wine on the low table, then she dropped on to the adjacent sofa. She was holding what looked like a club soda that had probably cost me twenty bucks of feline protection.

She held out thin pale fingers for me to shake. ‘I’m Chloe, but I think I might have already told you that.’

I squeezed her fingers in what I presumed was a girly version of a handshake. They were surprisingly cold given the heat of the room.

Chloe started right in. ‘If you want a lap dance that’ll cost a hundred bucks and a VIP lap dance — that’s touching and stuff — costs a hundred and fifty. Or you can just buy ‘pussy dollars’ for the stage dancing, but it’s, you know, better for us if you want a lap dance. I’m really good at it but you don’t have to have me. You can pick any of the girls.’ Chloe smiled, her teeth and tiny panties flashing luridly.

‘Look, I’m sorry.’ I was feeling out of my depth. ‘I just want to talk to you. About a girl who used to work here. Her name was Niki. Niki Rowe.’

Chloe shrugged. ‘Okay. Whatever. That’ll cost fifty bucks for ten minutes and I won’t do more than ten minutes, okay?’ She crossed her legs, swinging one long limb over the other, and took a sip of her drink. She smiled again, apparently waiting for me to start.

‘Do you remember Niki? She worked here for about six months.
She left about a year ago,’ I prompted her. ‘She was your age, maybe a bit older, and she looked, well, a bit like me only younger and prettier. Definitely smilier.’

Chloe’s hands flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. ‘Oh my gosh! You’re for real!’

Actually, right then, in that place, having that conversation, I was having serious doubts about that.

She giggled. ‘I thought you wanted me to talk dirty,’ she explained cheerfully. ‘You really want to talk, as in
talk
talk? Like conversation?’ She uncrossed her legs and leaned for her drink.

‘Ah, yeah. That would be good. Is that a problem?’

She took a sip, eyeing me across the top of her glass with those heavily made-up eyes. Her mascaraed lashes stuck together at the far corner of each eye. In an attempt to separate them she would squeeze her eyes shut and then open them wide. It gave her a peculiar, animated look. The things we women do …

‘No, that’s cool, but it still costs the same. I mean, I have to earn, okay?’

I nodded my agreement and took a sip of the red wine which immediately paint-stripped the roof off my mouth. I replaced the glass carefully, worried for the table.

‘I just want to find out about my sister Niki. She worked here until a year ago. She was killed. I want to find out about her — who she spent time with before she died.’

I kept my eyes on Chloe’s, doing my best to ignore the video on the wall behind her head where a girl wearing nothing but high heels was doing an act which involved flaming torches being passed between her legs. Either she’d had a Brazilian, or at some point she’d misjudged the flame action. Whatever the cause, she seemed intent on making sure the camera paid close attention to her hairlessness.

Chloe released tendrils of hair caught beneath her Alice band.

‘Oh, you mean Bonnie,’ she said. ‘We only ever use stage names here. It’s kind of like acting, you know?’ Chloe’s attention was wavering. Her finger twirled a strand of hair as her gaze drifted towards the dancer now swaying listlessly in front of a mirror at the end of the stage, her dreamlike absorption with her own image somehow touching and more intimate than anything else she’d done.

‘You knew Niki as Bonnie?’ I prompted, forcing Chloe’s attention back to me.

‘Yeah. She was a really cool chick. We got on great. And she was an excellent dancer. She made shit-loads on a good night. She liked to dance on stage, you know? Most of us don’t. The money’s not in it. I mean, look at those guys.’ She glowered at a row of men leaning against the stage.

The tableau of guys stood close together, shouldering each other in companionable aggression. They reminded me of cattle stamping and peering through the slats in an abattoir truck. I watched the dancer separate herself with reluctance from her own mirror image and turn back towards the herd of men. Leaning over to grasp her ankles she obligingly presented herself to them.

‘They pay their twenty bucks at the door then just perve at the girls,’ Chloe added with disdain.

It seemed an unreasonable complaint given what the dancer was doing right then, but before I could say anything in the guys’ defence, the music changed and a new dancer climbed on stage. This one wore a nipped-waist, soft cotton blouse and long, layered skirt that fell in feminine folds to below her knees. She was the only female in the room, apart from me, who had any actual clothes on. As she reached up to clasp the pole I noticed her feet were bare. In a room of women wearing nothing much more than shoes, those
wriggling toes looked extremely naked. Instead of gyrating against the pole, she clasped it and climbed those little bare feet right up between her hands, her bronze ponytail falling back towards the stage, her skirt rucked up to reveal bikini pants.

She flipped and landed, giggling shyly towards the men who, as one, had reached to catch her fall. Caught in these beseeching gestures, they shuffled self-consciously and shoved hands in pockets or grabbed at their drinks. The drowning men drank deeply, their shoulders drooped in defeat. The dancer smiled at them and modestly rearranged her skirt.

‘Vex is brilliant, isn’t she?’ Chloe whispered, echoing a version of my thoughts. ‘She’s got quite a fan club. She only dances Tuesdays and Thursdays and those guys are here both nights.’

I noted a young man sitting alone near the far end of the stage. Unlike the others who might all have been contenders for Young Businessman of the Year, he was dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, a suit jacket thrown on top, no doubt to get him past the dress-code police at the door. He was hunched over his beer glass and unlike every other punter seemed more interested in his drink than in the dancer.

‘What about him? Is he a regular?’

Chloe followed the direction of my gaze. ‘Oh, that’s Stoke. Funny you should ask about him actually because he was really close to Bonnie. Bonnie, Niki, whatever — your sister, I mean. He was totally into her.’

I studied his face, sure I’d seen him somewhere before. Now he too was watching the ponytailed dancer who’d abandoned the pole and was dancing to her own reflection in the mirror at the end of the stage. The buttons on her blouse had come undone as if by accident. Captured as she was by her own image, she seemed oblivious to her audience. The dazzling LED lights caught the
copper and bronze highlights in her swinging ponytail. She looked like a young girl practising dance moves in the privacy of her bedroom. Somehow in this very public place she had managed to turn us all into secret voyeurs. This girl’s dance routine made me feel dirty.

I angled myself back towards Chloe. ‘How does it work here? Do you get paid by the dance or by the hour or what?’

‘Oh, no way. We have to pay to dance here. That’s why we hate it when punters just pay the door charge and then spend the night perving at us.’ She saw my look of confusion. ‘Gavin gets the door fee, except girl customers don’t pay a cover charge on ladies’ night, that’s tonight. We don’t get any of the door money.’

Gavin. That was right. The owner of the club was called Gavin.