Willing Flesh (22 page)

‘You’re not going to fuck me over?’

‘Lie, and I will. Otherwise …’

‘Haverstock Hill, just round the back of the Steeles. It’s Jarndyce Road. Number seventy-two. The street’s full of Polish builders. They’re a fucking nightmare.’

Nineteen

Rosa mulls her finances as she runs a bath. The smell of cinnamon and cloves rises and spreads with the steam. She swirls the bath water and curses as the phone rings.

It has been a slow day, at the end of which she treated herself to a dusk stroll through Borough Market. Lunchtime, she saw Max, one of her regulars, which was eighty quid in – not the stuff of nest eggs, which a girl of her age should be incubating.

Rosa doesn’t recognise the phone number and her thumb hovers. Red or green? Green or red? She wants an early night but today hasn’t really got her anywhere.

She chooses green, recognises the tone of his voice immediately. You would too, if you’d heard what it uttered only the day before, in the Metropole Hotel – looking up at her, saying he loved her and what he would like her to do to him. But it was only words and over soon enough. He didn’t even go inside her. She held him afterwards. Two hundred buys you love.

Tonight, he asks for the same thing, the same price, and he asks her to wear white.

Rosa turns off the bath taps, orders a cab. She lays out the clothes to his specification; the nest egg a couple of days closer to hatching. She lets out the water, turns on the shower.

*

Tchancov downs his vodka and asks Staffe if he would like coffee.

Staffe declines, says, ‘What did you make of the article in
The News
?’

‘Vlad!’ he laughs. ‘We get it all the time. People think we are what we are not.’

‘There is such a thing as a Russian gangster, though – here in London.’

‘I won’t play that game, Inspector.’ The cocky smile from their earliest meeting has gone and the man who took Markary down all those pegs seems a pale outline of himself.

‘Times are hard for everybody, I suppose, Vassily.’

‘The world turns, still.’

‘Like cogs. We have to keep going at other people’s pace, keep finding new ways. I see your uncle Ludo is up for governor again.’

‘That’s a faraway land.’

Staffe thinks it is, perhaps, closer than Vassily might wish. ‘My colleagues keep an eye on things. There seems to be an insatiable desire to work in England.’

‘My uncle Ludo is like a father.’ For the first time, since Staffe met him, Tchancov shows sadness, regret. Something unrequited, or unforgiven, is written on his gaunt face.

‘There has never been a Mrs Tchancov?’

‘You should be going.’

‘Not before I have told you our news. We have a man for the murder of your girl. And Elena. He has confessed. In a way, I suppose he’s one of yours.’

Tchancov pours himself another vodka, downs it immediately. Pours another. ‘A Russian?’

‘No. He likes his sex. He’s a consumer, Vassily. A right pest, so they say.’

As if by magic, the Mongolian with the scimitar sideburns appears in the doorway of Tchancov’s lounge. ‘Hardly one of mine,’ he says. ‘If you have a confession, why are you here?’

‘A matter of courtesy. That’s all.’

‘Would it be discourteous of me to tell you to leave?’

‘I could write, next time. Get some nice paper. Some lilac paper, like Elena used when she wrote to you.’

‘You should learn to accept things for what they are.’

‘Show me her letters, Vassily. I’ll accept them for what they are. You have nothing to hide.’

‘There are no letters.’

‘Which answers your question.’

‘What?’

‘As to why I am here. You choose to lie to me – even though we have our man. Time well spent, wouldn’t you say?’

*

Rosa strolls confidently past the concierge of the Metropole, gets into the lift with a businessman. He says, ‘Good evening,’ in a soft, low voice that suggests he thinks he is in with a chance. He is northern European, probably Danish, and she nods, angles herself away from him, pressing 4. He reaches across and presses 6, his eyes up and down and all over her. The floors come slowly.

It pings 4. He says, ‘Have a good evening.’

Although she has done this several hundred times, tonight she wishes she was home, drifting to sleep with a book slipping from her fingers. Tonight, curiously, she fears she may be in the game two or three years too many.

She goes left, down a long corridor, and left again, around the service shaft. Rosa breathes deep and runs her fingers through her hair, pulling it forward so it frames her face. Then, through her dress, she pulls up her pants at the sides and fixes them just so, hitching her stockings up. She stands erect and closes her eyes, transports herself to a place from which she can push herself all the way out. She knocks, twice. As always, her heart beats faster, harder. The door opens away from her, shows her into somebody else’s world.

He is lean and seems younger tonight – and kind, as if he couldn’t do harm. Her instincts are good.

As soon as the door is shut he puts a hand on the slope of her shoulder and neck and kisses her, mouth slightly open, on the lips. His mouth is wet and tastes of vodka, his other hand around the back already, to where her buttocks meet her thighs. He squeezes gently and she cannot help but utter a low gasp.

He asks if she wants a drink. She declines, fathoming that he is from Liverpool. Maybe from Ireland in the past or the other way round. He asks if she minds if he does and she shakes her head, watches him pour a neat Smirnoff from the minibar and go to the easy chair by the window. It is one of many hundred windows in this hotel. This one looks into the top of a department store on Oxford Street. Nobody sees in.

Rosa says, ‘You want to watch me?’

‘Undress,’ he says in his soft voice that seems to need love.

She reaches behind, to unzip her dress, and he says, ‘No. Pull up the dress. I want to see your legs. Be slow.’ He seems uncertain, almost as though he can’t believe what he is saying.

Rosa bends, crosses her hands and takes the left hem of her dress with the right and vice versa. Far away, she hears a car horn. Otherwise, in the hard and secret heart of the city, it is silent; slowly, she pulls up her dress, a translucent white chiffon, over her head. Through it, she sees only a warm amber glow from the bedside light.

‘Stop!’ he says. ‘Please. Stop.’

She can hear him stand. She smells vodka coming off him. She realises he is behind her. Again, he puts one hand on the slope of her shoulder and neck and he kisses the lobe of her ear through the dress. He brings his teeth together on her. Again, she cannot help but gasp and she feels the slow descent of his other hand, first on the plump of her hip above her pants, then on the underside of her tummy.

‘What do you want?’ she says.

‘Stay just the way you are.’

Suddenly, Rosa is afraid, is unsure whether a door has opened, perhaps the en-suite. Is there another man here? ‘Let me take the dress off,’ she says.

‘Your friends,’ he says, the tenderness seeping away and his hand tighter on her neck. ‘You know the things you know. You know the people you know. It’s no good for us and it’s no good for you.’

‘Please!’ she pleads. ‘I don’t know anything.’

‘But you do. Tell me what you know about the other two.’

She can barely hear what he is saying. Her blood drums deep and fast in her ears.

Rosa’s voice warbles as she makes her reply. All she wants to do is to scream, then sob and collapse and let this all be over. ‘Elena?’ she says, thinking that as long as she is talking he won’t kill her. He killed the others, though. ‘Elena never said anything to me, just about clothes and the books she liked to read. That’s all.’

‘And her boyfriend? The one who stuck it up her?’

‘She never said she was pregnant.’

He says, ‘I never said she was pregnant. You been talking to your policeman friend? He needs to let it all lie, wouldn’t you say?’

Rosa’s hands are still above her head. She says, ‘You said “stuck it up her”. What’s that supposed to mean if …’ She coughs, ‘… it doesn’t mean …’ She coughs again, spluttering now and feels his grip on her throat release and she brings her hand down, as if to go to her mouth to abate the coughing, but it doesn’t. She leans forward to cough again, but within the convulsion she brings her head back. Fast! As hard as she can, smashing into his mouth. She hears the crunch of bone on flesh and teeth, and in the very same instant, he cries out into the room as she takes a hold of his balls with one hand, as hard as she can – as tight as she can muster and tugging, tugging, feeling her nails splinter as she does it and twisting round to face him, seeing his bloody face and reaching up, punching him in the throat, watching his eyes bulge and then grabbing his hair, hard as she can and dragging his head down, down towards the carpet. In a single, frozen moment, she sees the detail of the carpet, burgundy with small gold diamonds. She sees his head on the floor and can’t hear his curses any more – just his head on the carpet, turning to look up at her, his whole body flexing.

‘You stupid, stupid …’

But he doesn’t finish. She lifts up her stiletto foot, and she stamps down on his head with all her might, the heel’s pointed tip skidding off the curvature of his skull, but raking down across his face, making him clasp his head with both hands.

Rosa turns, runs for the door and opens it, kicking off her shoes and tearing off down the corridor, turning right past the service shaft and down along the corridor, then right again, hearing his curses rise and diminish as she gets to the lift, punching at the Down buttons but seeing both lifts are up at 9 and 11. She pushes the fire door, takes the steps two at a time, half flight by half flight, not knowing who might be waiting when she gets to the lobby.

She bursts through the doors and barges into a group of Far Eastern tourists, checking in. She runs behind the desk, throwing herself into the arms of the concierge, screaming, ‘Save me! Save me! Call the police, I’ve been attacked. Call the police, I’ve been attacked!’

The concierge tries to usher her away into the office behind reception but she won’t have it, insists on remaining where she can be seen until they call a man called Inspector Wagstaffe at City CID. She screams blue murder until that happens, until every last one of the Japanese tourists has checked in and two security guards have sat her down, until she can be sure that the man in room 411 is gone.

When she is calm, they tell her room 411 is empty tonight. They have been in and the room is untouched.

*

Staffe is spooning up to Sylvie to keep warm. She has kicked off the sheets in a fretful sleep. He dreams that he is awakened by a ringing telephone, then is awakened by an elbow from the woman he loves. As he turns over, trying to regain sleep, Sylvie says, ‘It’s yours, Will. Your phone’s ringing.’

He fumbles for his mobile, knowing this will hardly be good news. The man on the other end speaks calmly, telling him that a friend of his has been attacked and that she was quite insistent that they call him. The man tells him he is from the Metropole Hotel and that the woman is called Rosa.

‘Is she … is she alive?’

As Staffe wakes fully, he discerns that the man thinks this a strange question. For a sliver of a moment, as he dresses hurriedly, Staffe wishes for another life, far away from this. Then he hears somebody behind him and the rustle of clothes.

Sylvie, blinking, rubbing her face, has a silk robe around her and is padding towards the kitchen, saying, ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’

‘I have to go straight away.’

‘Will, you need to tell me about her.’

‘When I get back.’

‘I need to know if anything is going on. I won’t let that happen to me. I’ve seen what it does.’

He wants to convince her that he is nothing like her mother, that after all these years he has finally realised she is the one. But now is not the time.