Charlie felt a lump in his throat. What on earth was he getting emotional about? His mother was always saying things like that. He knew that he was tensed up, likely to be easily upset or moved. Nonetheless he realised he had made the only decision. He really couldn’t do anything that would hurt his mum.
Decisively he went into his bedroom and removed his prized painting from the wall, revealing a state-of-the-art wall safe. He punched the combination number into the control panel and swung open the steel door. The interior of the safe was divided into a series of drawers and each drawer had a label. Among them were ‘Alice’, ‘Angela’, ‘Joanna’, ‘The Merry Widow’, ‘The Weepy One’, ‘Mrs Pattinson’, of course, and ‘Miscellaneous’.
The names were all of Charlie’s regular clients. He didn’t really know why, but often he was more comfortable using nicknames than the names the women gave him, perhaps it was because it kept his business more impersonal. In any case he knew that most of the names were made up anyway and sometimes he was not given one at all.
‘Miscellaneous’ was his collective label for his more casual clients, one-off or very occasional customers.
Each drawer contained money, some more than others. Charlie kept careful records and knew that in total the safe contained almost £20,000 in fifty, twenty, ten and five-pound notes.
He liked to know exactly how much he earned from each of his clients and that was why he stored the cash they gave him separately in the fashion that he did. That way he could indulge his habit of attributing the purchase of his various possessions to specific women.
Joanna, whom Charlie still met regularly in her room at the Holiday Inn where she stayed while on business trips, was responsible for his lavish wardrobe. She dressed beautifully and always passed comment on Charlie’s appearance. He felt sure she must be something big in the rag trade. And although she never actually told him what she did it seemed appropriate that his earnings from Joanna should pay for his clothes.
He began putting the contents of each drawer into envelopes which he labelled in the same manner that the drawers were labelled — he wanted to keep his system intact and he reassured himself that everything would be back to normal in no time — before packing them into a small suitcase.
‘Miscellaneous’ had paid, among other things, for his bedroom furnishings and decoration. He did not like the idea of sleeping in sheets provided solely by one client. That would seem wrong, somehow. Charlie had always slept soundly when alone in his own apartment — until now at any rate — and he did not want any specific images disrupting his rest.
‘Alice’ was an extremely large woman who liked her food. And she was equally enthusiastic about sex. She had been making use of Charlie’s services for even longer than Mrs Pattinson — almost three years now. Charlie attended to her needs at her home — she lived in a big house with a discreet back entrance — whenever her husband was away on business, which seemed to be frequently. Sometimes Charlie was called there as often as four or five times a month. He couldn’t imagine that Alice’s husband really had no inkling of what his wife got up to during his absences, and assumed that the man probably didn’t care. More than likely he had his own diversions. And although willing, in fact eager, to try anything, ‘Alice’ was by far the least attractive of his regulars, and so fat that when she got excited he sometimes feared that either he was going to be squashed or bounced across the room. Nonetheless he liked Alice. She was jolly and accommodating and, after they had completed the serious business of the day, always insisted on cooking him a lavish meal. At first he had demurred. Eating with them was a waste of time really, Charlie thought. Time was money, and anyway he preferred to eat alone or with company of his choice. Sometimes, though, he had no choice except to go through the motions. And Alice had turned out to be an extraordinarily good cook. The meals and his genuine appreciation of them were all part of the routine now.
It therefore had seemed appropriate that Alice should pay for his superb stainless-steel kitchen. Even the doors of the kitchen units were faced in stainless steel. It looked more like the interior of a spaceship than a kitchen, Charlie reckoned. He was very proud of it, and it was rare for him to cook a meal there — although his efforts were humble compared with hers and usually relied principally on the freezer and the microwave — without thinking of Alice.
He wrote Alice on an envelope stuffed full of ten pound notes and put it in the suitcase.
There was not much money left in the drawer labelled ‘The Weepy One’. After all, incredible though it might seem, she had paid single-handedly for his £30,000-plus motor car. ‘The Weepy One’ had been abandoned in middle age by her husband who had left her for a younger woman. For six months she had been Charlie’s most frequent client, summoning him as often as two or three times a week to a suite in the Portway Towers, probably the most expensive hotel in the city. There was always champagne in a bucket, and something light but delicious to eat like caviar or foie gras. She explained to Charlie that it was her ambition to spend every penny of her husband’s money before the divorce she had never wanted was finalised. She spent most of his visits to her in copious floods of tears which did not prevent her demanding increasingly more fervent sex from him, during which she would frequently cry out that she wished her husband could see her now. Charlie had realised from the start that she was just using him for revenge, and that when she screamed in orgasm it was her errant husband’s face that she saw and not his. Afterwards she would ply him with vast quantities of cash — much much more than the £200 which was all he was obliged to split with Avon Escorts. Once, and even more hysterically tearful than usual, she had tipped him £1,000 in fifty-pound notes. He had been so taken aback that he had actually been moved to murmur a mild protest — after all, Charlie saw himself as a professional. All he wanted was to be properly paid for services rendered. Anything more than that was not really satisfactory to either side in any business transaction, he reckoned. But ‘The Weepy One’ had insisted, telling him she didn’t want her husband’s money any more, and she could think of nothing better to spend it on than being fucked by Charlie.
Charlie winced at the memory. The word ‘fuck’ always made Charlie wince, except when used actually during sex. He had been brought up that way, and it was strange how that sensitivity had remained with him throughout his bizarre working life. It particularly made him flinch when used by a woman obviously of a certain educational standard and social position in whose vocabulary such language really should not, in his opinion, figure. Charlie thought such things were important. He was sure that ‘The Weepy One’ would not normally use that kind of language and he realised that she must be a deeply disturbed woman. Nonetheless he swallowed his lurking feelings of guilt and took the money. £31,000 in all, over the six-month period.
Five weeks ago ‘The Weepy One’s’ calls to Avon Escorts had ceased abruptly and Charlie thought he had a fair idea why. There had been yet another suicide jump from the suspension bridge, which had a long history of fatal leaps into the Avon Gorge below, at about the same time. Of course Charlie didn’t know for certain that the woman who died had been ‘The Weepy One’ — after all, he didn’t even know her real name — and he certainly made no attempt to find out. To tell the truth he didn’t even like to think about it.
He packed the last of the envelopes into the suitcase and wondered again if he was over-reacting. Better safe than sorry, though. He wasn’t going to risk losing all that hard-earned cash.
More hastily he packed some clothes in a second, slightly larger suitcase, then he left the flat, locking it carefully behind him and setting the burglar alarm. He ran down the stairs to the car park just as he always did, in spite of holding a suitcase in each hand. Even the prospect of driving his BMW did not improve his doom-laden mood. But he roared out of the car park confident at least that he was doing the right thing.