The Business Of Dying

'And?'

'And several of the older ones had had some involvement with him. One had even gone back to his apartment in Hampstead Heath, the same place I'd visited on many occasions. Apparently, he also liked to have sex without a condom, which might have been one of the attractions of using street girls. They don't tend to be so fussy. So I ended our arrangement straight away. I'm not interested in dealing with people who lie to me and who have such a dubious attitude to the sexual health of both themselves and others.

'Then two, maybe three days after I'd confronted him, I got a telephone call at Coleman House. It was Miriam Fox. She told me she knew that I'd been seeing the lawyer, and that I'd been getting paid for my time.' She sighed. 'As I said, I couldn't honestly say exactly how she found out. I think he must have used her services a number of times, so she'd almost certainly been at his apartment at one time or another. Maybe she found some evidence that I'd been there.'

'Like what?'

'I told you, I don't know. Maybe she was leaving one night when I was arriving; maybe she was watching the place and saw me there. You know what some of these street girls are like: they go to a place, then tell their pimp how many valuables the punter's got, then they plan to rob it. She could have been surveying the apartment for her pimp, and seen me.' She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. 'The point is, she knew. That's all I can tell you.'

'What did she want from you?' I asked.

'The same as most blackmailers. Money. She told me that if I didn't pay her five thousand pounds, she'd expose me to the local authority and the newspapers.'

'That must have given you a bit of a shock.'

'It did. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It just seemed so… unlucky.'

'What did you say to her?'

'There were other people in the room with me at the time so I couldn't really say a lot. I got a number off her and told her I'd phone her back. When I did call her back, she repeated her demand for the money. I told her I didn't have that sort of cash and we had a bit of an argument. Eventually she said she'd settle for two thousand. For the time being. Those were her words. For the time being. I repeated that it was going to take a while. She gave me a week.'

'Did you ever give her any money?'

'I never actually met up with her at all. A week later she phoned me on my mobile – I'd given her the number – and I stalled her again. I said I'd managed to get some of it, but not enough. I told her she'd have to give me another week. To be honest, I didn't know what to do. I knew it wouldn't stop with just one payment, that she'd come back to me for more and would keep coming back until she'd bled me dry. I mean, she was a drug addict and she wasn't going to beat her addiction suddenly. And she was the sort of girl who would have told the authorities anyway, just to spite me.'

'What happened after the other week was up?'

'I phoned her on her mobile and left a message. I told her I was no longer interested in giving her any money and she could go fuck herself as far as I was concerned.'

'That was a bit of a brave move.'

She shrugged again. 'It was a calculated risk. I'd given it a lot of thought. I knew she'd probably report me, but I was hoping that neither the authorities nor the papers would take the word of some crack-addicted runaway. And even if they did investigate, I thought I'd probably be able to cover my tracks well enough so that they wouldn't discover anything. Anyway, she called back the next day and tried to persuade me that I was making a mistake. She was pissed off that I was calling her bluff, and she sounded pretty desperate as well. Perhaps she owed someone some money – her pimp, or somebody like that. In the end, I was almost feeling sorry for her.' She managed a slight smile when she said this, and took a sip of her wine, more confident, it seemed, now that she'd got this off her chest. 'We talked for a couple of minutes, she got quite hysterical, called me a bitch, said I'd regret messing her around, and then I just hung up.

'And that really was the end of it. It was the last time I spoke to her. A few days later she was dead.' She lit another cigarette, and I noticed her hands were shaking a little. 'That doesn't sound good, does it? Someone blackmailing me, and then they end up murdered?' Again, I didn't say anything, just sat there and let her speak. 'That's the reason, or one of the reasons anyway, I didn't say anything to you. So, now you know. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to tell your superior?'

'Well, it would be difficult to avoid the fact that you've got a motive for wanting her out of the way… but then so have a few other people. She was clearly the sort of girl who attracts enemies. Did you kill her?'

She looked me in the eye. 'No, I didn't. I had nothing to do with it. I might have had a motive, but not a strong enough one. Even if someone had believed her, I wouldn't really have been losing that much. I'm getting tired of the job at Coleman House anyway. It never seems to be doing anything to improve the lot of the people I'm meant to be helping, and I doubt if it accounts for more than a third of my earnings these days. I certainly wouldn't kill anyone over it.' She finished her wine and poured the last drops from the bottle in equal measures into her glass and mine. I doubt if there was more than a mouthful each. 'Do you believe me, Mr Milne?'

It was a good question. On balance, yes, I did. Her story sounded plausible. Coincidental, but still plausible. More so than any alternatives I might have thought up, and I was almost certain she hadn't delivered the fatal blow. She was tall and lithe, but it had been a man, and a strong one at that, who had killed Miriam Fox. That meant that for Carla to be guilty she would have needed to have got someone else involved in the plot, which, as far as I could see, would have defeated the object of it in the first place. And she was right too. All to defend a job managing a care home for delinquent kids? Somehow I didn't think so.

I sighed. 'I'm not going to take it any further, put it like that.'

'But you don't believe me?'

'I don't really know what to believe. It's a pretty strange story, you've got to admit that. One minute you're a high-powered social worker managing a kids' home, the next you're an escort girl with a nice line in kinky customers.'

'You certainly know how to make it sound degrading.'

I gulped my mouthful of wine. 'Well, isn't it? Getting fucked for money by middle-aged men who'll dip their wick with anyone who'll take the cash off them? It's hardly what you'd call satisfying and useful work.'

'I'm not going to apologize for what I do. I provide a service, nobody gets hurt, and sometimes, you know… sometimes it is quite satisfying. And if I get paid for it too… it's all the better, isn't it?'

'I don't know. Is it?'

'Have you ever paid for sex, Mr Milne? Dennis?'

I smiled. 'Why? Are you offering?'

She smiled back. 'I'm very choosy about who I sleep with.'

'Well, I guess that's me out then. A nosey, cynical copper's hardly a prime catch.'

She didn't say anything and we sat in silence for a few moments, both, I think, pondering our positions in the world and what we'd actually achieved. It struck me then that the two of us weren't really all that dissimilar. Both of us were leading murky double lives we'd far rather keep deeply buried. The difference was, I'd kill to preserve the secrecy of mine. At least I hoped this was the difference.

'Do you want another drink?' she asked me eventually.