Simon Kernick - The Business of Dying

She nodded. 'Yes, I suppose it is. I tend to do a couple of nights a week, sometimes more.'

'Is that what you were doing last night?'

'None of your business.'

'So how did some low-level street girl like Miriam Fox find out about your extra-curricular activities? I presume you weren't moving in the same circles.'

'Let's just say she found out.'

'How did she know who you were?'

'Two or three years ago, when she first ran away, she was arrested for soliciting and ended up at Coleman House. She didn't stop long, a couple of weeks at most. She was a very difficult girl to handle and she seemed to have a hatred of authority. I think there might have been problems at home that had helped to shape her personality, but she never talked about them. In fact, about the only time she did talk was to throw abuse. There were quite a few confrontations with staff, including myself, and then one day she decided she'd had enough and walked out. Like a lot of the girls do.'

'Wasn't it a bit dangerous to suggest to us when we first interviewed you that you didn't know her?'

She shifted in her seat and put one leg up on the sofa. It was a vaguely provocative pose, although she didn't seem to notice it. 'Not really. None of the current staff were there when she was there, and originally she gave a false name when we took her in. It would have been difficult to check up on it, and why would you have bothered?'

Which was fair enough, I suppose. 'And when was the next time you saw her?'

'I never did see her again.'

'But you said she was blackmailing you.'

'She was. Look, I'd really rather not go into details, Mr Milne.'

'I'm sure you wouldn't. But it's important I know.'

'So you can calculate whether I'm telling the truth or not?'

I nodded. 'Basically, yes.'

She picked up her wine and took a large drink, as if fortifying herself. 'Look, I'll be honest with you. I don't actually know how she found out. I can guess, but that's about it.' I waited in silence for her to continue. 'Let me start with how it works. My clients tend to be businessmen, men with plenty of spare money. The usual procedure is for us to go somewhere for dinner, then back to a hotel, or their place, for the rest. That way, I keep control of the proceedings, and don't get myself into any situation where I'm unnecessarily vulnerable.'

'That stands to reason.'

'A few weeks ago, though, one of my regular clients – a high-powered lawyer, and someone I've been seeing for several years – was caught kerb-crawling in King's Cross. You might have heard about it.'

I nodded, remembering the case vaguely, though not the name of the punter concerned. Kerb-crawling wasn't big news these days, even when it involved such a richly deserving case as a wealthy lawyer.

'Apparently, it was the second time it had happened to him. He'd been caught doing the same thing a few years ago in Paddington.' She shook her head, as if annoyed with herself for getting involved with someone so unreliable. 'I was worried. I didn't need that sort of hassle; not the sort that could easily compromise me. Afterwards, I went round to his place and confronted him. I asked how often he did it and he swore that both times had been one-offs. He was obviously ashamed about it. He was also obviously lying. No one's that unlucky. So I asked some of the girls in the home if they knew anything about him, whether he'd ever propositioned any of them, more as a matter of conversation than anything else. It was easy enough to do. The case had made some headlines in the local paper, so people seemed quite happy to talk about it.'

'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?'