Jon Grimwood - redRobe

‘That one,’ said Father Sylvester, pointing to a Japanese whore with tiny breasts and soft legs, her legs wrapped in crepe bandages so fine as to be almost transparent, ‘she’s perfect. . .’

She was, too. Young enough to pass for his daughter if needs be, not so young that she’d cry at being forced to do things she didn’t want to do. Spit at him maybe from that down-turned bee sting of a mouth or lash out with black-lacquered nails, but not cry. This one was long since cried-out. That was, if the emptiness in her dark brown eyes was anything to go by.

No expectations.

Nothing left that resembled hope.

Hollow.

Father Sylvester realised that probably made them equal. The bearded, black-robed priest nodded at Madame Sotto who smiled as if she expected no less, and levered her vast bulk from an ornate and over-gilded chair. Fake Louis Napoleon from the look of it, and not a good fake either.

At Madame Sotto’s shoulder stood a Megrib bodyguard dressed in a silver posing pouch, silver body paint and heavy brass bracelets. Behind her, red velvet rose to the ceiling, swathes of it covering all four walls. The whole brothel was one giant fire risk.

‘You told me you wanted young,’ Madame Sotto said with a short laugh, ‘maybe you should have mentioned you also wanted Chink.’ The fat woman made it sound like a joke but Father Sylvester knew it wasn’t. She was upset. He’d watched the edginess rise in her puffy face as he rejected one after another of her whores. Running first through the beautiful ones, then the sullen, sultry and obviously under-age. After that, she’d tried podgy and then out-and-out odalisque, just in case he was chubby-chasing, but he’d waved them all away until they got to this one.

And now he was interested. Really interested.

The girl was round hipped. Soft from lack of proper exercise. She wore a weird high-collared top of grey canvas that stretched like a restraint-jacket from under her chin down to her thighs. Her legs were bound from the ankle upwards with those crepe bandages and only her arms and feet were bare, each toenail decorated with a tiny henna spiral.

Father Sylvester knew high fashion when he saw it. And though he couldn’t put a price on the clothes he recognised expensive.

The Madame had been saving her. That was the reason he hadn’t been shown Mai before. This girl was earmarked for someone else but the priest didn’t waste his time wondering who. He wasn’t interested in anything except leaving with the girl in front of him-and soon.

‘Japanese,’ he told Madame Sotto, looking at the girl’s sullen mouth and heavy cheeks, so rouged they looked like she’d been slapped hard. ‘She’s Japanese, not Chinese.’

‘Nip, chink…’ Madame Sotto shrugged. She was going to say they all looked the same to her, but then she caught Father Sylvester’s eye and swallowed the words. There weren’t many Korean priests working for the Jesuits, but she was looking at one of them.

Half Japanese, that’s what the girl was. Not full…Father Sylvester amended the words in his head, without bothering to tell Madame Sotto. Not that she’d have understood the difference anyway. A bit of Father Sylvester, the dark bit that always burnt at the back of his mind, wanted to tell the brothel keeper that, actually, when it came to Occidentals he couldn’t tell one raddled Madame from another either. But as a priest he didn’t allow himself the indulgence.

‘You…’ Father Sylvester jerked his chin rudely at the girl. ‘Strip.’

He caught it then, inside her head, a faint flare of anger that never quite reached her face. The priest smiled and Mai’s eyes widened.

She knew who he was then. Or at least what he was…

Psi. Sucking her thoughts like a cerebral vanpyre. And she’d thought it was her body he’d wanted.

‘Strip,’ Madame Sotto ordered crossly and the girl did, blank-faced as she began to undo her canvas jacket, starting at the left hip, her childish fingers fumbling at tiny hooks. The huge swirl of dark hair wound up on her skull like a headdress shuddered as the girl lent forward to get a clearer view of what she was doing.

Madame Sotto snapped something in Spanish and Mai stopped, fingers frozen over the hooks. Then she nodded and ran one finger quickly down the other side seam of her jacket, waiting impassively as the canvas parted neatly and the grey jacket slid to the marble floor.

Smartcloth. Father Sylvester had read about it. Ate sweat, adjusted its TOG rating according to ambient temperature and kept itself dirt free. Also changed colour by adjusting its refractive index and provided invisible uplift to most of Hollywood, if the Enquirer was to be believed. And Father Sylvester made a warped point of believing the Enquirer.

The girl was beautiful. In a sulking, pouting, ‘5 a.m. in the morning, what the fuck am I doing up being gawped at by a priest’ sort of way. A single band of crepe was wrapped once round her chest, not quite hiding cherry-blossom nipples, but what Father Sylvester really noticed were her eyes. They were dark with the knowledge that she’d never find her way out of life’s maze, not even if the rats helped her.

‘Enough,’ Father Sylvester held up his hand.

‘You don’t want her to remove the rest?’

No. The priest shook his head. He’d seen enough. More than enough, more than he should. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. And he was very definitely doing the wrong thing.

‘How much?’

Madame Sotto named a price that would have kept Father Sylvester’s old food kitchen in the Aleutian Islands going for a year. But he wasn’t in a barren archipelago off the coast of Russia or even at the Vatican, he was in Spain. In a ramshackle farmhouse set fifteen klicks outside Alicante. And there was a stretch UltraGlyde waiting outside the door, chattering to itself as it waited for the Jesuit to make his purchase.

‘That’s acceptable.’ The priest motioned to the girl to put on her clothes and waited while she struggled to push one arm into a tight sleeve and then zipped up the opposite seam with a quick run of her nail along the edge of the cloth.

Did the garment do that for everyone, the priest wondered, or was it imprinted to Mai’s touch only? Either way, there was going to be time enough to find out.

‘Twenty-four hours,’ the Madame said firmly.

Father Sylvester nodded, his face impassive. Without hesitation he reached into his soutane and pulled out a Moroccan leather wallet, its corners edged with brass. The card he selected at random was stolen, they all were. So was the Honda outside. But they were as nothing compared to the dead Pope’s soul hidden in his pocket.

Sliding the gold HKS across the top of the marble table, Father Sylvester made sure his fingers never quite touched those of the Madame.

He should have asked about infections, about retro Virus and malaria and all the other diseases whores in Spain were prone to. Not that any of it would have changed his mind. This was the one he wanted, no matter how bad her blood count. Taking his gold card back from the Madame he pushed it deep into a pocket.

All that stood between him and success was a door and a short walk to his car.

‘This time tomorrow,’ he said, most of his attention now on the Japanese girl. ‘Go on,’ he told her, stepping back to let Mai enter a small courtyard flanked by Moorish ajimez, double arches cut from local red marble.

Later in the day the heat would be blistering. But right now it was still cool, in that Mediterranean way that everyone knew signified the sun would eventually be hot enough to melt blacktop.