Death Call (20 page)

The list contained the following names and addresses:

1 Gem Hackney Cabs, Essex Road.

2 Fabric Store Wholesalers, Liverpool Road.

3 Hampden Computer Suppliers, Upper Street.

4 Rollabar Hydraulics, Holloway Road.

5 Harry’s Hackney Company, City Road.

6 Jim Murney, Heating & Plumbing, Dalston Road.

7 A1 Hackney Services, Roseberry Avenue.

8 Xpress Parcel Deliveries, Pentonville Road.

9 Drop-off Couriers, White Lion Street.

10 Motorman Vehicle Services, Liverpool Road.

All that had to be done was a systematic check on each of these companies. That, Grant believed, would reveal whether the killer was working for one of them. There couldn’t be too many blonde thirty year old ex-army men out there with access to a purple estate car.

By the time Carroll had returned from his visit to the MOD, DCI Jones was making noises and wanted to see Carroll and Grant in his office. Dan didn’t even have time to have a cup of coffee before Jones dragged him in.

Grant sat there, confident that they were making good ground on identifying their suspect, and Jones looked like he was about to give birth.

‘Right, it’s good to see the two of you together at last. Whatever happened to working together on this case?’ Jones said sarcastically. ‘Sam has filled me in on what he’s been up to. Any luck with the army?’

‘Not as yet. But I’ve got a contact name and number. If we can get a name, then we can find out all we need to know. And if our man is ex-army, then we have him....’ Carroll said with a smile.

‘Well, it’s no time to rest on your laurels – whoever he is he’s still out there, and the Chief Superintendent has decided to go to the press on the killer’s general description. And before you say anything – no I’m not going to give him the latest before you have a chance to check it out – so no details on the car, or on the fact that he was cut on the ear will be released. Not yet, anyway. The Chief Superintendent’s coming down pretty hard on me over this, so I want you two to get together with Wheeler and Thompson and work it together – it’ll cut down on the amount of time wasted on interviews. If it was up to me there’d be a whole squad on the case – but we don’t have the resources.’

‘So we have to work with Wheeler and Thompson?’ Carroll sighed, looking out the window.

‘Yes, and don’t make life difficult for them – they’re good at what they do – understood? And seeing as this guy is dangerous, I’m issuing you both with firearms.’

‘Not a bad idea. The guy’s bound to be a trained killer if he’s ex-SAS,’ Grant commented as he handed the list containing the names of the businesses to his partner, who scanned it eagerly.

‘This list shouldn’t take too long to get through,’ Carroll said.

‘I want this done sensitively – you can pretend that it’s related to a traffic accident or something just to establish a positive ID, okay?’ Jones said, pushing his glasses up on his nose with his forefinger.

‘Well, we’d best get right on to it then, eh?’ Carroll said, hoping for a chance to get out of Jones’ office.

‘Okay – but just make sure that you keep me up to date on what’s happening. I want daily reports on this – understand?’

The two detectives left the DCI’s office feeling confident that the killer, whoever he was, had no chance of escape now.

‘A matter of time,’ Grant said to Carroll, smiling for the first time in over a week. ‘It’s just a matter of time....’

Chapter 21

The receptionist placed her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and spoke softly to the young woman stood opposite.

‘69 Noel Road. The basement flat – okay?’

‘Yeah, I know Noel Road. And it’s just the one guy? I’m not doing those threesome things anymore. They freak me out,’ the younger woman said in response.

‘Listen, Samantha, if you don’t want to do it, then I’ll find someone who does. Someone who needs the money, okay?’

‘Just tell me it’s not a threesome again. That’s all I want to know....’

‘It’s not a threesome. Now, are you interested or not?’

‘Of course I’m interested. Get the guy’s name and check him out, and I’ll get ready, okay?’

‘Right. I think he’ll only want you for a half hour or so.’

‘Another quickie? If it were this easy every time I’d be a happy woman....’ Samantha said with a wry smile. The receptionist smiled back at her sympathetically.

‘And a rich one too,’ the older woman said, checking the caller’s details in the phone book.

‘He’s in the book then?’ Samantha asked.

‘Yeah, he’s in the book. And I reckon he’s got loads of money – you can sometimes tell with the accent, you know....’

‘And sometimes you can be very, very wrong!’ Samantha replied, remembering a trick she had turned a couple of months previous to this.

He was an old guy of around seventy, wearing the obligatory blue blazer and creamy white flannels, a cravat circling his age-creased neck. He looked like he should have had loads of money. There was a definite upper class air to his voice. Only the guy didn’t have two ha’penneys to rub together. His credit card was about six months out of date, but that didn’t stop him. Everything he had, he had for free. It was a pity, Samantha thought, that all the girls on the job weren’t issued with a list of cancelled credit cards, so they could check whilst out on the job. Some agencies checked the credit card number before a visit, but most didn’t. And it looked like Sherri, the older woman who kept the reception desk at Honey’s Escort Agency, wasn’t up to going through the full series of checks. It took too long and was usually a complete waste of time. At least that was the way she saw it.

Samantha preferred getting paid in cash. That way, at least, she could cream off twenty or thirty quid for herself over and above what the agency required from her. All she had to do was arrange a new price with the client. And once they had seen what they were about to get a piece of, it usually wasn’t a big problem. Samantha had a body to die for.

The trick at 69 Noel Road had been cleared by Sherri’s system of checks, which although incomplete, usually satisfied the girls that they weren’t going out on a call organised by a masturbating student on the phone who wanted to pull himself off while talking to a whore. Those kind of calls were a common occurrence, and you could usually only get one decent job for the girls out of around nine or ten phone calls.

‘So what does the guy want?’ Samantha asked Sherri, checking her lipstick in the mirror that hung beside the reception desk.

‘I think he’s probably just after straight sex – he didn’t sound like a leather and handcuffs sort of guy, if that’s what you mean....’ Sherri laughed a little, before diverting her attention to the phone, which had begun to ring again. It never seemed to stop ringing in Honey’s. Always busy, always in demand. As far as the escort business went, Honey’s was one of the more upmarket in the area, with several well-known personalities on its books, and a list of regulars who had a girl once or twice a week. They were the jobs that the girls liked the most. You always knew where you were with a regular.

The majority of the regulars were divorced, separated or just plain bored. If they were married, it was usually down to their wife having gained that two or three stone extra that made their stomach and their genitals turn. But, as many of the girls agreed, the men were no spring chickens either. Everything from pot-bellied businessmen to retired amputees sought the ‘professional and discreet service’ they advertised.

Most of the clients just couldn’t stand the thought of not having a girl every week. And it was always the new girls that they wanted. Whenever a new girl started, she’d have all the regulars for the first two to three weeks, ensuring a good income for her, and a new playmate for the clients. It was the girls who had been there for a few months that got what they called ‘cold calls’.

Samantha finished applying her lipstick and picked up her handbag, readying herself to leave. The office was always busy on a Friday afternoon, and there were ten girls on call. Three of those present were the most bitchy women that Samantha had ever met and she was glad to be getting out of the office for a while – even if it meant prostituting herself with some seedy guy in a basement flat.

Having been on the game for five years, at twenty one, Samantha had turned to an escort agency in an effort to get away from her pimp. Five years walking the streets of Bradford had toughened her up, and she believed that she had landed on her feet with Honey’s Escort Agency. The whole show was run by a woman and Samantha, or Sammy, as the girls called her, thought that was just fine.

She’d had enough shit from the men in her life over the years, but now she was free of it – or at least that was the way she saw it. No more drugs being pumped into her veins by a pimp, no more beatings in alley-ways by drunken punters who couldn’t get a hard-on, no more physical abuse by her step-father.

Things were different now, and Sammy felt that she was in control. And control was vital to Samantha. Years of systematic abuse by her mother’s second husband had left her emotionally and mentally scarred. Having been first raped by him at the age of thirteen, Sammy had fallen foul of the law and had spent time in the care of the State, where she was introduced to drugs. Half of the girls who were in the home were on the game by their sixteenth birthday, and it wasn’t long before Sammy was at it too. At first she found the whole thing disgusting, but at the same time it gave her a feeling of being wanted, a feeling of power. She felt as though she had something that men wanted, and she could charge them for her favours. It seemed like a pretty good deal for the first few months. But when a local pusher got his claws into the young women, it had all started to go wrong.

For every forty quid she had made for each job, twenty had to go to the pimp. And by the end of the night another twenty would be given to him for a hit of heroin. So if she had two or three guys a night, and did her regular half and half, for which she got forty quid, she’d come home with around thirty or forty pounds a night. And that was before she had drunk anything. Six hours standing on a cold and wet street in a short skirt and high heels was enough to turn anyone to the drink. But it was different now. The only thing that Sammy had a dislike for was a threesome. It wasn’t the thought of two men having sex with her that she found disgusting, it was when a husband and wife hired her for a night and did everything they wanted to her, and had her do everything they wanted to them. The women were always the worst, she thought, remembering the pleasure one woman had seeing her husband fuck Sammy from behind whilst at the same time perform oral sex on her. It was the first time she had truly felt like a whore, and she didn’t like it one little bit. It was different when it was just men, she thought. Men are just pathetic creatures who need sex to feel good. The woman is nearly always in control and that’s the way it should be, she thought, leaving the office and climbing into her car.

Spring had managed to somehow make a foothold in the air that Friday, and the bright daylight raised her spirits as she started her car and drove off in the direction of Noel Road in Islington.

Number 69 was an old building with flaky white paint on the bottom half. A wrought iron railing and steps led down to the basement level, where Sammy pressed the doorbell. For a nice area, she thought, the house could’ve done with a lick of paint. There was no reply to the doorbell. Knocking loudly on the door with her knuckles, Sammy stood back and waited for a reply. The sound of latches being undone came from behind the door. Slowly the door opened, and Sammy introduced herself.

‘Hi, I’m Sammy, I’m from Honey’s....’

‘Come on in,’ said the man who had opened the door. ‘I’ve been expecting you for a while now.’

Sammy stepped past the man who had let her in and found herself in the living room.

‘I take it that you’re Edward then?’ Sammy said, trying to initiate a conversation.

‘Yes, sorry, didn’t I introduce myself?’

‘Oh, it’s okay. It’s a nice place that you have here.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now, I don’t know what you discussed with Sherri on the phone at the agency, but it’s one hundred and seventy for an hour and a half, and then fifty for every hour after that. So one seventy is the lowest rate. What would you like me to do, and how would you like to pay?’