Ivory (20 page)

He had the
suspicion that she would be safe from any danger the pimps might
have posed. He was more concerned with what her absence meant for
him personally. Had she left him? Would she return to the house
before the time she would be expecting Martin to be home from work?
Did she do this every day? A black fog smothered him. He had paid
her to stay off the streets and she had abused the gesture. He
shook his head and cleared the fug. He had to work with facts. She
was gone. He knew she could only be at her home with Ebony or at
Arven Road. He couldn’t go to Ebony to find out, it would confirm
everything Ebony told him and Martin was too proud for that. He
fought his way back into his coat, locked the house up, rushed to
his car and aimed it in the direction of Arven Road and ploughed
his way through the lunchtime traffic. If she was at Arven, Martin
could approach her and try and get her to return with him. Get her
out of danger.

He drew the
car into Arven Road and a panic seized him and shook him, his blood
became tumbling beads in his veins and his shallow breaths became
feathers that tickled and irritated his lungs. He was unable to
recall any of his journey, and he broke out in a cold sweat as he
wondered how many speed cameras he had tripped and traffic lights
he had missed, but this was not the source of his anxiety for he
was terrified that he would see Ivory in Arven Road. He wanted her
to have gone to the shops, gone out to spend the money he gave her,
gone to see a friend, even to have been enticed out of the house
like a little piggy by the bad wolf pimps, anything but Ivory
leaving him to go and sell herself after she had agreed to stay at
his. That could mean she saw through his motive of wanting her with
him to protect her.

Martin could
just about cope with King, Jenny, Ebony and Richard seeing through
his motive for wanting to paint Ivory, he had even managed to admit
it to himself, but if Ivory also knew… Knew and continued to take
his money. Shame and foolishness washed through him in a hot wave
that flushed his face red, the colour percolating into his thoughts
at the idea of Ivory and Ebony taking advantage of his ideas,
finances and feelings. He sat brooding in his car where he had
originally parked on his first visit to Arven and waited for a
glimpse of Ivory.

An hour passed
but the silent time spent waiting didn’t ease the uncomfortable
throbbing of his heart that seemed to draw on all the muscles of
his chest with every beat as it rode his tumultuous dread and
simmering humiliation and anger. The small road held a mixture of
feelings for Martin; the embarrassment of being in the road itself
and being associated with the types of men that frequented such
places, discomfort created by the blackened shell of King’s home
and the memory of his violent death, fear of the pimps’ van
appearing again, dread that he would see Ivory working the streets
when he had hoped he might be able to persuade her to leave that
life behind. All those thoughts and feelings wrestled with each
other to dominate him completely, and mired him in a sweaty grime
he knew he would not be able to shower off.

The road was
quiet and barely populated and only occasionally a girl would
appear in an alleyway or walk the pavement. He didn’t know whether
it was the exposure to the daylight that made the girls more
cautious or whether it was the cold and the threat of rain. Heavy
charcoal clouds smothered the sun and created an eerie twilight. It
was a depressing abandoned place and Martin doubted that the road
would lose its shadows even on the brightest days. There was a
pressure in the atmosphere and a charge to the air that matched his
brooding emotions. There was a storm brewing.

The silence
scattered from a sudden rapping against his window. Startled, he
found Candy peering in at him and he saw that she recognised him
and was equally startled. Her face blanked and she exhaled a curse,
she straightened up and hugged her arms around herself, appearing
caught and unsure what to do. Martin recovered his wits and quickly
lowered the window.

“
Don’t go,” he yelped, flailing a hand out of the window to
catch her.

She easily
avoided his grip. “I thought you were business.”

“
No. Sorry.”

“
I’m not sorry. You equal trouble. Don’t you get enough
trouble up your way or something?” She was trying not to look at
him, her face fixed in a distracted sulk.

“
I don’t look for it,” he mumbled dismally, sagging in his
seat.

She faced him, both hands on her hips. “Really?” A dark
preened eyebrow arched. “And just what
are
you looking for?” She tutted
before he could answer. “You don’t have to tell me; Ivory?” A
breeze suddenly blew through the street sweeping litter and the
last of the loose orange leaves around her feet. A darker cloud
drew across the sky and pressed its shadow down upon
them.

He nodded
apprehensively in answer to her prediction, smothered by the
exposure he felt from someone else being able to predict his
motives.

She tilted her
head back in reaction, but left her eyes on him, like a doll with
tilt-movement eyes. “It didn’t end well last time you came looking
for her.”

“
Have you seen her?” He pushed, dismissing her
concern.

The first rain
for the day began to sparsely spot the pavement and his windscreen
and distracted Candy into looking about her, cursing at the sudden
change in weather.

“
Have you seen her?” He urged, trying to compete with her
study of the sky and stop her from dashing for cover. She danced on
her heels, caught between finishing her conversation and finding
somewhere to keep dry as the rain began to fall harder. “Please.”
The word snatched her attention back to him. Candy held her flat
handbag over her head and squinted against the rain, hesitating
around her answer as if it were an obstacle she was unsure whether
to scale. The sky grumbled with a low thunder that reverberated
through the ground. “She went off with a punter about ten minutes
ago.”

Part Three

“
If you gaze for long into the abyss,

the abyss also
gazes into you.”

Friedrich
Nietsche

Chapter S
eventeen

Martin fixed
his gaze on Ebony’s distorted reflection in the glass of the
train’s window. It was a ghost against the rushing black face of
the underground tunnel. Ebony’s blank eyes stared back but were
oblivious to Martin’s presence. With the knowledge that Ebony
couldn’t see him, Martin felt like a ghost himself, haunting
Ebony’s journey. Even when the tube train carriage lurched or shook
and they were jostled against each other Martin was just another
anonymous passenger. It was just how he imagined being invisible
would feel. Occasionally he would glance aside and study Ebony up
close, his face was a mask of authority and a warning of power and
strength worked in iron, contradicted and undermined by his
blanched eyes that continually squirmed in their sockets like
vulnerable shell rooted molluscs.

Although Ebony
couldn’t see him Martin still travelled with his heart in his
throat, and could not shake the idea that he was going to get
caught, that Ebony would suddenly turn to him and address him,
revealing that he knew he was there all along. Ebony’s confidence
with his environment and the manner in which he faced the world and
challenged its mastery of him unnerved him, and left him
questioning the limitations of this giant man’s sight. Despite any
advantage Martin might have over Ebony through his extra sense
Ebony still held all the answers.

Martin’s head
boiled with questions after his discussion with Candy. After
learning that Ivory continued to sell herself he needed to
understand why Ivory did what she did. Needed to know whether her
return to prostitution was a betrayal, or simply an automaton
action through learned behaviour.

The fact that
Ivory had, at the moment he had been talking with Candy on Arven
Road, been working with another man, gutted him. The revelation had
left him as lost as Candy had appeared as the rain began to rush
down in drops as thick as bullets. She had frantically looked
around her for cover.

“
Get in.” She had frozen, unsure of the offer. “Just for
shelter.”

She had raced
around the car, hunched against the downpour, dived into the
passenger seat and yanked the door closed with both hands as if
against an oncoming wall of water. She had frowned at him. “Just
for shelter?” She had repeated. “Thanks.”

The rain
thundered on the roof and distorted the glass through spots the
size of fifty-pence pieces.

“
Can I ask you something? And I don’t mean this as a
judgement.”

She had rolled
her eyes as she checked her make-up in a compact mirror. “That
means there’s a judgement coming.”

The judgement
had already arrived – for Martin anyway. “No, really it’s just a
question.” She nodded permission to continue, scattering raindrops
from her hair and spotting the mirror. “Why do you do what you
do?”

The drumming
rain filled her thinking space and she hesitated before the mirror,
as if she was telepathically asking the question of her reflection.
“Because.”

“
Because?”

She shoved her
mirror deep into her pocket, cutting the introspective connection
and flashed a grin. “Well, it’s obvious I didn’t sit around as a
kid with my crayons and Barbie thinking I want to grow up to be a
prostitute.” She stared at the windscreen, watching the world
distort into shifting ripples through the rain. “A one night stand
gave me money once.” Her face had become blank, her tone flat.
“Turned out he was married. Maybe making it a business deal eased
his conscience, I don’t know, but it came at a time when I needed
money. It’s just something I fell into. It’s easy and the money’s
good.”

“
And you have stayed with it?”

“
Does the need for money ever go away?”

Martin could
only nod at her cause and effect justification, and accept its
simplicity, but Candy didn’t do it every day like Ivory did, just
enough to set her up for the week. Questions squirmed like fat
grubs in his head. Just how much money did Ivory and Ebony need?
And what did they use it for?

“
Have you got a boyfriend?” She nodded. “So you love
him?”

“
Jeez – you training up to be one of them counsellors at the
outreach project?”

“
Sorry, if that’s intrusive.”

She shrugged
and tilted an open hand in his direction. “It’s just that I’m used
to going along with whatever I think will turn the punter on.”

“
I just wanted to understand if… if you can love someone and
do what you do.”

“
Course I can. I’m no freak you know. Business is business.
Sex can be sex just like if you have a one night stand. There’s no
love there. If a punter is good at what he is doing it’s gonna feel
good for me physically, and I can enjoy what I am doing but I don’t
care for them or anything. If I cared for them I would be telling
them to go find a girlfriend or go back to their girlfriend or wife
and make things work out. It’s different with Brendan, my
boyfriend, because I love him.”

It hadn’t
answered his question. But the question of what Ivory felt could
only be answered by Ivory. A car arrived in the street that Candy
recognised as a regular customer and she had thanked him for the
shelter, checked her make-up again and braved the torrent for a
dash to the car.

Martin
withdrew within himself. He had driven from Arven Road to a road
that neighboured Ivory’s. There had been a sense of inevitability
attached to this next move, as if he had been moving within a world
of déjà vu, but he had to see if his prediction of Ivory’s next
stop was right. He had walked to the point in this street that was
roughly level with Ivory and Ebony’s house in the next street over
and entered the nearest alley that divided the terraced houses, he
picked his way through the wild weeds and dumped rubbish until he
had found a turning that lead into Ivory’s road. He found an alley
that was opposite the path that led down the side of Ivory’s house
to the main door. There was plenty of cover from bushy weeds
breaking from the ground and falling foliage from a willow tree
lamenting over a battered garden fence, and he was able to linger
there without being spotted by the surrounding houses. He had been
right to wait. Ivory had returned to the house from Arven Road,
looked about her cautiously and then headed to her front door. She
reached into the letterbox with a well-practiced snaking arm and
when it withdrew he saw a glint of gold that was her door key. She
used it and disappeared into the house.

She had
returned to Ebony with her earnings. The money Martin had given her
to make up for lost earnings through staying at his house, and her
actual earnings for the day. It confirmed his prediction and
realised his fears. A while later she reappeared, gave the street
the same wary respect she had given it upon her arrival and headed
back the way she had come. She would be back at Martin’s before his
expected return, as she undoubtedly had been doing everyday. It
explained why Ivory left no appearance of activity in Martin’s
house, and why it seemed that she didn’t eat anything at his place
during the day. However, these answers gave little comfort.

Ebony appeared
at the side of the house, his staff brandished before him like a
totem. His sudden appearance broke Martin from his resigned stupor
and Martin stalked through the scrub and rubble of the alley in a
determined course to intercept Ebony.