Mad Cows (13 page)

Annabelle wrote out Gillian's instructions on scented rose paper calligraphied with the words ‘Elite and Discrete'.

‘How's the thigh? Still swimming in circles, are you, Bel?'

Gillian retrieved the note from between Annabelle's false red fingernails in preparation for her new vocation. Now
there
was job fulfilment – relying on the kindness of passing serial killers.

12

Relying On The Kindness Of Passing Serial Killers

IF HE BROUGHT
a video camera to bed or there were any traces of blood on the valance or bodily fluids on the headboard, a career rethink would be in order. This is what Gillian decided as the lift swept her up to the seventh floor of the Swallow Hotel, Victoria. (Not a place to take a girl on her first date, she conjectured.)

‘You're late,' said the man, opening door 735 in answer to her knock. ‘I had my pre-intercourse shower three-quarters of a bloody hour ago.'

A crease of mild curiosity momentarily blemished Gillian's forehead. Her impromptu Prostitution Etiquette Guide had not included what to do if the client was young. Really young. The sort of male who has trainer wheels on his car. The room smelled of aeroplane air and was decorated with musak-banality.
What
Gillian referred to as a No Star Hotel. Keeping composed, she crossed the threshold, her heels sending up static from the acrylic carpet. Carefully, she placed her carpetbag on the sofa, beneath a colour reproduction of grouse being gunned down. The nervous client shut the door, then turned to make an embarrassed appraisal of his purchase.

‘I'm gunna complain . . .'

Gillian tensed. She had detected a slight flicker of disappointment on his face at the door.

‘You've been undersold.'

She realized with amusement that he was trying to be suave; Dustin, to her Mrs Robinson. An unsatisfactory film,
The Graduate
. In her version, Mrs R would get to keep her Toy Boy. ‘Drink?' His smile revealed a mouth full of steel. Not just bridge-work . . . the poor bastard was housing the Golden Gate in there.

As he bent back nail after nail trying to coerce the champagne bottle to give up its cork, rabbiting on about how this computer conference was his first time ‘overseas', Gillian appraised him. Late twenties and already the proud owner of a bloated beer-belly, he looked like the sort of guy whose favourite pastime involved adulterating his mates' drinks then shaving off their eyebrows.

‘I don't do tongues, armpits or toes. No elbow is to be inserted into any part of my body and it's no, no, no, to petroleum jelly.'

‘What?' he enquired, petulantly. ‘No extras? The fellas told me I could pay for extras.'

Gillian surveyed his terry-towelling robe which gaped uninspiringly. ‘Under the circumstances, my idea of sexual inventiveness is not to wear my plastic anti-contamination gloves, savvy?' Gillian removed her coat to reveal her leather basque. Eyes magnetized at suspender-belt level, his lips trailing a Labrador drool, the computer engineer unexpectedly lunged. Gillian side-stepped effortlessly, sending him sinking into the duvet with a forlorn phhht.

‘I believe you were instructed to make fiscal remuneration up front.'

The big boy made the wet, gasping noise of a beached walrus. With great reluctance he extracted his wallet from a side drawer. ‘So, what brought you to this?' he asked conversationally.

Gillian bristled. She refused to see herself as a fallen woman. She'd just lost her balance momentarily – her
bank
balance. ‘And no fellatio,' she added tersely. ‘It clogs my sinuses.'

Gillian's L-plated Lothario watched as she arranged her long, pale limbs on the Sheridan sheets. He ran his stubby fingers over her skin. ‘Let's turn the lights off,' he said, frankly. ‘It's just you kinda
feel
younger than you
look
.'

Trying to locate the love muscle of an overweight man in the dark is a little like attempting to land on an aircraft carrier in a hurricane without radar. When
Gillian
finally tracked down the vital bit of anatomy, it did not respond as enthusiastically as she'd expected.

‘Don't take it personally. Been a bit crook in the guts,' apologised the Aussie. ‘Been riding the porcelain pony all bloody day.'

‘I'm sorry. It's just that I do charge by the hour you know.'

‘He's almost there . . . aren't you, Darren . . . I call him Darren.' Gillian mentally added another type to her ‘No No' List – men who have pet names for their penises. A male preserve. She had never in her memory been informally introduced to a vagina.

Once aroused, ‘Darren' seemed to have just as much trouble reaching any satisfying conclusions about his immediate situation. The gleam of the clock radio glinted on to a Medical Alert pendant glistening in the crease of her client's neck. Gillian got motion-sickness as she tried, mid-bounce, to decipher the minute writing. ‘An S and a Z?' Contagious diseases and bizarre medical complaints flashed through her mind. ‘Schizophrenia?' she thought to herself. Oh spiffing. She was about to get a flick-knife through her Fallopians. Exactly how many personalities had she taken to bed with her, she wondered grimly. In the dim green light the silver engraving started to look less like ‘schizophrenic' and more like ‘psychopathic'. No wonder it was taking such an inordinate amount of time. How could she bonk his brains out, when he obviously didn't have any? Gillian was just
contemplating
informing him of her dental appointment
in three weeks' time
when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her handbag move. Then she heard a hiccough. And another.

‘What was that?' asked her Oedipal companion.

‘What?'

Gillian pre-empted the next tiny explosion with a little gasp of her own which he took to be pleasure. Pleased at his prowess, he re-engaged his attention to his landing gear. Gillian contorted herself into an avant-garde position, more to obscure his view of her handbag than to achieve Kama Sutra credentials. Her computer operator was just about to download, when the snuffles and sniffles emanating from the bag crescendoed into a loud and rasping cry. Gillian simulated an academy-award-winning orgasm as camouflage. Her thrashing movements were so vigorous that her bondage bustier zip got snagged with the boy's mouth braces. Untangling them by braille, she noticed that her punter was up on one elbow, staring in dismayed disbelief across the gloomy room at the squealing handbag inching closer and closer to the edge of the sofa. He snapped on the bedside light.

‘It's a baby,' Gillian explained casually, rescuing her bag from the floral precipice and liberating Jack from within.

‘Look, what the bloody hell's goin' on, lady?' Her Aussie Love-God was fumbling for his bathrobe.
Gillian
could see now that it wasn't a Medical Alert pendant at all. It was a silver astrological sign.

‘He's got a cold and needs his medicine, that's all.'

There was a flap of terry towelling as he stabbed in vain with his arm at a sleeve. ‘Tell me what the hell's going on or I'll call the cops.' Very practical, she recalled, Sagittarians.

‘I'm an undercover reporter,' she alibied, ‘from
News of the World
.'

‘Go fuck yourself.' He was all nerves now and aggro.

‘If the alternative is
you
, boy-o, I'll pare my nails, shall I?'

The computer whizz-kid suddenly went green around his after-shaved gills. ‘Wait there. Still a bit crook.' He galumphed into the bathroom. When it came to riding the porcelain pony, he obviously still had his spurs on.

The next bit was easy. Gillian pursued him, snatched the key, shut the door and turned the lock. ‘Hey!' came a muffled cry from within. She removed the phone from its cradle. The poor bugger was now pounding on the door, letting rip with a catalogue of guttural expletives. She counted out the money he'd left for her neatly folded on the bedside table. ‘What?' she chastised, through the door. ‘No tip?'

‘Yeah!' he shouted from within, beating his fists with fury. ‘Get some liposuction.'

For that, she gutted his wallet. Jack, anchored in her
arms
, was giving her one of his parsonical expressions. ‘We're just borrowing some assets he wasn't aware he was gong to lend us, dah-ling. Honestly! You're worse than a
husband
.'

Draping her coat across her shoulder, she hung the ‘Do Not Disturb' sign on the door and departed. The maid's trolley was by the lift. On an impulse, Gillian bustled through the open door of room 749. Was her hubby back yet? And would they excuse her? Her baby was fractious because of his cold, poor little poppet, and she had a desperate need to breastfeed . . .

An infant made it so simple – the perfect burglar's tool. All she had to do was locate the maid's trolley on each floor – it was time for the ‘turn down' – pretend the room was hers, go into Earth Mother Mode . . . then pocket all the valuables. If only Maddy could see them.

Until now, Gillian had never realized what an aptitude she had for theft. The school of hard knocks has an accelerated curriculum and Gillian had a feeling that there were a lot more lessons where that came from . . .

‘I'm stuck with you now, I suppose, you little bastard,' she said to Jack, as they raided another room. But her voice was light and happy.

13

Shoot-out At The Single Mother Corral

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT WAS
not something she had bargained on. It would be okay if she were Bette Midler or Whoopi Goldberg: then she could entertain herself. But Maddy felt so dull to start with, how would she be after two weeks of her own company?

Her only guest for the first week was a big, black cockroach. Maddy fed it biscuits and breadcrumbs. It would be pampered beyond belief by the time she got out of here – the insect version of Leona Helmsley.

She switched on her portable radio, but it was all cot deaths, starving children in Somalia, kidnapped babies. Turning down the volume, she filled in a magazine quiz to see whether she was a ‘good mother'. She failed. She even failed when she
cheated
.

Shredding
Women's Journal
, she resolutely set about
expressing
her milk. Grinding her teeth against the pain as she joggled away with her plastic hand-pump, she remembered the petite, pink, jelly-baby nipples she
used
to have. Now her nipples could stretch to Namibia. You could lasso an elephant with each mauve teat. The way things were going, she'd be on HRT by the time she got out of here, yet
still
expressing milk.

During week two, Detective Sergeant Slynne stopped by. ‘What kind of mother are you? Dwee was right about you.'

‘
Dwee?
'

‘Dunno why she gives a toss about you or your kid.'

‘You call her
Dwee
?'

‘But you're bloody lucky she does – a good woman like that . . . She's your fuckin' good fairy. Notice anything?'

‘Um . . . you've taken the bolts out of the side of your head?'

‘I've given up smoking, smartass. Thanks to her.'

‘She's using you, that's all, to help her find Jack.'

‘Yeah. Hopefully before it's too fuckin' late. We're accessing “Lucan”.'

‘Who?'

‘The Missing Persons Bureau's computer,' he boasted. ‘The Yard.'

He paused for her to be impressed, but Maddy was too preoccupied by the grey regrowth at his temples. ‘
Scotland
Yard,' he stressed, piqued. Not just the
cigarettes
, but the hair dye, and the gold chain were also gone.

‘Pointless waiting for a low-life like you to get in touch with your, you know,
remorse
.' The new vernacular didn't suit him. It sat self-consciously – like a man whose wife has dressed him in a shirt far too loud for his personality. ‘Stop putting up, um . . . whats-its' – he inserted another three Nicotinells into his cakehole and chewed ferociously – ‘
barriers
.'

Maddy suffered a sickening intuition. ‘Oh shit. You're doing the horizontal tango, aren't you?'

‘Eh?'

‘You're parallel-parking,' she clarified. ‘A team cream. You're having a bloody affair!'

Slynne changed the subject with suspicious celerity. ‘How could you leave your baby with a slag like that Cassells? Pissed off without paying her rent in Clapham. Checked into the Savoy Hotel no less. When it dawned on her that she couldn't pay the bloody bill, she
left your baby as collateral
.'

Maddy's stomach pinched sourly. ‘What the hell are you talking about?' Slynne rocked on to the balls of his feet. He was enjoying this. ‘Where's Jack!' the terror of it could snap her bones.

‘Cassells lost her bottle. Came back. Grabbed him. Then had it on her toes. But what kind of scrota do you think she'll sell him to next time, eh?'

Maddy watched her pet roach scuttle towards the detective, stop abruptly, turn and make for the
shadows
beneath the toilet. Professional courtesy, she assumed.

‘Lemee know when you want to t—' He nearly said ‘talk' but changed it at the last moment to ‘unburden yourself'. ‘The infanticide charge obviously, we're dropping,' he added quickly as he left, ‘but given you've a screw loose – why else would you leave your baby with that Cassells slag – we're maintaining our objection to bail.'

Before Slynne's appearance, Gillian, in Maddy's mind, was a tall, elegant, responsible woman friend with received pronunciation and perfect cuticles. Two seconds after Slynne's departure, she'd transmogrified into Rosemary West. By the time the dinner tray was collected, untouched, later that nail-biting night, Gillian was an organ-trafficking satanic worshipper who specialized in the sacrifice of small babies on church altars and the sale of their vital organs to rich Americans.