a pulp and left her for dead in a sleazy hotel off Oxford Street. She had deep, livid scars around her eyes and Stephanie knew that the reason she grew her hair long was to disguise the burns her attacker had left at the nape of her neck.
They were commenting on the Swede’s injuries with the indifference of accountants discussing tax rebate. Claire was as outwardly unmoved as the other two. As unpleasant as the facts were, they were not uncommon; if you were on the game long enough, you were bound to encounter violence. Stephanie was no exception. It was a risk run daily, a risk run hourly.
When working, Stephanie usually arrived in the West End during the late morning, from wherever she had spent the night, and then killed a few hours before being ‘on-call’. Most often, she watched TV with Joan, her ‘maid’. They drank coffee, smoked cigarettes and read the tabloids. At some point, she might eat – this was usually the only period of the day that Stephanie considered food – rolling all her meals into one. Sometimes she went to McDonald’s or Burger King, or sometimes she bought tourist fodder; grease-laden fish and chips or huge, triangular slices of pizza with lukewarm synthetic toppings and bases like damp cardboard. On other days, she visited the few friends she had made in the area; a nearby Bangladeshi newsagent, a Japanese girl from Osaka named Aki, or Clive, a diminutive Glaswegian who had a stall in the Berwick Street market and who allowed her to take a free piece of fruit from him each time she passed. When her mood was wrong, she drank before work, most often at the Coach and Horses, or else at The Ship.
As a rule, the later the hour, the rougher the trade so, given a choice, Stephanie preferred to stop working by ten. Generally, however, she found herself working later than that. And whatever the final hour, she was exhausted when it was over, even on a quiet night. Even on a blank night. Staying emotionally frozen bled all her mental stamina.
Stephanie drained her cup, left the three girls in the café – they were still discussing the attack on the unfortunate Swede – and walked to Brewer Street. She climbed the stairs and noticed that the reinforced door on the third-floor landing was open. A familiar voice came from within.
‘In here, Steph.’
Dean West. She felt her body tense and took a moment to compose herself before entering. West was drinking from a can of Red Bull. He wore a burgundy leather coat, a black polo-neck, black jeans and a pair of Doc Martens. As usual, Stephanie found her own eyes drawn to his eyes, which bulged out of his head like a frog’s, and to his teeth, which were a disaster. His mouth was too small for them; a dental crowd in an oral crush, a collage of chipped yellow chaos.
‘How was last night? Some hotel in King’s Cross, right?’
She nodded. ‘But there were two of them when I got there. Bulgarians, I think. Or Romanians.’
‘So? Twice the money.’
‘They wouldn’t pay twice.’
‘What?’
‘They didn’t speak English. They thought they’d already paid for both of them.’
‘I don’t care what they fucking thought. Money up front. That’s the rule. Always.’
‘Not this time.’
His anger deepening, West’s brow furrowed. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? We used to get on, you and me. I thought you was smarter than the others but now I ain’t so sure. What was the one thing I always said? Money up front! How many times d’you have to be told?’
‘I got the money up front.’ Stephanie handed West his cut. ‘For one.’
He began to count it. ‘Ain’t my fault you didn’t collect right. I want my piece of the second. And before you start, I don’t care if it comes out of your cut.’
‘They were both drunk when I arrived. They wanted me drunk too. Given the mood they were in, I thought it was best to go along with them. So I did everything they wanted and then I drank them under the table. That was when I lifted these.’ Stephanie produced two wallets from her pocket and tossed them to West. ‘You can take your cut for the second one out of there.’
West’s bloodless lips stretched into a smile as he examined the wallets. ‘Credit cards? Diners, Visa and Mastercard. Nice. What’ve we got in the other one? Visa and Amex Gold. Very tasty. Barry’ll be well chuffed.’ Barry Green, occasional vendor of drugs to Stephanie, also had a line in reprocessing credit cards, using a Korean machine that altered PIN codes on the magnetic strips. West’s good humour vanished as quickly as it had materialized. ‘But only sixty quid in cash? How much are you charging these days, Steph?’
‘The usual.’
‘And after that they only had sixty quid between them?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t counted it.’
‘Bollocks. You’ve trousered a little for yourself, ain’t you?’
A total of three hundred and fifty-five pounds. All she’d left them with were their coins. ‘They must have blown what they had on all that cheap wine they were throwing down my neck.’
‘Don’t try to be funny, Steph. And don’t try to pull a fast one on me, neither. Now cough it up.’
‘Just what Detective McKinnon was always saying to me. I’ve still got his number somewhere, you know.’
Superficially, West’s anger dissipated but, internally, he was seething and they both knew it. ‘Don’t push your luck, Steph. One day, it’s gonna run out.’
‘I know. And so will yours. We’re both on borrowed time.’
Dean West raped me once. I say ‘raped’ because that is how it appears to me now but, at the time, I was less sure. Anne Mitchell was the one who introduced me to him. She was still a prostitute in those days, working for West, and I think she did it purely to please him although she said it was in my best interest. She told me that for a small percentage of my earnings he would provide protection for me and that, anyway, without his authority, I wouldn’t be allowed to operate in this area. That was a lie. So were most of the things that Anne said in those days. But I don’t hold that against her. She was no different to anyone else in this business, no different to me.
It occurred here, in Brewer Street, in the very room in which I am currently standing. In fact, I am looking at West right now and I am wondering if he is also thinking about it. It seems a lifetime ago. Or rather, it seems like another life altogether. Not mine, but someone else’s. I barely recognize the Stephanie who features in my memories. If I was ever really her, I no longer am.
As I entered this room on that morning, he was polite in an old-fashioned way. Courteously, he held out a chair for me to sit in. This, I later learned, was typical of West. One moment he’s charm itself, the next he’s a savage. I have never discovered whether this is genuine or whether it’s something he has cultivated but, either way, it’s part of his legend. What is beyond dispute is that West has always enjoyed his reputation as a man not to be crossed. He’s thirty-five years old and has spent twelve of his last nineteen years in custody.
To look at him, you would never think he was so vicious. There is nothing in his physique that suggests menace. He is not particularly tall – five-nine, I should think – and he’s very thin with fine features; he has hands as delicate and long-fingered as a female pianist’s. His lank, light-brown hair falls limply from a centre parting, giving a rather effeminate appearance. In a crowd, he is invisible. But when the rage is in him, the bulging eyes threaten to pop out of their sockets, the pale skin becomes so bloodless it almost looks blue and he radiates a feeling that is unmistakable: pure evil.
There is no bluff with West. Everyone knows it. If he says he’ll play noughts and crosses on your face with a pair of scissors, you know he will because if you know anything about him, you’ll know that he’s done it before. When I first entered this room, about two years ago, I never even noticed the screwdriver on the table next to where I was sitting.
At first, he