Girl Seven Read online

  Without anyone to vent my fury on, I told them all I was feeling ill and went home early. I avoided looking back in the direction of Mark Chester’s table, but I took the professional killer’s business card with the number and no name.

  I didn’t sleep that night, which allowed plenty of time for the rage to build by the time I left for the Underground again at ten in the morning. The air had a bite to it: cold and bitter for this time of year. Some skinhead was already shouting at his young girlfriend outside a Starbucks. I fantasized about putting him in an armlock and breaking his wrist.

  I let myself into the club through the staff entrance and found Daisy, the bleached-blonde barmaid, already counting the float into the till.

  ‘All right, Bitch-face,’ I called. ‘You’re early. Is Noel upstairs?’

  Daisy looked up at me and smiled. ‘Hey, Fuck-rabbit.’ Even in the colder days of summer she didn’t wear much. In fact, even during winter I couldn’t recall seeing her wearing anything that covered her legs, nipples and midriff simultaneously. ‘So are you. Yeah, he’s upstairs. Do I need to put on the old headphones and whack-up some Tool?’

  ‘Maybe, but not for the reason you’re thinking.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ She gave me an animated thumbs-up.

  Daisy was the only one here whom I distinguished from the other girls. In a way, she was distinguished from the other girls. She didn’t entertain and perform and fuck and get fucked like the rest of us. Rumour was, her boyfriend had got her the bar job to stop her from getting bored. Her boyfriend was a hitman called Nic Caruana.

  A professional killer, I thought, like Mark.

  I left her and headed upstairs to Noel’s office.

  It was silent on the second floor. He never worked to music. He was remarkably sensitive to sound and couldn’t sleep with the slightest background noise. Even when he had the TV on it was at a volume almost no one else could hear.

  I let myself into his office without knocking.

  Noel looked up from his laptop, affronted, but then he smiled. Unlike most men, he became more handsome when he smiled. It showed his age; the late-thirties lines around his blue eyes stood out and his face became more weathered. But he wore middle age well, like an expensive luxury accessory, like the suit jackets he wore over his jeans.

  ‘Hey you,’ he said, beginning to stand. ‘What are you doing here?’

  I shut the door, pulled out the second wheeled chair with some commotion and sat down. The office was psychotically tidy, with papers and folders stacked in size order and everything arranged at right angles.

  He stared at me, and slowly lowered himself back into his chair.

  I raised my eyebrows, damned if I was going to speak first.

  ‘Am I about to be told off?’ he ventured.

  ‘Well, I’ll give you some credit for realizing you’ve done something wrong.’

  A couple more seconds.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, chewing his lip a little. ‘Ah. I... didn’t think he’d speak to you.’

  ‘What kind of excuse is that?’ I snapped, reciting a mantra in my head to stay calm, stay calm, stay calm... ‘So it’s OK for you to share my private business about my family with a stranger as long as it doesn’t get back to me? Is that your logic here? If Noel Braben shoots his mouth off to a random guy in the forest and Seven doesn’t hear, does it make a sound?’

  ‘Well, you once shared your private business with a stranger the first time you met them. You had no issue with telling me.’

  He never raised his voice to anyone, not that I’d heard. It was unnerving.

  I hesitated. Maybe it should have done, but that fact hadn’t crossed my mind once while thinking about this the night before. I still wasn’t sure why I’d told Noel anything about my personal life in the first place. If I’d been able to share the story of what happened to my family with him so freely, before anything had happened between us, it didn’t seem outlandish that he’d thought it might be OK to regale someone else with it.

  I am sitting on a mountaintop.

  I can hear the wind in the trees.

  I am calm.

  I am calm.

  Noel pushed a silver thermos across the desk at me. ‘Do you want some coffee?’

  I picked it up without a word and took a gulp of the coffee inside. I never drank coffee. He knew I didn’t drink coffee. It was black and disgusting and made me want to gag but I drank it anyway, to avoid speaking for a few seconds longer.

  ‘What did he say to you? It’s kinda unlike Mark to do something like that. He’s a stand-up guy. I didn’t think he’d just start talking to you about it.’

  ‘It wasn’t just talking to me about it, to be fair to him. He wasn’t simply looking for a fun conversation. He... He made me an offer actually.’ I fished the business card out of the pocket of my leather jacket and held it out for Noel to see. ‘He said he’s a guy who solves problems.’

  ‘He... Wo. Wow. He said that to you?’

  I nodded.

  Noel let out a snort of disbelief. ‘No, really. I mean, Mark, he’s... expensive and he’s... he’s Mark. Wow, he must be really interested in you. He doesn’t talk business with just anybody; he works for the Russians and spends half his time out there doing... God knows what.’

  There had been a festering sensation of dread and excitement in my stomach that had crept into my consciousness the night before and worsened now.

  I am sitting on a mountaintop...

  He started laughing and clapped his hands together, making me start. ‘Fucking hell, this is... OK, I know you’re pissed off with me and everything but this is pretty fucking amazing, you know. If Mark Chester wants to take an interest in you then maybe you should think about it? Maybe just talk to him? I don’t know. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but he’s serious, he’d probably find out stuff you never would...’

  I stared hard at the plain business card, with the number and no name. ‘So he’s kinda a big deal then?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s a big deal.’

  ‘You really think he’d find something?’ I asked, sceptical. ‘After three years? I mean... it’s almost three years now and there was no evidence then. You really think he’d find something?’

  ‘Well, I’m not one to exaggerate... much.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But I don’t think Mark’s ever left a job unfinished. I don’t think he’s ever lost a person he’s tried to track down and I don’t think he’s ever left a person alive who he was paid to take care of. He basically never fails, I think.’

  I didn’t know if this was what I wanted to hear.

  ‘Are you still pissed at me?’ Noel asked, leaning forwards across the desk and pushing his laptop to one side. ‘Look, I wasn’t just gossiping like some old bloody woman, I was just... Lighten up, OK? This could be a really good thing for you.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was right or not so I nodded. It wasn’t as if I was going to draw an apology out of him.

  He tried to prompt a smile from me. ‘Yeah? We OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I forced my lips to twitch, to appease him.

  ‘Yeah? Good, I hate it when you look at me like that, baby.’ He reached across the desk and gestured for me to take his hand. ‘And you know, I could have done something super smart here.’

  As I put my hand in his, I noticed that his wedding ring was back on.

  2

  The first time I entered the Underground I wasn’t impressed. I spent the majority of my first impression waiting downstairs in the club for my interview, picking at my fingernails and hunched over.

  I’d been sitting there for twenty minutes too long and the barmaid kept reassuring me, ‘He’ll be down in a minute,’ but I was starting to feel insolent.

  It’s not as if I needed a job right now anyway.

  I almost left before my interview, never to come back.

  Sometimes I tried to imagine how everything might have turned out if I had.

  Even if I was underwhelmed, the club w
as nicer than I’d expected: not as gaudy and overblown. It was about as tasteful as an erotic club could be. Now, at three in the afternoon, you could almost mistake it for a jazz place in the right light, without all the naked women.

  A few men in suits were drinking and talking amongst themselves at tables, while the barmaid appeared to run the place. Some low indie rock was playing from her iTunes behind the bar and the lighting was bright but tinted purple.

  There was exposed copper piping hanging from the ceiling.

  The man I was waiting for, Noel Braben, was upstairs in his office.

  I was to find out that the Underground did in fact have an owner, a woman called Ms Edie Franco, but I was only to see her twice in the time I worked there. Noel and Ronnie O’Connell, his long-time business partner, spoke of her working ‘up north’ with her other clubs. The two of them had more invested in the day-to-day management of the Underground than she seemed to.

  When the door to the stairwell on my left opened it wasn’t Noel Braben who walked out of it. It was a woman with dark red hair, metallic and glossy. She had high cheekbones and wide eyes that looked me up and down and full lips that tightened at the sight of me as she looked over her shoulder on her way out.

  I watched her go, thinking that she was gorgeous but an obvious bitch and that she probably worked here...

  A man wearing jeans and a suit jacket appeared in the doorway after the woman had left, looking pissed off and eager to abdicate from this day. Tired blue eyes searched for me from under a mop of hair that made him look like a member of the Beatles, and he frowned.

  ‘You’re... Seven?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Seven,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes.’ I raised my eyebrows this time and he smiled.

  ‘OK then, come on.’

  It wasn’t exactly lust at first sight. But it became apparent very quickly that something about me amused him, and something about him fascinated me.

  I wasn’t used to finding men interesting. Women had more intricacies; they were harder to please in every sense, harder to read, and the women I had loved I could live my entire life learning how to please and how to read.

  But I liked Noel Braben.

  I swivelled left and right on the spinning chair as he observed me and asked things like, ‘You always lived in London? You don’t look English, exactly.’

  ‘I’m half Japanese but my parents moved back and forth a lot so my accent is pretty much English.’

  ‘It’s a bit American.’

  ‘Well, that’s how we speak English. We watch a lot of American TV.’

  ‘Do you still live with your parents?’

  ‘No, they’re dead.’

  ‘Ooh.’ A grimace. ‘I’m sorry. Was it recent?’

  ‘They were murdered a few years ago, with my sister.’

  I think I’d wanted to shock him, or myself. It was the only explanation for why I’d stated it with such bravado.

  But he wasn’t shocked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with the blank tone of a guy who considered murder no different from any other form of death. ‘Did they ever find the... guy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you survived?’

  ‘I was out.’

  Another frown. He looked down at his desk, his only hint at a reaction, then back up at me with a smile. ‘Can you dance?’

  I was surprised he had changed the subject. He didn’t bring it up again until we were in bed, three weeks later.

  ‘Um, a bit,’ I replied. ‘I can dance but not like... dance. I’ve done Ninpo and some martial arts though so I can pick stuff up quickly.’

  He leant in. ‘Look, this isn’t the Royal Opera House. If you can put one leg in front of the other and smile at the same time most people here will be happy. Have you got any special talents?’

  ‘I can sing OK and I can paint. I’m not sure if I’m particularly special at either.’

  ‘Well, I can be the judge of that.’ He smiled at me again.

  I decided right then that I was going to have sex with him. At some point, whether it was next week or in a few months or whatever, it was definitely going to happen. It had never not happened when I’d decided on it.

  ‘You know how this place works?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a strip club, right?’

  ‘Yes... and no. Officially, we’re an erotic club. I manage it, with my partner Ron. Ronnie O’Connell.’ He spread his hands. ‘But I’m going to be upfront, cos you don’t seem naive. We do a lot here. We’re Members Only. People... certain people... come here to meet. We entertain them, give them free drinks, give them a song and dance, and depending on who they are we send the best girls to their homes for private performances. Are you OK with that? Potentially?’

  ‘With going to some guy’s house?’

  ‘They’re never just some random guy here. We vet all our members very thoroughly; you’d be safer working here than you would be on the tube. We can promise that.’ He became very serious suddenly. ‘We’ve never had a single incident, not with a member.’

  I mulled it over, but I wasn’t surprised. You’d have to be an amateur at life to go for a job interview at a club like this and not expect to be asked to partake in some mild prostitution.

  ‘Well... yeah, I’d be fine with that,’ I said, shrugging.

  ‘Great!’ He couldn’t quite repress the smile. ‘Um, before you do that you will need to provide a clear and very recent STD test. Only valid within the last month.’

  ‘OK. I think I’m starting to understand what this place is all about.’ I tapped the arms of my chair and looked around the office again. ‘I don’t think I’ve made a very good first impression on my co-workers though. I’m pretty sure old bitch-face who just left isn’t that big a fan.’

  He laughed and sat back in his chair, spinning around a bit. ‘Co-worker? You’re confident.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got this job, right?’

  ‘You’ve got it, yeah. Er... Seven.’ He rubbed at his stubble. ‘Old bitch-face doesn’t work here though.’

  ‘Oh, great.’

  ‘She’s my wife actually. She works at PWC.’

  Fuck. There wasn’t anything I could say to rescue myself from that, so I reddened and said, ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s OK; she’s an accountant. She knows she’s a bitch.’ He grinned at me, but I wasn’t sure if he was joking. ‘But you’re probably right to say that she doesn’t like you. She doesn’t like anyone who works here. Sometimes I think she doesn’t even like me.’

  I looked for the wedding ring and there it was, where I should have seen it in the first place. I’d noticed that his office was eerily tidy, everything in line with something else, or perpendicular to something else, but I hadn’t noticed the wedding ring.

  ‘Can you stand up so I can check you over? I can call Daisy up if you want a girl in the room but it’s just a look. Nothing weird, don’t worry.’

  The barmaid had seemed nice, but I didn’t feel threatened. On the contrary, I wanted to us to be alone.

  I stood up, put my bag down beside me and pushed the chair away.

  ‘Everything?’ I asked.

  The air in the office was hot and the one window was shut.

  ‘Everything you feel comfortable with, but the top layer has to go. It’s so we can check for marks, tattoos and stuff. We don’t allow anyone to use drugs here so we look for any evidence of that as well, needle marks... weird bruises.’

  ‘OK.’

  I took off my leather jacket and put it down on the chair behind me, then my boots. As I unbuttoned my shirt I looked down at my fingers, and then met his eyes as I slipped it off my shoulders, folded it slowly and placed it with the jacket.

  His face was expressionless, but he was tapping the arm of his chair.

  I slid my skirt and tights down to my ankles and stepped out of them, suddenly more conscious than I liked of what he might think of my skinny and childlike body. I tried to remember in more
detail what his wife had looked like. She’d also looked slight of frame, but more athletic than me, with broader shoulders.

  With a breath, I unhooked the straps of the black bra and let it slide down my arms.

  My body felt hot, inhabited by an exhilarated visceral sensation that squeezed my diaphragm and shortened my breath.

  I saw him wet his lips, eyes down, away from my face.

  ‘Can you, er... turn around?’

  I turned around in a circle. As my back was to him I was overcome by the fantasy of him approaching behind me, taking me by the arms, kissing his way down my back, pushing me down on to his desk with his hands all over me...

  ‘Yeah, that’s fine. Fine, I mean... nice. Good.’

  ‘Only good?’

  I picked up my clothes and started to dress myself, coy all of a sudden.

  He gave me an exasperated look. ‘Yeah. Great. Look, stop being a smart-arse and tell me when you can start. Tomorrow?’

  Pulling my jacket on, I beamed. ‘Really?’

  ‘Bring in some ID and bank account details tomorrow morning and I’ll give you a hundred or so to go out and get together some decent outfits, then you’ll be good to go. You can shadow one of the other girls for the night.’ He was writing something down. ‘If you run off with the hundred and think I won’t find you, I will, OK? So don’t.’

  It was the first time I’d felt vulnerable in front of him, but he said it so matter-of-factly that I was pressured to ignore the momentary fear and move on.

  I sat down to pull my tights back up. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah. Um, one question though.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Awkwardly, he cupped one hand beside his mouth, as if someone might be listening.

  I leant in.

  ‘You won’t think it’s racist if we play up the Japanese thing, will you?’

  I whispered back sardonically, ‘No, you’re fine. I won’t sue.’

  ‘Awesome.’ He spun around in his chair again, appraising me. ‘Because the whole Japanese schoolgirl thing, the little white socks, the skirts and stuff. It’s a total no-brainer.’