For three difficult months he had worked patiently through the night. He was a big man, not only tall, but massively built. In his overalls, he still retained some of the ceremony and bearing of Detective Chief Inspector. He was also handsome in a darkly impassive, ample-featured way. His eyes were particularly striking, neither brown, nor precisely blue, but dark grey beneath heavily plumed brows; something severely beautiful about the wide set of his mouth. He had a manner of looking at each person with honesty, interested and direct, yet also fractionally formal, which lent his personality a nuance of mystery. He was, above all, intelligent. Not the intelligence of the bookish, but of those who live life fiercely, in the raw, as though instinct and action were all, but who then later have the wit to deduce intellectually from their experiences. He was with the Met, working undercover. He investigated murder. In particular, he was investigating a current spate of irregular, but identically patterned murders of prostitutes in Soho. His undercover job was as night-watchman in an apartment block in Soho Square.
Soho Square is like a tree that has rotted at its base, yet still retains the lofty magnificence of its rich, fruit bearing uppermost boughs. Below, in the gardens, with their central pergola, people and rubbish accumulate alike, indiscriminately at every corner. The street doors appear anonymous, almost unused. No one ever notices people either coming in or going out. The narrow, brashly lit foyers are undecorated and unpatrolled, giving no intimation of the lives lived above.
Bill’s assigned apartment block was to the east of the square. Every night, at eight o’clock, he parked his elegant car several streets away, so as not to be spotted driving such luxury, and walked to work, where, from the first floor in a back room cupboard, transformed into a surveillance post, he monitored the 24 screens relating to the CCTV cameras, which tracked, in slow, wand-like dances, the lifts, the corridors and the individual entrances to all apartments.
In the past three months five prostitutes had been murdered, all murders bearing the same handwriting, a signature not yet revealed to the press. Ten of the apartments in this block were inhabited by prostitutes, with one exception, all of them shared between three pimps; three more apartments were rented to merchant bankers, clever, laddish men, who all worked for the same company; two more to film producers; one apartment was owned, not rented, by a famous middle-aged business woman, and another owned by a famous restaurateur. The eighteenth remained empty. It had been the home of “Gloria”, original name Gladys, a young prostitute murdered three months earlier. Now, the other girls were superstitiously reluctant to move in to it.
Apart from a brawl between two men overlapping late one night at an apartment door, all had been quiet in recent weeks. Bill had had to argue forcibly with his bosses for the right to continue his surveillance of the building. “Give it up, Bill,” they had said. “It is sending you to sleep.” They had laughed the manly laugh of men who know all there is to know about human nature, yet remain unafraid of the truth, both brutalized and empowered by their knowledge, at once bitter and forgiving. The forgiveness they felt was both for themselves and for each other, for humanity in general. But its connotation for them was not that of turning a blind eye or of finding the edges blurred between right and wrong. For them, right and wrong were identical with the law, a code which they operated sincerely enough. However, beyond the law was life itself, and it is that which they had learned to forgive, knowing both themselves and others to be potentially corrupted by it.
Absent-mindedly, but with little true curiosity, his police colleagues wondered why Bill had fought so hard to retain this dreary job. Professional zeal, a hunch maybe? His private life, certainly, had been sacrificed to its nightly rituals. His girlfriend had moved out of the home, which she claimed they had never truly shared. The job was essentially disruptive and boring and, in fact, his pals had been right to tease him. He had long lost interest in the various inhabitants of the apartment block, with their specious vanities and their pomaded nightly charades, felt only tedium listening to the nightly tap on their idolatrous conversations. He was bored by them all, except for one. And it had become exclusively for her that he stayed awake and vigilant night after night.
Unlike the other prostitutes, she seemed not to be run by telephone contact from a central office. It was unclear whether or not she had a pimp. Bill had certainly never seen him. Her calls, when they came, came from the street, from the ticketed, felt flurried phone boxes at street level. Bill had seen her card. It was unusual, in that it listed no promises, detailed no “services”, merely quoting her pseudonym, “Dana”, and the casual invitation. “Call me, sometime.” And, goodness knows, people did call. Numerous evenings Bill had listened to her breathless voice prevaricate over some assignation or other before agreeing to meet. Sometimes she slammed down the phone on her callers. Sometimes she left the phone off the hook and was not seen all night.
At other times, she simply took to the streets, teetering on her highest of high heels, through the windswept litter of the Square, usually on her way to the Mezzo bar. She was a tall girl, with a faultless figure, something Grecian and sculptural about the perfection of her proportions, something geometric in the clever balance of her small waist to the rounded charms of her hips and breasts. Only her face failed to match the perfection of her body. Not that she wasn’t beautiful, just that her face had escaped the ideal of her body. In its place was a visible war of emotions, of rueful, almost forgotten, pride; of sorrow; of beauty gradually yielding to the stain of disaffection; of delicacy broken by feisty hopelessness, all these strands knitted together into a tight weave and made central by an unmistakeable intelligence. Her clients liked her because, as well as responding to them, she habitually assessed them, almost, for a cursory few minutes, befriended them. Briefly in her arms, they experienced the illusion of compliance and passion, as oppposed to coercion and dutiful transaction. She was good at her job. Nor did she dress like an obvious “floozy’. As she paraded the street in her enviable figure and high heels, or leant gracefully at the Mezzo bar, men stopped to talk to her, naturally attracted to her, not imagining her to be a prostitute. And, so clever was she at befriending them in a short space of time that, as the truth dawned on them of her true status, it became just another of the things they liked about her. They would pay up willingly and retrace her steps back with her, like joyful sheep, to the confines of Soho Square.
All these “friendships” were quite easy and simple to her. But, at the point of actually working, she was governed by only two thoughts, neither of them friendly. Firstly, that these men must never see the interior of her apartment, which was, after all, private, and, in her mind, not designed for use by clients. And secondly a concern for her own safety. She knew perfectly well about the localized deaths of prostitutes. Most of the fools who followed her to Soho Square were just that, sweet, indiscriminate fools. But she knew that it would be insolence to assume that she could encompass the nuances of all human nature in the space of half an hour. The murderer she knew to be clever; she had read the newspaper reports. He would, she thought, be like herself, deceptive, and not altogether what one was expecting. Consequently, she had evolved a self-protective habit that depended on Bill, even though she had never met him face to face. Although, unknown to him, she had seen him.
Every night, in the small hours of morning, when the rest of the building was quiet, the other prostitutes all entertaining in their apartments, she brought her fellow revellers back to the block, inhabiting the lift, so that Bill’s camera wand would remain full upon her. There, she habitually acted out the various fantasies of being overcome by her many partners’ sensuality. She mimed hesitation and shyness, boldness and ferocity, and finally the reality of initiating sex there and then, adroitly jamming the lift for ten, twenty minutes at a time, and always performing for the camera.
Bill liked her best in the white silk dress, that fell on her supple body like water, the one that cleverly dissolved open with the rip of a series of rouleaux ties. He marvelled at the way she remained elegant, no matter what actions she performed. The men, she allowed do anything that they pleased; to clamber her high-heeled height; to bend her over, stretching the white lace straps of her suspender belt; to slam her anonymously, sometimes angrily, against the cushioned wall of the lift; to lift her on to their waists or kneel her before them, anything, just so long as they remained within view of the cameras. When the pavanes of brief courtship were over, she would knowledgeably unjam the lift and deliver her clients back to street level, bid them a decorous “good night”, then speed in the lift to her own fifth floor, returning alone to her apartment, her every action tracked by Bill. She would then re-emerge half an hour later, bathed and dressed in a new outfit, pale pink or baby blue, occasionally black, always newly made up and recoifed.
Bill admired her finesse, her beauty, cherished her confidence in him and his camera. He could not bear the idea of abandoning this job. Each night he sat in front of the screens and found himself aroused by her broken beauty and her trust, by her seeming remoteness from the ordeals she put herself through. He perceived that, in spite of her sorrow, she was also happy. He remembered something that his father had once said. “There are no women quite so happy as prostitutes,” although he wondered if that were really true. He had considered accosting her, trying to get to know her, although that might prove difficult, as well as dangerous to his career. Increasingly he wondered what secrets her apartment held, why it was that she never took anyone back there. Nevertheless, the formal correctness of his police discipline prevented him. He had a loathing for unprofessionalism.
One Wednesday night, as he watched her, stroking his own member yearningly, as she took yet another man’s penis into her generous mouth to whip at and soothe, her wide eyes intercepting with his on the screen, something seemed different. As yet, Bill could only see the man’s back. The top of his head was a thick crop of blond curls, like an altar boy’s, beneath which his shoulders appeared unexpectedly broad. He wore the unlikely combination of a lumberjack’s check shirt above neatly pressed trousers and shiny American loafer shoes. Bill’s camera searched the well of the lift, to reveal his jacket discarded on the floor, its Versace label exposed to the camera. Bill had not yet seen his face, but his voice, which came to him in distorted waves, struck him as reminiscent in some way. It was not a good voice; too nasal, curiously disturbing, even when speaking platitudes. In spite of his preoccupation with passion, the man was strangely talkative, mostly in catchphrases. “More haste, less speed”, Bill heard him say. As Bill’s camera tracked him, he seemed to be demanding more of Dana than was usual. Most men had one idea. This man seemed to have several. Bill watched as he spreadeagled her against the wall. She was wearing the white dress that he so loved. But, despite the easy unlace of its ties, the man chose to ignore them, lifting instead the hem of her dress to expose her buttocks, pulling the string of her thong aside as he did so, and entering her brusquely, his well-cut trousers already released at his waist, but now slipped to his ankles. “A stitch in time saves nine,” Bill heard him murmur. To hold her firmly in place, he pinned the flat of her left shoulder to the wall with his outstretched hand, whilst, with his other hand, he encircled the root of his own flesh and watched, as if transfixed, as its stricture disappeared to and fro between the soft roundness of her flesh. Bill noticed how unnaturally large and loose-skinned the man’s hands appeared and then, with a shock, realized that he was wearing fine, skin-coloured leather gloves. The man then turned Dana towards him and, placing his arms round her waist, again lifted her on to him. He made no attempt to kiss her, but Bill watched enviously as the blond crop of unruly curls mingled with the straight dark lengths of her own hair. The man appeared to be in no hurry. He was not only excited, there was something more deliberate in his actions as well. He seemed almost to rejoice in his own self-control, prolonging the moments.
Bill’s hand moved along his own thigh. He toyed with the buttons of his overalls, releasing their constraint at his waist. He stretched his legs forward languorously. As the man took her nipple into his mouth, Bill continued to watch, teasing himself desirously. As he knelt her before him, the man’s face was now in silhouette to the camera and Bill could see, for the first time, how his halo of curls was at variance with the harshness in his features. Not that the man was not good-looking, in a certain aggressive way that many find attractive, a way which denotes arrogance and brutality. Bill perceived that, in taking his pleasure, the man felt a need to watch, both himself and Dana equally; as though spectator and participator were for him two distinct, but identical pleasures of the same sport.
He also realized that Dana was disconcerted by the length of time the man demanded of her. In order to better observe his penis in her mouth, he held her hair in fistfuls above her head, so as not to miss a moment of his own event. Bill witnessed the look of desperation in her eyes. And then, as the man’s excitement grew, he forestalled her, time and again, postponing his pleasure, before finally lifting her to her feet and leaning her against his massive frame. Although tall, she was suddenly rendered tiny by his gigantic height. He still made no attempt to kiss her, but he began to caress her, running his swollen fingers between her thighs, making it clear that he wished to pleasure her, before claiming his own fulfilment. Under the scrutiny of the lens, Dana began to look troubled and exhausted. He heard the man’s voice say, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” as though he had transformed the prosaic into some modern riddle of profundity.
Bill was, himself, also excited by now, an excitement which combined the heady mixtures of concern and dismay. His penis now rested open in his lap, like a flower, its flesh a blush of anger and animation. He considered pursuing his own pleasure before the man fulfilled his. Usually he allowed his excitement to coincide with that of Dana’s partners, as though it was him and not them who made love to her; when, suddenly, the phone rang at his elbow, startling and disturbing him, his commander’s voice at the other end of the line. “Just until the weekend, Bill, and then I am putting you on another case.” The phone was replaced without room for debate. Bill’s thoughts shuttered distractedly through his mind, his penis fading in his lap. He held his head in his hands, contemplating how to deal with this blow. When he turned back to the milky screen, the girl and the man had vanished. The screen was flickering.
At first, Bill could not understand how they might have eluded him. He scanned the other cameras, focusing on the apartment doors and corridors, but still failed to find her. He became frantic. He ran from the concealment of his office as the lift was descending, fourth floor, third. It stopped at the second. Above him, he could hears the electronic sigh of the lift doors opening, followed by the sound of feet running on the stairs. A faint, familiar scent assailed him – chloroform. In a swift spiral of understanding, Bill deserted his post. As the man leapt the final few stairs to the foyer, Bill grabbed his calf, tripping him up. The two men struggled. The man was taller, but Bill the stronger. He rugger-tackled him, fighting with his full weight upon him to shackle his hands. The man fought hard. He was uglier than Bill had orignally noted, his veneer of suavity and good breeding undermined by the menace in his voice. Eventually, Bill won, his wrists cuff-linked behind his back, his feet tied with a length of rope Bill carried in his overalls pocket. Bill left him trussed up in the hall, whilst he raced to the first floor to check the lift. She was lying in a pool of blood, the smell strong. The man had cut her wrists. It was the same pattern as before. Distraught, Bill tore off his shirt, fretting at the material to improvize some rough bandages with which to tightly bind her wrists. He then made a call, requesting backup and an ambulance. The voice crackling at the other end of the line reminded him that the West End was almost static with traffic. There would be a delay. He spoke again to his boss, explaining that the murderer was downstairs, trussed up and finally detained. As he spoke, he suddenly remembered where he had heard the man’s voice before. It had been one of the unidentified voices on the answer machine of a prostitute murdered two months earlier.
The girl was weak, but still half conscious. She looked up as he cradled her head in his arms. “You are Bill”, she said sweetly.
“How do you know?” he asked, mystified.
Her reply was elliptical. “I have been waiting for you.”
“The ambulance will not be long,” he reassured her.
“Take me back to my flat first,” she begged.
He looked at her astonished. “You shouldn’t be moved . . . the evidence.” He stumbled. “More than my job is worth.”
“Please”, she pleaded.
He hesitated then pressed the button to the fifth floor. He carried her to her door. Her key, he knew, was on a long platinum chain around her neck. He had focused on it often.
He opened the door on to an apartment filled with white, beautiful light, empty except for an ornate brass bed, a wide white sofa, an easel and numerous canvases. On the bed, as if waiting for them, was a white poodle puppy.
“I wanted you to see my paintings before I die.”
The dog sprang to greet them, skidding giddily on the exposed floorboards.
“I shan’t let you die. You are very weak, but I have caught you in time.” Bill bent to gently kiss her, his big frame congested with conflicted feeling. They could hear the siren of the ambulance arriving.
“Will I ever see you again?” she asked. “Can you come with me in the ambulance?”
He looked up, scanning the clever intricacies of her magnficent canvases, something familiar. “I have fallen in love with you,” he replied.
“And I with you,” she answered.
“But you have never seen me before.”
“Switch on the television,” she ordered weakly. “Quickly, before the paramedics arrive.” She stretched impotently towards the hand change. He reached and operated it for her. On to the screen came a four-piece view of his downstairs monitor room. “I have seen you every night,” she replied. Suddenly, he understood the familiarity of her paintings, abstract, grand, and yet they were all of him, based night after night in his monitor room, stroking himself gently whilst falling in love with a broken-winged angel, who always seemed to trust him.