One Dead Witness (12 page)

And Tracey kept the Texan on the line. Right from the moment
she allowed him to rip her clothes off, unpack the whip and
vibrator and gently eased the latter up her ass. Thirty-five
minutes later, as decreed by the customer, Tracey changed her mind
about sex and entered the ‘rape’ phase where the Texan beat up on
her - and still managed to make her come at the same time as he
did. Except that he really did come all over his belly and she
faked a multiple orgasm whilst at the same time chewing on a slice
of
pepperoni pizza.

She slammed the phone down, closed her eyes wearily and
sniffed up through her cocaine-damaged nostrils.

A line of lights flashed on her little switchboard, demanding
her attention. She frowned and ignored them, leaning back in her
telephonist’s chair and glancing down the row of booths. There were
a dozen in all, each one soundproofed from its neighbours, around
the walls of the former barbershop which still smelled of
hairspray.

Each booth was occupied by an experienced sex-telephonist busy
handling calls. Leaning a little further back, Tracey could hear
some of the things going on. Grunts, panting, screams of pain and
passion, loving whispers, sexual demands. The noises were like the
combination of a zoo and a blue-movie soundtrack.

The telephonists - two male, the remainder female - came from
a range of backgrounds, each with their own personal reason for
being there, not least of which for all of them was that they were
paid tax-free. There were single mothers, supermarket cashiers, a
former prostitute with a tongue of silk, and a couple of
out-of-work actors trying to make ends meet whilst
‘resting’.

And they were all good at sextalk: chat which could make the
customer - always a man - ejaculate whilst imagining a vivid sexy
scenario. They could ad lib at will, immediately adopting the role
required by the caller, always giving their best shot.

‘
Answer yer fuckin’ lines,’ Tracey’s earphones informed
her.

She looked over her shoulder and shot a sneering glance at the
supervisor who was sitting behind a large switchboard on a small
raised dais at the back of the room. From there, the supervisor
could dip into all the workers’ calls, keeping a check by listening
in ... and also being able to tell when a telephonist wasn’t
working.

And work they did. This was no easy option. It was draining,
emotional toil. Twelve-hour stints. Continuous, consecutive calls.
Constantly talking and listening to the weirdest fantasies
imaginable and having the ability and imagination to match them. It
was beginning to take its toll on Tracey that night as she suddenly
found she needed the lift which only one thing could give
her.

Bitch, she thought. She gave the supervisor a one-digit
salute, ensuring she didn’t see it, of course. She ripped the
headset off and stood up. ‘I need a piss,’ she announced and picked
up her purse.

At that moment the front door opened.

Bussola, his two meat-head bodyguards and the other guy came
in. They walked straight inside, completely ignoring the
telephonists, went through a door at the back, down a short
corridor and up the stairs beyond.

One of the bodyguards stayed at the door and sat down in a
plastic chair.

Tracey watched the entrance of the men, completely astounded.
She shook her head, hardly able to believe who had just walked
through the door.

Two people she thought she would never see again.

Bussola and the man accompanying him.

Charlie Gilbert.

Charlie Fucking Gilbert.

The man she had once trusted. The man who had promised her the
earth. Her guts coiled with the hatred she harboured for
him.

Because look where she had ended up. At the age of nineteen
she was working on a sex-chatline, verbally masturbating guys over
the telephone wires.

Tracey walked numbly towards the seated bodyguard. He looked
tiredly at her and stood up as she approached the door through
which his boss had just gone.

‘
Where ya goin’, girl?’

‘
I need to pee,’ she said truthfully. ‘The toilet’s through
there.’ It was - down along the ground-floor hallway, last door on
the right.

The bodyguard raised his big square chin and dark bushy
eyebrows in a kind of acknowledgement and nodded slightly. His
eyes bore down the length of his broken nose. ‘How much d’ya cost,
babe?’

‘
I’m too fuckin’ expensive for you, ya greasy dago,’ she
responded, and tried to push past him. He grabbed her arm and
pulled her roughly towards him, raising her up onto tiptoe so that
her belly was at his groin level. He was already hard. She could
feel it through her clothes.

‘
Don’t push your luck, babe. If I want you, I have you.’ His
breath was enhanced by garlic.

Tracey uttered a short laugh of contempt, even though she was
fully aware that she was very close to annoying him. Her eyes
traversed slowly down to his hand, the big fat fingers squeezing
like a vice around her bicep. ‘Let go.’

He eased his grip slowly. His mouth was open and his nostrils
were dilating. Long hairs grew out of them. His ears also sprouted
a bushy forest. He had blackheads on his nose and around his mouth.
Specks of perspiration were dotted all over his face.

All these things Tracey saw as she regained her proper
footing.

All these things made her cringe and find him utterly
repulsive.

She edged past, through the door.

‘
And don’t go upstairs,’ he told her. ‘Or else.’

Kruger looked down at the object he held between his left
forefinger and thumb.

It resembled a doll’s eye with a sty in one corner of it and
was surrounded by a rubber sucker rather like the tip of a kid’s
arrow, though it was half the diameter. In his right hand was a
palm-sized portable TV which he flicked on. The tiny screen, four
centimetres square, was fuzzy for a few moments then gradually
cleared and came into focus, giving him a dear, monochrome,
slug’s-eye view of the underside of his chin and his nostrils,
transmitted from the lens he was holding in his fingers.

He pointed the lens towards a shop doorway and saw that image
reproduced on the screen. Kruger was impressed. He could see why
this was one of his top selling lines. It was like having an extra
eye on the end of your fingers.

He was standing at the rear of the comms van which was parked
in a quiet street. Myrna and Dale stood next to him. Kelly was in
the van, the back doors being open. She peered over Kruger’s
shoulder, looking at the tiny TV.

‘
Excellent,’ she said. ‘The lens has a powerful night
intensifier built into it which self-focuses and adjusts to the
available light. There’s a mike fitted in the lens too which can
give pretty good results, even through glass.’

Kruger nodded approvingly. He was not sure if there would be
any call to use the surveillance kit tonight, but decided to take
it along just in case. ‘Are you receiving okay?’ he asked
Kelly.

She turned into the van, switched on a monitor, made a couple
of minor adjustments and the screen blinked into life. She saw
exactly what Kruger saw on the mini screen. ‘Yep - no
probs.’

Kruger looked at Myrna and Dale.

Like himself, they had changed into more appropriate clothing
for the little foray ahead, having ditched their party gear for all
black - jeans, T-shirts, jackets and sneakers which had been kept
ready in the van for such an eventuality. ‘We play it by ear -
literally,’ Kruger said. ‘We don’t know what the hell’s going on
there. They could just be playing cards. We’ll leave Jimmy watching
the front. Myself and Myrna will go to the rear of the property to
see if there is any way of getting a view inside. Dale, you be our
lookout, okay?’

Both nodded.

Myrna was now raring to go, having got her second
wind.

‘
Anybody any further suggestions?’ Kruger asked.

They shook their heads.

‘
Let’s go then - and take care.’ He picked a set of aluminium
extending ladders which were part of the van’s equipment store and
hauled them over his shoulder.

Tracey took her time in the restroom. Her mind was in complete
turmoil. She had never expected to see either of the two men again,
particularly Gilbert. He had conned and tricked her, and used and
ultimately abused her, then discarded her into the clutches of
people who did it all over again. It was only through her strength
of character that she had risen from the gutter to her present
position - on the kerb of the sidewalk. But at least it was
upwards.

She finished peeing and washed her hands carefully, soaping
them thoroughly whilst she continued to think about Charlie Gilbert
in particular.

She looked up from her hands and caught sight of her
reflection in the cracked, dirty mirror above the washstand. She
closed her eyes quickly, not wishing to see the ragged reflection
of someone who had been a drug abuser from the age of thirteen. The
skin sagging off the bone, sunken eyes, dried-up, wrinkled
lips.

The reflection of a drug addict who had not yet died, but
would do so, in the not-too-distant future. She opened her eyes and
sneered at herself, briefly able to see the discoloured gums in her
mouth.

She sniffed and blew her leaking nose on a paper towel. Above
her was the sound of clumping feet moving about.

Her watery eyes rose towards the ceiling.

The alleyway behind the shops was pitch black. Briefly Kruger
regretted not taking Kelly up on her offer of night-vision goggles.
However, he took his time, allowed his eyes to adjust and used the
night-eye in his fingers to assist himself and Myrna as they walked
down the alley, monitoring their progress on the tiny TV
screen.

She stayed at his shoulder, a cool hand gripping his
bicep.

The extension ladders hung off his other shoulder.

He led the way without incident to the rear of Bussola’s
place.

The building was pretty much as Kruger expected it to be,
making him glad he’d brought the steps. This was a high-crime
neighbourhood and the rear of the disused shop was boarded up with
sheet steel, riveted for the rest of time - or until demolition -
into the brickwork.

Fortunately, the first-floor windows were just that - windows.
There were two, quite large, both with drapes drawn across and
lights on behind, indicating occupation. Running below the windows
was a metallic catwalk which formed part of the fire escape. The
folding ladders which were an intrinsic part of the escape were
secured at that level, out of reach from below.

Kruger swung the set of ladders off his shoulders and gently
leaned them against the shop wall. He gazed upwards at the
underside of the fire escape. Slowly, quietly, he eased out the
ladder extension.

The rubber tips of the ladders rested on the outer edge of the
fire escape.

‘
Hold ‘em tight,’ he whispered to Myrna. He slid the night-eye
and TV into his pocket and started to climb, rung by careful rung.
When he was almost at the top, he hoisted himself onto the fire
escape and dropped silently onto the catwalk.

He reached through the rails and held the top of the ladders
as Myrna ascended.

She came up nimbly, leapt over the rail and landed next to
Kruger, crouching down without a sound. Kruger relayed their
progress to the team via the radio, whispering his
message.

The two of them shuffled along the catwalk on all fours
towards the first window. They stopped underneath it and listened.
No noise emanated from inside; nothing seemed to be going on.
Kruger took a chance. He eased himself up and tried to see in by
way of a minute crack down the edge of the drapes. He saw nothing.
He sidled along to the centre of the window and peered in through
the small aperture where the drapes hadn’t quite met.

Instinctively he dropped back down.

‘
One of Bussola’s bodyguards,’ he whispered to Myrna. ‘He’s
sitting reading. I couldn’t see anything else.’

Myrna helped herself to a quick look, confirming Kruger’s
observation. The guy was reading a hard-core porn
magazine.

Kruger pointed to the next window, some ten feet along the
catwalk. Myrna nodded. Again on hands and knees they set off. Myrna
stayed right up Kruger’s ass and almost kissed it when he suddenly
stopped in front of her and rose to listen at the next
window.

This time he could clearly hear voices.

He could not see into the room, but there was a crack of light
where the drapes met carelessly in the middle and the possibility
of a view. This time, instead of chancing a look for himself, he
reached up, using his hand rather like a periscope, and pointed the
night eye into the room.

What he saw on the TV screen nearly made him fall off the fire
escape.

Although the most common method of using cocaine is by
snorting, it is alleged that the subsequent rush is not quite as
intense as that produced by mainlining. But Tracey knew that if the
purity of the drug was high enough, the buzz was just as
good.