Читать книгу The Watcher - Grace Monroe - Страница 20

Chapter Fourteen

Danube Street Casino, Edinburgh Sunday 23 December, 4.40 a.m.

Glasgow Joe leaned in to kiss me as he stopped to check that I was all right. The money in my pocket made everything all right. He swept me up and turned me round as I threw the cash in the air. The notes whirled around us like a snowstorm – I was Kailash’s daughter. I knew how to put on a good show for the punters.

Bancho came out of the security room. With only an hour to go before his planned raid he was edgy. The smile slid from my face, and I bent down to pick up the notes, carefully collecting them and putting them in the old wallet.

‘Get Kailash,’ barked Bancho. ‘I want to see the dungeons – rumour is that she’s got slaves.’

‘Arsehole – come back with a warrant,’ I hissed.

‘What does Kailash want?’ Joe turned around to find her. She was leaning against a colonnade, her jet hair curled expensively around her shoulders, and a sheer black Dolce&Gabbana dress clinging to every curve.

‘I’ve never denied owning slaves, Duncan, but there’s quite a waiting list. See Malcolm; he’ll put your name down.’ I was jumping from foot to foot, but Kailash locked eyes with me and it was a look that told me to calm down. ‘There are a lot of exhibitionists in tonight – the thrill of being observed by a real policeman means I can push the price up,’ she purred. She turned on her heels – he was being given one chance at what he wanted. If he failed to take it, Kailash would shut the doors faster than a Venus flytrap. Everyone concerned knew there was no way Bancho would get a warrant to inspect these premises – the powers that be had no idea who the police would find there or what the tabloids would make of it; they themselves kept Kailash out of the courts because they spent so much time there.

On the other hand, the Ripper’s victims seemed to be plucked from the city’s disenfranchised community of foreign, probably illegally trafficked prostitutes. Sex slavery. Perhaps, despite their unconventional ‘partnership’, Bancho didn’t trust Joe to check out Kailash’s operation with the same dedication he applied to brothels in Leith.

‘I’m coming!’ Glasgow Joe shouted. ‘I hate watching these fucking deviants getting their arses skelped,’ he muttered under his breath, and scratched his head as if such behaviour was beyond his comprehension. I knew it was. Joe’s sexual taste didn’t run along these lines; he was strictly a meat and two veg kind of guy. He grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t act smart down there – Bancho’s been mouthing off to the authorities that Kailash has sex slaves. I’ve told him he’s wrong but she feels insulted. She’s ready to knife him, Brodie, so we don’t need you shit-stirring as well. I don’t think it would be so easy to get Kailash off another murder charge.’

I pulled free. But I went along with their game, even though they didn’t know I was in on it. ‘It wasn’t so easy for me the first time,’ I growled, rather content that we were now back on an even keel and old habits of bitching at each other were to the fore again.

The dungeons were full tonight with ‘customers’ cramming in one more whipping before the traditions of Christmas demanded that they stay with their families. The dungeons were rooms with bars on them like the type you would see in a Wild West jail. It was a great design. Most fetishists were happy to share their perversion within their private world, and Kailash could check the employees were safe.

‘What’s the score here?’ I asked, pointing to a middle-aged, lumpy woman who was painting liquid latex onto a man. ‘And what’s with the straws?’ The man had thin tubes for breathing protruding from his nose. The dominatrix overheard me and proceeded to demonstrate by putting her thumbs over the bottom of the straws. Her victim, who was in chains, his hands manacled above his head, struggled. She took her boot and jammed the pointed heel into his bare foot. I winced. The man screamed silently, unable to make a noise because of the gag.

‘That’s enough, Betsy,’ Glasgow Joe warned as the male slave passed out.

‘This is what I mean, Joe – how can you say she doesn’t have more information about foreign sex slaves?’ Bancho hissed.

‘Because Betsy is married to a solicitor from Melrose – he’s a misogynistic bastard according to her, so she comes up once a month and spends his money here in the shops during the day and then helps out here at night, earning a bit of pin money that he knows nothing about. The slaves are quite happy to cooperate with Betsy.’ Glasgow Joe sounded tired as he explained matters.

‘Anything you need to ask about – ask me,’ said Kailash, who was standing behind Bancho long before he had any idea that she was there.

‘That girl there looks Eastern European,’ he said, squinting his eyes at her. The one he was talking about was a stunning dominatrix who would have been at least six feet tall in her fishnet-stocking soles. Tonight she wore over-the-knee latex boots with seven-inch heels. I winced when I saw the nipple clamps.

‘Contessa.’ Kailash beckoned the girl, who flicked the black eight-tongued whip over her client’s butt before she left the cell. He squealed and I looked twice at him. I thought I recognized him, but it was hard to make out his features. He squirmed in the corner, presenting his naked, flaccid butt – Joe shuddered and I couldn’t blame him.

Contessa, gripping the whip, marched over to her employer. ‘He wants a word with you,’ Kailash inclined her head in DI Bancho’s direction, and then started to laugh softly with Joe. I’d met her before – she was notoriously bad-tempered and born for this sort of work. It was unlikely that any attempt at questioning by the police would go down well.

But the Ripper had pulled off what years of community vice work had failed to produce: cooperation. A sex worker from Eastern Europe she may be, but Contessa knew that this time police officers, even ones as smelly, dishevelled and desperate as Bancho, were on her side against a common enemy. They huddled in a corner as I waited for the explosion that never came; instead of kicking the detective’s butt (which I was secretly hoping for), Contessa kissed Bancho on both cheeks before returning to her dungeon.

‘I’m done here,’ Bancho said, walking up the stairs. Turning he faced me, ‘And you? You can walk home.’

Silently, I wished them good luck at catching the Ripper.