The Outcall
I thought of London spread out in the sun
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
1 Monday 3 July
“May I ask you a personal question?”
They often say that at this stage. There’s a catch in his throat as he says it. His mouth is in my hair and he’s curled up around my back. From where we’re lying on the bed, all I can see is the hotel room wall and desk, with my clutch bag, the roll of cash and his iphone on it. All I can feel is sheets against my bare skin, his chest against my back, a hint of sweat.
“Of course you can, babe.” I do the husky voice that punters usually like, but despite the way he’s curled round me, despite his face burrowed into my hair, I sense that it’s not more sex he’s interested in.
He’s interested in me.
Difficult.
“We can chat in a second, I just need the bathroom.” I drag myself out of his arms, out of the bed. There’s something a bit odd about him, I say to myself. But I could say that about every punter: they’re all strange in some way or other, I think, as I go into the hotel bathroom. It’s the usual layout, bathroom next to the door onto the corridor. I’ve been in almost every hotel in Euston-Bloomsbury: here’s where they all stay, the businessmen, the tourists, they pour off the trains at Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross, they sit in an empty hotel room, they think the girlfriend, the wife, the family is far away, somewhere up north or overseas. They can watch the porn channel... but London is all around them. Sex. Real sex.
Just as I’m closing the bathroom door, there’s a knock on the hotel room door. That’s odd too. I’m sitting on the loo, listening in that silence between a knock and its answering. I try to think what it is about this guy that rings alarm bells. He booked me through the escort website that I use, and we never spoke on the phone. I prefer to hear a guy’s voice before we meet, but a hotel outcall is pretty safe, and I accept nearly half my new bookings without seeing, or hearing, the stranger that I’m going to meet. Earlier today, I got a notification text from my website: I checked the site, and he’d added the name of this hotel and the room number to the booking details. Then, moments before the booking time, 10pm, he texted me to say he was running late, could we make it 10.30pm? I texted back to say, fine, I could still do a one-hour outcall, starting at 10.30. Just before half-ten, I came into the hotel and up to this room. He was in here waiting for me, sitting on the bed – and I thought ‘nice’ – late middle-age, but tall, fit and lean: most of my punters, especially the hotel ones, are paunchy and balding. And they’re often shorter than me. He was 6’2” at least, twinkly blue eyes, nice smile. Very clean, not just male perfume splashed over stale sweat, which is one of my pet hates... Late evening, but he was still wearing a suit and tie. A ‘business gentleman’ we’d call him in the trade. There was only one little surprise: how tidy the room was. Almost always, the hotel rooms I visit are scattered with the guy’s clothes and possessions. And the toilet seat is always up.
Then, before we started, he wanted to photo me on his iphone. A simple girly face pic, in my bra. Pretty tame and nothing unusual, just a typical punter’s trophy. He was British: a trace of a warm, regional accent, but educated. The sex didn’t seem to satisfy him – he seemed distracted. Why do I get the sense that it was a sideshow for him, that he touched me in that half-hearted way because he was wanting, really, to talk?
“Hallo?” He’s answering the knock at the door.
“Sir, I think you dropped something in the lobby, here it is.” A man’s voice.
I hear him half-open the door to reach out. And then a crash as the door is flung open, pushed against him, knocking him back against the bathroom door so it shakes.
There’s a silence, three seconds maybe. All I hear is my heart start pounding. What the hell is this?
I hear the room door slam. So, my punter and the intruder are both in the room. I have only one thought: a drug dealer, wants his money. And then I notice the bathroom door has a lock. Thank fuck for that. I’m shaking as I twist the knob to lock it.
There’s my £200 on the bedside table. I’m praying the stupid punter to give it to him so he’ll go. Then I hear a hard crash, and another. It’s like a brick being bashed on another brick. God, what’s happening?
And then I think: I could run. Bathroom door next to corridor door. I could sneak out and go and get help. But I’m naked, I think madly. No, I don’t dare open that door. There’s a man being bashed up in there but I’m a coward, just a wet weepy girly little coward. I’m sat on the loo, looking at beads of sweat on my thighs. All my skin feels like ice.
There’s another, massive crash. Why the fuck does no one else in this hotel hear this? And then it’s quiet, really quiet. The frozen feeling on my skin seems to be coming inwards, around the middle of my chest. I’m more scared by this silence than by anything yet. Something please, please happen.
The corridor door clicks shut. Quietly. The intruder’s gone? Yes. Why else would he shut it quietly?
I have to open the bathroom door. I have to see what I will see.
I’m still shaking, my fingers can’t twist the knob at first, but then I get the door open. What do I see? Blood. Lots of blood: spatters on carpet, bedclothes, everywhere. I’m taking it in, like I’m watching it on a screen, because a logical autopilot bit of my mind has taken over, and I’m assessing the situation from some calm emotionless zone in my head. I see the punter, who told me he was called Jonathan, sprawled like a starfish on the floor in a white hotel-standard dressing-gown. First, I look at his face. His eyes are open, staring at the ceiling. There’s a raw gash across his forehead, where, I realise, his head’s been banged down onto the hotel room desk. It’s like my eyes are following my thought process, retracing what’s happened: I’m now looking at the blood that’s all over the corner of the desk. Then my eyes track back to the guy: his forehead is such a mess that it’s a moment before I see that there’s a slash across his throat, and a line of blood that looks too bright to be real. Like the red in a neon sign. My eyes trace the flow of blood down from that slice: yes, it’s all over his neck and the collar of the gown. Then I notice a lot more blood, all across his chest and stomach. It all looks like it’s come from his neck. His arms and legs, splayed out aimlessly, are also spotted with blood. His mouth, like his eyes, is open and not moving. That’s bad, this logic bit of my brain says. The autopilot goes and gets my little clutch bag, that I use for standard outcalls, and takes out my dinky makeup mirror, like I’ve seen it done on the telly, hold it to his mouth. No mist. Then I remember my junior St John’s Ambulance training (I was a good little girl, long ago) and feel his pulse. ABC. Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Well, there’s none of them. Zero, zero, zero. I’m a naked prostitute, kneeling in blood next to a corpse in a hotel room.
The logic brain says: get out. I’m doing things in a rational order: stand up, go to the bathroom, wipe the blood off my knees with toilet paper and flush it away. I check each item of my clothing for blood – they’re all perfectly clean – and get dressed. I pick up my clutch bag. I look over at the £200 and the iphone, lying on the desk. Like they’d say on the TV, This Is A Crime Scene. ‘Don’t touch anything’. But I’m a working girl. Then I see that the phone, too, is spattered with blood. It’s the final straw: I’m one breath away from fainting. The room swirls around me, a merry-go-round of blurry colours: white walls and dressing-gown, red blood. My hand reaches out: somehow, it knows where I am, where to feel for: I grasp the handle of the hotel room door. Gradually, the blurs steady back into focus. Yes, I have to get out of here. Autopilot does a room-check: there’s no evidence left that I was here. Except Forensics, who will no doubt find my fingerprints
and DNA everywhere. But I’m a canny girl, never been in trouble with the police: not even a speeding ticket. So all the cops will know is that the white thing lying on the floor had sex with an unidentified woman just before he died.
I open the door onto the corridor, and as I do, the autopilot lapses for a moment, I feel a total terror. Is the killer waiting in the corridor for me, or am I going to faint and drop right here? I sway, stagger, but somehow I keep hold of that logic brain. Keep moving. Along the corridor, away from that room.
I’m at the lift door, and my fingers are not under control now, they shake and shake. It takes me eight tries of the buttons before I can operate the lift. I step in, and after a moment it slides down, floor by floor, away from that horror. I’m inside this humming cube of shiny metal... it’s as if what happened, never happened. Then the lift doors open, and everything is real again. So far I’ve seen no-one, but now I have to cross the hotel lobby. Half the time, the snooty girls and guys at the desks at these places must guess what I am – and now, with bird’s nest hair, messy makeup, and clothes thrown on, I look well fucked. Someone will see me and remember me. But my luck is in: the lift was empty, but the lobby is crowded. There must be a coach party arriving, Chinese or something, all with their suitcases, all talking, no one notices me. One youngish guy sitting at the reception desk seems for a moment to stare at me, but then I risk a glance at him and no, he’s looking down at his desk again. Five, four seconds and I’m out through a revolving door into the darkness. Away from the floodlit hotel front, I take one side alley, then another. Past some bins, step over bags of rubbish in the dark, and I’m back out on a road. I see the familiar sign, red circle, blue line: Russell Square Underground station. That logic bit of my brain is still in control, because rather than using my Oyster, I buy a ticket for cash. No record that I was here. I wasn’t here.
The lift in Russell Square station freaks me out suddenly, it’s like I’m back in the hotel lift but rather than going down, it’s taking me back up... to that. I feel like time is rewinding and I’m going to be walking back into that hotel room. I’m going to be opening that door again, seeing that blood, those dead eyes, that sliced neck. Everything is happening backwards. It’s a mad feeling, I start hyperventilating and saliva dribbles out of my mouth. There are two people in the lift with me, a young man and a middle-aged woman. But it’s London; neither says anything. First rule of society here: never speak to strangers, even when they’re acting strange.
Thankfully, so thankfully, the tube train is quiet. When I’ve done an outcall that I’d rather forget, the Tube is my therapy. Each station... King’s Cross, Caledonian Road, Arsenal... recalling being touched, the pushing of some stranger’s cock inside me, his sweaty fingers on my skin, the smell and heat of his breath... it gets less. The memory is being erased. It’s like at one station it gets put in the Recycle Bin, then at the next I Empty the Recycle Bin. Then at Finsbury Park I’m switching off the computer and it never happened. 100% gone. Except for the cash in my bag.
“Are you alright?” A guy sitting opposite me, nice-looking, young, Asian, is speaking. And I realise I’m shaking and there are tears running down my face.
“I’m fine. Just finished with the boyfriend. For the fiftieth time this month.”
“You go carefully now.” He’s concerned. He gets off at the next station, waving to me through the window. Some guys see a girl crying on the tube and all they think is: I’ll try chatting, offer to walk her home, might be an easy fuck. But probably that’s a minority. It’s just that I see that minority every day.
Hold it together. Home in a minute.
Finsbury Park, getting out of the tube station, the walk home, it’s like I’m not there at all. The autopilot is moving my body along the street while I’m floating, like an angel, watching myself from about second-floor height, above and behind me. I see myself watch out for traffic as I cross the road, step round a large puddle – there was a thunderstorm mid-afternoon today. But even though it’s now near midnight, the air has heated up again. A warm night. There’s no-one else on the streets: just a few people inside the brightly-lit takeaway shops, Chinese, Indian, kebabs, fried chicken. Past the pub where I sometimes go with Jazz, closed for the night now: past a fox that silently, boldly crosses the street. Turn the corner into my road, where there are fewer street lights, and I’m glad of the darkness: at last, no passers-by can see my face, the death in my eyes. My angel seems to be able to think for me too, and is re-checking whether I left any trace in the hotel room. And reassures me: yes, in order to match what they find, the police have to have something, something about me, to match it against. Which they have not got. But there are scary voices in my head too, and they are saying only one thing: if the police can find you, they’ll nail this on you, Holly Harlow.
I’m through the front door of the flats, I go upstairs and unlock the door of my own flat into my living-room. Up to now I’ve been holding myself together, looking to reach this haven. But now I’m here the walls seem to close in on me. My dim lighting, which is meant to be seductive for when punters visit, brings out all the shadows, and my own belongings all look strange, darkness looms out at me from every corner. As if a hand from somewhere else has reached in here, touched everything. I feel the killer has got ahead of me, got here already, his fingers have been over my furniture, he’s opened my drawers, sniffed my clothes. He’s here now, in the dark behind the bedroom door.
I wake in the night and all the lights are still on. I’m lying in bed, still clothed, my arms around the huge furry model tiger I bought at the Zoo. I remember reading the label when I bought him: Amur Tiger, status endangered. I haven’t given him a name. I’m so used to hearing guys say their names – John, Harry, Jack. “Hi, I’m Jack...” So many names, so many all the same. Names are like masks that the punters hide behind. My tiger has no name. But as I fall asleep again I think “Tiger, you’re like me, like Holly Harlow. Status: endangered.”