Free Hard Girls by Martina Cole Page A

of the girls were there to keep their kids clothed and fed anyway. Like lap dancers and hostesses, they were simply trying to keep their heads above water. In this climate it was the only way some women could exist. This place had obviously been used by the same girls over a long period of time. She guessed that they had got used to being here, felt safe, and had probably forgotten how dangerous the job really was. Perhaps they’d let their guard down, assumed that men were all friendly and easily controlled. The reality was so different. Most men were harmless enough, but there were plenty of nutters about as well. These were the men who saw working girls as beneath them and who felt it was perfectly acceptable to hurt them. These men felt a surge of energy by humiliating them, or causing them injury. It was these men that the girls often forgot about until they were standing in front of them with a knife and a smile. Only this one didn’t use a weapon as such, he seemed almost to be trying to cleanse them. The use of acids and industrial cleaners on the girls was clearly important. It was as if he wanted to make them pure again.
    Kate kept that opinion to herself because she knew that everything said or speculated upon could find its way into the press. It was a different world now, the old ways were long gone. Young policemen and women were as caught up in the celebrity culture as everyone else. Nothing was kept quiet any more, kept in-house, even if it meant that the person they were looking for was given an out. It was the era of the snide, the internal grass. Everything was fair game these days, even if it meant ruining an ongoing investigation.
    Kate wondered how much of this crime scene would hit the papers by the weekend. How much of the girl’s life would be plastered across the front pages. It was always the same now. Her family wouldn’t be allowed the decency to grieve in peace, it would all be in the public domain and her whole life would be out there for anyone to read. And they would no doubt say she was asking for it because she was on the game.
    She sighed in exasperation, wondering if her private life would be exposed along with these poor girls’. It wouldn’t be the first time she had been the subject of the tabloid press’s scrutiny. Only this time she didn’t have Patrick’s strength to see her through it. Twice she had been the lead investigator on very high-profile cases, and even though she helped solve them, put the perpetrators behind bars, each time she had also been publicly ridiculed because of her alliance with Patrick Kelly. Until now, she had held her head up and accepted it as part and parcel of her life, and the people she worked with had grudgingly admired her stance. She had fronted it out. Now, though, she knew that Pat’s involvement in this investigation, however tenuous it might be, would be used against her. It was a different world to the one she was used to, and she also knew that if he was a part of this, then she had no option but to distance herself from him once and for all.
     
    She saw the girl’s Versace handbag on the worktop in the kitchen, it was a Jekyll and Hyde, a snide, a good imitation of the real thing. Opening it she saw the usual; a purse, a few bits of make-up and an Oyster card. In the purse was about fifty pounds in cash and a photograph of the girl with her two small children. She looked happy as she gazed into the camera, a huge smile on her face. The kids looked even happier, were well dressed and well cared for, which was not unusual for the children of brasses. Kate remembered reading somewhere once that, contrary to popular belief, the offspring of Toms were better dressed and cared for than the majority of the so-called regular population Kate knew from experiencll working’s children.
    Janie Moore had been a lovely-looking girl with two beautiful children, and now her life was over. Snuffed out on a whim. Her kids were left motherless, and