Free To Die For by Phillip Hunter Page B

what we call a whore. She fucks for money. The money she gets goes to Mr Marriot. I make sure of that. Got it?’
    He leaned closer still. I could smell his breath. I could hear the click in his throat as he spoke.
    ‘That nigger is of especial interest to me. So leave her alone.’
    It was an effort not to shove his nose back into his head. Instead, I got up and walked away, leaving half my drink.
    I decided to walk home and try to clear my head with fresh air, if that’s what you could call it in London. If I walked down St Paul’s Road, I could cut across to Green Lanes and follow that up to the Seven Sisters Road. It was only a couple of miles. I left the warm fuggy air of the Sportsman and hit a crisp, cold January night. It helped to clear my head, freshen me up a bit.
    I’d gone a few dozen yards when I saw her, standing in a doorway, trying to light her cigarette. She was wearing a short black jacket. The collar was up. Her shoulders were hunched against the cold. I walked past.
    ‘Hey,’ she called after me.
    I slowed and stopped. I didn’t turn around. I heard her trotting on high heels. When she reached me, she stood a moment. Her unlit cigarette was between her fingers. She moved from one foot to the other to keep warm. A jacket like that was useless in this weather, plain daft.
    I thought that if I just gave her a few quid she’d leave me alone. I was waiting for the pitch, thinking she’d charge fifty quid tops for a quick one, figuring I’d give her a score and be off. Instead, she said, ‘That hurt, you know.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘What you said in there.’
    I didn’t know what she was talking about. I waited for her to say something else. She managed to light her cigarette, took a deep drag and blew out a cloud of smoke and breath.
    ‘I wasn’t trying to solicit you, you know.’
    ‘Weren’t you?’
    ‘I’m off duty.’
    She smiled then. I wondered why. She looked nice when she smiled. She didn’t look all washed-up and wasted. She looked as if she could still think life was fun, like a kid.
    She had a slim body and she was tall, lanky really. In her heels she came up to my chin and not many women can do that. Her skirt rode high up on her thighs, and her blouse was thin. She stood shivering and her knees were together and she looked about as awkward as a woman can look. Her face became serious again. She frowned and there was something in there, something she couldn’t hide.
    ‘He a friend of yours?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘That man, Paget.’
    ‘No.’
    Her frown lifted. ‘Didn’t think so.’
    ‘What do you want?’ I said.
    She looked down at the ground and pulled her jacket tighter about her. When she looked up, her eyes were wide, her eyebrows raised.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,’ she said.
    I looked at my watch.
    ‘Nothing open round here.’
    That was a lie. We both knew it.
    ‘We could go to my place,’ she said softly.
    I was about to give up on her and go when she said quickly, ‘Just for tea.’
    I sighed. ‘Yeah. Sure.’
    We walked off, me striding like a walking wall, she tottering to keep up, smoking as she went.
    It took us a while to walk to her place and all that time I was wondering what the hell I was doing. She’d say something now and then, making small talk, telling me about what a bloody awful day she’d had and how she just wanted to sit down with a cup of tea and all that kind of thing. I might have muttered something or other, but it was an effort.
    She lived in a high-rise off the Caledonian Road. We passed a group of kids as we went in. They stared at us. I stopped at the lift and one of the kids laughed.
    ‘It’s not working,’ Brenda said. ‘Hasn’t ever worked as far as I know. I think they put it there for show.’
    So we climbed the stairs. The building was a sixties thing, falling apart at the seams, cracked cement, damp in the stairwell. They should’ve pulled it down ten minutes after they’d put it up. Some of these buildings are