habitation and a place.'
She squinted up at him through her cigarette smoke.
'Sixty-five?'
'Sixty.'
'OK.'
He counted out six ten-pound notes as, pushing the register forward, she reached behind her for Key Number 10.
It was, one may say, a satisfactory transaction.
Her glass was empty, and without seating himself he drained his own beer at a draught.
'Same again?'
'Please!' She pushed over the globed glass in which the semi-melted ice-cubes still remained.
Feeling most pleasandy relaxed, she looked around the thinly populated bar, and noticed (again!) die eyes of die middle-aged man seated across die room. But she gave no sign diat she was aware of his interest, switching her glance instead to die balding, grey-white head of die man leaning nonchalandy at the bar as he ordered dieir drinks.
Beside her once more, he clinked dieir glasses, feeling (just as she did) most pleasantly relaxed.
'Quite a while since we sat here,' he volunteered.
'Couple o' mondis?'
34
DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR
'Ten weeks, if we wish to be exact*
'Which, of course, we do, sir.'
Smiling, she sipped her second large brandy. Feeling good; feeling increasingly good.
'Hungry?' he asked.
'What for?'
He grinned. 'An hour in bed, perhaps - before we have a bite to eat?'
'Wine thrown in?'
Tm trying to bribe you.'
'Well ... if you
'I
'One condition, though.'
'What?'
'You tell me what you were going to tell me - on the train.'
He nodded seriously. Til tell you over the wine.'
It was, one may say, a satisfactory arrangement
As they got up to leave, Storrs moved ahead of her to push open one of the swing-doors; and Rachel James (for such was she), a freelance physiotherapist practising up in North Oxford, was conscious of the same man's eyes upon her. Almost involuntarily she leaned her body backward, thrusting her breasts against the smooth white silk of her blouse as she lifted both her hands behind her head to tighten the ring which held her light brown hair in its pony-tail.
A pony-tail ten inches long.
35
CHAPTER FIVE
Then die smiling hookers turned their attention to our shocked reporters.
'Don't be shy! You paid for a good time, and that's what we want to give you.' - Our men feigned jet-lag, and declined
(Extract from the
GEOFFREY OWENS had a better knowledge of Soho than most people.
He'd been only nineteen when first he'd gone to London as ajunior reporter, when he'd rented a room just off Soho Square, and when during his first few months he'd regularly walked around the area there, experiencing the curiously compulsive attraction of names like Brewer Street, Greek Street, Old Compton Street, Wardour Street... a sort of litany of seediness and sleaze.
In those days, the mid-seventies, the striptease parlours, the porno cinemas, the topless bars - all somehow had been more wholesomely sinful, in the best sense of that word (or was it the worst'). Now, Soho had quite definitely changed for the better (or was it the worse?): more furtive and tawdry, more dishonest in its exploita-
DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR
