Hanging Hill

walked up the path.

The woman who opened the door was in her fifties, small, thin and bitter, with a dark suntan and an old- fashioned beehive she had decorated with plastic flowers. She wore tight black leggings, a T-shirt and red high- heeled mules. She was sucking at a cigarette, as if she needed the nicotine so much she’d like to swallow the thing whole.

‘Jacqui?’

‘Yeah? What?’

‘Police.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Have you got a few moments?’

‘S’pose.’

Jacqui kicked aside a fluffy pink draught-excluder and opened the door. Zoe stepped inside. It was hot – the central heating was on high although it was spring. She followed the woman into the kitchen at the back of the house. It was neater inside than out – there were lace curtains in the windows, with a mug tree, matching tea- towels, and biscuit tins piled in a pyramid on top of the fridge. The only thing out of place was a yellow and black sharps bin on the work-surface.

‘Insulin,’ Jacqui said. ‘I’m a diabetic.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Now, make yourself comfortable, pet, and I’ll put on the kettle because you’ll be here a while.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You’re going to sit here and threaten me, pet, and I’m going to come back at you over and again, explaining how I’m not running a brothel. How what I’m doing here is not illegal. How you have to define what the girls are doing as lewd or likely to cause offence. You’re police but you’re out of your depth.’ She smiled and plugged the kettle in. Threw a couple of teabags into mugs. ‘I mean no personal offence, pet, but since they’ve got rid of the specialized cops – the street-offences crew – I’ve been able to run rings around you CID muppets. Shame, I had a lot of friends in that team.’

Zoe didn’t want to get into the small print of the Sexual Offences Act. From her own experiences, she knew the earlier legislation – a lot of it was written in stone on her heart – but over the years her knowledge had slipped. A lot of the stuff relating to lap-dancing clubs was governed by local bylaws, and a huge Act had been passed in 2003 that overturned a lot of what she’d learned. The only part of the new Act she could quote for sure was the bit about assault by penetration with an object – and she only knew that from the discussions in the incident room over what Act they might charge Lorne’s killer under. She’d be no match for the hard-bitten Jacqui.

‘I’ve been over and over this. The point is that no sexual gratification actually takes place on the premises.’ She dug a wrinkled finger at the table. ‘I can promise you that. If there is any sexual gratification occurring it ain’t here. It’s happening in New York or Peru or bleeding Dunstable, for all I know.’

Zoe raised her chin and looked at the ceiling, imagining a warren of rooms up there. ‘How does it work?’

‘They’re “chat hostesses”. That’s all. Sitting in front of a web cam and “chatting” – or whatever they have a mind to do, if you get my drift. Catering to the more discerning gentleman who’s had his fill of the Asian girls. A little pricey, but you get what you pay for. Two dollars a minute. Not that I see a penny of it. Because this ain’t a brothel. My only comeback is the rental of the equipment and bandwidth with it. What they do ain’t my affair.’ She put a mug on the table. ‘There you are, pet. Drink up. You look like you need it.’

‘Are they up there now?’

‘Just one. Our big clients are South America and Japan.’ She looked at her watch. ‘South America’s in the office now, and doesn’t like to get caught with his trousers round his ankles by the boss, and Japan? Well, he’s only just waking up. We won’t catch him at his randiest for another twelve hours. So?’ She gave Zoe a friendly smile. There was a smudge of red lipstick on her front teeth. ‘What section of the law do you want to argue about? You see, me,’ she held the hand with the smouldering cigarette against her chest, ‘I love a good debate. I should have been on Question Time, me. One day they’ll ask me.’

‘They will. They surely will.’ Zoe cleared her throat and reached, for the hundredth time, into her satchel. Pulled out the photos of Lorne. ‘Jacqui. Look, I’d love to have a debate. But I’m not here about the setup you’re operating.’

‘Operating? Be careful the vocabulary you use.’

‘The equipment you’re renting.’ She rubbed her forehead. She was hot and sticky in this shirt, and Jacqui’s tea tasted awful. She so, so wanted to go home – forget all this. ‘What I really want to know is if this girl ever passed across your radar screen.’

She spread the photos out. Jacqui took a long puff of the cigarette, pushed the smoke out of her mouth in a thin, straight stream, and squinted down at the photos, taking in every detail. She’d done this before, Zoe thought. Probably, if she’d been in the business a while, she’d done it a lot of times – speaking to the police about the victims of rape, abuse, domestic violence. Prostitution, lap-dancing, pole-dancing. Lying naked on a bed in front of a tiny video camera and a mic. All these things lived in a hinterland just on the other side of the law – sharing boundaries with the dangerous and the violent.

‘No.’ She sat back, closed her eyes and took another puff. ‘Never seen her.’

‘OK.’ Zoe put the wallet into the satchel and began to get up. She’d done what she could.

‘But…’ Jacqui said. ‘But wait…’

‘But?’

‘But I know who would like her. For his videos. He’s cornered the young totty market, hasn’t he? He likes them to look like teenagers.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know his name. Not his real name. London Tarn they always called him. London Tarn.’

Zoe sank slowly back into her seat. ‘London Tarn?’

‘It’s London Town,’ Jacqui explained. ‘Just “Tarn” because of the accent. You know – like in EastEnders, but he-’ She broke off, squinting at Zoe suspiciously. ‘What? You look like someone just sucked the blood out of you. You’ve heard of him, have you?’

‘No.’ She clutched the satchel to her chest. Drew her knees together. ‘No. I’ve never heard of him.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘It’s just that for a minute there, when I said his name, you looked like-’

‘I’m sure.’ She started tapping her foot, suddenly irritable. She was awake now. Wide awake. ‘Tell me about him. London Tarn. He makes videos?’

Jacqui took another slug of smoke and eyed her. ‘Yeah – he’s been around years now, must be pushing sixty. When he started, he used to be just soft porn. Hi Eight. He used to run a club too – out in Bristol, one of your old- fashioned strip clubs – and when that closed down he put everything into the videos. He didn’t have any proper production equipment – the only time I went to his place it was just him in a flat in Fishponds, with one VHS here,’ she put a hand out, ‘and another here, and a bit of wire between them, and that’s how he’d copy them. Then he’d sell them in the markets. You know, the stalls at St Nicholas.’

‘And after that?’

‘After that he was a gonzo.’

‘A gonzo?’

‘Yeah. He’d make vids of himself. This was in the nineties, mind.’ She tapped her ash into the ashtray and crossed her legs – getting comfortable for this reminiscence. ‘I never knew him then, that was after my time, but I seen the movies. He’d be there in his glory with some poor girl he’d talked into doing whatever. Never bothered with lighting or anything, which I always thought wasn’t professional. A bit slack, if you want my way of looking at it. But they do say, don’t they, some people like it – the, you know, warts-’n’-all look. Either way up, it was a seller. And on the back of that he picked up pretty swift on the Internet deal. Give him his due, he was in there. And after that came the bukkake stuff.’

‘Bukkake?’

Jacqui laughed. ‘Doncha know what that is?’

‘No.’

‘It’s all about humiliating the woman. They say it was an old Japanese custom – what they’d to do to the