I totter in front of Evil Face. I’m still a bit sore and stiff from the American onslaught and it isn’t easy to negotiate the steep, creaky staircase.
The smoking girls are long gone, but an empty condom packet lies on a landing, next to an empty tissue box. The closed doors around it must belong to a brothel. The atmosphere is oppressive and stale, misery compacted into every molecule of air. The opposite of sexy. Why would a person come here?
We walk out through the shop front of the peep show. A punter at the desk stops counting out banknotes in order to give me a good, long stare.
‘She one of yours?’ he asks the receptionist, but I don’t hear the answer, because we are already outside on a dark, rainy pavement.
I look around for a car, but there isn’t one.
‘It’s just around the corner,’ says Evil Face. ‘You can walk.’
‘In this?’ I gesture down at my barely concealed nudity.
‘Sure. Look around you. You fit right in.’
It’s true that the area around the park gates is home to little knots of working girls in tiny skirts and lots of leopard print, but I am still one step further on than them in the flesh-baring stakes and their eyes follow me along the alleyway that cuts through from the sleazy area to the district of fabulous wealth. Funny how all cities seem to have a similar geographical juxtaposition somewhere on the map, like a topographical joke.
I am grateful for the limited cover darkness affords me, but the light soon returns on the other side of the park. The hotel frontage is awash with golden light and I negotiate the steps and the lobby as quickly as I can, avoiding all eyes until we reach the lifts.
Upstairs on the top floor I can breathe again. My mystery man has the penthouse suite. Somehow this makes me uneasy. All the worst excesses at the Luxe Noir take place in the penthouse suite – some of the things the maids have had to clear up in there make even licentious little me shudder.
I could still walk away.
I pat my jacket pocket, looking for the rectangular reassurance of my mobile phone. Lloyd wouldn’t put me in danger. Oh! Perhaps it’s Lloyd in there! I know he’s pretty friendly with the guys at this hotel. Though he’d have had to fly down the fire escape at the gambling den to get here before me.
This burgeoning hope is given extra weight when Evil Face taps me on the shoulder before I knock on the door. ‘One more thing,’ he says. ‘He doesn’t want you to see him.’
Chapter Ten
‘What?’
My escort takes a length of black silk from his pocket. ‘I have to blindfold you. OK?’
Now I really am confident that I am meeting Lloyd in there. I assent without protest, allowing the man to cover my eyes and tie a tight knot at the back of my head.
He knocks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. The door is opened and I step carefully in, my heels sinking into plush, Evil-Face’s hand on my elbow.
‘Here she is,’ he says. ‘Special delivery. I’ll leave her to you now.’
There is no reply, again. It’s a person whose voice I’d recognise. I smile as a different hand takes my elbow, leading me onwards.
I try to repeat my triumphant guessing game hat-trick from the Soho stockroom, using my nose and my general awareness of Lloyd’s mannerisms, but he has obviously learned from that day, because he is silent and scentless tonight.
I need to make him talk. ‘So, how do you want me?’ I ask, running a finger down the lapel of the tux.
His response is non-verbal – the removal of said item of clothing. He undoes the button lazily, unhurriedly. A doubt makes itself known, way down in the pit of my stomach. This isn’t Lloyd.
The way he slides his hand into the small of my back, holding me there while he, presumably, takes in my nakedness only magnifies this doubt.
There is something very different here. This is a man in absolute control of himself – he is scarcely even breathing. Lloyd would be at me, on me, all over me by now.
He spins me around, and the hands that land on my shoulders aren’t Lloyd’s. Longer fingers.
‘Who are you?’ I ask uncertainly.
I have this feeling … but it just couldn’t be. It really couldn’t be.
It’s some high roller we’ve had at the Luxe Noir, an elegant stranger.