Authors: Stephen Leather
Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #War & Military, #Yugoslav War; 1991-1995
Elsa shook her head.
“No. I am sure.”
Sasha took the picture from her and held it close to her face.
“I want you to remember this face, Elsa, and if you see her I want you to phone me.”
Elsa nodded.
“Good girl. I'll send Karic up with your present,” said Sasha. He never carried drugs himself. It wasn't worth the risk.
“Thank you,” said Elsa.
“How about showing me how grateful you are?” said Sasha.
Elsa slid off the bed and on to her knees. Sasha opened his legs and lay back on the bed as she eased down his zip. He looked at his watch as Elsa went down on him. It was important to have the girls service him because it reminded them that he owned them, that he was the only man who could have them for free. But he was only going to give her ten minutes. Every minute she had him in her mouth was a minute when she could be opening her legs for a paying punter.
Solomon took off his clothes and handed them to the big man.
“Okay?” he asked. The big man scowled at Solomon and made a small circling gesture with his index finger. Solomon turned slowly. The big man grunted, handed Solomon a fleecy white towel and opened the door to the sauna. Hot, cloying steam billowed out and condensed on his face.
Solomon stepped inside. It was lined with pine benches racked up to head height with space for fifty people to sit, but only one man was inside, ladling water on to a pile of hot stones. There was a hiss and clouds of steam swirled up towards the ceilings.
“Hot enough for you, Solomon?” asked the man, grinning. Rolls of fat cascaded over the towel around his waist and his several chins dripped sweat. His hair, so black that it must have been dyed, was swept back and he had a thick moustache.
“Do you take all your meetings in here, Marco?” asked Solomon. The door closed shut behind him.
Marco Montanaro tossed the ladle into a wooden pail of water.
“Just cops,” he said, and sat back.
“First, there's nowhere to hide a recording device. Second, no transmitting signal can get through the metal walls behind the wood. Third, I like to see cops sweat.”
“Haven't you heard I'm not with the Met any more?”
Montanaro waved at the bank of benches to Solomon's right. Solomon sat down and opened his mouth wide to draw more air into his lungs. Montanaro grinned at his discomfort.
“Your phone call came out of the blue. You wanted nothing to do with me when you were in Vice.”
“I just wanted a chat,” said Solomon.
“I hope you're not asking for money.”
“I didn't want your money then and I don't want it now. But I need some information.”
Montanaro laughed harshly.
“You want me to give you information? Why, in God's name, would I tell you anything?”
Because you owe me," said Solomon.
“If I'd told GIB what I knew way back when, you'd have gone down.”
“You're not going to tell me you acted out of altruistic reasons, are you? You didn't grass on your colleagues because you were scared of what they'd do to you.”
“It was more complicated than that,” said Solomon.
“I think you've confused me with someone who gives a shit,” said Montanaro. He ladled more water on to the hot stones.
“You ruined a lot of lives but not mine.”
“I know,” said Solomon.
“Duggan was a good cop. Things ran smoothly while he was top dog. Do you know what he's doing now?”
Solomon nodded.
“And what about your own life, Solomon? Is it better now? Did you profit from your altruism?”
“It's ... different,” said Solomon.
“But I don't regret what I did.”
“How very fucking noble of you,” said Montanaro. He spread his legs wide and leaned back against the wooden bench.
Solomon wiped his hands across his face. They came away soaking wet. The heat was stifling and he had to fight to stop himself panting.
“What's the story with these Albanians?” he asked.
Montanaro shifted a little.
“That's what you wanted to talk about? The Albanians?”
“I'm told that you and the Albanians are in bed together, pretty much. That they're moving their girls into London and into your flats.”
“That's old news. What's your interest?”
“I'm trying to find a girl a working girl. I think she's here in London, but I've had a run-in with an Albanian guy who says he controls Soho. Now, the way I remember it it was the Maltese who ran Soho.”
“We still do,” said Montanaro tersely.
“Do you know a guy called Sasha?”
“Ah,” said Montanaro.
“He's been filling your head with nonsense, has he?”
“So you know him?”
Montanaro smiled thinly.
“We have a business arrangement.”
“He supplies the girls, they work out of your flats?”
Montanaro nodded.
“He didn't strike me as the sort of man who'd be satisfied with an equal partnership,” said Solomon.
Montanaro shrugged.
“When I worked Vice, you had the flats and you had the girls. Plus the clubs and the massage parlours. No one else got a look in. Why are you so keen to work with the Albanians now?”
“They've got good-quality girls. They work cheap, they do anything they know what'll happen if they don't.”
“I seem to remember that you weren't a soft touch with your girls,” said Solomon.
“The Albanians are something else,” said Montanaro.
“This doesn't add up,” Solomon said.
“You're letting them walk all over you.”
“Fuck off!” Montanaro jabbed his finger at Solomon.
“No one walks over me! No one!”
Solomon held up his hands in surrender. There was nothing to be gained from upsetting Montanaro. Solomon needed his help.
“No offence,” he said.
Montanaro glared at Solomon for a few seconds, then smiled slowly.
“You've got balls, Solomon. Big, clanging balls. You've no back-up now, no team behind you, and you know that I could crush you like an ant and no one in the world would give a shit. True?”
“Pretty much.”
“Yet still you give me a hard time.”
“Frankly, Marco, I've nothing left to lose.”
Montanaro picked up a bottle of Evian and drank from it, then wiped his mouth with a small towel, which he draped round his neck. He poured some of the Evian water over his hair and let it cascade down his back.
“So is your interest the girl, or this Albanian?”
“The girl. But I thought if I could understand what's going on with the Albanians, I might have more chance of finding her. He says he doesn't know her, but he also says he controls all the girls in Soho.”
“Yeah, well, that's bollocks,” said Montanaro.
“He has a big chunk of them, but there are others. And we still have some. Then there's the blacks, and the triads in Chinatown.”
“But you're pulling out.”
“We own the flats. The Albanians are supplying us with girls.”
“But the money from the girls goes to their pimps, right? The Albanians?”
“We get well paid for the flats they use.”
“So your girls are working elsewhere?”
“Now you're getting the picture.”
“But where? Soho and Chinatown have always been the centre of the sex trade. How's that changed?”
Montanaro's grin widened.
“The Internet,” he said.
“The sex trade is right across London now, Soho's days are numbered, but the Albanians haven't realised it yet.”
Solomon frowned.
“The Internet? You mean virtual sex?”
Montanaro laughed out loud.
“There's nothing virtual about it, Solomon. It's real sex, but instead of postcards in phone-boxes, we advertise on the Internet. Escort-agency websites. Our girls can be based anywhere in London. The West End. The City. South of the river. We can put the girls where the punters are.”
“How do the punters find the girls?”
“They go on line, they visit a website, then they call a number. They say which girl they want, we give them the address. The website's got photographs, descriptions, general location, the price. The punter can choose exactly what he wants at a price he can afford.” Montanaro poured more water over his head and shook his wet hair. Drops of water splashed over Solomon's face.
“It's big business, Solomon, Huge. The first agencies went on line in the late nineties, now there are hundreds. And we've got some of the biggest. The money's way more than we got from the Soho walk-ups. We've got one up-market agency where the girls charge five hundred quid an hour.”
Solomon's jaw dropped.
“People pay that?”
“Thousands of people pay that. And more. The girls charge three grand for an overnight and men are queuing up to pay. Some of our girls are booked weeks in advance.”
“More money than sense,” said Solomon. He tried to work out what a girl charging five hundred pounds an hour could earn in a year. It was lottery money.
“High-rollers,” said Montanaro.
“Guy works for a bank in New York. His bosses send him to London for a few days. He can go to the Internet, find the girl he wants, pre-book her with an email, then pay with his credit card. The credit-card slip will show he paid for a meal at a restaurant. He gets the best sex of his life and his company pays for it.”
Solomon stared longingly at Montanaro's bottle of Evian water, but the Maltese clearly had no intention of sharing it.
“We've got other agencies where the girls charge a couple of hundred quid an hour, we've got a domination site for the City types who want to pay for a trashing, and we've started bringing over Thai girls to work for an Oriental site. Bargain basement, a hundred and twenty quid an hour. Something for everyone.”
“And Vice leave you alone?”
“Vice couldn't give a shit, and it doesn't cost us a penny in backhanders,” said Montanaro.
“We're taking it off the streets. No phone-box advertising, no signs in doorways, no hookers harassing civilians. Just nice apartments in nice areas, all discreet, all above board.”
“But still illegal, right?”
Montanaro laughed.
“You know the legalities as well as I do, Solomon. But with all the info on the Internet, solicitation isn't an issue. The punter knows what he's going to get before he calls us.”
“You list the services on the site?”
“Nah, that'd be a red rag to Vice. But we don't have to. The prostitute-review sites take care of that.”
“What are they?” asked Solomon.
Montanaro ladled more water on the hot stones and breathed in the steam.
“Why the hell am I helping you, Solomon? What have you ever done for me?”
Solomon didn't reply. Now that he was no longer working for the Met, he wasn't a threat, and Montanaro probably didn't get too many opportunities to boast.
“Okay,” said Montanaro eventually.
“This is how it works. Prostitute-review sites are like restaurant-review columns. Punters write about the girls they've seen, how much they paid, what the girls did. There's one called Punternet.com that we use our people file reviews saying what the girls do. That way the girls never have to solicit. If a punter started trying to get them to list their services, they'd smell a rat. There's no need any more -it's all there on the Internet. It's as close to legal as it's possible to be.”
“Except for you living off immoral earnings?”
“Almost impossible to prove. As I said, my girls are right across London. We've got them in serviced apartments in Chelsea, riverside apartments on the Isle of Dogs, mews houses in Chelsea. Vice don't have the resources to mount an investigation into our operation. We're just too big. And if they did, do you think the girls would give evidence? Of course they wouldn't. Do you think they'd be able to follow the money trail? Of course they couldn't. My money's well hidden. Millions, all salted away.” He leaned forward conspiratorially.
“Do you have any idea how much we made from the agencies last year?” he asked.
Solomon shook his head.
“Eight million pounds,” said Montanaro.
“And that's profit, not turnover.”
Montanaro grinned at Solomon's look of disbelief.
“That's right. It's big business, Solomon. Now you understand why we're happy to let the Albanians into Soho. We get the rents from the flats, but we're going to sell them soon. If the Albanians want to buy, fine. If not, we'll sell to any one of a hundred property-development firms who are dying to get into Soho. Have you any idea what our portfolio's worth? Tens of millions. We've had some of those flats since the fifties, when no one wanted to buy there. How much did you make last year, Solomon?”
“Enough for me,” said Solomon.
“I've got simple tastes.”
Montanaro laughed.
“How long did you work Vice?”
“Five years.”
“And what did you achieve, huh?”
It wasn't an argument Solomon wanted to be drawn into, because he knew what Montanaro was getting at. When it came to prostitution, the legal system was pretty much a revolving door. Prostitutes charged with soliciting would be fined and back on the streets to earn the money to pay the fine within an hour of walking out of the court. If the police went after the pimps, the maximum sentence for living off immoral earnings was seven years and most ended up serving a year or so. But the girls simply found another pimp and carried on working. When the police went in with immigration officers, they'd deport girls who were working illegally after photographing and fingerprinting them but new girls would be moved into the flats before the old ones were on the plane home. And more often than not the girls they deported would be back in the United Kingdom within weeks on a different passport. When neighbours complained about street walking prostitutes, Vice could move the girls on but they didn't stop working, they just moved to another location. If they closed down a brothel, another would open up elsewhere.
“Now ask me what I achieved over those five years, Solomon.”
Solomon didn't have to. He'd seen Montanaro's file five years earlier. Seen the surveillance photographs of his house in Belgravia. The imported cars. The yacht. The private jet. He could only imagine how much the man had moved on since then.
“You don't have to rub my nose in it, Marco.”