In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(131)

“To get back for what?” Nkata asked. The guitar-wielding lout leered over his shoulder from an overlarge photograph, tongue hanging out. A line of studs pierced it. A silver chain dangled from one of the studs, looping across his cheek to a ring in his ear. “To get back at you for what?” Nkata repeated patiently, his pencil poised and his face all interest.

“For sneaking to Prongbreath Reeve, that's for what,” Shelly declared.

“MKR Financial Management?” Nkata asked. “Martin Reeve?”

“As ever bloody was.” Shelly marched over to the mattress, her coffee mug in her hand, unmindful of the hot liquid that sloshed onto the floor. She squatted, rooted for a truffle, and plopped it into the mug along with the coffee. Another chocolate she popped into her mouth. She sucked energetically and with intense concentration. This appeared to be directed—at long last—at the moderate peril of her situation. “Okay, so I told him about everything” she announced. “So bloody what? He had a right to know they were lying to him. Oh, he didn't deserve to know, little wanker that he is, but since they were doing to him what they did to me and since they were going to keep bloody doing it to everyone else in sight as long as they could get away with it, then he had a right to know. Because if people just use other people like that, then they bloody ought to pay for the using. One way or another, they bloody ought to pay Just like the punters, is what I say.”

Nkata looked like a man who was listening to Greek and attempting to write a translation in Latin. Lynley didn't feel a great deal more clarity at his end. He said, “Miss Platt, what are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about Prongbreath Reeve, I am. Vi and Nikki milked him like a cow, and when their pockets were full”—obviously, she wasn't a woman who clung to the unity of her figurative language—“they did a bunk on him. Only they made sure they took their punters with them when they scarpered. They were setting themselfs up to cost the Prong dear by going into business for themselfs, Nikki and Vi were, and I didn't think it was fair. So I told him.”

“So Vi Nevin did work for Martin Reeve?” Lynley asked Shelly.

“'Course she did. Both of them did. Tha's how they met.”

“Did you work for him as well?”

She snorted. “Not bloody likely, that. Oh I tried, I did. Right when Vi got hired, I tried. But I wasn't the type he was looking for, Prongbreath said. He wanted refinement, he said. He wanted his girls to make conversation and know which fork to use with the fish knife and watch an opera without falling asleep and go to a drinks party on the arm of some ugly fat bloke who wants to pretend she's his girlfriend for a night and—”

“I think we've got the idea,” Lynley cut in. “But let me make sure so there's no confusion: MKR is an escort service.”

“Posing as a financial management firm,” Nkata added.

“Is that what you're saying?” Lynley asked Shelly. “Are you saying that both Nicola and Vi worked for MKR as escorts until they broke away to form their own business? Is that right, Miss Platt?”

“Right as rain,” she asserted. “Right as a bleeding hurricane. He hires girls, does Martin, and he calls them trainees for some flaming money business that don't even exist in the first place. He sits them down with a slew of books they're supposed to study from to learn the ‘business,’ and after 'bout a week he asks them will they do him a favour and act like the date of one of MKR's big clients in town for a conference and wanting to go to dinner. He'll pay them extra, he says, if they'll do it just this once. And just this once turns into just another time, and by the time they figger what MKR's really about they're seeing they can make a lot more dosh acting like dates for Korean computer salesmen or Arab oil blokes or American políticos or … whoever than they could ever make doing whatever else they was doing when they came to work for Prongbreath in the first place. And they can make even more if they give their companion a bit more than their company for the evening. Which is when the Prong introduces them to what his business really is. Which has sod all to do with investing anyone's money anywhere, believe you me.”

“How did you learn all this?” Lynley asked.

“Vi brought Nikki home once. They were talking. I listened. Vi got hired by the Prong different, and they were telling their stories to each other to compare.”

“Vis was?”

“Different, like I said. She was the only escort he ever hired from the street. The rest were students. College girls who wanted to work part-time. But Vi worked the game by sticking her card in call boxes—”

“With you as her maid?”

“Yeah. Tha's right. And Prongbreath picked up one of her cards, liked the look of her—I s'pose he didn't have another girl who could look ten years old like Vi can when she sets her mind to it—and he rang her up. I booked him in like I always did, but when he showed up, he wanted to talk business.” She lifted her coffee and drank, examining Lynley over the rim. She said, “So Vi went to work for him.”

“And ceased to need you,” Lynley said.

“I stuck by her though. Cooking meals, doing laundry, keeping the flat nice. But then she wanted to take up with Nikki as her mate and her partner, and I was out. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “One day I was washing her knickers. The next day I was pulling mine down to give ten-pound pokes to blokes waiting to catch the District Line to Ealing Broadway.”