Chapter 3
Chapter three
Sexual services in exchange for money might have been legal in the UK, but it didn’t mean people, police officers included, were supportive of Scott’s career.
He trudged through reception in his socks, still wearing the coffeeshop apron around his neck, and baulked at the dispassionate expression of the officer behind the desk.
There was a glass sheet between them, and Scott tried to ignore the smear where it looked like someone had been violently thrown against it.
He took a step to the side to speak around the mark.
“I’d like to report a crime,” Scott frowned. “An almost crime.”
The officer quirked a thinning eyebrow at him. “And what is the nature of this almost crime?”
“Assault…and attempted imprisonment.”
The officer leaned closer, peering at Scott through the glass, giving him a distasteful look up and down.
“An almost assault, and an almost imprisonment…”
“Yes,” Scott replied. “I’m happy to tell you your ears are working.”
Easy, Scott told himself, easy. He couldn’t throw up the walls around himself; he needed help, and that meant calming the snarky cat inside him.
It had a bad habit of swiping when he was scared.
“Sorry, but…could I discuss this in a private room or something?” He glanced over his shoulder; it felt like disapproving eyes were pinned to him.
“I’ll see if there’s an officer free, or you can come back again tomorrow –”
“I’d rather wait for one now.” Scott gestured to one of three vacant chairs in reception. “I’ll be over there.”
If he left and went home, he’d bottle it; he knew himself too well.
Scott sat down and twitched his toes against the floor. He no longer left a bloody trail behind himself. The woman at the coffee shop had offered to drive him to her house first so she could grab him a pair of her son’s shoes for him to wear, but with a grateful smile, he’d declined.
The sooner he was at the police station, the more likely he’d go through with speaking to someone.
“What size are you?” the officer called.
“Huh?”
“Feet.”
“I’m an eight.”
He got a nod in reply, then a mumbled, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Scott watched him leave through the door behind him. A camera pointed down at Scott, recording his every move. It was one of the reasons Scott didn’t break down and cry.
He was prepared to be vulnerable in front of the officers, but not that vulnerable.
No one had seen him cry, emotionally cry anyway.
He could squeeze out a few theatrical tears if he needed to please a client.
The ‘it feels so good’ kind of tears. Scott found that if he thought about the scene in Land Before Time where Littlefoot’s mother died, they materialised, but that was someone else’s plight, which was empathy for an orphaned dinosaur; his own emotions were locked away behind a floodgate.
It would not burst because of him. That would’ve pleased him too much.
The officer appeared from another door and stepped up to Scott. He had a battered pair of pink Converse in his hands. “Sorry about the colour, but they’re the only eights we have.”
“Thank you.” Scott smiled. “I like the colour. There’s nothing wrong with wearing pink shoes, or women’s perfume.”
The officer frowned at him, then gestured to the door he’d come through. “There’s an officer waiting to take your statement.”
Scott eased out a slow breath and got to his feet.
It was now or never.
Five minutes later, he found himself in a box room sat behind a table with a police officer who introduced herself as police constable Pauline Viney.
Her blonde hair was up in a high ponytail, and whenever she turned her head, it swished against the top of her back and Scott got a hit of strawberries.
Her eyes were mahogany, soothing as she gazed at him, but he knew they’d only sharpen when she found out what he did as a profession and why he was concerned about this particular individual.
Most people when retelling a version of events began at the beginning, but Scott wasn’t most people, and he started with that day, and everything that led up to the moment of him running down the street in bare feet while the sun was setting.
“A shock collar?” Pauline said.
Scott nodded, touching his throat where the red mark had been from the weight alone, and she peered at his skin before tapping something on her laptop.
“Do you have the collar?”
“No. I wasn’t going to take it with me when it was electrocuting my hand, was I?”
Easy, Scott repeated in his head, easy.
“It’s probably best you didn’t try,” she murmured.
No fucking shit.
“And the man who’d hired your services for the night…”
“Was outside waiting in his car.”
Pauline nodded. “And you’re sure the footsteps you heard on the stairs weren’t his?”
“Not unless he could teleport.”
“I understand your frustration,” Pauline said. “But these are questions I need to ask.”
“The footsteps I heard on the stairs didn’t belong to Anthony, nor did the hand that grabbed me when I was climbing out of the window.”
“Yes, you said ‘grabbed you’, but is there a chance they were actually trying to steady you or feared you might hurt yourself?”
“No. There’s absolutely no chance of that.”
Pauline nodded. “You sound as if you have an idea of who this person was.”
“I know who it was…”
“Name?”
Scott bit his tongue before admitting, “I only know the name he gave me.”
Pauline’s eyebrows tugged together. “And what was that?”
“Warren,” Scott said. “He said his name was Warren.”
“Warren who?”
“He didn’t tell me his last name. He hired me seven years ago. He booked me for the night. It was a home visit. I went to his place, or the place he’d hired at least. He cooked. We watched a movie. Then we went upstairs.”
“Went upstairs?” She peered at him almost guiltily.
“To have sex.”
“And…”
“What do you want? A step-by-step,” Scott snapped before gripping his head in both hands. “Sorry, I… We had sex. He asked if he could be rough with me. I said he could.”
Pauline spoke in a quiet voice. “He…hurt you?”
“Not outside of the parameters of what I thought acceptable, but the things he was saying, what he wanted to do to me, they were…disturbing.”
“What kind of things?” Pauline said carefully, fingers poised to type down his answer.
“He wanted to have me against my will. He wanted to really hurt me.”
Pauline nodded. “But he didn’t.”
“He didn’t,” Scott agreed. “And he paid me double what he said he would and told me he would be interested in seeing me again in the future.”
“That encounter ended amicably?”
Scott thought back to that morning. Warren had been polite again, making him breakfast, smiling at him warmly, but his words of the previous night had chipped off the veneer. There was something unhinged about the man, something swirling in his eyes.
“Did he try to see you again?”
“No,” Scott admitted. He lowered his gaze. “It was me who messaged him. I…I needed money. I needed it fast, and I knew he’d give it to me if I arranged another date with him. At first, he said no.”
Pauline pushed back in her chair. “He said no?”
“I said…” He paused to ease out a breath. “I said he could live out his sick fantasy for real.”
“Why?” Pauline whispered. “Why would you do that?”
“I needed the money.”
“How much?”
“￡100,000.”
Pauline’s eyes and her mouth both widened at the figure.
“He paid me in advance. I picked a day that I knew I wouldn’t be able to make, and then for three years, I didn’t think much about him. He couldn’t get to me where I was.”
“And where were you?”
“Prison.”
“Prison,” Pauline echoed. “You’ve served time?”
“I was in Brixton for blackmailing a politician I’d slept with. I needed the money. I got caught, arrested, charged, and right before I was sentenced, I made the deal with Warren.”
“￡100,000? Why did you need that much? And why then?”
Scott shook his head. “It’s not important anymore. I owe him his fantasy, and he was so close tonight, too close. And I need your help. I need you to find out who he is and arrest him.”
Pauline winced. “Arrest him for what?”
“I’m sorry, but have you not heard what I said. He’s going to hurt me.”
“Has he threatened you? Has he directly said he’s going to harm you?”
Scott rubbed his brow. Even the first time, when it had been consensual rough sex, Warren had said things like, I want to…
or I wish I could… He never directly threatened to hurt Scott.
When Scott had contacted him, it had been him suggesting the violence, not Warren, and when he’d escaped through the window that night, no words had been spoken between them.
Warren had grabbed his ankle but let go when Scott kicked out.
“He put a shock collar on me –”
“You said your date for this evening, Anthony, put the collar on you.” Pauline scrolled through the notes on her computer. “I can send someone over to speak to him tomorrow morning if you’ve got his details.”
“Anthony is not the problem. He was a pawn, that’s all. I need you to find Warren and tell him to leave me alone.”
“Do you have an address for Warren?”
Scott shook his head. “I’ve got his email, it’s inactive.”
“You’ve tried messaging him?”
“I wanted to end our…agreement, tell him I’d pay it all back if he gave me time.”
“Do you still have the ￡100,000?”
Scott shook his head. “It’s all gone. He didn’t directly pay it to me –”
“Where did he pay it to?”
“It’s not important anymore. The point is, I don’t have it. I’m doing as much as I can to pay it back, but it’s going to take time.”
“Doing as much as you can?”
“With clients.”
“Right.” Her eyebrows jumped up, then settled again. “I see…”
“He’s not going to be civilised about this. He knows what he wants, he knows what I said he could have. I can’t meet up with him and talk about it, that will end up one way. He’s going to really fucking hurt me.”
Pauline sighed. “The thing is, we can’t charge him for something he hasn’t done.”
Scott’s eyes started stinging. “He will do it.”