Graven Image Read Free Page B

keypad when they go in the room, then flick the switch to green or red depending on the punter situation, thereby letting muggins downstairs know who’s where and what they’re up to. How hard is that? But still they messed it up. I could see a couple more training seminars being in order. They’d moan, sure. They’d whinge and whine and call me Gareth out of The Office . But they’d soon stop that if a punter went violent on them, oh yes. They’d be reaching for that red button and thanking the god of prostitution that their security man had gone to all that trouble for them.
    I sat down at the computer, running through the Level One procedure in my head.

6.

Took me all of thirty minutes to get Carla’s address. I thought that was quite good, bearing in mind this is a woman I do not get along with and only ever see in a purely business capacity. To give you the full picture, I fucking hated her. Something about her just got on my wick and stayed there, pinching and biting it. Listening to her was like poking darts in your ears, and looking at her was like scratching your eyeballs with that nail-file she was always using.
    To be fair, I did understand the point of her. You need someone like that running a brothel. Just like you need someone like me handling security. As much as I hate to say it, we were a good management team.
    I don’t know why I was shocked, finding the place and seeing what a dump it was. True enough: she was a brothel madam, and you picture them living in tacky mini-mansions with pink curtains and a fountain in the front garden. But Graven was the owner of Destiny, not her. He paid her a wage, just like me. And it wasn’t like she could just hand in her cards and find a better paid position. Besides a couple of Chinese ones that kept moving camp before you could hit them, Destiny was the only knocking shop in town.
    She could like her salary or lump it.
    And let’s be clear, here: Graven don’t take kindly to being lumped.
    Which explained the crumbling town-house on Green Hill, chest-high weeds out front and five rusty doorbells beside the front door. I pressed number three, which I’d been told was Carla’s.
    Then I leaned on it.
    What was I doing? The way I guessed it, Carla had taken Kelly off and handed her over to Graven, who was holding her somewhere, planning on using her as bait to force me to do some horrible thing in penance for my fuck-up. Which I’d gladly do, if it got Kelly free. There was no way Carla herself would be holding her. Carla was no different to Graven’s men, doing what he says or else. But she still wouldn’t want to face me right now. Glancing out her window and seeing me come along the road, she’d be out the back and down the fire escape in a shot.
    I went round the back.
    In a shot.
    No way had she come down this thing in a hurry. Not without half the neighbourhood knowing about it anyway. I’m no expert on fire escapes but even I knew scrap iron when I saw it. Two or three tons of the stuff in what looked to be two thousand moving parts. What wasn’t rusted solid was loose and rattling like a bag of change. There’d have to be some serious blaze going on for any sane person to set foot on this heap of nails, let me tell you.
    I set foot on it.
    The doors on these old lodging houses are shit. I’m no housebreaker and even I had it open with no more fuss than a little scattering of white paint flakes on the floor. You didn’t get a number round the back but I knew straight away it was Carla’s. I could smell her. When you work in a house full of hookers, you learn about perfume, mouthwash and all kinds of fragranced detergents. I don’t know what scent Carla used, but it reeked.
    No one in.
    For one so organised in her working life, I’d never have guessed she was a such a slob at home. Bed unmade, clothes on the floor, empty wine bottles all around, bins overflowing and no sign of a Hoover. This wasn’t just turning a blind eye to filth and