Strangers. Paul Finch

high-heeled shoes resting on the bench in front of her, as she swigged from a bottle of vodka.

      ‘And you’re not part of Necktie Nicky’s stable neither,’ she said, screwing the cap back on and giving a satisfied belch. ‘You wouldn’t dare give that much of his dosh away if you were.’

      Lucy ambled towards her. ‘I admit I’ve never met Mr Merryweather personally …’

      ‘No one has who’s so far down the food-chain that they have to walk these streets, love. Anyway, you can spare me the bullshit …’ The red-headed girl climbed down. ‘I know what you really are.’

      Lucy held her tongue, unsure how to respond.

      The girl slid the bottle into her shoulder bag, and struggled with the zip of her scruffy fleece jacket before finally drawing it up. She was shapely but short, not much more than five feet tall. There was no threat here, but the last thing Lucy needed was to be outed on her first night. She wondered what it was that might have given the game away.

      ‘You’re an independent, aren’t you?’ the girl said.

      Up close, even in the gloom, Lucy could see that she had a pretty face, though she smelled strongly of alcohol. If Lucy hadn’t been very used to it thanks to all the drunken prisoners she’d wheeled in over the years, it would have been nauseating.

      ‘And you’re new to the game,’ the girl added. ‘You know how I can tell? Because you haven’t got the thousand-yard stare. I’m Tammy, by the way. And that’s my real name too. I was christened Tamara. Can you fucking believe that?’

      It was an odd way to introduce herself; delivered in a casual, only half-interested tone, as if the information barely mattered.

      ‘Keira,’ Lucy said.

      ‘Yeah, I heard. So what’s the story, Keira? Lost your job? House repossessed? Kids hungry?’

      ‘Something like that.’

      ‘And you thought this’d be a piece of piss?’

      ‘Not exactly a piece of piss.’

      ‘Easy money then?’

      Lucy shrugged, took the wad of notes from under her sleeve and screwed it up into a ball. ‘You telling me I just got lucky when I met that gang of workmen?’

      Tammy eyed the money as it disappeared into Lucy’s bag. ‘Sometimes we get lucky, I suppose.’ She took a step back, this time eyeing Lucy herself. ‘You don’t look the worse for wear considering you’ve just been star-attraction in a backseat gangbang.’

      Lucy realised her mistake. She should have smeared her lippy and mussed her hair a little. But it was too late now. She could only brazen it out.

      ‘How many were there?’ Tammy asked.

      ‘Three.’

      ‘Jesus! Talk about getting off to a flyer. Anyway … your minge must be killing you, which means this one’s for me.’

      Lucy hadn’t realised it, but another vehicle had drawn up at the verge just behind them: a grey SUV with tinted windows. The front nearside window rolled downward.

      There were two guys inside it, one behind the wheel and one in the front passenger seat. This immediately struck Lucy as a potential problem, though if Tammy needed the custom, who was she to object? As the girl teetered across the grassy verge in her ridiculously high heels, the passenger grinned, white teeth splitting his thick black beard. He was somewhere in his early thirties, brawny and wearing a lumberjack-style plaid shirt.

      ‘You gents looking for a good time?’ Tammy tittered, leaning down at the window.

      Plaid Shirt’s expression rapidly changed – from lewd grin to twisted scowl.

      ‘YOU MURDERING SLAGS!’ he screamed, before throwing something into her face.

      Lucy caught a fleeting glimpse of a dark, lumpen object wrapped in what looked like white tissue. The next thing, Tammy’s hoarse voice rang out, an exclamation of horror and disgust, as she tottered backwards. The SUV sped away, howls of mocking laughter echoing from its interior. When Tammy turned to face Lucy, the excrement was smeared down her left cheek and around the side of her mouth. Solid fragments of it spattered her décolletage; a strip of filthy toilet paper had tucked itself into her cleavage.

      Quite clearly, the two most recent murders had finally hit the headlines.

      ‘Dirty bastards!’ Tammy stammered, eyes glimmering with tears of shock.

      Lucy hurried over to her. ‘Here, let me help.’

      She had some face wipes in her shoulder bag, but Tammy tried to pull away, too embarrassed in front of the new girl to allow herself to be assisted.

      ‘No,’ Lucy said, refusing to release her arm. ‘Let me help.’

      ‘Not here, for fuck’s sake!’ Tammy snapped, voice turning nasal as the tears flowed. ‘God, the stink!’

      ‘I can clean it off,’ Lucy insisted.

      ‘Yeah, but not out here!’ Tammy yanked her arm loose and strutted quickly away, working her way deeper into the copse of trees, heels clacking as she joined a paved pathway, which snaked from the road into denser shadows. Lucy followed, shoving the wipes back into her bag. Fleetingly, Tammy was invisible in the darkness ahead – it was only possible to follow her by her footfalls and sniffles. By the sounds of it, she’d quickly got on top of the tears. Probably couldn’t afford not to in this line of work. Lucy accelerated and fell into step alongside her. The path weaved away from the picnic area towards what looked like an open, well-lit space, though they passed several more girls before they got there, most of them standing talking quietly, indistinguishable in the darkness, only the tiny red pinpoints of cigarettes and the occasional whiff of cannabis revealing their presence.

      Tammy sniffled again and tried to wipe under her eyes, inadvertently smearing her fingertips with excrement. ‘Bastards!’ she hissed. ‘Can’t fucking believe this!’

      ‘Nor me,’ Lucy agreed.

      ‘Yeah, but you’re new. I ought to have learned my lesson by now.’

      The path ended at the edge of what was actually a lorry park. This was a rectangular dirt lot, rugged and rutted at this time of year, and about thirty acres in size. It was still close to the East Lancs, extending along it in a southerly direction, but was encircled on three sides by trees and undergrowth. At the far side stood a single-storey red-brick building, a combo of service garage and lorry drivers’ cafe.

      ‘There are some toilets round the back,’ Tammy muttered as they walked over there, passing numerous trucks and wagons, some old and some new, some with curtained interiors.

      When they reached the building, they circled round it, away from its glazed, brightly glowing frontage, passing a row of bins and a pile of spare but rusting auto-parts. At the very rear, two doors stood covered with flaking paint. One was marked ‘Gents’, the other ‘Ladies’.

      Two more girls were standing here, chatting as they smoked. One of them, a bottle-blonde in a fur coat and a preponderance of mascara, spotted them as they approached. Initially she looked shocked, but then she grinned,

      ‘And what happened to you, Tammy, love?’

      ‘What’s it look like?’ Tammy replied sulkily. ‘Some bastard threw a turd at me.’

      The bottle-blonde coughed cigarette smoke as she guffawed. ‘Oh my God … sorry, love, but rather you than me!’

      The other woman, who was older, grey-haired in fact, and considerably heavier – and thus looked awful in her matching red mini-dress and stilettos – seemed completely unmoved. She simply took in the night air, expelling streams of smoke through her flaring nostrils.

      ‘They were a lot of help,’ Lucy said when they’d entered the toilets, to which Tammy only grunted.