The Devil You Know

I thought about the steak knife. “Rosa leaves a very powerful impression,” I acknowledged, genuflecting at the secret altar of my conscience in penance for such a cheesy line. “And ever since I saw her, I’ve been wanting to meet up with her again. But she’s not in today.”

“That’s right. She’s not.” Jasmine was still playing the game by the house rules, but there was a guarded edge to her voice. “Do you want me to pretend to be her? You can call me Rosa, if that makes it better for you.”

I shook my head brusquely. “I want to make sure she’s all right. And I want to talk to her again.”

Jasmine didn’t answer. Either I’d struck a nerve, or she was just wondering if my obsession might spill over into actual violence. I was hoping for the former, because when I’d touched her hand, I’d got a fleeting glimpse of Rosa’s face on the surface of her mind. At the very least, she knew the girl; and, perhaps, if my luck was in, she was concerned about her already.

But her first reaction wasn’t promising. “Rosa’s fine,” she said. Her voice had changed now, closed down to a flat monotone. She took her hand off my knee.

“How do you know that?”

A pause. “Because I saw her yesterday. She’s fine.”

“When yesterday?”

Anger flared in her eyes. “Look, if you’re social services or someone, you can kiss my sodding arse!”

“I only paid for missionary, remember? I’m not social services. And I’m not a cop, either, but then you probably have pretty good radar for cops. I really do just need to talk to her. And I really am worried about her. If you tell me she’s okay, then that’s great. But when did you see her?”

Bowing to the inevitable, I took out my dwindling roll of cash and held out another twenty for her to take. She didn’t make a move for it. She just scowled at me, but not in aggression. It was more like her flexing her facial muscles as she came back out of role and took off the mask. My luck was holding. It looked as though I’d guessed right, and Jasmine was worried about Rosa on her own account. At least, that was the only reason I could think of for her not either whistling for the bouncer or helping herself to the extra twenty.

She still had to decide how far to trust me, though, and I could see it was going to be someway short of the full distance. “In the afternoon,” she said. “About two. She came in late, and Patty had words with her. Then Scrub”—she stumbled slightly on the name; I could see there was no love lost there—“Scrub came in and took her to see Mr. Damjohn.”

The pause lengthened.

“And?” I prompted.

Jasmine looked unhappy. “And she never came back in again after that.”

“Do you know where Scrub took her?”

Jasmine rolled her eyes, then shook her head once, tersely. How would she know? Why would she want to find out? This clearly wasn’t the kind of place where you asked too many questions. But that was still what I had to do.

“Does it happen often?” I asked. “Scrub taking the girls off for a talk with the boss? Does Damjohn give you a quarterly review or something?”

Another head shake. “If he needs to see us, he sees us here. But mostly he leaves it to Patty to sort out the girls. He takes care of the downstairs stuff.”

“Well, did Scrub say anything about why Damjohn needed to talk to Rosa?”

Jasmine didn’t answer at first, so I waited. Sometimes waiting works a lot better than asking again.

“He said—she’d been told before. She’d been warned. That was all. He didn’t say about what. Then she said she’d just been out for a walk. She hadn’t met anyone on the way, she just needed a walk.”

It seemed blindingly obvious that what Rosa had been warned about was tailing me. But she’d done it anyway—not to talk to me, but to take a swipe at me with a kitchen cleaver borrowed for the occasion. You did it to her. You did it to her again.

“Did they leave in a car?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“A BMW?”

“I didn’t see. But I heard it pull away.”

“Do you have any idea where Damjohn lives?”

Jasmine laughed without a trace of humor. “A long way away from here, I’ll bet. No. Nobody knows where he lives. This is the only place where we ever see him.”

“He never takes a couple of the girls back home for some unpaid overtime? Droit du seigneur sort of thing.”

“No. Not that I’ve ever heard of. Carole reckons he’s gay.”

I didn’t agree. From my brief acquaintance with Damjohn—and especially from that unwanted flash of images and ideas when I’d shaken his hand—I suspected that he got his kicks in some other way that only touched on sex at an odd tangent.

“Nothing else?” I asked, just to make sure.

She thought hard, frowned, looked at me doubtfully.

“I think Scrub said—but it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Said what?”

“Well—what I heard was ‘It’s the nice lady for you.’”

“The nice lady?”

“Yeah. Or maybe ‘the kind lady.’ Something like that. I don’t know. It just sounded funny, so it stayed in my mind.”

“Thanks, Jasmine,” I said, meaning it. “Thanks for trusting me.”