Red Light (7 page)

Zakiyyah hesitated, but the man in the grey suit flapped his hand to beckon her over, once, twice, and then again, much more irritably, so she slowly approached him. She was very conscious that she was wearing nothing but this thin turquoise slip and she crossed her arms protectively over her breasts so that he wouldn’t see her nipples.

‘This is Mister Dessie,’ said the bald African man, as if that weren’t obvious. ‘Say hallo to Mister Dessie, Zakiyyah.’

‘That’s your name, Zakiyyah?’ asked Mister Dessie. He stuck his thumb up his right nostril and tugged at it, as if he had some dried mucus up there that he was trying to dislodge. ‘What does that mean? Anything? I know what
this
meb’s name means, Bula-Bulan Yaro. Fat Boy.’

‘Zakiyyah means pure,’ said the bald man, blowing out smoke. ‘Like, never touched by nobody, never.’

‘Ha!’ said Mister Dessie. ‘I like that! Usually we change the girls’ names, but I really like that! That’s what-do-you-call-it? Ironic.’

The bald man smiled and nodded, though it was obvious he didn’t have the faintest idea what ‘ironic’ meant.

Mister Dessie went over to the bed and sat down and patted the blanket beside him to indicate that Zakiyyah should sit down, too. She did so, very cautiously, although she kept as far away from him as she could.

‘You have my suitcase?’ she asked him.

He blinked at her with those bulbous eyes, like a toad. ‘Your suitcase? Why would I have your suitcase?’

‘It has all my clothes in it, and my shoes, and pictures of my family.’

Mister Dessie slowly shook his head. ‘Don’t know what would have happened to that, girl. Not my department. But don’t you worry, I can fix you up with something to wear.’

‘But in my suitcase is everything.’

‘No, no, no, that’s where you have it wrong. Whatever you had in your suitcase, that
used
to be everything, but that was before you agreed to come here. The thing is, like, you’re in considerable debt to us, financially, and you’re going to have to find a way to pay us back.’

Zakiyyah frowned at him, and crossed her arms even more tightly across her breasts. ‘I do not understand you,’ she said. ‘How am I in debt?’

Mister Dessie slapped his sausage-tight trouser leg and turned to Bula-Bulan Yaro. ‘Did you hear that, Bula? “How am I in debt?” Would you credit the naivety?’

‘Pure amazing,’ said Bula, in his strange Nigerian-Irish accent, although it was obvious that he didn’t know what ‘naivety’ meant, either.

Mister Dessie turned back to Zakiyyah and said, ‘How much do you think it cost us to get you here? Your boat ticket? All of our other expenses? And just remember that you agreed to come here voluntary, like. My friends assured me that nobody forced you. But you could hardly expect us to bring you here for free.’

Zakiyyah was beginning to feel anxious now. ‘I do not know how much it cost,’ she said. ‘Those men told me that I would make a lot of money in Ireland, much more than in Lagos.’

‘Well, you will, darling, I can assure you of that,’ said Mister Dessie, patting her thigh. ‘For starters, though, you have to reimburse us. As much as we’d like to think of ourselves as a charitable institution, we’re a business, and we can’t afford to be shelling out boat tickets left, right and centre.’

Bula grunted in amusement. He must have heard all of this so many times before.

Zakiyyah was beginning to feel shivery, even though the room was so warm and stuffy. She touched her forehead and she was perspiring. She felt as if she could hardly breathe, especially since the air was so thick with Bula’s stale cigarette smoke.

‘How much do I owe you for the ticket?’ she asked Mister Dessie. ‘If I owe you, yes, I will pay you back.’

‘Two thousand seven hundred and fifty euros, all told,’ said Mister Dessie, without even blinking. ‘But for you, we’ll say two thousand five.’

‘How much is that in dollars?’ Zakiyyah asked him.

Bula had been prodding at his iPhone. ‘Three thousand three hundred and sixty-four dollars, give or take,’ he called out.

‘I can pay you back every week, when the club pays me,’ said Zakiyyah.

‘What club?’ asked Mister Dessie.

Zakiyyah felt even chillier now, and she was beginning to tremble. ‘The club I came to dance at.’

‘You won’t be dancing at any clubs, darling, not until you pay us back what you owe us.’

‘What do you mean? How can I pay you back if I cannot dance?’

‘Simple. You can work for us, that’s how. We have a club where men come along to be entertained by pretty young women like you. If you do that for two or three months, you should have cleared your debt, and then you can take yourself away and dance your rear end off wherever the fancy takes you. But not until then.’

Zakiyyah was shaking. ‘I do not understand you. I do not know what you mean. Please. I need my suitcase. I need my clothes. I do not feel very good. I feel sick.’

‘It’s not difficult to understand, darling,’ said Mister Dessie. ‘A man feels the itch for some female company, like, so he comes along to our club and chooses a female to give him some company. That’s all there is to it. Depending on how much your man’s prepared to pay, she’ll give him a hand-job, or a blow-job, or intercourse, front or back or both, and everybody’s happy.’

Zakiyyah couldn’t believe what he had just said to her. ‘You want me to be a
bagar
? A hooker?’

‘A
hooker
? We don’t call them that in Ireland. We call them
hostesses
, or sex workers. It’s a very respectable way of life altogether in Ireland, believe you me. It’s not quite like being a nun, I’ll grant you that, but it’s not so much sluttier than serving behind the cosmetics counter at Brown Thomas. And, like I say, you won’t have to do it for more than two or three months.’

‘I think I need doctor,’ said Zakiyyah. Her stomach knotted up and she unexpectedly retched, although nothing came up except a mouthful of sour-tasting saliva.

‘Oh, you need something to eat, that’s all,’ said Mister Dessie. ‘Bula can send out for a pizza for you. We’ll have to add it on to your bill, mind. But that’s business. You’ll never get rich if you don’t watch the pennies.’

‘I am sick,’ said Zakiyyah. ‘I cannot work for you. I cannot be
bagar
. Please, I feel very sick.’

‘You don’t have a choice, I’m sorry to tell you,’ Mister Dessie replied. ‘If you don’t work for me, I’ll report you to the immigration authorities and you’ll be arrested as an illegal immigrant and locked up in the Dóchas Centre. That’s the prison for women who don’t behave themselves, and believe me, you won’t like it in there.’

‘I can go back to Lagos. Please.’

‘Go back to Lagos? How? How are you going to pay for it? And just for the moment I have your passport for safe keeping, in case you think of skipping the country without settling up what you owe us.’

Zakiyyah retched again. She felt as if her whole stomach lining was being turned inside out, like the sleeve of a jacket.

Mister Dessie stood up. ‘I know what you need, girl,’ he told her. ‘You’ve caught the rabies, that why you’re feeling so sick. It was Charlie’s fault. He didn’t give you enough of the vaccine. Here.’

He reached into his inside pocket and took out a flat black leather case. He laid it on the table, unzipped it, and slid out a hypodermic syringe and a small glass bottle. Zakiyyah glanced over at him once or twice, but now she was shaking too much to care what he was doing. Bula stood by, with his arms folded, smiling placidly.

Mister Dessie sat down beside her again and lifted up her left arm. She felt a sharp prick, like a mosquito sting, and then Mister Dessie said, ‘There. You’re grand. You’ll be feeling much better before you know it.’

He turned to Bula and said, ‘You can take this one over to Washington Street. I think Mairead’s ready for her now. Any road, Michael will be wanting to take a sconce at her later.’

Zakiyyah’s shakes were gradually subsiding, though her thigh muscles continued to twitch now and again. She felt a warmth rising up inside her, and a calmness. In fact she felt almost light-headed.

‘I must have my suitcase,’ she said.

Mister Dessie ignored her. He stood up and zipped the hypodermic syringe back in its case and returned it to his inside pocket. Then he said to Bula, ‘As soon as you’ve dropped this one at Mairead’s, I want you to go over to Carroll’s Quay and see what the feck that Lindsey has been up to.’

‘What’s the story there, like?’

‘I don’t know for sure, but there was some kind of a shimozzle with one of her customers last night and he called for the guards. That’s the last thing we need, being haunted by the shades. As if we don’t pay the bastards too much as it is. They’ll all be taking themselves off on holliers in the Canaries before we know it, at our expense, with their blue lights flashing!’

‘I must have my suitcase,’ Zakiyyah repeated. ‘It has all my clothes – everything!’

Mister Dessie turned to her and said, ‘Will you ever shut the feck up? I know you come from Africa, like, but you don’t have to pester me like a fecking parrot.’

‘But I need my clothes! And I am not going to work for you as
bagar
!’

Mister Dessie paused for a moment, looking at Bula as if to say what am I going to do with this girl she’s giving me a pain where I didn’t even know I had a window.

Then he walked across to the bed and clamped his hand around the back of Zakiyyah’s neck, hauling her on to her feet. She yelped out in pain but he gripped her even tighter and shook her head until the beads in her cornrows rattled. Without saying a word, he pulled up her turquoise satin slip and forced his right hand between her legs. She tried to clench her thighs together and bend herself forward, but he wrenched her neck up even further so that she actually felt her tendons crackle.

Breathing furious onion fumes into her face, he hooked two fingers up inside her, and then pressed his thumb against her clitoris, as hard as he could. He kept up the pressure relentlessly for nearly ten seconds, all the time staring at her with those bulging eyes and breathing noisily through his nostrils.

Zakiyyah could do nothing but stare back at him, her mouth wide open in pain. Bula meanwhile wasn’t even taking any notice of her, but prodding on his mobile phone again, as if he was used to seeing Mister Dessie treat girls like this and thought nothing of it.

After a while, Mister Dessie abruptly released her neck and took his fingers out of her. Still without saying anything, he went over to the kitchenette and washed his hands with Fairy Liquid. He came out again, shaking droplets of water all across the room. Zakiyyah could only stand where she was, her head bowed, one hand slowly massaging the back of her neck. He had hurt her between her legs, too, but she didn’t want to touch herself there, not in front of him.

Mister Dessie went to the door. As he opened it, though, he stopped and said, ‘Hey!’

Zakiyyah didn’t respond. She hadn’t wanted to cry, but now she couldn’t help herself. The tears slid down her cheeks and dripped off her chin.

‘Hey, are you hearing me, girl?’ Mister Dessie demanded. ‘Because let that be a fecking lesson to you! Don’t you ever try to take the piss out of me, girl, because that’s what you’ll get, or worse.’

Still Zakiyyah didn’t answer. Instead, she turned away and shuffled over to the bed. She eased herself painfully down on to its worn-out springs and curled herself up like a child.

It was nearly 10.30 p.m. when Detective O’Donovan knocked at Katie’s office door again. He looked scruffy and tired. The shoulders of his khaki trench coat were still sparkling with raindrops and his tie was crooked. Katie was in the middle of shuffling all of her papers straight, in preparation for going home.

‘What’s the story?’ she asked him. ‘You look all flah’d out.’

He sat down heavily in the armchair on the other side of Katie’s desk, took out a crumpled Kleenex and loudly blew his nose. ‘I hope I’m not getting one of them summer colds, that’s all. I was interviewing that feller who’d been cutting and shutting them motors down at Victoria Cross yesterday and he was sneezing all over me like he was trying to blow me out of the door.’

‘So, any luck with Maka-wiya?’

‘Mawa-
kiy
-a, ma’am, and it’s the feller’s nickname, not his actual real name. The cook in the African restaurant knows him – well, at least by sight. He goes in there at least once a week to eat, on account of they cook this special Nigerian dish he likes, pepper soup with hot chilli and fatty lamb and big slices of tripe.’

‘Please, Patrick! My stomach hasn’t recovered from smelling your man’s decomposing body today, let alone finding out what disgusting food he used to eat.’

‘Oh, sorry, ma’am,’ said Detective O’ Donovan. He tugged his notebook out of his coat pocket, licked his thumb, and flipped it open. ‘From what the cook was telling me, like, he’s a real cute hoor, this Mawakiya. He’s got his sticky black fingers into almost everything you can think of. Drugs – especially the party stuff like Es and ket and miaow-miaow and GHB. Stolen copper wiring. Stolen mobile phones. But his main line of business is pimping. He has contacts in Sierra Leone and Benin and Nigeria and he brings a steady stream of girls over. The cook said he always has two or three sexy young girls with him whenever he comes in to eat, and it’s never the same girls twice. And
very
young. He reckoned that some of them couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen.’

‘But we only know his nickname?’

‘Mawakiya, that’s right. It means the Singer, according to the cook, on account of the feller never stops singing. Well, he’s stopped singing now, of course, for permanent.’

‘What language are we talking about? And don’t just say “African”.’

‘Hausa, that’s what the cook told me. He speaks it himself. But they speak Hausa all over the shop in West Africa, not just one particular country.’

Katie tapped her pencil against her teeth and frowned. ‘I don’t understand how he’s never shown up on our radar before. A black feller in a purple suit pushing drugs and getting himself involved in low-level larceny and pimping underage girls from Africa. You’d think our alarm bells would have rung the moment he first stepped out on the street.’