Dark Passage

She collected herself a little. "No, no. I must thank you. You've opened up my arse and a whole new revenue stream for me."

"Just like a whore, it doesn't take long to remember the money," I laughed.

"Just like a whore - because no one else ever thinks about fucking or surviving," she replied smartly.

I climbed off the bed and began to dress myself. She did likewise.

"Guess I'll be walking like John Wayne tomorrow," she said sheepishly, as she pulled on her knickers. I laughed politely and turned from her. I buckled my trousers, and pulled on my shirt.

She stole up beside me as I did so.

"I'm in trouble," she breathed in my ear. "I can't explain now. Meet me at ten on the Passeig de la Muralla. Please."

And she turned and was gone.

My reflex was to help her. Maybe it was some chemical response in my postcoital brain, or some chivalry or chauvinism in me, but I was convinced that I ought to rescue her. She had moved through a series of female tropes for me; from goddess, to whore, to damsel in distress.

What she had never yet seemed to me was a human being.

Peculiarly for a paranoiac like me, it didn't even enter into my head that her request might be a trap.

Scooping up my wallet, I left the room, and descended the rickety stairs.

My hand on the doorknob, I heard a filthy cackle from behind me. I turned. The pimp sneered derisively at me.

"She let you fuck her up her culo?" he grinned. "Ha! Ha! 'Oh meester, I so scared. You so big. You pay Pedro cincuenta euros.' Ha! Ha! She play you like a matador. She lower the cape and muleta, and you charge. She is good little whore, no?"

I did not dignify him with a response, but immediately left, slamming the door behind me. His laughter followed me down the cobbled street. It was absurd. He didn't see. She didn't play me, I played her. And she wasn't acting or faking. No one's that good. It was absurd. He didn't know.

I didn't forget to listen out for footsteps behind me, nor to glance into the doorways and alleyways I passed. I wasn't being followed. The streets of the old town were deserted.

I hurried back to the hotel to shower. Having washed the stench of sex off myself, I collapsed naked onto the bed and dozed a while.

I roused myself at twenty past nine, threw on some fresh clothes and struck out for the appointed rendezvous.

It was dusky and oddly quiet. There weren't many people around, and not much traffic. I crossed the square to the river, walking briskly up the Passeig Canalajes and over the bridge.

It was a pleasant evening, wonderfully cool after the intense heat of the day, and my stroll south along the river was an agreeable one.

I wondered as I walked what sort of trouble the beautiful whore was in. Had she been kidnapped and trafficked? Was she addicted to drugs? Had she robbed her pimp?

Whatever it was, I had determined to rescue her. I was surprised by the fanciful imaginings I began to have of our moonlit meeting, of her hushed, urgent tones pleading with my strength and masculinity to help her in her weakness and desperation.

I fantasised in the twilight of her rescue and of our lovemaking afterwards. God help me, I even began to imagine us married and in a little cottage in the Cotswalds with two pretty little children.

I shook myself out of my reverie as I reached the Plaza Catalunya and crossed it, making for the Muralla gardens.

The ancient city wall ran alongside the steep incline of the Passeig de Muralla itself. I glanced at my watch. It was ten to ten.

I walked up the ancient street, picking my way carefully in the darkness. About half way up the street I noticed a figure hunched up against the wall. I knew at once there was something terribly wrong. It was preternaturally still, and awkwardly positioned.

Even at that distance, in that darkness, I could tell that I was looking at a dead body.

My heart was pounding in my ears as I approached, and the night suddenly seemed icy cold as I approached.

I stood in something tacky and knew without looking down that it was blood.

As I came almost within touching distance, I heaved a sigh of relief. I could see by the moonlight that this was clearly a man's body. It wasn't her.

It wasn't her.

I crouched down next to the corpse and lifted its face upward, coating my hands in blood as I did so.

What the hell?

It was her pimp, still leering at me, though now in a rictus death grin. His throat had been cut.

Oh fuck.

I felt a sickening sense of dread.

I had no time to collect my thoughts as I heard men running towards me. I instinctively made to fly, but was thwarted by the sound of footsteps in the other direction. I had no time even to scale the wall.

The men in the darkness were almost upon me.

"Polizia! Polizia!" they bellowed and I was cornered. What the fuck.