Giles Pt. 01: Down Among the Dead Men

Tony stared at him for a long minute before saying, "You're lucky you never put your grubby paws on Maisie or Ruth, or I'd push you back in."

They stood for a minute longer before Tony snorted and stepped behind him. Giles flinched but the other was tugging at the knotted rope around his wrists. Once freed, Giles wrapped his arms around himself and tried to stop shaking. Tony threw the rope aside and walked away. Giles stared at Tony's retreating back while his thoughts tumbled incoherently in his brain.

After a couple of minutes, he started to take small hesitant steps, as if he were something fragile. He amassed no more than a dozen paces before remembering the hotel was in the other direction. His first impulse had been to return to Dearborn. He stopped, cold in the realisation that to do so would be to shed any remaining scraps of self-respect.

Turning, he stumbled his way back to the hotel, jumping at the slightest noise, terrified that his attackers might be lying in wait. A rustle in the hedgerow broke his nerve and he fled in blind panic. He attracted some curious looks and some malicious smiles on his way across the square, the onlookers doubtless thinking he'd fallen in the river or been the subject of a practical joke.

Back at the hotel, the receptionist raised his eyebrows but otherwise made no comment as Giles sought the sanctuary of the lift. He stood under the shower for a long time. It had never occurred to him that natural justice might prevail where the police did not. Now he realised that Dearborn had protected him in ways he had never imagined.

Once out of the shower and dressed, he packed his few belongings in the one suitcase, abandoning the wet clothes, and ordered a taxi to the station.

***

"London. Single," he said to the woman behind the glass at the ticket office. She raised her head to look at his face. Her eyes widened at the wet clothes and the bruises, and he knew she recognised him. After he paid and collected the yellow and orange slip of card, he turned away and heard her say quietly, "Good riddance."

He stopped. Had it not been for the events that afternoon, he might have had a go. Instead, he shuddered, and, after a moment, made himself walk to the barriers to the platform. There was an empty seat some way down and he settled himself to wait. His mind was a tabula rasa below the stinging pain of his injuries.

On the London bound service, he stared unseeingly out of the window while his thoughts skittered between the pain of his injuries and the events of the afternoon. Some blank time later he realised they were pulling into Victoria Station. He could remember nothing of the journey. Functioning on automatic, he hobbled uncomfortably after the rest of the passengers down the platform and through the gates into the main hall. There he stopped and looked around, not quite knowing what to do next.

A slight breeze made his trouser leg flap and he shuddered.

***

A taxi carried Giles to his club and the sight of it settled something in him. Regardless of everything else, he could base himself here and doubtless make some useful contacts.

He made his way slowly up the steps of his club clutching the railing and dragging his suitcase. Movement was painful and provoked a wince from time to time. He left his coat and bag with the concierge and took up station at the bar, ordering a large whisky. The steward's eyebrows raised as he surveyed Giles' battered face and Giles tried to ignore him. Still thinking about his situation he was startled when the secretary appeared at his elbow.

"Mister Stanforth," he began without preamble, "I'm afraid some rather unsavoury news has come to our attention. It is not the club's practice to allow its reputation to be tarnished by the antics of its members. Probity has always been our watchword so I'm afraid I must ask you to leave. Your membership has been revoked."

Giles stared at him. Over the secretary's shoulder two of the larger staff came to stand just outside the entrance. With a sinking feeling he stood and followed the secretary out of the bar.

***

July

In a couple of weeks his bruises had all but disappeared and no longer attracted stares when he went on one of his aimless wanderings around the capital. He sat in the chair by the window of his hotel suite watching the light fade on a cool and blustery afternoon. Bored and depressed, he decided he needed a distraction. Donning a jacket, he left the hotel. It was mid to late evening and even given the weather there were plenty of people on the street. He realised gloomily that at Dearborn, and in the surrounding country, he knew everyone, whereas here he knew no one. Giles discovered he did not enjoy anonymity.

There was a nightclub not far away and after a few moments hesitation he dived in. Inside there were already a decent number of patrons. On a gallery around the dance floor there was a bar and some seating. Trotting up the stairs to the bar, Giles ordered an espresso martini and sat down to watch the goings on.

The DJ was playing 80s dance music and lasers painted patterns on the walls and the ceiling while mirrors sent multi-coloured reflections flickering round the room. In his former life, Giles would've viewed this kind of thing as beneath him. Not that he couldn't dance, of course, more that this was an entertainment for the lower orders. Still, the beat nagged at him, the fingers of his right hand idly tapping out the rhythm as he sipped his drink. It wouldn't hurt to let his hair down for once, nobody knew him here and maybe he'd find other entertainment...

As that thought occurred to him, a girl on the dance floor looked up and caught his eye. She smiled and waved, and Giles found himself responding with a little wave of his own. She beckoned him to join her, and he shook his head slightly. She tried once more, and he again demurred. She shrugged and went back to dancing with whoever was nearest.

However, as the club filled up over the next couple of hours, their eyes met from time to time and Giles started to get the feeling that he might be in luck. That might have had something to do with his third martini of course. The booze was unwinding him from the awful tension of the last few days.

"Hi!" said a voice at his shoulder and he startled. Looking up he saw the girl from the crowd.

"Hello," he said, automatically.

She sat across the table from him. "Buy me a drink." The words halfway between a statement and a question.

Giles considered for a moment and then waved his hand to attract the attention of a waiter. His new companion raised her eyebrows.

She was young, early twenties maybe, short blonde hair, blue eyes, slim build. She was wearing some kind of shift-like dress in a pale fabric. It was hard to determine the colour in the visual onslaught of the lightshow.

"I saw you kept looking at me, so I thought I'd come and say hello. My name's Essie."

Her accent was a kind of debased RP, like someone trying to downplay their origins.

"Giles," he replied.

"Haven't seen you before."

"I've only just come up to town."

She shrieked with laughter, "Who says that these days? Will you be taking the down train when you go home?"

Giles noted that some of the Estuary inflections had disappeared. He decided to play the aristo card.

"I don't have the chance to get away from the estate very much, I'm afraid. I'm a little out of touch."

"Should I call you 'milord', then?"

He smiled; they were on common ground - sort of. At a guess, she was somewhere north of middle class, privately educated, working as a PA to someone or floating about a gallery in Bloomsbury: something like that.

"Nothing as rarefied as that. I don't even merit a 'Sir' when Father dies."

"Poor you!" she said, resting her fingertips on his wrist. He looked down at the vivid scarlet nail polish.

The waiter arrived and Essie ordered a Slow Comfortable Screw, then winked at Giles teasingly. He inclined his head in acknowledgement and took another sip of his martini.

Essie turned out to be exactly what he needed, a sparkling conversationalist and conversant with his milieu. Giles found himself laughing for the first time in weeks. Essie even managed to coax him on to the dancefloor for a couple of numbers. She touched him enough that he thought there would be a satisfactory conclusion to the evening.

Further into the club was a quieter room, all dark alcoves and soft furnishings: the noise of the dance floor making itself known as a dull throb in the fabric of the building. Giles got drinks from the bar and made his way to the secluded nook where he found Essie sprawled on the seating, her shift rucked up, displaying an astonishing amount of leg. One of her hands was in her hair, pushing it up at the back of her head while the other rested on her inner thigh. He stopped short.

Essie looked at him coyly from under her lashes. He set the drinks down on the table and knelt before her, running his fingers lightly along the smooth skin of her legs. She captured one of his hands with her own and drew it up between her thighs.

Her sex was hot and wet under his fingers, and he stroked her slippery folds for a moment or two before leaning forward to part her legs and kiss his way up from knee to crotch. Essie put her fingers into his hair and massaged his scalp. He shuddered; it was weird how erotic that could be. He buried his face in her cunt, his tongue licking her sex lips and dipping between them in search of more of her wetness. Essie's breathing grew heavier and more ragged as he worked at her, searching out her clit with his tongue while easing two fingers inside her. Her thighs tightened on his head, holding him in place while her hand urged him into her. He sucked her clit between his lips and feathered it with his tongue as his fingers pumped in and out and her lubrication spilled on to his hand. Suddenly there was a sound halfway between a gasp and a grunt and Essie quivered violently in the throes of her orgasm.

Giles sat up and pulled her shift down to cover her modesty, while she slumped against the seating with her arm over her face. He rounded the table to sit beside her and then eased the zip of his fly down, reaching inside to free his erection. Squeezing it gently he knew his own climax wasn't far off and he took her hand and placed it on his cock. Essie looked up at him wantonly, her hair tousled around her face. She slinked off the seating to sit under the table, never letting go of his shaft. Giles leaned back in anticipation, his hands falling to his sides. The next moment, he felt her blow gently on his crown before she licked him from base to tip, while her fingers gently palpated his balls. He looked down to see her blonde locks bouncing as she worked his crown between her lips. His hips started to surge off the plush and then she was sucking hard and massaging his shaft, his cum spurting into her mouth.

Giles fell back on to the seat and stared at the ceiling as Essie made her way out from under the table to sit beside him.

"Welcome to London!" she said brightly. "What shall we do next?"

"I want to take you back to my hotel and fuck the arse off you!" he growled.

"I don't do anal," she replied sharply.

Giles was taken aback. "No, that's not what I meant. I meant... I just want to fuck you," he finished lamely.

She brightened immediately. "Sure! Sorry if I was a bit abrupt but you can't take chances. Best to put some ground rules down right at the start, then no-one should get hurt - emphasis on the 'should' - can't be sure of anything these days."

Giles stared at her, suddenly aware that he'd had four martinis and so far, he'd only seen Essie have the one drink, the second was sitting untouched in front of her.

She smiled brilliantly and reached across to put her hand on his thigh, caressing him with the tips of her scarlet nails.

"Want to go now? Where are you staying?"

"The Regency."

"Oh, that's only round the corner!"

Giles was baffled, he'd walked much further than just round the corner. His expression must have shown on his face because she giggled.

"Can tell you're a newcomer! If you go out the back of this place, you're only a couple of minutes' walk from the back of the Regency. C'mon!"

She pulled him to his feet and then further into the depths of the club. Suddenly it seemed they were pushing through a fire escape into the cool evening air. He had no idea where they were, but Essie was chivvying him along and then, in very short order, she was opening a door that he couldn't even see in the gloom. A dingy bulb illuminated a service corridor and he balked.

"How do you know where we are?"

"I've worked in places like this on and off," she said over her shoulder.

He frowned, working as staff in a hotel didn't fit with the image she'd painted earlier.

Sensing his reluctance, she pulled him close and breathed into his ear, "Thought you wanted to get into my knickers, not that I'm wearing any!"

Caught between his semi-erect cock and a nagging sense of unease, Giles hesitated, and Essie dipped her hand under her shift and brought out two fingers glistening with her lubrication. She trailed them across his lips and the earthy smell brushed aside any remaining reservations. She pushed them into his mouth, and he licked them greedily.

They arrived at a lift and Essie slapped the panel to go up.

"Unless you want to go down," she whispered, looking up at him through her lashes.

He pushed her against the lift door and kissed her for the first time that evening. Her tongue invaded his mouth. Now his cock was at full stiffness, and she ground her mons against it, exciting him still further.

They carried on making out in the lift, aware and giggling that at any moment the doors would open on their little show. Finally, Giles was fumbling with the key card for his room.

"Wow, you have a suite!" Essie said in appreciation as she inspected the minibar. "Champagne?"

"Whatever," said Giles as he sprawled on a sofa, his eyes glued to her bare buttocks as she bent over the fridge.

Essie seemed to know where the glasses were kept, and how to open a bottle of bubbly. She brought the flutes to the low table in front of the sofa.

"Bottoms up!" she carolled, and they clinked glasses.

Essie sat at the opposite end of the sofa and brought one leg up to expose herself to his gaze. The lips of her sex pouted lewdly, and Giles' mouth was suddenly dry. He swallowed half of his drink and put in on the table. Essie giggled as he crawled between her legs and fastened his mouth on her cunt.

He felt light-headed as he licked her slick coral folds. Essie started to groan, and it seemed to Giles as if it was coming down the end of a very long tunnel. Unsettled, he sat up and Essie looked at him carefully.

"Why have you stopped?"

"I don't know," he said, his thoughts fighting their way through the fog that was invading his brain.

"If you're not well, perhaps you ought to go to bed."

"I don't know. Should I?" Giles said, uncertainly. His eyes kept losing focus and everything felt like it was underwater.

Essie pulled him to his feet and steered him into the bedroom where she helped him get undressed and into bed. He lay back and closed his eyes. Nothing seemed to be happening in his head at all.

He heard Essie picking up his clothes and folding them on the sofa. His limbs felt heavy, and he found movement very difficult. It was easier just to lie back and close his eyes.

***

Morning came and Giles woke to the most appalling hangover he had ever had. Consciousness was followed very quickly by the intense need to visit the bathroom, and he fell out of bed to stumble across the room, only just in time making it to the toilet where he voided the contents of his stomach.

Shivering, he clutched the sides of the porcelain bowl and wondered blearily how his mouth could be so dry when he'd just been sick. He sat on the side of the toilet and put his mouth under the cold tap in the sink, his head pounding.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd been that drunk. In fact, come to think of it, he couldn't remember drinking at all. He'd gone to that nightclub a couple of streets away and then... nothing.

Stumbling to the living room he filled a glass with water from the minibar and sat heavily in a chair, trying to organise his fractured thoughts.

His gaze fell upon his clothes; neatly folded on the small sofa. He frowned. He undressed in the bedroom, not in the living room - and he never folded his clothes - which could only mean that someone had done it for him.

Someone had been in his room and folded his clothes. It didn't make sense. A palpable unease settled on him. It wasn't the kind of thing the cleaners would do, and they wouldn't come in anyway if he was there.

A nagging suspicion took hold, and he went to investigate the pile of clothes. Neither his wallet, phone nor his watch were to be found. He made himself search the suite, peering at all the places even a drunk might leave his belongings. But the suite just wasn't that big. Had he been mugged?

He made his way to Reception where the duty staff politely ignored his general state of dishevelment, promised to look at the previous evening's surveillance footage from the lobby and advised him to cancel all his credit cards.

The credit card companies advised him that some unusual transactions had indeed taken place since midnight last night and promised to investigate.

Giles lay back on the bed wondering when his headache was going to recede, the paracetamol hadn't touched it. So, he had been robbed but he had no other injuries nor any real memory of the events of yesterday evening.

After a shower and a freshen up he somewhat reluctantly forced himself outside. Standing in the street he struggled to keep the directions to the police station in his head. He felt like glass and stood for several long moments before forcing his feet to move.

Some minutes later found him outside a down-at-heel concrete and red brick building with a blue sign on the corner. Inside, the desk sergeant was sympathetic to his tale of woe.

"You were probably drugged in the club, sir. Rohypnol or something similar. I'm not surprised you can't remember much. On the plus side this is a bit of a thing for us at the moment. Something about it tarnishing the image of a popular tourist destination. Let me get one of my colleagues."

***

The following day found him back at the station, skimming through the CCTV footage with a young female detective, Sharon Tiplady. The DC was an attractive young blonde woman. This much made it through the terrible glass screen the drug had erected in his mind. In her turn, the DC was quite aware of his innate good looks. For someone on the wrong end of a dose of Rohypnol, he was still drop dead gorgeous, even if he looked a bit tatty round the edges.

She pursed her lips and concentrated on the job in hand. Thankfully the club's kit was modern and the footage easy on the eyes. She found Giles easily enough. The girl who'd targeted him was a pro that much was clear.

Giles watched himself with the young blonde woman with whom he'd spent a considerable part of the evening. He couldn't remember a single thing about her. The detective observed that she was careful not to let too much of her face meet the camera. He watched the two of them go to the back of the club and disappear. Despite watching until the end of the footage as the club closed, they never came out again.

"Probably left through a fire exit, Mr Stanforth. A five minute walk will bring you to the back of your hotel and there's no CCTV there. She probably used a staff lift, no cameras there or on your floor. She knew what she was doing, you're her ideal kind of mark. A visitor to be rolled for whatever they can get. I'll keep an eye out for more information, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. Take my contact details and let me know if you remember anything else."