Desperate Measures Read online

  Desperate Measures

  By Stephen Leather

  All Malee wanted was a better life for herself and her son. And the only way she could make that happen was to sell her body, to exchange sex for money.

  But her plan falls apart when she arrives in London at the start of the Covid pandemic.

  She risks everything to support her family - but as the country goes into lockdown she runs into Russian gangsters who have their own plans for her.

  Before long the Russians are forcing her to work for them. If she refuses, they’ll kill her. Now it’s not about working for a better life - now it’s a matter of survival.

  ALSO BY STEPHEN LEATHER

  Pay Off, The Fireman, Hungry Ghost, The Chinaman, The Vets, The Long Shot, The Birthday Girl, The Double Tap, The Solitary Man, The Tunnel Rats, The Bombmaker, The Stretch, Tango One, The Eyewitness, Penalties, Takedown, The Shout, The Bag Carrier, Plausible Deniability, Last Man Standing, Rogue Warrior, The Runner, Breakout, The Hunting

  Spider Shepherd thrillers:

  Hard Landing, Soft Target, Cold Kill, Hot Blood, Dead Men, Live Fire, Rough Justice, Fair Game, False Friends, True Colours, White Lies, Black Ops, Dark Forces, Light Touch, Tall Order, Short Range, Slow Burn, Fast Track

  Spider Shepherd: SAS thrillers:

  The Sandpit, Moving Targets, Drop Zone

  Jack Nightingale supernatural thrillers:

  Nightfall, Midnight, Nightmare, Nightshade, Lastnight, San Francisco Night, New York Night, Tennessee Night

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  EPILOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Sunday March 1. Today I slept with a man for money for the first time. He was an American called Tim and he was thirty-five years old, exactly ten years older than me. Am I a bad girl? I don’t think so. I just want to do what is best for my parents and my son. Tim was nice to me and he stayed for two hours which cost him £300. He spent the first hour talking and then he got on top of me and I closed my eyes and he came really quickly. He kept asking me if I liked it and I lied and said that I did but as soon as he went I started crying and now I’ve been crying all night. I have met two of the girls who work for the agency that I work for and they both say that the work is easy and it’s money for nothing. They both earn more than £3,000 every week. Every week! Can you believe that? In Thailand a teacher works for a month for about 20,000 baht, which is about £500. It would take a teacher almost a year to earn £6,000 but these girls can earn that in two weeks. I want to build a house in my home town and I want to buy a truck for my father and a nice car for myself. And I want to take care of my son. That’s my plan. It wasn’t my plan when I came to London. I was going to be a student and work in a restaurant and I did that for three months but now I’m an escort girl, a girl who sleeps with men for money. That’s why I’m so sad and why I am crying. I never thought I would be a prostitute, but that is what I am. Am I a bad girl?

  Chapter 2

  Monday March 2. I cried all day yesterday. I’m not sure why I was so upset. The customer that the agency sent me was a nice man and he didn’t hurt me and I made £300 for just two hours. Well, £200 for me and £100 for the agency. But I felt so dirty. I showered five times and still I didn’t feel clean.

  Oliver is the man who runs the agency and he phoned me at mid-day to say that he had another customer for me. Oliver is Vietnamese but he has been in London for a long time and speaks with an English accent and says ‘innit’ a lot. I couldn’t stop crying and I said I couldn’t work. He said that was okay but that I had to take the agency’s share of the money I had earned to a flat in Sloane Square at ten o’clock at night. He said I had to do that every Sunday. I said I would try but after I hung up the phone I started crying again.

  At eleven o’clock at night my son phoned me. He is only five years old so my mum helped him make the call. His name is Ice because when I was pregnant with him I ate a lot of ice. I tried not to cry while I was talking to him but he kept asking me what was wrong. I told him that I had a stomach ache.

  Oliver called me at midnight and asked me why I hadn’t brought him my money and I said I was too sad and that I couldn’t leave my room. He banged down the phone.

  At one o’clock in the morning Cat came to my flat. Cat is Oliver’s girlfriend. She is Thai like me. In fact she is from Udon Thani, the same as me, but I never knew her in Udon Thani. Cat is older than me, about thirty-three or thirty-four, but she’s quite pretty.

  Cat was angry but she smiled all the time. She said that it was up to me if I worked or not. She wasn’t going to force me and neither was Oliver. But she said that if I wanted to make money I would have to do the job. If I went back to the restaurant where I used to work then I would make very little money.

  I hate what I have to do, but now I’m trapped because Oliver lent me the money to pay my rent on the flat in Bayswater where I stay. I had to pay for two months and give them one month’s deposit so I had to pay £5,400 and that was money I didn’t have. I have to pay him back and the only way I can earn that much money is to work for the agency. Oliver also paid £200 for the photographs on the agency’s website and he said I had to pay him back. And I borrowed money from Cat to pay for the uniforms and underwear that I wore for the photographs. They cost £550. That means I have to pay Oliver £6,150. If I do not work for the agency then I cannot pay back the money I borrowed. I am trapped. Cat asked me what I wanted to do and
I said that I would start working again today. Now I am waiting for Oliver to phone and tell me if I have a customer. And I am crying.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday March 3. Oliver sent me a customer at one o’clock in the afternoon. He was a man in a suit and he had one of those earphone things that you use to talk on your phone with. It’s funny because when he had sex with me he took off all his clothes but kept the phone thing in his ear. He told me his name was John but when I was in the bathroom I heard him on the phone and he said his name was Alistair. He called me Annabelle but that isn’t my real name, it is the name the agency uses. My real name is Malee which means jasmine in Thai. He stayed for one hour and he had sex with me three times and he paid me £150. I felt sad but this time I didn’t cry.

  I had a shower and drank some orange juice to get the bad taste out of my mouth and then the phone rang. It was Oliver and he had another customer for me, a man called Simon, and he had booked me for three hours starting from four-thirty. I couldn’t understand why a man would want to have a prostitute for three hours. Most men can only have sex for a few minutes before they come, so why did he want to spend so much time with me? I phoned Cat and asked what she thought. She laughed. She said it wasn’t the sex that he really wanted, he wanted a girlfriend. He wanted someone to like him and to spend time with him. She told me that I had to pretend that I was his girlfriend then he would be happy and he would come back and see me many times. Cat is very clever, she has been in this business for a long time. She said that I wasn’t a prostitute, I am an actress and my room was a stage. I was giving a performance. And if it was a good performance then the customer would come back many times. That was why Alice makes so much money, she said. Alice is the hardest working girl at the agency and customers keep coming back to see her. You have a choice, she said. You can see two different customers each day, every day. Maybe fifteen customers a week. Sixty a month. Or you can get yourself regular customers who keep coming to see you. If they like you they’ll start seeing you for four or five hours or maybe even see you overnight which means they have to pay £1,100. You might only see one customer a day but you would make a lot of money. Cat made a lot of sense.

  I spent a lot of time putting on sexy make-up and wearing a sexy bra and suspenders and stockings. When Simon came I kissed him on the lips and gave him a drink and then sat on the sofa and talked. He was forty and okay-looking but going bald which I don’t like.

  It was so easy. Cat was right. Simon wanted a girlfriend, he didn’t want a prostitute. We talked about his job (he works in a phone shop), his wife (he married when he was young and doesn’t love her any more) and his car (he has a Jaguar and he loves it more than his wife.) We talked for an hour and then I sat on his lap and kissed him and then I took his hand and led him to the bedroom. I undressed him and made love to him. He lay on his back and I did all the work and I pretended to come, calling his name and shivering. Afterwards I lay in his arms and he talked and I listened. Before I knew it his three hours was up. I had earned £450 of which I get to keep £300. When he left I kissed him on the lips and said that I hoped he would come back to see me and he said that he would. I don’t think I will cry tonight.

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday March 4. The boss of the language school I go to phoned me up today to ask why I hadn’t been in this week. His name is John and I think he wants me to be his girlfriend. He always closes his door when I go to his office and once he asked if he could kiss me. I know he is married because there is a photograph of him with his wife and daughter on his desk. I have to be nice to John because he helped me get my visa to come to the UK. If I want to go back to Thailand while I have the student visa then I need a letter from the school saying I have a holiday. I told John that I wasn’t feeling very well and that I would try to get in on Thursday or Friday. I am supposed to go for English lessons every morning, starting at 10am but since I started working for the agency I have been too tired.

  Cat phoned me to say that someone had posted a review of me on a website. The review said that I was pretty but not very enthusiastic. I think it was the man with the headset. I told Cat that the man wasn’t fair because most of the time he had been talking on the phone and that I had done everything he wanted. Cat said not to worry but that the reviews were important because customers looked for girls who had good reviews. She asked me how many towels I had and I said about three. She said I should go out and buy more towels. Every time a customer comes to the flat I should give him a clean towel, and then I should give him a fresh towel when he goes to the bathroom. That means two towels per customer. Cat said I should have at least ten towels in the flat but the more the better.

  Oliver sent me a customer at six o’clock. He was a painter, I think, because he came in overalls that were splattered with paint. He had his head shaved and was a bit fat, and didn’t seem to want to talk at all. I offered him a drink but he said no and then I sat next to him in the sofa but he didn’t want to talk. He said he wanted to go to the bedroom and when I asked him to shower he said no, he didn’t want to shower. He didn’t smell good but I tried to smile. Afterwards he got dressed and left without saying anything. I cried after he had gone. He treated me like a prostitute and that made me feel bad.

  I went to sleep at eleven o’clock so that I could get a good’s night sleep but Oliver rang me at two o’clock in the morning and said that a customer would be coming at two-thirty and that he would be staying for two hours. I wanted to say no but two hours meant £300 which is a lot of money. I showered and put on my make up and put on my stockings and suspenders. The customer’s name was Ronald and he was about my age, twenty-six. He wore a suit and a Rolex watch and was quite handsome. He told me that he worked for a stockbroker and that he had just done a big deal. He took cocaine and asked me if I wanted some and I said I didn’t. He wanted sex for the whole two hours. In every position. The only time he stopped was when he was taking more cocaine. I was so sore but I didn’t complain. When his two hours were up he showered and got dressed and tipped me £100. I couldn’t believe it. I squealed and kissed him.

  He asked me if I invested my money and I said I was saving it to take back to Thailand. He laughed and said there was no point in leaving money in the bank. He asked me if I had heard of the China virus, the Wuhan Flu. He meant Covid. I knew about Covid because some people had died of it in Thailand before I flew to London. He said that Covid was coming to Europe and it would change everything. He said I should buy shares in a company called Zoom because people would talk to each other online, that I should buy shares in Amazon because people would be scared to go to real shops. And he talked about something called ‘shorting’ which I didn’t understand but he said I should short airlines and travel companies. I smiled and said yes, okay, I would, but I won’t because I do not want to take any risks with my money.

  By the time he had gone it was five o’clock in the morning. I wanted to phone Ice in Thailand and tell him how much I loved him but he would have been at school so I went to sleep. I didn’t wake up until John rang me. I am still tired now but I have to get ready for my first customer.

  Chapter 5

  Thursday March 5. I had to buy condoms today. I bought a pack of twelve on Saturday but I’ve used them already. I went to a pharmacy near to my flat and bought thirty-six condoms, three packets of twelve. I was so shy. The man who served me was an Indian and he was grinning. He said ‘Sawasdee krup’ which is Thai for hello but I pretended not to understand what he was saying.

  He asked me if I wanted to buy some facemasks because he had just had a delivery. I asked him why I would need a facemask and he said because of Covid. But I said there was no Covid in England. He said I was wrong, he said that a woman had died of it in Reading which is near London. He said he had a cousin who worked in China and he said that hundreds of thousands of people had died of Covid but the Chinese Government was burying them in mass graves and lying about it. He said I should buy facemasks and hand g
el and latex gloves but I said I didn’t need them.

  I bought lots of shower gel and shampoo and they had some scented candles so I bought some of them, too. I walked down Edgware Road and found a shop that sold towels and I bought ten fluffy white towels. In all I spent more than a hundred pounds. London is so expensive.

  I only had one customer yesterday. When Oliver phoned me he said that it was probably because I had a bad review. He said that because I was a new girl customers would look at review sites to see if I was any good and if the only review was a bad one then they might not come to see me. My review was on a site called Punternet and Oliver said a lot of customers used that site. He said I should try really hard to make my customers happy so that they will say good things about me.

  I never thought I would do this job. I always thought I would meet a good man in Thailand and be his wife and have children and live happily ever after. But I suppose life isn’t a fairy story, is it? Life is real and sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to. I have a son but I don’t have a husband. He left me when I was pregnant and has never seen his son. And now I am far away from Ice, doing what I have to do to make money. I won’t do this job for ever, I’m sure of that. I think I can make maybe £100,000 profit in one year and that’s more than four million baht which is a lot of money. I will do it for one year then I will stop. I know Ice misses me but he is only four so he doesn't really understand. I love him so much. More than anything.

  When I first came to London I went to school every day and worked in a Thai restaurant in Camden in the evenings. I made £80 a day working and I had a small room in a house near the restaurant and I went to an English language school in Hampstead. I made enough money to live on but I didn’t make a profit. I was able to send a little money back to Thailand, but not much. Then I met Sandra in the restaurant and my life changed.