Chapter 4 - Girls

Cal opened the door to a slim woman with short blonde hair, heavy makeup and a bulky coat draped over her. "Caleb Knight? I'm Serena."

"Call me Cal." Cal stood aside to let her through, but she stopped short when she saw Ethan on the sofa. "Don't worry, that's just my brother."

"Your brother?" Neither Cal nor Ethan could place Serena's lilting accent, but both could detect the revulsion in her voice. "So, you both want-?"

"No," Cal interjected swiftly. "We don't want anything like that."

"Nothing like that," Ethan emphasised for good measure. "At all. We wanted to ask you some questions. About Taylor Ashbie?"

Serena looked between them warily. "Are you police?"

"Taylor and I used to date," Cal explained. "Maybe she mentioned me?"

"No." Cal winced at Serena's blunt reply. "And if you want to know where she is, I have no idea. I haven't seen her in weeks."

"You mean you don't know?"

"Don't know what?"

Cal and Ethan exchanged a look.

"I think maybe you should sit down..."

She didn't cry when they broke the news, but her fingers trembled as she accepted a cup of tea from Ethan. He and Cal had switched places so that Serena and Cal were next to each other on the sofa. All the better, Ethan thought, for Cal's 'interrogation' techniques (read: borderline flirting).

"I hadn't seen her for months," Serena said after taking a few sips. "We spoke a bit, when she joined in January."

Cal frowned and Ethan knew why. He and Taylor were still an item in January.

"Then in April she disappeared," Serena continued, oblivious to Cal's inner turmoil. "Girls like her do. They get some money when they're out of work, then leave when another job comes up."

"What sets apart girls like her from girls like you?"

Serena shifted uncomfortably. "I've been in this job since I was sixteen. I used it as a way to get a visa. The forms say I'm a masseuse, but... well, you know."

"And now?" he pressed. "Why don't you leave?"

"It isn't possible. I don't have any experience and they'd never give me a reference. Then there is my brother, he has a job with them too. Helping collect debts, that kind of thing. In his line of work, people never leave. And I can't leave without him."

"Yes, but-," The unmistakable wail of a baby cut Ethan off. "Oh, sorry." He hurried out, calling back, "I told you she's been restless Cal!"

"You... have a baby." Serena was nonplussed when he re-entered with Tilda tucked in his arms. "She's beautiful."

"Actually she's my baby," Cal said, standing to take Tilda. "In theory, at least. And Taylor's."

Serena turned her head sharply to him. "Taylor had a baby?"

"You didn't know?"

"Of course not! You can't-," Her voice broke, and she swallowed, eyes glistening. "You can't have children, in this line of work."

"I thought it was quite common?" Serena fixed Ethan with a stare. "Sorry, I've just been um... researching..."

"It's common if you're not careful," Serena snapped. "But Ancient Therapy has very specific standards. I won't go into details, but the effect of pregnancy on the female body is unacceptable to them. I've taken enough morning-after pills to know," she added bitterly. "Are you sure the baby is hers?"

"Definitely," Cal affirmed. "There were letters from a maternity ward in her flat that prove it."

"Then I don't understand how she managed to come back. Maybe if it had been longer since the birth, her body had time to get back to what it used to be, but not so soon. Unless..." she trailed off, thoughtful.

"What?"

"There was a man," she said, slowly. "When Taylor started, she told me that one of her clients had fallen in love with her. She laughed about it, said he paid well. After she left he refused to book anyone else. Maybe when she came back he was her only client?"

"Do you know his name?" Cal asked eagerly. "Did it begin with J?"

"Yes. John Smith, like half the men that book with us." She checked her watch and got to her feet. "Your time's up; I have another booking."

"Right, I'll get your money."

Cal left, leaving Ethan and Serena alone. He cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Why don't you go to the police? You know enough to get Ancient Therapy shut down."

She snorted derisively. "You know it's funny. Taylor's mystery man, I think he wanted to save her. Pretty blonde English girl and he probably thought she'd been forced into this life. Your brother clearly thinks that way too. But people like me... nobody wants to save us. Not really."

"Except Taylor's dead," Ethan pointed out gently. "And you're not. You don't have to wait for someone else to save you."

"You don't know what you're talking about," she said harshly, just as Cal came back into the room. She snatched the money from him and made for the door. "You can't help me, because you don't live in my world. Do your best not to get dragged into it."

The door slammed definitively shut behind her and Cal looked from it to Ethan in some bemusement.

"What did I miss?"

Both brothers sat in the living room half an hour later, Matilda still in Cal's lap. He was fiddling with the Ancient Therapy business card, turning it over from Taylor's handwriting to J's again and again.

"We should contact the police," Ethan finally broke the silence. "Tell them everything we know and get the brothel closed down."

"We'll limit our routes to getting more information on Taylor."

"So what do you suggest?"

"I think we should go back to her apartment." Cal pulled the panda keyring from his pocket. "I still have the keys. We could go now."

"Now? Why not tomorrow?"

"I'm not waiting. You can stay here if you want, but I'm not wasting time."

"I didn't say I didn't want to come, but it's nearly 2 in the morning-,"

"I'm going. I don't care if you come or not."

"Fine," Ethan huffed. "Then I suppose we'd better hope Dixie is willing to babysit again."

"I can't believe we're breaking in."

"It isn't breaking in if you have the key," Cal shot back at his brother, using said-key to unlock Number 14. As they stepped inside, his foot met something on the doormat. "Hello, what's this?"

Ethan scrabbled for the light switch, and the bulb came to life in time for Cal to pick up the offending object; a letter.

"No address or stamp," Ethan observed. "Must have been hand-delivered. Um, should you really be doing that?"

Cal was ripping open the envelope. "She's not going to see it, is she?"

"Well no..."

"It's J!" Cal exclaimed, and flashed the letter in Ethan's direction. "We've found him!"

Taylor,

I miss you. Please, don't do this to me. We can still make things work, I swear, and everything will be fine. But be careful, please? Don't do anything stupid. Call me, write, whatever you want. Just please get in touch. I can't bear this. I'm here for you, whenever you need me.

Jamie

Ethan was majorly less enthusiastic than Cal. "Jamie isn't much more to go on than J."

"Well it's more than we had before," he insisted stubbornly, tucking the letter with reverence into his inside coat pocket. "Let's keep looking, maybe we'll find something else."

They searched through the rest of Taylor's apartment and this time Cal didn't hold back. Her wardrobe, kitchen cupboards, DVDs - no stone was left unturned. Finally, in the drawer of her bedside table, he found something.

"Ethan!"

"What is it?" his brother called from the other room.

"I found a photo!" It was in fact several photos, all on one strip, the kind you'd get out of a do-it-yourself photo-booth. It showed Taylor and a man who looked a little older, both of them pulling different silly poses. "It's Taylor, with some guy... I think I've seen him before?"

Ethan entered the room, and peered over Cal's shoulder at the pictures. "That's the MP for Holby East!"

Cal blinked. "Is it?"

"Yes, James Radley. I voted for him." Ethan's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Where do you know him from?"

"I saw him," Cal replied, casting his mind back to a few days earlier. The man he'd squeezed to the side in the corridor for, sharply dressed and carrying a briefcase. "He was here, in the building. He must be Jamie, from the letter!"

"It certainly seems so." Ethan took the pictures and peered a little closer. "Yes, that's definitely him. Goodness. A politician falling in love with a prostitute. That would make for quite a scandal. I think he's married too."

"Of course!" Cal's eyes lit with sudden revelation. "She was blackmailing him! A scandal like that, it would ruin his career. He's behind this somehow."

"Behind... what, exactly? She wasn't murdered, she took an overdose."

"What if he was threatening her? He knew if she spoke to the press his career would be over. She was frightened, that's why she gave Tilda to me and why she ran after. She was trying to protect us!"

"But if he was somehow responsible, why deliver a letter today?"

"I want to go and see him. We can find his offices, can't we? Online?"

"And do what? There's no evidence for your theory. There isn't even really a theory at all." The alarm on Ethan's phone chirped. "Oh for God's sake. I didn't think we'd been here that long, I'm due at work in an hour."

"I'll drop you off," Cal offered. "Let's go."

The car pulled up outside the hospital, but Ethan didn't get out.

"I don't think I have ever been this tired in my life," he said dully. Cal side-eyed him, observing slumped posture and glassy eyes. "Um, you need to pick up Tilda from Dixie's in a couple of hours."

"Yeah, sure."

"Thanks." Ethan was too tired to pay any heed to his brother's reticence, and he stumbled out of the car. Cal watched him disappear into the hospital, then drove away. He had work to do.