The Doorkeepers by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

shoulder, and the tiny daisy tattoo.
    â€œThat’s her,” said Josh. “That’s Julia. But I never saw the tattoo before.”
    â€œWell, as I said, it was the tattoo that identified her. The tattoo artist called us and said he remembered an American girl who had asked him to do it specially. Apparently she was very chatty. She told him that she had only just arrived in England and that she was looking for a new life. She was trying to find a job as a nanny or something similar, but she didn’t have a work permit. So the tattoist put her on to a girlfriend of his who knew an employment agency that didn’t ask too many questions about where a girl came from, or what her qualifications were.”
    â€œWas that the Golden Rose Employment Agency? That was the last contact number Julia gave me.”
    â€œThat’s right. They found her a position with a Saudi familyin Holland Park, looking after two small children. But it seems as if she didn’t like the job very much. The mother treated her like a slave, and the father kept making advances. So after three weeks she left.”
    â€œWhat did she do then?” asked Josh.
    DS Paul took back the pictures. “I was hoping that you could tell
me
that. Didn’t she contact you at all?”
    â€œNot once. Not a word. I tried calling the agency a couple of times, but they just said that they hadn’t heard from her, either. I just assumed that she would get back in touch with us when she felt ready. Didn’t she go back to the agency for another job?”
    â€œNo. She told them over the phone that she was quitting the Saudi job and that was the last time they ever heard from her. She didn’t even collect her wages, and they didn’t know where to send them.”
    â€œThey had no address for her?”
    DS Paul shook her head. “She told them she was in temporary accommodation at the Paragon Hotel in Earl’s Court. It’s a very cheap place, fifteen pounds a night, popular with backpackers. But wherever she was, she wasn’t there. The management always keep their guests’ passports – you know, just in case they try to do a runner – and no single American females have stayed there for over a year.”
    â€œAnd nobody else knows where she might have been?”
    DS Paul shook her head. “Nobody. But we’ve sent her picture out to the media, and we’re trying to arrange an appeal for information on
Crimewatch
– that’s a BBC-TV program where we ask viewers to help solving crimes. We usually get a very good response to that.”
    â€œHow can somebody just disappear like that? I mean, totally?”
    â€œPeople do it every day, Mr Winward. There are eight million people in London and it isn’t difficult to get swallowed up, especially if you want to be.”
    They ate lunch at a pub called The Frog & Waistcoat, around the back of Victoria Station. It was smoky and noisy andcrowded with a mixture of office workers and miserable-looking travelers with too many bulging bags.
    â€œI feel like I’ve walked right into a Dickens novel,” said Josh. Everybody around him was talking very loudly but he couldn’t understand a word they were saying. He had always assumed that the English spoke English the way they did in movies, clipped and precise, but instead they talked in a mangled torrent, and he couldn’t tell when one word ended and another began. He had ordered shepherd’s pie, and then the barman had asked him again if he wanted a pie.
    â€œYes, the pie.”
    â€œPie of what?”
    â€œSorry, I don’t understand.”
    â€œPie of ordinary, pie of best, pie of Guinness, what?”
    He was almost reduced to sign language, but even sign language didn’t help when the girl behind the food counter asked if Nancy wanted a jacket. He thought that they might have inadvertently offended the pub’s dress code.
    â€œMaybe this