The Fix and the Honey

7/31/2019 The Fix and the Honey

1/7

If it were just the flashbacks about what happened in Chelmsford I could probably have carried it on for a

few more years. But when every hotel room started to seem like it reeked of unmarked dollar bills and

muscle rub I knew it was time to pack it in for something else. I was fifty-two, balding like a Lahore wicket

and clinging on to the ropes like a boxer allergic to canvas. I'd been in the cricket anti-corruption game too

long and I'd begun to get sloppy. Exhibit A: the thirty-something broad lying next to me with a mouth dirtier

than Virat Kohli's and skin as smooth as his off drive. Exhibit B: Five years ago I'd have known to say no to

her and the fifth bourbon and the subsequent mini-bar binge. But I'd got lazy and bored in the last few

months. Bored and lazy like we all did eventually.

I wanted to doze for another few minutes under the cheap sheets that at least kept the mosquitoes from eating

us alive. In truth, I wanted to doze on in oblivion for another two months and then just wake up in London

doing the project for the Home Office I'd signed up to when Murdoch's boys getting all the credit and us

getting our balls torn off got too much. But that particular daydream was, as ever, interrupted by the hum of

my standard issue ancient Nokia. I slipped myself discreetly out of bed and sat up to check whose textual

advances it was this time.

"Goddammit!" I said loudly enough to make her murmur but not stir. It was a my ICC line manager in Dubai

asking why I'd forgotten to follow an upcoming, but not yet ground or story-breaking, journalist on Twitter.

Was this what my role had come to, I thought to myself. Following fake sheik wannabes in the vain hope

their tweets might throw up a few leads. My back pinched at a nerve as I stood up and I sighed at the paucity

of it all. But I knew it was my job to follow orders, not to to get drunk in bars and go home with shimmering

pieces of air hostess, no matter how good they looked giggling at my slightly embellished anecdotes about an

English off spinner's alleged night spent with two cheerleaders and a leading umpire.

I pulled aside the beige, nondescript blind of the beige, nondescript hotel and looked out on another bland

city with a cricket pitch. A grey fudge of smog drizzled across the industrial panorama like cigar smoke

through a members bar. This was not the life I'd envisaged for a guy who had once worked on the logistics of

a South American president's visit to a G8 meeting, but I'd got so low recently I'd begun to think it was

actually exactly what was deserved for a guy of my age who'd never married yet had a kid in Cape Town

whose mother told him that Daddy "loves cricket and Mr Lorgat more than us". I really didn't and the lack of

contact nagged away at me, nibbling up my days on the road and spitting them back in my flailing face.

The only saving grace of my once domestic life was that it remained a fitting partner to my work. When you

weren't at the ground trying to get a whiff of which players, coaches and agents were angling to make a

grimy buck with a loose shot or a lurching step, you were in the same restaurants and hotels with the very

same players, coaches and agents trying to mingle awkwardly. Everyone knew who I was and what my role

was so I just hung around as exposed as Richard Dawkins trying to go undercover at the Vatican.

I looked back at her lying there amidst the straggle of our clothes and cursed myself again for getting

distracted. It was easily done, however, when your social life revolved around listening to cricketers drone on

relentlessly in a language they called banter in places you couldn't remember. The nicknames, the

PlayStation bragging, the endless debate about ice cream flavours when Mazhar had been about. It was quite

easy to see why someone like me wouldn't object when a woman like that showed some interest, although Isupposed I wasn't without my charms. I was in decent shape for my age and had a few self-flattering stories

to tell about the odd dictator's daughter and the shipment of diamonds I'd escorted across Namibia back in

the early eighties, but even so. I was batting above my average and we both knew it. Perhaps it was out of

sheer kindness that she joined me and my bourbon at the hotel bar? Perhaps it was just a quirk of human

spirit that she sat down and started to tousle her long, death black, diamond-glossed hair with those sleek

fingers shaped out of porcelain and tipped off with nails painted nuclear violet.

I had no time to ponder the whys and hows. I had to leave. I was due at the ground in thirty minutes and had

to at least give the impression I was eager to start another day of whatever it was Dubai wanted me to sniff

around in. God, it was futile. If they just let me do it my way I would have trapped those four in Bangalore as

well as being well on my way to nailing Dulansky, the whip-smart and fix-smart agent that spent half his

time arranging oversteps and the other importing coke for three members of a struggling IPL franchise. As itwas, I was generally just told to hang around and see what I could find out and Dulansky just got to give me

his Teflon smirk whenever he trotted past me in his Cuban heels and smug suits that he managed to carry off
http://www.pavilionopinions.com/2012/05/fix-and-honey-story-about-cricket.html#http://www.pavilionopinions.com/2012/05/fix-and-honey-story-about-cricket.html#


2/7

with an inexplicable panache. The result was nothing but the lack of worth I got every time I picked up a

newspaper and saw exactly the type of sting that all us Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) officers

were barred from carrying out. 'Entrapment', said Dubai, as if it were a dirty word rather than the raison

d'etre me and the other guys thought it was. For two years, every time I heard the words 'Sunday Times

Exclusive' I just wanted to reach for another bourbon and the job pages and now that was exactly what I'd

done. Two months, I thought, as I gave my teeth and hair a cursory brush. Just ride it out, Damien, old chap.

Just ride it out and think of Lord's in July.

I managed to find a new pair of trousers and pulled them on. There was no such luck with a shirt so after

dabbing halfheartedly at the lipstick smudge I'd acquired on its right sleeve, I just settled on the pastel white

number I'd been wearing last night. I went over to her and touched her shoulder, but then decided to let her

sleep on. She said she had nothing to do until she flew again later this afternoon so I decided just to let her

be, wrapped as she still was a in hive of blankets and the loitering effects of the numerous Martinis I'd been

happy to buy her the night before. I left her my mobile number and a couple of words I thought were honest

yet assertively flirty on the pad next to her earrings. I did up my shoes laces and walked out.

Striding down the stairs of the hotel and out of the lobby, I clocked a half-admiring, half-knowing glance

from last night's barman who was now engaged trying to mend the coffee machine in the glass-doored

canteen. I indulged myself by giving him a quick salute - one may as well reap the machismo kudos of our

foibles on the rare occasions they are serviced - but any thoughts of spending the day immersed in the

delusion I was a kind of DLF Daniel Craig soon evaporated as I stepped outside. It was thunderously hot

and, as the bourbon started to re-emerge from my pores, I felt relieved I'd been forced to put on this shade of

shirt rather than the pale blue I'd obviously left back in wherever it was I'd been hacking about last week.

Dhaka, Kolkata, Durban? The venues all just congealed like the matches. ODIs, Tests, T20Is, IPLs, BPLs -

they all had their differing rhythms and contours for the dutiful cricketing spectator, but for me and the other

ACSU guys, they just merged into one great piranha-infested swamp of willow and leather into which we

were expected to wade month after month.

I hailed and hopped in a cab and was pleased to find that my driver was quite a contemplative sort who only

asked rhetorical half-questions during our short journey to the ground, three of which were verging on the

existential: Must be an interesting place for you here, Sir?; Life can be pretty pleasing for a man, Sir?;"Why is the heat never there when we want it, Sir? He seemed to have no expectation of getting an answer

to any of these so we just let the billboards and high rises whizz by in silence as we sped towards the ground.

I gave him a more than generous tip, which his cuddly figure suggested would not last much longer than one

of the drive-in fast-food joints that we'd passed. A Sartre/Gatting hybrid for a cabbie, I thought, as I walked

towards the media entrance, feeling my shoes almost melt into the tarmac that had only been relayed a few

days earlier.

I nodded to the security guard who made a great show of fastidiously checking my pass before handing it

back to me with a wink and a smile that rivalled Gambhir's in the cheekiness stakes. We'd been doing this for

the last five years and, as usual, I paused before heading up the stairs to exchange some pleasantries on his

family. I'd come to vicariously know his young son a little through his father's regular updates on his

cricketing escapades and was surprised how pleased I felt at the news he'd hit his first fifty for his schoolunder-13s the week before. My son, he said. He's like Ashwell Prince. Great player. As our chats were

only ever brief, I'd never quite got to the bottom of why my regular sentry's reference point for greatness in

cricket was always the rather skittish South African leftie, but I knew what such a comparison meant for his

son. I'm very happy for you, I said, miming a cut to point. Great player. He waved me through with a pat

on my soggy back. At least I keep someone happy.

Inside the ground, I walked past the familiar press pack who were all individualised by their various pieces

of technology but shared the same panda-eyed face paunch that suggested that last night they'd become

similarly engrossed in the distractions of life on the road as I had. I gave a couple of them a sighing raise of

the eyebrows in acknowledgement of how they were feeling. This wasn't the Sky set, with the Gower-picked

Chablis and chateaubriand. These were the hacks here for the long haul, the Sauvignon Blanc they could get

their hands on and the fag end of the tour. The fag end such as today's dead rubber ODI, which came aheadof Thursday and Sunday's dead rubber ODIs. The grind lent us all a certain sense of camaraderie, but I had

never been much of a mingler and I knew that most of them thought my job was about as credible as a


3/7

Panesar reverse sweep. I took the mock-slaps on the back every time one of their colleagues exposed a fix

with good grace - Well done, mate! You've cracked another one! It's the Elliot Ness of the pavilion! - but I

could live without it to be honest. I really could live without the banter.

As I took my place in the stand the familiar tremble of my mobile flicked against my thigh and, as normal, I

naively hoped it might be my son to tell me that my own once remarked upon on drive had made it down

through my otherwise tainted genes and into his. I took some solace in the knowledge it had because of my

regular checks of the Cape under-14 regional scores online, but it was rare that I ever got to hear him tell mehimself about how he'd seen off the quickie from the opposition and then made a fluent 60-odd. I knew what

was being whispered into his unguarded ears by his mum and didn't blame her in the slightest. It would just

be nice to know once in a while. Instead what I got was one of the usual breathless tip-offs from Dubai

telling me what to keep an eye on in today's match: Seventh over from the Pepsi Max end. 3rd ball inc any

FHs. You know who. Will be a biggie. We think 50% cash already deposited. You had to hand it to them.

They at least had the decency to add a sense of drama to our efforts. In all honesty I really had no idea who

'who' was.

I went down into the changing rooms and introduced myself to both sets of players as stipulated under the

code. Most I knew and most were happy to exchange pleasantries. I gave them the spiel about being

available to chat confidentially if any had anything they were worried about and by now none of them even

bothered to pipe up with the faux adolescent shtick about having wet dreams and not knowing how to

unfasten a bra strap. We'd all reached a bit of a plateau where my presence was acknowledged and accepted

but only with the caveat it was regarded in much the same way Chris Martin probably regarded his bat - a

necessary yet near pointless addition to cricket's paraphernalia.

I slipped out and trudged back up and round to my vantage point at midwicket, the worst view for enjoying

the match but it had been decreed necessary that we observe players' front feet fastidiously in this age of the

overstep so this was where I'd be for the next eight hours. As a result, I'd become pretty au faitwith the

ankles of the world's leading bowlers over the past few years and even if my scrutiny had led to nothing in

the way of stopping corruption, I at least felt something of an authority on the sockwear of Wahab Riaz. Not

many people could say that, I thought, as the players began to saunter out.

Hanging around in hotels with cricketers in a limbo between friendship and betrayal was a cakewalk

compared to the hours spent actually having to watch the games unfold whilst wearing my cynic's spectacles.

Against plentiful odds, cricket still rustled my senses like nothing else, but having to try and pry out

instances of skulduggery from within a sport that lent itself so whoringly to manipulation was utterly

tiresome. If watching a popping crease through binoculars wasn't enough of a bind, I also had the

documenting of suspicious scoring rates, chronic running, and dubious spilled catches to drain the love out of

me. I still dutifully filed it all in my laptop, of course, because, firstly, it was my job and, secondly, because I

just didn't care any more about the lack of results or the carping from the rest of the media, the Crickerati on

Twitter and the sniping bloggers with their tired old satire. After Sydney I'd become immune to having my

doubts earnestly patted on the head by Dubai and just sent off to bed. If we weren't going to nail anyone

there, we may as well leave the lid off corruption's coffin forever.

The pounding sun continued to churn out the rest of last night's excesses from my now sodden back, but the

day began with little incident, or certainly none that I could discern beyond a dropped skier which came out

of a sun burning more brightly than Chris Gayle's casual wear. The scoring rate was slovenly although not

suspiciously so given who was at the wicket but, as we came to the seventh over and the tiresomely zealous

Tannoy guy announced the first change with a dose of Black Eyed Peas that made my ears clog with the

blood of slaughtered melody, I was logged on for action. Primed to record what transpired regardless of the

fact Dubai's tip offs generally had a strike rate close to that of an English bowler's on the subcontinent.

So this was the who. The seventh over would be bowled by a guy a long time on our radar but never quite in

our sights. As he stretched out and slung down a few warmers to mid off, his captain clapped enthusiastically

and gave him a few words of encouragement before he performed his familiarly dramatic eyes-closed deep

breath ahead of his run up. His well-groomed, lustily dark mane swung heroically as he eased in with hisusual languid stride and delivered with his almost comically serene action.


4/7

A very small no ball first up. A covering tactic quite common nowadays, as were the earnest looks at non-

existent footmarks which followed as he strode back past the stumps. He got away with the free hit with a

widish delivery that was optimistically left by the opposition's stodgy opener, awaiting a signal from the

umpire which never came. I refocused the binoculars and wiped my forehead's stinging sweat from out of my

eyes and waited on the feet and the crease for the third ball.

As oversteps go it was indeed huge. A few jeers rang round the stadium as was customary in these jaundiced,

cynical days and I duly tapped in: "Noticeable lunge. At least 50cm overstep. No real reaction from captainor other fielders." More footmark analysis, an overly ostentatious signal for sawdust to the changing room -

they didn't do themselves any favours sometimes - and the rest of the over completed with little incident. I

knew Dubai would be watching on TV another strand in the cloak of my irrelevance - but I texted them

confirmation anyway. As world weary and disillusioned as I'd become, I thought of the team back there

beavering away trying to sterilise cricket's open, dirty wounds and knew there was a lot of well-meaning

types at work, even that ass-kiss Phillipe who swanned around in those garish watches that were fifty times

more expensive than they looked. To be honest, I was pretty pleased we'd seemingly got a cast iron case in

the bag and almost immediately the text came back: "Nice work. Rest of money handover at Nando's at 7.30

tonight. Get pictures of them together then get out. Money shot great but not essential." You're not a DLF

Daniel Craig, I had to remind myself once more, but I couldn't hide the fact I was excited, Covent Garden

town house on the horizon or not.

The innings dragged on to a nothing total as my laptop's battery ran down to something similar. An

additional piece of nonsense was having to spend innings or session breaks darting up to the press area to

charge up my Dell's battery amidst the journos' sniggers: "Can't Haroon buy you an iPad, Damo?"; "I've got

some paper you can scribble on if the ICC are cutting back on your technology budget, mate?". I just joined

in by rolling my eyes and rolling over to be screwed by their ridicule, but it didn't bother me so much today,

not with the coup I was about to pull off and the knowledge that all the hours staring at socks might for once

not lead me on a goose chase wilder than one of Tony Greig's alleged 'tarts and togas' parties to which,

regretfully, I'd never been invited.

As I waited for my clockwork laptop to recharge, my phone went again. I didn't recognise the number and I

knew it wasn't South African, but hearing her purring into my ear again was more than compensationenough:

"Hi," she murmured in a voice that worked me the way VVS worked the leg side. "I'm sure somebody's a bit

tired today." I wasn't quite so suave as last night after a morning with a laptop milking my thighs of

perspiration and a head full of scoring rates, but I tried to hold my own:

"Well, you know. If you can't do the crime, don't do the time." That hadn't come out quite how I hoped it

would, but to her credit she passed it over.

"Just wanted to say I'm leaving in a while and thanks. You made me feel like someone might want me

again. I paused momentarily to ponder her slightly odd phraseology.

I very much doubt it would be too hard to make someone like you feel like that. I'm glad we met. I hope it

won't be the last time. A silence as committal as a Du Plessis single greeted that, but eventually she spoke

again:

Ok, well I should go. Flying in three hours. By the way, reception called up with a message for you a few

minutes ago.

Really? I said, about to chance my flirty arm again. Apoplectic about what we did to the mini-bar, are

they?

No, surprisingly not, she replied, with a dusky chuckle. With the bill we ran up they must be delighted.

No, they just said to give you a message. Ready? It says, 'Update: Handover at Nando's now at 8. Sameprocedure.' I'm sure that means more to you than it does to me. I supposed it did.


5/7

Ok, thanks, I said. Take care of yourself. A bit lame given the circumstances, but I was in no position not

to play the percentages.

You too, Damien, she massaged into my ear, an ear which I wished I'd noticed before last night was giving

a more than passable impression of Hashim Amla's chin. Trim man, I thought, as if trying to convince myself

that hairy lobes were the sole reason I'd never see her again.

I snapped shut my phone and snatched a decent chicken dopiaza for lunch and sat talking to an Kiwi ex-

player who was doing comms out here for what he called 'some station or other.' He was a nice enough guy

and much more considered and verbally agile than his manic on-air persona suggested. I asked if how he felt

about his commentary once being termed as 'like a lawnmower with Tourettes'. He said that his cousin

actually had Tourettes so he hadn't found it that funny. It was a bit awkward so I mopped up the rest of my

ginger infused sauce with a rather dry naan and made my excuses. Another notch on my networking bedpost

successfully obliterated, but I couldn't preoccupy myself with my schmooze failings at the moment. I had

another innings of notations, front foots and grounded catches to file away dutifully, but for once I welcomed

the tedium amidst what was likely to be a chase finished off pretty soonish. This evening I'd be back in the

subterfuge groove. Just like in Brazil. Just like in Namibia. Just like the guy I was before I joined the ICC all

those years ago.

***********************************

Six hours later I was about to leave the hotel. I checked the pockets of my linen trousers for wallet, cigarettes

and camera, patting myself down anxiously like a man not quite on fire but certainly a bit concerned about a

slight burning smell coming from the vicinity of his pockets. I pulled up my hoodie an incongruous

costume for a man of my age but nevertheless a necessity for the evening's work and set off to walk the

short distance down to the city's main drag.

I caught a glimpse of the joint Dubai had earmarked as the place where the remainder of the whiffy cash for

this morning's little overstep would be handed over. It was on the corner of two streets pock-marked with

neon signs depicting women dancing like they were auditioning for an IPL podium spot. I'd eaten therebefore and knew the layout and where Dulansky and his bowling puppet would be seated - a quiet booth

against the window at the back of the restaurant where people could be indiscriminate whilst maintaining the

faade of just enjoying their trough of Peri Peri chicken.

From outside their two faces were not visible, but as I slowed my stride and backed up against the wall I

could see over my right shoulder our overstep mule's impressive hair tumbling down over the back of his

seat and, dangling out beyond the booth, his master's expensive Cuban heels clacking against each other

from beneath a suit that was probably bought off-the-peg from a Dubai mall but looked as if it came bespoke

from Savile Row. I'm going to have you this time, Sunshine, I simmered, imagining how good it would

feel to see that designer-stubbled face for once contorted in a grimace of guilt rather than its usual disdain.

Good morning, everyone. It was time for the covers to be ripped off this chicanery.

I walked past the window with my hood tightly up and headed towards the entrance with the music from that

Tarantino flick with the milk Nazi echoing through my flaxen ears. I fumbled in my pocket to ensure the

digital camera was on and ready to take the shots that would nail those cheating, grubby sods the way Dave

Warner nailed his cover drives. It would be ugly, beautiful. A dirty splendour of splayed corruption to be sent

back to Dubai and the subsequent newspaper coverage framed on my future London walls.

I told myself to calm down. I entered Nando's and strode as purposefully as a man in his fifties dressed in

chinos and a hoodie possibly could. I walked between the couples ignoring each other for their phones and

the guys on a stag doing overpriced shots of Jagermeister. As I ventured further in, those glistening Dulansky

boots that had trampled over my worth fifty times began to get closer and closer. This time, you scummyswine. This time. I put my hand on my camera. They still hadn't seen me and they were now well in range for

their incriminating mugshot, but I need to get them head on. I needed their shrill, corrupt, ugly faces.

I took out the camera and got ready to feel relevant again.


6/7

****************************************

As soon as I got close enough to see the fingers tapping playfully on Dulansky's right thigh I started to feel

sick. A thick, numbing, nauseous sickness that careered up inside me like the time I'd been hit in the box

playing for my university side when we toured Jamaica thirty years ago. There weren't many cricketers who

got themselves manicured on a regular basis and certainly none that then went a step further and painted on a

nuclear violet varnish. So I knew instantly. Even before I looked up and saw that that sumptuous hair didn'tbelong to one of the world's leading seam bowlers, I knew it was her. You ridiculous, pathetic, old fool! I

screamed to myself as I near bit through my lower lip trying not to weep. You deluded, insipid, vain,

pointless shell of a man.

I wanted to turn on my own paltry heels and just walk out of the restaurant and into the nearest bar, but I had

to know why it was that bastard Dulansky was here with that exquisite harlot and not the guy he was meant

to be handing over whatever amount of unmarked dollar bills to. I ripped off my hoodie - if I was going to be

humiliated, I'd at least do it without being dressed like an idiot and walked up to the booth, by now

perspiring even more than earlier as the full horror of my duping began to set in. As I stood in front of them,

they both looked up, Dulansky with that smirk I'd wanted to punch so many times before and her with a

mixture of pity and disrespect that made me want to rub Peri Peri in my eyes out of shame. I tried to speak

but the words stuck in my throat like mothballs.

I'm sorry, Damien, she said. But there was too much riding on this for you to bust us. You know the

people involved. How they work. What they do when things don't work for them. If it's any consolation for

you and Dubai the guy you wanted was here 30 minutes ago, but he's long gone now along with any hope

you had of putting us out of business.All I could think of was how deception made her look even more

beautiful. I couldn't say the same for Dulanksy, however, whilst he sat there twirling a toothpick in and out of

his newly whitened molars.

She went on, dissecting my credence as a man like Warne bowling at Cullinan. We knew you were getting

close. If you want to save face in Dubai you can tell them there's a mole. Sadly for you, my voracious tiger,

he's been burrowing away for us for six months. He tells us what you know and when you know it. If it's anycompensation, I didn't just do what I did last night so you'd believe me when I delayed your arrival at this

little meeting. I did it because I liked you. I wanted to believe her but I couldn't forget how her hand had

been rubbing Dulanksy's thigh when I walked in. If she had a type, then it wasn't the one I wanted to be any

more.

Ok, I said. Take care of yourself. It was all I could manage. It was all I had the resolve left to utter. I

couldn't even be bothered to take a swing at Dulansky's perfect new teeth. Humiliation made vengeance well

up inside you for only the most fleeting of moments before smothering your spirit the way Younis Khan

smothered spin. I had my answer and I left.

*************************************

Ten minutes later I was sitting inside one of the joints painted in neon. Dubai had called but I still didn't have

the strength to answer and instead had just ordered myself up the largest bourbon available and was getting

lost in the dead-eyed girl gyrating in the middle of the bar. I hated these places, but they were a sanctuary for

the lost and the defeated and, after I clocked a couple of the journalists from earlier on, I was invited over to

join in their glazey-eyed revelry which currently involved a couple of private dances and a few stories about

the notorious tour of Oz in the late 1990s when one of their colleagues was hospitalised after being taken on

a jaunt around Margaret River's vineyards by one of England's greatest all rounders.

I got lost in it all and let my guard down about the last twenty-four hours. There was support and then tirades

about my bosses in Dubai and then increasingly impassioned theories about WHAT THE ICC NEEDS TO

DO IS, RIGHT, NO, LISTEN TO ME, DAMO... and I lapped it all up just to forget what a farce my life hadbecome. I knocked back the bourbon and when another cute looking girl in her early twenties came over and

asked me for the third time if I wanted a private dance I gave in to her pouting and the back-slapping urgings

of my media near-comrades and followed her into a back room. As she began to slide and smile in front of


7/7

me like my nemesis had done the night before I just let the self-loathing numb me. I just wanted to slip my

money into her G-string and get out of there as soon as possible but she seemed to take an earnest pride in

her jiggling and sliding and brought herself closer and closer and down onto my lap.

My phone went again and she winked at me and giggled momentarily and professionally at its vibrations

before looking aghast when I said I had to see who it was. I pulled myself upright on the stained couch and

fumbled in my pocket, fully expecting to see another pained missive from Dubai asking about the handover.

Sasha stood over me, hands on hips, looking as indignant as Stuart Broad without a hair-dryer but I put myhand up to her to apologise before reading the text and starting to laugh:

67 Dad!! Out b4 we won but was MOTM. See u soon. x. I suddenly felt untouchable.

Come on, Sasha, I said, handing over a wad of notes and trying for the second time in two hours not to

start crying. You've finished your dancing for tonight.

But it is too much...this money...I only dance here, she protested. "I am not...I will not sleep with...I don't

do extras.

No, that's perfectly all right, I replied. I've had quite enough of extras, I can assure you. I've gotsomething much more enjoyable for you lined up. How does drinking all the Martinis under the sun and a

chat about London sound? She looked at me bemusedly, stuffing the money under her few remaining

strands of clothing.

"Oh yes, please," she beamed, as I repocketed my phone and wiped some grimy sweat from my forehead for

the hundredth time that day. "I really, really love Martinis."

*******************************************

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N.B. Needless to say that all of the above is complete fiction and nonsense and not based on reality or the real

life of anyone or any organisation real mentioned.

Documents

The Fix and the Honey