Chapter 3

It had taken a cab and two trains to get there but they had made it. They stood outside the entrance to the train station and Vestie got his bearings and turned to the left. After finding Kirchenallee, known to British squaddies as Kitchen Alley, they walked down the street turned right and at the next corner found the Hotel Condor. Cheap and cheerful but clean and used to dealing with British servicemen. And the next morning it was all of 200 metres back to the train station. They got rooms without a problem and were back out and on the go 10 minutes after checking in. The fourth member of the group was the only Detective Constable on the team, Owen Thomas, whose parents clearly won the ‘least imaginative parents in Wales’ competition when it came to naming him. He was new to the investigation side of the MoD Police and had not been with them for long. But he was about to turn 31 so he was hardly some newbie fresh out of the training school. He had done eight years as a uniformed constable before transferring over.

When all your knowledge of something is from the hysterical stories of teenage boys the likelihood of the reality living up to the fantasy is slim. Hamburg was the exception to that rule and was so utterly disgusting, in a good way, that for once the reality was better than the stories. Britain is an odd combination of a repressed yet prurient country. One of the ways that this repression manifests itself is with regard to sex. Something as gloriously tacky but at some level very matter-of-fact as the Reeperbahn in Hamburg could never exist in Britain, so unashamed and blatant. Andrew remembered walking through Soho with Judy the previous summer and it was sad. It was like drinking light beer compared to the Guinness that was Hamburg. Everything about Soho was a pastiche, an imitation and a poor one at that.

In the 21^st century pornography is ubiquitous. In the 1980s it was anything but. Andrew was a 19-year-old man and had only ever seen pornography once. He had seen some tatty magazines showing some tits and arse at various Army camps but until that night the only porn he had seen had been at Maggie and Tony’s flat, when they showed him the magazine that Naomi had been published in. So Andrew was more than a little overwhelmed by the events of the evening. It started quietly though. Vestie and Splash led the way and they ended up in the Klimperkiste bar where the Beatles used to drink. It was a nice low-key, out of the way place that was perfect to start the night. The beer was good, as was the food and it was nice to see that 20 plus years after the Beatles were there the place was still going strong. It was clear the Beatles connection did not hurt. Neither Splash nor Taff (all Welshmen are called Taff or Taffy) had heard Andrew’s story so he had to go through the highlights again.

“You mean to tell me that you are 19, already have a university degree and this program that none of these poxy squaddies know how to use, you designed it?”

Andrew nodded.

“But, but” Splash stopped. “You seem so normal.”

Andrew wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.

“Jock is alright. Knows what he doesn’t know and listens.”

Andrew looked over at Vestie in surprise.

“It is true Jock. You could have been a complete tosser, total waste of oxygen. You designed the fucking program, and we would have had to put up with you. But you have stayed in the background and watched and listened. The questions you ask afterwards show that you are paying attention. I have been a copper for 15 years. Taff had to put in eight years in uniform before he could get a transfer. You turn up and you fit in, as in you don’t stand out. Sure you are not carrying your weight if you were an experienced bloke but that is it. You have no experience and no training and you are helping. None of us have a clue about this computer stuff, even though it seems to be a big red herring at present.”

Vestie stopped, looking sheepish at having voiced such praise.

“How did you end up with us, out here?” Splash asked.

“I was in support services at Headquarters, holiday cover for the records centre, hauling the files around, that sort of thing. On my fourth day there and only my third day working, Lester sent for all these files. As the new kid I was the one that got sent to Colchester. I saw an AIMS printout on the table and smiled. Some bloke from, well I am not sure who he was, but anyway he caught me smiling and thought I was smiling at what was on it, so I ended up having to tell Lester the story I told you.”

More beer was ordered but then it was Taff with the next question.

“I get how you ended up out here, but how did you get assigned us in the first place. You need Secret not Background.”

Meaning the clearances. Andrew sighed.

“I already had Background from all the CCF, Sapper and OTC courses I had been on. They got me to complete the Secret clearance forms, I think as an experiment. I passed but they never told me. Hell I turned up at the Main Building on the first day to be told I had to go to the Empress. When I got there they knew nothing about me. Took a whole day to get past reception.”

This example of British military efficiency had all three of them nodding. And with that it was dropped. Andrew was ‘the kid’, nothing more, nothing less, out with three older colleagues. Taff took his lead from the other two and the rest of the meal was Splash and Vestie reminiscing about the various times they had been here. For Vestie this was his third visit and for Splash it was his second. Like Andrew Taff was there for the first time. After they had finished a good nosh and drunk three big beers, it was time to venture out and see if Hamburg’s reputation was deserved.

After all the anticipation and excitement of going there it was time to see what all the fuss was about. And at one level Hamburg did not disappoint. But there is a reason Andrew never went back. The reason he was not a big drinker could be traced back to the Hogmanay night in 1979. He watched a collection of hard working farmers drink themselves unconscious. And did so with a grim determination as if passing out drunk was the point of the evening. Andrew had seen the same behaviour at various times at university and a lot while around Army soldiers. There was no joy in the drinking. For so many they drank because it was expected. The other thing that Andrew noticed that night was the fluctuating power dynamic. At one level the power was in the hands of those with the money, almost exclusively the men. But at a different level the power was with the women. There were so many more men around the area then there were women. The women could pick and choose which punters to deal with.

But on top of it all there was a lack of joy on both sides.

Did Andrew have a good time that night? Up to a point. Over the course of the evening they went to a sex shop, a strip club and finally a sex show. They walked past some prostitutes but did not talk to them. That part was more like street theatre. Andrew wasn’t helped by the fact that despite being pissed he was the soberest one of the four of them. It didn’t look like the other three got out much.

He was fascinated by the whole evening, but did recall at the end, watching a bored peroxide blonde with huge fake tits get fucked by some 130lb stick insect of a man with a big dick, that there was no joy. She was bored, he was bored, hell the audience was bored. Now the two of them were going overboard with the fake ecstasy expressions but it was clearly fake. They had paid a lot of Marks to descend into this sweaty basement and then drank overpriced bilge water whilst watching the least erotic thing he had ever seen. But that was the culmination of the evening.

After dinner and beer at the Klimperkiste they had walked the mile or so to the start of the Reeperbahn. The chat on the way was for three men of the world to show the kid all the things he had been missing in his life up until then. So they started with a large, garishly neon, sex shop. Maybe a block into the red-light district. Looking back this was the high point of the evening because it totally blew Andrew’s mind. Again, you hear the phrase sex shop and at one level it resonates; a shop full of sex stuff, a shop full of sexy stuff, a shop full of sex. Maybe others had asked the next question of what does that mean exactly? But for a shy young man from Edinburgh he never did. So as the blacked-out door behind swung closed Andrew was amazed, he was a robot with overloaded circuitry. For the first 10 minutes he wandered round in a daze just looking open mouthed at all the stuff.

And do you know what shook him out of his stupor. A pair of handcuffs. It was that pair of handcuffs that suddenly brought to mind a wonderful young lady with a desire to explore some edgier things. Andrew went from a gawking tourist to a serious shopper in the blink of an eye. The flashing neon proclaimed that this place was open 24 hours a day so he knew he could return. But as he looked at leather cuffs that buckled to a person’s wrists with clips to connect them together Andrew pictured Suzanne not just wearing them but thinking about wearing them. Andrew pictured them lying on the bed all day for Suzanne to look at and think about. It made everything real, and in a funny way, normal. As he walked back over some of the areas he had initially staggered past in a daze he saw a section full of beautiful corsets, including one with steel eyes sewn into the back. Andrew looked back at the cuffs and his second purchase was mentally made. The range of vibrators and dildos was impressive, but they would require further scrutiny to find an appropriate one.

He wandered over to one of the aisles where the guys were standing comparing different video covers and Taff decided to drop some cash on one that had caught his eye. In the end they were in there for maybe 20 minutes, no more than half an hour, but another layer of naiveté was stripped away. There was something oddly comforting to know that what Suzanne was feeling, wanting to explore, was sufficiently common that there were clothes and accessories for it. Up until then Andrew had been supporting her but doing it in total isolation. Let’s face it he could not imagine having the discussion with anyone. On the way out the store he passed the video racks and saw there was a small spanking section. What caught his eye? Someone holding a ping pong bat with a rosy cheeked arse also in the picture. No embarrassing prop, just a simple table tennis bat. Hmmm.

The sex shop had not so much peeled a layer of naiveté away as attacked it with a belt sander, and Andrew felt raw. It had been at least 45 minutes since they had had a beer and the troops were getting restless. So the strip club further down the block was the next destination. They got a table after paying a hefty cover charge and then their waitress arrived to take the order. You have seen a million pictures of German women in Lederhosen serving beer, most famously at Oktoberfest in Munich. Well imagine that costume but just a lot less material. Taff looked like he had lost the power of speech while Andrew was struggling to look her in the eye. Beer was ordered and Taff recovered the power of speech.