Chapter 4

Part 1 : Lunch on the Town

It's not often we feel the need to turn down a commission. I take a pride in the research we do and I get involved in almost every operation one way or another. I can't remember the last one we turned down. I'm Rick, by the way. I look after the Research Division for Clegg Enterprises. We trade women, but I guess you knew that already.

I was with Larry, our marketing man, in a restaurant at the top of a hotel overlooking Hyde Park. He'd asked me to go along with him for a meeting with a client. "It's a woman, Daphne Challis," he said. I must have looked interested. Actually, I just recognised the name. Larry had us do a report on her a while back. "Don't get our hopes up," he said. "If there was her and a horse in the bar, you'd be looking at the horse!

"That rough?" I said.

Larry nodded.

It was a pleasant day in mid march. Our table overlooked the hotel roof garden and the park beyond, where the plane trees were just starting to push out leaves in anticipation of summer.

I saw what Larry meant about Daphne when she joined us. She sort of waddled in, wearing a skirt that stretched across her belly, a sweater that looked two sizes too small and pair of shoes that looked as if they cost more than some cars.

The restaurant was a better venue than most of the places I lunch in. Green Stuff was a new place, built to cash in on enthusiasms for better food and healthier eating. Both the prices and portions were calculated to slim you down!

"Larry," Daphne said, when he broke the news that we didn't want the job, "what's so difficult about it?"

Larry shrugged.

Daphne persisted. "I need a personal trainer. Someone who can help me with getting fit. You must have someone like that on the database."

I pushed the leaves around my plate. What had been billed as "Country Life" on the menu had turned out to be a mixed green salad. I was missing some carbohydrates, the one thing I'd expected from lunch with Daphne, after what Larry had said, was that it would involve chips. Daphne reached over and poured some more carrot juice into my glass. Larry looked impressed. I guessed it was the first time he had ever seen her help someone else to some food.

"I can check but I'm just not sure it's a smart idea," Larry said. "Look — its going to be a challenge to find someone that will be right but of course we can do that with a bit of effort. Rick here can find something, I 'm sure." I nodded. "The problem will be prep."

"Hungfg?" she said through a mouthful of salad. I took it to be a request for explanation. You pick up useful life-skills working a lot with gagged women.

"First it's going to be a really difficult pick up. She'll be fit — that's a sort of requirement — works a lot with a lot of people, so not often on her own. Then there's getting her controlled — athletes are really good with pain and stress so we'll need to come up with a whole new approach. And, well, it's like any creative type skill. If you discipline them enough to be a slave you lose the abilities you were after. If you don't discipline them well enough they're over the wall at the first opportunity. Plus, with a trainer, they will have to take you out to Gyms, Tracks, Parks. It's not like you could keep them in a cage. They will be over the wall already! Trust me, I've just been through something like this with a writer and even with all Freddie's resources first she was difficult to hang on to and second she was difficult to get working properly. Then your project is going to take what — twelve months, tops? At the end of that you'll want to sell on and I'm telling you there has been zero requirement for anything like this in the past so resale value is going to be nothing like what you'll spend in Prep costs, even. It's a money pit project and much though I'd like to take your cash, I need to warn you."

She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. It left a green stain on the cloth but I guess that's a hazard if you serve this sort of food. "Larry, I'm going to have one. You know what I'm like when I make up my mind." She waved to the waiter and he came across. She pointed to her plate and said, "Again." He wandered away. I didn't think she quite got the hang of healthy eating.

"Let me make a radical suggestion." said Larry. Daphne looked at Larry suspiciously. "Hire one."

"What, hire a slave? How does that help?"

"No, not a slave. Hire a personal trainer. That's what normal people do. You give them money and they work for you. Sorted — and it's cheaper, believe me."

"Hire one?"

"Yes, look in Yellow Pages. Put 'personal fitness trainers' into Google. You don't need our database; you just need a cheque book. It's how they make their living. You must be hiring people all the time in business.

"Hire one? But this is a bit ... personal."

"Hire one: Getting fit is going to bit a bit public anyway, Daphne."

Her second plate of food arrived. She picked at it with a fork without saying anything. She seemed to be thinking about what Larry had suggested.

"You hire one. You're the experts at selecting people. Find me a trainer."

"Daphne, I'd like to help but, well, Clegg's operation isn't an employment agency."

"Come on Larry, do me a favour. I've put business your way. I'll pay a commission — 25% on top of her rates whatever they are. Rick," she looked at me, "from what I hear you could do this without to much effort. Clegg won't mind — put this down to account management — keeping the customer satisfied.

"Yeah," I thought to myself "one step ahead of the shoeshine, two steps away from the county line." What Larry said was, "OK, Daphne, we'll think about it."

When I sat down with Larry after she'd gone I must have sounded unimpressed. "You want us to research a girl but you're not going to pick her up?" Larry nodded. "So overheads on collection down, operational risks down but do we make any money?"

"You heard her. Maybe some. Sort of. Not much. Rick give me a hand, can you? Look at it like this. The worst that can happen is you'll have to spend some time looking at really fit women."

"Well," I said with heavy irony, "in that case, I suppose I could do a bit of work for you."

I got back to him three days later with a portfolio of half a dozen possibles. "Well that wasn't the worst assignment I've had," I smirked. "I wouldn't mind laying on a beach while this lot came and kicked sand in my face."

"Thank you Arnold Schwarzenegger," Larry said taking the portfolio and thumbing through it. "They all look OK to me but what do I know about it?"

"Ah, there's a science to this you know. We've been very selective. One of the girls in research had done a bit of training a while back. She used to do a bit of amateur running - middle distance stuff. She's worked with people like this. These are all people that will work with beginners — some of the top trainers won't. We've gone for folk that use fairly conventional training methods and we've gone for those that are easy on the eye too. Your client seems to like that."

"You have a deep understanding of customer needs, Rick, as always." Larry had said.

Part 2 : A Bicycle Ride

It took us a while but finally, we thought, we'd identified one.

My research team are pretty good when it comes to finding the right girl. When I saw the file I was sorry we weren't actually going to pick her up. But then, as Larry had said, this one was legit.

She looked fit, which wasn't surprising. Some of these athletes can look a bit muscle bound can't they? Or out of proportion. Anyway, this one looked normal. In fact if I'd been looking for fit blonde for our normal channels, she'd have been on the list.

The research report had a lot of detail on her personal background — my team do a good job on that stuff. Katya Izotova was our recommendation.

Katya was born and brought up in Moscow. She was very much a product of what remained of the Russian State Athletics Training Programme - it still worked in some of the schools in spite of the disappearance of state funding. She'd been in England about four years. She had come here, following her lover, Nicky after they'd met in Moscow.

He was the son of a show biz celebrity of the 1970's, a promising athlete but not quite good enough for the national teams. Armed with a degree is Sports Science he'd gone to study training methods at the Moscow State Institute of Physical Education. There he met Katya, who was also a student at the Institute.