Chapter 14 - Collapse

It was fifteen years after Martha had come into the brothel as little more than a pile of battered meat and broken bones, when Madame called all the girls to a meeting and warned them that there were some changes being made in the Police to comply with some new law or other which was supposed to combat police corruption.

"We, in the House of Joy, provide a necessary service to the community. If men could not come here and take their pleasures, then they would take them elsewhere and the number of assaults on unsuspecting women would increase dramatically," she continued, "In spite of this, what the House of Joy does is technically illegal, so we are visited from time to time by the local police. There is a new Director of the local Policebot Service who is supposed to be a real hard man, and Li Kim can tell you about him at a personal level."

One of the Submissives, who Martha didn't actual know personally, nodded and said "He just thrashes you until he comes. Nothing fancy, no fucking, sucking or arse fucking. He likes you to yell a lot, and to be frightened of him."

Martha wondered how anyone as hard-boiled as Li Kim seemed to be could succeed in persuading clients that she was frightened of them.

"We are regularly fined, and to save paperwork we pass the fine direct to the policemen who make the raid. We don't waste time appearing in court; there is no publicity; and we trust the policemen to pass the money on to the proper authorities," Madame continued.

All the girls giggled at this, because they knew perfectly well where the money went.

There were usually two men and five policebots to do a proper raid on the House of Joy; the policebots guarded all the doors to make sure that nobody could escape during the raid and the policemen spoke to Madame and then checked the rooms for evidence of wrong-doing. Naturally, there were two rooms which each contained a naked girl, and this needed detailed investigation. After 'interrogating' these girls for some time, the two policemen would be satisfied that there was nothing wrong with the House of Joy and would return to tell Madame the good news. Other than the two girls the policemen 'interrogated', Madame and her Top Girl would be the only staff in evidence and all clients were warned off because Madame was told two or three days before a raid.

When the next scheduled raid was due, Madame was pre-notified in the usual way. However, there were only the policebots present when this raid on the House of Joy took place; no human police were present and the policebots explained that as part of the new anti-corruption regime no human police were allowed to take part in such operations. Madame and Jill, her Top Girl were the only ones in the Choosing Room at the time, and were prepared with the necessary 'fines' money, but the policebots insisted on arresting Madame and claimed that they knew nothing of any arrangement to pay fines direct to the police.

The Policebot aircar left with Madame and the 'fines' money, which she was sure would make everything all right at the Policebot Station, and Jill alerted the other girls to what had happened. They decided, or rather Jill ordered, that the House of Joy would remain closed, for the first time in many years, until Madame returned. Later in the evening Jill took a phone call from Madame who asked for a change of clothes and a lawyer to be sent to the Policebot Station as she could not arrange her freedom, but would be arraigned the next morning on a series of what she described as trumped up charges designed to annoy her.