Mike arrived at the hotel an hour before the scheduled meeting time. As he was checking in, he studied his reflection in a mirror at the back of the reception desk. Just another middle-aged, middle management drone in transit -- paunch, greying hair, suit by Autograph, laptop bag over the shoulder. He had performed this particular drill countless times in four star hotels all over Britain. An onlooker would have had no reason to suspect that there was anything out of the ordinary taking place. But this time was different. He was here on business all right but not of the usual kind.
Once in his room he took a shower, putting on afterwards the black silk robe he had purchased for the occasion. He swallowed an aspirin and a Viagra, washing them down with tap-water, and picked up his mobile. 'Room 232 -- where are you?' read the text he sent. He then checked the time and rang Gillian.
'How's Southend?' she said.
'As low rent as I remember,' he said. His phone vibrated, indicating a received message. 'How's things there?'
'I'm up the walls with this bloody fundraiser,' she said. 'Mandy couldn't have picked a worse time to go awol.'
Mike checked the message he had received: 'In traffic. Might be late.' Typical. She was always late.
'Where's she gone then?' he said.
'Manchester,' said Gillian. 'Some family emergency. She didn't go into specifics.'
Mandy was the doyenne of the circle of neighbourhood wives of which Gillian was also a member. A former model of some description, her first husband, a showbiz agent some thirty years her senior, had died in murky circumstances in the Czech Republic some years previously, and had left her a very comfortably off young widow. Now she was married to Greg, the owner of a company specializing in corporate leisure -- whatever that was. He was also a councillor, a rising star in local political circles and someone widely tipped for higher office at some stage in the future...
'Keep your powder dry,' he said. 'I shouldn't be too late tomorrow.'
'Buzz me when you're on the way,' she said. 'I'll knock some grub together for you.'
'Bye.'
'Bye.'
Mike reached for his laptop and navigated to the video whose discovery by him had set in motion the chain of events that had led him to this very room. It had been shot on tape and the quality was poor. A time code in the corner read May 2000. 01.43. The camera was trained on a black leather sofa in the nicely decorated front room of what looked like a converted barn. There was nobody present but there was the sound of northern accents nearby. Now a blonde woman, her hair in braids, wearing a sluttily modified school uniform -- blouse knotted below her breasts, skirt barely covering the tops of her black-stockinged thighs -- entered and sat down on the sofa.
'What's your name then?' a voice off screen asked her.
'Tiffaneh,' she said in a heavy Lancashire accent. She smiled and twirled the end of her tie. One of her slate blue eyes was a touch off centre.
'And why are you here today Tiffany?'
'To suck cock and get fucked in the arse,' she said. The camera zoomed in on her shining, lip-bitten mouth.
'Show me those tits,' said her interrogator. She undid the knot of her blouse and pushed her enhanced breasts together and free from a PVC bra.
Now a heavily tattooed man, shaven headed to disguise male pattern baldness and naked to the waist, entered the frame. She affected girlishness, crooking a baby finger at the corner of her mouth.
'Fuck me, Daddeh.' As he squeezed and slapped her breasts -- his other hand pinching her face into a fishmouth -- she unzipped his jeans and started to work the enormous cock she drew forth.
'Suck the fucking cock,' he said, pushing it into her mouth. He gathered her hair in his fist and started to fuck her drooling face, pausing occasionally to kiss her mouth and breasts.
'Look at' fuckin mess all over the cock,' he said. 'Come here.'
He scooped a tendril of saliva from her chin and, pulling her thong aside, rubbed it into her cunt.
'Open your pussy. Open.'
There was a close up of the splayed pink meat above dark brown between her legs, dripping with spit and lube. The man's fingers worried her viciously while she cried out in hysterical arousal.
'Lick my balls,' he breathed, pushing her face between his thighs. 'Get in there. Lick my fucking arsehole. That's it.' There was a close up of his outraged face before the scene changed abruptly. She was lying on her back on the sofa, holding back her legs while he plunged two fingers in and out of her arsehole.
'Open your mouth.' He brought the same fingers to her lips. 'Taste it...that's it, good girl.'
He stood up, sticking his whole hand into her mouth while guiding his cock towards her arse with the other. Her face was just visible beyond her breasts, wide mouthed as if in astonishment. She whimpered, mauling her cunt desperately as the tentativeness of his insertion gave way to a furious vigour. He slammed his cock into her anus, stopping after each particular assault to display the increasingly distended hole to the camera.
'Look at that...fuck yes...'
He pulled her forward with her tie and thrust his cock into her mouth before shoving her face down into the sofa and renewing his anal assault. Similar ass to mouth business made up the remainder of the scene, which concluded with him masturbating noisily and voluminously to orgasm all over her upturned face. In spite of the going over she had received at the man's hands, her expression was one of malicious glee. Mike paused the scene at a point where the screen was entirely taken up with her come smothered face. He slipped his achingly hard cock through the vent of his shorts and brandished it in front of the screen. A few moments later, there was a knock at the door. He covered himself up and crossed the room, opening the door to find himself looking on the same face that was freeze-framed on his laptop.
Not exactly the same. As he stood aside to let her enter, he considered the modifications Mandy had undergone in the years since the video had been shot. Her hair, now coloured dark mahogany brown and worn that evening in a tight ponytail, was pulled back from a botox-smooth forehead, the tightened flesh making her eyes appear larger and drawing attention to the slight off-centeredness of the left one. Her lips had also been touched up, fattened with collagen, the top one as pink and swollen as the labium of an aroused cunt. As he had requested, she had put on a full face of make-up and the volume of bronzer she wore accentuated the hollowness of her cheeks, sunken like shallow graves within the stark bones forming their hinterland. But it was unmistakably the same woman from the video. Older, but definitely her. There was no mistaking the long, slender incline of that Greek nose or the natural irritability in the set of that mouth.
She walked to the far side of the room and set down her outsize fake designer handbag -- a monstrous thing decorated with a huge golden padlock -- on an armchair before turning to face him.
'Where you tell Greg you were going?' he said. He returned to the bed and sat down, leaning back and propping himself up with his arms.
'None of your business. Lying doesn't come so easily to some of us.'
'Oh, well I'd say you were quite a tidy little liar,' he said, jerking his head at the laptop. 'Tiffaneh.'
She backed up against the wall with her arms folded.
