CHAPTER 1

I sat waiting patiently in the car for my first appointment of the day. Okay, to be honest, it was my only appointment of the day, not because I had no customers but because my work goes like that, deliberately. I’m John Hargreaves. I run my own little business called Personal Collections and I make a good and varied living from it and my other interests, which you will discover more about shortly.

Before I go into the appointment let me explain how my business works. Personal Collections is what it says; I collect or rather buy up personal debt. I buy it not from the public but from a number of debt collection agencies that are far too busy to chase forlorn cases. What I do is mail them for people in my area who are not paying up what they owe. At the moment this brings in quite a few cold leads every month. The next step is for me to do some investigation. I go to where these people live and I observe, closely. I watch them for a few days if necessary before I make my decision. You see, I don’t buy up just any debt, I target specific types of people – like the person I am about to visit.

When I find someone I am interested in, I make an offer to buy the debt up with a one off payment that then assigns the debt to my organisation, or more accurately to me. I then own the debt and it is up to me to collect on it. Now, this may seem strange, but the people I target I know can’t pay – if they could I wouldn’t have been passed their details in the first place. So, you may be wondering, how do I recover my outlay and make a living? Well, it’s not actually that hard and you’ll see why in a minute.

As I own the debt I have a right to go through the courts and get charges put on property and then force people to sell their property to pay me back. As I said, it’s my right, so I’m always confident that at the end of the day I will get my money back, but in seven years of running what I do, I have never had to go that route and that is because of the debt I buy up.

I’m about to get out of the car now, it’s just a couple of minutes until ten o’clock and I know the person I’m about to go and see has been sitting nervously waiting for this moment for at least forty five minutes.

Before I go, you might as well know, this is not the only little business venture I have. The other one is legal too and you probably guessed that it is the business where I actually make most of my money.

***

Christina Tanwell had been waiting nervously since she had got back from the school run. Divorced with two kids in the local primary school, she is a good looking thirty something. She has dark hair, probably died that way. She is five foot three with hazel eyes and has a nice figure with a great-looking ass, as observed by me when I watched her out walking one day in her figure-hugging faded jeans. Her hair is about shoulder-length and the house she lives in is modest. My personal research indicated was virtually no equity in the property as her former husband had once been a fairly wealthy business man who’d turned to heavy gambling when his business went pear-shaped a few years previously. Since then he’d lied about his income and secured a second loan on the property and other debts too. Then the divorce had come and Christina had been left in the house with just enough income from the maintenance for the kids to pay the secured loans. She also had a personal loan of $40,000 going back to the time when she had worked full time, before the children arrived. She had long since stopped paying the loan back and it was this loan that I had purchased – for a lot less than the total amount.

“Good morning,” I said as the door opened a fraction. “Mrs Tanwell?”

“Yes,” she said nervously. She was wearing the same cream trousers and white blouse she’d returned to the house in nearly an hour earlier.

“I’m John Hargreaves; we spoke on the phone a few days ago. Do you mind if I come in?”

“No,” she said softly as I showed her my ID card, which indicated I was an agent of Personal Collections.

With the door shut I was shown into the living room. The furniture was mostly tired and old, and at that precise moment Christina matched the room perfectly.

“You know why I am here Mrs Tanwell; the matter of $40,000 which you owe Personal Collections. What I need to know is how you plan to pay us back.”

“I have no idea. The money from my ex-husband barely covers the loans on the property and a few household bills. I’m on various benefits to help make ends meet and I work two mornings a week to help us scrape by.”

“Ah yes, I remember from our conversation,” I lied. I’d read the case file while waiting in the car. “You’re divorced, two children in the local primary school and you have little chance of increasing the income you currently earn which, from the forms you already sent us, indicates you have less than $30 spare income a month.”

“That’s about right,” Christina responded. “Have a look round, you can tell I’m hardly having a ball!”

“No, I must agree with you on that front. But I have a problem in that the money you owe must be repaid. I think, probably, you leave me no option other than to start court proceedings to place a charge on your property and then to go for possession when you don’t pay up. It’s happening a lot these days, I’m afraid, but debts have to be repaid one way or another.”

“No, please don’t do that,” she was almost on the verge of crying. I already knew that Christina was desperate to stay in the property – she had told me as much when she sent in her income and expenditure form, so I knew she would do whatever she could to avoid the legal route. “Isn’t there any other way we can sort this out? Please!” She sounded frightened as I am sure she was.

“Well, that depends,” I said, still smiling.

“Depends on what?”

“On what else you have to offer. Do you have any other forms of income or assets that I don’t yet know about?”

“I... I don’t follow, you know I don’t,” said Christina, her eyes bright and close to tears.

“Well, what else do you have to offer me then?”

“I...I...I’m not sure,” Christina stammered.

“Well, let’s start with you deciding just how badly you want to stay here. Think about that for a minute,” I added, the smile disappearing from my face.

“What are you saying?” Christina asked.

“I’m saying that a woman of your age and decent looks, who has the desire to stay here, possibly, just possibly, might have what it takes to do so.”

“You mean, I sell my body? But I don’t know how to do that or where to go to do it.”

“Well, not sell exactly. How about a private arrangement whereby you do what I want and I start writing off the debt?”

“With you? Oh, I see, but what would you make me do?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I lied.

“But what about the company, how would you cover up the write-offs?”

I smiled to myself – she hadn’t said no. Perhaps she was just too desperate to do so. I find this is usually the case with the people I target and I have nearly always got to this position in the conversation quite quickly. The next few minutes would determine where I was going to go with this particular person.

“Let me level with you. I am the company, Christina. I invested my own money in acquiring your debt so I can do what I want with it. As to what you would have to do, the answer is anything, without question, with total obedience and with extreme gratitude.” I decided to make the choice simple and in as clear a language as possible.

“I see. So, you would want to ... have sex with me?”

“Possibly. Tell me Christina, have you ever experimented with things like bondage and spanking, or role play.”

“No. Mr Hargreaves, apart from one incident when I was a schoolgirl, I have not been spanked and I have never much tried anything very adventurous. My husband was a very straightforward man, worked hard Monday to Friday and enjoyed a romp on Saturdays, but he was a quick finisher and we never experimented with anything.”

“But are those things you would be willing to try, to explore even, if it meant you stayed in this house?”

“I might be, but how much would you write off my loan if I did?”

“That would depend on how much you please me. Certain things would earn a greater write-off than others, and obviously they would be more demanding. But we wouldn’t start with those.”

“You mean it would take more than one session to write off the loan?”

I chuckled to myself.

“My dear, Christina, I think I can call you that in view of where the conversation is headed, a street whore can perhaps earn $100 for a simple fuck, $30 for a blowjob or hand job. Your debt is $40,000 or more, so yes, it will take a lot more than one session. Possibly it will take several months of concerted effort on your part. After all, if you were to have to work to pay off the debt then you would expect to have to work hard for such a sum of money, and probably for quite a long period of time.”

“I see, well I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it, but I guess I have no choice. When do you want to start and how do we go about it? Obviously I have the children to consider so holidays and evenings are out and I work on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.”

“I was thinking day time visits, mornings, three times a week during term times and once a week during the school holidays. I am sure you can arrange child care for a few hours once a week.”

“I can try, but I can’t promise anything. So when do you want to start and what do you want me to do.” Christina was looking very apprehensive, a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a rapidly advancing truck.

“Before we go too far I have to be totally sure you are suitable for this. I need to be sure that you can undertake the tasks that will please me and so, as I have done in the past with others, I have arranged a little test to ensure your compatibility for the things coming up in the weeks ahead. So, we will start today with an audition, and if you pass that test then we will set out a program for the debt to be repaid.”

The moment Christina heard me mention others in the past, she knew I was experienced at what I did, that I had picked on her debt precisely because I knew she was single and vulnerable and I had always intended the conversation would go this way, but Christina was trapped and she had no alternative because the alternative was unthinkable – homelessness with nowhere to go except possibly into a cramped, dirty hotel bedroom as that was all the local authorities could provide in these days of debt crisis.

“Okay, I’ll try. What do I have to do?” Her voice was faint and trembling.

“You have to remember at all times from now on to call me Sir, or Master, to speak when you are spoken to and at no other times, to do what you are told without question and to remember every instruction I give you. If you can do all that, things will be fine and in a few months time your debt will be all gone. Do you think you can do that, Christina?”

“I can try.”

“Good girl. Okay, we’ll get started and see if you are suitable for what I have in mind. You said earlier that you had once been spanked at school. Describe what happened as best you can, please.”

I sat back on the lumpy sofa as Christina took a final sip of her coffee and remembered the experience from her school days.