The previous week one of the girls had talked of a young Russian woman who had killed herself; trapped in the cycle of the sex trade, no hope of escape, prey to the abuse of violent men every week, she had not been able to take any more.
Since coming to the West, there was nothing that Ju had understood better.
*
Pitt parked some way from the house, so that his car at least would not be photographed by one of the many CCTV cameras in the area. He walked for twenty minutes. He arrived in the vicinity of the house, thinking that he would take a seat in the café down the road and bide his time. He assumed that Chen Yun would operate on a Sunday evening. The lust of men does not rest on the day of the Lord. Neither would Chen’s greed.
Chen Yun was open for business. The café was not.
Pitt drew near to the house, stopped about fifty yards short, and turned back. He looked in a shop window, working out his approach. He assumed there would be some kind of calling card to allow admittance. He hadn’t thought that through, other than thinking he could latch on to another group of men, entering at the same time.
He stood still for several minutes, wondering how he would play it if no men arrived. Perhaps they were all already inside. On the cusp of making a brazen approach, and deciding that he would pretend to be drunk, an Audi passed behind him, slowing as it approached the house.
Pitt immediately began to walk in that direction, quickly at first to ensure he was not late, then more slowly so as not to arrive at the door ahead of them.
There were three of them; middle class white men in suits. They emerged slowly, looking around. New to the game, thought Pitt. By turn, they looked eager and apprehensive. One of them saw Pitt walking towards them; Pitt looked disinterested, stared at the ground. He tripped slightly, deciding that a bit drunk was probably the best way to handle it.
The car drove away. One of them glanced at it as it left, and then followed the other two up to the door. Pitt approached from behind, moving at the right pace. As the door opened, Pitt arrived behind the others. One of them threw him a glance; the other two did not seem to care.
The door had been opened by a woman in her forties. Brash. Short, curly blonde hair, long dark roots, grotesquely fake eyelashes, lipstick too thick, breasts squeezed into a low-cut top like a pair of balloons in a shoebox. Trying to be something she might once have been.
‘You all right, darlin’?’ said one of the men.
‘Jesus Christ, you’re not on the menu, are you, love?’
‘There’s four of you,’ she said sharply. ‘The Waterson party?’
‘Aye.’
They turned and looked at Pitt. Suddenly, thrown into the inevitable awkward moment, Pitt managed to find his true self; gruff self-assurance coupled with general disinterest in everything around him.
‘We added another to the list,’ he said, as if elected spokesman on behalf of the Waterson party. Such was the dull confidence in his voice, even the three actual members of the Waterson party seemed to believe him; or, at least, each individual thought that he was the only one who didn’t know what was going on.
‘If you don’t want the extra business...’ Pitt dead-panned.
She looked unsure, he wondered if she would see through him. However, he could afford to be cool about it as he did not care. If he did not get in this time, he would be back later, or he would wait until they left the house. It might make things more complicated, but he knew where they were and he would not fail.
She gestured into the house with a slight nod, her face curled unpleasantly. Stood at the door while the four men walked past her. She looked only at Pitt.
‘I hope we don’t fucking have to shag that,’ was said in passing, as they walked quickly up the stairs as directed.
She had heard it often enough. She was Mr Chen’s front of house; she did not need to be complimented. She kept the girls in order and the customers happily fed with girls, drugs and alcohol. Most of the time the customers came back and Mr Chen was happy. That was all that mattered.
The walls of the stairs were lined with bland pictures of tropical beaches, set against a backdrop of dull flowered wallpaper. Pitt recognised that, under other circumstances – circumstances where he was coming here to do something other than commit murder – this house would have profoundly depressed him.
There was a small landing at the top of the stairs. A large picture of flowers, a small table against a wall. Another flight of steps led away to the left. It looked even more unkempt and gloomy. There were two doors off the landing.
The four men waited until the woman had come up behind them.
‘My name’s Klimsky,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s not my real name, but we don’t need to go there, gentlemen, do we?’
She smiled with forced flirtation. A couple of the men grimaced in return. If Pitt had allowed himself to think about it, he would have been unable to believe that people were willing to pay for this. Yet he knew that no one really understands the mind of another.
‘If you want anything, just ask. Most of the girls don’t speak English, but you’re not here for conversation.’
She was greeted with one grimace fewer.
‘Come on, love, get on with it,’ muttered one, although without much conviction.
She nodded with some ill grace, opened the door and ushered the men in.
The room was bigger than Pitt had been expecting, and he realised that there must be more than one house with walls knocked through. There were four large double beds, pushed close together, with comfortable seating around the perimeter of the room. Beside the door there was a primitive bar area, from which Klimsky would dispense the drugs and alcohol. There was a door on the other side of the bar, and another at the far end.
Inside the room there were four men and seven women. Only one of the women was currently unemployed.
‘I’ll take your coats and your payment please, gentlemen, before we all get settled.’
Distractedly, keeping their greedy eyes on the erotic fiction in front of them, the three men removed their coats and drew money from their pockets. Pitt did his best, in the dim red light, to see how much money was being handed over, and then followed suit.
He did not hate handing over the money; the money meant nothing to him. Chen Yun would not get to enjoy it.
*
It was all conducted to a soundtrack of the Rolling Stones.
He sat in a corner of the room, his second glass of neat Johnnie Walker in his right hand. In front of him, seven men and seven women were having sex. He was surprised but unmoved by the brutality of it, the animalistic nature of the pack. The fact that men would pay to have sex in this kind of situation. He was detached from it however, a disinterested observer. It did not make him angry that Ju had had to go through this; just determined that she would never have to suffer it again.
In terms of the operation, the only person that Pitt had seen was Klimsky. No security, no other person in charge. Yet he could not believe that, in this atmosphere, there would not be trouble at times. Which meant there must be back-up, and that the small ring that Klimsky wore around her neck was a panic button. He presumed she would have another about her person in case that one was torn off.
He needed to execute his business with as little fuss as possible, drawing as little attention to himself as possible. It would not help Ju, even in the short term, if he freed her from this, but was not there to help her afterwards.
‘There’s a problem?’
She was there, with her sharp, unattractive face. Her eyes were relaxed, but she was pretending. She had been watching him since he’d arrived. It had been twenty-seven minutes. Of the other three who’d arrived with Pitt, two had immediately leapt into the fray, while one had sat back beside Pitt to have a drink and settle himself into the atmosphere.
For a while it had given Pitt some cover, although he had not responded to any of the man’s grubby conversation, and eventually he had settled down into his own
lust. Now he remained sitting a few feet from Pitt, his trousers at his ankles, while a Thai girl knelt on her knees before him.
He shook his head.
‘You’ve not been here before,’ she said. ‘How did you find out about us?’
‘I’m with the Waterson party,’ he said roughly, aware that the line had already run out of mileage. ‘You don’t want my business, give me my money back and I’ll leave.’
The smile, as false as the eyelashes, came with the shake of the head.
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said bluntly. ‘As long as everything’s all right. You know where the girls are when you want them.’
She gave him another glance and turned away. She saw through him and he recognised this. He lifted his glass. The alcohol tasted bitter.
He was unlikely to have to make a scene; the scene was going to be created for him. It was time to do something positive.
He watched her go, past the heaving concupiscent flesh, to the door on the other side of the room. There was a keypad on the wall into which she punched four numbers, and then she was through with the door closed behind her.
He placed the whisky glass on the table. As he rose to his feet, he caught the eye of the Thai girl on her knees a couple of feet away. The look in his eyes was dead; she read it as disgust and returned to her work.
Pitt walked through the room, eyes straight ahead, waiting for the door to open. Had to get his timing right. He did not look at the Slovak woman, being penetrated by three men at the same time, or at the Asian girl crying out silently in pain as she was taken brutally from behind.
Pitt did not try the door, did not try to guess the combination. He stood beside it, staring at it, his back turned to the humiliation that was taking place behind him. His brain had shut down completely. No nerves, no doubts, no uncertainty. He was doing something that had to be done, and no further thought was required.
He stood absolutely still, hands by his side. No one else in the room paid him any attention. They might have, had they known that his actions were about to bring an end to Chen Yun’s evening sex club. In all likelihood, however, Chen Yun’s sex club would be replaced by someone else’s sex club. That was of no concern to Pitt.
When the door opened half a minute later he was ready. He had never hit anyone in his life; he had never before involved himself in anything that could remotely be described as action. Yet, he was ready.
The pale, white hand pushed the door forward and Pitt immediately stepped through. Klimsky stepped back, a look of angry surprise on her face. The corridor was short and dimly lit; bare walls. There was a young Chinese man a few steps behind her, clutching a metal bar in his right hand.
Pitt let the door close behind him as he stepped through. The Rolling Stones disappeared. With another step forward Pitt landed a brutal scything punch to Klimsky’s throat. She fell back, her head banging loudly against the wall.
After the moaning and the crying out, and the grunting and the soundtrack of the Stones, there was sudden quiet but for Klimsky’s gasping as she lay on the floor, clutching her throat, looking hatefully up at Pitt. A moment while Pitt and the hired hand sized each other up. Neither of them was agitated; both had a job to do.
Somehow, though, Pitt was colder, calmer, more detached.
His opponent moved forward, making sure not to step on Klimsky’s sprawling legs. He lifted the metal bar and swung. Pitt, as if he had been training for this moment for years, waited until the last second, until the arc of the bar was set. Then he ducked out of the way, the bar swinging narrowly past his head.
The bar thudded into the wall. Pitt jabbed up under the arm with his right fist, bringing his left down on the wrist holding the bar.
A flurry of fists and attempted head butts; Pitt was unbreakable. Another blow to the throat from Pitt, weaker, but strong enough to give him the edge for a second; he took control of the bar, and brought it up into his opponent’s face, jabbing him in the eye. He fell back and suddenly Pitt was in the ascendancy.
Metal bar to the stomach and then a crushing blow brought down on the man’s head.
He lay on the ground. Out cold or dead. Pitt did not know. He paused over him for a second to make sure that he would not be getting up in the next couple of minutes, and then walked to the end of the corridor.
He found Chen Yun in a small dark office, sitting behind a desk, on the phone. When Chen Yun saw Pitt, he knew there was trouble.
33
For the second night in a row, Pitt did not sleep at all, although, on this evening, he did at least spend several hours lying in bed, Daisy next to him, wrapped in her familiar silence.
Pitt arrived home from Bristol at some time after ten in the evening. He had taken spare clothes, in case he had to change out of blood-stained, incriminating evidence. In the end there hadn’t been much blood, and he’d only had to change his shirt. The soiled one he would dispose of later. Others might also have had cause to want to so easily dispose of the images in their head. For Pitt, it did not matter.
When he returned, Daisy and Mrs Cromwell were watching television. He walked along the corridor behind them and went straight upstairs, had a shower and got into bed. When Daisy came up, he lay with his eyes closed and did not speak to her. It would have been too much to say that he pretended to be asleep, as Daisy was well aware that he was awake, as much as he was aware that she understood that he didn’t want to talk to her.
At some point she fell asleep, and he lay on his back, watching the dark of night gradually lighten, wondering what he was going to do with Ju, and how quickly he would be required to do it.
He got out of bed at 4:30 and went downstairs. Ju was not yet there. He made a cup of coffee, then sat at the table, staring straight ahead, unseeing, at the wall. Thinking about the cook. She could not stay here, with Mrs Cromwell vigilant and determined.
The door opened behind him. Pitt had not moved for over ten minutes, the coffee cooling before him. He glanced up at the clock and turned in the same movement.
Ju paused in the doorway. For once she looked Pitt in the eye. She had no idea what was returned in his look; face impassive, eyes as cold as they always were.
Her gaze dropped. She did not dare hope that Pitt was feeling the same things as she had been. A day and night of no sleep with an overactive mind had not allowed her to understand why he could still be interested in her. Now that he knew her secret. Yet, he had come for her and brought her back to his home.
Pitt glanced again at the clock. It was still very early for a Monday morning, but one could never tell when Daisy or Mrs Cromwell would first appear, wraithlike in the kitchen, dragging a cold wind in their wake. He did not have long.
Ju looked up as he moved towards her, caught another glimpse into his eyes, thought perhaps that she saw a light that was not normally there. He stopped in front of her, surprising her. Ju stared at his feet.
Pitt waited for her to look up, to look into those eyes from twelve inches away; to stand this close, to smell her and feel her, to engage her finally after all these weeks. To tell her that she had to leave. To tell her that she no longer had to worry about Chen Yun.
No words came. Pitt felt strangled. It was barely five in the morning, but the farmhouse woke early in the summer. He felt the ticking, an encroachment at his back, forcing him forward.
He walked to the door that led through to the house, gripped by an unusual sense of purpose. Once more, he had the feeling that, if interrupted by Daisy, the guilt would be draped on him like a cobweb.
He stood at the door, holding it open, waiting for Ju to look up. She turned, concerned, wondering what was happening. Pitt, so full of compassion and love for her, looked stern and unforgiving. Nothing of what he felt showed through, and Ju wondered if at last he had come to his senses. At last he had realised the kind of person he had in his midst.
The door was open, the implication at last obvious. She was to follow him. Head still bowed, she moved towards the door, then Pi
tt moved as she fell in behind him.
They walked along the short corridor that led behind the sitting rooms and dining room. A light carpet when Pitt would have preferred the old creaking wood. Grateful, for once, for something that Daisy had done around the house. He came to the door to Ju’s bedroom and stopped. He glanced at her as she came up behind him, embarrassed by his own clumsiness.
He opened the door to her bedroom and stood back. A guard, while she collected her few things. Ju did not immediately understand, and stood on the other side of the door from Pitt wondering what was happening. Finally it occurred to her. She had heard of men in China who had been found guilty of some disciplinary measure at their place of work. They would not be given notice, they would not be asked to leave at the end of the day; they would be marched to their work station, ordered to collect their things, and then escorted from the premises. Often, much worse followed.
Ju was being asked to leave, and she felt the immediate shame of it.
She walked quickly into the room. She did not have many things to collect. She must not cry.
She packed quickly, yet still neatly, her clothes folded into a bag, her few personal items placed on top. The book her grandmother had given her. The photograph of her mother and father. The simple bracelet that she’d had since she was a child.
They had not been allowed to carry much on the journey. Anything of value would have been taken from them.
She was packed and ready to leave the farmhouse in less than a minute. She lifted her coat, and then stood at the entrance to her room, a couple of feet from Pitt, her head bowed. He did not speak, and Ju, not really knowing what to do, walked past him and through to the kitchen.
Pitt glanced into her room, made sure that she had taken everything. A cursory check, having not previously looked in the room since Ju had arrived, then he followed her through to the kitchen. Glanced quickly up at the clock again, then to the back door and straight outside. He held it open for her, and Ju followed him, her head still bowed in shame. She thought that she would not look at him again.
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