by Amanda James
Rip Current
Amanda James
Contents
Also By Amanda James
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2018 Amanda James
The right of Amanda James to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Also By Amanda James
Another Mother
The Calico Cat
Praise for Amanda James
"This is a great read and I would highly recommend it to readers who like a book that turns from a contemporary read into an amazing dark psychological suspense filled read." Yvonne Bastian - Me And My Books
"The book was enjoyable, surprising and comprised of layers of storyline that were weaved together to form an enjoyable read." Susan Corcoran - Booksaremycwtches
"Another Mother is an intense family drama that will get into your head and under your skin." Michelle Ryles - The Book Magnet
"A gripping, slightly chilling, very entertaining read." Nicki Murphy - Nicki's Book Blog
"This story will hit you hard. It will mess with your head towards the end and have your heart racing to find out the outcome, very fast paced." Gemma Myers - Between The Pages Book Club
"This books has some fascinating characters and I loved the writing style – it is a very good psychological thriller." Donna Maguire - Donnas Book Blog
"Readers looking for a page turning, spring time binge read, should add Another Mother to their list of must reads." Christen Moore - Murder And Moore
"I never knew where this suspense filled book would take me and I found it to be quite a thrilling read." Nicola Smith - Short Book And Scribes
"Once the story develops into a suspense the action built up to the thrilling conclusion, which I for one didn’t see coming." Simon Leonard - Black Books Blog
To the memory of my mum and dad, both of whom I lost last summer while I was writing this book. Hope you're having fun Barb and Norm, wherever you are.
1
Anya’s hand trembles so much that the eyeliner becomes a charcoal mess under her lashes. She reaches for a box of tissues next to the dressing table mirror, but then lets her hand fall.
What is the point? The men that come to her room barely look at her face. Three men have been in her room today.
Three men have been inside her today.
Anya had tried to shut down her mind – switch off her senses while they shoved, panted, pawed – their stinking breath on her face, slobbering mouths on her skin. It hadn’t worked. A silent scream filled her head; a spear of shame pierced her heart.
The fingers holding the eyeliner grip so hard that she thinks the plastic will snap. How has she allowed this to happen? She looks at her reflection again and hardly recognises the pale, thin face, haunted grey eyes and the desperation behind them. Marta always tells her she must look her best. Men pay more for pretty women. If she doesn’t try to please them, Jozef will make sure she pays. Marta laughs when she tells her this. Gold teeth in a wide savage mouth assert her status.
‘Jozef has big fists and you have a small face, remember that,’ Marta said last night. She says this most nights, in fact any time Anya even hints at refusing to do her bidding.
As if she needs reminding.
She thinks about the way Marta’s bright blue eyes narrow to ice chips; the way, intoxicated by power, her lips quiver around each word before sending them to Anya’s ears. Little drops of poison — lethal to pride, murderers of hope.
Hope is a very dangerous thing to hold on to. People always say that where there is life, there is hope. Anya used to believe it, at least for the first few weeks. Cruelly used, held against her will. She used to think that somehow she would escape, get back home to the life she once knew. But now, more than six months on, Anya knows hope is a luxury she can’t afford. She has learned this well. Jozef’s fists, days without food, naked and chained in a freezing cellar are all excellent teachers. Anya shakes her head. Survival is better.
Survival is all she has.
In the mirror she watches a ghost of herself brush out her long blonde hair. Anya runs a few strands through her fingers and thinks it has lost its lustre. When she was little, her grandmother used to say that her hair looked like spun gold. Anya’s thoughts leap on the memories of those days like starving dogs. There she is now on her grandparents’ farm; she draws sustenance from the images of where she spent her school holidays. The days of hiding in the whispering cornfield with a good book. The days of endless blue skies and the flattest verdant landscapes, the days before—
‘Anya, you have a gentleman caller in five minutes, be ready!’ Marta’s voice calls up the stairwell.
Inside her head, the screaming starts.
2
I hurry along the rain-soaked street and, as I dodge the puddles in my ridiculously high-heeled shoes and pray that I don’t twist my ankle, I wonder if I am doing the right thing.
They say never go back, don’t they? The past is never exactly as you remember it, is it? Not when you actively seek it out, give it a poke, hold it up to the light. Under such honest scrutiny it’s often flawed, slightly unsavoury, and never measures up to the sparkly warm comforting memories you keep folded in your heart.
I reach the café, but my feet stop four paces from the entrance. Through steamy windows I can see foggy outlines of people sitting at tables, and I hear muted laughter and the clatter of crockery; when the door opens, coffee arabica snakes through the damp air and into my nostrils. I want to go inside but my feet remain unmoving.
Social media is both a blessing and a curse. When I reconnected with Imogen Ransom on Facebook last week it felt like a blessing. Her friend request flooded my memory with laughter-filled summer days that we thought would never end. Nights sharing secrets, hopes, fears, stolen wine and cigarettes under canvas in her back garden. Immi and I had been inseparable. Next-door neighbours and best friends in our teens, until her family had moved to Liverpool, almost a hundred
miles away. I stand at the threshold of our reacquaintance, and, at this moment, I wish I was a hundred miles away too.
Today I worry that accepting the friend request feels more like a curse. I worry that once I am through the door and into her life again, an awkward silence will open up like a yawning abyss across the café table. At the bottom of the abyss will be the snapping jaws of ‘they say never go back’, and I worry that we will have no commonality with which to build a bridge over them. If we do, it won’t last. In seconds the foundations will crumble and we’ll plunge into those jaws. There’s no coming back then, is there?
I worry that, once held to the light, scrutinised and poked, our sunny past will turn overcast, begin to rain, and I’ll have no umbrella.
The door opens again and a young, laughing couple step out onto the wet pavement. They look happy, rosy cheeked, refreshed. How bad can it be in there? I swallow my fears and force my feet another two paces forward but, as I step through the door, the biggest worry of all links arms with me. The biggest worry of all is how I will hide from Immi what I know about her father. Even if we discover our past is still bright and sunny and our future a blessing, if allowed to escape, her father’s secrets will colour everything black, suck the joy from the day, suffocate us in filth and leave us gasping for air.
Inside I slip off my mac, give it a quick shake and a cascade of raindrops spatter the floor. The chatter and laughter un-mutes and suddenly everything seems too loud, bright and intrusive. The room is packed and smells of wet hair, coffee, the grease of sausage rolls and other people’s sweat. A scan of the room – no Imogen. It’s not too late to turn and leave, is it?
This was a bad idea. No good can come of it. Turning for the door, my heel sticks in a broken tile and I grab a chair to steady myself. Why the hell did I wear such stupid shoes? To impress Immi, of course. It was ever thus. My hand grasps the door handle and the grey afternoon rushes at me, cool and fresh against my heated cheeks.
‘Bryony?’
My heart jumps. No. I didn’t hear that. Outside and gone is where I need to be.
‘Bryony! Hey, I’m here!’
So near and yet so far. I dredge a cheerful smile from my emergency reserves and turn round, close the door. There she is. Imogen. She’s doing the big waving thing she always did as if she’s guiding a plane in to land. As if I can’t see her about fifteen feet away. Fifteen feet and almost the same in the years have passed between us, yet she looks mostly unchanged. The big navy eyes in a heart-shaped face and long blonde hair styled to frame it. Dark eyebrows, though. They’re new.
My feet, more confident than my heart, hurry me over to a corner table at the back of the room. ‘Immi! Great to see you!’ I say and mean it. We hug. She steps back, takes me in with a sweeping glance.
Hands on hips, she affects a stern expression, though the twinkle of humour in her eyes gives her away. ‘Considering you were just about to leave, I find that hard to believe.’
‘No, don’t be daft. I couldn’t see you just now … thought I’d got the wrong place. I’m already late.’ My smile is fixed. Only part of that sentence is true.
She nods and grins, but I think she knows it is. ‘I’d just popped to the loo.’ Imogen flaps a hand at the table. ‘Let’s sit down then.’
We sit and smile and say that it’s so good to see each other at least three times each, compliment each other on how we look, and then a silence grows between us. It’s awkward and deep. An abyss. We look across it at each other – stretchy grins on our faces – and I think about my fears again. Never go back. ‘Shall we get coffee?’ I manage.
‘Not before we clear the air.’ Immi folds her arms and sighs. ‘I worried that things might be awkward after so many years, and they are right now. I reckon you’re nervous too, so let’s just bloody stop it and be ourselves. No need to impress each other.’ She looks round the table at my skyscraper heels and raises a dark, perfectly shaped and waxed brow.
I open my mouth to protest but pull a ‘you got me’ face instead. Then we’re laughing. Genuinely laughing. Not forced or polite in public kind of laughter – but the kind of snot-bubbling explosions we did when we were fourteen. I wipe my eyes, get my breath. ‘They were at the back of the wardrobe and thought they might make me look sophisticated. Truth is they hurt like fuck and nearly crippled me. Got the heel stuck in the bloody floor tile.’
Immi’s face creases up again. ‘I’ve got a mental picture of you as a copper running after bad guys in them!’
I laugh and take a shoe off, tap the tip of the heel. ‘I chuck ’em at the back of their heads. They go down like a sack of spuds.’
The abyss is filled. The next half hour flies by carried on the wings of childhood memories and teenage reminiscences. We are still the great friends we were and I can almost forget about her dad and what he stands for. Block him out. Almost. Then the inevitable happens.
‘How’s your folks?’ Immi asks.
There’s just Mum now, and though it’s been two years, I can’t cast the shadow of what happened to Dad over this sunny conversation. I say, ‘Good, thanks, and yours?’ Then I clench my jaw. There he is – Kenny Ransom – right between us on the table. Immi’s mouth twists to the side and I realise she has tears standing. Fuck.
‘Mum died of cancer a year ago. And Dad …’
I imagine she will say that he’s devastated, heartbroken. I know he isn’t though. His heart could never be broken, because he doesn’t have one. What she does say drops my jaw.
‘Dad is a bastard. A real evil bastard.’ Her mouth turns down at the corners as if there’s a bitter taste in her mouth. I think she’s going to cry but she sticks out her chin, wipes her eyes on the back of her hand. ‘The thing is, Bryony, I sent you that friend request for two reasons. Yes, I wanted to see you again, I’ve thought about you loads over the years. But the real reason is that you’re a copper. I know you’re after my shit of a father … and …’ She swallows hard and looks directly into my eyes. ‘And I want to help you get him. Send him down for the rest of his fucking life.’
3
Anya has seen the woman before. Well, she thinks she has – the rain on the kitchen window makes everything hazy. She looks more closely. Yes. Dark short hair, a mac, striking features. She walked past twice this morning. That’s not unusual, is it? The woman could work nearby, or live on the street. But until yesterday she hadn’t seen her before, and now three times. The only pleasure she gets is looking out of the window now and then in-between gentlemen callers. It’s her way of reassuring herself that the outside world really is still there, that she’s not living in some parallel universe, some purgatory.
Anya realises why she finds the woman’s passing by so unusual. The woman glances at the window each time. She glances at the door and the surroundings too. But Anya can tell that she’s really scrutinising, but pretending not to – pretending just to glance as a passer-by would. But why? What is she looking for? Hope surfaces in her heart but Anya drowns it. Even if the woman wanted to help, Anya couldn’t betray her family back home. Her grandparents, her parents and two younger sisters. They would all be under threat if she so much as hinted at being kept here against her will.
Though she would give anything to see Jozef, Marta and their masters pay for what they have done, the price would be far too high. Marta tells her this almost as often as she tells her that Jozef has big fists. ‘Remember that the boss of us is a very powerful man. He has a long reach, Anya, my beauty. A click of his fingers would see the end of your family if you even think of escape.’ Marta’s lips stretch over gold tombstones, a lascivious light in her eyes. ‘And your sister Katya is coming up sixteen, no?’
Marta stomps into the kitchen now and narrows her eyes. ‘Gazing out of the window again? You have a caller in ten minutes. Get your hide upstairs and in the shower, and your make-up on. We have a reputation to keep here and you look like a sack of shit!’
Anya nods and scrapes her chair back from the table. As s
he does, she sees the woman again across the street. She’s getting into a car driven by a pretty blonde woman with dark eyebrows. Hasn’t she seen her before somewhere too? They drive past and both look at her. Not glance, really look. Anya sighs and hurries upstairs.
A few days have passed, though so much has happened it feels like a month since the first meeting with Immi in the café. I still have to pinch myself that, after so many near misses, soon we might actually beat Kenny Ransom at his own game. Three years he’s been criss-crossing our path, but as soon as we get a hold around his neck he wriggles free and off into the undergrowth like a viper. Thanks to Immi we have already located the house where she says a number of Eastern European girls are working as sex slaves and we have a couple of officers surveilling. When I walked past yesterday I could hardly believe such an ordinary house in a respectable area contained so much misery behind its walls. I’ve seen houses like that in more rundown parts of town though – too many times.