by Amanda James
‘You’re a good lad, Nate. When you gonna get a girl and settle down, eh? You’re nearly thirty-one. That job’s no good for you. Look what it did to your dad.’
Mum says the same thing every time he comes round. It’s as if someone has pressed a ‘play’ button in her head and out comes the rehearsed script, word perfect. She says it while keeping her eyes focused on the screen, though Nathan wonders if she’s actually taking anything in at all.
‘Time enough for that, Mum. It will happen, but I’m just a bit busy at the moment.’ His mum smiles distractedly and so, his part of the script complete, Nathan leaves her to her TV.
Outside in the car a message waits on his phone. Mr Haliday is concerned about his delivery. I don’t want to have to message you again. KR.
Nathan sighs and writes back, I’m on it. Sorry it’s late, Mr Ransom. Swinging the car away from the kerb Nathan feels anything but sorry. He feels humiliation, anger and oppression. One day he’ll get out. He has to.
5
DCI Mark Bradley looks in no mood for a chat about how to extend surveillance on the house where the girls are being held. I get a cursory glance and then I’m looking at the top of his shiny bald head as he works furiously at some forms piled on his desk. I know from a colleague that he’s had a nagging toothache for a week and the dentist is having trouble extracting. Something about the root. He’s waiting for an appointment with a dental surgeon and medicated up to the eyeballs. Even when he’s okay he’s a bit of a spiky character, though he’s one of the good guys. Mark really cares about his job and the people he serves.
I clear my throat and try again. ‘Sir, I was wondering if we could get a bit more time on the house on Westmorland Street.’
A grunt. ‘I looked at what you showed me the other day and sadly there’s not enough to go on, as well you know. Not enough to justify the expense of having a couple of plain-clothes sitting there another few days. They’ve seen comings and goings – young men, older men – seen young women inside passing the windows, but not much else. Certainly not Kenny Ransom. My feeling is just to send a couple of officers round, see how many of the girls are illegal, probably all of them in my experience, and then deport them home. Best all round,’ he mutters without looking up from his work.
‘Yes, sir,’ I say and turn to leave. At the door, I do my Columbo impression. ‘It would be a shame to let Ransom go again though … especially as his daughter says she might have something concrete we could use.’
This makes him glance up, a frown furrowing his brow. The sun angling through the window across his face, and the toothache, make him look all of his fifty-two years – and more. He reminds me a bit of James Nesbitt before the hair transplant. ‘What kind of concrete?’
‘She didn’t say.’
Mark’s frown gets even deeper. ‘Hope there’s going to be no fallout from this for you.’ He picks up his pen and looks at it. ‘You know, with you being old friends and all.’
‘Sir?’ I raise an eyebrow.
‘Nothing that could compromise your position, your job.’ He puts the pen down and fixes me with those miss-nothing hazel eyes.
I feign shock. ‘Oh no. If there’s anything underhand on her part I’ll make sure she knows about it, sir.’ I leave the room before he has a chance to say anything else.
From the window, Anya sees the blonde-haired woman walking up the street. She was the one who was driving the car the dark-haired woman got into the other day. She has a Bible in her hands and she’s trying very hard not to look like she did before. Her hair is mostly hidden under a woolly hat; she has tinted glasses on but no make-up. Though the weather is fine she’s wearing a long dark green mac. Anya knows she’s the blonde woman she saw before, though, because she has a very good eye for faces. Faces are like TV to her nowadays. She’s not allowed to watch TV here but she’s allowed magazines. Though the ones she has are out of date and hard to read; her English is far from perfect.
There are at least three other girls in the house but they are confined to their rooms and have different sittings at meal times. They are not allowed to talk to each other. In six months, Liliana is the only girl she’s shared a few snatched words with when they passed on the stairs. They were forbidden to interact after that, and they were instructed to look at the floor in future when they met. Even though she’d dearly love to speak to the others, punishment in the damp, cold cellar is too high a price to pay.
Anya’s heart goes into overdrive when the woman crosses the road and walks up the path to the house. She looks right at Anya, puts a finger to her lips and shakes her head slightly. Then she points to the window and motions for Anya to open it. Anya shakes her head: no. It would be more than the cellar if she did. The woman mouths ‘please’ and gestures to the window again. Anya whips her head round and cocks an ear towards the rest of the house. Marta is clattering around upstairs chuntering something to one of the girls, and Jozef is nowhere to be seen or heard. She turns back to the woman and finds her right next to the pane, a pleading look in her big blue eyes. Though Anya’s heart aches to open the window, fear locks her hand to her side.
Now the woman presses a sheet of paper to the window. On it, written in big letters, are the words: ‘I AM HERE TO HELP YOU!’ Then she holds up an envelope in her other hand.
Anya slowly shakes her head. But something in the woman’s face makes her open the window and snatch the envelope before she has time to talk herself out of it. She stuffs it down her trousers. The woman gives her a relieved smile and hurries back down the path just as Marta stomps in, all gold teeth and in full yelling mode. ‘Aren’t you ready yet? You have fifteen minutes to make yourself look like you’re worth charging a hundred pounds for. These days it’s gonna take you at least an hour!’ Marta sneers and cuffs Anya round the head. Anya runs upstairs, but this time her footsteps feel a little bit lighter.
It’s almost midnight, the last man has left, and Anya starts her ritual of scrubbing under a scalding shower. Tonight hasn’t seemed as bad, because she has managed to almost block out what the men were doing to her by picturing the envelope in her mind’s eye. The envelope that might have hope folded inside somehow. She knows that hope is a dangerous concept but she can’t help herself. She didn’t manage to open it before the first man came because she was late getting ready. But as soon as she gets inside her bedroom, she’ll at last be able to see what’s inside.
Not wishing to alert Marta by having a light under her door, Anya stands by the window and slips trembling fingers under the flap of the envelope. By the light of the full moon and a street lamp, she reads the first line of the letter and then fear clamps her heart so forcefully that she shoves the paper back inside the envelope. The envelope seems to grow hotter in her hands, as if it contains some lethal poison, and she throws it to the floor before it can seep into the skin of her fingers. Anya takes some deep breaths and allows her rational mind out of the cupboard that fear has locked it in. It’s to be expected. Of course she will feel like this after keeping hope buried for so long. Just read the letter and then see. You don’t have to act on any of what it might say.
Once more she teases the letter from the envelope and reads:
I am here to help you escape. You and any other poor girl trapped in this house. We know what is happening to you. I have friends that can help and with just a little information from you we’ll be able to put the man in charge in prison where he belongs. I know you are afraid perhaps for your family back home, and certainly for yourself. Just a few details from you and it will all be over. You will be free.
Anya stops reading. It has taken her a long time to understand the letter; she has to spell out and whisper each word to help make sense of them. Her heart is thumping and she feels light-headed. The last four words seem to grow and shine, burning themselves into her brain. But can she believe it? And what information can she give? She goes back to the letter.
All I need is the names of the people that keep you in the house
. Don’t worry if you don’t know their last names, just the first will do. Write them down on the back of this letter and then screw it up and throw it out of the window into the yard by the bins. I will be there tomorrow at midday. You should be able to throw it from the bathroom window. I have studied your house and know that you can do this. Make sure it is midday, not earlier or later, as I need to get the letter very quickly before anyone sees me.
You can do it. Good luck. I will be waiting and in a few days you will be out.
Anya shakes her head and screws up the letter. How foolish, to allow hope to beat in her chest. This is too dangerous. What would happen if Jozef walked outside to have a cigarette just as she threw the letter? That would be the end of it. If she was with a client, she’d have to make some excuse to use the toilet, which could be awkward. Some were more cruel than kind. And what would be the point of the woman knowing Josef and Marta’s names? They are not the ones in control. It makes little sense to Anya. No. She won’t do it. Can’t. Dare not.
Anya goes to the bathroom and prepares to flush the paper down the toilet. She steels herself to do it three times but finds that instead she’s smoothed it out and placed it under her mattress. Anya sighs and wishes she could make the right decision. In the end she decides that literally sleeping on it might be the best thing to do.
6
The full moon shines its light through a crack in my curtains. It’s as if it is doing it on purpose – let’s keep Bryony awake, make her tired and even grumpier than normal in the morning. I slip out of bed and peer through the crack. There’s a silver sheen across the water and the moon’s caught in the branches of the tallest tree against the skyline. I open the window, ignoring the chill. It’s almost as bright as day and even though the city is not too far away, stars add their light to the moon’s one-upmanship, encouraging it to go one better.
I inhale the crisp 2am air, and a washing machine full of thoughts that’s been on fast spin in my head for hours now comes to a stop. Calm enters my body with each breath, and I realise how lucky I am. Okay, even though I have a boss who’s ready to pull the plug on the case, an old friend who’s up to no good to try and solve it – though she assures me she’s not – and I have no bloody clue on how to sort out either problem, in the end it doesn’t matter. I’m sure the poor broken girl we saw at the window on Westmorland Street would love to have those kinds of problems. I shudder to think what her life is like. A few images come into my head; I shut the window, and go to the kitchen to make a cup of tea to block them out.
The tea drinking exercise hasn’t helped too much. Mostly I have been thinking about leaving the police. Was I ever really cut out for it? Did I just join to impress Dad? It’s hard to decide, when my earliest memory is sitting on Dad’s shoulders with his helmet on, or rather over my face as it was way too big. Yes, he encouraged me, but I’ve always had a strong sense of justice, of doing the right thing. But what if doing the right thing is actually the wrong thing in the eyes of the law? What if Immi is planning to do something that would compromise my position? Would that actually matter if it led to a conviction of her vile father? If it stopped him hurting any more poor girls?
‘Blind eye turning, love.’ Dad sometimes used to say that and tap the side of his nose when I questioned something dodgy he’d told me about, or he’d done. It was always dodgy in terms of helping others, when technically he should have reported it. Is there such a thing as a bent copper, but bent in a good way? If so, then perhaps I’m not alone.
In the bedroom again I tug the curtains shut and flop down into my bed. Three hours before I’m up and on the job. I pull a pillow over my face and groan. Then Immi’s hopeful face surfaces and I push her away. I must sleep. I throw the pillow at the wall and close my eyes. If Immi can get something on Kenny Ransom that involves blind eye turning, then let her. If it was good enough for Dad, it’s good enough for me.
Great Uncle Cibor would turn in his grave if he could see Anya cowering from the fight. Did he cower from the Nazis when they rolled into Poland? No. Even though it seemed hopeless, he joined the resistance and fought back whenever he could. He picked off one or two of the bastards from his sniper position on the rooftops of Warsaw. Okay, it was one or two, hardly a game changer – but at least they then had one or two less than they had before. Anya remembers how his eyes would shine with pride when, as an old man, he told her of his antics.
The kitchen clock says 11.45. She has fifteen minutes to decide. Anya bites the skin at the edge of her thumbnail and feels her heart stepping up the pace. Maybe she isn’t as brave as Great Uncle Cibor. And besides, his actions wouldn’t have involved his whole family’s safety if they went wrong. If she failed in her mission … various scenarios present themselves and Anya shuts them down. Nausea squeezes the edges of her stomach.
The clock says 11.55 and she decides that what she’s been asked to do is too dangerous and she won’t do it. Then Great Uncle Cibor’s voice whispers in her mind that of course it is dangerous. Furthermore, that his family would have been in danger if he’d been caught, but sometimes you have to make a stand. Marta harrumphs from the door. ‘If I have to nag you once more this week about getting ready for a gentleman caller, I will tell Jozef to cellar you. You have half an hour.’
Anya nods and hurries upstairs. Marta was quietly spoken just then. When she’s not shouting, Anya knows that she means exactly what she says. In the bathroom she brushes her teeth and looks at her face in the mirror. Her eyes are wide, frightened. Can she see a ghost of Great Uncle Cibor behind them? He must have been scared but he didn’t give in. Suddenly her hand is pushing open the bathroom window, pulling a ball of paper from her bra, shaking as she prepares to throw. In the yard she sees a shadow by the back gate behind the bins. A woman’s shadow. She imagines that the paper is a sniper’s rifle; she takes aim, fires.
Anya covers her mouth with her hand to stifle the scream that waits in her throat. She has done it. She has been brave.
But nothing happens.
Nobody comes.
Marta calls her name through the door. Says people are waiting to use the bathroom. Without taking her eyes from the ball of paper by the bin, Anya says she’s almost ready, in a voice as normal as she can make it given that every fibre of her being is trembling with the enormity of what she’s just done. Then the woman runs into the yard, snatches the paper and runs back out. It happens so fast that Anya isn’t sure it happened at all. Perhaps it is all in her head. The empty space on the concrete where the paper used to be tells her otherwise. Gradually she allows her breathing to return to normal and a small triumphant smile to flit across her mouth. Anya thinks that, somewhere, Great Uncle Cibor is smiling too.
Imogen doesn’t stop running until she reaches the park. There’s nobody following her, she’s kept checking carefully, but she wants as far away from that house as possible. It gives her the creeps – all proud, grand and Victorian on the outside, hiding misery, squalor and shame on the inside. Apart from the Victorian bit, the similarity to her father isn’t lost on her. The two officers were still outside today, but she knows she must act fast. They won’t be here tomorrow, or even by this evening. In her opinion they were a bit useless anyway. When she’d gone in disguise the other day and given the girl the letter they’d hardly noticed. Okay, granted, they couldn’t have seen what she did because of the hedge at the end of the path, but they must have seen her walk up it. They certainly didn’t bother themselves to get out of the car and ask her anything. Just assumed she was spreading God’s Word.
A park bench on the horizon seems a good place to rest and catch her breath, see what the girl has written. The paper has been scrunched so tightly her own writing is barely legible and Imogen thinks the paper has been unwrapped and scrunched more than once. On the back, in what looks like eyeliner, are the names Jozef and Marta. At last there’s a name for the Hansel and Gretel witch. Marta. Imogen can’t wait for her demise. It’s bad enough that men do this to young wome
n, but other women do it too? Makes her skin crawl. A roll of panic in her belly brings with it a barrage of disquiet about her plan. What if it all falls flat? What if her father doesn’t take the bait? It will all have been for nothing and she will have let the girl down. The other girls too. He has to fall for it. But first she must make Bryony listen. Make her agree to do what she asks without question.
‘I don’t know one hundred per cent, but this is our one chance.’
Immi’s voice is shaking on the line and I think she might be close to tears. I can’t help but snap at her though. ‘Oh right. I’ll tell that to DCI Bradley, he’ll be so pleased.’
‘You have to make him listen, but if he won’t, you’ll have to authorise it. We need at least three of those tough officer types with the battering ram things to break down doors. My dad has never been any good with the threat of violence. Mind you, they might not need to break it down. Those plainclothes officers could go up and knock on the door. The others could be there for reinforcement. One or two need to go round the back in case he tries to leg it.’
My mouth drops open. ‘This gets better and better. Sure you don’t want to oversee operations? Have you any idea what would happen if I went above my boss’s head?’ I realise my voice is raised and look through the glass panel in my office to check that nobody heard. All heads are focused on work, but I close the blinds, nevertheless.
‘We can’t think about that now. We need to get my father arrested and free those women. Don’t forget to remain unseen until he’s gone. No point in being a red rag to his bull. Make sure you interview Marta and Jozef. Do the divide and rule thing – promise them leniency if they’ll testify against my father.’
Who the hell does she think she is? Telling me what to do, and that I shouldn’t worry about my job! The fact that I would run the operation exactly as she’s outlining is neither here nor there. I take a deep breath and count to ten, interrupt when she’s off on another tack.