Landslide

by David Menon

  ‘I thought you had God to do that?’

  ‘He isn’t listening’.

  ‘Or perhaps he is but he thinks you’re talking a load of crap’.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well have you ever thought that you’ve spent all this long praying to be different and yet you still get temptation thrown at you? Have you ever thought why that was? Have you ever thought that God created you that way and that the human condition is much more complicated for some of us than just a man being with a woman? There’s nothing impure about it, Tim. It’s only made complicated and wrong by the conventions we’re all brought up with. It isn’t you who’s wrong, Tim. It’s all those people who would tell you that you are’.

  ‘Like the church’.

  ‘Yes. And by the way, has your daughter come back from the religious retreat you sent her on?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, she has’.

  ‘And she’s okay?’

  ‘She seems to be, yeah’ said Tim. ‘But look, can we get back to why I’m here?

  They started to kiss and Adrian was really starting to get off on the taste of Tim. He had a sensuality that was rare because he rarely shared it with other men.

  ‘Was that more of what you had in mind?’ asked Adrian.

  ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since we kissed the other night’ Tim admitted. ‘Show me. Show me everything I need to feel better about myself’.

  Adrian stood up and took all his clothes off. Then he slipped under the duvet with Tim and showed him what a great night two men could have together.

  ‘

  LANDSLIDE EIGHT

  Barton was glad of his good night’s sleep when he walked into work the next morning and a call came through that made everyone wake up and pay right royal attention. It was from a little girl who said she knew who the girl was who’d been found in the boot of the car and she wanted to speak to the policeman who’d been on TV. Louisa the civilian support administrator had taken the call and Barton signalled that she should stay with it. It would probably be easier for her to speak to a woman. He looked at DS Bradshaw who confirmed with a thumbs up that he was putting the call on trace. Louisa brought the phone handset into the middle of the conference room and switched on the loud speaker. The rest of the team gathered round.

  ‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ asked Louisa.

  ‘It’s Manal’ said the pitifully low voice down the line.

  ‘Okay Manal, well my name is Louisa and I work with the policeman you saw on TV’.

  ‘Okay’.

  ‘So where are you, Manal?’

  ‘In the room where I’ve always been since I got here’.

  ‘And do you know where that is, Manal?’

  ‘No’.

  ‘Okay’ said Louisa. ‘Well can you describe the room to me, Manal?

  ‘I have a bed’.

  ‘You have a bed? That’s good. Do you have any food, Manal?’

  ‘The women bring it’.

  ‘Who are the women, Manal?’

  ‘I don’t know’.

  ‘How old are you, Manal?’

  ‘I am thirteen’.

  ‘And where are you from, Manal?’

  ‘I am from the Sudan’.

  ‘Okay. And how did you get here?’

  ‘There was a war in my country. My mother was killed. My father escaped and made it to Sweden. He was given asylum there. Then he sent for me and my sister. He paid people to take us to him in Sweden. But they didn’t take us there. They brought us here. They told us we had to do as we were told. They put something inside us that caused us pain and made us bleed. Then my sister had to go all the time without me and she wouldn’t talk about it when she came back but she was hurt. Whilst she was gone they made me lie down with different men. It hurt us. It really hurt us’.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from everyone listening. This poor little girl was being so brave against the background of all the horrors she must’ve experienced. She was clearly all alone wherever she was but in terms of helping her she might as well be at the other end of the universe. They had to try and work out where exactly she was. She must be frightened out of her wits. DS Bradshaw was still trying to trace where the call was coming from but it wasn’t there yet. There could be all kinds of reasons for that given the complexities of modern communications and the increasingly brazen way that the criminal world keeps on devising to get around them. Barton gave Louisa a nod. She was handling it all very well and was asking questions with all the instincts of a police officer. She couldn’t be doing any better. But Barton considered that the monsters holding this little girl must be fairly organised given that some kind of evil trade was going on that had clearly yet to be detected. And that made them even more dangerous.

  ‘Manal? Sweetheart, was the girl who was found in the boot of the car your sister?’

  ‘Yes’ Manal revealed tearfully. ‘She was Ahok. She was two years older than me. She tried to run away and take me with her. She wouldn’t have left me behind. But that’s why a man came in and cut off her feet. She was in such a lot of pain. We didn’t know what to do. Then another man came into our room one night and started beating her to stop her crying. But then she was quiet and was no more. She’d left me. He took her away. I am alone now’.

  They could all hear Manal crying her little heart out. It was hard to listen to.

  ‘Manal, I’m so sorry, darling. Tell me who this special man is?’

  ‘The leader of the men’ she answered tearfully.

  ‘And do you know his name, Manal?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry’.

  ‘That’s all right, sweetheart. You don’t need to be sorry’.

  ‘Can you help me?’ she pleaded.

  ‘We’re going to do our best darling but can you tell me whose phone this is you’re using?’

  ‘I found it. The men were here yesterday and I found it after they’d gone. It must belong to one of them. I’m locked inside this room but sometimes they bring me TV. That’s when I saw the policeman talking about Ahok and the number to call on the screen. They don’t know I’ve seen it. I remembered the number and I didn’t know any other number to call. I need you to help me, please’

  Barton was getting mightily frustrated. Where was the trace on the call? Why was it taking so fucking long? DS Bradshaw read the look on his boss’s face and looked back appealingly at him. He was doing his best to nail it down but it was proving to be so fucking elusive. He didn’t think he had to second guess as to what the men she was talking about had been doing to her, the filthy, fucking bastards. He’d hang them himself in an ideal world.

  Now Manal had said that they’d taken her sister away straight after they’d killed her. The anonymous phone call told them that the car used by Gary Makin and Terry Matthews had been parked in Rosebud Street, Stockport all the previous night. Could it be that the two things were linked? Did they take the girl’s body straight out to the car from a house on that street? It didn’t answer the question about where they were taking the body to, presumably dump it but if they could prove this sequence of events then they could be getting somewhere. He scribbled on a pad ‘ask her if she’s heard about Rosebud Street’ and passed it in front of Louisa.

  ‘Let’s stay talking, sweetheart’ said Louisa. ‘

  ‘But I’m tired’.

  ‘I know, sweetheart, but tell me, when the terrible thing happened to your sister, did they take her away from you straight away?’

  ‘Yes’ said Manal who was still crying. ‘I miss her. I miss my mother. I miss my father. I am alone. Why is life like this for me?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be, sweetheart, it can be better’ said Louisa although she didn’t have much faith in what she was saying. How could she? She had no idea how she was going to deliver on what she was promising. ‘Manal, have you heard of Rosebud Street?’

  ‘No’.

  ‘Think about it, darling. Have you heard anybody talking about Rosebud Street?’<
br />
  ‘No!’

  ‘Okay, Manal, I wasn’t doubting you. I just wanted to make sure’.

  ‘I don’t believe you’ cried Manal.

  ‘Okay, Manal, now I understand why you’re upset, believe me sweetheart I do. But can you tell me anything more about where you are?’

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you’ she cried. ‘It’s a house’.

  ‘Is there a window in your room, Manal?’

  ‘It is blocked. I can’t see out of it. It was dark when they brought me here. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what else to say’.

  ‘Manal, it’s okay, sweetheart’.

  ‘But I thought you could help me’.

  ‘We’re trying, Manal, but look, why don’t you tell me more about your life in the Sudan?’

  ‘It was war. We were Christians and the Muslim nation of the north wanted us out. There were bombs and bullets and guns. That’s how my mother died’.

  Louisa didn’t know how to respond to those last words that Manal spoke. She was lost. The atmosphere in the room was growing increasingly tense and everyone had started to sweat. Barton was growing restless. This investigation was knocking up the ugly head of unpleasant surprises like a river rushing to the sea. His heart was breaking listening to this bright, intelligent little girl’s testimony of such a deeply tragic life.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Manal’ said Louisa.

  ‘You can’t help me’ Manal sobbed.

  ‘We can but we need you to stay on the line and keep talking to us, sweetheart. You can do that, can’t you?’

  ‘I can hear them coming up the stairs’.

  She was terrified.

  The last thing Barton and his team heard was the sound of a door opening and footsteps making them realise there was more than one of them.

  Then Manal gave out the most piercing scream.

  And then the line went dead.

  For a moment or two the silence in the room was deafening them all. Then DS Adrian Bradshaw pierced the stillness with an announcement that had probably come a little too late.

  ‘I’ve got a trace, sir. I’ve got the number of the phone Manal was calling from and I’ve got the name and address of the person to whom that phone is registered. And guess where he lives? Rosebud Street in Stockport’.

  LANDSLIDE NINE

  ‘It makes you wonder our kid’ said DC Joe Alexander as he drove out of the station with DS Adrian Bradshaw in the passenger seat.

  ‘What does?’ asked Adrian reluctantly. He really wasn’t in the mood for one of Joe’s rants. He couldn’t get little Manal’s terror filled voice out of his head. He tried to imagine how he would feel if he was her father. That poor man had run from his war-torn country to another one far away after his wife had been killed. Who knows why he hadn’t taken his two daughters with him but Adrian wasn’t going to judge him on that. He’d been in the middle of a civil war and who knows what kind of pressures he’d been facing at that precise time. It really didn’t bear thinking about. It was a situation he hoped he’d never have to face. But then why would he? He lived in a country where civil wars only existed in the text books of history.

  ‘Well ... when the IRA exploded that bomb in 1996 it was supposed by popular wisdom to have made Manchester turn a corner’.

  ‘Where the fuck is this leading, Joe?’

  ‘Stay with me and I’ll get there’ said Joe. ‘People say it gave the city the kick up the development arse it needed and that it shook us out of our complacency to face up to the real world as it was emerging and find out place in it. We’re not the poor relation to London anymore. We can do anything they can do and better. We’re standing tall and proud with all those other European cities like Barcelona, Milan, Berlin and whatnot. We can do it independently from London. We’ve found out own place in the big wide world’.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I read articles telling me all that every week in the evening news’ said Adrian, wearily. ‘Now can we put some music on? Anything but your home spun philosophy’.

  ‘No, just hear me out, mate’ said Joe.

  ‘Well what are you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m trying to say that with all the joy that comes from all the good things that have happened in this city in the last twenty-odd years, and I celebrate all of it believe me, but with it all comes what we’re having to deal with today. When we opened the door to the world we opened it to all the advantages but with that came the kind of criminal underworld that our parents generation would never have dreamed about’.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it makes you wonder if it was all worth it’.

  ‘If what was all worth it?’

  ‘Jesus, have you taken more than your usual dose of dense pills today?’

  ‘Well I’m sorry but my mind is rather taken by the voice of a little girl who needs us to rescue her from the most despicable of human beings’.

  ‘Yeah, and why do you think I’m breaking all the speed limits and driving like evil fucking knevil? I want to get to that little girl too. I’m just also looking at the wider picture’.

  ‘Okay, so tell me about the wider picture’.

  ‘Well it just makes you wonder if these ever more heinous levels of crime that we’re having to deal with are worth the internationalisation of our city because it seems to me that one comes with the other’.

  ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit ... well, simplistic?’

  ‘But it’s simplicity that communities all round the western world are crying out for’ Joe countered. ‘The simplicity to just stop immigration if it feels the country is full up. The simplicity to make our own laws instead of being dictated to by someone else’s unelected bureaucrats. The simplicity to be able to celebrate our English values without being accused of racism’.

  ‘Look all of that sounds very seductive Joe but I really don’t think it can work in the real world’.

  ‘America elected Donald Trump on the basis of that kind of simplicity’.

  ‘Yeah, and he’s already finding that the world is a lot more complex to deal with than he and his supporters would like. Just like those who voted to leave the EU. Do you really think that all the money we’re supposed to be saving by not sending it to Brussels really will be spent on the NHS? It was all populist bullshit and the masses bought it even if their jobs depended on our trade with the EU. I cannot for the life of me understand why someone voted to leave the EU if their job depended on it but there you go. Now this country doesn’t know where the fuck it is except in some kind of alliance with the most divisive and pig ignorant President in US history. Well that’s a great victory for simplicity, Joe’.

  ‘Have you got an off switch?’

  ‘Well you brought it up my friend and you wouldn’t be asking that if I agreed with you’.

  ‘You’re my liberal conscience, Adrian’.

  ‘Your conscience? I’d have to find it first and that wouldn’t be easy’.

  ‘Point taken’ said Joe who nevertheless liked to spar with his mate Adrian even when they did disagree which was more often than not. ‘Look, my blood ran just as cold as everybody else when we heard that little girl scream. It doesn’t bear thinking about what might be happening to her now’.

  ‘You’d just rather it was happening in some faraway country than on our patch’.

  ‘Now who’s being simplistic’.

  ‘But that’s what you were basically saying’ said Adrian. ‘It’s like my uncle who thinks the Berlin wall should never have come down because at least we knew who our enemy was in the good old days of the Soviet Union. Never mind how miserable the lives were for millions of people living behind the iron curtain as long as my uncle George in his nice detached bungalow in Bramhall with all the mod cons of Western world living can go to bed at night happy in the knowledge of who his enemy is’.

  ‘You’re making me out to be as selfish as that?’

  ‘When the cap fits’.

  ‘All right’ said Joe. ‘I accept what you’
re saying’.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘There’s a downside to development, okay I accept that’ said Joe. ‘And it’s our job to deal with the consequences of that downside’.

  ‘Finally the penny drops’.

  ‘But it doesn’t mean to say I have to like it’.

  ‘Well okay but just don’t fall into the trap of the xenophobic populists’ said Adrian. ‘Because that isn’t you, Joe. And don’t come it by claiming to be part of this so-called un-listened to minority. Because just through doing your job you know better than that and you know that the issues are so much more complicated than that’.

  ‘We let the world in and all the crime that goes with it’.

  ‘Oh come off it, Joe! It’s not all bad. The vast majority of people in this city are blissfully unaware of the shit we have to deal with until they read about it in the papers or see it on the regional TV news. Other than that they get on with taking advantage of the international dimension that Manchester now has. They don’t dwell on the negatives, Joe. They start a business or they work for those who already have, they look out and not in. They accept crime as being part of modern life just like people everywhere else do’.

  By the time they’d finished their discourse they were sweeping across the viaduct bridge that led into Stockport town centre, continuing initially along the A6 which took them south out of the city centre with the highs of the peak district in the distance up ahead and passing by what Adrian thought was the magnificence of Stockport town hall. Then they had to turn right in the direction of the south Manchester suburb of Cheadle but within half a mile they came upon the area of back to back terraced houses of which Rosebud Street was slap bang in the middle.

  ‘So who is this Wayne Carpenter whose phone little Manal was using?’ asked Joe. It really was time to change the subject. He was never going to convince Adrian that he hadn’t turned into some unthinking traveller on the road to fascism. He still felt liberal when it came to social issues. He was positively in favour of gay marriage and he had no objection to immigration in principle. He just wanted the dissenting voices of social progression, like those of his parents, to be listened to and taken into account. That’s all he meant.