A Dark and Twisted Tide

by Sharon Bolton

  The park below and around them was busy. Everywhere Lacey looked, people walked dogs, played with children, threw balls at each other or just lazed around on blankets. Nadia had told her to come alone and had promised to do the same, but in this wide-open, crowded space there was no knowing one way or the other.

  Lacey certainly hadn’t kept to her word – that would never have been allowed, and the park was liberally sprinkled with plain-clothed police officers. On the way up, she’d passed Stenning and Mizon sprawled on the grass sharing a can of diet Coke. An operations van in a nearby street was listening to every word she said via the wires inside her running vest. Lacey stopped a couple of feet from Nadia and let the drinking flask she’d been carrying drop to the ground. It rolled towards the other woman, who stooped, retrieved it and handed it back to Lacey.

  ‘Thanks.’ Lacey tucked it carefully back into the strap around her shoulders. They now had prints to compare against those already on the system. They would soon know for certain if this were the same woman who’d been arrested last October.

  As though neither knew how to begin, they turned to look at the view: the medieval deer park, a layer of white stucco Regency splendour below, then a sliver of urban river, topped off with twenty-first-century skyscrapers.

  ‘At least up here it feels like there’s some air,’ Lacey said to the Canary Wharf tower.

  Nadia continued to stare ahead. She was older than Lacey remembered, and her skin had the fine lines of a face that had spent much time in the sun. ‘We should keep moving.’ Nadia turned suddenly and moved away. ‘It will be safer.’

  Feeling a chill that had nothing to do with air movement, Lacey fell in step beside her as they set off east. What to ask first?

  Back in the van, Tulloch was uncharacteristically silent.

  The two women passed beneath a short canopy of trees and suddenly the air around them was filled with sound. Leaves rustling, birds chattering and fighting, even the heavy scampering of a squirrel.

  ‘Do you need any help?’ Lacey began. ‘I know you’re in this country illegally, but if you’re the victim of crime there are people who can help you.’

  ‘Ask me again later,’ said Nadia. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Can you tell me where you’re from?’

  Silence.

  ‘I think you’re from Afghanistan,’ said Lacey. ‘I think, back home, someone offered to help you travel to the United Kingdom. I think you were probably told there’d be a job waiting for you, that you could earn good money and send it home to your family. If I’m wrong, it would be really helpful if you told me so.’

  Nadia was looking to her right, away from Lacey, at a tree so wide around the girth as to seem hardly younger than the park itself. ‘Such old trees,’ she said. ‘What are they? Do you know?’

  Lacey didn’t need to check. ‘They’re oaks. Most of the trees here are. It’s a very old park.’

  ‘In my country, too, we have old trees.’ Nadia picked up the pace again. Importantly, she hadn’t denied being from Afghanistan.

  ‘I think they chose you because you have pale skin and eyes and because you’re beautiful. I think you’re not the first and you won’t be the last. But, here’s the tricky bit, I think some women like you who’ve been brought into this country have been killed.’

  Lacey waited, giving Nadia time. The path had brought them to the prone form of the oldest tree in the park and the only one to merit its own protective railing. The empty husk of Queen Elizabeth’s Oak.

  Nadia was looking at the sign in front. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It says that Henry VIII used to meet Anne Boleyn by this tree,’ said Lacey, before realizing that the names would probably mean nothing to this girl. ‘Henry was a very famous king of England. He was married, but fell in love with a young English girl called Anne. He stopped at nothing to make her his queen, but when she didn’t give him a son, he turned against her. She was executed when she was just thirty-five years old.’

  ‘Did she have a daughter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lacey. ‘Elizabeth. She became a very great queen.’

  ‘I had three daughters.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘With their father. I haven’t seen them for three years.’ Nadia turned back to the fallen tree. ‘He killed her? She was a queen and he killed her? I thought this country was different.’

  Lacey opened her mouth to point out that Henry and Anne had lived five hundred years ago and realized that to a woman who’d lost three children, half a millennium would be a detail. ‘What happened to you?’ she said instead.

  Nadia pulled her scarf higher around her head. ‘I married when I was fifteen. To the eldest son of a government official. It was an important marriage. I was told how lucky I was. I think I even believed it. At fifteen, you don’t think of much beyond having a good and kind husband, lots of healthy children, earning the respect of your husband’s family. Do you?’

  At fifteen, Lacey had thought of stealing cars, of driving them at speed around empty car parks at night, of torching them in the dock area of her home town. Of the boys with their gelled hair and hungry eyes. Of the lies she could tell her foster families and, very occasionally, of what would happen to her when she was too old for local-authority care. This woman and she probably weren’t going to find much common ground. ‘I guess girls are the same all over the world,’ she said.

  ‘My first daughter was born less than a year later.’ Nadia reached out and, without seeming to know what she was doing, tore the head off a tall, daisy-like flower. She began tearing petals off it and throwing them to the ground. Her hands were surprisingly large, calloused and tanned. ‘My second just over a year after that. My third nearly two years later. Three beautiful healthy girls. I was allowed to finish feeding my youngest before he divorced me and sent me back to my family.’

  ‘For having girls? Are sons really so important?’

  The remains of the flower were scrunched in Nadia’s hand. ‘You have no idea what it’s like in my country. A family without sons has no security, no future. A family without sons is nothing. A woman without sons is worse than nothing.’

  ‘But you were young. You couldn’t have been much more than twenty. You were obviously capable of producing healthy children. Why didn’t you just try again?’

  Nadia set off again quickly. ‘Because my mother-in-law wanted to be rid of me. We have a custom in our land. When a girl is about to be married, her mother gives her a handkerchief. Often embroidered, often with lace. It is very special. But I wasn’t told what to do with it. That night, after my husband and I had been together, he looked for evidence that I’d been a virgin.’

  Lacey thought for a moment. ‘He looked for blood?’

  Nadia nodded. ‘There wasn’t any. The sheets were clean. He was supposed to take the handkerchief, you see, to my family the next day, as proof that they’d given him a pure bride. I was supposed to put it between my legs to collect the blood. But he couldn’t do it. So I was disgraced. My family were broken by the news, my husband’s family lost all respect for me.’ She turned, and for a second there was such fury in her cold, silver eyes that Lacey almost stepped away. ‘I was fifteen. I’d never left home alone. I’d worn a burka since my first period started. How could I not be a virgin?’

  ‘Not all women bleed when they lose their virginity,’ said Lacey.

  ‘If I’d known what that handkerchief was for, how important it was, I’d have taken a knife into bed with me. I’d have cut myself without him knowing. I’d have made sure there was blood. My whole life depended on it and my mother didn’t even tell me what it was for.’

  ‘But you stayed together,’ said Lacey. ‘You had children.’

  ‘If I’d had sons I might have been forgiven. But my mother-in-law saw each girl as a sign that God was cursing me for my impurity. She told my husband he would never have sons while I was his wife. So I was sent back to my family. He took another wife. She gave
him a son within the year.’

  ‘And your daughters stayed with him?’

  ‘Children in Islam belong to the father. But they will never be happy. They won’t have the best food or new clothes like the children of his new wife. When they’re old enough they’ll be married to unimportant men and will have no respect in their husband’s families. No one will love them. Yet here I am, on the other side of the world, and my love is slowly killing me.’

  Finally, Nadia turned to look at Lacey properly. She was a beautiful woman, clearly an intelligent one, all but crushed by the oppressive culture she’d been born into.

  ‘Just over a week ago I found the body of a young woman in the Thames,’ said Lacey, sensing an advantage. ‘This morning, we found another woman just like her. We haven’t been able to trace either of them, and that makes me think they came into the country illegally. The other night, I was out on patrol and we nearly caught a group of people coming up the Thames in a small unlit boat, just like you did. The two girls and one of the men got away. I was hoping you might be able to tell me what’s going on.’

  As Nadia set off again, Lacey followed. The path was taking them lower and Lacey caught the scent of roses, of dry earth and warm bark, as though the scents of the park were hovering close to the ground, like early mist.

  ‘How did you know I was looking for you?’ Lacey asked. ‘When you contacted me last time? Who gave you my number?’

  Nadia said nothing.

  ‘Was it the men who brought you here? I don’t want to put you in danger, Nadia. Look, come with me now. I can keep you safe.’

  Nadia shook her head. ‘I don’t know whether they were involved in that or not. They said not. But I can’t just disappear. I can’t risk them hurting my daughters.’

  Of course. It was how they controlled these women. Threats against the families back home. Whether the threat was real or not didn’t matter; it only mattered that the women believed it.

  A crackling in Lacey’s ear told her that DI Tulloch was running low on patience. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you can?’ said Lacey. ‘Start with what happened when you left the hostel.’

  ‘I was taken to a house,’ said Nadia. ‘It was a large place, but I only really saw my room. They kept me there for a long time. Several months, I think, but it was hard to keep track.’

  Lacey heard Dana catch her breath.

  ‘And what happened to you in those months?’

  ‘Nothing. They said I had to wait until the paperwork was ready. And until they’d made arrangements for my job. So I waited. I ate the food they gave me, watched television, slept a lot. It was dull.’

  Not what any of them had expected to hear.

  ‘They didn’t hurt you in any way? Make you do anything you didn’t want to?’

  Nadia shook her head. ‘I know what can happen to women like me. I know what a risk I took coming here. I’m one of the lucky ones.’

  ‘Were there other women in the house?’

  ‘I think so, but I didn’t see any of them. I just heard voices from time to time. Occasionally someone shouting. I’m not sure everyone else was as patient as me.’

  ‘You were kept prisoner there? The other women too?’

  ‘I suppose so. I did ask to leave one day. They said I couldn’t. That until the paperwork was sorted out, I’d be sent home. But I wasn’t badly treated. When I got ill they looked after me. I had doctors, nurses, medical treatment.’

  ‘You were ill?’

  ‘Yes, several weeks after I arrived there. They said it would delay my release. That no one would want to employ me unless I was healthy.’

  The ear piece started crackling again, but Lacey was already there. ‘Ill in what way?’ she asked.

  Nadia looked puzzled. ‘I’m not sure. They said it was quite common for young women from my part of the world. That I just wasn’t used to English food and water. English germs. They were right in a way. I did get better. And then I left.’

  ‘Lacey, try and find out where she was kept,’ Dana Tulloch’s voice whispered in her ear.

  ‘It was dark when I was taken there,’ said Nadia, when Lacey asked her. ‘And the same when I left. All I know is it was somewhere in London. The houses were tall. I couldn’t find it again.’

  ‘Did your room have a window?’

  ‘Yes, but the glass was – I’m not sure what you would say – cloudy?’

  ‘Opaque?’ suggested Lacey. ‘It lets light through but you can’t really see anything. We use it in bathrooms a lot.’

  ‘Yes, exactly, like bathroom glass. I knew there were other buildings close. And also, I was quite close to the river. You can tell, can’t you, when you’re near water? There’s a smell in the air. And boats sound different to cars.’

  ‘Did they take you there by water?’

  A shadow appeared on Nadia’s face. She let her head fall and rise in confirmation. ‘They did. But if you want me to remember the journey, I really don’t think I can.’

  ‘Anything you can tell us – anything at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you have to understand how frightened I became of water. After what happened to us, that night you pulled me from the river, I couldn’t think about water without feeling as if I was going mad.’

  ‘That’s understandable. It was a pretty terrifying experience.’

  ‘But not the first, for me. Not the first time I nearly drowned.’

  Lacey waited. Nadia seemed about to say more, then shook her head.

  ‘It was years ago,’ she said. ‘The details aren’t important. But because of it, water terrified me. I know they took me to that house by water, and brought me away by water. But I was so frightened both times, I just kept my eyes down and my scarf around my head.’

  Lacey felt a surge of disappointment. It was possible they transported the girls by water to disorientate them, to make it harder for them ever to explain where they’d been. If that were so, it had certainly succeeded in Nadia’s case.

  ‘You didn’t look where you were going?’

  Nadia was shaking her head. ‘No. I must have seen a few things, but when it was over I tried so hard to forget it all.’

  ‘I understand, really I do. But anything you do remember, anything at all, will be very useful to us.’

  ‘There was something else. Something I never really understood.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘There was a woman. She was outside, I think. I heard her through the window.’

  ‘A woman doing what?’

  ‘Singing,’ said Nadia. ‘She used to sing to us.’

  67

  Dana

  ‘BIG HOUSE IN Blackheath, Ma’am.’ Barrett had just got back from tailing Nadia Safi to the place where she lived. ‘In its own grounds with remote-controlled access gates.’

  ‘OK, these are the options,’ said Dana. ‘We can bring Nadia in, make her our responsibility, but if there’s nothing more she can tell us about the people who brought her here or where she was kept, we could be putting her or her family at risk for no good reason. We can also bring in her current employers, see if we can find out who’s supplying their illegal staff, but again we risk putting the gang on full alert and not necessarily gaining much. Or we keep Nadia as a contact. She’s given Lacey her number now, so at least we can get in touch if we need to.’

  ‘I honestly think she’s told us all she can for now,’ said Lacey.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dana. ‘For now. She may see one of the gang at the house. Something else could come up. I’d also really like her to give you a hair sample, Lacey.’

  ‘A hair sample?’

  ‘Yes. I want to find out what medication she was given while she was in the riverside house. Has anyone here ever heard a real doctor talk about English germs?’

  Silence while everyone thought about that.

  ‘They could just have been trying to use language a new immigrant could understand,’ said Mizon.

  ‘Possibly,’ admitted Dana.
‘But who were these doctors and nurses? Nobody pays house calls these days unless the patient’s practically at death’s door. And how come they weren’t asking questions about these young women under house arrest?’

  ‘Not real doctors?’ said Lacey.

  ‘They could have been anyone, giving her anything,’ said Dana. ‘All the other girls in the house as well. Lacey, can you ask her for a hair sample? She can pop it in the post to us if she’s worried about meeting you again.’

  Lacey nodded, as Dana glanced at her phone. ‘That was uniform,’ she said. ‘The search of Deptford Creek and its surrounds begins at dawn tomorrow. If anyone’s hiding out near the creek, we’ll find them.’

  68

  Lacey

  BY SIX IN the evening, the sun had lost much of its strength, but the ground seemed to be radiating back the heat it had absorbed during the day. Even Ray and Eileen’s boat, with the benefit of the creek’s breezes, had been unbearably hot and it had been a huge relief to get off her bike and step inside the green shade of the Sayes Court garden.

  The circular wrought-iron table she’d been shown to was on a raised deck to one side of the house. The surrounding buildings blocked the view of the river, but Lacey could see the treetops in the orchard across the creek. Tiny apples, pears and plums, as fresh and green as the miniature grapes on the vine growing overhead.

  ‘Are you ready to tell us what’s troubling you?’ Thessa gave Lacey that odd, sideways glance she liked to use a second after she’d thrown a difficult question her way like a hand grenade.

  ‘Tell her to mind her own business.’ Alex, approaching from the house, was carrying a large tray. ‘You never know, it might work for you.’

  ‘I imagine when you work in the medical profession other people’s business inevitably becomes your own.’ Lacey smiled at Thessa. ‘It’s similar in the police. And then in social situations, it becomes a little difficult to switch off.’