Throwaways

by Jenny Thomson

  Now he smiled, but it quickly faded. “Obviously it’d be as a last resort,” said Tommy, his mouth tight, “You wouldn’t have to actually turn tricks. Just act like you are. Put on a show. Make yourself believable. We need the other girls to see you as one of them, so they’ll confide in you and tell you where to find Kim.”

  Shit. The full implication of what I’d agreed to do started to sink in, and my stomach felt like I’d swallowed a lump of lead. “What am I meant to say if a punter comes over and rolls down the window?”

  “Tell them you have a regular appointment to keep with a cop. That’ll scare them off.”

  Tommy had an answer for everything.

  “But, you going on the streets is a last resort, Nancy. You know that even with me nearby, it’s dangerous. Anything could happen.”

  He’d get no argument from me on that score.

  “You know I’d do it, but my hairy legs would give me away. Glasgow’s not ready for the Ladyboys.” The glint in his eyes made me chuckle.

  Tommy went back to being serious “It might not even come to that. Most people are harmed by people they know. Husbands, boyfriends, relations, even parents. So, we concentrate on family first.” He paused. “We’ll need a cover story.”

  I’d come up with a plan that I thought would work. “We can say we’re journalists doing a story on their daughters; trying to find out what happened to them.”

  Tommy didn’t agree. “The press have been door-stepping these poor bastards for weeks now, writing all sorts of lurid tales about their daughters’ descent into prostitution. Painting them as junkie whores. They’ll just slam their doors in our faces and tell us to fuck off. Who can blame them? I’d do the same thing.”

  He had a point. “But how else do we get them to talk to us? We can’t say we’re the police. They’ll expect to see some ID and when we don’t have it they’ll call the cops on us.”

  The last thing I needed was the ever diligent Detective Inspector Waddell on my case; the man was as tenacious as a terrier down a rabbit hole. He already suspected I’d been up to no good, which was hardly surprising when one of the men who murdered my parents and raped me, ended up tied to a bed, in his manky boxers, with the word “RAPIST” carved into his stomach Lisbeth Salander style. Not that I’d been a complete psycho. I’d shown him some mercy and had drugged him first. He and his mate had shown me no such mercy when they’d raped me again and again, before abandoning me to die alone in a puddle of my own blood.

  Tommy outlined his plan. “We tell them we’re relatives of one of the missing girls and we want to find out what happened to her and the others. That way the families of the other women might talk to us.”

  “That might work,” I said. At least they’d be sympathetic and less likely to chase us from their doors.

  So, that’s what we agreed to do. But first we had to learn as much about the missing women as we could before we spoke to anyone.

  Whilst I headed off to the Mitchell reference library where they kept newspapers on microfiche, Tommy went off to speak to his police contact. Between us, we’d get what we needed.

  Chapter 3

  “Let’s look at what we do know.”

  We’d turned Tommy’s once orderly apartment into investigation central. We had a large whiteboard like the one we’d seen on police shows. On the board we’d pinned a picture cut out of a newspaper of the once stunning Suzy Henderson, the former law student who’d once been a model. The photo was a shot the newspaper had got from a modelling agency of Suzy pouting as the wind machine blew her black curly hair, making it look like it was full of volume. A year after the photo was taken she was working as an escort to pay off her student loans and cover the cost of a new modelling portfolio. By the age of 21, she had a cocaine habit (she’d starting snorting coke when she’d been a model to keep her weight down), had been kicked out of college and was told she was “too old” for modelling.

  Next to Suzy, we’d pinned a picture of Sheena Andrews, a smiling teenager in a slinky party dress at her 16th birthday party. It was hard to believe that seven months later, the fresh faced teen had been picked up by the police for soliciting in Glasgow’s red light district. Like Suzy, her fall from grace had been pretty spectacular. Straight A student at a fee paying school so prestigious that there was a waiting list for the pleasure of forking out 12 grand a year on school fees, to 20-quid-a-time streetwalker. Unlike Suzy Henderson who was currently languishing in a mortuary drawer, Sheena’s fate was less certain. She’d been alive when her finger had been bitten off. The teeth marks matched Suzy’s dental records. Try as I might, I couldn’t imagine how Sheena’s finger came to be bitten off.

  Tommy had no idea either and he’d seen some terrible things in Iraq. Things he only hinted at because he wasn’t that big on talking about his past.

  “Could he have forced Suzy to do it? To bite off Sheena’s finger? Say at gunpoint?”

  Tommy was pinning a picture of Tanya Baker, the third woman to go missing on our board, and turned round. “Nah. The pathologist told the cops he was pretty certain the finger had been bitten off as Suzy was in her death throes, in one go. He said if she’d been ordered by her captor to bite it off there’d be hesitation bites. Not one clean bite, although they’d have to see Sheena’s hand to be sure.”

  I’d been concentrating hard on the picture of Sheena, hoping that by looking at her we’d somehow become connected and I’d have a moment of blinding insight and understand what had happened to her.

  Instead, I asked Tommy if he thought there was any chance she was still alive.

  He didn’t blink. “I think she’s dead. If you were involved in something like that, if some mad bastard dragged you off the streets, killed someone in front of you, you would go to the police or tell someone. But, nobody’s heard from Sheena, so she must be dead.”

  I wasn’t ready to believe that. “Unless she’s too scared to come forward and has gone into hiding. Holed up somewhere.”

  Tommy leaned over and put a hand on my arm. “I hope you’re right, but her finger was bitten off. There’d have been a lot of blood. If Sheena had been restrained in any way, she might not have been able to stench the flow of blood.”

  He didn’t need to spell it out: Sheena could have bled to death or she could have got an infection.

  Wrapping my arms around myself to beat the chill snaking its way up my back like icy fingertips, we talked about Tanya Baker. If any of the women were destined to be abducted and murdered it would have been her. Tragedy didn’t come close to describing her hellish life. She’d been put into care at the age of four when her heroin addict dad bludgeoned her mum to death with an ashtray and jumped out their high-rise window to his death leaving little Tanya alone. She had no traceable family.

  She’d spent most of her childhood in the care system because she was deemed a problem child and would wake up screaming in the night. Once she’d stabbed an Action Man in the eye with a pair of nail scissors because he was “a bad daddy” before hurling the doll out a window. The words that her various social workers had scrawled in her file time and time again were unplaceable, unstable and unadoptable. By the age of nine, she’d been written off. They stopped trying to place her with a family. God knows the impact that would have had on the kid knowing that she’d never have a proper home.

  Were the social workers too overwhelmed by the kids they had in their care to pay attention to one very troubled little girl? That was the question the Daily Scot newspaper had asked when they’d printed the leaked notes. Yep, someone had betrayed Tanya again by handing over her confidential files.

  Tanya had last been spotted getting into a black Honda Civic. One of the other girls had written down the number plate. It’d been traced back to an elderly schoolteacher; the car had been stolen from outside her home. The vehicle was later found abandoned on waste ground, gutted by a fire. If any of the missing women had been in that car we’d never know.

  Tanya Baker was the odd one
out of the trio. She never had the chance of a decent life. Not like Suzy or Sheena. And she had nobody to miss her. The police only found out she was missing after a friend claimed Tanya had stolen money from her and went to the station to report the theft. The cases had only been linked because she’d gone missing round about the same time as Sheena and Suzy and was known to walk the same streets.

  “What else did your police contact tell you?” I said, then paused and added, “What was his name again?”

  Tommy raised his George Clooney eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  He was keeping it a secret. Considering everything we’d gone through together, he should have been able to trust me. It rankled that he didn’t.

  We didn’t have a picture of the fourth missing woman. She’d called herself Kim, but she spoke with an Eastern European accent and the police didn’t know a thing about her, including whether she was really missing. They suspected that she’d been sex trafficked by an Albanian gang. The last time she’d been seen she’d been climbing into a silver BMW with blacked out windows.

  “Tommy, how do we know that Kim has even gone missing? From what I’ve read, these sex traffickers often move their “merchandise” around. Makes it tougher for the police to close down their trade in misery.”

  I’d done my research. The gangs who trafficked these women were merciless; the girls were their property to be owned and traded and to do with whatever they wanted. Usually they’d been lured to the UK with the promise of jobs in top hotels and restaurants. Only when they arrived, they were stripped of their passports and belongings so they couldn’t leave and ordered to work off “their debt.” For some that meant being placed in brothels up and down the country run my madams who had often originally been sex trafficked themselves and hardened by their experiences. For others it meant working the streets.

  Tommy winked at me. “My, Miss Kerr, you have been hitting the books.”

  “Treating Kim like she’s missing might ruin our investigation.” Already I was talking like a cop. “There’s also a chance she’s just moved on.”

  “Good point. We’ll count her out for now. We don’t even have a picture of her – just a vague description.”

  “What?” My tone’s sarcastic. “Your snout can’t help you with that?”

  Tommy tutted. “A snout’s a civilian informant. You need to get a handle on this police lingo if we’re gonna do this.”

  Of course I knew that: I’d just been winding him up.

  Tommy went serious. “You know what you said about Kim? That she might not be missing?” I nodded. “Just because these four sex workers are missing doesn’t mean all the cases are linked. The only ones we know for certain are linked are Suzy Henderson and Sheena Andrews.” He was right. “So, we need to focus on Suzy and Sheena.”

  For the first time, he’d used their first names. They were starting to become as real to him as they were to me.

  With all the details written down, we decided upon a course of action. There was a slim chance that Sheena might be alive, so we’d start with her parents. We’d pose as the concerned cousins of Tanya Baker to try and get them to speak to us.

  There was also a good chance they’d tell us to get lost.

  Chapter 4

  The story of Sheena Andrews’ downward spiral had been the one the press had revelled in telling. Horse-loving, private school educated teen ends up going from a girl in pigtails to a slapper in fishnets, selling sexual favours for the price of a lottery ticket; one newspaper columnist’s words, not mine.

  The Andrews lived in a fancy townhouse on the outskirts of Glasgow in an area where the house prices were in the hundreds of thousands. We knew this because we’d Googled the place. Years ago, I’d dated this guy who lived nearby called Paul Slater whose parents restored and sold antique furniture for a living. They were very well to do –“we count the new Chief Constable of Scotland’s police as a close personal friend” kind of thing – but even their house wasn’t as big as this one.

  The red sandstone villa was set on enough land for Sheena to have a horse in the back garden if she’d wanted – if her parents didn’t mind their Wimbledon standard lawn being chomped away and covered in hoof marks.

  When Tommy and I first saw the house, we exchanged incredulous looks, but I was the one who spoke first. “How the hell does someone who comes from a house like this end up prostituting themselves?”

  Maybe the answer to that question would help us find Sheena and the others.

  The tall but stooped figure of James Andrews opened the door after we’d rung the bell. His hair was peppered with grey and he wore thick, round glasses that made him look like an ageing Harry Potter. Our introductions barely registered on his gaunt face before he invited us in. I recognized him from the pictures in the newspapers of the couple at the emotional press conference where they’d pleaded with Sheena to contact them.

  As the director of a multi-million engineering company, he was used to being in front of the cameras announcing deals, but he’d looked ill at ease at the press conference, unable to make eye contact whilst his wife had stared straight ahead as she’d wept.

  His movements were stiff as he led us into the living room. Sheena’s dad was sleepwalking his way through the days. I’d been that way after my parents were killed.

  Helen Andrews was sitting on the couch doing a crossword and looked up at us and nodded when her husband introduced us. He sat down besides her and she put down her magazine and her hand slid into his.

  They would have once been a handsome couple, but grief had wrung every last ounce of life from the pair. There were grey bags under Her eyes; the kind you get from crying so much you think you’ll never stop. She was a trim woman in her 40s with short brown hair that might once have been bobbed, but now looked in need of some TLC.

  We sat down, taking care that we didn’t crinkle the couch cover that looked like Harris Tweed. My eyes zoomed in on a photograph in a solid silver frame, sitting on the mantelpiece of the original Victorian fireplace. The girl in the picture was at that age where you’re trapped between childhood and adolescence. Her blonde hair was the colour of ripe corn. She was standing next to a pony with a fuzzy mane of shocking white hair. They were both showing off their teeth.

  James Andrews caught me looking. “Yes, that’s our Sheena. Beautiful, isn’t she?” A wistful smile played on his lips, bringing some light to his grim face.

  “Yes, she is,” I said as Tommy nodded.

  Rummaging about in my handbag, I brought out a pen and a notepad. “I hope you don’t mind if I write this down? We’d appreciate anything you can tell us that might help us find Tanya.”

  They both shook their heads, so I got started. We’d decided it’d be better if I did the talking.

  “What can you tell me about, Sheena? What was she like?”

  The full focus of Helen Andrews was on me. “I’m glad you say was and not is. Because they haven’t found Sheena’s body we’re supposed to have some hope that she’s still alive.” She exchanged a glance with her husband who quickly looked away, then dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then clamped it shut. He’d spoken about their daughter in the present tense. He was clinging to the hope that she was still alive.

  Helen Andrews carried on. “If Sheena were alive, she would have found some way of contacting me. She phoned me every day, even when things were bad and she knew I wouldn’t like what she was telling me. And, I’d always beg her to come home. I’d tell her we’d get her back on her feet and she could go to university and train to be a vet like she always wanted to be.”

  Her face lit up as she spoke about her daughter and just for a moment, I saw how she must have looked before grief drained her beauty. “She was a lovely little girl. She was bright, warm and funny and she loved horses. That’s why she wanted to be a vet.” She motioned towards the picture. “That’s her pony, Chester. We still pay for his keep at the stables. She ador
ed that horse.”

  Her features relaxed; remembering was helping her to cope with the grief and I knew how she felt. Since my parents and brother were killed, remembering the good stuff had stopped me from falling into a deep depression. When you’d lost someone you loved, the memories were all you had left.

  My eyes scanned the room, taking in all the antiques. The next question wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be asked. “Did you know what Sheena was doing?”

  James Andrews clenched his other hand into a fist. “No, not at first.”

  His wife finished answering the question. “We only found out when the police brought her home one night. We made her see a psychologist after that. Dr. Cassidy. He was so good with her. Wasn’t he James?”

  He nodded. “If it weren’t for him we wouldn’t have known about the abuse.”

  This was news to us: there’d been no mention of this in the media and we thought they’d eked out every last drop of salacious detail.

  “What abuse was that?” said Tommy.

  James Andrews seemed to have trouble focusing. As he stared straight ahead, his wife was the one who spoke. “Sheena was taken advantage of by a teacher at school. Her art teacher. We’d no idea what had been going on until she told her therapist.”

  “Was he ever charged?” I asked. Maybe this teacher had snatched Sheena as an act of revenge and grabbed Suzy Henderson to muddy the trail leading back to him?

  A brief look passed between the couple. I didn’t know what it meant until Helen Andrews spoke. “It wasn’t a man, dear. It was a woman. If it’d been a man, there’d have been no chance of him avoiding prison. At least that’s what our lawyer said.” She turned to her husband. “Isn’t that right, James?”

  Her husband’s face reddened. “That predatory bitch. She destroyed my little girl. Sheena was never the same after that woman got her claws into her. She started cutting school, drinking, smoking and staying out late. When I’d ask her where she’d been, she’d give me that impish smile of hers.” His face softened. “It was the smile she used to give me whenever I’d come back from a business trip. She’d come bounding in to see what I’d brought her from Tokyo, Singapore or Dubai, or wherever I was coming back from this time. Only this time it turned into a smirk. I…”