Victims for Sale

by Nish Amarnath

I hugged Sandra and Winston silently.

  ‘We’re never let outside. We’re just locked in all day,’ another girl mentioned. I remembered her as Nancy, the oldest-looking child in this room.

  ‘The door wasn’t locked when I came in today,’ I said. ‘And on Monday too.’

  ‘They always lock us!’ a stray boy yelled angrily. ‘The door lock has not been working for some few days now. So they left it like that. But if we goes out, someone always catches us and smacks us.’

  I had to marshal the strength to save these poor little souls from the malaise of a care home that was not only ill-treating them but also raping and abusing its mentally challenged female occupants – some of whom had borne these kids. Were those women forced to have sex with several people?

  Nancy interrupted my thoughts. ‘We’re afraid …’

  ‘Please help us,’ Jason corroborated, his voice cracking.

  ‘I will,’ I said quietly.

  A grating female voice from outside reverberated through the air, growing louder with the rhythm of accompanying footsteps. ‘What the heck is going on in there? If it’s that kid who’s gone potty again, I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!’

  I hastily disengaged from the children.

  ‘Run away! She’s back,’ cried a little girl who had never spoken to me before.

  I looked around me wildly. The glass window was tightly locked and grilled. There was no way I could jump out through it like I had done in Nila’s room. I darted over to a line of cupboards across the room. Alas, they all had shelves in between, so I couldn’t squeeze in.

  I spotted an overflowing toy chest a few feet away. I pried it open, tossed an armful of toys on to the floor and scrambled inside. My knees, scraped during my fall from Nila’s window, grazed a bed of dolls, broken cars and board games. I brought one of my knuckles to my mouth to keep from yelping in pain.

  I heard the woman enter the room with a big brouhaha. I pulled the lid shut over my head as quietly as I could, keeping it open just a quarter of an inch. A wheeze rambled up my throat. I fought the urge to cough. Hiding in closed or low-oxygen spaces had always been out of bounds for me. I yanked out my inhaler and took a sharp intake of breath. Then I unclipped my spy cam, raised it to eye level and peered through the tiny crack between the lid and the rim of the toy chest, hoping to video-record what was happening. The backside of a corpulent African woman in a white ankle-length skirt loomed ahead of me.

  ‘Why are the whole lots of yous makin’ so much noise today? And what’s all these toys doing ’ere lyin’ around?’ she bellowed, trudging in my direction. My heart pounded furiously. Just as she reached out to raise the lid of the trunk, Nancy stepped before her.

  ‘Don’t put the toys inside yet,’ she cried. ‘We want to mend these broken dolls. That’s why we took them out.’ The little girl picked up a one-legged Barbie from the floor. A resounding slap reached my ears. I cringed. Nancy had fallen to the ground. Helpless, I forced myself to stay still. Nancy was holding her stinging cheek. The woman yanked a handful of her wispy golden hair and hauled her up. Poor Nancy squealed in pain.

  ‘Where’s the other leg then?’ the woman demanded, closing her hands around Nancy’s frail throat. ‘You nasty harlot! I’ll teach you to lie to me!’

  Nancy’s eyes bulged as the woman pressed her fingers harder against her throat.

  A few kids began to cry. Some hurled themselves at the woman and tried to bite her. The old dame swung her arm wildly with her free hand, knocking the angry children to the ground. She released her hold on Nancy only when the little girl’s eyes began to roll backwards.

  ‘That’ll make yous remember what’ll happen if yous lie again!’ she growled.

  Nancy slid to the ground, gasping and coughing painfully. A wisp of a kid trying to protect me and getting banged up for it.

  ‘I want Mama. I don’t know what you did to her. I want Mama!’ Nancy wailed in a broken voice. A group of kids helped her up.

  I re-clipped the spy cam to my jeans pocket and swiped away my tears. I found an old Halloween mask and a boomerang when I dug around in the toy chest. I slipped the mask over my face, rearranged the scarf around my head and jumped out of the box.

  Flexing my foot, I raised my leg, leaned backwards and landed a well-aimed kick at the woman’s butt. She stumbled forward a few feet from the impact of my boot, then whirled around to face me. I hurled the boomerang at her and fled to the door. The tool hit her on the shoulder and flew back towards me, landing somewhere near my feet. She jerked backwards with an angry roar.

  ‘Dare you touch any of these kids again and I’ll have you in a trice. Or the police and social services will!’ I cried.

  With a bark of fury, the woman began to charge at me. No matter how frightened and guilty I was to leave these kids behind with a wretch like her, I took off on my heels. The woman gave me chase. As I raced across the lawns, I thought about running to the main gate, but believed that she might hunt me down the street too. Just as I approached the front-side gravel that led to the gate, I deflected rapidly to a narrow alleyway on my right. The alleyway snaked through a backside porch. The woman’s overblown girth was no match for my lithe build. She lost me somewhere during the time I made the swift turn. I juddered to a halt and looked around. I was in an entirely new area lying north of the main vestibule and the care home out front.

  Ahead of me was a quadrangle strewn with dead leaves. A wooden bench and table stood under the shade of a gnarled tree. A pathway before me led to a wooden backdoor. An overflowing trashcan and a crate of boxes stood haphazardly beside it. On either side of those boxes was a glass window about eight feet from the ground.

  My suspicion and horror got the better of me. I tiptoed towards the door and attempted to turn the handle. It seemed to be locked from inside. The crate of boxes looked sturdy enough to bear my 128-pound frame. I gingerly placed a foot on the crate. It didn’t seem to give way. I climbed up on it stealthily and leaned over sideways to peep in through the window on my left. Both windows were closed. Through the glass, I strained my eyes to trace the contours of some hazy objects, which indicated that the room I was viewing, might be a consulting office or clinic. There was a small, empty waiting area outside a curtained partition that I presumed was a doctor’s cabin. The door to the cabin was open. A narrow corridor in the far corner led up to a room shielded by a screened divider below a flaking board marked with a word I identified as ‘Surge’. ‘Surgery’ was more like it; the last two letter stencils seemed to be missing.

  I was just about to step down when a lurking image on the cabin’s doorsill arrested my attention: the shadow of a tall woman holding on to the bar of something that looked like a pushchair. When the source of that shadow materialised from the recesses of the consulting cabin, I nearly toppled over the boxes I stood on. The biggest shock had arrived. It was inconceivable.

  Shailaja emerged from the cabin, pushing a pale and tear-streaked Asha on her pram. A tall man in a lab coat followed them towards the door. What in Pete’s name were they doing here of all places?

  I realised Shailaja would see me spying on them as soon as she stepped out. She might not instantly recognise me as Sandy, but she would certainly make out Nimmy’s cardigan. They would be out of that door in seconds. I had no time to scoot. My eyes darted wildly around me scanning for a place where I could hide. I climbed down from the boxes I stood on as swiftly and gracefully as I could. I shuffled a large box in front of me and crouched as low as I could, behind it. The door swung open.

  ‘It’ll be all right, little one,’ The doctor said, patting Asha’s head gently. Then he straightened himself and looked at Shailaja. His angular features and Aryan complexion indicated a Persian or Iranian ethnicity. ‘Having to manage her periods will soon be a thing of the past. And a pap smear won’t have major side effects,’ he assured. ‘There may be a …’

  A call on his cell phone interrupted him. He answered it with a frown. ‘Simon, I’m just seeing a patient off
now. I’ll call you back.’ His expression changed. ‘A blonde with thick glasses, and a woman in a Halloween mask?’ he exclaimed, raising an index finger to excuse himself. ‘All right. I haven’t seen anyone like either of them but I’ll certainly keep my eyes peeled now.’

  My stomach sank. Obviously Erica and that monster of a woman in the playhouse-shed were alerting everyone on the premises. I had had many narrow escapes today and I was afraid I had pushed my luck just about as far as I could.

  ‘Pardon me, Mrs Sawant,’ the doctor apologised, reappearing at the door. ‘As I was saying …’ he paused, as if he didn’t remember where he had left off. Then, he continued, ‘… there may be a slight stretch of spotting for a day or two. But that’s hardly anything to worry about. I’ll call you with the results in three days.’

  ‘Thanks, Dr Tahseen,’ Shailaja said. ‘I’ll confirm the dates for the hysterectomy.’ I detected a tinge of hesitation in her voice, ‘It’s not just her menstrual hygiene, you know. That incident two years ago …’ She swallowed with considerable difficulty and went on, ‘… was a nightmare for all of us. I really don’t want a repeat in the future. I’m afraid it will …’

  ‘We’ve discussed this before. We’ll have all of it out,’ Dr Tahseen smiled crisply. ‘Take care.’ The door closed behind them.

  A hysterectomy? A distant memory came flooding back to me.

  An ex-colleague in Mumbai had once mentioned that his aunt had undergone a hysterectomy after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The colleague had mentioned that his aunt wasn’t planning on having more kids anyway. Were they considering a hysterectomy for Asha because she had some form of cancer? I shook my head. That didn’t make any sense. If Asha had developed a cancerous cyst or fibroid, Shailaja would have taken her to the NHS or another reputed private hospital. No, this had something to do with whatever happened two years ago. What was it?

  Shailaja walked past me, then paused to retrieve a juice carton from Asha’s pram. She fixed a straw and held the Tetra Pak to Asha’s lips. For a moment, she looked anguished. But that look was gone almost as soon as it appeared. Asha was gurgling from the straw. Shailaja pushed Asha along in her stroller until the pair camouflaged into the paddock of the main lawns around the corner. A paroxysm of claustrophobia was fast scaling my solar plexus, accompanied by its allegiant friends: the dreadful wheeze and a loud sob that threatened to wrench my gut. I uncoiled myself from my crouching position and took a few deep breaths from my inhaler, wondering if the doctor would reappear and search around the yard for ‘the blonde with thick glasses’ or ‘the lady with the Halloween mask’.

  The door did not open. I slung my bag over my shoulder and sprinted across the quadrangle towards the lawns. I heard angry voices behind me as I ran. I didn’t dare look behind. At the gates, I fumbled for the latch and tumbled out onto the street. As I dived into the dark tunnel towards Hercules Road, my mind began to absorb the implications of every word Shailaja and the doctor had exchanged while poor Asha lay sobbing in her pram.

  The Lambeth North tube station loomed ahead of me. A tall grey façade of the Christ and Uptown Church stood to my right, its cone-shaped turret shimmering in the effulgence of the mid-day sunshine. I blindly traipsed over to the church, flung myself on to one of its cold stone steps and nestled my forehead against the balls of my palms.

  A steady stream of recollections from the Sawant household spilled into my mind, along with random spotlights on the behavioural patterns each Sawant member had manifested.

  The Sawants’ dogmatic adherence to taboos … the raging protests they had staged when I wanted Asha to participate in Streetsmart … Nimmy’s frightful sensitivity to any matter concerning Asha … Rosie’s eerie visit, Nidhi’s hard-hearted response to Rosie’s entreaties and Asha’s subsequent disappearance … Asha’s claim that Rosie was a bad sign … Ashok Sawant’s apparent lack of involvement in situations or chores that revolved around Asha …

  At twenty-two, she was a pretty woman. She may have been pregnant two years ago and had an abortion. And the Sawants, in their anxiety to preserve their honour, wanted to now sterilise her, without her knowledge or consent, so that she would never again be with child. That was the only plausible line of reasoning against the backdrop of the schema I had mapped out in my mind.

  And then, a distant memory, from my early days with the Sawants swept ashore. A haunting image of Asha crying out to feed Sunny milk, the night she had a seizure. That scene seemed to fit with the ease and pulchritude of a stray bead that completed the link in a chain of concatenating events and responses. Maybe Sunny wasn’t a hallucination. Maybe Asha hadn’t even had an abortion. The possibility struck me with the force of a gavel in a courtroom. If my hypothesis was right, Sunil wasn’t Jyoti’s son as everyone had made him out to be. He was Asha’s.

  7

  The Tram Tunnel

  Keisha was rather quiet after she viewed my ninety-three minute video in stricken silence.

  ‘I didn’t expect this,’ she said finally. We were seated on wooden benches facing each other across an adjoining table in the BBC Media Village gardens. My spy cam peered out from a USB port on Keisha’s MacBook.

  ‘This video clearly unleashes the abuse going on there … and raises many more questions. This looks like an exposé, but we’ll have to investigate it further,’ Keisha added. She transferred the film to a fresh folder on her laptop and made a backup copy on a 16 GB SanDisk Connect flash drive dangling from a red text-label keychain. She scribbled ‘High Priority’ on the keychain label and ran an encryption code for both folders.

  ‘Is the encryption necessary?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. This is highly sensitive information and I want to keep the film extremely safe,’ Keisha replied. ‘I don’t want you talking about this to anyone under any circumstances until I say you can. D’you hear?’

  ‘You’re the boss, Kiki,’ I said simply. ‘There’s the proof now. Whatever I could manage.’

  Keisha looked me in the eye. ‘I don’t know how you managed to get hold of this on your own, but it’s a jolly brilliant job, San,’ she said sincerely. ‘I’ll get this out to our team at the earliest. They’ll probably want to investigate it further and slot it in the current affairs segment. I’ll talk to Alfred about hiring you as a paid production intern once you graduate. We’ll have the police raid that care home once the story is out. But that will take at least a few more weeks.’

  ‘Do … do we really need to let the abuse go on while we wait to do an exposé? Can’t we inform the police right away?’ I spluttered.

  Keisha laughed. ‘You really are a newbie, aren’t you? How can we get more materials for an exposé if we have the police step in, right away?’

  ‘But … a few more weeks?’ I squeaked. ‘What if some children and residents are traumatised so badly that they die by then?’

  Keisha shoved her Mac into its case and sighed. ‘I know, San. But journalism is what it is. Sometimes, there’s no room for emotion. A lot of ungodly incidents like the Kabbalah Centre Scam or the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty reached the public only through media-driven exposés, not through the police or not-for-profits or social activists. To do that kind of work, you’ve got to be thick-skinned and cold-blooded. That’s something that’ll grow on you with experience.’ She rose from the bench. ‘I have to leave now. We’re wrapping up a high-pressure production. Go home and run a warm bath. You look like shit.’

  As I walked out of the BBC complex, my mind spun with memories of the West Harrow police’s lackadaisical approach to the Sawants’ report of Asha’s disappearance the day Rosie had visited. I sighed. Keisha was right. Tipping the police off would not only have a bearing on our own investigation but also be substantially less impactful than the potential long-term benefits of running a bone-shattering exposé. Those residents and children would have to brave it until our story raked public attention.

  I bought a sandwich from a confectionary store at the White City Undergrou
nd. I ate while waiting on the platform for the tube, mindlessly sifting through a horde of emails on my phone. Committee meeting reminders from Lanong, a midterm report brief from Mark, a conference invite … something jumped out at me from the muddle … oh, wait … I wasn’t sure I had seen it right. I squinted into my phone and zoomed in the text. It was a note from Aiden McLeod all right!

  I headed to LSE. Dissolving into the whorls of its scholarly lair was just what I needed right now. After what I had just discovered, I couldn’t have stomached returning to the Sawants’. In the offices on campus, Mark was logging videos as he did most Thursdays. ‘The spy cam was a godsend,’ I greeted, returning the gadget to him.

  Mark pulled at one of his sideburns and grinned. ‘I’m glad it helped.’

  ‘EGG’s Lord Bradshaw has finally agreed to a fifteen-minute interview with me, thanks to Aiden McLeod!’ I burst out. ‘It’s on Twenty-eight March. 10 a.m.’

  ‘Kudos, Sandy!’ Mark came around to my side and thumped my shoulder in exultation.

  ‘Aiden has already asked for a briefing document,’ I informed. ‘So, I’ll put together an interview guide.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  It was nearly 7.30 p.m. when I swiped my card at the turnstiles in the LSE library and lumbered through a sloping corridor to the third floor. A voice boomed out at me from behind.

  ‘Ahoy there, San! Haven’t seen ya ’round in yonks. An all-nighter for those horrid papers, eh?’

  I turned around to find Ritchie. This time, he wore spiked hair with faint blue highlights. His felt-brown trench coat rumpled a little around his shoulders under the weight of his enormous bag. ‘You’re beginning to sound quite English. What the devil have you done to your hair?’ I exclaimed, despite myself.

  Ritchie flashed a grin. ‘A new style I’m experimenting with. How’ve you been?’

  An incomprehensible cloud of comfort evolved in his presence, enveloping me in its snug entirety. ‘I’m not feeling that great today,’ I admitted, as we headed upstairs.