The Overlooker

by Fay Sampson

  ‘Asian?’

  ‘I couldn’t be sure. There wasn’t much light in the room, and he didn’t come out into the daylight. His voice sounded typically northern. No foreign accent. He wasn’t obviously from the sub-continent.’

  He told her how he had explained his reason for coming, and his hope that they might be allowed to have a look at the house he barely remembered from his boyhood.

  ‘Then something caught my eye, and when I looked up there was another woman in a shalwar kameez, standing at the top of the stairs. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she vanished. And then the first woman arrived. The one we’d met in Canal Street after she’d collected her son from playschool.’

  He went over the tearful encounter. The fact that the woman had arrived apologetic for being late and obviously expecting to begin work. The man’s denial that he knew her.

  ‘I’m sure he was lying. The woman just looked bewildered. And she was devastated when he told her not to come back. It all seemed very strange,’ he finished. ‘We thought there must be something illegal going on. An unregistered workshop, perhaps. The house is quite small, but if they managed to open a way into other houses in the street, they’d have any amount of work-space to play with.’

  The detective inspector’s fingernails drummed on the desk. ‘Describe this woman.’ Again she turned back to Suzie.

  ‘Hard to say. She wasn’t wearing a burka, or anything like that. But she had a scarf around her face. She was quite tall. A little more than me. Slim. She had beautiful dark eyes.’

  ‘Young?’

  ‘I’d guess in her twenties. The boy looked about four. But, of course, she may have older children.’

  ‘Attractive?’

  Suzie seemed taken by surprise by the question. ‘It didn’t occur to me to think of her like that. She was so obviously upset. I just wanted to know if there was anything we could do to help.’

  ‘But cast your mind back. Take away the tears. Try to imagine her smiling. Would you say she was an attractive young woman?’

  ‘Well, yes. In ordinary circumstances.’

  Mary Heap turned sharply to Nick. ‘You say you were the only one who saw the second woman. The one at the top of the stairs. Was she attractive too?’

  Nick had a vivid picture of the young Asian woman. The slim figure in the close-fitting pink kameez. Raven hair escaping from her headscarf. The delicate features that had looked in the dim light to be the palest shade of brown.

  ‘Yes, frankly,’ he admitted. ‘She was. But what’s that got to do with working at a sewing machine, or whatever they do, probably for far less than the minimum wage?’

  The light blue eyes became steely. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you left the detective work to us, sir. There are more ways an attractive woman could be coerced into earning money than with a sewing machine.’

  Nick heard Suzie’s little gasp beside him.

  ‘You mean . . . it could be a brothel?’

  Nick winced. He had a sudden shocked vision of how his grandmother would have reacted to the suggestion that this was the use to which her childhood home was now being put.

  Was it possible?

  The inspector looked thoughtful.

  ‘Using women from the sub-continent isn’t typical. It’s mostly Eastern Europeans who get shipped across, ostensibly to work as maids or something, and then find that the deal isn’t what they thought it was. Some things here don’t fit. The second woman might be being kept against her will, but the one you met in the street obviously isn’t. That doesn’t mean the man she called Harrison doesn’t have some kind of hold over her. Suppose she’s not British born. A dodgy visa, perhaps? A forged work permit?’

  Again the nails tapped on the desk. A light was beginning to grow in her face. She picked up a phone.

  ‘Send Nichols through to me.’

  ‘There was something else,’ Nick said, suddenly remembering what had changed the whole strange episode into something far more sinister. ‘It was after we got back to my cousin’s. We’re staying with her up at High Bank. It was about five o’clock. My mobile rang.’

  He repeated, as carefully as he could, the words of that short but chilling phone call.

  Again he saw the light sparkling in the detective’s eyes.

  ‘But what I don’t understand,’ he finished, ‘is how he could have got my number. I’d given this Harrison man my name when I introduced myself. But not my phone number. Whoever it was even knew my architectural qualifications.’

  She stared at him, momentarily disconcerted.

  Then she said carefully, ‘There are some very unpleasant, controlling people behind these prostitution rings. There can be big money involved. I can’t immediately answer your questions about how your caller knew so much. But there’s not much you can’t find out on the internet these days.’

  Of course. It was something of a relief to Nick that there might be a simple explanation. His firm had a website. It was just possible that the man had traced him from there.

  Knowledge is power, and the man’s unexpected knowledge of Nick had heightened the scary feeling that he held a dangerous power over him.

  ‘He warned me not to approach you. But I have. He can’t really find that out, can he? And where we’re staying?’

  These were things no website could tell him.

  Her eyes were serious now. ‘You didn’t say anything to this Mr Harrison about staying with your cousin?’

  Nick tried to think back. It had been a brief exchange. ‘No. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. Just that I was tracing my ancestors.’

  ‘Hm. Of course, if he knows your name, and he’s been able to find out your profession, it won’t take him long to discover your home address.’

  The new thought chilled Nick. How stupid of him not to have thought of that. Anyone knowing the cathedral city where his architectural practice was could certainly find his home address in the phone book.

  Inspector Heap went on. ‘Never mind that. We need to get in first. Pick up the people responsible for whatever is going on in Hugh Street. Once they’re behind bars, you’ll be safe. And so will the women of this town.’

  A uniformed woman police officer knocked on the door and entered.

  ‘You sent for me, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, Nichols. Get hold of Constable Sutcliffe, if he’s around. Take this address.’ She pushed a sheet of paper across the desk. ‘The street’s supposed to be boarded up. It’s scheduled for demolition. But we have reason to believe there’s an illegal brothel operating there. Not the usual prostitutes. Asian women.’

  The constable raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Check out the area. See if anyone’s noticed any strange goings-on. There won’t be any near neighbours if the street’s been emptied, but you never know. I need to get a search warrant. Then we’ll see.’

  She looked round suddenly at Nick and Suzie, almost as though she had forgotten about them.

  ‘Thank you very much for your information. I appreciate your coming here, in spite of that unpleasant phone call. We’ll keep you in touch. With any luck, we may need to call you as witnesses.’

  ‘What about the threats to my family?’

  ‘From what you’ve told me, there’s no reason to believe anyone here knows where you’re staying. By the way, would you like to write down your cousin’s address for me?’

  She pushed a notepad across to him. Nick entered Thelma’s address at High Bank. The inspector read it and nodded.

  ‘There may not be anything behind the threat. But just keep your eyes open. Ring us if you have any cause for alarm.’ She got to her feet. ‘Goodbye now. Enjoy the rest of your stay. We’ll look after this.’ She gave Nick a rare smile and held out her hand. ‘I’ve been trying for years to nail this kind of thing. You may just have given us the break we need.’

  The door closed behind them. Nick found himself out in the corridor with Suzie.

  He felt curiously unreassured by Inspector Heap’s reas
oning.

  ‘I never thought . . .’ Suzie said. ‘I mean, we jumped to the conclusion that it must be a sweatshop. Prostitution never even entered my head. It’s a sobering thought, though. From what I’ve heard, some of these vice rings can be seriously scary.’

  ‘It’s out of our hands now. We can leave the police to sort it.’

  He hoped that was true. Phone calls were one thing, though it still troubled him that the unknown man had found his mobile number. But no one knew that the Fewings were staying with Thelma in that little terrace of three houses of millstone grit up on High Bank. They should be safe.

  He turned to Suzie with a smile that was only partly reassuring.

  ‘I’ll leave you to explain it all to Millie. I don’t think I’m flavour of the month.’

  SEVEN

  ‘A vice ring!’ exclaimed Millie.

  Suzie was trying to explain as they ushered their teenage daughter down the steps outside the police station.

  ‘You mean like fake passports, and they shut them up in houses and never let them go out? And then the police bust them, and they catch these men with their trousers down, and they’re trying not to let the photographers see their faces because people think they’re, like, really respectable people, MPs and judges and stuff? And the policewomen are taking these girls away?’

  To Nick’s surprise, Millie seemed more excited than frightened by Inspector Heap’s theory. Suzie struggled to convey to her the conditions of slavery under which such girls worked.

  ‘Are they going to raid that place in Hugh Street? If they catch them, and put them in prison, and let the girls go free, it would be all down to us, wouldn’t it? I wish I’d taken a photo on my phone when we were there. I can’t wait to put this on Facebook!’

  ‘Steady on,’ Nick warned her. ‘This is just the start of a police investigation. The last thing they’d want is for you to go spreading it all over the internet before they’ve had a chance to gather the evidence. You don’t want to scare them off, or the police would raid the house and find they’ve flown.’

  ‘Spoilsport!’ Millie grumbled. ‘But I can tell them afterwards, can’t I? When it’s in the papers and they put them on trial? I can tell all my mates, “We did that. We were the ones who shopped them.”’

  ‘Yes, of course you can,’ Suzie told her. ‘It just may take a bit of time. Even if they raid the house and find the evidence, it will take a long time to bring it to court.’

  She caught Nick’s eye over Millie’s blonde head.

  He felt an uneasy pang of conscience. Neither of them had yet told Millie about that frightening phone call. They had not had a chance to discuss it. Nick looked down at the slender figure of his fourteen-year-old daughter. Was it really necessary to scare her? As long as they were here, it was unlikely that she would be out of their sight for more than a few minutes. He had so much been looking forward to this excursion. The three of them exploring his family’s history. Tom joining them at the weekend. As the children grew older, these times together would become increasingly rare. He didn’t want anything to spoil it.

  ‘All the same,’ Suzie was saying. ‘There’s still something about it that doesn’t sound right. An illegal sweatshop I could believe. Goodness knows there’s little enough employment here. Women might work for a fraction of the minimum wage and still think themselves lucky. Especially if they’d been told not to declare it. But a brothel? Did that woman look to you like the sort?’

  ‘How do I know?’ Nick defended himself. ‘It’s not my scene.’

  ‘She certainly didn’t look as though she was being coerced into working there. She was distraught when he turned her away.’

  ‘So maybe it’s not the sort of brothel Inspector Heap thinks it is. With illegal immigrants.’

  ‘All the same, it doesn’t fit.’

  They stepped out into the sunshine of the car park.

  ‘What now?’ asked Suzie.

  Nick felt a double jolt of surprise. First at the sunlight. He had felt so chilled at times during that interview that he had forgotten that outside it was a lovely autumn day. Secondly, by Suzie’s implication that they had free time in front of them. He looked at his watch and was startled to find it was still only half past nine. They had arranged to see Uncle Martin in the hospital at two thirty.

  ‘I hadn’t thought,’ he said. ‘What with coming here this morning and going to the hospital this afternoon, I didn’t plan for anything else.’

  ‘Since we’re in town, couldn’t we look round the shops?’ Millie said. ‘Or Mum and I could.’

  Nick’s nerves tensed again. He shot a look around the car park. Could whoever had made that phone call really know they had gone to the police? Was it possible that he was watching them even now? There were a couple of other civilians by their cars. Neither of them seemed to be looking their way. The magistrates’ court on the far side looked busier. Police officers came and went. Cold crawled up his spine as a new thought struck him. Could that threat have come from someone inside the ranks of the police? How much more could he find out about the Fewings?

  He tried to fight down his dismay as he remembered writing Thelma’s address on Inspector Heap’s notepad.

  ‘Let’s stick together,’ he said, trying not to sound too alarmed. ‘I don’t want you two wandering off on your own in a strange town.’

  ‘Dad!’

  He saw the blaze of indignation in his daughter’s eyes. He heard his own words repeating in his head. It must have sounded incredibly patronising to a fourteen year old who did not know the reason for such exaggerated caution.

  Again the finger of doubt strummed on his conscience. Was this the time to tell Millie about that phone call?

  ‘Look,’ Suzie put in hastily. ‘There’s that other place. The old woollen mill further down the valley. It’s on our to-do list. It sounds quite a bit different from Thorncliffe Mill. It’s powered by a water wheel and it’s more about wool than cotton.

  ‘Great!’ Millie groaned. ‘Another museum.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. You enjoyed the last one,’ Suzie told her crisply. ‘You’re just in a bad mood today.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s my fault, is it? I get dragged all the way up here for half term, when I could be with my friends. And then I have to go hospital visiting. You know I hate hospitals.’

  ‘So you said,’ Nick sighed. ‘But really, we can’t let Uncle Martin down. Thelma said he’s dying to see us.’

  ‘Come on,’ coaxed Suzie. ‘It could be fun.’

  As they drove down the dale out of town, the high crags closed in above them. Nick kept glancing in his rear-view mirror. Were they being followed, or was he just imagining that that blue car was sitting steadily on their tail? It was just too far back for him to make out the driver.

  In twenty minutes they found what they were looking for. The tall mill building was almost screened by trees. The Fewings got out and Nick’s ears were immediately filled with the sound of rushing water. The river was narrow here, but racing past. He looked up. There was no mill chimney like Thorncliffe’s. No steam engine powering the machinery. Belldale was a watermill.

  ‘There’s probably been a mill on this same spot since the middle ages,’ Suzie said, looking round.

  Nick felt a moment’s excitement. This was taking the history of the Fewings and Bootles way back beyond the coming of cotton and the Industrial Revolution.

  But his mind switched to the present. Surely it was fanciful to think they had been followed out of town out into the dales?

  Again, his eyes were alert as they crossed the car park to the mill entrance. He had feared that the blue car would draw in beside them. But though he scanned the road, he saw no sign of it. It must have turned off, or driven past.

  He breathed more easily. He had been letting his imagination run away with him, seeing threats where there were none. The rush of the river was soothing. The cluster of houses around Belldale Mill was no more than a village. They read the boar
d beside the entrance. In the nineteenth century, an industrialist had chosen this site to expand the home-based wool production of the dales on a mechanised scale. It looked as if it had changed little since. But its history was older still.

  ‘I was right,’ Suzie said. ‘The earliest reference to a mill here was in the fourteenth century.’

  ‘I thought you said these big mills didn’t happen till the Industrial Revolution,’ Millie pointed out.

  ‘Not that sort of mill, for mass-produced weaving or spinning. This used to be a fulling mill. People wove the cloth in their own homes and brought it here to be finished. You’ll see all about it inside.’

  Nick tried to lock his anxieties away in the car and enjoy the experience.

  They wandered through the galleries, which demonstrated the fulling process. Explanatory boards illustrated how, back in Roman times, people had soaked the freshly woven cloth in stale urine and then trampled it underfoot, to make it stronger and thicker.

  ‘Yuck!’ cried a childish voice behind them.

  Nick looked round. There was a family of four following the same route through the mill. To judge by the ages of his children, the father was probably younger than Nick. But he carried more weight. Black hair was slicked down over a forehead that was already receding. His wife was thin, angular, in a pink cardigan. She had anxious eyes on her children. It was the faces of the children that amused him. The boy, about eight, had creased up his face in exaggerated disgust. The little girl, some two years younger, was laughing as she danced up and down, mimicking the drawing of slaves trampling the cloth.

  Nick exchanged a grin with the father. ‘Don’t they just love things like that?’

  ‘The more disgusting the better,’ he laughed back.

  Even Millie could not resist her delight at the earthenware pots in which, in later times, the millers had collected urine from the families around, to soak the woollen cloth before fulling.

  ‘A penny a pot, and tuppence if you were a teetotaller,’ chuckled the guide who had followed them into the gallery. ‘The Methodists did well out of it. Now, if you’ll follow me, we’re about to demonstrate the wheel.’