by Bali Rai
‘I know it’s really hard for you all but we have to be strong for Ellie’s parents and for Christopher,’ she told me.
I smiled a bit. ‘You mean Chris De Burgh?’ I said, trying to cheer up a bit, only it didn’t work.
‘Yes, for everyone.’
‘It’s just hard, Mum.’
‘I know. And the longer she stays missing, the harder it will be, baby. But you’ve got to have hope.’
I looked at my mum, at her kind face, and I wanted to cry again. How was I supposed to have hope when the police had found nothing? When no one had seen anything? Even Mr Sharma and Divy hadn’t really helped.
And then I knew. We had to tell the police what we had been told about a second bag. We had to. We could be holding what might be important information about Ellie from them. What if it stopped them from finding her?
I thought about telling my mum about it first but she didn’t give me a chance.
‘Have you seen Nanny?’ she asked me.
I shrugged. I hadn’t seen him for a day or so. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Where is he?’
My mum looked at me kind of funny. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s out asking after Ellie. You know, I did wonder whether her disappearance had something to do with that money you lot found.’
I swallowed and looked away, knowing that my mum would notice. But she chose to ignore it.
‘And then I decided that I was being silly. You gave it in anyway, so the police know all about it. They’d know if it was connected, surely.’
‘Er . . . yeah. I kind of thought about that too,’ I said, remembering the warning Jas had been given. I really wanted to tell my mum about that but something stopped me and I didn’t know what it was. Maybe I just didn’t want to worry her any more. After all, we’d figured out the police probably wouldn’t be able to do anything different, even if they did know about the second bag, but the threat on Jas must mean all the Crew were now at risk. Even me. More info than my mum needed right now, I reckoned. Everything in my head was going haywire anyway. I was trying hard to think positively but feelings of dread kept on taking over, making me want to cry. I swallowed again, then told my mum I was going to watch telly for a bit.
‘OK,’ she replied, smiling. ‘I’ll shout when the food’s ready to take next door.’
‘Cool.’
Around eleven that night I was sitting at the kitchen table reading a crime novel by James Lee Burke and drinking some of my mum’s beer. I was trying to think of something other than Ellie but the words on the pages of the book were blurred and jumpy and I kept closing my eyes and seeing her sitting opposite me, asking me to help her with her homework or moaning about something and nothing, like she always did. The beer was making my head feel light and I fancied a cigarette. As Mum was upstairs, I found some of hers and took one outside into the yard.
Zeus got up from his basket when I opened the door and followed me outside. I messed about with him as I smoked, then threw the fag away. I hated the fact that I had started smoking and become addicted to it. But not enough to give up, Ellie always told me. She’d tell me that kissing me would be like sucking on an ashtray and she had a point too. Not that she’d ever kissed me. Right at that point I would have given up smoking on the spot to know she was safe, and I could give her a kiss and a hug, fag breath or no.
Zeus went down the yard towards the alley door. Suddenly he turned and ran back towards me, barking. I was so shocked to see him running that I didn’t even stop to think about why he was barking. He started to bark in the direction of the alleyway. I told him to be quiet but as usual he ignored me. And then I heard a noise coming from the alleyway. I ran into the house and picked up a rolling pin before going back outside, towards the alley door. I raised the rolling pin above my head, edged towards the door slowly and lifted up the catch. The door would have creaked if I had opened it slowly, so I took a deep breath and pulled it open in one go. I saw a male figure in front of me in the dark, and I brought down the pin, catching sight of Nanny’s face and hair a split second before I hit him with it, pulling it away.
‘MAN, WHA’ DE RAAS YUH DO!?’ he shouted. There was a girl by his side.
‘Nanny,’ I said, taking a breath. ‘Shit . . .’
‘Who yuh think it would be – Frankenstein, man?’
The girl looked scared and ill. I could tell straight away that she was a working girl – not much older than me. I gave Nanny a look that said, Why are you creeping down the alley with a working girl?
He read my thoughts as usual. ‘Chill out nuh, man,’ he said. ‘Me nah buy she time. This is Sally an’ she have somethin’ to tell we.’
fifteen:
wednesday
I COULD HEAR the drip, drip, drip of a leaking tap coming from the bathroom. The room I was in was cold and damp and the girl they had looking after me was gone. I didn’t know exactly how many days I had been locked in that room, either tied to a chair or to a pipe near this dirty, smelly old mattress. It was hard to tell because I had been blindfolded all the time apart from when the girl took me to the bathroom or felt sorry for me and let me look around at my surroundings. The room was stripped bare, with rough plaster on the walls and holes in the ceiling and floor. There were electric wires hanging out everywhere and the window had been boarded up. It was a hell hole, but then I felt like I was in hell.
I had spent the first few hours – I don’t know how many exactly – crying and shaking with shock. At first I thought that I was going to die but after what felt like a day or two I realized that if the man was going to kill me he wouldn’t have left the girl with me to become a witness. The skinny girl . . .
The man who kidnapped me had been in and out of the room four or five times since putting me there, telling me that he hoped my friends would see sense and give back the second bag. He told me that someone had sent them a message. I had protested to him, telling him that they had given the bag to the police and that there had only been one bag. But he had just laughed.
I couldn’t see him through the blindfold but I could smell the strange mix of body odour and cheap aftershave that was his scent. He threatened to do horrible things to me and twice he had come so close to me that I could feel his breath against my skin. I wanted my dad to come and knock down the door and rescue me and I wanted Billy and Nanny and Jas and Will to hold my captor down so that I could kick the old pervert in his head and . . .
I spent a lot of the time wondering how and when they would rescue me. I had to keep on believing that they would because without that hope I would have just curled up and died and I wasn’t about to do that. I asked the girl about the man who had kidnapped me but she was too scared to talk. She told me that he would let me go soon and that I should keep calm and not make him angry. She told me that he got very violent when he got angry and that he was under a lot of pressure because we had taken money that he was supposed to get. At one point she mumbled his name but I didn’t hear it clearly. I asked her if he was her boyfriend but she just shook her head and told me that girls like her didn’t have boyfriends. Mostly, she said, they didn’t have friends. She was really young too. Probably only about fifteen – a year older than me. She told me all about what she did too, a working girl. A child prostitute. It made me cry.
She asked me if I was OK, which really has to go down as one of the most stupid questions I’ve ever been asked and I told her so. But that made her cry and I could see that she didn’t want to be there and that she had no part in what was happening to me so I talked to her some more. When she stopped crying, I told her that the only way that I could remain calm was to fantasize about who was going to rescue me and how they would do it. In the end I told her that my favourite rescue involved Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, with the old pervert getting his head kicked in and Angelina doing her English accent bit. Absolutely.
And then I told her that I was thinking about what I would eat when I got out of there. I told her about my mum’s roast dinners and Sue’s vegetarian
Thai stir fries and the omelettes that my dad made and Nanny’s curries. I told her about Billy and how he had rescued me that first time and how much I missed my mum and then I cried . . .
I wanted my mum and dad. I wanted to hear Christopher whistling Lady in Red while I was trying to watch Hollyoaks. I wanted to call Billy an old man and I wanted Della to call me sister and Jas to tease me about how much he thinks I fancy Billy, and Will to lecture me about stuff . . . and I missed that stupid dog too. I carried on crying. The girl started crying too, saying she was sorry. Then suddenly she stopped and told me that she was going to help me get out. I said that she could untie me but she just ran out of the room and I was left all on my own . . .
sixteen:
wednesday, 11.30 p.m.
NANNY WENT TO get my mum as I made the girl, Sally, a cup of tea. She sat at the kitchen table and held the mug in her hands and her eyes kept shifting from the mug to the door to the telly and back again. She was a little shorter than me and her hair, a honey blonde colour, was greasy and messy. She looked like she hadn’t taken her make-up off for a few days; there were dark hollows around her eyes and if I could have seen her arms I knew that I would probably see needle-tracks. She caught me looking at her and tried to smile but it came out all lopsided and wrong and then she got embarrassed and turned away again. I asked her what she had to tell us but, without looking, she shrugged and said that she was waiting for Nanny to come back.
‘He’s nice, Nanny – isn’t he?’ she said, picking up her mug.
‘Yeah, he’s cool. How do you know him?’ I replied, shocked at her voice, which was actually quite posh.
‘I don’t really – he’s just one of those characters that you see about, you know? A bit like dealers and punters . . .’ Her eyes glazed over and she got this distant look in them.
‘So you’re . . . what? A working girl?’
She smiled at my choice of words. ‘Working girl? That’s sweet.’
Sweet? I felt about five years old – again – and this time it wasn’t even my mum making me feel that.
‘Most of the kids around here call us slags and whores. You chose a very interesting way to put it.’
‘Well, I have my reasons and the fact that I’m not a kid might help too,’ I said, noticing for the first time the bruising around her neck. I had thought it was dirt but it wasn’t.
‘Where has Nanny gone?’ she asked, looking right at me.
This time I looked away, realizing that I’d been staring at her. ‘Erm . . . I think he’s talking to my mum.’
‘Your mum’s called Rita, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah. How do you know that?’
Sally drank some more tea and then set the mug down on the table. ‘She runs the drop-in centre. All the girls know who she is.’
‘Oh right – of course.’ I wondered why she did what she did and whether she really was as posh as she sounded. I had never met a working girl who spoke the way she did. Most of them had the local accent and swore loads and stuff. She was different.
I had to ask. ‘Why do you do . . .?’
‘What I do?’ She picked up the mug. ‘Because I have a son and a flat and I can’t survive on the money that I get from the government. Isn’t that a bit of a cliché?’
‘A bit – but if it’s true . . .?’ She didn’t look old enough to have a kid. But then a lot of young girls round here weren’t old enough and they had kids.
‘My son is two and I’m eighteen and . . . well, what else do you want to know?’ She looked right into my eyes again.
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to be nosy,’ I replied.
‘Yes you do. Ask me what you like. My customers are always telling me that I have a way of talking to them . . .’ She looked away.
‘So who is looking after your son now?’
‘His grandmother.’
‘You mean your mum knows what you do?’
‘His father’s mother. Not mine.’
‘Oh.’ I felt stupid again.
‘My parents don’t want me or my son because my son is mixed race.’
‘So where’s his dad?’
‘Busy being a cliché in prison.’
I thought about asking her another question but she started to talk without any prompting from me.
‘My son, Josh, is asleep at my flat with his grandmother looking after him. His dad is half black and half white and I suppose that makes Josh . . . well, how would you say it? I would just say he’s a baby, not a colour, but you know how things are . . .’
‘So what about your . . .?’
‘Parents? My dad supports the BNP and he told me that I would be polluting the English race if I had a “mongrel” child.’
‘He called your son a mongrel?’ I was incensed.
‘No, he called my unborn baby a mongrel. My mum agreed with him and there you go. I left home, moved in with Josh’s father and now it’s just Josh and me. And his grandmother.’
‘I’m mixed race,’ I said, as though that would make the situation easier. It didn’t.
‘You ever heard that song by UB40, The Pillow?’ she asked me.
‘UB40? Nah. Bit ancient for me. My mum loves them, though.’
‘Well, I swapped my dreams of shining knights,’ she said, suddenly looking sad, ‘for pushers, bars and money fights.’
‘Is that from a tune of theirs?’ I asked her. She nodded. ‘Which CD is it on? I bet my mum’s got it.’
She told me and then went back to her tea, which she finished.
‘Do you want some more?’ I said, wondering what was taking my mum and Nanny so long.
‘Yes, please. What’s your name anyway?’
‘Billy.’
‘I’m Sally,’ she told me, although I already knew.
‘Is that your real name?’ I thought she might use a false name. My mum had.
‘Yes. No point hiding behind a false name. This is the real me, bruises and all.’
I felt embarrassed. She must have noticed that I had been staring at her throat. ‘You don’t have to say where they’re from,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t about to.’
She put her fingers through her hair and I realized exactly how pretty she was and also how well it was hidden. Then she started singing softly.
‘You’ve got a really good voice,’ I said, but she ignored me and looked down at her mug.
‘Where’s my fresh mug of tea?’ she said, not changing her gaze.
My mum came into the kitchen with Nanny five minutes later. She went straight over to Sally and sat down next to her, talking to her in a whisper and ignoring me and Nanny as though Sally was the only other person in the room. I suppose it was what my mum did and she was good at it. They spoke for about ten minutes and then my mum turned to me and Nanny.
‘We should call the police,’ she said.
I looked at Nanny but all he did was shrug.
‘Call the police – why . . .?’ I asked, confused.
‘Sally knows where Ellie is being kept,’ answered my mum.
My heart jumped. ‘Where . . .?’ I demanded, looking straight at Sally. She shrugged and looked at Nanny. ‘Well . . . is someone going to tell me?’
Nanny did. Sally had been approached by a friend of hers, a young girl called Claire who was being forced to keep an eye on Ellie. The young girl had begun to have second thoughts and was scared that the kidnapper might hurt Ellie, so she had passed on Ellie’s whereabouts to Sally, telling her to find Nanny. Sally trusted Nanny to deal with it without her or Claire getting officially involved – neither could afford to upset the man who had Ellie as they didn’t know who he was working for. It could be some real bad man.
‘WHERE IS SHE?’ I shouted. I didn’t want to wait for the police. They would take too long to get their shit together. They always did. And then I found out.
‘In that empty house? Down the end of the street? THIS STREET?’
‘Yes,’ said Sally quietly.
I shook
my head. We had been all over the ghetto looking for her and asking questions and all the time she had been held not a hundred metres from us. I started to get angry and I looked at Nanny for support. ‘You’re the one that tells me about how untrustworthy Babylon is. She’s down the end of the fucking street and they haven’t found her! I ain’t waitin’ fe dem – I’m going to get her. MYSELF!’
My mum stood up and grabbed my arm. ‘Billy, leave it alone. It’s up to the police. They know what to do. I’ve told Sally we’ll keep her name out of it – we’ll say we just had an anonymous phone call from some girl who heard we were asking around.’
‘But she’s there . . . now! Right now! And we’re all standing around doing nothing.’
‘I’ll call the police now,’ answered my mum but I wasn’t listening.
‘Call who you like – I’m going to get her. Nanny, you coming?’
Nanny pulled his dreads through his hands, like he always did just before he was ready to leave the house, but my mum shot us both a stare, then she shook her head slowly. ‘Billy, the man who kidnapped Ellie could be there. He might hear you coming. He might hurt her.’
‘He won’t be there,’ said Sally.
I looked at her, followed by my mum and Nanny. ‘What?’ we said in unison.
‘Claire told me.’
I smiled. Nanny was straightening his hair again. ‘So is jus’ Ellie an’ dis gal, Claire, in deh?’ he asked Sally.
‘Yes, I think so,’ replied Sally. ‘Look, I’ve gotta go. I can’t hang around and talk to the police. I’ve done what I can, but you don’t need me any more.’ She looked really scared, but at the time I ignored it.
I went over to her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ I said as I turned and ran out of the kitchen door. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t drop you in it.’
‘BILLY!’
I didn’t hear my mum, though. I had already gone into Ellie’s yard and was knocking on her parents’ back door. I heard someone enter the kitchen and then a light came on. Ellie’s dad opened the door.