by Syd Moore
The desperation in her voice rang an alarm bell within me, and this is what jerked me into rational thought. This was a plea, pure and simple. A cry for help.
Without consciously making a decision to do anything in particular, I ran at full speed to the window and knelt down.
The woman in the basement room was shivering violently. Her face was insipid, eyes weak and bleary, possibly drugged. And she was wearing nothing but her underwear. Now I was that much nearer I could see some kind of metal manacle fastened on to her wrist.
‘My name is Gloria,’ she said, trying to keep heavy lids open. ‘He is keeping us here. He will be back soon. Just gone out. The alarm,’ she pointed at the back of the building. ‘It is broken. Help us get out.’
I was breathing hard and finding it difficult to process what she was saying at first and replied, ‘Can’t you come out through the back door?’
With a remaining sliver of energy she raised her hand and clanked a chain that I now saw ran from her wrist manacle to an iron circle on the wall.
I rocked back on my heels as I realised what I was seeing. ‘Oh shit. Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m phoning the police.’
I felt my jeans pocket, then, bugger almighty, realised I’d left it in electromagnetic detector mode on the table in the kitchen. ‘One minute,’ I told her. ‘I need to get my phone. Stay there.’ Which was a stupid thing to say all things considered but I wasn’t thinking.
I heard her scream for me to stay and clank something hard against the iron bar but I knew this was the right thing to do so raced back into the kitchen. There was no way I could get the girl out on my own. Not with that chain.
In the kitchen, I shouted, ‘Sam! Sam!’ as calmly as I could, keeping out of my voice the hysteria that was starting to rise. ‘Phone the police. Quick. Come here.’
I grabbed my mobile before he could reply and whipped back out into the yard again.
‘I’m phoning them now. The police,’ I yelled, hoping Gloria could hear me as I galloped back into the yard.
It was crossing my mind briefly that I might be getting into stuff I shouldn’t poke my nose into. A sex game gone wrong? Kinky behaviour by consenting adults? This had almost floored me on my last adventure with the remains of the witch.
As my resolve began to waver my pace slowed too but then Gloria started to cry. And she was absolutely terrified. You could tell.
‘Hang on in there,’ I said as, at last, I got through to the emergency services. ‘I’m reporting …’ I paused. What was I reporting? My not very expansive experience with the police suggested that they were overworked and understaffed which meant they had to prioritise jobs. ‘There’s a murder in progress,’ I told the operator. ‘With a bomb. Please get here as soon as you can.’
The gravel behind me crunched.
‘What’s going on?’ Sam asked, as he caught up. He was a little on the breathless side. Me and him both.
I handed him the phone. ‘Quickly!’ I yelled, ‘Give them our address.’
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Just do it. Now! And after that, phone Monty. Just in case.’
Gloria’s wails were becoming almost feeble Either the drugs were kicking in or her energy was running out.
‘Stay with me,’ I called. ‘You’re doing really well.’
I squatted down and looked at her through the bars. She was swaying unsteadily but as I watched her suddenly she became rigid. Her eyes changed, now wider and rounder. Turning with a newly energised fervour she staggered to me and pressed her face hard against the iron. ‘No, no, I can hear him,’ she said. ‘He’s coming back.’
I felt for my phone in my back pocket, remembered Sam had it, but found my fingers enclosed on something else. Three stiff strips. The cable ties.
I pulled them out and looked at them. They were thin and made of plastic but strong. They’d have to do. ‘Give me your hand,’ I told her. It was all I could think of.
Scabby fingers poked through the bars. I grasped them and said, ‘I’m going to wrap these around our wrists. Can you thread it and pull it tight on your side? He won’t be able to take you, without taking me. All right?’
I didn’t really know what I was talking about. I hadn’t had time to wonder if the unknown man wanted to take her anywhere. I just knew that she wasn’t happy or safe where she was and that I needed to do something to help.
Wordlessly Gloria obeyed slipping the strip round with her manacled hand. But her eyes were unfocused and unsteady. She was having trouble threading them through the catch.
‘Hurry,’ I told her, lashing one of the cable ties on to my own wrist, ‘as quick as you can.’ For I too could now hear the heavy tread of footsteps in a passage beyond.
As the door inside the shabby basement was thrown open I managed to link the ties and pull them tight. Gloria shrieked in weary pain.
Someone over by the doorway swore then a man entered the shadows of the room. In the dimness I couldn’t see much more than his outline. But I said, ‘The game’s up. We’ve called the police.’
There was a moment of inaction, then, abruptly, the lights came back on.
For a moment we stared at each other: me and this man.
I don’t know who I had been expecting to see – someone from the restaurant perhaps.
But I didn’t recognise him. He was a stranger.
Albeit a stranger who was livid. As he processed the sight, his eyes broadened and began to smoulder with outrageous fury.
If I could have shrunk back from Gloria right then, I’m ashamed to say I probably would have.
The poor girl whimpered and blinked against the fluorescent light that was still flickering on. I looked past her and saw the guy’s eyes focus on me. They did not look good. It was like someone had flicked a switch and something demonic had channelled down. He curled his lips, and made a snorty noise. Bits of spit flew out of his mouth. His expression was full of something I can only describe as murderous, insane, depraved. His shoulders hunched. Indignation and fury funnelled up over him, transforming the hue of his skin from puce to purple.
Before I could prepare myself he had lunged at Gloria.
I heard her yelp in my ear and found the hand bound to her pull down sharply into the room. My whole body followed with it, hauled across the yard as far as it could till I smacked hard against the window bars.
Gloria panicked and let out a frantic wail. My arm was yanked around, though I couldn’t see how: up to the shoulder it was inside the room.
Sam was scrambling around somewhere behind me. ‘What’s going on?’
But I couldn’t speak because the man inside the room, who I could no longer see, was pinching and scratching the flesh on my forearm. I yelped as he dug his nails into the crook of my elbow, then he bawled out something obscene.
Underneath me bits of broken wood and glass were digging in through my clothes. I couldn’t pull back, couldn’t twist my head around.
Sam’s hands wrapped round my shoulder and pulled back. But as someone on the other end of the phone started to speak, he became distracted and loosened his grip.
The pinches stopped and the heaviness the other side of the window relaxed. I took my chance and began to crawl back but again, my arm was grabbed, wrenched back into the room. Too fast for me to react, I collided with the bars once more. My head slammed into the bricks next to the window. Pain shot out across it and down into my chest, which convulsed with the involuntarily need to gag.
For a moment, I was aware only of a loud ringing in my ears, a red film over my vision and searing hotness on the right side of my head. Reflexively I tried to bring my hand up to touch it but found I still couldn’t move it for it was stretched and extended into the room and had something wet attached to it that was sinking and taking me down with it.
A blackness around in the yard seemed to flow into my mouth as I tried to draw in breath. I must have looked up because I remember seeing the stars in the sky swell and glow ever so, ever s
o bright and wondering absurdly if they might sing. Then a drift of honeysuckle swam to my nose. Another female presence here smelt strongly of roses. And right in the middle of this feminine essence I detected warmth and calm, a suckling sense of nurture. Then a voice I didn’t recognise whispered softly, ‘Come back.’
Swift strong hands reached down around my shoulders and began to prise me once more from the window into the yard. The pain in my head crowded back. Oh, it hurt. The resistance the other end had weakened and I felt my arm dragged again over the jagged broken glass and sharpness. Then I was fully conscious. Aware of Gloria slamming back against the bars with a horrific crack. She squealed. I whimpered. Sam continued to haul me back but Gloria’s arm was making cracking noises – it could stretch no further.
This ridiculous see-saw wasn’t going to work.
‘Stop,’ I gasped. ‘Film it, Sam.’
Gloria’s arm suddenly slacked. Despite the excruciating fire in my shoulder I found her hand and squeezed it. Then I rallied my senses and angled my face towards the room. The man had let go of her and was just standing there. ‘I’m filming this,’ I told him.
To my amazement the words effected a change. For his posture altered. He looked up, then very dozily, like he was coming out of a dream, went to scratch his head.
As the sirens piled into the yard, he said, ‘There’s no need to get aggy. It was just a bit of fun. That’s all.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
But it wasn’t just a bit of fun, we learnt. The man, or boy as he had seemed to me, Jackson, hadn’t been having anything consensual down in that basement. He’d got himself involved with something much more sinister. Something, DS Edwards told us, other members of his constabulary had been looking into for quite some time.
You just don’t think that slavery goes on under your nose. You just don’t think that your neighbours could ever be involved. Ordinary, decent people. But greed, corruption, power, these can be the real demons and some become possessed.
Jackson Jova and two of his cousins were.
I couldn’t quite believe it.
As I sat on the wall, hours later, DS Edwards reported an edited version of the Jackson guy’s confession in the back of a panda car. He had contacted Gloria, and it turned out, another woman known only at present as ‘Ruby’, who was in the neighbouring basement room, luring them with the promise of work as waitresses at La Fleur. Somehow he had managed to hack into to the restaurant’s Wi-Fi and was able to make a copycat email. It wasn’t hard, apparently, if you knew how.
Gloria and her friend had been picked up at the airport and then transferred here. They hadn’t worried about it, until they’d seen the living quarters. That’s when the chains were strapped on. And, they’d been told, before they could leave they would have to earn the cost of their flight back. But not by waitressing.
No one minded when I was sick.
Everyone seemed to think it was a natural reaction. Including the paramedic getting the glass splinters out of my arm.
Though I insisted to DS Edwards, or rather Jason as I was allowed to call him now, that I usually didn’t do such things.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, and handed me a tissue. ‘I’m hoping you don’t run into sex trafficking regularly, do you?’
I was happy to concede the point.
Although happy wasn’t one of the things that I was feeling there and then.
More like depressed, confused and disgusted. And knackered and in pain.
Sam had draped his jacket over my shoulders while the paramedics checked me out. I didn’t want to go to hospital. I had a gash on my arm and maybe a little concussion, but I thought I could deal with that. It didn’t seem right to divert attention from Gloria and her friend. They had, after all, been through so much more, it kind of felt indulgent to accompany them in the ambulance.
Jason pulled up a purple chair that had clearly come from La Fleur’s dining room. ‘It seems that Seth Johnson discovered what Jackson was up to. Took a sweetener to stay quiet.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Sam and shivered. He only had a T-shirt on. ‘Is that how he paid off Pots Fischman’s account?’
Jason frowned and eyed me. ‘Who?’
‘Oh yes, we kept meaning to tell you. We did our own bit of investigation. From a tip-off.’
‘Fact is, I wish you had,’ he said, and set his hands on his knees so he looked firm and substantial. ‘Because we might have avoided this.’
I nodded. It hurt. Although I wasn’t sure I believed him. ‘Really?’
The DS stroked the sporadic stubble on his chin. I wondered if he always grew it like that. ‘Well, there’s this thing called a police force that comes in handy when tasked to investigate crime.’
‘Funny,’ I said.
He raised his slightly tweezered eyebrows, ‘We’re running several lines of enquiry and this information may have led to a breakthrough.’
I noted his use of conditional tense. From where I was sitting this looked like quite a major development.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ he continued, ‘if Seth asked for more money, maybe blackmailed Jackson and his cousins, and that’s what broke the camel’s back.’
It was a theory. Could be credible. ‘You mean Jackson might have killed him? Murdered Seth?’ My words sounded slightly fuzzy – adrenalin was starting to recede and I was feeling dopey.
‘He doesn’t seem like a man of many scruples,’ Jason rued. ‘So it may have been something like that.’
‘All right,’ I said, and stifled a yawn. ‘Doesn’t explain the bonnet and lady and stuff. That’s what Mary described.’ But Sam had started talking to Jason so neither of them heard me.
I let them ramble on and took a moment to survey the yard. With the yard lights on now, I could see the area outside the restaurant was actually quite small. The girl in the sack dress must have been either just inside of the perimeter wall by the gates, or just outside of it. I couldn’t work out how she had disappeared so quickly without me seeing her go. Though it was still foggy out here. Sprays of moisture licked around the lamp lights like watery flames. It had been thicker earlier. The perfect conditions for mirages and tricks of the eye.
I watched the police photographer take some final photos of the broken-down gap I had used to get through into Jackson’s yard. When he finished that he shouted over to Jason that he was going inside.
Sam wandered over and stood close by. ‘You should really go in too, Rosie.’
He was right. It was cold out here, despite the Sam’s jacket and the blanket. My hair was wet, slicked with fog and about to start going frizzy. Plus, I wanted to get away from the smell of sick.
Jason looked over to Sam and said, ‘I’ll need to corroborate Rosie’s statement about the woman who knocked on the door. The one in the yard. Do you think you could get me the tapes?’
And so Sam shuffled off into La Fleur to fetch them.
‘Here, let me help you.’ Jason put my good arm over his shoulders and tucked his hand around my waist.
He paused when he saw me flinch. ‘Sore?’
‘Sorry.’ I could feel one side of my face was bigger than the other so didn’t bother trying to smile. ‘And, I’m not used to it. In my line of work, people don’t usually touch you. In fact, the physical contact that does occur tends to be classified as common assault.’
‘Ditto,’ he said. ‘Shall I or not?’ He was holding his hands up and away from me.
‘No, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘As long as I know it’s coming.’ And actually it didn’t feel bad at all. Plus, I was seriously enjoying his body warmth.
‘Listen,’ I told him as we began to hobble over the yard, ‘she wasn’t a woman. She was a girl. I’m pretty sure of it.’
The door was open and a single rectangle of light projected over the back steps. Jason helped me over them. ‘Your description is quite vague, I’ve got to admit. But I think we should put out a search. She might be involved.’
‘It’s all
on the tape,’ I said.
He nodded and fell silent as we passed into the kitchen. I stretched my back, rubbed the side of my shoulder that had hit the wall, then, as he lowered me on to the chair by the table where I had earlier kept my vigil, I yawned very loudly again.
‘Well.’ The sky was lightening through the window. ‘I should be off,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got work in the morning. Is that okay?’
He looked surprised. ‘I thought this was your job? And that museum of black magic place.’
‘It’s not a museum of black magic,’ I said, and reached around for my phone. ‘It’s the Essex Witch Museum. You know most of the women who were charged with witchcraft, who were executed, were completely innocent? It’s a classic miscarriage of justice. You should know all about that.’
‘Is that so?’ His mouth was pulled back into a smile and giving his cheeks dimples. ‘And you’ve got to get back to it in the morning?’
‘Oh no,’ I said, and pushed my hair back then wobbled. I think I might have been looking like I was drunk. ‘No, I’ve got a proper job. In Benefit Fraud. Public servant and that.’
Jason Edwards’ eyes swivelled down from my hair to my boots. I looked at them too. They were scratched across the toe and some of the gold leather on the sides had been torn. Typical.
‘I have enduring respect for public servants,’ he said.
There was something in his voice that made me flush. He really was quite good-looking. So, I smiled and said, ‘Me too.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said suddenly rather snuggly, ‘we could have a chat about it over a glass of wine?’
Instinctively, I looked at the cellar door, wondering if Sam was there. But we were going to be friends now, weren’t we? Maybe I should take Jason up on his offer. ‘Well,’ I said, making a decision, ‘you’re timing’s not impeccable but I think I could find a slot in my diary for that.’ I fiddled with my hair and felt an unexpected little flutter in my stomach. It didn’t mean anything. I could maybe just have a drink, after all. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d started something with the curator.