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Say You Never Met Me

Page 21

by Martin Yallop


  “You mean as a slave? Who is this man, the creepy man?”

  “Yes. A slave. This happens to many girls. At home we did not know, we were just suspicious but we have met many girls, many, who have stories like that. Some escape and go home if they can, some kill themselves because of the shame, many still work. It is sad. The man? His name is Michael. Some people say he is Russian but he doesn’t talk like a Russian. Some say Albanian. I don’t know.”

  Anita and Dora told George other stories including one of a girl who had gone from Cyprus to Hamburg then apparently disappeared and George struggled to remember names, places and case histories. After a couple of hours, the lights came on, then went off again then came on and stayed on and the girls took the rare opportunity for an early night and George accepted a final shot of Zivania before spending three hours hunched over his own dining table frantically making notes before falling into bed.

  Chapter 37

  He slept badly, waking several times in the middle of half-remembered nightmares and decided that he would clear his mind by continuing what he had dubbed his ‘delight and dismay’ tour of exploration of the island. The previous night’s power cut fitted neatly into the ‘dismay’ category but as so often, was counter balanced by the artless hospitality of Maria and George. He had already been to Nicosia and felt at home amongst the multi storey, glass and concrete blocks in the commercial centre. He had crossed over – an experience not unlike death and rebirth, he thought – to the north of the City. He could not take his car through the check point, even though the red number plates and ‘Z’ prefix instantly identified it as a hired car and therefore probably driven by a tourist – a delightful system, he though, to highlight vehicles whose drivers might not be familiar with the roads. A Turkish soldier had checked his passport and waved him through without any hint of welcome. He was as dismayed at the derelict buildings in the occupied part of Nicosia as he had been by the rusting barbed wire and the concrete-filled, pale-blue painted oil drums in the UN-policed buffer zone. However, as always, that dismay had been balanced by the delight of the natural hospitality of the Turkish Cypriots from whom he bought coffee and with whose other customers he chatted happily for nearly an hour. He had felt that as a precaution – against what, he was unsure – he should find out where the British High Commission was. He found it at the end of a quiet, leafy avenue lined with neat, suburban homes but it was squeezed against the ‘Green Line’ and the overgrown and neglected gardens of dilapidated houses ringed by barbed wire and marked with a faded, leaning sign warning him in three languages to keep out of a minefield.

  Today he was going to go to the resorts of Agia Napa and Protaras in the East of the Island The storm had fizzled out in the night and the roads were drying under a once again cloudless blue sky. He felt uncomfortable ringing Deborah from Maria’s apartments and he stopped before he turned on to the motorway to recount a summary of the information he had gained the previous night. Deborah had a meeting with Helen Knight arranged for the next day so that Marianna could relate her experiences and she would take that opportunity to brief the journalist with George’s information. Marianna had had a very difficult time and was still badly shaken. She had been threatened by two men who told her that someone called Mikhail was owed a lot of money for her travel and the trouble she had caused and she had to go to work for nothing until the debt was cleared. When her brother had intervened, the two men had beaten him up. That was when the whole family had gone into hiding. George interrupted to ask about Mikhail. Was he a Russian or an Albanian but Marianna didn’t know and had never met him anyway. He was just a figure in the background. Conrad and Lydia were still slowly travelling back, taking the opportunity for Lydia to see something of Italy, Switzerland and France under Conrad’s worldly guidance.

  By mid-morning the rush hour was well over and the motorway was delightfully free of traffic as it swooped between dun-coloured hills relieved by villages with imposing Orthodox Churches and copses of eucalyptus, palm and stunted conifers. The air was washed clean and the light restored to its full, Mediterranean intensity. There were several, wheeling, large black crows out for their morning flights. Traffic was so light that, at times, no other vehicle was in sight. Passing the British Base at Dhekelia, George overtook a battered, local pick up truck and noticed that the driver had a mobile telephone to his ear. Two minutes later, he noticed the truck growing rapidly larger in his mirror. It stayed there as the driver tailgated him, so close George could clearly see the man’s expression as he rummaged in the glove box for something. The pickup stuck to his tail for a couple of kilometres and through several alterations in speed before it finally pulled around him and roared ahead, the exhaust smoking, as if on a mission. As the truck passed him, George glanced at the driver, a middle aged man hunched forward at the wheel and not wearing a seatbelt, but he stared intently ahead, declining to return George’s glance. The truck stayed in the overtaking lane until it gradually disappeared from view. ‘What was that all about’, George wondered? ‘Stupid, dumbshit, goddam motherfucker!’

  Nisi Beach had escaped last night’s storm and was as delightful as George had been told it would be. The tanning, topless, thonged, bodies of the British and Scandinavian tourists meant he had to spend more time in the water than he otherwise might have but made him miserably conscious that he was probably the only person on the beach who was not with someone else and he left feeling forlorn. In the afternoon the distant view of Famagusta’s crumbling, ghost-town hotels, unoccupied since the Turkish invasion and occupation thirty years before and seen through binoculars from a platform constructed in the garden an enterprising local, provided the dismay. No day seemed complete without a leavening of that.

  On the way back to Larnaca the car started to play up and by the time he pulled up outside the car hire office it was smoking and coughing and spluttering so badly he did not have to explain why he was there. Stelios, the manager was just about to close for the day.

  “No problem, Mister George. I will fix it tomorrow.”

  “Well, actually, Stelios, I was rather hoping to go to Limassol first thing tomorrow morning. I’m going to spend a few days there. Do you have another car you can let me have?”

  “You are a good customer and Maria’s friend so I tell you what I do. All my cars are hired but you can take my Pajero for a few days, for the same special price. No extra charge. You bring it back when you come back to Larnaca. No problem.”

  “Well, thank you. That’s fine but your Pajero is not a hire car.” George was looking at the standard, white number plate.

  “No problem, no problem. It is insured and everything but if anybody asks you, if the police ask, just say you have borrowed it from me because I am your friend. Do not say you are paying and everything will be fine, fine.” George’s reluctance to sail close to and perhaps across local car hire rules was overcome by his need for a vehicle and his desire to drive the nearly new, top of the range, four by four for a few days and he accepted Stelios’ offer. He wanted to go to Limassol to implement plan ‘D’. Idly turning the classified pages of a local, English language paper, he had spotted an ad for a massage and escort service. The advert offered the ‘hand maidens of Aphrodite’ and ‘full body massage for gentlemen’ and incorporated a drawing of a scantily clad girl lying with her head propped on her bent arm and one leg drawn up in what was clearly intended to be seductive pose. The number was for a mobile telephone. George hoped that one or more of the ‘hand-maidens’ might provide him with more useful information but he did not feel comfortable inviting a masseuse to visit him at Maria’s so he was planning to combine his enquiries and his explorations from a base in a Limassol hotel. Meanwhile, plan ‘C’ was ticking along nicely. Anita and Dora now accepted him as a confident and had told him they would quietly ask around for information about girls from southern and Eastern Europe who had gone to the West, through Cyprus or by other routes, to work unwillingly in the sex trade. More importantly
and more dangerously, they would ask and listen for information about the men who arranged the traffic. George felt he could leave them to it for a few days.

  Chapter 38

  He had taken his anonymity for granted in a large, four-star hotel but the first person he saw as he turned away from checking in at the reception desk was Alice. And Alice saw him.

  “George!!”

  “Alice!!” His heart sank. “How lovely! What are you doing here?”

  “We arrived yesterday. What a co-incidence! Are you on holiday?” George noticed that the other part of ‘we’ was a strikingly good looking and well muscled man, somewhat younger than Alice, who was standing behind and to one side of her, smiling in the way of someone witnessing a reunion between old friends and waiting patiently to be introduced. Alice saw his glance. “George, this is Adam. Adam, George was the HR guy at the bank. He’s the one who sorted out all that harassment business and got me the money. I told you about him.”

  Adam stepped forward with his hand extended. “Good to meet you George, Alice has told me all about you.”

  “Are you on your own, George? We can’t have that. Look, come and have a beer. How great to find you here. This must entitle us both to life membership of the small world club, eh?”

  Reluctantly, George followed Alice across the vast, marble-tiled foyer towards a bar next to the floor to ceiling windows, overlooking gardens and a swimming pool. The sunlight outside was so bright it made him squint and he put his sunglasses back on. “I’ve only just got here, Alice. I really ought to take my bag to my room and I could do with a shower.”

  Alice glanced at his overnight bag. “Either you are travelling very light or you don’t plan to stay long, George. What would you like? Beer?” Then to the hovering waitress, “Three beers please. Well, how about this eh? Adam, I probably owe George my sanity. I’d have either gone mad… in fact, I think I was getting quite paranoid... if George hadn’t decided to give evidence for me instead of that bastard Brian. It was George who encouraged me to quit and go to a tribunal. Without him I don’t know what I’d have done; probably killed myself or murdered bloody Brian or both. I never knew someone could make me feel so worthless and so angry until I joined his department. You stopped us from killing each other, George. I owe you.”

  “Well, Alice, I’m glad you’ve moved on. You weren’t Brian’s first victim, you know. I’d been trying to get him to change his ways for a couple of years. It wasn’t just him. It was a whole culture around the male, macho thing. I’ve forgotten how many times I told the board that we had to do something before we ended up with a huge court bill. Mind you, I was a bit surprised at the amount of the award. Did you know your case is still used as a case study to frighten employers into action to stop bullying? Mentioning the best part of a million quid concentrates the minds of even the most sexist and blinkered boss. With your background, I don’t have to ask if you’ve invested it wisely, do I?”

  “Of course I have. But it’s not about money is it? It’s about freedom. You set me free, George, and I hope the cash helped you, too, especially as you had to leave the bank. I don’t suppose they offered you a big leaving bonus, did they?”

  “Hardly. But then there was the Susanna business too. I think I’d have had to leave anyway. I needed a fresh start. Do you know about Susanna?”

  “Lots of people knew that something was going on between you. Is she with you?”

  “Oh. You don’t know then. She was killed by a hit and run driver last month, while she was staying with her mother in Swindon.”

  “Oh, George. I’m so sorry.” She turned to Adam. “Susanna was George’s secretary. She was a lovely girl. I suppose you’ve come on holiday to try to get over it? Good idea, George. It’ll take your mind off things.”

  George sensed their embarrassment at finding he was alone and presumably grieving. There was a risk that he would want to talk to them about it, to cling to them, follow them about and darken their holiday with his shadow. Single and miserable people could not be welcome holiday companions. In fact he was so desperate for companionship that, for a moment, he considered suggesting they should meet up later, but he knew it would be miserable so he had to reassure them.

  “Well. I’d better go and find my room and unpack, especially as I’m only staying a couple of days. Better make the most of it. Good to see you looking so well and nice to meet you, Adam. Enjoy your holiday. Just one thing, the bank doesn’t know I got part of your payout and to be honest, I’m not sure it’s strictly legit. There could be questions of collusion or maybe even perjury or fraud. You… we might have to return the money and I’ve said it all before but it bears repeating: I’d rather not raise the question so… well, best not to talk about it, at least not in London. Only the two of us…” he glanced at Adam, “three of us know anything about it and it’d be better to keep it that way. Sleeping dogs and all that.”

  “Of course, of course. And it’s great to see you. You will give me a ring, won’t you? And we must have lunch or dinner together if you have time while you’re here.”

  “Yes, we must,” said George but he noticed that Alice had not suggested a date to meet or told him their room number. And he did not tell them his.

  If you or I had seen George half an our later, showered and naked, staring out of his window at the sunbathers exhibiting themselves around the pool below, we should probably have concluded that he was indulging in mild voyeurism. But we would have been wrong. The swimming pool had triggered thoughts of his first Boy Scout summer camp. He was, in his mind, in a field at the foot of the Sussex Downs. Several memories stood out clearly. He remembered the much-loved, dedicated and tireless Scoutmaster universally known to boys, colleagues and parents as ‘Skipper’ or ‘Skip’ for short. He remembered sacking-screened latrines, foul-smelling with some archaic chemical disinfectant. He remembered the whispered debate about what the Scottish, Assistant Scout Master wore under his kilt that was resolved for those boys positioned facing him across the camp-fire circle when they all sat cross-legged on the grass. Those boys had spent the rest of the duration of the camp trying unsuccessfully to convince their peers what they had seen. He never found the truth and the question remained, as it does for almost everybody else, one of life’s mysteries. He remembered wandering on mist-shrouded downs like a lost Hobbit. He remembered the electric fence that confined the cows to their part of the field and the unforgettable smell of dried cowpats used as fuel for the fire. He remembered the delicious, home–made lemon squash that was doled out at the rate of a single glass for each boy every morning. He remembered a swimming pool. The pool was a mile or so away and reaching it meant crossing the cows’ field and following a lane into the outskirts of the nearest village. It may not have been a true swimming pool. There never seemed to be anybody else there and, faintly green with algae and surrounded by colonnaded buildings like a Roman bath, it had had a sort of farmyard atmosphere. Years later, he realised that the almost daily visits to the pool probably had more to do with ablution than with diversion. About the same time he had made the mental connection between the daily dose of lemon squash and the latrines.

  They had been warned sternly about the electric fence running above the knee-high grass of the field. It was a single wire strung through the insulated eyelets of steel stakes driven into the soft ground. The cows had long since learned that it was best left alone but, boys being boys, it held huge interest for George and his companions. For a dare, first one boy, braver or more stupid than the rest, briefly grasped and released the wire. Nothing happened. Another followed suit. Nothing happened. Yet another pressed his backside against the wire and the conspiratorial chuckles of his companions were silenced by a scream that was clearly audible at the camp a quarter of a mile away. That boy ate his dinner standing up while Skip explained that the electric current was sent around the fence in pulses a few seconds apart – not in a continuous stream. In those days of innocence, being fed laxative-lace
d lemon squash, shown what a Scotsman wears under his kilt, bathed in cold, green water in a pool so unlike the one he was staring at from his hotel window and subjected to painful electric shocks had all seemed – and were - perfectly normal experiences for a twelve year old boy. Happy days.

  Chapter 39

  At the last minute, Marianna broke into tears and declared she could not face the journey to London to meet Helen Knight. She had been withdrawn and prone to tears since her arrival and had not left the house. Deborah, Natasha and the others had tried to reassure her but had not been able to draw out the full story of events in Albania. They suspected that something had happened to her that she could not bring her self to talk about and they feared she was trying to suppress bad memories. In a strange country, Deborah did not know what to do or who to ask for help and she was getting anxious herself. She was looking forward to meeting Helen to get her advice. She decided to go without Marianna and took Natasha instead. Helen was waiting for them, as arranged, in the lobby of the hotel adjoining Charing Cross station, a location favoured by investigative journalists for quiet meetings. She rose to greet them and to be introduced to Natasha. Her distress at hearing about Marianna’s continuing trauma was clearly genuine. She understood immediately and jotted down the name and telephone number of a charity in Brixton that provided help for women who had escaped from traffickers and would be able to offer Marianna expert support or advice on where it could be found. She offered to travel to South Croydon if Marianna felt she wanted to tell her story to someone who understood and would treat the information with respect.

  Jill had still not arrived and they decided to start without her. Helen listened attentively to Natasha’s description of her original contact with the Albanian gang that had promised to get her to Europe. She apologised for producing a small recording machine and asked Natasha to repeat the names, dates and descriptions she had included in her story. She used the recorder again when Deborah told her the information she had been able to extract from her contacts made through the Soho club and when she summarised George’s news from Cyprus. Finally she sat back and turned off the machine.

 

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