Finding Milly

by Nathan Burrows

  ‘I don’t think she’s broken the law, Jimmy,’ Laura said, her voice slow and considered. ‘Like I said before. Or any of them, come to that. I mean, with my lawyer head on, none of what you’ve just described is illegal.’

  ‘It must be,’ Jimmy replied. ‘How can selling sex not be against the law?’

  ‘Elements of it are. Like you can’t solicit, for example.’ Jimmy frowned, and Laura must have realised that he didn’t know what that meant. ‘That’s when a woman, or man come to that, loiters or solicits in a street or public place for the purposes of offering services as a prostitute.’ Her voice had changed for the last part of the sentence, as if she was reading from a book. Jimmy realised that, in a sense, she was. ‘That’s the legal definition. It also applies to soliciting for sex, or trying to procure it.’

  ‘What, like kerb crawling?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s against the law, but people only get fined for it.’

  ‘What about Hollister and Max? They must have broken the law, surely?’

  ‘Only if they’ve gained from the women’s activities, or coerced them into it. The first one’s ridiculously difficult to prove, and the second one’s tricky sometimes. It’s easier if women have been trafficked, but that’s not the case here from what you’ve told me.’

  ‘So, basically what you’re saying is that they’re untouchable?’

  ‘If the women are acting of their own free will and not being coerced in any way, and Hollister and Max aren’t directly gaining from their activity, then yes,’ Laura replied with a sad frown. ‘Sorry, Mr Tucker. I know that’s not what you want to hear. But getting from what you know now to something that would stand up in a court of law is a very long way indeed.’ She sighed, glanced at the closed laptop, and got to her feet. ‘And I dread to think about the legal team that Hollister would put together if he was ever charged.’

  Jimmy walked Laura to the door of his house, thanking her again for bringing the lasagna round.

  ‘It might not keep until this evening,’ he said with a smile as he opened his front door. ‘Just thinking about it is making me peckish.’ She smiled at his comment, dimples appearing in both cheeks, and took a step toward him with her arms outstretched.

  As he hugged her, Jimmy breathed in the perfume she was wearing. It was familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place it. He didn’t think either Hannah or Milly had ever worn it. It smelled vaguely of leather, almost with a hint of tobacco, but was incredibly feminine.

  ‘That perfume’s lovely,’ Jimmy said as he disentangled himself from Laura’s arms.

  ‘Thank you,’ Laura replied. ‘Gareth bought it for me.’ She laughed, a bright tinkle that Jimmy could have listened to all day. ‘Well, he bought me a tiny little bottle. Apparently, it’s very expensive. Isn’t it lovely, though?’

  ‘Are you two, er, now…’ Jimmy’s voice tailed off. He was unsure how to phrase the question he wanted to ask.

  ‘Together?’ Laura’s face coloured ever so slightly, and her smile turned into more of a mischievous grin. ‘I think we might be. My mum always used to say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’

  ‘Hence the lasagna.’

  ‘Hence the lasagna,’ Laura said. ‘I think my mum was right, except for the amount of garlic.’

  ‘They usually are right, Laura,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I’m delighted for you. Disappointed as I know that I’ll never persuade you that older men are much better company than young whippersnappers like Gareth, but delighted for you both.’ He grinned broadly as he said this, determined to make it obvious that he was only joking.

  Looking at the woman in front of him, he knew that Gareth wouldn’t have needed much in the way of persuasion. Laura could have served him up a Pot Noodle while she was wearing a black bin bag over her head and Gareth’s interest wouldn’t have waned in the slightest.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘I think so,’ Laura said with a faraway smile. ‘I hope so.’ She looked at Jimmy and her dimples slowly faded away. ‘Early days, though. I’ll see you soon. Take care and let me know if there’s too much garlic in the lasagna.’ She turned and took a few steps down the path.

  ‘Laura?’ Jimmy called after her. She stopped and turned to face him. ‘That perfume? What’s it called?’ The least he could do is buy her a decent-sized bottle, not to upstage Gareth or try to embarrass him but to thank her for the help she had given Jimmy over the last week or so.

  ‘It’s by Anna Zworykina,’ Laura said. Jimmy’s forehead creased. He would have to write that down straight away, or he wouldn’t be able to remember it.

  ‘That’s a weird name for a perfume,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s not the name, it’s the company who makes it.’ Laura turned to walk back to her car, calling over her shoulder as she did so. ‘The scent itself’s called Revenge.’

  Chapter 45

  When he was sure that Laura had driven away from his house, Jimmy returned his attention to Rhiannon. He opened the laptop screen and wiggled his finger on the track pad to wake the MacBook up. The picture that Laura had seen a few moments before reappeared. The woman on the screen wasn’t as large as Jimmy had first thought, he realised as he scrolled his way through the still photographs in the folder. Uncharacteristically for Max, he had caught the woman in a strange trick of the light that made her look heavier than she was.

  The still photographs were all fairly tame. Rhiannon was naked in every single one, but they were artfully arranged to avoid even an accidental glimpse of a nipple. The ones Jimmy had seen of Angela were more explicit than these were. Far more explicit.

  There was a video file in the same folder, its name a jumbled mixture of letters and numbers. Jimmy squinted at them, trying to recognise some sort of pattern, but they looked random as far as he could tell. He brought up the file’s information pane, just as Dave had showed him, and looked at the data attached to the video. It was large—well over three gigabytes—and had been filmed in high definition. Looking at the length of the film—over forty minutes long—he decided to make himself a cup of tea to drink while he watched it. He didn’t particularly want to watch the video, but he knew he had to.

  While he was waiting for the kettle to boil, Jimmy had an idea. He nipped up to his bedroom and grabbed the bank statements from his bedside table. A few seconds later, he was scanning them for any payments at about the same time that Rhiannon’s video had been made.

  His idea paid off. Three days after they had filmed the video, there was a payment into Max’s account of five grand from Hollister Enterprises. He clicked back out of the folder he was in to look at the date that the portfolio pictures had been taken. The corresponding payment of three grand had been made a few days before that date. That made sense to Jimmy. The woman called Rhiannon—whatever her real name was—had paid the photographer up front for the portfolio. Hollister Enterprises had paid Max when he’d finished the video. Cash on delivery, electronically speaking. With a fresh cup of tea in front of him, Jimmy settled down to watch the video.

  Jimmy was no stranger to pornography, but he was not a connoisseur. His friend Robbie, in contrast, considered himself very much the film critic as far as the type of film that Jimmy was now watching went. Years ago, way before Robbie had joined the army, the two of them had sat down to watch a porn film Robbie had bought off a bloke in the Heartsease. It had been Big Joe—who back then was not as big and just known as Joe—who had recommended the man with the holdall of VHS tapes to them. Jimmy and Robbie had clubbed together to purchase the tape which had cost them a fiver each. That was back in the days when a pint cost less than a quid, so a fiver was a fair outlay.

  Jimmy started watching the film, listening to Rhiannon introducing herself to the camera. Her eyes were wide and bright, as if she couldn’t wait for the experience she was about to have. It was a long way from the scratchy low-resolution tape he and Robbie had watched all those years ago.

  Rhiannon was a local girl, Jim
my could tell that much from her accent. Not Norwich, but perhaps a bit further out in the county from its capital. Her voice had an agricultural burr as she told the invisible man behind the camera—presumably Max originally, but in this context whoever was watching—about her hobbies and interests as if she was being interviewed for a vacancy at the cameraman’s company. The questions she was answering were coming from off-camera, and her eyes flicked once or twice toward the man behind the voice. Sure, Rhiannon said. Of course she could take her top off.

  Jimmy frowned as Rhiannon paraded herself for the camera at the invisible narrator’s insistence. By the time she was naked, the film was less than ten minutes in, and a couple of minutes later the narrator put in an appearance.

  He was white, probably a few years younger than Jimmy, but not in as good shape. Jimmy couldn’t see his face—it always remained just out of shot of the camera. The man had a large plaster over the outer portion of his upper arm. A tattoo, perhaps? Jimmy thought. It was fairly clear to Jimmy though that any person who knew the man intimately would recognise him straight away from other parts of his anatomy. Hiding a tattoo on his arm would not help with that.

  As the film progressed, Jimmy fiddled with the laptop to turn the volume down. Rhiannon was doing her best to show that she was enjoying what the narrator was doing to her. Jimmy found his attention drifting as he watched her going through the motions. Oh, yes, Rhiannon gasped as Jimmy was just thinking about Norwich’s chances against the next team they were facing in the league. Harder, harder, she pleaded as he considered whether the manager would keep the same line up at the back.

  It was just a pornographic film, Jimmy realised as the film and the narrator reached their inevitable climax. Rhiannon made an impressive attempt to highlight one of her own, but Jimmy sensed that her heart wasn’t really in it.

  The only person who would enjoy watching this film was the unknown narrator and co-star. Jimmy was sure than even Robbie would agree with that assessment. So, some bloke had hired Max to film him having sex with a woman—a prostitute—who Hollister had supplied. Jimmy didn’t have to like it. It was nothing to do with him, and he wouldn’t have had any problem with that at all if it weren’t for the folder marked Nikki on the same hard drive.

  According to the bank statements, the next three folders on the hard drive had cost the directors the same amount. The films reflected this. Different men, different women, but the same content. Jimmy was fairly sure that Robbie would describe the films as vanilla and, in a sense, they were. There was nothing in them that millions of teenage lads with unrestricted internet accounts weren’t watching every day around the world. The only difference with these films was that, as far as Jimmy could tell, the male participants had paid to star in them.

  The fourth film was slightly different. It had cost more to produce, with Max’s bank statements suggesting that they had paid him almost twice as much to produce this one as they had the others. When Jimmy opened the video file, he realised why. There wasn’t one narrator in this one, but two. One of them he recognised from an earlier video, a muscular man who made up what he lacked in intimate size with physical enthusiasm. The other man in the film was clearly in charge and was directing the action as much as he was taking part in it.

  Jimmy had four folders left to look through. He checked the amounts on the bank statements, each payment a few days after the creation date of the folders. Whoever had commissioned these videos had paid fifteen thousand pounds for the next one in the series, and twenty-five grand for the final three. Including the folder labelled Nikki. The one with Milly.

  Fingers trembling, Jimmy clicked on the folder with the video that had cost its commissioners fifteen grand. Bizarrely, he was hungry, and as he watched the woman on the screen introduce herself, his thoughts turned to the lasagna that Laura had brought round.

  Hi. My name is Beth, the woman on the screen said. She was stick thin, spoke with a London accent, and judging by the faint track marks that Jimmy could see on her arms, had a problem. Any thoughts of Laura’s lasagna disappeared as the video progressed. Jimmy soon lost count of the narrators in this video. They appeared on screen, sometimes alone, sometimes in twos or threes, and did what they wanted. Where they wanted. Jimmy started to feel nauseated as he looked at Beth’s face, occasional close ups of it highlighting her dilated pupils. He realised that any consent she may have been able to offer had been stripped away from the young woman by whatever she had taken to get herself through the experience.

  Horrified, Jimmy watched the film play itself out almost to the bitter end. The finale, such as it was, had been filmed by Max in slow motion. Jimmy couldn’t bear to watch the last few moments of the film, knowing exactly from the start of the sequence how it would play out at the end. He closed the window down, heart thumping in his chest. The final three videos—one of which was his Milly—had cost more than the one with Beth in it. What had that extra money bought the participants?

  Jimmy was biting his lip so hard that he tasted blood as he stared at the screen. There were three folders to choose from; Tina, Ellie, and Nikki. He opened the first folder. He had to know.

  This was Tina. She had dark hair, not dissimilar to Laura’s, that flowed over her shoulders. She looked to Jimmy to be younger than Milly. Late teens or early twenties at best. Thin, but healthily so. Curves and bumps all in the right places.

  The video started off just as the others had. Tina introduced herself to the camera, and within a few minutes was accompanied by a narrator. Jimmy didn’t recognise him from the other videos. The only distinguishing feature that the man had was a small signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. It left a horrible red weal across the side of Tina’s breast when he hit her for the first time. From the way she screamed, and the instant tears that welled up in her eyes, this wasn’t something that she’d been expecting.

  Jimmy watched a few more minutes of the video. Long enough to realise that this was far from consensual. He looked at Tina’s face, both cheeks bright red. Not from excitement or pleasure, but from hard slaps from a hand with a signet ring. Her wrists were cable-tied behind her back, the camera making the most of the way she’d struggled to prevent this.

  He paused the video a moment later, the still image on the screen showing Tina’s face fixed somewhere between a scream of pain and abject horror as her companion knelt behind her. Jimmy couldn’t see anything, but he didn’t need to. It was obvious what the man behind Tina was holding in his hand, and her expression made it equally obvious what he was doing with it.

  Jimmy looked at the young woman’s face, dark streaks running down her cheeks where her mascara had been washed away by her tears, as saliva filled his mouth. He stumbled to his feet, intent on reaching the bathroom upstairs, but he soon realised that he would not make it that far. A few seconds later, he was staring through watery eyes at the remnants of his breakfast in the bottom of the kitchen sink.

  He retched, spitting green bile to add to the mess below. Jimmy knew he had to watch the rest of the video. Tina deserved that much. But whatever had happened to Tina had probably happened to Milly.

  His Milly.

  His daughter.

  Chapter 46

  ‘Hi, Gareth? It’s Jimmy.’ Too late, Jimmy remembered that his name would have flashed up on Gareth’s phone.

  ‘Morning, mate. You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, all good. I’ve got a favour to ask.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Can I borrow your truck for an hour this evening?’

  ‘Er, sorry Jimmy,’ Gareth replied. ‘Me and Laura are going to the cinema, so I won’t be able to drive you.’

  ‘I can drive it?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were supposed to?’

  ‘Technically, I’m not,’ Jimmy forced himself to smile so that Gareth would hear it in his voice. ‘But I’ll be careful. I just need to drop some water barrels from the fish tank off at a bloke’s house. He doesn’t drive.’

  ‘I
s he local?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jimmy replied. At least then Gareth would know that he wasn’t driving far. ‘I’ll fill it up when I’m finished.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that, mate,’ Gareth replied with a laugh. ‘It’s running on fumes. That’d cost you a fortune.’

  ‘Well, I’ll put a tenners worth of diesel in it then?’

  ‘All right then, but for Christ’s sake be careful.’

  ‘I’ll take good care of it mate, don’t worry.’

  ‘It’s not the truck I’m worried about,’ Gareth said. ‘It’s you. I’ll stop by after work. If you could take me to Laura’s flat, that would work. The truck’s all yours after, and I’ll pick it up tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Nice one, Gareth,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Thanks very much.’

  Jimmy disconnected the call and put his phone down. He’d forgotten to tell Gareth that he was supposed to be at the hospital tomorrow morning, so he’d need to bring a spare key. Jimmy was just about to tap out a text message to Gareth when he paused. Maybe he should cancel the appointment? What were they going to tell him that he didn’t already know? Unless they’d suddenly discovered a miracle cure, there wasn’t any point at all in going.

  He picked the phone back up and scrolled through his contacts to find the hospital. While he listened to the on-hold music, he realised that the main reason he wasn’t going to the hospital was because he didn’t want to have to speak to Angela face to face. Not after what he’d seen.

  Jimmy’s problem was that he was desperate to speak to her, just not in the hospital. In fact, he had to speak to her. If he understood Max’s naming method for his folders, Angela was next in line. He had to warn her that what might happen to her might not be what she would be expecting. He couldn’t not warn her.

  ‘Neurology department?’ A woman’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Jimmy paused for a few seconds, suddenly unsure of what to do. ‘Hello?’