Ruined (Family Untied Book 1)

by S. A. McEwen

  When new “helpers” came, to their slum shelter on the streets of India, Upeksha had no doubt that they were part of the same group of “helpers” who had abandoned them there. Who else would have known where to find them and what they needed?

  Another helper offering salvation—for the right price.

  When they’d said they had no money, he’d looked slyly at Upeksha. The youngest, the prettiest of the group.

  “She could work for us, for a few weeks,” he’d said, leering. “While you wait for the documents to be prepared.”

  They didn’t have any other options. He’d said it would cover food for the family as well, and proper lodgings. Upeksha had agreed. Terrified for her baby. Shehara had tried to take her place, but the man was adamant. They wanted Upeksha.

  The rest of the family couldn’t look at her the day she was led away.

  That man had been her first client, and an almost daily visitor after that.

  He had also been the one who drove them to the airport, seven weeks later. All of them thinner, sicker, and more broken than they were before.

  The food and lodgings promised had barely been enough to keep them alive.

  Upeksha had waited until the whole family were out of the car.

  The driver leered at her in the rear-vision mirror. She had moved to get out of the car, but from under her clothes pulled a large knife that she had stolen from the house they’d kept her family in. Upeksha had only been reunited with them that morning.

  She drew the blade across his neck, with all the strength afforded her by helplessness and rage.

  It was harder than she had anticipated. She was pregnant, weak, and sick.

  It was a stupid thing to do. As soon as she started the motion, she realised that. She suddenly saw all the ways that it could go wrong. The danger that she’d put her family in.

  Her baby.

  But she had thought about it so often.

  She had tested the blade that morning as they ate their mouthfuls of stale bread.

  It was easier in her imagination. One quick slice. A silent, painful death.

  Stupid. How easily he could have stopped their departure if she had failed to at least incapacitate him. He could have screamed. Someone could have caught them, stopped them from boarding their flight, oh so easily.

  But she hadn’t thought about that.

  All she had thought was that she needed something. Some line in the sand.

  Some way of stating her non-acceptance of this method. Of her fate.

  Of the fate of all the other women who might come after her.

  But he didn’t call out or chase them. So she must have hurt him badly enough.

  She never knew if she killed him. She tells herself that she did, sometimes, when she wakes with nightmares.

  It allows her breathing to settle, and her to get back to sleep.

  It allows her to get on with her life.

  60

  Natalie and Griffin are still sitting on the kitchen floor, holding hands, when the detective calls them.

  She conveys the news in a matter-of-fact manner. Though she prefaces it with condolences, she is clearly not expecting the news to be upsetting.

  They have found a deceased Caucasian male at the hotel room Natalie provided. The license he is carrying is out of date, and shows a picture that Detective Casey believes is indeed Griffin, though the likeness is obvious between the two men.

  The name on it says Brody Allen Pierce.

  She needs Natalie to go to the station to make a statement.

  Later, when the police have finished at the crime scene, she’ll need Griffin to go to the morgue to identify the body.

  They agree, but stay seated on the floor after the call ends.

  Just staring at each other.

  61

  In his last moments, Andrew was thinking about his mother.

  When she first arrived in Sydney, she rented a room from a leery old man in Kings Cross.

  Far, far away from Brian and fists and fear, Catelyn had found the work that desperate women always find.

  She worked as much as she was able while the children were in school. It was rough work. Dangerous, with few support options. But she worked hard, and she put her kids to bed every night herself.

  And she loved them.

  She loved them hugely.

  Fiercely, protectively.

  Guiltily.

  She gave them enough love for three children, and a day didn’t go by when she didn’t feel the third child’s absence in her whole body. Like a knife.

  When the three of them curled up to sleep together, her joining them in the early hours of the morning—the kids way too old now to all sleep in the same bed, but she couldn’t afford anything more than the one bedroom apartment—she missed his small body with a yearning that was like dying a little, all over again, every night.

  By the time she tried to tell him this, though, he was no longer a little boy.

  His body was no longer small.

  Working on the farm full-time—having dropped out of school to help when Catelyn left—resulted in a solid, well-defined physique, which was somehow even more menacing on an eleven-year-old boy.

  Living with Brian resulted in a closed-off, hardened, angry soul, which was even more so.

  Catelyn tried to reach him, to pull him into their world of softness and laughter, despite the scarcity—she had spent years saving money, to send for him. She paid a trusted colleague cash. She paced endlessly for the entire time she waited.

  She was gobsmacked that he came.

  Andrew never knew it, but she was terrified that he would be firmly his father’s son, and pass their location on to Brian, to come for them and take—or kill—them all.

  But she’d also spent years growing strong and resourceful. She had enough back-up plans to sink a small boat.

  She tried to reach him with love and light. With her whole heart. Up against three years of guilt and pain and suffering, on both their shoulders.

  But he was unreachable, and hovered around the outside of their lives in a darkness and coldness that permeated their tiny flat.

  He called her a “whore,” like he knew what it meant.

  But he stayed with them.

  He went back to school.

  He was angry. But he was safe, she told herself, every night when she came home and looked at them. Together at last.

  She knew he wasn’t safe from what was inside him. Entrenched there through what he had endured. But she didn’t know how to fix that except with love. Consistent, relentless, enormous love.

  She couldn’t think about it too deeply. Instinctively, she knew that to delve into that would kill her.

  Because she left him.

  And he never forgot it.

  The drugs the woman had dissolved in his champagne made Andrew so sleepy, he didn’t even notice her slipping a plastic bag over his head.

  She’s standing behind him where he lounges in the chair, slumped down in it, already starting to slide off it to the floor.

  Everything is heavy and strange and slow.

  In his mind, he sees Catelyn smiling at him, even as he insulted her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she’s whispering, her long, soft hair tickling his face. “I love you,” she’s saying, the light dancing in her eyes, and her smile, which never falters.

  “I love you I love you I love you.”

  He’s never stopped hating her. Hating women. Hating whores. But in those last moments, as he drifts into unconsciousness, he feels an overwhelming urge to stroke her face. To curl into her arms. To smell her hair.

  In death, he might love her more than he ever allowed himself to in life.

  62

  Upeksha – Linfield, 2018

  In Andrew’s last moments, Upeksha had been thinking about her mother, too.

  Kandiah had spared her the details. He could not speak the details. Not of what happened to their family, or what happened to him. Thoug
h they could make a guess, from looking at his hands.

  He had never been able to work as an electrician again.

  There was a time in her life when it would have been unthinkable to Upeksha that she was capable of killing somebody.

  Even when she started following Natalie—after that day when Natalie declared that someone was killing her colleagues—she hadn’t been thinking of killing anybody. Just being there. Being near.

  But in truth, Upeksha never stopped thinking about life versus death.

  What she might do to protect her family.

  What she had done to protect her family.

  Not her country—she doesn’t understand that concept at all. She would not sacrifice her life for a Tamil state.

  But for her family…that was another matter.

  The day Alex was hurt, she was too late.

  She was too immersed in fear. Of being discovered, and being sent back.

  But the war is over now.

  And she had not survived this far to let her children die.

  She didn’t have a plan, or a strategy, or even any conviction that she would be enough.

  She hadn’t even intended to go back to the hotel until Natalie showed her the photo of Griffin.

  She hadn’t missed a beat. But upon seeing that picture, her plans changed.

  Though it was clearly a different man, the likeness was undeniable to the man Upeksha had seen near the bus stop the day that Letitia was supposed to come for lunch.

  Upeksha had been coming back from the shops. She’d wanted fresh produce to cook Letitia something special. Whatever Natalie thought about her prejudice against skin colours, Upeksha was thrilled to meet her daughter’s friend. Letitia seemed just like the sort of friend every woman needed.

  Upeksha wanted to embrace her, to adopt her. To make her one of the family.

  She had no idea that that would be the last thing that Natalie would appreciate.

  Weighed down with fresh produce, Upeksha had carefully exited the bus, lifting her shopping cart down each step painstakingly. She did not want any produce crushed or bruised.

  The bus had been late, and Upeksha had cursed, and wished she had let Ravi drive her. But she enjoyed shopping by herself. The orderliness of everything she needed, in neat rows at her fingertips. The cool shopping centres. The purposefulness of the (mainly women) shoppers.

  Now, she was late. The meat was already cooking, but Letitia would be arriving in half an hour. She would barely have time to get the bread and vegetables on before Letitia knocked on the door.

  She only noticed the man because he was staring at her over his shoulder, twisting awkwardly, as she carefully descended from the bus, with an expression that unsettled her. It was dislike, certainly, and that was unusual enough around here. Their suburb was middle class and well-behaved. Everybody was friendly, but kept largely to themselves. Open hostility was rare enough these days to stand out.

  There was no way a brown teenager would be abused in her street anymore.

  But it wasn’t even that. It was that he had driven away immediately after, but then she had seen him drive past and stare at her again just a few minutes later, heading directly back to where he had just been.

  Upeksha felt uneasy.

  So many years had passed.

  And since the attack on Alex, nothing untoward had ever happened to her. Nothing with any consequences, that is.

  Sure, there were obscenities shouted now and then. She was overlooked or underserviced. But nothing that was going to hurt her.

  Nothing that was going to kill her.

  Nevertheless, Upeksha was still hyper vigilant to the expression on men’s faces when they looked at her. Fifteen-hour days in a grimy Indian sex shop, terrified for the life of her baby, had taught her to pick up on those that might want to hurt her versus those that just wanted to have sex.

  Not that anticipating violence ever meant that she escaped it. Just that she would try to protect her baby, her stomach area, as best she could.

  She had wondered about the man, because she feared he went around the block to shout abuse at her. From the look on his face, she even feared he might assault her. But he drove past, slowing only slightly, and Upeksha’s awareness had been laser focused on getting home, or which house she could duck into should he reappear. Which neighbour might be friendly enough to open the door.

  Though she had reported him to the detectives that day they came to her house, she was ashamed to admit she could only describe the danger she sensed from him—not any identifying details about his car that might have helped them to locate him.

  But then, driving away from Natalie’s apartment, it occurred to Upeksha that she knew where he was.

  63

  The investigation is over quickly.

  Of the four young sex workers the police wanted to talk to, they could only find one. Only one number was listed in Andrew’s phone, and she is captured on CCTV leaving the hotel alone, as she’d stated, after refusing to perform natural oral.

  She didn’t know the other girls, she said in her statement.

  They were just on the street when she got the call.

  Her story didn’t budge, and despite a call for public help with the CCTV footage of the other three girls circulated widely, nobody came forward to identify them.

  There were small discrepancies.

  The CCTV caught the other three girls leaving the hotel, at a time when the medical examiner declared that Andrew was still alive, based on the time-of-death estimate.

  Numerous burner phones were found in Andrew’s room in a grimy sharehouse, not far from where he and Griffin had lived with Catelyn and Marilyn. Between those and Griffin’s phone, the police could link Andrew to all five murdered escorts within weeks of their deaths. DNA evidence linking him followed soon after.

  His death was ruled as a homicide by asphyxiation. There was speculation that he had been drugged prior to asphyxiation—traces of several depressants were found in an empty bottle of champagne—but there were numerous over-the-counter as well as illicit substances found at the scene and in his system, so it wasn’t conclusive who was giving them to whom, and with what intent.

  Timelines surmised that he had organised an orgy with sex workers immediately after Natalie had left (her hasty exit and distress also caught on CCTV), and had taken numerous substances with them. They left just before midday, and the time of death was estimated to be between midday and 12:30 p.m. The police had arrived at 12:39 p.m.

  The means of asphyxiation was not found at the scene.

  But they had no leads, and to Natalie’s surprise, resources were quickly funnelled elsewhere. The case wasn’t officially closed, but it seemed that the death of a white man—who could be considered to have deserved it—wasn’t a top priority for the homicide squad.

  Andrew sank out of the world without a trace.

  64

  At the time Upeksha was running late, and hurrying away from the bus stop and the man that had caused alarm bells to ring throughout her body, she was unaware that Letitia was running early.

  Due to the late bus, Letitia’s bus had in fact pulled up behind Upeksha’s own. The driver had waited for Upeksha to disembark too, to then be able to move into the correct bus zone to open the doors. Letitia was looking at her phone though, working out which way she needed to walk to reach Upeksha and Ravi’s house. She didn’t look up, and she didn’t see Upeksha getting off the bus or hurrying away.

  Neither Letitia nor Upeksha knew it, but Andrew had been following Letitia’s bus since she boarded it.

  His careful plan was about to be executed.

  Two weeks earlier, he had booked Letitia at a five-star CBD hotel. He’d been kind, respectful, and had sent her off early with a big tip. All things which he hoped would work in his favour now, as he “ran into” her on the street.

  Usually, he propositioned his victims. He lived just around the corner and was just heading home between meetings. Did she ha
ve time for a fifteen-minute blow n go? He had five-hundred dollars. He lives by himself; there will be no one else there...

  It had worked every time. After all, he had screened without fuss the previous time. He had been a perfect client. And most people could spare fifteen minutes for five-hundred dollars…

  He drove slowly past her bus, having seen Letitia standing up to exit.

  He pulled in ahead of the buses and craned his neck to check if Letitia was definitely exiting, not just getting ready for the next stop, and saw a nondescript old brown woman taking forever to exit, blocking Letitia’s bus.

  He shot her a disgusted look, hoping she’d move faster.

  Finally, she got off and her bus pulled away. Letitia was definitely on the steps of her bus, preparing to disembark.

  Andrew quickly pulled away. His plan was to drive around the block, and if necessary the adjacent blocks, until he saw her. He had to be quick, in case her destination was close by.

  Barely two minutes passed before Andrew saw Letitia on the street, her arms swinging easily as she strode along the path that Upeksha had trodden just five minutes before.

  A few minutes more, and she might have seen Upeksha ahead of her; called out to her; listened to her lament the late bus and reassured her that she was in no hurry.

  As it was, Andrew pulled up alongside her with a wide grin.

  “Fancy seeing you here!” he said, the window whirring as it lowered.

  He was dressed in a business suit and an expensive-looking tie.

  Letitia had hesitated, then moved toward the open window.

  Andrew was an attractive man.

  She remembered him. She remembered their pleasant tryst. The large tip.

  She smiled back, and he fed her his line.

  The sun was shining, and she was early.

  She slipped into his car.