by RJ Bailey
‘Oh.’ She was hardly what he would consider a friend, prone to casual calls. Pushy rival was more like it. Nina had shown a steel core and a thick skin when she first arrived on the magazine, carving out a niche for herself. Like all of them, she was fighting against having to write the journalistic equivalent of clickbait. ‘Everything all right?’
‘No. Not really. I think we need you, Adam.’ Not, he thought, words he heard often enough these days.
‘Who is “we”?’ he asked.
Five minutes later, he was in the garden, signalling that Kath should turn off the infernal racket of the blower. ‘I’ve got to go to London. Immediately.’
Kath brushed hair from her face, leaving a streak of mud across her forehead. ‘Really? Why?’
‘Research.’
‘Bit late in the day, isn’t it? What’s the hurry?’
‘It’s someone who knew Anthony Quayle in the war – must be well into his nineties – in town for one night only. I’ll buy him dinner. Might be the breakthrough I need. I’ll put up at the Nadler.’ At least one part of that was true.
The truth was, he could have told Nina all she wanted to know over the phone. But the chance to see his two saviours again was too good to pass up. He arrived early evening. Nina and Freddie were in the kitchen, two empty bottles of wine on the marble top between them. Once he had sat down, Freddie opened a third. There was another man there, too, with a glass of water in front of him. He was introduced as Tom, a friend of Sam’s.
The ‘friend’ was in slightly strained inverted commas. Adam found himself a little disappointed that there was a boyfriend. Mind you, he was a good-looking specimen, and gym-buffed. He had the sort of arms Adam knew he would never acquire even with a year of personal training. They had the shape of hams hanging in a Spanish deli.
‘Where’s Sam?’ Adam asked. Tom’s eyes flicked to stare over his shoulder.
‘In bed. She got up for a while,’ said Freddie, ‘but she’s exhausted.’
‘Does she need to see a doctor?’
‘She’s seen a doctor,’ answered Nina. ‘It’s a psych ward next unless we sort this out.’
‘Which is where you come in,’ said Freddie, who gave him a run-down of the story so far. Including the term FOTB.
After she had finished, Adam went back into the hall and fetched his overnight bag. From it, he took out a sheaf of loose papers and three notebooks. He placed it all on the table and then moved them aside for the wine glass that Freddie placed before him.
‘OK, I didn’t have time to look through this before I left. But I have heard that phrase before, when I was doing the Romanian work. Cam girls, you know?’ He looked from one to the other. ‘The two biggest centres for live sex streaming are Romania and the Philippines.’
‘So?’ prompted Freddie.
Adam flicked through one of the notebooks, then looked up. ‘It makes for grim reading. You ready?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Freddie, ‘you don’t need to treat us with kid gloves.’
‘FOTB is Fresh Off The Boat. Originally, it was just a phrase. A code word for virgins. Young girls, anyway. But there is also an organisation of the same name, which is run out of Amsterdam . . .’
‘Of course it is . . .’ said Tom, the first words he had spoken after ‘hello’.
‘This lot act like a Christie’s or a Sotheby’s of the sex-trafficking world. It caters to what we call High Net Worth Individuals.’
‘The sort we bodyguard for,’ said Freddie, but mostly to herself.
‘Basically, it runs online auctions. You can view the merchandise beforehand and attend in person if you wish. But for obvious reasons, most buyers prefer to do it online. Through very secure closed and encrypted links.’
It was dark outside now and Freddie got up to lower the blinds.
‘So you think Jess might have been fed into this?’ asked Nina.
Freddie said nothing. Just sat back down and chewed her lip.
‘The only positive spin I can give you is that these are not weekly events. She could be slated to go into the next one. Which might be months away.’
‘And till then?’ Nina asked.
‘She will probably be reasonably well looked after, physically at least. FOTB is all about undamaged goods.’
Freddie mumbled to herself. Nobody could make out the words, but they all got the gist. Then she said, ‘So how do we get in touch with FOTB? Find out when the next auction is?
‘Not easy. They used to be in onionland—’
‘In what?’ Tom asked.
‘The regular dark web network called Tor. It has a dot-onion domain name. But the FBI’s Violent Crimes Against Children unit started infecting the site with malware to trace the users. Then, when they arrested Matthew Falder, the police broke some of the encryption. So, of course, they moved on.’
Nina took a drink of wine. ‘Where?’
‘Darker and deeper. I don’t actually know.’ He flicked his notebook shut. ‘I didn’t stay on top of this once I’d finished the piece. You can’t stay in that world for very long. It’s like freediving through shit. You hold your breath and you know you have a limited time available.’
‘Can’t we go searching?’ asked Freddie.
A shake of the head. ‘Not you and me. Amateurs, I mean. Plus, unless you know what you are doing, you’ll have Europol and the FBI breaking down your door. I’m not sure “I was just doing research” will wash with those guys.’
Freddie drummed her fingers on the worktop. For the first time, Adam noticed a slight slur to her words when she spoke. ‘The Colonel had a computer expert. He helped find the images of Jess on the net.’ She considered what she had just suggested. ‘But again, I think maybe those bridges have been burned.’
‘What about the car man with the kid who’s an expert? Worth a try?’ suggested Nina.
‘One-eyed Jack? Fuck, no. The last time he got involved with Sam, his son got threatened. Can you imagine if we ask his boy to go into this cesspit?’ She shook her head firmly. ‘No. Too much to ask.’
‘Freddie? Can I have a word? In private.’
Tom didn’t wait for an answer, just got up and walked out of the kitchen. Freddie shot the other two a puzzled look and followed. She found him in the room at the front of the house that Freddie mainly used to watch TV. He sat in one of the armchairs and Freddie took the sofa. ‘What is it?’
‘I know a way to get to these guys.’
‘You?’ Freddie asked. ‘What have you ever had to do with that crap?’
‘I haven’t. But you can bet Leka has. Anyone whose job is trafficking—’
‘Leka? I’m not going to waltz to that tune again, thanks. Sam nearly got us both killed when she went to see Leka. We were lucky to get out alive. We only did because—’
‘Because Leka wanted Sam to confront me with his version of events,’ said Tom. ‘Look, I don’t know what Sam told you about what they said . . .’
‘All of it, of course,’ said Freddie. ‘No secrets.’
‘It isn’t true.’
‘Well, something is off,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is,’ he admitted. ‘The story I told Sam. Well, it was one I believed too. Over the years, I told myself it was what happened. But it wasn’t. Yes, we saw the girl with the goats, and a couple of the lads went up to talk to her. They gave her some chocolate, just messing about. Just banter.’ Freddie rolled her eyes. ‘Leka and his family turned up and reckoned we were going to . . . that we were out to rape her. And they began to take the lead. That’s when it became ugly. In the girl’s mind, maybe in Leka’s, they thought we were there first and had first dibs. That’s why the firefight started. But it wasn’t like she said. Our boys didn’t start it.’
Freddie said nothing.
‘It’s false memory syndrome or whatever they call it. You have to believe me.’
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ Freddie said at last. ‘It was a long time ago and it was a nasty little war and I
’m prepared to believe almost anything of anyone. Wars do that. I don’t believe you are a bad bloke, Tom. But I do know one thing – if you go to see Leka, he’ll kill you.’
‘Maybe not.’
Freddie laughed. ‘Maybe? I’d want a damn sight more than maybe.’
‘Have you got a better idea? Like I said, this guy traffics people. Women, no doubt. And what happens to a significant number of those women? Of course he’ll know about FOTB. Maybe where, what, when, who. Sam told me there was a possible hit still out on me. I mean, how long can I go on ducking and diving like this? I have to do it for Sam. For Jess, for Christ’s sake. The last time I tried to help Sam, she clobbered me. Remember? Knocked me out cold so she could face Bojan alone. I’m army trained. Yet she thought she could do better than me. And don’t tell me she’s as good as me. You were fuckin’ medics.’
‘Oh, come on, she’s pretty good at taking care of herself.’
‘Not as good as she thinks. The thing is, she’s been manic since Jess went. “Oh, I’m fine,” she says, when we all know she isn’t. Can’t be. She thinks she’s superwoman. Or wants us to think she is, anyway. But she’s not. She’s damaged. Like you said, she’s just been lucky, that’s all. Lucky she’s alive. I have to try this. And you can’t stop me.’
Freddie laughed and ran her eyes over his torso. ‘You have beefed up. I don’t think I’d give you too much trouble. Slow you down a little, perhaps.’
‘Well, maybe I knew in my heart that something like this was coming. That’s why I stayed match fit.’
‘Walking into the lion’s den isn’t much of a plan.’
‘It’s the only plan we’ve got. I love her, Freddie. I can’t bear to see her like this. It hurts. Right here.’ He punched his own stomach with a force that made Freddie wince. ‘Let me do this for her. Please.’
Freddie was taken aback by such a raw admission. ‘Like you said. I can’t stop you. But I can help. What do you need?’
THIRTY-FIVE
Sam Wylde is in hell. A strange, aquatic sort of hell, with real life refracted and blurred by the waves above her head. She tries to swim upwards, but the surface never gets any closer. She is aware that someone is feeding her, offering her drinks, and she takes them. There is no conversation with these visitors. When she tries to speak, the sound starts in her head. It is not screaming exactly. More a rushing, tumbling roar, like a waterfall as it plunges down onto rocks.
But she knows what it really is: white noise, designed to blank out reality. She doesn’t want it blanked out. She wants to stare straight at it, in all its bright, cruel heartlessness.
But something won’t let her. Some kind of coping mechanism, like a limiter on a powerful car, is preventing her confronting what has happened.
She is broken.
Or some part of her is. Shattered.
Her insides are liquefying. She can feel them. Dissolving into sludge. Her once-taut muscles are the same, without any substance or texture. The flesh yields beneath her fingers. If she pushes hard enough, it feels as if they might go right through the skin, as if her body were rotting flesh.
She can barely lift her arms. She has tried getting up, out of the bed, but when she swings her legs off she is trapped in a whirlpool that spins faster and faster until she is forced to flop back down. And then she is sick, retching up bile.
The worst thing is, she can’t think. Her neural connections are down. There is a grey fuzz settled in her brain. Sam has always thought of a way out of every situation. But this one has no roadmap, not so much as a signpost. She is lost in a featureless, watery wilderness.
‘What can I do?’
Haven’t you done enough?
She is aware that there are people talking, and talking about her. Occasionally, her name floats up the stairs. And then, perhaps, laughter, quickly stifled. A doctor has been in, too, who checked her pulse and shone a light in her eyes and listened to her heart and asked her some stupid questions. Did he give her drugs? Is that why the limiter is in place? She can’t tell.
Doors slam. Cars start up. She hears kids going to school, the local yappy dog, apparently called Bella, judging by the owner’s frustrated shouts. The world turns. But not hers. Apart from when it spins.
She has a song stuck in her head. An earworm. No, an ear cancer. It is some piece of shit from the 1980s. ‘The Final Countdown’. She wants it to stop. When it does, it is replaced by ‘Living on a Prayer’. It is like being trapped in Capital Gold. Not good at all.
She is aware of the door opening. Footsteps. Freddie again, perhaps. With chicken noodle soup or the equivalent. Or maybe the doctor, with some more sly medication. Chemical cosh. But the footsteps stop. Now Sam can hear breathing.
Using those rubber limbs, she pushes herself up in the bed. There is a little girl standing there. Eight, nine. Whose child is that? The film on her eyes clears. It is my child, she thinks. Jess, not as she is now, but as she was seven or eight years ago. Innocent. Unharmed.
‘Jess?’ she asks.
A smile spreads over the girl’s face, showing the gaps in her upper teeth. She holds out her hand.
‘Why didn’t you come and get me, Mummy?’
There is the sound of water receding, sucked away from the shore, as if a tsunami is coming. A synapse fizzes in her brain. Cataracts fall from her eyes, the tiny bones in her ear, long frozen in spasm, begin to move freely again. She can taste the staleness in her mouth. She can smell coffee. And her own body odour. She blinks. The child is still there, fading now like an old Polaroid.
‘Why didn’t you come and get me, Mummy?’ Jess asks one last time, before she dissolves completely.
Sam swings her legs off the bed, waiting for the nausea to hit. It doesn’t come. She holds out a hand. It doesn’t shake. She can feel muscle and tendon holding it there, steady. Ready. Sam looks at the space once occupied by Jess. There is an after-image on her retina.
‘Of course I’m coming, darling. Just hold on. Just stay alive till I get there.’
THIRTY-SIX
Freddie was alone when the call came through; Adam had gone back home, Nina was at work. She thought she heard Sam moving around, but just as she went to investigate, her mobile rang. It was Tom, so she took it.
‘Tom? Where are you?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Fuck. You OK?’
‘So far.’ He gave an unconvincing laugh. ‘Still alive, anyway. I have a meeting. With the girl. To sort this out. She’s a woman now, of course.’
That was for some other time as far as Freddie was concerned. ‘And you have seen Leka?’
‘He’s here in the room with me.’
Freddie felt a wave of admiration, sympathy and gratitude for him that almost made her cry. It was incredibly stupid and incredibly brave what he was doing. Mostly stupid, though. ‘And you’ve asked him?’
‘He wants to speak to you.’
‘OK.’
Leka started without preamble. ‘I can’t say I am sorry for your friend. She is a fucking nuisance.’
‘I’ve told her that a lot.’
‘And reckless.’
‘I hate to agree with you, but yes, that too.’
‘Still, I have to admire her. And I hear she is in a bad way.’
There was a thump from above and Freddie looked at the ceiling. ‘You could say that.’
‘OK, listen carefully. I do not work with these FOTB. They are sons of bitches. I am not saying I am Medicins Sans Frontières, you understand. But the men they deal with – their clients . . .’ He made a disgusted noise in his throat. ‘So, I cannot tell you too much. They sometimes come to me, asking if I have any candidates for them. They used to patrol the Jungle, you know? Looking for girls, till we drove them out. Then they sent some Kurds, as front men, and we dealt with them, too.’
Freddie wasn’t sure what sort of bullshit this was, but it was pretty ripe. She didn’t think a man like Leka worried about how others made a buck. If he drove them out of �
��his’ camps it was simply getting rid of a business rival. ‘OK. You aren’t bosom buddies with FOTB. Can you give me anything?’
‘I know someone with such tastes. Not a friend, you understand. I told him I needed a young girl, a virgin, FOTB, where could I get one? He said, there is an auction coming up in a week, ten days at the most. In The Void.’
‘The Void?’
‘The exact location is secret until you pay the entry fee. Which, by the way, includes a live stream of the event and . . . the follow-up.’ A red mist began to cloud Freddie’s brain, like hill fog rolling down into a valley. She blanked out the implications of what he just said about live feeds. It wouldn’t help. ‘It is usually a port, many of these people like to arrive by boat to collect their winning bids. It avoids any embarrassment at airports. But, to join is expensive, and you aren’t worth that to me.’
‘How do I enrol?’
He gave a laugh. ‘You can’t. Not you, your friends, not the police. Absolute personal recommendations only. Tighter than a duck’s arse. Ask the FBI.’
‘For God’s sake, man, have a heart here. If I gave you the money—’
‘You deal in bitcoin, do you? Forget it. I have done my part. The Void. Make of it what you will.’
‘Hold on, hold on. Leka? What about Tom?’
There was a lengthy pause and she thought for a minute he had broken the connection. ‘That remains to be seen,’ he said eventually, and the line went dead.
The Void?
Still turning the word over in her head, Freddie went upstairs, cursing the damned boot she still had two weeks left of wearing, to see what all the racket was. She pushed the door to Sam’s room open with her foot. The bed covers had been thrown back. The wardrobe was open, clothes on the floor.
And Sam was gone.
*
‘What do you mean, she’s gone?’ Nina asked, a mix of alarm and disapproval layered through her words.
‘She was fuckin’ comatose last time I looked in. How was I to know she was just playing Snow White?’
‘Have you called the police?’
‘What will they do?’ asked Freddie. ‘She’s a grown woman.’