“Why are you still here?” Scarlett said at last, clearly irritated.
Sam took a deep breath. “Look, I’m not going to follow you around. I just wanted to check you were okay. I’ve done that; now I’m going to leave you alone. If you need a friend, someone to talk to, or if you need help, you can ring me.”
“You can’t help me. Nobody can.”
Sam got to her feet. Scarlett looked up at her. In the grim orange light of the concrete bus station she looked so young, Sam could easily have believed she was still fifteen. For a moment she looked lost, and then she offered Sam a smile. When she smiled, she looked totally different: beautiful.
Sam looked away immediately.
“Thanks,” Scarlett said. “And thanks for lending me the phone. I will give it back.”
“Whenever,” said Sam, keeping her eyes down.
“No, I will. You’re not like the rest of them.”
Sam chanced a look back at the girl on the bench. Whatever she’d seen there—that moment when something had wrenched inside her—it had passed.
“Take care, Scarlett,” she said, and walked away up the slope toward the bowling alley which had closed down, conveniently leaving three parking spaces outside.
Back in the car, the doors locked, Sam sent a text to Lou.
Found her. She’s OK, won’t come back though. She’s got my number etc. Sorry x
It wasn’t a good result. In all probability they might never see Scarlett again, and Sam had lost her emergency phone.
SCARLETT
Wednesday 24 October 2012, 04:16
Inside the main warehouse it was dark. Scarlett was being half-dragged, half-carried across the concrete floor and she could make out several large, corrugated rectangular shapes—shipping containers, and one larger unit with a pair of metal doors that stood open. A dull light was coming from inside. She could hear voices, laughter from somewhere, and another voice that sounded muffled. They passed the open doors to the unit. Inside Scarlett could see that the walls were lined with ridged foam, as though the whole thing was a giant, room-sized packing crate for some expensive electronic equipment.
The smell was worse.
I am going to die in here.
A man came out from the soundproofed room, resting his hands on the metal doors as if to pull them shut behind him. He saw Scarlett and stopped, watching. The light was behind him. She couldn’t see his face. She saw him move, take hold of something and drag it, scraping along the floor, to the doors of the room. When the light illuminated it, she saw it was a spotlight on a tripod-like stand, an electric cable coiled around the height adjuster.
“Help me,” she said, but not loudly, whimpering. “Help me. Please.”
They pulled her to one of the smaller shipping crates and opened it, shoving her inside. The door boomed shut behind her and she heard the metal bang of the locks being pulled across.
It was pitch black. Not a glimmer of light. “No, no!” Scarlett shouted. “Don’t leave me here!”
She pummelled with her fists on the cold metal of the door, then listened. The echo of their retreating footsteps on the poured concrete floor outside.
And then a different sound to replace it.
Breathing.
Someone—something—was in here with her.
“Hello?” she whispered.
There was a movement behind her. “Engels?” came a whispered reply.
“Ja, engels. Ik ben Engels. I’m English.”
No response.
“Let me out!” Scarlett screamed, pounding with her fists.
Abruptly she heard the footsteps coming back and the sound of metal scraping against metal. She expected the door to open, but it didn’t. She could hear voices close by, a foreign language she didn’t recognize or understand. And then, without warning, a woman’s voice rising quickly to a panicked wail—“Nee! Nee, alsjeblieft!” No. Please.
A second female voice, moaning. Footsteps.
“What are they doing?” Scarlett asked.
In her crate, silence other than the breathing.
Outside in the warehouse, the voices of two women lifted in screams, and then another metallic door closing. The women were in the soundproofed box.
And then, without warning, muffled but still audible, a bang.
Silence for a second, other than the pounding of Scarlett’s heart in her chest. She pressed her cheek to the metal, straining to hear what was going on.
Seconds passed. Another bang.
Silence.
Scarlett choked back a sob.
From the back wall of her crate, she heard her companion.
“Next time is us.”
PART FOUR
DEAD INSIDE
LOU
Sunday 3 November 2013, 09:25
There was no more opportunity to worry about Scarlett Rainsford.
Area had arrested a nineteen-year-old called Aaron Sutcliffe, who had been mouthing off in one of the pubs formerly owned by Carl McVey. He’d had a go at breaking a glass and threatening a member of the door staff with it, then he’d run off. They’d identified him from the CCTV outside the pub and found him vomiting his way out of a hangover in the back bedroom at his mum’s house.
Lou had seen his name before. He had been at school with Ian Palmer; they’d interviewed him early on, more than once, since he had a record for GBH and assault as well as criminal damage and theft. But he’d had had nothing useful to tell them, at the time. On the night Palmer was assaulted Aaron had been in hospital himself—attending the birth of his first daughter.
The custody photo of Aaron Sutcliffe showed he had acquired another tattoo on his neck since his last visit—“Ella-Mae”—just scabbing over nicely, an elaborate, swirly font. Being a father clearly hadn’t endowed him with a renewed sense of personal responsibility, however. He was sneering at the camera, one eye twitching in a wink just as the image was taken. For that to have got through to the main database, Lou knew, the detention officer would no doubt have taken several pictures and finally given up.
Lou had sent Les Finnegan down to Briarstone nick to meet with the Division CID and collaborate with the interview. It was worth a shot, and from other witness statements taken in the Railway Tavern Aaron’s argument with the doorman seemed to have something to do with what had happened to Ian six weeks ago.
While she waited for Les to report back, Lou received a phone call from Caro.
“I heard Sam Hollands found Scarlett last night,” she said.
“Yes. Couldn’t get her back, unfortunately. She was at the bus station. Let’s hope it was just the safest place she could find to sleep, and not the first step in her moving somewhere far away.”
“I don’t think she has, yet. Have you seen this morning’s CAD about the burglary?”
Lou sat up straight, moving her mouse and clicking over to the Computer Aided Dispatch program that logged all the calls to police as they were received. “No—have you got the number?”
Caro recited the eight-digit identifier and Lou repeated it as she typed it in.
“Shit,” Lou said, when the details of the call came up on her screen. “A car key burglary?”
“Last night. They were all asleep, apparently. I found out about it when I rang Clive Rainsford this morning to ask for a meeting. He won’t leave the house at the moment; they’re all waiting for CID and forensics. And they can’t actually go anywhere, so I’m going to go down and speak to my captive audience. Do you want to come with me? I said I’d be there at eleven.”
Lou pulled a face. “I can’t, really—can I send Sam instead?”
Sam was on her way into the office. Lou asked her to meet Caro in the CID office at Briarstone at a quarter to eleven, and then went back to her computer and read through the CAD again, slowly.
She knew better than to jump to conclusions, but even the scant information on the CAD had set alarm bells ringing. There were usually at least two or three criminal gangs involved in car key b
urglaries at any one time—breaking into properties in order to steal the keys of the expensive-looking car on the driveway, and then the car itself. This particular offense was unusual. The method of entry was odd, but not unheard of. Often thieves would take anything of value that they came across while looking for the car keys, so easily portable items like cash, cards, laptops and mobile phones were frequently added to the property list. In this case, though, the car had been an eight-year-old Volvo. Again, they had seen car key burglaries for lower-value vehicles before, but those cases often involved large-scale theft from the property, where the car had been taken as a means to transport heavier items like TVs, computers, even the odd safe. Sometimes the lower-value car was taken alongside the higher-value vehicle parked next to it—possibly to be used in other crimes, rather than being sold on. But neither was a factor here.
She sent Sam a text.
Update me asap? Have you seen the CAD? Think it might be linked to our job?
A few moments later, Sam sent a reply.
I thought that too—does she even drive, though? I’ll let you know when I’m done.
Lou went back to the CAD, read through the list of items that had been stolen. The items of jewelry suggested a thorough search—that the burglar had had time to look. And yet the occupants had been asleep upstairs.
Lou sent another text.
Odd that no laptop, no mobile. Didn’t he work for electronics firm? Let me know how you get on with him.
CRIME REPORT
SAM
Sunday 3 November 2013, 11:45
It was rare for Sam to take an instant dislike to someone, but she had to admit she hadn’t been keen on Clive Rainsford from the moment she’d met him. Armed with the details of Lou’s report about her meeting with Annie, she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.
He had been perfectly polite, inviting her and Caro into the kitchen. He didn’t look to the outside world like the sort of man anyone would have cause to fear. But Sam, who had cheerfully conversed with some of the nastiest individuals society had produced, knew better than to judge on appearances. Clive had celebrated his seventieth birthday the week before the family had flown to Spain. Sam wondered if it had been a birthday treat, the holiday, and, if it was, how he felt having had it interrupted. He looked fit and well, his hair thinning but still fair enough for the gray not to show too much. He didn’t look seventy.
“Your forensics people have been,” he said, “so apparently we can make ourselves at home again. We’re just waiting for the locksmith now. Have a seat. Coffee?”
Sam sat next to Caro at the large, stripped-pine kitchen table. “Thanks, that would be great. I’m sorry to hear about the burglary. It looks like you lost quite a few valuable things.”
“Yes,” he said. “All insured, of course, but a pain. Annie is finding it very difficult to cope—the thought of those people in the house while we were asleep. Dreadful.”
“Do you have a laptop? Mobile phones?”
“My phone was upstairs, by the bed. The laptop—well, I cracked the screen just before we went away. I left it with a former colleague; he was going to try and fix it. Lucky really, since I imagine that would have been stolen too. I was going to take the girls out for a meal tonight, take their mind off things. Do you think that would be okay? Leaving the house, I mean . . . they’re not going to come back, are they?”
“I think it’s very unlikely,” Sam said, “but it’s your decision.”
He filled mugs from an ancient-looking filter machine on the counter and passed them across, then leaned back, arms folded, one leg crossed casually over the other. Relaxed, but closed. Sam wondered what his reaction had been to the news about Scarlett. She would have paid to see it. She could picture him in a pair of unfortunate Speedos on a sun-lounger by a pool, being approached by the rep and the hotel manager: There’s a call for you, sir, I think it’s urgent . . .
“Annie and Juliette have gone out,” Clive said. “Juliette’s not having a good day. Any upheaval throws her off balance, you know.”
“I’d really like to meet her,” Sam said. “What time will they be back?”
Clive frowned. “I couldn’t say,” he said, “sorry.”
“Oh, well,” Caro began cheerfully, “at least we’ve got you, Clive. Shall we get comfy?”
She fixed him in a pointed stare until he finally took the hint and sat down opposite them. The interview, it seemed, had begun.
“Has Scarlett been in touch?” Caro asked. She had called them after Scarlett had walked out of the VVS, last night.
Clive thought about this for a moment before answering. Sam wondered if this was going to be one of those discussions, the ones that took forever and achieved no real result. She was itching to intervene already, but Caro had her own plan—and this job was hers more than Sam’s. So far, at least.
“No,” he said, at last.
He didn’t ask if there was any more news. He didn’t ask if Scarlett had contacted the police.
“I wonder why you didn’t make contact with her when she was in our accommodation,” Caro said. Her tone had changed.
Clive stared at her for a moment, as if he was thinking up a suitable response. “I thought you were here to discuss the burglary,” he said.
“Clive, I’m working on an investigation into trafficking operations here in the U.K. Do you understand what trafficking is?”
“Yes, of course,” he said.
“In many cases,” Caro continued, as if he hadn’t answered, “young women and girls—some of them not even teenagers—are taken from their families against their will and forced to work as prostitutes in countries across Europe—including Britain. They are abused, physically as well as sexually, and have little or no prospect of escape or rescue unless people like us can find them, get them to a place of safety, and then see their captors convicted. You can’t imagine how difficult this problem is to tackle. So, as I’m sure you appreciate, every bit of intelligence we can gather is vital.”
He couldn’t seem to maintain eye contact with her for more than a few seconds. Eventually he said, “The fact that Scarlett is in this country at all is no thanks to you lot. So I think it’s unfair to ask her—or us—for help, when you had none to give her ten years ago.”
Sam heard Caro take a sharp breath in.
“Clive,” Sam said, “I’m sure you appreciate that it was thanks to a police investigation into trafficking that Scarlett was found at all. Otherwise your daughter would still be missing.”
“It might have escaped your attention, sergeant, but she is still missing. It has been as if we have lost her all over again.”
There was an emotion behind his words that Sam found strange: as though he was holding back a vast tide of something, unable or unwilling to express it.
“I can appreciate this must be an incredibly difficult time for the whole family,” Sam said. “Nevertheless, anything Scarlett can tell us that could help us find other victims of trafficking, and bring some of these offenders to justice, would be invaluable.”
Clive spread his hands on the table top, breathing deeply. For the first time, he managed a small smile. “I’m sure it would. And there are quite a few things I’d like to talk to her about myself. However, the fact remains, she has disappeared. Again.”
Caro cast a glance at Sam, the look that said anything else?
“I’d like to see Scarlett’s room,” Sam said. “Would you mind?”
He looked taken aback by her request. “Sure,” he said. “Follow me.”
The walls of the hallway and the staircase were lined with framed family pictures. A large canvas showing Annie and Clive’s wedding was opposite the front door: classic Seventies styling with Annie’s dead straight hair, and Clive’s wide lapels, flares and mullet. It wasn’t a flattering picture by any means; the parents flanking them on both sides, two adult bridesmaids in mint green, and a laughing best man who looked drunk. Tiny Annie, looking impossibly young, Cliv
e next to her, at least a foot and a half taller. The picture dominated the view when you entered the house.
And then there were pictures of Scarlett and Juliette as children; school photos, matching uniforms and gap-toothed smiles, alongside cheesy family studio shots, all white shirts and nylon-socked feet. And there were more of Annie and Clive, just the two of them. It was almost unnaturally narcissistic; this image of the perfect family on display.
There was another picture of Scarlett, aged about three, with a baby Juliette on her knee. Juliette with a quiff of black hair, Scarlett not so much smiling as baring her teeth. Sam caught sight of one final picture of Juliette at the top of the stairs—a smaller picture of an older teenager, on her own, a smile that didn’t seem genuine—clearly forced into a portrait-sitting that she was having to endure. Dark top, hair down, glasses, awkward in the shoulders, the expression in her eyes levelled at the photographer one of loathing.
“Here you go,” Clive said, opening a door at the top of the stairs.
“Oh,” said Sam.
She’d been expecting something of Scarlett to remain, but the room had nothing of the girl inside it. Magnolia walls, beige curtains across the window, and a single bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers with a mirror on it, an iron, a radio and a vase containing dusty fabric roses, all of which screamed “spare room.” The mattress was bare and on top of it was a pile of laundry. Propped against the wall was an ironing board. Sam walked over to the window, looked out at the back garden. The grass was overgrown, tussocky, but the garden was landscaped with a variety of shrubs and trees. At the end was a greenhouse and a vegetable patch. Next to it, a bare patch where some bush had obviously been removed and shredded, wood chippings in a wide, pale circle providing a sharp contrast with the dark earth. A wheelbarrow sat abandoned, full of dead leaves, a rake balanced across it.
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