And what about Jamie? He must be involved too, otherwise how would Lewis have known to plant Seth at the pub? She shook her head. How stupid she had been. How bloody, fucking stupid. She had been so right not to trust him, but she had been too slow.
Lewis Rider sighed. ‘I’ve had enough of talking. Let’s go. Gary, Pete, bring her. Any sign of trouble, you know what to do.’
There was no relying on Reg. He wouldn’t be phoning the coppers when she and Cora didn’t turn up. The only other person she had told she was coming here was Heath, but he was back in London and no bloody use at all. And he certainly wouldn’t be worrying about her in the middle of the night.
The only hope she had was Cora. Lewis Rider didn’t seem to know she had come over with her and Reg.
She prayed Cora was lying low.
Gary and Pete pulled her along so fast, her feet hardly touched the ground. They were out of the building and making their way along a defined path, the moon giving just enough light to see by. It seemed nobody wanted to put their torch on. The gun wasn’t pointing at her, it was pointing at the ground. Alex desperately wondered what she could do. Kick out at the gun? Twist and turn to get out of their grips? Lean down and bite Gary or Pete’s arm? Scream. That was it. She should scream.
She took as deep a breath as she could manage, then opened her mouth. But before the scream could emerge, Gary and Pete had dropped her, and Gary had put his hand over her mouth.
Their grip was looser.
She bit hard down on Gary’s fleshy hand.
‘Fucking hell,’ he shouted. Letting her go.
She took the opportunity to twist away from both of them and run. She could hardly see where she was going.
‘Don’t stray off the path.’ Lewis Rider’s voice followed her, sounding bored. ‘There are a fair few hidden mines. You must have read about those, during your research? Or perhaps not. Not everybody knows about them. So, go on, run. But be careful where you put your feet. We’ve had people try to escape before. It didn’t end well.’ His laughter carried over the air.
The mines. Did she really believe there were any on the island? Why not? After all, plenty were laid on Suffolk beaches during the Second World War when the coast was fortified for an expected German invasion.
She stopped dead.
‘Stay still, your feet are off the path.’
She looked down, and sure enough, she could just about make out that the path was to one side of her, and her feet were on the sandy scree.
Lewis Rider sauntered up to her, holding the gun. ‘We don’t want an explosion that could cause people across the water to ask questions, do we now? Not yet, anyway. Come on, there’s a good girl. And there are some friends of yours here.’
Gary and Pete took hold of her once more and guided her along the path until they reached a one-storey building. There was no light coming from it at all.
Inside, it was lit up like, as her father would have said, a gin palace. There must either be good blackout blinds at the windows or no windows at all. She was led along a long corridor, through a door and down a flight of steps. They were going right underground. The tunnel, which was well-lit, was damp and lined with brick, and the walls were glistening with condensation. She began to shiver.
‘These tunnels criss-cross under the island,’ said Lewis Rider from behind her. ‘They come up into several of the buildings that you can see from Gisford. Some open out into the underground structures. It was helpful for all the secret work that went on here between the two world wars.’
Alex could hear the echo of her footsteps.
They turned a corner, and Gary or Pete – she couldn’t see who it was – pushed her up a set of stairs. They emerged into a long room, a bit like a warehouse. Moonlight was shining through glass in the roof. Partitions lined one side. It smelled of rust and damp and something else. Loneliness. It smelled of hollowed-out loneliness.
‘Here,’ ordered Lewis Rider.
Gary and Pete pushed Alex forward.
The side of the warehouse had been carved up into several three-sided rooms. In each room was a large double bed, a chest of drawers with tissues and baby oil, and a computer perched on a table with a camera on the top. The rooms were decorated too, some with wallpaper, others with paint. The bedding ranged from deep purple to clean white. There were women in all of them, writhing on the beds and two men were hovering, presumably to set up the cameras and check on the Internet connection. Alex knew immediately what she was seeing. Women selling sex on the Internet. Except she would bet the women here were not willing participants and would see very little of the money made out of their bodies.
Lewis Rider smiled. ‘I believe you were asking Jamie about Karolina?’
Alex could almost hear her heart thudding. Please God, no. Please don’t let Karolina be in one of these makeshift rooms.
‘I’m sure she would have made a very good cleaner, I have to admit, and my mother was not pleased when we insisted on having her for this little enterprise. Thing is, she is so beautiful. Perfect, in fact.’
He pointed at a figure lying on a bed in stockings and suspenders. Push-up bra. Nothing else. Alex ran up to her. One of the men quickly turned the camera off.
‘Karolina.’
Karolina looked at her with dead eyes.
‘What have you done to her?’ shouted Alex at Lewis Rider, then, quietly: ‘What have the bastards done to you?’
‘I am fine,’ said Karolina. ‘Now leave. I cannot make any money if you stand here. I need to make money so I can go home. See my family. They said I could go if I made enough money.’ Her voice was as dead as her eyes. She had been given something to make her compliant.
‘Oh, Karolina.’ Alex was despairing. She caught her hand in hers and turned Karolina’s arm over. Sure enough, telltale needle tracks.
‘I am fine,’ she said again, pushing Alex away. ‘I need to make money so I can go home to my family. Now leave. Go.’
Alex felt herself being pulled away by Gary or Pete.
‘This is how you make your money,’ she said, bitterly, looking at Lewis Rider. ‘Not the yurts or the lodges or even the farm. But this. Forcing women into the sex trade. And you find these people through your charities. Is David involved?’ She thought about how he had lost weight recently, how he had seemed almost afraid of the Riders – he was certainly under their spell. She guessed he and his hostels were ripe for the picking.
‘That’s unfair. I don’t force them. I simply tell them I have a good little job for them and they come willingly.’ Lewis smiled, almost proudly. ‘I mean, look at them. They’re perfectly happy, aren’t they? No one is jumping up and running away.’
‘That’s because they’re pumped full of drugs.’
Lewis Rider shrugged. ‘They want it. Eventually. Look.’ There was a hint of impatience in his voice. ‘I give them a chance to make good money—’
‘That you mostly take off them.’
‘They have to pay for their bed and board, don’t they? Nothing’s free in this world. As I say, they jump at the offer of a job.’
Alex hated the self-satisfied look on his face.
‘They wouldn’t if they knew what it entailed. And how many do you take off the streets?’
‘Well, now. That’s the brilliant thing. No one misses them, do they? – as you have found.’
‘And the men you “recruit”. What do they do for you?’
Lewis Rider smiled as he licked his lips. ‘You must have watched Breaking Bad?’
Alex nodded.
‘A very good series I’ve found. A great story. Good characters. And the idea of a chemistry teacher making crystal meth to provide for his family. And you know when Walter starts work at that new, purpose-built and illegal meth lab?’
Alex nodded.
‘We have one of those.’ His smile was one of pride. In fact, Alex could have sworn he puffed out his chest. ‘It’s the perfect place. Underground. Nothing suspicious to see, you know. Looks just like a winer
y in fact. All stainless steel vats and pipes and a control panel of red and green buttons. Simon is the brains behind that. A PhD in Chemistry. Did you know that?’
Alex closed her eyes briefly. Simon. She heard David’s voice in her head telling her about Simon’s chemistry degree. But she hadn’t listened. And she had been so fixated on finding out more about Lewis and Jamie, she hadn’t looked at Simon.
‘It’s perfect you see,’ he continued. ‘Any unusual smells go out to sea; there are plenty of places to dump the toxic waste – so many underground chambers to use. And we have successfully put anyone off coming here.’
‘The high fences, the anthrax story, the ghost stories.’
‘Yes,’ he beamed. ‘Sometimes we have the dogs.’
‘But what happens when you’ve no need of the women or they outlive their usefulness?’ The horrible truth dawned on her. ‘You get rid of them, don’t you?’
He nodded. ‘Indeed we do. Don’t look so horrified. We don’t always kill them. Much easier to send those commodities we don’t need abroad. Men or women.’
‘Abroad?’
Again that sinister, stiff smile. ‘You must realize the whole of the coast is filled with nooks and crannies where we can land a boat with impunity. We can bring stuff in, we can ship people out. And no one knows anything about it. And the money. Oh, the money. Keeping people away from the island over the years has proved invaluable.’
‘You haven’t answered my question about David.’
‘Ah. Well of course he’s involved. If it wasn’t for his hostels we wouldn’t have half the right people for our little jobs. He wasn’t keen at first, but a few promises of the good life, plenty of cash in an offshore account and he’d do anything. Though I have to admit he’s getting a bit troublesome of late. And now can I ask you a question?’
Alex glared at him, wondering what was coming.
‘Cora. Where is she?’ His tone had hardened.
So, they didn’t know she had come with them.
Alex shrugged. ‘How should I know? I haven’t seen her for a day or two.’
Lewis Rider narrowed his eyes. He was suspicious, she thought. ‘I thought you two were as thick as thieves.’
‘I was trying to help her find Rick, that’s all. My guess is he escaped but you’ve found him again.’
Lewis Rider nodded as if in approval. ‘Good guess.’
‘And Cora, well, she was high-maintenance.’
‘I suppose she sold you a sob story about being raped?’
‘She told me about the court case, yes.’
‘I was friends with her once. Then she set out to ruin me. She should have known that my father would employ the best to annihilate her.’
‘He did that all right.’
‘She shouldn’t have told lies.’ He sounded like a petulant child. Twenty-four years had passed and he still believed his own story.
‘That’s not what she says.’ Alex was not going to let him get away with it. ‘She says you raped her, Lewis. You got off. It destroyed her and it destroyed her family.’
Alex felt a sharp blow and heard a crack before pain exploded in her head. She staggered backwards, white spears of lightning streaking across her vision, bile rising again in her throat. She couldn’t even shout with the pain, only moan. Lewis had hit her, hard, in the face with his elbow. He stood, watching her, breathing heavily. Her whole face hurt like hell and it felt as though a few teeth had been loosened. There was a trickle of wet at the corner of her mouth. She wondered if he had fractured her cheekbone.
Fuck this. She may never get off this bloody island, but she wasn’t going to go quietly.
She licked her mouth and tasted the sweet metal of blood. Before she let herself think, let herself give into the pain that was threatening to overwhelm her, she bent her hand back at her wrist and drove the heel of her palm under his chin as hard and fast as she could.
He gave a cry like a wounded animal as his lower teeth were slammed into his top teeth. He swayed on his feet, stunned.
She had a moment to think that the self-defence lessons she’d taken had come in useful after all before Gary and Pete caught her and slammed her down on the floor.
She howled in pain as her damaged cheek hit the concrete.
She was grateful for the blackness that descended.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DAY SIX: LATE
Cora could only guess at what was going on as she heard both a man and a woman scream out, swearing, a scuffle, then moments later, a noise that sounded as though something or someone was being broken, followed by a body thudding onto the floor.
Alex?
Had to be.
‘Take her away.’
That was Lewis, though his voice sounded strange – slurred and weak and full of pain. But there was no mistaking the menace in those three words. Had Alex done him some damage? She did hope so. But then Alex had obviously paid for it.
She held her breath as she heard something being dragged across the floor and wondered what she was doing here, hidden behind an old rusting filing cabinet, sure that they would soon hear her heart thudding. Why hadn’t she run when she’d had the chance? Because she knew Rick was here somewhere, and Alex would lead her to him.
She’d been right behind Alex when the lights had gone on in the building, almost blinding her, but she hadn’t followed her. As soon as the lights went on and she heard Lewis Rider’s voice – there was no mistaking it – she shrank back, listening at the open door.
His voice took her back to the last time they had spoken. When he had been psyched up by drink and fuck knew what else and he had taken his anger about Rick stealing his girlfriend out on her. Lewis had confronted her while she was having a sneaky fag after her shift, and he’d become more and more obnoxious, before pushing her up against the brick wall and telling her that she, together with the rest of her family, belonged to him, to the Riders.
She had pushed him back, telling him to sober up, and thought for a moment she had penetrated the fog and rage in his head. But he had slammed her against the bricks and tore at her clothes, before pushing himself into her. Afterwards, while he was zipping himself up, all he had said to her was ‘droit de seigneur, baby’ in a flat voice. When he’d gone, she’d retched until she could bring nothing else up.
Hearing his voice again, with that same threatening tone, Cora felt she would be sick all over again.
No. She’d had too many years of Lewis Rider dominating her life. Now was the time to stand up to him and that bloody family and make sure they got what they so richly deserved.
She had managed to use the shadows to follow Alex, Lewis and the two henchmen to this warehouse, though it hadn’t been easy when they made their way through the tunnels – there had been nowhere to hide and although she kept herself flat to the wall, one of them only had to turn round to see her.
Her luck held.
Why were there not more guards? People with guns around?
Not needed, she supposed, a feeling reinforced when she crept into the warehouse behind the old filing cabinet to see the women on the beds. Compliant. Uncomplaining.
When she heard Lewis talking in that glib way about the women who were selling their bodies and their souls for nothing in this miserable place, for absolutely nothing, she wanted to run out and do some serious damage to him. But she knew that would be foolish.
A door slammed shut. There was nothing more from Lewis or the henchmen. Or Alex, for that matter.
Had she been badly hurt?
Cora’s legs were beginning to cramp up from the crouching, she needed to move. She considered her options. There was no hope of getting off the island at the moment, thanks to Reg’s betrayal. She might have known it had all been too easy. The Riders don’t run this sort of operation for some old man with a boat to scupper it. Alex had been well and truly taken in, too busy thinking about the story she could break.
For a moment, she felt a surge of rage against Alex. Wh
y the fuck hadn’t she done more homework?
She tried to roll her shoulders. She was being unfair. She hadn’t looked beyond finding Rick and had been ready to grab the chance – any chance – to get over to the island.
And now she should be looking for him, not crouching behind this cabinet getting cramp thinking about things she couldn’t change.
Did she feel bad about leaving Alex?
She wrestled with her conscience for all of ten seconds. Well, sort of. But if she could find Rick then they could go back and rescue Alex and somehow escape the island. With evidence. How, though? And how many of the Riders were here on Gisford Ness tonight? What was the betting old man Joe would call a family conference – he was fond of doing that when his boys were young. When they had been friends, in their early teenage years, Lewis had confided in Cora that his dad used to make them all sit around a table and discuss things like division of chores, bullying, rudeness. Lewis always said he found the conferences excruciating.
She had liked Lewis then.
Enough of that.
She needed action. She needed evidence to bury the Riders forever.
Ignoring the protest in her calves and knees, Cora crawled back out of the warehouse. She was lucky the Riders thought their island was impregnable, it meant there were few guards around and it would make her task easier.
She had to find Rick.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
DAY SEVEN: EARLY MORNING
He had found Seth Goodwin in his little sitting room in Gisford in the early hours, slumped in front of the electric fire. The TV was still on. An empty mug was on its side by the chair, the threadbare carpet wet with the contents. Tea? Coffee? He sniffed. Something stronger. Whisky, perhaps. Gently, he pushed up the old man’s sleeve to see if he could find the telltale pinprick in the crook of his arm. Sure enough, it was there. He cast his practised eye around the room. They must have got the old man drunk as there was no sign of a struggle, no telltale signs at all.
The death of an old man from a heart attack, that’s what it would be. Who would bother to look for the mark of a needle in his arm?
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