Behind Closed Doors (19 page)

‘Look, Stefan,’ she said, ‘this isn’t how I usually entertain my clients. I know you’re trying to be kind, but I really don’t need your help, okay? I just want to get on with my job. Now – ’ she checked the clock next to the bed ‘ – you’ve had ten minutes already; is this really what you want from me, or would you like me to give you the best blowjob of your life?’

And after that he relented. Twenty minutes later, he left her alone to return to the window and wait for the next one. She watched him walk away, the saunter in his step. When he’d come, he’d actually cried out. She hadn’t expected that. The cops sometimes took advantage, so she was still none the wiser.

Instead of going straight home after leaving Annie, Lou went back to the office. She wanted to write up the details of what had happened with Scarlett and Annie before the conversations went out of her head.

That task completed, she got distracted reading more of the original Op Diamond file: the details of the searches that had been conducted around the resort in Rhodes. Initially the searches had been haphazard, including all manner of people who had turned up and shown an interest, including tourists, locals, and Clive Rainsford himself. Later, the same areas were combed by police with dogs. Nothing useful had been found.

Further down, the search reports and witness statements gave way to letters from concerned members of the public: British tourists who had been in the resort at the time and had opinions about Scarlett and what might have happened to her, and people who knew the Rainsfords in Briarstone and felt the need to share what they thought. It seemed everyone had a theory about where Scarlett had gone.

And none of them had got it right.

Lou checked her watch. If she was going to make it to Jason’s hockey game she was already cutting it fine. She looked back at the file, the stack of papers that were still sitting, unread. Somewhere in that stack might just be something useful, something Sam could use to persuade Scarlett to open up.

She picked up her phone and sent Jason a text.

There was a pattern to the days.

She spent the afternoon, evening and most of the night in the room, seeing men who came in off the street. Some days were busier, and she almost liked that because the time passed quickly. Over the course of the evening, the runners would pay her regular visits in between clients, to collect the money that had accumulated in the back room, replenish her supply of condoms and check that she was still alive, still behaving. If the money wasn’t enough, she would get pushed around a bit, threatened. One particularly slow day they’d spent nearly an hour slapping her and kicking her, pulling her hair, telling her that if she didn’t get some customers in they would sell her to the Lithuanians.

This particular threat had not meant much, until she’d plucked up the courage to ask one of the other girls what was so bad about the Lithuanians.

‘They don’t feed you,’ she had said. ‘They work you until you can’t work any more, then they dispose of you. It’s the end. Going to them is like the end. And they film it.’

She did get food, at least. Once or twice during the evening they would bring her something – a burger, a Coke, chips smothered with mayonnaise. It was a brief respite – the chance to eat while they collected the money, checked her over; then they would take what she hadn’t had a chance to cram in her mouth away with them.

They brought drugs, too. They tried hard to get her to take them. The other girls relied on them totally. At the beginning, something had stopped her, maybe some urge to rebel; and now she knew it was a good thing. The other girls were all dependent on the stuff, utterly reliant on their supply. They used it to keep going, to block out the misery of their existence, not realising that it was also reinforcing the bars of their prison. What was the point in worrying about your life coming to an end, when inside you were already half-dead?

Sometimes, along with the food, they still brought her crack. Usually when she was having a bad day. When they tried to get her to take it, she put on the fake smile and told them that she was better to them alive and awake, that she loved her job and that taking drugs would make her less appealing to the customers. As long as she didn’t try anything, as long as she worked for them and did as she was told and brought the money in, they let her have this one small rebellion. At some point she had realised that she must be making good money, and because she wasn’t off her face all the time she didn’t attract unwanted attention, didn’t generate complaints – maybe this was why they didn’t force her to do the drugs. So she would decline, and they would shrug and take the crack to the next girl, who paid for it out of the wages she was theoretically earning but never saw. Scarlett was paid the same amount whether she took the drugs or not. This was not a point she felt able to argue. After all, what could she spend the money on, if it even existed?

Although she was saving them money and making them money, she was still a risk to them. Scarlett was awake and alert and that made her unpredictable. They watched her more closely than the others. They checked her more often. In the early hours of the morning, when she was so dead tired she could hardly keep her eyes open, they would come to fetch her. Sometimes, if it had been busy, they’d bring another girl in to replace her in the room; sometimes they locked up behind them. She always knew when she was done for the night because there would be two of them, maybe three: so that she was never without a hand on her arm, never without someone watching her with the open door.

Even back at the flat, which was a dingy four-roomed apartment over a pharmacy near the docks, she was never alone. She slept in a room with other girls; the erratic shifts they all worked, coupled with the inevitable exhaustion whenever they were brought together, meant that it was almost impossible to form friendships. Talking was discouraged, and not just by the men who brought them in; once in the room, all anyone ever wanted to do was sleep. Sleep was their only escape, their brief snatch at peace. Besides, any sort of discussion was dangerous. They all knew that.

So she slept, on dirty sheets, between two girls she might or might not recognise; and, when they came to wake her up, sometimes she was allowed a shower. Sometimes she got clean clothes, too; they were never hers. Sometimes there was food in the kitchen; usually there was coffee, strong and black. Towards noon she would be taken with other girls back to the strip, where they were delivered like packages to the various rooms, ready for action, and left alone.

But she wasn’t really alone, ever. Even when she was in the window, tapping on the glass to try to attract attention, she was being watched. They were never far away.

When she finally got back to her car, Sam took some slow, deep breaths before dialling Lou’s mobile number. Her chest hurt – probably from all that running earlier, not a good sign – and she couldn’t stop coughing.

‘Hi, Sam,’ Lou said, when she picked up the call. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Okay. I’m heading home now.’

‘How’s Scarlett?’

‘Apart from a bit of a meltdown earlier, surprisingly good, I think. She’s more or less agreed to give me a statement tomorrow. I’m meeting Ali first, though; I promised to go and see Ian Palmer’s mum with him. I’ll do that, go to the office and then go and see Scarlett late morning, if that’s okay with you? You’ve got a rest day tomorrow, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but you can ring me. Let me know how you get on.’

‘Thanks,’ Sam replied. ‘Sorry to call so late. Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.’

‘No, I’m at home, don’t worry. I was supposed to go and watch Jason play hockey but I ended up reading through the case file.’

‘You work too hard, boss.’

Lou laughed. ‘Maybe. I think it’s more a case of not wanting to freeze my bum off watching grown men crash around on an ice rink.’

‘Poor Jason.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, he’s probably quite happy in the pub getting rat-arsed with his brother. And meanwhile I’m going to get into my pyjamas and have an early night.’

For the first few months in Amsterdam Scarlett had thought constantly about how she was going to escape. Thought about it every day. When there were men with her she was sizing up whether she could trust them, ask them for help; when she was alone she was fantasising about just opening the door and running away. It gave her focus. Gave her something to do.

She was never quite sure what stopped her – fear of the punishment, perhaps. Or maybe they just hadn’t pushed her far enough yet. Everyone had their limit, the tipping point when tolerating the abuse was just not possible any more.

One summer’s night the sounds of the rowdy crowds outside had been drowned out by an ear-splitting shriek. Scarlett was in her window, between customers, and saw the girl, half-naked, blouse unbuttoned showing her small breasts, running headlong down the cobbled street. She was small, chestnut hair in messy curls falling across her face, pale skin, eyes and mouth wide, desperate. Her arm had a bruise, a big one, yellowing. Scarlett had been struck by the thought that there would be other bruises, other injuries; there always were. Even if you couldn’t see them. Watching through the window was like being slightly removed from reality, like watching a drama being played out on the television screen. Nothing but glass between her and the girl, and yet she was a world away: grabbing at passers-by, crying and begging for help. Scarlett could hear her. ‘Help, help me, please help me,
hilfe
,
bitte
…’

But she’d kept running. Nobody was following her or doing anything but staring.

At the corner a police car had pulled over. She got in the back and they took her away.

Scarlett had felt relief for her. It had been quite easy, hadn’t it? The police had got to her quickly. Maybe that was the solution. You just had to be brave, go and find the police, you’d be okay.

But the next night Scarlett had overheard a whispered conversation between two of the others, as they all tried to sleep in the flat. The girl’s name was never spoken; probably nobody knew who she was anyway, and if they’d known her name it would not have been her real one. She’d been interviewed, then she’d left the police station because she needed to score. They’d offered her help, but couldn’t provide it quickly enough for her needs. Of course her minder had found her – tipped off by someone in the police station, or someone watching it for him – and she was gone. ‘Gone’ meant she was probably dead. That was what they did that to girls who became a liability. They didn’t just kill them quickly, of course. They used them first – filmed it. High prices could be obtained for those sorts of films.

One day, that will happen to me
, Scarlett had thought.
One day, it will be my turn
.

As much as they didn’t like the girls talking, this sort of conversation was rarely interrupted. It kept the girls quiet, well-behaved. What other option was there?

For days afterwards Scarlett had obsessed over the girl who had run down the street, wishing she had known her, wishing she had been able to talk to her, comfort her, tell her to just hold on. If only she had known the girl’s name, it might have helped. They were all nameless here and that made it worse: the very last level of losing your dignity was to lose your own name; to have your identity, your very existence scrubbed out.
We are not human any more. We don’t even exist.

Whenever she thought of it, it reminded Scarlett of Yelena, running across the car park at that service station, freedom and safety just metres away… and the way her head had burst open, blood and bone and thought and hope and desire spraying in a wide arc in the night sky. How in that moment, that one split second, the nightmare had ended for her. Ended before it had even begun.

It ended for all of them, sooner or later.
Where’s my ending?
Scarlett thought, in the darkness of the bedroom. The other girls had fallen silent. She pulled the sheet over her shoulders, turned her face to the wall.
When is this going to end for me?

Nothing less attractive than trying to sleep next to a man who’s so drunk you’ve put a bucket beside the bed, just in case.
 

So romantic.
 

There had been no reply to Lou’s text apologising for not making it to the hockey game, so it had been something of a surprise when Jason had turned up at her house hours later, drunk enough to require him to keep one hand leaning on the doorframe as he waved goodbye to the taxi that was idling outside.

‘I got two assists,’ he said.

‘That’s great,’ she said, ‘well done. You’ve been celebrating, then?’

‘Yeah. I’m sorry, I had lots of beers.’

‘Really?’

Lou had done the dutiful girlfriend bit: helped him to bed, half-listened to mumbled apologies that didn’t make much sense, relieved at least that he was here and not passed out in an alleyway or even at home alone with nobody to listen out for him potentially choking, later on. She left the hall light on, in case he had trouble finding the bucket.

And of course she had just dropped off to sleep, finally, after what felt like hours of listening to him snore and then randomly stop breathing for long moments, when he turned over in bed and snaked his arm around her middle, pulling her against him and burying kisses in her hair. He smelled of alcohol but that wasn’t the end of the world. Being woken up when you’d just fallen asleep was a little harder to forgive.