Lost Lives, page 5
The driver and his right-hand man had seen it too.
She’d watched them whisper something, unable to hear them over the noise of the engine and the crunch of the gears.
She looked back out of the window at the rolling fields and gentle hills. Looking but not really seeing. Parts of the countryside might have struck her as beautiful and green had she not had so many other things to think about – getting some food, for a start.
She had overheard hushed conversations between the other women who had arrived in their damp, draughty bedroom a couple of weeks ago. They had spoken of being moved on whenever police turned up at nearby farms and factories unexpectedly. One even spoke about being taken off and asked questions, a Hungarian interpreter present.
‘Why didn’t you tell them?’ Anna had wanted to yell at her. Except she already knew the answer.
They had to stick to the script.
It was ingrained in them all: they were happy to be here, working and sending money home, and they certainly didn’t want any help. Along with the script had come warnings about the corrupt British police. Officers who would demand more money than any boss or controller, would beat and even rape the women in dark, damp police cells.
With every miserable day that passed, she became more desperate to get word home to her family not to send her beautiful, sweet, eight-year-old daughter out to join her. Yet she had no way to contact them. It hurt to think about it.
Instead, she had simply turned over on her mattress and tried to sleep, ignoring the gnawing hunger in her belly.
Snapping back to the miserable present, she sat up straighter in her seat as the two men from her house prepared to get out at the next stop.
‘I’ve got used to the gut-wrenching stench now,’ she heard Tamas mutter to the other.
‘How much longer do you think we’ll have to run all over the place catching chickens?’ whispered the other.
‘No idea. At least we’ve learned how to pick up two in each hand now. It’s incredible how fast they can run when they want to.’
‘Better shoes wouldn’t be a bad thing either,’ she heard the other say. ‘My trainers have ripped laces and holes in the soles.’
She heard feet shuffling behind her, wanted to look round to sympathize, yet knew how this would be met.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ came the reply from behind her. ‘If you want another pair, add six months of being pecked and scratched by chickens. For something like decent boots, add another two years to your debt.’
‘Two years?’ came the panicked reply as the minibus turned up a smaller single-lane track.
‘Got to be,’ she heard one of them say. She strained to hear, so hushed were the words. ‘Think about it: the trip over was 110 euros each: compare that with what we’re supposed to get paid, minus the fix-up fee for finding us work, less the rent we pay, minus the daily drop-off and pick-up in the minibus, and what are we left with? I’ve been doing this crap for six weeks now, and I haven’t even paid off the trip from Budapest, let alone the 2,000 euros my family owe for getting me out of Hungary for a better life.’
‘You call this a better life?’
‘No, no, I don’t. I call this a dog’s life, but it’s better than being fed to the dogs, which is what happened to the last person who decided they weren’t going to work off their debt, so let’s keep our heads down and hope that we eventually get out of here alive.’
As the two got up, the side door was wrenched open from the outside. Anna put her hand over her mouth and nose to avoid the pungent odour of poultry, and at that moment one of the alighting slaves slammed their elbow into the back of her head. She was so used to being beaten, it didn’t even register with her.
She watched them as the door slid shut, standing in the morning chill beside their minder, dressed in jeans, trainers, T-shirts and tracksuit tops, and certainly no sign of gloves.
She couldn’t help but stare at their hands as they turned them over to look at one another’s palms, reddened and cut from ten hours’ work the previous day.
It paid more than the work she did, but even if it took her another year to pay off her debt, it would surely be worth it to avoid being pecked, scratched and torn, over and over every single day.
The minibus continued on its miserable way, only herself, Lili, two other women and the driver now remaining.
If her luck was really with her today, she might use a flushing toilet, wash herself in warm water and be given a full day of packing salad rather than removing dirt from carrots and putting them in plastic bags. She might even get to eat a tomato or two.
That would be a good day.
Chapter 14
Harry Powell, a police officer for the best part of three decades, a career detective, a detective sergeant then a detective inspector, used to the worst of human misery and depravity, thought he was past being shocked.
Of course, some of the scenarios he had encountered still tugged at his heartstrings and made him wonder if the planet really was worth saving. He frequently found himself watching apocalyptic films and rooting for the natural disaster. He had always fancied joining Greenpeace, except his oath to the Queen prevented all that.
But as he stood in the makeshift doctor’s surgery inside the police van, fighting to keep his breakfast down, he wanted to do what any normal person would do in this situation: grimace and run away.
It had taken a couple of minutes of persuasion between the Salvation Army volunteer and the interpreter to get Denis Boros to speak to Harry and the very silent and pale Tom.
Denis’s reluctance was becoming more evident by the minute.
‘It took us ages to get him to take his shoes off,’ said the clean-cut SA volunteer, Julian James, according to the identification on his badge.
‘What’s wrong with his feet?’ asked Harry, not entirely sure he hadn’t spoken an octave or two higher than his usual pitch.
Julian gave him an empty smile. ‘They’ve started to rot. He’s been sleeping here in one of the shipping containers and working for months in a roadside car wash. He only had training shoes, none of the proper protective equipment. The flesh is coming away from his bones.’
‘Then where the fuck is the doctor?’ said Harry, following his outburst up quickly with, ‘Sorry for my language.’
‘Well,’ said Julian, nodding in Denis’s direction, ‘there are a few cases worse than this one. There are a number of paramedics on hand here too, but it was ages before Denis would take his shoes off.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ muttered Tom, the first time he’d spoken since they’d shut the door behind them, closing off one room of horrors to step inside another. ‘He was probably worried that both his feet would come off with them.’
Harry glanced down at Tom. Anything to distract him from the look on the young Hungarian’s face as he sat in a chair, flesh-rotted feet resting lightly on a cushion covered with a thin cotton sheet. It seemed to Harry that Denis was keeping his eyes firmly shut and concentrating on his breathing, possibly a tactic to avoid catching sight of his condition.
‘Who’s in a worse state than this poor sod, then?’ said Harry as the interpreter put his hand on Denis’s shoulder, said something no one else understood and held a bottle of water out to the wretched young man. His eyes flickered open; he nodded and took the drink before closing his eyes again.
Julian folded his arms, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stole a look at the trafficked young slave.
‘We’ve not got him to take off all his clothes yet, as you can see.’
Both Harry and Tom chanced a look at the exploited worker’s jeans and short-sleeved T-shirt.
‘Don’t tell me this is going to get worse,’ said Tom.
‘It’s not only their feet that get wet with no hope of drying out,’ said Julian. ‘It’s their legs, and particularly their groin area.’
The two detectives took a minuscule step backwards. Harry was glad that Denis still had his eyes closed, so he couldn’t notice their repulsion and the penalty line-out pose they’d both adopted.
Even if Denis couldn’t speak English, the way they had reacted at the mere mention of potentially damaged testicles still smacked of unprofessionalism.
‘So you’re saying that his . . . er . . . you know, nuts and stuff, are going to be in the same condition?’ said Harry, now fighting the urge to put his hands in his trouser pockets.
His question was met with a small shrug from Julian. ‘Ideally, we’d like to cut their clothes off. They’re no good, really, and we have clothing from charity bins and shops to give them. Problem is, they have so few possessions, they don’t like us to.
‘In answer to your question, there have been two already this morning with a certain amount of rotting flesh in that region.’
‘Rotting in that region?’ asked Harry, not really wanting to know the answer, but unable to stop himself.
‘Where they’ve got wet from the car wash and not dried out, and then slept in a cold shipping container. We find that, once we get them to remove their underwear, maggots fall out from under their scrotum. I think that’s what’s behind Denis’s reluctance to get undressed.’
There were several seconds of silence before Julian said, ‘To give him some privacy and a sense of decency, would you both mind leaving us to it?’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Harry, one hand already on the door handle.
Once outside neither knew what to say. They walked past the immigrants, police and volunteers to Harry’s unmarked car, got in, and sat side by side in silence for some minutes before a rapping on the passenger window brought them back to reality.
Tom opened the window to Sophia.
‘What’s the matter with you two?’ she asked.
They responded with a slow shake of the head.
‘I’m not sure you’d want to know, Soph,’ said Tom. ‘I know I don’t.’
Chapter 15
On one of Detective Constable Hazel Hamilton’s rare days off without Harry Powell, she started the morning by making a list of all the things she needed to do. It was quite a list, and it took her until her second cup of green tea to finish it.
For a start there were the phone calls and emails, and she needed to drive into East Rise to pick up a present for Harry. Every now and again, she liked to buy him something to wear, or something for his home. Harry hadn’t realized how much his life would be enriched by an eight-litre glass drinks dispenser, or a vertical toilet-roll holder for the cupboard under the stairs.
Hazel smiled to herself as she thought of the expression on his face whenever he opened one of her household gifts. She had meant the very first of them to be a joke. She had lost count of the times they had been in the kitchen, Harry dashing from pot to pot, tasting each dish as he went, grabbing spoons from the drawer, draining board, dishwasher, then discarding them. Hazel would gather them up, wash them and wipe up the mess. So she’d bought him a spoon rest.
What she had been expecting was laughter and him to say something like, ‘What the fuck’s this, Haze?’ Instead, he had gazed at the spoon rest in wonder, turned it over and over and said, ‘That’s bloody brilliant. You’re the most thoughtful person I’ve ever met.’
She had been rendered speechless, unable to admit it had been intended as some sort of spoof offering. He wasn’t meant to take it seriously, but she had felt obliged to humour him and not blow her cover.
‘Just saw it and thought it might come in useful,’ she’d said as he’d got up to rinse the spoon rest under the hot tap.
Harry had wiped it with the dishcloth, squirted some washing-up liquid onto it, rinsed it again and dried it before giving it pride of place in the centre of the worktop.
Even more astonishingly, he had continued to use it. Things had gone too far past the point of her letting on her gift had been a joke.
She knew exactly what she was going to buy him today.
Harry had complained often enough about the continual mess the seagulls made of his car and how it was costing him a fortune having to make frequent visits to the car wash on the local A-road.
Hazel picked up her handbag and found her car keys. She was going to buy him a portable car wash set.
Now that really was a thoughtful gift, plus she wouldn’t have to listen to his regular moan that not only did the car wash charge a tenner, but everyone working there always pretended they couldn’t speak English.
Chapter 16
Hurrying from the minibus towards the farm buildings, Anna knew exactly what to do: smile at the English workers, try to look a little less miserable than she felt, and not stop if spoken to. Not that she would have been able to converse with them, even if she hadn’t been petrified by the very thought of being seen talking to them.
A few days ago, there had been some posters in different languages in the toilets, some of them in Hungarian, giving helpline numbers in case workers thought they were being exploited. Her hands had shaken as she’d stood at the sink washing them, daring herself to read the words, memorize the telephone numbers. Not that she could get to a phone.
The posters had promised the police would help, but she knew the stories only too well – the women raped and the men beaten and tortured in police cells, messages passed back home about betrayal. She couldn’t risk anything happening before her daughter was safe. Now it might be too late to stop it.
Head down against the biting wind as she hurried across the yard, she’d failed to notice someone falling into step beside her. She felt a hand grip her arm, realized she was being pushed towards a barn and tried to dig her heels into the ground. A completely useless gesture.
‘Come with me,’ she heard Pock-mark hiss in her ear.
‘No, let me go,’ she yelled as she tried to turn towards him, fists balled.
‘I’ll punch you in the throat if you don’t come with me and listen.’
They covered the short distance to the barn door in record time; he pushed her inside, threw his head back and laughed at her attempt at a boxer’s stance.
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ he sneered. ‘I need you to sign some papers.’
‘Papers?’
‘Yes, papers, you deaf bitch. Here.’
He produced a clutch of paperwork from his inside jacket pocket along with a pen.
‘Sign these,’ he said, thrusting them towards her. ‘We’d have done it this morning if it wasn’t for that mess with the bathroom. You people really know how to ruin a schedule.’
She scanned the words in front of her. They were in a language she couldn’t read, all except her daughter’s name.
Anna’s breath caught in her throat; her heart was in her mouth.
‘What is this?’
Her question was met with a shrug.
‘It’s so we can register her, get you some extra money to look after her, that kind of thing.’
‘But I can’t read any of this. I don’t know what I’m signing.’
He glanced over his shoulder through the open door to where the rest of the retreating workforce was headed. The gesture wasn’t lost on her: in a few seconds they’d be alone again.
‘Remember that time you were taken to a couple of different banks to open accounts? They refused to give you an account, didn’t they?’
She gave a small sad nod.
‘Well, let’s try not to fuck this up too. You want money for your kid, sign it.’
Miserably, she scratched a signature next to the crosses, unsure of what else she could have done.
Chapter 17
When Pierre phoned Harry, he had no idea that his DI was sitting stock-still in his car, traumatized by what he had witnessed, beside a much younger, but equally shell-shocked DC.
‘Hi, P,’ was all he heard when his call was answered.
‘You okay, boss?’ asked Pierre as he stood in the main A & E area, around the corner from John Kersley’s room. There was a pause that Pierre felt obliged to fill. ‘You sound very quiet. What’s up?’
‘Mate,’ said his DI, ‘just now, I don’t think I can bring myself to tell you. It’s too hideous for words.’
‘Anything I can help you with?’
‘That’s extremely unlikely, but thanks anyway. How’s it going at the hospital?’
Pierre ran an eye over the staff and patients passing by, some in more of a hurry than others.
‘John Kersley is one very scared man,’ said Pierre as he made sure that no one was lingering close enough to hear. ‘From what I’ve gleaned from him – from what Gabrielle has told us about the Eastern Europeans he seems to be friendly with – I’d say with confidence that he’s the opposite of a people trafficker. I think he was giving them somewhere safe to stay. For what reason, I can’t yet say. If we want to get anything out of him, we’ll have to take him away from here, get him somewhere safe.’
There was a slight pause as Pierre steeled himself to say what he needed to next.
‘Thing is, as much as I hate to admit it, he’ll probably respond better to you than he will to a mere lowly DC.’ He waited a beat then said, ‘What do you reckon?’
‘I’ll be right there,’ said Harry, then he hung up.
Phone in hand, Pierre wondered exactly what had propelled his superior officer to drop everything and rush to A & E. He could only guess that he was desperate to get John Kersley onside.
After running his hands over the ginger stubble on his chin, Harry sat in his car, stared straight ahead and said to the young DC beside him, ‘Sorry, Tom, but I’m going to have to leave you and Sophia here. Pierre needs me at the hospital. Call me if anything changes.’
‘What?’ said Tom, snapping his head in Harry’s direction. ‘What are we supposed to do?’
Harry met Tom’s stare. He took in his expression of bewilderment.
‘Go back to see that chief inspector and find out what you can about any links to Kitchener Street, such as firearms, paperwork with addresses, any intel. I’m on the phone if you need me. Look, there’s Sophia talking to one of the paramedics.’
