by R. D. Ronald
Tazeem stepped in further, overturned a flaming table and tried to make out any signs of movement through the smoke. One of the curved beams fell from the ceiling and crashed to the floor in a cloud of sparks no more than 2 feet away. Tazeem recoiled instinctively, then again tried to move forward. He tore off a shirt sleeve and held it to his face in an effort to filter out the repressive toxic fumes. The smoke had begun to take effect. He felt dizzy and stumbled, reached out, putting a steadying hand against one of the booths, and cried out as his flesh made contact with the burning wood.
He cast a last forlorn look around the interior, but in vain. He could only pray that Latif hadn’t been inside when the explosion happened. His hearing hadn’t yet returned but no doubt sirens were marking the imminent arrival of the emergency services. Tazeem hurried back to his car and drove away.
A mile or so down the road he texted Decker and Mangle and told them to meet him at the lock-up immediately. When they arrived, Tazeem explained everything he’d seen.
‘Someone must have recognised you at South of Seven, and they’ve made the connection between you and Latif. You both work at his store and you said there was someone from the stockroom with Sadiq at Mailsi tonight.’
‘So they go and blow up his restaurant? Jesus! And what the fuck do we do now, live in here?’ Decker said, toppling the chair backwards with sudden ferocity as he jumped to his feet, gesturing dramatically around the dingy interior.
‘No, but you have to stay out of sight till we can work out what is going on.’
‘You mean you aren’t staying?’ Mangle asked him.
‘I’ll be back, but I need to make sure Ermina is OK first. She’ll be home alone, and if they have connected me with this as well, then she is in danger.’
Tazeem drove quickly back to his house. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of Ermina sooner. He hadn’t even checked on her when he’d arrived home earlier, just got straight into his car and drove away.
Everything looked undisturbed as he pulled up, a few houses further up the street. The porch and hallway lights glowed reassuringly. Tazeem let himself in after first checking that there were no signs of forced entry, and called Ermina’s name once inside.
When she didn’t reply, Tazeem went from room to room to make certain no one else was in the house. He climbed the stairs two at a time, knocked loudly on her bedroom door, and when greeted only by silence he walked in. Ermina’s bed hadn’t been slept in and there were clothes haphazardly scattered across it. Both of the wardrobes were open and most of her clothes were gone.
‘No,’ Tazeem said, despairingly.
He searched upstairs and down for a note or any clue to her whereabouts. He dialled the number for her cell, but it was turned off. In desperation he even called Sadiq, but got no reply. Tazeem tried to gather himself. He splashed cold water onto his face then threw some of his own clothes into a bag. He knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to return here for a while.
When Tazeem arrived back at the lock-up, Decker and Mangle sat silently in front of the old TV set nursing cracked mugs of coffee, watching Kasey Haugh present a live Channel 10 news report.
‘Have you heard?’ Decker asked as Tazeem went to pour himself a cup.
‘Heard what?’
‘They hit the computer shop as well, another car bomb. Daisycutter bombs, or something, the news reports are calling them,’ Mangle said. He looked dazed by what he was hearing.
Tazeem sat down heavily, his head swimming. He gulped down some of the hot, bitter coffee and tried to gather his thoughts.
‘It was at the same time as the restaurant. It’s all over the news,’ Mangle continued. ‘Maybe it was intended as a warning and they didn’t know he was still inside.’
‘So they’ve found a body?’ Tazeem asked.
Decker nodded. ‘One body in the restaurant, but it hasn’t been identified. Is Ermina OK?’ he asked as an afterthought.
‘She wasn’t there. And her clothes and stuff are missing.’
‘We should take this to the police,’ Mangle said.
‘No, I can’t risk anything happening to her. Besides we have nothing but supposition, nothing to link it to Sadiq or anyone else. And you can guarantee the warehouse all this started in will be wiped clean.’
For the next few days all three stayed inside the lock-up as much as they could. Tazeem’s calls to Ermina went straight to voice-mail. The TV reported that Latif ’s body had been identified. At first the news channels were rife with speculation as to why a regular businessman had been targeted in such a way. But as no light was shed on the mystery, the coverage grew sparser before other disasters and the mayoral elections were deemed more worthy for public consumption and the two explosions were forgotten.
Tazeem had put out feelers on the street for any information, and on the third day he got a call from an informant. He arranged to meet him at a riverside cafe called Harley’s at 1p.m. that afternoon, but arrived 20 minutes early.
Harley’s was an old cafe that had seen better days. It used to service a nearby textile mill before its closure a few years earlier. These days it captured little passing trade, but many of the factory workers would return from time to time to drink cups of tea and reminisce with the owner. The floors were unmopped and the windows were milky, covered by handprints and a film of cooking grease.
Tazeem walked in, ordered a sandwich at the counter and sat in one of the many vacant booths. The man serving shared a joke with a customer sitting at the counter. He had a rasping laugh that sounded like splintering wood. Tazeem cleared his throat and checked his watch as his informant, Ferret, entered and sat down.
‘What have you got for me?’ Tazeem asked. He took a bite from his sandwich and pushed an envelope across the table.
Ferret had nervous eyes, copper hair and beard, and moved with sudden bursts of intent. He snatched up the envelope, and once certain that their conversation was of no interest to the men at the counter, he began to speak.
‘I know a guy, Ben, works behind the bar at the club you mentioned.’
‘South of Seven?’ Tazeem asked. ‘I want something on the explosions.’
‘You gonna listen to what I have to say or not?’
‘Alright, Ferret, get to your point, I’m listening.’
‘He was in there the night of the bombs. Said three guys left the club, suddenly, and it caused a commotion. Said there was a lot of coming and going after that, management and people in the VIP section.’
‘I know this already.’
‘He overheard something. An Asian guy in a sharp suit and sparkles,’ Ferret said, fluttering nicotine-stained fingers at Tazeem. ‘Took a phone call then said, “Do both places. Get the point across.”’
Sadiq. He must have been in the building or arrived there shortly after they left. This confirmed that Sadiq was behind the explosions, but gave them nothing new.
‘What else did he say?’
‘About the explosions? Nothing. He had more on the club, if you want that.’
Tazeem nodded but Ferret remained quiet and drummed his fingers on the table. Tazeem had anticipated this and reached for the second envelope. Ferret licked his lips, lizard-like, and grabbed it.
‘He says the girls are coming and going real quick these days. They used to have a rotation of regulars working the place. But now there’s a constant stream of new girls with accents, maybe Russian or somewhere like that. He says they show up all beautiful but kind of dopey-looking and it’s made pretty clear that for the right price a lap dance can have a happy ending.’
Tazeem nodded and waited for Ferret to continue. He was obviously holding out for a third envelope but Tazeem didn’t budge an inch and just returned his stare. Eventually, Ferret accepted that he’d milked the situation for all it was worth.
‘He’s heard there’s another place.’
‘Another lap dancing club? So what, they’re all over the city.’
‘This isn’t a regular strip club. I
t’s a real high-roller anything-goes type of place,’ Ferret said. His eyes glittered as he reached across the table and touched Tazeem’s arm. ‘And I mean anything goes.’
‘Lap dancers getting paid extra to fuck is nothing new. What’s the big deal about this place?’
‘It’s not just fucking, aren’t you listening to me? These girls learn the ropes at Seven and are moved on to the other place. More and more are coming through every day, man. How many fucking strippers does a place need, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Oh my God,’ Tazeem said, as he began to understand, and thoughts of Ermina spiked in his stomach. ‘Do you know where it is?’
Ferret took out a folded scrap of paper and passed it to him. ‘My guy Ben doesn’t know where the other club is, but the girls are being shipped in from here, a rehab centre in Newtonville.’
‘Well, what’s this other place called?’ Tazeem asked as he slipped the scrap of paper into his pocket.
‘The place is just known as The Club. But the behind-the-scenes bit that only the real big spenders get to see, there’s no official name, ’cause officially it doesn’t exist, that’s called The Zombie Room.’
10
When Tatiana got back to the clinic she found Laura still awake, sitting and gazing out of the window onto the moonlit fields below. Her companion from the trip to the lap dancing club went to bed, and within moments was asleep. Tatiana pulled up a chair beside Laura.
‘Can’t sleep?’ she asked. Laura shook her head.
‘Are you thinking about home?’
Laura looked puzzled for a moment, before answering. ‘No. That is not something I ever think of any more.’ A slight smile played at her lips, her forehead smooth and unconcerned.
Tatiana didn’t know what to make of that, as the memories of her life before her parents died were the only thing that kept her sane. But she had noticed a similar change in the other girls; they communicated very little any more, not just with Tatiana, but amongst themselves too, and any conversation that did germinate never involved what they had left behind, what they had lost.
‘Do you think we will ever again be happy?’ Tatiana asked after a few moments. Laura didn’t answer. Tatiana wasn’t sure if she had heard.
‘What is happy?’ Laura said quietly, after Tatiana had given up hope of a response. ‘I think I would settle for being at rest.’ She turned and faced Tatiana. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
Tatiana nodded, although she wasn’t sure that she did. ‘I couldn’t ever be at rest while the man responsible for killing my family walks free.’
Laura had turned to look back out of the window, then her eyes slipped out of focus. She was no longer listening.
The clinic had previously been the lavish home of a successful businessman. After his systematic fall from grace due to illness, and ostracization of remaining family, he donated the house and remaining land to a charity organisation that specialised in treatment of patients suffering from bipolar disorder, the only stipulation being, that it retain its name of The Walker Estate. When the charity fell on hard times it was finally placed on the market, but the reclusive location and lack of good farming opportunity saw The Walker Estate lie vacant for many years, during which time its existence had mostly faded from memory.
They parked about a mile away, and walked through scrubland and the occasional wooded copse. When they neared the fence Tazeem was surprised by the lack of security. It looked no different from any 3 foot fence surrounding regular farmland, designed to contain livestock. He began to question Ferret’s information.
The main building was a few hundred yards to the west; a modest two-storey country house with creeping ivy, well-maintained gardens and suitably pruned hedgerows. Three single-storey outbuildings ringed the rear of the property. So far there’d been no sign of anyone.
‘You sure this is where they keep the girls?’ Mangle asked.
‘Am I sure? No, but this is where Ferret said it was,’ Tazeem answered.
‘So you think that upwards of a dozen girls are kept in here, possibly Ermina among them, while they’re brainwashed into being sex slaves?’ Decker said dismissively, and turned to begin walking back to the car.
‘We’re here now, we may as well wait a while and see if we see anything.’ Mangle said.
As he spoke, the sound of a buzzer emitted from the property. All three lay down in the grass and watched as a procession of five girls wearing shapeless sky-blue jumpsuits were led from an outbuilding toward the main house. A woman who looked older than the others walked with them. She wore the same outfit in beige. One man accompanied them, who stood watching, but made no movement to usher or hurry any of them along. From this distance they couldn’t hear what, if anything, was being said, but he at least appeared to be unarmed.
A door opened and the girls began to file inside. The man scratched his chin and gazed off across the fields as the first three girls passed into the house and out of sight. Mangle, Decker and Tazeem watched silently from their vantage point as the second to last girl suddenly broke ranks and started to sprint across the grounds.
‘Fucking hell, she’s coming this way,’ Decker said. ‘How come the guy isn’t chasing her?’
The attendant seemed unconcerned by the fleeing girl. No alarms sounded and still the solitary man by the house was the only witness. She got close enough for them to see a bright red welt on her left cheek, the size and shape of a hand print. She was 100 yards from the fence now. Glancing to her left, she saw the three lying in the grass and angled her run toward them.
‘Shit, she’s gonna get us noticed for sure,’ Tazeem said.
‘There’s something around her neck,’ Decker said, ‘some kind of collar.’
‘Start backing away from the fence,’ Tazeem said. ‘Someone’s bound to come after her.’
She couldn’t have been more than 50 yards from them when she collapsed onto the ground, convulsing and clawing at her neck. The door to the building had closed on the other girls. The attendant began to walk across to the runaway, who writhed and kicked her legs spasmodically. The woman in the beige jumpsuit stood sentinel by the door but made no move towards the flailing girl.
Decker and Mangle had retreated back to nearby trees and Tazeem ducked down beside them.
‘You can hear it,’ Mangle said, shushing them. ‘Listen, you can hear the buzzing.’
Tazeem held his breath and sure enough could hear what sounded like an overloaded electrical socket. A steady buzzing was punctuated only by an occasional dull thump as one of the girl’s limbs flopped onto the grass. A few more seconds, and the buzzing stopped. Other than the occasional twitch, the girl now lay still.
Presently, the man arrived where she lay. He hoisted her onto his back with practised efficiency and started back toward the main building.
‘Fucking hell,’ Decker said once he was sure the man was out of earshot. ‘Least we know why they don’t bother with fences now.’
‘Yeah,’ Mangle said, ‘this is definitely the right place.’
Tazeem rented a small bungalow in a quiet residential district, a few miles north of the city. He left his easily identifiable Mercedes in the lock-up garage and they used the white VW to get around in. Ferret was now incommunicado and Tazeem spent the next few days trying to gather further information through his network of sources.
Mangle and Decker grew weary hiding out waiting for Tazeem to plan their next move, and decided on another reconnaissance visit to the clinic. They stationed themselves by the fence in an area of dense dogwood bushes. The first hour produced nothing but boredom and creeping damp patches on their clothes from lying on the ground.
When finally a buzzer sounded, both Mangle and Decker expected the same routine as they’d previously witnessed, with a troop of girls being led from an outbuilding back to the house. This time, however, the door from the main building opened and eleven girls wearing the uniform sky-blue jumpsuits, led by the single woman in beige, made their way outside.
‘What are they doing?’ Decker asked after several moments.
‘Not much of anything, it doesn’t look like; just walking around.’
The girls appeared to wander aimlessly around the grounds. Again there was a single man stationed beside the house. He had brought out a chair and sat reading a book beside the doorway, paying virtually no attention to the girls.
‘You recognise any from Seven? Or from the warehouse?’ Decker asked.
‘No, not from here anyway. None that look like they could be Ermina either.’
One girl followed an angular path around the flower beds, slowly gravitating further away from the building. Mangle kept low and watched for any sign of interest from the attendant. She never cast a glance back over her shoulder and he didn’t appear to look up.
‘Is that the one from the warehouse?’ Decker asked.
‘I can’t tell for sure while she has her head down like that,’ Mangle said, squinting at the girl closest to them. ‘But it doesn’t look like she’s wearing one of those collars, and the guy over there seems fine with her being so far from the house.’
He was right. The girl still followed the perimeter of one flower bed after another, maybe 200 yards from the house, and neither the attendant nor the woman in beige paid her any heed.
‘She’s humming,’ Decker commented. ‘What have they done to make them so sure the girls won’t run off?’
Mangle didn’t answer. He could hear the girl now as well. ‘Hey,’ he said, in a voice he hoped would carry to her. If she’d heard him she gave no indication.
Decker picked a small stone and tossed it towards her. It bounced in the grass a few feet in front of her and she immediately stopped humming. The girl peered absently over towards the fence but looked less than curious at their presence. After a prolonged moment of staring, she resumed the tuneless humming and again walked the line around the flower bed.
‘It’s her,’ Mangle said, with rising excitement in his voice. ‘It’s the same one.’
