by Holly Seddon
I met a girl at the station and escorted her to a hotel in the Surrey countryside where she was paid cash, put to sleep and had an organ removed. But don’t worry, Marianne, it was for a good cause. Someone really rich had bought it off her. He shakes his head; even with the ‘sweetener’ of receiving the locations of other trafficked women, this whole thing is totally, undeniably wrong.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Marianne would ask, if she could move past the idea that it’s a sick joke and consider that her husband is telling the truth.
Because I used some dodgy service on the dark web to trace a missing girl and now the people behind it have blackmailed me into joining this far larger scheme.
‘Who are they?’ she would say, if she hadn’t already started calling the police or packing her bags. And he would shrug, because he doesn’t know. There are people at the hotel who seem to be cogs in the machine, like him. And then there are people above them, people never named, only alluded to. One of them, presumably, is the person messaging Greg and pulling his strings, but there are at least two of them; David has said as much.
And they – the shadowy, all-knowing ‘they’ – haven’t messaged yet tonight. No confirmation of the surgery success and no information. He thinks of Talia, berating himself for not thinking of her sooner. If something goes wrong, what happens to her? And deeply, secretly, what worries him more is, What happens to me? Do I need to rustle up another match? Will they still give me the information? Will they tell Marianne? Eloise?
The door to the flat opens up as the message finally arrives.
‘Hey!’ he calls out, closing the laptop.
‘Just getting into my comfies,’ Marianne calls back. He inhales, lifts the screen and reads. A successful transaction. Information about a cluster of very young women. He’ll check it out tomorrow and then ‘phone it in’. He exhales, snaps the laptop closed and stares at himself in the reflection of the kitchen window. He looks wired, he looks guilty. Like an actor ready to pace the stage, he breathes in and out, closes his eyes to study his lines and his ‘motivation’. I’m Greg, I went to work as usual today and I need to appear normal tonight.
‘I’ll order a takeaway now, m’lady,’ he calls out, sounding weird rather than relaxed.
‘You’re a bloody good man,’ Marianne calls back. He watches his face recoil in the window. No, I’m not.
Samantha
Tuesday, 22 October 2019
I leave the house before Joe or Steve wake up and walk aimlessly around the town, killing time before I meet Paula. On any other day I would have cancelled but to do so when she’s confided her concerns would be cruel. And suspicious.
Steve and I barely spoke last night. He still hasn’t asked why I was speeding along the M25 after feigning illness. He hasn’t asked what I was really doing when I claimed to be out shopping the other night. He hasn’t asked me anything at all.
I get to Le Pain Quotidien early and sit in the furthest booth from the door. There are clusters of mothers with young children, older couples enjoying retirement. I stare at them, amazed that they don’t run from me. I imagine my dirt seeping everywhere until we’re all filthy.
When Paula arrives, she is all smiles. We hug and kiss, I press my lips to her cheek and am shot through with a guilt so sharp I flinch.
‘Forgive me,’ she says briskly. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking sending you that message.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive you for,’ I say. I need you to forgive me !
She shakes her head. ‘I was being so silly.’
‘You don’t think that Jonathan …’ I trail off. Do I really want to pursue this?
She laughs. ‘No, I don’t think that Jonathan is cheating on me. He was being so secretive and crafty, I thought that, well, you know what I thought. But it was nothing of the sort. He’s taking me to New York this weekend!’
‘Oh!’ I say, trying to hide my relief.
‘He’d been arranging it on the sly and he surprised me last night, not long after I messaged you. I’m sorry I didn’t follow up, but we got distracted.’ She smiles wryly and I feel my cheeks colour. How could he go home and do that after what we did?
‘Well,’ I say. ‘I’m very happy for you.’ She smiles so brilliantly that my eyes sting.
‘I’ve always wanted to visit New York,’ I add.
*
Wednesday, 30 October 2019
The deadline to pay the speeding fine is approaching, and if Steve doesn’t pay it and accept three points on his licence, or worse – if he appeals it – they will look at the photographs to ascertain who was driving. Me. An unlicensed driver, living here illegally under a false name. The stakes are as high as they’ve ever been, yet this is just a fraction of what could be laid at my feet.
We move in politely wide circles around each other. Still eating dinner as a family, still passing the salt and saying, ‘have a nice day’. But everything has changed.
It took time for Steve to trust me as an au pair. He was paranoid about Emily coming back and snatching Joe, but I think he struggled to fully trust anyone. He would come back unannounced during the day and let himself into the house quietly, watching as I played with Joe in the garden or helped him to write his name with fridge magnets. Sometimes I would look up and see him smiling, more with relief than anything. But to really gain his trust, first I risked losing it completely.
I’d gone home from work, late, expecting to find the bed I shared with Cristina empty. Since I changed to day work at Steve’s, we’d been in different time zones. And the train journeys from Surrey to North London dragged long days even further. She was still sleeping by day, me a few hours at night. I missed her warmth but was glad of the room. But that evening, Cristina was still in the bed.
She didn’t sit up to greet me, she didn’t move at all. Curled in on herself like a newborn. Grey. I don’t know who had followed her back to that house. Which other ‘tenant’ had let them in. Maybe it was Cristina herself, maybe it was someone she trusted. Although she didn’t seem to trust anyone except me. And I don’t know what happened next, what happened to her body, because after I tucked her in, closed her eyes and kissed her cold forehead, I left that house and got the first train back to Steve’s.
Joe was in bed where I’d put him before I left hours earlier. Hair fluffy from the bath. Steve was already in his pyjamas when I got back, tugging a dressing gown over them as he opened the door. ‘Did you forget something?’
I broke down. The words tumbling out of me so fast he couldn’t decipher them. ‘Come in,’ he said, helping me as if I were wounded. I curled into the arm of the sofa where just that day I’d been tucked with Joe, reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories.
‘My friend Cristina died,’ I said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Steve said. ‘Was she ill?’
I told him how I’d found her. Spilt myself open about the way we lived. As he watched in silence, I told him that I couldn’t report Cristina’s death because if I did, I would be sent back.
‘You shouldn’t be living in that house,’ he said finally. ‘You can’t go back there.’
‘I have nowhere else to go. I don’t have any money …’
‘The wages I pay you, I know they’re not a king’s ransom but—’
‘I owe them money for the journey over and my rent; they add to the debt every week and I’ve never got anything left. You don’t understand, there’s no way out for me.’
That night, I lay in Steve’s spare room, unable to sleep. I wore one of Emily’s old nighties and even though the bed was a double, I scrunched myself into the corner as if Cristina was tucked there with me. When Joe woke in the night, I leapt up to see him, gladly cooing and patting him back to sleep as Steve watched from the doorway.
The next morning, he offered me a deal. He would pay off the debt and I would move in with them.
‘As a live-in au pair?’
He shook his head and avoided my eye. ‘I was thinking that we coul
d do something different. Joe needs a mum. A family. I think you need a family too.’
He offered me sanctuary even though, really, he should have turned me over to the authorities, not given me a new life. And in nearly twenty years, he’s been nothing but kind and generous.
‘I don’t want another marriage like the last one,’ he’d told me, all those years ago. ‘I don’t ever want to wonder, When will she leave?’
‘I won’t leave, ever,’ I said.
‘I know you won’t,’ he said, casting an eye at his son hugging the side of my body like a koala and then joining in an awkward three-way hug. ‘We’ll get better at this,’ he said, and I smiled. And we did get better at it. We created a family for Joe that has formed the scaffolding of his life. And mine. And now it’s being disassembled.
*
Joe has left for an early lecture and Steve is fussing around, looking for his keys, when I just say it. ‘I was seeing someone. I was with him the night that I got the ticket and I was with him the other day when I said I was shopping. I’m so sorry. You can’t begin to imagine how sorry. But it’s over now.’
He stops and looks up at me, his eyes drooping with age and something else. Something new.
‘I’m just so sorry, Steve,’ I say. ‘I was stupid and selfish. I just wanted … I don’t know. I just wanted someone to want me. As a woman, not as a surrogate. Just for a little bit. But it was much too big a risk and I regret it so very much.’
He doesn’t react, doesn’t look surprised. Just watches me, waiting for what he must know is coming.
‘I know I shouldn’t ask you this,’ I say, avoiding his eye. ‘But if I don’t, everything unravels and Joe—’
‘I’ve already paid the fine and sent off my licence,’ he says. ‘So don’t try to guilt me into it.’
He pats his pocket and there’s a metal rustle. The missing keys. Once upon a time, not long ago, we would have laughed at this.
‘You were never just a surrogate to me,’ he says, his back to me.
‘It really is over,’ I say. ‘I promise.’
Then he walks out.
*
Tuesday, 12 November 2019
Since dropping off Dr Derbyshire’s laptop and SIM card in the luggage store near Gatwick, I haven’t received another assignment. No messages, nothing. I’ve settled back into a life that looks very like the one I had before: going to the gym, getting my hair done, volunteering at the charity, caring for Joe. I haven’t contacted Jonathan or Paula, but I have thought of them endlessly. And Steve, poor Steve, has said nothing more about my indiscretion but has instead thrown himself into work.
I’m in the office toilet at the charity, checking my other SIM. It’s been so many weeks since they’ve been in touch that I’m jarred to see it.
It’s in the same flat tone that delivers all my assignments.
You need to get rid of Michael Sutherland. You can choose the method but it must look like an accident. Attached is his weekly timetable and whereabouts. Keep it simple. Deadline is Friday night.
‘What do you mean “get rid of”?’ I write back. Praying I have misunderstood, that they mean for me to help him leave the country, go into hiding.
You know what we mean. He needs to be killed.
‘No!’ I write back. ‘Absolutely not. I’d rather go to jail for everything else than do that.’
You don’t mean that. Remember, it needs to look like an accident.
‘He has a young child,’ I write, my fingers tripping over themselves. ‘This is over a line. I can’t do it.’
I’m about to reply again, panic rising in my chest like acid. Another message comes through.
This is what we found on his computer.
I can’t delete the cascade of images fast enough. I fumble for the lid of the toilet and throw up until my eyes ache.
*
It’s nearly eleven and I lie in bed, numb. Cold in parts I didn’t even know I could feel. A tickertape parade rushes through my head, all his comings and goings, his whereabouts, the possibilities dancing in my head. How do you plan a murder? How do you plan to make a murder look like an accident?
I try to remember everything I was taught all those years ago. Of course, that wasn’t about murder. That was about defence, about vigilance, but it ended the same way.
Now, decades on, surely I can’t really do this? Maybe I could move on, take a new name and find a bedsit somewhere near Joe’s campus, hope that I can keep the truth from him a while longer. Anything better than taking another life.
I flip SIMs and type fast.
‘I’m not doing it. You can’t make me do this.’
Minutes pass. I close my eyes but still the images are there. I think of Michael Sutherland’s child and decide I will track down his wife, tell her somehow. It doesn’t have to take a murder to fix this.
I can see that whoever mans the Whispa app for them is typing. It comes in bursts.
CCTV of me arriving at an Electronics Superstore on that very first assignment. A photograph of me entering an E-Z Luggage & Lockers. So what? I try to tell myself. None of this proves anything.
Then, a CCTV freeze frame of me going into that flat in Kensington, another of me coming out with a backpack full of stolen goods.
Another from the tube station, which must have been just before Jonathan saw me.
‘Stop,’ I write.
Still the messages come. Scans of prescriptions, more CCTV stills from places I don’t even recognise. And then the maximum jail terms for each offence.
Ten years for prescription fraud.
Ten years for gift-card fraud.
Seven years for shoplifting.
‘Please stop.’
Six years for burglary.
‘PLEASE STOP’
And you’d better hope it’s in the UK and you’re not extradited.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
We don’t have time for this nonsense today, Samantha. Just get the job done by Friday.
*
On Friday morning, I drive to Tunbridge Wells. My car is disguised with a different set of fake number plates and my face in shadow from a baseball cap. I have a mask ready. As I drive, I run through the plan. I wonder, for a moment, if I can really trust these notes about the target’s schedule. But I can, can’t I, because this was no doubt put together by some other worm on a hook. And worms like us can’t make mistakes.
On my passenger seat is a large carrier bag containing a tub of grapes, a roll of plastic wrapping, a men’s jacket from a charity shop and a roll of wire. I have no idea if this will work but time is running out.
I pull up two streets away. It’s almost ten o’clock and he’s due back from his run around half past. There is no one around and I slip quietly down the alleyway between his road and the one behind. My new boots pinch my feet and I feel hot in all these layers of other people’s clothes.
I dodge the wheelie bins and dog mess and then open the gate to his garden. The shed has no more boxes; the kids’ toys are now stacked neatly inside.
It’s a dull day, the whipping wind too damp for clothes to be hung out. No one is watching as far as I can tell. I slide up the sash window – people so rarely lock these – and slip inside, leaving my boots below the windowsill.
I check every room in the house, my heart beating itself against my ribs like a warning. In the front room, I pull several sheets of the plastic wrap ready and hold them tight. Inside my gloves, even my fingers are sweating. I don’t know if I can trust them.
I wait behind the door, calming my breathing as best I can, listening out for neighbours or delivery people. Or, heaven forbid, Michael’s wife returning.
Eventually the key rattles in the lock. He pushes it open and steps inside, panting with exhaustion. The door bounces back off me and slams behind him. Shit. He turns to face me and I have to lunge at him, knocking him to the floor and covering his face with the plastic wrapping while he claws at me.
An
ancient memory stirs, rippling through me and propelling me forward.
The mask slips over my eyes and I can’t see properly but eventually he stops moving. He’s not a big man, around five foot five maybe, whereas I’m nearly six foot. But he was stronger than expected and I worry I’ve left bruises.
It must look like an accident.
As I drag him, unconscious, into the kitchen diner, I tell myself that runners fall over and bruise themselves all the time. I don’t know how long Michael will stay unconscious, but I wrestle his dead weight backwards into the large coat so it sits like a straitjacket. Then I heave him up into one of the chairs. The sleeves of the old jacket hang loose over his thin arms and I tug them over his hands and tie them tightly at the ends with the wire, twisted behind the chair. No ligature marks, but no escape.
I’m sweating already, my breath ragged. I’m not as fit as I used to be and it shows.
In front of him, the tub of grapes sits ready. I rinse the grapes under the tap – it feels like something he would do and every detail should be plausible.
I’m sweating under my mask and when I walk back over to the table, Michael stirs awake and lurches in fear.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he whispers. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Shout or scream and I will send your wife the pictures,’ I say, my voice low.
‘What pictures, what the fuck are you talking about?’
He’s shaking so much I fear the wire will loosen.
‘The photos. Those poor …’ I watch the realisation seep across his face like blood in a syringe. I lower my voice to a whisper. ‘We’re doing the world a favour.’
‘You mean porn? I’ve never, I’m not …’ He shakes his head, eyes wild. ‘They must have put it on my computer.’ He gasps for breath like he’s underwater. A thought hits him. ‘Who is we?’ he pants. ‘It’s you, isn’t it, that woman?’ I don’t reply. Sweat pours down his face, his skin is pale grey. He looks close to fainting. ‘Oh god, is this because I lost my job? I never told my bosses who I stole all that stuff for. I don’t even fucking know!’
