by D J Harrison
‘Tell them I’ll let them know, that I have to talk to Grublauskis first. That I’ll get a better deal from him.’
At the sound of the name, the two men exchange a glance, then the younger one answers while drawing his finger across his throat. Lottie translates but I already know what is being said.
‘Grublauskis is dead,’ she says.
*
We leave the grisly duo sitting there and return to the warm sunshine and fresh air outside. I feel drained even from such a short exposure to those men. I shudder when I think how vulnerable young girls like Lottie and Kat find themselves under the control of nasty pieces of work like them. Lottie looks at me with a puzzled frown. ‘Why did you say that, about the transport I mean?’
‘Because that’s what I’m interested in, Lottie. These aren’t the sort of men who might know where Kat is now. Once she’s left Ukraine and they have their money for her, they have no interest in where she is or what’s happening to her. It’s the ones who took her to England that we need to find.’
‘But how do we do that?’
‘I don’t know, we need to change our approach, that’s for sure.’
65
This man speaks good English, but I’m not getting the answers I need from him. Lottie left me to visit her father in hospital. It seems he will surely die very soon without an operation and there is no prospect of surgery in the near future. There are no doctors available, it’s not a question of money, only of personnel. Lottie has become increasingly distraught the last few days. The brutes in the hotel made her fear for Kat’s life, as well as her dad’s. One of her school friends set up this meeting with an elderly man with scholarly leather patches on the elbows of his dark green jacket.
My thin cotton t-shirt is clinging wetly to my armpits as we sit in the harbour side café, how he manages to justify that jacket I have no idea.
‘I don’t understand, don’t you have some transport arrangement, you know, someone who puts the girls into a lorry and smuggles them into England that way?’
‘Why would anybody want to do that?’ he frowns. ‘You say you have two girls both eighteen and you want to employ them in England. As long as they are willing, there is no need to take such trouble. Are they willing?’
‘Oh yes.’ I hope he can’t see the lies in everything I’m saying.
‘Then let me have their documents, I’ll arrange student visas for them.’
‘Student visas?’
‘Of course, anyone under twenty-five has no problem with a visa.’
‘Don’t they need to be accepted at a university or something?’
‘Yes, but that’s no problem either. I have good contacts in England.’
‘At universities?’
‘Yes, and colleges, mainly colleges.’
‘Don’t the girls have to apply for a course, have qualifications, all that kind of thing?’
‘No, as I say, I have good contacts. Your girls will be registered officially at the college. They’ll get confirmation of their places, everything. And for this all I require is their papers and two thousand pounds per girl. It’s a trouble-free way for you.’
‘Do you arrange many of these?’
The man smiles. ‘Hundreds, every year. An old academic like me has to do something in his retirement to make ends meet.’
‘What about the girls who have to be smuggled into England by lorry, why don’t they use you instead?’
‘I can’t help you. Human trafficking is a different matter. Those people deal in children and slaves, you don’t want to get involved in that business, it’s very dangerous. Better to get your girls my way, much better.’
66
The apartment has even fewer items in it than the one Lottie’s parents occupy. A smell of over-cooked cabbage pervades the whole place, at least I hope that’s the origin of the smell. I dread to imagine what else might be causing it. The threadbare sofa is occupied by Lottie and a small girl a few years younger with cropped black hair. Her name is Alisiya and she is Kat’s friend, the one who put us in touch with the old guy with the student visa racket.
‘Why didn’t Kat get herself a student visa, surely that would have been her best way to get to England?’
‘No money.’ Alisiya’s sad brown eyes betray a sense of hopelessness, an air of resignation that feels out of place in one so young. ‘Only the very rich can afford that man’s prices.’
‘She could have had the money from me.’ Lottie’s voice is shaking with emotion.
‘I know,’ Alisiya says, ‘I told her to ask you but she wouldn’t. She said she’d do it herself, just like you did.’
‘So what did she do?’ I ask, watching Lottie’s face twisting with distress.
‘She stopped working at the big hotels and started trying to make friends with the tourists, hoping one of them would fall in love with her and take her home with him. She’s very pretty, she had lots of men interested in her but not as a wife.’
‘So she stopped?’ I ask.
‘No, she didn’t stop meeting men, though she did begin to take their money. I suppose she hoped to save enough to buy a visa.’
Lottie bursts into tears and begins to shout at Alisiya in her own language. The exchanges are angry and acrimonious as if Lottie’s holding Alisiya responsible for her twin sister’s actions. Alisiya stands up and points to the door, screaming wildly.
When we emerge from the dank apartment block into the dazzling sunlight, Lottie is still sobbing. Parked next to our waiting taxi is a police car. Two blue-shirted men with French style flat hats and white gun holsters are talking to our driver. As we approach they look up and move to intercept us. I feel Lottie’s body stiffen with shock as she sees the policemen.
‘Run,’ she says, grabbing my arm and bundling me back inside the apartment stairwell.
‘It’s only the police,’ I say, ‘there’s no need to run.’
‘Yes there is,’ she pants, as she leads me down a grimy concrete-walled corridor, through a door and out into the desolation that forms the open space at the rear of the tower block. Four more policemen are waiting for us, complete with their ridiculous gendarme style hats. One of them grabs me roughly by my forearm. Another clamps his arms around me from behind. I relax instantly, buckle my legs, become a dead weight. When I feel the man behind me bending his back and bracing himself to bear my unexpected weight I stiffen, drive my legs hard into the ground, smash the top of my head into the face that overhangs me. The grip slackens. I kick hard at the knee of the man in front of me, wriggle my way free, turn to look for Lottie, take a savage blow to my jaw, see the gun being held to my head. For a brief moment I’m confused, it looks just like Leroy’s gun. I wonder why the same gun is threatening me again, whether everybody has a gun like this in the dreadful world I’m living in. Another blow to the back of my head knocks me to the ground. As I lie tasting my own blood, the kicking begins.
67
The fat woman with dirty blonde hair hanging in lank strands comes over to my corner of the cell as I try to eat. My mouth and jaw are aching badly; at least one of my teeth is broken or missing. The thin brown soup and dry black bread smell unappetising, but it’s all I’ve been given. She grabs at the enamel dish I’m holding and as I resist the soup spills over the side and the bread drops to the filthy floor. I stand up and smash the dish, soup and all, into her face, then I grab her disgusting greasy hair and use it to throw her over my right hip so that she lands heavily on the back of her head. As I stand over her, the spark of anger in her eyes diminishes. I continue to stare, daring her to rise up and fight me, but she has no stomach for it any more.
I’m back in prison. I know this game, I’ve played it before. Now she knows I don’t represent easy pickings she’ll leave me alone. It’s simply a matter of risk and reward to her. Her beaten look tells me she’s no longer interested. I turn and pick up her dish which she carefully placed on the small wooden table in the centre of the cell before she came over to grab
my food. Slowly, so that the others can also get the full effect, I pour the lukewarm liquid over her head then crumble the bread onto the floor. Now they can see I don’t care, that I have nothing to lose. That if they fight with me I’ll injure them whether they win or lose. I am hungry but I’m not starving and I’m certainly not showing my cellmates any form of weakness.
Nobody seems to speak any English. My repeated questions and requests go unheeded by both inmates and prison officers. Once a day we are let out to wash in an area as filthy as the cell we live in. No showers, only cold water taps. Most of the women don’t bother, they drink the water thirstily, splash a little over their faces and nowhere else. There’s no soap, no incentive to keep clean, but I do my best.
My meals go unmolested, the days and nights merge into grinding tedium. At least my jaw pain eases and the stench of the place is reduced with familiarity. As my own fears subside into numbed indifference, they are replaced by the terrible realisation that Lottie may be even worse off. She hasn’t had my experience, the hardening that this brings. Her food may be confiscated, she could be beaten half to death. If she were in here with me, I could help her, protect her. But Lottie is not here with me and I’ve no way of finding out where she is. My hope is that she’s back with her mother, that the police only took me, that she did nothing to aggravate them like I did. I have a horrible feeling that I probably did enough to get both of us imprisoned indefinitely. At least the policeman I injured hasn’t been around to exact vengeance. Maybe they won’t let him at me in a women’s prison. Maybe he’s in no fit state.
This time it’s only me they want. Two female officers lead me down the corridor and I get visions of the police waiting to give me another good kicking. They take me into a toilet block. This one is passably clean with flush toilets and showers. They wait patiently as I strip off the prison uniform and stand under the lukewarm water. I even find a small sliver of soap to aid the process. There’s no shampoo, no conditioner, no shower gel, but after what I’ve been used to, this is five star quality. I dry my hair on the rough grey towel, look at myself in the mirror. There’s a red and black bruise on the left of my face, extending from my neck up to my cheekbone. My own clothes are produced, I am encouraged to put them on. Then the women bring out my handbag and push cosmetics at me so that I can repair my damaged face as far as possible. It’s quite clear that they’re going to stand there until I finally apply some lipstick, so I oblige.
My hopes of being released are increasing with every moment. Why would they clean me up and make me dress in my street clothes if they weren’t going to let me go? The man in the interview room is the answer. He is my age, maybe a little older, forty at the most, neat black hair, grey flannels, dark blue blazer with shiny brass buttons.
‘Charles Smith.’ He stands stiffly and shakes my not quite so grubby hand. ‘I’m from the British Consulate, Mrs Parker.’
I sit down opposite him, the guards leave us alone. Charles sinks sadly into his seat.
‘Bit of a problem, I’m afraid.’ He indicates a manila envelope in front of him. ‘The Ukrainian authorities have rather taken exception to your behaviour. I must admit I expected you to be a lot more – how should I say – beefy. Putting one of their police officers in hospital has made you somewhat unpopular, though looking at you I can see why they’re so embarrassed. With the greatest respect, Mrs Parker, you don’t look like a major threat to Ukrainian national security.’
‘They chased me, grabbed hold of me, and then they kicked me while I was on the ground.’
‘Very unsporting, I’m sure.’
‘They knocked out my teeth, I desperately need a dentist.’ I’m not impressed with this junior assistant consul, or whatever he is. ‘I need to see someone who can help me, the ambassador, isn’t it? Can you get him here, surely he can do something?’
He smiles a thin reluctant smile. ‘I’m afraid the ambassador is unlikely to intervene personally every time a British tourist roughs up a Ukrainian policeman. You will have to make do with me, I’m afraid.’
‘What’s going to happen to me then?’ I ask, knowing full well now that I’m going to be in this cess pit for a very long time.
‘That depends.’ Charles opens the envelope and slides out a sheath of documents and a passport. ‘What exactly are you doing here in Odessa?’
‘My friend Lottie is Ukrainian, her father is ill. I came over to help and support her. She lives near me in Salford, she’s married to a friend of mine, Christopher Worthington. Do you know what’s happened to her? She was with me when the police arrested me.’
‘I’ll see if I can find out,’ Charles says flatly. I detect more than a note of insincerity in his answer.
‘Why aren’t you writing any of this down?’ I ask.
‘I don’t need to.’
‘Her name is Lottie Worthington, her family name is Federenco. Write it down or you’ll forget.’
‘Believe me, Mrs Parker, if I need to make written notes I will.’
‘Okay, I believe you, but please don’t forget.’
‘Before the police came, what were you doing?’
‘Visiting a friend of Lottie’s, or rather one of her sister’s friends.’
‘Why?’
‘To talk to her.’ I don’t know how much to tell this man.
‘About what?’
‘Kat, Lottie’s sister, has disappeared. We thought that Alisiya might know something about her whereabouts.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘Kat said she was going to England to work, she left Ukraine and that’s the last her family heard from her. It’s been three months.’
‘I see. And did this Alisiya know where Kat is?’
‘No, I don’t know…there was an argument. Lottie and her were shouting a lot, maybe it was Alisiya who called the police.’
‘Have you made enquiries of anyone else?’ Charles asks.
‘Yes, some men who offer to smuggle girls into England for five thousand pounds each, willing or not. One man who can get student visas for two thousand pounds. Nobody who admits to having dealt with Kat, though. I’m no wiser about her, only confused. I can see why a young girl would want to earn good money in England, but not how anyone could be so desperate as to put herself in the hands of the nasty characters we’ve met.’
‘So you suspect kidnapping?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Kat was willing at first but is now imprisoned somewhere.’ My heart is sinking at the enormity of the situation. It’s as if Kat were a grain of sand dropped into an ocean and I’m only now realising exactly how big that ocean is.
‘But you suspect people trafficking, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘And prostitution, forced prostitution. I’ve seen it in Salford, young girls from Eastern Europe made to perform degrading acts for men.’ I look across at his uncaring expression and almost add the words ‘like you’.
‘Let me get this straight, Mrs Parker. You suspect that your friend’s Ukrainian sister has become a victim of an organised prostitution racket, so you have come over here all alone and tried to put the whole world to rights?’
‘It’s not quite like that.’
‘But it is, Mrs Parker. Even if you find these criminals or worse still, if they find you, what do you expect?’
‘Once I know who they are I can report them,’ I say.
‘To whom? Report a gang of organised criminals to their own police force, or dial 999 when you get home and tell your local constable all about it?’
‘Look, there are young girls being abused, raped even. I’m not going to stand idly by and let it continue. I have to try, don’t you understand?’
I can feel the prickle behind my eyes and the heat in my cheeks, but I refuse to shed tears in front of this uncaring man.
68
‘What happened to your face?’ Alex asks.
‘It was kicked in by a Ukrainian policeman.’
‘Oh.’ Alex’s face wrinkles. ‘Is it
as sore as it looks?’
‘Worse than it looks, really painful. My ear hurt but this is at least as bad.’
‘I can see you’re upset.’ Alex moves to put his arm around me, to comfort me like an ailing child. I push him away, consumed by shame at my display of weakness, then instantly regret the impulse.
‘Leave me alone,’ I say. The words are completely empty of any conviction or meaning. After all it’s me who turned up disconsolate at his flat, not the other way round.
Alex makes a pot of tea, that weak urine coloured stuff that he drinks without milk. I might as well drink warm water from the tap. Alex and Hector should pal up together, they could have really jolly tea parties.
‘You and Hector would get on a treat,’ I say.
‘Who?’
‘The man who’s buying GOD Security, you’d like him. He’s just like you.’ I can’t hold back the beginnings of a grin.
‘Really?’ Alex asks.
‘You might actually be twins, you’re so alike.’ I laugh despite my discomfort. Teasing Alex, even if it’s only in my mind, is breaking through my melancholy. This is what I came round here for, I realise. Someone who connects to me deeply. Someone to dispel my gloom, to tell me I’m okay, convince me that the sad death of Lottie’s father isn’t my fault, to take me away from the grim circumstances that surround me. My culpability hangs heavily on my shoulders. Being with Alex somehow reminds me that I am doing my best, following my heart, not trying to put people at risk. Apart from myself, of course.
‘One day I’ll introduce you, you’ll see what I mean,’ I smile. Alex’s arms go around me now and I feel myself relax and melt into him.
‘When?’ Alex whispers.
‘Not until I’ve finished with you. I’m scared that you two might run off together.’
‘Hector who?’
‘Hector Brighouse.’ I feel a tiny shudder as Alex hears the name. ‘You know him?’
