Someone Elses Daughter

by Jack Norman

  “Yes, you fucked up big time,” Salko said with a growl, scrunching up the photograph and stuffing it into the man’s mouth with his thumb. He bunched his left fist, taking slow, deliberate aim before ramming it against the man’s exposed Adam’s apple. It wasn’t a killer blow, for he had pulled its power, but it was undoubtedly painful. The man gurgled and grunted simultaneously, producing the strangest sound. “We know you took her,” Salko said grimly, watching as the man’s face turned puce. “I want to know what happened to her.”

  The man’s eyes widened as his tormentor raised his fist once more. He made as if to speak but could only manage stretched grunts. He gulped, to try again. “She is gone,” he said at last, struggling with the painfully-rasped words. “I no longer know where she is.”

  “Gone!” Salko’s eyes hardened as he eased the safety-catch from the gun and placed its muzzle at the man’s temple, where a prominent vein throbbed noticeably.

  “She will be far away from there. I sold her-”

  “You sold her!”

  “Of course, I sold her as a whore,” the man said, and despite the pain in his throat, he uttered a choked laugh. “It is funny. I sold Viktor Borzov’s daughter.”

  “You’ll tell me everything,” Salko said grimly, reaching down to grasp the man’s testicles.

  Later, they found the man’s body floating in the River Moskva.

  IV

  The club in downtown Odessa was much like any other of its kind. Blue neon lamps behind wispy blue gauze drapes cast a gloomy light on the half-a-dozen patrons and a similar number of whores. The floor was a chequered pattern of glass panels lit from beneath by blue flashing lamps. A bare breasted girl, clad in tight spangled shorts and knee-length boots, swayed in a desultory manner beside a steel pole, sparing only a disinterested glance as the man ushered the six terrified girls to a door at the rear of the dance area. The back room was dim and dingy, in stark contrast to the glitter of the bar and dance area, which was just plain tawdry. Four men sat at a small table, drinking and playing cards. The trafficked girls stood quaking as the four swarthy men all but ignored them and continued to play their game.

  “Strip,” Plakici said.

  One of the men glanced up briefly at the women as Plakici spoke and then looked back at the playing cards in his hand. He took some moments to select a card and tossed it onto the table. He was a swarthy unshaven man in his late twenties, with greasy black hair swept back in a pony-tail, a small moustache and long sideburns.

  “What is this?” Anna demanded as she was pushed forward. “Look, my father—”

  “Shut up, cunt,” Plakici said, swiping the back of his hand across Anna’s face. He dragged the padded coat from her shoulders. “Take off your clothes.”

  Anna reeled back with a screech, her hand on her cheek. The man with the pony-tail looked up and sighed.

  “Take your clothes off, all of them,” Plakici snarled to the other women but his rage was unnecessary, because they had already started to undress, their fingers fumbling at buttons and zips in their haste.

  Anna shrugged off her coat and unzipped the heavy woollen cardigan they had provided. She stood wearing a black bra and blue jeans. The main card player glanced ominously towards her and gave a small gesture of his hand. With an inward sigh, she unbuckled the belt at her waist and pushed the jeans down over her thighs, and Plakici stepped forward to roughly yank her panties down around her knees. Anna reached behind to unclip the garment and allowed it to fall from her breasts. The other girls disrobed too. Anna’s jeans and panties were bunched around her knees, but her body was fully displayed.

  The card player glanced up at the line of women as Plakici went to sit beside him at the card table. “I’ll give you twelve hundred each,” he said. “Not more.”

  “The bitch with the fair hair and? The one with the blue rose tattoo on her shoulder... They told me you would buy her.”

  “That’s her?” He gave Anna a quick appraising gaze. “Her father is the big fish?” The man smiled and he threw his playing cards onto the table before rising and walking to stand in front of Anna. She sullenly held his stare without blinking as his fingers traced his down over the rose tattoo and settled on her right nipple. “What is your name?”

  “I am Anna Borzov.”

  The man tweaked Anna’s nipple, making her grimace. “So it is true. I will enjoy fucking the daughter of the mighty criminal oligarch bastad, uh? Kick off those jeans and pants, you whore. I ordered you to be naked.”

  Anna inhaled deeply but she obeyed, pulling off her shoes, jeans and panties and dropping them to one side.

  “You’ll buy her?” Plakici asked.

  “No,” the man said, drawing a knife and slashing it across the Albanian’s throat. “But I will take her from you. I can’t afford to have any witnesses that might lead Viktor Borzov to me.”

  Anna and the girls screamed as the stricken man slid to the floor, his life blood spraying over their naked bodies.

  V

  Viktor Borzov turned his back and gazed out over the moonlit Moscow cityscape from the large picture window of his penthouse office.

  “This wasn’t a mistake,” Salko said. “Anna was targeted for abduction. The traffickers were commissioned to take her.”

  “By whom?”

  Georgy wandered round the desk to stand beside Viktor and gaze out of the window.

  Salko said, “They call him the Englishman.”

  “What do we know about him?”

  “He’s been a player in the Russian crime scene for years. They just call him ‘The Englishman’.”

  “And he has the nerve to kidnap my daughter for ransom?”

  Georgy Nikitin shook his head. “I don’t think he’s interested in a ransom, or we’d have received his demand by now. It seems his only interest was to get Anna captured and sold by the traffickers. I think he has a grudge against you. He paid the gang to take her, and didn’t even take a share of the profits on Anna or the other girls when they were sold.”

  “They quickly sold her to an Albanian gang,” Salko said. “Just ordinary low-life traffickers.”

  Borzov remained silent for long minutes. The only hint of tension was in the way his loosely-clasped hands moved slightly behind his back, the knuckles of one hand tapping repeatedly against the palm of the other. After a while, he said, “You are quite certain, of course.”

  “I questioned the pimp at length.”

  “Pimp!” Borzov turned sharply as he spoke, as if stung by the word. Viktor belonged to that small, exclusive club universally known as ‘the oligarchs’. The very name implies immense wealth and, more significantly, great power. “Where is my daughter now?” he asked quietly.

  Leo Salko said, “She will probably already be out of Russia now. She was bought by an Albanian called Ermir. I’m going going to interview him.”

  VI

  Ermir the Albanian smiled to Lev Salko through the open window of his new black Ferrari Spider when they met in a leafy suburb of Moscow. “I heard you wanted to see me, Lev. You were lucky to reach me. I’m off to Moldova tomorrow.”

  “So I hear,” Salko said, getting out of his own rented car and pulling a photograph from his pocket. “This won’t take long. I’m interested in finding a girl your people bought.”

  Ermir studied the photograph for a few seconds, stroking the fashionable stubble on his face. He was young, perhaps less than thirty years old, but obviously doing well in life, with his expensive clothes and flash new car.

  “So?”

  “Her name is Anna.”

  “Why do you want me to tell you about her?”

  Salko looked around the deserted car park, with its puddles from recent heavy rain. He casually reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun, cocking it and placing the muzzle against the young Albanian’s forehead. “I want you to tell me about her? It will be a shame to splatter your brains all over this nice new car.”

  The Albanian seemed to calmly consid
er this for a moment. Then he said, “Yes, of course I remember this Anna. She is Viktor Borzov’s daughter.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Of course I knew. Tara told me and the bitch kept whining about her powerful father. I don’t scare easily, but I got rid of her quickly. I took her to Odessa and sold her on.”

  “Odessa?” Salko said. “”Who did you sell her to?”

  “A mean mother-fucker called Plakici. He buys girls from me and I buy from him. You know how it is. I sold him six women, including this Borzov cunt. Plakici got her cheap because she was hot. It was robbery. I know a few of his men, and they laughed that I hadn’t even taken the opportunity to fuck her myself. I didn’t care that I didn’t fuck her. What’s another whore to my cock?”

  “Tell me where I can find this Plakici,” Salko said quietly.

  “He’ll have sold her on by now...”

  “Just tell me where Plakici has his base.”

  “Hell, I don’t know. He’s around Odessa somewhere.”

  With that, Lev Salko fired a single shot and splattered Ermir’s brains all over the nice new car. “Shame,” he said, walking away.

  Chapter Four

  Nina

  I

  “Get me a vodka,” Igor said as he walked into Swingers bar. Eva, her breasts bare and wearing a small G-string, nodded and went to pour the drink. He slapped Kasharin on his shoulder.

  Vadim Kasharin sat on a high stool at the counter of his bar, drinking a coke. He looked up. “Yo, Igor. How is Nina coming along?”

  “Still snivelling,” Igor said. “I’ve knocked her around a bit, but she still keeps whining.”

  Kasharin nodded. “It’s no good being soft with a new whore. How many tricks has she turned?”

  “Six yesterday and ten today. She fucks alright, but she’s not hot or keen enough... lies there like a dead fish. And she whines and weeps every time. It’s driving me fucking crazy.”

  Kasharin laughed. He drank his coke in one swig and placed the bottle on the counter. “She always was a whining bitch. I knew her at school - we sat at the same desk as little kids. Then she was my girl friend for a while when we were teenagers. Still, it’s only been a couple of days. Give her time to adjust. Leather her arse every time she whines, that’ll soon stop her.”

  “Gah, I’m sorting out a few johns who delight in fucking and hurting a reluctant whore, and I’m charging them double.”

  Igor took the glass from Eva, and he vaguely wondered what kind of person abducted a school-friend and ex-girl-friend and turned her into a whore. It was none of Igor’s business, of course, but he wondered all the same. Still, the new girl had to start working like a true professional, putting on a good act, humping, grinding and moaning, feigning some eagerness. Kasharin was correct: he resolved to give Nina’s backside a good tanning. The paying customers had to feel that they were with the girl next door who was wild about them, someone who at least wasn’t repelled and scared shitless. That wasn’t asking a lot. Still, whoring an ex-girl friend... Igor had pulled some stunts, but he had never stooped that low. Why the surprise, though? he thought. After all, Eva was Kasharin’s wife, and yet he had her parading with her tits out in the bar every night.

  Back at the apartment, Nina was in the bathroom. She had showered herself for an hour or more, scrubbing and soaping her flesh until it was red, yet still she didn’t feel clean. She opened the bathroom cabinet and sorted through the pill containers. She took four Rohypnol and one Valium, and then swigged vodka straight from the bottle. With that, Nina went naked to Anna’s room. She was glad that there were no more customers for the day. As it was, she ached all over. A couple of the customers had been very rough with her, appearing to like it when she sobbed for mercy; that had been a mistake and she would not do it again. She wandered to Zelda’s room, but the door was shut. Nina tentatively tapped on the door.

  “What?”

  “Can I come in?””

  “Yeah, why not, everyone else does.”

  Nina opened the door and walked in, glancing round. It was virtually the same as her own room, although Zelda seemed to have added some personal touches: a couple of magazine pictures were attached to the mirror, and there was a little doll on the bedside cabinet.

  “Hi,” Nina said. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

  Zelda was lying on her bed. She wore a baggy tee shirt and grey track suit pants that masked her curves. She glanced up at Nina’s nudity. “You haven’t dressed.”

  “There doesn’t seem much point. Besides, there isn’t much in my wardrobe.”

  “I don’t bother wearing much when I have to work, but staying naked in your own time isn’t a good idea. If Igor finds you like that, he’ll fuck you for sure. He might anyway, but why encourage the bastard? There are some things in my wardrobe. Help yourself.”

  Nina nodded. She was beginning to see that Zelda had developed her own set of survival strategies, for all her apparent dog-like submissiveness when Igor and customers were around. She went to the wardrobe. It was untidy, with clothes just heaped haphazardly on shelves. Nina selected a baggy black tee shirt and some blue leisure pants

  “What happens when Igor punishes us?”

  Zelda gave a slight frown, as if pondering a stupid question. “Happens? He just drags you off to his room, beats the shit out of you, and then fucks you up your arse until you bleed. Best not go there...”

  “Does he always take you to his room?” Nina asked, pulling the tee shirt over her head.

  “That’s what he’s always done with me. Why are you asking? You’re not a pain slut, are you? Some girls go out of their way to get beaten. They don’t last long. Best avoid it at all costs.”

  Nina pulled on the leisure pants and went to the door, the beginnings of a scheme hatching in her mind. “Thanks, Zelda,” she said. “I’ll leave you in peace.”

  II

  “Get ready for your next customer,” Igor yelled into the room. “Wash your cunt. He will be here in ten minutes.”

  It was 7.30pm and Nina had just entertained her eleventh customer of the day. She knew there was one more to come. Nina was in the shower, standing under a stream of water so hot that it reddened her skin. She didn’t care. She used a rough exfoliating pad to scrub every inch of her body, every nook and cranny - particularly the nooks and crannies. It was her way of trying to wash away the shame and humiliation that seemed to cling like a filthy veneer. It was no good, though, because the feeling of being soiled still remained. ‘One fucking customer after another,’ she thought.

  The last one hadn’t been too demanding though, and he hadn’t hurt her. He had fucked her in a conventional missionary position, and asked that Nina say certain things his wife used to say when they made love (before she fucked off with someone else, Nina had thought cynically). Still, the man had been ordinary and nice enough, and not too old either. She might have even considered dating him in another time and place. Now, after only four days as a whore, she was already becoming hard-bitten. Nina knew exactly how many customers had fucked her in different ways and various orifices in those four days: thirty-two. Her first day had been light, although she hadn’t realised that at the time; only three customers had used her, but the memory of those three carried the most weight on her mind; perhaps it was like people remembered their first kiss, or their first fuck; a whore remembers her first tricks, in graphic detail, every bruise and scratch. The second day had picked up in pace, with eight johns, four of whom had fucked her up the arse and many of them been really hard with her. Now, nearly at the end of the fourth day, her thirty-third customer was due at any minute. It was time to put her plan into action.

  “Wear the leather straps he bought,” Igor called. “Pull them tight round your tits.”

  Naked, fresh from the shower, she went to the wardrobe and looked at the tangle of metal-studded black leather straps Igor had given her earlier that day. The punter had bought it especially, and he expected her to be wearing it when he a
rrived. She shook it out, trying to make some sense of it. Nina knew that it was a body harness of some kind, but it just seemed like a tangle of straps. It didn’t matter anyway. She affirmed her resolve, straightening her shoulders, and took it out into the living area where Igor was sitting with Zelda.

  “I don’t know how to put it on,” she said, tossing the harness at him with such force that it jolted his head back. “I don’t want to put it on, either.”

  He looked up in amazement as the leather straps wrapped around his neck, and he raised his fingers to touch the red weal on his face. “What the fuck?”

  “You wear the damned harness, if you like it so much, you bastard pimp. Let the customer fuck you. I’ve had enough.”

  Zelda gasped and cringed back, drawing away from the inevitable explosion of Igor’s wrath. And his wrath surely came! The pimp, his face a mask of fury, leapt to his feet, using the harness to repeatedly lash Nina’s naked body. He drove her back, the straps flying back and forth, until she was against the wall with nowhere to go, and he continued to beat her with the metal studded leather, until blood began to flow. He swung the harness round his head like a lariat and brought it crashing down across Nina’s breasts, making her scream in pain. She rolled to the floor, and he continued to lash her, over and over again.

  Nina could vaguely hear Zelda screeching over and over again: “Stop it! Stop!”

  Igor kicked Nina in the stomach, once, twice... She curled in a ball trying to protect her self.

  “You fucking cunt, you do as I tell you! Always!” Igor kicked her again, and then he reached down to grasp Nina by the hair and drag her to his room. Nina scrambled along on all fours as he dragged her, and he flung the harness at Zelda, saying, “You, put this on and see to the john when he comes. I’ll see to this bitch.”