“He said something, in Paul’s office…something like, ‘a good choice, well done.’ I didn’t know what he meant.”
Beau grabbed the backpack and the two shopping bags from me in one hand. He pulled open the apartment door and then fished out his cell from his pocket. I followed him from the apartment as we walked down the stairs, and he raised the cell to his ear.
“They’ve started already. Charlotte this time.”
He didn’t say anymore, just switched off the phone and replaced it in his pocket.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“No one. Get in the truck,” he said, opening the passenger door. He placed the bags in the truck by my feet, looked around before helping me in. He slammed the door behind me.
Beau didn’t speak as we drove through town. He continued on the road toward Whiteling and my stomach tightened as we passed the turn off. The sky had darkened a little and it looked like a storm was rolling in. We continued for another hour before he finally glanced over to me.
“Where are we going, Beau?”
“A little place I have that not many people know about. You’ll be safe there.”
“And isolated.”
“Do you trust me? I know Paul would have told you not to, and I will tell you who that fucking piece of shit is when I know I’ve got you away.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“He’s grooming you, Charlotte.”
I had no idea what he meant. “You were the one to introduce him to me!”
“There was a reason for that. Now, hold on.”
He turned off the road and drove through the trees. There wasn’t a vehicle track but he weaved his way between them, clearly knowing the route he needed to take. He didn’t even turn on the truck’s headlights.
I stared out of the side window, and in the dim light, I thought I saw someone dart between the trees. Branches were swaying in the wind and I questioned whether it really was someone, or just the shadows.
We bumped over the uneven ground and I held on to the door handle. I closed my eyes at one point when we drove a little too close to a large tree. Eventually, we came to a halt in front of a wooden cabin. It was so isolated, I didn’t think anyone would ever find it.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“My home.”
“I thought the townhouse was your home.”
“It is, so is this.”
I waited until Beau left the truck and opened my door for me. I grabbed the backpack and he picked up the two bags. He fished around in his pocket for his keys, just as the rain started to come down. In the distance I heard a rumble of thunder.
The cabin was chilly inside and after I’d left my backpack in the hall I followed Beau through the open plan space to the kitchen.
“This is amazing,” I said.
The downstairs was open plan with a staircase to one side. Wooden beams crossed the ceiling, down the walls, and I noticed some had intricate carvings on them. I walked over to a beam and ran my hand over the wood.
“The guy that built this for me is Native American, I guess those are symbolic to him. I really should have asked what they meant,” he said, as he unpacked the shopping bags.
“This would be my ideal home. I don’t know how you can bear to leave here for the townhouse.”
“It wasn’t Rachel’s ideal, unfortunately.”
I walked to a window and although the sun had set, I could make out the woodland surrounding the cabin. The moon cast a glow over the trees, causing ominous shadows that would have children scared. In fact, they had me shivering as well.
“I’ll get the fire going,” Beau said.
I’d wrapped my arms around myself to keep in the warmth as he stacked the fireplace with logs, and lit the rolled up paper he used as kindling.
“If that storm hits us, it might knock out the power. I have a generator in the shed, though,” he added.
I noticed half burned down candles on the mantel above the fire, on a sideboard, and the small table that sat between two sofas. I guessed the power going out was a regular thing. When the fire was roaring, I stood in front of it.
“Do you spend much time here?” I asked.
“Yes, I work from here.”
I slowly turned in a circle. There wasn’t a desk, or a workspace, that was obvious and I wanted to ask him exactly what work he did. I remembered Cecelia saying something about his work.
“What do you do?” I asked, chancing that he would actually tell me.
“I work for the government,” he told me, with a slight smirk.
“That could be anything from a clerk in the town hall to a spy,” I said.
“Somewhere towards the top of that scale.” He left me staring at him as he walked back to the kitchen area to make coffee.
I sat on one of the sofas and waited for him. The cabin was warming up nicely, and I could feel a flush of heat on my cheeks. Beau came back with two mugs of coffee, he handed me one and then sat opposite.
“You need to tell me what’s going on, Beau,” I said.
“Richard is someone I have to keep you away from.”
“Why? You never actually answer my questions.”
He sighed and rested back in his sofa. “Because I believe he’s after you.”
“After me? For fuck’s sake, Beau, just tell me what’s going on.”
“You remember what you heard when your cousin was talking to his friend?”
“Stop talking around the question and answer it. What has my cousin, his friend, got to do with Richard?”
“Richard has his associates find women who look a certain way, Charlotte. He then provides fucking crooks, pedophiles, whoever, with those girls.”
“I don’t know what you mean, look a certain way?”
“Blonde, blue-eyed.”
“I don’t have blue eyes.” Mine were a dark brown.
“Which is why I thought you were safe with Paul.”
“What has Paul got to do with…?” Paul worked for Richard. “No, I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. We’ve been keeping a close watch over you; we thought you would be okay, especially when you cut your hair off. But then Paul seemed to show an interest beyond what I expected and…”
“We? Who, Beau?” I was starting to get agitated.
“Kieran, Cecelia, Rose.”
“So, you’re telling me that Richard, and Paul, and maybe my cousin and his friends, take girls and do what with them?” I knew the answer, I’d heard the rumors about Cody, but I wanted him to spell it out for me.
“Force them into prostitution, sell them to rich old men like Philip Stanton. That’s what they did with Rachel’s sister years ago.”
I heard the click of my jaw as it fell open.
“What do you know about Philip Stanton? And what do you mean, Rachel’s sister?” I asked.
“I know that you reacted badly when you saw the report of his death. Tell me what happened, Charlotte.” His voice had softened a little, not answering my second question.
At that moment, I guessed there was absolutely no point in keeping Philip a secret anymore. Kieran had obviously told Beau.
“He was my friend. I met him at a bar; he just wanted company, Beau. I used to visit him at his home and we’d chat, nothing more, for a while, anyway. One night he was exceptionally upset, I assumed it was grief over his wife, so I took it a step further. We had sex, after I took a shower and when I came out of the bathroom…”
His eyes were wide, his eyebrows raised and his jaw worked side to side. I guessed I was about to get a snide comment about sleeping with a much older man. I squared my shoulders, waiting for his verbal attack.
“You were in the shower?”
“I just said that. Someone shot him in the head. I panicked and I ran. I think Damien killed him.”
“Damien didn’t kill Philip Stanton,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I did.”
Beau had decided we needed a break from talking and we needed to eat. I was glad, what he’d said had my head in a spin. He had killed Philip but he hadn’t said why. I curled my legs under me, not for comfort but I guessed it was instinct to make myself as small as possible. I’d done that every time I felt threatened. I wanted to scream at Beau, I’d gone through hell the past few months and poor Philip had been murdered. I blinked a few times, gasped as my breath caught in my chest. I slowly uncurled. I was in the same house as a murderer. I quietly stood, wondering what the fuck I was going to do. I needed to get out, but the rain lashing against the windows created a drum so loud on the roof that we’d had to raise our voices when we spoke. It was dark, it was stormy, and I had no fucking idea where I was.
Despite the fire that warmed the cabin, I felt chilled deep inside. I was beyond shedding tears but fear crept over me. Kieran, Rose, Beau, Paul, they’d all lied to me. They’d all known I was in danger, and yet they’d acted as normal as possible around me. Or had they? Small details began to filter in my mind. Kieran insisting on walking me home: Rose not being overly pleased to see Paul in her diner, in fact I lost count of the amount of times she’d been back and forth with that coffee pot as if to interrupt us: The strange looks in the store that day.
“There’s nowhere you can run to from here, Charlotte. Whether you believe a word I’ve told you, you are safe here,” Beau said. He placed a small plate with a chicken sandwich and another mug of coffee on the small table.
I started to shake my head. “You all lied to me,” I said.
“No, we just never told you the truth. You’re the only one who lied, Charlotte.”
“Didn’t tell me the truth? Tell me the difference! You put me in danger, why?” My voice had started to rise.
“Sit back down. Paul is friends with Frank, the detective in Whiteling. Frank works for me.”
“That means fuck all to me. Explain.”
“Frank is part of a team to dissolve, arrest, whatever, a ring of traffickers and pedophiles. Your cousin was under investigation, long before you stumbled into the middle of all this….”
“Long before I stumbled into the middle of this! Beau, I’ve been in the middle of this since I was fourteen-years-old.” I broke then.
“You all knew about my cousin yet no one saved me. No one intervened. I was a fucking child; I was raped more times than I can remember. I was ridiculed, kicked, punched, spat at. I was a slave to those people in that trailer park and you all knew.” I had started my sentence screaming at him, I ended it whispering.
I didn’t care about the tears that rolled down my cheeks, I didn’t care about the snot that dripped from my nose, or the fact my ugly crying would probably embarrass him. I just cared that someone knew what my cousin was doing and no one came to help me.
Beau rose from his sofa, he took the few steps needed to round the coffee table, and he knelt at my feet. He took my hands in his and it was the first display of comfort I’d ever received from him. I snatched them away; it was way too late.
“We didn’t know about you, Charlotte. I swear, we didn’t.”
“Bullshit! If Frank, whatever his name is, knew my cousin, knew the ring of…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. “Then he knew about me. I wasn’t a secret, I wasn’t kept hidden away. I walked the streets, I had to shop, I visited bars as a minor and got kicked out, regularly. Don’t you dare tell me he didn’t know.”
“I said, we, as in me, Kieran and Rose. Cecelia didn’t know about you and she knew about everything.”
“I can’t process this. I don’t know what’s going on. Frank works for you, yet you didn’t know about me. I bet me turning up in your life was a fucker, wasn’t it?” I laughed bitterly.
“No. It was hard, like I said before. But we did not think you were at any risk at all.”
“Well, you all got that so fucking wrong, didn’t you?”
I stood abruptly, causing him to fall back on his ass. I stepped around him and paced.
“Why did you kill Philip?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You can, and you will. You walked into that man’s house, that kind, old gentleman, and you shot him in cold blood. Why?”
“Because I was ordered to. That kind, old gentleman used to buy young girls, girls about six-years-old normally. He fucked them, any which way he wanted. He kept them locked up in his house. I bet there was one there all the time you sat on his sofa, having a cozy chat. The grief you say he felt? Guilt, Charlotte. And not guilt because what he did was fucking repulsive, but guilt because he’d been caught. Except the government, for whom I have no respect, didn’t want him to face trial. I don’t know why. I get an order, I do a job, and then I get paid. I don’t ask questions.”
I spun to face him. “You murder someone and you don’t even care to know what they did to deserve that?” I saw the spittle leave my mouth as the bitterness spewed from me.
“It’s a job. It’s not my place to question why. At the end of the day, that man ruined girls. Do you think he deserved to live?”
His comment stunned me. Not that I was a law-abiding citizen, not that I also had any respect for a government that had badly let me down, but I could never murder… I slumped on the sofa. Perhaps Beau and I weren’t so different. I’d killed Damien. I didn’t think, at the time, I’d intended to murder him. But when I saw his whole body on fire, I did nothing to help him because I knew he’d never leave me alone, he’d never go to prison, and he didn’t deserve to live.
I covered my face with my hands and I sobbed. My stomach roiled at the thought there might have been a child in that house at the same time as I was sitting there chatting to, consoling, Philip. I then realised just how easy it was to be kept under the radar. Maybe Frank didn’t know what was happening to me. I imagined they would be so focused on girls who were way younger than I was; I just slipped through the net. I wasn’t the typical age for the victims they were concentrating on. I didn’t have the right look for Damien to hand me over to Richard. I was just a teenage prostitute, like hundreds of others all over the county.
“When I was in the store the other day, people acted strange, people that I didn’t know. Why?”
“I can’t answer that. All I can say is that, one, you resemble Rachel even with your brown hair. Two, you’re a stranger in a town that has one of the largest and most dangerous cults on its doorstep. Maybe they hadn’t seen you around before and you spooked them.”
“What?”
“Richard is the elder of a cult, housed in a compound outside of Ayelsham. They are some serious people that the FBI have tried to shut down for years, and failed.”
“Pedophile, trafficking, a cult! Are you sure you haven’t got stuck in a fucking crime novel? These things don’t happen in real life…do they?”
“Yes, they do, and it happens right here, in Whiteling and in Ayelsham.”
“Why me, Beau?”
“The cult, years ago, believed in divine children, kids of angels or some shit like that. Richard now believes in drugs, guns, and catering to high-ranking officials and their sexual appetite for children. I guess that pays more than praying to God ever did. However, he has been able to convince the more gullible there are still divine children. So, he finds a blonde, blue-eyed girl, drugs them, and sells them. He holds all the power. Why do you think he has never been brought to justice? It isn’t just ex-mayors he has the capability to blackmail.”
“And you’re job is to wipe those high-ranking officials out instead of bringing them to justice?”
He didn’t answer; he didn’t need to. “Be very embarrassing for the government if it all got out, I suppose,” I added, sarcastically. “And I reiterate, I’m not blue-eyed.”
“Then Richard had a different role for you. But believe me, he did have a role for you.”
“I need to sleep. I cannot comprehend what you’ve told me. I don’t want to believe any of it, but I do, and that makes me
question everything. It hurts, Beau, so much it’s physical. I could have been saved, maybe there was a child in that house with Philip, and I should have saved her. Maybe I…”
“Charlotte, if there was, there would have been nothing you could have done. I can’t tell you how many people have lost their lives because they tried to take a stand against Richard, Paul, and Philip. As for you being saved? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that you had to live that life. If you were younger, maybe you would have been on our radar. We fucked up; we missed you. You say you were visible, but not visible enough for us to see what was happening back then.”
“When I was arrested, Frank knew I was Damien’s cousin, didn’t he? Couldn’t he have connected the dots?”
“Frank wasn’t involved, initially, when you got arrested, but as soon as I found your phone on the bedroom floor, I knew something had happened. I called Frank; he took over the case. I also called Paul, and I’ll tell you why. Frank is undercover, Charlotte. He’s not in as deep as I need him to be, but he’s acting the rogue cop. It’s the only way we can find out who is involved, where they are, what they’re doing.”
“So, you used me and my situation to help your cause?”
He sighed. “Yes. Yes I did, Charlotte, knowing the benefit of that would be your release. The Whiteling police force were all for charging you with murder. There wasn’t one person, me included, who believed Damien happened to set himself on fire by accident. There was also the matter of silencing you. If they discredited you enough, I mean, you were a prostitute from childhood who murdered her pimp, no one would have believed anything else you ever said. Especially when it comes to Philip.”
His words were harsh but honest.
“I killed Damien. I took a mouthful of his liquor, spat it over his face and then set fire to him. I splashed his one-hundred-proof shit all over him until the flames spread. I didn’t think about what I did, I didn’t even think I was killing him. It was…”
“Self-defence, Charlotte. Years of pent up abuse being released on the perpetrator. It was a justifiable murder. They happen, more regularly than you imagine.”
He’d made his point and I slowly nodded. “Get some sleep, Charlotte. There are two bedrooms upstairs, take which one you want.”
Harlot Page 18
