Double Bind

by Karen Bell

  She knew they had reached their destination even before the engine was cut, when she heard them arguing about the remote control for the garage door that had been left in the other car that was still in the hotel car park.

  ‘I swear I’m going to knock some sense into you pretty soon. Get her out of the boot,’ Sergei had cursed, ‘and walk her down the dark side of the building and in through the other door while I go to Yuri’s to get another one. Idiot!’

  Some minutes after she’d been taken inside, Mila had heard two cars pull in around the back and Sergei had returned along with two additional men.

  She’d sat in the same chair all day and now with dusk upon them, Mila looked surreptitiously to where her evening purse with phone inside, sat on the kitchen counter adjacent to the bathroom. There had been four sets of eyes on her the last time she’d gone to the toilet and no chance in hell for her to lay a hand upon it.

  Mila had forced herself to eat the sandwich offered to her earlier that day. She had to keep her strength up if she was to think straight and it had given her wrists a welcome break from the plastic ties. It had also allowed her to try to appeal to the sympathies of the young hustler who’d brought her the food. He was one of the two who’d come in late. She had been watching him, listening to his contributions to the conversation and had quickly chosen him as the weakest link. She hadn’t yet established if he could be of use to her but she instinctively felt that any empathy was better than none.

  She’d thanked him gratefully when he’d brought the food and had quite genuinely teared-up when he’d cut the quick-ties on her wrists so she could eat it. He’d looked at the red welts and torn skin and later, had replaced the straps with only half the tension.

  As darkness closed in, someone’s mobile rang and those around the table groaned when it was conveyed that the container was still another twenty-four hours away. Within minutes, the alcohol had come out, vodka and cognac, as they prepared to spend a long night in waiting.

  Mila felt a small surge of excitement as well as a twinge of fear on seeing the bottles. She knew well, the close and affectionate relationship between Russians and their alcohol and there was no chance that they would be stopping at one drink.

  ###

  Hotel security footage had shown Mila being taken from the hotel even as Ryan had stood in the foyer talking to his boss. He could have cried with frustration as he saw the time recorded on the screen. His heart was gripped and twisted on seeing her face as she fleetingly made eye contact with the camera in the lift, her anguish clearly mirroring his own now as he recognised one of the kidnappers as the man who’d pulled the trigger not once but three times on Mike all those years ago, shooting him in the knees, the stomach and finally at point blank between the eyes.

  The car shown to be leaving the car park was a black Mercedes sedan, C or possibly E class, Ryan couldn’t be quite sure from the camera angle but he could clearly see just two heads inside, meaning that Mila had been forced to lie either on the back seat or down on the floor or was most likely locked in the boot.

  Ryan was sickened to imagine her fear, gutted by the thought of her feeling abandoned after he’d failed to respond to her letter. As far as she would know, she was on her own, with no reason for anyone to be looking for her.

  He called in an APB on the car but he knew that it could be parked and concealed almost anywhere by now. That old raw nerve, that sense of helplessness washed over him and sent a debilitating wave of anxiety surging in its wake.

  His partner Mike had been on the case of his own choosing; he had been the best and he had been armed, and yet still he’d died alone, with Ryan watching on, unable to get to him through the fixed glass of a factory office window. What chance did Mila have at the hands of those same ruthless psychopaths?

  It was bad enough to always be shadow-boxing demons of the past but to be thrust back into the same situation again, to be reliving it all with Mila now as the victim, was just excruciating.

  He rode home like a maniac and collected Jack before returning to the container port. Stuff the orders, Tony would understand that he couldn’t sit still, let alone sleep.

  He found the coffee machine and poured it black and strong but stopped short of adding sugar as if depriving himself, in some way showed solidarity with Mila in her current circumstance. He heard the sound of some television program, by the sound of it, a low grade horror movie in the common room a couple of metres down the hall. He wandered toward the source of it, coffee in hand.

  Two young guns, specialists in cybercrime and all things digital, were sitting at a table in front of a laptop. They were part of the extra manpower pulled in by the department to help with the drug search and were evidently on a break. The desk faced into the room and Ryan could only see the lid of the computer but now that he could hear the soundtrack more clearly, he realised that it belonged not to the horror genre but to hardcore porn. Ryan didn’t need see the screen to know what was on it. The filth that was coming from the mouth of the aggressor together with the repetitious grunts and hitting noises were imagery enough.

  ‘Work or pleasure?’ he quipped with barely contained revulsion.

  ‘It’s one of the discs that Steve picked up from that dealer’s house yesterday. Come and take a look. We’re trying to work out if the sub is there by consent or not. It’s some twisted shit they’re doing to her regardless.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ he answered flatly.

  We’ve tagged her before, online over the past two years but she didn’t look underage so we haven’t followed it up. Now that we’ve got a clear look at her face we can’t be sure if she’s really distressed or playing it up for the camera. What do you think?’

  Ryan walked slowly around the desk, cringing in advance of what he expected to see. He’d anticipated the discomfort that coursed through him now at the sight of a woman, frog-tied, hanging a few feet above the floor, in the throws of being raped and tortured.

  How could these young guys spend their careers trawling through it, day in, day out? He’d seen it more often than he’d cared for and it continued to make him physically ill.

  Like vultures, the predators were always waiting and ready, circling and targeting their prey – women and children alike. But unlike vultures, who only do what they do to survive, the perpetrators of these crimes were without conscience and motivated solely by greed.

  Ryan couldn’t bear to witness their spoils and couldn’t bear these insights into the most base functioning of the human condition. He’d identified shame, among his automatic responses, as if sharing a Y chromosome somehow made him complicit.

  One of them spoke up. ‘Just let me take it back to the close up of her face. You’re good at reading people.’ The video froze, framing the disturbing image. A microsecond passed in slow motion before Ryan’s brain translated the meaning of the impulses that were buzzing through his optic fibres. Then he felt it, the crushing impact as recognition and realisation collided. It came thundering through him, knocking the air from his lungs. The victim, in the grip of her rapist, head wrenched back, eyes barely lifting, unregistering of the camera. Eyes that he barely recognised, all life drained and replaced with hopelessness, surrender and utter despair.

  His voice, when he found it, was low, menacing as if channelled from the pages of a Stephen King novel. ‘You’ve seen this woman before now and you did nothing about it?’

  ‘Not from this angle,’ whimpered one.

  ‘Different men but the same room,’ ventured the other. ‘She looks over eighteen, we thought she was willing.’

  ‘Willing? Does that expression look willing? She’s a fucking prisoner! Can it get any more obvious?’ Ryan had hurled his coffee cup against the wall and now had both the young cops by the scruffs of their collars lifting them to their feet. Jack was growling too, poised in attack position. The men cowered, and covered their heads not daring to answer.

  ‘Fuck!’ He bellowed, throwing them back into their chairs. ‘F
UCK!’

  Ryan stormed out of the building and down to the shipping yard with Jack at his heels. His head was exploding as he tried to compute every last detail of the case in his mind, as if doing so could somehow save her. But the agony of what he’d seen was fighting for headspace and he couldn’t think straight, his distress blocking all rational thought.

  What had she gone through for all those years? How could she have endured it and how could he have missed the signs that now seemed so obvious. The claustrophobia, the nightmares, the way she awaited instruction, the way she’d jumped when he’d come up behind her.

  He headed up the gangway, psyching himself up, trying to turn his fear into something positive but the agony of knowing and not knowing was all consuming. I can’t do this. I can’t go through this again.

  Jack looked up at him as if trying to decide what to do. In the end he just sat quietly while Ryan raged and cursed and threw a punch at the nearest container as if locked in some one-man fight club. Eventually the man settled down and walked back to the dog as if realising there was only one option.

  ‘Jack. We have to find the container. We have to find the drugs. Do you understand?’ Then we have to follow it to find Mila.

  Every minute they spent not looking, could be the minute that could have made the difference and he would never be able to forgive himself if he hadn’t done every last thing in his power.

  Fifteen hours later they’d found nothing. All the officers and dog teams were working with equal determination but as the sun set, they were no closer to discovering the cache. Not one lead. The other ship was in dock and their resources further divided. Notwithstanding several cups of coffee, Ryan was practically asleep on his feet and Jack despite being rested often, was showing the wear and tear of the long hours of standing on his arthritic hips.

  ‘I’m ordering you both off this vessel.’ It was his boss Tony, coming to lay down the long arm of the law.

  ‘I can’t. I have to live with myself when this is all over.’

  ‘Yes I know, I’ve heard you, but you’re looking like a madman and you’re far more likely to miss something in your current state. It’s not negotiable. Don’t bother going back via the office just go home and get some rest.’

  Ryan could sense there was no point in arguing. Man and dog together looked a forlorn sight as they walked reluctantly down the length of the ship towards the gangway closest to where the bike was parked. It was depressing to look back at all the containers they’d searched with no sign of the drugs. Even more depressing to acknowledge how many more they still had to go.

  His phone rang and he stopped to answer it with now familiar disappointment when he saw that it was not Mila, but the Randwick cop-shop calling. ‘We’ve had a call specifically for you from an Adrianna Moreno enquiring about a missing person?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone by that name. Which missing person?’

  ‘A friend of hers that you supposedly know, by the name of Mila Taylor.’

  The light dawned. Mila had mentioned the name Adie a couple of times before. Maybe she knew something. ‘Of course, I know who it is now. Did she say she had any information?’

  ‘No, but I’ll text you her number so you can get back to her.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He wanted to call, but what was he going to tell her? He didn’t know how much she did or didn’t know about Mila’s past, either with regards to her marriage or the club work and either way, he’d have to lie, so as not to cause alarm. She was quite possibly already frantic and he didn’t want to escalate her concerns to the point where she’d call Mila’s daughter. He was having a hard time keeping it together as it was, without having to keep two understandably panic-stricken women informed every step of the way.

  ‘Would you call her back and tell her I can’t call until later tonight or tomorrow, but if she has any information, that she should pass it through. You’d best let her know that I haven’t spoken to Mila since the weekend.’

  Ryan hung up, and expected to see Jack still sitting beside him, but he was gone. He gave a whistle and a few seconds later the dog emerged from behind a long line of containers.

  He was excited. Ryan could see that from several metres away.

  ‘What have you found?’ he asked. ‘That row’s already been searched.’ Jack was adamant; tugging insistently at his hand and Ryan noted that it wasn’t a row that the two of them had checked personally.

  ‘Okay, so show me.’ The dog headed down towards the far end, turning every few seconds, to ensure his master was behind him. When he arrived at the subject container, he barked once and sat down. Ryan checked his list. ‘This one’s not even on the list mate. Are you sure it’s this one and not the one above?’ The two containers above had already been searched, and according to the updated list, one had been accessed and opened and the other had gone through x-ray. Both had been cleared, so Ryan was dubious, but the dog was now up and scratching at the opening to the door of the bottom container with his claws.

  Ryan trusted Jack’s instincts and felt his own adrenalin surge, while trying to stay sceptical. It was very possible that the consignment might contain traces of drugs, other than those they were looking for. The other possibility that occurred to him now was that the cartel had a snitch planted at the shipping yard who had been sabotaging their search.

  It was verging on darkness, as Ryan put in a call to Tony.

  ‘Hi, it’s Ryan.’

  ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘Yes. Keep it to yourself, but Jack’s found something. He’s scratching at one of the supposedly clean containers; one that’s not even on the search list. Have we run background checks on the customs and Port staff? Is it possible that someone working in operations here is a plant.’

  ‘There are only a few people with access to the manifest list but we haven’t checked them yet. There’s always a possibility that someone outside could hack into the system too. What type of lock is it? Can we get in without making it obvious?’

  ‘No it looks sophisticated. It’s coded and I’d say tamper evident for sure.’

  ‘Well if we want it opened, we’d have to go through the port authorised agent to get a one-off code from the source and then we’d risk them tipping off the consignee. The best we can do is to get it through x-ray tonight, see if the cargo matches the manifest and put it back before the day staff come back on. At least then we’ll know whether to track it when it leaves here tomorrow.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even risk that,’ replied Ryan. ‘As much as I want to know what’s inside, it’s possible that they’ve got 24/7 counter surveillance and there’s nothing discreet about moving a forty foot container from under three others, to x-ray, even in the dead of night.’

  ‘Okay, we’ve got the manpower to track and follow. I’ll get a GPS put on the underside of it overnight. I’ve got one contact in customs that I’ve known for twenty years. We can trust him. I’ll consult with him on the best way to do this under the radar. Text me through the container number and location.’

  Ryan was disappointed to miss the chance of searching the container for conclusive evidence but he had every confidence in Jack, and was prepared to risk looking foolish if it meant even a chance in a million of getting it right.

  As he stood there typing through the alphanumeric ID, along with the row number, he felt a whoosh of light-headedness and realised he really had to get some rest. He’d be obliged to call back Mila’s friend too.

  ###

  As her captors slowly got drunk, Mila sat patiently trying to figure out a plan to get to her phone. She would have been paralytic on a quarter of what they’d already consumed and yet they were just merry.

  ‘We need some entertainment,’ one of them suggested. ‘Music, dancing.’ The second suggestion was made with no small measure of innuendo in Mila’s direction and she felt her skin bristle.

  ‘Great idea bratushki.’

  ‘I have some music on my phone perfect for the occasion.’


  Mila was listening to the conversation with mounting tension, thus far in Russian, but she knew it was about to turn to English.

  ‘We are bored,’ said one of the men with almost no accent. ‘We are here for the night and we would like you to entertain us. Like you entertained at the club.’

  ‘Maybe like she entertained in her movies,’ piped up another, which earned a hearty laugh around the table.

  Mila didn’t look up; she knew from past experience that insolence was not going to work in her favour.

  ‘Untie her. She’s not going anywhere. Victor, music, make it slow. We have all night.’

  Her primary tormenter, the wise guy from earlier in the night cut the restraints from her wrists and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘We want it all off,’ he growled, breath stale with alcohol, running a finger over her lips before squeezing and holding her breast with intent.

  She stood looking down to her feet in the middle of the room as the music started.

  ‘Why so shy suddenly,’ one of them yelled.

  ‘She is big star, she does not dance for free.’ As he said it, he threw a coin of some sort that landed at her feet. She heard the others roar with laughter as more coins flew across the room, hitting her in various places before spinning off.

  ‘Dance!’ they chorused.

  Still she didn’t move, more out of paralysis than choice. She looked up to see Victor with his gun aimed at the concrete floor a little way in front of her before it discharged, the bullet ricocheting off the floor and taking skin off the side of her calf. She felt nothing, but watched the blood bead to the surface as though the leg belonged to someone else.

  ‘Are you fucking crazy?’ yelled Sergei, grabbing the gun. ‘You could have killed her you moron. You’ll have us all executed!’

  One of Mila’s inner voices took charge, barking directions in her head, willing her feet to move. Her audience whooped encouragement, as the same voice commanded her to begin undressing. She did as she was told, a wind-up doll on remote control but in truth she was in another space and time, a distant spectator who remained unaffected, having seen much worse.