What You Pay For

by Claire Askew

  This time I yelled. ‘Vyshnya!’ I tried the door again, putting my back into it this time. It gave a little, and I knew from the handle turning that it wasn’t locked, but somehow stuck.

  ‘Vee?’

  Karen was now beside me, banging on the door too. Vee was the nickname the girls used: I’d never been allowed.

  ‘If you’re in there,’ I yelled, ‘stand back, I’m going to kick down the door.’

  From the other side, a sort of softened bang – a weak fist whacked against the inside of that same door. I felt it reverberate through my palm, still resting on the wood.

  ‘Vee?’ Karen said.

  There was a collective holding of breath, and on the other side of the door, a sort of low, animal moan.

  ‘Fuck!’ Karen smacked me, hard, on the arm. It stung. ‘She’s hurt in there. She’s behind the fucking door and he’s hurt her.’

  Behind me, the girls began to whisper and fuss. I tried to stay calm, crouching low. If Vyshnya was lying behind the door, she’d hear me better there.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Vyshnya, if you’re down there and you can, I need you to move away from the door. We need to get in and help you, okay?’

  No answer.

  ‘Okay, Vyshnya?’

  I straightened up and tried the handle again. It gave, and the door shifted open a few inches. It was dark inside, but putting my face into the gap, I could see that there was indeed a dark mass on the floor behind the door. Vyshnya was breathing hard, making small weak movements.

  I swallowed, and tasted acid in my throat.

  ‘You’re doing great,’ I said through the gap. I tried to keep myself pressed up to the jamb, so none of the girls could see in around my body. ‘Just a little further and I’ll squeeze in. Keep going.’

  Behind me, I could hear Hanna praying in Russian, and Karen hissing, Oh fuck, oh fuck over and over.

  It seemed to take an eternity, but eventually Vyshnya was able to shuffle across the floor far enough that I could get one arm and shoulder in through the gap – then a leg, which enabled me to hook the bulk of myself in. The room was almost black-dark, and smelled like bad things: blood and fear.

  Halfway inside, I twisted back round and looked Karen in the eye. Her mouth was inches from mine: she was ready to follow right behind.

  ‘Stay the fuck outside,’ I whispered.

  She eyeballed me for a half-second, then stepped back.

  I softened my voice in gratitude, and added, ‘I’ll get you in here when I need you, okay?’

  I saw her nod. As I turned back, I heard her say, ‘Okay, girls. Let’s get sorted . . .’

  I wrestled my way through the gap and closed the door behind me. ‘Vyshnya,’ I said. The carpet underneath me was spongy with damp. I fumbled behind me and turned on the light.

  Vyshnya was at my feet. I looked down at her, and threw up, clamping my lips closed so I wouldn’t vomit onto her. I had to leap over her bundled body and run to the corner of the room, with its long mirrors and small white sink. I spat up the contents of my mouth. They were a vivid yellow. I coughed, strings of phlegm sticking to the front of my shirt. I didn’t have time to clean up. The stink of my vomit added to the general stench of the room.

  From the corner, I could see the whole scene. Vyshnya was lying between the door and the bed. She was naked, tangled in a sheet that had once been white, but was now mostly purpled with blood. I could see that after Solomon had left she’d either fallen or crawled from the bed, and made it over to the door: there were bloodied finger-streaks around the handle. Her face, pointed up at the ceiling, was so bruised that her eyes were hidden, squeezed closed. She looked like she ought to be dead.

  I spat into the sink a final time, tensed every nerve, and walked over. The carpet was wet with blood: I saw that my shoes were covered in it. I couldn’t see where it was coming from – in spite of the beating she’d taken to the face, she had no open head wounds. Both her arms looked broken, and perhaps her legs too, though it was hard to tell with the sheet twisted around them. I realised I’d need to examine her.

  ‘Vyshnya,’ I said, as softly as I could. ‘It’s me. It’s Charlie.’ It was my real name that came to me in that moment, as though I wanted to offer her some small vulnerability of my own. As though that would make anything better. ‘I’m going to have a look at you, okay? You’re going to be okay, but I need to see where you’re hurt.’

  I put one hand up to her swollen face, to touch her jaw. She began uttering an urgent stream of curse words in spitty Ukrainian. It seemed that somehow her jaw was fine, but now she was moving her mouth, I could see teeth were missing.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I know your arms are hurt. I won’t touch them. But I need to see your legs.’

  Vyshnya groaned, and made to clutch at the sheet, but her hands seemed almost useless.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, in Russian, and then bent to peel the sheet from around her feet, as gently as I could manage.

  She made a sort of seething sound. Without even moving the sheet all that much, I could see her lower legs were broken, too. I found myself having to swallow down bile again.

  ‘Cunt,’ I spat. ‘Absolute fucking cunt.’

  I dropped the sheet back onto her legs, and she seemed to relax just the slightest bit.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I put one hand on her stomach. Her bruised eyes were leaking tears. I ran that hand up one side of her ribcage, and then down the other, trying to ignore the fact that by doing so, I had to touch her breasts. Their flesh was bruised. On one, there were teeth marks.

  ‘Scumbag,’ I hissed.

  I sat back and took an inventory. Solomon had beaten Vyshnya around the face, knocking out teeth, making her almost unrecognisable. He’d broken both her arms and, it seemed, both her legs. My cursory check of her torso suggested her ribs were intact – I was thankful, because even with my limited medical knowledge, I knew that broken ribs could puncture organs, and kill you from the inside out. She was bitten and bruised all over, but it seemed there was only one place the blood could be coming from. I closed my eyes, and for the first time in my adult life, I prayed.

  Vyshnya let out a long, rattling sigh.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. I realised I was angry, that the anger was sparking through me, revving my body’s engine into overdrive. ‘You are not going to die in this room, okay, Vee? That scumbag is not getting away with it.’

  I got to my feet and cracked the door ajar. The other girls had disappeared somewhere, but Karen was right there, her ear pressed close to listen.

  ‘What’s he done to her?’ she said.

  ‘Fucking everything,’ I said ‘I need sheets. Towels. Whatever you can find. Get as many as you can and shove them through this gap. Then get in here. Don’t let the others in.’

  ‘Okay.’ Karen turned.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, and her face flicked back. In her eyes, I could see steely tears. ‘Just . . . be ready, when you come in, okay? It’s bad.’

  She said nothing, and was gone.

  I sat down next to Vyshnya’s ruined legs, and waited.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I am so sorry I wasn’t here. Fuck. Vyshnya, I’m going to make this okay. I promise. I promise you’re going to be okay.’

  A tumble of white fabric came through the gap in the door, and then on the other side I heard Karen say, ‘No. Just me.’

  She squeezed one leg through the gap, then her torso. She’d taken her high heels off, and her make-up had run down her face. For a fleeting moment, I wanted to stand up and hug her – a thing that I don’t think she’d ever have allowed. But then she looked down at Vyshnya, and took in the carnage of the room, and it was too late.

  ‘Right,’ she said. Her face went grey, and I could see her legs shaking, but she stood still for a moment, then closed the door behind her. ‘Right, where do you need me?’

  I gestured to the sheets, and she bundled them over to me.

>   ‘Come down here,’ I said, ‘and let her know you’re there.’

  Karen dropped to her knees beside Vyshnya’s shoulder. ‘Hi, Vee,’ she said. Her voice trembled, but I watched her set her jaw. ‘It’s Karen. We’re going to fix you up, okay?’

  Vyshnya’s head stirred: a nod.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘She’s bleeding. I think from her . . . from . . .’ I couldn’t say it.

  ‘He raped her.’ Karen’s voice was so matter-of-fact that it startled me. ‘Motherfucker.’

  I looked into her face, and saw her rage was even larger, more all-consuming, than my own.

  ‘What do we do?’ I said.

  She stood, walked around me, and then knelt down again beside Vyshnya’s legs. I could see that her knees and shins were streaked with the blood from the carpet.

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘have to call an ambulance. I am going to stop some of this bleeding.’

  I paused. My head buzzed with shock, confusion, anger.

  Karen balled up a new white sheet, and pulled the bloodied one fully away from Vyshnya. Yes, that’s where the blood was coming from. I had to resist the urge to throw up again.

  ‘You’re doing so great, Vee,’ Karen said, as she eased the wounded woman’s legs apart and pushed the fabric up between her thighs. ‘I’m going to press on this and try to slow things down, okay? It’s going to hurt, my love, I’m sorry.’

  But Vyshnya nodded. I couldn’t imagine the agony she was in.

  Karen flicked another sheet in my direction. ‘Cover her up, for fuck’s sake,’ she said, ‘she doesn’t want to be seen like this. And call the fucking ambulance.’

  I did as I was told, and draped another of the clean sheets over Vyshnya’s torso and hips. Again, she seemed to relax just a little, though it might have been me trying to make myself feel better. I balled up the bloodied sheet and carried it over to the sink, dumping it in on top of the last streaks of my own sick.

  ‘If I call an ambulance,’ I said to Karen, ‘we’ll all be arrested.’

  She looked up at me. Her hands were covered in blood. It looked somehow wetter than I’d ever imagined blood could be: it shone on everything. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just me.’

  I blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

  Karen stared at me, her face screwed up with contempt for the useless, wretched man I was. The man who’d got them all into this shit.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘they’ll see it as a chance to run a raid. You’re right. They’ll bring cops with them. I wasn’t born yesterday, I fucking know that. But you can’t arrest someone if they’re not fucking here, can you? They’ll only get me, and . . . well, whatever. I’ve been in the nick before, I can take it.’

  I think my mouth fell open.

  ‘Go and get the girls,’ Karen said. ‘Tell them to get everything out of their rooms that belongs to them. Anything that identifies them. You get them and you get all your shit and you put everyone in the van and you get them out of here. Do it fast, you’ll be out before the ambulance gets here. I’ll stay here with Vyshnya and deal with . . . well, whatever comes through that door. You can tell that bastard Solomon that you ran, with the girls, and I wouldn’t go. I called the ambulance. If he comes near me I’ll fucking castrate him.’

  I couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. My head spun.

  ‘Do me a favour, though?’ Karen grimaced. Her hands were still pressed into the reddening sheet. ‘Get the condoms and shit out of all the rooms. Get all the money out. No need to leave them evidence, yeah?’

  Vyshnya coughed then, and through her wrecked teeth hissed, ‘Yes.’

  Karen smiled at me. Tears were running down her face, but I could see she was resolute.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘The boss lady says so. Now go call the ambulance and get the fuck out of Dodge.’

  I stood there for a couple of seconds more, looking at Karen. She was maybe five foot three, fine-boned, twenty-four or so. But something inside her was made out of steel. I was awed.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered. Then I ran for the door.

  By the time evening came, Birch had switched to autopilot. She spent her afternoon rereading interview transcripts, looking for even the tiniest crack that further examination might lever open. These were desperate measures on the part of McLeod and Crosbie, she knew, and she could turn up nothing for them anyway, so impenetrable was the wall of no comment. Darkness fell outside but the DCs remained at their desks in the bullpen, reviewing evidence again and again in a sort of desperate loop. Solomon would be up late, she guessed, being grilled for as long as Rab and Crosbie could stand it. McLeod was on call. Fifteen hours remained before they’d have to let Solomon go.

  Birch followed the tail-lights of a cab along Raeburn Place, past the shuttered cafés and the Mexican craft store with its twinkling coloured lights. On Dundas Street a number 23 bus pulled out into her path, and she suddenly realised she wasn’t driving home. But the route she was taking was familiar: she still hadn’t kicked up out of that autopilot headspace. By the time she’d trailed the bus to the foot of the Mound, Birch realised: she was going to visit her mother.

  She parked in Castle Terrace car park, not trusting she’d find a space any closer. From there she walked up Johnston Terrace as quickly as the hill allowed. Above her, the hewn castle loomed. A bright moon rose above the esplanade, broken perfectly in half like a smashed plate. A coin toss, she thought, light or dark. Somehow, she’d already lost.

  Her mother’s little flat – the last place she’d ever lived – was on the top floor of Thomson’s Court. The windows looked out over a close that cut between Johnston Terrace and the Grassmarket. Though it was a slightly longer walk, Birch would always approach from the back. At this time of year, when the dark was still coming in early, she’d liked to cut down the steps and see her mother, framed in the lit window, waiting for her daughter’s approach. Birch had moved the armchair to that window herself, the one in the living room with the bird feeder propped on the ledge. Her mother would wave to her from it, then Birch would watch her lever herself up, and begin the slow teeter from there to the front door. The timing worked perfectly: the time it took her mother to cross that short stretch of floor was the same time it took for Birch to get down the close, onto the Grassmarket, and up into the porch to ring on the buzzer.

  Now, she stood looking at that same window, the one her mother no longer spent her days at. The bird feeder was gone, and the flat’s new inhabitant had hung heavy curtains, already drawn against the dark and cold. Around their edges, Birch could see a thin seam of light, but it wasn’t the cosy yellow glow of her mother’s shaded table lamps. The flat held none of its old warmth any more, none of the warm feeling Birch realised she had come looking for. She felt so foolish that she found herself glancing around, to see if anyone was watching her.

  The cobbles on the road were greasy, and the air was sharp under that white half-moon. It was a little after seven: across the misty valley of the city, somewhere in Tollcross perhaps, a church spire clock shone like a coin. She’d been thinking of Charlie all day, looking at the time, counting how many hours he’d been gone. How long had he been awake? How far had he got? Was he still hidden, still safe? Now, as she dropped her gaze from her mother’s window and began to walk, Birch wondered about how he’d eat, whether he’d be hungry. He might be cold, too: she found herself hugging her jacket more tightly around her. The warm, steamed windows of the tartan shops and restaurants made her feel colder still, and alone. She was only a few yards away from the Thai Orchid: Birch inhaled its cloud of hot, welcoming scent and found herself thinking, I wish things could just be normal. For a split second, she imagined an alternative world in which she could have taken out her phone, texted her brother and said, Hey, I just went to Mum’s old place and now I’m lonely. Fancy coming out with me for Thai food tonight? It was a thing she’d literally never done. Would she ever get to? No: things hadn’t been ‘normal’ when it came to Charlie for a very, very long
time.

  A few steps into the close, something made Birch stop, and look up. She felt minuscule under the huge shoulder of the castle, its black bulk against that peachy light-polluted sky. Along the walled esplanade, tourists were still poking their smartphones over the battlements: Birch could see the tiny supernovas of flash as they tried to capture the Old Town’s sprawl, the spires and domes of Tollcross, the art school, the university. She realised she’d come here for another reason: because a part of her thought that Charlie might have done the same. He was running, and as far as she knew he had nowhere safe to go. Neither did she, so she’d come looking for her mother. Might her little brother have had the same thought?

  It was ludicrous, but she decided she ought to check: the building’s porch would be open, and she could ask a neighbour to buzz her into the stairwell. She wondered how it would feel, climbing those stairs to her mother’s floor and standing outside the white UPVC front door once again. She’d stood there so many times, listening to her mother’s hard breathing as she fumbled with the locks. Charlie had never done that. Charlie didn’t know.

  Castle Wynd South, the close’s sign said. Steep steps that chicaned between the high walls of tenements. This close was unusually wide, Birch thought, and well lit. The iron handrails had been polished by many palms over the years, and gleamed under the streetlights’ orange glow. Below her, Birch could hear the distant shush of traffic on the wet road of the Grassmarket.

  But about a third of the way down, she stiffened. Someone was descending the steps behind her. It’s fine, she thought, as she felt her pulse rise in her ears, people must cut through here all the time. The tread was heavy, softened by the soles of trainers or perhaps hiking boots, and the stride was big: a man’s. He was gaining on her, too.

  The close zigzagged, halfway down: Birch was coming up to a brick wall that would force her to turn right, then left, before the steps plunged down again in a straight line to the street. As she reached the wall – graffiti tags, peeling Fringe posters – she used the change in direction as an excuse to glance back. Again, her pulse quickened. The man was tall and broad, dressed in a dark sweater with the hood pulled up. His face was in shadow. This part of the close was invisible to the Thomson’s Court flats above.