Dirty Work

by Julia Bell

  ‘Yes.’

  She sighs and stands up. ‘OK.’

  I almost laugh out loud with relief. But instead I get up and tiptoe over to the door. I press my ear against the wood and try to listen. I can’t hear anything. I wonder if there’s anyone sitting outside. Fazil told me to watch out for the CCTV, but I can’t remember where he said it was. Stupid. My mind races and I gasp for breath like a swimmer surfacing. I have to remind myself to breathe.

  ‘Oksana?’ I whisper.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  I pull the keys out of my pocket, fumbling a little as I try the wrong key first. My fingers don’t seem to want to be quick. I take another deep breath. This time the right key. It fits the lock and the barrel turns with a soft click. Carefully, I push the handle down and gingerly pull the door open, millimetre by millimetre until I can just put my head in the gap and peek out. The corridor is dark, lit only from downstairs by the dingy electric light that shines up the stairwell at the far end. There’s a grey plastic chair next to our door like the ones at school, where I guess the person who’s supposed to guard us sits.

  I hold another breath, wait, in case someone heard, then we step out into the semi-darkness of the corridor. I shut the door behind us, but I don’t lock the Estonians in, just in case.

  Oksana presses herself against the wall and tiptoes to the top of the stairs. We both stand and listen. There’s the smell of a fresh cigarette and the sound of a radio, maybe a TV, coming from one of the rooms.

  ‘Security, he’s still awake,’ Oksana says in my ear. ‘We have to wait.’

  We sit side by side on the top stair, the thick, greasy green carpet makes me itchy just to look at it. There’s a cough and a grunt and I can feel Oksana’s arms tensing. I stand up, but I don’t know if I should run back to the room or stay where I am. Then, nothing. We listen for a bit longer.

  Now, I think. We should be going now. But I can’t move.

  ‘Come on then.’ Oksana grabs my hand and pulls me up. ‘We go.’

  Very, very slowly we go down the stairs, one by one. Me first, holding my breath until the blood in my head gets too noisy. I can see the bolted door and the iron gate with the padlock on it. Along the corridor on the middle floor, there’s a door ajar on the left, and the drone of a football commentary and the roars and chanting of a crowd.

  ‘He’s in the kitchen,’ Oksana hisses. ‘He can’t see.’

  We run down the rest of the stairs to the gate on tiptoes. The front door is just an arm’s stretch away. My hands are clammy as I try to get the right key into the gate padlock – it fits, but it won’t turn.

  ‘I can’t do it!’ I wiggle the key in the lock. There’s another grunt from the kitchen, louder and closer this time.

  ‘Quick!’ Oksana grabs the key. ‘Let me try.’

  The gate rattles as she pulls the padlock towards her. ‘It’s not working!’ she hisses.

  The frustration makes my throat itch and my eyes water. We’re so close. I pull the gate towards me and it clanks loudly on its hinges. We stand still, frozen like rabbits in headlights. The football commentary goes off with a snap and there’s a sniff and the scrape of a chair being pulled back.

  Oksana’s still fiddling with the keys. ‘Come on, come on,’ she says. And then the lock springs, just in time.

  ‘What?!’ He stands above us at the top of the first flight of stairs, staring at us blearily. ‘What?’

  ‘Quick!’ Oksana grabs my hand as she flips open all the bolts and locks on the front door, clanging the metal gate shut behind us.

  In a second we are out on the pavement.

  ‘Run!’

  My legs feel light and rubbery. There’s no time to think.

  ‘Hey!’ he roars after us.

  I don’t look even though I know he’s right behind us, fumbling with his car keys.

  ‘Over here!’ I cross the road and turn down a side street, into an alleyway round the back of some houses, cats jump out of our way, or eye us warily from behind the wheelie bins. We just can’t get caught. Not again. We run and run.

  But then, at the end of an alley, is a wall, topped with broken glass and bits of wire. Shit. We’re blocked in. We drop down quickly behind a bin.

  ‘Did he see us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Then there’s the crunch of footsteps and I can see the shape of a man peering down the alleyway towards us.

  ‘It’s him!’ Oksana slumps next to me. ‘What are we going to do?’

  I won’t give up. There is a way out of this. ‘Up there!’ We have to go over the wall. I jump up on the wheelie bin and balance, like a tightrope walker, arms out to steady myself. ‘Quick!’

  I grab Oksana’s hand and pull her up behind me.

  The man has seen us now and he shouts and starts lumbering faster towards us. I don’t have time to be scared. It’s just like climbing the trees at home I tell myself. Branch to branch, higher and higher like a cat.

  It’s over in a second. One of those moves that if you showed me how to do it I would panic and say no way. But I have a picture in my head of what my body has to do and while I’m thinking about leaping over the wall without cutting my feet to shreds, I’m suddenly there with Oksana holding my hand and together we’re leaping off a three-metre wall into the unknown of someone’s back garden.

  ‘Oomph.’

  ‘Ow.’

  We land on a compost heap, silted up against the wall. It stinks of onions and garlic and slimy rubbish. We’re over.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We stand up, catch our bearings. My shoes are covered in muck and I’ve ripped my trousers, all the way down from the knee. Underneath I can see I’ve cut myself; there’s a thin trickle of blood on my leg. But now my eyes have adjusted it’s clear we’re in one of a whole row of back gardens. Somehow we need to find a way out of here too.

  A face appears on top of the wall and Oksana pulls me back into the undergrowth. He’s too fat and chicken to jump over. He’s breathing like a horse, harrumphing and wheezing.

  ‘Over here.’ Oksana creeps along next to the wall, crunching leaves and undergrowth. He can probably hear us, but he can’t see us. The fence between the houses is broken at the bottom of the garden and we just have to step through it into next door.

  The security light dazzles us. Lights flicker on inside the house.

  ‘Shit!’

  We crouch down behind a clump of tall irises. We look at each other. ‘I have to go,’ Oksana says. ‘You stay here, to call police.’

  There’s a woman’s face at the downstairs window peering out. Then the back door opens.

  ‘Hey!’ A man in a dressing gown, holding a torch stands on his patio, squinting into the garden. ‘My wife’s calling the police, you know!’

  ‘It’s OK. You trust him,’ Oksana says.

  ‘How do you know?’

  She points at the red climbing frame and the blue paddling pool. ‘They have children.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ I say. ‘Will you be OK?’

  She sucks her teeth. ‘I will be OK, a cat with many lives. Now go! You talk, I find Tottenham.’ Then she smiles at me. ‘Hope. You were lucky when your mother gave you your name. She will be so happy to know you are free. And you have been a good friend. Natasha is sorry she got you into trouble.’

  I don’t know what to say as I hug her goodbye. ‘Will you let me know that you’re OK somehow?’

  She flutters her hands in front of her face, maybe to hide the fact that there are tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘Yes, yes, now you go. Go! Go on!’ The man in the dressing gown is starting to walk towards us. ‘Quick!’

  Slowly, with my hands up, I walk out of the flower bed on to the lawn.

  ‘Help me,’ I say, my knees trembling. ‘My name is Hope Tasker and I need to talk to the police.’

  As I walk towards him, I’m aware of Oksana scuttling back into the undergrow
th next door, darting and weaving out of sight. When I turn to check, she’s vanished into the shadows like she was never there.

  The policewoman who interviews me is very nice. She brings me a cup of hot cocoa and a chocolate bar.

  ‘Only out of the machine, I’m afraid,’ she says, putting a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

  Mum and Dad are driving down the motorway right now. I spoke to them on Mr Patterson’s phone. Mum was too emotional to say much – she kept swallowing her words and crying. Even though I told her that, really, I was fine.

  ‘Just stay there,’ Dad said. ‘We’re coming to get you. Don’t move.’ The line crackled. ‘I love you.’

  Mr Patterson said he was shocked that there was a brothel above the chip shop in the next road.

  ‘The sign says Sauna,’ he said.

  The police send some squad cars over to search the place, but when they get there it’s empty, although there’s ‘Evidence that the premises were vacated in a hurry’.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the policewoman says, shuffling her papers in front of her. ‘We’ll catch them.’

  I’m feeling strangely calm, almost detached. I study the scruffy paintwork of the police station. It smells a bit like a hospital.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘in your own time. Tell me exactly what happened.’

  I take a sip of the hot, sweet chocolate and wonder where I should begin.

  21

  Oksana

  Now there’s a big road and a junction and traffic lights and cars. My feet are sore from running so hard and my legs are covered in scratches and cuts. On the road signs it said it was this way to Tottenham. But now I’m here I don’t know which road to take. I don’t know how I will find Adik. Perhaps I expected some big flashing arrow pointing the way. All I had to do was get to Tottenham and I would immediately bump into him, or his house would appear all lit up, so I would know where to find him.

  I need to ask where Lordship Road is but I don’t want anyone to notice me. What if they report me to the police? And I have to fight with myself not to just sit down on the pavement and wait for someone to carry me. I’m so tired. Tired of running, of hiding, of being scared and dirty.

  It’s nearly day. The sky is starting to turn grey, and there are more people walking along, their heads bent low, hands in their pockets. No one even looks at me.

  I stand at a bus stop and stare at the map, but it doesn’t make any sense. There are numbers for all the buses that will take you places, but I don’t know where anything is: Finsbury Park, Aldgate, Alexandra Palace – maybe I should go there and call on the Queen. That thought makes me dizzy. That if I wanted I could go and call on the Queen, that I could learn the streets all for myself. That I could be free.

  Buses come and go and I sit there like I’m waiting for something to happen. The crowds get bigger with people jostling to get to work. So many people, speaking all different languages. I actually hear some girls talking Russian and hide behind an advertisement for shaving cream till they get on their bus to Bethnal Green.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’

  The woman has a kindly face, soft and floury. I stare at her for a second, then show her the scrap of postcard in my hand and point at the address.

  ‘You want Lordship Road?’

  I nod.

  ‘It’s just over there, second on your left.’

  She points across the road from where I’ve been sitting, which makes me smile. All the time it was right in front of me a miracle.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whisper.

  ‘That’s OK.’ She cocks her head to one side, like she’s trying to see deeper inside me. She reminds me a bit of Mum. ‘Look after yourself,’ she says, turning away.

  Maybe Mum is up there still, looking out for me, and today she is singing because she knows I am set free too. My heart takes a little leap. Here I am at last, Adik, after all this long way.

  The road is a row of houses all stuck together, like a lot of the houses around here. They make me think of people standing in a line, pressing together shoulder to shoulder, jostling each other for space. It’s hard to imagine him living here. The road seems so quiet and rich. The numbers count down from 260, so it’s a long way further down the road. I wonder as I get closer what his room will look like, what he’s doing here for money. It has occurred to me that he might still be working for Tommy, but if Tommy is there, I tell myself, I will run to the police, even though I don’t think my legs will carry me much further. Besides, I remember how Tommy looked that time I told him Adik was in London, not Germany. I didn’t know it then, but Tommy was surprised, and not that happy either. I hope that means Adik got away.

  Number eighty-eight. The door is red and freshly painted, and there’s a miniature tree in a pot right outside the front window, cut into a kind of corkscrew shape.

  It looks like a rich house, like he is doing well for himself. My chest is proud for him, he must have made it, I think. Like he always said he would.

  I knock on the door and a dog barks somewhere inside. I bite my lip. What if it’s not him?

  The door opens carefully and I can see a dog’s nose sniffing the air, and then a man with silvery grey hair appears in the corridor.

  ‘Hello?’ He looks at me curiously. ‘Are you OK?’

  I am frozen to the doormat. I’ve made a terrible mistake. Of course Adik isn’t here, in a place like this. Suddenly I want to lie down and cry, right there on the doorstep in front of the old man who takes another step towards me. I take a few steps back towards the gate. The old man doesn’t look like he will hurt me, but I have learned that you can never tell. ‘Hey, are you all right?’

  ‘Adik?’ I manage hopelessly.

  ‘Oh!’ The man’s eyes widen as if suddenly he understands something, then he smiles gently at me. ‘I should have guessed. Just stay there a minute. He’s in the garden. I’ll go and get him.’

  Adik is here. The dog comes out and sniffs around my legs. I stroke him on the head and marvel at how warm and safe he feels. I wonder if this man helped Adik to get away.

  And then Adik is there in front of me, face paling with shock, and we’re just staring at each other. Trying to figure out how come we both look so different, so much older, than we did before.

  ‘Oksana!’ He lets the door close behind him and grabs me in a huge bear hug. ‘What happened to you? What the hell are you doing over here?’

  I look at him and take a deep breath, and try to think of where I should begin.