He pulled his head torch on and switched it to full beam. “Oh my God,” he said. “Shit Ginty, she’s handcuffed to the bed!”
I switched my head torch on and took a look. A terrified Vietnamese or Cambodian or other far eastern sort of girl was knelt up on the bed, trying to get as high as possible out of the water, with her wrists handcuffed together to the struts.
“Quick Ginty, you go out to the van. There’s a bolt cutter on the left hand side. I’ll try and get this hole big enough for me to get through to her.”
The other woman was standing weeping at the door yelling things through to the chained up girl. Quinn had to push her out of the way to get a good swing on the door. The wood splintered some more.
I forced myself through the water to the steps and hauled myself out like out of a swimming pool, feeling heavy and restricted by my wet clothes and with my wellies threatening to get sucked off. Outside the water was nearly waist deep and running so fast it was like wading through a river. I pulled myself awkwardly into the van, my water filled wellies feeling like ton weights on the end of my legs, and sloshing as I moved. I looked systematically around on the left hand side for the bolt cutters, whilst having a quick suss around to see what else might be useful. On the spur of the moment I grabbed up a coil of clear plastic hosing. I jumped heavily back down into the rushing torrent and had to cling to the door lintel to not get swept away. Fuck this was scary.
Descending back down into the living area, the water was swirling up to my neck. Quinn had obviously headed through the hole. The other girl was standing, staring into the hole. I grabbed at her and shoved her towards the steps. I pointed and made hurry, hurry motions with my hands and with a last horrified look back at the black hole in the door she started to make her way to the steps.
I climbed as swiftly as I could through the hole having to duck my face down into the black sucking water to get through.
“Quick, Ginty,” Quinn sounded panicky, “She’s nearly under. She can’t stand up on the bed to get out of the water!” He snatched the bolt cutters out of my hand, took a deep breath and ducked under the water. He came back up again. “I can’t see too good, the water swirls round the light. I don’t want to cut through her hands by mistake!”
“Do your best,” I said. The poor girl was straining her head up against the top of the water, gasping like a goldfish. I clambered up on the bed so that I was now only in waist deep, unrolled the plastic tubing and shoved one end in her mouth. She got the idea straight away and grabbed onto it with her teeth, folding her lips firmly round. Her eyes rolled towards me as I held the tubing up straight and high to keep the airway open. I pointed my head with its head torch at the place where Quinn kept coming back up for air, to try to add to the light levels in the area he was working.
“Think I’ve got it now,” he said breathlessly, and disappeared back under.
Suddenly there was a yank and the girl was jerked a bit more under, then she floated free and thrashed upwards her hands parted, the rings still on them but the chain in between cut in half. She grabbed at my legs and hauled herself up me till she was standing clinging onto me, freezing and shaking. Quinn thrust his way upwards, gasping and spluttering, his eyes tightly closed.
I kept a hold of the tubing with one hand, just in case, then grabbed one of the girl’s hands with my other and jumped into the water. She pulled back but I hauled her down and forced her ahead of me. I knew she’d hate the duck through the hole so I gave her no option, shoving her head down under and pushing her through. I presumed she’d pop up like a cork the other side, so launched myself through after her. She was having to swim the other side and I suddenly found myself lifting off my feet with the pressure of the water and having to do the same. Water was pouring down the steps at the door like a waterfall. I shoved her from behind to push her up the steps. She was staggering stiffly with cramp and cold. I glanced back to check Quinn was coming and saw his head emerge out of the water as he bobbed up from the dive through, water streaming off him. I crawled and stumbled out of the water up the steps, the pull of the water sucking back on me. Quinn joined me on the steps, and stopped and waited for us both to get safely off the top step and onto the staircase before following us up. The two girls were clutching each other, looking scared. I pointed up the stairs and made hurrying motions again with my hands. They started up the stairs and I stopped to take each wellie off in turn and pour the water out of them like a jug. I grimaced as I forced my feet back into the unpleasantly freezing, sodden objects then picked up some of the electrical equipment to carry up. Quinn looked as though he might go out and check on the van, but I stopped him.
“Seriously Quinn, I nearly got washed away! It’s a fucking powerful current out there – just leave it! You won’t be able to do anything…”
He picked up the rest of the equipment with a worried look behind him at the open door, and followed us up.
I let the girls into the flat.
“I need to think how to get the cuffs off her hands,” Quinn said.
“Just leave it for now,” I said. “The first priority is for everyone to get warm and dry.”
I beckoned to the girls to follow me into the bathroom. “Quickly get changed Quinn and get the kettle on. I’ll get them in the shower.”
The girls came with me and I closed the door. It was quite a big bathroom with a large walk in shower, so I didn’t mess around. I stripped off to my underwear and switched on the shower, waiting till it started steaming. The girls’ teeth were chattering and their shoulders were hunched and arms folded around themselves. I made a clothes pulling off motion and they hesitate. They just completely stripped off to the skin and stepped naked into the shower with me. Oh what the hell, I thought, and whipped off my bra and knickers as well. I handed them soap and shower gel and shampoo and we scrubbed at ourselves, and soaped everywhere and stood till we went pink as lobsters. Their fingers and toenails were beautifully kept with Barbie pink nail varnish on them, they were completely shaven in the pubic area, and when the Eastern European bent over to reach for the dropped bar of soap, I was a bit shocked to see that she had a ring of piercings around her you-know-what. All different colours. I looked really quickly away.
We got out and I tossed big towels at them and we dived out through the living area where Quinn politely and rather hurriedly turned his back, and we took refuge in my room. I dressed myself quickly, and went through my clothes to sort something out for the little Vietnamese girl. (Don’t know what she really was, but that’s what I’ll refer to her as.) Knowing I might never get them back, I found some tracky bottoms that I wouldn’t much miss, and a warm but old fleece with wide enough sleeves to pull on over the metal cuffs and some woolly socks. The other girl was more Daisy’s size, so feeling a bit guilty I went next door and rootled through her cupboard for something similar. The girl took them gratefully off of me. I went out to Quinn. The kettle was boiled.
“Take a shower,” I said to him.
He didn’t argue, just disappeared into the bathroom. While he was gone I called the girls out and made them hot coffee with sugar in it for energy.
“AAAARGH! NO TOWEL!” Quinn sounded well aggrieved.
I rushed to my room, grabbed a clean one from my cupboard, opened the bathroom door a crack and inserted my hand with the towel attached. It was snatched out of my hand and I closed the door with a laugh.
I started reheating the bolognaise I’d made and boiled up some pasta shells. By that time Quinn had emerged from the bathroom again, dressed but with damp hair.
“Oo, Ginty you’re a star!” He said when he saw me dishing up four helpings. I handed plates to the girls, the Latvian (or whatever she was) had the common sense to go to get some cutlery from the draw and lay it out for us and we all sat down at the table and tucked in. It didn’t seem worth talking to either of them, they clearly couldn’t speak English, but I couldn’t risk them understanding more than they let on, so I waited till after the meal, mad
e everyone a cup of tea, and then pointed them to the sofa and handed them the TV remote. They seemed to be taking everything in their stride and curled up on the settee together and started flicking through the channels.
I leant over to Quinn and said in a low voice, “What the hell were they doing locked in there and fucking hand cuffed to the bed?”
“They’re prostitutes of course you muppet!” Quinn said. “They’ve probably been trafficked.”
I stared at him. “Downstairs? Under us? Prostitutes locked up?”
“Well I’ve been wondering for a bit…not the trafficked bit – the brothel bit.”
“God I’m so naïve!” I chastised myself. “It never even occurred to me!”
Quinn looked sideways at me. “The buzzer was going all evening and into the night and all those dodgy blokes hanging around when I came back after a late shift…”
“Shit!” I shook my head. “I’m glad I didn’t know that actually. Walking home has been horrid for a bit, and I figured it was turning into a pick up zone but…” I glanced over at them. “So what do we do now? The men will come back for them won’t they?”
He shrugged. “They may assume they’ve drowned and not bother…”
“That’s appalling!” I hissed.
“Don’t glare at me like that Ginty!” He defended. “It’s not me that locked them up there!”
“We’ll have to take them to the P-O-L-I-C-E,” I spelt it out in case they knew that word in English. They almost certainly would.
He wrinkled his nose for a moment while he thought it through. “Yeah, I think that’s best.”
“I don’t want them arrested, but if we don’t they’ll get locked up by some gang again. At least they can get help, claim asylum or go home or whatever they want to do…”
Suddenly my phone started ringing. I recognised the Thrills and Spills production team number. I answered. It was Damian.
“Just a quick call, because I saw on the news there were floods out your way and I wondered if you were caught up in them?”
Not because he cared, you understand, just because there might be a good story in it.
“Yep, too right we are, up to our necks!” I exclaimed.
“Fantastic!” He sounded congratulatory. “Hang on. I’ll set it up so the call is recorded and when I ring you back, you can tell me all about it.”
Quinn looked enquiringly at me. I rolled my eyes. “Thrills and Spills,” I explained.
“Oh good,” he said. Quinn was always up for attention.
The phone rang back again. I picked up. Damian again. “Ok, it’s now recording. We haven’t any Spills interviewers available so I want you to tell us what happened like a story, and if there are any interesting bits we’ll use it.”
So I reported back a blow by blow account of what just happened. When I finished he sounded off his head with joy. “Bloody fantastic! That’s great! Now put Adam on and ask him to tell it again from his point of view so we can use bits from both of you.”
I handed the phone to Quinn. “Now you’ve got to tell it again.” I rolled my eyes.
Quinn listened for a moment to instructions from Damian who had obviously told him to tell it again as though I just hadn’t. Afterwards he handed it back to me.
“Take footage on your phone Eve. Adam too. Out the window, and especially if anything else exciting happens like you get rescued. Don’t worry, we’ll pixilate out the girl’s faces if they get in it. You just get the footage for us, and we’ll make it ok?”
“Ok,” I said. Then I jumped out of my skin as we were plunged into darkness and the girls on the settee gave a little scream. “Shit, actually it’s about to get another level exciting cos all the electricity’s gone out! Quinn, I put candles and a lighter over by the kettle. Ok Damian, I need to preserve the battery of my phone now.”
“Yes, you do that,” Damian said cheerfully. “Good luck!” And then he rang off.
“Vultures,” I said crossly. “What he actually means is, ‘have a thoroughly uncomfortable time of it so we get a good story’!”
Quinn lit several candles and used one to look around for his head torch. I took one of the other candles off him and went back into my room to look for where I left my own headtorch. When I’d found it I put it on and used that instead, and put several other candles on plates and took them over to the girls.
“They’re a bit overpowering aren’t they?” Quinn commented, making pretend choking to death noises as sandalwood, cedarwood, strawberry, cinnamon, vanilla and patchouli wafted up in a cloying oppressive tangle.
“Daisy’s smelly ones,” I said. “Must be a bargain bag of different ones.”
“I don’t know about those two over there,” Quinn remarked, “but by the end of this we’re all going to smell like we’ve just escaped from a Nepalese brothel!”
“Shall we just all go to bed?” I said to Quinn, twenty minutes later. With no electricity we couldn’t have hot drinks, cook anything else, wash up, watch TV, stay warm. “We can put the girls in Daisy’s room.”
We leaned out the window of Quinn’s room which looked out over the street. It was still pissing down but there were no street lights, and no moon and no stars, so we just couldn’t see anything. We could hear a torrent of water thundering.
“Do you think that’s down there in our street?” Quinn said. “Or are we just hearing the river in the distance?”
“Dunno,” I said.
Suddenly we saw some lights in the distance. Torches? Lamps? They bounced up and down and swirled around. As they got closer they resolved into an orange RIB with three men on board. They had a massive searchlight they were shining around. They seemed to spot us. We leaned out of the window and waved. They bobbed up and down below us.
“Do you need to get out?” They yelled.
“What do you think?” I conferred with Quinn. “If it were just us, we’d just go to bed now wouldn’t we? But we need to get those girls out somewhere safe don’t we?”
“Ok,” he said slowly. “And we’ll get some good footage for Spills won’t we?” He leaned further out. “YES!” He shouted.
“How many?”
“FOUR.”
“Come down to the door in about five minutes!” They swirled away, pointing the search light up to other windows.
“Have you got an old coat you could give the tall one?” I suggested. “I’ve got one I don’t mind sacrificing to the little one…”
We quickly scooted around picking up things we might need. Phone, purse, tablet. I put my trainers on. They’d get instantly sodden, but I’d learned my lesson – wellies were useless in these conditions and once filled to the brim with water were potentially lethal.
“Make sure all the electrical switches are off,” I instructed Quinn. He went round switching everything off while I took the coats to the girls and blew out the candles. Then we led them downstairs. We couldn’t get to the front door, which was thrust open by the power of the water, as the level of the water was well up the first few steps of the staircase.
“I’ll go first,” I said in a low voice to Quinn, “to speak to them about these two and then you bring them out.” He nodded.
The RIB came back. It seemed completely surreal to see a boat in our street. Its engine was having to work hard against the powerful flow. One man threw a rope around a lamp post to hold the boat against the current, and they threw another rope to us.
“You lad! You hold the rope as tight as you can! One of you girls come out to us holding onto the rope. Don’t let go! We’ll grab you as soon as you get in reach.”
Quinn wrapped the rope around his wrist and grimly hauled back on it with all his strength and I grabbed hold of the taut rope with my gloved hands. As I plunged in, I found it was up to my chest and as soon as I got to the doorway it was sweeping me sideways. The boat was right at the door though, one of the men using a hook to hold it there and two men hauled me with a strong yank into the boat. I fell in, gasping like a lande
d fish.
“Listen,” I said urgently. “We need to get to a police station. Can you organise that for us?”
“They’re really busy right now,” one of the men said severely. “We can get you to dry land and then you need to go to a reception centre or friends…”
“You don’t understand!” I insisted. “We found these two girls handcuffed to the beds down in that basement up to their necks in water, we need to get them to the police!”
The men looked at each other as though they weren’t sure they’d heard me right. “We could radio for a police vehicle to meet us at the centre?” One suggested after a moment.
“Only don’t mention it in front of them,” I said quickly. “I don’t want them doing a runner.”
One of the men handed me a buoyancy aid and I put it on. I fumbled with the zipping up so he did it for me and clipped and tightened the belt.
“Next one!” They yelled across to the three inside the door well.
The tall Latvian came next, hauling her way across on the rope. I filmed it on my phone, plus the men putting her in another buoyancy aid.
“Next!”
“I’ll have to piggy back her!” Quinn yelled across. “She’s refusing to go in! She’s quite small, and she’s too scared!”
“Hang on to the rope and we’ll haul it back in as you come,” they ordered him.
I kept my phone recording going throughout this exchange and as Quinn got the girl to put her arms around his neck and hop up. He grabbed her legs, hooking them through his elbows and held onto the rope firmly with his hands. They pulled back on the rope as he came. I saw the moment when the current nearly swept him sideways, but the men leaned over and quickly grabbed the girl off his back, dumped her in the boat and yanked him in. He was gasping with the shock of the freezing cold and the effort. As soon as they had the buoyancy aids safely on the pair of them, they released the hook and let loose the rope wrapped round the lamp post and we lurched away with the engine note rising fast.
One man was on the radio. Arranging the police car, I hoped. We sat huddled in the bottom of the boat in a pool of water, the rain heaving down on us. I put my arm around the Vietnamese girl who looked really scared. The Latvian stared grimly ahead. I figured she would be trying to work out what to do next. Quinn was chatting to the man operating the search light. Apparently he was from the Clapham Cave Rescue, come over from Yorkshire to help.
The Way Barred Page 5
