Innocent Girls

by Terence Mitford

  ‘I had a little chat with your man in Bucharest. He was very helpful. But I don’t think he’ll be much use to you anymore. Now it’s your turn. When did they leave with my sister?’

  The man grinned. ‘You were so close. They left just a few minutes before you got here.’

  Natasha spoke through gritted teeth, ‘Get out of my way.’ Then she glanced at Alison. ‘Come on, maybe we can catch them.’

  The man pushed the door closed behind him, pulled out a knife from his back pocket and moved towards Natasha. ‘You are not going anywhere.’

  Alison shouted out, ‘Run, Natasha, run!’ Then stepped in to the man’s path.

  Natasha shouted back, ‘Alison, no.’

  But she was too late. The man plunged his knife into Alison’s chest. Natasha screamed with rage and ran at him thrusting her knife deep into his chest. Then she stabbed him again through his neck. He staggered back and collapsed, blood pumping from the gash in his throat.

  Natasha dropped the knife and turned to her friend who had slumped to her knees. Tears streamed down her face as she helped Alison to lay down. ‘Alison, I’m so sorry.’ She held her head in her arms as she took out her mobile phone and rang 112 for the Romanian emergency services. She gave their location and requested an ambulance. Then she cradled her friend waiting for them to arrive. ‘Alison, you must stay awake, do you hear me?’

  Alison looked up at her. ‘We need to find Katerina.’

  ‘You’ll love her and she’ll love you too, but just concentrate on staying awake.’

  A few minutes later the paramedics and police arrived and rendered Alison immediate aid. Natasha followed her to the ambulance holding her hand until she was told to let go and leave them to treat her.

  Alison took the car keys from her trouser pocket and pushed them into Natasha’s hand. ‘Leave it to the police now. Give them the maps and leave it to them. It’s too dangerous to follow the traffickers on your own.’

  Natasha nodded and jumped down from the ambulance. It sped off with Alison leaving Natasha with the police. After explaining the events on the second floor, and the fact that the traffickers had left with Katerina only minutes before she arrived, she handed over the maps with the route and safe-houses clearly marked out.

  Two of the four officers at the scene took the maps and set off in pursuit. Natasha jumped into Alison’s rental car intending to follow behind. As she started the engine one of the remaining officers shouted to her. She opened her window to hear. He pointed to her car and told her that one of her tyres was flat.

  She jumped out to see a long thin screwdriver sticking out of the side wall of her front tyre. She kicked the tyre in frustration. So that’s what the man was doing while she was checking the bathroom.

  The officer told her to wait a few minutes and he’d help her to change the wheel, but then she would need to follow them to the police station and provide a statement. He explained that they had their suspicions about activity in the apartment block and had tried to gather evidence of human trafficking taking place there.

  She thanked him then opened the boot and managed to pull out the spare wheel and the car jack.

  Thirty minutes later the officer had replaced her wheel, but when he returned to the crime scene she took her opportunity to drive away. She could not afford the delay of providing a statement just yet.

  Back on the road she headed for the border and the southern trafficking route. She had memorised the first part of the route and the next safe-house which had been marked as handover point on the map.

  As she neared the border she saw the police coming back towards her. She stopped and flagged them down and spoke through the open windows.

  ‘What are you doing, why aren’t you following the traffickers?’

  ‘It’s not in our jurisdiction. We have given the maps to the Hungarian police and they are on their trail.’

  Natasha thanked them and set off again.

  The handover-house was on the main road a few miles inside the Hungarian border. When she eventually found it she pulled up just outside the walled compound. The gates were open so she entered the courtyard on foot and was reassured to see a Hungarian police car parked in front of the grey stone, two storey house.

  But as she approached, something felt wrong. There were small holes in the back windscreen and in the drivers door panel. As she got closer and moved around the car she gasped and covered her mouth to stifle a scream. There were more holes in the front windscreen and the officers were slumped in their seats. As she opened the driver’s door the officer fell half-out onto the ground. He had several bullet holes in his face, neck, and chest. His partner had similar wounds. No need to check for breathing or a pulse. No one could survive those injuries.

  The front door to the house was open but there was no one in sight.

  As she stood fixated on the bloody scene in front of her a terrifying scream made her jump and duck down next to the police car. Another followed a few seconds later. It came from the upstairs of the house, and from the tone, it was certainly a male’s voice and not Katerina’s.

  She crouched down and looked into the blood spattered car. The officers’ pistols were still in their holsters. They must have been shot as soon as they pulled up. They would have been sitting targets with no time to react.

  She reached over and grabbed a pistol. Although not too familiar with hand guns, she knew it was a revolver. She managed to open the cylinder and count the rounds. There were six.

  She left the car and made her way to the front door as screams continued to pierce the silence every few seconds. Holding the pistol in both hands, she stepped just inside the house and paused. In front of her the hall stretched deeper into the property to what appeared to be a kitchen at the end. Doors to two rooms were on her left and the stairs were in front and to her right.

  Adrenalin coursed through her body, and between the blood curdling screams from above, she could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Something very bad was taking place upstairs. She wanted nothing more than to turn and run back to her car and drive away as fast as she could from that house.

  But although the screams were not from Katerina, she may still be somewhere in the house, and as Natasha visualised her, frightened, vulnerable, and alone with the evil men who held her, she knew she couldn’t leave. Not until she was sure.

  Slowly, she placed a foot on the first stair but hesitated again as another piercing scream went right through her. Someone was being tortured and the only mystery was who, why, and how.

  She breathed in deep and took one step at a time, hesitating twice more before reaching the top. Now her heart thumped so hard she thought it would burst through her chest any moment. Her whole body trembled as she approached the bedroom door and peered through the slim gap. A man was tied to a bed, stripped to the waist, with his arms and legs splayed. Two other men were taking turns to burn his bare chest with cigarettes. No part of his chest was free from ash burns. Her eyes scanned the rest of the room. Katerina was nowhere in sight. She wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or disappointed. If these men, probably the Albanians working for the Kestrati, can torture a man this way, she dreaded to think what they could do to a young girl.

  Once again, thoughts of just turning and running flashed through her mind but were quickly dismissed. She had to do something, both for her search for Katerina and for the sake of the man being tortured.

  She pulled back the hammer of her pistol and burst into the room. She pointed the gun at the nearest man and shouted at him. ‘Get your hands up and kneel on the floor now.’

  The nearest man turned and ran towards the window where a pistol in a holster hung over the back of a chair.

  Instinctively, she squeezed the trigger, and an ear shattering boom filled the room as the gun lurched upwards and the force of the discharge reverberated through her whole body. A single bullet smashed into the centre of the man's back knocking him flat on his face.

  As the second ma
n pulled a pistol from his waistband she redirected her aim and pulled the trigger three more times. The force flung him backwards into the wall where he crumpled to the floor.

  He had just one bullet hole in the centre of his chest. He was dead, but even at such close range, she had missed him with two of the three shots. She sighed. Maybe next time I should keep my eyes open when I fire.

  She dropped the officer’s revolver and rushed to the man on the bed. As she pulled at the rope around his right wrist her attention was drawn to a sheet of paper on the floor. She stared down at it and read the message. Several words jumped out at her, transporting the special order, England, and he planned to kill me and use her for his own entertainment. But the fact it was signed, The Recruiter, linked its author conclusively to Katerina. She remembered what the boss man had told her in the filthy apartment back in Bucharest. The man who had taken her sister was called Hugo Savic but the Kestrati called him the Recruiter.

  She let go of the rope and took a moment to digest the note’s content and its implications. She took a sharp intake of breath and looked at the man on the bed. ‘Is your name Anton?’

  His breathing was beginning to return to normal as his state of panic melted away. ‘Yes, please untie me.’

  ‘You were going to rape my sister?’

  ‘What, who is your sister?’

  ‘Katerina.’

  His eyes widened and as he stared up at her the panic returned. She knew that look. It was a frightened look, and it was a guilty look. She stepped back from the bed. ‘I can’t help you.’

  She left him tied up, grabbed the dead men’s semi-automatic pistols, and returned to the police car where she recovered her maps from the dashboard. She got back into the hire car and placed the two pistols under her seat, then sat quiet for a moment gathering her thoughts. She pictured the scene close by of the two brave police officers laying dead in their car and made up her mind. This was war, and she would see it through to the end, and that wouldn’t be until she had rescued Katerina or died trying.

  Nothing in between would do.

  She put the keys into the ignition but couldn’t turn them. There was something she had to do first. She took one of the pistols and returned to the bedroom. It was as she had left it, two bodies on the floor and their victim tied to the bed. His rapid breathing was the only sound. She placed the muzzle against Anton’s temple. ‘I will ask you just once. Where is my sister?’

  He glanced at her. ‘Hugo is taking her to England.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Through Austria, Germany, and Belgium, in a blue van.’

  ‘When did they leave?’

  ‘An hour ago, maybe more.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She pulled the trigger.

  16

  MASON

  Mason Cooper kissed Kathy just before she left for work, then took two cups of coffee upstairs. He tapped on Rosie’s door and waited. He heard her stretch, yawn, and mumble, ‘Come in, Daddy.’

  He sat on the edge of her bed and passed her a cup. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘You haven’t changed your mind have you?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘My job.’

  He shrugged. ‘I have to be honest with you, I’d rather you weren’t working there right now, but no, I haven’t changed my mind if it’s what you want.’

  She sipped her coffee and smiled at him. ‘I’m going to be okay you know, you can stop worrying about me.’

  Mason studied her for a moment and nodded. ‘I know, but if you think back to our conversation in the car on your last day at school, before everything happened, you’ll remember me telling you that being your father means worrying is part of my job. Actually, it’s the most important part.’

  ‘I’m bloody glad it is, or I might still be locked in that basement. You know, I would lay on that bed just praying you would come and find me. I knew you would never stop looking. It kept me going.’

  ‘If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here for you and so is your mum. But we won’t push it. You have to be ready.’

  She leant over and placed her hand on his. ‘I know that, and I’m sure one day I will talk about it, but not yet. I need to get my life back to normal first, and this job at the restaurant will help.’

  ‘What about your work experience in the fashion industry that you had lined up a few weeks ago, before everything happened?’

  ‘I can’t think about that right now. I don’t want any pressure so waitressing is perfect for me at the moment.’

  Mason stood up, leant over, and kissed her forehead. ‘That’s fine by me, sweetheart. Take your time.’

  She drank down the last of her coffee and handed him the cup. ‘Now that you’re unemployed, am I going to get a nice cup of coffee brought up to me every morning?’

  ‘Hey, young lady, don’t push your luck.’

  She snuggled back down in the bed.

  Mason looked back from the door. ‘I’m just going for a run. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Okay, Daddy, don’t bang the door on your way out.’

  Mason changed into a sweat shirt and jogging pants, tucked his mobile phone in his pocket, and left the house. His usual run was just over three miles. Nothing too strenuous as he was just getting back into his once regimented fitness routine.

  As he turned the corner onto the main road and headed for a local park, he glanced over his shoulder to see a silver car following him slowly. He could not see the driver due to the reflection on the windscreen and could not make out the model of the vehicle, but it looked expensive. He continued for a couple of minutes before glancing back again. The car was still creeping along behind him, but now it was close enough for him to see that it was a large Bentley.

  He stopped on the curb-side and waited for the vehicle to draw level. The driver was smartly dressed in a black jacket, black tie, and white shirt, and someone was sitting behind him in the back. Due to the quality of the car and the seating arrangement it was fair to assume the rear occupant was being chauffeur driven. This was not what he was expecting when he first realised he was being followed.

  As the car drew level with him and the rear window glided down, he got another surprise. In the back seat sat an elegant lady with fair skin, shoulder length auburn hair, wearing an immaculate green and white striped dress. He placed her somewhere in her mid thirties.

  Mason stood just two feet away from her door. ‘Hello Madam, can I help you?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, you can, will you please join me, Mr Cooper.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sorry, but have we met?’

  ‘We have now. Please, I need to talk to you. It’s very important.’

  Mason dipped down and studied the chauffeur, then brought his focus back to the woman.

  She opened her door, clicked off her seat belt, and slid over to the next seat. ‘Please get in, Mr Cooper. I live close by, we can talk there.’

  Mason was curious but not overly concerned about the situation. He sensed no hostility in the woman’s tone, so he got in, closed the door, and fastened his seat belt.

  The woman tapped the seat in front of her. ‘Take us home please, Andrew.’

  There was little conversation on the relatively short drive to a large town house in Mayfair, central London. Mason wasn’t surprised to discover this lady lived in the heart of one of London’s most affluent areas. After one look at her, the car, and her chauffeur, he expected nothing less.

  The car pulled up to a wide garage door that rolled up as Andrew pointed a small transmitter at it from his driving seat. They parked in one of three empty spaces and took an internal elevator to the floor above.

  The opulent decor of the entrance hall and large reception room with their marble floors, gilt trimmed artwork, and carved oak furniture, was evidence that no expense had been spared.

  The woman pointed to a plush leather bound chair. ‘Please, sit down, Mr Cooper.’ Then she sat on a matching two seater sofa across from a lo
w marble topped table.

  ‘Please, call me Mason.’

  ‘And I’m Angela.’

  ‘What is it you want, Angela?’

  She looked back at her chauffeur. ‘Andrew, please get Mason a drink.’

  Mason shook his head. ‘Thank you, but I’ll pass on that, I’m out for a run remember.’

  Angela nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll get straight to the point. I want you to find my daughter. She has been taken.’

  ‘Do you mean abducted?’

  She nodded.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘What did the police say?’

  Angela just stared at him.

  ‘You have reported it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Angela, I’m no longer a police officer, I resigned a few weeks ago. You need to report this.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They will kill her if we do.’

  ‘Who?’

  She hesitated. ‘The Kestrati. It’s an organisation that trades in girls, including underage girls.’

  ‘How old is your daughter?’

  ‘She’s ten.’

  Mason fought to conceal his shock. He didn’t want to add to her fears and concern. ‘How do you know they took her?’

  Angela’s eyes watered. She pulled out a handkerchief from a hip pocket on her dress and dabbed them. ‘Because they told us.’

  This surprised Mason. The criminal organisations that abduct girls for the sex trade do not normally contact the families. They need to remain anonymous. So this was not a normal abduction by the illegal sex trade.

  ‘They’ve made contact with you?’ Mason asked.

  She nodded. ‘My husband has upset the wrong people. They have taken her for revenge and to ensure he cooperates.’

  ‘With what?’

  My husband will be home any minute. He can explain.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because my husband says you are the best. You took down The Scarlet Club so you are well qualified.’

  ‘They had my daughter. I was driven by an insane determination.’