She could have been anyone but here she was, calmly smoking, and no one had moved her on. The wives who went into the NAAFI-run supermarket barely gave her a glance, but he noticed her. She was about sixteen years old, still a kid, really; a skinny, sad-eyed, bare-legged German girl from the town, with dirty-blonde hair, dressed in a short skirt and a T-shirt, and her cigarette had been smoked almost down to the filter. There wasn’t much there but he saw something in her.
He stood next to the girl and reached for his own cigs. He liked to smoke the American brands, Camels or Lucky Strikes, because they seemed more exotic, and he offered her one. She accepted it without a word. He lit it for her with his Zippo and watched as she took a drag. ‘Friends left you?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Cold?’
She gave a non-committal shrug that he took as an affirmative. He left her then and went into the café over the road. He ordered two hot drinks, waited till the waitress walked away then took the china cups outside, crossed back over the road and handed one of them to the girl. ‘Hot chocolate,’ he told her, and she held the cup gratefully in both hands to warm them.
She didn’t say anything for a while, then she took a sip and said, ‘Danke,’ before correcting herself: ‘Thank you.’
Samuel guessed it had been a while since anyone had given her anything. Maybe it was the reassurance of his uniform but he got the impression the girl trusted him already. She was so young; she shouldn’t be out there on her own. She was lucky he had chanced upon her and not someone like Dent. He wondered how her parents could let her hang around a military base like this. Didn’t they care? This girl was so young and trusting she was like a blank canvas, and that was why it was not too late for her.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Ingrid.’
Samuel stood outside the NAAFI with her while they finished their drinks and smoked his cigarettes, then he said, ‘Come on, Ingrid. I’ll get you something to eat.’
She trailed after him like an obedient dog. He knew then that he would save her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When she called, Tom was watching the TV news while eating a ham roll that passed for a late lunch. He’d just faxed a story through to a magazine about mobile army catering units; one of those everyday features whose modest fees helped keep them afloat. Apparently, squaddies weren’t too fussy what they ate, as long as it came with chips.
His mobile rang and he hit the mute button on the TV and put the ham butty to one side.
‘Tom? It’s me.’
‘Jenna?’ He waited for her to say something further.
It took her a moment and he heard her let out a breath before she spoke. ‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ she said, ‘but not over the phone. Can you come over tonight?’
‘Er, yeah, maybe,’ he said, though he knew he would have to cancel on Penny if he did and he wasn’t sure what he could tell her about this, other than that it was work, and was it really work when he was helping a former lover? He decided not to think about that too deeply and instead promised Jenna he would be there.
Penny didn’t sound too impressed when he phoned to explain he was busy that night. Though she told him it was fine, he suspected it was anything but.
Tom drove to Jenna’s village at the agreed time and automatically parked a street away from her shop. He knew there was a certain amount of risk for Jenna in his visit. How would she account for Tom, if he was seen, when she couldn’t tell the truth about their meeting? As an old friend, perhaps, or a former lover? Tom had grown up in a village and had always hated the lack of anonymity. He far preferred city life, where people didn’t feel like they always had to know everybody else’s business: who they were seeing, who else they had been seen with. He never wanted to return to that smaller world, but Jenna seemed to love it here. She was certainly keen to preserve her life in the village.
She showed him upstairs to her flat. Jenna made coffee and they sat together at a little table by the bay window, which looked out on to the main street and the village green. There was no one out there now; even the bus shelter was empty.
‘So quiet, isn’t it?’ she said with relish, as if the silence instilled a calm in her.
‘It is,’ answered Tom. He wasn’t sure he could cope with it.
It took her a few moments to start and he realized she was steeling herself or perhaps trying to get the story straight in her own mind before she could explain it to him. ‘When I graduated,’ she began, ‘I really wanted to stay in the North-East, but there weren’t many jobs.’
‘There never are,’ he agreed, noting that most of the people he knew who had left school with any qualifications had almost immediately ventured south, some through choice and others by necessity, seeking work that was unavailable in their region.
‘It wasn’t easy, but I finally got a job in marketing for a food-and-drink wholesaler in Newcastle. It was hard work but I enjoyed it most of the time and the pay was pretty good. Not quite good enough for me to afford the flat I fell in love with, though.’
Tom began to feel apprehensive. Had Jenna stolen from the company, or from someone else?
‘I’d saved enough money for the deposit, but I couldn’t get the right mortgage on my salary. Then I met a broker who said I didn’t have to worry about any of that. I could just exaggerate what I earned and no one would bother to check the forms, they would sort me out a mortgage without asking any questions. So that’s what I did. I added a few thousand on to my declaration of earnings, I got my mortgage and moved in. All good.’
Tom frowned at this. ‘But how did you make the payments if you weren’t earning enough?’
‘With difficulty,’ she admitted. ‘There was very little left at the end of each month, but I just about managed it. I juggled credit cards to survive but I knew I was robbing Peter to pay Paul. I loved the flat, though, and I figured if I could just get through the early years, maybe get a pay rise or a better job, then I’d be okay.’
‘But that didn’t happen?’
‘No,’ she said grimly. ‘I lost my job, quite suddenly.’
‘You were fired?’
She shook her head. ‘Made redundant. It seemed that, just like me, the company had been living beyond its means. They’d been borrowing a lot of money to keep going and, in the end, it wasn’t sustainable. They got rid of four people and I was one of them.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I panicked.’ She laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘I got some money when they made me redundant but I knew it wouldn’t last. I applied for dozens of jobs in the area, and beyond, but I got nowhere. I had enough to pay my mortgage for three or four months but after that …’
‘You’d lose your flat.’
‘Unless I found a way to make some money.’
She let that sink in. Tom thought he was beginning to understand.
She exhaled. ‘Then I saw an advert for an agency. They were looking for young, attractive women. It was discreet, the money was …’ She shrugged, as if to highlight the irresistible nature of it. ‘I figured I was young and attractive. I wasn’t seeing anyone, so there were no complications on that score, and I was desperate, so …’ She still couldn’t quite find the words.
‘You started working as an escort?’ He kept his voice deliberately neutral. He didn’t want her to think he was judging her and, in truth, he wasn’t, though he was a little shocked to discover that his teenage sweetheart had been having sex with men for money.
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
They both needed a moment to let it sink in.
‘This agency, what was it called?’
‘Angels.’
‘And how did it work?’
‘They advertised in some newspapers and in men’s magazines. Guys would call them up and arrange to see a girl for a set time ‒ an hour, an evening, sometimes overnight, though that was rare. They’d ask the man what kind of girl he was looking for ‒ her age, height, vital st
atistics, hair colour, that sort of thing ‒ then they’d call one of us and book us in.’
‘Where did you meet them?’
‘Hotels, sometimes,’ she said. ‘That was an outcall. They’d be guys on business, staying in the city, mostly. Then there were incalls.’
‘You’d meet the guy in his flat or yours?’
She shook her head. ‘Never in my flat. I wanted to keep that life very separate from the work I was doing.’
It struck Tom how odd it was to describe sex as work, even though it was meant to be the oldest profession, along with spying.
‘And I didn’t like to go to their homes either. It didn’t feel quite as safe somehow.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Angels rented an apartment in the city. They’d book us in and we’d show up before the client so we could meet him there.’
‘It was only supposed to be for a little while ‒ a few weeks, a month or two maybe, to make enough to cover the mortgage until I got a proper job again, but I just couldn’t get anything in the area.’
‘How long did you do this kind of work?’
‘Four years,’ she said, and he could see the admission cost her.
‘Wow.’
‘Don’t,’ she cautioned.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Do the maths,’ she said. ‘I can tell you’re doing it in your head. Thinking about how many weeks it was, then working out how many men I’ve slept with.’
‘I genuinely wasn’t doing that, Jenna.’
‘Good, because I didn’t keep score,’ she told him a little sharply.
‘I was actually thinking it must have been difficult for you.’
‘It was,’ she admitted. ‘Some of them men were nice ‒ most of them were okay, in fact ‒ but some were very far from nice. In the end, I couldn’t keep doing it. I just couldn’t.’
‘That’s understandable.’
‘So I quit.’
‘What about your flat?’
‘It had gone up a bit in value and the irony was that, once I realized what it was costing me to keep it, I didn’t like it so much any more. I wanted to get away ‒ from the apartment, from the city, from the lifestyle. I sold it and put the proceeds and all my savings into this shop.’
‘And it’s going okay, is it, the business?’
‘I’m getting by. It’s taken me a while, but I feel like I’m established here now. You know what a village is like. They reserve judgement until they get to know you, but I provide what people need and they drop by.’
‘But the villagers might turn against you if they knew about this?’
‘I should imagine a lot of people will no longer want to shop here if they know what I used to do.’
‘And there might be some blokes who’ll get the wrong idea.’
‘And think I’m still open for business? That had crossed my mind.’
‘So this can never come out,’ he reasoned. ‘But how could someone know what you used to do unless they were a former client?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that ‒ wondering about it a lot, in fact.’
‘And, if they are, surely they wouldn’t want anyone to know about it, so blackmailing you would be counterproductive.’
‘It is possible it’s someone from the village,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think so.’
‘What makes you say that?’ he probed. ‘Why do you have that feeling?’
‘Well, I’ve never experienced that shock of recognition from anyone, you know, that look in someone’s eyes when they have a previous, embarrassing connection with you. I never even had that when I lived in Newcastle, let alone here, with its tiny population, and you’re right ‒ why would someone blackmail another person if the secret would be just as damning to them? Even if they’re single, it would be humiliating if it came out that they had been paying for sex with an escort; more so, if they’re married, of course.’
‘Someone from the agency, perhaps?’
‘Maybe, but I didn’t have too many dealings with the people there. I went for one interview before I started. That’s all.’
‘This interview, was it with the owner, was it like … er … an audition?’
She laughed. ‘No, they didn’t make me sleep with anyone to get the job. The person who interviewed me was a woman. She explained that the agency’s role was to pair up girls with clients, and they took a cut. All they promised was that clients would have time with the girls. What we did with that time was our business, but they obviously explained what was required of me.’
‘Sex?’
‘Yes, and the various things men expect from a professional, but it wasn’t anything that men don’t want in general,’ she explained. ‘I didn’t do any kinky stuff. I left that to the girls who specialized in those things.’
‘Do you remember the name of the woman who interviewed you?’
‘Only her first name, I’m afraid. Amanda.’
‘Well, it’s a start. What about an address for this agency? You said it was called Angels?’
‘It no longer exists. It was closed down. Actually, it was raided.’
‘Really?’
‘This was after I left, about a year ago. I read about it in the paper. Some people were fined and got suspended sentences; only one did prison time. He got a year for living off immoral earnings.’
‘Do you have his name?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I kept the newspaper cutting.’
She went to a drawer and opened it, rummaged for a moment, withdrew the cutting and gave it to him. Tom read the report of the trial. Francis Walker was ‘a parasite who lived off the immoral earnings of a number of young women he preyed on, tempting them into a life of vice, cloaked in a veneer of respectability’, the judge had said. ‘Because of this and his previous convictions, I have no hesitation in passing a custodial sentence. Time is what he offered his clients, and time is what I am going to give him ‒ to reflect.’
‘The judge did have a sense of humour,’ said Tom, ‘as well as one of his own self-importance. This bloke got a year. If he kept his nose clean, he might have been out months ago.’ He gave her a meaningful look. ‘Could it be him?’
‘Blackmailing me, you mean? I don’t know. I suppose it could.’
‘If he was just out of prison and no longer had a business, and he could trace the girls he used to employ, then he might resort to something like this.’
‘He might,’ she said. ‘I know better than anyone what people are prepared to do if they’re desperate.’
‘Then I’ll see if I can track Francis Walker down,’ he told her, ‘and have a word with him.’
‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to approach a man like that?’ Her tone told him she wasn’t convinced it was.
‘How else will we flush him out?’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness.
‒ Matthew 25:30
He examined every inch of the shipping crate by torchlight. Even in daytime it was a gloomy, windowless room, and it was easy to miss things unless you used the torch and shone it into every dark corner. He had learned to be careful and not rush these searches. It was amazing what they were capable of, especially in the early days, before they had learned to accept things, so he would systematically examine every inch of each crate and every room to make sure he missed nothing. One had even escaped once and had to be replaced by a far less suitable girl, a parentless teenager who nobody seemed to miss. That could never be allowed to happen again.
It didn’t take him long. The missing paint and the bare metal on the head of the screw were a dead giveaway. What had she been up to, and how had it been possible? She was a cunning little one. It took him a few more minutes before he found the tool, hidden in a gap she had made on the blind side of the mattress. His anger threatened to take control of him then. Unknowing, ungrateful, treacherous bitch. After all the work he had put in, after everything he had done for her.
Then he stopped. He couldn’t do it. Not yet.
There had to be five.
Newcastle was nearly always a great night out, until the end. Then it was a pain to get away from, when you were competing with so many other people for a taxi and many of them were mullered after a night ‒ sometimes a whole day ‒ on the drink.
You could usually get a cab in the underpass, though, if you didn’t mind trekking down there, and it was better than waiting at the rank, which would involve hanging about for ages, being pestered by drunks who thought you were fair game just because you were on a night out or your skirt was a bit short. Kelly didn’t want to walk too far either, because these bloody heels were killing her, so she chose the underpass.
It wasn’t official or anything, but they were sort of cab drivers, blokes who hadn’t bothered to fill in all the paperwork for the licence and were probably dodging the tax on the income ‒ but who could blame them if they were skint? Anyway, she was very tired and a bit too pissed to worry about it. When she got there she was surprised to see only one car waiting. She knew why, though. Bloody police had moved everyone on again. They were buggers like that. Instead of going out and solving real crimes they spent their time coming down hard on working blokes who were only trying to add a bit of cash on to their social. It wasn’t like they were real villains or anything.
It wouldn’t work. They’d just lie low for a bit and be back again after a few weeks, when the police had lost interest in the area. It was the same everywhere in the city. If there was a spot that became notorious for hookers or dealers, the police would eventually bow to the public outcry, swoop down, make a few arrests and keep an eye on the place for a week or so, then they’d go off and do it somewhere else. Sure enough, as soon as their eye was off the ball, the prozzies and smackheads would return and it would be business as usual.
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