The Chosen Ones

by Howard Linskey

  To his astonishment, the officers nearest to the metal cover that had been placed over the hidden staircase went straight past it without stopping or even noticing it. ‘Come on,’ he said to himself, as they certainly couldn’t hear him from this height. He wondered if the bird’s-eye view he had was more effective than the one they were afforded at ground level and that was why they hadn’t seen the suspicious cover by the barn. He sat tight and waited for more officers to come by, but none did. They were all busy elsewhere or taking suspects away from the premises.

  Then the first two officers came back, and once again they went straight past the metal shutter. What did they think it was? Perhaps they couldn’t see it at all from that angle. Tom cried out in frustration.

  ‘Well, that was an absolute bloody waste of time,’ the detective superintendent who had insisted on accompanying the raid told Bradshaw. ‘They didn’t find a thing.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Bradshaw, who couldn’t believe it. Tom had recorded a woman being physically abused on the site, and now there was no one here.

  ‘This has been a farce,’ the most senior uniformed officer chipped in, damning Bradshaw even further.

  ‘What the bloody hell have you been playing at?’ barked the detective superintendent, who was clearly smarting from the sarcastic comments from his uniformed counterpart.

  Just then Bradshaw’s mobile phone began to ring. He let it, because he was in the middle of a bollocking from a detective superintendent and didn’t want it to look like he wasn’t listening to the man. Unfortunately, it rang and rang.

  ‘Well, answer it then!’ roared the DS, so Bradshaw did as he was told.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, then he listened intently and hung up.

  The DS was still waiting for an explanation, and the head of the uniformed squad was looking decidedly smug.

  ‘It seems your men have been looking in the wrong places,’ Bradshaw told him with relish. He turned to the detective superintendent. ‘Perhaps you’d like to follow me, sir.’

  Bradshaw set off for the location Tom had described on the phone and prayed to all the gods that they would find something when he pulled back the metal cover. It took him a while to find it because it was set back and on lower ground, but he knew it was there, which gave him an advantage over the uniformed men. He found it, lifted back the cover and saw the steps leading down. That wasn’t all that he found. Two scared Chinese faces were staring back up at him from the foot of the staircase, and there were other people lurking behind them down in the shadows.

  The DS peered down as well. ‘Er … well done, Bradshaw,’ he said, then he turned on his uniformed opposite number with some ferocity. ‘Care to explain how your men missed this? Not bloody good enough, is it?’

  Tom witnessed it all from the hilltop and a sense of relief flooded through him. One by one, the figures emerged from the covered staircase and he watched as other officers joined Bradshaw and led the victims away from their place of captivity.

  He had promised to phone Helen as soon as he knew the outcome and she answered on the first ring. ‘We got a result,’ he said. ‘I reckon there are thirty people down there, at least.’

  ‘And the missing women?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know yet. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.’

  Was it over? Perhaps it was. Even if the missing women had not yet been found, no one could deny their intervention here had paid off. Perhaps thirty lives had been saved. That was something.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘While the dust is settling, would you mind if I went home tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure, no problem.’ Then he asked, ‘How long will you be?’

  ‘Only a couple of days. I’ll be back in time to vote.’

  ‘What have you got planned?’

  ‘See my mum, see my dad,’ she said, and then because she remembered how much she hated it when he was evasive, ‘I promised I’d have a chat with Peter.’ There was a long silence on the line. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Are you serious? You’re not actually thinking of getting back together with him, are you?’

  ‘It’s only a talk.’

  ‘To what end?’

  She almost told him it was none of his business but had to admit he was only being as intrusive about her personal life as she was about his. ‘I promised to hear him out, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s trying to get you back, Helen,’ Tom reminded her, ‘And he’s an arse.’

  ‘He’s changed,’ she said, ‘since we broke up. Even my mother says so.’ It sounded so weak now that she was saying it out loud, but how could she admit her true feelings? Helen was in her late twenties, hadn’t met anyone she liked in ages and the one man she really did care about was dating a twenty-year-old. Helen was living in his spare bedroom and felt like she had nothing in her life except work. How could she explain that all this was making her scared and that, for that reason alone, she was willing to hear Peter out? Perhaps she would be settling for less with Peter, but maybe that was what everyone did, in the end.

  ‘People don’t change,’ said Tom, and before she could react he mumbled, ‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ and abruptly hung up.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  The next morning Ian Bradshaw ordered three crispy bacon rolls from the waitress at the Rosewood Café. ‘They’re on me,’ he declared, and was surprised by the muted atmosphere at their table. Tom seemed sullen and was sitting back in his chair with his arms folded. Helen lacked her usual warmth and he noticed she had an overnight bag on the ground by her feet.

  ‘What’s the matter with you two?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ they both chorused at once.

  ‘You’re like an old married couple.’ He only meant the way they gave the same reply at exactly the same moment, but they both shifted uneasily at his comment so he decided to change the subject. ‘Thirty-two people,’ he told them with a smile. ‘Men and women. That’s how many they lifted out of the bunker, as it’s being called, though really it’s just the lower level of the old barn. The evil bastards dug it out and bricked around it, then they put a brand-new barn on top of it. You wouldn’t know the underground part was there at all unless you saw the people going in.’

  ‘Where are they from?’ asked Tom.

  ‘China, mostly, but there are also a number of Eastern Europeans, several of African origin and at least one from India. We’ve got translators coming in to try and work it all out.’

  ‘It looks like a classic trafficking operation,’ he continued. ‘The people being held there were brought into the country illegally, for a fee they had to stump up themselves, and forced to work as slave labour. The criminals behind this scheme were getting money from their victims up front then profiting from their misery. We’ve seen this before: they invent false debts the immigrants have incurred and say they have to pay them off before they can be released.’

  ‘What were they using them for?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Unpaid labour,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Slaves, basically. They worked on farms or in factories, and some of the women, well, you can guess where they were made to work.’

  ‘That’s horrific,’ Helen said, ‘but was there any sign of our missing women?’ She knew he would have mentioned it by now if there had been.

  He shook his head. ‘There is a theory that they may have been through there, though.’

  ‘Why would anyone think that?’

  ‘You could describe the site as being underground. You said that yourself,’ he reminded Tom. ‘One of the senior officers reckons they might be part of some reverse white-slave trade deal that’s going on.’

  ‘Seriously?’ asked Tom.

  ‘I’m not saying I fully agree, but in the meantime everyone is pretty happy that we got so many people out of there.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Helen demanded. ‘They’re not just going to give up on finding the other women, surely?’

  ‘Not giving up, no,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘Just windin
g it down?’ said Tom, and his tone made it clear he was unhappy.

  ‘Not even that,’ said Bradshaw defensively. ‘Look, we never had much in the way of resources to start with, did we, and now we are no worse off. You two are still on the payroll. It’s just a question of where we go from here. When they both seemed unconvinced, he added: ‘So if you have any bright ideas, now would be the time to air them.’

  ‘I’m stumped if I know,’ admitted Tom, ‘but you’re right. Getting those people out of there was a real result.’

  ‘It was,’ said Bradshaw, ‘and one we shouldn’t take lightly.’ He had even enjoyed winding up DC Malone on her lack of progress with the ‘evil stepdad’ case, while he had been busy freeing the migrants from the scrapyards. ‘Maybe we’ll get something more from the men we arrested.’

  ‘What about Jimmy McCree?’ asked Helen. ‘Will they give him up?’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

  ‘But we know he’s behind this,’ she protested.

  ‘We do, but proving it is another matter and, so far, no one is grassing him up to save their skins. Would you, if it meant you’d probably be stabbed on remand? I suspect they will all quietly serve their time instead. They may not even know they’re working for Jimmy. He has cut-outs. You know, middlemen.’

  ‘So he gets away with it,’ she said coldly. ‘Again.’

  ‘Perhaps, but we’ll get him one day, Helen, and in the meantime we just saved thirty-two people from a life of slavery. The cup is half full.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ she admitted. ‘It just doesn’t feel like it.’

  Jenna had to drive more than thirty miles to meet her blackmailer. He’d chosen the village of Warkworth in Northumbria for the handover, and she’d spent a good part of the journey wondering why. Maybe nobody knew him there, and perhaps they would go unnoticed in this pretty little village, so used to strangers visiting its medieval castle, which dominated the horizon and towered over its shops and houses. She parked halfway up the steep hill road which doubled as the main street then walked back down it, away from the castle, until she passed the Church of St Lawrence and reached the bank of the River Coquet, its muddy waters, swelled by recent rains, flowing swiftly by.

  Jenna scanned the riverbank for any sign of her tormentor. He wasn’t on the first bench or the second, but she soon spotted him a little way off, sitting on his own, staring straight ahead as if placidly watching the ducks as they floated down the river. Such a calm scene for a meeting of huge importance.

  Jenna had her instructions: Tell no one, come alone, don’t wear a wire. She’d also been told what would happen if she broke any of those rules. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  When she drew closer to the bench he stood up abruptly. ‘Take off your coat,’ he said.

  She obeyed and handed it to him. He passed his hands through its folds and invaded its pockets, touching and squeezing the contents until he appeared satisfied and placed it on the bench. ‘Now the shirt,’ he said, as if this was a simple matter.

  ‘You want me to take my top off? Here?’

  ‘Lift it up,’ he said impatiently, and when she widened her eyes: ‘I need to know you are not wearing a wire. There’s no one around,’ he snapped. ‘That’s why I chose the place. No one can see us, no one can hear us.

  ‘Come on, love,’ he hissed. ‘I haven’t got all day. and it’s a bit late to pretend you’re shy now, isn’t it?’

  Jenna glanced quickly left and right then did as he ordered. She grabbed her shirt and pulled it up over her stomach and bra then lifted her hands higher until they touched her chin. He took a long look and seemed to enjoy the view.

  ‘Happy?’ she asked, once it was obvious she wasn’t concealing anything.

  ‘Very,’ he smirked, and she wanted to hurt him then, really badly. Jenna let go of the bottom of her shirt and it fell back down to cover her once more.

  ‘Can we at least sit down?’ she asked. ‘My feet are hurting.’

  He glanced at her shoes. ‘Should have worn something more practical. You could have had a walk round the village afterwards.’ He said it as if that was what people did once they had paid off a blackmailer.

  He sat back down on the bench and she joined him so they were a foot apart, both looking out across the river, a father and daughter, perhaps, out for a stroll.

  ‘Did you bring the money?’ he asked. ‘Is that what I felt in your coat pocket?’

  ‘I brought the money,’ she confirmed. ‘Just like you asked … or should I say demanded.’

  ‘There’s no need to get shirty.’

  ‘Oh really? I’m supposed to be polite, am I, when someone blackmails me?’

  ‘Shut up and give me my money.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? What do you mean, no? You know what will happen if you don’t.’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I do. You told me. You’ll tell my whole village I used to be an escort, ruining my life in the process.’ Then she took a breath, stealing herself. ‘But how do I know you won’t do that anyway, after I pay you?’

  ‘Well, that’s the beauty of our little arrangement, isn’t it, darling? If you continue to pay, I’m not going to tell, am I? There would be no incentive for me to.’

  ‘So, I have to keep on paying you the same amount every month for ever, to buy your silence?’

  ‘That’s how it works and I’d say it’s a good deal, for you and me both. Now hand over the money like a good little girl and I’ll be on my way, until the same time next month.’

  She hesitated then said, ‘All right,’ and reluctantly reached into her coat pocket for the envelope with the money. She held it out for him and he frowned as if she was being indiscreet doing it that way, but there was no one nearby to witness anything. He snatched the money and put it in his inside coat pocket.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Got to go. There’s somewhere I have to be.’

  ‘How many?’ she asked.

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘How many more of the women,’ she demanded, ‘have you blackmailed like this?’

  He snorted. ‘I told you, love. All of them.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  The theory that women from the UK might have been sent back to impoverished areas in some form of reverse white-slavery deal made no sense to Helen. Why would you go to all of the trouble of doing that if you were a criminal looking to make money? You wouldn’t need to kidnap British women and send them east when there were plenty of girls already in the area who could serve the same purpose. The reward wouldn’t be enough in a weaker local economy to go to all the risk and inconvenience. She just couldn’t see it.

  So, if the women weren’t at that scrapyard, they had to be somewhere else, but where? Helen’s thoughts went back to the abandoned farmhouse she had visited with Tom and the name and address on the electoral roll. It was the wrong name, or so they had thought when they went out there, but what if the document wasn’t wrong? What if the farmhouse had been owned by Keogh, too? As soon as that thought struck her, it made her want to go back there and take a closer look at the building to see what was behind it. The scrapyard backed on to the same land as the farmhouse and Keogh was a loose cannon who had stormed out of his family home when he was still a young man. He might be entirely harmless, but perhaps he wasn’t. The daughter he left behind hadn’t struck Helen as normal either, but of course that didn’t mean her father had been capable of abducting women all those years ago. The link with the present was trickier, however, and that’s when Helen’s intuition immediately fell down. If he was dead and had left only a daughter to run his business, how could she have any involvement in this? That was when she saw it.

  If he was dead.

  What was it Tom had said? ‘Maybe she thought we wouldn’t believe her unless we saw it with our own eyes.’ And how did she prove his death? With a scrap of paper from a newspaper column that anyone could have placed. All Helen and Tom had seen was a death notice. That alone did not
constitute proof.

  Helen still had a couple of hours before her train back home. Why not? she thought.

  ‘Detective Sergeant O’Brien,’ Bradshaw greeted the older man as he entered the conference room at Police HQ. ‘It’s been a while since we’ve seen you in here.’

  ‘I was suspended, as well you know, on full pay, with nothing proven and without a stain on my character.’

  ‘That why you are taking early retirement today? To avoid any awkward questions?’

  ‘When people throw enough shit, some of it is bound to stick. Mostly, they are on my side’ ‒ he jerked his thumb to indicate the roomful of detectives working in the office outside ‒ ‘but there’s always some who like to cast aspersions.’ He narrowed his eyes at Bradshaw as he said this, to make it clear he felt the younger man was one of them. ‘I’ve had enough. What you doing here anyway, Sherlock, and where’s the woman from Personnel?’

  ‘They call it Human Resources these days,’ Bradshaw told him, ‘and I’m here to formalize things.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ He shot Bradshaw a look of disgust. ‘I’d have thought Kane might be here at least, or is he too bloody busy to see off a man who is heading for well-earned retirement?’

  ‘It’s a very timely retirement,’ observed Bradshaw, ‘with those misconduct charges hanging over you.’

  O’Brien smiled. ‘Yeah, well, they can’t touch me now. I’ve done my years, pretty much, and I’ve got a full pension, as near as damn-it, so as far as they are concerned, I’m Teflon. Nothing will stick.’ And he gave Bradshaw a humourless grin.

  ‘But what will you do?’ asked Bradshaw. ‘How will you live? A pension is all very well, but is it really enough, and how will you fill those hours?’

  DS O’Brien looked incredibly smug. ‘Oh, don’t you worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’ll be just fine. I’ve got a few plans and I know how to make a bob or two.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ said Bradshaw amiably, then his tone changed. ‘Blackmailing hookers, presumably.’