Purgatory Is a Place Too

by Dominique Kyle

  Pete glanced at me. I looked away.

  “No-one else seems to care what is happening to these girls, so it’ll have to me,” I say.

  And then, “I’m utterly shocked. They’re starting them as young as thirteen. Running them like a prostitution ring. Providing them to any male who wants them in return for what? Money, political favours? I don’t know what yet. One girl told me she was asked to provide sexual favours for the leader of the Council.”

  Pete stared at me. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” I confirmed, biting my lip. “And a lot of important others besides…” I wished I hadn’t opened my big mouth to Mohammed. What if he took the next plane to Pakistan and never got brought to justice? It would be my fault.

  Entwistle told me to stay away from work until after the broadcast. Nick told me to not leave the flat. Jo rang everyone she knew to tell them to watch tonight. I rang Quinn to thank him for ringing the police and to tell him to watch the programme. And then with a sinking heart, I rang the Holts’ home phone as it was the only number I knew. Thérèse answered.

  “Is Heather there please?” I asked.

  Heather protested but I said, “Heather you have to tell him because he’s going to find out very shortly. You have to tell him before nine pm tonight or he’ll never trust you again.”

  She burst into tears.

  “Just say sorry to him, Heather,” I advised. “And tell him you’ve learned your lesson and you’ve realised he’s right. It doesn’t matter whether you really mean it or not, but it’s the thing to do right now to diffuse the situation.”

  “He’ll make me go down the police station and report it,” she sniffled miserably.

  “Well bite the bullet and do it,” I advised. “Because your evidence could save other girls going through the same thing, and that’s worth it isn’t it?”

  Finally I remembered to ring Cody’s Dad.

  “Yes I’ve already seen the trailers,” he said heavily.

  “It was because of Jessica,” I said. “Because no-one was doing anything about what was happening to her. Cody asked me to help her, and this is what I ended up having to do…”

  Jo and Zanna came round to Pete’s so we could all watch it together.

  “I was meant to get to see it first to veto stuff,” I said. “But because of bringing it forward we didn’t have time, so I’ve no idea how embarrassing it’s going to be.”

  But even I had to admit it was masterly. They spent the first five minutes or so building up the story. Mainly using my blog recordings as they documented my increasing frustration as I tried to help the young woman who had told me this distressing story. The lack of interest from the local paper, the police, the Social Services, the outright disbelief. And then how I set about trying to investigate it. From then on in they used my own, and then Sahmir’s recordings to build up a picture about how the gangs worked and how they groomed and then controlled the girls. They managed to draw single sentence nuggets from virtually every encounter I’d filmed, Stacey and her Leader of the Council claim, my first encounter with Mohammed and his ‘Kaz and his filthy gang bangs’ remark, the teacher running up, the way they treated her. Mohammed asking me how old I was and if I’d ever had sex. The girl’s claims about the taxi firm and the children’s home and the requests to service Raza’s friends and so on.

  The sex encounters in the flats they dealt with cleverly. In each case they showed the face of the man walking in, then explained why they couldn’t show the act itself but explained what took place and the age of the girls involved. They also showed the faces of all the men at that party.

  “I wouldn’t want to be those men now,” Pete grimaced.

  They showed the threats when I tried to say no to the abuse, showed the moment when Mohammed marked me with the lit cigarette, (Jo jumped as though it had just happened to her) and showed a large chunk of what happened in Glasgow, including me cutting myself in the toilet to bleed onto Helen’s underwear, (both Jo and Pete covered their eyes as they had to watch me stabbing at myself), the claims of the girls about what they were brought up here for, and the dramatic rescue with Rob and Quinn bursting through the door.

  “All respect due to Rob,” Jo said admiringly. “I guess I’ll have to be a bit nicer about the guy from now on, hadn’t I?”

  Sahmir’s rape footage was so distressing, they couldn’t even show the lead up to it. To protect the identity of the girls they just had the sound track of the start of things, and then gave a graphic description of what took place.

  Other footage from Sahmir was mostly proving political links, which were shocking enough in their own right. And the journalism team had dug deep to put forward some compelling financial evidence and proofs of political corruption and fiddled deals at Council level.

  They finished up by saying that a lot of the men shown in this programme had been arrested within the last twenty four hours as a result of the evidence presented to the police by the team, but that Mohammed Noorzai was still at large.

  There was a long silence in the room as the credits rolled.

  “Well,” Zanna said at last. “Definitely a lot more to you than meets the eye.”

  “I can see why you didn’t tell us what you were up to,” Jo admitted.

  “I’m glad I didn’t know,” Pete agreed.

  “I’m just so sorry that you’re all getting affected now,” I said apologetically. “I had no idea what all this would turn into…”

  And then my phone began to ring.

  It rang all the following day as well. After seeing the programme, Entwistle had warned me not to come in for the rest of the week, and Jo and Pete had made me promise not to leave the flat, so all I had to do all day was field the calls.

  First one of the day was the journalist from the local Herald.

  “I didn’t realise who you were,” he excused himself. Like that was an excuse for ignoring systematic sexual abuse.

  “Well, I know who you are, and I have no interest in speaking to you.” I snapped.

  “Don’t be like that,” he said.

  “Try saving your precious local community and your ethnic readership now,” I snarled.

  “Don’t be like that,” he said.

  “I’ve said all I want to say via that programme,” I told him roughly.

  “Are you sure?” He said.

  I drew in an angry breath and stopped to think about it. “Ok,” I said at last. “This is how I think you ought to handle it…” I frowned. “Firstly, every time you report on anything to do with it, you start out by emphasising it’s a few bad apples, the local Muslim population are as appalled as everyone else, and are glad that this awful criminal group have been exposed and rooted out of their midst. And if nothing else,” I said cynically, “it will serve to shame anyone who isn’t appalled by it.”

  “Yep,” he agreed. “Definitely the way to go…”

  “Try to find some local Muslim academic who will write you an article about how this isn’t really how Islam means you to treat women and who can write something on the positive things that the Qu’ran says about women – there must be some surely?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “And without ever naming him, make out that the local young Muslim man who went undercover to expose the gang is a complete hero and should be lauded and applauded, and that will give the lead to any of his own community who are treating him as a traitor, to change their attitude. If you do nothing else,” I said passionately, “this is the thing I would most like you to do!”

  “Fine, can I quote you on anything?” He said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to get involved. Quote lines from the programme, that’s enough.”

  John Holt rang.

  “When were you going to tell me about my daughter?”

  “I told her to tell you herself,” I said. “I hope she did?”

  “Finally, about twenty minutes before the programme,” he said crossly.

  “I
told her she’d have to give a statement,” I said.

  “I’ve already taken her down and she’s done it,” John confirmed, his tone grim.

  There was a lengthening silence.

  “I don’t know what to say,” John broke it at last.

  People always say that when they do really know what they want to say but feel awkward about coming out with it.

  “Thanks for going to such lengths to keep her safe,” he said abruptly.

  “It was lucky I was there,” I said. “She’d got herself into a right pickle and it wouldn’t have ended well at all. But I’m sure she’s learned her lesson…”

  He didn’t seem to trust himself to speak in answer to that.

  “Don’t be too hard on her John,” I urged. “She needs to trust that she can come to you with her concerns. No doubt you’ve done the angry bit, now be all kind and loving and supportive and she’ll love you forever for it. You don’t have to worry about her ever getting into trouble again, she’s scared herself silly.”

  “I was wrong about you,” he said roughly. “I thought you’d end up in a secure unit.”

  I thought about the carefully considered decision that I’d taken this week that if Mohammed tried to kill or maim me, I would definitely kill him first, and figured that Holty wasn’t that far off the mark.

  Chetsi rang.

  “What did you think?” I asked.

  “I’m never inclined to trust the media. I was prepared for them to completely shaft us. But I have to admit it was superb. They are clearly proper professional journalists, genuinely interested in exposing the abuse.”

  “They’re still working on it,” I told her. “They’re going to do a follow up programme to present even more evidence that they’re turning up on the corruption side of it.”

  “Even better,” Chetsi said.

  “How’s your training material going on how to spot grooming?” I asked politely.

  “Excellent,” she confirmed. “You’ve got me endless brilliant material. I’ve already been asked to speak at a regional Psychiatry conference…”

  “Well you were at the centre of it with all your patients,” I pointed out. “So hopefully they’ll be willing to listen to you.”

  “We need to have a final debrief, the four of us, don’t we?” Chetsi suggested.

  “Maybe,” I said reluctantly. “But our main priority needs to be supporting Sahmir. I’ve had just had Nasim on the phone, absolutely distraught. She’s so shocked and upset I didn’t know what to say to her. You know how devout she is - she doesn’t want to believe any of it! Do you think you could go along with Sahmir to meet with Nasim and Raj? He’ll need support even just to talk to his sister without getting angry with her…”

  Jo came in to see us on her way home from work.

  “Entwistle was right to keep you away,” she told me. “It’s all the customers can talk about! And people keep calling in with completely spurious ‘faults’ in their car, obviously just to ask about it.”

  I shuddered. “I’m so glad I’m not there!”

  “I took my poor car into work today and parked it at the back,” she said, looking severely at me. “The men tut tutted, so I said it was your fault and you’d promised to fix it, so Tony nobly offered to help you. And it suddenly occurred to Mr. Beaky Bolton, our resident meerkat, to ask how it happened. And once they heard, instead of sucking their teeth and tut tutting a bit more, the men were so made up with you for your revenge on Mohammed, that now they’ve all promised to muck in and they were beaming the rest of the day. Even Mr. So-Square-he’s practically Cubed Dewhurst, exclaimed something like ‘when are the men in this town going to realise they can’t mess with our McGinty?’ Honestly Eve, you know how to get people on your side don’t you?” Then she looked fiercely at Pete. “And don’t you dare say a word about it to Dad or he’ll remove her from the insurance! That’s why I’m hiding my car at work…”

  I was banned from going up to the barn to work, so Jo had to get my shale car ready for the weekend. She said that her Dad had installed some seriously big locks at the barn and an alarm.

  “Haven’t they caught up with that monster yet?” She asked impatiently.

  I divined she was talking about Mohammed and shook my head.

  She looked at Pete. “I asked Dad if he was coming along to the World of Shale final. I thought he definitely would, but he just shook his head. You’re coming though aren’t you?”

  “Course I am,” Pete said positively.

  We went down in the Beast. Just the one car. I couldn’t persuade Pete to bring his shale car just for the fun of it. Stoke was just to keep Horrocks off my back so I tried to gain some points without knackering the car. There was a bit of a ripple around the place as I passed, but I kept out of conversation with everyone and retreated into the Beast between races.

  “You don’t have to hide away,” Jo said. “You’re quite safe here.”

  “Just don’t want to talk about it to anyone,” I said.

  Mildenhall was the main event. I tried not to be nervous, but I really wanted this title. This was mine.

  I wandered over to say ‘hi’ to Horrocks. Harry bounced over. “Haweee Zebra Zoo Howoxth!” He greeted me. Horrocks pulled a see what you’ve done face at me.

  “Oh dear,” I said penitently. I bent over Harry hands on my knees. “HaRRRy HoRRRockSS is veRRRy HoRRRible,” I said. Then I glanced at his father and realised that might not be the best either. “HaRRRy HoRRRockSS is veRRRy HaPPPy!” I corrected.

  He looked ecstatic. “Haweee Zebra Zoo Howoxth ith veweee Howeeebull!”

  I looked at Horrocks. “Shall I just walk away?” I offered.

  “Might be best,” he agreed with admirable self-control.

  Horrocks was second, Patterson third. Jo took the cup off me and examined it carefully. “My God, something he’s never actually won! This is actually your very own title Eve…bet you’d have won that Silver roof fair and square if he’d turned up. He obviously couldn’t be bothered with shale.”

  Pete put an arm around me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Just the Silver to go now Eve and you’ll have swiped just about everything going…”

  On the way home I received a text from Nick to say that Mohammed had been picked up at Birmingham airport.

  “Thank God for that!” Jo exclaimed.

  I admit, I did feel a sudden weight fall off me.

  “Ok,” said Jo enthusiastically. “You’re safe to come back to the flat now! And back to work tomorrow…”

  “I’ll move back tomorrow after work,” I said. “I’m too knackered now.”

  Jo had never enquired as to exactly where I was sleeping at Pete’s, like she was pretending she didn’t know that he only had one bed. It suddenly occurred to me that her insistence I stay with Pete for so long may be part of her three year long extended campaign to get us back together.

  But as I got into the far side of Pete’s bed and lay curled up with my back to him, I thought, that’s it then. I’ve been here for two weeks now, and he’s never even tried to lay a finger on me. I’d wondered if on this last night..? But he didn’t.

  Birmingham was absolutely buzzing. The atmosphere was electric. End of season high with a packed Gala schedule full of lots of special races, with F2s, F1’s and V8 Hot Stox all on the same programme. The pits were heaving and every race was booked full to capacity. I wasn’t that bothered about winning or not, apart from the unique ‘winner takes all’ Wild Card race with a thousand pound chunk of prize money up for grabs. I could do with that money.

  We’d sacrificed ourselves to bringing Cody, but by the time we’d decided, all the races were fully booked, so she wasn’t driving. Anyway, best she finished on a high note with her three wins. She almost immediately took herself off with Wentworth, and was soon holding court with quite a number of the young male drivers around her. They must have had to sit up and take notice when she started winning everything.

  “Your little duckling�
��s suddenly turned into a swan,” a voice commented from behind me. I turned swiftly. It was Rob. “How’d you manage that conjuring trick?”

  I laughed. “We finally realised that sticks on their own don’t work, neither do carrots, she needs someone dangling something enticing in front while someone beats her simultaneously from behind, and then finally I told her that it was ok to trash the car…”

  He winced. “Sounds expensive!”

  “That’s why we swopped over to Zetecs,” I agreed. I smiled at him. “How are you?”

  “Good,” he agreed. “Brought Quinn along. Thought what with that programme just been on an’ all, the guys might want to catch up with him.”

  “After your heroic Batman and Robin guest appearance in it, you mean?” I teased him.

  He smiled slightly in acknowledgement.

  “Ah, but which of you was Batman?” I needled.

  His eyes lidded. “On another note,” he said. “Now that you’ve finally won your spurs, I figured you wouldn’t look out of place under another Gold roof…”

  I frowned. I had no idea what he was going on about.

  He dangled a set of keys in front of me. “I’ve put you down to borrow my car…”

  I stared at him. Every year at Birmingham Gala night the F1 drivers were allowed to loan their cars out to novices and well known drivers from other formats to drive alongside the professionals. The F1 season was over apart from the F1 Under Twenty-Five’s Championship on tonight, otherwise known as the Crashfest as the competition was so fierce. So this meant that none of their races tonight counted towards season points and it was traditionally the time when they could let their hair down, have a bit of fun, and recruit new drivers to the format by allowing them to have a go. My heart started to thump.

  “Now I’m utterly terrified!” I said in hollow tones.

  He smiled at me. “No you’re not.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” I said. “I have so little driving experience outside of the Stocks, that I’ve never even got a sniff of driving a vehicle with a V8 engine, or any sort of powerful engine at all.”