by Deborah Lucy
* * *
Megon Wallace had been left in a locked room in an empty flat in the dark. She was naked and cold, lying on a dirty mattress. There was no bulb in the light fitting that hung from the ceiling above her and the windows were boarded up. She knew that she was in something way too deep and she had no choice but to deal with it. She didn’t know how, but she had to get herself out.
More than anything, she wanted to be back at home, in her shared bedroom with her sisters and their dog, with her mum and dad. This was so far away from that comfort and she didn’t know if she’d ever see them again. The thought of that made her feel so sad she wanted to cry.
Despite everything that had happened to her in the last few days, it was that thought that really got to her. They told her she had a debt to pay and that they intended to collect every single penny of it, and some. This was what happened to girls like her who were careless, they said. It would teach her a lesson she would never forget.
She had nothing left, nothing, not even her dignity. They had taken her clothes to stop her running away. She had no phone, no possessions of any kind; they had stripped her of everything – even the thin silver ring she wore on her thumb.
She had nothing to put round her to keep her warm against a draught that came in under the door. The only other thing in the room was a galvanised bucket for her to go to the toilet and be sick in. She was sick quite a few times a day but she didn’t bring much up. She’d been left to wait, wait for the footsteps. She both welcomed and dreaded the footsteps. The footsteps would bring food for which she was so grateful, even though it was always so very little and never warm. Drink was equally restricted because they didn’t want her having to go to the toilet too often. But mostly the footsteps meant that men were being brought to her.
Megon couldn’t bear to think about how she’d got here. She had run with her friend – they’d had to because they’d lost the drugs and the money. The last she’d seen of her friend was when they caught up with them both. Megon was going to go home but they found them and split them up. It got really serious then.
Up to that point she’d been doing as she was told, ferrying drugs and money from London into the country areas, staying in trap houses, selling users the drugs and taking the money. Once she sold her stash she took the money back to London and repeated the exercise. She’d earned £200 for it. It made her feel useful, independent; she could do a lot with £200.
This was her third journey and she’d met a friend doing the same thing. They’d met in the trap house and quickly became mates. Then it had gone wrong; the money and drugs had been stolen from them. She’d been warned what would happen if she lost either the drugs or the money. She’d have to pay it back. There was a logic to it. It stopped anyone helping themselves, she could see that. They brought her here and it was then that she realised what they meant by paying her debt. She had no idea they would make her do this.
It was a flat above a small betting shop. She could hear the muffled sounds of a television and electronic slot machines with their endless mad circus-like music ringing out. No one could hear her against that din. She was left cold and hungry, really hungry. Then she would hear footsteps, big heavy footsteps against the bare wooden floorboards, coming up the stairs and along a short landing. One set of footsteps meant she could anticipate food, two sets meant fear. She knew there were thirteen steps up the stairs as she’d counted them. Then they would unlock the door. There was light outside as it shone through when they opened it.
They would let a man in. As soon as the man was inside, they left a small lamp in the corner that illuminated the whole room in a soft sort of light. Then they locked the door. More often than not, the men spoke in a foreign language; she had no idea what was being said between them or what they said to her. At first she had visions of running at them, pushing past them and escaping down the stairs. But they were big and threatening and they told her she was doing it to pay off her debt, to keep herself alive. If she didn’t do it, she was dead. Her choice.
When it became clear to her what this meant, she’d fought back, but that got her slapped and punched into the bargain. A big fat man had held her face in his hand and squeezed so tightly she thought her jaw would break. So she decided to just lie there, let them do what they wanted. Let them thump their bodies into hers. She did what they told her to do, got it done, got them out.
When they finished, another would come in. The same. Then another, the same. Another. One after the other they came: old, young, dirty, fat, thin, stinking, leering, vile, foreign, black, white, African, Asian, English. They came in, used her and left. She knew when the last one had gone because they took the lamp away. It was later that they brought food. Always cold food.
This was day four but it felt like a month. She’d already lost count of how many men had come into the room – twenty, thirty, more. It was like a conveyer belt. She was so scared of these people she dare not even scream. Each time they left her in the room with a man, she was so fearful, wondering if she’d be left alive. She just wanted to be herself again. Reclaim her body, her soul. But she couldn’t see a way of getting out.
Because most of the men who came in couldn’t speak English, she couldn’t even appeal to them, appeal to any shred of decency they might have. What was wrong with them? Couldn’t they see her, didn’t they care that she was so young, trapped, filthy, dirty, unwilling, being made to do the things they wanted? But it was precisely her youth and her naked prettiness that they wanted.
So she lay there, shivering with cold, the only warmth coming from her own imprint in the dirty mattress. She shifted and laid her cold back on the warm patch. That little bit of warmth was her only comfort. But she took it and took comfort from the fact that she had made it. She wanted her mum and dad. She wanted home. She waited to hear the steps on the stairs.
* * *
Temple went back to the office. He had his finger still wrapped in his tie and as he entered, two of his colleagues looked up from their laptops.
‘Fuck, someone’s tried to cut his throat.’ DS Sam Mendoza immediately saw blood around the neck of Temple’s white shirt. ‘What have you done?’
‘Christ, either that or he’s trying out his Dracula look.’ Inspector Bruce Jackson started to laugh. ‘You’re too early for Halloween. It’s not for a few more days yet.’
Temple held up his hand. ‘I was questioning Gary Lewis when he drew some sort of bloody machete out of nowhere. Nearly took my fucking finger off.’
‘You’ve lost your touch; been a while since you’ve been outside. You’d better stay indoors in future.’ They both laughed out loud at his discomfort.
Temple explained why he’d been out all day and that he was on the hunt for Gary Lewis. It was the end of his day shift, so Mendoza, who was on 2–10, said he would keep an eye on command and control logs and custody to see if anyone brought Lewis in during the evening. Temple said nothing to his colleagues about his meeting with DCC Buller. He couldn’t trust himself not to rant and them not to report it back. Looking at his watch, he made for home.
‘Give our love to Ana,’ Jackson shouted after Temple as he left. Without turning round, Temple held up his uninjured middle finger and carried on walking.
Chapter 10
Temple parked up on High Street, Avebury, in the only available space near St James’s churchyard. Fine rain had started to come down, making the cold air cling to him. He walked through the lychgate of the churchyard. He could have gone the long way round using the road but this was the quickest route in the rain. Looking to his left, he saw lights shining from the small windows of a thatched cottage behind a low brick wall. It was a cosy and inviting sight, which belied the cramped and crooked layout of a house built over 200 years ago, not designed for modern living.
He walked through the wooden door into the welcome smell of food cooking in the oven. He stepped onto a narrow, tiled hallway with a stairway opposite. To the left was the kitchen and to the right
a living room. He could hear the television and the familiar sound of a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD. He quietly put his head around the living room door.
The small room was made smaller by the largeness of the television balanced on a table in the corner. He saw his three-year-old son dressed in pyjamas, sitting on the floor in front of the television with his back to him, transfixed by the moving figures. Temple ducked back out of the doorway, careful not to disturb him, conscious of the blood on the neck of his shirt.
He went into the kitchen, over to the sink. Coming in behind him from the utility area, a young woman carried dried washing in a basket. She had smiling eyes and her black hair was held back with a faded red ribbon at the nape of her neck.
‘I thought I heard you,’ she said quietly, smiling at Temple.
‘Had a good day, Ana? How’s he been?’ Temple looked over his shoulder, and as he spoke he started to unwind the tie from around his finger.
‘He’s been fine. He went to nursery this morning. He ate his lunch and then went for a nap for an hour. When he woke, we went out for a walk to the pond at the manor and fed the birds.’ She smiled as she spoke and stood folding clothing. Temple listened, now used to the lyrical tone of the au pair’s soft Portuguese accent. There was a lovely softness about her face that followed in her personality.
‘Any progress?’
‘Not today. I was hoping that feeding the ducks might have helped. I wanted him to see you before he went to bed.’ She put her basket down and went into the living room to check on Ben. He was still engrossed in his programme and she didn’t disturb him.
On the face of it, the little boy had seemed to accept and adapt well to his new environment. The tragic loss of his mother and upheaval of losing all that was familiar to him had seen him understandably withdrawn to begin with. But in the four months since he’d moved here, Temple had not once heard the boy laugh. Despite any antics he or Ana tried, they couldn’t get the little lad to chuckle. They had hoped that putting him in the company of other little people at nursery might help.
Ana returned to the kitchen to see Temple looking at his bloodied hand. The tightness of the binding had just about stopped the flow of blood, but it was a deep gash. He ran it under cold water.
‘What have you done?’ she asked, concerned, looking at the blood-soaked tie in the sink and examining him for the first time since he’d come in.
‘I didn’t want Ben to see this. I couldn’t go in to him with my shirt and hand covered in blood. Could you look in the box for me and see if there’s a bandage or something?’
Ana went straight to a green first-aid box and gathered the necessary cotton pad and bandage.
‘You should get it looked at, it does not look good . . . What happened?’ She dried and tended to the wound.
‘A man pushed a knife in my direction and I didn’t move fast enough.’ He held a thick cotton pad in place while Ana wound the bandage round, tying it neatly and tightly at the bottom when she’d finished.
‘Thanks, that’s better. I’ll change quickly and put Ben up to bed. I’ll read him his story.’
Having quickly pulled on a jumper, Temple went into the living room and gently tousled the boy’s hair. Ben looked up immediately at his touch but was solemn. Temple scooped him up and sat on a sofa where they chatted, the boy noticing Temple’s bandaged finger. Ben was clearly tired after a long day and it wasn’t long before Temple carried him up to bed and sat and read him a story. He didn’t get to the bottom of the page before the boy was sound asleep. Temple sat awhile in the silence and stared at him. He looked utterly angelic.
He had dark hair like Temple, with dark, feathery eyelashes. His chubby little hands lay on top of the duvet cover. He sat and listened to him breathing perfectly soundly. Temple gently got up from the bed, kissed the sleeping boy’s head and turned off the light. Leaving the bedroom door open, he went downstairs to the kitchen.
Ana had laid the table and put out a salad. She produced a lasagne from the oven. Temple sat down as she put their plates in front of them.
‘There! I hope you like it.’
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said, feeling as though he should say it but not really wanting to discourage her. The smell was delicious.
‘Yes I do. You go out to work, so I cook and clean and look after Ben. It’s a good life, I like it,’ she said, smiling.
‘This is great,’ he said through a mouthful of hot lasagne. He was pleased he’d found Ana; she was a godsend. And Ben seemed to respond well to her.
‘Jane visited today. She wanted to make sure we were settling in OK. It’s all fine here, yes?’
‘I suppose we’ve just about squeezed in.’ He already hated it here. It had been a mistake to move to Avebury. The cottage was tiny, but it had been available at short notice. As an added incentive, his landlady Jane had knocked £50 off the monthly rent, making it a financial no-brainer. Jane had a soft spot for him and had helped Temple when his wife Leigh had thrown him out by renting another of her houses to him. When that was fire-damaged, she had Temple stay at her house temporarily.
If it hadn’t been for Ben, she would have had Temple move in with her permanently, but she wasn’t mother material and having a three-year-old around the house wasn’t her idea of fun. Still, she hadn’t wanted to lose contact with him, and taking a slight hit on the rent was one way of ensuring that.
However, as cheap as it was, Temple was beginning to wish he’d taken more time before accepting the tenancy. God knows he’d needed to save money, and what Jane had offered was a help. His wife Leigh had made it quite clear she was expecting a very healthy divorce settlement and his finances were already strained to breaking point with the bills of two households. He tried not to think of his money problems. His three credit cards were nearly maxed, which would mean he would need another soon.
But in hindsight, no matter how cheap, he should have looked for somewhere else to live. The house was almost part of the churchyard so had very little privacy and an open fire wasn’t ideal with a three-year-old. He also had to watch that he didn’t bang his head on a beam in the tiny bathroom.
But it wasn’t for these reasons he wished he’d not taken the house. It was Avebury itself. He knew now that he didn’t want to be here. If it wasn’t for the fact he’d disturb Ben, he’d move in a flash. They both carried on eating and talking and Temple said nothing more about the cottage.
‘I’ll probably have to work late tomorrow evening, will that be OK?’ Temple asked.
‘Sure, it’s fine. I’m going to the pub tonight, so it’s good.’
‘You can bring your boyfriend here you know, this is your home too.’
‘No, the pub is fine, I like to meet him there,’ she smiled. She was grateful for her job. She felt lucky working for Temple and she already loved little Ben. They had all been together for four months now and had established a routine. But she needed to get out of the house and make a life outside too.
As they ate, Ana gave Temple a rundown of the day’s events, telling him of all the necessary details to enable him to imagine his small son’s day. It was his third week at nursery school and he had cried every day when Ana left him. On his return today, after the half-term break had disturbed their routine, there had been the same tears but thankfully with less intensity than before. They discussed Ben and the gradual introduction to nursery. They decided to continue until the end of next week to see if the situation improved. With their meal done, Ana took herself to the pub to meet her boyfriend.
‘Take your key; I’ll be in bed before the pub shuts.’ Temple was tired. It felt good to get out of the office today, away from the computer screen and back to some proper work, even if it had cost him an injury. Sitting in front of the fire alone, he went back over the incident. Gary Lewis was dangerous and was lying about China’s whereabouts. Temple felt sure Lewis knew where she was.
Chapter 11
He had to try a different town. He never took two fro
m the same town; that would be too risky. So he tried somewhere else. He drove to Chippenham. Under the cover of the night sky, he parked up in an unlit spot down near the river. Once he was out of the car, he could hear the fast flow of the Avon and feel its icy temperature as the wind blew along with the flow. The rain had stopped but the dampness in the air made it seem much colder than it was.
Pulling up his coat collar against the cold and pushing his hands deep into his pockets, Brian walked up High Street looking at the shop fronts and the recessed doorways. There were a few people walking about, the pub-goers, those walking home from working late. As he walked slowly up the gradual incline, he couldn’t isolate a lone sleeper; they seemed to be huddled together in twos and threes.
It was particularly cold; the rain had left everything wet and he thought, given these conditions, someone would be grateful for the offer of booze and a warm bed for the night. If he could find someone on their own, his journey wouldn’t have been wasted.
He continued on to the top and walked around the back streets. He went to where he knew there were some smaller recesses. It was still no good; there was no one on their own in an isolated spot. He decided to cut his losses, go to a different location, so he walked back to his car.
He drove across to Trowbridge but unknowingly chose the wrong night there. A soup kitchen was in operation at St Mary’s Church. The local homeless charity had gone out and rounded up all the homeless they could find to get them out of the cold and take a hot meal. His evening had been wasted after all. He had run out of time tonight. He’d have to come out again. Tomorrow.
* * *
Temple woke and lay alone in the dark, staring up at the ceiling. His fingers went to the base of his neck, trying to manipulate it and stop it from tightening as he listened to the strange sounds the old building made in the dead of night. Just for a moment, he lay concentrating on the little creaking noises and how the building reacted to the wind and rain so that he could learn how he might distinguish the various natural sounds from those of an intruder.
