by Sam Blake
‘Apparently, yes, she was getting into a vehicle with someone Jacob described as an army man – Rebecca, his mum, thought that meant someone in combats – between three and three thirty Sunday afternoon.’
‘So presumably she was feeling OK then? What did our friend Billy have to say about that?’
Cathy shrugged, ‘I rang him late last night as he was closing up – we need to get a proper statement from him – but he said Sarah Jane had a half-hour break at that time and usually went out for a sandwich.’
‘And she started feeling ill when she got back?’
‘Apparently so. The boys are going over the restaurant CCTV this morning and the ones we’ve pulled from the other premises on South William Street to see if we can find the car. Shouldn’t take long. She’s on the internal restaurant tapes up to three o’clock all right, then she’s a bit of a blur on one of the cameras just before she left the building. Billy said she started feeling ill when she got back, and she was in parts of the building with no cameras afterwards – the linen room and his office.’
‘So this army character might be able to shed some light on what made her ill? We need to find him.’
*
Irina let the tepid water of the shower play over her face. She knew she should get out, but her body ached. Her soul ached. And for these few seconds every morning when she shut her eyes, it was like she was back home again, like her alarm clock had just gone off and the house was waking up and she was getting ready for college. In the kitchen her mum would have the radio on, coffee on the stove and toast on the grill, the smell working its way around the tiny apartment, summoning her brother from his bed, rubbing his chest as he headed, yawning, down the hall, his hair sticking up in every direction.
But when she was in the shower at home, Irina had been bright and breezy, looking forward to her lectures, to seeing Meti. Now she was exhausted from working all night. Work that required her to strip for and have sex with men she didn’t know, men who repulsed her, whose demands were warped and way beyond anything she had ever imagined possible.
The water ran cold and Irina jumped back against the shower curtain, a cry slipping out. There was never enough hot water for all of them. Dog Face, the woman who had brought them here, said they spent too long in the shower, that was the problem, that they had to be quicker if they all wanted it hot. Irina pulled the cold ragged cloth of the shower curtain away from her legs and reached for her towel, rubbing it hard over her skin, trying to shift the smell, the dirt. Would she ever feel clean? The shower would never be long enough or hot enough to shift the memory of fifteen men every night.
Slipping her feet, blistered from her stilettos, into a pair of cheap plastic flip-flops, Irina wrapped the towel around herself. It wasn’t long enough, of course, barely covered her backside. But for these few minutes at least, she was alone. The other girls – eight of them now the Slovakian one had gone – had gone up ahead of her to their tiny separate bedrooms, would be crashing out on the narrow single beds, getting a few hours sleep before they had to get up again and get their make-up on, ready for the early-morning punters, the ones who came before work.
Crossing the wet tiled floor, covered with strands of hair from the others, Irina bobbed down to look in the mirror above the single washbasin. It was flecked with toothpaste, smeared where someone had tried to rub it clean. But she could just see her face, bare now of the heavy make-up they all wore, her blonde hair hanging damp over her shoulders. She pulled her hair away from her face, tugging at the roots, testing to see if she could still feel it, to see if she was still human. She could.
The pain set her teeth on edge.
She was going to get out, was going to get home, was going to see Meti’s face again, feel his soft breath on her face, feel him wrap her in his love like a feather duvet. She didn’t have any choice, she was going to get out or she was going to die here, in the hell hole of a five star brothel in a foreign country.
And when she did get out she was going to take all her scraps of paper with her, the registration plates, the men’s names, the names of the shops she’d been able to see out of the window of the apartments they’d been in. She’d written them all down in the dialect her family spoke at home, in what looked like poetry, in a sort of code. She shivered.
Upstairs, Irina could hear doors slamming, raised voices, bickering. Luisa, the Brazilian girl, crying. Luisa had been crying since they’d arrived, and it was getting on everyone’s nerves.
Irina ran the phone number through her head again. It was like a rhyme now. And there was no way she was going to forget it.
She wished she could trust the other girls to help her, but she’d realised very quickly that that wasn’t the way this worked. Control was about keeping them isolated, about having favourites, about playing the girls off against each other so they knew they could trust no one. Lonely and isolated, they were even more vulnerable. Irina thanked God again that her passport was Russian, that the address on it was the apartment they’d left when she was fourteen. It meant the men who held her couldn’t find her family – they threatened all the girls that their families were in danger if they didn’t comply, if they attempted to escape. As if beating them up and raping them wasn’t enough. Her only option was to get a mobile phone, a safe one. The girl knew where they were, if Irina could talk to her, explain that they had been duped, that they had thought that they were coming to work as waitresses, chamber maids, supervisors . . . Irina shook her head at her own stupidity. The girl would help, Irina was sure she would help.
She just needed to get hold of a phone. And fast. They’d already been here longer than the other places – who knew when they would be moved again?
She had tried to get a phone already. The guys at the birthday party had been drunk when they’d arrived even though it was still early, had started buying champagne, heading straight for the private rooms to get the girls to dance. The rules were that the punters could watch the floor show, could get them to dance, but couldn’t touch them.
‘They don’t touch, you understand. You take them to the private room and dance and they get a taster. Then you get them into a bedroom.’ The voice of the man with the cowboy boots filled Irina’s head again. He’d arrived in the huge living-cum-dining room at the top of the house that first day, his arms full of thongs and lace basques that looked like they came from the wardrobe department of a porn film.
He’d flung open their bedroom doors, calling everyone together. Some of the girls had been getting dressed, and had shrieked as he’d looked them up and down as they struggled to pull on their jeans. When they were all in the living room he’d explained the way things would work. ‘Here you get paid for the number of drinks they buy you, twenty-five per cent of each one. They get a two-minute dance for free with every bottle of champagne. Show them what you’ve got. They can pay for up to an hour there. You get a bonus for every one of them you get into a bedroom. This is a classy joint, five star. You give the punters a good time and we’ll look after you. When you’ve covered your board and lodging, you get the balance.’
He’d looked after them all right. They were fed and clothed and locked up, forbidden from speaking to anyone else working in the club. Most of the girls couldn’t speak English anyway, and they were all different nationalities – Brazilian, Nigerian, Bulgarian, Romanian. They could hardly speak to each other, let alone anyone else. She’d pretended she only had a few words of school girl English – between that and the bits of Russian some of the others had, it was enough to get by.
But in reality her English was a bit better than school girl, it was degree level, and from the moment she’d realised what was going on, Irina had been listening, had started to make notes whenever she could. She’d found it hard, at first, to understand the accents here, there were many different ones, but she’d been sure they were in Ireland. All the buses she’d seen as they headed for the club had been blue and yellow, with Dublin Bus written across the front an
d down the side.
She just needed to get a phone. The guys at the birthday party hadn’t been much older than her, all designer jeans and designer bum fluff. The one who had honed in on Irina, and had gestured that he wanted a private dance, hadn’t been too bad looking, stubble concealing acne scars, hair thick with gel.
And he had his phone stuck in the pocket of his jeans.
Her heart had jumped when he’d pulled it out, tossing it on the table as he sat down, leaning back in the black leatherette chair in the booth, its chrome arms reflecting the soft red lighting, the deep plush burgundy carpet, stains and cigarette burns invisible in the muted light.
Inside the room, not much bigger than a broom cupboard, Irina had started dancing. Smiling like she enjoyed it, gyrating and running her hands over her body, making him want her. When he looked like he was going to explode, she had flicked her hair back and climbed onto his lap, arching her back, stretching the sequined bra over her breasts, rocking to the bass beat that filled the club. He’d been mesmerised, his mouth hanging open like a dog, had gripped her thighs so hard she could feel the bruises forming as he tried to hold her over his cock, rock hard inside his jeans.
Twisting, she’d leaned in to him. Pushing her long hair up over her head so it covered him too, she put the other hand onto the sticky table like she was using it for support as she worked her breasts close to his face, panting like she was enjoying it. Rubbing herself up and down his jeans, she’d tried to knock the phone onto the floor. She reckoned if she could keep him focused, get him upstairs and keep him pissed, he might forget the phone, and no one would see it in here in the dark. Maybe she could kick it to the side of the room when they stood up and, pretending she’d lost an earring, come back and get it later.
Irina turned on the tap and splashed her face with cold water. It had been a stupid plan, hadn’t been a plan at all. If it had rung while another girl was using the room they would have found it straight away, and where would she have hidden it in the gear she was wearing? She’d have had to shove it inside her to get it upstairs or into the bathroom.
It had all gone wrong anyway. One of the others in the group had tried to take photos of the girl dancing for him and everyone’s phones had been taken. She hadn’t even managed to get the guy’s phone onto the floor.
And then the bastard she’d made such an effort with had said he and his mate wanted two girls. They wanted to pay extra so they could both fuck both of them and then watch the girls go down on each other. Irina felt her stomach roll. They’d seen it in a movie, he’d said, laughing, looking at her thinking she couldn’t understand his bullshit man talk.
When they’d got upstairs to the mirrored bedroom, the one with the red satin sheets, they’d said they wanted a floor show first, wanted to see the girls play. Then this boy and his mate had dragged her onto the bed, and both tried to fuck her at the same time, laughing when she cried out . . .
Irina shivered. When they’d finished she thought that was the end of it, but the first one had pushed her to her knees on the shag pile carpet, shoving her face into the other girl’s crotch, rank with their cum and lubricant and massage oil, then climbed onto her like a dog, and made her lick until both of them came. Irina gagged again, just like she had then, turned the tap on full and washed out her mouth, the freezing spray from the tap splattering her breasts.
Irina rested her hands on either side of the basin and took a shaky breath. She couldn’t take much more of this. She had to get hold of a phone.
‘Come on, get a move on. I need to lock up.’
Behind her the door opened and Irina jumped, straightening up quickly, pulling the towel down behind her, her breasts exposed as she wrestled with it. The rules were no sex with the staff, but that didn’t stop the guards taking every opportunity they could. And they were rougher than some of the customers.
*
Cathy bit down on her gum shield and hit the punch bag as hard as she could. Left jab, right jab, right hook, axe kick. The sounds reverberated around the empty gym like gun shots, the chains holding the bag rattling. It was early evening, and for once, thankfully, there was no one around. She’d hit the off button on the stereo as soon as she’d arrived, needing the quiet after an intense day at the station, going through statements and security tapes until she was seeing double.
Finally she was starting to feel more centred, having spent the last half hour training: skipping, press-ups, roll-ups, more skipping; pushing her body as far as it would go. Now she was soaked in sweat. Dancing backwards, she hit the bag again with an uppercut, grunting with the effort, with the impact of the punch.
‘Hey lass, take it easy.’
At the other end of the gym McIntyre had materialised through the double doors. She’d known he was around, had seen movement in his office out of the corner of her eye. She’d been sure he was watching her through the etched glass, but she’d needed some time on her own, knew he’d understand. Normally if he wasn’t already in the gym, she’d stick her head around the office door as soon as she arrived. But not today. Today she needed to get her head clear.
From the doorway, McIntyre called out, ‘So what’s the story? Anything new?’
Cathy couldn’t look at him, danced back instead and threw a roundhouse kick at the bag, the sound of the thud echoing off the raw brick walls, the chain holding the bag rattling again.
‘Nothing after she got out of the cab. The driver said he dropped her home but didn’t see her go inside. Slug, her housemate, is a total waster, has no idea whether she came in or not. Or when someone trashed her room, for that matter.’
Cathy let out a sharp breath, bit down on the gum shield again and tensed for another punch.
The next moment McIntyre was holding the bag. It was his military training, she knew, but it never ceased to amaze her how a man of his age could move so swiftly and silently across the gym. From his tattoos anyone could see he’d been in the Paras, but she’d heard that he’d been an instructor at the end of his career, training special forces. He was like a bloody shadow, invariably appearing when she was doing something she shouldn’t be, like walloping that little prat before training on Monday. Jesus, Monday felt like a lifetime ago.
‘Take it slow, if you get too tense you’ll do yourself an injury. Try and relax.’
‘Relax?’ She almost spat it out.
He ignored her. ‘Lift that right a bit, keep your elbow up.’ She rammed her fist into the bag, ‘That’s better, that’s better. Now fill me in.’
Cathy danced back, her gloves tight in under her chin, then went in with a left jab, and another. ‘The bit that’s really worrying me is this story she was working on, the one she’d had a row with her dad about.’
‘The one about the lads and the horses?’
Cathy shrugged, ‘Maybe. If that was it. Did you hear anything yet?’
She threw a glance at McIntyre. His face was thoughtful as he slowly shook his head. He would have called the minute he’d heard anything, Cathy knew.
‘You’re so alike, you two. Sarah Jane’s just as headstrong and driven as you, and she’s a fighter, she’s hung on in every match to the bitter end. Telling her not to do something is – well . . . Her dad said it was dangerous, did he?’
‘Yep.’ Cathy planted a left in the bag, ‘According to her mum, but you know what her mum’s like. It’s quite possible that she got that bit arseways.’
‘Hmm.’
Another glance at McIntyre’s sceptical face stopped Cathy in her tracks. ‘What?’
‘Ted Hansen’s a war reporter, isn’t he?’
‘Yep. He’s based in New York, but he’s in Syria at the moment. That’s why Oonagh panicked. He Skyped her to say that they’d had a row, but the connection dropped. She couldn’t get hold of him again to see what they were arguing about, and then she couldn’t get hold of Sarah Jane. O’Rourke’s got half of CNN trying to reach him now, but he’s out of comms, chasing a story in the desert.’
> McIntyre didn’t say anything, just stood looking thoughtful. Cathy shook out her arms and headed for the bench. She needed water. Opening the Velcro on her gloves with her teeth, she bent down to grab her towel, rubbing her face and neck before reaching for her water bottle. Still holding the bag, McIntyre watched her, then finally spoke.
‘Have you got any idea what else she was working on? Apart from the horses?’
Unscrewing the top of the bottle, Cathy shook her head and spat out her gum shield. It was a lot easier to talk with it out. ‘That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question isn’t it? I wondered if it had something to do with drugs. Some of the lads are runners, aren’t they?’
McIntyre nodded silently, then said, ‘I’ve put the word out. Won’t be long, I’m sure. But it sounds like you need to get hold of her dad. His judgement of a perceived threat is a bit different to everyone else’s. If he reckoned it was dangerous . . .’
‘That’s what worries me.’
Cathy rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. This whole thing had been off the scale since she’d got that call from Oonagh Hansen. Could it get any worse? Cathy took a swig of her water, feeling her emotions welling up inside her. She had tried again to persuade Oonagh to come to Dublin, but she was insistent she stayed put in case Sarah Jane tried to contact her at home. Mobile reception was poor in that part of Kerry, and it made her feel more connected being close to the landline.
Walking over to the bench that ran down the side of the gym, McIntyre sat down and patted the polished wood next to him. ‘Come here, girl, sit down. You need to conserve your energy.’
Cathy plumped down beside him, leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees.
‘You knew her best, girl, you need to keep on top of this. If she said anything that could give you a hint, it’ll come to you. I know it will.’
Cathy felt him pat her shoulder. She still couldn’t look at him.
The sob escaped from Cathy’s mouth before she could hold it back.
‘Ah come here, girl. Sarah Jane’s a fighter, she’s fit and she’s focused. Whatever’s happened, she’ll be hanging in there.’
