SCARLETT
Amsterdam
Wednesday 12 September 2012, 13:49
Scarlett watched the man for a long time from the window, waiting for him to approach.
Some of them stared at her; she was used to that. They’d stand back a bit, sometimes with their mates, two or three of them, pointing, smiling, egging each other on. Other people walked past without even acknowledging her, without looking, avoiding eye contact as though she was a mannequin, modeling clothes.
Modeling her own skin.
Sometimes they stood right in front of her, window-shoppers, on their own, staring at her full on, challenging. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. She coped with it by smiling, beckoning to them, trying to get them out of the way at least—sometimes they sent people like this to test her, make sure she was performing properly. Once she’d given a guy the finger and she’d taken a beating for it.
This one was unnerving her, though. He was standing in the alleyway opposite, leaning against the wall. In another place and time he might have been waiting for a bus, or a friend, or just passing the time by people-watching. But his eyes were on her window, and he hadn’t looked away. Not once. He might have been checking up on her. He might have been police. He might just have been nervous, afraid, never been with a girl before. Whatever, she had to behave in exactly the same way. Look beguiling. Tempt him. Make money from the poor bastard.
If nothing else, it passed the time.
So far she had given him a smile and nothing else. He’d not responded, other than to maintain his stare. The trouble was, it was quiet out there. Not even many shoppers passing by; certainly not many tourists on a rainy Wednesday. She had made less than two hundred euros so far and it was already early afternoon. If she didn’t make some more money before the runner came at six, she would be in trouble. She got to her feet and moved to the glass, pressing her hands high and spreading her legs, arching her back. She tried another smile.
He was young, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. They sent out police officers who looked young, thinking they wouldn’t be suspected, thinking the runners wouldn’t notice them. And she definitely hadn’t seen him before.
When she had first arrived in Amsterdam she would not have noticed if the same man had visited her two days running, but these days she paid more attention. Part of it was self-preservation—knowing the ones who would get a kick out of smacking her one—and then there was the other extreme: the easy ones who just wanted to talk or cry or be held, and paid you the same and sometimes more. It helped to know what you were likely to have to deal with. The other girls dealt with it by getting off their faces on smack. Scarlett dealt with it by trying to stay in control.
The man moved.
Scarlett watched him approach, saw the way he looked left and right up the street, as if he wanted to make sure nobody was checking him out. When he got closer his mouth twitched in a smile. It made him look mean. She closed the curtains and went to let him in.
“Hi,” she said. “How are you? What is it you’d like?”
“You’re English?” he said. His accent was Dutch. He was still by the door.
“Yes,” she said, nervous now, determined not to show it. Chin up. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk,” he said.
Shit, shit. He was police, she knew it. And he was putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out his ID.
“You still have to pay,” she said. “Hundred an hour.”
“Sure.”
The wallet came out and he counted five twenty-euro notes, put them on the bed. No ID card. Not yet. She smiled, tried to relax. Maybe he wasn’t police after all; maybe he was going to tell her about how his girlfriend didn’t understand his needs, how his mother hadn’t listened to him, how his father had laughed at him. She counted the notes, stuffed them through the slot in the back wall.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, trying not to sound suspicious. She sat down on the edge of the bed, patted the grubby coverlet invitingly. “You want me to talk dirty?”
“No, no. I am interested that you are English,” he said, sitting down. He took off his jacket, laid it carefully over the hard wooden chair that stood next to the bed.
“If you want to improve your language skills, I am sure there are people who charge less than me.”
He laughed. “So how is it that you are working here?”
Scarlett stared at him for a moment. “That’s none of your business,” she said. She’d heard this question many times before, and it never ceased to amaze her, the crazy things people thought. Did they genuinely think she was here through choice? That she would choose to sit in a window in her underwear, on display, waiting for the next ugly, filthy, sexually inadequate bastard to come and use her body? Why did none of them ever stop to think about it, about the hideousness of it all, of what they were doing? How could this ever, ever be right?
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I am just—interested.”
She knew he was more than likely police, then. She fantasized about this all the time, dreamed about someone coming to take her away from this nightmare to a place where she’d be safe. She’d gone over in her head what she would say, how she would react, knowing as she did so that there was only one way to handle this. The voice in her head was screaming for help.
“I came here because I always wanted to do this,” she recited, trying to keep her voice light, knowing it sounded flat. “I always wanted to make people happy. You see, I have an insanely high sex drive. I need to fuck guys all the time or else I feel sad. So this is the perfect job for me.”
She had used this answer so many times that it got trotted out without any stumbling or hesitation. And none of them even considered that it might not be true! They believed it, because the truth was too awful to contemplate. Stupid fuckers, all of them.
“Don’t you have family? People who are missing you?”
“No,” Scarlett said. “My parents don’t miss me at all.” The first thing she’d said that had been honest.
Before he could ask her another question, she tried to divert him. “What about you?” she asked. “Do your family know you come looking for girls in the red light district on a Wednesday afternoon?”
He laughed, and his skin colored. He had kind eyes. “No, no. This is our secret. What’s your name?”
“Stella.”
“Is that your real name?”
“No, but it’s the only name I use now. What’s yours?”
“Stefan. Have you been working here a long time?”
I’ve been here years, Scarlett thought. Before this I was in Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The thought of it made her think about Cerys’s sister Aimee, how she’d gone traveling with her friends, backpacking around Europe. Seeing the sights. Had come home with a memory stick full of photos of old buildings, and boys.
“A little while,” she said eventually.
He was pushing it, really pushing it, Scarlett thought. It meant one of two things. Either he was with the police, trying to get information out of her, because he wanted to rescue her and protect her. Or he had been sent by them, to test her out. See how likely it was that she would try to run. If he was with the police, then there was no way they could guarantee her safety. She was already in danger if any of the runners had seen him come in—any minute now the enforcers would burst in, haul him out and beat her for good measure. If he was one of them, then she needed to be more forceful with this, or else she would get a beating when he reported back to them.
“Look, Stefan,” she said, “this isn’t how I usually entertain my clients. I know you’re trying to be kind, but I really don’t need your help, okay? I just want to get on with my job. Now”—she checked the clock next to the bed—“you’ve had ten minutes already; is this really what you want from me, or would you like me to give you the best blowjob of your life?”
And after that he relented. Twenty minutes later, he left her alone to return to the
window and wait for the next one. She watched him walk away, the saunter in his step. When he’d come, he’d actually cried out. She hadn’t expected that. The cops sometimes took advantage, so she was still none the wiser.
LOU
Friday 1 November 2013, 18:40
Instead of going straight home after leaving Annie, Lou went back to the office. She wanted to write up the details of what had happened with Scarlett and Annie before the conversations went out of her head.
That task completed, she got distracted reading more of the original Op Diamond file: the details of the searches that had been conducted around the resort in Rhodes. Initially the searches had been haphazard, including all manner of people who had turned up and shown an interest, including tourists, locals, and Clive Rainsford himself. Later, the same areas were combed by police with dogs. Nothing useful had been found.
Further down, the search reports and witness statements gave way to letters from concerned members of the public: British tourists who had been in the resort at the time and had opinions about Scarlett and what might have happened to her, and people who knew the Rainsfords in Briarstone and felt the need to share what they thought. It seemed everyone had a theory about where Scarlett had gone.
And none of them had got it right.
Lou checked her watch. If she was going to make it to Jason’s hockey game she was already cutting it fine. She looked back at the file, the stack of papers that were still sitting, unread. Somewhere in that stack might just be something useful, something Sam could use to persuade Scarlett to open up.
She picked up her phone and sent Jason a text.
Really sorry, held up at work. Hope game goes well. Maybe see you later? xxx
SCARLETT
Saturday 15 September 2012, 16:42
There was a pattern to the days.
She spent the afternoon, evening and most of the night in the room, seeing men who came in off the street. Some days were busier, and she almost liked that because the time passed quickly. Over the course of the evening, the runners would pay her regular visits in between clients, to collect the money that had accumulated in the back room, replenish her supply of condoms and check that she was still alive, still behaving. If the money wasn’t enough, she would get pushed around a bit, threatened. One particularly slow day they’d spent nearly an hour slapping her and kicking her, pulling her hair, telling her that if she didn’t get some customers in they would sell her to the Lithuanians.
This particular threat had not meant much, until she’d plucked up the courage to ask one of the other girls what was so bad about the Lithuanians.
“They don’t feed you,” she had said. “They work you until you can’t work anymore, then they dispose of you. It’s the end. Going to them is like the end. And they film it.”
She did get food, at least. Once or twice during the evening they would bring her something—a burger, a Coke—chips smothered with mayonnaise. It was a brief respite—the chance to eat while they collected the money, checked her over; then they would take what she hadn’t had a chance to cram in her mouth away with them.
They brought drugs, too. They tried hard to get her to take them. The other girls relied on them totally. At the beginning, something had stopped her, maybe some urge to rebel; and now she knew it was a good thing. The other girls were all dependent on the stuff, utterly reliant on their supply. They used it to keep going, to block out the misery of their existence, not realizing that it was also reinforcing the bars of their prison. What was the point in worrying about your life coming to an end, when inside you were already half-dead?
Sometimes, along with the food, they still brought her crack. Usually when she was having a bad day. When they tried to get her to take it, she put on the fake smile and told them that she was better to them alive and awake, that she loved her job and that taking drugs would make her less appealing to the customers. As long as she didn’t try anything, as long as she worked for them and did as she was told and brought the money in, they let her have this one small rebellion. At some point she had realized that she must be making good money, and because she wasn’t off her face all the time she didn’t attract unwanted attention, didn’t generate complaints—maybe this was why they didn’t force her to do the drugs. So she would decline, and they would shrug and take the crack to the next girl, who paid for it out of the wages she was theoretically earning but never saw. Scarlett was paid the same amount whether she took the drugs or not. This was not a point she felt able to argue. After all, what could she spend the money on, if it even existed?
Although she was saving them money and making them money, she was still a risk to them. Scarlett was awake and alert and that made her unpredictable. They watched her more closely than the others. They checked her more often. In the early hours of the morning, when she was so dead tired she could hardly keep her eyes open, they would come to fetch her. Sometimes, if it had been busy, they’d bring another girl in to replace her in the room; sometimes they locked up behind them. She always knew when she was done for the night because there would be two of them, maybe three: so that she was never without a hand on her arm, never without someone watching her with the open door.
Even back at the flat, which was a dingy four-roomed apartment over a pharmacy near the docks, she was never alone. She slept in a room with other girls; the erratic shifts they all worked, coupled with the inevitable exhaustion whenever they were brought together, meant that it was almost impossible to form friendships. Talking was discouraged, and not just by the men who brought them in; once in the room, all anyone ever wanted to do was sleep. Sleep was their only escape, their brief snatch at peace. Besides, any sort of discussion was dangerous. They all knew that.
So she slept, on dirty sheets, between two girls she might or might not recognize; and, when they came to wake her up, sometimes she was allowed a shower. Sometimes she got clean clothes, too; they were never hers. Sometimes there was food in the kitchen; usually there was coffee, strong and black. Toward noon she would be taken with other girls back to the strip, where they were delivered like packages to the various rooms, ready for action, and left alone.
But she wasn’t really alone, ever. Even when she was in the window, tapping on the glass to try to attract attention, she was being watched. They were never far away.
SAM
Friday 1 November 2013, 22:30
When she finally got back to her car, Sam took some slow, deep breaths before dialing Lou’s mobile number. Her chest hurt—probably from all that running earlier, not a good sign—and she couldn’t stop coughing.
“Hi, Sam,” Lou said, when she picked up the call. “How are you getting on?”
“Okay. I’m heading home now.”
“How’s Scarlett?”
“Apart from a bit of a meltdown earlier, surprisingly good, I think. She’s more or less agreed to give me a statement tomorrow. I’m meeting Ali first, though; I promised to go and see Ian Palmer’s mum with him. I’ll do that, go to the office and then go and see Scarlett late morning, if that’s okay with you? You’ve got a rest day tomorrow, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but you can ring me. Let me know how you get on.”
“Thanks,” Sam replied. “Sorry to call so late. Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“No, I’m at home, don’t worry. I was supposed to go and watch Jason play hockey but I ended up reading through the case file.”
“You work too hard, boss.”
Lou laughed. “Maybe. I think it’s more a case of not wanting to freeze my bum off watching grown men crash around on an ice rink.”
“Poor Jason.”
“Oh, don’t worry, he’s probably quite happy in the pub getting rat-arsed with his brother. And meanwhile I’m going to get into my pajamas and have an early night.”
SCARLETT
Tuesday 18 September 2012, 22:18
For the first few months in Amsterdam Scarlett had thought constantly about how she was going to esc
ape. Thought about it every day. When there were men with her she was sizing up whether she could trust them, ask them for help; when she was alone she was fantasizing about just opening the door and running away. It gave her focus. Gave her something to do.
She was never quite sure what stopped her—fear of the punishment, perhaps. Or maybe they just hadn’t pushed her far enough yet. Everyone had their limit, the tipping point when tolerating the abuse was just not possible anymore.
One summer’s night the sounds of the rowdy crowds outside had been drowned out by an ear-splitting shriek. Scarlett was in her window, between customers, and saw the girl, half-naked, blouse unbuttoned showing her small breasts, running headlong down the cobbled street. She was small, chestnut hair in messy curls falling across her face, pale skin, eyes and mouth wide, desperate. Her arm had a bruise, a big one, yellowing. Scarlett had been struck by the thought that there would be other bruises, other injuries; there always were. Even if you couldn’t see them. Watching through the window was like being slightly removed from reality, like watching a drama being played out on the television screen. Nothing but glass between her and the girl, and yet she was a world away: grabbing at passers-by, crying and begging for help. Scarlett could hear her. “Help, help me, please help me, hilfe, bitte . . .”
But she’d kept running. Nobody was following her or doing anything but staring.
At the corner a police car had pulled over. She got in the back and they took her away.
Scarlett had felt relief for her. It had been quite easy, hadn’t it? The police had got to her quickly. Maybe that was the solution. You just had to be brave, go and find the police, you’d be okay.
But the next night Scarlett had overheard a whispered conversation between two of the others, as they all tried to sleep in the flat. The girl’s name was never spoken; probably nobody knew who she was anyway, and if they’d known her name it would not have been her real one. She’d been interviewed, then she’d left the police station because she needed to score. They’d offered her help, but couldn’t provide it quickly enough for her needs. Of course her minder had found her—tipped off by someone in the police station, or someone watching it for him—and she was gone. “Gone” meant she was probably dead. That was what they did that to girls who became a liability. They didn’t just kill them quickly, of course. They used them first—filmed it. High prices could be obtained for those sorts of films.