Behind Closed Doors (18 page)

‘If you’d wanted to see her, you would have done it before now, wouldn’t you?’

‘Exactly. The only person I want to see is Juliette, and the trouble is I can’t see her without seeing them first.’

‘Haven’t you tried to contact Juliette, since you’ve been back?’

There was a long pause. ‘You don’t know them. They would have found out.’

‘So you haven’t contacted anyone at all?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Were they keeping you prisoner, Scarlett?’ It was not meant as an accusation. As soon as she’d uttered the words Sam regretted them, thinking it too much of a challenge. But Scarlett didn’t take it that way.

‘No. They were all right to me most of the time. I don’t think you lot understand what it’s like, being dead for ten years. It’s actually quite liberating. It’s suddenly being alive again that’s hard work.’

Abruptly Scarlett stood up.

‘I’m ready to go back now.’

She started walking towards the gate, Sam beside her. When they were out on the road again, under the street-lights, Sam saw her hugging her arms across her chest. She was small – tiny, really. Like her mother. Sam’s heart lurched. She wanted to give her a big hug, tell her it was okay, that things would get better.

‘Why does your mother dress like a teenager?’ Sam asked.

Scarlett didn’t look up. ‘She’s just weird.’

As they approached the house, Scarlett’s steps slowed.

‘Okay?’ Sam asked.

Scarlett shook her head vigorously.

‘Come on,’ Sam coaxed. ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll sit with you for a bit, shall I?’

‘Can you make her go away?’ Scarlett asked, her voice just a whisper.

‘Who? Caro?’

Scarlett nodded. ‘She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t get it.’

‘You should try and explain it to her, then. Or to me.’

‘Maybe.’

At the doorway, Sam paused. ‘You go on in,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow you in a sec.’

Back in her car, Sam rooted through her glovebox for the cheap Pay As You Go handset she’d bought from the supermarket two months ago. She kept it in the car, charged and turned off, just in case she ended up stranded somewhere without a phone, because on more than one occasion she had left her mobile at home or in the office and been lost without it. Of course, since she’d bought this emergency replacement, she’d managed to keep her own phone on her at all times. Right at the back, under a pile of CDs and some windscreen wipes, she found the charger for it, with the wire tie still wrapped round the cord.

Walking back up towards the house, Sam turned on the phone, relieved to see it was fully charged, and dialled her own number. She let it ring in her pocket for a moment before she disconnected.

When she went back inside and into the living room, Scarlett had finished eating and packed away all the cartons and greasy chip paper into the carrier bag. She was watching the news with the sound turned down.

‘Here,’ Sam said, handing Scarlett the phone and the charger.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s my spare phone. It’s got a tenner’s worth of credit on it.’

‘You’re giving me a phone?’

‘I’m lending you a phone. I just rang mine, so the last number dialled is my number. Keep it safe, right?’

She took the bag of rubbish back to the kitchen. Caro and Orla were in there discussing the shortage of emergency accommodation and whether the magnanimity of the chief constable would stretch to a few more nights in the Travel Inn.

‘How is she?’ Caro asked.

‘She’s okay. Just a bit of a meltdown.’

‘Was it something I said?’

‘I think it was us trying to get her to make decisions. But it was only the trigger, don’t beat yourself up about it.’

‘I need to get off home now,’ Caro said. ‘Are you staying?’

‘I’ll sit with her for an hour or so,’ said Sam. ‘Then I need to go too.’

She went back through to the living room. Scarlett was playing with the phone. ‘Wish I could remember people’s numbers. Not much use having a phone without them.’

‘I’ll have it back, then, if you don’t want it,’ Sam said. ‘Orla made you a tea.’

She put it down on the coffee table firmly, slopping a little on to the stained formica.

‘Thanks.’

‘And Caro’s gone, for now. She’ll be back tomorrow.’

Scarlett tucked the little phone into the pocket of her hoodie, leaned her head back against the cushion. ‘I’m so tired but I don’t want to sleep. I have nightmares. Every single night. It’s exhausting.’

‘What sort of nightmares?’

Scarlett didn’t answer straight away. Her eyes closed and Sam was beginning to think she was falling asleep. Then she said, quietly, ‘I saw a girl get her head blown off once. They did things like that. If you didn’t do what they wanted, they just –
bang
– you know. It was so easy for them. I see her all the time – her face. She didn’t know it was going to happen. Sometimes I dream it’s happening to me, it’s
my
head being blown apart and I can’t feel it; it doesn’t hurt or anything. But I can just see it happening.’

‘Does anything make it better?’

‘When I get so shattered that I’m too tired to dream. So I stay up as late as I can. Doesn’t always work. What is it you want? What is it you all want me to do?’

Hearing it put so baldly, Sam was taken aback for a moment.

‘I mean, you’re all on at me to decide what to do next. You must want something. What is it?’

‘We’re trying to find out what happened to you, Scarlett. So we can stop it happening to other people. We need you to give us a statement.’

‘About Greece?’

‘About everything.’

‘And then you’ll leave me alone?’

Sam thought about her response. ‘You’re an adult, Scarlett. Far as I know, you haven’t done anything wrong. You’re free to walk out any time, if you want to.’

Scarlett nodded, slowly. ‘I can’t think straight right now. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.’

‘I hope so. Scarlett, when your mum arrived, I overheard you say quite a strange thing. You said, “I saw you.” Can you tell me what you meant?’

Sam had chosen her moment deliberately, trying to catch Scarlett off guard. And there was a flicker, a swift look, a moment, and then she composed herself again.

‘Oh. I saw her on the telly. Giving an interview about me.’

It was a lie.

‘Really? When?’

‘Not long after I got taken. I was in a flat somewhere. I saw her being interviewed on the news but the sound was off and the subtitles were in Polish or whatever, so I couldn’t understand what she was saying.’

In the months following Scarlett’s abduction, her parents had been interviewed several times, made appeals, even been on
Crimewatch
. Annie had never been interviewed without Clive, and as far as Sam could remember Annie had never said more than two or three words.

Back then, Clive had done all the talking.

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, modelling clothes.

Modelling 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 letterbox 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 fantasised 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 coloured. 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 the Czech Republic.
The thought of it made her think about Cerys’s sister Aimee, how she’d gone travelling with her friends, backpacking round 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.