Authors: Keith Hoare
People Trafficker (12 page)
Angela was beginning to come round. She could remember the African injecting her and very little else. Her mouth was dry; she felt sick and very cold. Opening her eyes, she knew immediately she was somewhere else. The room was large and bright; two other people were in the room. One, a woman in her thirties, stood some way back from the bed holding a stick in her hand. The other person was also a woman, but she was old, dressed in heavy black clothes and rubbing her hands with a towel.
“Where am I?” Angela asked.
Saeed’s mother looked down at her and grinned. “You’re awake then? That is good; we were just about to wake you. You need to shower with plenty of soap.”
Angela sat up, and for the first time she looked down at her naked body. He mouth dropped open; all her body hair had been removed.
“What the hell have you done?” she demanded.
“You are being prepared for sale, body hair removal is necessary before the oils to your skin are applied. Now you will come for a shower.”
“Sale, what sale?”
“First you shower, then I will explain. The creams on your body need to be washed off before they begin to burn your skin.”
“I couldn’t care less. Besides I’m going nowhere,” Angela retorted bravely.
Saeed’s mother looked across to the other woman stood behind Angela and nodded. She touched Angela with the stick she’d been holding. The shock to Angela was immediate. Her body arched throwing her back onto the bed. But the woman hadn’t finished. Grinning as she kept touching Angela on the most sensitive and intimate parts of her body, laughing as her body moved in severe spasms, only stopping when she was crying uncontrollably, her body still shaking with the bolts of electricity sent through her.
“Now will you shower, or should we give you more punishment?” Saeed’s mother screamed at her.
Angela had had enough and she followed Saeed’s mother, with the other one behind her holding the stick, into a shower room. They stood watching her as she rubbed the soap all over her body before rinsing it off. Then she dried herself with a towel hanging on the door.
Back on the bed Saeed’s mother began with the oils, rubbing them in vigorously, until every part of her body had been covered. She stood back looking down at the girl, before taking some clothes laid out on the chair, throwing them at her.
“Put these on.”
Angela was glad to finally dress, although they were only knickers and blouse.
“Sit on the side of the bed.”
She did as instructed and Saeed’s mother knelt down on the floor and taking an ankle iron from under the bed, which was attached by a chain to one of the metal bars of the bed, clipped and locked it around one of Angela’s ankles.
After checking the lock she looked up. “You will be showered in the mornings and oiled three times a day. You will not be allowed to leave the room. I’ve provided books for you to read. When you have finished them, tell me, and I’ll give you more. Object to anything I ask you to do, try to escape and you’ll feel the electric stick on your body. In three days’ time you are to be offered for sale by auction. You’re a very pretty girl, if you keep it that way, rather than be subject to beatings every day then you will be purchased by a very nice man, who will look after you. The alternative to no one buying you is the local brothel. They will take anything; you’d be good for six months of twelve hours a day on your back.”
Angela said nothing, what was there to say. Already she felt dirty, abused and angry with herself that she’d been duped so easily, when all the signs were there to tell her something was not right.
The two women left the room, slamming and locking the door after them.
She sat there in the silence and began to think back to meeting Karen. She had managed to escape, was it possible that she could do the same? But if she did, how would she survive? Karen was already used to survival skills; she’d never even slept in a tent, let alone stayed out all night hiding in some field. The more Angela mulled it over in her mind, the more she realised, for her, there would be no escape. Her only hope would be that the local police would find her, or somehow she could contact home. Walking over to the chair, she sat down and picked a book up, already she was scared and fed up. The oils on her body stank making her feel decidedly sick.
Donald entered a small room at the rear of an adult interest shop. He felt a little embarrassed going through the black painted front door, past all the hard-core pornography DVDs and racks of books. However, in other ways he couldn’t care less provided the end justified the means and this was a risk he needed to take.
There were two men inside the room; one stood, the other sat behind a desk. The desk was covered with papers obviously just thrown down without much thought of what was on them. The man behind the desk nodded towards a chair. “It’s been a long time, Donald, take a seat,” he said. “I hear you are no longer in the force, so I presume this is a private matter?”
“It is, Chad, and I desperately need information and maybe your help.”
“If I can help in any way, Donald, I will, after all you did me a favour once, and I said then, if you ever need something just come and see me. You laughed saying you’d not got to the age when you needed one of my girls, still happily married. So what is it you need from me?”
Donald sat down and removed a photo from his inside pocket. It was a photo of Angela, his daughter. He placed it on the desk in front of the man. “I’m still not in the market for one of your girls, Chad. I want my daughter back and the people who did this to her punished. There’s a hundred thousand in the pot, it’s all I can raise, but time is not on my side. Angela is very ill. She has a rare blood disease that if left unchecked will poison her. She needs an injection every few weeks to counteract this build-up and there’s only three weeks left.”
Chad looked at the photo. “A pretty girl Donald, I presume Angela was one of the girls abducted?”
“Yes she is.”
“If she can be found, do we have to get her back here for the injection, or can it be done where we find her?”
“She can be injected anywhere, Chad. Then she’ll need around twelve hours before coming back to normal. Of course that would depend on how far she’d gone, so the twelve hours is only a guess. You see it’s only happened once before when she first showed symptoms of the disease, so that’s why we don’t really know timescales.”
Chad said nothing for a short time. He rubbed his chin with one hand as he leaned over the desk gazing down at the photo.
“This was an abduction to order, no girl from the five who went missing has, to my knowledge, been offered out to the brothels. We didn’t like this snatch. To take five British girls in one hit like that has caused our business real problems. The press are hounding our girls. They’re snooping where they shouldn’t be, believing the girls are back in this country, and splashing our outlets across the papers. The man who took these girls is known to the industry as Saeed. We don’t think it’s his real name; in fact it’s probably certain it isn’t. He has a smallish organisation in this country but specialises in supplying the market around the Mediterranean. If you remember, a girl called Karen Marshall was taken. She somehow escaped, that has never happened before, but she was one of Saeed’s girls. Now we come to your daughter. Saeed was very badly injured by this Karen, in fact there’s an open contract out on her, but unknown to her she’s protected. Not by the government, but her original purchaser, a man called Sirec. Even in this country you don’t go up against that man. He’s a gunrunner of the worst kind and has many contacts throughout the world.”
Donald frowned. “You seem to know a great deal of what’s gone on. Why is that?”
Chad shrugged. “It’s a very small business, as traffickers themselves go that is. In fact there’s only a handful throughout the world. We as outlets, so to speak, know the majority of them, as each trafficker specialises in who and what they supply. Although since the break-up of the Soviet Union, more traffickers have begun to appear, offering anything you want at cheap prices. But Saeed caused so much trouble by this snatch, there was a meeting some days ago, and it’s been agreed to freeze him out completely. Now we come to the problem of finding your daughter. We believe and it’s only a belief that these girls were ordered for private buyers. No brothel would take the chance of using them after all the publicity. Even in the Mediterranean countries the brothels are frequented by many Europeans. It would take just one of their clients to recognise one of the girls and the brothel would be in the shit. You have to remember most brothels use registered girls; among these girls are the so-called specials. These girls and boys as well are usually underage and kept in the background for special requests. They are under very strict control and have no chance of escape. But if one of these snatched girls was recognised the client would probably say nothing to the girl, except minutes after leaving the brothel he’d be in the police station trying to claim the reward for information.”
“I see, so you’re suggesting that because my daughter has gone to a private buyer it will be more difficult for her to be found?”
“Impossible, it’s as simple as that. The only way to find your daughter is to find Saeed. The problem is no one knows where he lives, or what he looks like. His dealings in other countries apart from the Lebanon are through strings of agents, he never gets his hands dirty. I say never, but that’s not strictly true, he doesn’t use agents in his own country, there he deals direct. Mind you, even to get into the Lebanon, for a white guy like you that is, and then start asking around for this Saeed would get you nowhere, maybe even killed.”
“So what does this Saeed usually deal in, after all this is the first big snatch of English girls?” Donald asked.
Chad nodded. “You’re right, he rarely gets white girls. His usual stock in trade is children from Asia, sold by their own parents to raise much needed cash. At one time these girls would often be drowned at birth, now this is a way to still get rid of the girls but bring money in for the family. They go through auctions he runs once a month.”
“What if I made it known, through you, I was in the market for a girl? Would Saeed deal?” Donald asked.
Chad shrugged his shoulders. “Of course he’d deal, get anything you wanted, boy, girl, baby, even an adult. But you would only deal with an agent not Saeed. No, the route to find your daughter is through someone who knows him. The only person I’ve heard of, who’s actually met him is that Karen Marshall.”
“How do you know that?” Donald asked.
“She lived at Saeed’s for a time, in fact saw him every day, and if you read her story of the abduction in the paper, she talks of the house and her captivity, besides the bizarre gambling night that led to her being taken to some other house where she had been clever enough to trick them into letting her call home. Get her to agree to go back and I’ll supply the muscle. They will force Saeed to give the names of the buyers, then armed with that, we can find your daughter.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but would she go back and more importantly how will she get there?”
“That, my friend, unfortunately, will be your problem. After all she had a hell of a time getting out. Then even if she agrees, just to get her back in the country would be difficult. She’d have to be flown to Cyprus, after which she’d need to go by sea to a port in the Lebanon. It would be a long and difficult journey and she’d be in great danger, both from Saeed and her purchaser who also lives there.”
“Thank you for the information Chad, I will see this Karen Marshall and get back to you.”
Chad stood and offered his hand. “Good luck with this, Donald, if I hear anything I’ll be in touch.”
Donald left the shop and took a taxi into the city centre. Then he walked briskly down a shortcut between two main roads and took another taxi. This one travelled some distance before stopping outside a large office block. On the sixth floor he entered an office with the words ‘Farman Transport Service’ on the door. Once inside he was shown into a large meeting room. There were six people already sitting at the large centre table. All of them were studying documents from a folder in front of them.
The man at the head of the table stood and offered his hand. “Donald, it’s been a long time.”
Donald shook the man’s hand. “It has, Peter. I believe you’re now knighted so should I be calling you, Sir Peter?”
Sir Peter laughed. “I suppose you should, but we go back a long way so let’s forget the formalities. Anyway how did our underworld friends treat you?”
“Very well, in fact they are just as peed off as the government is, and prepared to supply people to sort it out. They are incensed that this mass abduction has happened in their neck of the woods.”
“Yes I can believe that, besides which, we’ve really been keeping the pressure on them and also around the Mediterranean. So what did they say?”