It wouldn’t take long for Amy to fall asleep. It never did. Suzanne peeped in. Yes, Amy was snoring away. She really needed to get her adenoids seen to, thought Suzanne, as she went back into the lounge and checked her watch. She should have been gone by now.

Fucking men!

They couldn’t do one thing right. Suzanne didn’t understand why Lenny kept changing his mind. She didn’t see why they were bothering to keep the child alive now. What was Lenny stalling for? That was the part that worried Suzanne. The side of Lenny that was capable of double-crossing anyone and everyone. Did that mean he would do it to her? She didn’t really believe that—they were the same type, him and her. They were meant for one another. He wouldn’t double-cross her. He must want the child alive in case the plan changed. He was smart; he was rich; he was good-looking—she didn’t need to worry. But she did need a contingency plan, and she had it. If things went wrong, Suzanne had it all worked out what she was going to do. Amy was her ticket to freedom. With the money she could sell Amy for, she could retire.

She headed over to check on the new arrivals. She had better keep a more watchful eye on this lot. She couldn’t trust the men where the women were concerned; they weren’t using their brains to think. They were easily distracted. They had been responsible for the loss of the women in the fire—she had warned them that it was only a matter of time. She had told them to move the women earlier. But had they listened? Now Lenny was gone to try and sort it out and she was left to manage the idiots. Things had not turned out the way they were supposed to.

She locked up the flat and called a cab. The journey took her twenty minutes as she headed north off the M25. She reached her destination—a scruffy end-of-terrace on a road that was high up on a demolisher’s list.

Tony answered the door. Suzanne went past him and straight through to the kitchen. ‘It’s freezing here. Put the heating on.’

‘It doesn’t work.’ Tony followed her through to the back.

‘I thought you were going to tart this place up after we sold the other girls on.’

‘The Albanians screwed us over. We didn’t get a lot for the girls, in the end. They weren’t worth much—they were finished.’

Suzanne looked at him. She knew he was lying, but it didn’t matter to her, she hadn’t handled the deal—if the shit hit the fan it wasn’t her mess to clean up.

‘Well, get the heating fixed before we start getting punters in here. They’re going to be too cold to get their clothes off. Ring someone and get them round…no, wait, leave it—I’ll do it tomorrow.’

Suzanne had decided that the men were best given minor tasks. She couldn’t risk another disaster. She set the bags of bread, pasta, jam and milk down on the kitchen table. A bare electric light bulb swung down over their heads. A small portable television was blaring out from the corner of the worktop. The house was ex housing association. It had been bought at an auction and needed a lot of money spending on it, which it wasn’t going to get.

‘You have four hours max. I have had to dope the girl as there is no one there to look after her.’

Tony was disgruntled. ‘We can’t manage them, just the three of us. It’s too much.’

‘It’s not too much if everyone does their fucking job. We’re already fifty grand down with the loss of the others.’

‘That had nothing to do with me.’

‘Yes, it did. You should have known the Chinese would come. You should have backed me when I said to move them on quicker and you should have kept an eye on that black guy. He wasn’t thinking with his brains.’

Tony shrugged. He was looking sheepish. He was up to something or he’d done something, thought Suzanne.

‘Where are the girls? Upstairs?’

Tony nodded. She could see by his face that he was hiding something.

‘What kind of condition are they in? They’ve been cooped up in the back of a lorry for a week. Are any of them sick?’

Tony turned his back on her and started to unpack the groceries.

‘Not sick, but they were playing up—making a noise. I had to get rough with them. Had to make them do as they were told, show them who’s boss.’

Suzanne could see by his face that he’d had his fun.

She went upstairs to look at the girls.

The house had four bedrooms. Six girls slept in one room and the other three were going to be used to entertain clients.

As Suzanne made her way up the stairs there was an eerie silence coming from above. The front door sounded loud as it juddered shut behind the exiting Tony. She opened the door to the girls’ bedroom. Two of the girls were sitting on their beds, facing each other, talking. Two more were lying curled on their mattresses. The other two sat together on the floor, their backs against the wall. The room smelt damp and dirty. Suzanne blamed the mattresses. Tony had found them on a skip. He was a cheap little hood, but Suzanne had to work with what she was given. She was still a minor player in the league but was working her way up the ladder. She and Lenny would be a great team one day, a formidable team. But for now she must look after a few frightened Filipinas—schoolgirls, kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder, which just happened to be Suzanne’s new boss.

The girls on the bed turned and stared at her as she entered. She went over to the two on the floor. One of them was the youngest of the six girls, at thirteen. Her fifteen-year-old sister had her arm around her. Tony had done a good job by raping the youngest first—they looked frightened, traumatised,

exactly as they should look

, thought Suzanne.

32

‘How long are we in the air? Do you think the plane is safe? It seems really old to me…and what are those drops on the wing?’

Becky and Mann were sitting on a small domestic aeroplane heading for the island of Mindanao.

‘Just relax—just takes a couple of hours, that’s all. I can’t believe you are frightened of flying. I thought you loved travelling.’

Mann was having a hard job keeping the smile off his face.

‘I love to travel but I hate getting there.’

‘Just relax, close your eyes, try and sleep.’

‘No way—at any minute I might have to fly the plane.’

Mann laughed. ‘This plane is made out of bits of chicken wire and soggy cardboard, God knows how it stays in the air as it is—if there’s any trouble we are going down fast…’ He looked at her panic-stricken face—her eyes were huge. ‘I didn’t mean it. This airline has a better safety record than Qantas—believe me, there is nothing that can go wrong—why don’t you read a magazine and forget about it.’

Becky slumped in her seat and took the in-flight magazine from Mann, but continued to stare at the water droplets that ran in ragged paths across the wing.

They were on the second leg of their journey now. They had stopped at Cebu, sat in the suffocatingly hot departure lounge, paid boarding tax, luggage tax, departure tax and now they were sitting on the connecting plane that would take them to Davao, the capital of Mindanao. It was a small old plane with one very short-skirted hostess and a pilot who coughed incessantly. Becky was wearing cut-off jeans and a vest top. She looked at the hostess and was glad she had chosen not to wear shorts. She wouldn’t want to

begin

to compete with those legs.

They flew out of the cloud and Becky looked down below to see white-rimmed islands floating dream-like in the transparent turquoise ocean. She felt calmer. They had a chance now they were over water. She had rehearsed the escape from a plane in the sea many times in her head. She was a good swimmer; she could afford to relax for a while. She opened the magazine and started reading about Mindanao. She turned to ask Mann a question but he was asleep. His sunglasses were resting on his head; his black hair and choppy fringe were pushed back from his forehead. She studied his face. His broad forehead had a permanent crease, a frown line across it, even when he was resting. His eyebrows were black and thickest where they arched over the centre of the eye. The scar on his cheek sat right over the cheekbone in an otherwise quite beautiful face, thought Becky.