Behind Closed Doors (29 page)

She ran.

There was shouting from behind her. The concrete floor slipped under her feet and she ran into the dark warehouse, skidding behind containers. She heard the metal door clanging shut again, and then screaming from somewhere else, another woman – the girl who had been with her? Was she running too? It was so dark that Scarlett could just make out the metal walls of containers either side. Her bare feet made no noise as she ran, checking around each corner before moving on. She could hear their footsteps – how many? – two, three of them?

Scarlett crouched against a container, breathing. She had lost the advantage. She should be out of here by now. Without the distraction of the other girl they only had her to focus on. She peered round the end of the container. It was a blank wall, breeze blocks: the back of the warehouse. It was a dead end.

Concentrate
.

She held back a sob, hugging her knees to stop the shaking, the stilettos still clutched in her hand. Her feet were icy and it was so cold she was shivering. A breeze lifted the hair from her cheeks, a cold blast from somewhere. Footsteps again, urgent whispers. They were on the move again. The sounds echoed around the walls, making it impossible to tell where they were coming from. Scarlett’s eyes had grown accustomed to the lighting now and she could see more than just shapes – the corrugated metal ceiling, far overhead, all the way to the other end of the warehouse, just visible in the narrow space between two of the crates. And in that split second she saw a figure cross the gap. She gasped and shrank back.

This was no good. They would keep looking until they found her, and then she would die. She had to get out.

She headed for the back wall: there might be a fire escape or something. The breeze chilled her flushed cheeks. There
had
to be a door.

The crate next to her was much larger than the others; the wall seemed to go on and on. And then she realised it was the soundproofed room they were using as a film studio. If they’d bothered to soundproof it, that must mean that they were bothered about people hearing what was going on. Which meant that there must be people nearby! Probably they did their business overnight, when the other units in the industrial estate were empty, but, even so, they didn’t like noise.

On the wall next to her Scarlett saw a big red button in a box. It was a fire alarm. Would it work? Would it distract them? She took hold of her stiletto and smacked the glass as hard as she could. Almost instantly the warehouse seemed to come alive with sound, a shrieking, wailing clamour that rang in her ears and echoed from wall to metal wall.

She ran.

A wall rose in front of her – the corner of the warehouse, a thin gap – not big enough to squeeze through – behind the soundproofed room and the far wall. Another dead end. She turned sharply and ran back the way she had come, sobbing now because over the din nobody could have heard her anyway. It had been a stupid thing to do because now she couldn’t hear footsteps, couldn’t hear their shouts, never mind whispers.

Then she saw it – the grey outline of light, the shape of a door. When she reached it she realised there was a bar across it. A fire exit – thank God! She shoved, expecting it to be chained shut or rusted or painted closed. The door stayed shut. She shoved again, pushed harder, and this time it gave, slightly.

From behind her came a bang and a spark of bright light next to her face as a bullet hit the metal door. They had her now.

She shoved the door one last time with all her strength and it flew open, propelling her out into the darkness, over the tufts of rough grass that had grown up around the door outside and had held it closed.

And now, the cold, fresh air giving her a new blast of energy, Scarlett ran.

With no further news about Scarlett’s whereabouts, Lou tried Stephen Waterhouse again, who managed to answer this time. He seemed to have regained his former belligerence.

‘How are you getting on with McDonnell?’ Lou asked.

‘Why do you ask?’ he said, his tone anything but friendly.

‘Just that when my sergeant saw him yesterday he indicated that he was aware of the surveillance —’

‘He always tries that one. It’s a bluff. Unless someone’s tipped him off, that is.’

Lou hesitated. ‘Nobody on my team knows about our discussion in the SB briefing, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘Well, I heard you’ve got a leak.’

Lou paused again, trying to gauge the tone of his voice; eventually she decided he was trying to wind her up, get her properly angry so she’d say something unprofessional. What was wrong with him?

‘I trust my team, but I still don’t discuss things that aren’t relevant to the jobs we’ve got. Unless you’ve got some evidence to back up that accusation, I suggest you wind your bloody neck in.’

Waterhouse gave a throaty laugh, which reassured her that it had been a bad joke. ‘Just don’t expect me to keep you updated with what my teams are doing.’

Time to change the subject. ‘Did you see my report about my meeting with Annie Rainsford?’ Lou asked.

‘Yes, all very interesting, but what they failed to tell you ten years ago isn’t actually that much use to us right now, is it? That Greek boy, whoever he is or was, could be anywhere on the planet now. Probably running his own little crime empire. Or running for parliament. And since we can’t even ask Scarlett to confirm her mother’s account…’

‘As you know,’ Lou said evenly, ‘she’s twenty-five. She hasn’t committed any crime, as far as we’re aware, so we don’t have a reason to arrest her or hold her against her will.’

‘I was counting on you to
persuade
her to engage with us,’ Waterhouse said.

‘You didn’t
actually
want me to have anything to do with it,’ Lou said, ‘in case you’d forgotten.’

He hung up on her.

Well, let’s hope I never have to ask a favour of SB
, she thought.
Bastard shitting
tosser
.

There were thirty-four emails – on a Sunday, for crying out loud, it never stopped – and yet Lou was still distracted by the crime report of the burglary at 14 Russet Avenue. It would be interesting to know if the unusual features of this offence weren’t unusual after all. It was easy to lose touch with what was going on in the area and it was possible that someone out there was actively targeting older cars, or even Volvos. Russet Avenue might just be part of a crime series and therefore it might be nothing more than a coincidence that the Rainsford property had been targeted. Yet this wasn’t the sort of thing she could look into without drawing attention to the Rainsfords and her interest in them.

One possible solution presented itself – someone she knew she could trust.

Scarlett ran without stopping, ran and ran until she was out of the industrial area and on a wide main road, with shops on one side and apartment buildings on the other. The traffic was building as dawn started to break. She slowed to a walk when she realised nobody was behind her, and, because the soles of her feet were stinging, she stopped and put the stupid shoes back on. She kept to the shadows of the buildings, realising that cars were slowing down as they passed her.

I need clothes
,
she thought, pulling her thin blouse tighter across her chest, folding her arms over it.
I need food. I need somewhere to hide, to think.

She was vulnerable here, on the main road. If they followed her in the car, they would spot her. She turned into a passageway to the right, a stairwell, and through the other side was a sort of open space, a courtyard shared by the flats; across the middle, a washing line was strung between four concrete posts in a wide Z. There was a wall running at head height, and beyond it a row of dumpster bins. She rounded the corner and saw another passageway leading back to the road. A low wall separated the ground-floor apartment from the passageway, bikes chained together behind it.

She sank down slowly, catching her breath.

What to do next? Maybe if she waited an hour or two, till it was light and busy, they would have given up looking for her, if they were even bothering at all. In any case, it couldn’t hurt to wait here; she was out of the wind. Scarlett kept thinking of the overheard conversations, late at night; the other girls talking about the men who were sent to test them out, and what happened to them afterwards. None of them knew that someone else might come to take you away too – a man who pretended to be your rescuer. Presumably most of the girls who had gone with Stefan had died. And if any of them, like her, had managed to get away… who would ever risk going back?

She thought about ways in which she might be able to get a message back to the other girls, at the same time knowing that she never would. Even if she could summon up the courage, she didn’t know where the apartment was. She didn’t even know any of their real names.

A while later Scarlett heard a sound and looked up. A woman was in the courtyard, hanging washing on the line, her back to Scarlett. She looked young, Scarlett’s age or maybe a little older, and she was dressed in blue jeans and a pastel-pink sweater that looked as though it would be soft to touch. Too tired to move, rooted to her doorstep with a mixture of exhaustion and fear, Scarlett could not tear her gaze away from the woman. The washing she was hanging up was a mixture of baby clothes – brightly coloured dresses and tights and onesies – and adult gear: a man’s boiler suit, three blue shirts with some sort of logo on them. A ray of golden dawn sunlight burst unexpectedly through the space between the apartment blocks, illuminating the scrubby patch of grass. The woman’s hair, brown and wavy and loose down her back, almost to her waist, shone. Scarlett couldn’t take her eyes off her: the shape of her, the normal clothes, the sheer ordinariness of a life that involved hanging out washing early on a weekday morning.

Scarlett closed her eyes and let the sunlight fall on to her face. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt the sun on her skin.

‘
Hee
, is
alles
goed
met je?
Kan
ik
helpen
?
’ The woman had turned and seen her. Are you okay? Can I help you?

‘
Ben okay
,’ Scarlett stammered. Stood up quickly – too quickly, had to lean on the wall for support.

‘
Wacht
even
.’ Wait a minute.

The woman put the washing basket down, looked as if she was coming over. Scarlett started walking back down the passageway, speeding up. She rounded the corner on to the main road, tottering on her stupid heels and feet that hurt, wondering where she could go next, where she could hide. The sun had gone in and it was cold, shiveringly cold.

‘Hey!’

Behind her, the woman was running to catch up. Scarlett looked around. She wanted to run, but where would she go?

‘
Hier
.’

The woman handed her something. It was a coat, a khaki-brown-coloured parka. Scarlett stared at it, looked up at the woman. ‘
Nee, nee, dank je
…
’

‘
Neem
maar, het is
goed
zo
.
’

She handed over the coat and pressed something into Scarlett’s hand, then smiled, and walked back towards the passageway, back towards her washing and her normal life.

‘
Dank je
,’ Scarlett said, her voice rising in a sob.

‘
T’is
gewoon
karma
,’ the woman called cheerfully.

In Scarlett’s hand was a twenty-euro note.

She wrapped the coat around herself gratefully. It was warm and smelled of the woman’s scent and, faintly, of pizza or something like that. It was too big but that didn’t matter, it was warm and soft and cottony, quilted and lined with fleece. The relief of the warmth of it, the protection of it, made Scarlett suddenly feel invincible.

The kindness of strangers
, she thought.
I never believed in it until now
.

They left Clive Rainsford in his kitchen, waiting for his wife and daughter to return home. Sam had spent some time taking a statement from him, and his demeanour had changed again, from desolate to taciturn. He clearly didn’t feel that recording his emotional response to his family’s problems was a worthwhile activity. Nevertheless Sam had persisted, and they had their statement.

Sam walked Caro back to her car, which was parked in the next street.

‘However dysfunctional they are,’ Caro was saying, ‘it doesn’t make them necessarily guilty of anything.’

‘What do you think all that was about?’ Sam said. ‘You think he’s genuinely having a wobble about it all?’

‘Who knows? Looked real enough.’

‘I was looking at that wedding picture,’ Sam said. ‘Annie looked very young.’

‘Oh, yes. She was only just sixteen.’

‘My God,’ Sam said. ‘Seriously?’