LITMIR.BIZ

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woman was on the screen. Or was it a girl? A small figure with a pinched, frightened-looking face. Difficult to see as the night-time footage wasn’t helped by being black and white. She looked familiar to Sheila. Was this a trap? Was she a dealer, pushed up to the camera by some gun-toting monster because she looked less threatening at a glance?

      Chiming, chiming – the visitor was insistent. Sheila could have just walked away. Turned off the lights and retreated to the bedroom. But her battered conscience said she should answer this girl’s plea.

      ‘What do you want?’ she barked down the intercom.

      ‘Mrs Sheila, it’s Efe!’ The girl had a heavy Nigerian accent. ‘I work for you. Please. I need to speak to you.’

      Sheila scrutinised the girl’s face, mentally running through the staff records that Gloria had meticulously put together. Comparing the haunted girl on the CCTV screen to the photographs stapled to fact sheets. Click. She found a match with one of those trafficked girls from Benin City. She wasn’t lying. Exhaling heavily, she was only now aware she had been holding her breath.

      ‘What do you want, Efe?’ Sheila asked. ‘It’s late. I was going to bed.’

      ‘Can I come in?’

      ‘No. Call Gloria in the morning if you’ve got a problem.’

      ‘Please! You must hear what I have to say.’

      ‘You shouldn’t have come here. Hasn’t Gloria told you we’re closing the business?’

      The girl started to weep, clinging to the gatepost for support.

      Against her better judgement, Sheila buzzed her in.

      ‘You cannot let us go, Mrs Sheila,’ Efe said, hiccoughing. She dabbed at her puffy wet cheeks with some kitchen roll that Sheila gave to her. Sipping at a glass of milk. Doleful eyes not even taking in her surrounds. Just focusing on Sheila, then her work-worn hands. On Sheila, then the hands. ‘There are five of us living in that flat Gloria found. We are so grateful for you getting us away from those bad men in Birmingham. You saved us. You are both like aunties to us.’

      Sheila poured herself a vodka and orange. She sighed heavily. ‘I didn’t save you. I’m no angel, Efe, and I’m not your auntie. It’s business. You’re just numbers on a spreadsheet, love.’

      ‘Mrs Sheila! If we don’t work for you, what will we do? We don’t want to go home. We can’t get benefits.’

      ‘Look, it’s not my problem, is it? You’re a free woman, now. Apply for a visa,’ Sheila said, swigging the drink rather more quickly than she should. Wet hair, dripping down the back of her robe, as she willed herself not to pity this shabby, tired-looking girl in a duffle coat and old-fashioned jeans who couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

      Efe’s mouth turned down at the corners. She tugged at her hair, styled in a loose Afro, and pulled it off in one piece – a wig, much to Sheila’s surprise. Pointed to a patch of unsightly scarring on her scalp where the hair no longer grew.

      ‘You see this? This is where one of those bad men threw petrol at me and set fire to me. Then, he pushed me out of a car because I didn’t want to go with the disgusting pigs he brought to the house where we were being held prisoner.’

      Sheila winced, trying to picture the scene. Felt the long shadow of guilt dim the brightly lit kitchen and fall across her. ‘What’s that got to do with my cleaning company?’

      ‘I need that job. I need my flat. I don’t want to have to work for bad men again, giving my body to strangers just so I can eat.’

      ‘Go back to Nigeria.’ Sheila examined her nails, unable to look the girl in the eye. Wishing she’d put the wig back on.

      ‘I can’t! I can never go home. I’m ashamed. We all are. We’d be untouchable back home after the things we’ve done. We want to stay here. We want to be safe, working for you. Gloria is like family to us.’

      ‘Then I suggest you give her earache instead. Not me.’ She drained her glass and stood, making it clear that it was time the girl left.

      ‘But she is your friend.’

      ‘Gloria is a business associate. Nothing more. And that business is finished. Numbers on a spreadsheet, Efe. I’m sorry.’

      Efe pulled her wig on forcefully, glaring at Sheila. Pushing the milk away, undrunk. She wiped her eyes with a balled fist, her defiance not quite concealing the deep, deep hurt. ‘Then you must not have a beating heart inside your body, Mrs Sheila.’

      She stood and snatched up her cheap plastic handbag. Fastened the toggles on her threadbare duffle coat. ‘I will pray for you. You are a woman who only sees other human beings as commodities. That is no way to live and certainly isn’t the will of God. I feel sorry for you.’

      Guilt, anger, embarrassment reacted together inside Sheila. An explosion was inevitable. ‘Get out of my house!’ she yelled, hurling the glass from her vodka and orange against the wall. It smashed, scattering gleaming fragments of crystal over the kitchen floor.

      By the time Sheila had located the dustpan and brush in the utility room, Efe was long gone, having slammed the front door with enough force to make the glass in the vestibule reverberate. The confrontation left Sheila only with the feeling that she was nothing more than a gangster’s moll. No, worse than that. She was a materialistic, unfeeling lump of shit with no true friends, a family that kept its distance either through embarrassment or fear, no sense of community, no conscience. She was nothing. In fact, she was less than Efe. Efe, once a slave and a whore and a prisoner, was now none of those things. She was free. Whereas Sheila was all of those things but with a better manicure and more expensive clothes.

      Rhythmic crunching of gravel on the driveway snapped her out of her reverie. The thrum of an engine. She was not alone.

       Chapter 10

       Lev

      Loose stones kicked up against the discreet, anonymous-looking people carrier. It bounced along the potholed road, past the girls on the street corners, who ducked and dipped like erotic waterfowl to make eye contact with the driver every time they saw a car slow down. Thigh-length boots and miniskirts. Cut-off tops, whatever the weather and whatever time of night it may be. Preening to attract a fast mate who would pay hard cash.

      ‘Look at these poor cows,’ Tariq said, gunning the vehicle towards T&J Trading. ‘Risking life and limb to make the rent. Not like our girls.’

      ‘Our girls don’t make bloody rent,’ Jonny said. ‘They pay off my colossal mortgage and fund Gorgeous Sandra’s Botox habit, thank you very much!’ Guffaws of laughter and elbows in the ribs. Obviously on top form after what had taken place at the gallery. ‘What would they do without Uncle Jonny and Auntie Tariq, keeping them off the streets?’ More laughter.

      ‘Cheeky sod.’ Tariq playfully punched his business partner. ‘Last time I looked, you were the one with well-trimmed testicles, my friend. Snip, snip.’ Miming Gorgeous Sandra, no doubt.

      But Lev was only partly paying attention to the banter. He sat on the back seat, uncomfortably sandwiched between Asaf Smolensky and a giant of a man called Nasim he had never met before until that evening – apparently Asaf’s apprentice and a second cousin of Tariq.

      He felt his pulse. It was still racing after that loon Paddy O’Brien had lunged for him, trying to squeeze the breath out of him as some sort of retribution for M1 House. The arsehole had fingers of steel. How any of them had walked out with their lives intact with all of those guns and knives drawn was nothing short of a miracle. No, he mused. Actually, it wasn’t a miracle. It was down to that accountant woman. She was the scariest bastard

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