Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (23 page)

I curled my finger back and balled a fist with my elevated hand. Carla hesitated just long enough for her friend to intervene.

“Stop it, both of you! You hand that damn bottle over to me right now . . . Do as I ask or you can say goodbye to our friendship and the roof you have over your head, I swear, Carla.”

Virginia Landry stood calmly by the agitated young hooker’s side. She carefully wrapped her hand around the bottle and slowly pulled it away from Carla Havers’ fingers and dropped it on to the table.

“Mr Ellington didn’t start anyting here. He was just asking me a few questions, I became upset, but I’m all right now . . . see?”

She placed her fingers underneath Havers’ chin and made eye contact with her.

“Look at me, no harm done. Now you go back upstairs to your room and git some sleep, Carla. I’ll see you later.”

The young call girl was reluctant to leave at first and stared back at me, the dissipating fury in her eyes barely sated.

“Do as I say now, please . . . Everyting’s just fine.”

I watched in admiration as Virginia Landry closed the living room door as the young girl passively returned back to her room. In an unruffled manner she had managed to halt a potentially dangerous situation and turn things round for the better, and that had surprised me. It was a stark contrast to the woman who had sat weeping in front of me a moment ago.

“Thank you.”

“Would you have really done to Carla what you threatened to, Mr Ellington?”

“I’d hoped I wouldn’t have had to, but if she’d have forced my hand, she’d have left me with little choice. I didn’t fancy having my face split open like a busted-up plum.”

Miss Landry raised her eyebrows sharply as she looked at me, then sat back down, surprising me again with her willingness to recommence our previous conversation and go over the incident that had aroused so much fear and sadness within her.

“While I was standing in that dirty little back bedroom with my eyes shut and my back turned away from that animal Anansi, he walked over to me, took me by the scruff of the neck and slammed my face up against the door. He’s not a man who likes to be refused, Mr Ellington. He told me that I had no choice and that tomorrow he’d make it known to my pastor and the congregation at my local church that I hung out in shebeens with whores and dope addicts and that I was no better myself. He said that he’d see to it that I lost my job at the Bee Hive and said he’d make sure that somebody lied to the landlord of this place, saying that I’d been bringing men back here and having them pay fo’ sex. He said he’d see me out on the streets.”

“So you did as he asked . . . Yes?”

“Of course I did . . . What the hell was I supposed to do? Carla said he’s got people everywhere. That he’s a dangerous and powerful man. That if I had refused him, the tings he’d threatened to do to me would seem like nuttin’ by comparison once he’d finished with me.”

“What happened after you agreed, Miss Landry?

“Oh please, enough with the Miss Landry. Call me Virginia. You’re starting to sound a like a nosy copper.”

“Funny you should say that . . . I was once upon a time.”

“You were a copper?”

“No . . . I was just nosy.”

I grinned at her, and the graveness on her face was lifted for a moment by the briefest of smiles at my juvenile joke before she continued.

“If I tell you what happened . . . when I’ve finished, I want you to do someting fo’ me.”

“OK, if I can.”

I sat back on my chair and closed the notepad, resting it on my knee.

“Befo’ Anansi let me leave that damn room, he said that somebody would be in touch with me at the Bee Hive and that he’d have me picked up from my home and I’d be introduced to his ‘associates’ in the near future. Sure enough, less than a week later the big bastard who stands guard outside of the shebeen called on me while I was at work, said I’d be collected on the Saturday at 9 p.m., that I was to wear someting elegant and no make-up. On the night I’m picked up at nine on the dot and taken over to Richmond Road, where Papa’s waiting in that stinky old room again. He tells me how beautiful I look, that I’ve pleased him and that his associates will be pleased too. He takes a small envelope outta his pocket and tells me, ‘This is fo’ you, baby, spend it wisely,’ then we went back down stairs and joined the party fo’ a while.”

“How much money was there in the envelope, Virginia?”

“Forty pounds. It’s still sitting in my chest of drawers, been there since I got back from wherever I was taken. I don’t wanna ever have to touch it again.”

“I’m sorry that I have to ask you this, but it’s important . . . I need to know what happened after you left the shebeen.”

“At around eleven thirty I’m sitting with Papa. He hasn’t spoken a word to me since handing over the money, and through the crowd some white guy heads over towards with us. The white dude’s just standing there, the pair of ’em don’t speak to each other, but Papa looks at me and tells me that it’s time fo’ me to leave and to have a good evening. I’m taken outta the shebeen across the road to a car, I’m put into the back, and the white guy gets in beside me and pulls out a piece of cloth and tells me that I have to wear it across my eyes, that I’m safe and no harm is gonna come to me. I let him put the blindfold on me, he clips the seatbelt across my lap – and that’s when he did it.”

“Did what?”

“He injected me with some kinda drug, powerful enough to stop me from making a fuss. It was starting to wear off a little by the time we arrived at the house.”

“And then?”

“And then what happened next I just wanna forget about, OK?”

“Somebody hurt you?”

“Like you wouldn’t know, Mr Ellington . . . Like you wouldn’t know.”

“What the hell happened to you, Virginia?”

The young woman started to shake.

“What, are you sick in the head or someting? Do you need it spelling out to you, giving you a kick to hear this stuff, is it? Jesus, you’re as bad as those dirty perverts, stood pawing over me like I’m some piece of meat on a butcher’s slab, hiding behind those masks.”

“Did you say masks?”

“Yes . . . crazy carnival masks. The white guy in the back of the car, he took me down some steps into a room; there was very little lighting and it was cold. He stripped me outta my clothes and I was pushed onto some kinda bench. My wrists were tied and then he took the blindfold off of me and stuffed it into my mouth, then he left me there alone. That’s when the men in the masks came in.”

“How many men do you think there were?”

“Oh fo’ Christ’s sakes, I don’t know. Ten, fifteen . . . more . . . and there was the woman.”

“There was a woman?”

“Yeah . . . She was a young black woman. I can remember her being dragged in front of me and pulled onto her knees, and they made her watch, they held her face next to mine and they made her watch as they . . . Well, you can guess the rest, surely. I could hear the mumbled voices of the men. I don’t recall a word any of them said, but the one ting I do remember is that young woman never made a sound, she didn’t call fo’ help, scream out . . . nuttin’.”

I began to feel sick at what she had told me. My head was struggling to comprehend the inhuman cruelty she had endured.

“How’d you git back to home?”

“I can’t remember; I think I was drugged up again, probably driven back same as befo’. I woke and found myself outside, propped up against my front door.”

“And other than what you’ve just told me and Carla, nobody else knows what those bastards did to you?”

“Of course not . . . Do you think I’m mad, who the hell is going to believe a story like that?”

“You need to tell the police about this, Virginia. You can’t keep this a secret, and you hide it inside of you like it never happened, it’s going to haunt you fo’ the rest of your days.”

“But he’ll kill me if I go to the cops!”

“Think, girl . . . The police can protect you. What if Papa is about to seize another woman and then puts her through the same horror as you suffered? You don’t wanna have that on your conscience. You’ve been through enough, surely?”

Virginia Landry sat looking up at me. It was if every fibre of her humanity had been stripped from her as she had narrated the vile abuse that had been inflicted upon her.

“You needn’t worry ’bout my conscience or if another woman is going to suffer at Papa Anansi’s hands, Mr Ellington. He already has his next woman fo’ those twisted bastards . . . You’re looking at her.”

I stood looking through the frayed net curtains out into the quietness of the street as Virginia Landry sat, motionless, behind me. Neither of us had spoken for the last couple of minutes and her fear pervaded the little sitting room like an unwelcome relation had just joined us, giving me a real sense of unease as I tried to take in all that she had just told me. As I continued to stare out at the greyness outside, lost for a moment in my thoughts, a lone magpie flew down onto the church wall opposite. It steadied itself on the arch of the stonework, then began to clean its beak on the edge of the blue masonry before raising its head to study its surroundings; it peered across the road towards the house and bent its head ever so slightly, as if it were trying to get a better look inside at me through the translucent fabric.

“Hello, mister magpie, how’s your wife and kids?”

I was brought back to reality from my preoccupied thinking with a start as Virginia Landry suddenly spoke. I had not heard her get up, but she was standing directly behind me, watching the large black and white bird over my shoulder.

“You should salute it now.”

“What?”

“That’s what people say over here when they see a magpie alone. It’s an old English superstition, Mr Ellington.”

She smiled at me before returning to her chair and sitting down.

“It’s only a bird . . . Why’d they say that to a bird?”

“Maybe it is only a bird . . . but I’m told they’re supposed to mate fo’ life. When you see one on its own that means the bird is mourning the loss of its partner. You salute it to show sympathy fo’ the magpie’s loss.”

I turned and looked back out into the street to catch another glimpse of it, but the feathered creature that provoked such unusual sentiments was gone. I felt a sharp shudder run through me as I walked back across the room and stood in front of the frightened young woman, gently resting my hand on her shoulder.

“You said earlier there was someting I could do fo’ you once you’d finished telling me what happened . . . What was it?”

“If you find the missing girl you’re looking fo’ and she turns out to be the same poor child they had in that room, the one those bastards were holding and forcing to watch as they did what they did to me . . . You tell her I was sorry.”

She stared down at the floor and I watched as she softly tapped the toes of her white patent-leather shoes together.

“Sorry . . . What you gotta be sorry fo’? There was nuttin’ you could have possibly done to have helped that girl.”

I knelt down in front of her and rested my arm across my knee as I looked back up at her tired, anxious face. When she finally answered me, her voice was tense and subdued, as if the words had been attached to barbed wire and her edgy utterances were being cruelly dragged out of her throat one by one as she spoke.

“No . . . You don’t understand . . . You see . . . While she was being held by those men . . . she smiled at me. It was the kinda smile that I’m sure was trying to tell me that everyting would be all right . . . that it would soon all be over . . . I was just too scared to smile back . . . to give her the same feelin’ in return. All I had to do was smile, Mr Ellington . . . but I just couldn’t.”

She returned her gaze to the floor and I laboured to think of what I could say without appearing to be insensitive. At that moment I felt anything I said to try and offer solace or sympathy would perhaps feel hollow and senseless to her. When I finally spoke, it was from my heart rather than my head.

“When bad tings happen to us, we never know how we’re going to react to them. You’re being real tough on yourself, girl. You did what you had to do to git outta that place in one piece and I’m gonna see to it that you ain’t going back there.”

I took out my notepad back and wrote my name, address and Vic’s telephone number back at Cut Man’s gymnasium for her to leave a message for me should she need to. I tore the page from the small lined book, folded it in half and gave it to her.

“I’m gonna be sorting all o’ this . . . You need me, that’s where you can find me, OK? In the meantime I suggest you lay low fo’ a few days. You have anywhere else safe you could stop fo’ a time? Some place away from Bristol perhaps?”

“I have a friend used to be at my church. She lives in Birmingham now. Or maybe Carla could find . . .”

“No . . . not Carla. The kinda circles she moves in, you can be sure she’s soon gonna be getting stoned again and be talking to people who you don’t want knowing your bidness . . . Do you have any way of getting in touch with your friend in Birmingham?”

“Yes . . . I have her phone number, but I—”

I put my finger to her dry lips, interrupting what she was saying and silencing her words. I fished my wallet out of my back pocket and took out a five-pound note, placing it on the table in front of her. She looked at the cash, then pushed it back across the polished veneer towards me.

“I’m not taking your money . . .”

“Oh yes you are. I’m the one telling you to leave. Take it and git away from here . . . Do you understand me?”

I got up from kneeling in front of her and saw the graveness on her face lessen slightly.

“OK . . . I’ll call her when I git into work . . . which reminds me, I gotta go or I’ll be getting the sack.”

She stood up and smiled hesitantly at me.

“Do you really need to go into work this afternoon? I suggest you make a move outta here sooner than later.”

“If you say this is going to be sorted, then when I return I’m going to need a job to come back to, Mr Ellington. At least I can square tings there befo’ I leave. I git back around four; I’ll pack a bag and try to make the earliest train to Birmingham that I can . . . If I’m having to run, at least I’ll do it at my pace, if that’s all right with you?”