Stolen Lives (2 page)

Before Edmonds could act, the woman twisted away from Richards’ grasp, leaving long strands of hair dangling from his hands. Edmonds had a brief glimpse of her mouth, bloodstained lips curled back in a snarl, and her gut contracted again because she looked just like a vampire.

To her astonishment, the woman then hooked a leg over the handrail and jumped. Edmonds saw her red hair fly out behind her as she landed on the tarmac below on all fours, like a cat.

“Grab her,” Edmonds shouted, and the fire escape vibrated yet again as the officer on his way up did a hasty about-turn and made a hurried descent.

Edmonds thumbed her radio on. “Escaping suspect,” she yelled. “Back entrance. Red-headed female. You copy?”

She glanced down again, just in time to see the woman dart into the shadows and disappear from sight. She was limping heavily, favouring her right ankle, which must have twisted when she landed.

The radio crackled in reply. “We’ve got the two main streets cordoned off. She won’t get far. Over.”

Edmonds turned back to Richards. He was swearing, breathing hard, his fingers pressed to the wound on his neck. He took his hand away and stared down at the sticky smear of blood.

“Bitch!” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Bloody bitch. Can’t believe she did that. God knows what she’s given me.”

A strong gust of wind wailed eerily through the gaps in the fire escape’s supports. Blinking rain out of her eyes, Edmonds saw the woman emerge from the shadows, then bend and fumble under her trouser leg before she set off half-running, half-limping, towards the young constable standing by the parked police cars.

Edmonds grabbed her radio again. Through the worsening downpour, she thought she had seen the gleam of a knife in her hand.

“Watch out! She’s armed!” she shouted, directing her voice into the radio and also towards the uniformed officer manning the cordon.

The officer didn’t hear her warning. He moved confidently forward to intercept the fleeing woman, obviously thinking, as Edmonds had done at first, that she was one of the trafficked victims trying to escape. There was a brief scuffle, and then he cried out and stumbled backwards, clutching at his stomach. In the bright beam of the police car’s headlights, Edmonds saw blood seeping through the young man’s fingers.

Kevlar offered little protection against a sharp-bladed knife.

Firearms were not commonly found in brothels, as there was always the risk that they could fall into the wrong hands. Because of this, the police didn’t carry guns during raids.

Right now, Edmonds wished she had a gun.

“Officer down!” she screamed into the radio, staring at the scene in horror. “Call an ambulance. We’ve got a man injured on the street.”

Another pair of high-beam headlights blazed in the darkness, and Edmonds saw a sleek black car speeding down the street towards them. It skidded to a stop a few metres away from the police blockade. For a moment the lights from one of the police cars shone directly through the windscreen, allowing Edmonds to glimpse the driver, a sunken-cheeked black man. Then the passenger door flew open, the red-headed woman dived inside, and water hissed from under the tyres as the car spun round in a tight U-turn and disappeared down the Leytonstone Road.

Two other officers sprinted over to the fallen man.

“Shit!” Richards had wadded a tissue onto the wound in his neck and was also staring at the departing vehicle. “That was an Aston Martin. Looked like Salimovic’s car.”

“The brothel owner?” Edmonds’ eyes widened. She’d heard Mackay on the radio earlier, communicating with the team that had been on the way to his house to arrest him.

Now it seemed that despite their careful planning and preparation, he had managed to escape.

“Shit,” Richards said again, inspecting the wet and bloody tissue. “How do these bastards always know?”

“Well, it wasn’t Salimovic at the wheel,” Edmonds said. “I saw the driver. He was black.”

The radio crackled again and Richards jerked his thumb towards the door. “Don’t worry about what’s happening down there. They’ll sort it out. We’re going in now. Room-to-room search. Keep your pepper spray handy in case there’s trouble inside.”

Edmonds tripped over the ledge in the doorway and almost sprawled headlong into the corridor. Great going, girl, she thought. Look good in front of your superiors, why don’t you?

She moved forward cautiously, glancing from side to side. It was gloomy in here, lit only by a couple of low-wattage bulbs. The walls were dirty and the floor was scuffed, the lino cracked and uneven. She caught another whiff of the unpleasantly musky perfume which she now realised hadn’t come from the escaping red-head, but from the interior of the brothel itself. Underlying that was the stench of old dirt and another pungent odour that Edmonds suddenly, shockingly, realised was the smell of sex.

Pop music was coming from somewhere, piped through invisible speakers, but as she noticed it the sound was turned off. Now she could hear the voices of the officers at the front of the building.

“You three take the top floor.”

“Bag that price list, will you?”

“Christ, it stinks in here.”

“Oi! Where do you think you’re going, sir? Hey! Someone grab him.” Then there was the sound of running footsteps, followed by a brief scuffle.

She came to a closed door on her right. Aware of Richards behind her, she pushed it open. The room was gloomy; a purple lantern illuminated a single bed in the corner with a figure huddled on a stained mattress.

“Somebody here,” she called, hearing the quiver in her own voice as she approached the bed.

A black girl lay there, eyes wide and terrified. She was on her side, her slender arms wrapped tightly around her legs, and Edmonds saw with a jolt that she was naked. She glanced around the room for something to cover her with, but there was nothing suitable in the small space. Nothing at all.

“Are you all right, miss?” Edmonds leaned forward. Now she could see the puffy swelling on the girl’s left cheek, where the dark skin was mottled even darker with bruising. She could also see the massive, crusted scabs on her lips.

The girl flinched under Edmonds’ concerned gaze.

The police officer breathed in deeply, suppressing her anger. Who had done this? The owner? A client? That middle-aged bastard who’d tried to wriggle out of the back entrance?

“Who hurt you?”

No reply. She whispered something in an almost inaudible voice, but it wasn’t in a language that Edmonds could understand.

“I don’t know if she speaks any English,” Edmonds said aloud.

She reached out and gently took the black girl’s hand in her own cold, damp one.

“Are you all right?” she asked again.

The girl looked up at Edmonds in silence, her eyes full of tears.

2

October 25

They came for him at night.

Eleven p.m. on a summer evening and Terence was in bed, propped up on his black continental pillow, fiddling around with something on his laptop. She was watching
Idols
on the big-screen tv, lying naked on the bedcovers, her hair spread over the pillow, listening to some teenager butchering a Mango Groove song.

Then, a noise. Loud, hard, frightening, cutting right through the hum of the laptop’s fan and the screech of the South African
Idols
contestant’s high notes.

He snapped his laptop shut and sat bolt upright. She raised her head from the pillow and stared at the window, as if she could somehow see all the way through it and down to the dark garden below.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Don’t know.” He pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed. “Turn the tv down, will you?”

He pushed back the curtain and peered out of the window. She felt around for the remote, nearly knocking the bedside lamp over. Where on earth was it? She fumbled in the folds of the duvet, checked under the pillow. Her heart was pounding, her hands trembling. What had made that noise? It was impossible that anything could be banging outside like that. But it hadn’t sounded like a banging noise in any case. It had sounded like …

… like somebody knocking hard on the front door.

Which was even more impossible, because they were the only people on the property. It was well secured, as all the homes in this wealthy Jo’burg neighbourhood were, surrounded by a high wall and a five-thousand-volt electric fence.

She glanced across the bed. There it was, of course. On his table. It had gravitated to the man’s side, as remotes invariably do. She stretched across, grabbed it and stabbed the mute button with nail-breaking force.

The teen’s quavering voice cut off mid-wail.

“Can’t see a thing,” Terence muttered, turning away from the window.

Then they heard the noise again. It sounded louder in the silence.

Bam
,
bam
,
bam
.

“Shit,” he said. He hurried to the cupboard, flung it open, rummaged among the clothes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“How the hell should I know?” He pulled on a black t-shirt and grabbed his jeans. Searching through the cupboard once more, he took out a small silver gun. He did something to it that made a metallic, ratcheting noise.

She sat up and stared at him, wide-eyed, clutching the duvet and worrying it between her fingers. He turned around and regarded her coldly, as if she were a complete stranger, as if they hadn’t been making love earlier that evening and sharing a jacuzzi an hour ago.

“Put on some clothes,” he snapped.

Suddenly her own nakedness wasn’t sexy or appealing. It made her feel vulnerable, afraid.

She leaned down to retrieve the outfit she’d worn earlier, now discarded on the floor. Short black cocktail dress, lacy panties, gold sandals. Hands shaking, it took her three tries to fasten her push-up bra. By the time she’d got the dress over her head, Terence was on his way downstairs.

She heard his footsteps on the tiles. Then nothing. She waited, perched on the edge of the bed, straining her ears. Was that the front door opening? She didn’t know. It was too far away for her to be sure.

She waited for what felt like an eternity, expecting to hear a shout, a gunshot, something.

She heard only silence and the soft trilling of a cricket outside.

“Terence, are you ok?” she called.

More silence.

“Terence?” She tried again, louder this time.

She waited a few more fearful, stomach-clenching minutes. What should she do? Eventually she crept down the stairs, slowly, cautiously. Who would be waiting there? She didn’t know. She needed a weapon, but what could she use?

Stopping at the foot of the staircase, she lifted an ornamental wooden spear from its resting place next to the painted Masai shield on the wall. It wouldn’t be effective against a gun, but at least it was something. Its polished shaft felt comforting in her hand. She held it in front of her and cautiously made her way down the hallway.

The lounge was quiet. The hall was empty. There was no sign of Terence, no sound of anyone.

Ahead of her she saw the front door, gaping wide open. Beyond that—she froze, grasping the spear more tightly, feeling her heart hammer a panicked tattoo in her throat—the electric gate stood wide open, too. Wide open to the dark road outside.

The house was unguarded, vulnerable, its defences breached.

Terence was gone.

3

October 26

Jade pounded along the path that ran parallel to the main road and then wound its way through a grove of pine trees. Her feet skidded on loose sand, crunched over the dry needles. Shade at last. The air was cooler in the dappled cover of the trees. She slowed to a jog and concentrated on her breathing. Two steps breathing in, two breathing out. In, out, in, out. Her lungs burned. Her legs ached.

She hated running.

Every weekend, without fail, her police-commissioner father had got out of bed even earlier than his usual break-of-dawn start. He would pull on his battered running shoes and strap his service pistol around his waist. If Jade was up by that hour, which she occasionally was, he’d greet her with a grim nod. He’d always say the same words to her, in the same resigned tone.

“Can’t let the bad guys outrun me.”

Then her father would head out of the house, returning an hour later, redder, sweatier, and with an expression on his face even grimmer than before.

Jade suspected it was similar to the one she wore now.

She wore Nike trainers, which thanks to her twice-weekly runs were rapidly becoming as battered as her father’s had been, but she drew the line at carrying a gun. She knew from experience that a loaded weapon might feel light at the start of a run, but it would have grown as heavy as a brick by the end.

Her father was dead, but his life lessons stuck with Jade.

Don’t let the bad guys outrun you.

Jade lifted her gaze from the path in front of her and checked the road ahead. Slowing again, she glanced back. Nobody there.

The pine grove was behind her now. The path led down an uneven slope, the dry soil fissured and eroded, pale yellow-green weeds clinging to the sides, and then rejoined the sandy road.

Not far to go till home.

She increased her speed, forcing her tired legs into a sprint. She ran past the house on the corner, a gunmetal-grey monstrosity that looked like it must surely be owned by a retired naval commander. The outside wall had been painted white, which was an unfortunate choice for a home bordering a dusty dirt road. Jo’burg’s winter had been long and dry, and although it was late October now, and hot, not a drop of rain had fallen. The wall was covered with brownish-yellow stains, just like the teeth of a sixty-a-day smoker.

Past the next house, an inoffensive bungalow with an electric-wire fence. Inside, a gardener stood aiming a hosepipe at a withered flowerbed. Jade waved. He waved back. The owners’ Jack Russell raced up and down the fence line, yapping loudly.

Almost home. Past the next property. It was easy to run faster here, past the main house and the concrete staircase that led to the tiny flat above the garage. Jade didn’t want to look at it. She didn’t want to see the smart red Mini parked outside the garage. It belonged to the new tenant, a woman who was obviously prepared to pay more for her wheels than for her accommodation.