‘Wait,’ Donna had said, ‘there’s someone in my house. A copper. She’s been stabbed. You’ve… you’ve got to go back… ’
One of the men had turned round, stared at her. Anger in his red, painful-looking eyes. She recognised him as the one she had pepper-sprayed in the face.
‘Stabbed?’ he said. ‘Your speciality, is it?’
‘What? No, I… ’
He turned as far round in the passenger seat as he could go, looked her right in the face. Flecks of foam and spittle flew off his lips as he spoke. ‘You know what you did? You put my partner in the hospital. He’s fighting for his fucking life after what you did to him. D’you know that?’
A Scottish accent, she thought, her mind temporarily displaced by fear. She hadn’t been expecting that. She said nothing.
‘Bitch,’ he said.
‘Easy,’ said the driver. His voice was more dispassionate. She responded immediately to that, wanted to cling on to it. Dispassionate meant he wasn’t going to hurt her. Then her mind flicked over some of the punters she had had who had seemed dispassionate. At first. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
Donna was breathing hard, terrified. She wanted to say something that would make this man calm down, that would take away the imminent threat from him.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Her words just seemed to make him more angry. ‘You’re sorry? You’re fucking sorry? You humiliated me, you nearly killed him… ’
She sat back, eyes closed, preparing herself for a blow.
It didn’t come. She opened her eyes.
He had turned back round, was staring out through the windscreen. The driver was silent, just kept driving.
Donna said nothing.
And that was how it had been all journey.
Ben startled her away from her thoughts, pulling at her hand. She looked down at him.
‘I’m scared,’ he whispered.
Me too, she wanted to reply. But stopped herself. That was what she wanted to say, but not what he needed to hear. He was just a kid; he needed her to be strong. To tell him lies that he hoped would come true. Like Father Christmas and life is fair, that kind of thing.
She summoned up a smile. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she whispered back. And squeezed his hand.
He looked up at her once more, his eyes meeting hers, trusting in her words.
And in that instant, her heart broke.
She looked up again, spoke to the men in front.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ said the one with sore eyes, not even bothering to glance round this time.
She looked down at Ben once more, then out of the window. She didn’t know which was worse. This journey or the eventual destination.
She felt Ben’s hand squeeze hers all the tighter.
Wished she could believe in lies too.
80
‘There’s no easy way to do this, no easy way to tell you… ’
Don sighed. Felt Marina looking at him. Continued.
‘Right. There was a commune. This was in the seventies, round about then. You know the type. Hippy dropout place. All kaftans and cheesecloth and children running about naked. That kind of thing. Beads and badly played guitars and free love.’ His face darkened. ‘Or at least it was, in the beginning.’
He took a sip of coffee, continued.
‘The Garden. That was the name.’
Something flickered behind Phil’s closed eyes. ‘The Garden. But that’s-’
‘Don’t interrupt, Phil.’ Don’s voice was not harsh, just firm. ‘It’s better that I tell you this without interruption. And you just listen.’ He cleared his throat, continued. ‘Like I said, the Garden started off with the best of intentions, the way these things always do.’ He sighed. ‘But along the way, like always happens, that initial vision, such as it was, got corrupted.’
Another mouthful of coffee. He wished it were something stronger.
‘Brainwashing. That’s how the allegations went. Not just a commune, but a cult. And abuse. All kinds of abuse. Sexual, psychological, physical. That was bad enough. But then other rumours started. Even nastier ones. That the communists, for want of a better word, were being hired out. Pimped out, sold, even.’
‘In what way?’ Phil couldn’t help asking the question. He was too much of a detective.
Don didn’t seem to mind this time. ‘As sexual slaves,’ he said. ‘All ages. Rich perverts could get in touch, have a look at the menu, decide what they wanted. Sliding scale of payment depending on who they wanted and what they wanted them for.’
Another sigh. He shook his head.
‘We heard that some rich sicko wanted a couple of adults to chase on his estate instead of foxes. They never came back. Torn apart by hounds, we reckoned. And women. Lots of women. Some of them came back. But not all. And I doubt the ones that did were ever the same.’ His voice caught. ‘And the kids… ’
He took a moment, composed himself.
Silence thudded inside the house.
‘Anyway,’ Don said, clearing his throat, ‘a couple of them escaped. Man and a woman, with a couple of kids. Boy and a girl. Just… just young. They came to us. Not immediately, of course. Took them a while to trust us. We were the enemy, after all.’
No bitterness in his voice, just a wistfulness.
‘But they spoke to us. To me. I was a DI then. They wanted what was going on at the Garden stopped. Couldn’t bear to see their dream go sour. Couldn’t bear what was happening. It took a hell of a lot for them to get away. A hell of a lot. And they wouldn’t talk unless we guaranteed protection. So I did.’
More silence.
‘I arranged for the family to go into a safe house with twenty-four-hour protection. They were a really nice couple. A lovely family. I spent a lot of time with them. He had been a journalist before they joined the commune. She was gorgeous. And so were the kids.’ He nodded. ‘Yes. Especially considering what they’d been through. And when we got them there, they talked. Told us everything. Everything… ’
His voice tailed away, his words getting lost in memories. Not pleasant ones. He brought himself back, continued.
‘The Garden had started out OK. Guy in charge had genuinely believed he was doing some good. But then others got involved. Took over the running of it. They were… bad. Very bad. And that’s when everything changed.’
Another sip of coffee. It had gone cold. Don didn’t care.
‘So we made plans to raid the commune. Gary and Laura, that was their names, gave us as much detail as they could. Layouts, who lived where, access in and out, as much as they knew. But we had to be careful. There’d been the Jonestown massacre in America a few years before, and we didn’t want a repeat of that. We didn’t think it was likely, not in Colchester, but we couldn’t take any chances. They had them pretty brainwashed by now, half starved, ready to do anything they were told. So it took us a while to formulate a plan and get it implemented.’
He sighed again.
‘And when we did finally move on the Garden… it was deserted. Empty. Like they had all been… I don’t know. Beamed away to the mothership. Completely deserted. Like a landlocked
