The Skeleton Coast

make all kinds of stuff very cheap, and everybody knows it’s because they mostly use slave labour. And mostly nobody cares. They pretend to be legit, and their customers pretend not to know how the goods are being made because it’s so cheap. Anyway, someone must have made an official complaint, because we were sent to investigate.’ He paused. ‘The factory made bed linen. Sheets, quilt covers. Those flouncy things you put round the bottom of beds. The doors were all chained shut, so none of the workers could escape. They lived in there, worked in there, two shifts, working round the clock. They’d do 12 hours on the machines, then they’d lie down around the edges of the workroom and try to sleep. They were cooking in there too, on little stoves with naked flames—imagine! In a bedding factory! Where there’s fabric and lint and fluff and cotton everywhere! You’d only have to knock one of those stoves over and the whole place would go up. The people looked like ghosts. They were so thin and pale—they were never allowed outside—never had a day off, and the food they were getting was pathetic. I’ve never seen anything like it. But here’s the thing—even after we came in and closed the factory down, a lot of them didn’t want to leave. They were begging us to let them stay. I couldn’t figure it out.’

‘What were you going to do with them once you let them go?’

‘Another ship was going to take them to a refugee camp.’

‘Ah,’ said Annalie.

‘What do you mean, “ah”?’ asked Cherry, perplexed.

‘No one wants to end up in a refugee camp,’ Annalie said. ‘You’ll live your whole life there with no chance of ever getting out. Those people who wanted to stay must have thought they had at least some chance of a better life there.’

‘They were locked in, 24 hours a day,’ Cherry said. ‘The factory was a death trap.’

‘I’ve heard the refugee camps aren’t too nice, either,’ Annalie said.

‘And anyway, it isn’t true you don’t have a chance of getting out of the camps,’ Cherry said stoutly. ‘People get resettled all the time. Dux has a very active refugee resettlement program.’

This was not what Annalie had heard, but she could see that Cherry believed it.

‘So do you do a lot of that sort of thing?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Liberating slaves.’

Cherry’s face brightened. ‘It’s different every day. That’s what I like about it.’

‘You like being in the Admiralty, then?’

‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Why else would you join?’

‘Well, maybe because you have to if you want to go on and do something else,’ Annalie suggested.

Cherry just laughed and shook his head. ‘My family would quite like me to get a nice safe job in an office. But I love being at sea.’

‘What do you love about it?’ Annalie was genuinely curious.

‘I like the camaraderie,’ Cherry said. ‘And the fact that you never know what you’re going to be doing next. When you’re out on patrol, you might be chasing pirates or answering a distress call. We’ve done search and rescue operations. Remember that yacht that got lost, that had the vid star on it?’

Annalie shook her head, mystified.

‘You really don’t remember? It was all over the newsfeeds.’

‘I don’t pay much attention to those,’ Annalie mumbled.

‘We were part of the search. Wasn’t our vessel that found her, unfortunately, but we saw the signal that led to the other guys finding them.’

‘Wow,’ Annalie said politely.

‘Sometimes we’re just sailing up and down, making our presence felt, keeping the bad guys away. And that can be a bit boring. But one of my superior officers told me that it’s good when it’s boring. It should be boring. Because that means you’re keeping people safe.’ He beamed at her.

Annalie looked at him curiously, remembering the stories she’d heard, the things she’d seen with her own eyes. She longed to press him on whether he’d been part of the not-so-noble actions, too—the ones where they burnt people’s homes or threatened to shoot them. But she couldn’t think of a way to bring it up without making him suspicious. So she said nothing.

The morning passed quietly, but as morning became afternoon, one of Red Bandana’s companions appeared and waved Annalie vigorously to the door.

‘What’s he so excited about?’ Cherry wondered aloud.

Annalie could only hope it was good news.

Once more she was ushered into the room with the squashy lounges. Red Bandana was there with the boy and the old man, and this time, Red Bandana looked radiantly happy.

‘We know who you are,’ the boy translated.

Red Bandana crowed and shouted something.

‘You’re a bad girl!’ the boy translated. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you’re one of us?’

Annalie stared at him, and then realised what had happened. They’d searched her nameon the links and found the story about Essie’s kidnapping.

‘That girl, that heiress. She still on your boat?’ the boy asked.

‘No,’ Annalie said. ‘We lost her.’

The boy translated this. Red Bandana shook his head and waved his finger at her in a “naughty naughty” gesture.

‘You’re lying,’ the boy translated. ‘He remember her. She was the other girl on the boat.’

‘All right, that was her. But there isn’t any money,’ Annalie said. ‘Didn’t you read the story? Her father can’t get at his money, and the Duxans won’t pay. We already tried. There’s no money, she’s not worth anything. The whole thing was a bust.’

The boy translated this. Red Bandana’s expression darkened. He shot out a burst of rapid-fire instructions.

‘You don’t know how to squeeze a family,’ the boy said. ‘We could get the money, no problem.’

‘I promise you, there’s no way,’ Annalie said.

‘We think there is,’ said the boy. He paused while Red Bandana spoke again. ‘That call ID you gave us, that was her call ID?’

Annalie had to nod—it was pointless to deny it.

‘You call her. Get her to come here. If you give her to us, we’ll let you go.’

‘What?’

‘You want to get free? Give us the rich girl.’

Annalie stared