Twisting the little white rectangle between her fingers, she spoke unfalteringly about that night on the airbase and about her recuperation and life since. Other than Marta Lsenko, her fellow Ukrainian, she knew nothing about the young women she had shared a container with. Lsenko had become a friend, she explained. The two had worked together at the restaurant for a short time, but the physical demands and type of work had not been to Lsenko’s liking. She’d lasted no longer than four months in the job.
‘So what’s she up to these days?’ Bliss asked. ‘How is she making a living?’
Savchuk wrinkled her nose and turned away. Her strong cheekbones glistened and her full lips had become a thin slit. Eventually she shrugged and faced them again, folding her arms across her chest.
‘I do not like to say. Marta, she try to talk me into same thing. She say I make a lot of money doing what she does.’
‘Yeva, is she a prostitute?’ Bliss asked softly.
‘No. She… is escort. She has photographs on website. She meet with men and pretend to be girlfriend, yes?’
Bliss nodded, not wishing to point out the obvious. ‘But you don’t want to do that?’
She shook her head and gave a little shudder. ‘No. I not like showing myself off in photograph. Nor to men. They ask you to wear… not much. Sexy things, you know?’
‘Lingerie,’ Chandler suggested. ‘Stockings and suspenders, that sort of thing.’
‘Yes. This. I tell Marta I will stay here and do what I do. Soon I am manager. I live okay. I tell her I have no need of this thing she does.’
‘Do you know if she still has her card?’ Bliss asked.
‘I think yes. But I am not so sure.’
Bliss huffed out a sigh of frustration. Already he could see this was going to be a dead end. Locating whoever had given their victim the card was essential for forward momentum. His team thrived on such impetus, and learning which girl had given up their card would have been a great start; his money was still on the one who elected to return to her homeland. He thanked Savchuk, wished her well, paid the bill and got out of there. The young woman gave him a peck on the cheek before they left, thanking both detectives once again for rescuing her and the others. Bliss brushed it aside – it was his job, after all.
‘Am I wrong, or is this a complete waste of time?’ Chandler asked as they walked back out to the car. ‘I mean traipsing around to visit them. You could have asked about the card when you called them.’
Bliss acknowledged her observation with a slight dip of his head. ‘I could have. But I wanted to see the cards for myself. Any of the girls might have lied to me for one reason or another.’
***
They were early for their final interview, so Bliss called ahead. Lsenko asked him to give her half an hour; he suspected she was entertaining a client. It took them less than ten minutes to reach her flat in Hampton Vale, close to the Moorhen pub. Bliss parked the pool car a little way up the road so they could covertly observe the entrance to her property. Nobody emerged while they sat there.
‘Unless she threw her punter out of the door the moment she put down her phone, I guess she wasn’t busy after all,’ Chandler said. There was no judgement in her voice.
The pair got out of the car, walked up to the door, and rang the bell. A buzzer sounded, the lock shot open with a loud thunk, and they let themselves in.
Marta Lsenko was by far the most striking of the women they had rescued. Same high cheekbones as her friend Yeva, but where Savchuk had an athlete’s build, Lsenko was all soft curves. She wore a pink leisure suit that was more tasteful than it sounded. Damp hair hung in thick strands over her broad shoulders. Bliss’s eyes were drawn to her eyebrows, which were so arched she looked to be in a permanent state of shock.
Within two minutes, their host had also produced her card. She leaned down to hug Bliss before showing it to him. ‘You gave me this life,’ she said. ‘You and Penny. I won’t ever forget you.’
A dark cloud entered the room to squat over Bliss’s head. Was this what he had rescued her for? To endure the same indentured slavery she would have been forced into under Lewis Drake? He wondered if the agency Lsenko worked for was part of that man’s organisation. How ironic that would be.
The woman was open about what she did for a living and why. She had worked as a prostitute back home in Ukraine from the age of fourteen. As with all organised crime gangs, the one that ran her in the town of Donetsk was harsh with its girls, often brutal. But she had a wild streak her masters were unable to contain, and they had sold her on, a chattel to be haggled over. There she had lived in a single room that functioned as her entire home. A life of squalor and unhappiness. Here, Lsenko told them, she had a whole apartment to herself, and only ever saw the men who controlled her very existence when it came to handing over their cut of any cash she received. Provided she earned them twelve
