Vanished

‘I know it’s hard.’

Tears blurred in her eyes.

Then she nodded.

‘Thank you.’ I reached into my pocket, removed my pad and placed it down on to the floor next to me. The girl followed every movement, a habit born out of having to predict the next development, the next attack, the next assault. ‘Do you feel ready?’

‘Yes.’

I asked her how she ended up in the UK, and from there she told us – in staccato, broken English – about her journey. She was one of four sisters, with an absent father and a chronically depressed mother. Tears continued filling her eyes as she told us how she was grabbed one day on the way back from school and thrown into the back of a van, and then the next time she was conscious, she woke up in a room full of men – four, maybe five of them – and they raped her repeatedly. She told me she was eleven at the time. It was all I could do to keep it together, to remain emotionless as the pain tremored through her voice, and I had to look down at my pad to prevent her seeing my anger and thinking it was directed at her. I wrote meaningless notes while she told me how she’d been pulled out of the room and into a lorry, then another van, except this time she was in a new country, and they didn’t even speak her language.

‘When did you first get here?’ I asked.

‘In UK?’

‘Yes.’

‘December,’ she said.

‘December last year?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’ve been here six, seven months?’

‘Yes. That was when I meet Adrian.’

The people who’d kidnapped her handed her over to Wellis, and from there she became a prisoner. As she talked, I realized she wasn’t scared of Wellis – or, at least, not like she had been at the beginning – but the way he’d used her and treated her had left her with a look of inevitability, as if being dragged from one punter to the next was all she should expect from life. She had no money. No one to run to. Nowhere to go. It was a heartbreaking moment; one of those times when it felt like you were watching someone drifting out to sea, knowing the fate that awaited them, and all you could do was watch from the shore.

‘He had friend,’ she said.

‘Adrian?’

She nodded. She’d referred to him as ‘Adrian’ throughout. She didn’t know his surname and had probably only learned his first name from listening to their conversations. ‘He had friend called Eric. He always …’ A pause. ‘He always look at me. Never say nothing. Just look. I didn’t like way he look at me.’

But eventually Eric Gaishe did more than look. I remembered Pell turning up the night I’d been watching their house, seeing him talk to Gaishe before driving off again. Gaishe must have told him Marika was unavailable, or Pell would have surely asked for her. Either way, it wasn’t much of a shift: one violent rapist to another.

‘Eric was one who hit head. I can’t remember nothing after. Just remember you. You save me.’

‘Do you remember any of the other men who came to see you?’

Her eyes blinked, surrounded by the bandaging. Somehow I could see the answer without her saying a word: After a while I stopped paying attention.

‘Do you remember a guy called Duncan?’

A blank.

‘He used to film you?’

Now she remembered. From behind her, Healy couldn’t see her reaction but when I glanced at him he could see exactly what I was telling him: She remembers Pell.

‘He never told me name,’ she said, and her voice was so quiet it was barely even audible beyond the ECG and the murmur of conversations in the corridor outside. I didn’t interrupt, though, just shifted in, across the floor, a little closer. ‘He was … strange man.’

‘Why?’

‘He never say nothing. No words.’

‘Ever?’

‘No words,’ she repeated.

‘He hurt you?’

‘Yes. Hurt me.’

I remembered finding her in the loft, and remembered the words she’d managed to get out, through all the bruising and the blood and the damage: Don’t let him hurt me.

‘He was the one you were talking about?’

She frowned.

‘When I found you in the loft, you said to me, “Don’t let him hurt me.” Was that man – Duncan, the one who filmed you – was he was the one you were talking about?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

There was something in her face.

‘Marika?’

‘Yes. Him.’

But as she looked at me, a lie passed between us, and fear bloomed in her face. It wasn’t Pell she was talking about, just as it had never been Wellis. None of the DVDs Pell had of them were timecoded or dated, but if she’d landed in December, it meant the majority of them were filmed after Sam Wren’s disappearance.

‘Was it the man who watched you and Duncan that scared you?’

She glanced at me, trying to figure out how I knew.

‘Was it him, Marika?’

It seemed to take her a long time to process the question, and when she finally did her legs came back up to her chest, and she resumed the foetal position. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘It was the man who watched you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he only watch?’

Tears in her eyes now. ‘Yes.’

‘So why were you scared of him?’

‘I don’t know how to …’ She paused. ‘Don’t know words.’

‘Can you try?’

The tear escaped and she automatically went to wipe it away, but all she felt at her fingertips were bandages. She sniffed. ‘He never show face. I just hear him behind me.’

‘You never saw him enter or leave?’

‘Never see him. Ever.’

‘Then how did you know he was there?’

‘I hear door.’

‘You heard him come in?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s it? You only heard him?’

‘I see his …’ She waved a hand. ‘In mirror.’

‘His reflection?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did he look like?’

She shook her head. ‘Face was in dark.’

‘Shadow?’

‘Shadow, yes. Mostly.’

‘You never saw any of his face?’

‘Only once. A small …’