the lamplight – and he – would last.
Elenuta ran.
Three flights down the staircase, she headed for the exit onto the street, hoping no other door opened as she passed it. Each of those other apartments was as dangerous to her as the one she had just escaped. Dressed only in a tattered halter-neck top and Lycra miniskirt, no underwear, no shoes, she raced downwards, jumping the last three steps, praying her ankles wouldn’t sprain. She needed to be able to run. Looking upwards, she checked the situation. No one was following. Yet. It would only be sixty seconds or so before they realised she was missing, though.
Forcing herself not to barge through the outer door and have it slam, she moved carefully, slipping out into the night air. Dumbryden Gardens was still unfamiliar after the month she’d lived there. Inevitable, given that she hadn’t been allowed out of the flat. Planks over the inside of the windows meant she couldn’t even assess the terrain from above. She’d wondered why the police hadn’t become suspicious. Windows covered from the inside were never indicators of lawful activity. One of the women who’d been held in the flats the longest had explained.
‘Looks perfectly normal from outside. Kids’ curtains, flowery curtains, princesses, bullshit rainbows and hearts. They put the planks on with the curtains still up.’ A week later, the woman had disappeared, never to return. None of the other girls knew a thing about it. There were hypotheses and horrified speculation, but nothing solid save for one scrap of information that had got Elenuta where she was now. Perhaps a client had got too rough and killed her, was the most popular opinion. Then there was the option that she’d contracted a disease that would render her useless for sex trafficking purposes. Finlay did his best to keep his girls clean – not for their sakes, but so that his punters kept coming back for more. No one was going to do that with their dick resembling a root vegetable and leaking pus. Perhaps she’d escaped, one of the other women had whispered. There was a rumour about a key being sewn into the hem of one of her skirts. That was why Elenuta had requested that any spare clothes in the house be given to her. She’d pleaded that hers were no longer fit to be worn, and that hadn’t required much acting. Finlay had given her grief about it. As one of the newest members of what Finlay laughingly called his ‘team’, Elenuta was popular with the clients and made more money than anyone else. The clothes landed at her feet one day during her allotted shower time. The key had been shoved roughly into the picked-open hem of a pair of shorts. After that, the problem had been finding a moment when no one was guarding the outer door. That hurdle had suddenly and bizarrely been overcome when a man had walked in carrying a bulging newspaper package smelling of hot chocolate and shouting, ‘Deep fried Mars Bars, you fat fuckers!’ Without a second thought, Elenuta had grabbed the key and gone for it.
Now she had no plan. All she could do was follow her instincts. Turning left, she raced through an alleyway between the block she’d left and another that sat at a right angle to it. Put some distance in place first, then consider what to do, she told herself. Several of the street lights were broken. Sometimes during the day she heard the sounds of rocks being thrown, the odd cheer when there was a hit. The darkness provided both shelter and a disadvantage. Her pursuers knew the area well. A line of terraced houses was on one side, the rear of another block of flats on the other. She couldn’t see a main road, which was what she’d been hoping for. Flagging down a car would be her fastest way out of the area, and it wasn’t as if there was any definable risk of being raped. Not after twelve different men had been allowed into her room already that day. There were rewards and penalties depending on your behaviour. If you wanted to eat, you did what you were told without complaint. If you didn’t want to be beaten raw, you did what you were told. If you didn’t want to be injected with heroin against your will, you did what any man asked you to, without moaning and without tears. Unless they wanted to see you cry. Several of them did.
She wasn’t sure exactly what time it was, but it had to be after 2 a.m. That was when the stream of customers began to tail off. Few lights shone from the windows of the houses. Pausing to get her breath – it had been several weeks since she’d walked more than a few paces in one go – Elenuta considered her options: stand in the middle of the housing estate and scream like a banshee to attract maximum attention and scare off her pursuers, or run from door to door hoping some kind person would open up, immediately believe what she told them, and protect her until the police arrived.
A slammed door, cursing, then a shout from behind her helped make her mind up. She needed to buy more time. If they saw her, they’d be on her in a matter of seconds. The front doors weren’t worth the risk. Dipping low, she headed for the rear of the properties, knowing the problem would be dogs in the back gardens, but discounting the danger. She’d been throttled, beaten, drugged and assaulted more ways than she’d known were possible since being kidnapped in her native Romania. Getting into a fight with a bullmastiff looked like a clean exit from her perspective. If they barked, they were going to give away her location. That was a risk she had no choice but to take.
Her whole body ached. The adrenaline of escape wouldn’t last much longer. Tiredness was setting in, partly through sheer terror, partly because her food had been rationed to weaken her. It was working. She took the first fence easily enough, scratching the inside of her leg on the chicken wire. Didn’t matter. Just one more injury to add to the multitude of others.
The next garden had a higher wooden construction. She looked longingly at the back door, wondering if she could risk giving up running and starting to wake people. The problem was that back doors didn’t have doorbells. She would have to knock and call out if she was going to rouse people at that time. She steeled herself. Better to be cautious and make sure she was safe before revealing her presence. It seemed wiser to get at least four houses in before starting to hammer on a door. Climbing first onto a wheelbarrow, then a barbecue, she took the high fence, making it over the top then losing her hold and falling to the ground, a tool of some sort smashing into her ribs. Still she didn’t cry out. The worst of the noise was soaked up by the mud and wet grass she landed in but there was nevertheless a dull thud as she hit the earth. She’d learned the hard way recently how to stay silent and endure pain. It turned out to be a useful lesson now. Light-headed and suddenly overwhelmed with nausea, she stayed where she was before daring to move.
A light came on in the upstairs window, attracting her attention, and undoubtedly also alerting her pursuers to her whereabouts. This was it then. Just two houses in, and that would have to do. She was hoping a woman would live there, maybe fifty years old, mature enough to know desperation when she saw it, and compassionate enough to want to help. It shouldn’t be a family with young children. They wouldn’t want to invite her in and wait for the police to attend. No one in their right mind would want someone as battered and unclean as her in the same house as their babies. Rolling onto her stomach and pushing herself up, she knew she looked awful. There weren’t any mirrors in the flat, mainly because it would be too easy to break them and create a weapon. It had the benefit of stopping the women from realising how dreadful they looked, but imagination worked just as well.
Elenuta began banging the back door with both hands, with her fists curled one around the other, kicking it at the same time. The owner was already awake. She just had to get them downstairs.
‘Please,’ she shouted. ‘Help me. Need help. Call police. I am kidnapped.’ Her English was good but not perfect. Enough to make herself understood which was all she needed.
An upstairs window slid open at the house next door. ‘Would ye shut yer fuckin’ hole, wench?’
‘Help me …’ she screeched. The window slammed shut.
‘She’s in the gardens,’ a man shouted. ‘Chunky, get over there and shut her up.’
They
