Trafficked

‘What? Why?’

‘Temporarily—to help with an investigation.’

‘Awesome. Can we all go?’ Shrimp’s face lit up. ‘London is supposed to be the place to get vintage clothes—there’s Carnaby Street, Petticoat Lane, Brick Lane even.’

Mann held up his hand to stop him as he was gathering speed. He shook his head. ‘Nice try, Shrimp, but afraid not. The only Lane you’ll be seeing is the Lane Crawford shop in Causeway Bay.’

‘Why London?’ asked Ng.

‘Did you know CK Leung had more than one child?’

Ng shook his head.

‘Well, he does—a twelve-year-old daughter at school in England, and she’s been kidnapped.’

‘Why you?’

‘Special request.’

Ng wasn’t impressed. ‘Be careful, Mann. Remember: Deep doubts, deep wisdom, small doubts, small wisdom. CK has a plan and evidently you feature in it. If they kill that little girl, God help them. If he blames you—God help you.’

‘I know. But it will be worth it to me if I get it right. I have Wong’s assurance…’ he reached into his pocket for his phone, pulled it out and pressed play. Wong’s voice came over, muffled but it was definitely him. ‘This says that I can stay in the department.’

Ng rolled his eyes and sighed as he took his wallet out from his pocket and begrudgingly handed Shrimp a hundred-dollar bill.

Shrimp took it from him and grinned. ‘That the way the mop flops, old man—nothing personal.’ He turned to Mann and waved the bill in the air. ‘I bet on you staying, he bet you’d be kicked out. But what about the investigation into the new sex-trafficking ring, Boss? What’s going to happen to that?’

‘I don’t think these events are all random. A spate of wealthy abductions—someone’s raising funds and not just anyone—has to be someone with the clout behind them. We know CK has control of the largest trafficking ring. We know there’s a new boy in town. The other kids were kidnapped purely for money, funds. CK’s daughter’s abduction is more than that. Someone is forcing him to show his hand. Carry on the investigation this side—get out on the streets and listen to the talk. Keep tabs on Stevie Ho. We need to find out who he’s working for—is his allegiance still to CK, or is he with the new boys? According to that list you gave me, Ng, Stevie was in London before he went to the Philippines. He must have had business there. If he’s still working for CK he would have brokered the ransom. Why did they choose this child now? It isn’t by accident and they haven’t got what they wanted from CK. My hunch is that this kidnapping has something to do with Stevie increasing his trafficking routes. That means, courtesy of my new friend, Superintendent Wong, my investigation just went global.’ Mann waved and smiled at Wong through the glass. The Superintendent scowled back at him. Mann laughed. ‘I think I’m going to like this open-plan arrangement.’

6 (#u11811401-2769-528f-b9c7-9c3e2286b440)

Angeles, Philippines

Fields Avenue, Friendship Road, Blow Row—on the surface, Angeles, a ramshackle town a few kilometres north of San Fernando and an hour’s drive north of Manila, had just a few filthy streets with mediocre restaurants and garish bars to offer the tourist. There was not a great deal to do—there was a nearby volcano to climb but no nice beaches. There was little reason to come to Angeles except for sex. The town was created for that purpose.

Angeles was born to service the needs of the men at the nearby American naval base at Clark. When the Americans were pushed out by the do-gooders, the priests and the nationalists who no longer wanted the Americans’ help or their military bases, the whores and the whorists were left with nowhere to go. The Colonel and a few others stepped in to save those communities, and from ‘disaster’ they created ‘opportunity’—a new Angeles was born, a Disneyland just for sex—a city of fallen angels. Now it was a major destination for every whorist and paedophile in the western world.

The Colonel sat with three other men on one of the four tables outside the Bordello on Fields Avenue. He paused, beer bottle pressed against his mouth, and watched Jed, a big black guy, swagger towards him, walking the walk, talking the talk, bling hanging from around his neck in layers of gold chain and a diamond crucifix. On his arm was a tiny Filipina named Peanut. Jed glanced the Colonel’s way, nodded his head respectfully, grinned at the other men and then swaggered on past into the Bordello.

The Bordello was like all the other bars and hotels down the avenue—a facade. From across the road, face on, it looked like a mock-up of a western saloon, but from the side it looked like a cardboard cut-out supported by a scaffold and attached to a windowless concrete block. It was situated three-quarters up Fields Avenue, before the road widened, branched out and the hotels began. They weren’t proper hotels. There were no five-star accommodations on Fields Avenue. Most hotels offered their rooms at an hourly rate.

The Colonel had called a meeting for eight o’clock in the Tequila Station. He had plenty of time till then. He drank his beer and surveyed his kingdom. In the thirty years he had lived in the Philippines, Angeles was where he’d always been. Firstly as a Chief Petty Officer stationed at the nearby American naval base at Clark, and latterly as the self-styled saviour of the city of fallen angels.

Brandon sat directly to the Colonel’s right, British, shaved head, ex-Marine, his voice thick with a Portsmouth dialect, akin to a gravelly cockney. He had tattoos of Chinese script on both his arms and an eagle stretched across his upper back. He was not a man to move hastily. He had learned to sit back and observe. It had kept him alive in the Marines; it would continue to keep him alive, as long as he never forgot it. Brandon had been with the Colonel for eighteen months now. His job was to control the women, make sure that the young ones stayed scared and compliant and that the others felt the back of his hand. Brandon had not found it easy in the beginning. Hitting women was not in Brandon’s nature, but he had got used to detaching his brain from the work. That’s all it was—work. They were merchandise. The Colonel liked him, he knew that. One day he wanted to take over from him. Of course, there were obstacles to that, and that’s why Brandon had to be good at waiting and watching.

Next to him was Reese, an Australian who was stuck in the seventies—a string of love beads around his neck and flowery board shorts on his skinny legs. His surfer’s curls that were once his pride and joy were now straw, and his once beautiful face was now thin and deeply lined. He sat cross-legged, swinging his suspended leg nervously and fiddling with his cigarette packet.

The fourth man called himself the Teacher.

A few westerners sat in the Bordello at the bar enjoying a late-afternoon beer. It was their lull time. The evening unfolded in a regular pattern. The needs of the whorists were always the same—eat, sleep and fuck—but they formed their own patterns according to their age. From lunchtime onwards the younger ones emerged in packs, tired and hung over. They needed food and a good few beers and to socialise with each other. They got rid of one date, sobered up and recharged themselves ready for another evening of heat and sweat and DNA exchange. The older whorists were loners, even if they had come along with another male they didn’t feel it necessary to stay with them all day and all evening. They sat at bars on their own, picked up a girl early. They were after a companion to have dinner with and spend the night snoring next to. They preferred the calm surroundings and the melancholy country music of the Bordello. They needed to pace themselves.

A barmaid named Comfort kept the energy circulating in the bar with a big smile and a substantial push-up bra. Her laugh ricocheted around the walls as she bantered happily with the three men who had nothing else to do but sit and watch her.

Comfort looked up as Jed and Peanut came in and she moved down to the end of the bar where the signing-in book was. She leaned over the book, pen ready.

Jed didn’t acknowledge the other men in the bar. He walked in as if he were on stage. He talked loud, laughed louder. He was showing the older men that he was a young stud.

‘You got a room for an hour, baby?’

He rested his elbow on the counter and leaned over to get close to Comfort and look further down her cleavage. He grinned smugly; his gold teeth flashed in the gloom of the bar. She grinned back. Peanut stood waiting patiently for it all to be over. She was an un educated girl from the countryside, and spoke very little English. She was unattractive: dark-skinned and rough-featured. Her scrawny legs dropped down from beneath a micro denim skirt like two sticks of gnawed liquorice. But Peanut was a hit with men who liked their women to look like undernourished girls. Jed towered over her at six foot four to her four foot nine.

Comfort flicked her hair back from her face and turned her large round eyes, as clear as amber marbles, towards Jed, ignoring Peanut altogether.

‘You go-in’ to need two hour, Big Boy.’

He raised an eyebrow and let out a laugh that boomed out across the bar. ‘Damn! Is that right? How come? You plannin’ on joinin’ us?’ He ran his hand down her forearm. ‘You want a repeat performance?’ He stroked the round of her breast as it rested on the signing-in book. ‘You missed me that much you want some more of the big man?’

Comfort looked up at Jed and bit her bottom lip playfully.

‘You spoil me. Give me ree-al good time larse time.’ She reached out and ran her fingers lightly down his chest to his crotch. She felt the muscles in his abdomen tense. ‘I’m go-in to have to give it to you for free, Big Man. You leave door unlock. I come up an’ party wid you. Okay?’

He grinned inanely. ‘Oh yeah, baby! Me and Peanut here are gonna be waitin’ for you.’

He flashed his teeth and clicked his tongue, placed his hand on Peanut’s tiny bottom and steered her towards the stairs at the far end of the bar. A door there led to the two floors of short-stay rooms. Above them slept the women who serviced those rooms. He turned back and winked at Comfort. She winked back, waited till he was out of sight then turned to look at the Colonel. He was watching her through the window. He tapped his watch at her. She nodded.

7 (#u11811401-2769-528f-b9c7-9c3e2286b440)

For a few seconds Amy didn’t know whether her eyes were open or not—it was too dark to tell. She felt around the bedcover with her hands. It didn’t feel like the soft cotton one that she was used to. It felt hard, waxy. She scrunched it in her fingers—no, it definitely didn’t fold in her hand the way it should, it was like cardboard. She blinked again…yes…her eyes were open. She lay there in the darkness and thought hard. She tried to remember what had happened: Lenny picked her up from school; they drove to an apartment block next to lots of others, in the middle of nowhere where lots of buildings were going up all around. They came up in a lift. The flat smelled of paint and had hardly any furniture in it. It didn’t look as if Lenny or anyone lived there. Lenny didn’t know where anything was. He had opened the wrong door in the kitchen when he wanted the fridge. Then he had shown her her room. She remembered sitting in the lounge and watching telly whilst Lenny made a few calls. It was then that she had begun to feel very uncomfortable and she had looked for her schoolbag so that she could make a phone call. When he came off the phone she asked Lenny where it was. He said it was still in the car and that they’d get it in a minute when they went back out. But nothing felt right. Amy had drunk her Coke and pretended to watch the telly but inside she wanted to cry. Then she remembered feeling so tired that she just had to close her eyes for a little while. She gasped now. Was she naked? Had he undressed her? She felt under the bedclothes. It was all right, she still had her clothes on. She blinked again and this time she saw a faint orange glow in the room coming from beneath the door. She looked around; only moving her eyes, she didn’t dare move her head. Yes—there was the desk, the chair, the old lamp. She was lying on a mattress on the floor, not in a bed; it was the room she had seen before. She must have got sick and Lenny had put her to bed. That was it. She could hear the sound of a television in the room next door.

‘Lenny?’ She sat up and called out. ‘Lenny?’

The television went off. She heard the rustle of someone moving; she heard someone approach the door and turn the handle.

A man stood in the doorway. He was Chinese. Amy knew his type: rough Hong Kong low-life type. She had been around types like him all her life.

‘Where’s Lenny?’

The man didn’t answer for a second and Amy could see that he had something behind his back. Only when he came into the room did she see what it was—it was a length of rope with a loop at the end.

8 (#ulink_50a1a5cd-2d6f-5d39-b909-fd271fc6e968)

Johnny Mann went back to his flat to unpack and repack his case before he headed over to Stanley Bay to see his mother and explain why he wouldn’t be over for Sunday roast. He knew she would be looking forward to seeing him. He hadn’t caught up with her for a while. The last case had kept him working twenty-four-seven and then the aftermath had left him needing to get away and recover his sanity.

‘They’re lovely.’

He stood behind her in the hall mirror and finished fastening the string of pink pearls around his mother’s neck. She reached up and touched the hand he had placed on her shoulder and smiled at him in the mirror. Molly was about to hit seventy but she kept herself fit and active and stood erect. She was a good-looking woman, strong-featured with piercing grey eyes and a straight roman nose; she had high cheekbones and ivory skin. Her hair was a beautiful mix of grey and silver interwoven with darker shades. It was long and thick and she twisted it into a bun and caught it with a clasp at the back of her head. Now that Mann stood behind her he realised how slight she was. Her shoulders felt bony beneath his hands.

‘You shouldn’t have spent your money on me, but it’s very thoughtful of you, Johnny.’ She patted his hand before turning away. Mann followed her through to the kitchen.