Strangers (40 page)

Something
cracked
.

The pain was immense, sickening. It was centred in Lucy’s left forearm, but swiftly ran the entire length of her body, even into her head, where it popped like a light bulb.

Dizzied by the intensity of it, Lucy knew instinctively that she’d fractured a bone, probably her left wrist. But at present she was operating on pure adrenaline. More an automaton than a thinking being, she scrambled back to her feet, grabbing Tammy’s collar with her right hand and dragging her behind as she stumbled on, the sole of her damaged trainer flapping wild and loose.

She veered first towards the workmen’s cabins, but now heard Suzy McIvar’s feet come thudding in pursuit. There was another strobe-like burst, which raked the cabins from top to bottom, pummelling them full of holes, turning them to Swiss cheese, making it quite clear that there was no refuge to be had there.

Lucy released Tammy as she pivoted back around. She didn’t know how many shots she had left in the Glock – it couldn’t be many. But Suzy, about forty yards away, made a perfect target. Again, Lucy aimed and fired. She hadn’t expected to hit, and she didn’t – but Suzy went to ground, ducking and rolling fast, more and more of her braided hair flying loose.

Lucy jammed the Glock into the back of her jeans and staggered on, dragging Tammy behind her again as she swerved away over ground now strewn with wire and rubble. In the midst of it, protruding up at an angle was the concrete rim of a sewer pipe. She tottered towards it, panting. It was only about three feet in diameter and she had no idea how far it led underground, but in these circumstances any kind of cover was desirable. On reaching it, she lugged Tammy up into a sitting posture, hunkered down and, hooking her arm underneath the girl’s bottom, levered her a foot or so into the air. Though it was agonisingly difficult one-handed, she inserted Tammy over the pipe’s rim feet-first, gripped her under her right armpit and then let her go – so that she slid downward out of sight.

It was anyone’s guess what lay below. But it couldn’t be any worse than staying here.

Lucy grappled with her injured arm as she glanced quickly back. She’d thought it had gone numb below the elbow, but merely touching it lanced pain to the ends of her fingers.

Suzy was about thirty yards away, but on one knee. She’d dispensed entirely with her ruined ski mask and was in the process of cracking one clip loose from her machine-pistol and replacing it with another. Lucy didn’t wait to see more. She vaulted over the rim herself, and slid down the interior of the pipe. The worst possible outcome here would be if it was blocked a few yards down – perhaps with building or demolition rubble. Both she and Tammy would literally be rats in a barrel.

But in fact she continued to descend, bouncing over joints and repeatedly jarring her arm. She was about twenty feet down and feeling faint, when she dropped through another circular opening into a horizontal pipe, landing on top of Tammy, who now lay face up and perfectly still. Breath rasping through a throat turned raw, Lucy rolled sideways off the girl, to find the pipe filled to several inches with sludge and icy ditch water. She groped in total darkness, feeling first at the casualty’s neck – and almost choking with relief when she detected a pulse. Tammy moaned, but it was impossible to tell how badly she’d been hurt. Next, Lucy played her fingertips across the girl’s lower midsection. It was a mess of torn, slimy material. Tammy moaned again, this time with faltering breath.

‘Good God!’ Lucy muttered. She glanced overhead. At the top of the upper pipe, a disc of night sky was distantly visible. No silhouetted head was framed there, but it wouldn’t be long before Suzy appeared, pointed her weapon down and unloaded another clip. She wouldn’t even need to be a good shot; they were directly in the firing line.

Grunting anew, Lucy crawled away from the aperture, dragging Tammy by her feet into ever-deeper darkness. With thin squeaks, two loathsome furry bodies scampered off, their tales whiplashing Lucy’s face. She didn’t care, only coming to a rest when they were at least a dozen yards from the foot of the upper pipe. She dug into her pocket again, pulled out her phone and, though she couldn’t get a signal, hit the light, the milky glow of which shimmered along the cylindrical concrete passage in both directions,

As she did, she heard a faint scuffling behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if this indicated more rats scurrying away into the depths, or feet descending from above. Dust trickled downward from the entrance to the upper pipe. For several taut seconds, Lucy was frozen rigid, wondering how much further she could drag the wounded girl, wondering if the pipe would run continuously straight so that bullets could pass easily along its entire length – but then the scuffles began to diminish, the plumes of dust to settle. She waited tensely, listening hard.

The urge was still to press on, but where to … into the bowels of the Earth?

She risked glancing down at Tammy.

The phone-light illuminated a face that was still as death and pale as ice.

Tammy’s eyes were lidded but motionless; clots of half-congealed blood trailed from either side of her mouth.

Further down her body, it was even worse.

Still with half an ear cocked to the passage behind, Lucy made a quick, cursory examination of the girl’s midsection, now with the aid of the light, and though she didn’t want to rummage too much through torn, gore-slick clothing, she rifled it sufficiently to spot at least two puckered, coin-sized bullet-holes several inches apart in the middle of the girl’s abdomen, from which, even as she watched, more and more blood was pulsing.

A slow realisation dawned that her part-time friend was not going to make it. No basic first aid would fix this.

Lucy did her best, finding a packet of clean tissues in her pocket and screwing them into the wounds, but there was nothing she could do about damaged internal organs. Gently as she could, she mopped stringy, copper-red hair from the girl’s sunken eyes, at the same time looking back along the pipe again.

There was still no sign of that bitch, Suzy. Whatever the delay was, it at least gave them a chance … but Lucy was increasingly hesitant to clamber on into the opaque blackness. Hauling the ailing casualty through God knew how much more bricks, filth and sewage would only cause her an awful lot of suffering.

‘Tammy?’ Lucy said quietly. ‘Can you hear me? Tammy … it’s me.’

‘Dunno …’ Tammy murmured. ‘Dunno …’

‘Tammy, it’s Hayley,’ Lucy said. ‘But my real name’s Lucy. I’m a cop, if you remember.’

‘Lucy … yeah.’

‘Tammy, listen … you’re pretty banged up.’

‘Feel sick, Lucy …’

‘That’ll pass soon, love. Look … I’m so,
so
sorry I brought you to this. It was never my intention to see you hurt.’

‘Suzy … did this …’

Lucy put fingers to her lips, shushing her.

She listened intently, ears pinned back. Fleetingly, she’d again thought she’d heard a scuffle of boots on concrete. It might not have been that of course. Another rat possibly?

As before, the sounds faded quickly. In fact, the silence was suddenly ear-splitting. Was it possible, she wondered … could it conceivably be that Suzy McIvar had opted
no
t to venture down here, but to flee the scene instead?

Lucy hardly dared to hope.

‘No one screws with the Twisted Sisters, eh?’ she said, still keeping her voice down.

‘Should’a known … should’a …’ But the mere act of mumbling words brought pain to Tammy’s tortured, bloodless features. ‘I messed … up …’

‘You’ve done nothing wrong, love,’ Lucy said. ‘In fact, you’ve been great. You almost helped us crack a really serious murder case …’

Tammy’s lids inched open, the eyes underneath filmy and unfocused.

‘I did good …?’ she stuttered.

‘You did brilliantly.’ Lucy took her hand, and kept it in a firm grip.

‘Can do good …’

‘Just lie here, rest. Help’s on its way.’

‘Wanna … do good. Do’n wanna die … drunk …’

‘You’re not going to die.’

Though it almost choked Lucy to say this. It might have been her imagination, but the young prostitute seemed to be shrivelling up in front of her. And yet, almost imperceptibly, Tammy’s grasp on Lucy’s hand tightened until she held it in a near-fist.

‘K … kids,’ Tammy stammered. ‘Lucy … they’re selling kids.’

‘What … what’s that?’

‘In the brothel.’

‘No, love … you’re mistaken.’ Lucy shook her head. ‘I was undercover at SugaBabes for two weeks. There were no kids working there. Not even collecting glasses …’

‘No’ there … listen!’ Though it took effort, Tammy’s eyes widened until they were bright, bloody orbs. Wracked, she reached up her other hand and clutched the lapel of Lucy’s combat jacket. ‘Lucy, there’s … another place.’

‘Another place?’ Despite her exhaustion, Lucy felt a tremor of anticipation, a swift revival of her policewoman’s instinct.

The McIvars had another place.

Accessible, no doubt … via the SugaBabes Taxi Service.

Lucy checked one more time over her shoulder, but she was finally starting to relax on that front. Suzy had left them alone down here for so long now that it surely meant she wasn’t coming. Besides, what Tammy was now stammering was too important to put on hold.

In fact, it was so important that Lucy activated both the camera and the microphone on her mobile so that she could make an audible and visual record of it.

No cop ever wanted to be in a position where he or she was taking some kind of final statement or dying declaration. But what was necessary was necessary.

‘Tammy, I’m recording this … okay?’

‘Sure … wanna … help.’

‘Who do you think shot you tonight, love?’

‘Suzy … Suzy McIvar …’

‘I think it was Suzy McIvar too, but why would she do that?’

‘Protect …’ Tammy’s eyes fluttered closed.

‘Protect what, Tammy? What was Suzy trying to protect?’

The eyes opened again, perhaps by half a centimetre. ‘The other place …’

‘And what’s the other place, Tammy?’

‘Taxi takes you … from SugaBabes.’

‘Is it another brothel?’

‘Child brothel …’ Tammy coughed and struggled to breathe. With a glottal gurgle, more thick blood spewed from her lips.

‘A child brothel?’

‘Uh …’

Lucy glanced backwards one more time. Still there was no sign of pursuit.

‘Tell us more if you can,’ she urged her. ‘Tammy?’

‘They run …’

‘Who’s they, love?’

‘Jayne … Suzy McIvar. They run … taxi.’

‘A taxi?’

‘Not real … SugaBabes Taxi …’

‘Tammy … how do you know about this?’

‘Was … part of it.’

‘You mean you were a prostitute at this other place?’

‘Yeah … when I started …’ Tammy gave a deep groan. ‘Oh, Lucy … so sick …’

‘Try and concentrate, love … tell us everything you can.’

‘Not … not all customers. Just some. High payers … pervs, paedos. Check in … at SugaBabes, then … taxi. Blindfold … so they never know where …’

‘But
you
know where, don’t you?’ Lucy trained the phone-cam on the girl’s haggard face.

Tammy gave a vague nod. ‘Ordinary house. But … feels bigger on inside.’ Bizarrely, even in the midst of her pain, she chuckled at that.

‘And what’s the address?’ Lucy asked.

‘41 …’

‘41 …?’

‘Trestlehorn Avenue … Whitefield.’

‘Okay, 41, Trestlehorn Avenue, Whitefield. And let’s just be clear, Tammy … that’s a brothel where underage prostitutes are working?’

Another vague, barely perceptible nod. ‘Kiddies …’

‘And you were there, you say?’

‘Nine years old …’

‘You were working as a prostitute for the McIvar sisters at the age of nine?’

‘Others too. How they make … big money … right?’

‘How long were you there for, Tammy?’

‘Kicked me out when I … sixteen. Too old …’ She tried to chuckle again, only for additional blood and foam to spatter from her mouth. ‘Put me in SugaBabes … only ’bout a year. But … like a drink. Not impressed. Bitches … alright plying me wi’ booze when I was … nipper, eh? Keep me docile, suppose. But … doesn’t suit ’em later …’

‘Let’s be quite clear about this, Tammy. You were a child prostitute, working for the McIvar sisters in an underage brothel located at 41, Trestlehorn Avenue, Whitefield. And as far as you’re aware, that place is still in operation?’

Tammy nodded again, but grimaced. More blood oozed out. Thicker this time, darker.

Lucy cut the interview and glanced again at Tammy’s wounds. The temporary dressings were already sodden crimson. It was a horrendous sensation, knowing there was nothing else she could do – but now, very abruptly, she noticed something else, namely that the light in the sewer had changed. As well as the pale glow cast by her phone, a faint blue iridescence came flickering along the pipe. By the looks of it, as she craned her neck to peer backwards, it was filtering down from the upper world.

Lucy could have shouted with delight. After many years of tough scrapes and close calls, she’d learned to appreciate the arrival of the blues and twos.

‘Okay, Tammy,’ she said urgently. ‘You just sit tight. Believe it or not, help’s finally got here. And not before time. Just hang on, you hear me, girl?’

Tammy tried to say something, but it was inaudible. Her eyes had closed again. The steamy breath from her bloodied lips was thinner, weaker, but at least it was still visible.

‘I promise I’ll be as quick as I can,’ Lucy added.

She scrabbled back until she was underneath the upper pipe. If it had been difficult coming down, ascending back to the surface was murderous. It wasn’t too steep, but there were no grips, no footholds. The only way she could manage it was by working her way upward with her knees pressed into the facing wall and her back braced against the one behind. Again and again, she caught her left arm on the concrete. The jolts were frightful, like electric shocks; they knocked her giddy, almost sent her tumbling back down. But she persevered, because this wasn’t just a case of escaping the subterranean realm – now someone’s life depended on it.