“Heroin,” said Mike, taking the bottle from him. “Looks like it was stolen from a hospital.”
Julian squinted into the darkness, thinking of Joanne Butcher. “Heroin for an overdose nobody would find suspicious.”
“More like for getting girls hooked on, then making them work for a fix. A sex trafficking operation, that’s what this is, isn’t it?”
“This is The Society of Dirty Hearts.”
“What’s The Society-”
“There’s someone in the last cage,” exclaimed Julian, darting towards the rear of the cellar. A dimly visible figure lay on a camp-bed, swaddled in blankets, head buried beneath a pillow. Julian’s voice trembled in the gloom, half fearful, half hopeful. “Mia!” The figure didn’t move. He frantically rattled the cage’s padlocked door, calling Mia’s name again. Still no response.
Mike’s lighter sparked to life. The wavering flame extinguished Julian’s hope. “It’s not her,” he said, staring hollow-eyed with disappointment at the wisps of red hair curling out from under the pillow.
“Who is it then?”
A name came into Julian’s head. Ginger. “We need to get this door open.”
“Wait here.” Mike dashed away. He returned after half-a-minute with a hammer. It took ten minutes to smash the padlock open. The figure on the bed never once stirred. Julian ducked into the cage and removed the pillow. As he’d suspected, it was Ginger. She looked dead. But when Mike felt for a pulse in her wrist, he said, “She’s alive…barely.”
“What do you think’s wrong with her?”
By way of explanation, Mike pointed at a row of fresh needle marks on Ginger’s inner forearm. “Help me move her. She needs to get to a hospital.”
Looking at Ginger’s sunken, pale bluish face, Julian felt no antipathy. But neither did he feel any sympathy. You were right, he thought, I’ll never understand. “Okay, but first I have to show you something upstairs.”
“There’s no time. She could die.” As Julian turned and headed for the stairs, Mike added, “Do you hear me?”
“I hear.” Julian started up the stairs.
Mike pursued him, catching hold of his arm. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you care?”
“Yes I care. That’s why I need to show you this.”
“Show me what? What could be more important than that woman’s life?”
“The truth,” said Julian. “Only the truth.”
Chapter 24
Julian scanned the columns of figures on his computer screen, silently tallying. He wrote a number down and stared at it, unable to tear his eyes away until the whistle blew for knocking off. He took a bottle of whisky out of his desk drawer, poured himself a measure, swallowed it, and poured another. He tensed at a knock at his office door. “Come in,” he said in a low voice, almost as if he didn’t want to be heard. He drew a little breath of relief when Jake entered. Not for the first time, Julian was struck by the change in his appearance. He was barely recognisable as the boy who’d staggered off into the forest all those months ago, bruised and bloodied. His shaved hair had grown out. His face was fuller, healthy-looking. He wore the blue overalls of a machinist.
Jake glanced at the drink in Julian’s hand. “Bit early for that, isn’t it?”
“I’m celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?”
“The business is back in the black for the first time in over two years.”
“Hey, that’s brilliant.”
Julian poured Jake a shot. They lifted their glasses simultaneously and emptied them. “Y’know what, we should head into town tonight,” suggested Jake. “Celebrate properly.”
Julian shook his head. “I’ve got too much work to do.”
“Aw, come on, Jules, take a night off, kick back for once.”
Julian’s gaze strayed to the photo on the office wall of his mum in her bridal dress. “You sound like my mum. She’s always telling me I push myself too hard, that I should take a holiday.”
“She’s right.” An expression of almost childish eagerness lit up Jake’s face. “Hey, we could go away together to Spain, or somewhere like that. I’ve never been abroad before.”
Julian swabbed the scratch of guilt Jake’s words inflicted with another shot of whisky. “Maybe in a few months, when things have settled down here. The business is only just back on track. I can’t afford to take my eyes off it right now.”
Jake sighed, but nodded agreement. “I guess you’re right.”
Again, Julian’s thoughts travelled back over the past several weeks and months, to the change in Jake that’d been gradually occurring ever since he’d taken him in and given him a job. There’d been times when Jake had irritated, even infuriated him with his sullen, often perverse obstinacy and quick temper. There’d been times when he wondered whether Jake would ever be able to adjust to a regular life with a regular routine. He was fairly certain that even a couple of weeks ago his unwillingness to go along with either of Jake’s suggestions would’ve been met with a display of angry disappointment. But suddenly the balance of his personality had shifted. The torrent of grumbling complaints from his line supervisor had dried to a trickle, then stopped, and finally been replaced by cautious praise. The old expression of shifty distrust in his eyes had been replaced by something more open and direct. Jake Bradshaw, it seemed, had left the building. Jake Harris had arrived. “Come on,” said Julian. “Let’s lock up and go home.”
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Jake said, as they made their daily round of the factory floor. “I heard on the radio that another one of them’s killed himself.”
A familiar tightness came into Julian’s throat. “Which one?”
“That doctor they locked up for killing one of them girls they thought Ridgway killed. They found him dead in his cell. He’d cut his wrists and his throat. How many’s that now?”
Julian counted them in his mind. Tom Benson had been the first. When it came out that he had a taste for cocaine, prostitutes and sadomasochistic sex, in rapid succession he lost his job, his wife and finally, after jumping off The High Bridge, his life. Some sleazeball, closet homosexual politician with a penchant for underage boys was next. He gassed himself in his car. After him came a businessman who enjoyed playing the role of an entrepreneurial philanthropist in public and murdering young girls in private. He gave himself both barrels of a shotgun, after his name was connected to the deaths of two girls previously attributed to Michael Ridgway. Then there was a solicitor who after having sex with Joanne Butcher had watched while she lay dying from a heroin overdose. And then a teacher, a judge, two priests. All so-called decent, honest people. They OD’d, jumped off buildings, and hung themselves, and nobody went to their funerals. “Eight.”
“There’ll be more before this is over. They still haven’t found half the fuckers on those videos. Imagine what it must be like to be one of them, sat at home with your wife and kids, or whoever, just waiting for the coppers to come knocking.”
Julian didn’t need to imagine. He knew what it was like to live with that. He knew how the sick feeling welled into your throat every time there was a knock at the door, every time the phone rang, every time the post arrived, every time you opened your eyes.
“Man, if I was one of them fuckers, I’d do myself in,” continued Jake. “Wouldn’t you?”
Julian made no reply. He pretended to check something on a machine so that he didn’t have to look at Jake. Recently, he’d thought a lot about suicide. He’d even driven to the bridge and leaned far out over its railings — like Mia had done — wondering how it would feel. The rush of air, the stinging cold slap of water against his body, his lungs filling with water, burning. Then blackness. Merciful, dreamless blackness. He knew he couldn’t do it, though. Not while his mum was alive, not while Jake needed him, and not while there was a chance, however seemingly slender, that Mia was alive.