Chapter 2

The morning came round soon enough. Zoe managed to get out of bed without waking me, which is quite a feat, and had made porridge and started bacon frying before waking Dusty, Fatso and me. After breakfast I sent the other two to relieve Chalky and Snoopy. Getting Goat to take relief until she’d got into the gang’s system was a forlorn hope, and I knew Bernie would rather stick with her.

It took her a couple of days to get in, at which point she crashed and Bernie was monitoring the gang’s communications. Serendipity and her crew were in Berwick when I got a call from Bernie. It seemed that the gang’s tentacles reached into the Coastguard. Cherry, as a responsible skipper, had kept the Coastguard informed of their movements, so the gang leader knew where they were. I rang Cherry, who sighed.

“I hate to break the rules – they’re there for our safety,” she said. “Looks as though I’ll have to lie to them, though.” She agreed to keep out of the way with Nadiya for a couple of weeks, saying she’d discuss with Pippa Henderson and CC whether they would stay with her for the duration. They would head North and try to get lost among the Orkney Islands.

However, despite attempting to mislead the Coastguard, someone obviously connected the erstwhile ‘Eirene’* with the very similar Serendipity.

*Skipper Cherry Thornton misidentified her vessel to the Coastguard as ‘Eirene’ in an attempt to mislead the gang – at the risk of causing herself problems professionally.

Zoe and I took our turns at monitoring the bugs. I would have preferred to save my wife the distress of listening, but I have to say I was proud of the way she handled it. If she achieved her ambition of a Doctorate in Psychology, like Trudy Waters, I was certain she could handle listening to the accounts of abuse she would encounter.

It was horrible. Usually, the gang would hold back one of the girls in each house to ‘entertain’ them while the others were satisfying the perversions of assorted wealthy perverts. Of course, sometimes all of them were needed to ‘work’. From time to time the gang found it necessary to ‘punish’ one or more of the girls, which was especially harrowing as we needed to wait for the right time to move in and close down the operation.

As it happened, I was listening when our hands were forced. Both Snoopy and I caught most of a discussion about how to deal with the continued evasion of Nadiya and Serendipity. I was not prepared to let the remaining girls be eliminated.

I tried to call Cherry, but the calls went straight to voice mail, or, in the case of the sat-phone, were unanswered.

Plans were made, discussed, amended and put into action.

Bernie, Snoopy, Zoe and I would deal with one house, Chalky, Fatso, Dusty and Goat the other. We dressed in what I always think of as our ‘Ninja’ outfits, but really it was just black combat gear including a Kevlar vest. Dusty and I were armed with Glock 19 automatic pistols, we all carried batons. Use of the firearms would be problematic, but better armed than not. I think Zoe got some thrill from wearing the gear, but for the rest of us ... nothing new; except that we weren’t exactly legal.

Access was ridiculously easy. They’d set no alarm, no watch, being too focussed on having some fun before disposing of the girls. It was easy to localise the activity from the noise, but we did check en route to make sure there were no enemies in our rear.

I led the way, and inside we spread out. Four naked young girls, arms cable-tied behind them, cowered in a corner. Three equally naked, startled men turned to face us. One, quicker witted than the rest tried to grab my Zoe. Perhaps he thought a hostage would buy his freedom; but my darling dodged just at the right moment, seized the arm which would have grabbed her and followed through with an arm lock. The creak of his elbow dislocating was loud in the room, even over the whimpering of the girls. His scream when the pain registered was music to my ears and, I think to the rest of us.

It was the work of moments to zip-tie them to chairs, then to release the girls. ‘Be calm, ‘ I told them, ‘you’re safe now. We’ll get you out of here and back to where you came from or to a safe place in this country if you prefer’. I spoke in Russian; I knew from Nadiya that some of the girls came from other countries, but all understood Russian, even if that wasn’t their native tongue. Clothes were found – the most satisfactory of a poor lot – so the girls could cover themselves.

The men tried to bargain with us. “Not interested,” I told them. “We know everything you’ve been saying for the last week. Now would be a good time to make your peace with God, if you believe in Him.”

Zoe had been in a huddle with the girls while that was going on. I had intended to send the gang members on to the next plane of existence using a lethal dose of potassium, which would simply cause their hearts to stop. There would be a few minutes of pain, but not nearly enough to match what they’d inflicted. They watched, wide-eyed, as I prepared three large syringes.

“Alex!” Zoe was standing, holding the hand of one of the girls. I paused and raised an eyebrow. “Valda here has asked if she can inflict some pain on her abusers. She thinks a cable tie tight around their balls might be a suitable retribution.”

It went right against every principle we’d had drummed into us. I looked at Bernie and Snoopy, who both frowned, but, after a few moments thought, nodded.

“Okay,” I said. I called the others and briefly explained, as cryptically as I could, what we were doing.

One of the girls, Liina, although probably the worst damaged of all the girls, would not use the opportunity to exact revenge, perhaps because of her strong Orthodox religious faith. That meant the other three girls each got to exact some measure of revenge. I don’t know how things were worked out at the other house.

We gagged them, to muffle the screams.

Once the girls had made use of the ties, I found a vein in each trembling arm and, in turn, the three girls squeezed the syringe to end the life of a tormentor.

It was all over by one in the morning. We vacuumed the computers, removed the tape and ties, dumped bodies in beds and arranged an ‘accidental’ electrical fire to start some time after we left.

We were all back in Witham by three in the morning. The eight girls we rescued were quite happy to huddle together in the available beds. One problem remained.

“I need a volunteer or volunteers to chase up the leader,” I explained.

“I’ll do it,” Goat put in immediately. “I’m the most innocuous looking of the lot of us, other than Zoe. I can handle it.”

I nodded. “Who do you want as back up?”

“Snoopy, if he’s willing.” She looked over at her colleague.

“Of course!” His response was immediate. Then, “But how do we get North?”

“I have an idea,” I said, dragging out my mobile phone and pressing a speed dial. It was nearly four in the morning at that point.

“Hey, Ed,” when my friend answered, “I need a favour.”

“At four in the morning?”

“Yeah. I need to get two people North in a hurry. I was hoping you’d be willing to fly them.”

“Well...” he hesitated. “You know I’m happy to help, but the Malibu is down for some maintenance at the moment. It’ll be available from eleven hundred or so. Midday at the latest, I hope. We could rent a machine if necessary...”

I thought about that and my mind was working fast for once. “I think midday would probably be okay, actually. That might work better. Southend by then?”

“Okay. This more of your James Bond stuff?”

“Not exactly. Important, though.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Not always. But this is off the books anyway.”

“Okay. I’ll trust you, though I can’t think why. See you later.”

Ed Golding is a friend. We met, professionally, you might say, because he was Army Air Corps, flying Lynx when I met him the first time. He’s flown everything in the Army inventory, both fixed wing and rotary, but he left about the same time I did when the military was downsizing ... again. So he was aware that I’d been involved in some ... unconventional ... activities; he’d been the pilot who medevaced Bernie and my wounded self from somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.

I turned to Goat and Snoopy. “Look, you two. You need to rest and get into civvies. Ed’s got a Piper Malibu at Southend, and he’ll fly you in that. You’ll need to be at Southend at midday and Edinburgh is your destination, at least unless you need to go all the way to Orkney. Our target is almost certainly at Kirkwall, and he can’t get a flight from there today anywhere except Edinburgh. I’ll shake some trees while you rest.”