Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Had No Fear

On the outside, she pulled her e-cigarette out of her bag with a shaking hand. Dragged heavily on it. Sighed heavily and thumbed a text to Aunty Sharon.

Still no breakthrough re. Letitia. Do you want me to pick anything up on the way home?

The walk to the bus stop was bleak, as usual. Wind gusted across the giant Belmarsh complex, with its uniform beige brick buildings. George mused that they resembled oversized cheap motels or a 1980s commercial trading estate or perhaps a crap school – the kind where they’d invested money in a new building and nothing else, meaning it was permanently on special measures. The double-height fencing reminded her what sort of study subjects she worked with. Terrorists, murderers, violent people traffickers. Gordon Bloom. He was pretty much as bad as any other psychotic inmate the notorious Belmarsh had entertained. The only difference was, he was white, well educated and well heeled.

To her left, the modern buildings of the Woolwich Crown Court loomed, conjuring memories of a teenaged Ella, testifying against her former consorts in a closed court. George shuddered at the unwelcome flashbacks from her other life, now long gone: having to wear the ill-fitting track suits of the Victorian women’s prison up north, where Letitia had left her to rot on remand; huddled in her pissy cell, fearing what the future might hold for a grass; a teenaged girl, bravely taking the punches from the other banged-up women, as they vented their frustrations on one another at a justice system that so often failed them.

As she crossed the road and ventured along a cycle path into a copse of budding trees, bus-stop-bound, she wondered why on earth she was bothering to hunt down her mother at all. Maybe the old cow had just gone AWOL of her own accord. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time.

‘A year,’ George whispered to the wilds of Woolwich that shot by, as the bus bounced her towards the DLR station. ‘In fact, one year, one month and three days since you vanished. Where the hell are you, Letitia?’ Absently taking in the rise of flashy new developments close to the riverside on her right, heralding the march of the middle class on what was traditionally an area of Southeast London on the bones of its semi-maritime arse. The low-rent, low-rise shops to her left, offering fried chicken and cheap mobile phones to the poultry- and telecoms-addicted locals. She considered the eyeball – an eyeball she had presumed to be Letitia’s – which had been carefully gift-wrapped inside a fancy box, sitting on the table in Amsterdam’s Vinkeles restaurant. ‘The Israelites’ emanating from Letitia’s vibrating phone also contained within that box of delights. Now, whenever George heard Desmond Dekker, anguish tied her innards into knots.

Taking out her own phone, George thumbed out a text to Marie in Dutch. Imagined Van den Bergen’s IT expert, sitting in her own cabbagey fug in the spacious IT suite that Van den Bergen had persuaded his new boss to give over to her internet research activities. Everybody had had quite enough of sharing Marie’s eau-de-armpits.

Any news on eyeball-gate? Did some more googling today but still nothing on my dad.

Trudging up the road to her aunty’s place, George agonised yet again over the origins of this waking nightmare: the original out-of-the-blue email from her father, inviting her to lunch at Vinkeles, apparently as a reconciliatory gesture. His name had been used as a lure to get her to that restaurant, she felt certain.

Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno.

Four words that conjured in her mind’s eye vivid memories of a childhood fraught with parental drama. A handsome, clever Spanish man she could now barely remember. Daddy’s hairy, olive-skinned arms, swinging her high onto his shoulders. The smell of toasted tobacco and aftershave coming from his black hair and tanned neck. She had clung onto his head for dear life, thinking him so impossibly tall, though next to Van den Bergen he would in all likelihood have seemed diminutive. Speaking the Catalan Spanish to her of his native Tarragona.

Swallowing down a lump in her throat, she felt suddenly alone and vulnerable on that shabby street in Catford. Hastening past the grey-and-cream Victorian terraces towards the warmth and welcoming smells of Aunty Sharon’s, paranoia started to set in. The place started to feel like an artfully constructed movie set, concealing something far more sinister behind the brick façades than the mundane workings of people’s family lives. Uniform rows of houses closing in on her; stretching her route to safety indefinitely. Paranoia had been a familiar visitor in the course of the last year. She was sick of feeling that she was being watched by somebody, perhaps hiding behind some wheelie bins or overgrown hedging.

Glancing around, George sought out that long-haired old biker once again. A craggy face, partially hidden behind mirror shades, that had cropped up in her peripheral vision once too often when she had been food-shopping in Amsterdam or walking from Van den Bergen’s apartment to the tram stop. Hadn’t she seen him over here in the UK, too? Skulking on a platform in Lewisham when she had been waiting to catch the DLR. The sense that she was being followed now was overwhelming.

She stopped abruptly. Took her handbag-sized deodorant from her coat pocket, poised to spray any lurkers in the eyes. Gasping for air.

‘Come out, you bastard!’ she yelled.

Swigging from the bottle of Dos Equis, he peered through the dusty window of the four-wheel-drive at the brothel. Bullet holes pitted the plastered outer walls, punctuating the painted sign that marked this place out as offering the average Mexican man a good time, at a price. A Corona logo had been amateurishly daubed onto a florid yellow background with black paint. The opening hours and maximum capacity had rubbed off some time ago. But he knew it was open 24/7 for a man who had the cash. This was a Chiapas town, after all. And this club was his.

Beyond the threshold, he spied a tired-looking jukebox and several cheap white plastic chairs. A young girl sat on one of them. Overweight, like most of them were. Wearing a barely-there skirt and vertiginous platform stilettos. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Her face shone with sweat and her long black hair hung lank and greasy on her bare shoulders.

‘What’s the deal with her?’ he asked Miguel.

At his side, Miguel leaned forwards and squinted to get a better look at the girl. ‘Oh, her? She wouldn’t run,’ he said in English, spoken with an accent flavoured heavily with his native Spanish, with a dash of Texan twang. ‘She was the only one. She was too frightened, she said. Ratted the others out, though, when we threatened to kill her mother and sisters.’

‘Good. And do we know where the dumb bitches have gone?’

‘Apparently they’re headed towards the landing strip hidden in the mountains. Some customer with a conscience told them about it. Said they could hire a light aircraft if they clubbed together, or maybe offer the pilot their services if they couldn’t.’ Miguel dabbed at his forehead with a clean white handkerchief. His black hair, thick like carpet, stood to attention in sweaty spikes.

‘I want you to find the chump that gave them big ideas and feed him to the crocodiles. Comprende? ’

Miguel waggled his head in agreement. ‘ Naturalmente, jefe . I’ll check the CCTV. If he’s local, we will find him.’

‘If he’s from out of town, you’ll still find him.’

‘ Si. Claro .’ Miguel closed his eyes. Nodding effusively.

‘And put it on YouTube. Then, make sure the whole town sees what’s left. Leave it in the square or something.’