Lee Weeks: Trafficked

LEE WEEKS

Trafficked

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2008

This edition published 2017

Copyright © Lee Weeks 2008

Cover design © debbieclementdesign.com

Cover photograph © shutterstock.com

Lee Weeks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847560834

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007329045

Version: 2017-12-08

This book is dedicated to my mum

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

A child whispered in the darkness.

‘Shhh…stop crying. The Kano will hear you.

What’s your name?’

‘Perla.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Eleven.’

‘I’m Maya. I’m eight. You from Davao?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too. Where are we?’

‘Angeles City.’

‘Why are we chained up? Are we in prison? Why does that Kano hurt everyone? What will happen to me?’

‘You will be sold.’

‘Sold?’

‘Sold to a man.’

‘What will the man do with me?’

‘He will have sex with you.’

‘I’m just a girl. I can’t. I’m going to run away. Let’s do it, Perla. Let’s run home to Davao.’

Perla stated to cry again.

‘Don’t cry. The Kano will come. He will hurt you. He will poke you with the buzzy stick.’

‘My legs are wet. I am bleeding.’

‘Don’t cry, Perla. I’ll be your friend. I’ll tell you a Mickey Mouse story.’

By the time Maya finished her story, Perla was dead.

Detective Inspector Johnny Mann was sitting at the covered end of the Boom Boom Bar on a beach in Boracay. Five young locals were watching a boxing match on a small television set at the front of the bar, whilst Mann and three other tourists sat on stools around the bar, staring at their drinks and willing the alcohol to kick in.

The Boom Boom Bar was no more than fifteen foot square, with a threadbare palm roof and a floor made from reclaimed wood. It looked like a piece of flotsam that had been found by an enthusiastic beachcomber, dragged up the beach and put to use. It was named the Boom Boom Bar because of its nightly entertainment, when dreadlocked youths took it in turns to sit on a drum box on a small stage pitched into the sand, with their eyes closed and their backs to the sea, beating out a rhythm on the drum’s skin.

Inside the bar there was a Caribbean theme: bongos, bongs and Bob Marley posters hung from every section of wall space and jostled for position on sand and salt greased shelves. In addition to the bar stools, there was an old rattan sofa with half its back missing and a few threadbare scatter cushions just inside the entrance where the beach met the bar.

Mann held on to the glass and rolled it in his hands, savouring the cool condensation before allowing it to slip through his fingers and land in the centre of the bar mat. He checked his phone—another message. He rubbed his face with his hands and wiped the sweat away from his brow.

Mann was thirty-five but he looked older. His once beautiful face—a mix of Chinese and English—had been made hard and handsome by life’s knocks. On his left cheek, where the skin stretched taut across his high cheekbone, a crescent-moon-shaped scar stayed pale against his tanned face. It was there as a memento of a childhood friendship that had gone very wrong. His large espresso-coloured eyes had seen more sadness than any person was meant to, and in his heart he carried the pain of having screwed up.

There was no fan in the Boom Boom Bar, only the breeze to cool it down, and tonight there was not a breath of wind. Mann’s clothes stuck to him in the suffocating heat. He wore faded baggy jeans and an old surfer’s T-shirt. It was his favourite—he had bought it on his first visit to the Philippines fifteen years earlier, when he’d discovered the delights of lying on sand as fine as flour and swimming in a transparent turquoise sea. Then the T-shirt had hung off him; now it clung like a shark’s gills as it followed the contours of his adult muscular frame.

He looked around at the other three men sitting with him at the bar, and smiled ruefully to himself as he wondered if they were all destined to meet here, same time, same place, with the same sense of fuck-up.

His phone vibrated again. Mann knew who it would be. Ng knew him well. He knew that Mann would be sitting at a bar drinking vodka, contemplating the universe, and that it was a task best cut short. Mann would ignore him for a while longer. He had come to Boracay to lie on its white-sand beaches and to let the world wash over him, like he always did in times of stress or sadness. The place gave him headspace. Usually it allowed him time to repair and regroup, but this time it hadn’t been able to work its magic. There was no escaping the past for Mann. No matter how many times he ran it through his mind it still looked the same—he had a self-destructive streak a mile wide, and just owning up to it didn’t make it go away.