‘Let them go, you bastards,’ Chloe tried to scream, but her voice came out in a hoarse, painful croak again. Adrenalin kicked in. She ra
n towards them. One of the men turned to face her. A disdainful sneer on his lips, although she couldn’t see his eyes that were shaded by the hood he was wearing. She kicked him hard in the groin and the sneer vanished as he crumpled, groaning, to to the ground.
She felt an arm pulling her back and she spun round, knocking the arm away, spearing a hard fist into her assailant’s sternum and then uppercutting him as he doubled forward. But she was sluggish, far more sluggish than she should have been. The uppercut was off target, and the man moved aside so that her punch only grazed the side of his head. He snapped a blow straight back at her. But Chloe had anticipated it – she stepped inside his swing, grabbing his arm and using the momentum of the missed punch to pull him forward towards her. She lowered her head as she did so and smashed her forehead into the bridge of his nose. There was a satisfying crunch of cartilage. The man squealed like a stuck pig and dropped to his knees, hands cradling his wrecked nose that was now spilling blood.
Chloe breathed deeply and turned towards the van. Two of the remaining three men moved towards her – more cautiously than their colleagues had. One of them holding Laura tight to his body with a muscular arm wrapped around her. She saw the flash of steel as that man pulled a long-bladed knife from his jacket, watched Hannah stumble, heard a scream. Laura fell down and was yanked rudely up.
‘What do you want?’ Chloe shouted at the men, holding her hands forward ready to strike.
‘Just leave now and you won’t get hurt,’ came a quiet hiss from the hooded figure who now held a terrified Hannah against the side of the black van.
Chloe shook her head. ‘Just let them go!’ she said, putting one foot forward, hands held like blades as she moved slowly towards the two men facing her. Her head was clearing now. Something the man holding Hannah had said triggering some kind of memory. She tried to catch hold of the thought but couldn’t, the synapses in her brain still not firing at a hundred per cent – despite the adrenalin that was coursing through her blood now.
She moved forward slightly again, her foot not leaving the ground as she slid it along the uneven surface of the street, doubly glad now that she hadn’t worn heels. The hooded man who didn’t have hold of either Laura or Hannah took a step forward himself. Chloe tilted sideways quicker than he could register and snapped out her right foot, slamming it into his knee.
‘It’s okay, Laura,’ she said to her terrified friend. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’
Laura shook her head, her eyes widening with panic, with shock.
‘Trust me, babe,’ Chloe said, misunderstanding her friend’s reaction. ‘They are not getting away with this!’
She saw the man holding Laura take a step backwards as she inched her foot forward once more. She felt the movement of air behind her. But before she could react a baseball bat swung against the back of her head, crunching into the fragile bone. She collapsed forward and hit the cold cobbled ground.
Chapter 20
DOCTOR HARRIET WALSH knelt down and examined the gaping wounds.
‘Cause of death?’ asked DI Ken Harman.
Doctor Walsh looked back over her shoulder and shrugged. ‘Can’t tell at this stage. No bruising to the neck, no evidence of gunshot damage. The soft tissue and organs have been eaten away in the main.’
‘Murder, though?’
She shrugged again. ‘Maybe. She died, that much is evident, and was then wrapped in this plastic sheeting – left here until she could be disposed of somewhere else, I guess. But then again, it’s my job to give you facts, not to speculate.’
The detective shook his head, disagreeing. ‘Speculating is good. At this stage …’ He cleared his throat. ‘We’re not in a court of law presenting cold facts and hard evidence. We’re pissing in the wind, hoping its direction doesn’t turn against us. So speculate away, give us a thread to start pulling on and we just might unravel the whole damn thing before someone gets hurt again.’
Wendy Lee looked over at him. ‘Do we know who owns the lock-up?’
‘Not yet,’ said DI Harman. ‘But we’re on it.’ He turned to the pathologist. ‘Is it possible she was suffocated by the sheeting?’
Dr Walsh ran her hands gently over the dead woman’s cheeks and shook her head. ‘No indication of it.’
‘If it wasn’t murder … why wrap the body up and hide it away like this?’
Wendy looked down at the woman’s face for a moment or two without responding. Then she said, ‘She looks Middle Eastern to me. Egyptian, perhaps. Jewish?’
‘Maybe Eastern European?’ said Doctor Walsh.
Wendy shrugged. ‘Maybe. Could be an illegal immigrant. Could be she died from natural causes but whoever brought her in couldn’t afford to deal with her death through the official channels.’
‘Human trafficking?’
‘It’s a possibility. We all know that organised criminals out of Eastern Europe and Africa, but not exclusively from those parts of the world, have been bringing in large numbers of women. Holding them to ransom with threats against their children or family back home.’
Harman nodded thoughtfully.
‘It’s a trade worth billions of pounds. And this is an area pretty well know for the seedier side of the prostitution business.’