Dicky smiled, his large white friendly smile.
‘Call it jump nerves, man - everyone gets them. Think how Brunos must be feeling, eh? He’s the one who’s got to do the jump. He’s the reason for it all. And on top of everything he’s got Lewis riding his back.’
‘True, Dicky, true. I’ll see you get your dosh, but keep your ear to the ground anyway for the next few weeks. I want to hear everything you hear.’
‘It’s as good as done.’
After Dicky left Albie brought in Nick’s afternoon coffee and placed it gently on the kitchen table. Nick smiled at him.
‘All right, Albie?’
Albie nodded, happy to be noticed by the man he worshipped, the man who had been his champion for years.
‘I found out that Georgio ain’t beasting, Albie, so all the good little boys can sleep easy in their beds.’
Albie smiled once more. His moon face so trusting, so adoring, that Nick experienced the all-too familiar feeling of horror tinged with pity that only Albie could summon up in him.
‘I would never deal with anyone who was beasting, you know that, don’t you? Now I can carry on with my plans in good faith, can’t I?’
Albie nodded his head vigorously.
‘Sit down, Albie me old china, and relax for fuck’s sake. Why do you always have to be near me, eh? What possessed me to take you on in the first place? I’m as soft as shit me, that’s my trouble, ain’t it?’ He talked as always by asking and answering his own questions; it was a habit acquired over the years because of Albie’s inability to talk.
He looked sad and frightened now and Nick sighed.
‘Don’t worry, Alb, you’re like me own child. In fact, you’re more than me own child, because you’re there all the time, whether I want you or not. I’ll never dump you, mate, so cheer up. Me and you are a team - a bit like Lenny and his mate in that novel, Of Mice and Men. I’ll look after you, son. I’ll never be without you, all right. That’s a promise.’
Happier now, Albie relaxed into his seat.
Drinking his coffee, Nick contemplated his life, Albie’s life, and whether or not he believed all he had heard from Little Dicky. Nick had always prided himself on the fact that he could smell a rat before it was stinking.
And there was a stink coming into his nose now, only he couldn’t be sure where the source of it was. Only time would tell.
He had four days till the jump and Jack Coyne was on his mind as was JoJo O’Neil, and somewhere, tacked on the end of the list, was Donald Lewis. There was a connection somewhere, and he would find out what it was if it killed him.
Nick smiled to himself ruefully because he knew that where Lewis was involved, the chances of being killed were a distinct possibility. But Nick was a betting man. He knew that with forethought and a little inside knowledge, he could at least lengthen the odds.
Donna sat in a small hotel in Hikkadoa sipping a glass of iced tea. She watched the holidaymakers relaxing in the brilliant sunshine, and was once more amazed at what this idyllic spot was hiding. She corrected herself. It wasn’t in fact hiding anything. It was all done blatantly, under cover of the warm tropical nights, though most of the people near her now knew nothing of what was happening under their noses. An elderly couple sat at the table beside her and Donna smiled a greeting to them.
She watched the lane leading up to the Bay View. So far, four cars had come out of the lane, only one had gone inside, and she’d been sitting watching since ten in the morning. Picking up her sun hat, she left a few rupees on the table and began the long walk towards the hotel. Her heart was beating a tattoo in her chest, her legs felt shaky with fear, but she forced herself to carry on walking.
The trees were alive with birds. As she walked, a monkey hugging her baby to her chest crossed the lane, taking no notice of her, and disappeared into the dense undergrowth. Donna wiped her face and neck with a large white handkerchief, the sweat both nervous and from the dense heat. As she turned the corner that brought the hotel into view she stopped and watched for a moment.
The place looked deserted, but Donna saw a movement from inside the front entrance. A heavy-set white woman with thick blonde hair was standing in the doorway, a child of about seven by her side. Donna knew the woman could see her and, plucking up her courage, she walked towards her. Donna’s mouth was dry with nerves and dust. The wide-brimmed hat she wore gave her eyes protection from the burning glare of the sun.
The woman walked to the top of the verandah steps and looked down at her. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’
Donna stood at the bottom of the steps. The woman’s thick cockney accent was a culture shock in these luscious tropical surroundings. On closer inspection, Donna realised that the blonde was a lot older than she had first thought. Her skin was tanned to a deep mahogany and had a leathery appearance, especially around the eyes. Deep wrinkles were etched there, and at either side of her nose. It was the thick blonde hair that gave her the appearance of youthfulness from a distance.
Before Donna could answer the child opened the verandah door and said in broken English, ‘Miss Candy, I go to wash now.’
The woman waved an arm in agreement, her eyes staying firmly fixed on Donna.
Pulling herself up to her full height, Donna took a deep breath and walked up the steps. She sailed past Candy and pushed through the verandah doors as if she was meant to be there.
Candy turned on her heel. ‘Oi, you! Where the hell do you think you’re going? Who the fucking hell are you, lady?’
Donna faced the woman in the coolness of the building and said in her best imitation of Carol Jackson, ‘I’m Mrs Georgio Brunos, love. I’ve come in answer to your fax. Now am I going to get a drink and a seat or do I have to whistle for them?’
Candy’s face was instantly friendlier.
‘Why didn’t you say? Come through to my office, love, and we’ll get sorted. I’m sorry about the welcome, but with all the hag at the moment I have to be very careful, you know.’
She led Donna into a large office at the back of the building. Donna felt the cool breeze from the electric fans and sighed with relief. The heat of the day was so overpowering, coming into the cool had caused her to sweat even more.
Candy grinned. ‘You get used to it, love, after a while anyway. Now can I get you a cup of tea?’
Donna shook her head. ‘Just a glass of water, thanks. Then you can tell me exactly what’s going on here.’
Candy poured out two long glasses of bottled water and settled herself behind the desk. Donna sat facing her in a rattan armchair. In the distance she could hear the shrill cry of a bird, and closer the sound of a child’s quiet crying. The traffic from the main road was a dull buzz underlying all the other noises.
‘So what exactly has happened?’
Candy looked at Donna for a long moment before speaking. ‘Have you seen Stephen? I missed him, he’s gone up into the mountains on a pussy hunt with my brother Jake. We need more girls here - without their mothers, to be honest. Now that Thailand is run with kiddies, and with the threat of AIDs out there, we’ve knocked the Thai hotel on the head. The place in Goa will be up and running soon. Stephen said Georgio’s pleased as punch about it. How is he, by the way? I don’t get much info from Davey Jackson because we always fax each other. You know what that Carol’s like. Mother Theresa in a Next bodystocking!’
Donna laughed with Candy, a hard hollow sound that rang false even to her own ears.
‘I am my husband’s representative here. I have say over Stephen and Davey. Now, will you tell me exactly what the trouble is? My husband is interested in protecting his investments, and so am I.’
Candy lit a small cheroot and shrugged. ‘The computer in Colombo went down a few weeks ago. We couldn’t get anything through to Liverpool at all. Stephen’s going to take back the merchandise with him. We need to keep up the momentum, see. Once we’re up and running in Germany, we won’t have any need of JoJo or Jack Coyne, but at the moment they’re our bread and butter,
and we’re making a fortune. Jack Coyne got us the printers and the contacts so we have to tread warily with him, though as you probably know, Stephen wants to dump him once we hit Europe in favour of a bloke in Amsterdam. ’
Donna interrupted. ‘Look, Candy, can you just tell me what the merchandise is that we haven’t been able to receive and why, please?’
Donna was nonplussed at Candy’s talk of Germany, Europe, JoJo O’Neil and Jack Coyne. She wanted to know exactly what was going down.
Candy frowned at her in consternation. ‘It’s the same as it’s always been, love - the pictures of the kiddies. You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’ Her eyes were slits as she watched the elegant woman before her.
Donna sighed heavily. ‘I know what you’re talking about all right, I just want to know why the hell it hasn’t come through?’
‘The modem’s no good any more. We had someone hacking into us. We had to stop. Sending the stuff down the phone line is great, but we realised that some of it was going astray. Whoever it is has made a point of hacking into our system. Now it could be the government, but I don’t think so. It could be Interpol, they’re shit hot on child porn these days. Myself I think we have a nonce hacker! Anyway, as you know, we’ve stopped for a while. But Jake is going to set up another route from the Maldives. It should be operational in a few weeks. He’s also going to set this one up with so many passwords, it’ll take fucking Einstein to get into it!
‘I think the trouble was with the Internet. We sometimes got it up on the main computer ourselves; some of our contacts are on there. We need to make the contacts more difficult, and that is what is being done. The Maldives system will send everything straight to Germany. We’ll completely bypass London, which can only be for the best. We’ll leave it all in the hands of the Krauts; and just take the money.’
‘When is Stephen back?’
‘Today, tomorrow. Depends really. I hate them going on the hunts, it sickens me to be honest. I hated it when I was out in Thailand. But the men like it. They’re up in the mountains looking for girls, and the tea plantations have plenty of dirts waiting to be bought for a few quid. We’ll keep them a year then their fathers come and renegotiate or else take the girls home. They’re weird these Asians, you know. They’d sell their fucking grannies for a few rupees. I thought I’d seen it all in Thailand, and the Philippines took some beating, but it’s been going on there for years. Here it’s quite new, and the people are falling over themselves to give us their kids. Ugly little fuckers, a lot of them. At least in Thailand the little girls are cute, and cuteness makes money. Here they all look half-starved and their eyes are pused over. I spend more money on fucking Golden Eye ointment than I do on their food!’ Candy laughed raucously.
Donna felt an urge to slap the woman before her. She watched as a fit of coughing overcame Candy, and saw her spit into a yellow-tinged hanky.
‘How’s this place doing?’
Candy’s coughing fit abated and she took a long swallow of her water.
‘All right. We had a few visits from the local Old Bill, but we soon sweetened them up. A couple of the older girls and a thousand rupees a week saw them off lovely. But you must understand, love. Here, a lot of things are ignored. The caste system is similar to the setup in Thailand. The poor are to be used and abused. That’s the bottom line. They all believe in reincarnation anyway, and are all convinced they’ll come back as the rich cunt next time, so they accept their fate without a second thought. Ignorant as shit, most of them.’
‘Quite.’ The one word conveyed to Candy that Donna put her on a similar level and her face hardened.
‘Listen here, Mrs High and Mighty Brunos. Your old man couldn’t wait to come in with us, and he’s had a good bit of bunce off us since. I assume you shared in it, so don’t you dare sit there and fucking look down your hooter at me, lady. I do what I do because it’s all I know. But I ain’t justifying myself to you or anyone else. You’re here now because it all fell out of bed for a while and your money is drying up. So don’t you dare put yourself above me and mine, I won’t have it. You should have let fucking Stephen or Paddy sort this out, love, if you couldn’t handle it.’
‘Or Davey Jackson.’ Donna had regained her equilibrium. ‘With respect, Candy, I don’t have to like what we’re doing, do I?’
The other woman relaxed into her seat again and sighed.
‘No, you don’t. No more than I do, I suppose. But it’s like Jake says: if we weren’t doing it someone else would be, and at least I see the kids are looked after for the most part. I don’t have no bondage or nothing for the little ones. In Thailand, you know, there’s brothels where the kids are chained all the time to a bed and have ten or more men a day. When I was in Bangkok a few years ago, a brothel near us caught fire and all the little girls died, burnt alive they were, because they were chained to the beds. Broke my heart it did. No, they don’t have too bad a time of it here. I never keep them more than eighteen months or two years. Even the really young ones look shagged out by then.’
Donna nodded, unable to trust herself to speak.
The phone rang, sending a shrill shock through the quiet of the room.
Candy picked it up with an abrupt: ‘Yes?’
Donna watched the changing expressions on her face.
‘What do you mean? Listen, Stephen, your brother’s wife’s here with me now.’
Donna rose in consternation. As she stood up, Candy waved her back to her seat, fear in her eyes now. Donna walked from the room and out towards the back of the house. She stood in a wide doorway watching the children as they sat in the shade. They were all different shapes and sizes, different shades of brown. All had large expressive eyes, and unsmiling mouths.
She was still watching them when Candy walked out to her and said, ‘I think me and you had better have a little talk, Mrs Brunos, don’t you?’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Candy took her firmly by the arm and led her back into the office. Donna slumped in the chair once more. She looked frightened; she was frightened.
‘What really brought you out here, lady?’
Donna lit herself a cigarette and took a deep draw on it.
‘What do you think? I had no idea what was going on - oh, I admit I had had my suspicions, but I thought that if I came out here and found out the score then I could decide what I was going to do. I had to know if my husband was involved, you see.’
Candy grinned. ‘Oh, he’s involved all right, up to his neck. This was all his idea, love. Georgio was the brains behind it all. But you can discuss that with Stephen. He’ll be here later today.’
She saw Donna’s fleeting look of fear and half-smiled.
‘You should look frightened, my dear, because Stephen is livid. I opened me big trap, didn’t I? But as I said to him, I didn’t realise I was doing anything wrong. You looked the part and acted the part. Now you’re going to get in a lot of shit, and it’s my job to keep an eye on you until he arrives. So let’s get one thing straight, shall we? If you attempt to leave I’ll break your fucking legs, and that’s no idle threat. I am quite capable of doing it. That was my forte in the girlie houses in Bangkok. I was a head girl with a difference, you see. To me they’re all scum.’
‘What happened to all your talk earlier, then? About how you look after the kiddies?’
Candy looked shocked.
‘But I do. That’s the point, see? I do look after them, but they’re all the same, love. In these countries you find out what life is really all about. Now in Bangkok I worked with the teenagers. Fucking pain in the arse most of them. But, you see, I’m quite partial to girls myself. Not kids, never. But the older girls are always willing to lighten their burden. They’re clever, shrewd. We’re not talking kids like the ones back home. The children out here are born fucking old. They adapt to their lives, they’re pliable, don’t cry that much either. I used to find that weird at first. But not any more. It’s like I said earlier, they were never k
ids in our sense of the word.
‘In some of these villages the seven year olds have been working on the tea plantations since two or three. They do a full day’s collar. In Thailand they work the paddy-fields or making baskets. They’re not kids. Not in their minds. We’ve got mothers and fathers queueing up to sell their kids to us, accept it as a part of life. That’s the difference, see? Once you get over your Englishness and start looking on it all from their point of view, you find life becomes a lot easier.’
Donna looked down at the floor. ‘My husband would have nothing to do with anything like this, I know that better than you. When he finds out there will be murder done here.’
Candy laughed gently and lit a cheroot. ‘Your precious husband was out in Thailand a few years ago, love. I supplied him with thirteen and fourteen year olds. He liked the three-headed blow job best.’
She watched Donna’s look of shock and disgust and smiled sadly.
‘I know it’s hard to admit to these things. But there, the truth hurts, don’t it? Your husband is as much a part of all this as I am. It was his idea not to bother decorating the place. The men who come here don’t give a flying fuck what the surroundings are. In fact, I think the more sordid it is the better they like it. The stench of the place turns them on. Degradation is a heady drug, love, that’s why we make so much dosh. In Phuket, you can pick up a little boy or girl on the beach, lay with them all afternoon - if you want in broad daylight. It’ll be the same here in a few years. It’s the Asian black economy. Goa is just opening up now, as is this place.
‘Your husband had the foresight to see all this, along with his brother. We make films here, do anything we want to do, and no one can stop us. It’s a bit hairy at the moment, granted, but once we get ourselves off to Krautland we’ll be laughing. I don’t know why you’re looking so green around the gills. It’s all this that’ll get your old man home, and keep you in luxury for the rest of your days.’
Donna stood up. ‘Oh no it won’t, lady. I’m leaving.’