I hadn’t told Amy that her twin brother was missing, and whether or not to mention it bugged me. Would she want to know or had she washed her hands of everyone from her childhood forever? Including him? But she’d told me she’d confided in him that she was escaping and he’d helped her. So she must have a soft spot for him even if he had agreed to incest. Incest at the insistence of extremely mad and bad adults who had brainwashed him.
I let out a gruff sigh.
“You okay?” Jamie asked from my left side.
“Yeah, just thinking.”
“About Amy?”
“That bloody commune, and how awful it was when she was there ten years ago.”
“Have you told her about her brother?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She had a right hissy fit when I told her I’d been up to Yorkshire. To be honest, I didn’t get further than telling her that I’d gone before I was machine gunned with pasta.”
“Should have told her beforehand.” He chuckled. “You had a search for him? The brother?”
“A quick sweep around. But not a proper dig. I’ll get to it.”
“Fuck me, it stinks ’round here.” Cillian wafted his hand in front of his nose.
“Sewage works. Keep going straight for another mile.” Finn was studying his phone. “Not far now.” He pulled up his bandana.
I did the same.
“What’s the plan, Prof?” Dalton asked.
“Jamie will have to make first contact,” Andrew said. “His voice is recognizable, and they’ve spoken on the phone. We don’t want to arouse suspicion until we’ve got the measure of the place.”
“Yeah, we need to know what we’re up against,” Grant agreed. “But Jamie can’t be completely exposed.”
“Yeah, you go with him, Mitch.” Andrew turned to me. “Put your phone on so we can hear any conversations. Then when we know how many girls are there and what backup this asshole has, we’ll move in. They won’t know we’re in the van with these blacked-out windows.”
“Are we shooting to kill, Prof?” Jamie asked.
It was the question on all of our minds. We only killed killers.
So if this Beelzebub guy, or whatever his name was, wasn’t a murderer we couldn’t take him out, that was our code. No matter how much of a deviant, a despicable human beinghe was, we had to let him live and hope the scales of justice balanced and a judge sent him down for a long time.
My right index finger twitched. My darkness prodding to be let out. Selling women into lives as sex slaves was as bad as murdering them…wasn’t it?
“We know nothing about him,” Andrew said. “But we can change that. Do some digging when you start talking, guys, let’s see if he tries to big himself up and trips up on bravado and tells you something about his past.”
“Yeah, good plan.” I nodded slowly. “We can do that.”
I studied Jamie. People just liked talking to him. He had a knack of feigning interest even when someone didn’t interest him. Probably got taught that at one of his posh schools. And I had enough policing years under my belt to know how to catch people out.
Basically, everyone liked talking about themselves. Favorite topic of conversation.
We turned onto a long driveway lined with silver birches. It would have been upmarket if it wasn’t for the potholes and the crap lining the way—an old fridge, two stained mattresses, a shopping trolley to name a few items.
“What is this place?” Andrew muttered.
“A place to shop for women, women who didn’t choose to be for sale,” Dalton said between gritted teeth. “It’s a shithole.”
