During their trial there’d been rumours flying all over the place. A ‘little black book’ was one of them, but no one had ever produced it and no one ever discovered the names of those men who had traded kids for decades, men who had gathered in each other’s houses for ‘special parties’. But Andy knew their names because he’d arranged their travel when they’d flown in and out of Bangkok. He’d seen their passports. He had photocopies. And he’d kept all the paperwork. You never knew when you might need insurance. The little black book. Not little, nor black, nor a book, but a computer file, on a memory stick, hidden with Andy’s overflow of cash in the attic of the Seashell.
After they had parted company with Bassani and Carmody, the three of them – Steve, Tommy and Andy (the Three Musketeers, Steve called them, stupid name) – had started with the girls.
Anderson Price Associates was Steve’s idea. A recruitment agency, legit-looking, ‘completely kosher’. Just girls, because there was always a demand for girls, always had been, always would be. Not job lots. Bring them in one at a time, two by two at the most, like on the Ark. Straightforward trade, no small children, no refugees. Just girls.
Tommy was quick to agree, but then he thought the sun shone out of Steve’s arse, for some reason.
Andy hadn’t been so sure, but Tommy said, ‘Don’t worry so much, Foxy, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.’ And it was.
Anderson Price Associates was the official shiny recruitment face of the operation. Andy’s firm, Exotic Travel, funnelled the girls into the country. Supply and demand, that was the foundation of capitalism, wasn’t it? They had girls coming out of their ears. ‘Exponential,’ Steve said.
They weren’t press-ganged or shanghaied off the street, they came of their own free will. They thought they were coming to real jobs – nursing, accountancy, care homes, clerical work, translators even. People sold bread or shoes or cars. Anderson Price sold girls. ‘It’s just business,’ Tommy shrugged. ‘No different to anything else, really.’
Anderson Price Associates, in the shape of Steve, recruited them on Skype from what he referred to as his ‘second office’. It was a caravan really, a static on an old site of Carmody’s, but it was impressive, right down to the authentic background noises of a busy office.
A lot of the girls had skills and qualifications. Much good that did them once they were shackled to an old hospital bed in Silver Birches and being forcibly injected with drugs. Steve called it ‘breaking-in’, as if they were horses. After that they were distributed. Sheffield, Doncaster, Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester, Hull. The choice ones to contacts in London, some even found their way back into Europe. The white slave trade, alive and well in the new Jerusalem.
And, after all, who was going to suspect a bunch of middle-aged white blokes in a seaside town? The focus for the police, for the security services, was elsewhere – Asian paedophile gangs, Romanian slavers. So here they were, hiding in plain sight, supplying the limitless needs for sex in pop-up brothels, saunas and places that were even less legitimate, less salubrious. (You wouldn’t think that was possible, but it was.) Trade was good.
Figures were meticulously kept, all the accountancy done beneath the cloak of the dark web. Anderson Price Associates was the umbrella that oversaw everything, but Anderson Price was, essentially, just Steve. The thing about Steve was that he enjoyed the game – the power and manipulation and lies, he enjoyed fooling the girls. That old caravan of Carmody’s was more like a hobby to him – a refuge too, perhaps. Other men had sheds or allotments, Steve had the static.
They stopped again at a Sainsbury’s Local on their way into town and he bought the girls a Ginsters pasty each and more Fanta, and some rancid coffee for himself. He couldn’t believe how much they could eat. ‘Hollow legs, eh, girls?’ he said. Still, he thought, they probably weren’t going to get much from now on, may as well treat them. They twittered something unintelligible in response that he supposed translated as gratitude. He could feel his unlooked-for conscience trying to push its way out of the darkness and into the light. He pushed it back down and said, ‘Here we go, girls, we’ve reached our final destination,’ as the sprawling, dilapidated building that was Silver Birches came into view.