The Girl Who Made Them Pay Read online

  The man with the machine gun peeked inside the van, then climbed in. I held my breath.

  The woman screamed again. “Aiii!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I heard a sickening thump and the screaming ended.

  A tremor of horror passed through me. I stopped breathing and strained to listen. Did he hit her? Did he kill her? What’s going on?

  Katy, Win, and Luc all had their heads down. I thought I heard a sob come from Katy. I noticed Tetyana, like me, was keeping an eye out. She didn’t notice me, focused on what was happening in the warehouse.

  Her face was contorted into something nasty, more furious than fearful, I thought.

  The man with the machine gun emerged from the back of the van, holding his gun in one hand and pulling a girl with the other, his hand around her neck. To my surprise, Vlad came out behind them, pulling up the fly on his pants, a cocky look on his face.

  I felt the bitter taste of bile in my mouth.

  Vlad strolled over to Zero and his companion and dug out a cigarette.

  I looked at the girl being pulled across the warehouse by her neck. She looked Hispanic, maybe fifteen or sixteen at most, wearing only a yellow blouse tied at the waist. I remembered her from before when we’d all waited in the kitchen in the house back in London.

  The man threw her on the ground.

  “What are they going to do to her?” I whispered in horror.

  “Head down,” Luc whispered and pulled at my robe. I didn’t move.

  “Hush.” I heard Tetyana whisper.

  If I’d felt nauseous before, but it was nothing like how I was feeling now, sick to the pit of my stomach.

  I watched as the girl tried to pull away from the man. She got on her knees, trying to get up, but she didn’t get far. The man gave her a swift kick, turning her body into a football that landed with a thud on the concrete floor.

  Every nerve in my body cried out. I wanted to run out, grab her, and pull her away from these evil monsters. I twitched madly underneath the robe. I felt Tetyana reach over and put a hand on my shoulder. She squeezed it tightly and held on.

  Even after that horrifying kick, the girl somehow regained enough strength to sit up again. This time, he hit her on her face. She fell on her back. I watched in horror as she fought to get back up, again and again. Each time, the man punched her. Again and again. She cried in agony with every blow.

  I closed my eyes every time the man’s fist came down and opened them every time the girl tried to get up. Tetyana’s hand dug into my shoulder. I knew it was there as a reminder to stay quiet. But every time the girl cried out, her hand squeezed down tighter like she too felt that punch in her bones.

  “Shut her up!” It was Zero.

  The girl was convulsing on the floor now. I can’t watch this.

  The man with the machine gun stepped over her and lifted the butt of his gun high. My gut screamed. I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t watch anymore. I couldn’t move. Though Katy, Win, and Luc weren’t watching, I felt the same frisson of unspeakable terror go through every one of us.

  We clutched each other, like we were hanging on to our humanity, while out there unbelievable insanity raged. I closed my eyes, but I heard the dull thud.

  It’s over.

  When I opened my eyes, the half-naked girl lay lifeless on the stark warehouse floor, her head open and bloodied, her yellow blouse splattered red, her legs crooked under her.

  I sat frozen, staring at the girl’s body. I wanted to scream. I wanted to sob. But I couldn’t. Not because we weren’t supposed to make a sound, but because I felt dead inside.

  I’m sorry I didn’t help you. I’m sorry I let this happen to you. I’m sorry I did nothing.

  I wanted to scream, but nothing came out.

  Zero and Vlad smoked another cigarette, taking puffs as if it was just another ordinary day.

  The man with the machine gun threw a plastic sheet over the girl and joined them. Vlad offered a cigarette to him and a lighter.

  Even seeing Zero kick Win hadn’t prepared me for this. That had been horrifying, but I remembered how I’d thought these were small-minded, stupid criminals. Who am I kidding? These were ruthless men. Men? Are they even human?

  My shock waned, and in its place came a surging rush of rage.

  I remembered my grandmother telling us that when all else failed, we needed to put our trust in the gods. She should have known because she worshiped them all—from the christian gods, the hindu gods, the buddhist gods, the jewish gods, and even the islamic one, though she wasn’t allowed in the mosques.

  So where did all these good gods and prophets go to hide today? I wondered. Where were those magnificent deities I’d seen in the temples of India, the shrines of Tanzania and the churches of Canada?

  Where were these omnipresent creators who are worshiped and on whom money is showered by the millions? Why didn’t a single one of them come down from their precious heavens to stop this atrocity?

  The world’s mad, I concluded. Yes, the world’s infuriatingly, infinitely mad, madder than ten thousand dogs with rabies.

  Something stirred in me. Something raging, uncontrollable, insuppressible.

  The image of the terrifying warrior Hindu goddess, Kali, sprang to mind. That purple-skinned woman with a necklace of dead men’s heads, a sickle covered in blood in one hand and her ghastly red tongue hanging out. Back in Goa, Grandma had a picture of her taped over her mattress and a small shrine dedicated to her to ward off evil spirits. What a useless goddess, I thought. All talk and no action.

  We, humans, were here alone, to take care of our own messes. The quicker we realized it, the better.

  I knew then that before my stay was over on this continent, those men would pay for their sins. Every cell in my body wanted nothing but revenge now.

  The two khaki-clad packers were now walking toward our van.

  “Stay down.” I heard Tetyana say.

  I lowered my head, but not before I saw her tuck her mobile phone back into her T-shirt. She did it so quickly, I almost missed it. What was she doing with it? I wanted to ask but now was not the time. The men had come closer. I felt the tension rise in everyone next to me, even Tetyana.

  The men got to work, without bothering to look our way. We could have been empty cardboard boxes for all they cared. Maybe that was all we were worth.

  I now saw why Tetyana had rearranged the inside of the van. She had known this was going to happen. She’d created an area large enough for us to sit on the floor with our feet pointing forward. The bags were not a barricade as much as a demarcating line between us and the boxes being packed. The men started piling the boxes just behind the bags.

  One by one, the boxes filled the van all the way to the top. They were building a wall, right in front of our eyes, locking us in. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but the air seemed to get thinner. I felt my chest constrict and I had to force myself to breathe. I felt Luc’s hands squeezing mine.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered in my ear. “It’s only to hide us.”

  “From who?” I whispered back.

  He didn’t answer.

  Chapter Twenty

  “She died for all of us," Tetyana said, quietly.

  It wasn’t the voice of the cocky, self-assured woman I’d met a few hours ago. Something had changed in her. In everyone. We were all broken now.

  “I can’t believe it happened,” I said in a whisper. My stomach was whirling like a washing machine, but my mind had completely shut down. “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe I saw that.”

  I heard Katy whimper next to me. She was rocking back and forth. I squeezed her hand and held it tightly.

  “We knew this was coming,” Luc said softly, staring at the floor. “We just pretended it wasn’t. We pretended we were gonna make good money and get out.”

  “They’re going to pay for this,” Tetyana said, her eyes burning.

  We sat in silence after that, each los
t in our own nightmares.

  The image of the girl’s pretty yellow blouse splattered in blood was etched with fire on my mind. I couldn’t get it out. The blouse was the least offensive thing I’d seen at the warehouse, but it was the only aspect my weakened mind could bear to remember without going insane. I vacillated between horror and guilt.

  She had not been much older than Win. She’d probably been running away from something bad, seeking something good, like we all were. I could have been her. She could have been me. She could have been any one of us.

  I wanted to hurt every one of those dastardly men. “Why didn’t we do something?” I cried out, punching the floor. I heard the fury boiling in my own voice. “How could we let that happen right in front of us and do nothing?”

  I tried to choke back the sobs threatening to surge out. But no one bothered to shush me now.

  “We’re no match for their weapons,” Tetyana said finally.

  I gave her a defiant look. I’d rather have died in a hail of bullets than live with that image forever branded into my brain. Knowing I sat and watched and did nothing would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  “Why do you think they have a thug with a machine gun?” Luc asked in a soft voice.

  “Does it even matter?” I snapped.

  “It’s a very efficient piece of equipment to mow down a rebellion from the vans,” Tetyana said crisply. “Gets the job done in five seconds or less. A good pressure washer can clean it all up afterward.”

  I felt my blood chill.

  “Do you really think they’d have killed all of us like that?” asked Katy, looking at Tetyana in horror.

  “Yes,” Luc said.

  “In a heartbeat,” Tetyana said.

  “But the police?” I stammered. “You can’t hide machine gun fire, can you? They’d hear it. And rescue us, wouldn’t they? I mean, if we’re still alive, that is....”

  Tetyana laughed her coarse laughter. “Do you know how many graves there are in Europe with forgotten foreign girls, hun?”

  I shook my head and looked away. Part of me didn’t want to know.

  “Sometimes, they find ten bodies in one spot. One time they found thirty. Do you think anyone cares?” Tetyana said. “They wash the blood off, pay the cops and it’s back to business. No politician wants evidence of this happening under their watch, so they cover it up.”

  “Not in Europe,” I said, not wanting to believe any of this. I’d seen the bad side of humanity by now, but this was different. This was on a spectrum of evil I hadn’t even realized existed.

  “Haven’t you heard of white slavery?” Tetyana asked, looking at me pointedly, her green eyes glowing in the dark.

  I shook my head.

  “You better believe it happens.”

  “It’s true,” said a small voice, “but it’s worse where I come from.”

  We looked over at Win, curled up into a ball, her head on Tetyana’s shoulder. She’d been following the conversation without a word. She looked away when she saw us all turn her way.

  Tetyana put a hand on Win’s head and stroked her hair. “You know,” she said finally, in a thoughtful voice. “I thought I had an agreement with those bastards.”

  Agreement? Is she profiting from all this?

  “Tell me,” I said, sitting up and looking at her directly. “Why are you here in the back of the van and not up front with them?”

  I felt Luc give a start next to me.

  Tetyana was silent for a second. “Because I’m not one of them.”

  “But,” I said, pointing at her, “you seem to know a lot.”

  She took her time answering. “I do what I have to do because I have no choice.”

  “Why did you put me to sleep when we left?” I felt my voice rise. “Why did you prick me with that injection or whatever you did to me?”

  “To keep you alive,” she said.

  Then, she looked away and refused to say another word. And that was the end of that conversation.

  The van rocked us back and forth until one by one, we all dozed off. We’d been going through stop-and-go traffic for such a long time, I eventually got used to it, slipping in and out of consciousness, half-asleep, half-awake.

  Next to me, Luc had fallen asleep, eyes closed, breathing deeply. I accidentally elbowed him but he didn’t budge. Katy and Win had also dozed off, heads close together. I looked at Tetyana. Her eyes were half-closed like she was meditating, but her hands on her lap were clenching and unclenching. Clenching and unclenching.

  She was still awake.

  "Tetyana," I called out softly.

  She opened her eyes.

  Even through the darkness, I could see the weariness on her face. She looked decades older than when I first saw her at South Hill Square, and she’d looked terrible then. How old is she? Twenty? Twenty-five? She couldn’t be more than a couple of years older than any of us, could she?

  I looked down at the midnight-black robe we were now using as a makeshift blanket. "What happened to Bibi?”

  Tetyana sighed before replying like it was too laborious an answer. “Probably ran away. Hiding somewhere out in the streets away from the cops.”

  Bibi was supposed to have been at the mosque when I fell through that window into the London house. I’d been lucky to get hold of one of her spare robes. I imagined her small figure shuffling through darkened alleyways, ducking into hidden nooks, peeking out fearfully through her eye slits as blue police lights flashed across the building.

  “She must be really scared right now,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Tetyana said shaking her head. “I’d say she’s happy.”

  “Happy? How?”

  “Because she’s far away from that madman.”

  Does she mean Zero? “Is she really Zero’s sister?”

  Tetyana didn’t answer.

  I remembered when Bibi showed me her face. It hadn’t been a threat, but a warning. I remembered those fierce black eyes, that horrible, disfiguring scar on her cheek, that scar that gave me nightmares.

  “Did Zero—” I swallowed. “Did he do that to her face?”

  “You ask so many questions.” Tetyana sighed.

  I pointed at the robe on my lap. “I’m Bibi now, so I need to know these things.”

  “Good point,” Tetyana said in a business-like manner. Then, she sat silent for five maddening minutes. I waited impatiently, not wanting to annoy her. The last thing I needed was for her to stop opening up to me.

  I was nodding off when she began to speak again.

  “It happened when they were back home.”

  I sat up and blinked.

  “Where’s that?” I asked.

  “Pakistan.”

  “What happened?”

  “She fell in love with the neighbor’s son. They were fifteen or something, but she was supposed to be married off to a fifty-year-old man as wife number four.”

  “A fourth wife?”

  “It’s their tradition. The fourth wife is always a young girl, sometimes barely ten or twelve if she’s lucky. Somehow Bibi had held off.”

  “Oh, my god.”

  “So Bibi ran off with her boyfriend,” Tetyana continued. “But they didn’t get too far. The village chief ordered Zero, he’s the oldest brother, to find them. They found the two near the Indian border and brought them back to the village.” She paused. “They whipped the boy till he bled to death, she said.”

  My mouth had gone dry. I stared at Tetyana wordlessly.

  “Something about family honor, she said.”

  I felt cold goose bumps come all over me. Back in Goa, I’d heard about honor killings, read about it in the newspapers, but to know of someone who’d gone through that experience was chilling. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.

  “That’s what honor’s all about in some places,” Tetyana replied. “They torture and kill anyone who disobeys, and hey, presto!” She snapped her fingers. “Family honor’
s restored. Just like that.”

  “That’s so twisted.” I stopped myself. Like I hadn’t seen enough nonsensical stuff in my life, I thought.

  I remembered how Aunty Shilpa had been married off to an older man who beat her mercilessly. When he died of AIDS, they considered her “Untouchable” because she was a widow, and infected with HIV on top of that, a disease that took her life in the end. I remembered how my own grandmother had arranged for me to be married off to an alcoholic pervert when I was only fifteen. I’d escaped to Canada, where I thought I was going to work to pay off my debts to the immigration broker, only to discover he was the entry point for a human trafficking ring. A year after I fled, I learned how my cousin Preeti had been forced to marry that vile man in my place.

  The world’s a twisted place.

  “Better believe it,” Tetyana was saying. “Happens every day, and Bibi's family is not any different. The village chief made Bibi watch all this on her knees. She said her boyfriend cried like a dying animal with every lash. When they finished with him, the chief ordered Zero to throw hot oil on her face to punish her.”

  A shiver of horror went through me. Bibi’s scarred face flashed to my mind. I choked. There was nothing I could say. I didn’t want to hear anymore, but Tetyana wasn’t done.

  “You know that old man she was supposed to be married off to? He raped her while her own brother, Zero, and his friends held her down. In the middle of town while all the men watched.”

  “That’s barbaric,” I whispered, shaking my head.

  "The chief wanted to whip her to death like her boyfriend too, but the imam of the village told him she was a slut because she lost her virginity in public. Regardless of how she lost it, mind you. This meant she lost all her honor, so according to the imam, that was a fate worse than death. They let her live to punish her.”

  “So inhuman,” I said, my voice faltering. “Zero’s an animal. How could he...”

  I sat back, horrified, speechless. What do you do when your own family hates you that much and hurts you that badly? Then blames you for it? I pulled Bibi’s robe up to my chest. I half-wished she was here, so I could give her a hug.