16. Labubu
Sally and Liam got back in the Mustang and she pulled away onto Dungeness Road.
"OK," Liam said, taking his phone from his ear. "The DCI's going to send a forensic team to the shack. We're on the list to speak to the girls, but we need to follow full safeguarding procedure."
"Of course. Where are they?"
"A temporary victims unit at the old Lydd fire station, along with a whole raft of social services, medical, immigration, interpreters and press. It's chaos there now, apparently."
"But we're in?"
"We're in."
They drove on in silence, back past the reactor and Umberside Lodge and into Lydd, until Liam pointed wordlessly ahead.
The old fire station was a plain brick building engulfed by vehicles: a forensics wagon, press vans, several patrol cars, an ambulance and a dark sedan with a social services parking sticker. Sally parked the Mustang at the fringe and strode over.
The station's bay doors were painted a deep municipal red and overhung with an antique brass alarm bell. Sally and Liam pushed through the crowd of press; no sign of Tania Brown, which was a relief.
PC Chakrati was on the door. She smiled and waved them through.
Inside, the air was sour with wet clothing, instant coffee and antiseptic.
They passed through a lobby with a small gift shop, beyond which the displays had been pushed to the sides; a preserved hand pump, a rack of old helmets, a child's display about wartime firewatchers.
At the center of the hall now stood several folding tables covered with bottled water, packaged snacks, foil blankets and medical kits.
The girls were seated in a cluster near the back, wrapped in silver blankets beneath a display of sepia photographs showing Lydd firemen in leather helmets.
Five girls. It was hard to tell ages at a glance, but they were all young.
One had a pink hair clip pinned to the cuff of her blanket.
Sally recognized the girl from earlier; still dressed in an oversized hoodie.
Her eyes were watchful and roaming, until they locked on Sally.
Then she bolted upright, threw off the mylar blanket and ran over, throwing her arms wide to wrap Sally in a tight hug.
"Thank you, thank you!" she cried in heavily accented English. She was shorter, her head pressed against Sally's grimy shoulder, and sobbing.
Thoughts of evidence and contamination ran through Sally's mind, then she tossed them aside and hugged the girl back.
Her body was as thin and frail as a child's, shaking as she wept.
Sally felt the rage resurging in her chest, at Roarke Rook, at a system that allowed trafficking to happen, but anger was no use now.
She buried it and gently patted the girl's back, murmuring that everything would be OK, she was safe now. It didn't matter that the girl probably didn't understand the words. She understood enough, and steadily her sobbing eased.
A woman glided over to stand before them. She was in her 50s, with short gray hair, calm eyes and the commanding physical presence of a ward matron. She watched for a moment as the girl calmed herself, then spoke softly.
"Officers Rogers and O'Connell?"
"That's us," Liam said.
"My name is Polly Brampton, Safeguarding Officer. Eszter here has been asking for you. Isn't that right, Eszter?"
The girl turned to the older woman and nodded. She pulled back, offered a shy, teary smile, said something in another language then took Sally's hand and held it.
Sally squeezed back.
"Eszter's Hungarian," Brampton said. "The only one in this small group, so she hasn't been able to talk to the other girls so much. The four others are Romanian. If you'll come this way, we have a space set up for you."
Sally looked at the girl. "Eszter. Is that OK?"
Eszter nodded, eyes bright. "Yes. Yes. OK."
Brampton led them across the hall. "We have translators inbound. Until then, we're using a translation app. It works well enough, but we can't use it for a formal statement."
A folding table sat in a cubicle at the edge of the hall, and they sat.
A tablet computer lay in the center, the translation app live.
Brampton remained standing. "I'll remain nearby to monitor.
I advise only brief contact at this point, no more than five minutes with each young woman.
They've been through a terrible ordeal, which started long before their hazardous journey aboard a small boat late last night. "
Sally looked up, still holding Eszter's hand. "Could we have some coffee, please? Biscuits, anything like that?"
Brampton nodded. "Of course you can."
She summoned an aide who hurried away. Sally looked at Eszter, then over at Liam, then she pulled the translation app toward her and began.
"Tell us everything, Eszter," she spoke into the app. It repeated the question in Hungarian, and the young girl nodded, then words began spilling out of her.
The process that followed was slow and halting, as Sally or Liam asked her to pause, to repeat, to backfill. The app was imperfect and didn't catch everything. They ate biscuits and drank tea and coffee while she went through it all.
The crossing. The shack. The pickup. What followed.
She'd known she was going to perform on a livestream, it seemed. It had been part of her payment. A one-month indentureship, and the Rooks had put them straight to work.
Sally asked if she could identify the brothers.
She did. One brother had slapped her several times. From the description, Sally believed it was Roarke.
"Did you see anything unusual on the beach?" Sally asked. "Did the Rook brothers or the men who brought you attack anyone?"
Eszter frowned as the translation came. She bit her lip, thought a moment, then answered low and fast.
"I did not see any attacks," the app translated. "But we were on the beach for seconds only. From the boat, into the box. That was all."
Sally looked at Liam. "Did you hear anything unusual? Any cries, shouts? An engine?"
"I don't think so. I just remember the cold. Two of the girls were crying. I tried to comfort them." She paused, looking back at the group of four huddled in their silver blankets. "I told them it would be all right. We were beginning a new life."
Then she began to cry.
Sally just rested her hand on Eszter's. "It's OK."
Eszter spoke, and the app translated, though all the pain was cut from the intonation. "It will not be OK. We will be sent back now." Her eyes flared. "And I cannot go back!"
Brampton stepped forward. "I think that's enough," she said gently. "She'll have to go through all this again for the formal statement."
Sally squeezed Eszter's hand. "Will she be sent back?"
Brampton sighed. "Not tonight. Maybe never, if she successfully applies for asylum. But that's a complex process. Honestly, I don't know."
Sally turned back, looking into this young woman's desperate eyes. The fear was still there, but deeper now, and it stung Sally. Slowly, carefully, she extricated her fingers. "Thank you for helping us, Eszter. You're safe now. Just one last question."
Eszter looked at her numbly.
"We found a Labubu doll in the shack. Silver, with rainbow hair." She held out her phone, showing the photograph. "Was it yours?"
Tears glimmered in Eszter's eyes, then she answered in halting English. "Yes. From my… uh. Little sister. Before…"
She stopped talking. Sally's heart chilled. A doorway to greater misery.
"We'll get it back to you as soon as we can. And we'll do whatever we can for you, Eszter. I promise."
Sally stood. The girl at the table seemed very small and forlorn, and it broke her heart to walk away.
"You don't want to talk to the others?" Brampton asked quietly, falling in beside her.
"I don't think it's necessary. Like you said, it's traumatizing enough to say it once."
"For everyone," Brampton said. She paused near the lobby. "It was bad at that farm, Officers. I'm seeing injuries consistent with rape."
Liam sucked in a sharp breath. "What about rape kits?"
"We raised it with the girls. They didn't answer, but that's not uncommon." She took a moment. "We'll know more when the translator comes. Have you arrested the men responsible?"
Sally's jaw clamped tightly. "We've got one. We'll get the others."
"Good. They're clearly very dangerous."
Brampton started to pull away, back to where she was needed, but Sally called after her. "What do I have to do, to get their claims moved up the pile?"
Brampton eyed her. Like she was passing judgment. "It's not easy. A statement of investigative interest, possibly? Your signature, on Agency letterhead, saying these girls are witnesses of value in a live murder inquiry and that removal would prejudice it. But that doesn't seem to be true."
"Are you investigating this case?" Sally countered.
The woman frowned. Then nodded. "No. You are. I'll send the paperwork."
Sally glanced back across the hall. Eszter was still at the folding table, very small under the sepia photographs. "I'll get it signed. Thank you."
Liam said nothing as they returned through the crowd of press to the Mustang, though Sally didn't start the engine straight away.
They sat in silence for a moment. Thinking about the look in Eszter's eyes. She'd expected to see relief, maybe even hope, but only despair burned through.
"That was a nice thing to do," Liam said at last. "You're doing everything possible for those girls."
Sally looked at him. Maybe that was true. Maybe not. Either way, she wasn't going to forget.
She turned the key and pulled away from the old fire station.