Paternoster (22 page)

‘Samson and Delilah!’ someone cried, and shuddering with relief, she relaxed the pose.

No sooner had she put down the shears than ‘Samson’ was upon her, tearing at her costume.

‘Good job you didn’t cut my hair,’ he said. ‘I would lose my strength and not be able to love you.’

So this was love. A nameless stranger in a silly costume, rutting in the middle of a room, egged on by his friends, who piled in on the fun.

Not like Rodney. Dear, sweet, shy Rodney. He’d brought her flowers that morning. A little posy clutched in his paw and two bright red spots on his cheeks as he presented the flowers to her. He didn’t stop to enjoy her favours. A business meeting, he explained, looking excited, but he wanted her to know his esteem and regard. And with his funny little bow, off he’d gone.

Samson groaned and juddered, and collapsed on her chest with a woof. Rodney never did that. He took his time – Mrs Bedwin wasn’t pleased – and talked to her, and stroked and comforted her.

‘When I make my fortune, Rachel, I shall take you away from all of this. Would you like that?’

Would she like that? She’d nodded at him, a fluttery feeling in her chest, and when he’d gone, she missed him immediately and started counting down the days until she could expect him again.

‘Don’t forget about that thief-taker and the matter of the gloves what you stole,’ Mrs Bedwin reminded her, as she mooned about downstairs feeling dreamy. ‘So don’t get no plans about leaving, will you? You’re not going nowhere.’

Rodney would rescue her. He’d pay off Mrs Bedwin and take her away and set her up in a nice little house with china tea bowls and a looking glass, and a maid to cook and clean for her. And dear Rodney would visit with his pockets full of trinkets, and he’d sit her on his lap and she’d comb her fingers through his hair and he’d tell her she was the sweetest dumpling in the world and she’d say …

She became aware that she was being pointed at.

‘You and you,’ someone ordered. ‘Stop daydreaming.’

Ye gods, was it not enough that she was poked and prodded before all and sundry but that now she had to pay attention during it, too?

‘Come on,’ Emma whispered, tugging on her arm. ‘They want us.’

The two girls were led out of the room and through a series of chambers. Rachel caught glimpses of gilt chairs and a huge polished dining table, sofas and draperies and walls hung with portraits, then they were pushed into a room that led off the main hall. At the far end of the room, a door stood open.

As Rachel passed through the door, a servant thrust a lit candle into her hand, and she found herself in a narrow passageway. She jumped as the door slammed shut behind her. It was cold in the passage, very dark, and smelled stale as a crypt. Groping for Emma’s hand, she stumbled along the passageway and down a flight of stone steps to a tunnel lit intermittently by candles set into niches in the wall. Rachel pressed her fingertips to the side: they came away slimy with damp.

After what seemed like a long time, steps led up again, and they emerged into a small, circular room. Two mean candles burned in the centre and gave out a stink of tallow, their light puddling on contorted shapes painted on the walls. Rachel held her candle high to see. Depictions of all varieties of sexual act were painted over the walls. Every fancy, every contortion, every abhorrence.

On the far side of the room, clinging to the shadows, were four skinny girls, shackled together. Their faces were pale with black hollows carved deep beneath their eyes. One had a bruise swelling her cheekbone; another had scratches all over her arms and her head was shorn. Chains clanked against the stone floor every time one of them moved.

‘Where is this?’ Rachel asked in a low voice, afraid to the depths of her soul.

‘The Paternoster Club,’ one of the girls spat. She looked about thirteen. Tear tracks ran through the grime on her face.

‘What’s that?’

‘You’ve heard of the Hellfire Club?’ said the girl with the shaven head. The razor had nicked her scalp and there was a crust of blood above her ear. She scratched at a sore on her bare leg. ‘Imagine all the rumours were true.’

Her tone sent an icy shiver down Rachel’s spine. She’d heard the stories about the Hellfire Club. Summoning the devil, evil rites, everyone sworn to secrecy. Rachel and Emma exchanged a look. Emma’s eyes were huge and frightened, and her breath came swift and shallow. Any moment she’d faint from fear.

Rachel raised her candle. ‘Where are you from? You’re not Mrs Bedwin’s girls.’

‘I was on an errand for my mistress in Bath,’ the girl with the shaved head said. ‘There was a bag over my head and I was in a coach before I knew it.’

‘You were all snatched?’ Emma echoed. The girls nodded.

‘What are we here for?’ Rachel said, panic building.

‘The gents that want to join the club. They have a test, like a trial by ordeal,’ the girl said. Her mouth worked silently for a moment before she was able to utter her next words. ‘Us too.’

Dread crawled over Rachel’s scalp. Desperately she calculated her chances of escape if she sped down the tunnel, out of Greville House and away. Mrs Bedwin would set the thief-taker after her for her gowns, but surely that was better than staying here. She gripped Emma’s hand. ‘We should run away while we can. Before someone comes for us.’

‘We can’t leave them here.’ Emma crouched in front of the girls, studying their faces. ‘How long have you been here?’

Before they could answer, a door opened behind them and they all flinched. Rachel pulled Emma to her feet and cowered back against the wall.

A squat man with grey stubble peppering his head came into the room and grabbed one of the girls by the elbow. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘They’re ready for you.’

He dragged her through the door, forcing the others to shuffle and hop along in her wake. Rachel cast Emma an anguished glance, and they too trailed behind them, into a temple punctuated with stone columns and draped with crimson velvet. It was lit with hundreds of candles and incense burned in the corners, filling the air with perfumed fug. A table covered with black velvet stood in the centre of the room like a satanic altar. Rachel shivered. There must be some way to escape. Perhaps she could fight her way out. But no, there were six masked men already there; too many to take on. She’d have to bide her time and pray a better opportunity came along.

A man wearing a ram’s head stepped forwards and held his arms high and wide.

‘My children. We are gathered here together so our dear brother may be tested and show he is ready to be one of us. Brother, come forwards.’

A man wearing a wolf’s mask moved into the centre of the circle.

‘Are you ready to be tested?’

‘I am.’

‘You know that if you pass the test you will hold the power of life and death?’

‘I do.’

‘Are you ready for this honour?’

‘I am.’

‘Do you swear to keep all you see, hear and feel here tonight secret until your dying day, and to take the secrets of the Paternoster Club with you to the grave?’

‘I do.’

Ram’s head clapped his hands. Another man brought forth a glass of wine and a small inlaid box. He opened the box and thrust it at the initiate.

‘Choose.’

Wolf man scrabbled in the box and brought out a bean. At a signal from ram’s head, he plopped it into the wine, held the wine glass up high, and downed the contents in one long swallow. Everyone gasped.

‘And now we will see whether you have passed the test, and whether you are worthy to join us.’ Ram’s head snapped his fingers. ‘Choose a damsel to accompany you to heaven or hell.’

The wolf strutted up and down the line of girls, scrutinising each one in turn. Eventually he chose one of the scrawny captives, hoisting her arm high in the air as though she’d just won a prize fight. A long, low moan escaped the girl’s lips. Rachel’s insides turned to water. She’d heard that moan before from the captives tied in the back of the cart on their way to the gallows. It was a moan that betrayed there was no hope. She shrank back as wolf man hauled the girl away, shutting her ears to the girl’s pitiful screams.

‘Take your partners,’ ram’s head announced. ‘Ladies’ choice, I think.’

The men did not remove their masks as one by one the girls picked their partners with blindness born of shock. Rachel was barely aware of what was happening; her mind echoed with everything she’d witnessed. This was all play-acting, surely? It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. It was just a bit of silly dramatics to amuse these silly men who had too much money and liked to feel important.

The girl wasn’t really going to die, was she?

In a daze of fear, Rachel chose one of the men. They were all the same; it made no difference to her. Throughout what followed, her eyes never strayed from the doorway where the girl had disappeared. She’d punch this fellow in the guts and run to help the girl. Then they’d escape into the night and …

She wouldn’t. She had no money, nowhere to go, no one to help her, and Mrs Bedwin could tell the thief-taker something that would snap Rachel’s neck. They’d both be dead: her and the girl, the poor snatched girl. A tear glided over Rachel’s cheek as she leaned against one of the stone columns, bracing herself on her palms while her gentleman battered into her. All the girls were silent. The only sounds came from the five men. When they were done, they slunk away, never speaking a word.

When the men were gone, the girls huddled together in the temple. Emma and Rachel sobbed, their arms tight about each other’s waists. The chained girls did not cry, just stared with hollow blankness into space.

‘This trial by ordeal?’ Rachel asked. ‘What is it?’

The girls shrugged.

‘And your friend, the other girl, she’ll be back tomorrow?’

‘No.’ One girl raised her head. ‘We never see the girls again.’

Eden ran a computer search on Zamir Sussman and found an address in Gloucester and a business registered to him: a takeaway food shop near the bus station. Perfect location to prey on teenagers too pissed to realise what was happening to them.

She looked again at the photos of Chelsea out shopping with her friends: overly made up, trying too hard, vulnerable, sassy, desperate to prove they were grown up. Easy prey. Zamir must have picked them out straight away: three girls on the lookout for excitement, for attention, for flattery, and he knew just how to satisfy them.

She made copies of the photos of Chelsea and drove the short distance to Gloucester, first stop Zamir’s address. No one answered the bell, nor when she knocked on the door. Peering through the windows she could make out no trace of Chelsea: no coat hanging up, no shoes lying on the carpet, no handbag. A scout round the back of the property also yielded nothing. Dishes lay drying in the kitchen rack: one mug, one bowl, one spoon. She liked this less and less.

A tiff, making up, Chelsea stays the night, too loved up or embarrassed to call her mum; all of that was possible. But the way Zamir had homed in on the girls, buying them clothes and makeovers, reeling them in; that disturbed her. And if Chelsea had stayed the night, where was her mug, remains of her breakfast and lunch? If she wasn’t here, where was she?

Eden climbed back into her car and headed for Zamir’s shop. The takeaway had yellow lettering covering much of the front window, and a formica counter where four youths were loitering and eating their takeaways.

She pushed open the door and the smell of hot oil, garlic and chips assaulted her.

‘Is Zamir in?’ she asked the serving girl.

‘Zamir? No, he’s out at the moment.’

‘When’s he going to be back?’

The girl shrugged. ‘He doesn’t come here much. Do you want to speak to the manager? He’ll be back in about an hour. He’s at the cash and carry.’

Eden dug out a photo of Chelsea. ‘You ever seen her?’

‘No.’

‘Try looking.’

A sigh, but she looked properly this time. ‘No. I don’t know her.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

Eden tried the youths on the off-chance they’d seen Chelsea, but they all shook their heads. ‘Wouldn’t mind, though,’ one contributed. ‘She’s well fit.’

She left the shop and scouted round the area. Above the takeaway was a flat: grimy windows and a square of cardboard taped over a fractured pane. The door to the flat was round the side of the building, no name underneath the bell. She pressed the buzzer.

‘’Lo?’

‘Hi, is Zamir there?’ She made her voice light and frothy, copying Olivia and Bryony’s breathless manner.

‘Zamir?’

‘Yeah.’

A snuffle. ‘No.’

‘I thought this was his flat.’

‘No, love. Just me here. I rent it from the council.’

‘Sorry.’

Damn! Still, worth a try. What she needed now was street intelligence. A thin rain was falling as she left her car in a central car park where she knew it would be safe, and walked to an area of Gloucester where tall Victorian houses jostled next to each other. Once prosperous, the area had slid steadily downhill. Now the haughty Victorian facades were grubby and the stone steps were broken. The buildings were chopped into the sort of flats and bedsits where blankets served as curtains. Student digs, landlords who demanded key money, shabby B&Bs with brown nylon carpet tiles where a toaster and a pile of white bread constituted breakfast.

The area was well furnished with hookers, too, as shabby and broken-down as the Victorian villas. Eden knew some of the girls; knew which ones would lie and take her money, and which ones would tell the truth and take her money. Kaz fell into the latter category. She was shivering on the pavement in shorts and halter top, shoulders hunched against the rain, sucking on a fag as though it were her last breath.

‘Hello, Kaz,’ Eden said. ‘Fancy a cup of coffee?’

‘Might miss a punter.’

Eden looked up and down the empty street. ‘Yeah, I can see them queuing. Come on, it’ll be warm in the caff.’

Kaz sniffed.

‘I’ll buy you a doughnut.’