The Girlflesh Institute (Nexus) (3 page)

Clinging on tightly to the lorry’s underframe, secured by snaplink cords attached to a climbing harness, Vanessa’s heart thudded. She heard a few casual words exchanged between the driver and the gate guard, then the barrier lifted and the lorry moved forwards into a world of echoing concrete and the harsh light of fluorescent tubes. The vehicle slowed again and there came the rattle of a mesh gate rolling aside to let it through. That was the inner gate dividing the car park. Her gamble had paid off. She was entering the Tower’s mysterious high-security zone. The lorry swung down a ramp to the lower level, came to a brief halt, backed a little way, then stopped.

The engine cut and Vanessa heard the driver jump down from his cab. Footsteps sounded on the concrete, the rear doors of the lorry opened and a ramp was lowered.

‘All OK?’ the driver asked.

‘No problem,’ came a woman’s voice from within. ‘They slept most of the way.’

‘What was that hold-up about?’ a second male voice asked.

Vanessa’s heart skipped a beat. Two people had been travelling in the back of the lorry.

‘Just a stalled car,’ the driver explained.

Vanessa breathed again. It was sheer luck that they hadn’t heard her stowing away beneath them.

‘Right, let’s get them down below,’ the woman said.

‘Down below?’ Vanessa wondered. But they were already on the lowest level.

‘Want them to take the gear down with them?’ her companion asked.

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Send up another chain for it later. This lot deserve a rest. They’ve had a busy night.’

‘Another chain?’ Again Vanessa wondered at the odd phrase.

The other man chuckled. ‘Fair enough.’

Vanessa heard a soft scuffing whisper of movement from within the lorry, accompanied by a metallic clinking. This odd procession of sound passed slowly down the ramp and off across the concrete floor. Then came the swish and whirr of lift doors opening.

‘I’ll go up and have a bite to eat,’ said the driver. ‘See you later …’

As the echo of his footsteps receded, the shuffling and rattling sounds inside the lorry ceased. There was a soft clunk of closing doors, then the fading sound of the lift in motion.

For the moment at least, Vanessa was alone.

Taking a deep breath, she unclipped her securing lines and dropped into a crouch under the lorry. Still doubled over, she stripped off her harness and packed it away into the toolbox slung beside her, removing from it a blue peaked cap bearing the Shiller logo. This matched the overalls she was wearing, based upon photos she had previously taken of Shiller maintenance staff at work.

Vanessa slipped out from under the lorry and cautiously peered round its bulk.

Except for half a dozen cars and two plain vans, the level was empty.

She glanced into the still open rear of the lorry. Down each side ran tall mesh frames, which she took to be tool racks. There were also several large chests on wheels, of the sort stage crews used to transport concert props and equipment. She would like to have investigated their contents but she had no time to waste.

Opposite the open back of the lorry were the recessed doors of a large lift with a stairwell door to one side. Mounted on the wall beside the call buttons, just as the building plans had shown, was a keycard reader. A similar device was incorporated in the lock of the stairwell door.

Vanessa crossed quickly to the lift. Opening her toolkit, she took out a slim wafer of metal and plastic and slid it into the jaws of the reader, with which it merged almost invisibly. Then she pressed a miniature camera, concealed within a grey cornice-like shell, into the shadowy inner angle of the lift-door recess, to which it adhered. Finally she went round to the back of the stairwell block and waited.

A few minutes later she heard the lift ascend. So there was another level below this one. The doors opened. The voice of the man who had ridden in the back of the lorry said: ‘Right, get that lot unloaded …’

Again came the odd shuffling and clinking, followed by what she took to be the sounds of the wheeled crates being rolled down the ramp and across to the lift. After a minute or so the doors shut again and the lift departed.

Vanessa let out her breath. They had not noticed her spying devices, but she needed somebody to open the doors from the outside.

An agonising half-hour passed before a car came down the ramp into the park. Vanessa heard a couple of chattering women get out and make for the lift. They keyed their way in and set off upwards.

As soon as the doors closed, Vanessa darted round to the door recess, recovered her pirate reader and camera and returned to the back of the stairs.

The reader plugged into a specialised gadget in her toolkit. When this flashed a green light she withdrew from its slot a new keycard. If everything had functioned correctly, this was a clone of the one last used to access the lift.

The camera downloaded on to a small screen where it showed the lift-door keypad. She magnified the image and played it over until she could read the pass-code number the last user had entered.

Vanessa closed her toolkit and walked round to the door side. Heart pounding, she swiped her pirated card through the reader and punched in the code. The lift door opened smoothly.

She stepped inside the roomy car and studied the controls. Level B2 was illuminated and the panel did not show anything lower. But there had to be something. What was the trick to get down to the secret level? She noticed the B2 button looked far more worn than the B1. Just how much traffic could there be from a half-empty car park? Perhaps … she pressed the B2 three times.

The doors closed and the lift started downwards.

Vanessa opened her toolbox and switched on the video camera concealed within it. On impulse she also took out a torch, then contrived to put a slightly bored expression on her face. I’m just one of maintenance crew checking for burnt-out light bulbs, she thought.

The lift halted, the doors opened, and Vanessa took a step forwards …

Only the reassuring solidity of the torch in her hand and the mental preparation she had already made enabled her to continue putting one foot in front of the other. She moved unhurriedly to one side and played its beam over an electrical conduit that fed the ceiling light above the lift doors. The expression of virtuous concentration on her face gave no hint that she had just seen anything out of the ordinary. Inwardly, however, her mind whirled in disbelief.

Waiting to enter the lift were a dozen naked women, chained by the neck in four rows of three across. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs, their mouths were filled with bright-red ball-gags and their ankles were confined by hobble chains. A large blond man dressed in black singlet, shorts and trainers stood behind the huddled group. As Vanessa stepped clear of the doorway he gave her the briefest of nods, then said: ‘Forward!’ and the girls obeyed.

As the captives filed into the lift they made the same curious shuffling clink Vanessa had heard twice before on the level above, both leaving and then unloading the lorry. Out of her tumbling thoughts came the realisation that they had the same cause. The ‘chains’ the lorry crew had spoken of were literally chains of girls.

Then the lift door closed leaving her alone and Vanessa sagged weakly against the wall.

What had she got herself into? Girls being treated like slaves under an office block in the middle of London. Not just singly but dozens at a time. They had even been in the lorry she had hidden under. The true scale of the thing suddenly struck her. This was what Sir Harvey had suspected: Shillers were slavers … people traffickers … sex traders.

She took a deep breath, trying to keep her nerve. First, she must get her bearings …

Level B3 seemed to be at least as large as the car park above, but it was far less utilitarian.

The sky-blue painted ceiling, formed from a series of arching vaults rather than flat slabs, was illuminated not by fluorescent tubes but by artfully placed uplighters, making it seem loftier than it was. Long broad corridors stretched away from the lift block to the left, right and straight ahead, bounded by rectangular structures with concrete-block walls painted in different colours. They were lower than the vaulted roof and might have been open-topped. Large potted shrubs lined the corridors, each bathed in light from racks of mini-spots, adding their scents to the warm fresh air. Around the lift the floor was woodblocked, but the corridors were carpeted with thick, dark-blue rubber matting. A distant murmur hinted at activity, but for the moment nobody was in sight.

Cautiously, Vanessa circled the stairwell. In a row on each side of it – quite incongruously – were three compact single-storey wooden chalets, complete with small verandas and roofs almost brushing the painted ceiling. All the windows Vanessa could see were curtained.

At the back of the chalets behind the lifts, a shorter and very worn and wheel-marked woodblock corridor ran between more colourfully painted partition walls to a junction at the far end of the chamber, where it was crossed by a strip of green. Halfway down on the left-hand side, a large double doorway stood wide open. Indistinct sounds were coming from within.

Steeling herself for whatever she might find, Vanessa walked towards the doorway, torch and toolbox at the ready.

Through the door was a stable yard, open to the false blue sky. There was a row of wooden stalls,
polished
harness hanging on the walls and a pile of hay bales in one corner. But peering over the low stall doors were beasts with the torsos of naked women and the heads of horses.

Suddenly Vanessa realised that they were actually women, their heads enclosed in elaborate equine masks moulded out of translucent plastic. Collars reaching from chin to sternum, with rings embedded in the plastic, confined the women’s necks. Horse-like snouts complete with flared nostrils extended the line of their jaws, while long fluted ears, facing forwards, rose from the sides of their heads.

Bridles encased their masked heads, and bits, extending back up their false snouts, filled their mouths. Blinkers drawn together and fastened by pop-studs hid their eyes. Their hair had been pulled out through slots in the top and back of the masks, so that it hung down over their shoulders like a long mane.

Pairs of tethers clipped to their collar rings were hooked to the doorposts, keeping the women in place and on display. Their arms were obviously bound tightly behind them. Although they could not see, their attention seemed to be focused on the centre of the small yard. Here a large black man, dressed in black leather knee-high boots and matching thong, was harnessing four more horse-girls to a small two-wheeled carriage.

The man glanced round as Vanessa appeared, and she immediately feigned a deep interest in the soundness of the conduit that supplied the light above the stable door. The man returned to his task and she continued to watch him out of the corner of her eye. She felt a sense of sick fascination as he meticulously checked each helpless woman’s harness, stroking and patting the bare flesh under his hands as he did so.

These four naked human ponies were bound tightly shoulder to shoulder, arranged not in pairs but in a single row. Their wrists were confined in front by cuffs fastened to broad belts buckled about their slender waists. A tapering strap ran from each belt down over their lower bellies, to be swallowed by the glistening clefts of their naked pudenda, emerging once more from between their full, firm buttocks. Ponytails matching the colour of their own manes jutted from the small of their backs.

Their crooked arms were drawn sharply backwards, thrusting out their pert bare breasts, and were held in place by a horizontal pole which had been threaded through the gap between the small of their backs and the inner angle of their elbows. Straps bound about the pole and their elbows prevented them slipping free of its constraint. From a pivoting mount in the centre of this cross-pole, a single curving shaft ran back to connect with the carriage.

Through the slightly misty plastic of their masks, Vanessa could see their white teeth clamped about black rubber bits. Streaks of saliva dribbled from the corners of their wide-stretched mouths. Clipped to the snaffle-rings on their cheeks, reins passed over their shoulders. Their blinkers were open, extending well forwards and allowing them to see only what was directly ahead of them.

Completing his check, their master climbed into the low seat of the carriage and gathered up the reins in one hand. In the other he picked up a carriage whip, which he flicked over the backs of his ponies.

‘Walk on!’ he commanded, and the wretched girls obeyed.

He hardly glanced at Vanessa as he wheeled his team out through the stable doors, turning them left and down the corridor.

Vanessa saw the jiggle and bounce of their glossy breasts and the bob of their tails across firmly rounded buttocks. Then they were past her, leaving a whiff of feminine perfume in their wake. As the carriage reached the T-junction with the green-floored corridor, the driver turned left again, cracking his whip across the row of rolling buttocks before him to urge them into a trot. Then they were gone.

Numbly, Vanessa walked along to the junction and peered after the carriage. A strip of green-painted board flooring extended in each direction until it banked and curved away out of sight, like an indoor running track without marked lanes. Presumably it encircled the whole level.

She stood there so long in a daze, struggling to accept what she had seen, that she was only roused by the sound of the carriage once more. Suddenly it bowled into view, coming from the other direction, having made a complete circuit.

The girls were leaning forwards now, their legs pumping desperately as they hauled their load at the equivalent of a gallop. Vanessa heard the driver’s whip crack across their backs and saw that their straining bodies were already beaded in sweat, their chests heaving and breasts bouncing. He was treating them like animals. She felt inclined to throw her toolbox at him rather than covertly recording his cruelty. Instead she forced herself to give a casual wave as the cart sped past and received a flashing grin in response. The girls’ glossy, straining buttocks beneath their flying tails were already mottled with scarlet whip marks.