To Tell the Truth (13 page)

Matt put his finger to her lips.

‘Sssh, Rosie. Don’t say anything. I know, I know. It’s all that shit from a few months ago. You’re alright. You’re okay.’

He took her face in his hands.

‘Listen, Rosie. You never want to mention this again, we won’t. It’s forgotten about. End of. You want to talk, I’m all ears. I’m not just some daft young boy. I admire
you, Rosie. I respect you. You’re a legend. But shit happens and it fucks up your head. You’re no different from anyone else.’

He took her hand that was still clutching the mobile.

‘Look,’ he grinned. ‘Still ringing out. Where can you get a fucking copper when you need one. Same as home.’

Rosie managed a smile and put the mobile to her ear. Eventually someone answered and she managed to tell them in her fractured Spanish that they’d been attacked in their car by a man with a gun. She gave them the location, miraculously remembering what the slip road sign had said. From what she could grasp from the rapid fire reply, they had to stay where they were. They were on their way.

Matt handed her one of her cigarettes while they watched nervously in case the gunman returned.

‘Matt,’ Rosie said, drawing on the cigarette. ‘That wasn’t a road rage nut. I think it’s something to do with Taha. They’re all connected. All this gangster shit. Russians, Albanians. Missing kid. Christ. Maybe even something to do with that guy in the bar the other night – the Glasgow cokehead who thought he recognised me. Maybe it’s something to do with Jake Cox. He’s down here somewhere. What if he knows we’re here?’

Matt shrugged. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Rosie. I can’t disagree with you on all counts, but we can’t get all paranoid every time someone makes faces at us.’

‘He tried to shoot us, Matt. He wasn’t making faces.’

‘Stop worrying. It’s bad for your heart.’ He put on his brave Matt grin.

Rosie bit her lip. She hadn’t heard from Taha since she’d put him on the train two days ago. He must have been in Barcelona by now and there was nothing to have stopped him getting to a phone and calling her, even if he hadn’t gone there.

‘My gut instinct is that they’re warning us,’ she said. ‘Maybe they saw us with Taha somewhere. Maybe they were following him.’

‘Look. The cavalry.’ Matt pointed beyond her.

‘Okay, listen,’ Rosie said. ‘Let’s not say anything to them about what we’ve just talked about. Don’t bring the cops anywhere near that. Just say it must have been an angry Spaniard who didn’t like the Brit driving. That’s what they’ll be expecting to hear anyway. I don’t want them anywhere near our story.’

Later, back at the hotel, once they’d dispensed with the lengthy bureaucracy of making out reports at the Guarda Civil office, Rosie luxuriated in a steaming hot bath, sipping a glass of red wine. The bathroom light was dimmed so low it was almost dark. She leaned her head back on the cushion and closed her eyes. There was a tightness in her throat, and it had taken all her strength not to blub again in front of Matt when they finally got back to the hotel.

Now she could let it go, and she sank into the water. She felt so alone. It was something she’d learned to live with during those early years with her mother, having to keep the secret from everyone of how drunk she’d be when Rosie got home from school every afternoon. The
only person who had ever been able to see her clearly was TJ. It was TJ who’d tried to put the broken bits back together again, and he nearly succeeded. She shook her head and sniffed. Look where that had got her … Enough, she told herself. He was out of her life now, gone like he said he would be, and that was it. Finished. She was back to where she started, to where in reality, she was probably more comfortable. Alone.

She wiped her eyes and told herself to get a grip. Enough tears had been shed over TJ. If he’d changed his mind or really wanted her he would have got back in touch. He knew where she worked, where she lived. He could have written. Now it was time to move on. If she said it often enough, maybe she would start believing it.

She put the glass down. No more wine. She was hot and sleepy enough. The two-hour ordeal with the Guarda Civil, giving statements while the translator took them through the story slowly, had left her completely drained. When they’d got back to the hotel, Matt dealt with the car hire people and they both had a quick coffee in the bar. Matt downed two swift gin and tonics, but Rosie knew getting pissed would only make her feel worse. She thought about telling McGuire what had happened, but she and Matt made a pact not to. He would bring her home immediately, and she was damned if she was giving up. She had too much at stake here to walk away and go home. This is what she did. This is who she was. And right now, it was all she had.

She stepped out of the bath and wrapped herself in the fluffy white bath robe. As she splashed her face with
cold water, she heard a knock at her bedroom door. Her stomach jolted. She came out of the bathroom and looked at the phone, half thinking of phoning reception or trying Matt on the mobile.

‘Rosie. Howsit going?’ It was Matt.

‘Christ,’ she whispered in relief. ‘Matt. Hold on.’ She pulled the robe tight and opened the door.

Matt grinned. ‘Hi, Rosie.’ He winked. ‘This is my game face. You’re looking beautiful.’

He’d clearly been too long in the bar, shaking off the motorway terror. Rosie shook her head.

‘I’ve seen your game face, Matty boy. I’m sure it works every time, but not tonight sweetheart.’

‘No?’ Matt looked surprised but was still smiling. ‘Porque?’

Rosie laughed. ‘Okay, try these for starters. You’re too young, you’re too beautiful, and, you’re too pissed. That should do it.’

They stood looking at each other for a minute. Matt seemed to sober up a little and looked into Rosie’s eyes.

‘You know what, Rosie? I love you. You’re the best woman I’ve ever known. I just want to tell you that.’ He stretched his arms out. ‘Can I just get a hug, then?’ He stepped closer to her.

They hugged and Rosie held him just as tight as he held her. ‘Thanks, Matt.’ She stopped herself from filling up. ‘And thanks for today. I’m so glad it was you with me.’

He let her go. ‘I’m here for you, Rosie. Anytime darlin’.’ He turned to go, then he grinned back. ‘And I’m not too young. No way.’

‘Goodnight, Matt.’ Rosie blew him a kiss and closed the door.

She looked at her bed. The reckless part of her wished she’d brought him in for the next few hours. A couple of years ago she might have. She shook her head and went back to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She hoped she’d be tired enough to sleep when her head hit the pillow. Then, suddenly, there was another knock at the door. Bloody hell. Enough Matt. She wouldn’t open the door this time, just tell him to go to bed.

‘Matt, listen. I’m tired, man. We both had a long hard day. Now go to bed. We’ve got work to do, and I’m knackered.’

‘Rosie?’ The deep, dark voice from the other side of the door shot through her. It had been seven months since she’d heard it, but she knew.

‘Adrian?’ Rosie said, utterly confused. ‘Adrian?’

‘Open the door please, Rosie. Yes. It is me. I must talk with you.’

Rosie opened the door. Adrian, stood there, his deathly pallor a little less pronounced than she remembered, but with the same dark shadows beneath his eyes. His lips moved to something resembling a smile, then his eyes looked down at Rosie and his face softened. Right there and then Rosie knew she was never, ever truly alone.

‘My friend. Is good to see you.’ Now he did smile.

Rosie opened the door wider and threw her arms around him.

CHAPTER 16

Rosie couldn’t stop looking at Adrian as though he were a ghost that would vanish at any moment. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him.

When he had first come into the room, everything that had happened in the past few months came rushing back. She’d sobbed in his arms and couldn’t even get to the point of asking him how the hell he got to be here. She thought she’d buried a lot of the fears from that night when he’d saved her life, but she hadn’t. Just the sight of him brought it all back. She could barely remember how Adrian had picked her up and bundled her into the car to rush her to hospital, but it was always Adrian’s voice that she would hear when she woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

She’d come to know the strong, square tones of the Yugoslav in his fractured English long before that night when he’d held her, telling her she would be okay, that she was safe now. Jesus! Here he was again, walking into her life from nowhere, like that first day they’d met in
Glasgow and she had come to his rescue when, as a hungry Bosnian immigrant, he was caught stealing bread in the cafe where she sat. A chance meeting, a gesture of kindness from one human being to another, as she’d stepped in and said he was her friend.

Rosie hadn’t seen Adrian since that night when he’d left her in the hospital bed in Glasgow and told her he had to go quickly before the police came and started asking questions. After he’d gone, she had cried so much that her battered ribs and face ached. She wondered if she would ever see him again, longed to see him to thank him for her life. And she’d often wondered why he hadn’t ever called to know how she was. The number she had from him had been dead every time she’d tried it. He had disappeared without trace like the shadowy figure he was, and Rosie had accepted it. He had been there when she needed him. Now she sat and listened intently as he told her where he had been for the past few months.

Adrian spoke slowly and deliberately, drawing on a cigarette and staring into the darkness of the Spanish night. He’d been coming to her flat in Glasgow that night to tell her what had happened, and that he was going away for a while, but when he arrived, he heard voices behind her door and realised something was wrong.

What he’d come to tell her was that earlier in the day he had been called by his mother in Sarajevo to tell him that his sister Fiorina had been kidnapped by a gang of people-traffickers after being lured to Spain with the promise of a job. She was just seventeen years old. With
a friend, Katya, from their village outside the city, they’d made their way to Sarajevo to answer a newspaper advert looking for girls for office work, promising jobs in the UK, Spain and Italy. Fiorina had learned secretarial work in school, and both she and Katya spoke good English. The girls saw it as a way to get to Western Europe legally and get a job.

Fiorina and her friend had waved goodbye to their families the following day. They flew to Malaga where, as the man who’d interviewed them in Sarajevo had promised, they were met at the airport by two men who took them to a hotel. They were told to wait in a room and the company boss in Spain would come to have coffee with them. But when they left the room, they heard a key turning on the outside. They were locked in. They banged on the door and shouted, but nobody came. They were held there all night, frightened, cold and hungry.

The next day three men came in and the girls were tied up and blindfolded, and were beaten when they cried. Later, they were taken from the hotel in a car. After several hours they stopped in some cafe with a car park. A van came and they were dragged from the car and driven for more hours. There were other girls in the van, shouting and crying, but everyone was blindfolded. Eventually, the van stopped and the blindfolds were taken off. The girls – about twelve of them in all – could see they were outside a house in the country somewhere.

Suddenly Fiorina and her friend Katya broke free and made a dash for it to escape. All the girls then started running. In the confusion that followed, the men tried
to run after them, but they couldn’t catch Fiorina and Katya, who ran into the woods. But after only a few hundred yards, Fiorina fell and twisted her ankle so badly that she couldn’t move. Katya wanted desperately to stay with her, but Fiorina made her go on. She told her she must go on, save herself and get help. Katya, she said, was their only hope.

Adrian rubbed his face with his hands and shook his head.

‘My sister is very brave, Rosie. She knew she couldn’t make it, but she didn’t want her friend to be kidnapped when she had a chance to be free.’

Rosie touched his arm. ‘So the girl? Katya? She escaped and made it home?’

He nodded, and told her how Katya had stayed in the woods for two days before making it to the road, where she was picked up by a farmer and taken to the Spanish police. By the time the Guarda Civil came to the place they could find nothing. No girls. No cars. Nothing.

The Guarda contacted the girl’s family and she was put on a plane home. It was only when she came back to Sarajevo a few days later that she was able to go to Adrian’s mother and tell her what had happened.

‘My mother wants to die now. If she never sees her Fiorina again, she told me she cannot live.’ He shook his head. ‘That day, when she called me, I promised her I would find her, Rosie. I promised.’ He swallowed. ‘And I will.’

‘Did Katya have any details, Adrian? Any details of the other men? Accents? Nationality?’

Adrian nodded. There was some detail, but not much. She said she heard the name Leka and that he was Albanian. She heard the men talking about Spain. They mentioned a place called Marbella. But just one name. Leka. The boss.

‘The name was burned into my heart, Rosie. To my soul. After the phone call, I decided I was going to Spain and find this man Leka. I have a friend who works in a hotel in Marbella and he said I could stay with him and he would help me. He is also Bosnian, and the immigrants always hear things. It is like a network. After some time, I found who Leka was. He was some big boss man of these organised gangsters from Albania and Russia, working together, kidnapping people. They take women and very young girls and sell them to the whorehouses. They even take children. Mostly immigrant children. Romanians, Africans. And they sell them.’

Rosie watched as he shook his head.

‘My little sister … in a whorehouse. I cannot even think about it. I can only think of how I am going to find her. So I find some other people from Eastern Europe who work for this man and I got a job driving for them, working for the organisation.’