Ben Read online

  “Come and have a drink to celebrate. Dmitri will be over at the Thirsty Whale, saving us a seat. We could do the post-mortem over there.”

  Ben didn’t want to go – he enjoyed a drink, yes, but he was tired. Unfortunately, the social part of being a doctor could be almost as important as the book-learning. Ben knew that. He’d survived ten years of med school parties and hospital fundraisers and sharing flats with stuck-up trainee surgeons.

  “I’m keen,” he said, wearily.

  “You’ll feel better after a drink,” said the colleague, patting Ben on the back.

  Yes, the thought of the alcohol was some compensation. He could just have one. So Ben nodded and they headed across to the bar.

  Dmitri, the third doctor, was already in a booth by the window. He got up and waved and offered to shake Ben’s hand – which he did with a firm, friendly grip. He was vaguely Russian and still had a trace of an accent, whereas Ravi spoke with the crisp, clipped tones of someone who’s British prep school had cost his parents a great deal of money.

  “Call me Dima,” the Russian one said. “Less formal, and easier to say.”

  Ravi handed Ben the wine list. “What’s your medication, doctor?”

  Ben looked at the wine list and decided that to avoid disappointment, he’d better stick to beer. His father was a wine importer. Ben had acquired some expensive tastes.

  “I’m buying,” said Ben, and the others smiled and outlined their requirements.

  When they were settled back in the booth with drinks in their hands, Ben decided to ask them – in sketchy, general terms – about the situation he’d found himself in, with Layla.

  “I had a bizarre consultation today,” he said.

  Ravi smiled – he had warm, understanding brown eyes. He must be popular with his patients, Ben thought. “Yes. Some of the locals can be very entertaining.”

  “This one was more odd than entertaining,” Ben said. “A girl lying about her age – reducing it by a couple of years. Why would she do that? Teenagers usually want to be older, not younger.”

  Dmitri shrugged. “Cheap travel on the buses. Kid’s tickets at the cinema?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Her so-called stepfather brought her in asking for a raft of tests to be done.”

  Dmitri looked at Ravi and Ravi looked at Dmitri, who raised his brows, expressively. “Oh,” the Russian doctor said. “One of those.”

  Ravi explained. “I would assume he wants to get her working, you know what I mean, and maybe she’s trying to argue that she isn’t legal yet.”

  Ben listened and thought about this theory. It fitted the facts, as he had gauged them. “She was wearing a kind of corset thing.”

  Dmitri gave him a wry look. “Maybe she’s working already, then. Was it red?”

  “No. I think it was to make herself look younger – to hide her breasts.”

  Ravi frowned. “What was the man like? The so-called stepfather?”

  “Said his name was Leach. About forty-five. Grey hair. Paunchy. He coughed like an addict.”

  “I know the one,” said Ravi. “Ray Leach. He’s always got a new girl in tow.”

  “He’s friends with that man who runs The Fizz Club isn’t he?” Dmitri said.

  “The Fizz Club?” Ben said, raising an eyebrow. “What’s that, exactly? Is it some kind of gym?”

  “No. It’s a bar. At night it turns into a ‘gentleman’s club’ and I’ve heard it specializes in so-called clean girls. Kids new to the game, mainly.” Ravi said. “I believe someone from there was jailed for trading in underage girls. But they didn’t pin it on the man who runs the club."

  Dmitri smiled. “They wouldn’t. He could get away with murder.”

  “Are you talking about Birch?” said Ravi.

  Dmitri gave a very Russian shrug. “Who else?”

  Ben frowned. “What’s all this? Who’s Birch?”

  “Somebody enlighten the new boy,” said Dmitri, picking up his drink.

  Ravi took on that task. “This is gangland, Ben. Our medical centre is right smack in the middle of it. If that wasn’t made clear to you when you applied for the job, then I think it should be made clear now. Mr Birch is a very important figure in this community. The Birch Boys run this whole area. And you don’t want to cross them. Ever.”

  “Oh, I see.” Ben stared into the bottom of his beer glass, processing the information, presenting the appearance of a man who could take this in his stride. He’d wanted to work here. He’d asked for it. The challenge of a poor neighbourhood. The thrill of making a difference. It was his choice. “So the girl who came to see me – she’ll end up working for Mr Birch?”

  “Of course,” said Dmitri. If she’s young and she’s pretty. He’ll see the profit to be made. He’ll run her like a taxi. Until she’s too sick and tired to run anymore.”

  “Somebody should stop that,” Ben murmured.

  “People talk about standing up to him. But no one ever does.”

  “Why not?” said Ben.

  Dmitri laughed. “Who wants to be a martyr?”

  Ben thought about the girl. “She said bad things would happen to her. She asked me to stall, on the tests.”

  “You can try,” said Ravi. “But eventually he’ll take her somewhere else. At least if that happens, it’s not on your conscience.”

  Oh, but it would be, Ben thought. It already was. The look in the girl’s eyes. Help me. It was seared into his mind.

  Layla

  Layla looked down at her baby brother, cradled in her arms. He was almost asleep, but every now and then he would try to open his eyes again. “Don’t fight it, Jaydee. Go to sleep.”

  Poor little thing, he was only eleven months and too young to be without his mother. “She’ll be back, baby. And when she comes home she’ll be all better.”

  It was a desperate hope. Layla’s mother had been off crack for about three years – during which time she’d met Jayden’s father, had a tempestuous relationship and a premature baby, and then gone back on crack when the sleepless nights started to wear her down. Jayden’s father still loafed around the Rookeries, and once he came over with a toy panda, but he’d never been any real help.

  Layla took the baby into the bedroom that she shared with both of her brothers. The only other bedroom was occupied by Ray Leach, who had moved in only a few days before her mother had gone to the rehabilitation centre. She’d never have let him in at all if she’d been in her right mind – and now Layla couldn’t get rid of him.

  Layla put the baby into his cot, and pulled the string on the little plastic house that played a lullaby. Then she went back into the lounge and started to clear up after Ray’s little party last night.

  Whenever Ray had a little party, Layla did her best to stay out of the way. It was safest if she stayed in the bedroom, cross-legged on the floor with her two younger brothers – trying very hard to look about ten-years-old. The younger the men thought she was, the less likely she was to attract any attention. For that reason, she wore clothes that covered anything that Ray’s friends might like to get to grips with. She wore grey hoodies, shapeless baggy pants, old anoraks with broken zips. Anything that might help her hide what nature had given her. Her best friend Tracey had helped her make the horrible elastic thing that flattened her figure. They had worked on it together, taking turns to sew on the hooks and eyes that went down the front.

  Tracey had actually cried when Layla cut her hair off. Tracey had said it was a crime to cut such beautiful hair. Layla’s long blonde hair had come right down her back towards her waist. But even before Ray came on the scene it was attracting too much attention. From all the wrong type of people. So Layla had used a small pair of kitchen scissors to get rid of it. She chopped it short at the back like a boy – and a bit longer on the top so it fell into her eyes and gave her something to hide behind. By the time she put the scissors down, her best friend was in tears.

  Layla had tried to make her feel better. “I read a magazi
ne that said if you don’t like your best friend’s haircut, you’ve got to lie through your teeth so you don’t hurt her feelings.”

  “B-but you had such beautiful hair. You were so lucky. You looked like a model.” Poor Tracey sobbed and sniffed, and said it was a shame. Then she’d spent the next few minutes picking up long strands of Layla’s hair from off the bedroom carpet.

  “You’re not keeping them, are you?”

  “Yes. I am,” Tracey had told her. “I’ll never have hair like that myself. Not if I live to be a thousand. And you don’t want it, do you? So I’m going to keep it in my box of treasures.”

  Layla thought about Trace and her box of treasures now, as she cleared the little coffee table in the council flat, gathering up empty cans, beer bottles and even an empty vodka bottle that was lying in the valley in the middle of the couch. Tracey was a good friend, only fourteen, but kind and wise beyond her years. Layla wished the poor kid had nicer things to count as treasure than a few pieces of junk jewellery from the Oxfam shop, a royal wedding souvenir badge, and a lot of Layla’s long blonde hair.

  There was a chipped semi-circular mirror in the room, with bevelled edges. It had come off an old dresser that Layla’s grandmother had owned when she was a kid. A relic from the 1940s. It hung on the wall above the television. But Layla didn’t look. Not these days, it was too depressing. She concentrated on the tidying up. Removing the empties and the bits of foil and the cigarette ends. She didn’t want Jayden crawling around amongst all that stuff when he woke up after his nap. And Bradley, who was nine now, would want to sit in front of the TV and play his video games if he thought the coast was clear. They kept the games and the console hidden inside Bradley’s mattress and only got them out when no one was around. If they didn’t, Ray would take them and try and sell them. Poor Bradley. None of this was his fault. So she fussed and tidied and tried hard to make the place look like a normal home. One that she didn’t have to be ashamed of.

  Then, after she’d cleaned and vacuumed and polished the windows and let a bit of fresh air into the place, she went into the bathroom and had a shower. She took off the ugly frowsy clothes and let them fall on the floor in a heap. She turned on the water and stepped under the shower head – letting water course down over what she knew full well was a beautiful body. She closed her eyes and let the water splash down onto her face, and between her breasts. She washed the dust out of what was left of her hair and flicked it back, spraying droplets of warm water around in the shower. And just for a moment, under the warm water, she let herself dream – about a man with understanding eyes and a face so attractive it almost hurt to remember. The doctor – who had helped her, who had touched her – the man who spoke to her gently, and said, “It’s okay, Layla, it’s okay.”

  Seven More Minutes

  He was almost afraid he’d never see her again, so it was with some relief that he saw her file waiting for him in the slot beside the archway. He took the file and walked through to the waiting room to find her, knowing he was a little too keen to see her. She looked up and smiled when he said her name, and Ben’s heart demonstrated that it was quite capable of tachycardia.

  He had hoped she would be alone and she wasn’t, but at least Ray Leach wasn’t there.

  Her companions were different this time. A shy pale boy of about eight, quite clearly her brother. And a baby of approximately one year, very messy and red in the face, probably teething. She held the baby in her arms, and for a moment Ben wondered if the child was her own – Layla was full of surprises. But then he remembered, with perfect clarity, her breasts. She had pale rosy pink nipples – the sure sign of a girl who had never been pregnant.

  Oh, he couldn’t give in to thoughts like that. It wasn’t right to sexualize what should be a clinical relationship, and he was a man who tried to do what was right. Most of the time.

  “Come through, come through,” he said and they all trooped into the consulting room again. Ben drew out a cardboard box of plastic toys from under his desk and indicated that perhaps the children would like to look at them. The older boy looked at them in disdain and stayed where he was. The baby stretched out his arms, enthusiastically, but Layla kept tight hold of him.

  “It’s alright,” Ben said. “There’s nothing in there that could hurt him. I’ve checked.”

  Layla smiled and let the child down off her knee to look at the toys. She wore jeans and an anorak with a broken zip, but it was open at the front and underneath she had a white shirt on – with two cute little pockets right over her breasts. He suspected, from the curves that tantalised his sight, that she’d left the elastic thing at home.

  Then he knew he’d have to begin – they only had seven minutes. “You seemed upset, when you came to see me on Monday…”

  “You were brilliant, doctor. A total genius,” she said, her pretty face glowing with gratitude.

  Ben was flattered, though he tried to hide it. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  “You were amazing,” she said. “You just seemed to understand, without me having to say anything.”

  She looked at him like he was Apollo the God of Healing, and for a few golden seconds he let himself believe it too, because her admiration was so sincere. Then he felt a sense of panic. Hero worship was a powerful drug, and he was feeling the rush. He couldn’t just sit here and let her shoot him up intravenously. He stared at her case-notes in desperation, wondering what to do, knowing he must take pains not to encourage her. “That man who was with you last time. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. It’s your life. Your body. It should be your choice.”

  She sighed. “I’m from the Rookeries, doctor, and a girl from the Rookeries don’t get much choice. Ray Leach thinks it’s time I started earning my keep, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” he said, feeling like he needed to grip the table. Yes, plenty of men would part with their hard-earned cash for a good time with Layla. Unwelcome images came into his mind, including a disturbing one involving his own wallet. “I know what you mean.”

  “I thought you didn’t, at first,” she said. “But then, when you helped me, I knew you understood.”

  Ben recognized perfectly well that he’d got through the last consultation on sheer luck and audacity. He wasn’t especially good at understanding women, and Layla, in particular, had presented a challenge. “Well, it’s my job to try to understand.”

  She smiled. “You’re kind. And you’re very clever.”

  Their eyes met for a second, as if they were together in a smoky bar. And he knew, in that instant, that if they had been together in a crowded bar somewhere, he would have offered to buy her a drink. And the way she gazed into his eyes, she’d have said yes. And the whole thing would have begun, then and there…

  He glanced down at her file. “Maybe you can tell me a bit more. Now that we’re alone.”

  But they weren’t alone. The boy sniffed and shifted in his seat. And the baby cooed and sucked the head of a wooden horse and wriggled his chubby legs.

  The girl didn’t seem to know where to begin, except to say, very quietly, “Ray Leach has got his hooks into me.”

  So Ben asked her, “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No. I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she said, and looked up at Ben, meaningfully. “And I wouldn’t choose Ray Leach for my first one, would I?”

  Ben processed her statement, which stirred another series of highly unprofessional thoughts in his brain, and other parts of his body. He cleared his throat. “So what’s going on, then?”

  “He’s just some random guy my mum got involved with. We all hate him, but he’s looking after us.”

  “But if your mother knew what he wanted to do to you, wouldn’t she ask him to leave?”

  “She would, but my mum’s not here. She’s in rehab and she was lucky to get in. She’ll be away for the next six weeks.”

  Ben saw some hope in this statement. “If he’s not your legal guardian, I don’t see h
ow he…”

  “He can. He’s got friends – important ones. He’d sell me today if he could, but his friends ran into some trouble over underage girls last year. That’s why I have to keep saying I’m younger than I am. If Ray knew I was past sixteen – or worse – almost eighteen, he’d be rubbing his hands in glee. When he does find out, he’ll have me sold off at his club before you can say ‘hello, sailor’.”

  “I see,” Ben nodded, trying to honour what she’d shared with him, trying to act as if he heard this sort of admission every day of the week. It was a lot for a young girl to confide in a man she hardly knew. It was a lot for a young man to hear, and left him struggling with emotions she forced him to face.

  “The manager of the club gets all the girls to have a test, you see. So the punters know what they’re getting. Or not getting.” Layla paused. “That’s why I can’t have those tests.”

  This seemed to him to be the answer. Avoid the tests. Buy time. “You don’t have to have them. It’s your right to refuse.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.” She was beginning to sound disillusioned, like she was thinking Ben must be rather thick. “At the Rookeries, everybody belongs to someone, and at the moment, like it or not, I belong to Ray Leach.”

  “You don’t. You should go to the police,” Ben said.

  She laughed. “You can’t be serious? I can’t nark on Ray. I’d be mincemeat living in the Rookeries. At least he’s looking after us. Protecting us from the others.”

  The boy, Layla's brother, turned and smiled. Ben realized with a start that the kid was following every word of the conversation. A conversation about turning his sister into a whore. Ben had a sister that he loved, and for a moment he tried to imagine how he would have felt if he’d had to listen to this. And he couldn’t understand why they all looked on that revolting man as their protector. Ben tried to ignore the boy, it was too disconcerting.

  He turned to Layla, “About the children…”