[Author's note: Adam has infiltrated Jodie's organisation. He has gathered enough evidence to take down her entire slave trading operation, but at the cost of breaking Eve, the woman he loves, and incriminating himself. He has turned a memory stick over to Colette (
I02
), Eve's colleague, handing himself in to the police to await his fate.
Alice and Fee (
HL09
) hold the rest of the evidence required to dismantle Jodie's web of blackmail and deceit. Colette's team need to be very careful and very thorough to ensure justice is done.]
---
SOME SMALL MERCIES
Colette was talking to Harsini, or more accurately her boss was talking at her, standing in the middle of the floor at work. Her colleagues had their heads down, buried in screens or paperwork, as Harsini laid it all out, sweating and adjusting his bulk as he towered over the middle-aged blonde woman in front of him.
He had every right to be agitated, but it wasn't directed at Colette, or at Reece or any of them. He was simply laying out the orders for the investigation, making sure that everyone knew which leads they were following, who was on point to interrogate the prisoners in the holding cells on the floor below. He was under immense pressure to make sure the investigation went by the numbers. He needed everything done exactly right.
"You know what I mean here?" he finished, "If we fuck up even a procedural, we are gonna get reamed in the trial."
"Yeah, I got it. Really. It's okay, I'm not gonna fuck up, boss."
Harsini regarded her for a minute and seemed to relent.
"How's Eve?" he asked in a softer voice.
"She's okay. I went to the hospital last night. They're keeping her in a side room."
"Yeah. Shit, Col, what a fucking shitty business."
He shook his head.
"It can't be allowed to stand," he murmured, "Eve's one of ours and they fucking knew it too, so this is a hit on blue. We go all the way on this one. I don't give a fuck who's involved or how high up they are."
"Col, phone."
Reece was calling out to her, and she turned.
"Someone on front desk. You're on front desk, yeah?"
"Yeah," Colette acknowledged, looking back at her boss.
"Okay, I'm done," Harsini said, "Go see what they want."
Colette took the stairs down to reception, but Harsini's question had brought her back to the hour she'd spent in the hospital room with Eve. They'd talked, but Colette had struggled, taken aback by just how subdued Eve had been, how vacant. She thought about the man in the holding cell, and what he'd done to her, and how he'd gone about it, and she seethed. She wanted to make Adam suffer, but what was worse was that Eve had asked after him and when Colette had told her that his confession had triggered everything, Eve had seemed to sag. It had broken Colette's heart, seeing the woman she knew defeated like that.
And now, they were in the eye of the shit storm, with some high-profile prisoners and sworn statements from everyone in Santuary Point. The fact that two of the statements were from the mistress of a senior exec at a major media company and the wife of the mayor just piled on the pressure. The swoop was already circulating in the thin air way above her paygrade, and they were only twelve hours in.
The desk sergeant nodded to her as she walked in, using his pen to point at two women sitting on chairs in the waiting room. Colette headed over to them and they rose to greet her. She held out her hand.
"Colette Masterton. I'm one of the officers on the case."
The first woman was petite, blonde, dressed in a casual top and tight jeans that showed her off. She took Colette's hand.
"Alice Hastings. This is Ophelia Raine."
Colette turned to the other woman. She was taller, younger, willowy, with the same long blonde hair. Colette shook her hand too, assessing them both.
"Want to come this way so we can talk?" she said, leading them into a room.
Colette watched the women from behind, taking in the details. Alice's casual dress belied the fact that the jeans were a designer label. Ophelia's dress was expensive too, way too good to visit the cops. Manicures, hairstyles, make-up, all pointing to people who shouldn't be here at all. She motioned towards the table and chairs in the middle of the room and closed the door behind them.
"Take a seat. What can I help you with?"
Alice looked across at her friend and said, "You go, Fee. You've got it."
Fee shrugged, taking a seat and fishing around in her handbag. She produced a memory stick and set it down on the table with a click. Colette stared at it.
"Mind filling me in?" she asked.
"Sure. We're here about Sanctuary Point."
Fee was watching her closely. Colette took the seat opposite her, glancing at Alice and then back to the younger woman. She gave nothing away, leaning forward slightly and looking down at the small black shape on the table.
"Go on," she said.
"You're investigating it, right?" Fee asked.
"It's being investigated."
"But you're investigating it."
Colette sat back in her chair and folded her arms, surveying the women opposite. They weren't the first to show up. Reece had been covering front desk overnight and they'd had someone else come in, trying to extract information. It felt like the rich and famous were coming out of the woodwork surreptitiously, probing. It all added fuel to the fire, the nervousness of these new faces. There was something on those encrypted hard drives from the Spa that were now on the desk in Harsini's office. The sooner they could get them over to the specialists, the better, Colette thought to herself.
"What do you have for me?" Colette asked, eyeing the memory stick. "What's on there?"
"Evidence. I don't know what you got, but we need to talk," Fee replied.
"Really? Okay, evidence of what?"
"We know about Davis, what he was involved in. Jodie too."
Colette maintained an impassive expression, but her nerves were suddenly tingling. These women had come in from the street and named two of the people in the holding cells.
"And how do you fit in? What's the story?"
Alice spoke this time. "We know what they do. We have a list of names."
"That's great. Let me add them to the list and we can cross check."
"No, uh, you don't understand. We have all the names."
Colette's focus was on Alice now.
"And?"
Alice's nose wrinkled in frustration. "We have their network. We have the people they're blackmailing, how they did it, where."
"Okay."
"Okay? Seriously? These people are everywhere. It's not just Sanctuary Point. London, Tokyo, New York."
Colette tapped the little black memory stick.
"How did you two come into possession of this key information?" she asked.
"I was... uh. I was...." Alice stammered, her voice faltering.
"She was blackmailed into service for them, her and her husband," Fee interjected.
"Blackmailed?"
"Yeah, Jodie. She made them do awful things, entrapping others too."
"So there are others? Who?"
Fee gave her a withering look.
