Chapter 1

April 2010

 

            Though the rain was light, it still soaked straight through the cheap denim coat Biata Sobczak was wearing. Her matching short denim skirt and skimpy sequined halter neck top did not offer any protection either from the cold spring night. Chilled to the bone with her dark blonde hair plastered to her scalp she was determined to find her sister and escape from this horrible country.

            Biata knew she would receive a harsh beating if she was caught out of the house �" house that was a joke, little more than a prison it was filthy and disgusting and a place of nightmares - but she had to find her sister and somehow find her way back to her home in the little village of Pieszyce in southern Poland. She and ten other girls were crammed into three tiny bedrooms sleeping on old stained mattresses only allowed to venture to the bathroom twice a day, once in the morning and once to clean up before being put on display into large room like pieces of meat at a butchers shop.

            Each night was the same men would come to the house, chose a girl, pay a fee and wait for their selection to be delivered to them in one of the playrooms. The unlucky girl would be expected to perform whatever degrading act the client had paid for however long as he or his money lasted. But she had not left her parents a simple note on her pillow and travelled across Europe to become a prostitute. Her elder sister, Halina, had left home a few months before her, seduced by the promise of easy work and good money as a nanny to the children of wealthy London families. Halina had even sent a few emails saying how much she was enjoying her new life here in London, the parties with new friends, visiting the beautiful homes of other nannies and the shopping.

            Not wanting to miss out on the excitement Biata called a number Halina had sent in one of her letters and a few days later she was on a plane to London along with two other girls from the neighbouring town of Bielawa. They were met at the airport by a friendly well dressed woman and a large bald headed man who said very little. The woman, who introduced herself as Klaudia, welcomed the girls to London and escorted them to a waiting minivan for the trip to their hostel. When they had arrived at their destination and walked through the front door alarm bells went off in her head. There was a horrible strange smell in the air, a mix of stale sweat and rotting garbage. The door closed loudly behind them making Biata jump As they stood in the litter strew hallway, the woman disappeared through a set of large double doors into the front room of the house and a short skinny man approached them from the rear of the house. His greasy hair sat heavily on his scalp and a long angry red scar circled his neck.

            His lips curled up in a sneer as he looked each of the girls up and down and the hungry look in his eyes sent shivers down her spine. Silently he motioned for the girls to follow him upstairs when they refused the large bald man pushed her violently towards the stairs sending her stumbling into the other two girls. Instinctively they clung to each other as they climbed the stairs. Once they had reached the top she noticed that each of the doors leading off the hallway had been secured with heavy shiny new padlocks that stood out in stark contrast to the ancient threadbare carpet and peeling wallpaper.

One of the other girls spoke up and demanded in a shrill loud voice to be allowed to leave and go home. In response the skinny man punched her hard in the face and she collapsed in a heap unconscious onto a filthy mattress that lay on the floor. Their bags thrown into the hallway and they were quickly searched for mobile phones anything else they might have been hiding. Any resistance was quickly and brutally dealt with and before the men locked them into the room each of the girls had received at least two or three fists to the face or stomach.

            ‘What the f**k are you doing here?’ A terrifyingly familiar voice said right beside her. It was the large bald man who had collected her and the other girls from the airport. He liked to call himself, The Bear, and had more than a passing resemblance to his name sake. Though his head was bare, the rest of his massive chest and arms were coated with thick black hair.

‘Where is my sister you pig? Where is Halina?’ Biata screamed at him. ‘I want to see her, what have you done with her?’

The Bear grabbed her arm with a large powerful hand and dragged her through the crowd of people who had just left or were still trying to get into the nightclub behind them. She stumbled often on the ridiculous cheap clear plastic heels she had been given to wear as the two of them left the crowd behind. Biata continued to scream questions at him though The Bear paid her no attention at all.

They rounded a corner behind a row of shops and The Bear threw the slender girl against the brick wall. Stunned she stood with her back to the wall as though it was the only thing holding her up. She looked around and realised to her horror they were alone in small unlit car park. Her heart thumped in her chest with fear and panic as she looked around anxiously for a way to escape. Without warning The Bear unleashed three heavy blows to her head sending her sprawling into a pile of rubbish bags. Slowly she staggered back to her feet as blood streamed from her nose down the flimsy material of her top. She knew she had to escape, or he would beat her to death right there but her legs would not respond to the commands from her brain.

‘How did you get out? Who helped you?’ The Bear yelled at her before bringing his knee up into her in the stomach hard. Biata dry heaved several times, but as she had not eaten since yesterday there was nothing in her stomach to come up.

‘Nobody helped me, I swear,’ She cried, ‘I was out with a man, I jumped out of his car and ran.’

‘B***h, you’re lying,’ The Bear spat at her.

‘I’m not, please do not hurt me. I’m sorry, I’ll go back. I will be good I promise.’

The girl continued to beg but now she was begging for her life. The Bear took no notice of her pleas and punched her in the stomach. She fell to the ground and pulled her arms and legs protectively around her body to protect herself but this did little good as The Bear picked her up by her skimpy top and punched her over and over again. With each blow Biata faded further and further from herself until she felt nothing at all.

 

Andrej Tarnow, the Bear, looked down at the crumpled body of the w***e at his feet and swore. He had not meant to kill the girl, but her ear piercing screeching had pissed him off. Had she simply shut up and went with him back to the house then none of this would have happened. He spat on her in disgust.

Taking a cloth out of his pocket he wiped his hands clean of the w***e’s blood. F**k knows what kind of diseases she might have caught off the men who came and paid to f**k her. He swore at her body again angry that he was going to have to go back to the house and explain what happened to his boss.

Tarnow was a tall well built man, had fought many people, killed them with his bare hands when necessary and felt no fear or remorse for doing so. If anything he felt sorry for the people he killed. How were they to know they had come up against him, they weren’t to know their deaths would happen so soon, so painfully. He had served with the Polish 1^st Special Commando Regiment he had fought in Kosovo and Iraq and taken part in some of the fiercest fighting his regiment had faced since its inception. Even as his unit had been pinned down by sniper fire during an ambush in the city of Karbala he felt no fear leading his troops to safety. His boss, Serafin Michalski, was another matter entirely. The man was a f*****g psycho, he had been kicked out of the Polish army during the days after Soviet control ended for operating an arms smuggling ring and liked to take a hands on approach when dealing with those who betrayed him.

There were rumours of family members being forced to watch as his victims were fed screaming feet first into massive meat processing units. Tarnow did not see this happen for himself but he knew several men who claimed they did and that was enough for him.

Back at the house they used as their base he walked into the lounge room to find his boss sitting in one of the leather armchairs with his bodyguards standing on either side, handguns tucked into the waist bands of their trousers.

‘Dziewczynka?’ Michalski asked simply in Polish �" the girl? Obviously he already knew that one of the girls had gotten out and located them at the nightclub. There was not much he did not know.

‘Wziąć z listami’ Tarnow replied trying to hide his nerves �" taken care of. Say the wrong thing and he could find himself dangling about a meat processor as well.

‘Dobre.’ Good.

 ‘What’s going on?’ A middle aged blonde haired man demanded in English.

Tarnow had not noticed him before sitting on the couch between two of his bosses men. He was well dressed in a black suit, sky blue shirt and a red striped tie. He looked like the sort of rat who never got his hands dirty at all expecting everyone else to do the messy work. Tarnow despised him on sight, sitting there and asking questions as though he was the boss and not Michalski.

‘Don’t worry my friend,’ his boss replied soothingly, ‘one of the girls got out and we have, how you say, taken care of her.

‘Don’t worry you say.’ The Englishman said angrily. ‘The f*****g police are going to be crawling all over the area for a while. They don’t like young girls turning up dead on their streets.’

‘I said do not worry. If the police come looking around I will deal with them.’

‘This isn’t downtown f*****g Warsaw; you can’t go around bribing coppers or killing them. I told you to lay low until I had the ownership of the clubs sorted and then you could move your girls in. Now the Police will be looking for your big bald friend here and when they find him they’ll find the rest of you.’

His boss sat forward and Tarnow could feel the tension in the room rise dramatically. His boss was not a big man, nor was he particularly menacing looking, yet he had an air of barely suppressed white hot rage that threatened to explode into a fury of horrific violence.

 ‘Do not make me regret our arrangement my friend.’ He said coldly. ‘If the police come looking I will take care of them. You hold up your end of the deal and get me those clubs.’

 

Biata did not know when the beatings stopped or when The Bear had left her lying on the pavement of the car park. Every part of her body ached. She could not stand straight from the pain in her stomach, one of her eyes had closed over and would not open and she had lost a shoe.

Biata stumbled out of the car park and back towards the main street. Her head felt as though it was going to explode out of her ears as she wove her way through the now deserted street. She banged her fist on a few doors to try and get help though no-one answered her cries.

Eventually she came to the entrance to a park and found a row of bins. The trees overhead gave slight cover from the now persistent freezing rain. She tried to sit down in between two of the bins to rest, but lost her balance and fell hitting her head painfully on the edge of one of the bins. One leg was trapped painfully beneath her but she lacked the energy to free it. She just wanted to sleep, to rest.

‘Bee... Biata....Bee,’ She heard her sister’s sweet voice calling her, giggling mischievously the way she always did when she had come up with a plan to torment their eldest brother, Piotr.

Biata held out her hand towards the voice and tried to respond but all she could manage was a mumbled whimper. Her hand fell into her lap as she ran out of energy and blackness enveloped her.

‘Bee, come on hurry up,’ her sisters voice called to her again. She found herself in the fields behind their parents’ house. Ahead of her she could see her sister Halina skipping through the long grass wearing her favourite blue dress and her long blonde hair shining brightly in the sunlight.

‘Lina,’ she called out happily, ‘Lina I’ve found you.’ A big grin spread across her face and she ran off chasing after her sister.