They continued to head down the pavement, both thinking this through. Finally Fowler said, ‘People held as prisoners? You’re right, it does sound a lot more than prostitution.’
‘While it’s unlikely that Pavel would’ve been using his own place as a brothel, it could easily have been used as a halfway house for girls imported illegally into the sex industry.’
‘I didn’t think there was much of that kind of thing going on over here.’
‘That’s Monty’s argument. People seem to think it’s an Eastern States phenomenon, that it isn’t relevant to us in the west. Over here the problem tends to be more of smuggling people for illegal labour or immigration than for human trafficking. That’s why the trafficking that does happen doesn’t get the attention it should—because no one expects it.’
‘I don’t know much about this kind of thing, never had any experience with it,’ Fowler said.
A rare admittance of ignorance, Stevie guessed.
‘So what’s the difference between people smuggling and human trafficking?’ Fowler said.
There were no lights down this end of the street. They didn’t realise they’d reached Fowler’s WRX until they almost stumbled into it. Fowler unlocked the door with a beep of his key and leaned on the frame from the footpath, without getting in, waiting for Stevie’s answer. Light seeped from his car, illuminating one side of his face while the other side was cloaked in the shadow of the narrow alley.
‘Trafficking and smuggling share some characteristics,’ Stevie explained, standing with him beside the open car door, ‘but it’s the voluntariness than sets them apart. In both scenarios people are illegally taken across borders and exploited. But those who are trafficked, as opposed to smuggled, are taken against their will and used as sex slaves: women, girls, young males—’
The squeal of tyres cut Stevie off. They whirled to face the noise. A car barrelled out of the darkness towards them, headlights on full beam.
It wasn’t going to stop.
The street was narrow; the open car door took up most of its width.
‘Get in!’ Stevie yelled at Fowler who’d frozen to the spot. She gave him a shove, heard the side of his head crunch against the doorframe.
She scrambled onto the roof of Fowler’s car using the door sill as a springboard. The hurtling car slammed into the WRX, knocking it further up the curb. With a shriek of tearing metal, the door was severed like a limb.
The impact rocked the car and it teetered on two wheels. Shock waves coursed through Stevie’s body as she clung to the roof, throwing her weight toward the raised side to balance it.
It was over in a few seconds. The WRX wobbled and righted itself, vibrations ceased.
The other car continued to charge down the street. Lodged on its undercarriage, Fowler’s ripped door scraped along the road leaving an electric pattern of sparks in its wake. The car’s rego was indecipherable and so was the make; all Stevie caught was its long, low shape swerving towards the end of the road. It rumbled to the end of the street and took a sharp right. The door dislodged on the curb and bounced onto the pavement. The sound of the powerful engine roared toward the docks until darkness swallowed it. (Image 15.1)
Image 15.1
TUESDAY
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The man gave one last grunt of satisfaction and hefted himself off her, his flaccid penis leaving a wet trail along her thigh. Was he number six or number seven tonight? Mai counted on her fingers. First there was the man in the wheelchair who Rick had helped onto the bed, then the sour-smelling truck driver friend of Rick’s. The drunken boys from the eighteenth birthday party had all looked and behaved the same: embarrassed, fumbling, reeking and, in a couple of cases, non-functioning. Mai realised then that she’d lost count. This was unusual for her, seeing as she was paid per customer—not that she ever saw much of the money she made.
Soon she and the other girls would be leaving the city. Her mind was numb with the thought of the journey ahead. Perth had been her prison for nearly a year, but at least it meant that she had been close to Niran. This time next week she would be in a place so far away, they might just as well be in another country.
They had renamed her son Joshua. She could hardly get her tongue around the western name. When she tried, the white men, the farang, laughed and mocked. They did their best to confuse her. They didn’t want her to learn any English words other than what she’d been taught to say to the clients; words and phrases such as sexy big boy, handsome man, I fuck you silly, you like it doggie? But she found she could understand a lot more of their language than she could speak. You could learn a lot in a year.
The man hauled himself from the bed and patted her on the head. In Thailand the head was an object of holiness. Once she would have cringed under his touch. She used to think a man touching her there was worse than anything he could do to the rest of her body.
Now she knew different.
Now she didn’t care.
He drew the curtain closed behind him. She heard his heavy tread on the stairs. The sound of laughing and shouting men reached her from the bar. She stripped the bed and wrapped herself in the soiled sheet and opened the curtain.
The pungent scent of ganja wafted into the cubicle and mingled with the bleachy smell of sex. She picked up the used condom from the floor—at least this guy had agreed to it wear it—and flushed it down the toilet in the bathroom opposite. The curtains in the other cubicles on the upstairs landing remained closed. From behind them she heard the fake laughter of the girls and their mechanical moans of pleasure.
Clients milled around the bar below—they often needed alcohol before partaking in the pleasures upstairs. Beer, wine, spirits or worse: their breath made Mai feel sick, though she never showed it; she never showed any of the revulsion she felt. She was good at her job and she knew it. At the top of the stairs she stood for a moment and listened to what was going on below.
With little effort, she could pick out Rick’s voice: he sounded excited and Mai had trouble deciphering his rapid speech. He was probably talking about the journey—she heard him mention that place called Broome again. She tried silently to curve her mouth around the sound. He said something about the money he would make and how he would spend it—on pills probably. Sometimes drugs were used on the girls to make them more compliant, but they were always forbidden to the guardians. Rick shouldn’t be speaking like this.
Another man spoke; she recognised Jimmy Jack’s higher tones. He seemed to be giving Rick some kind of warning, probably reminding him of what happens to those who abuse the Mamasan’s trust, what The Crow had done to Jon Pavel. Rick fell silent; there was no more talk of pills and parties. Even he had been shaken up by the events he’d witnessed.
Over a week ago, just before dawn, the other girls having only just got off to sleep, Mai had crept down to the kitchen to look for something to pop the blisters on her sore feet.
Rummaging through the kitchen cupboards she heard strange noises coming from the basement and decided to investigate. As she limped toward the closed door the sounds became clearer: dreadful screams of unspeakable agony. The Crow was at work again. She fled back up the stairs and vomited into the toilet. When she recovered sufficiently to move, she peeped from the landing and saw Rick and Jimmy Jack hauling Pavel’s charred body through the door that led to the garage.