Dead Tomorrow

sullenly into the large, modern living room. It had fine views of the Palace Pier and the blackened remains of the West Pier, the Marina, over to the east, and far out across the English Channel.
    Cosmescu was sure they would never have seen anything like this place in their lives. He knew the kind of background they would have come from. And that Marlene would have cleaned them up, in preparation for their new lives.
    All the girls that came here were debt-bonded, which meant they had signed up in Romania to an impossibly large loan–although they never actually saw the cash–agreeing to work off in England their one-way passage to what they thought was freedom. They would start here in Brighton. If they settled into their work, fine. But the vigilant Brighton and Hove police, along with care workers, visited the local brothels from time to time, talking to the girls, trying to find ones that were there against their will.
    If either of these looked as if she might start giving out signals that she wanted help from the police, he would move her away from Brighton and up to a brothel in London, where less interest would be taken in her, by anyone.
    ‘We go to the bar tonight?’ Anca said.
    ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said. ‘Both of you.’
    The two girls looked at each other in surprise. ‘Clothes?’
    ‘I want to see you naked.’
    ‘We–we did not come to be strippers,’ Nusha said.
    ‘You are not strippers,’ he said. ‘You are here to pleasure men with your bodies.’
    ‘No! That’s not thedeal!’ Anca protested.
    ‘You know how much it cost to bring you here?’ he said harshly. ‘You want to go home? I will take you to the airport tomorrow. But Mr Bojin will not be pleased to see you. He will want his money back. Or would you rather I call the police? In this country false passports is a bad offence.’
    Both girls fell silent.
    ‘So tell me, which do you want? Shall I phone Mr Bojin now?’
    Anca shook her head, looking terrified suddenly. Nusha bowed hers, looking ashen.
    ‘OK.’ He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and stabbed a button on the dial pad. ‘I call the police.’
    ‘No!’ Anca shouted. ‘No police!’
    He put the phone back in his pocket. ‘So, take your clothes off. I will teach you how to pleasure a man in this country.’
    Staring sullenly at the black carpet, as dark as the void of their new lives, both girls began to undress.

52
    On the flat screen high on thewall, a short distance in front of her desk, Lynn read the words in large gold letters: COLLECTOR BONUSES TOP TEN .
    Below was a list of names. The top was currently Andy O’Connor, on a rival team, the Silver Sharks. The screen informed her that Andy had collected a total of £9,987 in cash this week, so far. His accumulated bonus, if he maintained this position, was £871.
    God, how she could do with that!
    She looked enviously at the other nine names beneath his. The bottom was her friend and teammate Katie Beale, at £3,337.
    Lynn was way off the scale. But one sizeable client had just agreed to a plan. He would make a lump sum payment of £500 and a regular £50 a month, to pay off a MasterCard debt of £4,769. But that £500–assuming it did come in–would only bring her weekly total to £1,650. Leaving her with an almost impossibly long way to go.
    But perhaps she could stay late tonight and catch up on her hours. Luke had come over to see Caitlin after they’d got back from the hospital this morning, so at least she would have company. But she did not want to be away from her for too long.
    Suddenly an email pinged on to her screen. It was from Liv Thomas, her team manager, asking her to have another try with one of her least favourite clients.
    Lynn groaned inwardly. A golden rule of the company was that you never actually met with your clients , as they were called. Nor did you ever tell them anything about yourself. But she always had a mental picture in her head of everyone she spoke to. And the image she had in her head of Reg Okuma was of a cross between Robert Mugabe and Hannibal Lecter.
    He had run up a billof £37,870 on a personal loan from the Bradford Credit Bank, putting him up among the largest debtors on their client list–the highest topping out at a whopping £48,906.
    A few weeks ago she had given up on ever recovering a penny from Okuma, and had passed his debt over to the litigation department. On the other hand, she thought, if she did get a result, then it could