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Simon Kernick

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

1

It had been two nights since she had heard Eva’s screams as they took her away. Now there was only silence, which meant her friend was dead.

Tara knew they’d be coming for her next. It was that simple. That was why she was here. To die. She had no idea what she was meant to have done to deserve this fate. It was all like some strange nightmare.

One night — a week, two weeks ago? — Tara had gone to sleep in the filthy little room she called home, with the constant drone of the buses going past outside the window. Then, when she’d woken up, she was here in this tiny, windowless cell. She was naked, with only a blanket for warmth, and chained to the wall by her ankle, like some kind of beaten animal.

At first she’d thought she was completely alone in the stony silence, and she’d started crying with despair. But then she’d heard a voice speaking her language — Albanian — from beyond the wall, asking her name. It was her friend Eva, and she was being held in the cell next door.

Eva had told her that the same thing had happened to both of them, and not just the kidnapping. Like Tara, she’d been talked into coming to England by a man who’d promised her a good job and a release from the poverty she knew at home, only to force her to work in a brothel as a virtual slave. They even both came from the same area of Kosovo.

In their cells, Tara and Eva had talked every day for hours and hours at a time. About home and family, about their hopes and dreams, about what they’d do if they ever got out of there (Eva wanted to go to Paris and climb the Eiffel Tower, Tara wanted to learn to ride a horse).

But now Tara was alone with only the constant, dead silence for company.

That didn’t mean she’d given up, though. No, if anything, what had happened to Eva had filled her with a new energy. Tara was going to escape. And she had a plan.

There was a piece of loose brick in the wall behind where she sat. She’d found it on her first day here. Ever since then she’d been working to get it free, wearing her nails down as she dug out the mortar on either side of it, until finally she was able to twist and pull at it, slowly loosening it.

Now she was holding a solid half-brick in her hand. It would be a useful weapon, if only she had the physical strength, and the chance, to use it properly.

Tara had never seen the man who held her prisoner. She was always made to turn round and face the wall on those few times when he came in to change the bucket she used as a toilet. He gave the order in Albanian but in a thick accent she didn’t recognise, and it sounded like they were the only words in Albanian he knew.

Twice a day, he pushed a plate of food and a plastic bottle of water through a flap in the cell door. He always wore black gloves, but sometimes his sleeve rode up and she could see the thick hair on his arms, and the swirling shape of a tattoo on his skin.

She could hear him now, moving about outside the door. She tucked the brick behind her, scared but hopeful too that he’d come in, knowing this was probably the best chance she was going to get.