He eased back the hammer, his gun now primed and ready to fire.
‘Well, that sounds charming,’ Helen gasped in response, struggling to breathe.‘But before you do so, you might want to know that you’re being watched.’
Despite his vice-like grip, she nodded towards the end of the alleyway.Confused, her captor shot a look back towards the street.Helen clocked his confusion – there was no one in the mouth of the cut-through – then his sudden realization as he noticed the CCTV camera high on the wall, pointing directly down at them.
‘The jewellery shop has been broken into three times in the last two years, hence why they’ve put up extra security back here.Safety first and all that …’
Helen had hoped this might give her attacker pause, might even convince him to turn tail and flee, but to her surprise, he now threw his head back and laughed.
‘You thinkthatwill stop me?’he replied, incredulous.
‘You’re really going to murder someone live on camera?’Helenchallenged, sounding far more confident than she felt.‘You think you can do something like that andget away with it?’
‘IknowI can,’ he replied, grinning.‘Don’t you get it, Helen?The police don’t run this city anymore.We do.Which means we can do whatever the fuck we want.’
His finger tightened on the trigger, ready to fire.
‘I could shoot you right now and nobody would lift a finger to stop me.Is that how you want to die, Helen?Alone, with us, in this dirty alleyway?’
He squeezed the trigger, blood lust consuming him.Instinctively, Helen turned away, closing her eyes, but the image of her brains coating the wall, her lifeless body slumping to the ground, forced its way into her mind.Was this how it was going to end for her?For her child?
Then suddenly, unexpectedly, the pressure was released, her assailant stepping back smartly, removing his arm from her neck, as he slid the gun back into his jacket.Breathless, unsteady, Helen stared at him, shocked.
‘Last warning, Helen, or it’s …’
He ran a finger across his ravaged neck, before turning and heading away, his accomplice trotting dutifully behind.Reach-ing the end of the alleyway, he paused to look directly into the CCTV camera, blowing a kiss at the lens, before rounding the corner, chuckling darkly to himself.Helen watched him go, her hand once more clamped to her belly, her body pressed tight to the dusty brickwork.She was fighting hard to regain her composure, to shrug off this distressing encounter, but in truth she was deeply unsettled by it.She was enraged.She was relieved.
But most of all, she was scared.
Chapter 65
Her heart was thundering in her chest, her breath short, but there was no question of backing out now.
Hanging the wet cloth over the tap to dry, Viyan cast another wary look out of the kitchen window.To her relief, Leyla was still deep in conversation with her Dutch accomplice, the latter appearing to be unsettled and unhappy about something.Leyla was working hard to reassure her partner in crime, reasoning earnestly with him, even laying a comforting hand on his arm, which suited Viyan just fine.The more distracted Leyla was, the better.
The young mother had waited all morning for her opportunity.It had been hard to concentrate on her chores, her mind full of what today might bring, but she’d tried hard to appear as docile, broken and listless as usual.She avoided Leyla’s eye at all times, terrified her vengeful captor might sniff out her treachery, even when she was reeling off the extra chores she expected Viyan to complete.Nodding obediently, Viyan had complied, despite the agony which still racked her body, silently praying that Leyla would leave the farmhouse soon.But her captor seemed to linger longer than usual today, finding things to do, never straying far from her charge.As the minutes slowly passed, Viyan began to despair of ever being left alone, but thenhappily, the Dutch haulier intervened, summoning Leyla outside for a private conversation.Something was clearly up, but Viyan had no interest in the little drama playing out in the yard: she had a job to do.
Hobbling from the kitchen, she made for the staircase.There was no way that Leyla could hear her from here, but still she trod lightly on the stairs as she hauled herself up, the aged floorboards emitting the gentlest protest as she rose.Cresting the landing, Viyan made straight for the master bedroom.There were a number of small rooms on the first floor, but Leyla knew which one to target.She had never been allowed up here, her duties strictly reserved for the ground floor, but she knew from experience that Leyla conducted all her important business in the main bedroom, away from prying eyes.Many times Viyan had stood in the kitchen, hearing the boards creaking above, earnestly wondering what was playing about between Leyla and her accomplices.
Now there was no such time for speculation and Viyan hobbled into the master bedroom, closing the door behind her.It seemed profoundly odd, and dangerous, to be stepping into her captor’s inner sanctum, but if she wanted to make good her escape, if she wanted to see her family again, Viyan knew she had to hold her nerve.
The room was simply furnished, a large double bed, a desk and a fitted wardrobe providing the only decoration.Bending her steps to the desk, Viyan tugged the top drawer open.It was full of make-up and jewellery, so, closing it, she moved on to the next drawer.This was more promising, stacked full of papers, but rifling through them, Viyan could find nothing of any interest.The bottom drawer was the same, so abandoning her search, she crossed to the bed.Dropping to her knees, cursing at the pain, she peered underneath.
This was immediately more promising, a heavy trunk catching her eye.Grasping the handle, she pulled it out from under the bed, exhaling with the effort.Eagerly, her thumbs sought out the padlock, but it was locked and there was little chance of her guessing the code.Angry and frustrated, she was about to replace the trunk when her gaze landed on a pair of shoeboxes, which had been secreted behind the bulky obstacle.Ignoring the dust that danced around her as she burrowed under the bed, Viyan grabbed both, sliding them towards her.Straightening up, she pulled the lid off the first one and gasped.
It was stacked to the brim with passports, the box a collage of burgundy, blue and black covers.The contents of the second box was similar and Viyan now set to work, rifling through the little books, searching desperately for the familiar burgundy of her Turkish passport.She found one, two, three, four documents belonging to her compatriots, but it was on the fifth go that she discovered what she was looking for.
Viyan Bashur.Her eyes drank in the detail of her name, her date of birth, her hometown, before alighting on the photo.Instinctively, she let out a sob, saddened beyond measure by the elegant, handsome, hopeful young woman in the photo.She looked so different now, drawn, thin, her raven hair thinning and flecked with grey, but here was a powerful reminder of who she had once been, who she could be again.This was the real Viyan, not the helpless wraith that haunted this awful camp.This document, this testament to her identity, her essence, was not only a tonic and an inspiration, it was also her ticket out of this country.With her passport in hand, she would beg, steal, borrow, do whatever she had to do to raise the money for an airfare.And once she was home, she would walk all the way from Istanbul to the Syrian border if she had to to be reunited with her children, to hear them call her ‘Mama’.
‘Viyan.’
She froze, her body suddenly rigid with tension, as Leyla’s cry drifted up from the ground floor.Viyan had been so intent on her task that she had not heard her mistress return.
‘Where the hell are you?’
She could hear her tormentor stomping around downstairs, angrily searching for her servant.It would only be seconds at most before she discovered Viyan was missing and headed upstairs, so stuffing the passport into her hoodie, she replaced the lids on top of the shoeboxes and slid them back under the bed.With a hefty tug, she replaced the trunk too, before gingerly rising to her feet, terrified of giving her presence away.
‘Where are you, you stupid bitch?’
