Free The Overlooker by Fay Sampson

forgotten about them.
    â€˜Thank you very much for your information. I appreciate your coming here, in spite of that unpleasant phone call. We’ll keep you in touch. With any luck, we may need to call you as witnesses.’
    â€˜What about the threats to my family?’
    â€˜From what you’ve told me, there’s no reason to believe anyone here knows where you’re staying. By the way, would you like to write down your cousin’s address for me?’
    She pushed a notepad across to him. Nick entered Thelma’s address at High Bank. The inspector read it and nodded.
    â€˜There may not be anything behind the threat. But just keep your eyes open. Ring us if you have any cause for alarm.’ She got to her feet. ‘Goodbye now. Enjoy the rest of your stay. We’ll look after this.’ She gave Nick a rare smile and held out her hand. ‘I’ve been trying for years to nail this kind of thing. You may just have given us the break we need.’
    The door closed behind them. Nick found himself out in the corridor with Suzie.
    He felt curiously unreassured by Inspector Heap’s reasoning.
    â€˜I never thought . . .’ Suzie said. ‘I mean, we jumped to the conclusion that it must be a sweatshop. Prostitution never even entered my head. It’s a sobering thought, though. From what I’ve heard, some of these vice rings can be seriously scary.’
    â€˜It’s out of our hands now. We can leave the police to sort it.’
    He hoped that was true. Phone calls were one thing, though it still troubled him that the unknown man had found his mobile number. But no one knew that the Fewings were staying with Thelma in that little terrace of three houses of millstone grit up on High Bank. They should be safe.
    He turned to Suzie with a smile that was only partly reassuring.
    â€˜I’ll leave you to explain it all to Millie. I don’t think I’m flavour of the month.’

SEVEN
    â€˜A vice ring!’ exclaimed Millie.
    Suzie was trying to explain as they ushered their teenage daughter down the steps outside the police station.
    â€˜You mean like fake passports, and they shut them up in houses and never let them go out? And then the police bust them, and they catch these men with their trousers down, and they’re trying not to let the photographers see their faces because people think they’re, like, really respectable people, MPs and judges and stuff? And the policewomen are taking these girls away?’
    To Nick’s surprise, Millie seemed more excited than frightened by Inspector Heap’s theory. Suzie struggled to convey to her the conditions of slavery under which such girls worked.
    â€˜Are they going to raid that place in Hugh Street? If they catch them, and put them in prison, and let the girls go free, it would be all down to us, wouldn’t it? I wish I’d taken a photo on my phone when we were there. I can’t wait to put this on Facebook!’
    â€˜Steady on,’ Nick warned her. ‘This is just the start of a police investigation. The last thing they’d want is for you to go spreading it all over the internet before they’ve had a chance to gather the evidence. You don’t want to scare them off, or the police would raid the house and find they’ve flown.’
    â€˜Spoilsport!’ Millie grumbled. ‘But I can tell them afterwards, can’t I? When it’s in the papers and they put them on trial? I can tell all my mates, “We did that. We were the ones who shopped them.”’
    â€˜Yes, of course you can,’ Suzie told her. ‘It just may take a bit of time. Even if they raid the house and find the evidence, it will take a long time to bring it to court.’
    She caught Nick’s eye over Millie’s blonde head.
    He felt an uneasy pang of conscience. Neither of them had yet told Millie about that frightening phone call. They had not had a chance to discuss it.