Where is she?

The lights were coming on all over Chinatown. I drove as close as I could get, the blues and twos flaring and screaming, all the city making way for me. I left the BMW X5 on Gerrard Place but it was only when I saw the shrine of dead flowers that I realized exactly where I was parked. For a long moment I stood under the red and gold awning of the dim sum restaurant, staring at the flowers that marked the spot where we had found the lorry with twelve women who died and one woman who lived. And then I ran. I ran through the dawdling late afternoon crowds on Gerrard Street to the doorway by the duck restaurant halfway down and then up the ancient wooden staircase three steps at a time to the bright white room on the first floor. The door to Sampaguita was closed. Low voices were coming from inside. I went in without knocking and stared at Ginger Gonzalez and a man I didn’t recognize. He was not yet thirty, a clean-cut city type, lean inside his good suit, the kind of man who goes to the gym for a serious cardio workout before he goes to move money around in one of the big glass towers. He looked privileged but not soft. It was a look you were seeing more and more. He was smiling at Ginger as he moved slowly towards the door, about to make his leave. I was about to knock him to the ground when Ginger spoke. “Max, this is Kris. Max is a colleague of mine, Kris.” He held out his hand, smiling politely, and I had shaken it before I knew what I was doing. “Good to meet you, Max.” He turned to Ginger. “I’ll call you later.” As he left I stared at her wildly. “Where is she?” I said. “Where’s Rabia Demir?”

Hana

Then I had her in my arms and I was screaming for an ambulance and hands were reaching out to help me get her out of the back of that death truck and onto a stretcher that we loaded into an ambulance parked in the middle of Shaftesbury Avenue, the swirling blue lights piercing the frozen winter morning. We tore through the city, the sirens howling at the world, telling it to get out of our way. “You’re safe now,” I said, trying to stay on my feet in the back of the rocking ambulance, squeezing her hands, trying to get some warmth back into them. “We’re getting you help. Don’t give up. Stay with me.” She did not reply. “Don’t give up, okay?” I said. And she did not reply. I had never felt anything colder than that young woman’s hands. “Will you tell me your name?” I asked. “My name is Hana,” she whispered.

The Women

“Let’s open it up,” I shouted, ducking under the perimeter tape. A fireman from the station on Shaftesbury Avenue fell into step beside me. He grinned at me, bleary with exhaustion and I guessed he must have been kept on after pulling the graveyard shift. Over one shoulder he carried bright red bolt cutters, four feet long, and as we reached the lorry, he swung them down and set the steel jaws against the rust-dappled lock that secured the back door. He looked at me, nodded briefly, and put his back into it. The cheap lock crumbled at first bite. We both grabbed one door and pulled it open. I stared into the darkness and the cold hit me first. The temperature in the street was in the low single digits. But in the back of that lorry, it was somewhere below freezing. I climbed inside just as my eyes cleared. And that is when I saw the women.