After helping the girl to get dressed, Anna called it in. As she expected, the case was immediately granted priority status and officers were going to be pulled off other duties – including the riots – to attend.
Central control also said they would arrange for an ambulance to be sent to the house, along with a team from social services.
‘I want forensics here too,’ Anna said. ‘Along with local CID.’
She phoned Nash to update him and to ask him to make sure that she got what she wanted in terms of resources. He promised to do what he could and said he hoped to be back at MIT HQ later in the day.
Anna then confronted Sullivan, who was being held by Mortimer on the landing at the top of the stairs.
‘You’ve been using this place as a child brothel, haven’t you?’ she said, prodding him hard in the chest with her finger. ‘You sick, vile bastard.’
He just stared back at her, saying nothing, his eyes flat and empty of all emotion.
‘Tell me why you didn’t bring Jacob Rossi straight here,’ she said. ‘Why did you leave him for so long in the pub cellar?’
His eyebrows snapped together. ‘Are you talking about the kid who went missing in Bromley? The son of that TV bloke?’
‘You know I am.’
‘That had nothing to do with me. I only know about it because I saw it on the news.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘And I don’t give a fuck.’
Anna had to resist the urge to punch him in the face.
‘Take him downstairs before I do something I’ll regret,’ she said to Mortimer. ‘Send Megan up here to help me with the kids and tell Max the cavalry will be here soon.’
Anna then got the three children together in one of the bedrooms where she quickly discovered that only the girl was English. The two boys were from Romania.
It wouldn’t be Anna’s job to delve into their backgrounds or to launch an investigation into the gang that had preyed on them. That would be the job of specialists working for the National Crime Agency. Her job was to find out if they had information that would help bring to justice whoever had been behind Jacob Rossi’s abduction.
She found it hard to contain her emotions as she stood looking down on the three youngsters who were sat on the edge of the bed. They seemed confused rather than scared. Their eyes were wide but vacant, and the thought of how much they must have suffered tugged at Anna’s heartstrings.
The boys were wearing T-shirts and Anna noticed some bruises on their arms. The girl, who was no longer crying, was now wearing shorts and a crew-neck jumper. She had short black hair and delicate features. Anna hadn’t spotted any bruises or marks on her body when she’d helped her to get dressed.
Anna began by asking them whether they were related to each other or to the people who had been in the house with them. They all shook their heads.
She then asked them their names and ages. The girl said she was Vicky Woods and she was eleven, almost twelve. The boys were Christian Orban and Darius Anca. They were both thirteen and spoke pretty good English.
Anna explained who she was and told them that they were now safe and would be properly looked after. But their reaction was muted. Even when she said that efforts would be made to contact their families, the only response was a weak smile from Vicky. It made her wonder if they had been given drugs to control their behaviour.
When DC Sweeny entered the room, Anna introduced them to her and said that there were other police officers downstairs.
‘More will be arriving shortly and you’ll be taken to a place of safety,’ she said.
‘What will happen to Lorna?’ Vicky asked, her voice low, wary.
‘Is she the woman who’s been here in the house with you?’
The girl nodded. ‘She’s the one who feeds us and tells us what we have to do when the men come. She says she’ll kill us if we tell anyone what happens here.’
Anna balled her fists involuntarily and felt her entire body tense.
‘Well you won’t have to worry about Lorna any more,’ she said. ‘She’ll be going to prison for a long time. And the man too. What do you call him?’
‘Lorna calls him Craig,’ Vicky said. ‘We’re not allowed to talk to him.’
‘And what about the other man who arrived here a little while ago? Do you know who he is?’
Vicky lowered her eyes and clasped her hands together in her lap.
‘He paid them so that he could do things to me,’ she said, and it shocked Anna that she was so matter-of-fact about it. ‘He was getting undressed when Lorna shouted that the police were here. So he ran out of the room.’
Anna got Sweeny to take notes while she asked the questions. And the more she heard about how they had suffered the angrier she became.
All three had met for the first time about four months ago when they were brought together at another house, which Vicky believed was somewhere in London. Before that Vicky had been living with her stepfather in Norwich. By the sound of it he was a brutal drug addict. Her mother was dead and she said she had no other relatives. The stepfather didn’t like having her around and sold her to two men he met in a pub. She had been abused by lots of different men ever since.
The boys had been abducted from an orphanage just outside Bucharest in Romania and trafficked to the UK in the back of a lorry with five other children. The three had been moved to this house around two months ago and that was when they met Lorna. Since then they had been sexually abused and raped almost daily by a succession of men who had paid for the privilege.
Anna learned that the woman, Lorna, resided in the house and the abusers were brought there by Craig Sullivan and sometimes other men.
‘They don’t let us go out except into the back garden, and if we cry Lorna hits us,’ Vicky said.
It was a set-up that had become all too familiar in recent years in the UK and across Europe. Nobody knew for sure how many children were being cruelly exploited in this way, but unofficial estimates put the figure in the thousands.
Anna continued to ask questions even as she heard reinforcements arrive at the house. Walker popped into the room to tell her that Sullivan and the other two had been arrested and cautioned and were about to be transferred to Wandsworth.
‘A forensics team is on its way,’ he said. ‘Meantime, I’ll organise a search of the house.’
Anna sensed the children were becoming anxious and she wanted to get some more questions in before the social workers arrived.
She took out her phone and showed them a photo of Jacob Rossi. All three said they had never seen him before. They also said they had never spent any time in a pub cellar.
But both boys did recognise a photo of Neville Quinlan.
‘He’s been here many times,’ Darius said. ‘The last time was about a week ago. He told me I was his favourite, and when he was finished, he gave me some sweets.’