the winner from the last race, bitch number four. Can she repeat the brilliance of her last run or did she only have one victory in her?’ Finlay circled the last woman, who was looking twitchy, jerking her knees up one after the other, her eyes huge, haunted, like some terrified Olympian on speed.
‘Rules – like there fucking are any – the bitches get a sixty-second head start on the hunt. They can run, hide, fight, disable one another, team up, whatever they like. Champions – same applies to you – all you have to do is move like fuck.’
Elenuta felt vomit rising in her throat at the word hunt. The women were starting to edge away from Finlay, three of them together, the previous winner – as if that term could ever apply – keeping her distance from the group.
‘There are screens above your head that will capture any action you can’t see from where you’re sitting. Don’t worry, we won’t let you miss a thing.’
Elenuta couldn’t see the screens the audience had access to, but she didn’t need them. It was all here, ready for Finlay to gloat over. She wanted to refuse to watch, but even if Finlay would let her get away with that – and he wouldn’t – knowledge was a currency, and at the moment she was flat out broke. She needed to know what possible dangers lay ahead.
‘Turn up the lights!’ Finlay shouted and, like a Broadway show, the camera rose into the air – Elenuta assumed it was a drone – and lights flickered on in what was apparently a vast warehouse, fitted out with a maze of partitions. Here and there, metal staircases, more like ladders, rose above the temporary six-foot walls and facilitated access to a different part of the building, but using those ladders would make the women more visible. There were what appeared to be cupboards, large bins, piles of sheets, all providing the false promise of a place to hide. Elenuta estimated the warehouse interior was maybe twenty thousand square feet. It was hard to tell with the sketchy light and movement of the drone. It was vast, by any reckoning. The drone dipped closer to the floor and lengths of barbed wire came into focus, which would force the runners to either jump, dip below it or turn back. Dappled light on the ceiling caught her eye.
‘What’s this?’ she asked without thinking, giving Finlay a chance to enjoy her interest.
He pointed at the warehouse floor although there was nothing to see from the drone’s viewpoint.
‘Smashed glass. Five different patches of it. There have to be some handicaps, after all.’
‘But they have no shoes,’ Elenuta said. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘Not fair? I paid good money for those whores. I need a return on that investment, and that means putting on a proper show. Do you have any idea how much it costs me to house and feed you lot?’
Elenuta stared at him, the space between her eyebrows a knot of wrinkles as she waited for him to laugh. He didn’t. He meant every word of it, the resentment at the bills incurred feeding them stale bread and out-of-date chicken nuggets. The heating was turned off overnight and only put back on during client hours so they didn’t get complaints. The sheets were the only items washed regularly. The women handwashed their personal items in the sink overnight. Elenuta wondered how far gone Finlay was if he had genuinely persuaded himself that he was somehow being taken advantage of by the women he held captive and sold every day.
‘Here we go,’ Finlay told Elenuta, his face alight with excitement. ‘Now don’t you fucking look away. I don’t want you missing any of the good bits!’
‘One final word of warning to you all,’ on-screen Finlay wagged his finger. ‘First man to lay hands on any woman gets her to himself. Once a man has her, no other man can touch her. Three men, four women. The last woman standing gets a good meal, a hot bath and a comfy bed with none of you cunts in it tonight. That’s it!’
He raised his left hand in the air. ‘Countdown! Five.’ The last race’s winner looked deep into the maze, head down, knees bent. The other women looked terrified, hands still wrapped together.
‘Four.’ The audience was on its feet to a man, and the noise coming from that side of the warehouse was deafening. Elenuta couldn’t hear Finlay count down after that, but she watched his lips move.
‘Three, two, one!’
The previous winner was gone. She flew into the maze, taking an outside lane, glancing back over her shoulder only once as the other three women looked on, dazed and bemused.
‘Run, you fucking whores,’ Finlay shouted. ‘If you don’t want to die where you’re standing, then friggin’ run!’
As one, like the herd of zebra that’s spotted the lion, they bolted, moving chaotically, tripping over their own feet and each other’s. Elenuta wanted to shout instructions to them, as if she were watching in real time, but it was way too late for that. The camera focused on a clock on the wall, the countdown already at thirty-seven seconds and falling as Finlay’s champions jumped up and down, ready for the off. Tattoo had his teeth bared. The big man was sweating profusely, sparkling in the half-light. Elenuta prayed that a heart attack might strike him down in his revolting excitement before he could set off. The scarred man, though, was something else. Something bestial, his face twisted with a hatred so terrifying that Elenuta could hardly bear to watch. She pitied anyone who crossed his path. He was a man without limits. She’d met such men before and been grateful to have survived the encounters.
The image suddenly split into four quarters, presumably a reflection of what the audience in the warehouse had seen. The footage was from drones, four separate cameras. This was no small operation. Finlay had to have had four men, one set to follow each woman, to provide constant footage. Two of the women had stuck together, and the others had gone off alone. The countdown was at ten seconds, and the men were poised and ready to sprint.
‘Those drones are the bloody best you can get. Cost me a fuckin’ packet,’ Finlay lectured.
‘Uh huh,’ Elenuta murmured.
Her hands were gripping the bedcovers, as if to tether herself away from the screen. The previous winner was at the far side of the maze now, pausing, hands on knees and panting, looking behind her, then ahead, to decide tactics. Not getting yourself cornered was the obvious priority, and she wasn’t. She had three directions to run in. The next decision was whether to hide, or keep running. The problem with that was exhaustion. Sooner or later the after-effect of the adrenaline would be to drain the women’s energy, rather than to provide a boost, and then there would be nothing left to fight with if – when – the moment came.
Elenuta looked at the other screen sections. The youngest woman was trying and failing to open an old metal cupboard, tugging uselessly at the doors which had obviously been deliberately locked and put there to distract the runners.
Horns blasted, echoing hard around the bare walls. The men, like hounds released, began to run. The audience made noises that might have come from behind the bars in a zoo. The scene was nothing short of gladiatorial, if the surroundings were less than Romanesque. The young woman who’d been attempting to open the cupboard had finally given up on that plan and was trying to cover herself with a pile of old sheets that had been dumped on the floor. However slight she was, there was no disguising the person-shaped mound in the middle of the rags.
‘Get up,’ Elenuta hissed through the screen at the girl. ‘Get up now.’
‘She can’t hear you, love,’ Finlay laughed. ‘Entertaining, isn’t it?’
‘Animal,’ Elenuta said.
Finlay leaned forward, poking out his tongue to lick her face from eye to chin, leaving a trail of saliva for her to wipe away.
‘The big bloke’s surprisingly light on his feet. Watch him go here,’ Finlay pointed, as the largest of the three men took a corner at speed and caught sight of a woman ahead of him. ‘Oh, the tension,’ he mocked. ‘I should charge ten times what I do for this. People would take out loans if they had to.’
Elenuta chose to look at Finlay rather than the chase underway on the screen.
‘How