Chapter 3

[chilly658]

3
The Thames Estuary  Monday 17th January 2011

The Indigo Cargo ship was built in 1996 and was one of the largest cargo vessels in existence weighing 93,750 Tonnes and boasted a beam, or width of 140 feet, and a length of 1,099 feet which enabled her to hide many, many secrets.

Her upper decks were laden with 40 feet steel containers stacked five high which were full to the brim with trade exports bound for France, Spain, Portugal and then onto Italy, Greece and Turkey before heading to Madagascar, Indonesia, Malaysia and then Australia, generally taking her between 72 and 90 days depending on weather conditions, customs and of course off shore leave for the crew which was always taken in some of the warmer climates.

She had departed from a dock near Cubit Wharf in the docklands area of London after a routine inspection by London's River police accompanied by Customs and excise, and inspection which had taken three and a half hours due to the size of the ship and eventually everything was found to be in perfect order because her Spanish Captain, Luis Santana was a meticulous man in his mid fifties who was a round man with an almost completely bald head and what hair he had left was thinning.

Captain Santana had been on board ships for his entire working life, at first with the Spanish navy and then into the lucrative shipping industry after twenty years of service and he ensured that the Indigo passed every inspection with flying colours, partly due to the fact that he was very well informed too.

Three hours after that routine inspection had been completed the Indigo floated down river in an east bound direction and dropped her Anchors again just eighteen hundred metres from where she had just left so that her highly illegal 'Ganado' could be loaded on board.  Livestock.  And after La Ganado had been loaded she really was full, her true cargo quota was now completed.

The hold of the ship which was strictly out of bounds to the crew which was unheard of before the Indigo was put into service was lined with no less than two hundred and sixteen cages measuring three feet by four feet and were three feet tall.

There were nine of these cages in each column and there were twenty four columns which ran almost the entire length of the cargo hold with a second tier of cages on top of them.

The hold had been disguised well because all of these cages had straw laid onto their floors and there was a distinct stench of animal faeces  mixed with an equally strong scent of bleach so that it seemed to an inspecting officer that the animals would be stored and transported inside these cages which were currently empty as the livestock wasn't to be loaded until Madagascar, so in the hold everything seemed as it was supposed to and passed the inspection very quickly as nobody really wanted to spend longer down there with the mixed aromas than was absolutely necessary and the hold was of course empty.

Empty until she had floated eastward for eighteen hundred metres which took her thirteen minutes.

The livestock had been prepared and took just twenty three minutes to load in it's entirety and the Indigo was well within the time tolerances for high tide so that she could at last make her way through the Thames and into the Thames Estuary where she once again dropped Anchor and waited for the hight tide at Normandy in southern France.

Miguel Sanchez was on the upper deck playing cards with three of the crew members, something he did often as a way of passing the time on during the longer voyages and everybody on board liked him, Miguel unlike his wife wasn't sadistic by nature, he viewed La Ganado as profit and this was how he made his living, he didn't consider them as people, they were articles for sale and he was just the seller of people who were no longer people, he once tried to explain to his wife who for obvious reasons had a different opinion.

Theresa Sanchez had no interest in gambling or the crew and spent most of her time down in the hold until they reached dock and dry land where Miguel would always take her out to dinner.

She was dressed in a green British army surplus store shirt with knee length paler green shorts, her usual desert style boots with beige socks and her long jet black hair was as always pulled into a long pony tail from higher than usual at the back of her head.

She strolled through the aisles of the cages studying her prisoners, all of whom were completely unconscious thanks to the white paper masks that each and every one of them wore, doused with chloroform of course to keep them compliant but one would be lucky, a girl and the purpose of Theresa's stroll was to choose the unlucky recipient of her favour.

Her dark brown eyes studied many of the young women intently and after viewing all two hundred and sixteen cages she had short listed her victim down to five.

Eventually she chose a young girl who until now had been living on the streets of London, just like many of the other occupants of the cages and  London had four thousand and six hundred more before the trafficking ring would move onto Liverpool and began trading the homeless there.

The young woman laying on top of the straw inside one of the lower cages was around twenty years of age with unwashed auburn shoulder length hair and she was wearing a dirty pale green t shirt with an equally dirty black leather jacket and also black denim jeans which in any other circumstance would need a good wash too, but now they didn't because her future didn't require clothing of any kind of course.

Theresa's dark brown eyes stared down at the sleeping girl, it was going to be her.

But not yet because in eight hours the Indigo would drop anchor just off the coast of Normandy where Miguel would be taking her ashore for some sight seeing before they moved on to Spain and then Italy, that was when Theresa would rouse this girl from her sleep and torment her relentlessly, telling her tales of the abuse which awaited her arrival.

Theresa strolled to the end of the Aisle and removed from the wall of the ship some lengths of her favoured red rope which was actually quite soft unlike nylon, Theresa preferred her victims to have a little comfort as this encouraged them to try to free themselves without the burns and they could never free themselves, she had learned her sadistic trade well but enjoyed the sight of them trying.

Theresa picked up the key bunch which held labelled keys to each and every cage in this particular aisle and once she had reached the cage in question once again she unlocked the padlock and opened the cage door where she climbed in with the girl.

She rolled the young auburn haired woman onto her front, making sure that her paper mask remained attached to her face and then pulled her arms back behind her where she tied the girl's crossed wrists whilst quietly singing a tune to herself under her breath.

Now Theresa proceeded to tie just above the girl's elbows and pulled tightly just so that the young woman would suffer considerable discomfort once she had been roused from her sleep and then she tied together her ankled very tightly and again just above the knees.

Theresa now rolled her over onto her back and was laying there looking down at the girl's closed eyes and still quietly singing her song to herself and then she studied her still dressed body and saw that she had already urinated in her clothes, but that was the real purpose of the straw, it mattered no to Theresa.

Theresa brushed the girls hair gently off her face.  "vamos a tener nuestra diversion en aguas espanolas."  She whispered down to the unconscious girl with a fake caring smile.  "We will have our fun in Spanish waters."

Eventually Theresa climbed out of the cage and after she had again closed the door she re locked the large brass padlock and then returned the keys to the hook at the end of the aisle.