A lump of emotion threw itself maliciously into her throat as the irrepressible Della Quince flitted through her mind, bringing with her the explosive cocktail of sensations she had been responsible for fermenting within Lucie. Della had been at once Lucie’s dream and nightmare, having proven in the end to have manipulated her with an equal mixture of expertise and precision in her quest for vengeance against a whole country. Lucie, having eschewed personal relationships ever since the abuse she suffered while chained up in an Afghan cave, had felt herself falling for the older woman. To this day half of her yearned to know whether Della’s professed reciprocity was genuine, while the other half no longer cared. After her death, Lake had presented her with a note Della had written to her, but in her obstinacy, she had refused to accept it, and though its mysterious contents tormented her heart daily, her soul declined to alter the decision, accepting and stubbornly taking pride in the self-inflicted pain.
Nonetheless, whatever it counted for now, Della’s actions had been of immeasurable help in those first days, allowing Lucie to slip into the role rather than crash into it, and as she stood smiling at the bemused and emotional Asif Ismail, the desire to be of similar use ran through her. The tension may be gone, and he may have accepted the reality of his situation, but that didn’t make living with it any easier, and the sooner he learned to do that, the sooner they could work properly together.
“Listen,” she began, hoping her voice sounded as full of understanding as possible without tipping over into condescension, “did Lake give you any instructions? Anything at all?”
Ismail shook his head, tiredness beginning to show through his smile. “Nothing much. He just told me where you live and said we had some missing women to find; he said you’d take it from there.”
“Well then, I guess we should have a chat. Any plans for the day?”
“All of a sudden my diary looks pretty empty.”
“Well then,” Lucie answered, grabbing her overcoat and keys from the table and stepping past Ismail through the living room door. “It looks like we have time for a drink.”
ELEVEN
The idea had proven as successful as Lucie had hoped and more, the one drink quickly turning into several more as the pair began to relax into each other’s company. Ismail, she learned, was a more than accomplished officer, having received several commendations for bravery and a scar across his abdomen from a knife attack. Although reluctant to talk about it, he had finally admitted that the knife had been wielded by an elderly member of a golf club in Primrose Hill, who had taken exception to what he perceived as cheating by other members and decided to deal with the matter with a sheath knife he had kept since the war. Although fortunately nobody else was injured, the young PC Ismail had ended up with a slash across his flesh after the old gent tripped up as he walked forward to surrender the weapon. Though she had listened intently to that point, Ismail’s sheepish revelation led to a mutual roar of laughter and another round of drinks.
She had liked Ismail when she first met him, and she warmed to him further still during the evening. Though the light in the bar was dim, the setting and the music seemed to accentuate the stress lines she had noted on his face at their first meeting, which strangely added an extra layer of complexity to his handsome, if tired features. He had been full of questions for her, probing cautiously at first before quickly moving through inquisitive gears and pressing for more details of the job, the nature of the work and Lucie’s involvement in it. She didn’t answer everything in detail – she couldn’t – but she endeavoured to provide the same level of reassurance that Della had given her barely months before. She watched his eyes as he absorbed the information as readily as he imbibed the alcohol they drank; his eyes flicking ferociously as she described the nature of their work to him as unglamorously as she could. When she had been sure his queries were finished, she ordered him another beer and probed him on his background, wanting to be sure his homelife leant itself to this type of work, and also satisfy her natural curiosity about a man in whose presence she had begun to feel the earliest twinge of nervous excitement. He was 39, a divorcee and lived not too far from Lucie, in a flat off Highgate Road, where the extortionate rent left few funds for anything else.
“Well don’t think that espionage is going to make you any richer,” she’d joked, earning a laugh in response.
When the stress of the day’s events began to catch up with him and he had started to stifle yawns, Lucie had called it a night, shaking his hand and suggesting he get some sleep before they met the following day. His refreshed and altogether more human appearance the following morning showed that her advice had been wisely taken. As she watched him collect the two large cups from the half empty coffee bar they had entered minutes earlier, Lucie took in his altogether more relaxed features, complemented by the business suit he wore with causal elegance, and caught herself before he could notice her smile. She still had no time for that kind of thing – at least she told herself that she didn’t – and certainly not when there was work to be done. Throwing her overcoat over the back of her chair and pushing up the sleeves of her blue paisley shirt, Lucie took one of the cups from Ismail, thanking him as he joined her at the table.
“No problem,” he answered, “thank you for picking up the tab last night.”
“Least I could do,” she grinned, “since it was my lot that led to you getting pissed in the first place. Did you have time to go through your notes?”
“Better than that,” Ismail answered, pulling a flash drive from his inside pocket and holding it up to Lucie.
“What’s on that?”
“What isn’t on it? Let’s just say we can be thankful for at least one consequence of Tory cuts.”
“Yeah? Which cut?”
“The one to the Met’s IT department. In the old days, my suspension would have meant instant loss of intranet and database access and a block on my email account. Unfortunately, the loss of so many of the team means they’re not as on top of that as they should be. First thing this morning I logged on to my police laptop and wouldn’t you know? I still had access to all the files.”
“The rest of the missing women?”
“Everything that was recorded by police up and down the country,” Ismail grinned, his pleasure at being of immediate use in his new role both obvious and palpable.
Lucie shared his elation. This was just the break they needed, and her mind began instantly and impatiently race, yearning to simply absorb the information the drive contained, rather than waste time asking questions.
“Fantastic,” she exclaimed, leaning forward to look at the small, flat stick as though it were a sparkling jewel of unparalleled beauty. “What have you learned?”
“There are a couple of things that stand out,” Ismail began, handing the drive to Lucie who clutched it tight in her palm for a moment before pushing it securely into her pocket. “The first one you can probably guess.”
“The investigations were all pulled before they got going?”
“Spot on,” he confirmed. “No surprises there. But something else got my alarm bells ringing, something which puts Ines’s murder in a whole new light.”
“What’s that?”
Ismail paused to take a sip of his scalding Americano and fill his lungs with the coffee shop’s warm air.
“Something a DS in Leeds picked up on before the case was pulled from her. She was looking into the disappearance of Isabella Garcia, a Spanish woman who went missing in the city a little while back, and she found something interesting in her social media history.”
“How interesting?” Lucie asked, her attention entirely focussed on her new colleague’s words.
“Extremely. It seems that Isabella belonged to a Facebook group called ‘PeopleToo’. It’s an online campaign page for women’s rights; people use it to campaign for all sorts of things under that umbrella.”
“What did Isabella push for?”
“A few different things,” he a
nswered, taking another sip from his coffee. “Equal pay, EU Citizens rights… she was very anti-Brexit as you’d expect, but something else stood out. She was a vociferous campaigner against the government’s introduction of trial brothels.”
“Really?” Lucie mused, assimilating the information and reaching finally for her own drink.
“And she wasn’t alone either,” Ismail continued. “Pages like that often generate sub groups and connections between members. In the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Isabella had dialogues with a number of fellow campaigners, including…”
“Including the other missing women,” Lucie finished, her mind picking up the thread of the police officer, who nodded in confirmation.
“Precisely,” he answered. “All of them, including Ines Aubel and quite a few more besides.”
“How many more?”
“There are seventeen women Isabella regularly communicated with, all passionate campaigners. Three of them British and the rest from various EU countries.”
Lucie nodded quietly, her brain locked fully into analysis mode and busy formulating hypotheses, as she absently sipped the scalding hot coffee.
“Shit,” she whispered as her tongue screamed in protest and she clinked the cup back to the saucer. Her elation at the existence of the information had been tempered by the new questions it posed and what looked like a very real danger to even more women.
“We need to check on the whereabouts of the other women Isabella was in contact with,” she said, her forehead furrowing as she spoke, “including the British ones. It might look so far like British women aren’t being targeted but we don’t know that for sure, and even if they’re not they might know something about all this.”
“True.” Ismail replied. “There is something you can be pretty sure of now though: Ines wasn’t out looking for punters the night she died.”
Hearing him say the words infused a sensation of justification in Lucie. “No,” Lucie readily acknowledged, “she wasn’t. Which means either she’d taken her campaigning to a dangerous level and this was a protest gone wrong, or else someone is targeting those specific campaigners; someone who could be back at any time for the rest of them.”
“Agreed,” nodded the detective. “But if you’re thinking of organising protection for any of them you’ll be disappointed; the cops just don’t have the resources.”
“You’re not a cop anymore,” Lucie answered, immediately regretting the coldness in her voice. “What I mean is, you and I have different resources available to us now.”
“I suppose that’s true,” replied Ismail, a touch defensively, “but what about the political pressure? Police up and down the country have had their investigations curtailed and been threatened with all sorts of crap if they continue. What’s stopping the same pressure being put on us?”
“We have a degree of insulation against that, for now at least,” Lucie answered, risking another sip of her coffee. “Lake, for all his faults – and believe me I know all about them – is a tenacious bugger. There are still one or two people in high positions who want this looked into and Lake is canny enough to be cagey with exactly what he tells who. We can crack on for now.”
She pushed her coffee away from her with a grimace, her burnt tongue letting her know in no uncertain terms that it did not relish the prospect of further sips, at least not right now.
“I don’t even want this,” she said with a laugh, only for Ismail to pick it up and gratefully drain the still steaming contents himself.
“Do you have an asbestos throat?” she asked, a look of quizzical amusement on her face.
“Nope, just a headache that could floor a rhino,” he answered with a grin. “There was a lot of beer flowing last night.”
She laughed, “I wish I looked as good as you when I’m hungover; it’s normally tea time before I’ve stopped drooling onto my pillow.”
“Getting up and ready isn’t the problem for me,” Ismail said, dabbing his lips with a paper serviette. “It’s staying up I struggle with. A pot noodle sandwich for brekkie and as much coffee as I can lay my hands on helps a treat though.”
“Pot noodle butties, eh?” laughed Lucie as she rose from the chair and wrapped her tattered black coat over her shoulders. “I’ve always been a cheeseburger with everything kind of girl when it comes to hangover cures.”
“Each to their own,” the cop smiled, picking up the cups and sliding them onto a bus trolley near the counter before following Lucie to the door and staring in concern at the garment she had just thrown on.
“I thought it was,” he said as she opened the glass door.
“Thought what was what?”
“That’s a bullet hole,” he answered, pointing to the frayed and untidy circle hanging over her midriff.
“You’re mistaken.”
“Don’t patronise me, I know what a bullet hole looks like.”
“What if it is?” Lucie answered, a challenge in her eyes.
“Nothing,” he answered, “I just don’t like the thought of you having been shot, that’s all.”
There was the slightest hint of what sounded like affection in the man’s voice, but now was not the time and she found his question both inappropriate and clumsy. She had been burned before by revealing too much information about herself and her history too quickly, and she had no inclination to repeat her error now. Instead she fixed him with the firmest of gazes and repeated her assertion that he was mistaken, her eyes leaving him in no doubt that further questioning would not be received politely.
They stepped out into the late winter morning sunshine and biting cold air, and Ismail stuffed his hands into suit pockets as they walked, Lucie wrapping her trusty coat tight around her.
“We need to get the social media records of everyone in that group Isabella communicated with, look for any correlations in their activity, any indications they were planning any direct protests or any connections we can find.”
“That’ll be quite a task,” Ismail cautioned. “Seventeen people, probably all with multiple accounts across multiple platforms; that kind of research will take a hell of a long time for just the two of us.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Lucie concurred. “I’ll ask Lake to have people look into that side of things for us. In the meantime, we should check out the scene of the crime. At least the potential scene of the crime.”
“I take it you mean the ‘Adult Leisure & Entertainment Centre’?” Ismail quizzed, a cynical tone to his voice as he gave the official, government approved name of the new establishments.
“The brothel, yeah,” Lucie answered. “I want to find out exactly what went on there that night, question the employees, view any CCTV footage…”
“I don’t have my police ID anymore.”
“Yes you do.”
They had reached the famous Chalk Farm Road bridge, Lucie stopping as they passed under it, and Ismail following suit with a curious frown on his face. Reaching into the inside pocket of her voluminous overcoat, Lucie pulled out two small, black wallets, handing one to Ismail and keeping one for herself.
“I asked Lake for these,” she explained as Ismail opened his to reveal a shining, metal police badge and corresponding photo card.
“Fake police IDs?” he frowned, clearly somewhat professionally irritated as well as appreciative of the convenience.
“Nothing fake about these,” she replied. “Everything’s real apart from the names.”
“Spy names?” Ismail laughed heartily, “No way! Let me guess, DC Mike Oxlong and DS Gloria Spoobs?”
“Piss off,” she laughed, “this isn’t a bloody Bond film; we’ve got sensible, every day names. I’m Agni Tadialova, and you’re Zishan Ellahi, at least as far as this case is concerned.
“I suppose that’ll do,” Ismail smiled, pocketing his new identity securely. “So, Lake’s lot can look into the electronic trails and you and I will do the good cop, bad cop routine at the knocking shop. Sounds like a plan.”
Lucie took a deep breath and winced a little as she came clean to the once more confused looking Ismail.
“Actually,” she began, “I was thinking of a slightly different approach.”
“Like what?”
“Come with me,” she said, “I think you might need a bit of hair of the dog.”
TWELVE
The bright winter sun had long since faded by the time Lucie reached the threshold of the Camden Town Centre for Adult Leisure and Entertainment that evening. Having eschewed her usual paisley and denim, Lucie climbed the steps to the grand, illuminated entrance dressed in unusual finery. A velvet cocktail dress as red as the lipstick she uncharacteristically wore, clung to her frame. Her dependable, if somewhat tired, overcoat having been left at home, Lucie instead carried the kind of small and impractical handbag she had so often laughed at in the past, cursing both it, the stupidity of the high heels she wore, and whomever had decided that they were an appropriate look for a woman. Outwardly cold but inwardly warmed by irritation at her attire, Lucie pulled open the door to be met by a duo of impeccably mannered bouncers.
The woman, the shorter of the two, stepped forward, imposing in black leggings, boots and bomber jacket, while the man hung slightly back, resplendent with shaven head and goatee beard.
“Good evening, madam,” she said, her voice politeness itself, though her lined and somewhat ‘lived in’ face remained unflinchingly stern. “Welcome to the Camden Adult Centre. Are there others in your party this evening?”
“No,” Lucie answered, her eyes quickly taking in the pair. There was little question both could handle not only themselves but probably several others besides. The woman, whom the goateed man seemed to defer to, looked a few years older than Lucie, and her jacket prevented a thorough assessment of her physique, but her thigh and calf muscles, around which her leggings tightly clung, were testament to her strength. Her colleague also possessed the aura of the genuine article. Both, Lucie thought, looked more than capable of causing serious physical damage – or worse – to anyone who found themselves on the wrong side of the establishment’s rules. Faced with a young woman like Ines, they would barely even break a sweat.
Sealed With A Death Page 7
