China Roses

by Jo Bannister

  ‘I know,’ said Ash miserably. ‘And I know it’s not fair on you. Do you want to take a few days off? – an extra week’s paid holiday, go and visit those friends of yours in the Lake District? Then you won’t find yourself having to tell any lies, and by the time you get back the … situation … will have been resolved.’

  Her manner softened at the offer. Though she was employed to take care of the Ash boys, sometimes she forgot that there were only two of them – that the third was forty-two years old, over six foot tall when he stood up straight, and not actually one of her charges at all. But her respect for him had deepened over the last two years to a genuine regard, and it wasn’t only concern for her own position that had brought her here. ‘I’m not comfortable about leaving you to deal with this alone.’

  ‘It’s my job to deal with it,’ he said simply. ‘No one else can. I suppose,’ he ventured, ‘you think I should tell the police?’

  ‘It’s no part of my job to tell you what you should do,’ said Frankie tartly. ‘I imagine, if you thought the boys were in any danger, you’d have told them already.’

  Ash nodded. ‘It occurred to me that you might.’

  She considered. ‘I wouldn’t lie if the police asked me a direct question. I don’t think you’d expect me to. But this is your family, Mr Ash, and I don’t want to create difficulties for you in order to salve my conscience. Nevertheless, if Mrs Ash stays here much longer, her presence will be noticed. You and I will be able to keep the secret for as long as necessary, but sooner or later one of the boys will make a mistake. Will say something to a friend, that the friend mentions to his parents, that the parents will feel obliged to report to the police.

  ‘She’s not a petty criminal, someone whose misdemeanours might be overlooked by a good neighbour. People know what she was involved in, what she did. There would be nothing malicious about someone feeling they had to report her presence here. And she would be in a lot of trouble, and you would be in a lot of trouble, but worse than that, those boys would know that their mother was going to prison because of something they said, a mistake they made. I don’t believe you’re any more comfortable with that prospect than I am.’

  Despair was aging Ash in front of her. ‘I don’t know what to do. Of course the boys come first. But will they forgive me if I turn her away and they never see her again? Or the police catch up with her because I deny her our home as a refuge? I wish to God she’d never come here, but she did, and I don’t know what to do to keep this from blowing up in our faces. But Frankie’ – he looked directly at her – ‘much as we all think of you as a member of this family, our problems are not your problems, and there’s no reason for you to stand in the firing line beside us. Take yourself away for a winter break.’ He managed a pale smile. ‘Keswick must be charming at this time of year.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Frankie. ‘And that would probably keep me safe from any legal repercussions. It would do nothing to help you and the boys.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But then, what will?’

  ‘Have you talked to Miss Best?’

  A wave of guilt and discomfort passed across his face. ‘How can I talk to Hazel? She’s a police officer. If she knew – if she even suspected – that Cathy was here, her career would be on the line. I can’t put that burden on her.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. So what are you going to do?’

  ‘What can I do? Apart from trying to keep Cathy out of sight until it suits her to leave, what else can I do?’

  But some problems even Frankie Kelly had no answer for.

  After she had left him alone, sick with worry, too dizzy to clamber off the endless roundabout of what he could do and what he should do and what he wanted to do and what consequences might follow from each, he felt a cool damp touch on the palm of his hanging hand. Patience was looking up at him with liquid caramel eyes.

  This isn’t as complicated as you’re making it seem. You know what you should do.

  He barked a little laugh that was half a sob. ‘No, don’t spare my feelings – tell me what you really think!’

  I think you’re putting everyone at risk in order to protect the one person in all this who doesn’t deserve it.

  ‘Maybe you should phone Dave Gorman and tell him where she is.’

  Don’t be silly, said Patience severely. You know he wouldn’t hear me. Only you hear me.

  ‘That’s because you’re a dog,’ said Ash weakly. ‘Just a dog. I only think you’re talking because the PTSD never quite went away. What I’m really listening to is the voice of my own conscience.’

  That’s as good an explanation as any, agreed Patience. Though I’m not sure about the JUST a dog bit.

  Ash gave a frayed smile and stroked her head, which – dog or conscience – she had always liked. She leaned into his hand. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I know what I should do. But how can I do it? How can I send my sons’ mother to prison?’

  She tried to kill you.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  Have you forgiven?

  ‘No, not that either. But … I don’t need vengeance. I have everything I need – my children, our home, my shop, my friends, you. The problem is, I’m not sure I can keep them all. I genuinely don’t care what happens to Cathy now, but I do care passionately about my relationship with my sons. But if I help her for their sake, I’m going to lose Hazel and probably Frankie too. Or I could go to prison, and lose them all.’

  Yes, you could. That should make the decision easier, not harder.

  Ash searched through his pockets until he found his mobile phone. He offered it to her.

  I’m just a dog, remember? said Patience. No opposable thumbs. If you want someone to make the call, it’ll have to be you.

  The study door opened again – no knock – and it was Cathy. ‘Talking to yourself again, Gabriel? You do know that’s not a good sign?’

  Ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, and Hazel did knock on DCI Gorman’s door before she went in to update him on her progress; or rather, the lack of it. He didn’t seem surprised.

  ‘This is the reality of CID,’ he said resignedly, ‘as distinct from the mythology. We have a clear-up rate, nationally, of a little under eight per cent – i.e., twelve crimes go unsolved for every one that results in a conviction. OK, we do better with major crimes than minor ones – complain that someone’s half-inched the hedge-cutters out of your garden shed and it’ll figure in the statistics even though we know, and you know, and the guy who nicked the hedge-cutters knows, that we haven’t the manpower to chase him down. But we’re still running at twelve-to-one against, and not many races are won at those kinds of odds.’

  ‘This isn’t petty theft,’ said Hazel, quietly rebellious. ‘It’s murder, and it may be modern slavery. That girl crossed two continents in search of a better life, and someone shot her in the back and dumped her in a reservoir. If we can’t pull out all the stops for her, who can we pull them out for?’

  ‘We don’t even know who she is, or where she came from. And I don’t know how to set about finding out.’

  ‘David says she came from Vietnam.’

  ‘Which is a country,’ Gorman pointed out, ‘not a village. Go stand in the middle of Hanoi and shout, “Anybody here know a Rose?” and see how far it gets you.’

  Hazel gave a demure smile. ‘We could try that. Or we could try stable isotope analysis.’

  Gorman stared as if she’d grown an extra head. ‘What?’

  ‘We did it before,’ she reminded him. ‘To prove that Gabriel’s sons hadn’t been held hostage in Africa at all but had in fact been living in Cambridge. It was David Sperrin who put me onto it: it’s a technique they use in archaeology. They use teeth, but we used samples of the boys’ hair. It all comes down to the ratio between – between – don’t tell me, I’ll have it in a minute – between strontium and oxygen in the drinking water. Or something like that.’

  Now Gorman remembered. He’d had to sign the chit. Hazel had ha
d to spell out some of the words for him, and she’d had to look them up in a dictionary. ‘But what’s that going to tell us that we don’t already know? Is the drinking water different in different parts of Vietnam? Even if it is, how much will it narrow down the search?’

  Now she thought about it, Hazel wasn’t sure either. ‘Maybe it won’t,’ she said, deflated.

  ‘Maybe it’s worth doing anyway,’ said Gorman, more to encourage her than out of any real hope. ‘The poor kid’s not going to miss a bit of hair or even a tooth, is she? And it’ll be another piece in the jigsaw. She’s probably got family somewhere, and any time now they’ll start wondering what’s happened to her. If they get worried enough to report her missing, we might be able to make contact. If we can’t find her killers, we should at least try to find her family, let them know that she won’t be phoning home. I’ll do the paperwork, you go back to the morgue and explain what we need.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Hazel; and after a moment, ‘It’s not easy, is it?’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Being a detective. Knowing you’re the last best hope for a bunch of desperate people, and that you’ve only got one chance in twelve of giving them what they need.’

  DCI Gorman gave a sombre smile. ‘No, it isn’t. But it is important. Sometimes, even when we’re not successful, we find the answers to some questions. Sometimes, that’s the best people can hope for.’

  Hazel rather liked the morgue. Compared to the rest of the hospital, it was an oasis of calm: no drunks to be evicted, no children to be dodged, no one throwing up in the waste-paper basket. She had no problems with dead people. Sometimes, particularly if the police had got involved, their stories were sad ones, but their sufferings were over. They were at peace, a peace which permeated the whole department.

  Her only reservation about the morgue was the people who worked there. It might not be an official career path for medicos whose bedside manner gave cause for concern, but pathology departments always ended up with more than their fair share of characters.

  Dr Fitzgerald was a case in point. Like Sergeant Wilson, he hadn’t really the figure for his working clothes, in his case a set of one-size-doesn’t-fit-anyone theatre scrubs. His fondness for highly coloured waistcoats and bow-ties, often visible through his plastic apron, rendered the already memorable unforgettable. He referred to the cadavers as his clients, and kept them entertained by humming pieces more usually rendered by a full orchestra.

  He studied Gorman’s request, grasping the import without further explanation. ‘Ah. Yes. You want me to do a bit of ad hoc dentistry on Rose Doe.’

  ‘If we can figure out where she came from, we may be able to find her family. They deserve to know what happened to her.’

  ‘Of course they do. She’d want them to.’ Humming portentously – Hazel was no opera buff but she thought it was that football thing from Turandot – he went directly to the girl’s cabinet and slid her out. ‘You might not want to watch this bit.’

  ‘If she can put up with it, I can,’ muttered Hazel.

  The chosen molar extracted, Dr Fitzgerald returned Rose to her cool-box and moved over to his bench. He glanced up as he worked. ‘Any progress finding these bastards?’

  ‘Not that you’d notice,’ admitted Hazel. ‘Our star witness is still suffering from amnesia.’

  ‘Take the scunner down a back alley and kick him a few times,’ advised the poster-boy for the caring professions.

  ‘No, really,’ said Hazel, smothering a grin. ‘Head injury. Bits keep trickling back, but there’s no consistency, and we’re not sure which are proper memories and which are bad dreams.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s a bit different,’ admitted Walter Fitzgerald. ‘Pity, really. It’s surprising how many amnesias can be cured by a good kicking. And these bastards need finding.’

  Hazel nodded. ‘Yes, they do.’

  ‘Did you see her knees?’

  ‘Her knees?’

  ‘It was in my report,’ he said reproachfully. ‘The marks on her knees.’

  ‘What kind of marks?’

  The pathologist gave a cumbrous shrug. ‘Circular bruising round both knees. I’m guessing they used hobbles to restrain her.’

  Nodding, he returned to the cabinets, slid Rose out again and slipped the sheet up from her feet. ‘See? Not very thick – about a centimetre – but it caused both bruising and abrasion. Depending on the length of the chain, she’d have been able to walk but not to run.’

  ‘She was able to run when our witness met her. That’s why she was shot, because she was running away.’

  ‘They’d taken the hobbles off, then, or else she’d found a way of getting them off.’ He put the sheet back, smoothing it around the girl’s feet. ‘There you are, pet – sorry to disturb you.’ He closed the cabinet, waved a hand towards the bench. ‘I’ll get these off to the lab. Get the results in a couple of days, maybe.’

  Hazel was still puzzling over the circular bruises. ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘When I got her? Not even a smile. Why?’

  She didn’t answer him, spent the drive back into town crystallising her ideas and then took them up with DCI Gorman.

  ‘I’ve been wondering why they’d tie her knees instead of her ankles. Maybe it’s because hobbling her knees wouldn’t be obvious if she was wearing a long skirt. Which might suggest that, at some point in her journey, she was in plain sight. If people realised she was being restrained they’d have done something about it.’

  Dave Gorman nodded slowly. ‘It could mean that, yes. So maybe she wasn’t landed on a bit of east coast shingle at the dead of night, but came through a commercial port or airport like an ordinary traveller. Which would mean having some kind of papers. They wouldn’t have to be top-quality ones to get her off, say, a container ship docked at Tilbury, under the guise of captain’s stewardess or crew cook or something, but they’d have to pass at least a cursory inspection.’

  ‘It also means she was no longer an illegal immigrant, she was already a prisoner.’

  ‘Looks that way.’ Gorman considered a moment. ‘That’s a good bit of thinking, Hazel. I read that PM report, saw Fitzgerald had noted bruising on her knees. I didn’t spot the significance.’

  If Hazel had been a cat she’d have purred. ‘To be fair, Dr Fitzgerald drew my attention to it. I didn’t have to wade through the whole report.’

  ‘Still, good work.’

  Emboldened by her success, she ventured another theory. ‘She was found naked.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that how she went into the dam?’

  ‘Probably. It’s a reservoir – well, it was: it isn’t used any more – there isn’t much current to pull at her clothes.’

  ‘She wasn’t naked when David saw her.’

  ‘That he’d have remembered,’ agreed the DCI.

  ‘So they stripped her after she was shot and before they disposed of her body. Not a pleasant task: they must have had a good reason.’

  ‘People’s clothes can identify them,’ said Gorman. ‘Not just the contents of their pockets – the labels on their underwear as well. Can suggest at least the general locality they came from.’

  ‘I doubt if the entire wardrobe of the average illegal immigrant contains a single traceable item,’ murmured Hazel. ‘If the traffickers thought she was worth stripping, that may mean her clothes were distinctive. Not a cheap mass-market T-shirt but something that could be traced. To one manufacturer or one city. Conceivably, to one shop.’

  The DCI was listening carefully. ‘How does that help?’

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t,’ admitted Hazel. ‘Except that it confirms what we thought: she wasn’t trying to escape from poverty. She was from a successful family, people who could afford expensive things. They didn’t wave her off expecting never to hear from her again. They thought she had a good job waiting.’

  ‘So when they realise she’s missing, they may have enough clout to get their concerns listened to,’
said Gorman. ‘If we can’t find them, maybe they’ll find us.’

  ‘What are we going to tell them? That their daughter died with a bullet in her back because the people who promised her a good job in England made a slave of her before she ever landed here?’

  ‘No,’ said Gorman gruffly. ‘We’re going to tell them that we found the bastards, and they’re going to pay. For what they did to Rose, and God knows how many other girls just like her.’

  ‘Not just like her. The others submitted to their fate and never found a way of letting us know what was happening to them. But Rose was brave enough to take them on. Her death should count for something.’

  ‘It will,’ promised Gorman. ‘I meant what I said. We will find these bastards, and we’ll find them in time to give Rose’s parents a little consolation when we have to break the news to them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Right now I have absolutely no idea,’ he said honestly. ‘But we will. We must.’ He peered at her. ‘You’re the one with the bright ideas. How would you find them?’

  Put on the spot like that, Hazel quailed and then rallied. ‘The two biggest markets for girls trafficked into Europe are as prostitutes and domestic servants. We should talk to people involved in both trades.’

  ‘If our girl was so insistent that she wasn’t Chinese,’ suggested Gorman, ‘maybe it’s because there were other girls in that van who were. Maybe the traffickers specialise in Chinese immigrants. Can we narrow the search down to people who employ Chinese girls specifically?’

  ‘I’ll get onto it,’ said Hazel.

  Gorman hid a smile. Her enthusiasm reminded him of him at the same stage in his career. ‘You make a start on the domestic service side. I’ll get Tom Presley to look into the prostitution scene.’

  She blinked, disappointed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the people farming these girls out will believe that you’re interested in employing a Chinese maid. And they might believe that he’s looking for a Chinese prostitute. Other way round? – not so credible. Horses for courses, Hazel,’ he said. ‘Horses for courses.’