‘Did Elena give him a family name?’
‘Nope, and she never gave any hint that Grace even existed.’
‘We may never find out who the dead girl really is,’ Thackeray said. ‘An anonymous death in a faraway country. Her family will never know what happened to her.’ Thackeray seemed to look bleakly straight through Mower for a moment before he shook himself slightly and returned to the present.
‘And the trafficking? What did Elena say about that?’ he asked.
‘She told Ibramovic about the house where she was kept. Quite a big house, she said, although coming from where she comes from he said anything with more than two or three rooms would seem big to her. He’s a Bosnian, so he should know. Anyway, he reckons three floors at least and some sort of cellar. She said when girls got hysterical or stroppy they’d be put underground in a room without windows and left there for a couple of days. The whole house was dark, apparently. Elena said that the windows all round the house were generally covered up with what sounded like wooden shutters. Which means it has to be an old house, Victorian probably, with those shutters that close on the inside.’
‘There’s a few of those still about in the older parts of Bradfield,’ Thackeray said. ‘Mainly around Aysgarth Lane.’
‘Right, and that would be a good area to choose if you’re going to put women on the street. But I did speak to one of my contacts and she said she didn’t think foreign girls were being run on the street. She’d heard rumours but never met anyone like that, and didn’t know anyone who had.’
‘The vice team from County are going to do a sweep of the red light districts tonight,’ Thackeray said. ‘We haven’t the numbers to do it ourselves. I want every woman on the game questioned.’
‘That sounds good,’ Mower said. ‘It may turn up some sort of corroboration of the rumours. But Jackie reckons that they’re being run as call girls. Kept under close guard and taken out to clients. Or possibly offered in some of the clubs.’
‘That would fit with what we know about Grace and Elena being taken to West Royd,’ Thackeray said. ‘Tomorrow I want to start interviewing every single person who was at the United parties at the club over the last few months. Find out from Minelli how many there’ve been. It seems to be after they’ve won a match and I understand they’ve been doing that unusually often recently. Someone must know how those girls got there, who brought them, who asked for them to be brought.’
‘You’d best make a start quickly,’ Mower said. ‘Everyone connected with United will be going to London for the big match, don’t forget. That’s on Tuesday evening.’
‘Plenty of overtime over the weekend then,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’ll fix it with Jack Longley. Start by asking the football club for a list of all those who were invited, including wives and girlfriends. We’ll start with the legitimate guests, but ask them all if they saw anyone they didn’t recognise or didn’t expect to find there. It’ll be tedious but necessary. A lot of people must have seen those two girls at least at one club party, and maybe other girls we haven’t identified, if what Jolene and Katrina said about seeing girls leave the Chelsea party was true. I want a picture of how they arrived, who they spoke to, who they went upstairs with – it may not be only the three players we know about – and how they left, and who with, who ordered them and who paid for them. We’ll interview the whole team, if necessary. Girls have been seen coming and going in the car park. What sort of car were they in? What were they wearing? Who were they with? I want a complete picture of each night, and particularly the night the two girls ran off, after asking the men they were with for money. They ran, but who, if anyone, followed? Someone may have noticed.’
‘Guv,’ Mower said, making copious notes as he listened to Thackeray. ‘We could ask the beat coppers in the older areas of town about the house, too,’ he suggested. ‘Somewhere old and large, with windows more or less permanently shuttered up. There can’t be too many places like that. If we find a likely house we can ask the neighbours what they’ve seen.’
‘Yes, organise that too, would you, Kevin?’ Thackeray said, tiredly. ‘Any other leads?’
‘Possibly,’ Mower said. ‘Joyce Ackroyd has turned up trumps. She’s here now looking at mug shots for the two men who knocked on her door claiming to be from immigration. She reckons they went round most of the estate so there’s a good chance we’ll get a good description, if not a positive ID. And she made a note of the mobile phone number they were giving out. I suppose the chances are that it’s a pay-as-you-go with no registered owner, but you never know. Someone may have been stupid enough to give their own number. I’m having it checked out. Anyway, if it’s switched on we may be able to pinpoint its whereabouts. That might help us find the house too.’
‘If they’ve any sense they’ll have ditched the phone by now, and quite possibly moved their base,’ Thackeray said. ‘But give it a try. We can’t afford not to. Have there been any sightings of the two runaway girls?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Mower said. ‘We’re still wading through the CCTV tapes. The Gazette and local TV want to know if you want them to go with the pictures of the two of them?’
‘If we do, we risk alerting the traffickers to the fact that Elena’s still in Bradfield.’
‘If we don’t, we get no feedback from the public.’
The two men’s eyes met in shared anxiety for a moment.
‘Go with Jasmin’s picture,’ Thackeray said. ‘But ask them not to make any connection between her and the other girl. Missing schoolgirls are common enough, and if we find her we’ll find Elena as well, obviously. Tell her parents what we’re doing and why. They’ll understand. The fact that Elena’s with her makes Jasmin’s situation all the more dangerous. They’ll know that.’
‘Right, guv,’ Mower said.
‘Anything from the sweep of massage parlours?’
‘Nothing so far,’ Mower said. ‘There’s plenty of girls who will admit, if pushed, to offering a lot more than the standard massage, but we’ve not found anyone who knows anything about foreign girls being brought into their establishments. No one who’ll admit it, anyway.’
‘Right, well, keep going with that but softly, softly, especially in the clubs. I don’t want to panic these bastards and have them leaving town, taking their girls with them.’ ‘Right, guv, I’ll work on the trawl of the clubs myself tonight. Take someone with me, look like punters, and make some discreet inquiries. If what Elena says is true these girls must be offered for sale somehow, somewhere. We’ll find them.’
‘Let’s hope so, before someone else gets killed,’ Thackeray said. ‘Or they’re all shipped out to Manchester or London or Belgrade. I don’t think we’ve got much time.’
Laura finished work that afternoon and sat at her blank computer screen for a long time, wondering what to do with the long empty evening that stretched ahead of her. She knew without being told that Thackeray would not come back that night. In fact she guessed that he would not come back at all unless they found some way of discussing and resolving the chasm of misunderstanding that now lay between them. Thackeray had never sold his own flat in Bradfield, and she knew that he regarded it as a bolthole for the moment when their affair finally crashed in flames, as she guessed that he had always thought it might. Maybe that moment had come at last, she thought. She desperately wanted to talk to him, but she knew from past experience that he had the capacity to bury himself in his work when he needed to, although if that failed, there was always the other route to emotional oblivion he had largely resisted since she had known him but which lurked like a rabid tiger in the dark undergrowth ready to consume him if he showed the slightest weakness.
Still debilitated by his spell in hospital, she knew he was finding the present case difficult. The next week, when they both had appointments with the inquiry team probing Bradfield CID’s last horrific murder, would be worse. Together they might have withstood the pressure. Apart, she was not at all sure they could.
She
sighed and had walked across the deserted office to get her coat when the phone on her desk rang. She hurried back and grabbed the receiver, her heart thumping, hoping against hope that it might be Thackeray, and was surprised to hear Vince Newsom’s voice at the other end of the line. She had never found the emotional energy to follow Kevin Mower’s advice and talk to her former colleague and lover about the evidence he proposed to give to the police inquiry, and now, she guessed, he had decided to take the initiative himself.
‘Hi, doll,’ Vince said, with his customary lack of charm. ‘As you probably know, I’m up in your neck of the woods on Monday, courtesy of the cops, and thought we might get together for old time’s sake.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Laura said. ‘Not after what you did to me last time. What exactly do you intend to tell the inquiry?’
There was a short silence at the other end.
‘That rather depends on you, darling,’ Vince said.
‘What do you mean?’ Laura asked, although she had a good idea what was bothering him.
‘Well, it did cross my mind that neither of us has much to gain by slagging each other off in front of these nosy coppers. What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,’ Laura said, as much to gain time as because it was true.
‘Let me spell it out then, babe,’ Vince said, an edge of irritation making his voice harsher. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to go into lurid detail about what went on that night and I’m bloody sure I don’t want to be accused of nicking that crucial sheet of paper from you. I’ve a fiancée now whose family is already a bit sniffy about what I do for a living. A bit more Telegraph than Globe inclined, my future in-laws. I thought that if you said you had lost the document that was in your bag and I said I found it in my car after I’d dropped you off we would both be better off. What do you think?’
‘You want me to lie to the inquiry to cover up for you?’ Laura asked angrily, filled with fury that Vince Newsom should be trying to manipulate her yet again.
‘You wouldn’t be lying,’ Vince snapped back. ‘Can you honestly say how I found your precious piece of paper? Did you see me take it? Of course you didn’t. You were out of it, baby. You know you were. I had to put you to bed, for God’s sake. And you don’t remember that, either, do you?’
Laura caught her breath, feeling as cold suddenly as she had felt hot a moment before.
‘Do you really want everyone – and I do mean everyone – to know just how pissed you were that night?’ Newsom persisted. ‘Much better all round if we keep it simple. You couldn’t drive home because you were over the limit, I kindly dropped you off, and later on I found this very interesting note in my car that you were supposed to deliver to lover boy. And surprise, surprise, I jumped on the gift-horse and rode with it before giving you the note back the next day. How’s that? Suit you, does it? No hint of theft on my part, no hint of hanky-panky when you invited me in on yours. A win-win situation, if you ask me. Is it a deal?’
Laura desperately wanted to say no but she knew she couldn’t. Vince’s offer would take the dead weight off her shoulders that had been there ever since the day DC Val Ridley had given her that note for Michael Thackeray, the contents of which had found their way onto the front page of the Globe under Vince Newsom’s by-line, the next morning. He was in no position to deny that he had got hold of the information but he would be as happy to say that he had found it by accident as she would be to see the suspicion that she had deliberately given it to him dispelled. And she would be even more grateful not to have Vince’s visit to her flat explored at the inquiry. She knew he had come inside with her, she knew he had put her to bed, and when he had claimed to have gone further there was no way she could deny it. It would be deeply embarrassing to have Newsom tell the inquiry any of that, but much, much worse when Thackeray heard her ex’s most lurid version of events, which was undoubtedly what would happen if she pushed an allegation of theft.
‘It’s a deal,’ she said quietly to Newsom at last. ‘You’re a bastard, Vince, but it’s a deal.’
‘Good girl,’ Vince said. ‘So let’s get this straight. The note could easily have fallen out of your bag in the car?’
‘Right,’ she said.
‘And I gave you your key and dropped you at your door.’
‘As far as I can remember,’ Laura agreed.
‘Just stick with your hazy memories and we’ll be fine, baby,’ Vince said. ‘We’ll be just fine. As far as I can find out I’m the first to give evidence on Monday so I’ll stick to that. You make sure you do the same.’
With her coat round her shoulders Laura sat at her desk for a few more minutes, wondering again if she could or should try to contact Thackeray. But in the end, she shrugged and pulled her coat on and wound a scarf around her neck, and walked slowly out of the building, hesitating again in the foyer where she could see sleety rain lashing against the plateglass windows. She did not want to go home, and she toyed for a moment with the idea of going up to The Heights to see her grandmother. But although she knew that would please Joyce, she did not feel strong enough to spend an hour or so rehashing the mistakes they had both made that had so infuriated Thackeray. She also ruled out a late call on her friend Vicky Mendelson, who would be putting her children to bed. Vicky would, as always, be a comfort, but she did not want to risk seeing her husband David at the moment. As a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer, she knew that he would be as appalled as Thackeray was when he learnt of the mess she had got herself into.
But her own empty flat seemed less than enticing, and in the end she left her car in the car park and walked across the town centre, dodging the homeward bound shopping traffic, and strode up the stone steps to the imposing entrance of the Clarendon hotel, where she knew she could find an armchair in a quiet corner of the bar and sink into anonymous comfort with a vodka and tonic.
The Clarendon had been a favourite haunt of her father’s, a place where Bradfield’s surviving businessmen conferred, successors of the textile millionaires who had built solid monuments to themselves like the Exchange, the Italianate town hall and the town’s major hotels, which still stood, although their mills and warehouses had fallen silent long ago. The place was still opulent and when she walked in there was a handful of prosperous looking men in suits at the bar taking their Scotch prior to the long drive home to the more salubrious dormitory towns in the Yorkshire Dales. One or two looked at her curiously as she sought out a seat and nodded to the waiter. This was still not a place where a woman on her own was a common sight once afternoon tea had ceased to be served in the lounge to elderly ladies in hats.
Service was quick, and she took a sip of her drink, leant back in her seat and closed her eyes for a second, trying to blot out the day completely. She felt sick at the thought that Thackeray might be trying to do the same with a bottle of Scotch. But she was not left in peace for long. She had only half finished her vodka and tonic when she was aware of a heavyweight figure making its way across the thick carpet towards her.
‘Laura? Laura Ackroyd?’ said the man she quickly recognised as her father’s acquaintance Les Hardcastle. ‘I thought it was you, Laura, and lovelier than ever.’ Hardcastle dropped into the chair on the other side of the table and beamed at her, a florid man in his late fifties with silvery hair and calculating eyes. ‘Have you spoken to your dad recently? I was only talking to him the other day, as it happens. We still keep in touch now and again, me and Jack. Sold me his shares in the end, you know.’
‘I heard you’d had some dealings over Bradfield United,’ Laura said, trying to summon some interest in the obsessions of the football fanatics. ‘Are you going down to London for the Chelsea match?’
‘Oh aye, I’ll be at Stamford Bridge,’ Hardcastle said, his eyes ablaze. ‘It’ll be good to take a close look at a club that’s found an investor like they’ve got, the Russian fellow, you know? I’m trying to get someone like that on board at United. We’d be up in the Premiership i
n no time with that sort of investment in some decent players.’
‘Is that what you’re aiming at?’ Laura said, trying not to look too sceptical as she recalled Jenna Heywood’s conviction that Les would sell the club down the river for a suitable financial return. Les tapped the side of his nose and tried to look mysterious, although to Laura it merely made him seem shifty.
‘It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility,’ he said. ‘There’s feelers out of a very encouraging sort. Can’t say any more, especially as you’re with the Gazette, my dear. But it’ll all come out in the fullness of time. You’ll see.’
‘Well, make sure our sports editor’s the first to hear of it, won’t you?’ Laura said. ‘He’s very keen to discover which way the club is going. I interviewed Jenna Heywood last week. Does she play any part in your plans?’ Laura knew the answer to that question and she was not surprised when Hardcastle scowled.
‘She’s got no idea about football, that young woman,’ Hardcastle said, with real venom in his voice, making Laura suddenly feel cold. ‘Just as soon as the investor I’ve got in mind is fully on board, she’ll be out on her ear, I make no secret of that. She won’t be able to turn the deal down, believe me, even though my man won’t want to keep her on as chairman. You wouldn’t catch this lad leaving a woman in charge.’
‘Any particular reason for that, Les?’ Laura asked sweetly. ‘Smaller brain, perhaps, or the lack of a willy?’
Les flushed, and leant across the table towards her angrily.
‘There’s no need for that,’ he hissed. ‘But it’d not be something a Muslim would do, is it?’
‘A Muslim millionaire then, is it?’ Laura asked.
‘I’ll say no more,’ Hardcastle said, hauling himself back to his feet. ‘Give my regards to your parents when you speak to them.’ And with that he headed back to the bar where he was soon absorbed by a group of middle-aged men in suits who glanced in Laura’s direction in response to something Hardcastle said, and then turned in on themselves again with knowing smiles. Irritated, Laura drained her glass and left the bar, which suddenly felt inhospitable, without a backward glance. On the steps of the hotel she paused for a moment and pulled out her mobile.
Death in a Far Country Page 20
