A Dark and Twisted Tide

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Which brings us to the problem,’ said Dana. ‘Once it gets out that we’ve found two more bodies, and arrested the three in the boat tonight, the operation will close down or move on. We’ll never find who’s doing this.’

  Cook sat down heavily. ‘I can’t do it, Dana. We’ll have been spotted there tonight. People will start asking questions. We’ll have the press down there before you know it. And that’s before we get on to the fact that Lacey was attacked there and only just escaped with her life.’

  ‘More by sheer luck than operational competence,’ snapped Dana.

  Lacey gave her a weak smile.

  ‘My point is—’

  The door to the meeting room opened and Stenning and Anderson entered. ‘The girl still isn’t talking,’ Anderson said. ‘The interpreter’s tried both main Afghan languages and a couple of dialects and got nothing out of her. We can try other languages in the morning, but frankly she could be from anywhere in the Middle East.’

  ‘She’s a Pashtun,’ said Lacey, picking up the photograph again. ‘Just like the others.’ Dana found herself nodding. Even the standard police mugshot couldn’t disguise the girl’s appeal. She was striking, with fair, almost European skin, bright blue eyes and dark brown hair.

  ‘She looks quite a lot like you with your Bollywood makeover.’ Mizon turned the photograph towards her.

  ‘Neither of the two men are saying anything either yet,’ said Stenning. ‘Although both of them do have some knowledge of English. What’s pretty obvious is that they’re scared.’

  ‘Will they talk, do you think?’ asked Cook.

  ‘Probably,’ said Stenning. ‘But I can’t see them being major players. They can probably tell us where they were going to take the girl, but other than that . . .’

  ‘That’s something in itself, though,’ said Anderson. ‘We get a warrant, a dawn raid should throw up something. In which case, we need to get moving. Once it’s known that these guys have been picked up, they’ll start covering their tracks.’

  ‘Except, if Nadia was telling the truth, nothing illegal happened to her while she was with these people,’ said Lacey. ‘She was looked after, given a nice room and plenty of food, medical attention when she got ill, and then the job that she’d been promised.’

  ‘So, if we raid the place, wherever it is, and we come up with nothing, that’s it,’ said Dana. ‘We might get some minor convictions for people-smuggling. The operation will move somewhere else and we’ll never know what was going on.’

  ‘People-smuggling is hardly a minor offence.’ Cook looked offended.

  ‘It’s not murder, though,’ said Dana. ‘Lacey’s right. We’re no nearer knowing what they’re doing to these women and why some of them are dying.’

  ‘Pity we can’t let them go ahead and put a bug on her,’ said Stenning.

  ‘Yeah, that’ll work.’ Anderson stifled a yawn.

  ‘It might.’ Mizon was still looking at the photograph of the girl from the boat. ‘How old would you say she is?’

  ‘Difficult to tell.’ Stenning leaned over her shoulder. ‘Late teens, early twenties.’

  ‘She’s about five foot four, right?’ said Mizon. ‘Weighs about eight and a half stone?’

  ‘What’s on your mind, Gayle?’ said Dana.

  ‘Whoever picked her out back in Afghanistan or wherever wouldn’t have sent a photograph through, would they?’ said Mizon. ‘They won’t want any sort of paper trail. I’ll bet whoever is expecting her was just told it would be a young, good-looking girl, dark hair, light eyes.’

  ‘If you’re suggesting we send someone in undercover, we’ll never get it organized in time,’ said Dana. ‘I can talk to SO10 tonight, but the chances of them having a young Asian officer available are practically non-existent.’

  ‘So you’re saying we’ll never find a young, dark-haired female officer with light-coloured eyes and experience of working undercover at short notice?’ said Mizon.

  Suddenly, every eye in the room was on Lacey.

  73

  Lacey

  IT FELT TO Lacey as though she was the only person in the room capable of being still, of remaining silent. Everyone else was fidgeting, talking too fast, too loud, all at the same time. Tulloch was on her feet, striding from one side of the room to the other, the way she invariably did when she was stressed. ‘I am not risking the life of an officer on a half-baked, ill-considered, reckless operation,’ she announced. ‘We’re not discussing it any further.’

  ‘No disrespect, Ma’am,’ said Mizon, ‘but there’s no harm in considering every possibility. Lacey can pass for one of these women. She already has. She convinced half the occupants of the Old Kent Road the other night. If Mr Cook can give us twenty-four hours before he brings those bodies up, it might just be enough.’

  Enough, thought Lacey. It wasn’t enough, then, that she’d had corpses strewn in her way, strung up from her boat. It wasn’t enough that someone had wanted her to be the next one. Funny, how she hadn’t been able to see that until now.

  Tulloch was leaning against the far wall, her arms folded, glowering.

  Anderson had the floor. ‘I’m not saying I agree with Gayle, but presumably SO10 can fit us out with surveillance equipment. We’ll know where she is at all times. The minute she’s worried, we can pull her out.’

  Cook held up one arm to get attention. ‘I definitely don’t agree. Lacey’s my officer and my responsibility, when all’s said and done. But just for the sake of argument, we can put teams on the river in unmarked vessels. We can be seconds away from her, all the time she’s in there. I’m still not saying I think it’s wise. It’s too rushed.’

  They were going to let her do it, Lacey realized. This was noise, bluster. They were going through the motions, but when it came to it, they didn’t have another option.

  ‘Exactly,’ snapped Tulloch. ‘And how will we get the two men to play ball?’

  ‘Offer them a deal,’ said Mizon. ‘They make a phone call, now, to whoever they were due to meet, saying they were held up and they’ll try again tomorrow. Tomorrow night, with a close but discreet police escort, they take Lacey and hand her over. Then they come back into custody until the operation is over. In return for their cooperation and for testifying, they get lenient treatment.’

  ‘All they have to do is wink, or pass a note, and Lacey ends up at the bottom of the Thames,’ said Tulloch.

  Like she hadn’t been there before. Hello, river bed, looks like you won, after all.

  ‘If there’s any winking or note-passing, we get her out of there,’ Mizon was arguing. ‘We’ll practically be camped out on her doorstep. Look, I’m not saying it’s ideal, but it might be the best chance we have.’

  And there was that brief moment of silence, as though she’d ordered it.

  ‘Gayle’s right,’ said Lacey. ‘It is our only chance. You all know it, you just don’t want to ask me to do it.’

  ‘Do you speak Pashto?’ said Tulloch, eyebrows raised. ‘Or Dari?’

  ‘There are forty languages in Afghanistan,’ said Lacey. ‘What are the chances of the reception party being fluent in all of them? Not that I’m saying it’s a good idea, you understand.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad we’re agreed on something,’ said Tulloch. ‘Because even if you idiots can talk me into it, Weaver will never agree.’

  ‘Can I talk to her? The girl we picked up tonight? Can I have some time with her?’

  ‘Why? To work on your cover story? It’s not happening, Lacey.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to her without the interpreter and the solicitor, just her and me.’

  ‘No. That would be highly irregular.’

  Lacey sighed. ‘She hasn’t requested a solicitor, Ma’am, and she hasn’t even acknowledged the interpreter. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t ask them to leave. Gayle can come in with me, if you don’t want me to be alone.’

  ‘Lacey—’

  ‘I know, Ma’am. We all think it’s a bad idea.
So we need to find out what we can, while we can.’

  ‘Oh, do what you bloody well want. I give up.’

  ‘I think you can understand me.’

  Gayle was right, Lacey thought. She and the girl across the table did look alike. The other girl was probably younger, but spending more time outdoors in extreme temperatures had coarsened her face. Her hair was long and dark brown, her eyebrows finely drawn and her eyes the colour of cornflowers just as their freshness starts to fade.

  They’d had her moved to the family room, a more relaxed space than the interview rooms, a space where they normally interviewed children or vulnerable people.

  ‘I think you’re from Afghanistan.’ The girl looked steadily back at Lacey, almost without blinking. ‘And that you were told there would be a job for you here. Maybe looking after children or helping a rich Western woman with the housework. You expected to be able to send money home to your family. So you must be able to speak some English, or you’d never have considered coming.’

  Lacey waited, for any sort of reaction. The other woman’s eyes dropped to the untouched mug of coffee on the table. Lacey glanced to one side and got a reassuring nod from Gayle.

  ‘I think your journey here took a long time,’ she said. ‘That it became uncomfortable, maybe even frightening. I think you began to wonder if you’d made a mistake, but you were told it was too late to change your mind. I think the men who were bringing you here changed. They started to threaten, instead of persuade. They told you that you had no choice. That your family would suffer if you made trouble. I think you’re probably terrified right now.’

  She waited again, looking for something, anything, in those blue eyes. OK, time to step it up a bit.

  Lacey opened the folder in front of her and turned it so the girl could see the photograph of Nadia Safi. ‘What I need you to understand is that you’re actually very lucky.’

  Blue eyes darted down and lost interest. She’d clearly never seen Nadia before.

  ‘This is Nadia Safi,’ said Lacey. ‘She was very lucky, too. She arrived in England last summer. From Afghanistan, like you. She’s working with a family in London now. Of course, she could be sent home at any time because she’s still here illegally. She’s probably little more than a slave, but no one hurts her. She has food, somewhere to live. She’s a lucky one.’

  The girl was looking bored now. Lacey opened the folder again and pulled out two more photographs, laying them face down on the desk. She turned the first over.

  ‘We call this girl Sahar. This is what we think she looked like when she was alive.’ She turned the other photograph. ‘This is what she looked like when we pulled her out of the river. She wasn’t so lucky.’

  The girl had looked quickly at the photograph. The shock on her face had been genuine. Her eyes were down now, fixed on the table top.

  ‘I’m sorry to upset you. But you need to understand how serious this is.’ Lacey took out a photograph taken at the last post-mortem, of the corpse found strung up on Lacey’s boat. Then another, taken from the Marine Unit files, of the woman pulled from near the South Dock Marina two months previously.

  ‘Three dead women. All your age, all from your country, all brought into the UK just as you were. All exactly like you. So here’s where we make a decision. When you leave police custody and go into the United Kingdom’s immigration system, the men who brought you here, the men who are doing this, will find you again. They found Nadia and they’ll find you. You’re too valuable to them to let go. You may be one of the lucky ones, like Nadia. Or you may not.’

  ‘Lacey,’ said Gayle, ‘I’m really not sure she understands a word you’re saying.’

  ‘Oh, I think she understands just about every word I’m saying.’ Lacey didn’t take her eyes off the girl. ‘But I’ll slow down, because this next bit is important. In a few hours, I’m going to take your place. I’m going to wear clothes just like yours and I’m going to let the men who brought you here take me to where they were going to take you. I’m going to pretend to be a young, terrified woman from Afghanistan. Only I won’t have to pretend to be terrified. That will be for real. We call it undercover work. I’m going to put myself in danger because I don’t want any more girls from your country to die. That’s what I’m going to do. How about you?’

  She waited. The girl held eye contact steadily. Lacey could hear Gayle breathing at her side. She gathered together the photographs and stood up.

  ‘Interview terminated at 04.23 hours.’ She went to switch off the recording equipment.

  ‘You haven’t asked me anything,’ said a voice from behind her. ‘All you’ve done is talk at me. If there’s something you want to know, ask me.’

  74

  Dana

  DANA PULLED THE photograph of the three dead women up on to the screen of her laptop.

  ‘We’re going to charge you with murder,’ she told the dark-skinned young man across the table. ‘We have three bodies of illegal immigrants. We have contacts in Afghanistan, we’re going to find out who these women were and we’re going to trace them to you. More importantly, we have a woman who was brought in last year, who didn’t end up at the bottom of the Thames. She can identify you.’

  The man sat stony-faced, not reacting. Beneath the table was a different matter. His left leg was vibrating with nervous energy. It was making the whole side of his body shake.

  ‘You’ll probably serve thirty years,’ she said. ‘Your friend, on the other hand, will get off lightly. Because he’s cooperating.’

  Just the hint of a glower beneath those heavy brows.

  ‘He’s talking to my sergeant right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already told him where you picked the girl up and where you were heading tonight.’

  She reached out and picked up her phone. The screen was empty, but he couldn’t see that.

  ‘My sergeant wants to see me,’ she said. ‘I think it must be over. We need someone to help us with an operation. But we only need one of you. It’ll be the one we trust the most. The one who’s cooperated.’ She got up and closed her laptop.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ asked the man.

  ‘It isn’t happening, Lacey,’ said Dana, when she and the team were once more in the meeting room. ‘You may have taken maverick operations to a whole new level, but I don’t take foolish risks with the lives of fellow officers. Your sun-tan is clearly fake, your hair is obviously dyed and your skin is classic English rose. And just in case you’d forgotten, whoever is killing these women knows who you are. He tried to drown you earlier. All I’d be doing by sending you in is making it easier for them. “Here’s Lacey. I’ve gift-wrapped her for you.” You know what, I’m actually tempted.’

  ‘If we let this chance go, we’ll never get another one,’ said Lacey.

  ‘I know that,’ said Dana. ‘Which is why, against all my better judgement, I’m going to agree.’

  It was as though someone had poured ice-cold water over the girl. Dana watched, half amused. Lacey liked to talk tough, she was exceptionally brave and would do it, no doubt at all, but she’d been badly scared recently. Scratch the bravado and terror was only just beneath the surface.

  Dana watched her reach out for a coffee mug that was long since empty with a trembling hand. She drew it back quickly, before anyone could see, and Dana was suddenly reminded of why she liked this young woman so much, why her best friend had fallen in love with her.

  ‘Right.’ Anderson jumped to his feet. He was ashen. He, too, liked Lacey. ‘We’d better get moving. I’ve got someone from SO10 coming over to talk us through what to expect. Lacey, are you sure about this? Because if you’re not . . .’

  ‘Keep your knickers on, Neil,’ said Dana. ‘Lacey isn’t going undercover. I am.’

  75

  Dana and Lacey

  THEY WAITED FOR the tide. It had to be high, the two men had explained, plenty of water, but not flowing too fast. At a little-used jetty on the south bank just east of Greenwich
, Aamil climbed into the boat first and stepped to the front. He was the younger of the two men, the muscle. Raashid was at the tiller. Dana stepped in last. Only one member of the Marine Unit, Sergeant Wilson, wearing jeans and a sweater, had accompanied them down to the jetty. Fred looked as unhappy about the job as everyone else. He’d squeezed Dana’s shoulder just before she’d climbed down, but as the engine fired up at the second attempt, he couldn’t manage more than a tight-lipped smile.

  They left the bank behind and Dana turned away from the still figure of Fred on the jetty, knowing that, finally, the reality of what she was doing was about to hit home. There had hardly been time to think, over the last few hours. Maya, the girl they’d picked up the night before, had given her the rudiments of a cover story. She was twenty-five years old, a childless widow from Takhar province whose dead husband’s family had refused to care for her. They’d sent her back to her own family, who hadn’t been too keen on the idea either. With her future in Afghanistan looking bleak, she’d jumped at the chance of a new life in the West. As a young girl, she’d spent several years in school before the Taliban had clamped down on female education, hence her rudimentary knowledge of English.

  The clothes Lacey had bought for her trip along the Old Kent Road – cotton trousers, tunic and headscarf – had been pronounced perfectly acceptable by Maya. She’d even offered advice on the simple cotton underwear women from Afghanistan favoured. In the canvas bag at Dana’s feet were her possessions, based on what Maya had had in her own bag. Lacey had spent the day in Brick Lane doing her best to replicate them, and had found a change of clothes, some simple toiletries with eastern labelling and photographs of Dana’s supposed family back home.

  Dana had also spent time with a detective sergeant from SCD10, who’d come over to give her some tips on how to behave. He’d set a time limit of 24 hours maximum on the operation, a timescale David Cook had reluctantly agreed to. Any longer, the sergeant had said, would expose her to unnecessary risks. Twenty-four hours hadn’t seemed long back at Lewisham, but now, just a few minutes into the operation, it was a different story.