‘Why doesn’t he want you to tell your mummy about the sweets?’
The girl shrugged and turned her attention back to the car in her hand. ‘He likes cuddles and I like sweets.’
Shari and Andy marched back up to the sister’s flat and banged on the door again.
‘Who is it?’ a voice called from inside.
‘Postman,’ Andy shouted back. ‘I have a parcel for you.’
The door opened and Andy jammed his foot in the gap. ‘You lied to me,’ he told the woman coldly. ‘Now I want to ask you a few questions and I want to come inside. Now!’
Seven
Andy might have regretted demanding entry to the flat, as the place was not somewhere he would have wanted to stay for very long. It was hot, sticky, smelled of grime, and there were layers of dust and cigarette ash over practically everything. Unable to sit down on anything with confidence, Andy and Shari conducted their questioning stood up, while the woman, Val, chain smoked between a pile of blankets in the corner and the balcony doors. Shari couldn’t help but notice how her investigations always seemed to take her into horrible smelly hovels like this.
‘He comes once a week,’ Val said, ‘well... he did. I kicked him out last year but he still comes to visit. I give him a bit of money, you know, to help him along, and he sometimes steals a few beers if I’m not looking.’
‘Why did you kick him out?’ Shari asked her.
Val narrowed her eyes again. ‘I’m not talking to her,’ she told Albrighton. ‘This is still a white country isn’t it? I still have the right to speak to a white policeman, don’t I?’
Shari clenched her jaw. Racism wasn’t new to her, but it never failed to light a fire in her stomach.
‘You don’t have any such right,’ Andy told her crossly. ‘And if you don’t want to answer her question we can always arrest you and you can answer them at the police station, where I’m sure I can find plenty of non-white police officers to sit you down and explain the law to you.’
Val bridled and flicked her ash out of the balcony. Outside, the view of the city at night was spectacular. Private tenants in nice apartment buildings would pay a lot of money for such a view – Val got it for free. ‘He’s always been in trouble,’ she told Shari, ‘but when he started getting mixed up with the kids I told him I didn’t want people kicking my door down trying to kill him.’
‘The kids?’
‘The pimp,’ Val said, by way of an explanation.
‘The pimp?’ Shari was beyond puzzled.
‘The young girls,’ Val groaned, ‘do you not know anything? He used to know these four sisters, Czechs or Slovaks or something. They lived on the third floor in this building. Anyway, they had been brought over by these guys for sex... you know, like slaves and stuff. But the guys got arrested and the police could never find the girls coz they run away.
‘Then our Davy met them and got to thinking: these girls were broke, and had no way of getting around. So he tells them he’ll get them money if they keep on prostituting’.
‘Why would they do that?’ Shari asked.
‘Because they needed money and they were fifteen and good looking,’ Val sighed. ‘What else were they supposed to do?’
‘So what happened?’ Andy asked, trying to cut to the chase.
Val finished her cigarette and threw the butt over the balcony. She then found a pouch of tobacco on the table and began rolling a new one, her fingers working expertly as she continued her story.
‘They got hurt, didn’t they! Every now and then some bastard would punch one of the girls, or slap her around a bit and they went to Davy for protection. He took a cut of their earnings so he had to do something. So he buys himself a knife and starts threatening these buggers. Mostly it worked, but then word got back to this fuckin’ pimp down the road - this guy running five or six girls behind Piccadilly Station.
‘Well this pimp hears about this rival running around near his turf with four sisters and a big knife and he gets pissed off. He shows up at the flat one day looking for Davy. I tells him he isn’t in, but he finds him outside on the street and holds his knife to his neck. Tells him to stop pimping or he’d kill him.’
‘Then what?’
Val lit her new cigarette and drew back on it as if it was giving her oxygen. She exhaled slowly. ‘I kicked him out. Davy carried on with the girls, of course, and the pimp kept coming back, but I told him he wasn’t here. The bastard gave me a black eye.’
Andy puffed his cheeks out. The number of offences being disclosed here was stacking up rapidly.
‘Was your brother still working these sisters recently?’ Shari asked her.
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘They ran off somewhere, but by then he had met these two women who lived down the road. They were a lot older, but men will still pay for it won’t they?’
‘He was exploiting two older women?’
Val nodded. ‘I wouldn’t say exploiting. They were willing. But they were also smack heads. Davy tried to get the Slovak sisters hooked on smack so that had to rely on him, but they still ran off somewhere. I don’t know what happened to them, but Davy and these two women ended up on the street stealing and begging and doing all sorts of shit just for a bit of cash.’
‘You didn’t want him back here with you?
‘Nope,’ Val told her proudly. ‘That pimp was still looking for him and he kept threatening me not to let him back. I said I didn’t want him back.’
‘Did this pimp say he would hurt Davy?’ Andy asked.
Val nodded, pursing her lips. ‘I think he seriously wanted to kill him.’
Back downstairs, Shari and Albrighton took a deep breath of fresh January air and headed quickly for the car.
‘This is getting out of hand!’ Andy sighed. ‘I want to go back to working fraud cases with Barry.’
Shari smiled. ‘So we’ve got this Gravy Davy exploiting young girls for cash, making an enemy out of a local pimp who suddenly wants him dead.’
‘Don’t forget the older women he starts hanging around with,’ Andy put in. ‘Jesus, I picked the wrong week to stop smoking.’
‘That’ll be Irene and Doll,’ Shari thought aloud. ‘So they haven’t been homeless for very long then. I’ll have to find them again and ask them about the pimp.’
Andy’s smirk was interrupted by something in the background that had caught his eye. Great plumes of grey smoke were billowing from behind the grand red-brick mills of Ancoats that lined the Rochdale canal. Somewhere in that dense little neighbourhood, flames had returned.
Shari saw it and gasped. She turned on her police radio just in time.
“Can anyone break off please,” the Comms officer was asking over the air, “we’ve got a ‘Persons Reporting’ on Bengal Street in Ancoats. Caller says it a large derelict building and they can see flames on multiple floors.”
The term Persons Reporting was code for fire. Nothing incited panic in passing members of the public than hearing the word “fire” over a police radio.
‘Shit,’ Shari and Andy said together.
There was little they could do when they got to the fire. This time it was a large, mill-like building, several storeys high. The backstreets were still thick with snow and un-drivable, but a fire truck coming from nearby Oldham Road risked it and ploughed its way to the scene. Shari and Andy stuck to crowd control, as there were more and more of people gathering around watching and filming it on their phones. Soon enough, more cops turned up and the area was cordoned off.
Ryder and Abbott came too. By this time the fire had become an inferno, and a second and third fire trucks were required to try and bring the flames under control. The intense heat was enough to stave off the biting cold as the evening drew in, though after almost an hour it began to snow heavily. Grey hot ash mixed with delicate white snowflakes in the air, creating clouds both beautiful and eerie.
‘Still think it’s an accident?’ Ryder asked Abbott.
Abbott looked at him and back at the burning building. �
��I think you need to open a new investigation and get cracking. Shari and Andy can work the murder. You, Sergeant Ryder, can solve these fires for me.’
‘Just wait ‘til the papers get carried away with this one,’ Ryder shouted, above the din of a nearby siren. ‘We’ll have Chief Super Bhatti crawling all over us!’
Abbott shivered, though it could have been from the cold.
Eight
It took a few more hours before the fire brigade were happy that the fire was out and the building was secure. It would have to be cordoned off while it was inspected, which meant this tiny half a square mile of Ancoats now had three separate police crime scenes. Just staffing each of these was going to be a logistical nightmare, but that was for another time.
As evening fell, Shari and Andy ventured down to the backstreets behind Piccadilly Train Station, the unofficial prostitution centre of the city. As usual, now that dark had fallen, it was easy enough to find young women stood around waiting for work. Some of them were so scantily clad that it boggled the mind that they could survive long in this mid-winter cold spell.
The prostitutes were never arrested, for that would make criminals out of vulnerable people – some of whom would be being exploited against their will. Instead, a small unit of the police officers ‘managed’ them. There was no ‘Vice Squad’ per say, but there were dedicated plain-clothes officers who got to know the women, offered them support from time to time, and garnered useful intelligence from them if they had any. It was delicate work.
That’s why, when Shari suggested that she and Andy go look for the pimp Val had told them about, Andy had suggested that they wait until tomorrow and consult the vice officers first. Shari urged him to reconsider – her pressing need to solve this murder felt like a race against time, and every second counted.
‘Why are you so desperate about this one?’ Andy asked her as they dodged on foot through angry commuters stuck in traffic on the main road.
‘I just want to beat Ryder,’ she replied honestly.
‘Ryder’s good,’ Andy agreed, ‘but you’ve not been with us long – you’ve got nothing to prove.’
Shari said nothing. They were now on Adair Street, where a trio of teenage girls shivering by a brick wall cautiously watched her and Andy walk past. Further down, on a side street, a lone woman in her late thirties stood in a big black fur coat, smoking casually, as if she was just enjoying the night time air. She smiled at Andy as she saw them, thinking he was a businessman in his suit. Andy smiled mildly back.
It was easy to find girls, but the pimp would be next to impossible. All they knew about him was what Val had told them: that this pimp had a Polish name but a London accent, and that he drove a white BMW that was a few years old. The car was their only real clue, as there were plenty of men sat around in cars in the area, some of them just parking up to catch a train, some of them potential customers building up the courage to approach one of the women.
The area around here was full of modern warehouses and small industrial units for the building trade. On a shady side street that dog-legged off Adair Street Shari spotted a white BMW parked up, but as they approached it through the slush and snow, it quickly pulled out and disappeared around a corner.
They followed its tracks in the snow, knowing that if it indeed was the man they were after, he wouldn’t venture too far away for too long. True enough, they found him parked on the inappropriately named Temperance Street, beneath the railway arches that leapt away from the city towards the south. Again, before they could get close enough the driver spotted them and the car pulled away.
The next morning Shari checked it out on the Police National Computer. The car belonged to a Roman Korczak and registered to an apartment in the city centre. A search of the name revealed only one possible match – a 38 year old from Tottenham, with a long criminal record and rafts of intelligence against his name.
Reading the intelligence kicked up some surprises. Shari learnt that Korczak was an ex-commando who had served in the British army since he was eighteen, until he was dismissed dishonourably eight years later for reasons unknown. Since then, he had been done for all sorts of juicy things, such as extortion, fraud, assault, affray, threats to kill, and possession of class-A drugs.
He was not a nice bloke, though there was nothing unusual about his career and profile that seemed to indicate he was truly evil. For a start, there was no arson. Secondly, though he certainly was capable of killing – trained to do so in fact – none of the intelligence alluded to any murderous tendencies when not in uniform.
Nevertheless, the two detectives went to pay him an early morning visit. It took a lot of banging to get him to answer the door to his flat but eventually he did - Shari recognising him as Korczak from his profile on the computer. He looked at them sharply, full of impatience. They had expected the get the man out of bed and inconvenience him a little, but he looked as if he had been awake for hours. He looked wired.
‘What?’ he asked them.
‘Mr Korczak,’ Shari began, ‘we’re from the police...’
‘I know,’ he responded in a cockney accent. ‘What you want?’ He stood wearing a white t-shirt and black combat pants. Around his neck were some US army dog-tags and a necklace with a bullet on it, and his arms were covered with tattoos of British bulldogs and silhouettes of soldiers brandishing rifles.
They explained why they were there, but he just told them he was busy and closed the door on them.
‘The pimp’s giving nothing away,’ Andy relayed to Ryder back at the office. He plopped down in his chair and sighed as he closed his eyes. ‘This case is going to be the death of me.’
‘The pimp might be a dead end,’ Ryder told them both. ‘Bring him in anyway for formal questioning. If he has something to do with the murder then he’s not going to get away with shutting the door in our faces.’
‘On what grounds do we bring him in?’ Shari asked. ‘He won’t volunteer, and we haven’t got anything on him.’
Ryder looked woefully at his subordinate. ‘The man’s a pimp. Get hold of someone from the vice unit. Tell them to tell him that if he doesn’t come in for questioning then we’ll make his life a living hell.’
Shari nodded.
‘Must I think of everything around here?’ Ryder asked, with a melodramatic exasperation.
‘Do you know a David Mullgraw?’ Shari asked Korczak in the interview room that afternoon. ‘Also known as Gravy Davy?’
Korczak nodded vigorously. ‘I know the bastard.’ Next to him his solicitor bristled.
‘How?’
‘He owed me money.’
‘How much?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘Did he pay it back?’
‘No, I let him off for it.’
‘What did he want it for?’
‘I don’t fuckin’ know, do I?!’
The conversation went on like this for a while. Short vague answers were a nightmare, but worse than that it was becoming clear that Mr Korczak wasn’t going to be broken very easily. He knew plenty about Mullgraw, but he was telling them nothing. The story about the debt was probably a ruse.
‘Did you know the two women he hung around with,’ Shari persevered, ‘Irene and Doll?’
Korczak nodded, this time with irritation. He rubbed a hand vigorously over his shaven head. ‘They exploit children,’ he said. ‘Little girls.’
‘Little girls?’
‘They were doing it first, then he started helping them out.’
‘Who, Mullgraw?’
‘Yeah. Irene and that other one – they’re fucking about with girls on the street, making them prossies. And that cunt helps them out.’
‘How do you know this?’
Korczak laughed and shook his head. ‘Word on the street, love.’
‘Were you aware that David Mullgraw was found dead the other day?’ Shari asked, her eyes keenly following Korczak’s facial expressions.
Korczak sat back in his seat and fol
ded his arms, as if he was suddenly realising what all this was about. ‘No I wasn’t.’
‘He was burnt alive,’ Shari told him. ‘He was seen running out of an empty building on Cotton Street - on fire - before he collapsed and died in the snow.’
At this Korczak didn’t flinch. Either he already knew these facts or he just didn’t care. ‘Oh... right.’
‘We have reason to believe that you might have had wanted to do him harm.’
Korczak shrugged. ‘Nope.’
‘You weren’t angry at him?’
‘Nope.’
‘What about the money?’
‘I let him off for it,’ Korczak said, through gritted teeth.
Shari could sense that she was getting to him, but that he was still too wise to get himself into any trouble. It was like trying to trap a wild tiger with nothing but the tools one would normally use to catch rats. And she and Korczak were circling each other now, moving cautiously around and around - him evading her advances, well aware of her game plan.
‘What about your turf?’ Shari asked. ‘Wasn’t he treading on your turf by exploiting girls for money?’
Korczak practically snarled. He folded his arms tighter over his chest, like he was stopping himself pouncing on her and ripping her to shreds. But his eyes were also wise. He knew exactly what to do and exactly what to say.
‘No comment.’
‘Do you know anything about the other fires that have been happening in Ancoats in the last week?’ Shari asked. ‘Tell me, Roman, what’s the word on the street?’
To her surprise, Korczak instantly relaxed a little and sat forward. He even ventured a soft smile. ‘I might have some info for you there, actually, and I’ll give it you for free for a change. But I promise, there’s no connection to this dead body you’ve found. I know nothing about that. It must just be a coincidence.’
Nine
While Shari and Andy were teasing information out of the pimp, DS Ryder had gone to Ancoats for an update on the new fire scene. He returned with a handful of DVDs.
The Fire In the Snow Page 4
