Storm Child (Dangerous Friends Book 3)

by Jennifer Young

  The girl, now standing by the bus stop, pocketed her phone and looked again at her watch.

  There was no sign of Cas. He might forgive her. She’d find out.

  Celina walked across to the girl, and laid a hand on her arm.

  Chapter 30

  Once he’d seen Bronte safely onto the bus, Marcus couldn’t settle. Strolling back down through Edinburgh’s New Town towards his flat did nothing to calm his nerves, nothing to ease not one but two niggling issues at the back of his mind. As he took off his jacket and flicked on the television to watch the lunchtime football, his brow crinkled in concern. First of all, Bronte charging into confrontation with her father, on his behalf. It was something she had to do, but she wouldn’t get through it without distress, and he’d pushed her to do it. If she blamed him for any fallout, he could hardly complain.

  The other issue at the back of his mind might trouble him less at a personal level, but it was bigger and more significant, though out of his control. He shouldn’t, therefore, let it worry him but he couldn’t get Jan Kowalski out of his head, and Nick Riley’s resistance to any alternative hypothesis irked him beyond measure. Standing in front of the telly watching the two teams kick off, he picked up his phone, dialling Nerissa in the knowledge that she never considered herself off duty and could be relied upon to sympathise with his feelings about Nick.

  ‘I know it’s a Saturday, but I can’t let go of this Perthshire business.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘I know what you mean. It isn’t foremost among my professional worries, but it won’t lie down. Nothing frustrates me like a necessary job done badly.’

  Marcus shook his head. Jan must have been desperate. You didn’t take on a storm unless the alternative was worse. ‘I wanted to talk things through with someone. I told our friend Nick what I think is behind it, but he won’t have it.’

  ‘Of course he won’t. I’ve explained why — he has no respect for you. What’s your thinking on the issue? You’re more au fait with the details than I am.’

  Marcus turned the volume off on the telly, and stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone to his ear. ‘Jan Kowalski isn’t the only one, is he?’

  ‘I’d be astonished. Sometimes you’ll find a single victim, but in general, the economics don’t balance the risk.’

  ‘He wasn’t malnourished. He was pretty much fit and well. He certainly hadn’t spent the winter scavenging. So, he must have found somewhere to shelter, and that implies to me that someone must have helped him.’

  ‘Remember he was travelling with his sister.’

  ‘Yes. So she might still be out there. And because neither Jan nor Celina speaks English, they must have found someone who can communicate with them in Polish. And if no-one in the town knows anything about them, that screams “exploitation” to me.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of being a detective?’ she mocked him, then laughed. ‘There are plenty of Polish speakers about up there. Obviously, a lot of them are relative newcomers, but some have been established there for decades. I spent a lot of time up in rural Perthshire, as a child. We had family up near Killin. There’s a significant Eastern European community up there — not just Poles, but Germans and others. They came to build the hydro-electric schemes after the war, and a lot of them married local girls and stayed on. Most of that first generation are gone now, and not all of their descendants speak the language. In any case, one would assume that Nick Riley has followed that up.’

  ‘Am I mad to be thinking that’s what it is?’

  ‘Far from it. Like you, I have grave concerns over what’s going on, and in particular what kind of exploitation his sister might have had to endure.’

  ‘Or still be enduring.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  He shook his head over Nick, a good policeman whose pride might be paid for in human misery. ‘If I had his number, I’d give him a call.’

  ‘I’ll happily give it to you, though I’m sure he won’t thank me for doing it. But remember — if you do decide to call him, you’ll have to come up with something much more specific than some kind of vague concern. He’s right to require evidence, although I admit he shouldn’t turn down any you have to offer.’

  Marcus noted down the number she read out to him and rang off, shaking his head. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that the answer to the mystery was the one he feared. And yet he’d failed to persuade Nick Riley to see it. Nerissa was right. He had to find something new before he could go back. Turning his back on the telly, he reached for his laptop.

  It took him less than the first half of the football match he was watching. Half an hour of trawling the internet for information on Perthshire’s Polish community, and he’d solved the conundrum. In the end, it was an innocent, community-spirited article which revealed the answer to him. In an article on Perthshire’s industrial heritage, a year or so old, he learned that the area’s heritage did, after all, hold the key. He found it in a plaque to the Eastern European workers who, sixty years before, had come to Scotland to build the country’s hydro schemes. And a picture. Local farmer and businessman Casimir Janosik, grandson of one the original Tunnel Tigers, unveils a plaque at the new visitor centre in Pitlochry.

  He might not have been able to describe that face to Nick Riley as he’d seen it in the snow, but when it was in front of him, he recognised it instantly. Casimir Janosik, taller than the group of local worthies who surrounded him, stood smiling and at ease. It was a world away from that dislocated night in the snow, but his strong jaw alone would have been a giveaway, even to a less skilled observer.

  Vindicated, Marcus called Riley’s number, but there was no answer. ‘Marcus Fleming here. When Nick gets this message, it would be great if he could give me a ring. I’ve something to tell him, and it might be urgent. Thanks.’ His tone would annoy Riley, but his patience was beginning to run out and he no longer cared.

  More than an hour later, just as he’d resigned himself to being ignored and as the football was building up to a climax, his phone went. ‘It is a Saturday, Marcus.’

  Marcus, pressed almost beyond endurance, sighed. ‘People commit crimes on a Saturday, like any other day of the week.’ He crossed to the table and flicked his laptop back into life.

  ‘I’ve been putting in a lot of hours. Do you have something important to tell me? Or are you still fixated on this modern slavery idea?’

  Looking at the lean, handsome face of Casimir Janosik on the screen in front of him, Marcus counted to ten. ‘I thought you might like to know I’ve recognised one of the men in the car.’

  ‘Ah. The car we can’t prove existed.’

  ‘He’s a fruit farmer of Polish descent.’ Marcus ploughed on, so as not to allow himself time for sarcasm. ‘I don’t have his address, but he lives outside Pitlochry, so you might know him. I think he was the man I spoke to on the night of the blizzard.’

  ‘You think? I don’t know how strongly your thoughts count as evidence.’

  ‘Listen. I’m not trying to muscle in on your investigation.’ Marcus turned back to the telly, and sighed as Stoke City leaked yet another late goal. ‘I’ve been spending a little time thinking about it. I’ve been researching it. His name’s Casimir Janosik.’

  ‘Yes, Cas is well known in the local community. Honestly, Marcus.’ Riley’s voice, faintly patronising, tailed off into an off-duty, Saturday-afternoon sigh. ‘Do you really think I haven’t worked that out for myself? The Polish community was the obvious place to start.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to him?’ It wasn’t that Marcus regarded his colleagues as incompetent, merely that he suspected any investigation led by DCI Riley would be geared to pointing to a predetermined conclusion, rather than to uncovering an unusual truth.

  ‘Of course. I went along and interviewed him the other day. He owns a farm down towards Blairgowrie. A fruit farm. He spends a lot of time down there in the summer, and lives up above Pitlochry for the rest of the year
. He has another farm there, but it has no stock at present. He was up there on the night of the blizzard.’

  ‘That fits, then. Can he prove he was at home?’

  ‘Please don’t try to interrogate me. No, he’s recently-divorced and lives alone. But he doesn’t need an alibi. You know as well as I do that no-one but a fool would have been driving in that weather, and he knows the country. He drove along that road at about the time you describe, but he was alone and saw no-one. After that, he stayed where he was, just as you should have done.’

  At the Britannia Stadium, the full-time whistle had gone and the teams headed down the tunnel. Marcus, confounded both by the result and by Riley’s reaction, turned the telly off. ‘I’ve found his picture in an article from the local paper. I’d swear it’s him.’

  ‘Would you? But you couldn’t describe him to me. You said you barely got a look at him. From what I understand, you were in no state to take much in at all. I’m inclined to think that you did see a car, and it was his. That fits. But he didn’t see you, and the rest of it is your and Ms. O’Hara’s collective delusion.’

  From the screen of the laptop, that handsome face mocked him. ‘Okay. I accept that I don’t sound convincing. But I do recognise the face from somewhere.’

  ‘You could well have seen him around. He has a couple of business interests in the town. He owns the Lochry Café. You know it?’

  It was one of Bronte’s favourites. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then that’s what it is. I appreciate that you want this case solved, Marcus. And I understand that you don’t want to let your pet theory go. But in my opinion, the case against Jan Kowalski is pretty cut and dried. As it happens, there is a connection, of sorts. Cas employs Eastern Europeans on his fruit farm in the summer. There’s nothing wrong with that. Jan Kowalski was one of them.’

  Marcus suppressed a sigh. Technically, of course, there was no reason why Riley should have told him any earlier in the investigation, but he’d like to have known. ‘What happened to him at the end of the season?’

  ‘He packed up and left, with the rest of them. I told you. It’s all pointing to the obvious conclusion. He somehow managed to keep himself going through the winter, and it seems likely that he’s responsible for the burglaries and possibly the murder. We’re waiting on the DNA evidence for that. But I’ll be astonished if that isn’t the case.’

  But it didn’t add up. It was implausible that Jan could have survived for six winter months, undiscovered, without help. ‘And his sister?’

  He almost heard the shrug at the other end of the line, could sense Riley looking at his watch. ‘She was there in the summer, too. I daresay she’s holed up somewhere. There may be a whole gang of them. Finding them is my priority, but you can be sure Cas Janosik has nothing to do with it.’

  Stranded up yet another blind alley, Marcus sighed. ‘Okay. Sorry for disturbing your Saturday. But do keep me posted.’

  ‘I’ll make sure you know everything you need to.’

  Marcus flicked the phone off. He ought to be satisfied with that. It was just that he didn't believe the theory of a gang of Eastern Europeans holed up in the Perthshire countryside without someone helping them, without someone organising. Gangs had gangmasters, and someone had to know what was going on.

  But it was beyond him. He’d done all he could. There was nothing he could do now but wait and see what transpired.

  Chapter 31

  The girl had blue eyes. That was what struck me. Not blue and sparkling with humour like Marcus’s, but cold, and her mouth was set hard in a determined line. A stripe of blonde hair escaping from beneath the headscarf betrayed her to me immediately. I stood in frozen horror for a second or so, and then I shook her hand from my arm and I ran.

  Dad had already gone. Seeing me safely to the bus departure point, believing the girl to be elsewhere, had been enough to reassure him — and me — but our trust played us false. Pausing for a second in front of the station, I cast a wild glimpse around, and when I looked back over my shoulder, the girl was close behind me.

  Executing a rapid U-turn, I broke past her, turning to see whether she followed, just as the bus pulled into the stance. My manoeuvre had left me stranded, and now she stood between me and safety.

  Taking the only escape route, I bolted through the side entrance to the taxi rank, struggling to think clearly. I’d get a taxi home and call Marcus from there. He could come to my flat and meet me. Then, under his calm influence, I’d call the police.

  There were no black cabs, just one vehicle sitting at the stance with its engine running. I bent down towards the door, and stared straight into the face of the man I’d last seen in the cold heart of the Perthshire blizzard. I recognised him. He recognised me.

  So, who the hell was the girl?

  For a moment, my eyes locked with his, and then I panicked. Like that startled deer leaping up onto the road in the blizzard, I ran without thought past the car, to the exit from the taxi rank. The roar of an accelerator and the screech of brakes on the road told me that he was coming after me, but the city’s one-way system saved me. The car had no option but to turn right and, painfully breathless and with my options ever narrowing, I bolted up the hill to the bus station and ran for the Edinburgh bus.

  The girl, wide-eyed and pink in the face from running, was ahead of me, standing a little back from the stance with her hand curled round a mobile phone. Waiting for me. How had she got there? This was madness. My heart pounded in a crazy beat, my head aching with the stress of it. Who was she? What did she want?

  I didn’t wait to find out, only thinking of getting away. Scanning the various stands, I headed for the nearest bus with its engine running. Another time I might have been amused at the irony of its destination. ‘Pitlochry, please.’

  ‘Should have got your ticket at the kiosk, doll.’ The driver seemed more amused than irritated by my ineptitude.

  ‘Sorry. I was running late.’

  I should just tell him. I should say: someone’s following me. But he’d look at that slip of a girl who couldn’t possibly do me any harm, and he’d laugh when I tried to tell him my impossible story. And anyway, by the time I’d made myself understood and tried to point her out, she’d have disappeared into the crowd, and the game of cat and mouse would resume another day.

  As the door of the bus slid easily between us, her blank face stared at me through the glass. Safe on the bus, I wasn’t afraid of the girl, especially not now that I saw her standing in the bus station looking lost and forlorn. The man at the taxi rank was a different matter; I was scared as hell of him. As the bus ground its way out of the bus station, the silver 4x4 pulled in at the kerb, and the girl ran to the passenger door and pulled it open. I lost sight of them when the bus pulled out, but my cold heart made a bet that the pair would have dropped in behind it.

  Whatever they wanted, they were serious about it, and knowing that I’d seen them wouldn’t scare them away. I clenched a shaking hand around my phone and dialled Marcus’s number. ‘Have you got a moment? I’m in a spot of bother.’

  ‘What kind of bother?’ His voice was sharp and alert. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. I’m fine. I’m on a bus to Pitlochry.’

  ‘To Pitlochry? Why? Have you taken some mad idea—?’

  ‘No. No, it isn’t that. But the girl. It wasn’t my dad, Marcus. He didn’t know anything about it. She was following me in the station and I had to run away from her. So, I got on a bus.’

  ‘But why Pitlochry?’

  ‘She was waiting for me by the Edinburgh bus stop. I got on the first one there was.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, with what sounded like a sigh. ‘Don’t panic. I’ll come up to Pitlochry and get you.’

  ‘The bus stops at Perth. You could meet me there.’

  ‘The traffic’s a nightmare getting out of town. I might not get there in time to get you at Perth. Call me overcautious, but I don’t want you hanging around in public where I can’t look af
ter you. If I step on it, I should get to Pitlochry before the bus. But the next time, just get a taxi, eh?’

  ‘I did try. But there was a man in a car at the taxi rank. And it was the man we saw up in the storm.’

  ‘Right.’ His voice betrayed no concern, offered nothing but reassurance. ‘I’m on my way. Are you sure you’ll be okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ My mouth was dry, my pulse still hammering, but Marcus had the matter in hand and neither the man nor the girl could reach me. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll be just fine.’

  I closed off the call and sat with the phone in my hand, watching as the streets of Glasgow slid past. Inching through the traffic, the bus sped up when it reached the M8, and by the time the houses of Millerston were flashing past as we made the M80, I breathed again. There had been no need at all to panic. It was two-and-a-half hours to Pitlochry on the bus, and Marcus would be there well before me. I might have been wrong about the man at the taxi rank. I might have over-reacted.

  In retrospect, I’d made something of a fool of myself. There were all sorts of reasons for it — tensions at work, the stresses my family had brought down on my head. It was hardly surprising that I was starting to become paranoid. It was just as well Nick Riley couldn’t have seen the sequence of events as they unfolded, or he’d have thought me even more of a drama queen than he already did. And perhaps I was.

  The traffic was slow on the A9, but eventually we reached Perth, stopped for a while for passengers to get on and off, then moved off again on the last leg of the journey. And, though I scanned the traffic around us, there was no sign of the silver car. Barely half an hour from safety, I finally relaxed. Eventually, Marcus and I would laugh about it.