A Quiet Death

by Cari Hunter

  The girl folded her arms, her foot tapping in a blunt staccato. “And if he doesn’t?”

  Sanne kept her own body language open, non-combative, but she wasn’t going to sugar-coat things. “Pack him some pyjamas.”

  She expected a clout, or fingernails coming straight for her eyes, but the bald suggestion took the wind out of the girl’s sails.

  “I’ll phone Dad. Don’t tell them nothing!” she shouted past Sanne, as Nelson opened the door. Then she gripped Sanne’s biceps. “What’s your name? I want to make a complaint.”

  “Move your hand.” Sanne waited out a count of three. “Move it.”

  The girl startled and released her, snatching Sanne’s proffered card instead, as if to compensate for her lack of nerve.

  “That has all the details you’ll need,” Sanne said. “Search online for the IPCC to make your complaint.”

  “Stop taking the fucking piss!”

  Unwilling to get into a slanging match with a fifteen-year-old, Sanne followed Nelson onto the street, where a crowd of onlookers had gathered to glare at them. She walked right past them, unable to understand the mutterings and murmurs aimed in her direction but gleaning a good enough idea.

  Nelson waited for her at the car. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. You?”

  “Yep. Shall we get out of Dodge while the going is moderately bad?”

  She nodded and continued round to the passenger side. Faraj let her fasten her seat belt before he booted the back of her seat.

  “So, are you a fucking dyke then, or what?” he asked.

  She locked eyes with him in the rearview mirror. “I’m a fucking dyke,” she said. “Now get your feet off my seat and shut your mouth.”

  *

  With no room to pace in the EDSOP corridor, Eleanor sidestepped a sweating teenaged interviewee whose complexion was more acne than skin, and checked her watch again.

  “George, use Interview One for Hasan Faraj when Sanne and Nelson get here with him. He’s another of Sadek’s relatives who’s corroborating the Kadri story.”

  “Will do.” George saluted and tripped over the teenager’s flip-flops. “Anything else you need?”

  “No, just them. Send them straight in.” She returned to her office, where Russ was sitting beside the Tactical Aid sergeant, their heads bowed over building plans. “Ten minutes,” she told them. “The traffic’s bad on the bypass.”

  “Should only take us an hour or so to get over there on blues,” Russ said. “We can hang on and brief everyone together.”

  “How many entrances?” she asked, taking the remaining seat.

  “Three: front and back, plus a fire escape into the adjoining alley. To say it’s a logistical nightmare would be understating things somewhat.” He marked crosses on the plan and grinned at her. “Thanks for the loan of your team.”

  “I’m hoping this will turn out to be mutually beneficial,” she said. “Besides which, DCI Litton is very keen to foster a strong working relationship with GMP.”

  “And muscle in on the credit, should things go well.”

  “Cynic.”

  A knock on the door made them look up.

  “Showtime,” Russ said. “Have you still got a vest that fits, DI Stanhope?”

  “Sod off.” She opened her office door to Sanne and Nelson, en route to collecting her jacket and stab vest. “Tactical briefing will be held at Longsight nick, but I have some notes for you to read on the way over there,” she told them. “Mike and Jay are on board as well. Are you all set?”

  They nodded, the gleam of excitement in their eyes mirroring that in Russ’s.

  “Okay, then.” She shrugged into her vest. “Let’s get going.”

  *

  The interviewees segregated along the corridor shuffled aside or gaped as Sanne led the ten-strong team toward the lift. She had to rein in her instinct to break into a sprint, sure that every minute wasted getting across to Manchester might result in the raid being cancelled. Outside, the TAU van was parked in the drop-off bay with its engine running. Sanne bagged a window seat and looked out at the vivid line of orange splitting the darkened sky, the sunset carving the storm clouds into layers, like a cake with a filling of flames.

  She turned on the torch attached to her vest, sharing a set of notes with Nelson as the TAU driver cleared the car park barrier and sparked up his blues. Due to the time constraints, Eleanor had only outlined the bare bones of the assignment, and Sanne was keen to know what she was letting herself in for. Tuning out the blare of sirens, she read quietly, waiting for Nelson’s murmured assent before turning each page.

  According to the précis, Greater Manchester’s Sexual Offences and Exploitation Team had been surveilling a three-storey terraced house in Longsight for the past fortnight, recording the different men who visited the property each night and noting the arrival of two women, herded out of a van and taken inside the house via the rear entrance late on 19th February. Neither woman had left the property since.

  “Jesus, have you seen the date?” Sanne asked.

  “Yep.” Nelson checked the next page. “Looking at the vehicle details, it wasn’t Sadek’s Previa doing the drop-off, but still, that’s one heck of a coincidence.”

  “Why the hell wasn’t it flagged to us sooner?” Sanne said, incredulous at the lack of dot-joining.

  Nelson had continued to read, and he used his own torch to highlight a name. “Apparently GMP were at cross-purposes. They were planning to raid the brothel, but then this Bashir chap showed up out of the blue, so SOET alerted Parry, who recognised the significance of February the nineteenth, and here we all are.”

  “Parvez Bashir.” Sanne sounded the name out. “You ever heard of him?”

  Nelson shook his head. “But we don’t really travel in the same circles, do we?”

  Bashir—mid-forties and mixed race, with a Pakistani father and an English mother—had a criminal record showing steady progression through possession with intent, to sexual assault and battery. He had upped the ante after a spell in jail, culminating in a charge of controlling prostitution for gain. When several witnesses retracted statements or refused to testify, the case collapsed, and Bashir, who allegedly made a living as a taxi driver, now resided in a detached house in the wealthy suburb of Didsbury.

  “Ambitious fella, isn’t he? No wonder Parry’s looking like a cat that might get the cream.” Sanne reached the section of the briefing that detailed Bashir’s suspected involvement in the trafficking of women across Europe to the UK. He had made an unforeseen appearance at the Longsight property at about the same time that Sanne was arguing with Hasan Faraj’s sister. According to the team on site, he was still inside.

  “Longsight borders Levenshulme.” Nelson was peering at an A-Z. “Sadek would have known he could get away with saying one but heading to the other.”

  “Especially if he’d swapped vehicles.” Sanne grabbed her armrest as the van chicaned through the rush-hour queue at a traffic light. Typically, one driver did precisely the wrong thing and blocked the entire lane. Unwilling to force cars through a red light, the TAU driver muted his sirens, the rhythmic flash of his blues far more sedate than the thrum of Sanne’s heartbeat. She pulled out her phone, intending to send Meg a text, but faltered, unsure what to say. The screen returned to sleep mode as she stared at it.

  “Do you tell Abeni about things like this?” she asked Nelson. “Because I’ve never…Well, I’ve never really thought about it with Meg.”

  He shut the map, giving her his undivided attention. “Feeling more responsible now that you’re officially a couple?” he said, not teasing, just curious.

  She nodded slowly. “I worry about her more, too. Y’know, little things, like her driving home on the Snake after a night shift, or some of the idiots she has to deal with in A&E. I mean, I worried before, but everything seems different these days.”

  He patted her hand, probably to stop her from massacring a fingernail. “Tell her about it
afterward, when everything’s fine and there’s no reason for her to fret. That’s what I do. I suppose I have it easier with Abeni, though, because she’s sheltered from all of this, the things we see and have to deal with. Meg’s not; she has a far better idea what you’ll come up against, which will only make it harder for her.”

  “So if we’re in one piece later, I tell her then?” Sanne tilted her torch until it illuminated Nelson’s face. “I told her about climbing out of that window.”

  “But only after you didn’t fall and break your neck.”

  “True.” She settled into her seat, feeling better for his advice. “Thanks, Nelson.”

  He sat back as well, watching the city pass by in a blur of rain and neon. “Any time.”

  *

  Had Sanne not known better, she might have mistaken Longsight for Sharcliffe. An inner-city district built up around a strip of mini-markets and Asian speciality shops, it had a similar crisscross of terraced houses encircling it, and most of its residents were from ethnic minorities.

  The east Sheffield TAU van was now travelling in convoy with Central Manchester’s, their blues and sirens off as they crawled along Stockport Road amid a mob of taxis and buses. The tinted window to Sanne’s left framed the odd curious glance, but the majority of the passersby appeared indifferent to the police presence.

  “We should be turning off any minute,” Nelson said. He adjusted the angle of the A-Z, struggling to keep track of their progress via vandalised street signs and his own rubbish map-reading. He hadn’t spoken much since the briefing at Longsight police station, his attention, like Sanne’s, focused on the photocopied schematic for fifty-eight Cheviot Road. The end-terrace extended over three floors, with three means of access, two of which opened onto unlit alleys.

  Closing her eyes against the glare of reflected streetlights and fluorescent takeaway signs, Sanne tried to visualise the layout from their assigned entrance through to the point where her team would call clear: middle floor, two rooms to the right of the landing and three to the left. The stairs dog-legged before continuing to the upper floor, so one of her team would be stationed to intercept anyone trying to flee down them.

  Balancing her notes on her lap, she moved a hand to her Taser, reassuring herself that it was there. The procedure for drawing and activating it had been ingrained by hours of training, not to mention a recent practical refresher courtesy of Gobber Beswick. She hadn’t anticipated a need for carrying one after transferring to EDSOP, but two of her recent cases had brutally disabused her of that notion.

  “Here we go,” Nelson murmured as the van took a left and his finger inched closer to the X he’d marked on the A-Z.

  As if a switch had been flicked, the Sheffield TAU lads stopped chucking someone’s sandwiches around and quietened, donning the last of their kit. She recognised one of them from a raid the previous month. Balding and built like a brick shithouse, Graham popped a bubble in his gum and winked at her before pulling on a balaclava. Although his IQ was largely confined to his biceps, he excelled at putting the boot in, and the edginess that had beset her since the briefing abated somewhat when she rechecked her notes and realised he was the TAU lead on their floor.

  The van thudded over a speed bump, sending up howls of protest and knocking her into Nelson. He righted her, leaning in without thinking to brace her for the next one.

  “Cheers, mate,” she said, and then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Are you sweating as much as I am?”

  “Probably more. I can’t tell whether it’s nerves or impatience.”

  “Both.” Usually the one in charge of route finding, she hated not knowing where she was going. “I think he’s having a laugh and driving round in bloody circles now.”

  The road they were on was a carbon copy of the one they’d just left, fronted by Victorian terraces, many with boarded or smashed windows. Cobbles demarcated the alleys, and the front doors opened directly onto the street.

  “Nope, Cheviot’s the next one.” Shining his light on the map for her, Nelson sounded a quiet fanfare when he spotted the sign. Sanne’s applause was muted, her eyes fixed on the window again, counting down the houses until the van pulled into the alleyway after number fifty.

  Eleanor got to her feet. “Okay, GMP are already in position in the east alley,” she said. “And nothing’s changed since we left the nick, so let’s get going.”

  The TAU moved first, sliding open the van doors and jumping down into the alley. They were hefty men, but the stamp of their boots landing on wet cobbles, along with a muffled cough, were the only sounds Sanne heard them make. After the oppressive heat of the van, she welcomed the sudden shock of cold air. Feeling a sneeze coming on, she sniffed in a breath to get it out of the way before following Nelson toward their designated TAU members. Drizzle had veiled the passageway, leaving its far end murky and indistinct, but an unfamiliar voice in her earpiece confirmed the Manchester TAU were heading for the front door and ready to take the top floor via the eastern fire escape.

  “Alpha and Bravo to the rear,” the Sheffield TAU sergeant said. “My lot with me to the front.”

  They divided efficiently, Sanne and Nelson keeping a few paces behind Graham and the rest of Bravo team as they weaved around wheelie bins and the discarded household junk cluttering the alley. A dog set off barking at number fifty-four, its claws scrabbling on the concrete as its bulk sent a shudder through the gate. A floodlight hit the yard, but it was angled too acutely to reach the alley. Ducking instinctively to hurry past, Sanne smelled dope and dog shit, and for once appreciated not having eaten in a while.

  In keeping with their neighbours, the owners of fifty-eight Cheviot had taken no chances with security. A four-digit combination padlock secured the solid wooden gate, and rolls of illegal razor wire topped the high brick walls.

  “All teams go.” Eleanor’s taut command, carried across the comms.

  “Camera,” Sanne said, spotting the small CCTV fixed to a corner post. “Better get a wriggle on.”

  One of the two TAU officers wielding enforcer rams waved to the lens and then smashed the steel rod against the gate, rattling hinges which shook but held. Cursing, he adjusted his stance until he and his mate could batter their target in tandem, stealth sacrificed for expediency as the wood imploded and their boots finished off what little resisted. They sprinted for the back door, making short work of the uPVC and catching an Asian man by the scruff of his neck as he tried to launch himself out of the gap, wielding a piece of metal like a samurai. Sanne ducked beneath it, and an officer jerked the man’s collar to slam him up against the yard wall.

  “Fuckin’ drop it!”

  A barrage of Urdu and further struggling followed, but the metal went flying seconds later, and Sanne had to leapfrog his legs as the officers pinned him face-first on the concrete paving and then sat on him.

  “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence…”

  The mantra faded to nothing as Sanne sprinted after her team into the house. Tracking the flashes of torchlight, she passed through the kitchen to the first flight of stairs, taking them two at a time until she caught up with Nelson. With the chaos over the comms reaching fever pitch, her team left one man poised at the bottom of the next flight and paired off, advancing along a narrow carpeted corridor whose doors were all fitted with sliding bolts.

  Shouts of “Police!” and the occasional shriek or guttural yell punctuated the crashing of wood and the grating of locks. Sanne approached the farthest room with Graham and stood well clear of the door as he kicked it open. The impact set a light bulb swinging, its squalid glow picking out a middle-aged man crouched on an unmade double bed, naked apart from the leg he’d shoved back into his trousers. As Graham moved to secure the adjoining room, the man abandoned his clothing and his common sense to dash toward the window. His belly slapped the glass and his fists rose to smash it just as Sanne grabbed his arm and pivoted him round. He clawed at her with his free hand, his teeth bared
in a snarl like an animal prepared to chew off its own limb to get away. She felt his nails rake her cheek, but he was already off balance, and he tripped over the leg she shoved between his.

  “Fucking bitch!” He kicked her as he fell, and then screamed when she planted her foot in his bollocks and dropped her full weight onto his torso.

  “Hands behind your back!” she yelled, digging her heels in to stop him bucking her off. “Now!”

  Graham smoothed out the negotiations by smashing the man’s face into the carpet, and the man complied with Sanne’s instructions, allowing her to cuff him and recite his rights. Moaning incoherently, he curled into a ball, and she threw a blanket over him so she didn’t have to look at his arse.

  “Detective Jensen?” Graham’s voice undercut the rasp of her breaths and the ongoing row in her earpiece. He wiped his sweaty face with his balaclava as he gestured at the adjoining room. “I think you’d be better in there than me.”

  She straightened slowly, only now seeing the shredded pink nightie and the Formica-topped table strewn with sex aids and condoms. Bright spots of blood dotted the crumpled bedding. Lightheaded with adrenaline and trepidation, she walked across to the second door and pushed it gently. As she stepped inside the tiny bathroom, two pale hands shot up to hide the face of the young girl cowering under the sink.

  “No, please, please,” the girl said. “No, please.”

  “It’s okay.” Sanne knelt but kept her distance. Even in the dim light, she could see the welts and bruises that marred the girl’s body. “I’m a police officer. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “No, please.” The girl began to sob, pressing closer to the porcelain as if that might be enough to protect her. Sanne couldn’t place her accent but guessed at Eastern European.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. Here, you must be cold.” She shrugged out of her jacket and touched the girl’s hand with its sleeve. When that didn’t seem to make anything worse, she carefully draped it around the girl’s shoulders. “Do you speak English?”