A Quiet Death

by Cari Hunter

  “Pretty bad.” It had started to make Sanne clammy, sticking her loose hospital gown to her chest.

  “Hang on, love. I’ll go and find your doc.”

  The door closed behind Meg, shutting out the clatter of a breakfast trolley and a ringing phone, everyday sounds that Sanne could have listened to for hours. She shuffled around until she could see her mum properly.

  “You should get to bed, Mum. You look shattered.”

  “I am,” her mum said. “I feel as if I’ve been out there with you, running in the dark. You frightened me half to death.”

  “I’m sorry, Mum. I really am.” Sanne didn’t think she’d ever be able to apologise enough. “Did you tell Dad?”

  “I couldn’t, love.” Her mum took a deep breath. “Your dad died, Sanne. About three hours ago. He’d been poorly all night, and they couldn’t do anything to fix it this time.”

  Sanne bent her left foot until the bite of the stitches and torn skin cut through the fog of the drugs. She was terrified she’d wake up and realise she’d been dreaming.

  “Were you with him?” she asked.

  “No. I was here with you.” There was no remorse or grief in her mum’s tone. “Your dad didn’t need me. He hasn’t needed me for years, but you did. A nurse came to tell me when he’d passed, and I signed some paperwork.”

  Sanne stroked the back of her mum’s fingers, smoothing across the raised scar from the slip of a potato peeler and the slight swelling where arthritis was beginning to take hold.

  “If I believed in a god, I would’ve bargained your dad away in a heartbeat,” her mum said. “But I didn’t have to, in the end.”

  “I’m not sad that he’s gone,” Sanne said.

  “Nor am I. I’m just glad that I got you back.” Her mum unfolded the pile of wool from her lap, revealing a long red sock. “Here, I’ve been making these for your poor feet.”

  Sanne pulled the sock closer, admiring the double thickness of its sole. “Oh, they’re perfect.”

  “She’s making me a pair as well,” Meg said, coming in at the tail end of the conversation. “For the next time you leave the damn heating off.” She took a syringe filled with clear liquid from the tray she’d put on the overbed table. “This’ll probably knock you out again, San. Is that okay?”

  Sanne nodded, sure now of what she would be waking up to. She started to count as Meg injected the drug into her IV. Her eyelids were heavy by nine. She didn’t make it to ten.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “That man, that man.” Dorina Ivas touched each of the mug shots, the sleeves of her sweater riding up to reveal finger-shaped contusions on her wrist. She looked at Eleanor, one eye closed by bruising, the other unflinching. “And that man.”

  Eleanor collected the photographs and turned them face down as Dorina sipped from a mug of black coffee. Though the heating in Interview Two was on its highest setting, Dorina wrapped both hands around her mug as if the chill from the moors persisted more than seventy-two hours later. A specialist SOET detective had assumed the lead in the interview, and she waited until Dorina set her mug on the table before asking her next question.

  “You identified Vasile Enescu as the man who arranged to bring you over to England. Could you tell us how that process worked?”

  Dorina turned to her translator for clarification. Her English was reasonably comprehensive, but there were gaps in her understanding, and she replied in Romanian. The translator jotted a couple of notes and spoke once Dorina confirmed that she had finished.

  “She applied for a childcare job from a website promising good wages and prospects. She arrived in Manchester last Tuesday, and Enescu met her at the airport. He gave her flowers to welcome her, but he took her luggage and her passport from her. He stopped at a house close to the airport to collect Mirela, and then he drove them both to the barn. He told her it was temporary, that she would be moved somewhere better, but she didn’t believe him. The two younger girls were already there.”

  “It all went to shit,” Dorina said, with no small amount of satisfaction. “Mirela ran from a sex house, and they burned her to punish her. I was to go to that house in her place, but I heard the men talk of the police closing it down.”

  “Yes, we raided it on the Monday evening,” Eleanor said, “which explains why they had to keep you at the barn.”

  “Very bad timing for the men,” Dorina told her. “Enescu and the Pakistani were angry that we couldn’t earn money for them, so they fucked us instead. The Pakistani said it was pity to let us go to waste.”

  The translator blanched and drank half a glass of water, no doubt relieved that Dorina had reverted to English.

  “Would you be willing to testify, Dorina?” Eleanor asked. “To tell a judge and a jury what you’ve told us?”

  Dorina seemed to shrink back, her body language closing off and her eye contact slipping. It was the first time Eleanor had seen a crack in her façade.

  “My parents cannot know. They think I am childminder.”

  “We can withhold your name, and you may be able to give evidence via a video link so you wouldn’t have to be in the courtroom.” Eleanor paused to allow for translation. However reluctant she was to pressurise Dorina, she knew the case against the men would be weaker without her.

  “If I do this, those men go to prison?” Dorina asked quietly.

  “Yes,” Eleanor said with absolute conviction. “For a long time.”

  Dorina inclined her head as if considering the truth of this. Her poise returned as she came to a decision. “Okay. I will do as you ask.”

  “We very much appreciate that.” The response seemed inadequate to Eleanor, but Dorina showed all her teeth as she smiled.

  “Officer Sanne,” she said, “she will speak in court?”

  “Yes, she’ll be called as a witness, just like yourself.” Eleanor didn’t see the harm in deviating from the script now that the formal part of the interview had concluded. “I visited her in the hospital yesterday, and she asked me to thank you for helping her.”

  “We helped each other, I think.”

  Eleanor nodded. Dorina had provided a vivid account of Sanne’s time in the barn, including details of a discussion between the men that Sanne hadn’t been able to understand, details that were now recorded as part of Dorina’s statement. They would be transcribed, included in the case file, and repeated in court, but Eleanor would do her damnedest to keep them from Sanne for as long as was feasible.

  She stated the time and stopped the tape. The translator escorted Dorina to the lift, allowing Eleanor to return to her office. Her skin itched as if there was a layer of scum clinging to it. She was towelling cold water from her face when Russ toed the door open. He was carrying a large cardboard box, and a laptop bag swung from his shoulder.

  “Ready for the off?” she asked.

  “As I’ll ever be.” He hefted the box. “Although this makes me think we might be crossing paths again in the not too distant.”

  “I hope so.” She kissed his cheek. “We got most of the way there in the end, didn’t we?”

  “We did, and my lot will keep plugging away at the rest of it.”

  “Keep us updated.”

  “Of course.”

  She held the door for him. “I don’t really…” she began, and then shook her head, cut adrift. She felt as if she was losing her closest ally. “I’ll see you soon.”

  He smiled at her. “I’ll bring the bacon butties.”

  *

  Five floor tiles separated the bed from the chair. From her vantage point on the edge of the mattress, Sanne pondered the distance and concluded she’d probably end up on her arse.

  “Let me get this for you. It’s almost run through.” Meg twiddled with the connections on Sanne’s IV port, removing the antibiotics prescribed for a newly spiked temperature. The irony that Sanne was now too warm hadn’t been lost on either of them. “All done. Are you ready?”

  “Yep.” Sanne slung her left arm ov
er Meg’s shoulder, her right manoeuvring a crutch into position. Her new socks cushioned the impact of her feet on the floor, and she ventured forward before she could chicken out.

  “Four more steps and you’re there,” Meg murmured, her lips close to Sanne’s ear.

  Walking on fresh stitches and inflamed wounds hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much as Sanne had feared, and she tightened her arm around Meg, happy to be mobile after three days in bed.

  “Okay, sit your bum down,” Meg said.

  Sanne obeyed without protest, her one-and-a-half metre expedition enough to leave her out of puff. Unaccustomed to being ill, she’d forgotten the all-encompassing lethargy that came with an infection.

  “Bloody hell, I was running eight miles last week,” she said.

  Meg used the chair’s remote to raise Sanne’s legs and draped a thin blanket over her knees. “You’ve taken a proper wallop, San. You’re going to feel wiped out.”

  “I didn’t sleep well last night.” She had insisted that Meg go home and had regretted it as soon as she’d turned out the light. Her room was never really dark, but its shadows had spooked her, and every little noise had made her jump. If she had been able to find the emergency buzzer, she would have pressed it and asked for her door to be left open. “It was lucky you put the bed rails up.”

  “Did you try to do a runner?”

  “Yeah, I woke with one leg stuck through them.” She picked at a tiny rip in the chair’s armrest. “Do you think I’m jinxed, Meg?”

  The water Meg was pouring spilled all over the cabinet as she jerked the jug upright. “What? Do I ’eck as like, you silly sod.”

  “But I keep getting in shit,” Sanne said. Worrying about this had kept her awake for the rest of the night, once she’d convinced herself that no one was hiding in her cupboard or under her bed. “And it doesn’t seem to happen to anyone else.”

  “Carlyle got his throat slashed,” Meg countered. “And if I remember rightly, Nelson fractured his skull.”

  “They were both with me at the time, though, and they got hurt because of decisions that I made.” On some elusive level, Sanne knew her argument was groundless, that Nelson and Carlyle had understood the risks involved, and that she hadn’t come out unscathed either, but the doubts persisted, and she couldn’t seem to shake them.

  Meg edged her chair across the floor until it touched Sanne’s. “How many lives did you save?”

  Sanne frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “These last three cases, the ones where you’ve been hurt. How many people would have died if you hadn’t had the balls to make those decisions?” Meg made a show of ticking them off on her fingers. “I’m getting eight. Nine if you count plugging Carlyle’s neck with nappies.”

  Sanne hadn’t thought about it like that. All she’d been able to see were the negatives. “I decided to hand in my notice,” she said quietly. “At some point this morning, when I couldn’t reach the light. I decided I’d leave EDSOP and do something else, something safer.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I want to stay.” She held out her hand to Meg, who took it in both of hers. “Would that be all right with you?”

  “You don’t need my permission, San.”

  “No, I know. But you’re the one who has to pick up the pieces, aren’t you?”

  “Would you rather work nine-to-five in a nice comfortable office?”

  Sanne shook her head. “I’d hate it.”

  “Keep doing what you’re doing, then,” Meg said. “And if there are pieces to pick up, well, that’s part of my job as a doctor and as your long-suffering better half.” She tugged on a tuft of Sanne’s bed-head. “Do you want me to sort out this mop of yours before your visitors arrive?”

  What Sanne really wanted to do was throw her arms around Meg and smother her with kisses. She passed her the brush instead. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Duck down a bit so I can reach.”

  Hair deemed presentable, Meg managed to wrestle Sanne into a pair of loose jogging bottoms and a clean T-shirt. Sanne flattened the creases from the shirt, self-conscious about its rag-tag appearance, despite being glad to get out of her pyjamas.

  “You look gorgeous,” Meg said. She laughed at Sanne’s sceptical expression. “Okay, maybe ‘gorgeous’ is an overstatement, but you look less like you’ve been smacked around and dragged through a grough backwards.”

  Sanne peeked into the handheld mirror Meg had left on the cabinet, and pressed the tender swelling on her jaw. “I do still look like I’ve been smacked around.”

  Meg prised the mirror from her fingers. “Do you want me to cadge some foundation from that nurse with the orange face?”

  “Thanks, but no. I think I’d rather stay pallid and purple.”

  “Wise choice.” Meg spotted Nelson and Eleanor through the door’s slatted blinds. She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and then shook Eleanor’s hand. “I’ll make myself scarce. I need to bend my boss’s ear about exactly what constitutes a ‘family emergency.’”

  As the door closed, Nelson set a box in front of Sanne. “Everyone sends their love,” he said.

  “Crikey. That’s not all they sent.” She rummaged through assorted bags of sweets, boxes of chocolates, and a pile of cards.

  “There’s a Victoria sponge in there somewhere,” Nelson said. “Courtesy of Fred and Martha.”

  “I’ll ask for some plates and a knife when we’ve finished.” She eyed the file on Eleanor’s lap. “So, what have I missed?”

  Eleanor smiled at her eagerness. “It’s only been three days, Sanne.” She left a pause perfectly timed for dramatic effect. “But quite a lot, as it happens.”

  Sanne shoved herself higher in the chair, forgetting all about her improper attire and the oddness of the setting. The impromptu bedside briefing had been a brainwave of Meg’s, a compromise between keeping Sanne in the hospital until she was fit for discharge, and stopping her from climbing the walls through lack of information. She stifled a yelp as her battered heels reminded her why she was still an inpatient.

  “Did you speak to Dorina this morning?” she asked, when the discomfort had eased.

  “Yes, and she’s agreed to testify,” Eleanor said. “She identified each of the men we arrested at Black Gate as having raped her and the three other victims. From what we can gather, the raid on Cheviot and our obvious interest in Sadek put a dent in the plans as far as those particular vics were concerned. He had buyers in Sheffield lined up for the two girls, but he didn’t dare move them on. The barn at Black Gate was a last-minute, temporary holding place.”

  “Sadek hadn’t wiped the hard drive on his laptop,” Nelson said. “We think he was intending to lie low and then resurrect his business once the fuss died down. Looking at his administrative records, he was small-scale in comparison to Bashir, but he certainly didn’t lack ambition.”

  “Did you find any link between Sadek and Bashir?” Sanne asked. She’d been making mental notes all morning and was now regretting not asking Meg to write them down.

  “We’re still working on that angle,” Eleanor said. “Sadek’s laptop contained victim profiles, flight information: essentially a shopping list of the women he’d arranged to ship over. He and Bashir would trade on occasion, but he doesn’t feature on Bashir’s payroll. They seemed to have done business on more of a freelance basis.”

  Sanne murmured her understanding. Even through the fog of her mild fever, she could see the benefits for the two men. “They each had access to something the other wanted, didn’t they?”

  “Exactly. They were dealing in completely different countries, and it seems Sadek wasn’t keen to lose his Eastern European connection; he put feelers out to Vasile Enescu—that’s Cezar Miklos’s real name—soon after Bashir’s arrest. They must’ve hit it off, because Enescu had taken Dorina and Mirela to Black Gate that same day you spotted him at Sadek’s shop. Enescu was one of Bashir’s main suppliers. I suspect his computer will keep the MST
busy until DI Parry reaches retirement.”

  Unofficial hospital briefings were all very well, but Sanne would have given a lot right then for the office flipchart and a marker pen, or at the very least a breakdown of the key points and players. “The girl in Ron’s cellar, would she have come from Bashir, then?”

  Eleanor checked her notepad. The page she turned to was filled with names and arrows, and she’d resorted to multiple colours to keep everything in order. “Originally, yes. He also provided a number of women for Sadek’s enterprise at Nab Hey.”

  “How the hell did Ron get involved? He just…Jesus, boss, he always seemed like such a decent bloke.”

  “He liked young girls,” Eleanor said with brutal simplicity. “His computer was full of underage porn, and we found records of webcam use, the type where the client can direct the abuse of remote victims. We think he met Sadek through a forum and tipped him off about the property at Nab Hey as part-exchange for the girl in his cellar. His bank records show that the fee he paid for her was refunded when he allowed the use of his own barn.”

  Sanne sipped from a glass of iced water and rubbed her cheeks with her chilled fingers. She couldn’t tell whether it was anger or the infection that was raising her temperature. “Is she okay? The little one?”

  “She needed surgery.” Eleanor hesitated but didn’t elaborate. “We’ve traced her family, but we’re not sure if they were complicit in her being trafficked. SOET are working on that. They’re actually working on the lion’s share of the case now, alongside Manchester’s MST. They raided a brothel in Ardwick yesterday and found three of the missing Cheviot vics, but seventeen remain unaccounted for.”

  She opened a bag of boiled sweets, popping one into her mouth before she offered them around, as if keen to rid herself of a foul taste. Sanne let hers dissolve slowly, while Nelson, more of an instant gratification type, crunched his and pinched another. He smiled at her as he unwrapped it, obviously happy to have things back to a semblance of normality.