The Carnival of Curiosities (Matt Drake Book 27)

by David Leadbeater

  “Who knows? Fire and brimstone? A virus? Repression and austerity? Not many will oppose them. But forget about The Scourge for now. We need to get you out of the mess you’ve made and deal with the Hagis.”

  Lupei lounged against the back end of a police car, confident and arrogant. “Bring guns,” he said. “Military weapons. The bigger the better. I want to wipe him out with one stroke. And when I am king of all Romas, then everyone will respect me.”

  “Of course, of course. I will make the calls.”

  Lupei ended the call, looking from his sad, unoccupied carnival to the police cars with their flashing lights, his family, and men in handcuffs. Who had struck a blow against them tonight?

  Whoever it was, they would soon regret it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Alicia stretched weary muscles, sitting up ramrod straight in the car. It wasn’t an easy task. Her arms and legs ached from hours of being immobile. Her brain was foggy. Dahl had fallen asleep hours ago and emitted gentle snores. Alicia spent the time deciding what she could put in his half-open mouth and then take photos of.

  By the time she’d scrapped the photo idea and decided to draw a phallic shape on the side of his face, Karin was back on the phone.

  Dahl woke at the ringtone. “Wh... what?”

  Alicia slipped her hand deep into his trouser pockets and started rummaging around. “I’ll answer it. Is it in here? Oh, wait... what’s that? Not a phone. Hang on, what’s this? Nearly there. I can—”

  “Stop.” Dahl pushed her hand aside, grabbed the phone and answered it. “Karin?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” the Englishwoman said over speakerphone. “We finally got the satellite footage through, which I just sent to your phones.”

  Dahl pressed on a notification and then switched to widescreen. “What are we looking for?”

  “Black van. Wait for it.”

  Karin had edited the footage so that the black van appeared right away. Alicia watched the grainy footage as four men got out, opened the back door and dragged two females onto the tarmac. In the struggle that followed Alicia got a clear view of one of the women’s faces.

  “That’s Oana,” she said.

  “Yeah, facial rec agrees. Oana is in the system for a few misdemeanors. So is her sister.”

  “Their parents aren’t exactly role models,” Dahl growled.

  “Got it. Just keep watching.”

  Alicia watched as Oana and Alba were pulled to their feet, then punched and kicked until they stopped fighting. The four men didn’t hold back. Alicia expected the women to be hauled into the warehouse—the same one they were watching right now—but instead, the shutter doors rattled open and two cars appeared. Oana and Alba were shoved into separate trunks and then driven away.

  “Shit,” Alicia said. “They’re not here.”

  “That’s why we check the footage,” Karin said. “But the cars are clear enough and I did get the plates. I scoured the footage from hundreds of CCTV cameras from your position outward. Both cars are currently parked up at—” she went quiet for a moment “—here. I sent you the coordinates.”

  “Fantastic.” Dahl put them into his satnav. “Hell, they’re a hundred miles away.”

  “Then we better get going.” Alicia started the car and pulled into traffic, following directions. “Nav says ninety-five minutes. Bet I can do it in seventy.”

  Dahl buckled his seatbelt. Karin said she’d keep an eye on the cars and went back to work. Dahl rummaged in the footwell, looking for food.

  “Hey, did you eat that whole bag of donuts?”

  Alicia wiped sugar from her lips. “No.”

  Dahl glanced up at her and then shook his head. “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll just eat bloody fruit.”

  “I told you to get more sweet stuff.”

  Dahl sat back. “And now we’re sounding like an old married couple.”

  Alicia grinned, following a winding road along a slick surface. The folded lands of mid-Romania swallowed them for the next hour until they neared their destination.

  “Told you,” Alicia said, pointing at the time. “Seventy-nine minutes.”

  “That’s not what you said and we’re still ten minutes out.”

  “Near enough,” Alicia grunted. “Fuck me, Dahl, just remind me never to join you on a stakeout ever again. You’re no fun whatsoever.”

  Stuck in traffic, they edged their way toward their destination. A call to Karin verified that the suspect cars were still in place—a somewhat sobering thought. Surely they wouldn’t hang around for almost ninety minutes with two captives in their trunks.

  Five minutes later they saw the cars.

  Both were parked outside a large diner with full-length windows. People sat eating at narrow breakfast bars in the windows, staring out at the parking lot. Alicia borrowed Dahl’s phone to get a good look at the four men who’d transported Oana and Alba.

  “You ready?” Dahl asked.

  “We should wait,” Alicia said. “Destroying a diner is gonna put us on all the wrong radars and these guys have to come out soon.”

  “Unless they dumped the cars. At least, let’s look inside those trunks.”

  “All right. I can live with that.”

  Dahl grunted, exited the car and stretched. Alicia found she had to do the same. They’d been sitting in practically the same position for hours. Dahl went around to the trunk, opened it, and took out two handguns and two knives.

  “Here. Don’t do anything silly.”

  Alicia glared at him. “Says the Mad fucking Swede. All right, Torsty, I’ll be a good girl if you will.”

  Dahl stalked away from the car and approached the suspect cars. Alicia followed, keeping an eye on the diner but seeing only youths and women enjoying their food at the windows. Their four targets had to be deeper inside.

  Dahl stopped and rapped on the trunk of the first car. There was no reply. Alicia knocked hard on the second. Again, silence was the only response. Dahl looked over at Alicia.

  “Inside?”

  Alicia hesitated. Every moment they wasted meant that Oana and Alba might get further away, but attacking four men inside a busy restaurant might also result in their arrest. And if the cops stopped them, they couldn’t help Cam’s sisters.

  As she waited, four men left the restaurant. She recognized them instantly—the very four men they were looking for. One of them saw Dahl and immediately turned belligerent, yelling at the Swede to get the hell away from his car. The other three, also aggressive, squared their shoulders and headed toward the Swede.

  The lead man—a close-shaven blond—yelled at Dahl in—presumably—Romanian. The Swede cupped his ear.

  “Not a bloody clue, mate. Can you sing?”

  The blond looked confused. His friends—a short guy, a broad guy and a man whose orange tan looked as bright as a pumpkin on Halloween night, blinked at each other.

  “Hey knobhead,” Alicia said to him. “Why you got a satsuma on your neck?”

  The blond, clearly agitated, came forward, fists raised. Dahl blocked his punch and smashed a fist into his teeth, bloodying his lips. The broad guy moved in next, clearly fancying his chances. Dahl grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him off his feet before depositing him hard on his spine.

  “Hey,” Alicia complained. “Leave some for me.”

  The satsuma leered at her. Alicia stepped around Dahl, grabbed the man’s jacket and jerked him forward, at the same time lowering her head. His nose connected with her skull, making him cry out and fall away. The short man was already reaching inside his jacket.

  “Don’t think so.” Dahl gave him an elbow to the jaw.

  All four men were injured, but they were also criminals and ready to fight. The short one caught himself and flew at Dahl, fists flying. The satsuma pulled a knife and slashed at Alicia. Worse, the other two produced guns.

  Alicia caught the satsuma’s thrust under her armpit, locked the arm in and spun. The man was forced to spin with her, his body
crashing into both gun wielders. All three men collapsed. Alicia stomped on one’s abdomen and another’s face. The third scrabbled for his weapon. Alicia used her right boot to break his fingers.

  Dahl blocked his opponent’s attack, then threw the man onto the back of his own car face-first. The impact left a red smear. Alicia debilitated her attacker faster, conscious that their little fracas wasn’t going unnoticed by people in the diner.

  She collected their weapons and then started her interrogation.

  “Oana and Alba,” she said. “Two Roma girls the Hagis asked you to kidnap. Where are they?”

  Predictably, the men only cursed at her. Alicia spent eighty entertaining seconds squeezing broken bones, punching sensitive areas and kneeling on the groins of these human traffickers. Nothing was too painful for them.

  “The girls?” Alicia asked.

  Dahl slammed his opponent time after time against his own car, breaking bones and slashing flesh. The man held his hand up, but Dahl decided to break it at the wrist. They didn’t have time to conduct a long interrogation.

  “Where are they?”

  “I am sorry... I am sorry...” The satsuma was the first to give in. “They are—”

  The broad guy then elbowed satsuma in the throat, causing him to choke and clam up. Alicia fell on the broad guy, pounding at his face, focusing on his eyes and mouth. She hauled him up by the shirt only to knock him down hard once more. Her knuckles were bruised, her flesh torn from striking his teeth. The man spat and yelped and then started to cry.

  “Please, no more. No more.”

  By now, satsuma was able to talk again. Both men gurgled out different versions of the same information.

  “They were taken to the Vlad. It’s a hellhole. A terrible place near Bucharest where trafficked men, women and children are taken and held until they are sold as slaves.”

  “How long ago?” Alicia asked.

  “They will arrive soon. But auctions can happen at any time. They might already have been sold.”

  Alicia leaned forward, knees grinding into Satsuma. “You’d better hope not, asshole. If I have to come back for you...”

  “Please... please...”

  Alicia added several punches to his agony. “Did the girls beg and plead?” she asked. “Did they ask for mercy? And what did you do... laugh at them?”

  Satsuma gasped out the address, even adding a password that should get them inside. Alicia looked over at Dahl who was extracting similar information.

  “We good to go?”

  “Yeah, and fast.”

  Quickly, they bundled the four men into the trunks of their own cars, locked them and threw away the keys. Then they ran back to their own.

  “Misdirection,” Dahl said as he started to drive. “They drive the girls away from Bucharest only to return them under a different guise. It’s all carnival ingenuity. The cops or searching parents might even pass them on the road. It’s truly horrendous.”

  Alicia nodded grimly. “Drive, Dahl. Just drive.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  Alicia shifted her gaze from the piece of paper to the building in front of her, not quite believing her eyes.

  On the piece of paper was the address Satsuma had given them. Talk about assumptions and asses and all that, but the building in question was nothing like the one she’d imagined.

  “You sure?” she asked Dahl for the eighth time.

  “Either Satsuma lied, or this particular slave auction reaches far higher than we’d imagined.”

  Higher? Alicia thought about that and then nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.” But how are we gonna find the women?

  It was a smoked-glass, ten-story structure rearing up amid other costly buildings in an exclusive part of the city of Bucharest. Its reflective glass windows were impressive, filled with drifting clouds, gray sky and surrounding edifices. Alicia saw only one entrance, a foyer, and a sign leading to a parking garage around the back. They’d already spent fifteen minutes googling the address.

  “Top eight floors are prime office space,” Dahl said. “Home to some of the richest companies in Romania. But that’s not what makes this address exclusive. It’s the lower two floors, which are home to a vast private gym that attracts celebrities from all over the world. Whether local, visiting or filming in the vicinity, they all come here.”

  “A celebrity gym,” Alicia mused. “I wonder if Reece Carrera is here.”

  “Who’s Reece Carrera?”

  “A celeb who’d do anything for me. Just think of Dwayne Johnson and Hugh Jackman rolled into one.”

  Dahl grunted. “I’d rather not. I’ve just eaten. But the chances of this Carrera bloke being in Bucharest today are pretty slim.”

  Alicia nodded glumly. “Just checked his Insta. Apparently, he’s partying in Vegas. Lucky bastard.”

  “His Insta?” Dahl frowned and then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Look, Satsuma gave us a code. Trouble is we don’t know where to use it or where to go. We need to get in the building and do some recon.”

  Alicia started forward. “We can start with the outside.”

  Together, they strolled past several buildings but studied only one.

  “CCTV,” Dahl said, “on every corner and the front door. Also, above the third floor windows, probably extra security for the celebs. Interestingly though, none around the parking garage.”

  “You’re getting old.” Alicia sighed. “Look.” She indicated a pretty obvious white ball over the entrance.

  “No,” Dahl said. “There.”

  Alicia noticed it only when he pointed—an obscure niche in the wall next to the big entrance. The niche held a metal door and a keypad. They hung around for as long as they could, but for the extended period they watched nobody seemed interested in the minor door.

  Several expensive looking cars did drive down into the parking garage. And, proving the quality of the security team, it wasn’t long before a man wearing dark sunglasses exited the building to stare at them.

  “We should go,” Dahl said. “They probably get deranged fans and paparazzi out here all the time.”

  Back in the car, they debated.

  “We try the keypad,” Alicia said finally. “We have a code. It’s a potential way in. And then we wing it—like always.”

  Dahl agreed. “No time to waste,” he said.

  This time, they approached the door from another angle, fast and direct. Dahl turned into the niche as Alicia hung back and kept her head on a swivel, watching out for anyone approaching from the building.

  “HPWPIM.” Dahl spelled out letters on the keypad and waited. Alicia heard a dull click before Dahl pushed open the door.

  “Get ready,” the Swede mouthed.

  Alicia followed him inside. Unfortunately, the passage was narrow and she couldn’t see a thing around his bulk. Alicia tried to peer underneath his armpits, coming up on both sides but unable to see much more than the Swede’s biceps.

  “Where are we?”

  “What am I? A tour guide now?”

  The passage ended in a narrow, concrete staircase, leading downward. “Hurry up,” Alicia whispered. “It’s bloody freezing in here.”

  They descended thirteen steps to a lower floor. Here, the passage widened. Alicia saw another passage, this one with a booth at the far end where a man with the aura of a parking attendant was sitting.

  “Here’s where it gets interesting,” Dahl muttered.

  The man looked up as they approached, hands beneath the table he was seated behind. His face was flabby and open, his eyes cautious. A nametag attached to his jacket read: Jamie. “Your car, sir?” he asked in English.

  Dahl’s next response was vital. “Car?” he said, affecting his old Swedish accent. Alicia couldn’t remember him speaking with an accent since the old bones of Odin days.

  Jamie studied the big man. “Do you have a ticket for your car?”

  Dahl didn’t bat an eyelid. “I have no car. Why would I need a car? I have the
password. What else do you need?”

  “Your invitation, sir.”

  Dahl hesitated, clearing his throat and then turned in a blasé way to Alicia. “My assistant should have it.”

  Alicia gaped back like a goldfish, for once at a loss for words. “I... I... what...”

  “Oh, do not tell me you have forgotten it!” Dahl bellowed, making her leap out of her skin. “Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid—”

  “Umm, sir, please keep your voice down,” Jamie began.

  “But the girl is so stupid! I have her for the eye candy only. She is barely able to string a sentence together. Little better than an animal. All this way!” he shouted directly at Alicia. “We have come all this way and—”

  Jamie was trying to grab Dahl’s attention but, staring at the big Swede’s face, Alicia knew he was having far too much fun to hear the man. A sharp jab to Dahl’s sternum shut him right up and didn’t attract Jamie’s attention. Dahl went a little red and fell silent.

  Jamie’s voice became clear. “Please sir, who gave you the password?”

  Dahl took a breath. “Ah, the Brigazi. My friend, Satsuma.”

  “Satsuma?”

  “Yes, Satsuma. Do you know him?”

  Jamie cleared his throat. “I know the Brigazi, of course. They send many clients. Please... go in.”

  Alicia hid a smile at the tone of Jamie’s words. It sounded more like he was trying to get rid of them than admitting them. She followed Dahl through the glass booth, giving Jamie a saucy wink as she passed, sharing a private smile with him. The poor lad probably had to put up with an endless flow of obnoxious, criminal assholes and would enjoy a silent joke at their expense.

  Past the booth, they wound down another passage and another set of stairs, coming eventually to a double door covered in plush leather. An imposing entryway, but a lavish one nevertheless, promising something special inside. Alicia waited for the guards to push them open.

  Inside, it was a different world. It was rough and dusty, heated and well-lit. Cracked tiles covered the floor, missing in many places, and plastic seats had been arranged before a wooden stage upon which most of the lights shone.