‘I go for walk,’ Ludmilla said.
‘You went for a walk? I thought you were locked in.’
‘No. First night. Before…before he came. I have keys, to go buy food. I go for walk.’
‘Tell me about it. Where did you walk?’
‘Not far. I show you.’ She took the paper again and started drawing. ‘I walk down here, and round here.’
‘What did you see? What shops did you see?’
She made agitated movements with her hands, frustrated by the lack of words. ‘Fruit,’ she said. ‘And…tables and chairs. And music. And big shop where I buy food.’
‘A big shop. Can you remember the name?’
She screwed up her face in concentration, but it wouldn’t come. ‘I think…I think begin with…’ She picked up the pen and drew the letter S on the pad.
‘We want a big shop beginning with an S,’ I told the other two, but they were about as helpful as a spare wheel on a sledge. Even my feeble brain was capable of coming up with Sainsbury’s and Safeways, but when I suggested them Ludmilla shook her head.
‘That’s terrific, Ludmilla,’ I said. ‘We’re nearly there. Is there anything else you can tell me? What about the names of these other streets.’
She shook her head again.
I pointed to the route she’d indicated on the drawing. ‘Which was the busiest road?’
‘That one.’
‘Was it very busy?’
‘Yes. Very busy. Many people all over. Shops come out where people walk. Very busy.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Do you mean that the shopkeepers bring their goods out on to the pavement?’
‘Yes. On pavement. And many ladies dressed like the doctor.’
‘The doctor?’ I queried.
‘Doctor Kaur,’ Lorraine said. ‘In the next room.’
‘You mean Asian ladies, in saris?’
‘Yes. Asian ladies.’
We were getting there. It would take time, but we could probably pinpoint the flat from the information Ludmilla had given us. ‘OK, Ludmilla,’ I said. ‘You’ve gone for your walk and you’re heading back to the house. Did you have a front door key?’
‘No. Front door not locked.’
‘Was there a number on it?’
‘No, but…’
‘Go on.’
‘This house.’ She pointed to the house next but one. ‘This house number…’ Again she drew it on the pad. Number 45. ‘Same age as my father,’ she said.
‘Brilliant!’ I said. ‘Well done.’ I did a quick calculation and came up with either 49 or 41 for the house in question. ‘Now,’ I continued. ‘You’ve entered the house. Where was your apartment? Was it upstairs?’
‘Yes, up stairs.’
‘And you had a key to your apartment. What sort of key was it?’ I quickly sketched a Yale key and a deadlock. She pointed to the deadlock and snatched the pen from between my fingers. ‘Number eight,’ she said, and drew an 8 on the pad. ‘The flat was number eight.’
‘That’s fantastic. Now, I’d like you to tell me about the room. What it was like inside.’ Ideally, we’d want to prove she’d been in there.
‘I go all round it,’ she said. ‘I do this, everywhere.’ She pressed her fingers on the table several times, then stood up and did the same thing on the wall and the door. ‘I think they will kill me, so I leave my fingers on everywhere, so you can tell that Ludmilla was in the room.’
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that this slip of a girl had been so brave, had endured so much in her brief life, and had such a fighting spirit. ‘We’ll find the room, Ludmilla,’ I promised, ‘and we’ll prove that you were there, and we’ll arrest the people who put you there.’
I was nearly done, had just one line of questioning remaining. I said: ‘Tell me how you escaped.’
It hurt her, being reminded of those days. She was tortured and locked in a room, used as casually as if she’d been a disposable cup, and expected to die when they’d finished with her. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked gently in the chair.
‘He came…’ she began, her voice barely audible. ‘He have…his little friend with him.’
‘Doo-gie?’ I asked.
‘No not Doo-gie. Pony’s tail man. He attack me with little friend.’
‘Who was the little friend?’ I asked.
‘Little friend not a person. I steal little friend. I bring it for you. It is in car.’
‘Which car? The one that brought you here?’
‘Yes.’
Lorraine jumped up and left the room. A minute later she returned and placed this thing on the table in front of me. Ludmilla shrank away from it, stood up and walked over to the window. A big jet was coming over, and she was probably wishing she’d never been on one. The thing consisted of an aluminium tube and a red plastic pistol grip. The words Hotshot Made in the USA were moulded into the handle. It was the cattle prod that Wallenberg had used to punish Selina and torture God-knows how many girls like Ludmilla into cowed submission. Sometimes I think that an-eye-for-an-eye would be too easy for people like him.
‘How did you get this?’ I asked.
She was still looking out of the window. She said: ‘He came. One night. He…he attack me. I pretend…’ She couldn’t go any further.
‘It’s OK, Ludmilla,’ I said. ‘I think we know what you mean. Did you grab this, his little friend?’
‘Grab it?’
‘Did you take it from him?’
‘Yes. I take it. I go pssst pssst to him.’ She turned to face me as if holding the prod and made two stabbing motions.
I smiled at the thought of it. ‘You gave him some of his own medicine?’
‘No! No medicine.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I picked up the prod and jabbed it to one side ‘You did this to him?’
‘Yes. He not like it. Then I run away. Key was in door. I open door and make lock again and run away.’
‘You locked him in?’
‘Yes.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You’re an incredible girl, Ludmilla,’ I said. ‘Just incredible.’
She’d run into the nearest shop and they’d looked after her. We had another cup of tea in the other room and they took turns to fire questions and lecture me on gender politics. I was seriously outnumbered and outgunned so I took it all. They muttered in amazement when I told them that I knew who the two men were, and that led to a short, eye-watering discussion on what ought to be done to them.
I used the bathroom and asked to be taken home. The Asian lady and the other woman shook my hand. Ludmilla looked hesitant. I gave her the apologetic smile and said I’d tell Lorraine what happened. She thanked me for helping her.
I collected the cattle prod from the kitchen and told them I needed it for evidence. The blacked-out glasses were on the mantelshelf and as Magda opened the front door I handed them to her, saying: ‘I don’t really think I need these, do you?’ My words were blown away in the down-wash of a Delta Airlines Triple 7 as she took them from me.
‘Peter Wallenberg,’ I said. ‘Top priority. I want him before the end of the day.’ We were in the main office, with everybody present. ‘He’s either done a bunk or is lying low. Find out the location of every property he owns and look for him there. Talk to the neighbours and his tenants, show them his picture. Talk to his wife and lean on her. Shell shop him if she can. Fraud Squad – or should I say the Economic Crime Unit – are looking into his finances, seeing what they can freeze. We want him for murder, kidnapping and rape.’ As an afterthought I added: ‘And having a ponytail at his age.’ If anything would stir them into action that was it.
I wiped a clean patch on the whiteboard and picked up a pen. ‘One other thing before you go,’ I said. ‘I have a description of the house and locality where the foreign girl was held. Does anybody recognise this?’
I sketched a row of terrace houses. ‘This one is number 45,’ I said. ‘She was held in thi
s one.’
‘49,’ somebody informed us all.
‘Or 41,’ another added.
‘That’s right. The street down here leads to a main road,’ I drew it, ‘and there are lots of shops here. The shops spread their wares out on to the pavement.’ I drew a few circles and squares to represent them. ‘One of the bigger shops that sells food begins with the letter S. Now, here’s the clincher: the name of this street is to do with trees. Two words, and they are both trees, or associated with trees. Anybody any ideas?’
Everybody gazed at the board, racking their brains for enlightenment. Jeff broke the silence.
‘Are we talking about Heckley?’ he asked.
I gave the wish-I-knew smile. ‘Not sure.’
Somebody else said: ‘When you say trees, do you mean grove, or something like that?’
‘I imagine so. What else is there, or do we have to go through the A to Z?’
‘Avenue.’
‘Yep. Any more?’
‘It’s the Junipers,’ the youngest DC in the squad stated. ‘Juniper Avenue, just off Westerton Road. The shop beginning with an S is a Spar.’
A sigh of agreement rippled through the room. ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Juniper Avenue sounds like the place. I’d like to publicly congratulate that man on his diligence and observation. Will the rest of you please take note and act accordingly?’
‘He only knows because he’s screwing the checkout girl,’ someone said, and the meeting broke up with smiles all around.
‘49, Juniper Avenue?’ Dave asked when the scraping of chairs and rattle of conversation had faded away. He walked over to the wall map to check its location.
‘I want somebody from fingerprints there, too,’ I said. ‘The girl says she left her prints on everything.’
‘What, deliberately?’
‘Mmm. She thought they’d kill her so she wanted to leave her mark.’
‘Blimey.’
I made the call and arranged to meet a SOCO at the flat. Twenty minutes later we were parking in Juniper Avenue. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I said.
I tried to put myself in her place. She’d landed an hour earlier, straight from a country ravaged by war and sectarian hatred. I went through the names that had made the headlines since the break-up of the Soviet Union: Serbia, Macedonia, the remainders of the Czech and Yugoslav republics, Kosova, Albania. And so on. A heartbreaking litany of hatred whipped up by a few men’s craving for power. Where she came from I didn’t know, but Westerton Road, with all its traffic and dust and bustling shoppers, must have felt like heaven to her. Workmen with a cherry-picker crane were lifting more Christmas decorations into place and stringing cables dripping with coloured bulbs across the road. The smells are the first thing you notice about a foreign country. To me it was just traffic fumes, but what would she smell on the breeze? The odour of wet peat blowing down from the hills, the freshly cut grass in the park and the aftershave and perfume of the boys and girls? We did the walk she’d done and found ourselves standing outside the un-numbered door, next but one from the end.
‘It’s flat number eight,’ I said. ‘Upstairs.’
The front door wasn’t locked, as she’d said. We closed it behind us and I found the push for the light. Dave led the way up the carpet-covered stairs. We’d barely reached the top when the light went out. I found another push and when the light came on again we saw that number eight stood before us.
I knocked, then tried the handle. It was locked.
‘Kick it down,’ I said.
Dave pressed himself against the opposite wall, took a deep breath and launched himself at the door. Wood splintered and a gap appeared. Two more clinical kicks and we were in.
All rooms smell when they’ve been locked up for a week or so, but it doesn’t usually hit you before you pass over the threshold. I sniffed, set my expression to one of distaste and gingerly stepped into the room, like a cat exploring a new home.
It was a businesslike room. Some businesses require computers and desks, or ladders and power tools. When sex is your business all you need is a bed and a bathroom. A coat was flung carelessly on the floor, with a jacket next to it. A black coat. I stepped between them and worked my way around the bed.
He was curled up in a corner, between the bed and the wall. His shirt was unbuttoned all the way down and his trousers and underpants were around his ankles. One hand was clutched over his genitals and the other was in front of his face, palm outwards, the fingers spread wide to offer maximum protection from whatever he was hiding from.
‘Come and look at this,’ I whispered.
‘Jeeezus!’ Dave exclaimed as he came alongside me. We stood in silence for several seconds. ‘Wallenberg?’ he wondered.
‘Yeah, it’s Wallenberg,’ I said. ‘Look at the expression on his face.’
‘I’ve heard of people being scared to death,’ Dave said, ‘but this is the first time I’ve seen it.’
The SOCO arrived and we sent for the pathologist. Officially it was a suspicious death, so we had to set the machinery in motion again. I had the coat put in an evidence bag and whisked off to the lab.
‘Right, where shall we start?’ the SOCO said after the professor had given his permission.
‘How about there,’ I said, indicating the middle of the door that led into the bathroom.
‘Good as anywhere,’ he replied, and dipped his squirrel-hair brush into the aluminium powder. Ten seconds later he said: ‘Blimey. First time lucky.’ An hour later he ran out of lifting tape and had to send for replenishments.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I didn’t go to Rosie’s funeral. I don’t know why; it didn’t seem necessary. Funerals are for the living, not the dead. They’re a statement of closure, I suppose, but Rosie and I had closed a week before she took the fatal dose. The funeral director we’d assigned the arrangements to rang me from Scarborough and asked what I wanted him to do with Rosie’s ashes. I asked him if I could collect them after hours and he said no problem, so straight from work I dashed over to Scarborough and brought Rosie home.
I’d arranged to have Wednesday off. When I dug up the roses in Rosie’s garden I noticed a freshly planted rambler with the ticket still on it. Something had jolted inside me when I read the name: it was called High Hopes. At first light I drove over to her house and dug that one up, too, and placed it in the car boot, next to her ashes. Four hours later I swung off the M5 and started looking for the signs for Uley.
The vicar is called Duncan and we’d met before. We shook hands and he said it was a sad story. He collected a spade and we went down the graveyard next to the church, to where Abraham Barraclough, Rosie’s father, was buried. It was informal, which is what she would have wanted, with no prayers and no hymns, just two of us with our private thoughts. I asked Duncan if he minded me planting the rambling rose in the hedge, and he said of course not. I felt better after doing that. Like I said: funerals are for the living.
Have a day off and the work piles up, especially when you are trying to sew up two, or was it three, murders? The report I’d asked the lab to rush through for me was on my desk. The overcoat belonging to Wallenberg bore microscopic traces of blood and brain matter, all down the left-hand sleeve and shoulder. The inference was that he’d been walking to the right of Krabbe when the fatal blow was struck, which meant that Duggie Jones must have done the deed. Further tests were being done to prove the coat was Wallenberg’s and the blood was Krabbe’s, but there was little doubt.
Joe Crozier was Nigel’s case, but I like to keep a fatherly eye on him. Jones had already confessed to helping Dale Dobson dispose of Joe’s body and now we had him for murder. Without a complainant we couldn’t touch him for the rape charges, but we’d confront him and he’d claim he was just the driver. Hopefully we’d learn a lot more from him about Wallenberg’s empire. He’d be wearing communal underpants for the rest of his life, but if he was a good boy and cooperated with us he might be allowed to wash them for himself.
‘Hi Chas,’ he said. ‘Have a good day off?’
‘Hello Jeff. No, not really.’
‘Go anywhere?’
‘Mmm. I went down to Gloucestershire; took Rosie’s ashes to the cemetery where her father is buried.’
He looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry, Chas…’
‘That’s OK. It had to be done. It was just a long drive, that’s all. What have we got?’
‘These,’ he said, pointing to the photos of Body One. ‘And the other girl – Body Two. Presumably these are still ongoing.’
‘Hmm, I’d think so. We can try for forensic links to Wallenberg, but I doubt if we’ll find any. I suspect he’s involved, though, but I doubt if we’ll ever know. What’s the expression we use: a police spokesman said they are not looking for anyone else.’
‘Did you see my report for yesterday?’ Jeff asked.
‘No, not yet.’
‘I spent most of the day at the flat on Juniper Avenue, talking to the tenants. Wallenberg owned the end three, would you believe. Jones had a room in the end one and all the other rooms are taken by ladies of the night. He was taking about £200 a week each off them, which works out at something between one and two thousand, over and above the rents. Not bad if you can get it. He had similar operations in Bradford and Leeds and God-knows where else.’
‘Jesus. We’re in the wrong line of work.’
The phone rang and it was the call I’d been waiting for. ‘Hello Prof,’ I said. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘The body from Juniper Avenue…’ he began.
Over the Edge Page 25
