‘At the weekend probably. I’ll stay with Becky and Mark until I can find a place. I’ve got to get ready to leave here anyway. The agents will be exchanging contracts in the next couple of weeks, and then I’ve got to move out.’
‘I’ll go and stay at my house tonight.’
She didn’t make any attempt to stop him.
On his way over Mariner stopped at the off licence and picked up some bottles of the strongest beer he could find. He felt numb, unable to fully grasp that after all he and Anna had been through during the last year, it wasn’t enough to keep them together. Sitting in an armchair in the lounge, the room around him began to get blurred around the edges. Rubbing a hand over his eyes he found that his face was wet.
Mariner woke up the following morning, still in the armchair surrounded by a collection of empty brown bottles. He had a slight headache and his mouth was dry, but the biggest pain filled up his chest, which felt as if someone had been stamping all over it all night. And as his mind flashed back over the previous evening his eyes began watering again. An hour later he was showered and dressed in time for Charlie Glover to pick him up, but he could tell from Glover’s face that he still looked like shite and he was grateful that Glover didn’t know him well enough to ask what was wrong.
They stopped off at the Daffodil to collect Katarina, with Lorelei as a chaperone, and after initial greetings and light conversation everyone seemed content to sit back and watch the scenery go by, such as it was on the southbound M6. At the Catthorpe interchange Glover took the A14 towards Huntingdon to the immigration compound at Oakington, a fenced-in collection of boxy, temporary-looking buildings that could equally have been a prison complex or a university campus.
After passing through heavy security, Mariner and Glover were taken to a small windowless room to wait, while Lorelei and Katarina went to speak to the other girls. The two men sat for what seemed like an age, watching the wall clock tick slowly round. Glover couldn’t keep still. Half an hour later Katarina reappeared and for a moment Mariner thought they’d had a wasted a journey, until he spied the small, slight figure almost hidden from view behind her. ‘This is Valenka,’ Katarina told them stepping aside. She spoke to the girl in a language that wasn’t English and the girl tentatively reached out to Mariner and passed him a small snapshot. It wasn’t the picture they’d given Katarina, but a real photograph, probably taken on an instant camera, of a young girl cradling a newborn.
‘This is her friend Nadia soon after her baby came,’ Katarina told them, as Mariner and Glover stared down at a snapshot of the girl they’d all come to know as Madeleine. Her hair seemed a little darker than in the reconstruction, but other than that there was no doubt.
‘Jesus, it’s her,’ breathed Glover, his voice cracking.
‘It’s a baby boy?’ Mariner asked.
The girl nodded assent. ‘She called him Nikolai.’
From his pocket Glover retrieved the polythene packet containing a silver crucifix that they had retrieved from Madeleine’s body.
‘Do you recognise this?’ he asked. Valenka nodded miserably in reply.
‘What can she tell us about Nadia?’ Mariner asked, inviting the girls to sit.
Valenka spoke and Katarina translated for her, a strange halting conversation.
‘Nadia was already living in the house when I came here. She was kind to me and we became friends. Nadia was already pregnant then but she hadn’t told anyone. She was afraid because she wanted to keep her baby but she knows that if they find out they will make her get rid of it.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘The men who brought her to the house.’
Mariner took out a picture of Alecsander Lucca. ‘Is this one of them?’
It was a moot question. He only had to see the sheer terror on her face. She gabbled something to Katarina, who repeated to Mariner. ‘He’s coming back?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Glover. ‘He’s dead. But so is her friend Nadia.’
At the translation the girl’s eyes widened and she shook her head. Katarina hadn’t told her. ‘No. She went home.’
‘We found her body ten months ago. We recently found the body of her baby.’
The girl took the news with blank resignation, a single tear trailing down her cheek. Suddenly the room felt hot and Mariner’s own eyes filled. ‘What happened when Lucca found out about the baby?’ he asked, getting himself back on track.
‘He says she can keep it if she works until one month before it will be born.’
‘Dear God, she’s eight months pregnant and she’s turning tricks,’ said Glover in disgust.
‘Some men like it,’ said Katarina. It was a simple observation.
‘Where did Nadia have the baby?’
Valenka picked up the story. ‘They take her to another house. I thought they had gone to the hospital, but when she came back she says it was another house. There was - a baby nurse—’ Katarina, translating, groped for the right word.
‘Midwife?’ Glover volunteered. ‘A nurse who delivers babies?’
‘Yes the midwife come. She stay there for a few days and then they take the baby from Nadia. They tell her they will take it back to Albania to be cared for by her family.’
‘Did she see the midwife? Can she tell us what she looked like?’
Valenka shook her head.
‘And afterwards Nadia came back to the house on Foundry Road, the house where we found you?’
‘Yes, but only for two, maybe three days and then she is gone again. I ask where she is and they tell me she goes home to be with her baby. I am surprised because I know that Nadia owes them money for bringing her here, and we are never allowed to go out of the house. And she leave the picture behind.’ Valenka leaned forward and picked up the snapshot. Tears were streaming down her face by now and she brushed them away, murmuring something unintelligible to Glover and Mariner.
‘Did Lucca take Nadia’s baby?’ Mariner asked.
‘No. Lucca bring her to this country. The big man take the baby.’
‘The big man? Does she have a name?’
‘Zjelic, she thinks Zjelic.’
Mariner and Glover exchanged a look. ‘Could it be Zjalic?’ Mariner asked. They had interviewed a Serbian, Goran Zjalic, as part of the murder enquiry at the address where Lucca lived. At the time Zjalic had claimed that he and Lucca just happened to live in the same house and they had no reason to disbelieve him. He was over six feet tall. He was big.
Katarina translated and Valenka nodded miserably. ‘It is maybe him,’ said Katarina.
‘What else does she know about Nadia?’ Glover asked. ‘Another name, her birth date or where she is from? We want to find her family to tell them what has happened.’
Valenka was able to provide them with Nadia’s family name, her age and the name of the town she came from. They hoped it would be enough.
‘Will Valenka make a statement?’
Valenka agreed and Mariner arranged for one of the immigration officers to expedite it.
‘Have you heard of this happening before, a girl being allowed to have her baby?’ Mariner asked Lorelei, as they waited for the two girls to return.
‘Only in isolated cases, and usually it’s by accident. Some of these girls are so young and inexperienced they don’t even know they’re pregnant until they go into labour. They don’t know about contraception and the punters prefer sex without, so their pimps don’t enlighten them and pregnancy is the inevitable result. They’re undernourished anyway so they wouldn’t put on much weight. If they do realise what’s happening, some of the girls get rid of the babies themselves using the crudest of methods, or more commonly their pimps get it done for them.’
‘It’s barbaric. What about antenatal care? Medical care before the baby is born.’
‘There isn’t any. They just see a midwife at the time when the child is born. Often we pick up girls who have been thrown out of the brothel they’re working in and left to fen
d for themselves on the streets.’
‘And if a baby does go to term, and survives, it is murdered in cold blood like Madeleine’s baby.’
Lorelei was pragmatic. ‘What’s the alternative? The men who run the operations know that most families would reject a child born in these circumstances. It would be much less trouble to just get rid of the child.’
‘But why then kill Nadia too? She could still be useful to them.’
‘Perhaps motherhood gave Nadia a different perspective on her way of life and she didn’t want to give up her baby. The maternal bond is immensely powerful. Maybe she got too difficult to handle, so Zjalic dealt with her and her baby instead. It would be the simplest thing. There are plenty more girls to take her place, they are disposable commodities. ’
‘Or more accurately he had Lucca do some of the dirty work for him,’ Glover reminded him. ‘It was Lucca’s prints all over the tape. We only have Zjalic’s word that the two men didn’t know each other. And the witness who saw someone dumping something in the small hours last November identified a tall man. Zjalic is certainly that.’
‘We need to find Goran Zjalic.’
Chapter Fifteen
The drive back to Birmingham was largely a silent one, punctuated by occasional murmured exchanges between Katarina and Lorelei. Mariner and Glover were lost in their own thoughts, the euphoria of identifying Madeleine replaced by the shocking realisation of what her life had been like. They took the two women back to the project hostel. ‘When is Ocean Blue likely to come to trial?’ Lorelei asked Mariner.
‘It could be months, why?’
‘We’re running out of bed space. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep Katarina here. Our beds are in constant demand and she is no longer in immediate danger. It’s getting hard for me to justify her presence.’
‘And if you can’t keep her?’
‘We may have to consider letting her go back to Albania.’
‘What will happen to her if she does?’
‘It’s hard to tell but, to be truthful, the prospects aren’t great. I doubt she’ll be going home to Mum and Dad. My experience is that most of the girls we send back either get caught up in the sex trade in their own country, will get bought again by traffickers or, worse-case scenario, will end up killing themselves. They’ve been through so much that they’re not in a fit mental state to be reintegrated into their families.’
‘When I talked to Katarina about it she said she was too ashamed.’
‘Wouldn’t you be? It’s a common response.’
‘But that means we might lose her and we might never get her captors to court to testify.’
‘Regrettable though that is, it’s not really my problem,’ said Lorelei, candidly. ‘For the moment Katarina is safe. There are other women out there whose need right now is greater.’
‘How long have we got?’ Mariner asked.
‘I could only guarantee her a couple more nights, then you’ll have to find an alternative.’
First things first though. Immediately he and Glover got back to Granville Lane, Mariner called the police officer he’d made contact with in Tirana, at the time when Nadia’s body was discovered, and followed up by faxing through the description and photograph of Nadia. The officer seemed optimistic that they would be able to trace her family, and would arrange for one of them to fly over. ‘No rush,’ Mariner wanted to say. It was a meeting he didn’t anticipate with any pleasure.
The other item low on his list of anticipated events was going back to Anna’s house, but even so, what he saw on the drive came as a shock. Snuggled in behind Anna’s car in Mariner’s usual spot was a gleaming one-year-old silver Audi TT. The front door of the house was open, so some little way back down the road Mariner reverse parked into a row of cars from which he could observe without being seen. His worst fears were confirmed when, after a few minutes, Dr Gareth appeared from the front door. He went round to the boot of the Audi and opened it up, at the same time as Anna emerged from the house carrying a cardboard box. The laughter and playful banter between them made Mariner’s chest constrict and his eyes well up again. He waited until they’d retreated again into the house, pulled out of the parking space, did a three-point turn and drove back to his place.
Mariner had never been afraid of his own company, and there were times in the last few years when he’d craved solitude. But that had been from the safe position of having an alternative. Suddenly he felt very alone and the house very empty. One of the next things he’d do was let out the second floor flat as he had done in the past, once successfully when Tony Knox was temporarily homeless, and then rather less successfully when Kenneth McCrae had taken up his unfortunate short-term occupancy. He might not feel like opening up his home to the general public quite yet, but there were plenty of trainee officers looking for cheap lodgings. He climbed the stairs to inspect the rooms. They’d need a bit of a clean, but otherwise everything was in good order. He’d get an ad put in the force magazine tomorrow. It wasn’t until he was standing under the shower the following morning that he had a much better idea.
DCI Sharp’s car was in the car park so Mariner went straight to her office. ‘I want to talk to you about Katarina, the girl we interviewed from Ocean Blue,’ he said.
‘All right.’ Sharp sat back in her chair.
‘They need her bed at the hostel. But I’m concerned that if we let her go we run the risk of losing our star witness. Katarina is the best we’ve had for years and we have no way of knowing what she’s going back to, or whether we’ll be able to keep track of her.’
‘So?’
‘She came here to be a translator. She’s a bright girl with skills and . . . experience. Can’t we do something to help, find her a job or something? We’d do it for offenders, why not for a victim?’ He was being naïve, Mariner knew that. They couldn’t possibly help every victim of crime. But Katarina had endured so much and in the long-run they were going to need her here.
DCI Sharp must have agreed.
‘Talk to Millie,’ she said. ‘See if they can’t do something through the offender rehabilitation scheme.’
Millie’s response was mixed. ‘We could probably get Katarina interpreting work through the Brasshouse centre, but accommodation will be more difficult, she’ll need somewhere to stay, an address.’
Mariner had already covered that base, though he hesitated to say it. ‘She can stay at my place.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Probably not.’ But, as far as Mariner was concerned, it was the only humane thing to do.
Mariner and Glover had first interviewed Goran Zjalic at 158 Wilmott Road, Stirchley, the address where he and Alecsander Lucca lived. When there was no response today to their banging on the door, Mariner ordered it broken down. They and two uniforms burst into an empty house, but one that had until lately been lived in. There was recently bought food in the kitchen cupboards.
‘We’re looking for anything that might link Zjalic to Ocean Blue or to Nadia,’ Mariner told them. He dispatched one of the uniforms to knock on doors and talk to the neighbours on either side.
The house was as grubby and sparsely furnished as the last time they had been here, with fixtures and fittings that were beyond second-hand. Furniture was minimal, but in the small box room upstairs was a cot. ‘He had his sister living with him.’ Glover reminded Mariner about the young woman who had come in while they were talking, cradling a baby on her hip.
‘If that’s who she was,’ Mariner said. ‘From what we now know she could have been another Nadia. I mean, we don’t even know that the baby was hers—’ He stopped suddenly.
‘It could have been Nadia’s baby,’ said Glover, picking up Mariner’s train of thought. ‘We only know that Nadia and the child were killed at around the same.’
‘Nadia’s baby had a cleft lip and palate,’ Mariner reminded him. ‘I didn’t notice that about the child.’
‘It might have had a dummy in its mouth. Tha
t would have covered it up. The baby died of a crushed skull. Zjalic losing his temper when it cried too much?’
‘It’s possible,’ Mariner had to concede. ‘But I don’t think this is Zjalic’s normal residence. Valenka called him “the big man” but I don’t think she was just talking about his height. He’s higher up the food chain. He could afford somewhere much smarter than this.’
The uniform returned. ‘The neighbours on one side recognised the description of Zjalic, but according to them he hasn’t been seen since around the time of Ocean Blue.’
‘It doesn’t mean he hasn’t been here,’ said Mariner. ‘Didn’t you notice the lack of post in the hall when we first came in? If Zjalic has really been off the scene for three weeks there would have been a stack of junk mail on the floor. Someone’s been in and moved it. It might not have been at the time of day when anyone would see him, but Zjalic has been back. We’d do well to put this place under surveillance. Anyone else seen here?’
‘They said there’s sometimes a young woman with a baby, but again, not in the last two or three weeks.’
‘It’s always the same woman?’
‘They seemed to think so.’
‘Nadia’s baby died at the end of last year, so maybe it really was Zjalic’s sister we met,’ said Glover.
‘Sir.’ As they were talking, the second PC descended the stairs carrying a crumpled black bin liner, which he passed to Mariner. ‘I found it stuffed in the back of a wardrobe.’
When Mariner opened up the neck of the bag, sitting inside were a white leather handbag with multiple pockets, a mobile phone and a blue and white striped canvas ballet shoe with a buckle trim. ‘What the hell is going on?’ Mariner exclaimed. ‘Where does Christie Walker come into this?’
A pit-stop at Phyllis Gates’ house verified that the bag belonged to her late granddaughter and all three items were retained for forensic examination, and, Mariner hoped, something that would explain what they were doing in Goran Zjalic’s house.
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