Cold in Hand cr-11

by John Harvey

  "No word from Gregan about a possible shooter?"

  "Not so far."

  "Something'll break sooner or later."

  "You have to hope."

  Lynn turned towards the door. "I'd better go."

  "Okay."

  "See you at home."

  Resnick nodded. "If you see Frank or Anil-"

  "I'll ask them to come back in."

  Andreea phoned Lynn the following day, her voice shaky, her accent thicker. The Witness Care Officer had informed her of the adjournment, thinking perhaps that it might put her more at ease.

  "Where are you?" Lynn asked. "Are you phoning from London?"

  No. She was there, in the city, at the bus station.

  "Wait where you are," Lynn told her. "Wait there and I'll find you."

  She was sitting on one of the benches, head covered by a patterned scarf. Since Lynn had last seen her, she seemed to have lost weight. Her face had become thinner, more gaunt.

  As Lynn approached, she looked around anxiously, then grabbed at her arm. "I did not want to come here, but I have to see you. I am afraid."

  "It's okay." Lynn disengaged herself. "It's okay. Let's go somewhere where we can talk."

  The Victoria Centre was beginning to empty, some of the shops already closing, their shutters being pulled down and locked for the night. Lynn steered Andreea along the upper level and onto the covered walkway that crossed Upper Parliament Street; down then past stalls selling electrical goods and discount batteries and cheap clothes. A few hundred metres and a few more corners, and they were on Broad Street and there, across from the arts cinema, was Lee Rosey's, Lynn's little oasis in the city centre.

  She'd stumbled on it by chance, a small cafe with no more than six or seven tables running to the back and a few stools by the front window looking out on to the street. Arranged neatly on the shelves along one wall were fifty or more different kinds of tea, everything from Assam and Ceylon through peppermint or chamomile to cinnamon and hibiscus. You could get coffee if that's what you wanted, and the coffee was okay, smoothies also, but tea was the thing, the proprietor going against the trend; not coffee but tea.

  Generally, Lynn liked to keep the place to herself, not go there with anyone associated with the job. Most of the regular customers seemed to be patrons of the cinema opposite or students from one or other of the nearby colleges, but at that time of the evening there were only a few stragglers left: a young man using his laptop by the window, a young woman leafing through a book about photography while she listened to her iPod, a couple sharing a piece of coffee cake and staring into each other's eyes the way only adolescents could.

  "Please," Andreea said, "what happened-I don't understand."

  "You mean the adjournment?"

  "Yes."

  "It's difficult to explain."

  "You think he is not guilty?"

  Lynn breathed out slowly. "No, it's not that, it's… Look, Andreea"-touching her hand-"I'll be honest with you. I don't fully understand everything myself. But Zoukas, in the end he'll pay for whatever he's done, I assure you."

  "And me?" Andreea said. "What of me?"

  "You'll be fine. Nothing will happen to you."

  "But now that he is free-"

  "He's not free; that's not true. He has to report to the police all the time."

  "But he knows that it was me who would speak against him at the trial."

  "Look, Andreea." Lynn leaned closer. "You don't know that. And even if he did, right now the last thing Zoukas is going to want to do is draw more attention to himself. He'll be going out his way to stay clean."

  She glanced up as somebody came into the cafe. "Besides, he doesn't know where you are."

  "You don't think he can find out, if he wants?"

  "London's a big place."

  Andreea shivered. "I don't know."

  "Andreea, listen. Listen. Listen to me. Go back to London. Keep your head down. Stay where you are. Nothing's going to happen to you. I promise. Okay?" She squeezed Andreea's hand. "Andreea. Okay?"

  "Yes." A smile, hesitant and quick with doubt. "Okay."

  When Lynn got home, having seen Andreea safely back onto the express coach to London, what she had wanted most was a drink. Resnick moved the casserole he'd been reheating down to the bottom of the oven, lowered the gas, and opened a bottle of red.

  Lynn downed most of the first glass as if it were water.

  "Jesus, Charlie! What was I doing?"

  "How d'you mean?"

  "Making promises like that. Again. Promises I can't keep."

  "You really think she's in danger?"

  "I think she could be. If Zoukas wants to be sure she won't speak out."

  "You think he can find out where she is?"

  "It depends. If she's drifted back into the same kind of work, it's more than possible. It depends how wide his connections go. Andreea's got a friend she was telling me, from Romania, working in a hotel down in Cornwall. She might see if she can find work down there later in the year."

  "A shame she can't go now."

  "I know."

  Resnick reached across and refilled her almost-empty glass. The streetlight was sending a dull orange glow into the room, where only the small lamp on the shelf above the stereo was burning.

  "You think that's what happened to Kelvin Pearce? Someone looking out for Zoukas threatened him in some way?"

  "Either that or paid him off."

  "No sign of him yet?"

  Lynn shook her head.

  They continued to sit there, each to their own thoughts, while the room darkened further around them.

  "You ready to eat?" Resnick said eventually.

  "We'd better. All this wine's going to my head."

  On his way out of the room he paused to put some music on the stereo. Laurindo Almeida and Bud Shank. One of the first jazz bossa-nova sessions, 1953. Shank's alto, sinuous and precise over the intricate filigrees of Almeida's guitar. Perfect in its way.

  He carried his glass out into the kitchen, turned up the temperature of the oven, and set two plates to warm. How long after eating, he wondered, before they were both in bed?

  Thirteen

  Resnick had already left for work. Lynn, not yet fully back on official duty, had lingered over breakfast, leafing through the paper, passing time with the quick crossword, before finally casting it aside when the clue for ten across, "shy target," ten letters, annoyed her, not with its complexity, but because she was sure the answer was simple and she couldn't for the life of her work out what it was.

  That done, she contacted the Detective Sergeant heading up the search for Kelvin Pearce. One sighting, unconfirmed, in Retford; two calls made to his sister in Mansfield, both of which she at first denied. Kelvin, she told the officers, was scared stiff. All bluster on the outside, our Kelvin, but push a little and he's soggy inside as a Gregg's meringue. A couple of blokes had been round to his place in Sneinton, she told them, letting on to a whole lot more than she had before, put the frighteners on him something awful. Reckoned if he as much as showed his face at that trial, like, they'd put a bullet through both kneecaps, make sure he never walked again.

  No, she swore, she didn't know where he was, where he'd been phoning from, but wherever it was she didn't think he'd stray far. Doncaster, perhaps, used to have a good mate up in Donny, did Kelvin.

  Lynn emptied the laundry basket, sorting the whites from the coloureds, pushed the latter into the machine, added liquid, selected the right programme and pressed the button. The whites she could do later.

  She was contemplating a slow walk down to the corner shop for a fresh loaf of bread, fancying a slice of toast and marmalade, when the phone rang.

  "The other day," Daines said, "I think I might have been a little unfair. Shutting you out like that."

  No intention of making things easy, she held her tongue.

  "I thought maybe we should meet up. Then I could fill you in. As far as I can, at least. What do you say?"
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  A pause, and then: "All right."

  "Good. Excellent. Why don't we meet for a drink this lunchtime? Somewhere quiet."

  "I don't think so."

  "Oh, come on. Surely."

  "They didn't give you an office?"

  "Yes." A small laugh. "We have an office."

  "Fine. Then let's meet there."

  "Okay. Twelve o'clock? Twelve thirty?"

  "How about eleven?"

  "All right, eleven."

  He gave her the address. One of those streets of Georgian houses off Wellington Circus that are now mostly offices for solicitors or the better class of architect, the ones for whom kitchen extensions are a thing of the past.

  Lynn dressed carefully: a dark brown trouser suit that gave little concession to her shape, court shoes with a low heel, minimal makeup, her hair pulled back from her face.

  Daines's office was as anonymous as a room in a Travelodge motel but better-proportioned, furniture that had come flat-packed and in need of assembly, the surface of his desk empty save for a laptop computer and mobile phone. Blue and grey files were shelved at the far side of the room. The windows were double glazed to keep out the sound of traffic and the air was somehow limp and odourless, save for the faint stink of air freshener.

  "Welcome. Such as it is."

  Daines was wearing grey suit trousers and a white open-necked shirt, cuffs turned back once above the wrist. Lynn accepted his handshake and sat on a metal folding chair facing the desk.

  The indistinct sounds of other voices came from other rooms.

  She wondered how many SOCA staff there were in the building, what size budget and how many personnel had been allocated to this part of the operation. Whatever the operation was.

  "Until the machine arrives," Daines said, "the only coffee I can offer you is instant. Or I could send someone down to the Playhouse Bar."

  "There's no need," Lynn said.

  "Water, then, or-"

  "Viktor Zoukas."

  Daines smiled. "No time for pleasantries."

  "You were going to explain-"

  "As far as I can, yes. Some things, of necessity, I'm afraid, are still under wraps."

  Lynn nodded.

  "One more thing before we start. That bag"-he indicated the leather shoulder bag that was resting now on the floor beside her chair-"you wouldn't have a recorder of some kind in there?"

  Lynn picked it up and held it out towards him. "You want to check?"

  She was beginning to feel as if she'd wandered into an episode of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. One that she'd missed.

  Daines smiled again. "It's okay. This job, it's making me slightly paranoid. But one or two things leaking out at the wrong time…" He shrugged. "Anyway, Viktor Zoukas, let me tell you a little about him you still might not know. A little background. He came over from Albania in '99, under the guise of being a Kosovar refugee, though that may not have been strictly true. He's got family here, a brother, cousins, mostly settled in north London, Wood Green. There's a whole bunch of them there, mostly from northern Albania. One or two, quite respectable. One who's a doctor, working at the Royal Free. He was the one who stood surety for Viktor's bail.

  "Viktor and his cousins, though-prostitution, that's their thing. A younger brother, too. Valdemar. Brothels. Massage parlours. Trafficking women from eastern Europe and then forcing them to work in the sex trade. Girls as young as fifteen, sixteen, some of them. You probably know how that works-in principle, at least. They make a lot of false promises, charge a small fortune to bring the girls into the country, often via Italy, and then keep them as virtual prisoners while they pay back what they supposedly owe.

  "Either they put them to work themselves or sell them to others. Someone like Nina Simic, the girl who was killed, she could have been bought and sold for a few thousand pounds and a hundred cartons of cigarettes."

  Daines paused as someone approached the door, thought better of it, and walked away.

  "Tobacco smuggling, that's how I first made contact with these people. When I was still working for Customs and Excise. It was a big thing, still is. Since then, the Albanians have moved on to cannabis, and they'd like a chunk of the heroin trade as well, but the Turks have got that pretty much sewn up and are keeping it to themselves. So now, this last year or so, they've shown every sign of adding another string to their bow. Broadening their portfolio, I guess you could say. Guns. Guns and ammunition. Big time."

  "And that's what SOCA's interested in?"

  "Principally, yes."

  "I still don't see why it was so important to have Zoukas released on bail."

  Daines sighed. "Timing. That as much as anything."

  "I don't understand."

  "You know those games-I think they're supposed to be for kids. Jenga, something like that. A tower made out of little strips of wood placed diagonally across one another in sets of three. The skill is to pull one out and reposition it on the top without making the whole tower fall down. That's Zoukas, one of those little pieces."

  "And the tower?"

  Daines drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk, a neat little pattern whose reverberations spun his mobile phone around.

  "Anything else I say now, it doesn't go beyond this room. Is that understood?"

  "Understood," Lynn said. If she were still a child, she might well have had her fingers crossed behind her back.

  "Okay. Our information is this. Some enterprising free marketeer in Lithuania has been buying up large quantities of relatively low-powered pistols-alarm pistols, that's what they call them over there-okay for scaring off the neighbour's Doberman, but not a lot else-and remodelling the barrels so as to take regular 9mm ammo. He sells them for a few hundred quid each, and by the time they reach the UK, they're fetching upward of fifteen hundred apiece.

  "We've intercepted several small consignments over the past few years, Customs and Excise that is, most usually in vehicles that have been fitted with hidden compartments, so no more than a couple of dozen at a time. But now, according to our information, a far larger consignment is on its way. As many as seven hundred weapons, maybe, fourteen thousand rounds of ammunition. We're just not sure yet when. Nor which route they're taking. But you can imagine what it would mean if they got through, that lot get into the wrong hands and out onto the streets. After what happened, you especially."

  "Yes. Yes, of course," Lynn said. "But I still don't see the connection. These men, the guns, everything-you say they're Lithuanian."

  "Correct. And the guys over here are shitting themselves because they think, after that last arrest especially, we've got their number. Better, then, to sell them to somebody else and take a smaller profit than run the risk of fetching up behind bars."

  "Which is where Zoukas comes in."

  "Absolutely. Viktor and his brother, yes, we think so. We've been watching, waiting. Liaising with the Office of Organised Crime and Corruption in Lithuania. Letting them get everything into place. Our best guess, Valdemar was set to handle the London end, Viktor anything farther north. Here, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow. Once Viktor was in custody and taken out of the equation, everything was put on hold, which made the Lithuanians jumpy. According to our information, they've been threatening to take the guns elsewhere. The Turks, maybe. Last thing Valdemar and his pals want. The whole deal's on the verge of falling to pieces and if that happens we're back to square one and left having to start all over again. Months of work, God knows how many man-hours down the drain. But if we can keep it in play and strike at the right time, we get the buyers, the sellers, the pistols, the works. Once we heard there was a chance of Zoukas being released on bail, that gave us our chance."

  A frown set on Lynn's face. "Heard? Heard how?"

  Daines tried for what was meant to be a disarming smile. "We've been interested in the outcome of the case, naturally enough. Frankly, it had always seemed to us there was a strong possibility of Zoukas being acquitted. But then, once one of your main witnesses opt
ed to run for cover-"

  "Is that what he's done?"

  "I really wouldn't know. But it seems possible, don't you think?"

  "And convenient. For you, anyway."

  Daines's smile broadened. "A little good luck never hurt anyone."

  "Nina Simic's throat was cut practically from ear to ear."

  "I know. I know. And if he's found responsible, Zoukas will pay. Just later rather than sooner. What possible harm is there in that?"

  "Come on, don't be naive. If someone managed to find one witness and put the fear of God into him, what's to stop them finding the other? A month for us to track down Pearce, but a month also for Zoukas or whoever's looking out for him to find the only other good witness we have. Result: Viktor Zoukas walks free."

  She fixed him with a look. "Perhaps that's what you want all along."

  "Perhaps in a way it is."

  Lynn's eyes widened. "That young woman," she said, quick to her feet, "was bought and sold like fresh meat. From what we can tell, she was systematically beaten, almost certainly raped, then forced to have sex with anyone and everyone, twelve, fourteen hours a day. And then she was slaughtered, butchered-"

  "Whoa, whoa! Don't you think you're getting a bit emotional?"

  "'Butchered,' that's the word I chose. Butchered, and if you have your way, she'll get no justice, no justice at all. And emotional? Yes, okay, I'm emotional. I saw her lying there dead, with her blood soaking into a rotting carpet that was sticky with men's come. Of course I'm bloody emotional!"

  She turned away and headed for the door.

  "Time of the month, I daresay," Daines said. "Probably doesn't help."

  Lynn spun round. Quite how she stopped herself from going over and slapping the supercilious smile from his face, she didn't know.

  "Fuck you!" she said.

  Daines grinned. "You know, you never did thank me for the flowers."

  Lynn slammed the door hard in her wake.

  Furious with herself, Lynn walked-no, strode-she strode across the city centre, past the refurbishments of the Old Market Square and up Smithy Row, in the middle of which a short, wiry-haired man, stripped to the waist, was entertaining the early lunch crowd by wrapping himself, Houdini-like, in chains. Not so many months before, the same man-or one just like him-had been forced to call emergency services when he'd been unable to set himself free.