“Call for medical, will you, please, Dave. We don’t know what they’ve been given. We also need social to be around when they wake up. God knows where they’ve been held or what’s been done to them.”
He got off the bus and walked over to the driver.
“Do you speak English?”
The driver looked confused. “What is problem?”
“Please give me your phone.”
“Why? What is problem? I take girls home to Albania. You have no right to stop me.”
Paolo smiled. “I have every right. Five of those girls are British citizens and you are an accomplice to kidnapping and possibly worse charges, depending on what’s been done to them. Now, I would like your phone, please.”
The driver trembled. “I do nothing. I drive, is all. I know nothing. I bring girls. I take girls. I do no wrong.”
Paolo shook his head. “Your phone. Now!”
The driver rummaged in his pockets and produced an iPhone. Paolo quickly scanned through the recent call log.
“He hasn’t made or received any calls for over an hour. Take him to the station,” he said to the uniformed officers holding the driver. Turning to Dave, he continued, “We need to move fast in case there’s someone waiting for him at the ferry port. We don’t want Gazmend and his friends to realise anything’s up. First stop, Gazmend’s house.”
“Open up, police!”
The door opened a little. Paolo could see one half of a woman’s face. She looked terrified. He stepped forward.
“Diellza, we have to speak to Gazmend. Is he home?”
She shook her head.
“Could you stand back and let us in, please?”
Soundlessly, she opened the door and stood to one side. She said nothing as police officers streamed into the house and began a systematic search. After a few minutes, Paolo was told the house was empty of all but Diellza, who still had not moved from her place against the wall.
Paolo took in her bruised arms.
“CC, could you come with me? I want to chat to Mrs Dushku in the sitting room. She’s looking a bit fragile and might be glad for some female support.”
He wanted to go gently with Gazmend’s wife. She looked as if she’d been through enough trauma, but he couldn’t spare the time. If Gazmend got wind of the fact that Paolo was closing in on him, he’d have time to hide his tracks.
“Diellza, I need you to help me. Please. Children’s lives are at stake.”
The woman nodded as tears ran down her face.
“Did Gazmend force you to threaten the children in care?”
She nodded again.
“Do you know where he keeps the girls not yet old enough to go on the streets?”
“Can you protect me from him? And from the people who work for him?”
“If we can put him away, you’ll be safe. Please, Diellza, help us. Help us find the children he’s selling.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. He’ll kill me.”
CC took Diellza’s hand. “I’ll get you into a refuge. You’ll be safe there until after the trial and once Gazmend’s in prison, he won’t be able to do anything to you. Please, we have to find the children before he has chance to move them. Do you know where he keeps them?”
“No, but I can give you some addresses to try. Gazmend has many, many businesses.” She turned to CC. “If I give you the information, you will take me to the refuge? Tonight? Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Paolo passed Diellza a pad and pen. She wrote down several business names and addresses, many of them on the industrial estate. As she handed the pad back to Paolo, her hands shook so badly the pen fell from her grip.
Paolo leaned down and picked up the pen. “Are any of these more likely to have hideaways than others?”
“That one,” she said, pointing to a construction equipment supply company. “He had cellars dug out and built. He never told me why, but I guessed.” She touched her blackened eye. “Promise me one thing,” she whispered. “Promise me he won’t come home tonight. If he finds out I told you where to go…”
Her voice trailed off, but Paolo didn’t need to hear the rest.
“If we can find him tonight, I give you my word he won’t be released to hurt you ever again.”
She nodded, as if reassured and Paolo felt the weight of yet another person’s safety settle on his shoulders. He prayed he’d do a better job for Gazmend’s wife than he was able to do for Alice, who’d so nearly found a new life as Michelle.
Paolo sent squads to each of the businesses on the list. He was leading the search in the supply company and, like the others, was waiting for the time to tick over to nine exactly. They had to enter all the businesses at the same time to avoid any chance of someone giving a warning.
Lights were on in office across the street from where they waited. Paolo hoped it was Gazmend in there. He wanted to be the one to take him in.
He looked at Dave, crouched next to him behind the car, and nodded.
“Now!”
They rushed across the street and a uniformed officer kicked the door open. Paolo, right behind him, saw Gazmend rise from behind a desk.
“What the fuck is going on?” Gazmend shouted. “All you had to do was knock.”
Paolo ignored the question and signalled to the officers.
“Handcuff him and take him outside.”
He waited until they’d removed Gazmend from the premises. “Right, I want this place torn apart. His wife seems to think there are rooms underground. Let’s find them. Dave, you and I will take this office, the rest of you, spread out into the warehousing area.”
The officers split into pairs and moved off. Dave and Paolo began the painstaking task of tapping on walls, moving furniture and feeling for loose floorboards looking for hidden doorways. In the end, they discovered the door almost by accident. They’d worked their way systematically from the entrance towards the rear of the long office and found nothing. They had only the rear wall to check out when Dave rested against a massive filing cabinet. As he put his weight on it he felt a slight movement.
“Paolo, I think I might have found it.”
Paolo put down the rug he’d picked up and hurried over. Together they shoved, but although it gave a little, it didn’t shift as much as they’d hoped. Getting down on his knees, Paolo looked underneath. There was a lever which he pulled and wheels dropped down into place. He clamboured back up.
“I think it will go now, Dave.”
They had barely touched it when it slid easily to one side, revealing a door.
“The lever works from the back as well as the front, so we need to be careful. Some of Gazmend’s men could be down there,” Paolo said, stopping Dave from opening the door and rushing through. He waved his phone at Dave. “I’ll get some backup.”
When the uniformed officers arrived, Paolo opened the door and stepped onto a well-lit landing with steps leading down to a corridor with a series of doors on each side and a single door at the end.
“There’s about a dozen rooms here,” Paolo whispered. “Dave and I are going to open the door at the far end. I want two of you to come with us and the rest wait up here in case anyone tries to run from the other rooms.”
He nodded at Dave and they crept down the steps and along the corridor, closely followed by the two uniformed men. There wasn’t a sound from any of the rooms as they passed and Paolo wondered if they had been soundproofed so that no noise would carry to the office above. When they reached the end of the corridor, Paolo held up his hand and then pointed to his chest. He was going in first. The others nodded to show they understood. Hand on the handle, Paolo took a breath and then turned it quietly, leaning against the door as he did so.
The door flew open to reveal a single bed against one wall. The bed was occupied, but a man’s shocked face was all Paolo had time to register before Dave shoved him to one side and wrenched the man from the bed by his neck.
“Get Dave off him,”
Paolo ordered the officers as he moved to the naked child cowering on the bed. She was one of those who’d arrived from Albania just a few days earlier.
He reached out to cover her with the blanket, but she scrambled away, screaming words he couldn’t understand. Pulling out his phone to call for CC and a WPC, he glanced back to see Dave being restrained. The man, Edar, had been handcuffed by two other officers who’d come down to join the fray.
“CC, we need you and as many WPCs as we have available. We’ve got at least one child in serious need of female support.”
He looked back to see that the child had grabbed the blanket and was hiding underneath it. A classic case of if I can’t see you, you can’t see me, Paolo thought, wondering how old she was. Maybe six or seven, certainly no older. He was tempted to let Dave have his way with Edar, but that would play into the bastard’s hands.
Moving out into the corridor, he saw the officers had opened all the doors. The rooms on either side were much larger than the end room and were laid out as dormitories. There were six beds in each room and all the beds were occupied.
An officer came out of one of the rooms, dragging Bekim.
“I found him hiding under one of the beds, sir.”
“I did nothing,” Bekim said. “I just feed, but not touch. I not touch. I tell you all, yes? Then you be kind. Like me. I kind to girls. I feed, but I not touch.”
Paolo didn’t trust himself to go near the man until he’d had chance to bring his emotions under control. Not only did he understand Dave’s rage, his own made him feel as if his head was about to explode.
“Get him out of my sight.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
17th December
Paolo stood in front of his team. They were still traumatised by what they’d found five days earlier. Most of the girls were now with social services, but a few were still in hospital. Paolo would be going over later that day to have another talk with the child they’d found under Edar. Mentally, she had made a remarkable recovery, but physically, she’d sustained much internal damage and wouldn’t be leaving the hospital for some time yet. He hated the thought of putting her through any more suffering, but she was the only one prepared to talk to them. The others all had families who they were protecting, but Adelina was a genuine orphan. She had no one.
“As you know,” Paolo began, “Bekim hasn’t stopped talking since we arrested him. Thanks to his information, the bodies of Michelle, Jeton and his wife were uncovered yesterday on a construction site operated by one of Gazmend’s companies. Bekim says Jeton recognised their photos as being men he’d seen many times in his cousin’s company. He’d rushed off to warn Gazmend to have nothing to do with them. When Gazmend saw that Jeton guessed the truth, he had to die.”
“But why kill his ex-wife, sir? She didn’t know anything, did she?”
Paolo sighed. “No, she was completely innocent. Her disappearance was to make us think she’d run off to be with her ex. It piled the suspicion on Jeton.”
Paolo spared a thought for Alice. She’d so nearly made a new life for herself and Gazmend had destroyed her.
“Several other bodies have also been found,” he continued, “but we have not yet been able to identify them. It seems that many unsolved crimes over the last few years might have had one of Gazmend’s companies involved in some way. He is still denying all knowledge and putting the blame firmly on Bekim and Edar, but we’ll leave that to the courts to sort out.”
He sighed. “News from Albania is not so positive. The orphanage claims ignorance of any girls being switched in the past and, unfortunately, we have no way of proving otherwise.”
At the roar of disapproval, Paolo held up his hand. “Yes, I know. I feel the same way. They claim they have always received back the same girls who left and would have reported it had the girls in the bus arrived at the orphanage. The Albanian authorities have promised to look carefully at what’s been going on in the orphanage. We have to rely on them doing so because we obviously have no authority. Fortunately, Interpol has now taken over that aspect because it looks as though the ring was Europe wide. I’ve spoken to the officer in charge and he says he is sure there will be evidence to prove the orphanage was complicit. Don’t worry, the people there will go down.”
He waited for the cheers to fade out before going on. “Interpol say girls were being exchanged all along the route on the return journey. UK kids handed over in France, for example, were swapped for French children, who were then taken to Germany and so on. Which means, of course, that the driver’s claim of innocence in all this is a crock of shit.” Paolo paused, remembering the driver’s look of outrage when it was made plain he was under arrest along with all the others. He wondered how many lives he’d been responsible for transporting into hell. “Gazmend’s organization has been trafficking children for years. It’s going to be a major job to track down all those he’s sold on, if it can be done at all. But the Interpol officer sounds determined to do so. For the sake of all the kids who’ve been snatched from the street and put to work God knows where, we can only pray they are successful.”
A chorus of cheer greeted that comment. When it died down Paolo glanced at his notes and picked up where he’d left off.
“As you know, Lucy Bassington has been reunited with her parents. She has been through hell in the time she was kidnapped, as have the other four British girls on the bus. They were snatched from care homes around the country. We are keeping them here in our social services while the courts decide where they should go.
“Fortunately for us, Gazmend kept good records of where he’d farmed out the girls here in the UK. We’ve passed the paperwork to the special crimes unit and they have broken up a massive paedophile ring, arresting close on two hundred men. That’s being kept out of the press until the operation is complete, but the news will break in a few days. It’s thanks to your work, team, that this was possible.” He raised his coffee cup. “Here’s to you.”
“Thank you, sir. What about the street girls? Have we managed to track them all down?” one of the WPCs called out.
“We believe we’ve taken into care all the girls who Gazmend was running on the streets. Bekim was very helpful there, telling us where they were held and who by. Some may have taken the opportunity to disappear, but without money or passports, I doubt they will get very far. As always, we have people out looking out for underage runaways.”
He gathered up his papers and headed back to his office, but was stopped by CC as he walked past her desk.
“Sir,” she whispered so that only Paolo could hear, “what’s happened to Dave? We haven’t seen him since the night of the arrests.”
“Dave was in need of a break, so he took a few days’ leave. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Good,” she said. “The place isn’t the same without him.”
Paolo was careful to keep his smile to himself. Only a year before Dave and CC couldn’t be in the same room without war breaking out.
“I’m going to the hospital in about half an hour to meet the interpreter who is talking to Adelina, the poor kid Edar raped. She is our only link to the orphanage. I’d like you to come, just in case she reacts badly to a man being in the room. I wouldn’t blame her if she did.”
“No, sir,” CC agreed. “I can’t begin to imagine what effect this will have on her.”
“Or on any of them,” Paolo said. “It’s hard to picture anyone recovering from this level of abuse, but many do. We’ll just have to give them as much help as possible.”
Paolo parked, as he frequently did, in the area reserved for the hospital administrators. It always amused him that the admin offices were sited right next to the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. He would never say so out loud, but considering the fact that those at the top earned more than the doctors and nurses they controlled and didn’t seem to give the staff the respect they deserved, it was a fitting place.
He shivered as he waited for CC to climb out. The tempe
rature had dropped several degrees overnight and he was glad he’d picked up his gloves and scarf before leaving home this morning. They walked briskly to the main entrance and arrived just as the first snowflakes fell.
“Hey, sir, you think we’re getting a white Christmas?”
Paolo looked up at the grey sky. “Could be. I’m kind of hoping the snow holds off until the day and then clears up again immediately afterwards.”
“That sounds very bah humbug of you, sir.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. I was just thinking of the idiots who will go out on Christmas Eve or to office parties this week and get plastered and then still try to drive home. It’s bad enough when they do that in good conditions. In the snow and ice, it’s a recipe for disaster. Still,” he said, looking at the trees turning white, “I agree, the world does look prettier in the snow.”
They made their way to the ward where Adelina was being treated and found the interpreter chatting to the two WPCs outside her door.
“Ejona, thank you for coming. You’ve met CC, I believe?”
Paolo was amazed to see a blush spreading over the interpreter’s face as she nodded.
“Yes, we know each other,” she said.
He turned to CC and saw that her neck had gone very red and a small smile played on her lips. Putting two and two together, Paolo was glad for her. She’d taken the breakup of her last relationship badly. Ignoring the crackling atmosphere between the two women, he signalled for Ejona and CC to enter the room ahead of him. He didn’t want Adelina’s first sight of her visitors to be male.
Someday Never Comes (#2 - D.I. Paolo Storey Crime Series) Page 25
