by John Harvey
Old canvas rucksack on his back, he took the bus from Frenchgate Interchange towards Lakeside, alighting at the B & Q then crossing the main road before walking along Mallard Way to the reserve.
Willow Marsh he might head for first today, always with the option of crossing Black Marsh Field towards Piper Marsh later in the day. The whole point of it really, what you had to remember, you never knew just what you were going to see and where or when. Like the time he’d more or less dropped off, napping on the job as it were, and snapped awake just in time to see a black-tailed godwit over West Scrape. His first of the year.
By the time he broke out his thermos, mid-morning, there’d been nothing but sandpipers and the odd oystercatcher. Quiet but pleasant, decent temperature, a breeze out of the west.
He was screwing the top back onto his flask, when a movement caught his eye away to the left. A bittern, was it? Yes. There in the midst of the reed beds, the curved beak and the long neck. He reached for his binoculars and thumbed them into focus.
No sooner did he have the bird in his sights than, with a splash of water and almost lazy flap of wings, it had lifted away, leaving him staring at what looked like a human face, part-submerged amongst the reeds.
The estimated driving time north from Nottingham to Doncaster was a minute over one hour, but an accident on the motorway and the subsequent detour meant that by the time Colin Sherbourne and Simone Clarke arrived at the Potteric Carr Nature Reserve, the whole panoply of police response was there before them. Divers, Scenes of Crime officers in their blue coveralls, a specialist search team from the Tactical Support Group: South Yorks police pulling out all the stops.
A white tent had been erected on the far side of the marsh. Stretched out inside, Shane Donald’s naked, lifeless body – scrawny limbs, pale skin, a withering of hairs across his chest, flaccid penis resting against the wrinkled sack beneath – looked like a failed prototype for something finer, somehow more complete.
The abrupt angle of the head told its story clearly enough: his neck had been broken.
‘If pressed,’ the medical examiner said, ‘I’d say he was caught in a headlock from behind – look at the bruising there and there – one quick sideways wrench and a catastrophic cervical fracture ensued. Paralysis, a certain amount of internal bleeding, he would have been dead within seconds. But better not quote me, at least not yet.’
Sherbourne stepped outside into the fresh air.
‘Payback, you reckon?’ Simone Clarke said. ‘For letting the girl go.’
‘Looks that way. Donald no longer the soulmate he had in mind.’
‘One thing certain, one man alone, easier to pass unnoticed than two.’
Above them, a flock of lapwings swerved this way and that, making black-and-white patterns against the sky.
The first fresh sighting of Adam Keach came later that same day, a garage near Pontefract, the same MO as before, stolen credit cards, stolen vehicle – a Honda Accord that was found later, abandoned in a Little Chef car park on the Great North Road. With no report of another vehicle being taken in its place, it was quite possible he was no longer driving and had simply hitched a lift.
After that there was nothing until a possible sighting was reported at Glasgow Central station, a man closely resembling Keach’s description seen outside the Starbucks on the main concourse. But a trawl through CCTV from the booking office and along the platforms yielded nothing further.
False trail, Sherbourne thought. Until a second sighting was reported a day later, this on the ferry from Mallaig on the Scottish mainland to Armadale on the Isle of Skye. Which, had that indeed been Keach in Glasgow, made a kind of sense, even though the trains to that part of Scotland, he knew from family holidays in the past, left from Queen Street rather than Glasgow Central.
The person who’d reported this had emailed a photograph taken on their mobile phone, the resemblance close enough for Sherbourne’s hopes to be raised just a little and to give the local force a frisson of excitement, before the man in question turned out to be an insurance claims investigator set on climbing at least two of the Munros before his week’s holiday was over, the visual resemblance to Adam Keach an unfortunate embarrassment.
Wherever Keach was, he was still at large.
43
Sorina’s first response on seeing Mark Foster was one of approval: after all those sweaty men who lied by some ten or twenty years about their age, here was someone who looked to be as young as he had claimed. Younger. But when Foster, almost apologetically, showed her his identification, she realised the deception this time had been of a different kind.
Now she was sitting in a stuffy room, faced by two plainclothes police officers, both equally stern, a woman and a man, and the handsome young detective was no longer anywhere to be seen.
In the first minutes she had been cautioned and informed of her rights, certain basic questions asked and answered: name, age, country of origin, current address. So far, Sorina thought, so routine. It was not the first time she had been questioned by the authorities and would almost certainly not be the last.
She still didn’t know what they really wanted; wondered how long it would take them to get to the point.
‘You know, I believe,’ Hadley said, ‘a man named Anthony Winter?’
Ah, Sorina thought, not long at all.
‘I’m not sure. Winter, no, I don’t think …’
‘According to his phone and email records, he was in touch with you on at least three separate occasions in the past eight weeks.’
‘I still don’t think …’
‘Sorina, you’re not in trouble here. All we’re seeking is information.’
‘Information, yes, of course. I am helping if I can.’
‘Good,’ Chris Phllips said, with the beginnings of a smile. ‘So, Anthony Winter.’
‘Yes.’
‘You do know him?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have, in fact, met him on a number of occasions.’
‘Yes.’
‘For sex?’
‘Anthony … Anthony was a friend.’
‘A friend with whom you had sex?’
‘Yes. Of course, there is nothing wrong …’
‘For money?’
Sorina looked from one face to the other.
‘You had sex in exchange for money?’ Hadley asked.
‘Sometimes he would give me present.’
‘Present?’ Phillips said. ‘That’s nice. What was it? Chocolates? Flowers, perhaps?’
Sorina shook her head.
‘You had sex with Anthony Winter,’ Hadley said, ‘sex of a particular kind, the kind of sex in which he was interested, involving the giving and receiving of pain, and in exchange for that, your part in that, you were paid. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes.’
‘In cash?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when was the last time this happened?’
‘I … I don’t know … I can’t … I don’t remember.’
‘Maybe this will jog your memory,’ Phillips said, and keyed a short sequence of video on to the screen. ‘That is you? Approaching Winter’s studio?’
‘I’m not sure, you cannot properly see …’
‘No? Well, look. Look again. I’ll freeze the image here. Now … is that or is that not you?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘It is you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then here you are leaving, a little over an hour later.’
Sorina nodded.
‘And you see the date? The time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Saturday, April the eighth. The same evening, the same night that Anthony Winter was murdered.’
Sorina shivered and clasped her arms across her chest.
‘You know how he died? Anthony?’
A quick shake of the head.
‘He was beaten. Badly beaten. A sex game that went too far, perhaps, carried on too long.’
Sorina shivered again.
‘Is that how it happened?’ Hadley said, her voice clipped and brisk. ‘Fun and games that got out of hand?’
Sorina shook her head. Her throat was suddenly dry. When she tried to speak, the words refused to come.
‘Did you strike … did you hit Anthony Winter when you were having sex? Was that one of the things he liked you to do?’
‘No. It was not that.’
‘What then?’
‘Sometimes … sometimes he would ask me to tie him up. Like this … his hands behind his head. Behind his back.’
‘And he didn’t ask you to hit him then? Slap him, perhaps?’
‘No. It was always the other way.’
‘He would hit you?’
‘Yes. Later. When I untied him. But not always. And not so hard. You know, it was a game. Like you say before, a game.’
‘When you went to Winter’s studio that evening,’ Phillips said, changing tack, ‘how did you go?’
‘Go?’
‘Yes, travel. How did you get there?’
‘Taxi. I take taxi. Minicab. Always.’
‘And after? Going home?’
‘The same.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Which company did you use? One close to where you live? Because, of course, we can check. It will show in their records.’
‘I cannot remember. I am sorry.’
‘Is that because you didn’t go by minicab at all?’
Sorina swallowed. ‘Sometimes I get lift.’
‘Who from?’
She swallowed again. ‘My friend, Grigore.’
‘Grigore?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s what? Your boyfriend?’
‘No. Not really, no. Just friend.’
‘Friend from Bucharest?’
‘No. Here. Here in London.’
‘And would you say he was a good friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who takes you sometimes to meet clients, picks you up afterwards?’
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘And you give him money?’
‘No.’
‘You never give him money? The money from clients? Never?’
Sorina looked down. ‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘So he’s your pimp?’
‘No. Friend, only friend.’
‘And I suppose the money you give him, it’s for petrol, perhaps?’ Phillips said and laughed.
Sorina did not laugh. There was fear, instead, ticking at the backs of her eyes. Maybe she had said too much, spoken – how did you say? – out of turn.
‘This Grigore,’ Hadley said, ‘does he have another name?’
Sorina’s head dropped even lower. ‘Balaci,’ she said in a whisper.
‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up.’
‘Balaci.’
‘Grigore Balaci?’
‘Yes.’
Something in Hadley’s brain clicked deftly into place.
44
It had been 2013. Hadley had been liaising with officers from the Vice Unit, working out of West Ham Lane. Preparations for the Olympic Games of the previous year, extensive in themselves, had been followed by a swathe of urban regeneration which had brought large numbers of transient workers to the area and, with them, an ensuing rise in prostitution. Massage parlours, brothels, women working the streets. Many of the women were from abroad, Eastern Europe in particular, some from Africa, trafficked here under false expectations and forced into prostitution to pay back the extortionate cost of being transported.
Getting the women to talk, lay complaints about their situation, name names, was next to impossible: they were too afraid. If they tried to run away, they were swiftly found and made an example of. Beaten. Cut. A razor to the breast, the face. Like something out of Brighton Rock, Hadley thought, Britain in the 1930s, not this Brave New Post-Olympic Paradise of glass and shining steel.
And it wasn’t only the women who suffered, though they suffered most.
Punters, too. A few.
Gerry Carlin’s grandfather had run his illegal bookie’s business from the upstairs back bedroom of his house in Bromley-by-Bow; when off-course bookmakers were made legal in 1960, he opened his first shop on the high street; a second, run by Gerry’s father, in nearby Stratford. Now there were seven all told, across the East End and out into Essex, overseen by Gerry himself, and despite competition from the likes of Coral and William Hill, profits were steady. Life was good.
Carlin had been married and divorced twice – three children of his own, two of them girls, grandchildren now as well – and though the wrong side of sixty he still had his needs.
For some little time these had been met by Nataliya, a young woman from the Ukraine whom he used to visit in a small hotel off the Romford Road, and who would now call discreetly at his house on St Leonard’s Street. A new cleaner, the neighbours thought, if they thought anything of it at all.
It was some two months after Nataliya began coming to the house that Gerry Carlin first encountered Grigore Balaci. There on the doorstep alongside Nataliya when he went down to let her in.
‘Mr Carlin … I thought time was we become acquainted.’
Malicious, flashily dressed, smiling. Speaking slightly old-fashioned English with an Eastern European accent.
When Carlin tried to bar him from entering, Balaci simply pushed him aside. Thrust him up against the wall. Showed him photographs on his phone. Photographs taken in the Romford Road hotel.
‘You would not wish for your family to see these. Your daughters. Your lovely grandchildren.’
Carlin had looked anxiously towards Nataliya, who turned quickly away.
‘Fifty thousand pounds or these will be on Internet everywhere, on line, social media. And then one thousand pounds each week, each time Nataliya is here. You understand?’
When Carlin didn’t answer right away, Balaci punched him in the stomach, butted him in the face, rested a blade against the side of his neck, just below the ear.
‘All right,’ Carlin said. ‘All right. But I don’t have that kind of money here.’
‘You lie.’ A little blood began to trickle down below the collar of Carlin’s shirt.
‘I can find maybe two thousand now, that’s all. But tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. I will have it all. But you will have to promise me, the photographs …’
‘Tomorrow. All of money. Or …’ And drawing the knife blade across Carlin’s neck, barely an inch away from the skin, he laughed.
When he came back the next day, Hadley was waiting, along with three other officers from West Ham Lane. Balaci was taken into custody and charged with possession of an offensive weapon, causing actual bodily harm and demanding money with menaces.
Held on remand and denied bail, he continued to deny all charges.
Nataliya could not be found.
Six weeks before the case was due to come to court, the front of one of Carlin’s betting shops was smashed in, another was set on fire. Shortly after that, Carlin let it be known that he was changing his testimony. He had misinterpreted Balaci’s actions, misunderstood the situation. There had been no violence, no knife, he would swear.
Grudgingly, the CPS made the decision not to go to trial.
Grigore Balaci was released.
September 2013.
‘You think it’s possible,’ Chris Phillips said, ‘he could have been trying on the stunt here? With Winter?’
Hadley took a drag from Phillips’ cigarette; handed it back. They were at the back of the station car park, the road that led down past the recycling depot. Stretching their legs. Thinking time.
‘Why not? Winter had money, Balaci would have known that. And a public persona he might not have wanted dragged through the mud. Now especially. After collecting Sorina, Balaci could have come back. He’d have known enough to avoid the CCTV cameras, avoid getting seen.’
They walked on. A counci
l bin lorry went slowly past. A van heading for the Royal Mail sorting office further along.
‘That business you were telling me about with the bookie,’ Phillips said. ‘That was what? Four or five years back now?’
‘Four. Since when Balaci’s been walking the finest of fine lines. Suspicion of extortion, harassment, living on immoral earnings. Questioned, never charged.’
‘Wouldn’t do any harm,’ Phillips said. ‘Invite him in for a little chat.’
‘It’s something. Otherwise …’
‘Don’t worry, boss. We’ll get there.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Yeah,’ Phillips said with a broad grin. ‘Got right on our side, after all.’
‘If that’s all, then God help us.’
Phillips looked up into the sky and laughed. ‘The Lord, they say, He moves in mysterious ways.’
Hadley’s mobile rang in her jacket pocket. ‘Maybe that’s Him now.’
45
Grigore Balaci had put on weight since Hadley had last seen him; the beginnings of a paunch that his well-cut suit failed to completely hide. His hair had got thinner, the first suspicions of grey. But the same lean face, the same cheekbones, the same thin lips. Rings on three of his fingers. A gold stud in his right ear. Eyes that were rarely still.
His solictor was bearded, balding, prosperous. ‘My client has agreed to help you in any way he can …’
Chris Phillips at her side, Hadley let the platitudes wash over her.
‘Mr Balaci,’ she said when the formalities were through. ‘Do you remember me?’
‘No. Should I?’ The tone insolent, the look.
‘Perhaps not. After a while, I imagine one arresting officer must look much like another.’
Balaci’s tongue slithered between his lips. ‘Not when they’re as pretty as you.’
Hadley’s distaste was etched on her face.
‘I should remind you,’ the solicitor said, ‘my client has never been prosecuted for any offence, and we strongly resent any attempted slur on his character.’
‘I doubt,’ Hadley said, ‘if it would be possible to demean Mr Balaci’s character any further.’
