Close Call

by Stella Rimington

  ‘Any time.’

  She didn’t like leaving it like this. She said, wanting to give the conversation a better ending, ‘I may have to come up to your part of the world. If I do, I’ll drop in and say hello.’

  ‘You do that. It would be good to see you again.’ Then he added, ‘Just don’t make a special trip on account of Lester Jackson. Take my word for it, the guy’s nothing for you to worry about.’

  Putting the phone down, Liz felt troubled by the conversation. She stood up and went over to the window, looking down as a small tug chugged along the river. The Thames was lifeless-looking and grey under the overcast sky of late autumn. His account of Lester Jackson just hadn’t rung true. ‘Small beer; not the sharpest knife in the box’ did not describe the elegantly dressed man who, according to the Germans, had strolled into the Schweiber Museum, had conducted quite clever counter-surveillance, had been whisked off the street by a Mercedes, picked up by a private plane and collected by yet another limousine from a private airfield.

  Why had McManus tried to downplay Jackson’s importance? Come to that, why had he not responded to the photograph Peggy had circulated to all Special Branches? He must have received it and known very well who it was.

  She thought back to the McManus she had known years ago and the reason she had split up with him. Then he had been prepared to bend the rules in his pursuit of criminals who he was convinced were guilty, even when he couldn’t prove it. Was he now bending the rules in pursuit of something else? His own interests perhaps?

  And McManus had exhibited all the verbal tics of the practised liar – ‘honestly’, ‘believe me’, ‘to tell you the truth’, and ‘frankly’. She realised that she didn’t believe a word he’d said about Lester Jackson, and now she was worried that in talking to him she had given too much away.

  Chapter 23

  Katya knew all about the police in her country – they were armed and violent and sometimes if you paid them enough they would go away – but she didn’t know about the British police. People said they were different, but those were normal people, people who were in the country legally, people with the right stamps in their passports, people who had genuine passports. Not people like her for whom the smallest brush with the authorities could mean disaster.

  So when a young man knocked at the door of the house where she rented a room and said he was a policeman, an icy panic gripped her. He flashed an identity card so quickly that she couldn’t have seen it even if her eyes had been working properly. She’d been woken by his knock and was still half asleep as well as scared.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Halliday,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’ and before she could say anything he pushed past her and went into the lounge. The three other girls who lived in the house had all gone out to work. They had nine-to-five jobs, but Katya got home at four o’clock in the morning and usually slept till the early afternoon.

  The lounge was in a mess. One of the girls slept there on the sofa and she’d left her clothes and underwear scattered on the floor. Halliday sat down on the one chair while Katya stood in the doorway in her nightclothes and nervously waited for him to say something.

  ‘I expect you know what this is about, love,’ he said with a smile that was only superficially friendly. He seemed young to be a detective; his hair was spiky and shiny with wax, like the kids she saw sometimes on her way home, coming out of the clubs.

  She didn’t say anything and he laughed. ‘Come on, Katya. Speak to me.’

  ‘Just tell me what you want,’ she said, not that she had much doubt. He must know she was there illegally, without proper papers, and she feared the worst – deportation back to Dagestan, the country she had been so happy to leave. But if he’d come to arrest her, why was he on his own? It seemed odd.

  ‘I’m interested in your place of work.’

  ‘Slim’s?’

  ‘That’s right, love. You work upstairs, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Funny kind of place, Slim’s. I mean, it’s a club downstairs, full of respectable citizens having dinner and a drink or two and a dance. But if someone wants a special dessert they can get it upstairs.’

  Katya said nothing, wondering what he was getting at. She didn’t know whether what went on upstairs in Slim’s was legal or not, all she knew was that neither she nor any of the girls who worked there had the right papers. But if he was inquiring into what went on in the club, why had he come to her? She didn’t run the place. Whatever he wanted, she wished he’d get on with it. But his next remark gave her a shock. ‘How well do you know Mr Jackson?’

  She shrugged. ‘He is there most nights, but he doesn’t often speak to the staff.’

  Halliday sneered. ‘Oh, so he’s too grand to talk to the people who help make him rich.’

  She didn’t reply; the less she said the better. She must do nothing to rouse his interest and then he might go away. She knew Jackson, of course, but as a daunting presence rather than as someone you could talk to. He was the owner of the club, with the power to hire and fire. But it was more than that – he owned them, the girls, and she had no doubt that he was behind the operation that brought them into the country.

  The girls in the upstairs room at Slim’s were stunners – the prettiest girls their home country had to offer. Katya was proud of this, since part of her job was selecting the girls who got brought over. For that, she had to travel to Dagestan from time to time, and when she did she used a false passport that was given to her for the journey, then taken away. It said she was Bulgarian. The girls she recruited came to the UK in a lorry; she knew that from talking to them when they got here. The other part of her job was managing the girls once they arrived.

  There was an air of menace about the man Jackson; behind his stylish clothes and cool manner she sensed a brutality that scared her. The other girls saw it too, though as far as she knew he had never hurt any of them.

  There was another strange thing about him. In Katya’s experience any owner would have occasionally sampled the goods; that was a right that came with the territory. But not Jackson; he never talked to any of the girls, let alone touched them, and he only occasionally had a word with Katya, just to check that the customers were happy and that there had been no complaints. There never had been and he seemed satisfied, but she still found him frightening.

  Halliday’s breezy manner had changed. His voice sounded ominous when he said, ‘Your employer is about to find himself brought down a peg or two.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Katya.

  ‘Yes. And you’re going to help me do it.’

  Chapter 24

  The two men sat in a dimly lit alcove on the raised dais at the back of the dining room. Slim’s, named after Joe Slim, the Manchester United footballer who’d started the club eight years earlier, was in Wilmslow, ten miles or so south of Manchester. It was said that the Aston Martin dealership in Wilmslow sold the highest number of Aston Martins in the UK, so affluent was the local lifestyle. The room was crowded this evening, loud with music and the raised voices of a group of young men and girls at a long table. One of the two men looked around and smiled in satisfaction at the packed tables.

  He was the owner, a tall black man known as Jackson. No one at the club ever used his first name. Jackson had acquired the club after Joe Slim was found, early one morning, face down in the Manchester Ship Canal. It was generally assumed that he had fallen in from the towpath while he was drunk, but no one seemed to know why he was down there and no witnesses had ever come forward.

  Jackson dressed as smartly as his well-heeled clients, and tonight he wore an elegant blue suit, a cream-coloured woven shirt, and a subtly patterned Hermès tie. His companion was less flashy but his suit looked equally pricey; he had the air of a successful self-made businessman – the kind of man who paid in cash from a roll of banknotes held by a silver money clip.

  ‘Good trip then?’ asked the man who looked like a businessman.

  Jackson gave him a quizzical
look, then seemed to decide the question was innocent enough. ‘Not bad. Though I had a spot of bother with the locals. I don’t know what sparked them off but they seemed to be wondering what this uppity nigger was doing over there.’ Jackson chuckled. ‘They didn’t find out though.’

  ‘What were you doing over there? Was it business?’

  Jackson laughed sarcastically. ‘I wasn’t in Berlin for my health, man. I was chasing up a new opportunity.’

  ‘German girls?’

  Jackson shook his head. ‘I’m getting tired of that line of work – too many hassles. I’m thinking of branching out a bit.’

  When he didn’t elaborate, the other man said, ‘Well, it must have been important if you took a chance like that.’

  ‘What chance?’

  The other man shrugged. ‘You don’t want to get European police forces on your tail. They can be a bit nasty. Just watch out if you’re up to something dodgy over there.’

  Jackson said nothing at first. Then, ‘I don’t know if it was the police. I didn’t see any uniforms.’

  The other man said, ‘But you got out all right?’

  Jackson looked amused. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘It looks that way to me,’ said the other man. His role there was hard to place. He didn’t act like a customer; he was too self-confident to be a dependant; yet the black man didn’t seem the type to have friends.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Jackson, ‘when are they coming?’

  The businessman looked at his watch. ‘Any time now.’

  And as if in response, the maître d’ came up to their table, looking agitated. ‘Mr Jackson,’ he said breathlessly. ‘There are Immigration officers outside the back door. They’re asking for you.’

  Jackson raised his eyes but didn’t seem surprised. ‘Thank you, Émile.’

  The maître d’ went on, ‘They have police officers with them. They say they want to check the papers of the girls.’

  Jackson looked at his companion, who also didn’t seem surprised by Émile’s news. Jackson said to him, ‘You better excuse me. I like to leave by the front door of the places I own.’ He turned to Émile. ‘This gentleman’s my guest, so put our dinner on the house tab.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Jackson. But what should I tell the police?’

  ‘Tell them if they want to see me they need to make an appointment. Like my guest here,’ he added with a smile. And then, without any show of haste, Jackson was out of the front door of the club in ten seconds, leaving Émile to deal with the officers of the law. Jackson’s guest remained seated at the table, and after a moment signalled for a waiter and calmly ordered a large cognac.

  Chapter 25

  She had seen Halliday twice and each time he had pumped her about the upstairs operation at Slim’s. She’d explained that she didn’t know any details of the business; once a week Khoury, the accountant, showed up, and sat in the little room next to the cloakroom, where he went through all the tabs the girls had handed in. But he didn’t talk to Katya about the business, and she certainly didn’t know the turnover figures. She only knew that none of the girls, even the desperate ones, dared to try and skim any of the money. They handed it all over. That’s how scared they were of Mr Jackson.

  At their second meeting, Halliday had told her about the coming raid. ‘Not a word to anyone,’ he’d said. ‘They’ll be picking up the girls, and that’ll include you. But don’t worry – I’ll see you right.’

  And he had been true to his word – too true for Katya’s liking. The police and Immigration officers had come in the back entrance, quite politely. This had seemed curious to her – she’d expected something like the movies, with armed officers breaking down the door, waving guns and shouting as they forced their way in. But instead they had waited outside, only four of them, in plain clothes, while the bouncer had called Émile, the maitre d’ of the restaurant, who had come back and let them in.

  It had all been tidily done, and despite the initial panic of the upstairs customers – that early in the evening, there had only been one group of stag-night revellers and a sad-looking man who said his wife had recently died – it was soon clear that the police were only interested in the accountant’s room, where one of them had gone right away, and in the employees. None of them was English, of course, and none of them had papers as far as Katya knew – not a National Insurance card, a driving licence, or anything at all.

  There had been seven girls working that night, including Katya (though her job was to supervise the goings on, not participate), and they had all been escorted out to the police van while Émile had wrung his hands and promised that he would have them out as soon as he could locate the club’s lawyer.

  It hadn’t been quite that easy – by three in the morning there had still been no sign of the lawyer, and until the preliminary hearing scheduled for noon there didn’t seem much chance of any of them getting released. It didn’t matter much, since they were in a long row of adjacent cells, and the girls – however frightened they really were – took things in good part, calling out to each other, whistling to keep their spirits up, even briefly having a sing-along, until the duty sergeant came along and told them to pipe down. After which they curled up on their respective bunks and settled in for the night.

  Which made Katya’s release so noticeable, since alone among the seven of them she got called, by the same duty sergeant, and brought out from the cell. ‘You’re free to go,’ the officer said grumpily, giving her back the small handbag she’d been made to hand over when they’d booked her and the other girls.

  ‘What about my friends?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Aren’t they getting out too?’

  The duty sergeant shook his head. ‘Not as far as I know. What’s the problem – do you want to go back to your cell?’

  It would have been better if she had, Katya reflected, as she opened the front door to her home. Her housemates were still asleep and she crept in quietly. It wasn’t that much later – or earlier depending on your time frame – than her usual return home after the club’s closing.

  She was worried about being the only one released. It must have been Halliday’s doing, she decided. Hadn’t he told her he would look after her? But she wished he hadn’t done it this way. The other girls were bound to wonder what set her apart. They were loyal to her, but only up to a point. She did her best to look after them, and she could protect them from the drunks or abusers or the ones who didn’t want to pay. But there was no disguising the nature of the operation upstairs in Slim’s, and any girl who thought her duties stopped at serving drinks didn’t last long – which meant an ignominious return to Dagestan, since none of them had papers that would enable them to find a proper job.

  Katya knew this, since she had come to the UK originally by the same route and found herself in the same position. Back in Dagestan the offer had seemed irresistible: Come and be a hostess in a deluxe club in glamorous Manchester. Earn five times the wage you are earning now. Meet interesting powerful people and live a life of Western luxury.

  She knew the come-on lines by heart now, since she used them herself when she was sent home to recruit new girls. Occasionally when she was interviewing a girl who seemed particularly sweet and likeable, she tried to hint that perhaps the job wouldn’t be quite what it seemed; that maybe the girl should have a long think about what was on offer before accepting. But Dagestan was dire; no one under the age of thirty could see their future in a positive light, and the girls she saw didn’t want to know that the West was not the land of milk and honey; that men could be just as exploitative in Manchester as in Makhachkala; that the money on offer would go mainly to pay the rent charged for their squalid shared rooms, or in ‘fees’ for nebulous services to the owner of Slim’s.

  Now she hesitated for a moment in the hall, wondering if she should have a cup of tea, then decided to go upstairs. Normally she would head straight to bed, but she felt grimy after her time in the cells, and
went and ran a bath, closing the bathroom door so as not to wake the other girls in the house. She was pleasantly surprised to see that Michele, the French girl who always had a bath late at night, had for once cleaned the bath after using it.

  Katya lay and soaked for a while, wondering if by now the other girls had been let out. She hoped so, as otherwise she knew they would be wondering why Katya had been released. And if word got round it would be certain to be picked up by Émile – he was catlike, that man, always lurking nearby, avid for gossip. And Émile would never keep news like that to himself, which meant he would tell … Katya shuddered, and quickly got out of the bath.

  She managed to fall asleep, half waking when the other residents of the little house got up and went to work, then falling asleep again. When she finally rose it was just past noon.

  Downstairs the kitchen was in its usual post-breakfast disarray – used cereal bowls and half-drunk mugs of tea and coffee. She opened the back door to air the place and started tidying up – her housemates were younger than Katya, and, just as at work, she looked after them. Maybe someday she’d have her own children to look after, but in the meantime she did not mind looking after girls younger and less worldly than herself. Michele in particular seemed in need of sisterly advice, especially when she expressed interest in ditching her boring secretarial job and coming to work at Slim’s, something Katya had so far managed to steer her away from.

  She had just finished with the leftover dishes when she heard the postman push the mail through the letter box slot. No point rushing to see it; bills and more bills would be lying on the mat. But a minute later she thought she heard a tap at the front door, so this time she left the kitchen and went out into the hall. She opened the front door, but there was nobody there – she must have imagined the noise. Then she bent down and picked up the post, examining it as she walked back to the kitchen. There was one envelope for her, which she was opening when she came into the kitchen again, not paying much attention. It took a moment to notice the man now sitting at the kitchen table, and she jumped when she saw him.