The Dirty Game

by Solomon Carter

  “You think they give a shit about PR, bruv? Nah, man,” Suitcase had taken the bait, and was off. “Only the top brass care about that shit. The ones on the beat and the CID and all those plain-clothes coppers, they’re all scum. As long as they get some extra cash coming their way, they don’t give a toss about justice, do they…?”

  “Sounds like the voice of experience,” said Dan.

  “It is mate, I’ve taken my share of secret police beatings. Do they ever get in bother for it? Do they bollocks.” Suitcase looked around the queue and shouted at the closed front door. “Open up will you, we’re freezing out here!” Then he looked at Craig. “Those heartless bastards say they want to help us then leave us standing out here freezing our tits off.”

  Suitcase was fond of profanities of any kind. He wasn’t at all fussy, so long as they kept coming.

  “What I want to know is what motive they’d have for it? For covering it up I mean?”

  “Spin the wheel, mate, spin the wheel. They’ve got a million reasons. Maybe one of their own is doing it or they’re being paid by the killer to turn a blind eye. Could be it’s an MP. Maybe it’s Prince Charles, who knows…”

  “Now you’re off your head.”

  “Yeah, I am actually, now you mention it. Proper off my head. I feel fantastic,” said Suitcase with drifting, dreamy eyes.

  “Good. Glad you’re happy. Now, where were we?” said Dan, pressing on. “Oh yeah, the powers that be killing prostitutes and covering it up.”

  “Come on, Craig. It’s not that far-fetched is it? We’ve had politicians going on beanos to the valleys so they could abuse orphans in care… young boys being driven to Bayswater flats so a cabinet ministers can get their sick little rocks off? Two years ago that would have sounded like a fairy tale, but now we just nod our heads and go ‘yeah, they’ve done it again, aren’t they bad.’ The lot of them should be shot –all of them, as soon as they run for office.”

  Suitcase had some kind of point there. But Dan needed more, and if there was more to be had, Suitcase was the one to give it.

  “What makes you think this is a cover up, mate?” said Dan.

  “Come on. Get with the programme, my man. Laura gets topped and her body washes up on the beach. There’s a bit of an investigation and that John Balfour, the one who killed that other prozzy years ago, suddenly he gets topped. That’s a cover up.”

  Dan nodded. “Could be, I suppose.”

  “You suppose. Then there’s all the tarts you don’t hear about who go missing.”

  Dan’s eyes came to life. He started reading, recording, detailing everything he saw on Suitcase’s sweaty face and dreamy eyes, every nuance and inflection which came from his mouth.

  “I mean foreign ones. There’s a brothel on every street in this country, you know that? Every street. There is, Craig. On a nice kosher street, you wouldn’t be able to tell them, but they are still there. On a bad street, everyone knows where they are, don’t they? And Romanian girls, Bulgarians, Romany types, they are everywhere and no one even knows they exist.”

  “Why did you bring up the foreign girls, eh?”

  Suitcase rolled his drug addled eyes as if his friend Craig was being deliberately ignorant. Suitcase turned his head and made a big wave, beckoning someone further back in the queue to come forward. “Here, Haralamb. Over here mate. Tell him what you told me.”

  A big man with a cheap blue football overcoat and a baseball cap leaned out of the crowd and pointed at himself. His face looked cold. His skin was brown, like a Turk, but his face wasn’t Turkish. Haralamb was a big man but looked humble and quiet. He apologised to people in the queue as he came forward to meet Suitcase. “What?”

  “Hey, you can’t push in!” someone screeched behind them.

  “Shuddup! He’s not pushing in, he’s with me and Craig! Here, Haralamb. Tell him what you told me. About the girls!”

  Haralamb looked at Dan and shrugged. “What girls?” he said.

  “You know the ones. The Prostitutes who go missing.”

  Realisation dropped onto Haralamb’s face. “Yes, yes, yes. I see,” his voice was Eastern European ethnic. He was almost certainly Romanian or Bulgarian. “The girls have been going missing for a while, but no one cares. There are no records. The pimps write them off as an attrition. They know they always lose some of the girls to the perverts so they just bring more. There are always more girls, the pimps don’t care about the ones who go missing.”

  “You’re serious?” said Dan, waiting for an obvious body language slip to reveal a lie. There were so many story tellers at The Refuge it paid to be careful. The guy made a foreign-looking twist of his head and raised his eyebrows to confirm he was being honest. Dan believed him. “How many and when… where?”

  “What? There must be hundreds…”

  “No. Who you know about..?”

  “Three in this town. Others in Basildon.”

  Dan nodded for more details.

  “Ileana. Magda. Miruna, that’s three. Lovely girls. Pretty. Too young to die… Too young to do this work.”

  “How do you know about them, Haralamb?”

  Haralamb looked away, his face reddened, then he looked back. “I liked to look after them.”

  “Old Harry here is a red blooded male, Craig, but without a pot to piss in. He hoped if he treated the girls nice, he’d get the crumbs that fell from the table, ain’t that right old Harry?”

  “Piss off,” said Haralamb, the words sounding almost quaint on his foreign tongue.

  “But how come there are no bodies, Haralamb?”

  “Maybe they bury them. Maybe they put them through a wood-chipper. Maybe they put them on kebab? How do I know? Do I look like Poirot?”

  Suitcase laughed out loud.

  “When, Haralamb?”

  “All in the last two months. Such a shame…” Haralamb shook his head and trudged away to his place in the queue. Dan wondered just how much time he’d have to keep up his act before he could reasonably disappear without causing any suspicion about all his questions. Dan’s nostrils flared as if he could smell his prey. He wanted to be chasing them now. If Rowntree or Chauncey were implicated, he now had a major card to play against them. But he had to wait and play his part. Inside he queued for a food parcel he didn’t need, and took a plate of pastries and poured himself a cup of The Refuge’s insanely bad coffee. He sat down and started nibbling. Haralamb came up alongside Dan’s table, loud and agitated. “I told what we talked about to my friend Razvan. He is a tramp, yes? Very Romanian. Cannot speak a word of English. He tells me another girl went missing last night.”

  “Last night? Where?”

  “Very local. Near the Talbot Estate. Lenuta. Pretty girl, black hair, good body. Only twenty years old.”

  “Was she picked up in a car? Did they come alongside her? How?”

  “Lenuta, I don’t know. The ones before were in a car. Another time they walked away together. Terrible business for Romanian girls.”

  “Bastards!” said Dan.

  Behind him, the big bruiser volunteer who guarded the door with a cheesy smile came to Dan’s shoulder. “Watch your language here, fella. Keep it down, eh?”

  “Yeah, sure, sorry,” said Dan, playing his humble part, while his mind screamed with new facts. He chomped on a pastry and left his coffee.

  “I’ve got to be off, Suitcase, Haralamb. Nice talking to you. Enjoy your E’s, Suitcase.”

  Suitcase shook Dan’s hand. “I will bruv, guaranteed.”

  Dan wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, as was customary amongst Refuge users, and slowly walked down the corridor. As soon as he’s said goodbye to the volunteer at the door, he moved as fast as he could. Craig was finished for the day. Dan was back with a vengeance. Now there was a pattern of murders, hidden because the victims were under the radar. The murderer had been targeting untouchables, women without a record of their existence to save them. The killer had only broken their pattern by going for Laura.
Why? But for whatever reason, the killing of Laura had changed the game. The body had appeared. She was known to the system, and to prevent further chance of being caught the killer had broken the pattern again to silence John Balfour. Dan felt the ticking of the clock for the first time. Prostitutes worked all hours. So maybe this killer did too. They had to find him and stop him now, before he killed again, and Dan knew he certainly would.

  Twenty-one

  When you have to stop someone from doing something evil, something which ends the life of another, then you have all the motivation you need to get extremely close to the line. Rowntree had her on that one, because once again Eva knew temptation was taking her across it. After speaking with Dan she felt his disgust at what was happening on the streets. As he relayed what he’d learned she felt the same way. Some evil bastard was getting away with killing girls who no one else cared about. She remembered the girls she had saved from Stanca Cataraga and James Winstanley, and she prayed none of them had been killed. It was evening and the sky was full of billowing grey-black clouds. Having driven from Albany Park area up towards the seafront roads around the Talbot Estate, they were ready to cross the line as a team. They were starting on Burmont Road – a row of terrace housing on one side and the high prison style wall of the Talbot Estate on the other. Drum’n’Bass music, shouting, swearing, chatter and laughter echoed high into the air from the estate, pouring up into the night like an invisible aura. They were in Dan’s Jag. It looked the type of car a prostitute would think belonged to a punter. The leather seat creaked as Dan turned to face Eva.

  “How do we play this?” asked Dan.

  “Easy. Like before. You drive around slowly looking like your average sleaze ball about town, and then you slow down when a Romanian-looking girl takes the bait. We get her in here and do the double act. We need one of them to want to take the risk we are asking of them.”

  “Which comes back to money. How long can we keep bankrolling this before we sink?” said Dan.

  Eva had wondered that herself, but she had felt mean. She hoped they were getting toward the finish line now. She shrugged. “A little while longer.”

  “For what we’re asking we should give a fifty. Can we spare that?”

  “We have to.” Eva opened her purse and slid three notes out and gave them to Dan. “You’re the buyer.”

  “Yeah. I’d pretty much like to catch and castrate all the buyers I’m going to see tonight. Like a pre-emptive strike.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like a true feminist, Dan,” said Eva.

  “That’ll be the day. Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Eva got out of the car and shifted into the back seat. She was more out of sight back there, with Dan the prominent one looking for a bit of fun. He started the engine and began a slow drive along Burmont. The road was as long as the Talbot Estate was broad, and there were no street walkers evident along it yet, but there was a small gathering at the far corner. Dan sped up and then slowed as the group came into view. A bunch of young, thin looking girls in a mixture of alluring outfits turned and stared at the car as it passed. One or two of them seemed to want to do business more than the others. Dan noticed these ones, thinking the murderer might notice them the same way. The road took him left, up and along past the mouth of the Talbot Estate. Dan turned in and made a U-turn. He drove back past the crew of girls, seeing they had already broken apart and were parading for the black Jag. Dan guessed he was the first of the punters tonight.

  “Which one Eva?”

  “Which one catches your eye?” She was using Dan’s male instincts as a homing device. If he liked one of the girls within the victim-type there was a good chance the killer would identify the same.

  “Honestly?”

  “Of course.’’

  ‘’Second from the left with the long wavy dark hair. She looks like a young version of that Welsh woman from the One Show. Then there’s the gypsy princess third in the pack, all narrow waist and bangles on her wrists. She looks eye-catching, both of them do,” said Dan.

  “Okay. If those two qualify we shouldn’t risk leaving one without warning,” said Eva.

  “Hell, this is just one street. The bastard might strike in Westcliff while we’re sitting down here.”

  “We don’t know much, but we’re following our leads, and this is as good a bet as any.”

  Dan turned the car towards the pavement, opened his window and leaned across the passenger seat to speak to the first group of girls. When they looked at him, he saw how young, slender and sculpted their faces were. They had the glow and shine of youth, the clear eyes, and a remaining hint of innocence. These foreign girls weren’t into the drugs yet, clearly. They were just selling their bodies for survival. Dan pointed to the girl with the dark wavy hair. The others laughed and said things in their language that were probably universal. They were encouraging her and mocking her at the same time. He saw it was playful. They were just girls. Dan shook his head. The one with the dark hair waved to her friends and got into the front seat. She closed the door and gave Dan a sweet smile, then saw Eva from the corner of her eye. The girl looked around at Eva, her eyes growing in sudden panic.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe, I promise.”

  She understood. Her eyes settled as Dan started the engine. “What do you want?” she asked. “A man and a woman is unusual…” her English was heavily accented, but very good all the same.

  “We want to talk – that’s all and we will pay.”

  “Talk and sex… or just talk?” she asked, seeming suddenly hard-bitten and mature in spite of her youthful gloss.

  “Just talk,” said Eva. “And we’ll stay near to your friends so you feel safe. But first we need another. That girl there,” said Eva, pointing to the one with the bangles on her wrists, all dressed up like Shakira with no place to go.

  “Adriana. You like the pretty ones with dark hair, yes?” said the girl.

  “We’ll explain. Just tell her to get in. We will be quick and pay well,” said Dan. The girl nodded and shrugged. The car slowed beside the gang, and they looked at the car as one. This time they saw a face they recognised leaning from the window. Their Romanian conversation happened quickly. The gang looked interested, some had big excited eyes and they spoke rapidly to one another. The Shakira-alike, moved up to the car and got in. Her face never showed a trace of flirtation, unlike the first girl. She knew the score. This wasn’t going to be about sex.

  “Adriana is not good with English,” said the first girl. “I will translate.”

  “Right. I’ll park around the corner, then we’ll talk this through.”

  He pulled the car to a halt on the side road facing the sea wall and the last of the Golden Mile amusements before the beach turned natural at Southchurch. Dan killed the engine and faced both of the girls.

  “What’s your name?” said Dan.

  “Why? You like me?” said the girl, smiling.

  “So we can talk. My name’s Dan and this is Eva. We heard about what’s happening. Romanian girls are going missing all the time. Is it true?”

  “My name is Luisa. I’ve been here three weeks now. The girls and the people we work for said it wasn’t true. They said the girls were just running away. We believed them because this country is supposed to be safe for this life - that is what we were told. Safe and it pays well.”

  “You want the truth? It’s not safe and it pays like shit,” said Dan. “That’s myth one and two out of the way.”

  “Don’t speak like that. This is not our choice… We have no choice.”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah?” He could fix that too, soon enough. It was another job to add to his bucket list.

  “But now you believe the girls are missing. Why?”

  Luisa turned to Adrianna and they started talking animatedly in language rich with vowel sounds and complicated consonants. They chatted for maybe half a minute before Luisa started again. These young girls were so pret
ty Dan feared for their chances.

  “Adrianna said she saw Ileana getting into an old green car last week. She never came back.”

  Dan’s eyes flared and drew tight again. He looked at Eva and saw excitement there too. They were getting close.

  “How long ago?”

  “Four nights, we think. It could be five,” said the girl.

  “That’s well after Laura was murdered, but before Balfour got hit,” said Dan.

  “Is Ileana the only one from your group?”

  The girls looked at each other and spoke again.

  “No. But we are new. We only hear of the others,” said Luisa.

  “Do you know why we picked you two?” said Eva.

  “Maybe you are the ones who take the girls away?” said Luisa, in weak attempt at a joke.

  “No, Luisa. You are safe with us. But you’re not so safe out there, I’m sorry to say. We picked you because you are both young Romanian brunettes – the one who takes the girls mostly goes for slim young girls with brown hair. It seems he is mostly going for Romanian girls as well. Because you two are the most eye-catching of your group, we think there is a very high chance you two could be targeted soon.”

  Luisa was shaken. Her eyes widened and blinked, then she spoke to Adriana in a careful tone. Adriana gasped and looked at Eva then Dan.

  “We want you to be our eyes and ears, okay?” said Dan. “We intend to stop this person before they kill anyone else, including you. When we do, Romanian girls will be safe here again. Okay?” said Dan. But your pimps soon won’t be, thought Dan.