The Black Shepherd

by Steven Savile

  ‘Action stations, kiddo,’ Tasha said, grinning. ‘We can talk about it later.’

  NINETEEN

  The restaurant was closed, but that didn’t stop Mirjam walking straight to the door and rapping on the glass.

  A few seconds later it opened.

  The man who let them in had obviously modelled himself on the Italian plumber from that old video game. He hugged Mirjam and kissed her on both cheeks. His welcome for Peter Ash was less effusive. He shook Peter’s hand, pumping it a couple of times, both of his own meaty hands closed around Peter’s. The smile never left his face.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, accent thick in those repeated words, and led them to the only table that was occupied.

  ‘Hello, Ivan,’ Mirjam said. ‘This is my colleague, Peter Ash, the man I was telling you about.’

  Ivan rose and stepped out from around the table to embrace her like a long-lost friend. He nodded to Peter, then returned to his seat.

  The Italian left them to it, scuttling away to the clatter of pans in the kitchen.

  ‘So, shall we get right down to it, Mr Ash?’ Peter nodded, taking a seat at the table. ‘First, you need to understand, I’m not in touch with any of my former colleagues, so I cannot broker a meeting if that is what you were hoping?’

  Peter shook his head. ‘I’ve got zero interest in the old country, Ivan. What happens there is someone else’s problem. What I am concerned about is what’s happening here, in Estonia, and how it spreads into the rest of Europe.’

  The big man nodded. ‘You think that Russian girls are being trafficked? And you think I can help?’

  ‘Mirjam thought you might be in a position to.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you this much, everything you can imagine is true. Or it was. What I don’t know is if it’s still happening.’

  ‘And you have evidence?’

  ‘A witness.’ Peter nodded, but didn’t say anything, letting the man talk. ‘I know a girl who came into the country this way. She managed to escape the traffickers.’

  ‘Is there any way I could I speak to her?’

  ‘With your mouth is usually the easiest way,’ Ivan said, earning a snort from Mirjam. Peter just smiled, it was the kind of smart-arsed crap he’d come out with right before someone gave him a slap. ‘But all in good time. The issue, of course, is that she’s here illegally. No papers. No visas. No permission to stay. I wouldn’t want to cause her distress or make her life any more difficult than it already is, you understand?’ His flicked his gaze towards Mirjam and back.

  Peter took that as his cue. ‘We’re only talking hypothetically.’

  ‘Mr Ash has limited jurisdiction here, Ivan, and no powers of deportation or repatriation without the cooperation of the member state. He can’t simply overrule the Human Rights Act.’

  ‘As inconvenient as that can be at times,’ Peter said with a wry smile.

  ‘That is good to know, but you have considerably more power here,’ Ivan said.

  ‘I do,’ Mirjam agreed. ‘And there is a limit to what I can turn a blind eye to, so if you do arrange for Peter to sit down with your contact I don’t want to be there. It’s better not to know than to have to lie.’

  ‘Then perhaps you have a craving for nicotine?’

  She nodded and left them to it.

  ‘She doesn’t smoke,’ Ivan said.

  ‘She’s good people,’ Peter agreed.

  ‘That she is. If I were twenty years younger I would still be too old for her, but I’d happily make a fool out of myself trying to convince her otherwise.’ Ivan laughed for the first time since Peter had entered the restaurant. His demeanour shifted. ‘I am very protective of Mirjam. I was forced to leave my daughter behind. She has taken the brunt of my parental guilt. I would hate to think you might be abusing her good nature.’

  Peter met his gaze and knew he was looking into the eyes of a man who had both tortured and killed people he didn’t believe. ‘I’m not interested in punishing victims. I want to stop the people behind this.’

  Ivan said nothing for a moment, seeming to weigh his honesty on some invisible scale, then said, ‘I believe you.’

  ‘You’ll arrange for us to meet?’

  ‘I will reach out to her, but I won’t force her to talk about anything she doesn’t want to.’

  Peter nodded. ‘She can walk away at any time. You have my word.’

  ‘If you betray either of us I will find you, and I will kill you.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment,’ Peter said, holding his gaze until finally the big Russian finally laughed, his face broadening into a wide grin.

  ‘I like you,’ Ivan said. ‘I don’t say that very often.’

  He raised a hand as if summoning a waiter, and a few moments later Peter heard soft footsteps coming up behind him.

  He didn’t turn around.

  A thin, waif-like girl barely out of her teens joined them. She carried her ghosts in her face.

  ‘This is Tanya,’ Ivan said, and to the girl, ‘This is Peter.’

  Peter nodded, but made no move to make contact. The girl stood with her arms wrapped around herself. She sank down into the chair beside the Russian.

  ‘Peter would like to ask you a few questions. You don’t have to answer any, do you understand?’ She nodded. Ivan inclined his head slightly, turning the conversation over to Peter.

  ‘Hello, Tanya. Can you tell me how long you’ve been here?’

  She shrugged. ‘Six months.’

  ‘Did you know where you were going when you left Russia?’

  ‘Ukraine,’ she corrected. ‘I came from Ukraine, not Russia.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Peter said.

  She shrugged. ‘Not important. Most English people don’t know the difference. I was supposed to be going to London. I had been learning English for two years so I could start a new life there.’

  Peter nodded. It wasn’t a surprising story. ‘You speak it very well,’ he said, earning a flicker of a smile.

  ‘Some of the other girls thought they were going to other places. Then we found out the truth.’

  ‘The truth?’

  She chewed on her bottom lip, a curiously innocent gesture given what she was about to say. ‘They said we owed them money. More than we had. They told us we were going to have to work it off. At first they said they had places for us as cleaners, and looking after children, but that was a lie. We were going to be made to have sex for money until they decided we had paid off our debt.’

  It wasn’t the first time he’d heard a similar story. It was a crude trap, but it didn’t need to be any more sophisticated than that – take their passports, hold them hostage, keep them frightened, isolated, break them until they were willing to fuck strangers for money, thinking they were earning their freedom.

  ‘How many of you were there?’

  ‘Eleven to begin with,’ she said. ‘But one of the girls ran on the first night.’

  ‘She got away?’ Peter said, though it was much more likely that the opposite was true. Six months fitted the timeline for the burned body that had turned up in the wildfire. He needed to be careful with what he said next. The forensics division had reconstructed the dead girl’s face, creating a digital model. The picture was in his pocket. He could put it on the table and ask her if it was the same girl, but it was a case of weighing up the cost of it. The moment he put that picture down on the table she’d know the other girl was dead. But didn’t that girl deserve a name? Didn’t her parents deserve to know what had happened to their little girl? Didn’t they deserve closure?

  Of course she did, but the best way to bring that about was to be careful now, to earn Tanya’s trust and keep Ivan onside.

  ‘Do you know where they took you?’ he asked, before she could answer his first question.

  ‘They called it the compound, but it was really just some cabins in the middle of the forest. We were there for a few days, they said they were training us, then they were going to m
ove us somewhere else. They put us on a ferry. I don’t know where they were taking us.’

  ‘How did you get away?’

  ‘I threw myself overboard. They thought I drowned,’ she said. ‘Do you think you can find the other girls? Can you save them?’

  It was the kind of promise he didn’t want to make, because there was absolutely no way he could keep it. ‘I’ll do my best. I can promise you that much.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t lie to me,’ she said. ‘People think that they should lie when you ask something like that. They think it makes things better. It doesn’t.’

  ‘Can I ask how you got involved with these people in the first place?’

  ‘You mean: how was I stupid enough to get trapped in that mess? That’s what you want to ask, isn’t it? That’s what I’ve asked myself every single day for the last six months.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re stupid. Sometimes we want to get away from something so badly we don’t give much thought to where we are running to, or how we’re going to get there. Getting away is all that really matters.’

  ‘And maybe that’s when you realize that what you left behind wasn’t really that bad,’ she said.

  ‘Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes what you left behind is a lot worse,’ Peter offered, conscious that there was nothing to be gained by telling her there was a better life waiting for her in Ukraine. He had no idea what she’d run away from.

  ‘And sometimes it takes a lifetime to realize you were in the wrong place all along,’ Ivan said with a shrug, taking ownership of his own mistakes. Peter was surprised that he’d remained silent for so long.

  She nodded and gave him a smile, a more certain one this time, but she still couldn’t look him in the eye for more than a second before her eyes darted down towards her hands. ‘This life might not be perfect, but it is better than the one I had before. I have friends here. But to answer your question, there were people who used to come round handing out soup and hot tea when I was living on the streets.’

  He nodded. ‘They offered you a way out?’

  She sniffed, still looking down as she nodded. ‘At first they just offered food, but the more I got to know them the nicer they were to me. I thought we’d become friends. I’d help out, making food, serving people, then after a while they said they could help me move to London, they had people there. I could have a new start. They could help me get work. I might need to start with stuff like picking fruit and cleaning toilets, the kind of work that no one in your country wants to do, but they could help me find somewhere to live. Like they said, a new start.’

  ‘Thank you, I know it can’t be easy to think about this again. Just one last question, the girl who got away? Do you remember her name?’

  She looked up hesitantly, her eyes going to Ivan before she answered.

  He nodded.

  ‘Maria Bartok.’

  TWENTY

  ‘Did you get what you needed?’ Mirjam asked as they drove away from the now shuttered restaurant.

  ‘Apart from food,’ he said. ‘Not to sound ungrateful, but I could eat a horse. I’d kinda thought we’d get something to eat.’

  ‘Do you think I got my glad rags on just to play chauffeur?’

  Ten minutes later Mirjam pulled up outside another Italian restaurant, considerably more up-market than the one they had just left. ‘Like I said, I’m just going to assume you are on expenses.’ She offered a slight smile.

  ‘It’s that or the overdraft,’ he said.

  ‘Second mortgage might be more appropriate,’ Mirjam said, leading him in. Half of the staff seemed to recognize her. Again, there were hugs and kisses, and genuine affection. He caught a couple of diners looking his way as they were led to a table in the corner where candles had already been lit. He was the only man in the place wearing jeans. Mirjam talked her way through the place, exchanging songbird sentences with the staff, until they were left with a couple of menus and a beaming smile from the departing waitress, who looked him up and down then nodded approvingly.

  ‘Friends of yours?’ Peter said when they finally had a moment alone.

  ‘Something like that. The chatty one was my baby sister.’

  ‘You might have said.’

  ‘And spoil my fun?

  ‘Fun?’

  ‘I told them you were my new man. They are most impressed.’ Now her grin was wide.

  ‘I’m flattered, I think.’

  ‘You should be, I’m out of your league.’ Mirjam burst out laughing. ‘You know what families are like. Mum and Dad have been on my back for ages, nagging about grandchildren and finding a nice man to settle down with. I thought I’d kill two birds with one scandalous stone.’

  He nodded. ‘There are worse fake girlfriends to be set up with,’ he said.

  ‘That there are. So, want to tell me what happened with Ivan when I was gone?’

  ‘I’m putting two and two together here, but Tanya gave me the name of another girl. They were in some forest compound together six months ago. The other girl escaped on the first night.’

  ‘And you think she’s our victim?’

  He shrugged. ‘How many bodies can there be out there in those trees?’

  ‘That’s not a question you want to ask.’ He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

  ‘Like that, is it?’

  ‘Every country has its secrets,’ she said, and all of a sudden he remembered that it was less than thirty years since Estonia had regained its independence from Russia. Sometimes it was too easy to forget just how radically the geopolitical world had changed since the early 90s.

  ‘I’ve got a name. Next step is to try to find a picture and compare it with the electronic reconstruction we’ve got.’

  ‘You didn’t show it to her?’

  ‘She’s already been through enough.’

  She looked at him then. He wasn’t sure what was behind the look. Disapproval?

  ‘A man with a heart,’ Mirjam said, finally.

  ‘Don’t tell my partner that.’

  ‘You did the right thing. If she’d walked into the police station to report a missing person, that would be different.’

  ‘We both know that’s not going to happen. You want me to run the name through the system here?’

  Ash hesitated for a moment. ‘Probably best if we leave it to Laura. I don’t want to drag you into this.’

  ‘I think I’m pretty much dragged into it, don’t you, given that it’s my corpse you’re talking about. I’m beginning to think you don’t trust me.’

  ‘Would that be such a bad thing?’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘But you swear you’ll tell me if there’s anything I need to know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  While it seemed to satisfy her it was painfully obvious his refusal to share had damaged the level of trust between them. Her smile had faded a little. It wasn’t going to be an easy fix.

  ‘I did discover that old Russians have a certain way with death threats,’ he offered with a straight face.

  ‘He’s a teddy bear,’ she said.

  ‘An ex-KGB teddy bear,’ Peter said. He made a decision. ‘It seems pretty clear that girls are being trafficked through Tallinn. They’re being promised new lives in the West, then being trapped in the sex trade. We’re at the gateway here. Once they’re inside the EU anything becomes possible. A trip over to Sweden and then on to the UK, or south to warmer climates.’

  ‘And they burn girls who try to escape them.’

  It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling they do a lot worse than that,’ Peter said.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing more I can do? I want to help, Peter. I’m not some fragile flower. I’m a damned good cop.’

  ‘Well, right now there is one thing you can do for me.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘You can order for me, because I can’t read a word of thi
s.’

  ‘You’re such a dick,’ Mirjam said, shaking her head.

  ‘And there was me thinking I was being charming and a little funny.’

  ‘I really should just say fuck you, Peter Ash, get up and walk away.’

  ‘And yet you’re still sat here.’

  ‘You’re really not that charming, you know?’

  ‘But a little funny? Give me that, at least.’

  She just shook her head. ‘The ossobuco is to die for.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Kask didn’t sleep.

  He knew that he wouldn’t, so he’d spent the night sitting in the leather chair in his study that his ex-wife had bought him for his fortieth birthday. That was a different life. Or at least it felt like a different one. So much could happen in six years when it came to the world falling apart. He didn’t recognize the man he had been when he looked in the mirror these days. Kask stared at the whisky bottle, knowing that if he opened it, he’d empty it, and that would be a dumb mistake this late in the game.

  He needed to keep his wits about him.

  Dawn’s early light crawled slowly up the window frame. He needed to make the call before someone else found the body. He’d planned it out meticulously, setting things up like dominoes so that once one fell it would bring all the others down, but so much could still go wrong.

  Twenty minutes later he pulled to a halt beside a payphone a couple of kilometres from where he’d dumped Annja Rosen’s body.

  Wearing a fresh pair of latex gloves, he dialled 112.

  The emergency line was picked up on the second ring.

  ‘There’s a body,’ he said without preamble. ‘I was walking. I didn’t realize what it was at first. My dog wouldn’t leave it alone. Then I saw the arm and I realized …’

  ‘Can I take your name, please, sir?’ the woman on the other end of the line asked. He ignored her, pretending shock. It was a natural response to the discovery of a corpse.

  ‘I don’t … She’s on the wasteground. She’s dead. It’s a she. I’ve never seen a body … I … I saw a car.’

  ‘What kind of car?’