The Black Shepherd

by Steven Savile

  But he didn’t have to like it.

  It wasn’t about her being a woman. She was right when she said she could handle herself. She was his partner. That meant something to him. He imagined Mitch’s spectre shaking his head and offering the old joke: Losing one partner is unlucky, mate, but losing two would be downright fucking careless.

  ‘Fuck you, Mitch,’ he said to the empty street.

  Frankie had dragged him out of that fire six months ago. He’d be dead without her. That was the reality of what had gone down in the ruins of that Parisian orphanage.

  He’d definitely used up one of his extra lives.

  Laura was hunting Maria Bartok’s past.

  If she wasn’t the girl in the forest, then they had a survivor to find, and if she was they had closure to bring. Knowing where she’d come from could give an idea to the flow of traffic.

  Standing here, looking out over the docks and across to the ferry terminal, it made sense that girls would be trafficked from here through Sweden. Sweden might look like it was on the periphery of Europe, but driving from Malmö across the Öresund Bridge into Denmark, and down to Roedby you could be in Puttgarden, Germany, in two hours, without showing your passport once. You could move anywhere in Europe without having to identify yourself as long as you didn’t try to fly. It made tracking people near-impossible.

  Getting into the UK was more difficult, being islands, but going through Dublin you could disembark without showing any ID, so it was doable, even if the Channel Tunnel and major airports were out of the question.

  He wasn’t sure what more he could do here, but heading into Sweden without a solid lead would be worse than chasing shadows. There had to be a way in, though. A way of attacking this from the other side. Frankie from the inside, him from the out. Trafficking was like any business in that there was a supply line, buyers and sellers. If Tanya was right and the girls were being used as sex-workers on the other end, there’d be the equivalent of cards stuck in phone boxes and listings on websites where hobby escorts were advertised side by side with organized crime. Since the FBI had shut down Backpage, the main site for sex-workers, a lot of this stuff had been driven back out onto the streets, of course, putting the power back into the hands of the scum that ruled those back alleys. But it wasn’t as though he could just turn up in Stockholm and start asking the girls working the streets, ‘Hey, did you end up here because you had a religious revelation? Spend any time in a forest compound in Estonia? Know any girls who burned to death trying to escape?’

  Peter had seen a few rough-sleepers on the walk down. They didn’t make eye contact. He knew they needed to be invisible. Being seen meant they risked the kind of crap Frankie had gone through, being pissed on, beaten, or worse. Invisibility was armour. On the walk back, he counted the huddled shapes in the shadows.

  He stopped counting long before he reached the hire car. There were just too many of them. It was soul-destroying. He drove slowly back up towards the hotel. The streets were almost empty until he reached the centre of the Old Town, and even there it was quiet. He saw a few people staggering home, lovers walking hand in hand or kissing up against the walls of brightly painted buildings with the kind of frantic need of those first alcohol-fuelled encounters. He couldn’t remember ever being like that, so desperate to consume and be consumed that he hadn’t been able to make it halfway home before he’d had to start tearing at the woman’s clothes in the street. But then, he’d always kind of hated himself and doubted anyone would actually want him, so that blind spot in his memory was hardly surprising. He saw a couple of taxis trawling for trade.

  It would be busy again as people returned to work, but for a few hours more at least, Tallinn slept.

  He parked up outside the hotel, then went for a walk, covering many of the same streets he’d just driven, looking at the faces, looking for the saviours walking those same streets with their coffees and warm soups, but they weren’t out that night.

  He sat on a bench in the centre of town and took his phone out of his pocket, opened the web browser, and used his thumbs to type: escort tallinn. The search returned about thirty ads for used cars, as well as listings for prostitutes. He saw that they used a k instead of a c and quickly adjusted his search, turning up hundreds of more listings promising OWO, CIM, and other acronyms, with the usual disclaimers that any money that changed hands was purely for the companionship and any sex that happened was a bonus. There was an element of organization to it all, he realized, with very similarly worded listings being repeated for a lot of the girls. A disproportionate number of the listings were for girls from Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, but there were several listings for Russians, too.

  So many of the girls looked the same, too, but that was hardly surprising seeing as they were using stock photographs and glamour shots of complete strangers. Either there was some serious fiddling of the genetic lottery going on, or six of the thirty girls on the first page had stolen the same set of shots for their own use.

  It wasn’t going to be any help, so he killed the browser and started walking back towards the hotel. In the morning he’d call Laura and see if she’d had any luck tracing Maria Bartok, and update her on Frankie’s situation.

  Right now, everything felt like it was in a holding pattern, not least because the investigation that had brought him out here wasn’t supposed to be real – no matter how real it felt talking to Tanya and Ivan and Mirjam Rebane. He was only here for Frankie, all the rest of it was window-dressing, and if she said wait, he waited, and just hoped that the One World compound turned out to be what she needed it to be.

  It was easy to forget that she was looking for family.

  For Frankie it wasn’t about naming the body in the forest or finding the men running a supply line of sex-workers into Europe. It was about Irma Lutz, a kid who had disappeared from university because she’d found God. If they focused on that, then maybe, just maybe, it was a problem they could solve. Because the alternative, going down that rabbit hole and trying to tackle the sex and slave trade across twenty-eight – soon to be twenty-seven if the Government in constant flux didn’t derail the whole withdrawal process – member states, was lunacy of the highest order.

  But then Peter Ash had never been that smart. It was his weakness; white-knight syndrome.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Kask left the scene to the forensics unit, grimly satisfied that they’d have a suspect in custody before the mud had set.

  He went back to the office.

  As much as he would have liked to witness Tamm’s fall he needed to be elsewhere. He trusted his own cunning. Each piece of his plan would fall into place – he knew that because he knew how cops thought. He knew what they looked for and how they processed an investigation because there was a way of doing things. A methodology. He’d always thought cops would make the most dangerous criminals if they set their minds to it. Not only did they have the resources, they had the specific knowledge needed to get away with murder.

  And now he was about to put that theory to the test.

  When the emergency dispatcher had mentioned the dog-walker’s call putting a rusty yellow Volvo at the scene it had taken all of five minutes for someone to mention Karl Tamm’s name. That was the joy of being well known to the police.

  Within an hour they had Tamm in custody.

  He’d run, or at least tried to, which made it even better.

  It didn’t matter that they always ran. It was all about perception. Tamm wasn’t just in the frame, he’d bolted, which painted a target squarely on his back.

  News spread through the station quickly.

  ‘Looks like you missed out on all the fun,’ Jaan Puhvel said, coming into the squad room, coffee in hand.

  ‘Fun?’ he said, looking up. He needed to keep the smile off his face.

  ‘That body you found.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly find her,’ he said.

  ‘First officer on the scene, that makes her yours,’ Jaa
n said.

  ‘Sure. But not on our patch. South are doing just fine.’

  ‘If you call the fastest murder arrest on record “fine”, then yep they’re doing just fine.’

  ‘They’ve got someone already?’ Just the right amount of surprise in his voice.

  ‘Oh man, I thought you’d have heard it on the jungle drums. They brought Karl Tamm in. He’s downstairs in interrogation.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s fast.’

  ‘We got lucky. His yellow Volvo was seen driving away.’

  ‘A yellow Volvo. C’mon, that’s thin. There must be dozens in the city, and more passing through every day.’

  ‘Lucky break. It was enough for a warrant.’

  ‘And?’ As he said it, the image of the girl lying naked in the grass filled his mind. He felt sick.

  ‘They found a girl’s thong hidden in his room. We’ve always suspected Tamm was a collector, but we’ve got him this time, Max. He’s not walking away from this.’

  ‘They’ve got a positive match?’

  ‘Not yet. Forensics sent them back to central labs for DNA testing. But they’re hers, my friend.’

  ‘Do we have an ID on the girl?’

  ‘They found her bag and a load of books near the body. There was no ID anywhere, but South ran a check with the library and the only student who had checked out the exact list of texts is Annja Rosen, a computer-studies undergrad.’

  ‘I know that name,’ he said, knowing he was playing a dangerous game now. ‘I know I know that name. Give me a second. Yes. It came up in a disappearance case a while back. I’m sure that was it. Annja Rosen. Her flatmate was reported as missing, but if I remember right she’d signed up to some holier than thou cult and gone off to find herself.’

  Now, if anyone spotted the link between Rosen and Irma Lutz, and that he was the bridge between the two, he was covered. He hadn’t tried to hide it. It was the first thing he’d said when he’d heard the girl’s name.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The cafe was busy without being full.

  He saw no sign of Annja bussing tables, so figured she was out back. As far as Peter could tell there was only the one woman working the counter, and she was struggling to keep up with the orders for frothy coffees, warm paninis, and breakfast bagels and keep the tables cleared for new arrivals.

  He took up residence at an empty table and waited for the woman to make her way around to him.

  Peter passed the time people-watching; and there was a good slice of life to be seen. It never ceased to amaze him just how diverse culture was capable of being, despite feeling like you were surrounded by a hundred variants of the same blonde hair and blue eyes, sharp cheekbones and ridiculously thin bodies, the reality was that more than half of the seats in the place were taken up by the young, the beautiful, and the fiercely intelligent, but under those blanket descriptors he saw fierce dreads, and hipster beards, alabaster-pale cheeks, and ebony black skin. There were three Asian girls sharing a table, arguing about some sort of ethical debate which probably came down to people are shits. At least that was Peter’s understanding of ethics. It was all great in theory, until you introduced people into the mix, then it all went to fuckery.

  The waitress finally reached him, and asked, ‘What can I get for you?’ in English.

  ‘Actually, I’m looking for Annja,’ he said. ‘But a decent Americano would hit the spot.’

  ‘You and me both,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t turned up this morning. And she didn’t even call in so we could get cover. Do me a favour, if you see her, tell her that she needn’t bother coming in tomorrow. Anyway, I’ll get that coffee for you. Anything go with it? Assuming you still want it?’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘What’s good?’

  ‘Everything,’ she said, ‘but then I’m biased.’

  ‘OK, how about—’ He looked up at the chalkboard for the daily specials, with its list of creative croissants, sourdough sandwiches, baked goods, and healthy delights, and opted for, ‘That black bean and sweet potato hash sounds good.’

  ‘With scrambled or fried egg?’

  ‘Fried.’

  ‘Coming right up.’

  Alone again, he tried Annja’s number.

  It went straight to voicemail.

  ‘Hi Annja, it’s Peter Ash.’ He glanced at his watch to double-check the time. ‘It’s almost eleven. I’m here, but your boss says you haven’t arrived yet. If you need me to rearrange, I can do that. I can come out to you, if that would help? Give me a call.’

  His coffee, craft-brewed, arrived faster than he’d expected. He’d only just hung up when the woman put it on the table in front of him. ‘Enjoy,’ she said. ‘The hash will be a few minutes.’

  He drank his too-hot coffee and checked the tracking to be sure Frankie was still down by the docks. Eleven o’clock. They were probably cleaning up after the breakfast run.

  His food came a few minutes later.

  He ate like a condemned man, wolfing down the meal. It was better than good.

  He left a twenty-euro note under the saucer, which covered a decent tip. She was clearing away his table and collecting the cash before he was halfway to the door.

  Peter stood outside the cafe for a moment, annoyed at having been stood up, and frustrated that Annja had set her phone to go direct to voicemail rather than just answer and tell him she’d changed her mind about talking. It happened. People got antsy about talking to cops, even when they’d done nothing wrong.

  He was thinking about taking a walk down to the campus to see if she was there when his phone rang.

  ‘Law. What’s the good word?’

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  A shiver ran up the ladder of his spine and, in that moment, the silence between her delivering the bad news and that last second when his life was normal, Peter felt a tide of weakness flow through his body, buckling his knees as he tried to say, ‘Frankie?’

  Realizing her mistake, Laura was quick to say, ‘No, she’s fine. It’s Annja Rosen. She’s dead. They found her body this morning. It was out on some wasteland on the edge of the city. The initial report suggests sexual assault. South Tallinn already have someone in custody.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Law. This is all just a bit too convenient.’ He shook his head, looking back through the cafe window to where the woman was busy serving another customer. ‘This stinks. We arrange to talk, she turns up dead. I don’t buy it.’

  ‘No such thing as coincidence,’ Laura agreed. ‘And do you want to know what stinks the stinkiest?’

  ‘Hit me.’

  ‘The first officer on the scene? Maksim Kask. And what, pray tell, is special about Maksim Kask? Why, Officer Kask is the same officer who took and buried Annja Rosen’s statement.’

  ‘Fuck that shit.’

  ‘Fuck that shit indeed.’

  ‘And Frankie’s about to go off into the woods with One World to play happy campers.’

  ‘It’s one thing for a Church to use their influence to keep their name out of an investigation, but killing a witness?’

  ‘They’re not a Church, Law. They’re a fucking cult. They’re capable of anything. You saw the piece HuffPost did on them a while back? That woman separated from her own kid, forced to kidnap it from one of their temples to get it to hospital. That baby was malnourished and suffering from neglect. It had been left on a mattress in its own faeces for days, dying, and the only medicine those bastards allowed was the magic touch of their fucking Shepherd? When these fuckheads think they’re doing it for a higher purpose, then yeah, anything is possible. These fuckers think they’re untouchable.’

  His mind was racing. He didn’t have many friends out here. Not ones he could confide in when it came to asking awkward questions like: Is one of your most decorated detectives a corrupt religious fanatic capable of murder?

  But there was one.

  Maybe.

  Even if talking with her was going to involve expenses.

  ‘Pete, do me a favour
before you go charging off half-cocked,’ Laura said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Try not to get yourself half-crucified and almost burned alive.’

  ‘I shall make that my top priority,’ he promised, and killed the call.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the fracture in One World’s facade that those who railed against the cult had been looking for; it wasn’t taxes, or something vague like a billboard asking a daughter to come home. It was the body of a girl dumped on wasteground. It was a corrupt cop in the pocket of their holy man. It was compelling. It was front-page newspaper visual. It was the kind of thing that could bring down a house of false gods and fake prophets. If he didn’t get himself – or Frankie – killed trying to get to the heart of it.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Laura was shaken.

  She wasn’t a field agent, but that didn’t mean she was immune to the stuff they were investigating. A kid had just lost her life because she’d told the truth. And if Laura hadn’t noticed the statement was missing from the file she might still be alive. It was as simple as that. Cause and effect. Sending Peter Ash out there to interview her had got her killed.

  And that was on her.

  No one else.

  She needed to do something. And that wasn’t just guilt driving her. She was separated from the mess. She could dig in different ways to Peter. She had the entire weight of Division behind her. She could monitor traffic on a local level, looking for patterns on a global one. She could listen to chatter, cross-reference reports from all sorts of jurisdictions, and maybe, just maybe, see something he’d miss down at the sharp end.

  The first thing was to take that name he’d given her, Maria Bartok, and find out once and for all if she was the body in the woods.

  And it would keep her mind off Annja Rosen.

  But, assuming it was Maria Bartok, and she’d come over the border from Russia, then finding where she’d been picked up by the traffickers was going to be a nightmare. Russia wasn’t like the EU. She didn’t have access to their systems. There was no cross-jurisdictional border cooperation in place. And the idea of hacking into Russian databases to get at that stuff … was likely to set off a diplomatic Cold War, or at least earn her a stretch in the Lubyanka.