The Black Shepherd

by Steven Savile

  Laura stood up and called across the Operations Room, ‘Anyone speak Swedish?’

  A hand went up. ‘Badly, if that counts. It’s basically a prettier Danish,’ Magnus Edgarsson, one of the team that had been based in Copenhagen said, with a grin. He was a big, burly guy with a shaved head. The kind of man you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, as her mum used to say. Thankfully he was one of the good guys. He got up and walked across to her terminal. The fabric of his shirt strained just a little as he leaned forward, his biceps almost too much for the material. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘A little translation help.’

  ‘It’ll cost you.’

  ‘Of course it will. What do you need?’

  ‘Coffee,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘You check this out, I’ll make a coffee run.’

  ‘Do you need me to write it down for you, or is it OK to just read it to you’

  ‘Reading it’s fine. It might be nothing.’

  ‘OK, then I’ll do the work in advance and we can go and get the coffee together. It’s a police report. Maria Bartok, arrested for vagrancy, no documentation. She claimed to have come from Estonia, but there was some doubt about that. She claims not to know how long she’s been in the country and there’s no point of entry paperwork. The arresting officer, Kristoff Andersson, suspected she may be involved in prostitution – which of course isn’t illegal in Sweden from the perspective of the girls selling themselves, only from the point of the buyer, or a pimp if she’s being put to work. He didn’t have the evidence, but issued her with a warning. He told her about a group home that could help her if she was at risk, and warned her what the impact of a criminal arrest could be for her. Certainly it would cause problems for any long-term residency permit.’

  ‘He seems like a good guy. He’s tagged a note on the file that he believed she was frightened and possibly acting under duress, which is often the case. He asked her if she needed a way out. He’s written here that she said there was no need, she was leaving the country anyway.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it gives us any idea where she was heading?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Was that worth the price of a coffee?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What were you hoping to find?’

  ‘Honestly? Maria Bartok.’

  ‘Could she have gone home?’

  ‘Back to Russia? Unlikely. I think she’s running. You run away from somewhere or towards somewhere, you don’t tend to run back to whatever you ran away from.’

  ‘Unless it’s really bad where you end up.’

  ‘Not a fan of Stockholm?’

  The big Dane grinned. ‘When God made the Nordic countries he gave us the beauty and the brains. He made the Swedes dull.’

  ‘Don’t let Frankie hear you say that.’

  ‘She’s only half-Swedish, she doesn’t count. Her other half is exciting.’

  ‘Good save.’

  ‘But, if she’s not going back, she’s going forward. The obvious choice is Denmark. Over the bridge, though I think they still check IDs now, after the refugee crisis, which could make it more difficult if she doesn’t have papers.’

  ‘Maybe. But that doesn’t really help. Still, at least I know that she left Estonia alive, which is more than I knew an hour ago.’

  Magnus raised an eyebrow. ‘Why would she have?’

  ‘She was mixed up with sex-traffickers.’

  ‘Fuck. So Andersson was right?’

  ‘On the money.’

  ‘You could try face-recognition software,’ he suggested. ‘Run her through the system. We’ve got all sorts of toys here.’

  ‘I would if I had a photograph.’

  ‘Ah, well, finally I can offer you some good news,’ he said. ‘But it might cost a cinnamon bun on top of the coffee.’

  ‘OK, I’m game, but only because you’re pretty and I don’t believe for a minute you’ll actually eat it. Meaning I get to.’

  He laughed at that.

  ‘Bottom of the page. There’s a link to her mugshot when she was booked in.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The trainers were a size too big, the T-shirt a size too small, but the jeans and sweatshirt were a good enough fit. She left the spray running in the shower considerably longer than she was under it, letting the small room steam up. She enjoyed the water. It felt good to be clean.

  A couple of seconds after she killed the spray there was a soft knock at the door. ‘Everything OK in there?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she promised. ‘The trainers are too big. I don’t suppose you’ve got a size smaller?’

  ‘Of course we have, honey,’ the woman said.

  A couple of minutes later she returned with a different pair and opened the door without knocking.

  ‘Here we go. And goodness me, I just realized I never introduced myself. Where is my head at? I’m Elsa.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Frankie said, taking the trainers from her. ‘It’s just that I’ll like to run in the mornings. Gets the blood pumping, clears the cobwebs out of the head. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to just stretch my legs and really run, you know, without it being with my sack on my back, running because someone’s chasing me.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Elsa said. ‘We’ve all got our versions of your story. They’re different of course, but they’re the same, too. You enjoy your run tomorrow. The woods are great for it. But it’s probably best not to go too far. It’s easy to get turned around and end up getting lost. These woods are vast. I think they go a couple of hundred kilometres in one direction. We’d need a search party if you wound up getting lost.’ She smiled at that. ‘I’ve an old tracksuit you can borrow. That’s got to be better than running in jeans.’

  ‘You’re very kind. Thank you.’

  ‘No problem, honestly. We’re all one big family here. I’ll put it in your room later. And talking of your room, let me show you where you’ll be sleeping, then I’ll take you to join the others. They’re all looking forward to meeting you.’

  Elsa led Frankie across the compound to the building with number three painted on its end. It was wood rather than brick, which made sense given the abundance of building materials the forest offered. There were three small windows, slightly higher than her eyeline, and she was tall.

  Tomas’s car was nowhere to be seen. As much as she wanted to, Frankie decided not to say anything. Maybe he’d been good to his word and put her bag in cabin three before he quit? And maybe she’d spot winged bacon over the Baltic.

  If the backpack was still in the boot of the limo that was going to make the next week a lot more isolated and dangerous than she’d bargained for.

  ‘Here we are, home sweet home,’ Elsa said, pushing open the door.

  Inside was pretty basic: a single bed, a desk, a chair, and a single-door cupboard. It was more like a student dorm or a nun’s cell than a holiday chalet, emphasis on the ‘cell’.

  ‘It’s a shared bathroom, but it’s only you and three other girls so it shouldn’t be too much of a hardship.’

  Frankie gave her a smile. ‘It’s better than the last doorway I called my own,’ she said. ‘This is luxury.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  Repeat a lie often enough and you begin to believe it; that’s what the psychologists say. It’s one of the reasons they drill undercover officers over and over to make sure they’ve got their stories straight. It’s not just that they need to know their stuff, it’s that they need to believe it. And Frankie was starting to convince herself she’d actually been rescued from a life on the streets, not just a few nights in a shop doorway – even if she did go through a trial by urination.

  ‘You must see a lot of people coming through here.’ Frankie tried to make it sound natural. She looked around, walked across to the bed and tested the mattress springs.

  ‘Oh, I see girls coming through here all the time, honey. We’ve got new groups nearly every week.’

  ‘Only girls?’


  ‘Girls, young women, I never know where one age is supposed to end and another begin. It’s not like when I was young, we all called each other girls. Heck, we still do.’

  ‘No, sorry, I meant are there no men?’

  ‘Well, sometimes we get a few, but they’re usually people like Tomas, volunteers who help take the girls on to the next stage of their journey within One World.’

  There was something odd about the way she said that, but again, Frankie resisted the temptation to push. It needed to be done gently. Gain trust. Did it mean the men went to a different camp, or that they only ‘saved’ young and vulnerable girls from the street? The second made sense if this cult really was some sort of cover for the sex trade and the compound was a staging post in a human railway. She thought about Irma here, on her own, thinking these people were going to save her somehow, and felt sick to the core.

  ‘How many other girls are here at the moment?’

  ‘Twelve. They’re a nice group, but then John has an eye for the right kind of girls.’

  ‘Do you ever have people that just don’t fit in?’

  ‘Oh, it happens, but not often. Rather than let them upset things here, we have to let them go.’ Elsa obviously saw something in her face and assumed it was worry for her own situation, so offered a reassuring smile and said, ‘We get Tomas to take them back to the city, we even buy them a train ticket so they can go back home if that’s what they want. There’s never any hard feelings, at least not on our side. But you don’t need to worry about that, I know you’re going to fit in just fine.’

  ‘I just don’t want to disappoint anyone.’

  ‘Oh, honey, you won’t disappoint anyone. John will look after you if you’re feeling a bit lost. He’s a good man.’

  Frankie wasn’t sure that she wanted looking after. Being invisible was always better, but that wasn’t what she’d come here for. So if she needed to be whatever John wanted her to be, then that’s what she’d be.

  ‘You know, I was thinking,’ Frankie said, ‘I don’t really know what actually happens out here.’

  ‘Oh, all in good time, honey,’ again with the honey, it was folksy, too friendly, and was already beginning to choke in her craw. Frankie smiled and nodded. ‘We’ve just got you settled. Now we’ve got to go and meet your new friends. Maybe you’ll stay here for the whole week with us, or maybe you’ll be given the chance to move on somewhere else. That’s what this camp is all about, finding out what your particular talents might be and how One World can help you.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘You’ll be glad to know you’re not the only one getting twitchy about Karl Tamm’s arrest,’ Mirjam Rebane said. ‘There are doubts about the underwear they found in Tamm’s room, too.’

  ‘Are you saying it doesn’t belong to Annja Rosen?’ Peter could hear the sound of traffic in the background as well as the echo of his own voice feeding back to him down the telephone. She was on the handsfree, most likely driving.

  ‘It’s definitely hers. We’ve got a DNA match on that.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘There’s no trace of Tamm’s.’

  ‘Is that so surprising?’

  ‘The guy’s a sexual predator. Last time he was brought in he’d jerked off into the vic’s panties.’

  ‘Maybe your guys brought him in too quickly? He didn’t have time to get his jollies?’

  ‘It’s possible, but not likely. It’s only a matter of time before someone cross-references the emergency logs.’

  ‘Anyone spoken to Kask yet?’

  ‘He’s MIA. No one has seen him all day. He’s not answering his radio or his phone. It’s only a matter of time before someone goes knocking on his door.’

  ‘Then maybe we should get there first.’

  It didn’t take her long to come to a decision. ‘It doesn’t count as a date,’ she said, and he realized that if they were counting dinner and coffee, then they were moving into third-date territory and barked out a short, highly inappropriate, laugh. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’ve got the filthiest laugh, Peter Ash?’

  ‘That would be a yes,’ he said.

  ‘OK, where are you?’

  ‘Back at the hotel.’

  ‘Wait in the lobby. I’ll come and pick you up. Give me fifteen to get to you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘About it not counting as a date? Positive.’ He could hear her smiling.

  ‘Well, you can’t blame a lad for trying.’

  ‘Oh, and I got confirmation, Kask’s part of One World. He attends their church in the city.’

  ‘Shit. But it’s what we expected. I just really hoped I was wrong.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Because it makes it a lot more difficult.’

  ‘I did a little digging last night,’ Peter told her. ‘They’re an incredibly wealthy organization with interests all across Europe. Everyone seems to love them. They do all of this great work for the homeless, hands on, like the soup kitchen down at the docks here. Anything we do that paints them in a bad light is going to affect the lives of real people who have no one else to help them.

  ‘Which is shitty,’ she agreed, ‘but the law is the law, and there’s a dead girl who needs us to bring her justice. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new religion or the oldest. If there’s corruption at the heart of it we’ve got a duty to root it out for the greater good.’

  ‘Absofuckinglutely, Detective Rebane. We’re soulmates. Just a shame there’s only the two of us, because we could really use some manpower here.’

  ‘There are four of us,’ she said and it took him a moment to realize she meant they had Frankie on the inside and Laura back in Bonn. Four wasn’t exactly the magic number, but it doubled their resources.

  ‘Somehow we’ve got to prove there’s a connection between One World and your dead girl in the forest.’

  ‘If it’s there we’ll find it. But there’s something else we need to talk about.’

  ‘You’re going to ruin my good mood, aren’t you?’

  She made a face, and he knew she was about to do just that.

  ‘Spit it out,’ Peter said.

  ‘Kask isn’t the only member of One World serving in our police force. OK, get your sexy arse downstairs, young man, I’m only a few minutes away.’

  She ended the call. Peter Ash grabbed his jacket, checking that he had his wallet, and slipped his phone into his pocket.

  He really wanted to put questions to Kask, look him in the eye and do that human lie-detector thing, but even if there was just cause the fact that Kask was in the wind pretty much put paid to that. That last comment though really had been the sting in the tail. Anything he did with Kask was going to get back to One World and whoever was pulling its strings. There was no way it wasn’t, with however many faithful hidden away within the force. It wasn’t like there was a check box on the application that said please disclose any crackpot faith you have sworn allegiance to.

  The question was, just how corrupt were the others? Would they give Kask the protection he needed to get away with murder?

  By the time he reached the front entrance she was already parked outside.

  ‘You took your time.’

  ‘The lift took for ever.’

  ‘Ever thought of taking the stairs?’

  ‘From all the way up there?’ He pointed to a window up on the ninth floor. ‘I may look like a paragon of health, but like it or not I’m not as young as I used to be. And I wouldn’t have taken nine flights of stairs back then, either.’ He grinned. What he wasn’t saying was that he was far from recovered from the tortures Stefan Karius put him through six months ago, but that wasn’t for public consumption.

  ‘So we’re off to the monster’s lair?’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  ‘How far are we talking?’

  ‘Twenty minutes from here, maybe a little longer in this kind of traffic.’

  She lied. But then, there was no accounting for the
fact she drove like a madwoman. Mirjam Rebane put the car through some serious abuse, taking corners like Mika Häkkinen. It was more than just familiarity with the route. It was a rat run. ‘Eleven minutes,’ she said as the car came to a sudden stop outside an apartment block. She checked her watch. ‘Ten and thirty-two seconds. Even better.’

  ‘I think I lost at least one of my nine lives back there. Heart failure.’ She laughed at that. He realized he liked making her laugh. ‘OK, which one is Kask’s?’

  ‘Third floor, 302. I double-checked before I left the station.’

  ‘That’s a risk. Does your search record raise any kind of flags with IT? Back home I’m pretty sure someone looking for a cop’s home address is going to trip all sorts of alarms.’

  She reached across and opened the glove box, pulling out a small black leather notebook. ‘Names and addresses of every officer in the city, which department they’re with. The only thing it doesn’t have is their social security numbers, but you can get those just by phoning the tax office. We’re an open society. So, in answer to your question, no trail.’

  ‘There’s something to be said for old-school pen and paper,’ he said.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Let’s go and ruin his day.’

  They clambered out of the car. Mirjam used the button on the keyfob to lock the doors behind them.

  There was no lift in the small block so they had no choice but to take the stairs. Peter did his best to hide the wince as they turned the last corner.

  They were too late.

  A neighbour, an elderly woman with a small pug clutched tight to her, stood on the landing waiting for them.

  She said something.