Breaking Point (36 page)

‘Why should they?' Trowbridge had asked rhetorically during an uneasy truce between the two men. ‘Where some of them come from, the police are as bad or even worse than the traffickers. In some cases they
are
the traffickers. God, you should see some of the histories compiled by Europol and the NGOs in Eastern Europe. I tell you, Neil, when I read some of the stuff that crosses my desk, and I hear the stories these women have to tell, there are times when I'd like to take a gun and wipe these bastards out myself.'

Strong words from a man who had seen more than his share of the seamier side of life during his time in the Met.

Yet not surprising, Paget thought, because he, too, had been deeply affected by what he had seen last night.

The plight of the young women was bad enough, but it was the look on the children's faces that had brought a lump to his throat and moved him close to tears. He'd expected them to be scared, even terrified by what they must have seen that night, but when he looked into their eyes he'd felt a chill go through him the likes of which he'd never felt before.

There wasn't a tear. No expression on their faces, nothing in their eyes. They were blank, lifeless and perhaps wilfully blind to what was going on around them. He'd wanted to say something to them; something that would let them know that they were safe, that they would be taken care of, that their lives would be rebuilt, but the words refused to come, and he wondered now whether it would have been a lie if he had been able to find the words.

Now, sitting in his office in the cold light of day, he wasn't quite so certain that what Mike Bell had done last night was wrong. Yes, he'd gone out of his way to make sure that the crime scene was compromised and evidence was destroyed, but perhaps there was an element of justice in what the man had done.

He looked at the clock. Ten past four on a Sunday afternoon. The office was dead quiet, and he'd been there an hour already, yet he hadn't put a single word on paper.

Paget was still struggling with his report when Alcott made an unexpected appearance. He paused in the doorway to light a cigarette, but his dark, bird-like eyes never left the chief inspector's face as he blew smoke toward the ceiling.

‘I had a call from Chief Superintendent Brock half an hour ago,' he said as he came into the room and sat down. ‘He asked me for details of a raid that took place last night at the Roper farm, and I had to tell him we were still working on the report, and I'd get back to him.

‘What I
didn't
tell him,' he continued, ‘was that I didn't even know there had
been
a raid at the Roper farm,
or
that we had recovered Lyons, because no one had bothered to tell me. The only thing that may have saved both you and me from a royal bollocking is that it seems the raid was successful and Trowbridge was thanking us for our cooperation – but even
that
was something I had to hear from Brock!'

Alcott flicked his open mackintosh out of the way and sat down facing Paget. ‘So, if it's not too much trouble, Chief Inspector, would you care to tell me just what the hell has been going on, and why I have not been kept informed?'

Paget drew a deep breath and let it out again slowly as he swung his chair around to face the superintendent. Alcott was right; he should have been informed long before this; he had every right to be upset, but he had wanted to sort things out in his own mind before committing anything to paper. What he hadn't counted on was Trowbridge calling Brock. But thanking them for their cooperation was just twisting the knife as far as Paget was concerned.

‘You're quite right,' he said apologetically. ‘I should have informed you before this, but I wanted to try to sort things out in my own mind before I talked to anyone about what took place last night. And I still can't make up my mind about what to say in my report.'

Paget wasn't quite sure how Alcott would take what he was about to say, but he pressed on. ‘What I would
like
to do is tell you what happened off the record – at least for now – because, while the main thrust of the operation
was
successful, I'm not at all happy about the way evidence was destroyed, and where that leaves us regarding murders that took place on our patch.'

Alcott drew deeply on his cigarette, then looked at his watch. ‘Go on, then,' he said, ‘but be quick about it because I can't put Brock off much longer.'

‘I'll try to be brief,' Paget told him, but it was almost twenty minutes later when he finally sat back and said, ‘And that's about it. As far as I can see, we've been left with an impossible situation as far as prosecution is concerned.'

Alcott had remained silent throughout Paget's monologue, but now he sat back in his chair and said, ‘You don't look as if you've slept at all. What time did you get home?'

‘Somewhere between three and four this morning, and no, I didn't get much sleep. Too much to think about, especially the killings and the plight of those women and children.'

‘Difficult to see things clearly under those conditions,' Alcott said. ‘As for Bardici, I thought Superintendent Trowbridge made it very clear at the beginning that if the fellow could be persuaded to cooperate in breaking up the organization, the benefits would – at least in their estimation – far outweigh putting the man on trial for the killing of Newman and Doyle, even assuming we could find enough evidence to make the charge stick. Fletcher might have told us something if they hadn't got to him first, and now that Slater's dead, I very much doubt if you could get enough evidence to bring Bardici to trial anyway.'

‘There were a number of others arrested last night,' Paget pointed out. ‘Some of those people must have known what was going on.'

Alcott shook his head impatiently. ‘Even if they did,' he said, ‘they know they would be dead within a week if they testified against him, and without eyewitness testimony we have nothing. CPS certainly wouldn't touch it.'

‘So, apart from anything else, what do I tell Emma Baker?'

Alcott shrugged. ‘You can tell her that two people we believe were involved in the death of Newman and Doyle are now dead. In fact, you can tell her if it hadn't been for Newman poking around the Roper farm, we might never have known that it was being used as a staging point for smuggling people into the country. You could even say he played a part in saving many young women and children from a life of slavery. As I recall, Trowbridge told us that Newman was buried somewhere on the farm, so we find out where, then dig him up and give him a decent burial. As for Doyle . . .'

But Paget was shaking his head. ‘That's not right,' he protested. ‘I think she deserves a better explanation that that!'

‘Do you?' Alcott said as he rose to his feet. ‘What do you suggest? The truth?' He shook his head. ‘Sorry, Paget, but that's not on, and you know it. Apart from that, I suppose you can tell her whatever you like, but if I were in her shoes I think I would prefer to be told that some good has come out of the lad's death, rather than be told that he came very close to buggering up a long and costly investigation, and sealing the fate of all those in captivity.'

T
he media didn't get hold of the story until late Monday afternoon, when the Minister for Immigration rose in the House to announce, no doubt with some relief, since he'd been under attack for months on the government's immigration policy, that more than forty people believed to be involved in smuggling women and children into the country for illicit purposes had been arrested. Raids on their homes and business premises, he said, had produced evidence of their involvement with a vast network in Eastern Europe as well as several other countries, and it was anticipated that more arrests would be made in the coming days. He went on to say his ministry was working closely with Europol and other agencies and NGOs throughout those countries, where ‘similar raids are taking place even as I am speaking to you now'.

The minister spoke for some twelve minutes on the subject, ending with the hope that this would clearly demonstrate his government's grave concern and commitment to stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the United Kingdom.

It wasn't often that Paget had a good word to say about Westminster or for the role politics played when it came to common-sense policing, but in this case he was grateful for anything that would shift the spotlight to London.

Despite persistent questions from the media, no details were given regarding the specific number of illegal entrants who were now in protective custody, which led to some creative speculation, especially in the tabloids. Nothing was said about the farm, nor was there so much as a mention that anyone had died. Clearly, Trowbridge and his masters were controlling the information being released, not only to the media, but probably to the minister himself.

The RangerContinental that had brought the women up from the south, had been followed as far as Wrexham, where the driver had stopped to spend the night, and he was arrested Sunday morning when he was about to leave. Roper and his wife were arrested when they returned to the farm on Sunday morning after spending the night in a hotel in Ludlow. When asked how he had managed to leave the farm unobserved, Roper told them that the switch had been made Saturday afternoon, when Kellerman had arrived dressed as a workman in a Crawley's van.

‘Paranoid, he was,' he said contemptuously. ‘Scared to death that someone might be watching. Had me switch clothes with him so it was me who drove the van away. He even had the wife creep out of the house and into the van behind a sheet of plywood we carried out between us. I mean there's times we don't see anybody out there for days, so who'd be watching us?'

Clearly, the penny hadn't yet dropped for Roper.

‘Don't know anything about torture and killings,' he'd protested. ‘What they did in that barn was nothing to do with me after I rented it out. All this bloke told me was that they wanted it for meetings every now and again, and I wasn't to go near the place. The money was good, so I did what he wanted.'

Mark Newman's body was found and lifted from a shallow grave behind the barn. Starkie did the autopsy and recorded death by strangulation after being tortured.

The funeral was held the following week in the village church in Whitcott Lacey. Newman's parents were contacted, but only his mother made the journey from Plymouth to identify the body of her son and attend the funeral. She was a small, pale, wisp of a woman, who seemed to be incapable of making a decision about anything, and it was Emma Baker who finally took charge of the funeral arrangements.

‘Mark never attended church while he was staying with us,' she told Paget, ‘but I think he would have liked a Christian burial.'

Mark's father did not attend.

‘The business, you know,' Mrs Newman said vaguely when Paget asked.

Tom Foxworthy was there, as was Sylvia Tyler, together with a handful of villagers for whom Newman had worked at one time or another, but it was a small gathering.

Paget and Tregalles remained in the background during the short service, and were about to slip away when Emma stopped them as they left the church.

‘Thank you for coming,' she said, ‘and thank you for taking me seriously when I first reported Mark missing. Such a waste of a young life, but at least, as Uncle Bob explained, it was your search for Mark that set off the investigation into whatever it was that was going on at the farm, so in a way he didn't die for nothing.' She frowned as she looked off into the distance. ‘He wouldn't tell me exactly what was going on there,' she said slowly. ‘He said something rather vague about an ongoing investigation, which I took to mean he wasn't going to tell me anything more.' She shifted her gaze to Paget. ‘I don't suppose you . . .?'

He smiled sadly and shook his head. ‘I wish I could,' he said gently, ‘but like your uncle, I'm not at liberty to discuss it. Sorry, Emma.'

Standing there in the churchyard in the warm sunlight, Emma's voice hardened as she said, ‘I'm glad the man who did it is dead. I don't think I could have borne seeing someone like that weasel his way through the courts and probably get off with just a few years behind bars.'

So that was now the official version, Paget thought sadly. And yet, watching Emma's face, perhaps it was for the best after all.

Later that night, with the day's events still on his mind, he and Grace talked about it at length, and it was still on his mind when they went to bed.

‘I'm supposed to ignore the fact that people were killed out there at the farm,' he said as they got into bed. ‘Murdered in cold blood, and whether the killing was justified or not, it's not up to us to decide. And I'm supposed to ignore the fact that evidence was deliberately destroyed.

‘No one will be charged with the killings. Bardici will never stand trial for those murders; in fact he may not even do any time for trafficking or anything else if he cooperates and tells them everything he knows about the network. And that sort of trade-off really concerns me.'

‘But they can't just let him go,' said Grace.

‘Oh, he'll probably be charged with something and do some time just to make it look good, but I'll lay odds it won't amount to much. I'm sure it's all arranged. I've tried to talk to Ben about it, but it's a done deal and he won't even take my calls.'

‘On the other hand,' said Grace gently, ‘you told me yourself that the chances of getting a conviction against Bardici are almost nil. You have no witnesses who are prepared to testify, no evidence connecting him to the murders, except, perhaps for the word of Trowbridge's undercover man, and he's not likely to put his hand up, is he? I hate to say this, love, but I don't think the CPS would even look at it, let alone prosecute.'