Death in a Far Country (16 page)

‘There’s one thing,’ Towers said suddenly, his voice half strangled. ‘OK Okigbo said you told him his tart had Aids.’ His solicitor drew a sharp breath again, evidently still capable of being shocked by what he was hearing.

‘I didn’t say that,’ Thackeray snapped. ‘I told him the murdered girl, Grace, was HIV positive. We don’t know about the other girl because we haven’t made contact with her yet.’

Towers said nothing but he seemed to have difficulty getting to his feet, and when he did he looked faintly green beneath his expensive tan. His solicitor followed him to the interview room door looking almost as distressed.

‘You know where to contact me, Chief Inspector,’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ Thackeray said and, to DC Hodge’s surprise, when the door had closed behind the footballer and his lawyer, he thumped his fist down so hard on the interview room table that they both winced.

‘Boss?’ the younger man said cautiously. Thackeray looked up and shook his head briefly, his eyes opaque.

‘Better than thumping that over-paid, incontinent young bastard, which is what he deserves,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s see if the next one has arrived. If the CPS would wear it, I’d like to charge the lot of them with statutory rape, but I don’t suppose they will. We’ll just go on persecuting the women.
There’s not much obvious correlation between the law and justice, is there?’ And he led his bemused young colleague out of the room.

Laura arrived at the
Gazette
office that morning late, tired and thoroughly deflated. She had slept badly, alone in the bed she normally shared with Michael Thackeray, and had then been roused from her semi-stupor as she sat in the kitchen, hunched over a large mug of coffee, by a call from police headquarters asking her to see Superintendent Longley as soon as she could that morning. Feeling slightly sick, she had made an appointment and presented herself in Longley’s office, where she found the Superintendent alone, in full uniform, gazing out of his window at the wind-swept town hall square below. Eventually he turned and held out a hand for her to shake with an expression that was about as far from welcoming as she could imagine.

Laura felt she knew Longley well enough, having lived with Thackeray’s take on his boss for so long, but she had met him only a couple of times, and never in circumstances remotely like this. She took in his portly shape encased in navy blue with buttons gleaming, his shiny, almost bald head, and the fleshy, slightly grey, creased face and chilly blue eyes, and recognised an unhappy and seriously embarrassed man.

‘Ms Ackroyd, sit down,’ Longley said, waving her into a chair and lowering himself into his own with ponderous dignity.

‘Laura, please,’ she said, flicking the cloud of copper-coloured hair she had not had time to put up out of her eyes, and crossing her legs, encased in her red leather boots.
Confession, she thought, might be the best, possibly the only, form of defence, although she doubted she would be offered much in the way of absolution, either here or anywhere else this morning. While Longley hesitated, she waded in.

‘You don’t have to tell me that I’ve been involved in something very stupid, and I don’t have to tell you how sorry I am,’ she said. ‘I don’t regret having helped this girl Elena when she was obviously sick and in trouble, but once I realised the police wanted to interview her in connection with the death of the other girl, I know I should have brought her straight here, not given her the chance to run off again.’

Looking rather less than disarmed, Longley leant across his desk.

‘Concealing an illegal immigrant is an offence, Ms Ackroyd,’ he said.

‘She was half-starved, sick and unable to communicate very much,’ Laura said. ‘I regarded her as a victim not a criminal, and I wanted to get hold of a translator and find out a bit more before I persuaded her to talk to the authorities. Not such a big deal.’

‘With a story for your newspaper in mind, no doubt?’

Laura flushed slightly.

‘That wasn’t my top priority,’ she said. ‘But it was a consideration, yes. I was shocked by what Elena told me. It’s something that’s largely hidden. I thought
Gazette
readers should know that the trafficking of young girls was going on right here in Bradfield. And I knew that if she was arrested there was a strong chance that she’d be shipped off to some immigration detention centre and I’d not be able to speak to her easily again. Was I wrong? Were you even aware of this
horrible trade on your doorstep?’

But Longley refused to bat that one back.

‘We have a special unit dealing with this sort of thing at County,’ he said. ‘But that’s hardly the point. This was a murder investigation that your own…’ He hesitated, old and conservative enough for the word he was looking for not to come easily to his lips. ‘That your own
partner
was investigating. I’m amazed you didn’t tell Michael about the girl your grandmother had taken in.’

Laura glanced away. There was no way she was going to confide in Longley about the state of her relationship with Michael Thackeray.

‘My grandmother and I decided we should find out a bit more about Elena’s circumstances. What she was saying was very vague and garbled. We needed her to get her strength back and I needed to find a translator. Speakers of Albanian are a bit difficult to track down. It took time. Once I’d learnt the full story I knew we would have to talk to the authorities – the immigration people, the police, whoever. But I thought it was kinder to let her have a bit of peace with the Ibramovic’s. They’re good people. They were keen to look after her, and I knew she’d be safe there, well out of Bradfield. I didn’t know you were looking for her then.’

Laura pushed her unruly hair away from her face and leant towards Longley, putting all her considerable powers of persuasion into her voice.

‘It was pure bad luck that I wasn’t at work when you issued the picture and the appeal for Elena,’ she said. ‘If I’d known on Wednesday, of course I would have told Michael then. You have to believe that.’ But Laura knew that it was not Longley
that she had to convince, it was Michael Thackeray himself, and however sceptically the Superintendent might look at her, Thackeray would take even more persuading.

‘So you went back to Ilkley on Thursday when you realised we were looking for the girl, but you still didn’t bring her back to Bradfield,’ Longley said, real anger in his voice now. ‘You left her there and gave her and the Ibramovic girl the chance to run off. You’ll forgive me if I suggest that was criminally careless of you.’

‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘That was stupid. I was hoping Michael would go out to Ilkley to talk to her rather than her having to be taken to the police station. You’ve no idea how fragile she is. It never crossed my mind that she would run away.’

‘A lot of things seem to have never crossed your mind, Ms Ackroyd, not least the fact that if this girl has been used in the way she claims, the people who have abused her, who may well be the same people who have murdered her friend, will be extremely anxious to get her back. Being arrested as an illegal immigrant may be unpleasant, but believe me, having her fall back into the hands of the people traffickers could be much, much worse.’

Laura nodded, feeling sick and numb, knowing she could not argue with that, and Longley leant back in his chair and sighed.

‘I’ll arrange for one of my officers to take a formal statement from you,’ he said. ‘I’ve already asked a detective and a woman officer to visit your grandmother to do the same. I understand she’s not very mobile.’

‘Thank you,’ Laura said.

‘I think I should warn you that I may have to pass what
you’ve told me to the Crown Prosecution Service. You seem to have interfered pretty disastrously in a murder investigation, and not for the first time. They may decide to pursue it further.’

‘Whatever,’ Laura said dully, thinking how furious her friend Vicky Mendelson’s husband David, who worked for the CPS, would be when he found out what had happened. She wondered where she could find a friend and ally in all this mess.

Longley hesitated for a moment.

‘When are you due to talk to the inquiry at County HQ?’ he asked.

‘Next week,’ Laura said, and the Superintendent nodded.

‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘that you and the DCI need to discuss just how your private and your professional lives intersect, don’t you? This is the second time it’s been a major problem.’

‘I’m sure we do,’ Laura said non-committally, biting her lip to prevent herself blurting out that her main fear this morning was not statements or inquiries or even the possibility of prosecution but the fact that she and Michael Thackeray would not intersect again in any significant way at all.

Half an hour later she had left the police station, having signed her statement. She had felt even more drained than she had when she got out of bed that morning as she had walked slowly across the town to the
Gazette
office where she was met, before she took off her coat, by an evidently over-excited Tony Holloway.

‘Where’ve you been? I need to talk to you,’ he said, following on her heels to her desk. ‘All hell’s broken loose at
United and Ted Grant’s doing his nut.’

‘What’s happened now?’ Laura asked wearily. ‘You may think I’m muscling in on your territory, Tony, but I can tell you honestly, nothing’s further from my mind.’

‘Never mind all that now,’ Tony said. ‘You can help, actually. I can’t get much sense out of the press people at Beck Lane, and I know you’ve managed to inveigle your way into Jenna Heywood’s good books, so Ted wants you to call her and see if we can firm up the rumours that are flying around.’

‘What rumours are they?’ Laura asked.

‘Just that OK Okigbo, and possibly some of the other players, have been sleeping with tarts and have picked up something nasty from them, probably AIDS. And that they’ve been interviewed by the police because one of the girls is the one who ended up dead in the canal. I dare say lover-boy may just have mentioned that in passing, but we know where your loyalties lie, don’t we? So – we could have our star player banged up as a murder suspect just before they’re due to go to London for the Chelsea replay. How major is that?’

Laura felt very cold suddenly. She shook her head.

‘I know absolutely nothing about all that,’ she said. ‘And I doubt very much that Jenna Heywood will tell me anything, even if it’s true. It’s the sort of thing they’ll put a very tight lid on. You know that.’

‘It could finish the club off if it’s true,’ Tony said. ‘The shareholders’ll do their nut. Will you call her?’

‘Is that what Ted wants?’ Laura asked, glancing towards the editor’s glass-walled office where, unusually, the door was tight shut.

‘That’s what Ted wants,’ Tony said.

Laura sat down at her desk and picked up the phone to call the football club and, to her surprise, was put straight through to Jenna. But when she spelt out the reason for her call Jenna interrupted her coldly.

‘We’ve got no comment on that,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Laura. You’ll have to ask the press office at police HQ what’s going on.’

‘I think we’ve already tried that,’ Laura said, glancing at Tony, but thinking of Elena. A place like a hotel, she had said, but why not the country club? ‘You realise that the girl who was murdered and her friend could have been at your team parties, don’t you? And that they were probably prostitutes in the country illegally.’

‘No comment,’ Jenna said.

‘Have you seen the photograph of the girls?’ Laura persisted. ‘You might even recognise them.’

Jenna seemed to hesitate for no more than a split second, and seemed to be weighing her words very carefully.

‘If I do, I’ll be talking to the coach about it and telling the police, not you. Now I must get on.’

Laura hesitated, absolutely sure that Jenna knew more than she was telling her.

‘You recognised her, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘Do you also know who arranged for the girls to be at those parties? Was it Minelli?’

‘No comment,’ Jenna said sharply. ‘I’ve nothing to say to the
Gazette
about the players’ private lives.’

‘There’s one other thing, Jenna,’ Laura said impulsively. ‘You might like to know that my father’s apparently sold his shares in United to Les Hardcastle.’ She heard Jenna draw a
sharp breath at the other end of the phone.

‘Thanks for telling me that,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it some thought over the weekend. I’m going down to London tomorrow for a bit of peace and quiet before the big match. The team travel down on Sunday. Give me a call after it’s all over, Laura, next Wednesday, say, and we’ll have a chat then. In the meantime, I want out of Bradfield for a bit. I’ve had more than enough of it.’

Laura put the phone down and shook her head at Tony Holloway.

‘Nothing doing,’ she said. ‘Whatever she knows she’s not telling me. By the sound of it she’s still more worried about the in-fighting amongst the directors than she is about any problem with the players. I think maybe your rumours are just that – rumours.’

‘No way,’ Holloway said, looking obstinate.

‘Wouldn’t it be more productive to do some digging around Les Hardcastle’s plans for the club?’ she suggested. ‘If anything’s a threat to its future it’s that, not the sexual antics of the players.’

‘Give me a break, Laura,’ he snapped. ‘If only half what I’m hearing about OK Okigbo is true the whole Press pack from London will already be halfway up the M1. I need to break this story and I need to break it before they arrive. It’s mega.’

‘If you say so, Tony,’ Laura said wearily as she logged onto her computer. ‘If you say so.’

Sergeant Kevin Mower put his head round DCI Thackeray’s door later that morning and found his boss more or less as he had left him several hours before, his room fuggy with cigarette smoke and a pile of unopened files on the desk in front of him. He glanced up lethargically as Mower came in and closed the door.

‘Developments, guv,’ the Sergeant said. ‘I’ve had a long talk with Ibramovic and pretty well wrung him dry. He’s not unhelpful. He knows we’re doing our best. But he was more useful on what the girl told him about the trafficking racket than he is on where she and his daughter may have gone. He doesn’t seem to have any idea about that.’

‘Did Elena give him a family name?’

‘Nope, and she never gave any hint that Grace even existed.’

‘We may never find out who the dead girl really is,’ Thackeray said. ‘An anonymous death in a faraway country. Her family will never know what happened to her.’ Thackeray seemed to look bleakly straight through Mower for a moment before he shook himself slightly and returned to the present.

‘And the trafficking? What did Elena say about that?’ he asked.

‘She told Ibramovic about the house where she was kept.
Quite a big house, she said, although coming from where she comes from he said anything with more than two or three rooms would seem big to her. He’s a Bosnian, so he should know. Anyway, he reckons three floors at least and some sort of cellar. She said when girls got hysterical or stroppy they’d be put underground in a room without windows and left there for a couple of days. The whole house was dark, apparently. Elena said that the windows all round the house were generally covered up with what sounded like wooden shutters. Which means it has to be an old house, Victorian probably, with those shutters that close on the inside.’

‘There’s a few of those still about in the older parts of Bradfield,’ Thackeray said. ‘Mainly around Aysgarth Lane.’

‘Right, and that would be a good area to choose if you’re going to put women on the street. But I did speak to one of my contacts and she said she didn’t think foreign girls were being run on the street. She’d heard rumours but never met anyone like that, and didn’t know anyone who had.’

‘The vice team from County are going to do a sweep of the red light districts tonight,’ Thackeray said. ‘We haven’t the numbers to do it ourselves. I want every woman on the game questioned.’

‘That sounds good,’ Mower said. ‘It may turn up some sort of corroboration of the rumours. But Jackie reckons that they’re being run as call girls. Kept under close guard and taken out to clients. Or possibly offered in some of the clubs.’

‘That would fit with what we know about Grace and Elena being taken to West Royd,’ Thackeray said. ‘Tomorrow I want to start interviewing every single person who was at the United parties at the club over the last few months. Find out
from Minelli how many there’ve been. It seems to be after they’ve won a match and I understand they’ve been doing that unusually often recently. Someone must know how those girls got there, who brought them, who asked for them to be brought.’

‘You’d best make a start quickly,’ Mower said. ‘Everyone connected with United will be going to London for the big match, don’t forget. That’s on Tuesday evening.’

‘Plenty of overtime over the weekend then,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’ll fix it with Jack Longley. Start by asking the football club for a list of all those who were invited, including wives and girlfriends. We’ll start with the legitimate guests, but ask them all if they saw anyone they didn’t recognise or didn’t expect to find there. It’ll be tedious but necessary. A lot of people must have seen those two girls at least at one club party, and maybe other girls we haven’t identified, if what Jolene and Katrina said about seeing girls leave the Chelsea party was true. I want a picture of how they arrived, who they spoke to, who they went upstairs with – it may not be only the three players we know about – and how they left, and who with, who ordered them and who paid for them. We’ll interview the whole team, if necessary. Girls have been seen coming and going in the car park. What sort of car were they in? What were they wearing? Who were they with? I want a complete picture of each night, and particularly the night the two girls ran off, after asking the men they were with for money. They ran, but who, if anyone, followed? Someone may have noticed.’

‘Guv,’ Mower said, making copious notes as he listened to Thackeray. ‘We could ask the beat coppers in the older areas of town about the house, too,’ he suggested. ‘Somewhere old
and large, with windows more or less permanently shuttered up. There can’t be too many places like that. If we find a likely house we can ask the neighbours what they’ve seen.’

‘Yes, organise that too, would you, Kevin?’ Thackeray said, tiredly. ‘Any other leads?’

‘Possibly,’ Mower said. ‘Joyce Ackroyd has turned up trumps. She’s here now looking at mug shots for the two men who knocked on her door claiming to be from immigration. She reckons they went round most of the estate so there’s a good chance we’ll get a good description, if not a positive ID. And she made a note of the mobile phone number they were giving out. I suppose the chances are that it’s a pay-as-you-go with no registered owner, but you never know. Someone may have been stupid enough to give their own number. I’m having it checked out. Anyway, if it’s switched on we may be able to pinpoint its whereabouts. That might help us find the house too.’

‘If they’ve any sense they’ll have ditched the phone by now, and quite possibly moved their base,’ Thackeray said. ‘But give it a try. We can’t afford not to. Have there been any sightings of the two runaway girls?’

‘Nothing yet,’ Mower said. ‘We’re still wading through the CCTV tapes. The
Gazette
and local TV want to know if you want them to go with the pictures of the two of them?’

‘If we do, we risk alerting the traffickers to the fact that Elena’s still in Bradfield.’

‘If we don’t, we get no feedback from the public.’

The two men’s eyes met in shared anxiety for a moment.

‘Go with Jasmin’s picture,’ Thackeray said. ‘But ask them not to make any connection between her and the other girl.
Missing schoolgirls are common enough, and if we find her we’ll find Elena as well, obviously. Tell her parents what we’re doing and why. They’ll understand. The fact that Elena’s with her makes Jasmin’s situation all the more dangerous. They’ll know that.’

‘Right, guv,’ Mower said.

‘Anything from the sweep of massage parlours?’

‘Nothing so far,’ Mower said. ‘There’s plenty of girls who will admit, if pushed, to offering a lot more than the standard massage, but we’ve not found anyone who knows anything about foreign girls being brought into their establishments. No one who’ll admit it, anyway.’

‘Right, well, keep going with that but softly, softly, especially in the clubs. I don’t want to panic these bastards and have them leaving town, taking their girls with them.’ ‘Right, guv, I’ll work on the trawl of the clubs myself tonight. Take someone with me, look like punters, and make some discreet inquiries. If what Elena says is true these girls must be offered for sale somehow, somewhere. We’ll find them.’

‘Let’s hope so, before someone else gets killed,’ Thackeray said. ‘Or they’re all shipped out to Manchester or London or Belgrade. I don’t think we’ve got much time.’

Laura finished work that afternoon and sat at her blank computer screen for a long time, wondering what to do with the long empty evening that stretched ahead of her. She knew without being told that Thackeray would not come back that night. In fact she guessed that he would not come back at all unless they found some way of discussing and resolving
the chasm of misunderstanding that now lay between them. Thackeray had never sold his own flat in Bradfield, and she knew that he regarded it as a bolthole for the moment when their affair finally crashed in flames, as she guessed that he had always thought it might. Maybe that moment had come at last, she thought. She desperately wanted to talk to him, but she knew from past experience that he had the capacity to bury himself in his work when he needed to, although if that failed, there was always the other route to emotional oblivion he had largely resisted since she had known him but which lurked like a rabid tiger in the dark undergrowth ready to consume him if he showed the slightest weakness.

Still debilitated by his spell in hospital, she knew he was finding the present case difficult. The next week, when they both had appointments with the inquiry team probing Bradfield CID’s last horrific murder, would be worse. Together they might have withstood the pressure. Apart, she was not at all sure they could.

She sighed and had walked across the deserted office to get her coat when the phone on her desk rang. She hurried back and grabbed the receiver, her heart thumping, hoping against hope that it might be Thackeray, and was surprised to hear Vince Newsom’s voice at the other end of the line. She had never found the emotional energy to follow Kevin Mower’s advice and talk to her former colleague and lover about the evidence he proposed to give to the police inquiry, and now, she guessed, he had decided to take the initiative himself.

‘Hi, doll,’ Vince said, with his customary lack of charm. ‘As you probably know, I’m up in your neck of the woods on Monday, courtesy of the cops, and thought we might get
together for old time’s sake.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Laura said. ‘Not after what you did to me last time. What exactly do you intend to tell the inquiry?’

There was a short silence at the other end.

‘That rather depends on you, darling,’ Vince said.

‘What do you mean?’ Laura asked, although she had a good idea what was bothering him.

‘Well, it did cross my mind that neither of us has much to gain by slagging each other off in front of these nosy coppers. What do you think?’

‘I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,’ Laura said, as much to gain time as because it was true.

‘Let me spell it out then, babe,’ Vince said, an edge of irritation making his voice harsher. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to go into lurid detail about what went on that night and I’m bloody sure I don’t want to be accused of nicking that crucial sheet of paper from you. I’ve a fiancée now whose family is already a bit sniffy about what I do for a living. A bit more
Telegraph
than
Globe
inclined, my future in-laws. I thought that if you said you had lost the document that was in your bag and I said I found it in my car after I’d dropped you off we would both be better off. What do you think?’

‘You want me to lie to the inquiry to cover up for you?’ Laura asked angrily, filled with fury that Vince Newsom should be trying to manipulate her yet again.

‘You wouldn’t be lying,’ Vince snapped back. ‘Can you honestly say how I found your precious piece of paper? Did you see me take it? Of course you didn’t. You were out of it, baby. You know you were. I had to put you to bed, for God’s sake. And you don’t remember that, either, do you?’

Laura caught her breath, feeling as cold suddenly as she had felt hot a moment before.

‘Do you really want everyone – and I do mean everyone – to know just how pissed you were that night?’ Newsom persisted. ‘Much better all round if we keep it simple. You couldn’t drive home because you were over the limit, I kindly dropped you off, and later on I found this very interesting note in my car that you were supposed to deliver to lover boy. And surprise, surprise, I jumped on the gift-horse and rode with it before giving you the note back the next day. How’s that? Suit you, does it? No hint of theft on my part, no hint of hanky-panky when you invited me in on yours. A win-win situation, if you ask me. Is it a deal?’

Laura desperately wanted to say no but she knew she couldn’t. Vince’s offer would take the dead weight off her shoulders that had been there ever since the day DC Val Ridley had given her that note for Michael Thackeray, the contents of which had found their way onto the front page of the
Globe
under Vince Newsom’s by-line, the next morning. He was in no position to deny that he had got hold of the information but he would be as happy to say that he had found it by accident as she would be to see the suspicion that she had deliberately given it to him dispelled. And she would be even more grateful not to have Vince’s visit to her flat explored at the inquiry. She knew he had come inside with her, she knew he had put her to bed, and when he had claimed to have gone further there was no way she could deny it. It would be deeply embarrassing to have Newsom tell the inquiry any of that, but much, much worse when Thackeray heard her ex’s most lurid version of events, which was undoubtedly what would
happen if she pushed an allegation of theft.

‘It’s a deal,’ she said quietly to Newsom at last. ‘You’re a bastard, Vince, but it’s a deal.’

‘Good girl,’ Vince said. ‘So let’s get this straight. The note could easily have fallen out of your bag in the car?’

‘Right,’ she said.

‘And I gave you your key and dropped you at your door.’

‘As far as I can remember,’ Laura agreed.

‘Just stick with your hazy memories and we’ll be fine, baby,’ Vince said. ‘We’ll be just fine. As far as I can find out I’m the first to give evidence on Monday so I’ll stick to that. You make sure you do the same.’

With her coat round her shoulders Laura sat at her desk for a few more minutes, wondering again if she could or should try to contact Thackeray. But in the end, she shrugged and pulled her coat on and wound a scarf around her neck, and walked slowly out of the building, hesitating again in the foyer where she could see sleety rain lashing against the plateglass windows. She did not want to go home, and she toyed for a moment with the idea of going up to The Heights to see her grandmother. But although she knew that would please Joyce, she did not feel strong enough to spend an hour or so rehashing the mistakes they had both made that had so infuriated Thackeray. She also ruled out a late call on her friend Vicky Mendelson, who would be putting her children to bed. Vicky would, as always, be a comfort, but she did not want to risk seeing her husband David at the moment. As a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer, she knew that he would be as appalled as Thackeray was when he learnt of the mess she had got herself into.