Death in a Far Country (9 page)

‘So what can I do for you?’ she asked.

‘This inquiry,’ he said, looking suddenly deadly serious. ‘They’re bound to want to talk to you.’

‘Yes, Michael told me that. I was there when he was shot, after all.’

‘That won’t be the only thing they’ll be interested in,’ he said quietly. ‘They’ll want to know how the
Globe
got hold of the information they printed about the little girl. Val Ridley will be giving evidence and she won’t pull her punches. She’s furious about the whole business and she’s not a serving officer any more so there’ll be no way of putting any pressure on her. She’ll tell them she gave information to you to pass on to the guv’nor because he wasn’t in the office at the time, and that was the information that the
Globe
printed. They’ll want Vince Newsom to tell them how he got the information as well. And you’re well and truly in the middle of that line of questioning.’

‘Ah,’ Laura said softly. ‘You’ve no idea how dreadful I feel about all that. I lie awake at night thinking about it.’

‘Will Vince tell them how he got his scoop, do you think?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Laura said. ‘He should protect his sources but he may not be at all bothered to protect me. On the other hand, he won’t much want to admit that he nicked that piece
of paper out of my handbag. All I’ll tell your inquiry is that Val’s note got lost, which is true. I won’t go any further than that unless they already know more than that. Then I won’t have much choice, will I?’

‘Did you tell Michael everything that happened that night?’

Laura glanced away, avoiding Mower’s eyes.

‘No,’ she said. ‘There are things that I don’t want him to know. Things that I still don’t know are true or not.’

‘Do you think Newsom will open that can of worms?’ Mower persisted.

‘And lay himself open to an accusation like that?’ Laura whispered. ‘I shouldn’t think so, because if he raises the issue he knows exactly what I’ll say.’

‘If I were you…’ Mower said hesitantly. ‘If I were you, I’d have a chat with Vince Newsom and get clear just what you are both going to tell the inquiry. It could be in both your interests. And Michael’s.’

Laura sipped her drink and looked away.

‘I wish I’d never had to have anything to do with Vince Newsom again,’ she said. ‘How the hell did he come back to haunt me like this?’

‘The inquiry’s not out to get you – or Vince Newsom, for that matter,’ Mower said uncomfortably. ‘It’s disciplinary and it’s us they’ve got in their sights – Val Ridley, though she’s clear of disciplinary action now she’s resigned, and the chief investigating officers. Your newspaper friends haven’t been slow to point the finger at a mishandled case, and that’s what they’ll be looking at: what, if anything, the DCI and the Super got wrong while they were in charge of the case.’

‘And the security services? They hardly covered themselves
in glory.’

‘Maybe,’ Mower said. ‘But they have an uncanny habit of ducking out of sight and avoiding blame. Get it totally wrong and get promoted is more like it for them, on past experience. Justify a war on the basis of a load of half-truths and queue up here for your knighthood.’

Laura smiled faintly, though she felt sick inside.

‘Without the job Michael would fall apart,’ she whispered.

‘I’m sure it won’t come to that,’ Mower said, putting his hand briefly on hers. ‘But all you can do is get your own story straight. Talk to Newsom. I would. He must be bricking it as well. That was a dirty trick he pulled and he won’t want it out in the light of day if he can avoid it. In the meantime, I’ll talk to Val Ridley about what she’s going to say to the inquiry. Her main gripe is with what the Super failed to do while the boss was on holiday. If I can persuade her that she might damage the DCI as well as Superintendent Longley she may think more carefully about what she says. But now she’s out of the force she’s got nothing to lose personally.’ He shrugged. ‘It could all go pear-shaped.’

Laura walked slowly back to the office feeling deeply depressed. Her own professional reputation wouldn’t be much damaged by anything the police inquiry chose to dig up and perhaps publish, but Vince Newsom still represented an unexploded bomb that, if detonated, could destroy her relationship with Thackeray. And there was no doubt that the events that had led to his near-fatal shooting could seriously damage his career. It was no wonder that he was as tense and miserable as he was, she thought, and she felt in little better shape herself. She should have asked Kevin Mower just how
long the inquiry process was likely to take, just how far away an end to the tension might be. If this thing dragged on, she thought, someone was only too likely to snap.

Back in the office she began to sort out her feature pages, which she had neglected that morning in favour of her new-found, and she reckoned, very short-lived enthusiasm for football. The work had piled up and she buried her own uncertainties in that, until at around four her phone rang and she was surprised to hear her grandmother’s voice, filled with her usual cheerful resolution.

‘Can you come up when you’ve finished work?’ Joyce asked. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Laura said. ‘Is there anything you want me to get you on the way?’

‘Can you pick up some bread and some cans of soup? And some antiseptic cream and plasters?’

‘Have you hurt yourself?’ Laura jumped in, feeling a sudden anxiety. At her grandmother’s age even minor injuries were a concern.

‘They’re not for me, love,’ Joyce said and, to Laura’s surprise, hung up.

Laura did her grandmother’s shopping as soon as she left work and drove quickly through the thickening rush-hour traffic to The Heights, where the derelict block of flats that was still standing loomed darkly through the evening’s mist and drizzle like an abandoned medieval castle surrounded by a wasteland of ruins. The lights were on in her grandmother’s tiny house and the curtains were drawn tightly, but Joyce opened the door quickly when Laura tapped on the glass panel.

‘Come in, love,’ she said, and closed the door behind Laura so sharply that her anxiety immediately returned.

‘Whatever’s wrong?’ she asked as she followed Joyce’s bent and hobbling arthritic figure into the living room.

‘I’ve got a visitor,’ Joyce said, waving a hand towards her faded settee, where a small pale girl, little more than a child, lay stretched out, apparently asleep. Laura took in the thin figure in a skirt and a thick blue cardigan that she recognised as belonging to Joyce herself, the tangled dark hair against the cushion and the fragile blue skin that flickered slightly beneath her closed eyes. She looked at her grandmother in astonishment.

‘Who is she?’ she asked. ‘Where on earth did she come from?’

Joyce drew Laura by the elbow into the kitchen, took the shopping from her and put the kettle on.

‘I found her,’ she said. ‘Out the back in my outhouse. I thought for a moment she was dead but when I touched her she opened her eyes and I realised she was freezing cold and half starved. When I got her into the house she came round a bit and I gave her some sweet tea and some bread. She was ravenous. She’s got a few scratches and bruises but apart from that she doesn’t seem to be hurt so I didn’t get an ambulance or anything. She says her name’s Elena, but I don’t know if she’s telling the truth. What I do know is that she’s terrified of something, but when I mention the police she was even more terrified. She tried to get out of the door, but she’s not strong enough to get away, even from me, with my gammy knees. I managed to get her back inside and persuade her to stay for a bit. Then she fell asleep. I thought maybe you could get her
to talk. I’m not right sure I can. You never know, there might be a story in it for you.’

‘Phew,’ Laura said, sipping the tea Joyce had handed her automatically. ‘That’s a tall order. Do you think she’s English?’

‘She’s not said much but I don’t think so. She seems to understand what I say but she’s got an accent of some sort.’

‘You’ll have to tell the police, Nan,’ Laura said. ‘Whoever she is, she doesn’t look as if she’s even sixteen. She’s a child. Someone somewhere will be looking for her.’

‘Whoever it is who’s looking for her, she’s scared rigid of them,’ Joyce said fiercely. ‘We’ve got to find out a bit more about her before we make any decisions about what to do.’ For many years Joyce Ackroyd had been a popular and effective town councillor in Bradfield, and this crisis, Laura thought wryly, had put the iron back into her soul.

A slight noise behind them made the two women turn and they found themselves facing the girl herself, standing behind them unsteadily, clutching the blue cardigan around her thin body and gazing at them with dark, frightened eyes. Laura took the girl’s arm gently, appalled at how stick-like it felt inside the thick knitted sleeve.

‘Come and sit down,’ she said gently. ‘No one is going to hurt you.’

The girl allowed herself to be steered back to her seat and collapsed into it with a low moan.

‘Elena?’ Laura said, perching on the edge of the sofa beside her. ‘Is that your name?’ The girl nodded silently, her eyes full of unshed tears, gazing at the world with a curiously dead expression as though she was surrounded by sights she could
not bear to remember.

‘You can speak English?’ The girl nodded again.

‘A little,’ she said. ‘I learn in school.’

‘Where are you from, Elena?’ Laura asked. ‘Where is home? Where is school?’

The girl looked at her and shook her head, glancing towards the door as if wondering if she had the strength to run.

‘We can help you,’ Laura said. ‘But you must tell us who you are.’ The girl gazed at Laura and Joyce for a long time and then gave a sharp little nod, as if accepting that she could trust them, at least a little.

‘One morning,’ she said. ‘I go school, like every day, like all days, yes?’

Laura nodded.

‘Man…men…come when I walk on road. Men in car. I go in car with men.’

‘Did you want to go with them?’ Laura asked sharply. The girl looked at her blankly for a moment and then nodded again in understanding.

‘No want,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘I no want. They take me.’ She reached out both hands to Laura’s arm and took hold of it, dragging her a little and then pushing her hard. ‘They take me,’ she said. Laura’s mouth felt dry and she could hear her grandmother’s sharp intake of breath behind her.

‘And they took you to England?’ she asked quietly. The girl nodded, a single tear creeping down her pale cheek now.

‘To England, yes.’

‘How long ago?’ Laura asked. She glanced around her for Joyce’s calendar and showed it to Elena. ‘One week,’ she said, counting out seven days. ‘One month? One year? How long?’

The girl studied the calendar for a moment and then turned the pages back, looking carefully at the name of each month.

‘I think then,’ she said, pointing to the picture of a spring scene which illustrated the entries for the month of May. ‘Then, when snow go, flowers come.’

‘Spring?’ Laura said softly. ‘Last spring.’ It must have been eight or nine months ago since Elena had been dragged into a car on her way to school.

‘What happened in England?’ she asked. ‘Why did they bring you here?’

‘Men,’ Elena whispered. ‘Many, many men. Many, many, many men.’

‘Oh God,’ Laura said, understanding only too clearly what the girl meant and with that understanding a dam seemed to break within the girl’s emaciated frame and she was suddenly wracked with sobs. Laura reached out and took her in her arms and felt her tears soak through her shirt.

‘Oh God,’ she said again. ‘I’m so sorry, so sorry, Elena. I really am.’

Laura found the official letter in the postbox at the flat when she returned home from her grandmother’s that evening. It invited her to present herself at County Police HQ the following week to give evidence in the inquiry into the events three months previously surrounding the deaths of members of the family of Gordon Christie. She put the letter down carefully on the table, as if it would explode if handled roughly, took off her coat and sat down heavily in a chair, which was where Michael Thackeray found her some fifteen minutes later, gazing at the silk flowers in the fireplace with a dazed look in her eyes.

‘What is it?’ he asked, and picked up the letter when she gestured in the direction of the sheet of paper lying on the table. He glanced at her pale face after he had read it and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘You really don’t need to worry about it,’ he said quietly. ‘You did nothing wrong. Just tell them exactly what happened.’

‘I don’t want to make it any worse for you than it already is,’ she said. ‘If they’re going to hang you I don’t want to be the one kicking away the chair.’

‘Look, I know what I did,’ Thackeray said. ‘They know what I did. It was impulsive, and officers of my rank aren’t supposed
to do impulsive things, let alone put themselves at risk of being shot. I chucked twenty years’ training and experience out of the window in a crisis. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a case of dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, and taking whatever they throw at me afterwards. Nothing you say is going to make any difference, believe me.’ He put as much confidence into his voice as he could, which was far more than he felt.

‘You only did it because I was there,’ Laura said. ‘I feel responsible, and now you could lose your job.’

‘I doubt it,’ Thackeray came back quickly. ‘What I did may have been stupid but it wasn’t criminal or even particularly negligent. I didn’t put anyone else at risk. Jack Longley’s in far more trouble. I chanced my own life, he risked a child’s. He came back from County this afternoon looking like death warmed up and shut himself in his office without saying anything to anyone. They want to talk to him again tomorrow. And I guess that once they hear what Val Ridley’s got to say he could be for the high jump. But I wasn’t involved in any of that. I wasn’t even in the country.’

‘What a mess, though,’ Laura said.

‘Have you thought any more about what you’ll tell them about the story in the
Globe
?’ Thackeray asked. ‘I’m sure they’ll ask you about that as well, given the chance. Vince Newsom’s story didn’t help.’

‘I won’t tell them any more than I have to,’ Laura said. ‘But I guess they’ll work out exactly what happened from what Val and Vince tell them anyway. It wasn’t my fault he got hold of that document but Val undoubtedly blames me. But like you, I did nothing wrong.’ Her plea of innocence was more heartfelt than Thackeray could realise, and he merely nodded.

‘You’re right, it was a mess,’ he said. ‘And we’ll have to live with the consequences.’

‘Do you know when they want to talk to you?’

‘Not yet. I think they’ll be dealing with Longley and the much more serious failures first. They’ll get round to my misdemeanours later.’

‘I hate all this,’ Laura said.

‘It’ll soon be over,’ Thackeray said. ‘So forget about it for now. I saw your football story on the front page of the
Gazette
this afternoon. How did that come about? I didn’t think your sports editor was encouraging your new found interest.’

Laura smiled faintly.

‘He’s very definitely not, but Ted thought it was a good idea, and I need brownie points with him more than I do with Tony Holloway. But I think that’s the end of me and Bradfield United. No one’s thinking of sending me to London to cover the replay next week. That would definitely be a match too far.’

‘Good,’ Thackeray said. ‘I’m not sure I fancy you being turned into a sports commentator. I wasn’t much taken with the people we met at that party on Sunday. Young men and women with more money than sense, as far as I could see, and a gang of cynical vultures feeding off their talent.’

‘That sounds a bit harsh,’ Laura said. ‘But maybe not a lot.’ She recalled the weeping girlfriend tottering away from the celebration and wondered if she had forgiven her errant fiancé by now. ‘How about you?’ she asked. ‘Have you identified your murder victim yet?’

Thackeray shook his head.

‘No. No one admits to knowing who she is. The only new
development is that we’ve found her shoes. Someone saw her chuck them away and run off barefoot. We thought they were at the bottom of the canal, unfortunately, and have wasted a lot of time looking for them there. That will have dented the budget.’

‘Who was she running from?’ Laura asked, intrigued.

‘That we don’t know.’

Laura thought of another girl who seemed to be running as well, but quickly pushed the recollection out of her mind. She had promised Joyce, against her better judgement, that she would tell no one about Elena’s existence until the girl had regained some strength and explained more clearly what had happened to her.

‘Do you think she might have been an illegal immigrant, this black girl?’ she asked.

‘It’s possible,’ Thackeray said. ‘It has crossed our minds. In which case people might be reluctant to identify her in case they expose themselves.’

‘They’d be deported?’

‘In theory. Unless they could persuade the immigration authorities it was too dangerous for them to go home. We’re going to have to get a bit tougher questioning the African community in Bradfield, I think. I feel sure this girl is African, even though no one admits to recognising her. Even your football hero, Okigbo, is worth a look. I get the distinct feeling that someone’s covering something up.’

‘If I didn’t know you better I’d say you were being a tad racist,’ Laura said.

‘I didn’t take to Okigbo’s friend Emanuel Asida, but that’s nothing to do with the colour of his skin.’

‘There’s a lot of people trafficking, isn’t there? What happens to girls who are smuggled in for the sex trade?’

‘They’re here just as illegally as someone who came here of their own free will,’ Thackeray said. ‘They may be allowed to stay while they give evidence in a criminal prosecution, but after that they’ll usually be sent back to wherever they came from. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, I was just reading something about a charity that helps girls like that,’ Laura said. ‘I thought I might write something about it.’

Thackeray seemed to lose interest and Laura saw him wince.

‘Have you taken your painkillers?’ she asked. He shook his head, his expression grim, and they both knew that it was more than paracetamol he needed to dull the pain he was feeling.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Laura said with more confidence than she really felt, and he managed a faint smile.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

Laura went into the editorial meeting next morning with a thumping headache, fit only to go through the motions of planning the day’s paper. She and Thackeray had spent a desultory evening watching television and she knew that his depression was unlikely to lift while the disciplinary inquiry hung over his head. She had called her grandmother on the way into work to be told that Joyce’s unexpected visitor was still sleeping soundly.

‘I gave her my bed and slept on the sofa,’ Joyce said, sounding as weary as Laura felt herself after a restless night.

‘You can’t go on doing that for long,’ Laura said sharply.
Joyce’s arthritic knees would not be improved by such
ad hoc
sleeping arrangements. ‘I’ll come up at lunchtime and see if we can’t find somewhere safe for her to go.’

‘She’s fine here for a while,’ Joyce said. ‘Let her be.’ But Laura knew that the arrangement was not fine and determined to find some other refuge for Elena as soon as she could. Once she was in a place of safety, she thought, the legal implications of her situation could be safely explored.

In spite of her abstraction, her attention was suddenly grabbed by angry voices at the other end of the editorial table. She looked up to see Ted Grant’s face flushed with rage and a determined scowl on the face of Tony Holloway, who appeared for once to be in a mood to defy the editor.

‘If you thought there was funny business going on when they bought Okigbo, why the hell didn’t we report it at the time?’ Grant demanded.

‘I couldn’t prove it,’ Tony said. ‘And you’d be the first to complain if they’d slapped a libel writ on us. It was just a rumour. You know what sport’s like these days. It’s more about money than the lads on the field. It’s one thing to be told that brown paper bags of cash are being passed around, something else to prove it. Although I reckon it’s a bit more sophisticated than brown paper bags these days. Deposits in off-shore bank account’s more like it.’

‘It’s your bloody job to prove it, any road,’ Grant said. ‘My God, in my day on the
Globe
you wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. Use your imagination man, get off your backside and do a bit of investigating. If it was old Sam Heywood shelling out to get the Nigerian lad here, we can’t libel him, can we?
The beggar’s dead and buried. Find out what he was up to.’

‘It might not have been Sam,’ Tony said, his face sulky now.

‘So find out who it was, why don’t you? And find out who’s going to benefit if they sell Okigbo on. Follow the money, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’

‘Are they really looking to sell OK?’ Laura asked mildly. ‘It seems very odd when they’ve suddenly started attracting crowds again. What sort of investment is that?’

Grant flicked a sharp glance at Laura before turning back to Tony.

‘That’s what you should be asking Jenna Heywood,’ Ted snapped. ‘There’s a good story buried in the woodwork at that club and you seem to be doing bugger all to winkle it out. On your bike, lad. Dig a bit of dirt for a change.’

Laura watched Tony Holloway simmer in his seat for the rest of the meeting, which turned at that point to more routine matters, and she was not surprised when she felt him hovering over her when she got back to his desk.

‘Well, thanks for that bit of solidarity in there,’ Holloway said sarcastically. ‘I’d be really grateful, you know, if you’d keep your nose out of my patch.’

‘Fine,’ Laura said. ‘But it does all seem a bit odd, even to someone like me with a minimal interest in your beautiful game. If it was worth Sam Heywood shelling out illicit cash to get OK here, to help save the club presumably, why is someone now trying to sell him, which can only damage the club? It can’t be the same person, can it? This time it must be someone trying to undermine Jenna.’

‘Any fool can work that out,’ Tony said sourly. ‘The problem is finding out who’s done what and why. Investigate,
Ted says, but when the hell can I find the time to do any investigation. I work a ten-hour day as it is, six days a week in the football season. The trouble with Ted is that he still thinks he’s got all the resources of a London tabloid to run this one-horse operation. It’s bloody stupid.’

‘Oh well, I’m sure someone else will annoy him before the day’s out and take the heat off you. You’ll have a big story anyway, won’t you, if OK goes? The fans will be furious.’

‘As if anyone cares about the fans,’ Tony said, turning away with a scowl.

Laura logged off her computer at lunchtime, collected some sandwiches in the town centre, where she was surprised to see how quickly some of the local shops had decked their window displays with blue and gold United colours and supportive slogans for ‘the Lads’, and drove thoughtfully up the hill to The Heights to visit her grandmother again. Joyce opened the door to her looking anxious and Laura followed her into the living room where Elena was sitting on the sofa watching television with dull eyes that Laura guessed were seeing very little on the screen. She busied herself organising lunch for the three of them and then sat beside Elena, who began to sip listlessly at a mug of soup.

‘Are you feeling better?’ she asked the girl gently. But Elena merely shrugged.

‘She won’t try to talk,’ Joyce said, sounding tired and slightly exasperated. ‘I’ve got nothing out of her at all this morning.’

‘Elena,’ Laura said more firmly. ‘You understand you can’t stay here for long. My grandmother can’t keep you here. Do
you understand that.’

The girl shrugged again and a single tear slipped down her cheek.

‘You’ve been kidnapped and abused,’ Laura said firmly, hoping the girl’s grasp of English would cope with that. ‘We need to get you some help and find the men who did this to you. Then we’ll find some way to get you home to your family.’ Laura was still not sure how much Elena understood of what she was saying but she suddenly put down her mug and covered her face with her hands and began to sob convulsively.

‘Elena,’ Laura said, putting an arm round her shoulders. ‘We’re trying to help you. But you must talk to us. We can’t keep you here. And you need help to get home.’

Elena shrugged Laura off and eventually the storm of tears burnt itself out and she turned frightened eyes to Joyce and then to Laura. She had evidently recognised the word home.

‘Not go home,’ she said. ‘Never go home.’

‘Your family must be frantic with worry,’ Joyce said. ‘Your mother and father will be desperate to know what happened to you. You must tell your mother and father where you are.’

‘No,’ Elena said, her voice dull. ‘Father, mother not to know. They kill me.’

For a second Laura thought the girl was trying to make a joke and then she realised with a shudder that she was deadly serious. She met Elena’s eyes and saw only despair in them.

‘Brothers kill me,’ Elena said flatly and Laura believed her. ‘Me bad girl.’

‘Then you must get help here,’ she said. ‘You must talk to the police.’

If anything Elena’s agitation only increased at that suggestion.

‘No talk,’ she said. ‘Man say girl run, girl talk to police, then mother be killed. Bad men everywhere, men here, men at home. Men know village, know where mother live. They find. And here, men everywhere. First I was in London. Then new man came. He bought me and brought me here.’