Blood Money (2 page)

Half an hour later, her daughter happily entrusted to the caring and capable crèche manager, Emma O’Brien got back in her car and allowed herself a little cry, the separation from her daughter a tangible, physical pain in her chest even though Jessica had let her go without a murmur. Fumbling for her mobile Emma started to speed-dial Peter’s number then abruptly severed the connection. By this time he’d already be at work and would be in meetings all day about the latest round of drug trials, so he wouldn’t thank her for the interruption. Far better to call him this afternoon when it was all over to report how well it had all gone. Blowing her nose hard she consciously shifted herself into professional mode.

At Granville Lane while the FME was checking over the girls, up in the briefing room Mariner reminded his team of the drill. Eight girls in total had been brought back to Granville Lane from two different establishments. Two men, their minders, had been arrested and all without casualties. It had gone smoothly and Mariner began with congratulations. ‘But that was the easy part,’ he said. ‘Now comes the real challenge; building a case against the two men and any others who have been picked up across the city, and finding out who the organisers are. We can’t kid ourselves that we’ve got the organ grinders, but that’s who we need, those responsible for this whole obscene operation. Immigration have identified a number of suspects who they’ve been monitoring for the last twelve months.’ He held up a sheaf of half a dozen digital mug-shots. ‘But we need to make the connections. We want positive identification backed by credible witness statements. Some of the girls will have had direct contact, or may have overheard things. Immigration will continue to do their bit by going through any paperwork we’ve found, but the taped and videoed interviews will be crucial.’

Looking around, Mariner was satisfied to see everyone, outwardly at least, fully focused. ‘Of course some girls are going to do better as witnesses than others, but what we’re looking for are a couple of reliable ones who are also willing to testify.’ He was aware as he said it that it was the biggest potential stumbling block. ‘Most of these girls have been abused over long periods of time. They’re young and scared and have learned the hard way not to trust anyone. We don’t have much time to rebuild that trust. I don’t have to remind you that these are the victims, not the criminals. We need to go gently and build confidence. They’re not under arrest but full procedure must be followed so that if and when the case comes to court we can be confident that there will be no accusations of us having led the questioning.’

Mariner had split his officers into teams for interviewing, where possible male with female, in the hope that the girls would be less intimidated. He and Knox would start with the minders, with a view to trying to cut some kind of deal that would lead them to the bigger fish.

As the briefing broke up, DCI Sharp came in, another woman following close behind. ‘Tom, this is Lorelei Fielding, she’s from the Daffodil Project,’ Sharp said.

‘Daffodil Project?’ Mariner stepped forward to shake Fielding’s hand.

‘We’re a charity that offers support to women in distress,’ Fielding said. ‘We act as advocates or counsellors. We also have several refuges across the city. We’re here to offer our services. Our support workers can be present at interviews and when you’ve finished what you have to do, we’ll take the girls to our hostel overnight.’

‘Thanks,’ said Mariner. ‘We’ll give you a shout when we’re ready.’

The FME came to let them know that he was finished. ‘You’re starting the interviews now?’ he asked Mariner.

‘We’re just waiting for one of the interpreters to arrive.’

‘You won’t need it for all of them. One of the girls speaks pretty good English.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, her grandfather was over here during the war apparently. He taught her the basics. She’s pretty fluent.’

‘Which one is she?’

‘Katarina. At nineteen she’s one of the oldest, so you may find that she handles the whole process better.’

‘Thanks.’ He and Knox would interview her.

‘You’ll go easy on them, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

But easy was only a one-way street. For Mariner the initial interviews with the minders were a frustrating experience. Except to give their names, the men refused to speak or to acknowledge recognition of any of the further suspects on the photographs. After only an hour Mariner gave up. ‘If nothing else we’ve got them for living off immoral earnings. We can afford to let them stew,’ he told Sharp. One of the girls might provide us with a way in. Let’s make them the priority.’ And he wanted to start with the girl who spoke English.

 

Tony Knox, with DC Jenny Foster, was conducting an interview with a girl who looked no more than about twelve years old. Pale and scrawny, her eyes were dark hollows and her skinny arms were mottled with scars. She lowered her head as they went in, but not before they’d noticed the gummy gap where her top incisors should have been. It gave her the appearance of a small child losing her milk teeth. She sat low in her chair placing as much distance as she could between them, her arms folded protectively around her.

‘What happened to her teeth?’ Foster asked the interpreter. ‘Was she beaten?’

‘They were removed,’ the interpreter said after a short exchange. ‘It would help her to do her work better.’

‘Christ,’ said Knox.

But DC Foster didn’t get it.

‘All the better for giving blow jobs,’ Knox illuminated, his voice low.

Foster turned a funny colour.

Sonja responded to their questions with the barest nod or shake of the head, and Knox was about to abandon the interview, when suddenly she turned to the translator and spoke, her words gushing out in a torrent, tumbling over each other, and for the first time looked directly into Tony Knox’s face with a desperation that wrenched at his insides.

‘She wants to know how long this will take,’ the interpreter said. ‘She wants to go and find her child.’

‘She has a child?’ Knox was shocked to the core.

The girl spoke again, the urgency in her voice increasing.

‘A daughter. She’s in an orphanage in Tirana. She wants to go and find her.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ breathed Knox, looking at the kid in front of them. ‘Now I’ve heard it all.’

 

Walking into the interview suite with PC Jamilla Khatoon, Mariner recognised Katarina as the girl he had escorted from the top floor of the house on Foundry Road. He’d never have believed she was nineteen but, in the safety of the police station, she seemed to have lost a little of the timidity. She clasped a beaker of tea between cupped hands. The room made an attempt at cosy, with comfortable chairs and soft furnishings, along with the audio and video recording equipment of a standard interview room, but she looked far from at home.

‘You speak English,’ Mariner said.

Katarina nodded.

‘I just want to ask you some questions. If there’s anything you don’t understand or anything you don’t want to talk about, then you can tell me. Okay?’

She nodded again, and Mariner hoped for the sake of the recording equipment that she would eventually find her voice.

‘How did you come to England, to Birmingham?’

Katarina took a sip from the cup and cleared her throat. ‘I work as a waitress in a bar in Tirana where my family is. A man heard me talk in English to some American customers.’ She spoke in a listless monotone, concentrating hard on the words. ‘He says that my English is very good, that he can get me a job as a translator and to teach our language in England. He says there’s a big want for good translators and that I look nice and he can get me a good job in Brussels or in London, for good money. He says he work for the government.’

‘Doing what?’

She lifted her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I tell him I have no money, but he said I can travel in his car and he will arrange the papers and the travel documents and I can pay him back when I have a job. He tells me about the life I can have, with my own apartment and my own car. He says I must think about it and he will come back to the bar in a few days.’

‘Did he tell you his name?’

‘I only know “Petya”. I talk about it with my family and my father and he think it will be a great chance for me to have a good job. When Petya comes back to the restaurant I say I will go. I have to meet him at a place in the city early in the morning, five o’clock. I am surprised because he has good clothes but his car is old and dirty. But I think it’s okay because there are two girls also waiting.’

‘Did you know these other girls?’

‘No. They are going to get a job with rich families, to look after the children. Petya take our passports for making them safe. He drive us to the border and a hotel where he says we will stay tonight. Two more men came and then Petya says that he must go back to Tirana on important government business and his friends will take us on the rest of the way to London.’ She stopped for a moment and sipped her tea.

‘You’re doing really well,’ Mariner said, sensing that the worst was to come.

Katarina took a deep breath. ‘That night one of the men come in to my room and make me have sex with him. I don’t want it and I tried to fight him but he’s very strong. Afterwards he lock the door. We stay in the hotel maybe three days, with the door locked. Sometimes a man comes, brings a little bit of food, some water, sometimes have sex or hit me.’ Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

‘Petya’s friends?’

She nodded.

Mariner had heard of the process before, called ‘seasoning’, in other words, beating and raping the resistance out of the girls. He hated making her relive this, but they needed the evidence. ‘Do you want to stop?’ he asked. ‘We can take a break?’

She shook her head but sipped again from her tea. Mariner couldn’t help but notice the tremor in her hand.

‘I know this is hard,’ he said, ‘but can you describe any of the men?’

‘They have black hair.’

‘All of them?’

‘Yes. But one of them have very short.’

‘Like my hair?’

She looked briefly then away. ‘More short, and he tall man, thin man.’ She measured out tall and thin with her hands. ‘He don’t have sex with me, but he bring food.’

‘Were the other men tall, too?’

‘Not so much.’

‘They were short?’

‘A little bit, and one is a bit fat and one more bit fat.’ She gestured a generous gut. ‘They don’t shave and I think they don’t wash very much. They smell like beer.’ She grimaced with distaste, then a light sparked behind her eyes as she remembered something else. ‘The fat man he have a picture.’ She stroked her skinny forearm.

‘A tattoo?’ Mariner confirmed. ‘A picture on his arm?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you remember what the picture was?’ But she didn’t.

‘Sometimes I ask them about the job as translator but they laugh at me. They say I have a different job now. They have paid good money for me and I will work for them to pay it back.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I have to pee now.’

‘Of course.’ They took a short break, during which Mariner went and stood outside in the fresh breeze, perhaps hoping that it might cleanse him.

Five minutes later they were back in the interview room. ‘You said you were at the hotel for three days,’ Mariner prompted gently. ‘What happened then?’

‘They get me up very early and we leave the hotel. It’s dark. We drive in the car again to Paris. We go to another hotel. We stay, I don’t know, two, maybe three weeks and many men come to have sex every night. They give us money. The fat man take it for his money. Then in the morning another man come, tall man. We go on the train to London then drive in a car to Birmingham and we come to the house where you find me.’

‘The other girls were with you?’

She shook her head. ‘They stay in Paris. I don’t know what happens to them.’

She spoke numbly, devoid of emotion, but the air in the room was thick with suppressed anger as Mariner and Jamilla Khatoon listened.

‘And since you came to Birmingham?’

She shrugged. ‘I do my job. I stay in the same house and the door is lock on my room except when I can go to the bathroom, or get food or when the men come.’

‘How many clients?’

She sighed.

‘Maybe fifteen, twenty each day.’ She was beyond caring.

‘And they pay you?’

‘Stanislav take the money to pay my debts. I can’t talk to the men and I must pretend I can’t speak English.’

Mariner placed two photographs on the table. ‘This is Stanislav?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the other man?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you know any of these?’ Mariner placed the other photographs in front of her.

On the third one, a swarthy man with slicked back hair, her eyes widened in surprise.