Cold Courage (25 page)

The fact that Arthur Fried had been accused of corporate fraud made the headlines at every news media outlet in the nation. It was, ironically enough, the most press Fair Rule had ever
garnered
.

Mari and Lia watched from the Studio as the story swelled. Thomas O’Rourke had done his homework. The documents he had distributed were so convincing that no one dared claim they were a fake. Because only the
Star
knew the entire story, the other
editorial
offices were forced to turn to them for facts. By the early evening, the story had spawned so many hits that the tabloid’s web server crashed.

O’Rourke sent Lia a text message around eight o’clock: ‘I’ve given sixteen interviews today. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun.’

But Arthur Fried and Fair Rule were lying low. Because the TV stations didn’t have their own interviews with him, they were still airing clips filmed at the press conference, showing how Fried’s face froze as O’Rourke posed his question and the sorts of quiet, dark looks Fried and the party secretary exchanged. The videos closed with Fried exiting as the reporters shouted after him.

Lia imagined the feelings of confusion and panic hanging over the party headquarters – if Fried even had the nerve to go there and thrash the matter out.

How will Stephen, Dorrie and the others react to this?

Sky News showed a feed from the Fair Rule office in Epping High Street. The faces of Stephen and Simon flashed across the screen. Lia swung between empathy and irritation. She expected to experience some pangs of conscience over what she had done to these people she had come to know, but they never came.

The BBC Nine O’Clock News began with the headline ‘
Right-wing
Leader Tax Scandal’ and the commentators proceeded to express their astonishment that a person with such an impeccable reputation as Arthur Fried could become the target of such serious accusations. A BBC crew had interviewed the head of the Lincoln economic development office, who said this was the first he had
heard of Fried’s businesses’ continued operations. In his personal view, this was a case of unusually egregious fraud.

‘Fried was a highly esteemed businessman here several years ago. His enterprises received support above and beyond the usual limits. Apparently we experienced a significant failure in judgement,’ the official said.

Arthur Fried released his own statement the same evening, at 10.39 p.m. He announced that he would cooperate fully with the authorities in any possible investigation. If any confusion had arisen during his companies’ move to London, he would endeavour to
rectify
it in full. The statement came too late for most of the morning papers – they would only have time to quote directly from it in their paper editions without any further commentary. And Fried was not giving interviews.

When the morning papers did appear, expert opinion was
unanimous
in predicting a significant blow to Fair Rule’s support.

‘What was to be a standard press conference turned into Arthur Fried’s final kamikaze dive. What will remain of a party based on talking straight when no one else would dare now that its leader has been accused of such an astonishingly brazen con? If the accusations turn out to be true, this case will be a triumph of investigative
journalism
sure to influence the upcoming parliamentary elections,’ wrote
The Guardian.

Over the next few days, Fried continued to refuse any interviews, but the reporters on the political beat succeeded in prising comments out of the rest of the Fair Rule leadership. And of course
representatives
of the major parties were eager to comment. His own people still supported Fried, but others were more than happy to criticise his ‘messianic’ appearances and populist pandering.

‘Cool-nerved damage control,’ Mari said.

Fried knew that he had to calm his own troops first. He would probably attempt to draw the investigation out beyond the election. The party’s popularity would not necessarily collapse if the public remained in the dark as to whether he had committed a crime or not.

Lia listened to Mari’s analysis. It was almost as though she knew what was happening inside Fried’s mind.

Fried most likely still believed that this was a game of politics, that the information had come out by chance, dug up by one reporter, Mari continued. When they released the next revelation, Fried would know that someone was attacking him. Then he would start the fight for real. They had to be one step ahead.

Lia called Sarah Hawkins at the hotel where they had taken her after taping her interview. They had given her a new mobile phone so no one else could reach her.

‘Have you seen the news about Arthur?’ Lia asked.

‘Yes. This is unbelievable. Of course I knew about his businesses, but nothing like that,’ Sarah said.

Lia warned her that more sensational news stories were likely to follow soon.

‘The media will start digging into Arthur’s and Fair Rule’s dealings in an entirely new way,’ she explained.

‘Good. When my video comes out, that should give them
something
to talk about.’

Sarah had received a copy of the final interview. She had watched it dozens of times.

‘Seeing myself on the telly is so strange. But I feel better than I have in years. If only this could all be in the past. I could get on with my life again.’

‘It will all be over soon.’

At two o’clock on a Monday afternoon, the Westfield London was surprisingly peaceful. The lunch rush had passed, and only the
occasional
shopper walked here and there.

Lia was sitting at a window table in the café, sipping her coffee and waiting. Now and then she glanced at Paddy Moore, who was sitting a few tables back.

Although they had patched things up, they still regarded each other more carefully. Paddy wanted to see how dependable Lia was.

Lia had arrived at the café alone, once Paddy had first checked the place and scanned who was nearby. They showed no sign of knowing one another.

Lia had asked for two days off. Martyn Taylor, the AD, had agreed after Lia had showed him how the layout work could be divided so her leave would not muddle anything terribly. Lia had expected Taylor to object to her sudden absence, but he seemed to respect her purposefulness.

At 2.25 p.m., four women walked into the café. One of them was Elza, and the features of the others also showed they were from the Baltic. A boy who had been following the women remained outside. Perhaps sixteen years old, he was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket and wore oversized earphones. A carder.

The women bought pastries and coffees at the counter. Listening to them chat, Lia wasn’t sure but thought the language was Latvian.

The women claimed the table next to her. Elza did not greet Lia, but after a few minutes cast a long glance her way.

Then she got up and said to her friends in English, ‘Ladies, do excuse me while I powder my nose.’

The others laughed at this affectation, and in that moment Lia realised that Elza had not told them about Daiga Vītola’s death or about herself. The humour and warmth between the women was a pleasure to see, in spite of the situation.

Elza walked to the ladies’ room. After waiting a minute, Lia grabbed her coat and handbag and followed. Elza was waiting, looking serious.

‘Tell me your name,’ she asked.

‘Lia Pajala.’

‘Elza Berklava,’ Elza said, proffering her hand.

This must be terrifying for her. She lives every moment with thugs like Kazis Vanags and that bald man.

‘If I tell you about Daiga, what will happen then?’

Lia admitted she didn’t know.

‘But whoever killed her must be brought to account.’

Elza nodded.

‘I’ll help how I can, but then you have to help me too. If they find out, the same thing will happen to me as to Daiga and Anita.’

Lia did a double take.

‘Anita?’

‘Anita Klusa. The woman they found shot last week in the Hyundai.’

Lia tried not to show her agitation.

Elza said she had cried the whole night after reading the
newspaper
clipping Lia had given her.

‘I had to rip it to bits and flush it down the toilet because they search our things all the time. They look for drugs – they know we have them, but they don’t want us using them too much. The customers complain if a girl is high.’

‘Tell me about Daiga,’ Lia said.

Elza smiled. When she spoke, her eyes filled with tears.

‘Daiga was a crazy girl.’

She was from the Riga suburbs and had come to Britain two or three years before any of the other prostitutes. When they met, Daiga had given Elza pointers about working in London. She had taught several other girls as well.

‘In most of the houses there’s a more experienced girl who gets the others started.’

When Daiga was still at the flat in Vassall Road, five prostitutes had been working there. Four remained.

Daiga had been the only one who ever dared contradict the brothel operator, Kazis Vanags. Daiga took fewer clients than the others because she wanted to keep herself healthy. She wouldn’t buckle under the strain of bullying. She had always been the intellectual
leader of the girls on Vassall Road, making sure that their conditions were tolerable.

‘Daiga always told us that life is shit but at least our shit life was in London.’

They had done the same work back in Riga too.

‘Daiga and me used to turn tricks in the parks, two or three nights a week. Our area had the best parks with the most traffic. We could choose our clients ourselves.’

Having to work year after year like prisoners here and take anyone who came was a hard blow for them.

Daiga had thought that something else would come along
someday
, a better future in London. She had done everything with rare fortitude. A common problem for most prostitutes was that their minds couldn’t take it and they had to numb themselves. Daiga Vītola had not drunk or taken drugs. Because of her the girls had been able to see a doctor regularly. Even though they used condoms, they would still have inflammation and infections.

‘Who killed Daiga?’ Lia asked.

Elza’s lips pursed in a bitter line.

‘It must have been Vanags.’

Kazis Vanags had hated Daiga’s lack of fear. However much he railed at her she gave it back in turn. Once she even laughed in his face.

‘I had a bad feeling after that. Kazis wouldn’t hesitate to kill a baby.’

Elza had no evidence against him though. She did know that Vanags had been apoplectic at Daiga just before she
disappeared
.

The toilet door opened and an elderly woman entered.

Elza and Lia fell silent. When the woman entered the toilet stall, Elza quietly said, ‘I’m going to go back to the table so the other girls don’t wonder where I am. Wait five minutes.’

Before she left, Elza dug into her handbag and then handed Lia something.

‘I brought this for you.’

Lia looked at the piece of paper. It was a photograph, the small type you might get from a self-service booth.

In the picture was a dark-haired woman. Lia knew who it was. Daiga Vītola.

The woman in the picture was smiling, laughing actually. She looked strong but also like a person who could take pleasure in small things. For example how silly it was to sit in a photo booth and pose.

She looked like a mother, Lia thought. Strange that a woman like that had prostituted herself, first in Riga and then in London.

Or perhaps that was precisely why a woman like that left her home. She probably had to earn a living for her family. She wasn’t doing it only for herself.

Looking at the small picture in her hand, Lia thought about all the many choices people make.

If you’ve never had to make a difficult decision in your life, you can’t know what it’s like for someone else.

As she exited the stall, the older woman eyed Lia suspiciously, but Lia didn’t give her a second thought. The woman left, and a little later Elza returned.

‘I think the girls guess something’s up,’ Elza said. But Elza’s friends were afraid, and they knew better than to ask why she kept traipsing off to the toilets.

Elza continued her narrative. Four days before Daiga’s
disappearance
, Vanags had flown into a rage at her.

‘The two things must be connected. I thought Kazis forced Daiga to go somewhere else. But now I know he killed her. And in such a dreadful way.’

Elza’s eyes filled with tears. Lia had a hard time keeping her composure too. Both leaning on the sink counter top, Lia listened as Elza went on.

The four women of Vassall Road were all from Latvia. In London there were four brothels where the girls were Latvian, and all had come to the city the same way.

Six men ran the brothels, most of them from Latvia as well. They also had a group of collaborators, the descendants of Eastern Europeans living in London now.

‘There are three lower bosses. Each one takes the profits from one house, but Vanags gets the most.’

Vanags handled the importing, making him the de facto head of the operation. He had a large network of transportation specialists in Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Buffet food shop was a perfect front for the rest of his businesses. The real money came from weapons and prostitutes.

‘They don’t do drugs because the police investigate that the most.’

Before 2004, when Latvia joined the EU, trafficking women had been more difficult. First they were all smuggled into Poland from Latvia. That had been the easiest part of the journey, since they could simply bribe the border guards. Elza had ridden across the border in the back seat of a car in broad daylight for everyone to see.

Then they had to hide the girls. A car drove them overland to Sweden, and from there they came to Edinburgh on a passenger ferry. Some of them were given false passports and visas so they could travel more comfortably.

But forging documents was expensive, so most girls had had to stow away. Elza had spent the two-day sea voyage in the boot of a car under a false bottom.

‘It was terrible. I felt like screaming my lungs out the whole time, but I couldn’t. It would have been even worse if I had been found out.’

They had just had to cry into their hands to muffle the sound. They travelled in complete darkness in that tiny confined space. Air came from a small tube under the car. The driver gave them a couple of bottles to pee into. A little food and even less water.

No one had told them about the journey in the car boot until right before they had to go. And there were no other options. The driver simply ordered the girl into the boot and then told her she had to stay there if she wanted to get to London. If the girl refused, he said he would shoot her on the spot.

‘Daiga and me and a lot of other girls had to go through that. Sit in the boot of a Volvo and look straight down the barrel of a pistol. We knew we were staying in there dead or alive. We call it a Volvo berth.’

The car was always the same model, a Volvo S40, because it had space for a false bottom difficult to find in a superficial inspection.

This was why Elza was sure that Vanags was the one who had killed Daiga Vītola.

‘Daiga tricked him on one of the transports. Kazis got so angry at her we were all afraid.’

Bringing new prostitutes into the country was much easier now because it was all EU territory. All they needed was a Latvian
passport
, which was only a problem for Russian girls. Vanags sent for two or three new girls a year, and they came in a lorry. In Latvia they put the woman up front next to the driver, who ensured that she couldn’t escape or talk to anyone.

In one particular transport, two girls were supposed to be coming from Latvia. Daiga had come up with the idea of using this to get her mother and daughter into the country. She had not seen either in years. They had only kept in contact over the phone, and she could only ring them occasionally, with the pimps
monitoring
her.

Daiga had no need for her husband back in Latvia. ‘He’s a bad man,’ Elza said, and Lia felt as though she understood without elaboration.

Daiga promised a large sum of money to an acquaintance in Latvia for substituting her mother and daughter for the prostitutes. The lorry driver wondered about a sixty-year-old woman being exported as a prostitute. The sixteen-year-old daughter was easier to believe.

‘But the drivers don’t ask too many questions. He brought the grandmother and daughter to London, straight to the flat on Vassall Road.’

When Vanags discovered them, he blew his top, immediately taking the mother and daughter away. They only saw Daiga for ten minutes. Daiga went insane with regret and fear.

She screamed at Vanags and refused to take any clients. She had really thought that after so many years of work, Vanags would have felt pity for her and allowed her family to stay. She offered Vanags money, but he was too angry to listen.

Four days later, Daiga disappeared.

Elza had asked about her, but in vain. She had hoped that Daiga had just been moved to a different house.

How did Elza and the other girls not hear about it in April right when the body was found? Lia asked. ‘It was the number one story in the whole country. It was in all the papers.’

Elza shrugged.

‘We don’t follow the news. We don’t have any use for it.’

Some of the prostitutes did not even speak much English. They only knew the vocabulary they needed with customers. But they had read about Anita Klusa’s death.

Daiga’s body was found in the same kind of Volvo used in
smuggling
the prostitutes, except that the car lacked a false bottom. The body was put in the boot, which was a message to them all. The Volvo berth.

Daiga had been left on Holborn Circus and Anita on Ludgate Hill, and it was clear what that meant. Another brothel, on tiny Creed Lane, was nearby.

‘Two girls escaped from there last year. They tracked one down straight away and killed her. The other was Anita. They didn’t get her till now.’

Lia understood. They had killed Anita Klusa as a sign that they always caught escapees sooner or later. Daiga was a sign not to defy the pimps.

Lia was relieved that out in the café, just a dozen metres away, sat Paddy Moore. Then she realised something.

‘Elza, it’s possible that I know where Daiga’s mother and daughter are.’

She then explained about the house in Catford where Vanags took food every night.

‘It could be that Vanags is keeping them hidden there.’

Elza covered her mouth with her hand.

‘Oh my God! I was afraid Vanags sent them right back or
something
worse. Maybe they’ve been there the whole time.’

‘Can you go to Catford?’ Lia asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Elza said, clearly startled. ‘Just talking to you is so dangerous. What can we do if they’re locked in there?’

‘At least try to talk to them. Maybe they’ll be willing to risk talking to you.’

Elza thought. Near them in the shopping centre was a beauty
salon. She could get out through the back, which offered access to the loading docks and car park. No one would know about it unless they had been inside the shop.

‘I’ve thought that if I tried to escape someday, it might be possible through there. The boy waiting outside the café is so stupid that if the girls and me go into the beauty salon and I come out the back, he’s bound not to even notice. We could have an hour and a half. Maybe two.’