Strange Affair (39 page)

The second house was about a mile away, in Islington, but light years away in comfort. It was a detached house with a small garden, the curtains all shut tight against the morning light. If the SO
₁₉
team leader hadn’t verified that it belonged to Mr. Hadeon Mazuryk, Annie would have thought it the home of a perfectly normal family with a couple of kids, a dog and a people carrier.

The team had had to move fast, before Mazuryk found out about the King’s Cross raid, and the SO
₁₉
team had reassembled in the van for a quick briefing. The layout of the house was similar to many others in the area, including the house one of the men lived in, and between them, the officers were able to sketch out a likely floor plan. Then they quietly evacuated the houses on either side and sealed off the street at both ends.

Annie sat across the street in the car with DI Brooke, who had got nowhere talking to the men at King’s Cross, and watched. She could hear faint music from one of the downstairs rooms, a bass line of some pop song she didn’t recognize. Then she heard a man cough and someone laugh.

“You’re very quiet, Dave,” she said, turning to Brooke, who was staring down the street.

“I was warned off,” he said, without looking at her.

“What?”

“I was warned off, Annie.” Now he looked her in the eye and she could see his self-disgust. “Orders from the top. Gareth Lambert’s part of an international investigation. If the police swarmed over him, all the major players would disappear into
the woodwork for years. That’s what I was told. If I valued my promotion…well, I think you can fill in the rest. Oliver Drummond and William Gilmore seemed likely leads.”

“I’m sorry, Dave,” Annie said, feeling embarrassed for him. “You were only following orders.”

He gave her an ironic glance. “Isn’t that what the Germans said?”

“This is different. What else could you do?”

Brooke shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t like the feeling, that’s all. I doubt they’d warn off your pal Banks so easily.”

Annie smiled. “DCI Banks is a law unto himself,” she said. “Partly because he doesn’t feel he has anything to lose. It’s not necessarily a position to envy.” She gestured to the SO
₁₉
officers in the street. “Anyway, for better or for worse we’re getting some action now.”

Brooke nodded. “It’s gone too far. Even the brass couldn’t justify leaving vulnerable underage girls in captivity like that for one night longer than they had to. Besides, we still don’t know if or how Lambert is connected. Maybe it’s something completely different.”

“Whatever it is, we’ll find out soon,” said Annie. “They’re going in.”

Half the men went around the back and the rest prepared to enter through the front door. Annie held her breath as one of them slammed the battering ram and the wood splintered, then they were in. She heard similar sounds from the back.

This time, in addition to the shouting and screaming, Annie heard shots. So did the neighbours farther down the street, who soon appeared at windows and in doorways, only to be kept at bay by the uniformed officers deployed on crowd duties. After an agonizing period of silence, the team leader stepped out and waved Annie and Brooke inside.

“Everybody all right?” Annie asked.

“We are,” he said. “Eddie took one on the chest but the body armour worked fine. He’s feeling a bit sore, that’s all. Look, we’re waiting for the ambulance and for the brass to get here. You know what it’s like whenever shots are fired. Forms in triplicate. Questions. You feel more like a criminal than a copper.”

Annie and Brooke followed the grumbling team leader into the front room. Four men had been sitting around playing cards at a folding table. Two of them were handcuffed and two of them were slumped against the wall with holes in their chests, covered in dark bibs of blood. Blood had also sprayed on the walls and carpeting. Annie felt a bit sick. She hadn’t seen many gunshot victims before and hadn’t been prepared for the smells of the exploded ammunition and fresh blood in the room.

One of the dead men resembled the description she had heard of Hadeon “Happy Harry” Mazuryk, and the other one had a body builder’s physique, long greasy hair tied back in a ponytail and a thick gold chain around his neck. One of the bullets must have severed the chain because it snaked in one long piece down his bloody chest.

Annie didn’t recognize the other two men. Both were looking sullen, handcuffed and guarded by SO
₁₉
officers with their Heckler and Kochs at the ready. One of the men might have been the driver of the Mondeo, but all the descriptions she had of him were vague. The more she looked at the other one, the more he seemed familiar: the spiky hair, goatee beard. Then she remembered: the photograph Banks had showed her, the one his brother apparently took just days before he died. This was the man who had been sitting with Gareth Lambert at an outdoor café. Now there was a connection, whatever it meant.

An ambulance arrived and men filled the room. Annie and Brooke followed one of the officers upstairs. There were three bedrooms, all of them occupied by beautiful young girls, who were more than a little unnerved by the shooting. SO
₁₉
officers dealt with the other two and Brooke hung back as Annie entered the cozy room and walked over to the pregnant girl, who was lying on the bed looking frightened.

“Carmen?” she said. “Carmen Petri?”

The girl nodded, seeming surprised that Annie knew her name. She looked a little older than the girls in the King’s Cross house, perhaps as old as nineteen or twenty, and she wore much less makeup. It was difficult to tell what her figure had been like because she was about six months pregnant, but she had a beautiful face: full lips with a Bardot pout, a perfectly proportioned nose, flawless complexion – apart from a beauty spot by the side of her mouth – and deep dark blue eyes damp with tears. Annie couldn’t read her expression and guessed that Carmen was a girl who had become adept at hiding her feelings and thoughts for the purposes of self-preservation.

“What happened?” Carmen asked.

“I’ll explain it all later,” Annie said. “I’m happy to meet you at last. I’m Annie Cabbot. Will you answer some questions?”

“Where’s Hadeon?”

“Dead.”

“Good. And Artyom?”

“Who’s he?”

“Big man. Ponytail.”

“He’s dead, too.”

“That is also good,” she said, shifting on the bed slightly. Annie could see an expression of discomfort cross her features as she moved. Probably the baby kicking.

“What happened to you?” Annie asked. “How did you get here?”

“Is a long story,” she said. “And a long time ago. I was taken from street when I was a young girl.”

“How young?”

“Sixteen.”

“By who?”

She shrugged. “A man.”

“Where?”

“A village near Craiova, in Romania. You will not have heard of it.”

“You went to see Dr. Lukas at the Berger-Lennox Centre?”

“Yes. She was good to me.” Carmen reached for a cigarette. “She wanted me to stop smoking, but I tell her a girl must have one vice. I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs.” Her English was remarkably good, Annie thought, and she could see what Veronika meant about her being beautiful. There was a sophistication about her beyond her years, and Carmen had the kind of class you don’t usually associate with people in her profession.

Annie wondered how on earth she could stand the life without some form of escape, but what did she know? And what could she presume to know about someone who had been through what Carmen had been through?

“Do you remember Jennifer Clewes?”

“Yes. She works with Dr. Lukas.”

“She’s dead, too, Carmen. Someone killed her.”

Carmen looked alarmed. “Why?”

“We don’t know. We think it might have to do with something you told her. Jennifer and her boyfriend seemed to know something about what was going on here. Did you say anything to her when you were talking last week?”

Carmen looked down at her swollen belly. “The doctor think we do this because we want to,” she said. “I tell her she does not know how bad things are, that none of us are here because we want. I tell Jennifer, too. Some stories of what happen to girls. I should not have said that. But I think I was feeling brave because they were treating me well, different from the others.”

“When did you tell her this?”

“Last time I go to clinic. Not long. Monday, I think.”

“Did Artyom know you’d been talking?”

“He took me back in the car and told Hadeon. They could not hurt me to make me tell them anything. I knew that. But…”

“I think I know,” said Annie. “They threatened to harm your parents back home, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” Carmen whispered.

“So you told them.”

“Yes.”

Annie nodded. “That house in King’s Cross,” she said. “We’ve just come from there. Those girls were treated terribly. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I have been there. Hadeon always tells me I have been very lucky. For me men pay hundreds of pounds a night, for those girls they must have many men to make such money. Hadeon makes his girls work very hard. He tells me if I am not good he will send me there, too. I am happy he is dead.”

“Do you think he would have people killed who found out what he was doing?”

Carmen nodded. “Harry once killed a girl with his bare hands for refusing to have sex with him.”

“Did Artyom work for him?”

“Yes. And Boris.”

“With the cropped blond hair?”

“That is Boris.”

The driver, Annie thought. “There was another man downstairs.” Annie described him. “Do you know who he is?”

“All I know is that his name is Max and that he brings new girls for Harry. He is not always here. I have never talked to him.”

Annie imagined that when Mazuryk knew Carmen had talked, he or Max had brought Lambert in to handle damage control, and that was what had been going on all week. Mazuryk had also sent Artyom and the driver to keep an eye on Jennifer, watch where she went. Perhaps Lambert had talked to Roy and managed to assure Mazuryk that no one would be ringing the police, but negotiations were tense, then something else happened, something that changed it all.

“Do you know a man called Lambert?” Annie asked.

“Lambert? No,” said Carmen.

Annie gestured towards her stomach. “What’s going to happen to you?”

“I’m going to have my baby. It makes them take good care of me. I get food and they leave me alone. I get bored sometimes. The only times I can go out is to see Dr. Lukas, and then Artyom usually takes me. But it is much better than before.”

“Do you know who the father is?”

Carmen gave her a scornful look.

“And what about the baby? Dr. Lukas told me it was going to be adopted.”

“Yes. They want to sell the baby to a rich man. She will go to a good family and have a good life. That is why they treat me well, to keep the baby healthy. Harry always jokes when he sees me, how he must keep me healthy for Mr. Garrett.” A
sudden anxiety came into her voice. “But Harry is dead. What is going to happen to me now?”

“I don’t know,” said Annie. “I really don’t know.”

Banks remembered something on his way out and opened the door to Roy’s garage. The Porsche still stood there gleaming and immaculate. He opened the driver’s door and sat down, reaching into the side pocket for the AA road atlas. It was still open to the same page as it had been before, and this time Banks spotted Quainton on the top right. Well, he thought, it was hardly conclusive, but a bit of a coincidence nonetheless. Perhaps Quainton had been Roy’s port of call before he got home, rang Banks and went off to the Albion Club with Lambert. What had he found out there that disturbed him so?

Banks took the AA atlas, locked up the car, garage and house behind him and headed for the M41 and Quainton. As far as he could gather, after a number of diversionary manoeuvres, there was no one on his tail. He had his mobile on the seat beside him and just beyond Berkhamsted Annie rang and told him about the raids, the deaths of Hadeon Mazuryk and Artyom, and about her interview with Carmen Petri. It put a few things in perspective and persuaded Banks that he was certainly heading in the right direction.

An hour and a half after leaving London, he was there.

Quainton stood at the bottom of a hill, a straggling sort of place scattered around a village green. Banks parked there, near the George and Dragon. He paused a moment and glanced at the brick windmill at the top of the hill, then went into the pub. He hadn’t got an address from Dieter Ganz, just the village name, but he guessed the place was small enough
that they would probably know Lambert and his Spanish wife at the local pub.

It looked like a good place to eat. Blackboards offered steak and Stilton pie, French country chicken and Thai red curry. Maybe he’d come back after talking to Lambert and his wife. The barman knew the Lamberts and told him they lived in a big house on the Denham Road, and he couldn’t miss it. Banks thanked him and set off.

He found the house easily enough on the outskirts of the village. It looked the sort of place that had had a few additions over the years – gables, an extra wing, a garage – so it was hard to tell in what period the original building had been erected. Banks pulled into the gravel drive, parked out front and went to ring the doorbell.