The Eyewitness (15 page)

“Who is she?” asked Diane.

“An eyewitness to an atrocity in Kosovo. Her family were all killed.”

“So she'd have been looking for asylum, right?”

“I don't think so,” said Solomon.

“I'm pretty sure she's working as a prostitute, so she could have come under another name. I was hoping for the easy option.”

“There's a whole industry devoted to putting together false identities for prostitutes,” she said.

“She could have paid for a passport and visa, or come over under contract. Either way, the paperwork would be faultless.”

“Can't you spot them when they're coming through?” asked Sean, refilling their glasses with wine.

“You mean you can spot a hooker just by looking at her?” said Diane.

“They don't come in wearing miniskirts and fishnet stockings, love.”

“No, but if you've got a pretty young girl arriving at Heathrow with no visible means of support, you must wonder?” said Solomon.

“She might be a language student they're allowed to work twenty hours a week to fund their studies. She might have rich parents. She might be a tourist. Our people have a few seconds to make a judgement. There might be just half a dozen officers to deal with two 747s. Seven hundred people. We don't have time to cross-examine every good-looking girl. If the passport and visa are right, they're in.”

“So nothing can be done to stop it?”

“It's the asylum-seekers who are the bigger problem. They cost the country money. Prostitutes don't go on the dole they work and then they go home. They're not really seen as a problem, not when our resources are as stretched as thinly as they are.”

Solomon sat back in his chair.

“It's a funny old world, isn't it?” he said.

"Immigration aren't over-worried about girls coming here to work as prostitutes. The police don't care, so long as no one gets hurt. But the guys doing the trafficking are making a fortune.

No one seems to be doing anything to stop it. Why don't we just legalise it and have done with it?"

“It's not a bad idea,” said Diane.

“We could issue hooking visas. Six months, renewable, subject to health checks and income-tax payments.”

“Specialist workers,” said Sean, with a grin.

“I was joking,” said Solomon.

“Well, I'm not,” said Diane.

“The going rate for a fake passport and visa out of Central Europe is about ten thousand dollars. Most of the girls have to pay off the debt when they get here, and that means working for one of the trafficking gangs. That's where the problems start. If the Government was to issue visas to working girls, it could be monitored and the girls looked after.”

“So the Government would be living off immoral earnings?”

“They sort of are already,” said Diane.

“A lot of English prostitutes pay income tax. They face more hassle from the Inland Revenue than they do from the police.”

“Yeah, maybe you're right,” said Solomon.

“Legalise it and have done with it.”

“Legalise it and regulate it,” said Diane.

“So long as the girls aren't being forced into doing it, they'd be better off. And it'd free up more resources for the real problem areas.”

“So it's the men who are running the prostitution rings who are the problem, not the girls.”

“They're just trying to earn a living,” said Diane.

“You can't blame them. There but for the grace of God .. .”

“What do you mean?” asked her husband.

“Are you saying you'd prostitute yourself?”

“If I had no other choice? What do you think?”

“You always have a choice,” said Sean.

“That's easy to say when you're living in the UK,” she said, 'but what if I'd been born in Kosovo? What if I was thrown out of my home, my country? What if half my family had been massacred? I'm bloody lucky to have been born in England, Sean. I've had choices thrown at me throughout my whole life.

Good schools, good health care, and an economic system that works."

“But you could sleep with a stranger for money?” asked Solomon.

Diane jerked a thumb at her husband.

“I've slept with him after he's had six pints of lager and a vindaloo, and I didn't get a penny.”

Solomon laughed and Sean faked a glare at his wife.

“Come on, Jack,” said Diane.

“You must have paid for sex, right? After your divorce?”

“Thanks,” said Solomon, 'but I don't have to pay for sex."

“Everyone pays,” said Sean, raising his glass to Diane.

“One way or another.”

“And you'll pay for that remark later,” she said. She turned back to Solomon.

“Seriously, are you saying you've never paid for it?”

“Diane .. .” he protested.

“I'll take that as a yes. And you know as well as I do that paid-for sex is a massive industry here in the UK. More money is spent on prostitution in Britain than on cinema tickets.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It's a fact. I read it in the Sun.”

“Oh, it must be true then.” He laughed.

“It's an industry, and with the sort of money on offer I'm not surprised that girls are queuing up to do it.”

“You're right,” said Solomon.

“I've seen where these girls come from and their choices are limited. Kosovo is a pretty shitty place to be just now.”

“And the collapse of Yugoslavia's made our life bloody difficult,” said Diane.

“Turks, Iraqis, Iranians, even Chinese, are all flooding into the UK through the Balkans.”

“How so?” asked Solomon.

“Tens of thousand of Iranians and Turks go to Sarajevo as tourists. They don't need a visa, payback for supporting the Muslims during the war. The Chinese can get tourist visas to Serbia pretty much on demand because of the special relationship there used to be between Beijing and Belgrade, and the Serbs were in bed with Saddam Hussein for years so they get visas without any problems, too. Hardly any go home. They slip across the border into Croatia and there they buy a package to the UK.”

“Package?” queried Sean.

“A passport and transport,” said Diane.

“Sometimes legal on a scheduled flight, sometimes overland to France and then the Eurostar, sometimes hidden in the back of a truck. As soon as they get to the UK they claim asylum. We keep asking Bosnia and Serbia to tighten up their visa requirements, but why should they listen to us?”

“But the atrocities all those people who died. That was the Serbs, right?” said Sean.

The problem with explaining the situation in the Balkans was that it was so damned complicated, Solomon thought. There were no blacks and whites, just many shades of grey.

“There were atrocities on both sides,” he said.

“Muslims killed Serbs, Serbs killed Muslims. Serbs killed Croats. Croats killed Muslims. Everyone had it in for the Albanians. When Yugoslavia fell apart, there were a lot of old scores to settle.”

“So this girl, what is she?” asked Sean.

“Albanian Muslim,” answered Solomon.

“So Serbs killed her family?”

“Until I find her, I won't know for sure. But there were lots of Serbian troops on the rampage in Kosovo at that time.”

Diane motioned at her husband to open another bottle of wine.

“So, how are you going to find her?” she asked.

“Once someone is in the country, there's no real way of tracing them. Not if they're working for cash.”

“Yeah. No National Insurance number, they're not on the electoral roll, no State benefits. All the normal avenues are dead ends.”

“You're trying the police?” asked Diane.

“I've got a contact who'll run her through their computer, but if she's not here under her own name .. .”

Diane nodded sympathetically.

“You could try the clap clinics.”

“Sexual-health clinics, please,” said Sean.

“Thank you, darling,” said Diane, blowing him a kiss.

“Presumably she'll have health checks while she's here. There aren't that many clinics in London you could take her photo round, see if any of the doctors recognise her.”

“Might work,” said Solomon.

“Snag is, I'm not here officially.” He explained what had happened in Bosnia and why he'd left the country.

“Bloody hell, Jack,” she said, when he'd finished.

“You still know how to win friends and influence people, don't you?”

The next day, Solomon sat in a coffee bar in Wardour Street nursing a succession of cappuccinos until he saw Inga walking towards the alley where her flat was. She'd tied back her hair and was wearing a long leather coat, knee-length boots and a pair of sunglasses with impenetrable lenses.

Solomon hurried out of the coffee bar and caught up with her as she reached the entrance to the alley.

“Inga?” he said, touching her shoulder.

She recoiled.

“What do you want? Who are you?”

“It's David,” he said.

“I came to see you the day before yesterday.” He flashed her an open smile.

“What do you want?”

“Hey, it's okay. You remember me, don't you?”

She looked at him for several seconds, then smiled tightly.

“Okay. I remember.” She looked at her wristwatch.

“I have to go.”

“I need to talk to you.”

She pushed her sunglasses higher up her nose.

“Come and see me later. I shower and make up, then I work after midday. I am happy to see you then, okay?”

“Can I take you for a coffee? Please?”

She shook her head emphatically. Then her lips tightened she had seen something over his shoulder. He turned. Two policemen in bright yellow fluorescent jackets were walking slowly down from Oxford Street.

“You're here illegally, aren't you?” he said.

“I have passport and visa,” she said.

“But not in your real name, right?”

“Who are you?”

“I'm someone who needs your help, Inga. That's all. Just let me talk to you for a few minutes.”

He looked over his shoulder. The policemen were less than fifty feet away.

“I'm not with the police, I'm not with Immigration. I'm not here to hurt you. Five minutes, okay? And I'll pay you for your time.”

For a moment he thought she was going to turn and run down the alley, but then she nodded.

She walked with him to the coffee bar. She wanted an espresso and Solomon ordered a lemonade for himself he'd had all the caffeine he could take.

Inga was waiting for him at a table by the window, tapping her foot impatiently. She nodded curtly when he put the coffee in front of her, but made no move to drink it. He sat down next to her.

“Look, I'm sorry about this,” he said.

“You could get me into big trouble,” she murmured.

“I'm not supposed to see customers outside work.”

“Who says?”

“My boss.”

Solomon took out the photograph of Nicole and slid it across the table towards her.

“I'm looking for this girl,” he said.

She picked up the picture and studied it.

“Why? Did she steal from you?”

“No,” said Solomon.

“You said you would pay me for talking to you,” she said, putting the photograph back on the table.

Solomon gave her forty pounds.

“The man you work for, your boss. Who is he?”

She eyed him suspiciously.

“You said you were looking for a girl. Why do you want to talk about my boss?”

“Because someone brought her over from Bosnia. I thought maybe the man who brought you over might have brought her, too.”

“She is from Bosnia?” asked Inga. Picking up the photograph again.

“Kosovo,” said Solomon.

Inga's eyebrows shot up, suddenly interested.

“She is a Serb?” she asked.

“Albanian,” said Solomon.

“What about you, Inga? Where are you from?”

“Bulgaria,” said Inga.

“Did you come here from Bulgaria?”

Inga took off her sunglasses and gave him a long, hard look.

“Why do you want this girl?” she asked.

“She witnessed a crime in Kosovo.”

“So you are a policeman.”

“No, I'm not,” he said firmly.

“I work in Bosnia for a charity. I'm not interested in what's happening here in London. I just want to find this girl.”

“And she is a prostitute, the same as me?”

“I think so. Yes.”

She nodded slowly.

“I, too, was in Kosovo for a while,” she said.

“It was not a nice place.”

Solomon sipped his lemonade and waited.

“My parents died when I was small,” she said.

“I lived with an aunt but she didn't want me in her house. She was a cleaner at a hotel and had no money and two children of her own. I didn't want to live with her but I didn't have anywhere else to go.” She shrugged.

“I wanted to run away but there was nowhere I could go. Then, when I was sixteen, I met Goran. He was twenty but he said he loved me. He was the first man I went with. He said we'd always be together. That we were soul-mates.” She paused.

“He told me we could work in Macedonia, in a restaurant that a friend of his owned. He said I could help in the kitchen and work as a waitress. He said we could get a flat and live together and be happy.”

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, close to tears.

“There was no restaurant?” said Solomon.

She shook her head fiercely.

“We stayed with a friend of his. Then, after a week, he said I had to sleep with his friend because we had no money. Then there was another friend. Then another. Then he brought men to the apartment and they gave him money to sleep with me. If I said no he beat me. Then he took me to a house where there were a lot of girls and left me there. I never saw him again.”

Solomon lit a Marlboro. He offered the packet to Inga but she waved it away.

“I was there for six months. Then some men came from Kosovo. I think they were the Kosovo Liberation Army. You know them?”

Solomon said he did. They were the former anti-Serbian rebel force, and were every bit as violent as the Serbs they hated.

“We were paraded naked in front of the men, I thought it was for sex, but the man who owned the house was selling us. I was sold for two thousand dollars. Six of us were put in a van and they took us to Kosovo.”

She looked out of the window, watched the traffic crawl by.