To Tell the Truth (11 page)

‘That’s a fucking understatement, Rosie. All bets are off with these people now. No more Mr Fucking Nice Guy. From what I’m reading between the lines, these people have got something to hide. Maybe O’Hara’s been getting his leg over Amy’s mum. If that’s the story, our readers will crucify them. And so they fucking should.’

‘I know,’ Rosie said, but she couldn’t help the little
pang of sorrow for them. Jenny Lennon’s world had fallen apart when her daughter disappeared, and the only thing that could be worse than that would be having to live with the fact that it was her fault. And now, she may be about to be exposed.

‘She’ll get torn apart. They both will.’

‘You bet,’ McGuire said. ‘And we’ll be leading the charge. Listen, Rosie. I’m not at all bothered that we didn’t get that story. Though a part of me wishes we could have broken the Taha story about what he saw. But it’s not solid enough, coming from a rent boy. Anyway, we’re hunting bigger fish. But we need to be on this too. Do you need a runner down there? I can send Joe Dawson to give you a hand, you know, the day-to-day press briefings and stuff? You can concentrate on the bigger picture. Carter-Smith, and that wee rent boy Toha, or whatever he’s called. Have a think, and talk to me in the morning.’ He hung up.

Rosie’s paranoia kicked in. Was McGuire losing faith because she had missed the windsurfer story? Did he think that maybe she wasn’t focused enough? Self doubt forever hovered over her shoulder.

CHAPTER 13

Besmir watched as the ferry that should have been taking him back to Algeciras disappeared into the setting sun. He drew on the last of his cigarette and flicked it into the harbour.

He bit the inside of his jaw. What the hell was he playing at? But even though he cursed himself, he felt a surge of adrenaline at the snap decision he’d made. Six months ago, no, six days ago, he would never have done anything like this. But something had changed in him, as though he’d lost the iron self control that had been the very centre of his life. He felt beads of nervous sweat under his arms at what he was about to do. He dialled the number.

‘I am here,’ he said. ‘I didn’t take the boat. Come. Meet me at the little bar on the harbour.’ He lit another cigarette and ordered a coffee and a cognac.

Besmir dialled another number and spoke to Elira. He told her he would not be taking the boat to Spain tonight as planned, and that he’d met a young lady. He was going
to relax for the night. He smiled to himself when Elira made a dirty remark. He was a good liar. She said that Leka had been phoned from Morocco and that he was pleased Besmir had made the delivery. She’d let him know he would return tomorrow. He put the fake passport in his pocket, and watched the ferry vanish on the horizon.

The driver had seen something in Besmir that he himself hadn’t known he was capable of. He had done other jobs that involved transporting kidnapped women, even girls as young as fourteen or fifteen. It was a job, nothing more. He had never kidnapped anyone before, but he delivered them to wherever Leka told him, he got paid, then he moved on. Besmir didn’t analyse what made him the man he was. To do that would be to revisit the orphanage that turned out dehumanised individuals like him as soon as they were able to fend for themselves. Sentimentality was for other people. There just
was
no sentiment for Besmir. He didn’t know what it felt like. Until now. Until this little kid kept snuggling into him. Until he’d opened the boot of his car in Algeciras and her pale, confused face stared hopefully up at him. The memory kept returning of her bright blue tearful eyes as the woman carried her out of the room. Something had changed.

Besmir hadn’t noticed the driver watching him during the journey to the port. It was only when they’d left the house after delivering the girl that the driver spoke to him.

‘Why you do this?’

They were in the car. The driver kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. Besmir looked at him, then straight ahead. But the words hung in the air.

‘Just drive.’ He rolled down the window.

They stopped in a line of traffic and the driver took a packet of cigarettes from the dashboard and handed it to Besmir. He took two out, lit them and handed him one. They drove on in silence, Besmir staring out of the windscreen. Eventually, the driver spoke.

‘They will get lot of money for the blue girl. For sex. They will sell her for sex. A lot of money.’

Besmir watched the smoke circle up from the cigarette between his fingers. He swallowed but his mouth was dry. Leka and Elira had told him the girl was for a rich childless Arab couple who wanted a British girl so they could have British blood in their family line. When you were that rich you could buy whatever genetic make-up you wanted for your future generations, Leka had told him when he gave him the kidnapping job.

‘What do you mean, for sex?’ He turned his head to look at the driver.

‘That is the way.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Everyone is for sex. It’s what they do. Girls. Boys. Women. Doesn’t matter. You did not know that?’ His expression was quizzical, mocking.

‘She is a baby,’ Besmir said, surprised at the indignation in his voice.

‘Doesn’t matter. Some men will fuck a baby. Plenty men will fuck a baby.’ He shook his head and puffed through his lips. ‘Plenty.’

‘Fuck,’ Besmir whispered under his breath as the girl’s face flashed into his mind. How stupid could he have been not to know, not even to suspect. All he’d cared about was the money.

‘Tell me what you know.’

‘How do I know you won’t kill me?’ The driver glanced nervously out of the corner of his eye.

‘If you thought I would kill you, you would have kept your mouth shut. Tell me.’

The car stopped again in the queue of traffic. The air was stifling inside and outside of the car. The driver turned to Besmir.

‘I saw you with the blue girl. You don’t look right. You tough guy, for sure, but you care about the blue girl. I can see it. Why? Is no good to do your job like that if you care. You see her every day now in your head. You see her on the day you will die. Always she will be there. You are prisoner now.’

Anger at his own naivety rushed through him. And guilt. He grabbed the driver’s arm and squeezed it, watching him wince.

‘What are you? My conscience? Are you the priest? Fuck you.’

‘Please,’ the driver said, softly. ‘I want to tell you.’

Besmir loosened his grip. He listened as the driver told his story.

The blue girl would be taken, perhaps already had been taken, to the place where they keep the young ones before they move them on. The children were mostly from Morocco and some further into Africa. Some from
Romania. Street children, abandoned, most of them. Orphans. Ones like that could disappear and nobody cared.

The kidnapped women were kept in a few houses across Tangiers and Marrakesh, and one or two outside the cities. Most of the women were eventually sold to work as prostitutes in the whorehouses in cities all across Europe. The best-looking ones were sometimes kept to be sold to the Arabs. The Arabs liked the girls from Eastern Europe and Bosnia, but especially the very light ones from Ukraine. Young teenage girls were valuable because of the men who liked children.

But the very young children were special. They were for the sex rings, and for filming. They could end up anywhere. Europe, Bangkok, anywhere. Men who liked children would pay big money for a baby. The blue girl, he said, would be moved to the broken-down farm further away while they waited until things quietened down before they moved her on. They would already have a buyer for her because she is so beautiful. There were other children there, some as young as her, some a little older. They kept them in cages. Like animals.

‘Cages?’ Besmir felt hot.

‘Yes. Cages. Is dark most of the time. They never get outside. At night you can hear them crying.’ He shook his head. ‘Is a bad sound to hear children crying in the night. Very bad. Like souls from the dead.’

‘You have seen this? You have heard this?’ Besmir watched his face for lies.

The driver nodded vigorously. ‘I am afraid. I am sad. I never tell anybody before. I have little sisters. Young twins,
and one older. I cry in case someone takes them. I am like in prison because I have seen this. I drive the car for Khalid, the fat man. That’s all I do. But I saw too much and I am trapped. One time I saw the fat man take a girl of maybe only fourteen and he fuck her.’ He shook his head. ‘He would kill me if he knew I told you this.’

‘Fuck the fat man,’ Besmir spat.

They’d been getting close to the harbour and the sound of a ship’s foghorn rose above the din of the traffic. He’d never cared before about what happened to the people he had dealt with for Leka. It didn’t matter if a drug pusher who was slow to pay needed his legs broken, or a few women had to be driven hundreds of miles to be passed onto someone else. He’d made his mind up never to ask questions or care about what happened to any of them. He had dulled himself to anyone’s stories many, many years ago. He’d got rid of corpses for Leka and he had killed people. He couldn’t have recalled any of their faces if his life depended on it. But this was different. He knew this was the beginning of the end. But he couldn’t stop himself.

They were at the harbour.

‘You can show me this? You can show me these cages?’

‘I can show you,’ the driver said. ‘But your boat is here.’

Besmir got out of the car, and walked around to the driver’s side. He leaned in the window.

‘Give me your phone number. If I don’t get the boat I will call you. You come back for me and you take me there tonight.’ It wasn’t a request.

The driver looked worried. ‘But tonight? I don’t know.’

Besmir grabbed his wrist and looked him in the eye.

‘If I call you, you will take me there tonight. You understand?’

The driver nodded. ‘I understand.’ His hands trembled as he scribbled down his telephone number on a grubby piece of paper and pushed it into Besmir’s hand.

Now Besmir sat and waited, watching the tourists drinking in the crowded bar, armed with trinkets and happy memories to take home from Morocco. They lived in a different world. At the table next to him, a middle-aged British couple got up and walked away, leaving behind an English newspaper folded on the seat. The picture caught Besmir’s eye, and he reached over and lifted the paper.

It was Daletsky’s yacht, and a picture of Daletsky along with two other men, one of whom he recognised. He read the headline slowly:

Home Secretary’s Russian Roulette

And underneath, in smaller letters:

Government rocked by revelations of Carter-Smith’s Costa del Crime junket with Russian oligarch

The report described how the government minister was pictured going on board the yacht with his old school friend, the businessman Oliver Woolard, where they spent nearly three hours. And there was a picture of them emerging with Daletsky, who had his arm around the
minister. A second story, with a picture of Daletsky looking younger, gave an account of his life story with the word ‘gangster’ in nearly every paragraph.

Besmir glanced around at the British tourists, and allowed himself a wry smile. He had never met Carter-Smith, but he knew he was one of the VIPs who used the rent boys. He favoured the skinny little Moroccan faggot Taha, who Besmir felt sorry for because he’d once witnessed a pimp beating the kid up for turning up late for his appointment with a VIP. Taha had only been in Spain for a few weeks at the time and didn’t know his way around the various apartments his pimp used for what he called his special clients. Besmir had to give the boy some wet towels to clean up the blood from his face. He’d told him sharply to stop crying, and that if he didn’t toughen up he might as well take the ferry back to his mother in Morocco.

He imagined the crap that would be flying around right at this minute with Daletsky and Leka. He was glad he’d decided not to go back. At least for now.

He saw the car pull in. He got up, stuffing the newspaper under his arm, and walked towards it.

‘Come,’ the driver said. ‘We have a way to drive and is not easy to find in the dark.’

CHAPTER 14

‘I know. I hear what you’re saying, Mick.’ Rosie paced the floor of her hotel bedroom, the mobile phone pressed to her ear. ‘But we can’t
make
them admit it. Going in there like attack dogs and suggesting anything untoward at a time like this won’t get us anywhere.’

She walked out onto the terrace and listened to McGuire ranting on. No matter how she protested, she’d have to doorstep either Jenny Lennon or Jamie O’Hara. Someone was telling porkies, McGuire fumed, and he hated people trying to pull the wool over his eyes.

The day’s front pages had been full of the follow-up to Andy’s story about the windsurfer spotting a man with yellow shorts going into the Lennon house on the morning Amy disappeared. The press pack had descended on the windsurfer’s home first thing to get their own version of what had left them bare-arsed because of Andy’s exclusive.

The windsurfer had stuck steadfastly to his story and Rosie saw no reason to doubt him, even if he did admit
to smoking cannabis the night before he’d gone to the beach. That admission alone had given O’Hara and Jenny Lennon a lifeline. They blatantly denied his story. They’d rubbished it in a statement they released after the Guarda Civil had interviewed them separately at the police station when the story broke.

Rosie had been with the rest of the press and the growing crowd when Jenny was driven to the police station by one of their friends. There was no sign of her husband. Regardless of whether she was lying or not, it was uncomfortable to watch her as she ran the gauntlet of rage from the righteous locals who had turned up to judge her. The Spanish news had been buzzing all day about the story that police were quizzing the mother and the friend about their statements, following the windsurfer’s revelations. Even though there was no evidence that anything had been going on between O’Hara and Jenny, it was looking like they’d lied – and that was enough to damn them. The locals had already made up their minds, and they shouted abuse at Jenny as she walked the narrow, cobbled street into the police station. Rosie cringed when someone shouted, ‘Whore!’