Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery) (38 page)

‘Garskill Farm?’

‘She didn’t know what it was called. I just thought, with the murder and all . . . well, there might be a link of some sort.’

‘Excellent thinking, PC Lyttleton. Good work. We’ll make a detective of you yet. Where is she now?’

‘Well, ma’am,’ said Lyttleton, scratching his head. ‘She was bit, erm, aromatic, if you catch my drift, rather ripe, so I took her down to the custody suite and got WPC Bosworth to show her to the showers and fix her up with one of those disposable Elvis suits.’

Annie smiled. He meant the coveralls they gave to prisoners while their clothes were being examined for trace evidence. A bit of embroidery in the right places and they might look a bit like the jumpsuits Elvis Presley wore in his Las Vegas shows. The basement had been modernised recently, and there were decent shower facilities for the use of anyone being held there. Letting the girl use them was stretching it a bit, but if Lyttleton was right, it beat sitting in a small warm room with her as she was. ‘Did you arrest her? Charge her?’

‘No. Not yet. I thought I—’

‘Well done, lad.’ She thought of the starving girl, set the vestiges of her vegetarianism aside, put some money on the table and said, ‘Go and get her a Big Mac, large fries and a Coke, will you, and get someone to send DS Stefan Nowak over from next door, if he’s not too busy. I know he speaks Polish.’

‘Yes, ma’am. What shall I—’

‘When she’s finished with the shower, take her up to interview room two and let her eat there. Try to put her at ease. Tell her she’s nothing to be frightened of.’

‘She doesn’t understand English, ma’am.’

‘Do your best, Constable. A kind smile and gentle tone go a long way.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Interview room two was no different from any of the others, except that it had a viewing room beside it, with a one-way mirror. Annie wanted to see what sort of shape the girl was in before Stefan arrived, so she installed herself in the tiny room and waited there.

The girl was shown into the interview room. A lost, pathetic figure in the overlarge jumpsuit, small and frail, skinny as a rail, clearly scared, wide-eyed, starving and exhausted, damp brown hair clinging to her cheeks and neck, she seemed no older than fourteen, though Annie estimated she was probably eighteen or more. When the door closed and the girl thought she was alone, she flicked her eyes around the room as if checking for monsters in the corners, and then just sat there and started to cry. It made Annie want to cry herself, it was so bloody heartbreaking. Just a frightened, hungry kid, and there was no one here to comfort her, to hold her and tell her that she was loved and everything would be all right. You didn’t have to be a
Guardian
reader to raise a tear or two for that predicament.

Lyttleton entered the interview room and handed over a McDonald’s package. Before Annie even had the chance to feel guilty and wish she’d sent her a salad sandwich or a tofu burger instead, the girl fell on it and ripped off the wrapping paper. Annie had never seen anything quite like it, but it reminded her of one of those nature shows on BBC with David Attenborough. In a matter of moments, burger, fries and Coke were gone. Lyttleton had been decent enough to leave her alone to eat – he must have suspected it would not be a pretty sight – and Annie now felt guilty that she had been riveted to the spot by such a personal degradation as someone eating like there’s no tomorrow. She felt like a voyeur, or a participant in a sick reality TV show.

When the girl had finished, she carefully picked up all the scattered wrapping paper and put it in the wastepaper basket, then she used one of the serviettes to wipe the table where it was stained with grease or ketchup. Christ, Annie thought.

A few moments later, DS Stefan Nowak arrived in the viewing room. Annie explained the situation. ‘Can you help?’ she asked him.

Nowak looked through the one-way mirror at the girl. ‘I can speak the language, if that’s what you mean. I’m not a translator, though. It’s a special skill I don’t have.’

‘This isn’t official,’ Annie said. ‘We’ll get a statement and all the rest the correct way later. Right now, I need information.’

‘Does AC Gervaise know?’

‘I’m sure she would agree if she were here.’

Stefan grinned and held up his hands. ‘OK, OK. Only asking. Come on, then. Let’s have at it.’

The room still smelled of McDonald’s, and it made Annie feel slightly queasy. Fish and chicken she could handle, but she always avoided red meat. The girl jumped up when they entered, but she stopped short of running away and curling up in the corner. Instead, she regarded them sullenly and fearfully and sat down again slowly. She had a sulky, downturned mouth, lips quivering on the verge of tears and dark chocolate eyes. Her fingernails were badly bitten down, some showing traces of blood around the edges. All in all, she was probably a very pretty girl under normal circumstances, Annie thought, whenever she was lucky enough to experience them.

‘Could you ask her name, please, Stefan?’ Annie said.

A brief conversation followed. ‘She says it’s Krystyna,’ Nowak said. ‘After her grandmother. She wants to know when you are going to let her go and what she is accused of doing.’

‘Tell her she’s got nothing to be afraid of,’ Annie said. ‘I just want to ask her a few questions, and then we’ll see what we can do to help her.’

Nowak translated. Lyttleton came in with a pot of hot coffee and three styrofoam cups, powdered milk and artificial sweetener. Annie guessed the girl might crave real sugar, but then she’d just had a large Coke. It was a wonder she wasn’t bouncing off the walls.

‘Ask her how old she is,’ Annie said.

Stefan talked with Krystyna and said, ‘Nineteen in July.’

She’s of age, then, Annie thought. Though of age for what, she didn’t know. For the life she had been leading? ‘Where does she come from?’

Nowak spoke to Krystyna, and the answer came slowly, hesitantly.

‘She from a small town in Silesia,’ he said. ‘Pyskowice. Industrial. Coal mining.’ He paused. ‘She . . . I mean, she doesn’t speak very good . . . Her Polish is very . . . provincial. She’s not well educated.’

‘Spare us the Polish class distinctions, Stefan. Just do the best you can, OK?’

Nowak’s eyes narrowed. ‘OK.’

Annie had always thought Stefan could be a bit of a stuck-up elitist prick at times. He was well educated and probably descended from some Polish royal family. Maybe he was a prince. She’d heard there were a lot of Polish princes about. Maybe it was a good line for getting laid. Stefan did all right in that department, she’d heard. She wondered if a line like that would have worked on Rachel, with her dreams of wealth and opulence. Then she got back to the matter at hand. ‘Ask her why she came here.’

Annie watched Stefan translate. Krystyna’s expression turned from puzzlement to surprise.

‘For a better life,’ was the answer Stefan translated. There was no irony in Krystyna’s voice or her expression. ‘Why do they all think we owe them a better life?’ Stefan added.

Annie ignored him and paused for a moment, then asked, ‘Where was the farm she lived on?’

‘In a wild place,’ came the answer. ‘There was nothing to do. No shops. No movies. No television.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Cold. The roof leaked. The garden was all overgrown with weeds and nettles. There was no proper place to wash and no real toilet.’

‘It sounds like Garskill to me,’ Annie said. ‘Can you ask her when and why she left?’

‘Wednesday morning,’ the answer came. ‘They were all told to pack up their belongings – not that they had any, apparently – and that they wouldn’t be coming back there after work.’

‘Where was she working?’

Nowak and Krystyna conferred for a while, then he said, ‘A yeast factory. There was a sign outside that said “Varley’s” she said. I think I know the place. They make yeast products for animal feed and for prisoners, diet supplement pills and suchlike.’

‘A yeast factory? Sounds bloody awful,’ said Annie. ‘How did she end up living at Garskill Farm and working there?’

This time the conversation in Polish was longer, with a clearly frustrated Nowak asking for more repetitions and clarifications. Finally he turned to Annie and straightened his tie. ‘She went to Katowice, the nearest large town, but there were no agencies there, so she went to Krakow and found someone who took her money and gave her an address in Bradford. I think she said Bradford. It was all phony, of course. These people are so gullible. Anyway, she ended up at the farm with about twenty other hopefuls doing a variety of rubbish jobs until they found somewhere to place her permanently, or so they said. And they kept most of her earnings back for bed and board and to pay off her debt to the agency.’

It was a familiar story. Annie looked sympathetically towards Krystyna. ‘Where is this yeast factory?’ she asked Nowak.

‘Northern edge of Eastvale. That old industrial estate.’

‘Ask her why they had to leave.’ She thought she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear Krystyna’s version, nonetheless.

‘A man came to the farm in the morning,’ Nowak said a while later. ‘Different man. She hadn’t seen him before. He came in a dark green car. A shiny car, I think she said. It looked new. The other two men, the regular ones who drove them to their jobs and back in the white van, seemed frightened of him. He told everyone to pack up, that they wouldn’t be coming back tonight. That was it. She didn’t mind so much because she didn’t like living there. Apart from everything else, men kept trying to mess with her. That’s what she said.’

‘What language did this man speak?’

‘English,’ Stefan translated. ‘At least, she thinks it was English. She actually does know a few words. And then someone translated for the workers who couldn’t understand.’

‘Did he have an accent of any kind?’

Annie saw Krystyna shake her head before answering. ‘She doesn’t know. She couldn’t understand much. She’d hardly be likely to know if he had a Scottish accent or something.’

‘Can you describe this man?’ Annie asked Krystyna. Nowak translated.

Krystyna nodded.

‘Excellent. We’ll see if we can rustle up a sketch artist after our little talk. If the worst comes to the worst, I can always have a go at it myself.’

‘Do you want me to translate that?’

‘No. Don’t bother,’ Annie said. ‘Ask her what happened next.’

Nowak asked Krystyna and translated her reply. ‘They all piled into the van as usual. All except for Mihkel. They held him back. He had told her his name was Mihkel. He was from Estonia. She liked him. He was nice to her, and he didn’t . . . you know . . . want anything.’ Stefan cleared his throat. ‘Some of the men tried to touch her at night. They were very crude. Apparently, there were two couples at the farm, and everyone could hear them when they made love, however quiet they tried to be. These men imitated them, made funny animal sounds and laughed. Mihkel protected her and her friend Ewa. She would like to see her friend Ewa again. She is sorry for leaving her, but she was scared.’

‘That’s probably how Mihkel gave himself away, the poor bastard,’ Annie said. ‘Being nice to people and asking too many questions. At least one of the men in the work gang was probably a plant for the other side. Don’t translate that. Did she ever see Mihkel again?’

‘No,’ said Nowak after another brief exchange. ‘They were taken to work, as usual. She was to be picked up outside the factory at six o’clock, but she says she got out early and ran away.’

‘Why?’

Krystyna seemed confused when Stefan translated the question. She muttered a few words. ‘She doesn’t really know,’ he said. ‘She was unhappy at the farm. She thought she would not see Mihkel again, and the new place would be worse.’

‘Was there anything else?’ Annie pressed.

After a while, Krystyna cried and told Stefan that the regular van driver had been pressing her to sleep with him, and that he wanted her to go on the streets to make more money. He said she could earn money very well that way and pay off her debts in no time, but she didn’t want to do it. She ran away.

Annie found some tissues in her bag and handed them to Krystyna, who thanked her politely in Polish. Even though she had nothing, Annie thought, Krystyna had chosen to flee the work gang rather than stay there and suffer their mauling and end up deeper and deeper in debt, trawling the streets for prospective clients. What had she thought would happen to her, on the run, alone in a strange country? She had been desperate enough not to care. ‘Do you know where they are now, the others?’ she asked.

When she understood Stefan’s translation, Krystyna shook her head. Then she spoke again.

‘She doesn’t know where they were taken,’ Nowak explained. ‘She’s been in Eastvale ever since. She walked from the factory. She has no food or money. Since then she’s been living on the streets, sleeping in shop doorways and alleys.’

Krystyna spoke again. A question, this time.

‘She wants to know if she can have a cigarette,’ Nowak said.

‘Afraid not,’ Annie replied. ‘But tell her I’ll buy her a whole packet when we’ve finished in here.’

Krystyna merely nodded at that.

‘She says Mihkel asked her about herself,’ Annie went on. ‘Did they talk much? How did they communicate?’