Price to Pay, A (9 page)

‘You want me to deal with him, too? Not just break into his house and take the computer and case?’

‘He might have seen the profiles. He might have seen what’s on the computer.’

‘Eamon said he’d wiped the memory, though.’

‘He would have, wouldn’t he? It’s safer this way.’

Liam said nothing for a second or two. ‘The police don’t know about you. But they do me. I’ve got a record, Nina.’ He watched her as she took another cigarette from her pack and lit it. The ones she smoked were black. They had a funny name. Soberoni or something. ‘All I’m saying is, we’re getting out of here after this, aren’t we?’

Her pale blue eyes glittered. ‘Mmm?’

‘This guy in Brinny. That’ll be the fifth I’ve done over this – six if you include the woman living in the ground-floor flat. I can’t be in the country if the police start piecing it together. Neither of us can.’

Her shoulders dropped and her features softened. She cupped the side of his face with one hand. ‘Yes, we’ll be together soon. The money I’ll get for the two we have downstairs, that will be enough. You will love it so much where I’ll take you. There is a beach and, right behind it, the mountains. The slopes are a carpet of vineyards – you just fill up jugs at the farm. It costs almost nothing.’

Her palm and fingers on his face; they seemed to suck away his ability to speak. ‘And the beer?’ he mumbled. ‘You said that’s good.’

‘The beer?’ Her eyes almost closed. ‘So good.’

She dropped her hand and lifted her eyelids. The spell was broken. ‘But first we must finish this thing. Then we can be free.’

He nodded his agreement, so wanting to feel her touch once more.

T
hey were crowded round the table in a side briefing room. Too many men, not enough space, Iona thought, as a slightly stale smell began to permeate the air. People with coffee on their breath and shirts that had been worn for a few hours too long. She glanced at the condensation-covered window. If it wasn’t mid-winter, I’d open that as wide as it would go.

‘OK, everyone,’ Roebuck said. ‘I’m due in the super’s office in under thirty minutes. Marko, what have you got?’

A man with medium-length blond hair and a thin nose sat back. Like most fieldwork officers in the unit, there was nothing to make him stand out in a crowd. ‘All four laptops that went missing from CityPads were Dell Latitudes that had been stickered. The laptop Philip Young brought in had obviously had that sticker removed, with resulting damage to the case in its bottom-right-hand corner. We can assume, therefore, the other three laptops will be similarly disfigured.’

‘And marked with a UV pen on the inner surface of the battery compartment lid,’ Roebuck added. ‘I asked that of Shazan Quereni and he confirmed that he had personally written his company’s name on each.’

‘How did he strike you?’ Iona asked.

‘Quereni? Pissed off. A lot of important company data was on those laptops. He said several accounts had been jeopardized.’

‘Including people looking to purchase Western girls?’ Martin Everington questioned.

Roebuck hunched a shoulder. ‘Obviously, I made no mention of the profiles. But he seemed entirely unconcerned about us having one of his laptops in our possession – other than wanting to know if and when it would be returned.’

Someone gave a mocking laugh.

‘And the employee who ran?’ Iona asked.

‘Nirpal Haziq?’ Roebuck responded.

‘Yeah, how did Quereni react to that?’

‘He seemed just as surprised as the rest of us. Embarrassed, too.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Because he gave up the bloke’s file there and then, we were able to get a car to his address within minutes of Haziq doing one. No sign of him, as yet.’

‘Do we reckon him and the other one – Khaldoon what’s-his-face – are working together?’ Marko asked.

‘Can’t say at this stage,’ Roebuck replied. ‘We’ve already put a block on his bank cards. No significant sums withdrawn today. So, unless he had an exit plan in place, he won’t be going far. The entire City Centre division have him as a top priority.’ He moved that sheet of paper aside. ‘Any more on the two missing girls, Dean?’

A detective in his late thirties placed his elbows on the table. ‘Not so far. We’re still working with social services to compile a list of kids who’ve gone missing from care homes in the area.’

‘And?’

‘And because so many of them are now privately owned, it’s proving a nightmare, frankly.’

‘There’s no record kept centrally by social services?’

‘Officially, there is. But some homes are better at submitting figures than others. There’s been a lot of phoning places is all I can say at this stage.’

‘Welcome to the wonderful world of privatisation,’ Roebuck muttered. ‘I’ll need some kind of numbers for the super. What can you give me?’

Dean pulled his notes closer. ‘In the last two months, forty-six have run away from homes in the central Manchester area. Twenty-nine are back in care, seven are in custody and ten are still unaccounted for.’

‘You’re not waiting for a final list, are you?’ Roebuck stated. ‘Start looking into the ten we know are still missing now. Deal with other missing reports as they filter in, OK?’

‘Sir.’

‘Right, next on the list is the laptop handed in by Philip Young.’

‘Any luck getting past the password?’ Martin jumped in.

Iona flashed him a glance: I’d been about to ask that, she thought.

Roebuck looked across at an overweight man with a wedge of brown hair hanging low over one eye. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name.’

He nodded, clearing his throat as he did so. ‘Alan Goss.’

‘Go ahead, Alan.’

‘It’s not as easy as I’d hoped. Initially, I thought I could use OPH Crack to get in. But whoever the owner is, they’ve built in a couple of extra layers. I’ve just finished trying all the passwords provided by the employees at CityPads who were able to give them: no joy.’

‘So it must be Khaldoon’s or Nirpal’s,’ Iona stated.

‘If they’re working together, why would Khaldoon flog Nirpal’s laptop – dropping him in the shit as a result?’ Martin asked. ‘I mean, there’s something important on it, or he wouldn’t have run. To me, that suggests they’re not a team.’

Good point, Iona begrudgingly thought to herself.

‘How long before you do anticipate getting access?’ Roebuck asked Alan.

‘I’d say hours. There are a couple of things I’ve yet to try.’

‘OK, you get going.’ As the IT guy shuffled out of the room, Roebuck consulted his checklist. ‘Simon, latest from the Border Agency, please.’

‘Khaldoon and his sister, Sravanti, boarded PIA flight three-o-two to Islamabad on Monday the nineteenth. Their seats were paid for with cash and the booking requested they sit together. Sravanti is Khaldoon’s fifteen-year-old sister.’

Someone gave a low whistle.

‘We’ve made contact with the embassy in Islamabad and they’re going to try and establish where they might have gone.’

‘They’re British nationals, then?’ someone asked from over near the doors.

Simon nodded. ‘The family are from Droylesden, west of the city centre. It’s an area with quite a large ethnic community.’

‘Craig and Nigel have gone to speak with the parents,’ Roebuck stated. ‘We’ll soon know if their son and daughter left the country with their blessing. We know Khaldoon’s absence from his office is unauthorised. Has the daughter permission to be away? This trip of hers is, remember, during term-time. Anything for Khaldoon on the PNC?’

A bald man wearing a muted green tie with thin red stripes spoke. ‘Nope. Never been so much as cautioned.’

‘So, at the moment, we have an otherwise hardworking, law-abiding individual suddenly ripping off his employer and taking a morning flight to Islamabad – along with his younger sister. Something ugly is going on. Iona, you’re looking into the identity of the female student who purchased that other laptop. Progress?’

She straightened up in her seat. ‘I’ve had the posters printed and – as soon as this meeting’s over – I’ll start distributing them round the university campus. Four laptops were taken from CityPads; two of those were, we know, flogged to students. I think there’s a good chance the other two could have been, as well.’

Roebuck nodded. ‘If you need more uniforms to expedite that, I’ll try my best – we need all these things in our possession.’ He lifted his final piece of paper, a slightly sour look now on his face. ‘O’Dowd asked that I inform you about this. It’s from the CC himself.’

Chief constable, Iona thought. The very top.

‘As I mentioned earlier, establishing whether the girl called Zara was the one who blew up at the Israeli checkpoint meant contacting that country’s security services. They quickly confirmed it was and now we have their ambassador demanding that a team of agents from his country are granted full access to the investigation.’

A voice came from the back. ‘Mossad? We’ll be working with Mossad on this?’

As soon as Roebuck nodded, murmurs of excitement rippled across the room.

‘These guys,’ he added, raising his voice, ‘as I’m sure you’re all aware, do not mess around. The Israelis have years – decades – of experience in counter terrorism. All that knowledge is funnelled into Mossad. They’ve demonstrated time and again that rules don’t come into it when they want someone.’

Iona pictured her father, a lecturer in Persian Studies. She knew from reading his pieces how much he abhorred Israel’s long tradition of sending agents into other countries to execute opposition figures. Car bombs, letter bombs, shootings, poisonings. She recalled how a honey trap sprung in Britain led to the abduction of the person who’d blown the whistle on the country’s illegal nuclear programme. He’d then been shipped back to Israel, charged with treason and locked away.

‘Now,’ Roebuck continued. ‘The powers-that-be have agreed to keep the Israelis abreast of developments as they happen. But let’s not fool ourselves, Mossad will not happily sit back and wait for us to provide them with answers on this.’

A heavy-set man hunched forward, the material of his shirt taut across his shoulders. His eyes were on Roebuck. ‘They’ll be conducting a parallel investigation to ours?’

‘Put it this way: they’ll have their own leads and their own sources, I’m certain. And I’m not convinced they’ll be keeping us as closely informed as we are them.’

The man grunted dismissively. ‘So why are we showing them our cards? Bollocks to that.’

Roebuck sat back. ‘We’ll show them what we want them to see. It’s called diplomacy, Lewis. I know you rugby league players don’t have much time for it.’ He grinned.

Lewis lifted the corners of his mouth in return. ‘You don’t win matches by being nice to the opposition.’

A few people started to chuckle as the door opened. Stuart Edwards, the office manager, poked his head through the door. ‘Boss, got an urgent one. Relating to the stolen laptops.’

Roebuck’s chin came up. ‘Fire away.’

Edwards stepped fully into the room and read from the paper in his hand. ‘Report just received from a patrol car over in Rusholme. The student who brought the laptop in – Philip Young.’

Roebuck’s eyebrows lifted. ‘What about him?’

‘They think it’s his body in the flat below the one he was renting.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Officers forced the front door of the flats. Two bodies in a ground-floor flat bedroom. The female who occupied it and what appears to be Philip Young. They’ve both been bludgeoned to death.’

Iona turned to Roebuck. We shouldn’t have let him go, she wanted to say. We need to find that girl in the duffel coat. Fast.

Roebuck’s face was white. ‘Anyone arrested at the scene?’

Edwards shook his head. ‘The female – a nurse called Wendy Morgan – was engaged. Patrols are out looking for the fiancé now.’

N
ina walked down the aisle of her office. Eight women worked part time for her, the shifts of each one arranged by Nina so there were always at least three people in. A phone rang. Keyboards clicked. Business was good; what had started as a front for what she really dealt in had steadily grown. Thanks to her, it was now a viable commercial enterprise in its own right. True, not enough to sustain her large home and very comfortable lifestyle. How far she’d come! Her early years: they may as well be another person’s. She didn’t want the memories. She wished she could bleach them from her mind. She had no idea if her parents were still alive, her younger brothers and sister. She didn’t care. Her mum and dad had sold her at the age of fourteen. She didn’t know of any other girl who’d worked her way out of the brothels in the mining town of Vorkuta. Those she’d started with, she was sure, were dead by now. But she had guile as well as good looks. The owner of the brothel was soon won over. Better jobs came her way. Evenings that involved being taken to hotels in the town centre to visit men there. Men who could afford suites.

Clients started requesting her by name. Sometimes for an entire night. A few would even take her down to the hotel restaurant for a meal. It was on one such evening, while escorting an obese finance officer from a mining company, that she had been introduced to him. The one who saw that she was truly special. Sensing he could save her, she’d worked extra hard to enchant him, harder than with anyone before. And it had worked. He paid the necessary fee and took her out of the old gulag town, out of the Pechora coal basin completely.

Europe followed. England. He trusted her. No more clients: she was his. He didn’t want anyone else to touch her. Now she helped him run his business. She looked at the long thin white boxes piled neatly on the shelves. A spot of colour was stuck to each one – yellows, golds, beiges, tans, browns and blacks. So many shifting shades, the differences so subtle. But this wasn’t his business. His was the secret one. The one that involved the two young girls in the basement of the main house.

She entered her private office at the far end and closed the door. Four in the afternoon on Saturday. He was due to call. She turned on the computer, eyes moving briefly to the table where she’d so carelessly placed the laptop.