Take Out (15 page)

‘What about girlfriends? I imagine in this kind of business the temptations must be pretty strong,’ Stevie said.

Marius manufactured a chuckle, directing his reply to Fowler. ‘Any red-blooded male would be tempted.’ He couldn’t have made a worse choice for some man-to-man bonding; Fowler’s return expression was less animated than the living statue’s they’d seen earlier in the street.

Marius touched the knot of his tie. ‘Yes, he had girlfriends, Mr Fowler,’ he said as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Most of the girls behind the bar obliged him at one time or another.’

And they probably oblige you too, you greasy toad, Stevie thought. ‘Is there one he saw more than most?’ she asked.

Marius moved as if to get up from his chair, but she put out a hand to stop him. ‘It’s okay; I’ll find her myself. Just tell me who to ask for.’

‘Her name is Rodika, she should be behind the bar now. She doubles as Jon’s secretary.’

Versatile woman.

‘Rodika,’ Fowler rolled the name on his tongue. ‘Is that a Romanian name?’

‘I believe it is, Mr Fowler.’

Stevie headed for the door.

‘Please, have a drink on me, madam,’ Marius called out.

Stevie needed something to eat before she could risk a drink. She pushed her way through the bodies on the dance floor, the sticky surface like velcro under her feet. At the circular central bar, finding no evidence of bar snacks, she plunged her hand into a bowl of nuts, which tasted like old cardboard—so much for quality control.

A bottle of water cost six dollars. She took one from the young barman and shouted above the din to chalk it up to Marius. She asked where she could find Rodika and he pointed to a woman wiping down a table next to the DJ’s set up. If Stevie had known the song blasting forth, she would never have recognised this remixed, pounding version, which burrowed deep into her chest and stayed there.

And boy was it hot. She swallowed several mouthfuls of water and began to push her way through the writhing bodies. She glanced at the people around her. It looked liked she’d chosen the wrong outfit again; never seemed to be able to get her dress style right these days. Sometimes she wished she really could pull off strappy and frills. Most of the women dancing under the flashing mirror ball wore skimpy dresses. The guys flashed luminescent smiles back, assorted bling bouncing to the beat.

She tapped the barmaid on her bony shoulder. The woman swung around with an exaggerated startle response, looked ready to plunge her dirty dishcloth into Stevie’s face. Stevie stepped back and smiled and put her palms up. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to give you a fright,’ she shouted above the music.

Rodika responded with a wide smile of relief. One of her side teeth was missing, Stevie noticed; others flashed with gold. Her hair was platinum blonde and fluffy as an exotic chicken’s, her false eyelashes long enough to bat over a wineglass.

‘I’m with the police,’ Stevie said. ‘Can we go somewhere quieter to talk?’ Rodika glanced toward the club’s entrance. ‘It’s okay,’ Stevie told her, ‘Marius said I could talk to you.’

The woman indicated the fire exit with a tilt of her feathery head.

It was blissfully cool in the stairwell, though not as quiet as Stevie had hoped. Music still pounded in her ears and chest.

‘Is this about Jon? Have you found him?’ Rodika’s English was hard to decipher, her accent guttural. Stevie thought back to the police phone log. Yes, Rodika might sound unintelligible down a bad line if the cop on the other end was harassed enough or lazy enough not to give her his complete attention.

‘No, I’m afraid we haven’t found Mr Pavel yet,’ Stevie said.

The woman let out a sigh. Stevie examined her closely in the bright light of the stairwell. Despite her trim figure and scanty clothes her age was ambiguous. The delta of creases around her eyes, the deep marionette lines of her mouth, suggested anything from a worn out thirty-five to a well-preserved fifty.

‘Were you told about the baby found abandoned in the house?’ Stevie asked.

‘Yes, poor little Joshua. I feel sorry for him. How is he?’ There was concern in her voice, even though her look remained distracted and flickering. What was she frightened of, Stevie wondered: the police? Rodika had come from a country with a history of repression; fear of the police was ingrained. But Ralph Hardegan, Marius? The same virus of fear seemed to have infected them all.

‘He’s fine now,’ Stevie said, still searching Rodika’s heavily made-up face. ‘Fully recovered and being looked after by a foster family. But he wasn’t left alone in the house as long as we first thought. It turned out that someone had been coming into the house to feed him.’ Stevie saw surprise in the woman’s features, fear still, but no evidence of guilt. ‘Would you know anything about this, Rodika? Did you feed the baby after his parents disappeared?’

Rodika shook her head and clutched at Stevie’s arm. Bordering on hysteria she said, ‘No, not me, I have nothing to do with this! I no kill Delia, I no feed the baby!’

Stevie tried to calm her down. ‘It’s okay, Rodika; no one’s accusing you of anything. If I thought you were responsible, I’d be arresting you now and taking you down to the station, wouldn’t I? Have you visited the Pavel’s home at all over the last few months?’

‘No, I never go there. Jon always keep me away from Delia, he says we separate.’

Made sense to keep the wife and mistress apart, still, Stevie didn’t trust this woman any more than she did Marius. She’d make sure to get Fowler to take her prints and see if they matched any in the Pavel house.

Rodika took a calming breath and nodded her fluffy head.

‘Were you intimate with Jon Pavel?’

‘Intimate?’ Rodika paused as if pondering the word. ‘Oh, you mean sex? Yes I had sex with him, many times,’ she said, looking down absently and pulling at her strappy top.

‘Did his wife know?’

Rodika shrugged, as if the matter was irrelevant.

‘Did you have sex with Ralph Hardegan too?’

‘They partners, they share,’ she said, still attempting to cover some cleavage.

‘Did you like Ralph as much as Jon?’

‘Lady, like don’t matter—they both arseholes. But Ralph was more, how I say, stingy. He always want something for nothing.’

‘But Jon paid you well?’

‘And give me good job. I help in his office.’

‘What about Mr Marius, do you sleep with him too?’

The woman put her hands on her hips, and looked at the concrete floor of the stairwell as if contemplating spitting on it—by the looks of the slippery surface, many already had. ‘He try, but I no have him. Maybe if he was partner I have him.’

‘He wanted to be a partner though, didn’t he?’

Rodika made talking motions with both hands. ‘Always go on and on, very jealous of Ralph I think—but you don’t tell him I say that right?’

‘Jealous enough to want to kill him?’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, Marius is a big fat coward. He would trick you, yes, but he would not kill you.’

‘Did you ever go to Thailand with Jon and Ralph?’

Rodika’s mouth turned down. ‘No, there plenty other young girls in Thailand. I have holiday when they away.’ Then her demeanour changed, as if everything she’d said and the way she had said it, had just been a tease. She clapped her dishcloth between her hands and stretched her mouth into a wide smile. ‘Now I need go back to work.’

Stevie placed her hand on the woman’s arm. ‘Just one more thing; I’ve only ever seen one picture of Jon, and it wasn’t very clear. Did he have any distinguishing features—special marks? Is there anything else important about him that you forgot to tell the police before?’

Rodika gave the matter some thought. ‘He wore big thick gold chain and matching bracelet, also big ring. I told them that.’

It figured. ‘Would you recognise the jewellery if we found it?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Anything else you can tell us about him?’

She didn’t answer straight off. Stevie waited. After some lip chewing Rodika said, ‘I always think there was something funny on his hand. He had had funny marks here.’ She pointed to the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger.’

‘What kind of marks—tattoos?’

‘Yes, tattoos I think, like little tiny dots in little tiny colours. You can hardly see them.’

This reminded Stevie of something she’d seen or read of recently, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She became aware of her heart pulsing above the thump of the music and knew that whatever it was, it was important.

‘Thank you Rodika, you’ve been very helpful.’

While Stevie had been interviewing Rodika, Fowler had been talking to the younger bar staff. Stevie met up with him on the street outside the restaurant while staff inside cleared tables and vacuumed. The restaurant had closed for the night but people still entered and exited the club through the side door.

Fowler hadn’t got anything of interest from the barmen, but like Stevie he had his suspicions about the manager. ‘We need to bring Marius into the station for a formal interview,’ he said. ‘Get both his and that Rodika woman’s prints. He’s hiding something, I’m sure of it.’

‘He’s also shit-scared, and so is the woman. That place is slippery with sleaze. I feel like I need a shower.’ They left the noise of the club and coffee district behind them and headed down the almost deserted street. ‘According to Rodika, Marius was jealous of Hardegan,’ Stevie said. ‘We saw it for ourselves in the office. Marius was very put out that Pavel chose to team up with Hardegan and not him. Rodika said he was hoping to make partner himself.’

‘But it makes sense for Pavel and Hardegan to pool their resources. What does Marius think he could bring to the equation? Could he be behind all this, wants to get his hands on the business?’

‘Pavel and Hardegan have made quite a gravy train for themselves. Money, girls...’ Stevie stopped mid-sentence and came to a halt under a streetlight.

‘What is it?’ Fowler asked.

‘According to Rodika, Pavel had a discreet tattoo, here.’ Under the light she pointed to the web of her hand. ‘It was made up of a series of coloured dots.’

‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’

‘Fresh produce ... Thailand, girls...’ Stevie thought aloud. ‘Monty’s been doing research on human trafficking for the CCC—I recently read something he’d written about the east European crime gangs.’ She rubbed her eyes as she tried to think clearly, the lateness of the hour beginning to take its toll. ‘They have tattoos like the Asian gang members, only much more subtle. You’d have to be a gang member to recognise them—often just a dot on the skin.’

‘As soon as I hear mention of these kinds of gangs, I think of that shipment of illegals found dead in the container at the Dover docks. Horrible.’ Fowler paused. ‘You think Hardegan and Pavel were in the skin trade?’

‘Rodika’s certainly not one of the vestal virgins, and I’m sure Marius takes his share of anything he can get.’ Stevie pulled at her ponytail. ‘But I reckon this might be more than straightforward prostitution—they’re old hands. Ralph and Marius wouldn’t be this scared if that was all they were up to.’

They continued their journey in near darkness to Fowler’s car, possible scenarios jostling for space in Stevie’s tired mind. The busker had gone home long ago. A salty breeze played with a discarded newspaper in the middle of the road until a hotted-up Holden growled past and squashed it flat.

‘Remember when I got locked in the Pavel’s upstairs room?’ Stevie said.

‘I won’t forget that in a hurry. Of all the stupid, interfering—’

‘Shut up and listen to me, Fowler! The room was decked out like a dormitory—no, make that a prison cell, completely self-contained with no inside doorhandle and locked safety-glass windows. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t like that because they were redecorating.’

They continued to head down the pavement, both thinking this through. Finally Fowler said, ‘People held as prisoners? You’re right, it does sound a lot more than prostitution.’

‘While it’s unlikely that Pavel would’ve been using his own place as a brothel, it could easily have been used as a halfway house for girls imported illegally into the sex industry.’

‘I didn’t think there was much of that kind of thing going on over here.’

‘That’s Monty’s argument. People seem to think it’s an Eastern States phenomenon, that it isn’t relevant to us in the west. Over here the problem tends to be more of smuggling people for illegal labour or immigration than for human trafficking. That’s why the trafficking that does happen doesn’t get the attention it should—because no one expects it.’

‘I don’t know much about this kind of thing, never had any experience with it,’ Fowler said.

A rare admittance of ignorance, Stevie guessed.

‘So what’s the difference between people smuggling and human trafficking?’ Fowler said.

There were no lights down this end of the street. They didn’t realise they’d reached Fowler’s WRX until they almost stumbled into it. Fowler unlocked the door with a beep of his key and leaned on the frame from the footpath, without getting in, waiting for Stevie’s answer. Light seeped from his car, illuminating one side of his face while the other side was cloaked in the shadow of the narrow alley.

‘Trafficking and smuggling share some characteristics,’ Stevie explained, standing with him beside the open car door, ‘but it’s the voluntariness than sets them apart. In both scenarios people are illegally taken across borders and exploited. But those who are trafficked, as opposed to smuggled, are taken against their will and used as sex slaves: women, girls, young males—’

The squeal of tyres cut Stevie off. They whirled to face the noise. A car barrelled out of the darkness towards them, headlights on full beam.

It wasn’t going to stop.

The street was narrow; the open car door took up most of its width.

‘Get in!’ Stevie yelled at Fowler who’d frozen to the spot. She gave him a shove, heard the side of his head crunch against the doorframe.

She scrambled onto the roof of Fowler’s car using the door sill as a springboard. The hurtling car slammed into the WRX, knocking it further up the curb. With a shriek of tearing metal, the door was severed like a limb.