Deadly Terror (Detective Zoe Finch Book 4)

by Rachel McLean

  “Worth a try.”

  “Yeah.” She eyed him. How many people had known they were coming here? How many knew they’d traced Kyle Gatiss here?

  Gatiss might have seen them. There had been a roomful of people in the briefing this morning. One of whom might have planted the evidence at the airport…

  Zoe watched Ian as they passed through the downstairs rooms. He didn’t seem nervous or guilty. She knew he had to maintain his cover while he was working for Carl, that he’d have to convince Hamm and his associates that he was bent. But this…?

  “I’m going to take the other side of this floor,” she said. “See if there are any more offices past that sitting room.”

  Ian nodded and Zoe walked out of the room. As she turned into the dingy hallway, she spotted movement further along. Someone was going into the sitting room they’d been trapped in.

  Zoe looked back at Ian.

  “Ian,” she hissed. She gestured for him to follow her, and crept along the hallway. The door to the sitting room was open.

  “Who was it?” Ian whispered.

  “A woman,” she replied. She raised a finger to her lips.

  Zoe slid round the doorway, one arm raised in front of her and the other hand hovering near the handcuffs on her belt. A woman was stood at the other side of the room, looking away from her.

  “Police,” Zoe said. “Stay where you are.”

  The woman turned to her. She was young, with smooth dark hair. She wore a white cashmere coat.

  “Do not hurt me,” she said. She had an Eastern European accent. “I am looking for Andreea.”

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  The woman stared back at Zoe, her face pale. It was the woman she’d seen being shoved into the Mercedes by Kyle Gatiss. She smelled of expensive perfume and her hair was neatly styled. She didn’t belong in a place like this.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” Zoe asked.

  The woman stared at her. “I do nothing wrong.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “No. I look for sister.”

  “Your sister? Does she live here?”

  The woman shrugged. “I think so.” She backed away from Zoe, her eyes wide.

  Zoe took a shaky breath. “Slow down. I’m not going to hurt you.” The woman looked terrified. She pushed her hair back and Zoe noticed a bruise on her wrist. “Tell me your name and your sister’s name.”

  “My name is Sofia Pichler. I am looking for Andreea, my sister. She took children.”

  “What children?

  “Children, from airport.”

  Zoe looked back at Ian. He frowned at the woman.

  “You know about the children at the airport?” Zoe said.

  The woman shrugged. “I know they disappear. They say Andreea took them.”

  “From here?”

  The woman nodded.

  “Do you know where she took them?”

  The woman backed away again. Zoe put her hands by her side. “I’m not going to hurt you. You can relax.”

  “You arrest me?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you’ve broken the law.”

  The woman gasped. “I help, with children. Is that broken the law?”

  Zoe looked at the woman. She seemed innocent enough, with her immaculate hair and clothes. But it could be a front. For all Zoe knew, this woman could be running the operation.

  Zoe took a step forward. “I’ll need to take you to the police station,” she said. “You’ll be questioned about the brothel that’s been operating from this building, and the missing children.”

  “You arrest me?”

  “No. But you will be under caution.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “We’ll get you an interpreter.”

  Zoe looked round. Ian had gone, and that was enough to have her worrying about what he might be doing. She motioned to the woman to sit down. “Wait here.”

  “I need to find Andreea. She is in danger.”

  “Why do you think she’s in danger?”

  “Because she took children. They will be looking for her.”

  “Who will be looking for her?”

  A shrug. “Men.”

  Zoe sighed. “Sit there.”

  She left the room and closed the door. In the corridor, she called for Ian. He emerged from a room at the back of the building.

  “This woman’s going to have to be taken to Harborne,” she said. “I can’t get any sense out of her.”

  “You’ll want to see this,” Ian replied.

  Zoe’s hand was on the doorknob. She knew that if she left the woman, she would escape. In search of her sister.

  “Bring it here,” she said.

  Ian twisted his lips in annoyance then disappeared into the room. He returned with an A4 brown envelope.

  Zoe took it off him. It was full of passports. She clenched her fists, her head light.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “They’re all Romanian,” he said. “Women.”

  Zoe searched through them. Sofia Pichler, the woman had said. No sign of a passport for her here. But there was an Andreea Pichler. She glowered at the camera, her eyes almost obscured by tousled black hair.

  “We need to find these women,” she breathed. Ian nodded.

  “Stay here.” She put a hand on his arm. She wasn’t letting him out of her sight.

  She took out her phone again.

  “Amanda, put out a call. We need a squad car to take a witness to Harborne nick. Sofia Pichler. Tell DCI Clarke, she’ll need to be interviewed as soon as she arrives.”

  “The car is four minutes away, ma’am.”

  “Good.” Zoe clutched the passports under her arm. “Ian, come with me.”

  Chapter Eighty

  Zoe watched the two uniformed officers bundle Sofia into the squad car. Ian stood next to her.

  “Right,” she said as the car pulled away. “We need to find her sister. And those kids.”

  “And all the other women who’ve disappeared.”

  “How many of them are there?” she said. “Judging by the contents of this envelope, at least twenty women. And there were seven children missing. They can’t be all that hard to miss.”

  She walked to her car and turned back to Ian. “Come with me.”

  “I’ll take my car, we can cover more ground.”

  “No, we go together.”

  “Boss, I think it’s best if—”

  “Just get in my car, Ian,” she replied in a tone that brooked no dissent. In just the few minutes he’d spent without her in the hotel, she’d wondered what he was getting up to and how much damage he might be doing. She wasn’t taking any more risks.

  He slid into the passenger seat and buckled up. “That means leaving my car here.”

  “You can get a lift back later.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Right,” she said. “We’ve got two groups of people. The children are the priority.”

  She started the car, waiting for a familiar VW Polo to enter the driveway before moving off.

  She wound down her window.

  “Adi.”

  “Zoe, good to see you.”

  “You too, Adi. Start with the office to the right of the front door. There’s another one at the back. We need documents proving they were trafficking women from Romania. And check prints for a match with that handbag.”

  “Will do.” He closed his window and parked.

  She hit hands-free on her phone.

  “Rhodri, I need you to keep in contact with control. Tell me if anyone spots a group of women or a single woman with seven children, in the Hall Green area.”

  “Are they already looking?”

  “They are.”

  “Righto.”

  “Thanks.”

  She looked at Ian. “Where would you go, if you were her?”

  “The airport?”

  “You think she’ll eve
n know where it is?”

  “It’s well signposted when you get onto the main roads.”

  “She won’t have transport. Road signs won’t be relevant.”

  “She might be walking.”

  “With bunch of kids? It’s seven miles to the airport.”

  “If that’s where she’s going.”

  Zoe sat back in her seat. She dragged her fingers through her hair. “Think.”

  She pulled herself upright and headed for the road. “Let’s start driving anyway. No use sitting here.”

  She waited as a bus passed, buffeting the car. She turned to Ian.

  “She’ll have got a bus. Find out where that one goes.”

  “The number six.” He got his phone out. “Into Solihull.”

  “Where there’s a terminal. Buses to the airport.”

  “You think she had the money?”

  “She could have stolen it.” Zoe swallowed. “She could have earned it.”

  “OK. Follow that bus, then.”

  “Too slow.” Zoe pulled out into the road and overtook the bus, forcing a car coming the other way to swerve. The driver honked the horn at them.

  “I’ll put the lights on,” she said. The cars in front moved out of the way.

  “Right,” she told Ian. “You keep your eyes on the pavements, in case she is on foot. And if we spot a bus, we stop it.”

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Mo was starting to feel like he’d knocked on every door in Birmingham, and now it was getting dark. He stamped his cold feet on the ground as Fran rang the doorbell of their eleventh target. It was a wide bungalow with garden gnomes adorning the front path and a Neighbourhood Watch sticker in the front window.

  A man in his sixties answered the door, arm encased in an oven glove. Mo could smell roasting meat. He held up his warrant card.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir, my name’s DS Uddin and this is DC Kowalczyk. We’re speaking to people who might have seen anyone leaving the airport on Saturday evening, after the explosion.”

  The man sucked his teeth. “Nasty business, all that. Traumatised my dogs.”

  Mo nodded. “We believe two vans left the airport by a gate further along Elmdon Lane” – he pointed in the general direction – “and we’re hoping someone might have seen them. I know you’ll already have been asked if you have CCTV on your house.”

  “I don’t know anything about CCTV,” the man said. “But I did watch the whole thing.” He met Mo’s gaze. “Just wanted to know what was going on. So I could look after my dogs. Not being voyeuristic, or anything.”

  Mo smiled. “Of course not. We’d be grateful if you could tell us what you saw, Mr…”

  The man sniffed. “The name’s Eccleston. Come on in, it’s bloody freezing out there, if you’ll excuse my French.”

  “Thank you.” Mo exchanged glances with Fran. He hoped this wouldn’t take too long.

  The man led them into a sitting room at the front of the house with two brown sofas that had suffered considerable dog damage. A chocolate Labrador lay curled up on one of them.

  The man ruffled the dog’s ears. “Saw the whole thing, I did. Horrible business. I took photos too. D’you want to see them?”

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Connie peered over the computer screens at Rhodri. “Everything OK?”

  “The boss is at the hotel with the sarge. Asked me to talk to control, check if they’ve tracked down the women and kids.”

  “They’re not at the hotel?”

  “They buggered off, apparently.”

  “There are some nasty bastards out there.”

  Rhodri blew out and a lock of hair bobbed in front of his face. “Yeah.” He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “It’s frustrating, being stuck here.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “They need us following up evidence, talking to other units.”

  He grimaced. “Dogsbody work.”

  “Don’t go doing anything daft, Rhod.”

  “I won’t.” He sighed. “Better make the call. Tell you what, I’ll walk down there.”

  She smiled. “You do that. I’m just checking some prints.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “That woman that just came in, the Romanian one. See if she’s on the database.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Police work isn’t always fun, Rhod.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Back in a tick.”

  Connie watched him leave the room, then returned to her screen. She was checking to see if there was a record of the woman in the HOLMES database, and if she might be associated with the organised crime group DS Uddin had been investigating.

  So far, there was nothing.

  A thought hit her. She switched to another part of the system. She ran an analysis, then stared at the screen, her fists clenched.

  She picked up the phone to call the boss just as the door opened.

  She straightened in her chair. “Ma’am.”

  “Oh do sit down, Connie. I need to sit down too.” DCI Clarke sat at Rhodri’s desk and rubbed her eyes. She was pale.

  “Are you alright, ma’am?”

  “I’m bloody tickety-boo. Why does everyone keep asking after my health?”

  Connie opened her mouth to answer, then thought better of it.

  “Right,” said the DCI. She stood up. “Come with me. You’re going to help me interview Sofia Pichler.”

  “Me, ma’am?”

  “Yes, you. Zoe and Ian are out, and I trust you. Your colleague is nowhere to be seen, so you drew the short straw.”

  Connie brushed crumbs off her trousers and stood up. Rhodri was going to hate her. “I’ve just discovered something that might be useful when you’re interviewing her, ma’am.”

  “When we’re interviewing her, you mean. What’s that?”

  “Her fingerprints. They match the ones we found on the bag that was dropped at the airport.”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Zoe drove as fast as she could without making it impossible for Ian to scan the pavements. There were no buses.

  “They don’t run very often, do they?” she said as they squeezed through a traffic jam that was bunching up to give them a way through.

  “I think we’re off the route,” he replied. “Haven’t seen a bus stop for a bit.”

  “Damn. Tell me how to get back on it.”

  “Will do.” He held up his phone, the other hand on the doorframe to steady himself as she jerked out of a bottleneck.

  Her phone rang.

  “DI Finch.”

  “Boss, it’s Rhodri. I’ve got something from Control.”

  “Go on.”

  “A commotion’s been reported in Solihull. At the bus interchange.”

  “What kind of commotion?”

  “Someone trying to get a bunch of kids onto a bus without paying, boss. A fight’s broken out.”

  Zoe thumped the steering wheel. “A fight?”

  “The person trying to get onto the bus is Eastern European. Someone decided to have a go at her.”

  “Where’s the interchange?”

  “By the rail station. Station Approach.”

  “Thanks.” She turned to Ian. “Get directions.” He nodded and peered into his phone. “Quickly,” she snapped.

  “Er…” said Rhodri.

  “What else?” Zoe asked, speeding past a line of cars that was pulling onto the pavement for her.

  “Connie’s disappeared.”

  “What? She’s probably gone to the loo.”

  “She’s not in there. Apparently.”

  “OK.” Zoe clutched the steering wheel. The last time Connie had gone AWOL had been during the search for her brother Zaf. She’d joined forces with Nicholas and hacked his attacker’s social media accounts.

  But that time, she’d been told to go home by Ian.

  “She’ll be back soon,” Zoe said. “It’s not like Connie to disappear in the middle of a job.”

  She caugh
t Ian’s raised eyebrow and gripped the wheel tighter. Shut up.

  “OK, Rhod. Just keep in contact with Control. Tell me if anything else comes up. What was Connie working on?”

  “Hang on.” There was a pause. “Fingerprints, boss.”

  “Whose?”

  “The woman you found at the hotel. Sofia Pichler. From what I can see on Connie’s monitor, her prints match that bag. The one at the airport.”

  Zoe grinned at Ian. “That links the Belvista to both attacks. Rhod, we need to find out everything we can about the Hotel Belvista. Who owns it, who’s been staying there. Talk to Adi. Make sure he’s keeping any documents that have been left behind. We want a paper trail on that place.”

  Zoe smiled. She liked paper trails. Lesley liked procedure, and Zoe liked to winkle out evidence hidden in accounting documents and contracts.

  She slowed as they approached the station. She remembered something. “Rhodri. Are you still there?”

  “Still here, boss.”

  “Ask Adi to check the phone in the hotel’s office. Dial 1471, find out the last incoming caller.”

  They’d cleared the place out, which meant they’d been tipped off.

  “There she is,” said Ian. A crowd of people had spilled off a bus and into the road, a spiky-haired woman at the centre. Two uniformed officers approached her. “Come on.” He grabbed his door handle.

  “And check the number you get against phone records,” Zoe told Rhodri. “See if you can match it.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Connie slid into the interview room behind the DCI, trying to project confidence. She’d done this with the sarge and the DI before. She knew how to handle herself in an interview.

  But the DCI was in an even more prickly mood than usual, and Connie was wishing someone else had been there when she’d walked into the office.

  The woman sat alone on the other side of the table. The DCI nodded at her. The woman sniffed. She had shiny, almost-black hair and dark brown eyes that were rimmed with red.

  “Please, have you found my sister?” she asked.