For Richer, For Poorer

by Kerry Wilkinson

  Jessica interjected: ‘This is the problem when you want to do something as simple as pay for a quick you-know-what. In some countries, it’s either illegal or it’s not – over here, some things are fine, others are going to leave you wound up in here. Your biggest problem is that it’s unclear if the girl you gave forty quid to – Ana – is doing that job by choice, or if she has someone controlling her and taking her money. At this exact time, it’s not easy getting that information but if it turns out she’s being forced to do that job, then you, my friend, are in some serious shite.’

  Leon slumped forward, cradling his head in his hands. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Unfortunately for you, that no longer matters. You’re supposed to do the asking: “All right, love – here’s forty quid. Oh and by the way, you are doing this by choice, aren’t you?”’

  He started to sob. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘For a start, you tell me everything about how you found out about Ana, then you’ll be bailed awaiting further statements from Ana and anyone else we can get our hands on. At some point we’ll be back in contact.’

  ‘Do I have to tell people?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring but then he could have taken it off.

  ‘I’m sure you want to get out of here, so let’s start with Ana – how did you know she was there?’

  Leon spoke between coughed sobs. ‘There’s this Internet site – you need a password.’

  Jessica slid a pad and pen across the desk for him to write it down. When he was finished, she took it away again. ‘What’s on the site?’

  ‘It’s a list of everywhere in Manchester where you can find girls. Prices, services and then ratings.’

  ‘Who runs it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some bloke at the football mentioned it once – I don’t know his name – you need to have your registration approved and then it’s all there.’

  ‘And Ana was listed on there?’

  ‘Yeah, she seemed all right.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Leon looked up from his hands to the solicitor, clearly not wanting to answer. ‘Cooperation will get you everywhere here, Leon.’

  ‘She had a few good reports, y’know – from other lads. Plus she wasn’t too expensive, so I called her . . .’

  Jessica listened to the rest but it was more or less as she’d expected. In some ways, she felt sorry for Leon but there was little his solicitor – or anyone – could do for him. There was no doubt what he was paying for, the only issue was whether Ana was under the control of someone else. Arguing he didn’t know would do him no good because of the way the law was worded. It was one of the few areas where Jessica didn’t know where she stood. For Ana, being thrown into a flat, being monitored from the outside and having to give away the money was awful. For Leon, he had simply chosen the wrong girl and not asked the question that no one, realistically, was going to ask. From his point of view, he’d given money to a woman in a flat where there were no obvious signs she was under anyone else’s orders. There were no winners.

  When Jessica was done, she sent him back to the cells while bail was sorted out and then went to make a phone call she always hated. Serious Crime Division were in charge of investigating vice issues around Greater Manchester – and if she was going to do anything further, she would have to talk to them first.

  32

  The Crown and Anchor pub sat on the edge of a patch of wasteland that had once been a block of flats. Abandoned by the council, the flats had been imploded a few years ago, much to the delight of everyone who had lived in their shadow for so long. The remains were cleared and then the site was promptly ignored. Aside from flimsy wire fences that wouldn’t stop a child climbing over, there was little else other than a vast area of mud and random piles of rubble.

  The fact its surroundings were so open made surveillance of the Crown and Anchor and its adjacent disintegrating car park increasingly awkward. In case the text message Pavel had received did mean eleven in the morning, they’d had people holed up since first thing that day. Jessica had opted for the late shift, knowing that whoever had been planning things was unlikely to work under the non-existent cover of daylight.

  By nightfall, Jessica was sitting in the back of an unmarked police van around the corner from the pub. A hidden camera on the top of the vehicle gave them a view of half the car park, while two other vans on the side roads allowed them to see approaching vehicles. It wasn’t the best set-up but given the lack of time they’d had to put everything together, it wasn’t too bad.

  Ana had been moved into protective custody, her flat cleared of surveillance devices and Sam – slightly to Jessica’s disappointment – had moved back into her own flat.

  Given the choice of switching shifts to enjoy the action, Archie had jumped at the chance and was sitting next to the monitors as they watched nothing happen outside the pub.

  ‘How do we know your man’s not already inside?’ he asked.

  ‘If Pavel’s hiding in a room upstairs and has been for the past week then we don’t know. If nothing happens tonight, we might look for a warrant anyway based upon Ana saying it was this place and Katerina’s expertise in the area. If he shows up in the main part of the pub, we’ve got a pair inside. They’re apparently keeping their heads down and simply watching, which means they’re almost certainly sticking out like a pair of nuns in there. Hopefully it won’t get that far – the moment anyone sees Pavel, we’ve got those other two vans full of blokes with MP4s ready to cart him off.’

  ‘What if he brings a gun and starts a shootout?’

  Jessica frowned at him. ‘Don’t be a dick, Arch. Stop tempting fate.’

  ‘I was just saying.’

  ‘Well, don’t. Say nice things – “What if he turns up with a super soaker? Have we got enough towels?”’

  One of the other officers who definitely wasn’t listening in to their conversation sniggered.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jessica continued, ‘how have my friends at the SCD been treating you?’

  ‘Like they’ve just shat me out.’

  ‘That’s how they treat everyone. Are they at least cooperating?’

  ‘Only in the sense they’ve sent all the paperwork our way. We’ve been working our balls off today to go through everything.’

  ‘You didn’t have to hang around this evening.’

  ‘Aye, well, didn’t want to miss a good ruck, did I?’

  Jessica had spent most of the day liaising between the Serious Crime Division’s vice team, the superintendent and DCI Topper. When she wasn’t doing that, she’d been talking to the Tactical Operations team about how their day-long surveillance of the pub had gone.

  ‘The guy at the SCD said they’ve been looking into closing a few of the flats and small brothels down for a while,’ Jessica said. ‘Now we’re interested too, they probably see it as a way of halving the costs on their budgets. If everything goes well, they get the credit; if it goes arse-up, we get the blame.’

  ‘I didn’t realise what a bunch of dirty bastards those SCD lot are. They literally know every knocking shop with an M at the beginning of the postcode.’

  ‘I phoned up to give them that website address Leon gave me but the guy practically laughed, saying of course they knew about it. They have a back door into the site and about a dozen others.’

  ‘Why haven’t they raided before then?’

  ‘That’s part of the problem – it’s not easy to know which girls are doing it voluntarily and who might be trafficked. They act on anything obvious but some of the women see it as easy money and don’t mind. Trying to police this stuff is a bloody nightmare.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Using a mixture of their intelligence – a loose term, I know – and anything else we know via Ana and Katerina, we’re going to raid a few brothels at the same time. I don’t know when yet. I think the super wants to make sure the papers know about it so we c
an have a few cameramen taking pictures and making it look like we know what we’re doing. I’m a bit out of the loop – I’m just waiting to be told where and when to go.’

  They were interrupted by a man’s voice on the radio: ‘Vehicle on one.’

  Jessica checked the clock – 22.45 – and then turned her attention back to the screen where a white estate car was surging past one of the monitoring vans. A wheel screeched somewhere nearby and then the vehicle appeared on their camera. After doughnutting around the largely empty car park, the driver skidded to a halt across two spaces and then he emerged, baseball cap at an angle, arse hanging out of his jeans, basketball shirt five sizes too big, shiny thick fake gold chain hanging limply around his neck. The man who slumped out of the passenger seat looked equally stupid, slouching his way towards the pub’s entrance with one hand on his crotch, the other holding his mobile phone to his ear.

  ‘They’re going to get bloody lynched in that pub,’ Archie said.

  ‘Compared to our lot, they’ll probably blend right in.’

  Time ticked away until it was five minutes to eleven when the radio sparked into life again. ‘Grey van on two.’

  On the monitor, a van similar to the one housing Jessica eased between two parked cars. It edged past their van and then accelerated gently towards the pub. The headlights dimmed and then went off as it pulled front-first into the shadows, leaving only the back window in view of their camera.

  The officer who had driven them there leant across from where he’d positioned himself behind the driver’s seat. ‘Should I try to move?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Jessica replied, ‘we don’t want them to think anything’s up.’

  As well as Jessica, Archie, the driver and the banks of equipment, there was one more officer, two empty pizza boxes, and wires running in all directions. Jessica stood as tall as she could, slipped around Archie without touching him, slid across the other officer’s lap and then do-si-doed with the driver until she was behind the passenger seat. As elegantly as she could, she pressed herself in between the gap between the two front seats, ending up lying on her belly with the handbrake pressing into her stomach.

  Slowly, she pushed herself up onto her elbows until she could see the car park through the passenger-side window. As gymnastic manoeuvres went, it wasn’t quite Olympic standard but she hadn’t stuck her arse in anyone’s face, which was always a bonus for them and her.

  Because of the shadows, she still couldn’t see the entire van but there was movement in the front seat where something head-like was bobbing back and forward with the faint glimmer of light that was most likely a phone.

  Archie’s voice hissed through the van: ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Not much.’

  Jessica wriggled, trying to get the pointiest part of the handbrake away from her belly button, when the radio reported there was another van on its way. Moments later, a grimy-coloured piece of rust on wheels pulled in next to the first van.

  ‘It’s eleven,’ Archie whispered loudly.

  Jessica could see the back of a man’s head in the driver’s seat leaning towards the first van. Gentle plumes of steam were drifting upwards from where the drivers were talking to each other through open windows.

  A man’s voice hissed across the radio. ‘Do we go?’

  Jessica didn’t move, in case someone was looking towards their position. ‘No, wait.’

  One of the officers repeated her instructions via the radio as a calm silence fell across everyone, as if they were all holding their breaths. Jessica was beginning to feel an ache in her forearms from propping up the rest of her body but gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it. In the car park, nothing was happening.

  ‘It’s five past,’ Archie whispered.

  ‘Shh!’

  ‘It’s not like they can hear me.’

  ‘I can hear you.’

  The spirals of air continued to drift, joined by the orange spark of a cigarette being lit. The radios were disconcertingly silent – no vehicles on their way. Were these the only two vans coming? Was Pavel in one of them? Why wasn’t anyone getting out?

  Suddenly, as if there had been a cue no one else had heard, the drivers’ doors clanged open and two men climbed out, walking to the back of the vans and leaning against the second one. Jessica watched one of them light a cigarette for the other but the men were too small to be Pavel. A laugh echoed across the deserted street as one of them bent over double, using his cigarette to point at the first man, whose grin was illuminated by the moon. Both of them were white, both dressed unassumingly in jeans and dark tops. If they hadn’t been hanging around after dark in a pub car park next to a pair of vans then no one would have looked at them twice.

  Someone behind her started shuffling, making Jessica shush them again. She heard Archie mumble a swear word in her direction.

  Just as she was beginning to think they were going to have to raid the vans regardless, a single word hissed across the radio: ‘Cars.’

  Jessica tried to wriggle to peer between the gap in the seats but she could hear the engines anyway. ‘How many?’

  ‘Four . . . five . . . six,’ Archie said.

  Jessica dropped down flat as the noise from the car engines became louder and then gradually propped herself up again until she had a clearish view of the car park. The half-a-dozen cars turned their headlights off and pulled up front-first in a line, boots facing the vans.

  The voice sounded across the radio again: ‘Now?’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Six more white men got out of the drivers’ seats and assembled at the back of the vans, exchanging back-slaps and jokes. From what Jessica could tell, their cars were empty – all with number plates at least eight years old, all not worth very much.

  One of the drivers tossed his cigarette to the floor and stamped it out, pointing at one of the other men and smiling. He reached up to the van door and heaved it open.

  Jessica could feel her heart pounding: doof-doof-doof-doof.

  Under the bottom of the van door, she saw a pasty, thin white leg stepping down and then a woman with long blonde hair and nowhere near enough clothes for the conditions stepped into the centre of the circle the men had formed. Even from a distance, Jessica could see she was confused. One of the men reached out and squeezed her breast, nodding approvingly.

  Suddenly the realisation of what was going on dawned on Jessica: the men were here to bid on the woman.

  She turned towards the back of the van: ‘Go.’

  The officer repeated her message and then, as he, Archie and the other officer piled out of the back of the van, Jessica slipped between the two seats and set herself to watch the action on the monitor.

  The other police vehicles screamed around the bend, blocking the exits from the estate, as the men began to panic. The woman was ignored as they all raced for their cars and vans but it was too late – black-clad officers with the semi-automatics and body armour raced towards the scene demanding everyone get on the ground. The poor woman – mini-skirt, low-cut top, large hooped earrings – turned in a full circle, unsure what was happening as everyone around her either shouted or dropped face-first to the tarmac.

  Moments later and the scene was secure. Jessica climbed down and dashed across to the car park. The handcuffed men were being ordered back to their feet and lined up against the wall of the pub. One of the officers from the back of Jessica’s van was draping a blanket around the frightened blonde woman and trying to explain that they were the good guys. Moments later and the final car arrived, with Esther and Katerina climbing out and hurrying across. Katerina batted the officer away and said something to the woman in a language Jessica didn’t know.

  ‘Got him?’ Esther asked.

  Jessica scanned the backs of the men being lined up. None of them was big enough to be Pavel. ‘No.’

  ‘You could give me a bit more notice in future – I was lucky to find Katerina at home.’

  ‘Sorry.’

&
nbsp; Katerina had a hand on the woman’s shoulder, speaking quickly. She turned to Jessica, eyes wide: ‘Did anyone check inside the vans?’

  Jessica turned to look at the still-closed vehicle doors. ‘No.’

  ‘She says there are others.’

  The armed officers were on the far side of the car park, so Jessica did what she definitely shouldn’t have, reaching up to the first van’s door and wrenching the handle down. With a groan, the heavy metal door swung open and Jessica heard the female gasps. Through the gloom and the dust, she peered into the hot metal box to see seven more women, all wearing short skirts and barely there tops. They cowered at the back, pressed against the rear of the driver’s seat, chattering in a foreign language, all utterly terrified. She could see the bruises on their arms, black marks across their legs. They stared at her, wondering what was going on, if this was part of some new type of torment.

  Jessica opened the back of the second van where there were six more girls, all cowering, all hugging themselves.

  She exchanged a look with Esther. Until now this had been about the hunt for someone who could be connected to a burglary. Ana had been so uncooperative – not to mention that she’d attacked her – that Jessica found it hard to empathise with her. Now it felt real. Fourteen young women, all brought here to be sold to the highest bidder and stuffed into the back of an estate car before being driven to various parts of the north to make money for their new owners.

  Owners.

  Jessica felt sick.

  Archie was on the radio saying they needed far more cars than they’d first thought plus support officers, blankets, translators – basically anyone remotely associated with the force who was still awake at this time of night.

  Jessica stepped away from the others, wishing she knew what to say to let the women know they were safe. She didn’t even know what language they spoke, let alone have the capacity to reassure them. Her stomach creaked.

  Owners.

  She couldn’t think past the word.

  In the thick of it all, somewhere, was Pavel. He’d been texted the details of this meet because he was central to it. Jessica could feel it – the six drivers who had turned up might be working on his behalf in some way, deciding which girl went to which area and trying to haggle down the men with the vans. Perhaps he was the middle-man between whoever had smuggled the women in and the men in the cars who were buying, keeping a cut for himself? Perhaps he took a cut of everything?