by Les Cowan
“Credibility and confidence,” McIntosh said firmly. “Neither Tatiana nor Elvira has had a good experience with the Edinburgh police. They are going to need someone around they can trust whatever we do. Tatiana has said the only person she is willing to trust is ‘David H: Pastor’. And we’re asking Elvira to do a difficult thing. She trusts you, James. You will not be asked to do anything other than be there – if you’re willing. It’s what we’d call a ‘confidence-boosting measure’. It may not be part of the main operation, but without your involvement, I don’t think we could do what we’re planning to do. I’d put it as strongly as that.”
“So what are you planning to do?” David asked somewhat pointedly, giving up the fight on whether he was involved or not.
“I want Tatiana to come out shopping in Hanover Street on Thursday afternoon,” McIntosh said crisply, “then go back into the house until Friday night. Then we’ll bust the whole place, get all the girls, all the punters, all the staff, and all the cash. How exactly we manage that will form the second part of this briefing, but in the meantime I think it would be courteous at least to let Andrei in Belarus know we have heard, understood, and are acting on his information. David, you may still be at a degree of risk so you’ll be staying with friends for a few days. And finally, if there are no more questions, I think we need to break for a bit and get some coffee.”
“I think I need something a lot stronger than that,” James Dalrymple whispered in David Hidalgo’s ear as McIntosh closed the lid of his computer and one of his colleagues flipped the kettle on again.
“I just hope we’re not needed on Friday night. It’s my wedding anniversary. We were going to go to the Balmoral Hotel. If I miss that I’ll need to move to Belarus!”
Mikhail Lubchenco turned the laptop round so that Maxim Blatov could see the screen and pointed to a line on a table of figures.
“Well, look for yourself. There’s nothing there, I tell you.”
“That’s impossible. I moved it myself.”
“Well, it’s not there now.” Mikhail was emphatic. “And I tried to look into the police network this morning. It’s blocked. None of the passwords work.”
Max paused for a second, then issued an order.
“Call Rudi. There must be some mistake.”
“I tried. He’s not taking our calls. I think we’ve been dumped.”
“In that case I need to speak to Thompson.”
Unusually, Maxim Blatov was not smiling as he tapped his mobile.
DI Thompson’s personal phone rang. He flipped it open, saw the number, and immediately left his desk and headed out into the corridor. He only tapped it when there was no one within earshot.
“I told you never to call me at work,” he hissed. “I don’t care. You’ve brought all this on yourselves. You do that and you’ll be locked up and they’ll throw away the key. No. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. I might lose my job but you’ll be going away for life. Think about that. I have no idea about the cash; we had nothing to do with it. No, I’m not willing to meet you. I’ll see you on Friday evening. Then we can talk about this. And not before. And don’t ever call me at work again or I’ll personally shop the pair of you!”
Chapter 23
HANOVER STREET
Tatiana had given up hope. Pat hadn’t been in to see her for over two weeks, and she had come to the conclusion that he had probably thrown the letter away or handed it in and lost it or something else and didn’t want to face her. But if he’d handed it in, why was she still able to walk and talk and feed herself? There was a lot of tension around the house but she didn’t feel it was particularly aimed at her. Elvira had never reappeared, of course, and that was a loss. It had certainly seemed like she’d finally got out the only way she could. But maybe she’d somehow survived and was being kept apart from the others until she recovered and could work again. Or maybe Max had simply decided she was too much trouble and opted for “retirement” as it had said on the spreadsheet in the office. Either way, Tati was pretty sure she’d never see her friend again and that it was more than likely she was dead. That was desperately sad but it was what she was used to in this brutal life. She knew she was a commodity for Max, Mikhail, and the various men who used her. She would live as long as she could turn a trick and return a profit. When that day passed so would she. She couldn’t stay in the house without working and making money and she couldn’t be allowed to leave given everything she knew. These were men who lived at the expense of others and she was one of the others. How they’d got like that she tried not to speculate; she might end up feeling sorry for someone who had had a difficult childhood and had turned to crime as a way to survive on the mean streets of Minsk in the dying days of the Soviet empire. Well, plenty of other people had made it through without turning into monsters. There were always choices. She mentally corrected herself: for most people at most times there were choices. What choices did she and the other girls have now?
She tried to maintain a positive attitude, to remember that she was a human being and that they could abuse her body but not steal her soul, but it was hard. She cut out fashion photos from copies of the Evening News that lay about the dining room and stuck them up on her walls to remind herself of what she once aspired to – a glamorous entrepreneur running a successful temping and office services business in London or Manchester or even in Edinburgh, looking good, feeling confident. She would have meetings with investors and clients, interview applicants, arrange transport and visas for girls from her home country and neighbourhood to come to the West, work hard, and make a life for themselves. Maybe they might get a British boyfriend, a nice flat in town, then a wedding and some kids. Or maybe some of them might start their own businesses too or else just get involved in the community and become naturalized. Maybe they would send some money home to the family or invite brothers and sisters over for a holiday. What about a Belarusian community right here in Edinburgh where they could speak their own language, eat their own food, listen to music, dance, tell stories and be glad that they were Belarusian but didn’t have to actually live there? But all that was like smoke on the wind. She was destined to go the same way as Elvira; it was just a question of time. Somehow she had ended up a particular favourite of Max’s and of some of his most valued customers, but that just pushed the inevitable a little bit further away – it didn’t change anything. She was meat – eventually dead meat.
In the meantime she still had to play the game of pretending to live. That meant getting dressed up in kinky leather gear or some sort of sexy costume to please a bunch of drunken bums who sometimes could barely find their way to the bed by 12.30 on a Friday night. And for that there was another shopping trip tomorrow into town. She had grown to absolutely hate that shop. She wanted to contact Sally, if there was a Sally, and tell her what all the kinky gear and sex toys meant to her. If she had had any hope that Pat had posted her letter then she might have been keyed up in another sort of way. She might have hoped that David H: Pastor might have been there, that he would recognize her or she would somehow recognize him and that he would be able to rescue her from this living hell. She had almost even begun to wonder if such a man existed. When she could be sure no one would come in she had taken to peeling back that corner of wallpaper and reading the lists again, just to remind herself that the name had been written down somewhere and not by her. It was real; she hadn’t imagined it. Whether he existed in the real world or not, someone had written down his name and seen him as a danger to PGC and its operators. Maybe they had imagined him as well, and he was just a figment of the collective imagination, like St Nicholas or the Easter Bunny. No doubt Jung might have some explanation for how they had all come to such an odd collective fantasy, but be that as it might, fantasy was what it was. David H: Pastor couldn’t come to her aid because he didn’t exist. The only things that existed were the men who inhabited both her waking and dreaming nightmares, who bit and licked and drooled and dribbled all over her. Who s
macked and struck and pushed and panted, hour after dreary hour. And she had to somehow pretend it was fun or Max would “write it in the book”. She wished she had taken that book out of the office, not the two lousy lists. Then she could at least have seen it for what it was – one gigantic lie to mess up their heads. Sometimes a girl would come to her with a smile and a twinkle in her eye and tell her that she had been with Roustabout or Soldier of Fortune last night and had done so well that Max had given her double points in the book. What a pathetic but clever lie. With no other source of hope or anything to believe in it was natural that sometimes the girls would cling to any passing branch or straw. Max says that if I keep this up I could leave next year. Max says I’m the best in the house. Max says I always get top marks. Tati didn’t comfort herself by thinking about her top marks. When her mind had to be elsewhere, which was roughly five hours every day, she liked to fantasize about the marks she would give Max. What would be best – electrical cable or whiplash? A blunt instrument or something sharp and pointy? Maybe both – alternately. Or both together. She would ask him some meaningless paradoxical question, then whatever he said, she’d say, “Sorry, wrong answer, Maxy. What would you prefer – the whip or the chain?” Anyway, this was only a way of managing an unmanageable reality. It wouldn’t change anything; nothing could. She had made an attempt with Andrei’s birthday card. What had that achieved? It had probably been incinerated by the council or ended up in a landfill site by now – along with her dreams.
In the meantime, another evening of pathetic losers who didn’t have a real girlfriend or who couldn’t satisfy their wives or had such low social skills that the very idea of having a successful conversation with a real girl who had the choice of whether to listen to them or turn away was in itself a sexual fantasy. So they came to spend an expensive hour with her, a girl they could never hope to interact with in real life, far less get anywhere near a bed. And she had to giggle or pant and squeal as if they were amusing or exciting. Some of the girls in the house had had dreams of being actresses. Well, what perfect training. It was all acting, although the choice of parts was somewhat limited. None of them would be bold, impressive, dramatic actresses, just cheap little tarts turning it on for the punters. When it was finally over she went to bed with the start of some infection or other and tried to sleep. For all she hated the “Sally” shop, though, at least it was a change of scene. She got to look at normal people going about their normal business and could try to remember what it had been like to be able to decide what you would wear, what you would eat, where you would go, who you would talk to. Sometimes she would play a game with the girls in the house. “Anyone fancy going out tonight for pizza?” she would say in the middle of nothing. “Then we could take in a movie and maybe go dancing after. Anyone up for that?” It used to crack the place up. “Or a weekend in London – see a show or go to a concert? You might attract the attention of a nice-looking young man in the bar at the interval, give him the eye, sidle up to him, and sweetly whisper in his ear, ‘Drop dead, buddy; I’m with my friends tonight and I’m sleeping on my own. Got that?’” They used to crease themselves and that made her feel good. She had poured some oil on their troubled waters and brought some humour and relief.
“Tati!” She heard a voice call her name. “Get yourself ready. I can’t go today. Dimitri will take you. Leaving in five minutes. Ok? You hear me?”
Leaving in five. If she’d been leaving in five to see David H: Pastor that would have been one thing. But leaving in five just to try on underwear to tickle the fancy of some hopeless creeps with their brains in their balls? Well, it was a trip out at least. She put a pair of flat shoes on and grabbed a jacket. In some last pointless gesture she peeled back the wallpaper and pulled the lists out. What would it matter if she was caught? The papers that had excited them both so much that night had ultimately proved valueless, or whatever value they had couldn’t be realized. There was no market for what she had to sell. She stuffed the two by now dog-eared and dilapidated sheets down her jeans, ran a brush through her hair – for what purpose she couldn’t have said – and walked up the stairs to the locked and armoured front door.
Needless to say, Sally Winters hadn’t existed in Scotland the last time David had lived here and he wasn’t aware of any equivalent in Spain. The Great Universal Stores inch-thick catalogue had been the most exciting thing in that line in his childhood, although, to be fair, it was reasonably exciting for a twelve-year-old. Two days previously DI McIntosh had suggested that he and Dalrymple should at least familiarize themselves with the layout of the shop since this was going to be crucial. Having heard the outline in the briefing, they got the general idea and decided a bit of liquid lunch might be necessary first. Deacon Brodies on the Lawnmarket seemed as good as any. “Do you mind if I ask you how on earth you got yourself involved in this?” Dalrymple asked, as they navigated from the bar to an unoccupied table, pints in hand.
“I keep asking myself that same question,” David replied gloomily. He did a brief resumé of Mike Hunter’s role then mentioned Sandy Benedetti, the virus on a pen drive, the connection back to Belarus uncovered by Spade, the gunshot through his bedroom window, and, most recently, the email from Andrei and the list uncovered by Tatiana since confirmed by Elvira.
“Bloody hell,” Dalrymple said and let out a low whistle. “And I thought our little incident over the past few days was dramatic. That does take the biscuit.”
“Oh, and by the way, I also got engaged less than a week ago. My fiancée Gillian Lockhart is a Scots Language researcher. That’s why we were in Galicia. She was speaking at a conference. So, one way or another, it’s not been exactly what I was planning at this time of life.”
“D’you know, I’ve been incredibly impressed with Elvira over the past few days. I’ve got to know her a bit. She’s a little wobbly on her pins still but she’s determined to show up for Thursday’s event. She never stops speaking about Tatiana – ‘Tati’, she calls her. I just hope it all works – I mean, that she gets out for the day, that what McIntosh and his team are planning goes ahead, that they clean up every last one of them, and get the girls out safe and sound, of course. I’m still dumbstruck that this sort of thing goes on in our city. You read about it in The Scotsman and there might be some kind of drama on TV but it never really quite comes home to you that it’s all going on right under our noses.”
“Ah, well. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” David mused, taking another sup from his pint. “All human life is going on under our noses. There’s a temptation to think that everything grizzly and nasty is banished to a housing estate somewhere else, but in my line of work you get every sort of person coming to you for advice and you find out that both the best and the worst exist everywhere.”
“Yes, I’ve no doubt. The ‘chiel amang us’, as they say.”
“I’m supposed to be in the spiritual care business, but the spiritual is impacted by the physical, the emotional, the psychological, even the economic. It’s a Gordian knot and often there’s no way of finding out what needs to get sorted first to have an impact on all the rest.”
“I’m aware of that in my line too. The public tend to think the anaesthetist’s job is just to send people to sleep while the surgeon comes in and does the clever bits. But we have a very particular kind of interaction with patients that the surgeons don’t. In all but emergency cases the anaesthetist needs to meet the patient before the op and get to know them a bit – find out a bit about their general health and lifestyle and so on. Because we’re not dealing with the cancer or the heart disease or the hysterectomy, people often open up a lot more to us than to the surgeons. They’ll say things like, “Does it matter than I had an abortion last year? I’ve never told my boyfriend or my mum.” So you might be the only person they’ve ever told, apart from the medical staff at the time. I’ve had patients in floods of tears about things they’ve never told anyone else that really had nothing to do with the anaesthetic or the operation –
childhood abuse, rape, financial problems – or things they might have done years ago, like giving a child up for adoption, an affair, an assault. I had a man confess to bigamy once, as if he needed to get it off his chest before I knocked him out. So I know what you mean. Human life is endlessly surprising. But this has to be the most surprising thing I’ve ever been involved in. Bar none.”
“Indeed – and the converse, what I call ‘everyday heroism’. Take Elvira, for example – and Tati. We’ve heard about her from a couple of different sources. She seems to be a remarkable young woman. I’m taking a positive view on this – that we will get them out and she will get a second chance.”
“Have you thought that if things go as we hope we’re going to have maybe up to thirty young women with no means of support or place to go suddenly on our hands and no doubt all going to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? It’ll be like freeing thirty Al-Qaeda hostages or treating thirty victims of a motorway pile-up. Their physical health is going to be an issue but it’s their mental health that worries me. Elvira only ended up in the Forth after she couldn’t take any more and tried to hang herself. These girls are going to need a lot of care. I just hope the police have some plan in mind for that as well.”
“McIntosh did mention something to me about it. They have specialist counsellors they can bring in, but he wondered whether the churches might be able to help in terms of accommodation maybe or some kind of semi-normal family home while things are being sorted out.”
“Well, we certainly should,” Dalrymple immediately agreed. “Isn’t that what it’s all about? Good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, setting free the oppressed. Our guy Gordon quotes that so often I think everybody in the congregation should be able to recite it verbatim in our sleep.”