39
AURORA HAD NOTHING WITH HER, NO CASE, NOTHING, NOT even the little money I’d given her at the airport. The dressing from her earlier brush with Derin’s knife had come off and the small wound had bled afresh and rescabbed. We drove to Sandra’s house. I wasn’t about to go home if that’s where Kristina told me to wait.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” I asked Aurora as I checked the rear-view mirror for potential followers.
She stared at her fingers. In the confines of the car I could detect the sweet odour of stale sweat.
“You still have the money?” she asked.
“Of course. It’s where I showed you. I’ll get it later.”
She nodded. “I should maybe go to embassy.”
“Slow down, Aurora. It’s Sunday night, it won’t be open. Let’s think about what to do after you’ve had something to eat.”
“Yes, and shower would be nice.” She grimaced.
* * *
Sandra looked surprised when she opened the door slightly on the chain. She released it, opening up.
“What’s up, George? It’s Sunday night and my ex-sister-in-law’s just left. She’s not the most relaxing of people to have around.”
“Sorry, I’d forgotten she was in town. The thing is, Aurora didn’t leave the country as planned.”
“What do you mean? You drove her to the airport on Friday. Did she miss the flight?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Give me the bloody highlights.”
“OK. She was intercepted at the airport after I dropped her off and when I got back home I was slapped around and Tasered. The people who did it, likely as not people-traffickers, picked her up at the airport. Yesterday I was told she’d been found squashed on the A14 but they’d actually stashed her somewhere in the Fens and now she’s in my car in filthy clothes minus the suitcase I gave her. I don’t know what she’s been through between the airport and here because she’s too upset to be able to talk to me and needs a shower. Plus I have no change of clothes to give her.”
She looked over my shoulder at the car. “Bloody hell. Why didn’t you just say she was here?”
“Before you ask, I can’t take her home: they know where I live and might find out that I have her.”
She sighed. “Has she eaten?”
* * *
Aurora sat wet-haired in a large bathrobe at the kitchen table. The sleeves were rolled up and she sipped gingerly at a hot cup of tea.
“I’ve ordered some pizza,” Sandra said.
Aurora nodded and smiled at her. “Thank you for having me.” Sandra patted her arm.
“Do you want to tell me what happened at the airport?” I asked gently.
Putting the cup down, she tucked her damp hair behind her ears.
“A man stopped me before the passport control. Ask for passport.”
“The man with the beard, who picked you up tonight? From Cherry Hinton?”
“No, he was there later, with car. I never seen this man before. He took passport from my hands and looked at it. Then he said to go with him.”
“And you went?”
“I thought he was official man,” she said, sounding distressed at her own gullibility.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Listen, most people would have done the same. So where was the bearded man?”
“He was waiting next to car. Official man give him passport and beard man give him envelope and he go. Then beard man tell me we going to Cambridge.”
“And you got in the car?”
“What can I do?” she said. She was trembling either with anger or frustration. “He had passport!”
“Aurora, I’m not judging you, I just want to know what happened.”
“That’s what happened. There was other woman in car, from my country.”
“She died?”
“You know?” I nodded and she covered her face with her hands.
“That’s enough, George,” Sandra said, making eyes at me.
There was a knock at the front door and on Sandra’s prompting I went to pay for the pizza which I took into the kitchen.
In contrast to my interrogation, Sandra fussed over Aurora and served her a slice of pizza which she wolfed.
“I think it’s probably best, Aurora, if you stay with Sandra tonight because I’m not sure if they know that you’re not at your new employer’s and they know my address.” I looked at Sandra. “Is that OK?” I asked, smiling, knowing I was putting her on the spot.
“It’s fine, George.”
“I’ll bring your money tomorrow first thing,” I told Aurora. “We’ll use some of it to buy a ticket and then I’ll take you to the airport. And this time we’ll allow plenty of time.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to book a flight online now?” asked Sandra. “We can use the office credit card.”
“Yes, excellent idea,” I said.
“I pay you,” Aurora said.
“Better still, we’ll charge it to Galbraith,” I said, smiling to myself. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?
“Thank you, Mr George.”
“Could you please just call me George, Aurora? Not Mr George.”
“OK… George.” She managed a smile.
We browsed the Web but the earliest flight we could book was for a ten-thirty a.m. from Heathrow for the Tuesday, the day after tomorrow. We bought a ticket anyway.
“Now, when you’ve finished eating shall we try and find some clothes for you?” Sandra asked Aurora. “Nothing of mine is going to fit so you’ll have to wear Jason’s. We’ll raid his wardrobe since he isn’t here.”
I stood up to make a move. “I’ll see you out,” Sandra said. In the hallway I turned to her.
“You’ll try and speak to her, right?” I asked, softly. “See what happened after she left the airport.”
“Sure, but I’m not going to force it. By the way, I was going to tell you tomorrow but since you’re here…”
“What is it?”
“Remember the Toyota lease car you asked me to chase up? Yesterday I finally got hold of some young lad at the leasing company; he’s new there and I managed to get the name of the organisation the Toyota is leased to out of him.”
“Do I have to waterboard it out of you or what?” I asked.
She smirked. “Cambridgeshire Police.”
“Say that again.”
“The name on the lease is Cambridgeshire Constabulary, not an individual.”
Darkness had fallen by the time I drove home, mulling over what Sandra had just told me. Trying to process this information on top of everything else was hard work – my brain was like a sponge to which people kept adding water that it couldn’t hope to retain. Kristina Galbraith was seeing a bloody policeman? Of course he could be an administrator or a manager – Cambridgeshire Constabulary covered a large geographical area and number of people, and management metastasized in every profession – but it would have to be someone senior, that’s for sure. His age, the confident way he held himself, the snazzy suit. Yes, he’d been slumming it in a corporate lease car, probably to be inconspicuous, but Kristina wasn’t the type to fuck around with a nobody. I wasn’t sure of the significance of this information at the moment, except that it explained Kristina’s reaction to the photos when I’d showed them to her. I filed it under “interesting” as I parked one street down from mine. I made a sweep of the cars near my house but couldn’t see anything suspicious. The house was dark and unwelcoming and as soon as I was inside I rang Linda, to see if she wanted to come over and fool around.
“I’m off to London in the morning,” she said.
“Work?”
“Actually I have an interview.”
“Really? Where? You kept that quiet,” I said, sounding more aggrieved than I wanted to. She was the first to break the small silence that followed, and ignored my questions.
“How about I come by tomorrow, when I get back? I’ll pick up some food on the way from the sta
tion. Will you be there?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what time,” I said, then without thinking about it, “I’ll leave you a front-door key under the rubbish bin behind the side gate.”
“Sounds good, Georgie. Oh, and make sure you look out for my story tomorrow morning, it should be another front pager above the fold.”
As soon as I hung up the phone rang. It was Stubbing, sounding tired.
“George, I’d like you to come and see me first thing tomorrow.”
“What for?”
“You’ll find out. I’ll see you at nine sharp.”
“Should I bring croissants?” I asked, but she’d already hung up.
40
I DIDN’T SLEEP WELL, WAKING UP AT THE SLIGHTEST NOISE and getting out of bed to look through the window onto the street. There was little point worrying about what Stubbing might want but I tried to get back to sleep.
I eventually drifted off about four until I woke, if not quite from a nightmare, then from an unpleasant dream, one bad enough to disturb my sleep. I was on my father’s bicycle again but this time cycling in a tunnel where the roof was getting lower and lower until eventually I was bent double over the handlebars and my back scraped the brickwork. I was ringing the bicycle bell when I woke but realised it was the landline. The clock read six-thirty. Once I’d managed to get out of bed it stopped ringing. I pelted my aching body with hot water, greeting my various bruises like the old friends they’d become. The phone rang again as I stepped out of the shower. Still wet and wrapped in a towel I checked the mobile. A message from Sandra asked me to ring her as soon as.
“Aurora’s told me about what happened in the car after she was picked up at the airport, although you’ll probably want to hear it for yourself.”
“Give me a synopsis,” I said. “We got up to how she was bamboozled into getting in the car with Leonard at the airport.”
“That’s right. Let’s see… So she’s with another Filipino woman in the car from Heathrow. They’re talking, exchanging their stories all the way back to Cambridge, in whatever language they speak, I guess, and this drives him nuts, apparently, the driver, ’cause he can’t understand what they’re saying. He keeps shouting at them to shut up. The other woman tells Aurora that she plans to make a run for it. So Aurora gives her the piece of paper, the e-ticket or whatever, with your number on it, so she can call you. By this time the driver’s livid and stops the car in a lay-by or something. Her companion puts the piece of paper in her pocket so he doesn’t see it when he turns round and starts hurling abuse at them, actually spitting on them. So out of nowhere this woman punches him in the nose. At that point he gets a zapper, like the one you showed me, from the glove box, and just zaps her. Aurora is terrified at this point, obviously, but he starts the car and as they’re moving off the woman just gets out.
“The thing is, her door is roadside and it’s raining and she just runs when she gets out and almost immediately, bam, she’s hit by a bloody lorry and carried down the road. The lorry just keeps going, like the driver didn’t notice, and maybe he didn’t, who knows. It’s raining and busy. The driver just takes off, and about fifteen minutes later reaches some house in the country. She said there were about twenty other women there, a mix of nationalities which she’s a bit hazy on. Anyway, they weren’t locked in their rooms or anything, just sitting around, cooking and chatting. She spoke to one of them who said that people leave and new people arrive, and that nobody is there longer than a week. None of them had their passports so I’m guessing that either they’re arriving here illegally and are waiting to be found work, or they’re being trafficked into the country. Either way the place is some sort of halfway house.”
“Yes, I know the place,” I said. “I followed one of Badem’s men there yesterday evening. That’s where he picked Aurora up from.”
“So those other women are still there?”
“He took some bags of shopping into the house, so I guess so.”
“So shouldn’t we tell someone about it?”
“Yes, but I’d like to do it without getting Aurora involved, otherwise she’ll be sucked into the system. Listen, while it’s still fresh, make some notes of what she said about the incident on the A14, and whatever she told you about where she was taken. I think it would be useful to get a statement from her.”
“But not go to the police?”
“I’d like to give the police something to work with so this guy is dealt with, but without risking Aurora. I know who he is but it would be good to somehow tie him to the woman’s death. I’ll ring Rhianna about it this morning.” Rhianna was the solicitor I occasionally consulted when negotiating legal minefields.
“What’s the matter?”
“What?” I asked.
“Not you, George. Hang on a second will you…” Her voice grew faint as she spoke to someone else. I mused. A statement from Aurora on the death of the woman on the A14 would be something concrete I could give Stubbing, along with the location of the other women in the Fenland farmhouse. For all I knew the farmhouse was legit, but given it was linked to Badem, that seemed unlikely. At the very least it would get Leonard investigated. As long as Badem didn’t know that I knew about the house, he would be unlikely to move them out of there, so twenty-four hours wouldn’t make a huge difference.
“George?”
“What is it?” I asked.
“You should get over here now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Aurora’s in a state. Seems to be having a panic attack or something.”
“Not again. What happened?”
“I don’t know, George, just get over here.”
“OK, but I have to be at Parkside police station at nine.”
I quickly took Aurora’s cash from the tin in the hall and put it in an envelope then picked up the clinical audit report filched from Galbraith’s case which I wanted to scan at the office. As I left the house I put the spare key as promised under the wheelie bin for Linda. Perhaps it marked a new transition in our relationship, or perhaps it was just too little too late on my behalf when suddenly faced with the prospect of Linda moving to London.
After remembering where I’d parked the car last night I took a circuitous route to Sandra’s in case I was followed, but I was still surprised that Badem or his goons hadn’t turned up. Was he hoping I’d just move on when Aurora hadn’t turned up yesterday evening?
Sandra opened the door, and I was reassured to see her looking annoyed rather than upset.
“What’s the rumpus?” I asked.
“I don’t know, she insists on talking to you,” Sandra said, sounding peeved. “The newspaper dropped through the letterbox and she freaked out.” She handed me the offending copy of the Argus.
On the front, above the centrefold as Linda had said, was a picture of a new smiling blond girl, under the full width headline EXCLUSIVE: DEAD GIRL FOUND AT BYRON’S POOL IDENTIFIED emblazoned above it. The subheading read: BOGDANA SUMIŃSKI IDENTIFIED BY PARENTS. PEOPLE-TRAFFICKING LINK SUSPECTED. I flipped it over to see another story – PARENTS VISIT SITE WHERE DAUGHTER’S BODY FOUND – with a photo of the makeshift shrine in front of the height barrier.
“Where’s Aurora?”
“In the living room.”
She was on the sofa in jeans rolled up at the ankles and an oversized T-shirt with the name of a band I didn’t recognise printed on it. The clothes made her look like she’d shrunk. She was staring at an untouched cup of tea, her eyes wide and face pale. I sat down next to her but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look me in the eye. I put the newspaper on the table and she flinched.
I gave her the envelope with her money in it. She nodded and placed it on the newspaper.
“Sandra told me about what happened to you in the car,” I said to her. “Must have been traumatic.”
“Traumatic?”
“Upsetting. Sad.”
“Yes, but for other woman was worse,” she said. She was staring at the envelope
.
“Of course. But you saw it.”
She turned to me. “Will anything happen to him, the man with the beard?”
“Yes. And I will tell the police about the place he took you. As soon as you get on the plane tomorrow.”
She nodded but said nothing, then sighed. It was a tremulous sigh, full of feeling.
“What is it, Aurora?” I pressed.
She took a breath and raised her head. “I have to tell you something,” she said, and it was the first time she’d spoken to me in this way, like someone much older. “Something I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t know…”
“OK.” I imagined it must be something that had happened at the farmhouse Leonard had taken her to, something she couldn’t tell us before. She removed the envelope so that Bogdana’s picture was visible. She pointed at it.
“I seen this girl. Walking, smiling, speaking.”
“Are you talking about Bogdana?”
“Bogdana, yes. Yes, I saw her at the house.” She reached out to touch the photo gently.
“You mean the house you were taken to yesterday by the bearded man?” I asked her.
She looked at me, frowning. “No, the house of Mr and Mrs Galbraith.”
41
FROM WHAT I COULD GATHER FROM AURORA IN THE FEW minutes I had before rushing off to see Stubbing, Bogdana had occasionally been to the house to help Aurora out when there was a dinner party, sometimes sleeping on Aurora’s floor until Mrs Galbraith took her back to wherever she’d come from in the morning. She’d been there the Tuesday night, as the Galbraiths had hosted people for dinner, and, as on previous occasions, had remained behind to help clear up. That night, the night before Aurora left with the briefcase and Bogdana’s body was found at Byron’s Pool, Kristina had left to drop a guest at the station and Mr Galbraith had told Aurora to go to her room, and had locked the door from the outside. That’s the last she’d seen of Bogdana. She wasn’t let out of her room until the following morning.
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