The Body Dealer (A DI Erica Swift Thriller Book 5)

by M K Farrar

After her discussion with DCI Swift, she’d Googled Kenneth Beckett, wondering if he was the same man who’d met with her at the restaurant, but no photographs came up, only articles about the various businesses he ran. Was he involved in this somehow? Was that why her name had been on a list at the gym?

  She’d considered telling John James about the police talking to her but stopped herself almost as soon as the thought came into her head. The moment she said anything, he was bound to call the whole thing off. He was clearly cautious, and if he knew the police were interested in her, he would cut off all contact and she’d lose her chance at getting Milly a kidney.

  That was Angela’s sole focus. Her vision was tunnelled, with only the image of seeing her daughter happy and healthy again at the end.

  No matter the cost.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Linh was getting used to the routine of the house—the early starts, the lines for the bathroom, the journey in the back of the van to the hotel. The day of backbreaking work followed by a basic meal, more sleep, only to repeat it all the next day.

  She was feeling a little more comfortable with what needed to be done at the hotel, however, and she had learned the names of some of the women she worked with. It made the day pass more quickly, and being submerged in the English language meant she was picking it up far quicker than she had during the time where she’d been trying to teach herself and Chau.

  Chau worked hard as well and was also picking up the language quickly. Linh beamed with pride when Chau made the effort to speak to someone in English. She had no doubt the girl would be fluent within a couple of months, and that would make both their lives easier.

  They stripped the sheets of the double bed together, pulling the cover off the thick feather duvet and yanking the white cases from the fluffy pillows.

  “Take them to the chute for washing,” Linh told Chau, bundling the dirty sheets into her daughter’s arms for her to throw them down it. The chute ran down to the basement where all the laundry was packaged up and sent to a laundrette for cleaning. It would then be returned, neatly folded and pressed, ready for them to exchange for yet more dirty sheets.

  Chau vanished out of the hotel room door, the pile of sheets taller than she was, and Linh focused on wiping down the bedside tables, the phone, and changing over the contents of the tray that held little ceramic jars of teabags and sugars and packets of coffee.

  She straightened with a frown and glanced over her shoulder towards the door. Chau still wasn’t back. Had she stopped to talk to one of the other women in the corridor? She might get in trouble for doing that. Their employees didn’t appreciate it when they wasted time. They got fifteen minutes to quickly eat the bagged lunch they provided, but that was all. Sometimes, when Linh’s back was particularly sore, she closed the door of the bathroom she was cleaning and put down the toilet seat and just took a few minutes to sit down. But they were all timed on how long they had to clean each room, and she’d already been shouted at for falling behind, and didn’t want to risk the same thing happening.

  She went to the door and stuck her head out into the long, featureless corridor, with its patterned carpets and black-and-white prints on the walls. Silver trolleys containing everything the workers needed to clean the room were positioned at equal spacings outside of the hotel room doors. Embedded into the wall at the end of the corridor was the metal plate that signalled the start of the chute.

  Chau was nowhere to be seen.

  The first flutters of nerves caught Linh’s breath. Where was she? Had she stopped by one of the rooms to talk to one of the other women? Why would she do such a thing? She knew they’d get into trouble if they were caught not working. Anger intermingled with worry. Now she was going to lose valuable time herself by finding Chau and reprimanding her for not doing as she’d asked. It wasn’t like Chau to misbehave, though—the girl knew how much they had at stake. There were no signs of the sheets, so she must have put them down the chute and then stopped by one of the rooms.

  “Chau?” she called quietly, not wanting to upset any of the people who might still be staying in one of the rooms they weren’t cleaning. She spoke in Vietnamese. “Chau, where are you?”

  She stopped at the first room that had a trolley outside it. One of the women, Kasia, who was from Poland, was busy inside. Linh sought the right words in English—the only language they had in common.

  “Please, is Chau here?”

  Kasia straightened and frowned. “Your daughter? No, I am sorry.”

  Linh nodded her thanks and backed out again, hurrying to the next room that was being cleaned. This was being worked by a woman from Turkey, who had straight black hair and green eyes, and was called Zehra. There was no sign of Chau.

  “You see my daughter?” she asked Zehra in her stilted English.

  Zehra shook her head. “No, sorry.”

  The flutters of worry had turned into a twisted knot in her chest that was wringing out her lungs and making it hard to breathe. Where had she gone? Could she have gone down to the basement to use the staff toilets? But why wouldn’t she have told Linh where she was going? Chau would know how much she would worry if she didn’t return immediately. It wasn’t like her at all.

  She wasn’t on this floor.

  What if she was? What if one of the people staying in one of the other rooms had opened their doors and seen Chau there and grabbed her and dragged her back in with them? Chau would have screamed, wouldn’t she? Linh would have heard something.

  But what if she hadn’t heard anything? Chau could be behind one of those doors right now.

  She glanced up. No, there were security cameras that covered the corridor. If someone had snatched Chau, it would have been caught on camera, and surely no one would take that kind of risk. She had to think sensibly about this. It was far more likely that she’d gone to use the bathroom or had even been called away by one of the other women to help with something.

  “Chau? Chau, where are you?” She spoke in her own language and no longer bothered to keep her voice down. Her fear for her daughter was stronger than her fear of being told off by her employers. Her fast walk broke into a run, and she raced to the stairwell and pulled open the door.

  “Chau?”

  Her voice echoed down the stairs.

  She longed to hear her daughter’s sweet voice calling back up to her, telling her she was there, and not to worry, but it didn’t come.

  She passed a couple of hotel guests, but they seemed to barely notice her, despite her clear distress. They were more interested in their phones and each other than one of the many hundreds of staff that flitted, seemingly unseen around them, cleaning up their mess, bringing them food and drink, and doing their every bidding. These people wouldn’t notice when one of them went missing—they didn’t even notice when they were right under their noses.

  Using the handrail, she swung around the corners and took the stairs two at a time. She raced down each flight until she reached the basement. The door blocking the stairwell had a ‘no entry’ sign above it, but she knew this was only meant for the guests—not that any of them came down this far anyway.

  “Chau! Please, where are you?”

  Tears streamed down her face now, but she didn’t care who saw them. She didn’t care about the job or any of the men who ferried them around, or if she got the attention of the authorities. All she wanted was her daughter back. She ran from room to room, opening every door, asking every person, but everyone gave her the same answer. No, they hadn’t seen her daughter.

  Chau was gone.

  Chapter Thirty

  She still had a lot of paperwork from cases Gibbs had been tying up when he’d had the stroke. It was one part of the new job role she didn’t think she was going to like, but hopefully it wouldn’t be for long and Gibbs would be back soon. From the amount of paralysis she’d noted down one side of his body, she doubted he was going to be returning to work anytime soon. She wasn’t a doctor, however, and maybe he’d ma
ke a quick recovery.

  Her phone rang, and she answered. “Swift.”

  “It’s DS Shariff from MisPer. How are you?”

  “I’m good, thanks. What can I do for you?”

  “You were asking about missing women with a Southeast Asian nationality a few days ago. There probably isn’t a link, but my gut told me to call you.”

  Erica sat up straighter. “Oh? What’s happened?”

  “A woman who appears to be an illegal immigrant from Vietnam is claiming her thirteen-year-old daughter has gone missing from a hotel where they were both working. She’s extremely distressed. Is there anyway this could be your burnt girl?”

  Erica frowned. “When did she go missing?”

  “Just this morning.”

  “No, the timings are all wrong. It can’t be her.”

  Shariff exhaled down the line. “Could the two cases be connected? I take it you haven’t yet identified your victim.”

  “No, we haven’t. I’d say it’s unlikely they’re connected, but I certainly won’t rule anything out. We haven’t been able to get any leads on who the victims might be.”

  “So perhaps the bodies are illegal immigrants,” Shariff suggested. “It would be less likely that someone would report them missing. If they had friends over here who noticed them gone, they might not want to draw any attention to themselves.”

  “It’s certainly a possibility and something we’d considered ourselves. What is the mother saying?”

  “Not much at the moment. She can barely speak English and has no identification. We’re getting in a translator, but that’s going to take a little time.”

  “You said the daughter went missing from a hotel?”

  “That’s right. The Royal Comfort Hotel in Canary Wharf.”

  Something niggled at Erica. “That’s near to where the second body was found. What job did you say they were doing?”

  “Cleaning bathrooms. Changing the sheets and replenishing the toiletries from those carts. That kind of thing.”

  A light-bulb moment flashed in her head. “Give me one minute. Are you okay to hold on?”

  “Of course.”

  Erica quickly pulled up the images sent over by Lucy Kim from the postmortem examination on her PC. There was one image in particular she was looking for. That one. The one of the melted plastic with the text across it.

  There. She clicked onto the website for the hotel. Sure enough, the letters of the hotel name and the ones on the plastic were the same, as was the font it was written in. The capital ‘R’ was for ‘Royal,’ together with the ‘al’ at the end, then the ‘mf’ fitted with ‘Comfort.’

  She got back on the line to Shariff. “There’s no way the daughter can be the same person, but I think it might be connected. The second body had a piece of plastic stuck to their skin, half-melted from the heat, and it looks to match the branding of the hotel. I think the second victim took something from the hotel toiletries—perhaps a bar of soap or something—and had hidden it in the waistband of her trousers.”

  “So, the victim might have been taken from the hotel as well?”

  “Like you said, the mother of the missing child is an illegal immigrant and has been working illegally. If our other victims were in the same position, they might not have anyone who would report them missing.”

  She could hear the nod in Shariff’s voice.

  “I’d say that was possible.”

  Erica finally felt as though she was onto something. “I’d like to be able to speak to the mother as well, if that’s okay?”

  “Of course. It sounds like we’re going to need to work together on this one.”

  “The more the merrier,” Erica said. “I have a free interview room, if it’s needed. I can get the translator in as well.”

  “That works for me. I’ll bring her in.”

  “See you soon.”

  Erica hung up and went back to the computer. She already had a feeling she knew what she was going to find, but she checked anyway.

  Sure enough, the Royal Comfort Hotel was also owned by Beckett Enterprises.

  She sat back in her chair. There was no way this wasn’t connected.

  She had an hour or so before DS Shariff would arrive with the missing girl’s mother, enough time to get down to the hotel and ask some questions. She grabbed her jacket and bag and stopped by Shawn’s desk.

  “There’s been a development. Come with me. I’ll fill you in on the drive.”

  Shawn didn’t ask any questions but hopped out of his seat and followed her out.

  In the car down, she told him about the call from Shariff and the missing girl. “I want us to speak to every woman who works there. Find out what they know. I’m sure one or more of them will be able to ID our two Jane Does.”

  Shawn grimaced. “I don’t think they’re going to be keen on speaking to us. I suspect there’s a high number of illegals working there.”

  “All the more reason to speak to them. We need to find out where they’re staying as well, and who’s behind employing them.”

  This was all connected, she was sure of it.

  “I want all the CCTV from the hotel as well,” she said. “The floor the girl went missing from and the lobby and surrounding roads, too.”

  Was someone ‘employing’ these women in the guise of them working at the hotel only for them to be taken, murdered, an organ or more removed, and then the bodies burned to conceal what had happened?

  Erica shook her head. Those poor women, and now a girl had gone missing—a girl who should have been in school and wasn’t even old enough to work there in the first place.

  A girl not much younger than Angela Hargreaves’ sick daughter.

  THE HOTEL WAS A BUZZ of activity.

  Uniformed police were trying to hold back the people staying there, preventing them from entering, since the entire hotel was now classed as a crime scene. It would remain closed until they figure out who to talk to and exactly where all this had happened. Understandably, those people weren’t too happy about not being allowed access to their rooms and belongings. As well as that, were all the workers who’d also been pulled in for questioning.

  Leaving Shawn to liaise with the police sergeant who was coordinating the scene, making sure every hotel room was checked from top to bottom and that any CCTV footage from the building was obtained, Erica quickly located the manager. David Grant was a tall angular man who wore a suit and a pained expression at the disruption.

  She showed him her ID and asked for them to find somewhere to talk, away from all the hubbub.

  He led her through to his office and sat down heavily at his desk. “I don’t know what you expect me to say that’s going to help you. I don’t know anything about a missing girl.”

  “You have illegal immigrants working in your hotel, Mr Grant. Not only illegal immigrants, but ones that aren’t even old enough to be working yet.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I had no idea there were illegal immigrants here, never mind one that young.”

  “I assume I don’t need to tell you that’s against the law. Knowingly employing people who do not have the right to work in the UK not only carries unlimited fines, but you could also be looking at up to a five-year prison sentence.”

  “I absolutely did not employ anyone knowing they were illegal. We employed a contract firm who were responsible for cleaning the hotel, and of course they never mentioned those women were immigrants.”

  “Not just women,” she reminded him. “Children, too. So far, I believe, there’s been a fourteen and a fifteen-year-old also found working on your premises illegally.”

  “It’s a big hotel. It’s not as though I can go around asking everyone’s ages. We have hundreds of employees here. There’s no way I could know them all.”

  “The buck still stops with you. You’re responsible for those you employ.”

  He nodded, his lips pressed together. “I understand and I’ll accept whatever repercussions c
ome my way. You’re completely right, I shouldn’t have trusted someone else to go through the right paperwork.”

  How calm and understanding he was being was grating on her. “You realise Immigration Enforcement may also publish your details as a way of deterring other businesses from doing the same, which will most likely cause massive damage to your reputation.”

  He let out a sigh. “I imagine five years in prison won’t do much for my reputation either.”

  “I’d imagine not. The hotel is owned by Beckett Enterprises, is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s the brand who owns it.”

  “And have you ever met Kenneth Beckett?”

  He frowned. “No, I-I hadn’t even really thought of him as a real man. I thought it was just the umbrella name for the business.”

  “You must report to someone, though.”

  “Yes, but no one of that name. There’s people at head office, but I mostly deal with them by email.”

  This illusive Kenneth Beckett was bothering her.

  Her phone rang. “Excuse me.”

  She stepped out of the office and took the call.

  “It’s DS Shariff. I’m here with Linh Phan, the woman whose daughter has gone missing.”

  “Great, I’ll be there shortly.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Linh Phan was a small woman in her early thirties. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, and she clutched a tissue in one hand which she used to dab at her nose.

  DS Shariff led the interview.

  “How long have you and your daughter been in the country, Linh?”

  The translator spoke in Vietnamese to Linh, and she replied.

  “Not long,” the translator said. “Only a matter of a few days.”

  Erica frowned. Linh might not have had time to get to know the other women who’d been killed then. She might not be able to get a positive ID from her.

  “Can you tell me your current address?” Shariff asked. “Where you’ve been staying since you arrived in the country?”