by M K Farrar
Buying a property in the city was near impossible these days and Shawn still rented his place. He hated to be at the whim of landlords telling him what to do, but there was nothing he could do to afford to save up the huge deposit needed for a mortgage. But he still wasn’t buying this side of Webster’s story.
“I’ve got another version of events,” Shawn said. “How about you listen to mine for a minute. The way I see things is that the ‘work’ you’ve been doing is actually transporting immigrants to and from work places where they’re illegally employed—be that hotels for the women, and possibly construction sites for the men—and part of your pay for that work is also a room in the house. When we questioned you last time, you knew you couldn’t tell us that address as you were aware it would point us in the direction of the immigrants.”
“That’s not it.”
Shawn continued. “But bringing in cheap labour isn’t the only thing you’re doing, is it? Because sometimes you’re asked to take specific immigrants to a different location, and sometimes those immigrants aren’t even alive anymore. Did you move the bodies of two women? Did you set fire to them to hide what had happened?”
Webster’s jaw dropped. “No, I didn’t. I swear it.”
“Do you know what happened to Chau Phan, the thirteen-year-old Vietnamese girl we raided the house looking for? Her mother, Linh, has reported her missing from the hotel where they were working. You might remember them since they only arrived a few days ago. Someone picked them up from the back of a lorry in a white van. Sound familiar?”
Something flickered across the younger man’s face. “I don’t know them.”
This would be easier if he had a photograph of the girl, but the mother hadn’t had anything on her. She’d said her belongings were in a room at the top of the house, and that there was a photograph of her family in her bag. Shawn needed to find out if DS Shariff’s officers had managed to get their hands on it. Assuming the other detective had managed to get a warrant to search the property by now, SOCO would have bagged anything they found. If it came to it—which he hoped it wouldn’t—they might need something with the girl’s DNA to match to a body.
“I find that strange since they were living in the same house as you. Her own mother has attested to it.”
Pinpricks of sweat burst out across Webster’s lower lip and brow. “I’m just couch-surfing. I haven’t paid any attention to who else lives there.”
Shawn pushed a print-off from the hotel’s CCTV footage—the one of a man carrying what was apparently a bag of laundry—towards Webster. “Is this you? Or someone you know?”
Webster stared down at the image. “No, that isn’t me.”
“Where’s the van, Bradley? The one you use to move the immigrants around. We know it exists. Neighbours have been interviewed, and they’ve all said that a couple of white vans arrive at the house first thing in the morning and then don’t come back again until late evening.”
“I don’t know anything about a van.”
“I think you do. I don’t know if you were one of the men driving it to dump off the first body, but the moment we find it—and I promise you, we will find it—and we find even a hint of DNA or a partial print that can be linked back to you, we will charge you for her murder.”
His face grew pale. “You can’t do that. There’s no proof.”
“The DNA would be enough proof for us, together with the CCTV footage of the van. I’m sure you’ve been sensible enough to wipe down the van, but assuming you’ve been inside it, you’ll have left your DNA everywhere.”
Webster swallowed audibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“But you understand that you’re not really the one we’re after, Bradley. We want the people you work for.”
There was no way Bradley Webster was clued-up enough to be running the sort of setup that was going on here.
“If you help us by giving us a name, we can talk to a prosecutor about reducing your charges. We’ll be more lenient on you, and make sure the judge is, too. We just need a name.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You must have someone you’re contacted by.”
“Yeah, but it’s just by phone. He tells us where we have to be and how many we have to pick up.”
“Did you have the phone on you?”
He nodded miserably. “Yeah, I handed it in at the desk when I was brought in, but it’s a burner phone. You won’t get anything off it.”
“We’ll be the judge of that. What about the van?”
“I don’t know about any van.”
Shawn took a sip of his coffee and tried not to grimace. “I’ve got all day, you know. We can just sit here until you remember.”
That wasn’t the truth either, but Bradley Webster didn’t need to know that.
Shawn’s phone buzzed, and he paused the interview.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he told Webster and stepped out of the room.
“DS Turner,” he answered.
“It’s Shariff. I tried to get hold of DCI Swift, but she didn’t answer her phone. I have an update.”
“Did you find the girl?”
“Not yet. But we have found the van and we’re in the process of getting a search warrant to get SOCO onto it. One of the neighbours reported that they’d witnessed a van matching our description being driven in and out of a set of garages. They’re council-owned as well, and the name on the lease is the same as the one for the house.”
“Good work. Is it definitely the same van? Does it have the sticker for the boxing club on the back?”
“No, but there’s residue where a sticker has been scraped off. Hopefully, once we get the warrant, SOCO will be able to get something we can use off the vehicle.”
“Even if it’s been wiped, there’s every chance they’ve missed something. They always do.”
It wasn’t helping them find the missing girl and even though they had people of interest, it wasn’t enough. They needed whoever was at the head of this operation, and it wouldn’t be a nobody like Bradley Webster.
“Was anything found at the house?” Shawn asked . “We could do with a photograph of the girl?”
“Yes, Linh Phan said she has a bag in the top room, which we managed to locate. I’ll email you over a copy of a couple of photographs we found in the bags. One’s of the girl and her friends back home, and the other looks to be a family group.”
“Anything else in there that might point towards who brought them over? Any contact details, or a phone?”
Shariff let out a breath. “No, nothing like that. How are you getting on with the young man from the house?”
“He hasn’t given up anything of use yet. He’s just a run-of-the-mill dogsbody. If we can get someone to testify that he was one of the people driving them to and from the workplace, we might be able to land something on him, but that’s all. He’s not one of the big boys in this.”
“And he won’t give us the name of who he’s working for?”
“No.”
“What about his phone?”
“It’ll be going to Karl Hartley at digital forensics. He might be able to get something out of it. There is still one lead I have who might prove to be fruitful, and I believe she’d be dealing with someone higher up. She’s not the kind of person who would tolerate the likes of Bradley Webster for even a second.”
“Oh?” Shariff sounded interested. “Who’s that?”
“The Minster for Care, Angela Hargreaves. DCI Swift is bringing her in.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Several hours had passed since she’d left Shawn to interview Bradley Webster, and in that time, Erica had gathered enough information to bring in Angela Hargreaves.
“What the hell is this all about?”
Angela stood in the interview room, her arms folded across the chest of her smart suit jacket.
“Please, take a seat, Ms Hargreaves,” Erica encouraged.
“I don’t need a seat. I need to know wha
t’s going on.”
Erica kept her cool and pushed the photograph of Chau Phan towards Angela. DS Shariff had sent it over after Shawn had told her it was needed.
“This afternoon, the girl in that photograph was taken from a hotel in Canary Wharf where she’d been working with her mother. They’re both illegal immigrants.”
Angela’s gaze snapped to Erica, as frigid and blue as glacial ice. “I don’t see what this has to do with me.”
“Two women, that we know of, have already been murdered for their organs, and I’m sure there are many more than we’re unaware of. Now Chau Phan has been taken, and if we don’t find her soon, she will meet the same fate.”
Angela still didn’t sit down.
“Please, look at the photograph, Ms Hargreaves. She’s just a girl hanging out with her friends, the same as your daughter. Simply because she wasn’t born here and doesn’t have money doesn’t mean she has as less right to live than Millicent.”
“I know that. How can you make out like I don’t know that?”
Erica continued. “We have reason to believe the girl was taken because you’ve ordered a new kidney for your daughter, Millicent.”
“That’s a load of nonsense. I’d never do something like that.”
“Ms Hargreaves, I have to let you know that I’ve applied for your phone records and a production order for your bank statements. I’m fairly certain I’m going to find some interesting messages and phone calls, together with large amounts of cash withdrawn recently. Am I correct?”
In truth, she didn’t know for sure that Angela had made any payments to the organisers of the transplant, but she didn’t let that show.
Angela covered her face with her hands and shook her head, as though she was trying to block all of this out. Her hands trembled as she lowered them again.
Finally, she slid into the chair on the other side of the table. Her complexion had drained of all colour, and she looked like all the energy had seeped out of her.
“Last time we met, you said you were a single parent, too,” Angela said.
Erica nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“Son or daughter?” she asked.
“A daughter.”
“And I bet you’d do anything you could to save your daughter’s life, wouldn’t you? Anything at all, even if it meant making some really hard choices, choices you knew were wrong.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks, and even though she’d been about to do a terrible thing, Erica couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
“I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t break the law.”
“You’d just let her die? You’d stand back and watch your child fade away right in front of you because some politician—someone just like me—decided it was immoral to do so?”
Erica wanted to tell herself that she would never have dreamed of going down the same route as Angela Hargreaves. She would have waited and hoped that a donor would come up and that her daughter would be well enough to receive the kidney.
Except that was what Angela and Millicent Hargreaves had done. They had waited, like they were supposed to, and at the last minute, all their hopes were dashed, and they were turned away again.
“I wouldn’t have a choice,” Erica said.
“But I did. I did have a choice, and yes, maybe it’s illegal and grey around the edges as far as mortality goes—”
“Angela,” Erica cut in, “we’re talking about women being murdered for their organs. They’re hand-picked to meet the requirements of the person who needs the transplant, and then they’re cut open, the specific organ removed, left to die, then burnt. What part of that is ‘grey around the edges’?”
Her cheeks flushed red. “I didn’t know that’s what was happening.”
“But you knew it would be something along those lines.”
She shook her head violently. “No, I didn’t. I swear it. I thought perhaps someone who was desperate for money would have sold a kidney. People can survive on one kidney. Don’t you think it was something I looked into myself? I would happily have donated Milly one of my kidneys, even if there was a high possibility of it failing, but I wasn’t a match.”
Maybe she hadn’t known for sure that someone would have died for the organ, or had simply convinced herself that nothing that bad would have happened, but either way, she’d been breaking the law. It was illegal to purchase organs for transplant, and she’d knowingly committed a crime.
“Whoever is behind this had no intention of allowing the victim to live. If they survived, they’d be able to seek help, and that would lead a trail back to the perpetrator. They’ve deliberately destroyed the bodies after taking what they wanted to hide their crime.”
Angela blinked back tears and stared down at her hands. “I wasn’t aware of that. I never would have...” She broke off and shook her head.
“You understand you will be charged for breaking the Human Tissue Act by attempting to illegally purchase a human organ. You’ll lose your job.”
Erica hoped that would be enough to scare Angela into telling her everything she knew. In truth, it would be up to a prosecutor to decide what charges would be brought against the politician, and while the people behind the harvesting of illegal organs would definitely be facing those charges, she wasn’t sure Angela would as well. They would have to prove that Angela knew a person would be killed for their kidney when she organised the transplant for her daughter, and that wouldn’t be an easy thing to do.
“I don’t care about my job. All I care about is my daughter.” She finally lifted her head to look at Erica. “If I go to prison, who will be there for her? Her father is useless—he’s in America somewhere, and I’m not sure I even know how to get hold of him. Without the transplant, she’s going to deteriorate, and she won’t even have me to take care of her. What if she dies alone?”
“A transplant still might become available for her the traditional way.”
“It did before, and she was turned away. It crushed her. It crushed both of us. If I thought there was any hope, don’t you think I’d never have gone down this route? I only did it because I was desperate.”
“There might be a way you can help your case.”
“What is it? Don’t mess around with me, Detective.”
“You can help us catch the people behind this. Those people are of far more interest to me than you are, Angela.”
“How can I do that?”
“There will be a whole network of people behind this, from the traffickers, to the doctors willing to take payment to perform the surgery. We already have some of those lower down the chain in custody, but they’re not talking.”
“I met someone,” she said. “A smartly dressed man, attractive. He messaged me via Facebook.”
“Did he have a profile?”
“Yes, he did, and it was the same man who came to meet me.”
“Can you show me?”
Erica took out her phone and handed it to Angela. Angela logged in to her social media and pulled up the profile of the man who’d contacted her. John James. It wasn’t a name Erica had come across and the photograph didn’t match that of Kenneth Beckett’s either.
Had her instincts about Beckett’s involvement been completely wrong?
Erica tried not to show that she’d just kicked the stool out from under her investigation. She’d been convinced that Kenneth Beckett was the brains and money behind this international trafficking ring—his legitimate businesses simply a cover for the thing that was bringing in the big money.
“And this is the same man you met in person?” Erica double-checked.
“Yes, it is.”
Erica took a breath and restructured her thoughts. “When is the operation due to happen?”
Angela chewed on her lower lip. “Tomorrow.”
“And what’s the plan?”
“I have a phone he gave me. I have to wait for a call, which will give me the location where I have to take her.”
“I’ll
want to have detectives with you when that call comes.”
“And then what?”
“We find out where they want you to take Millicent. We’ll put a tracker on you both, and we’ll follow right behind you.”
She lifted a hand to stop Erica. “Wait a minute. You want me to take Milly along?”
“The location they give you might not be the final one. It might simply be a place for them to pick you up from to take you to where the surgery will be performed. If we go to that location instead of you, we might find nothing, and they’ll know we’re onto them.”
Angela shook her head. “No, I can’t take Milly. I won’t get my daughter involved in this.”
“You already did get your daughter involved, that’s the problem.” Erica leaned forward, her forearms on the table between them. “In one of the other interview rooms here in this station, there is a mother who’s lost her thirteen-year-old daughter. She’s crying her heart out because someone stole her daughter right out from under her nose, and she can’t help thinking the worst. And the sad thing is that she’s probably right in thinking the worst. The only thing that might be keeping that girl alive is that she’s scheduled to be an organ donor for a rich white woman’s daughter—a politician, no less—and that kidney is more likely to work the less time it spends out of the donor’s body. Except she’s not a donor, is she? At least not willingly. That kidney will be stolen from her, and then she’ll be allowed to die, and her body will be burned to disguise the cause of her death and any incriminating DNA.”
“What am I supposed to tell Milly?”
“She’s not a small child anymore. I suggest you tell her the truth.”
Angela swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m letting her down again. I told her she was going to get the kidney and instead she’s going to be in trouble with the police.”
“No, she won’t be. Your daughter is a victim in all of this, too.”
Angela pressed her lips together, and Erica wondered just how much she’d told her daughter. Erica decided she didn’t need to know.