China Roses

by Jo Bannister

  ‘The last leg of the journey was in the back of a lorry, on a cross-Channel ferry,’ he prompted when the story began to flag. In an aside to Hazel he said, ‘I’m not sure how they managed to trick the surveillance at the docks. Remind me to ask when we find them.

  ‘Then the lorry drove for an hour or so before it stopped, and you were transferred to a smaller van.’ Soo Yen nodded again. ‘Where did this happen? A lay-by, a motorway service station?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘A country road. No buildings, no people. Some sheep.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you can tell us where. Even approximately?’

  ‘No, sir. I am sorry.’

  ‘The smaller van. Do you know what kind it was?’

  But she didn’t. ‘A white one?’ she offered apologetically.

  ‘Could you see out?’

  She shook her head again. ‘It was … enclosed? No windows. Only a small view ahead, past the driver.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Sometimes fields. Sometimes many cars and lorries. We were on the … motorway?’ She checked with him that it was the right word; Gorman nodded. ‘On the motorway for perhaps another hour, then off again. More fields. The van stopped at a place surrounded by fields. A house and some long sheds. Two members of our party disembarked.’

  ‘Two girls?’ asked Hazel.

  ‘No, two young men. They had applied for a job driving tractors on a farm. Perhaps that is what they got.’

  ‘We’ll try to trace them, check that they’re all right,’ said Gorman. It was in his face that it would be easier said than done.

  ‘My information is not very helpful,’ said Soo Yen sadly. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Stop saying that,’ said Gorman gruffly. ‘You have nothing to apologise for. You’ve been badly treated, and I’m sorry you haven’t had a better experience of my country. It isn’t perfect, but most of the people here don’t think it’s all right to treat visitors as slave labour.’

  ‘Were you ever tied up?’ asked Hazel quietly. ‘Your wrists, your ankles? Your knees?’

  ‘No,’ said the girl, surprised. ‘We believed we were being taken to where we had paid to go. There was no need to compel us. The journey had been uncomfortable, but it was nearly over. We were excited to be arriving. It was only later that I realised that I at least had been misled.’

  ‘The man driving the smaller van,’ said Gorman. ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘No, he had an assistant. A younger man.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’

  She tried, but really all she could remember was that they weren’t Chinese. The younger one was shorter and thinner than the older one. They spoke with a strange accent that made it hard for her to understand them. She lowered her voice. ‘Like Mrs Lassiter.’

  Hazel hid a grin. ‘A Birmingham accent. What we call Brummie.’

  ‘Brummie,’ echoed the girl carefully.

  ‘What did they say to you?’ asked Gorman.

  ‘Very little. Get out here, take your bag, knock on that door. They talked more between themselves.’

  ‘Can you remember what they were talking about?’

  Soo Yen gave it some thought. The journey was now a distant memory, she’d been tired, the strangely accented conversation of the two men in the front of the van had not interested her much at the time. ‘She who must be obeyed,’ she said finally.

  Hazel burst out laughing. Gorman stared at her without understanding.

  She tried to explain. ‘It’s Rider Haggard, isn’t it? She? And then John Mortimer uses it in Rumpole, as Horace’s nickname for Mrs Rumpole …’ She saw that she wasn’t getting through to him. English literature had never been his strong suit. ‘It’s a nickname men use for the significant women in their lives – wives, bosses. Women who tell them what to do.’ She turned to Soo Yen. ‘Did it sound as if they were talking about the wife of one of them? Or about a woman they both worked for?’

  The girl knew it was important. She tried to remember exactly what had been said. But it was four months ago, and it hadn’t seemed remotely important at the time. She was a long time answering, not because she was reluctant but because she was trying to get it right. ‘I think – I think – both of them used that name. The young man and the older man. She could not have been the wife of both, could she?’

  ‘No, she couldn’t,’ agreed Gorman. ‘What did they say about her?’

  ‘They made jokes. They pretended to be frightened of her. But I think perhaps they really were frightened of her, a little.’

  They tried to coax more information from her, about the journey and the men and the woman who made them nervous, but after a while DCI Gorman was satisfied there was no more information to be had. Soo Yen had told them everything she could remember.

  ‘Please,’ she said then, ‘when shall I be able to go home?’

  ‘Just as soon as I can arrange it,’ Gorman promised.

  It was a short drive back to Meadowvale. Too short: Gorman turned aside, driving along the park railings and on towards the canal. He parked beside the little humpback bridge and sat staring at the water.

  Hazel said nothing to disturb him. She knew exactly what they were doing here. The DCI was Thinking – the capital letter was intrinsic – and before long he would want to bounce his Thoughts off her. The towpath was quieter than the police station, with fewer interruptions, when there was serious Thinking to be done.

  At length Gorman looked round at his newest DC as if mildly surprised to see her there. Then he sniffed and said darkly, ‘I blame the feminist movement. You never used to find women running international crime gangs.’

  Hazel grinned. ‘They should never have given us the vote. That was the first mistake.’

  Gorman gave a chuckle. ‘OK. We don’t want to read too much into this. Firstly, because we might be wrong – these two guys might have had a mistress in common. Unlikely, in view of the age difference, but not impossible. And secondly, She Who Must Be Obeyed probably isn’t running anything. If she’s giving orders to the two muppets driving the van – the guys who’re most likely to take the fall if something goes wrong – she’s probably only a couple of rungs up the ladder.’

  ‘How long do you suppose the ladder is?’

  ‘Long enough to keep the guys in charge well above the shit,’ growled Gorman. ‘That’s how these things work: little fish reporting to slightly bigger fish until you come to the shark at the top of the tree.’ He paused there, aware that his metaphor had become somewhat mixed. ‘So nobody can give the whole game away if he ends up talking to us.’

  ‘Which makes She Who Must Be Obeyed some kind of middle management,’ suggested Hazel. She wasn’t sure if he actually wanted her input as well as a receptive ear, but if he didn’t he’d shut her up soon enough.

  Gorman nodded slowly. ‘Less disposable than the drivers, but disposable enough if push came to shove.’

  ‘How do we find her?’

  Gorman didn’t know either. ‘At least we’ve an idea now what that van was doing at Myrton.’

  Hazel blinked. ‘We have?’

  ‘It was making a delivery. Rose or one of her fellow-travellers was being delivered to their new employers.’

  Understanding kindled in Hazel’s eyes. ‘That’s farming country. I doubt there’s anything but farms for ten miles in any direction.’

  Gorman shrugged. ‘Cheap labour would be a godsend to lots of farms. Picking fruit, mucking out the chickens, milking the pigs.’ Dave Gorman was a city boy at heart: he’d hardly seen a green space bigger than a rugby pitch until he came to Norbold. ‘Those two lads who travelled with Soo Yen – that’s the kind of job they went to. Someone travelling with Rose must have been heading for the same thing.’

  Hazel had pulled the road map out of his glove compartment. ‘The drivers are using the big lorry and the motorways to cover distance, then switching to the van so they can make deliveries up narrow country roads. Since it was the van that David saw at Myr
ton, maybe they’d made a delivery not long before, or they were just about to. If we visit farms on the road between Myrton and the motorway, we might find the right one.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gorman doubtfully. ‘I guess we’ll have to try. The difficulty will be recognising it when we find it.’

  Hazel, who had done much of her growing up around farms, had a better idea what they were looking for than Gorman had. ‘It’s the wrong season for fruit picking, so a big vegetable producer would be favourite. They’ve always used overseas labour. Picking veg is hard work for not much money: lots of home-grown workers would rather be on the dole. Agricultural workers from Europe – eastern Europe in particular – come for the picking season, live on site, work long hours and go home with money in their pockets. It works for both parties.’

  ‘Then why the need for slave labour?’

  ‘Because someone always gets greedy,’ sighed Hazel. ‘The margins aren’t enormous at the farm gate.’ No, she’d lost him again. She tried to make it simpler. ‘There isn’t that much profit on a carrot once you’ve paid for the seed and the fertiliser, and the stoical Romanian to pick it. The price the housewife pays in the supermarket is a lot more than what the supermarket pays the farmer. The seed and the fertiliser always go up in price, so the only way to boost the producer’s income is for him to pay less for his labour.’

  ‘Is it skilled work?’

  ‘Not particularly. I mean, people who do it for a living are a lot better at it than casual labour, but anyone can master the basics pretty quickly. I’ve done it myself, to make money for college. It’s murder on the back but it’s not difficult.’

  ‘So a couple of illegal immigrants could be put to work without much training, without anyone asking too many questions, and without much risk of the neighbours reporting suspicious activity,’ ruminated Gorman. ‘They’d just look like part of the regular overseas crew.’

  ‘The regulars would know they weren’t, though. They’re the ones we need to talk to. We need to find a vegetable operation gearing up for the Christmas market somewhere on that road, and talk to the overseas pickers. They’ll know if there have been any ringers in their ranks.’

  ‘Will they talk to us?’

  Hazel saw her chance and took it. ‘They might not talk to you, Chief. But I bet they’ll talk to a fellow yokel like me.’

  When she got home that evening, there was a visitor waiting on Hazel’s doorstep. She felt an unexpected surge of anger under her breastbone. ‘All right, where is he?’

  Patience regarded her with calm, toffee-coloured eyes. The end of her scimitar tail waved.

  ‘Gabriel?’ He didn’t have a key to her house, and though he knew where she kept the spare, she doubted he’d have let himself in and left his dog sitting on the pavement. She glanced at her watch. Quarter to seven: with the boys away, he was probably still in the shop, bringing his accounts up to date. Some days he needed the fingers of both hands. It was a short walk from Railway Street to Rambles With Books. Hazel pointed a commanding finger towards the street corner. ‘Go on, off you go.’

  Patience stayed where she was, sitting on Hazel’s doorstep, watching her expectantly.

  Hazel breathed heavily. ‘He’ll be worried when he misses you.’

  There was nothing remotely aggressive about the lurcher’s posture; at the same time, it was obvious she wasn’t going to do as she was bid. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake …!’ Hazel shrugged her coat up around her ears and dug her hands deep into the pockets. ‘Come on then, I’ll take you back.’

  Apparently that was the desired response: immediately Patience came to her feet and fell into step beside her.

  She’d been right about the accounts. Though the shop was closed, there was a light on and she could see Ash bent over the long table, pen in hand. She’d tried to convert him to the convenience of digital bookkeeping, in vain. With a quiet obstinacy to match his dog’s, he’d explained that he liked doing it the old-fashioned way. He kept a fountain pen for the purpose.

  The door was locked. She rapped on the glass and when he looked up, startled, pointed down at the dog. Then she turned back the way she’d come.

  Ash threw aside his books, and even his fountain pen, and hurried to the door. ‘Hazel. Please don’t go.’

  To keep walking would have been both childish and churlish. She stopped and after a moment looked back. ‘Patience found her way to my place. I thought I’d better bring her back.’

  ‘I hadn’t missed her. She must have gone out the back way.’

  ‘You need to make it secure.’

  ‘I thought I had.’ He was standing in the street in the icy blast of a winter’s evening in his shirtsleeves. His head was down and his shoulders hunched, and there was a look of helpless misery on his face that had nothing to do with the weather.

  She almost said, ‘Whatever,’ and kept walking. But they had meant too much to each other once for it to end like that. Whether or not she was still angry with him, whether or not he deserved her anger, their shared history meant that the least they owed each other now was a civil parting. Perhaps that was why she’d come. Perhaps – a fanciful thought – that was why Patience had fetched her.

  Hazel’s tone softened. ‘Go back inside, Gabriel. You’ll catch your death of cold.’

  ‘Will you come in? Just for a minute?’

  She went on watching him; still she didn’t leave. ‘There’s no point.’

  ‘I want to …’ What? Explain? How could he possibly? Apologise? No apology he could offer could begin to set things right between them. ‘I want to say how bitterly I regret leaving you to deal with David’s death alone.’

  ‘I wasn’t alone,’ said Hazel; and it came out rather more sharply than she meant it to. ‘Dave Gorman had my back. Pete’s been a star too.’

  ‘I could tell.’ Ash’s teeth were beginning to chatter. ‘That doesn’t make what I did all right.’

  Almost against her better judgement, Hazel found herself taking pity on him. She ushered him back into the shop and closed the door, shutting out the dark street. But she didn’t sit down. She had no intention of staying.

  ‘Isn’t it time you went home? Your time isn’t your own any more, you know,’ she added, a shade maliciously.

  The needle went home: she saw him flinch. ‘Actually, it is.’

  Hazel’s eyes saucered. ‘She’s gone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For good?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Ash.

  ‘Well – that’s a bit sudden!’

  Ash shook his head despairingly. ‘It wasn’t what you think, Hazel. She was never going to stay any longer than it took to sort a few things out. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you. I thought, the more you knew, the more difficult your position would be. If that was stupid, I really am sorry. I couldn’t find a way of doing everything that needed to be done. It won’t be much comfort, but I was feeling a complete bastard even before I heard about David.’

  He wasn’t a man who swore easily or very effectively. He didn’t get enough practice. On those rare occasions that the Queen’s English failed him, he always sounded like a nine-year-old afraid of being overheard by his mum.

  Hazel gave a weary sigh. ‘You don’t need to. It was all over before I even missed him. There was nothing either of us could have done.’

  There was a lengthy pause. Neither of them made any move towards the door. Patience settled herself under the long table, curled round like a bagel with her chin resting on her tail.

  Eventually Ash said, ‘How did you know? About …?’

  ‘Your visitor?’ Hazel’s smile was brittle. ‘I saw the pair of you, at your bedroom window.’

  ‘She stayed for three nights. I slept in the study.’

  Oddly enough, she believed him. She still didn’t understand. ‘If you didn’t want to share, why didn’t you put her in the guest room?’

  Ash looked at his shoes. ‘The boys broke the bed, playing at paratroopers. I haven’t go
t round to buying a new one.’

  ‘And these things you needed to sort out …’ She saw his hunted expression as he glanced up. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for the gory details. I’m going to make a wild guess, and you can tell me if I’m right or wrong. That thing you were busy doing – was it something to do with the boys? With keeping them safe?’ That would explain his actions as nothing else could.

  Ash considered for a moment. The answer he gave then was overly simplistic but it was the truth. ‘Yes. Yes, it was.’

  Hazel let out a long breath. ‘Then you did the right thing. They have to be your priority. They always will be. Is everything all right now?’

  ‘At home? Yes, I think so. Frankie and the boys will be back in a few days. But it’s not all right. We’ve both lost a friend. And I’ve been afraid I lost something even more precious.’

  ‘Oh Gabriel,’ sighed Hazel, finally sinking onto one of the chairs drawn up at the table, ‘why do we always make such a mess of something everyone else finds easy? Even teenagers; even people with half a brain. I’m not stupid, and you’re positively smart, and still we can’t figure out what we want from one another.

  ‘Shall I tell you something? When I saw you together and I thought you were … well, a couple … a bit of me was relieved. Relieved that you’d taken it out of my hands, that you’d made a decision so I didn’t have to wrestle with it any more. Didn’t have to decide what I wanted and how much I was prepared to pay for it. I was sorry, I don’t mind telling you I felt hurt, but there was a part of me that figured it was probably for the best.’

  She was only telling him what he already knew: that he’d managed to trash any future they might have had. He was bereft but also resigned. At least he consoled himself with the tentative hope that the anger she had borne him had begun to mellow.

  ‘I let you down,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Regardless of what we could or couldn’t have accomplished, you came to me for help and I let you down. I’m not going to ask you to forgive me. In view of what’s happened, that wouldn’t just be unrealistic, it would be impertinent. There must have been a way I could have protected the boys without hurting you, and I’m more sorry than I can say that I couldn’t find it.’