Careless Love

by Robinson, Peter

  ‘You’d be surprised how many men there are like Keane. Men for whom human life or happiness means nothing. Men who will take what you love from you in the blink of an eye just because they can. Men of power and money who will steal your dignity and leave you with nothing.’

  Banks gave a slight nod. There was something that struck a chord in what she said, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on. ‘You sound as if you know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Did you lose someone, Zelda?’

  She glanced away sharply. ‘How could I lose someone? I am an orphan. I had no one to lose. Friends, yes. I lost many friends, and I soon realised it was best not to make friends because they came and went.’

  ‘Then it was you, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, Zelda.’

  ‘No. I do not want your pity, Alan. But I also do not think I need to tell a man like you all this, tell you what I have suffered, what many others like me have suffered. I think you know a great deal about these things. But even with all you know, you could not even begin to imagine the horror of my life.’

  But he could. Imagine it, that is. The beatings, the rapes, the constant fear, the squalor, the sweaty pigs grunting as they came in her, one after the other. But that was all he could do. Imagine it. The only action he could take was to try to stop as many others as he could from doing it. It might be like cleaning the Augean stables, but nobody should have to go through what Zelda had been through. Or Linda. Ever. End of story.

  ‘In all your work since then,’ Banks asked, ‘have you ever come across the men who hurt you?’

  Zelda looked towards the window. ‘Some of them, yes,’ she said. ‘It was long ago. Perhaps many have moved on? Or they are dead. That would be better. Perhaps too much to hope for.’ She turned back to face Banks and smiled. ‘It’s a beautiful day. Cold, but beautiful. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. Do we have to sit in this dreary office to make a plan? Would you like to hear my story, or do you have more important work to do?’

  Banks smiled. ‘No, not at the moment.’ He grabbed his overcoat. ‘Come on. Let’s go. You can leave the suitcase here.’

  Banks and Zelda went out of the station into the market square. Zelda was a couple of inches taller than Banks, and she certainly drew admiring glances as they walked. She fastened her coat loosely and put on the fur hat. ‘Like a true Russian,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘You’re not Russian, are you?’

  ‘My mother’s family came from St Petersburg – or Leningrad as it was then – to Odessa after the war. The world war. That was where my mother was born, in nineteen sixty-five. They had survived the siege. Odessa is also where my father met my mother, and later they moved to Moldova for my father’s work. He was an engineer. That’s where I was born. So yes and no. My father also came from Russia, but he believed his parents migrated from the east. So mine was a very mixed family. It is hard to sort everything out. And I never really got a chance to ask them for their life stories.’

  Despite the chill, they bought ice creams at the corner shop and walked along Castle Walk, a tree-lined cinder path that circled Eastvale Castle high above the river valley. Zelda smiled as they passed groups of unruly children in bright orange shell suits and young lovers hand in hand. Banks watched her from the corner of his eye as she occasionally put the cone to her mouth and licked at the scoop of ice cream. It was a gesture both sensual and child-like in its innocence. Which seemed all the more odd coming from a woman who was far from innocent. Or perhaps innocence was more a matter of the heart, or soul, than of things that happened to the body.

  The path emerged into the open high above the silver river. It was a good site to choose for a castle, Banks had always thought. High and compact, with a view for miles around. The wooded slope down to the water was steep. It would have been easy to pick off any marauders from the top of the ramparts, pour boiling oil on them or whatever.

  They sat on a bench with their backs to the castle walls and enjoyed the view across the river to the opposite bank. The trees were bare, which gave a better view of the fields and rising daleside beyond, but the fields themselves were still bright green with the recent rains and rose in the distance to steep hills with outcrops of grey limestone catching the winter light. Sheep grazed everywhere, and the landscape was crisscrossed with drystone walls. In one of the lower, riverside fields, two sleek and beautiful chestnut mares, backs covered with blankets, nibbled at the grass. Directly below them, the river ran down a series of weirs and rocks, giving the effect of mini rapids, and children stood on the banks and threw stones into the water.

  ‘I cannot believe how much I love it here,’ said Zelda. ‘It makes me feel like I have come home.’

  ‘To Moldova?’ Banks asked, quickly trying to prevent a blob of vanilla ice cream from dropping onto his trousers.

  Zelda laughed. ‘Moldova? No. I mean home in my heart. But we lived in Dubãsari in Moldova, stuck right between Ukraine and Romania. It is next to Transylvania, where your Dracula comes from.’

  ‘He’s supposed to have landed in Whitby,’ said Banks.

  ‘Maybe that is why I feel so much at home here. I love Whitby, too. The Magpie. Fish and chips and vampires and goths. Wonderful.’ She smiled.

  Banks laughed. ‘Go on. You were going to tell me your story.’

  ‘I cannot remember much of my childhood because my parents were killed during an uprising in Bendery in nineteen ninety-two, when I was five, and everything was topsy-turvy for a while. I remember my parents spoke Russian as well as Moldavian. Language was always a very political issue in that part of the world. I also speak Russian, some French and German, too. The war came after the break-up of the Soviet Union. But it was not a big war in Moldova, not famous like Serbia and Bosnia. My parents were not political, just ordinary people caught in the crossfire. What do you call it? Collateral damage?’

  ‘Some cynics would call it that.’

  ‘Yes. Collateral damage.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘An orphanage. That was my life for next twelve years. But it was a good life. You hear so many stories about what terrible places orphanages are, what cruelties are inflicted on the children there, but not this one. People find it difficult to believe, but the nuns were not cruel. They did not beat us with Bibles and thorns. And they were good teachers. Not only arithmetic and history, but art, music, literature. We had food – not always enough, but food – and we stayed warm. It was a simple life, and they were very strict, but it was also a good life. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Banks.

  ‘But one day it ended. I had to leave. Everyone has to leave eventually. I had nobody on the outside, and I had hardly got to the end of the street when I was picked up by some men, some very, very bad men. For the next few years things were very difficult for me. How much I cannot say. But I survived. And I escaped in the end. It doesn’t matter how. The story has a happy ending. That is what matters. My life is very different now. But I am still involved with the people who hunt these monsters down, the people who saved my life and gave me a new identity. So that is why it is very important for me to do what I can to fight the evil things these gangs do. I owe it to the thousands of other girls caught in their nets.’

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘All I can tell you that it is an international organisation. Naturally, it has to be. The sex traffic is an international problem. Europol is involved, and many other agencies, including your own National Crime Agency. Of course, I am a mere pawn. I am not a police officer. I have no powers of arrest. Mostly I work in London, in an office, as I told you before, but sometimes they send me to airports or train stations, even to ferry docks, if they think girls and their traffickers are coming in. But I am always hidden away in a special room nobody can see into. And it is rare that I do anything more than look at photographs and videos. My job is intelligence gathering, as I said, helping expand the database. These people move around, pop up all over the place, as you say.
They are smart and usually manage to stay at least one step ahead. They are constantly adapting to new and better ways of doing what they do. I just try to put names to faces, perhaps remember when and where I saw them first, then the files are passed on to someone else. There are squads that go out and arrest suspects and try to help the girls, but I never meet them. Sometimes there are meetings or conferences in the Hague, Brussels or Lyon, if something new or big is happening. But not often. It is not a glamorous job.’

  ‘But somebody has to do it, right?’

  Zelda finished her ice cream cone. ‘Yes. At least for the moment. Nobody knows what will happen after this Brexit. We may be able to continue, but perhaps not. There is talk of losing funding.’

  ‘There’s always talk of losing funding. That’s pretty much par for the course with Brexit.’

  ‘Par for the course?’

  ‘The normal thing. Nobody knows.’

  Zelda smiled. ‘Ah, yes. I see what you mean.’ She paused. ‘Do you know, I feel guilty because I cannot talk to Raymond about things like this. He is like a child . . . too quick to react, too emotional. If I tell him about my work and the bad things in my life, he treats me like I am made of plastic for days.’

  ‘Porcelain?’ suggested Banks.

  ‘Yes. Porcelain.’

  ‘And me? I’m cold?’

  ‘No.’ She touched his arm. ‘But you are a cop, Alan. You understand. I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want . . . what do you calling it? Cuddling?’

  ‘Cuddling would be nice,’ said Banks. ‘But I think you mean coddling.’

  ‘Yes. Coddling. Like an egg. I don’t need that.’

  They admired the view in silence for a while, watching a mother walk by pushing a pram, and an elderly man in a scarf and flat cap walking his Jack Russell. It was quite warm in the sunshine, but a cold wind blew up from the water and rattled the bare branches now and again.

  ‘So, your man Keane?’ said Zelda.

  Banks turned to face her. ‘I wanted to talk to you so that I could try to persuade you to forget about him,’ he said.

  ‘But?’

  Banks smiled. ‘You’re very perceptive. Now I’m not so sure. Ray said you’re not the type to back down.’

  ‘I did try to tell you the other night, Alan. Besides, I assure you it is not dangerous for me.’

  ‘Danger is always relative, and with someone like Keane you always have to be aware that it’s there, or you’ll make a mistake and . . . well, like I did.’

  ‘This Keane. He was Annie’s boyfriend, am I right?’

  ‘Yes. He used her to keep track of our investigation. He made her feel betrayed, humiliated, a fool. He’s very charming on the surface, but if he feels cornered he’ll kill or run. Or both.’

  ‘I can imagine how betrayed and used she felt. But were you not . . . not with her at the time?’

  ‘No. We’d split up by then.’

  ‘But she still cares for you.’

  ‘Does she?’

  Zelda nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, Keane drugged me and set fire to my cottage with me inside it. If it wasn’t for Annie and Winsome, I’d be dead.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘Because he suspected we were on to him. He was covering his tracks.’

  ‘And he escaped?’

  ‘Yes, he drove over the hills and far away.’

  ‘And now he turns up again in a photograph I have seen?’

  ‘The man he was with—’

  ‘Is a very bad man. Croatian. He was part of the gang that took me.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘He’s a pig.’

  ‘And he hasn’t been stopped yet?’

  Zelda shrugged. ‘He is clever. And lucky. Just as he was in the war. And he knows who to pay. Why should he stop?’

  ‘So what would he be doing with Keane?’

  ‘As I said before, the only thing I can think of is that he would want false documents of some kind. Shipping, bills of lading, passports, even. I don’t know.’

  ‘For himself?’

  ‘Or someone else he was trying to smuggle somewhere, or place in a position of influence. They forge work backgrounds, resumés, references and so on, for customs officers, lorry drivers, that sort of thing. And they do not only snatch girls from the street. They are skilled at creating official-sounding fronts to persuade them to leave their homes – marriage and employment agencies, fake modelling agencies, fake film production studios, and fake opportunities for work and study abroad. All these things exist legitimately, so it is often impossible for the girls looking for jobs abroad to separate the fake advertisements from the real ones until it is too late. Nobody checks the authenticity of these advertisements.’

  ‘And the photograph you saw was definitely taken in London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  Zelda turned away, staring towards the hills again. A blackbird started singing in a nearby tree. ‘I’m afraid that might not be possible.’

  ‘The secrecy?’

  ‘Yes. I think my team is very much concerned with making a case against the other man in the photograph. If Keane can lead them to him, all is well and good. But to them I think Keane is just a pawn.’

  ‘Look,’ said Banks. ‘I want Keane. Not just for personal reasons, not just for what he did to me and to Annie, but because he’s a cold-blooded murderer.’

  ‘These men are all cold-blooded murderers.’

  ‘Well, Zelda, you’re in Yorkshire now, and you’re not entirely surrounded by cold-blooded murderers and rapists all the time any more.’

  Zelda laughed. ‘There must be some, or you would not have a job.’

  ‘There are some. More than enough. But what I’m saying is that while Keane may not be unique in your world, he is in this one, or at least to some extent.’

  Zelda frowned so Banks went on quickly.

  ‘All I need is a lead. An idea of where I might find him. A town, an address, a phone number, whatever. That’s all. I don’t want to interfere with your work. If you’ve got an operation going on, I’ll even wait until you’ve done what you need to do before moving in. I don’t want to interfere. But I do want to find him.’

  Zelda paused before answering. ‘I will help you if I can,’ she said. ‘But you have to understand that the other night when we were all talking about how dangerous it was, you might have been worried about danger to me, but that’s not what I was thinking of.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘No. I was thinking about the danger to you and Annie. And to Raymond.’ She paused ‘When you – how do you say it – disturb a sleeping bear. It is not only this Keane you have to worry about. He has some very nasty new friends now. Men like the Croatian. If he is valuable to them, they will kill to keep him alive and free.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect anything less of them,’ said Banks.

  ‘Believe me, I know what they are capable of.’

  ‘Let’s be especially careful, then. Be patient. Wait for the right time. Don’t take unnecessary risks.’

  Zelda glanced at her watch. ‘I must go. My train.’

  Banks stood up and held out his hand to take her arm. ‘Come on, then. We’ll go back and pick up your suitcase and I’ll give you a lift to the station.’

  ‘Bugger me, it really is him,’ said Ronald Hadfield, staggering slightly as the mortuary assistant gently pulled back the sheet. Noticing that Ronald had turned ashen, Annie grabbed his elbow and led him out of the morgue. He eased himself out of her grip, firmly, but politely. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing. I think I had expected it all to be a big mistake. I can’t believe the miserable old bastard’s dead at last.’

  Ronald Hadfield had behaved like a total arse so far, complaining about being dragged all the way back from Tokyo and missing important business meetings, then he had demanded to see the real body instead of a closed-circuit TV
image or a photograph, insisting he could handle it. Annie had hoped for a moment that actually seeing his father’s corpse for real might suddenly make him more human, but apparently, it was not to be.

  ‘If you need a few minutes to recover,’ she said, ‘or require counselling—’

  ‘I could do with a fucking drink,’ Ronald said

  They were certainly a foul-mouthed pair, the Hadfield siblings. Annie wondered if they had got it from their late father Laurence. Still, if Ronald Hadfield wanted to go around effing and blinding, who was she to complain? She’d done it often enough herself when things went tits up. ‘We’ll go over to The Unicorn,’ she said. ‘It’s never likely to make it into the tourist brochures, but they serve a decent measure.’

  The Unicorn was quiet on a Tuesday afternoon, and they found a table far enough away from the bar to give them some privacy. Hadfield seemed uncomfortable in the grimy corner pub, being more at home perhaps in the clubs and bars of Hampstead or the City. He asked for a double brandy, which Annie bought for him, wondering how come she was always the one buying drinks for the filthy rich Hadfields these days, and sticking to Diet Coke herself.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to give me the third degree now?’ said Hadfield, after a bracing slurp of brandy.

  ‘Just a few questions, if that’s OK?’

  ‘You realise what a bloody big mess this will cause, don’t you?

  ‘What?’

  ‘Father’s death. He was a very important person, you know. The economies of several small countries depended on him. Not to mention that he was one of the main players in the Brexit think tank.’

  That sounded like an oxymoron to Annie. ‘No doubt he left a detailed will,’ she said.

  ‘Hah! The will, yes. Are we going to have some sort of Agatha Christie reading, the family gathered together around a big table, the solicitor reading out the bequests?’

  ‘We don’t do that sort of thing any more.’ They never had, as far as Annie knew.

  ‘Just as well. He didn’t like me, Father. Do you know that? I could never do anything right in his eyes, never be as good as him. And he doted on my fucked-up junkie slut of a sister. Knowing him, he’s left everything to her to fritter away on toy-boys and cocaine. But you can bet it’ll be left to me to tidy up his business affairs.’