‘Jazzy? Elena? Are you there?’
There was still no obvious response but she wondered if she had not heard the faintest movement further along the walkway. She hesitated, but only for a moment. She switched off the torch and, relying on the last vestige of daylight that was left, felt her way carefully along the passageway, glancing into each doorway as she passed. At the end she found a door that had been restored to an almost upright position and propped closed, though drunkenly.
‘Jazzy?’ she said, more loudly this time. ‘It’s Laura. Are you there?’ Suddenly the door was pushed open, catching Laura off balance as it fell towards her and pushed her across the walkway hard against the retaining rail, which sagged alarmingly under her weight. Before she could regain her balance two figures rushed out of the flat and ran away from her, back towards the main staircase.
‘Jazzy, Elena!’ Laura cried out involuntarily as the two figures disappeared onto the top landing. ‘It’s me. Come back, please. Jazzy, please come back.’
But there was no response, and rubbing her elbow, which had taken a glancing blow from the falling door, she hurried after the fleeing pair. On the landing she hesitated, glancing down into the inky blackness below but, to her surprise, hearing nothing. They did not seem to be running down the stairs. But then she noticed the faintest hint of daylight on the floor to her left, just visible below another door, which she guessed led up to the roof. She felt for a handle, found it, and the door swung open. Above her, at the top of another flight of steps, she could see the night sky and she felt the force of the wind, which was blasting across the open roof. She felt sick with apprehension. Once, several years ago, she had seen a man fall off a roof like this. She did not want to witness the same thing again.
Forcing herself up the concrete steps she stepped out into the gusts of sleety rain, silently scanning the empty expanse of roof, broken only by the top of the lift shaft. She could see no one but she was absolutely sure that the two girls were there, no doubt hiding on the far side of the shaft. Cautiously, she made her way towards the structure.
‘Jazzy,’ she called as she got closer and thought her voice could be heard above the gusty wind. ‘Elena. Please, it’s me, Laura. I don’t mean you any harm.’ Then she saw them, not, as she had thought, behind the shaft, but crouching in the lee of the parapet on the side of the roof that overlooked the road. She changed direction and slowly walked towards the girls, but as she got closer, what she feared most suddenly happened. One of the figures jumped out of the shadows and climbed onto the parapet, where she stood for a moment, silhouetted against the faint light from the streetlights below and swaying slightly in the wind. Elena’s friend Jazzy screamed and grabbed hold of her but the Albanian girl struggled as Laura ran towards them, her heart pounding, expecting Elena to lose her balance and disappear before she reached her. But she was quick enough to grab hold of the girl’s emaciated body as she swayed between life and death and, between them, Laura and Jazzy managed to pull her down until she was sitting on the parapet with her legs safely on the inside.
‘Elena,’ Laura gasped. ‘You mustn’t, you mustn’t! You’re going to be all right.’
‘Men down there,’ Elena said, her voice shrill. ‘Look, men down there.’ Laura glanced down at the road and saw that the girl was right. A car that looked very like the one she had suspected of following her through the town earlier was now parked at the front of the flats and two figures could be seen making their way towards the gap in the fence. Her mouth went dry and she drew the two girls closer to her, so that they could not be seen from below, but Elena suddenly wriggled out of her grip and half climbed back across the parapet again.
‘No,’ Laura said. ‘Please believe me, Elena. If we’re quick we can get out of here before they find us. Come on, Elena. You said you did it yourself. We can do it too. If they come up the main stairs we’ll go out the other way, down the emergency stairs. But you need to be quick.’ The girl was sitting with her legs over the void now and Laura doubted that she could pull her back a second time if she was determined to launch herself over the edge.
‘She doesn’t understand,’ Jazzy said dully. ‘How can she understand you. She wants to die. She told me that over and over. She wants to die. I wanted her to come away from Bradfield but she wouldn’t. I couldn’t get her to go on the train with me…’ Jasmin shuddered, evidently on the verge of collapse herself.
Laura tried to get a firmer grip around Elena’s waist, feeling the tension in her thin frame as she flexed her arms ready to fling herself forward. But her own desperation and fury that the girl had been driven to this gave her extra strength.
‘Help me,’ she said to Jazzy through gritted teeth. ‘For goodness sake, help me pull her back.’ Almost reluctantly, it seemed, the other girl took hold of Elena’s arms and between them they eased her back onto the floor. When they had got their breath back Laura hauled the weeping Albanian girl onto her feet and hung onto her arms grimly.
‘We’re going down now,’ she said firmly. ‘No argument. We’re going down.’ Very slowly the three of them, Elena supported on each side, made their way back down the first flight of stairs to the top landing, where they stood for a moment listening. Elena trembled between them but no longer offered any serious resistance, but she stiffened as they all saw a flicker of light far below and heard the sound of someone ascending the main stairs. Laura pulled the two girls onto the top walkway and they made their way to the far end where the second staircase led downwards. Not daring to use her torch, Laura led the way, feeling the sides of the stairwell with her hands and reaching for each tread tentatively with her feet. On the landings they could clearly hear noises from the other end of the building, but no one had apparently worked out that there was another exit. Breathlessly, they reached the ground floor, pushed open the door and ran across the muddy expanse of grass to the gap in the fencing.
To their amazement, as they struggled out of the darkness into the road, they were met by several burly policemen heading in the opposite direction. Behind them Laura saw parked police cars and vans and, amid the confusion, the welcome sight of Michael Thackeray and Kevin Mower at the kerbside deep in conversation with her grandmother. Seeing the three of them approach, the two men hurried in their direction.
‘Look after the girls, Kevin,’ Thackeray said, brusquely. Mower had watched Thackeray’s growing anxiety, verging on panic, ever since he had discovered that the car number Laura had relayed to him on her way to The Heights was Stephen Stone’s. His visible distress had intensified when Joyce Ackroyd had told him where Laura had gone to seek the runaway girls, and Mower could only sympathise with his boss’s distraught expression now as Laura ignored him and addressed herself to Mower alone.
‘Elena needs a doctor,’ Laura said. ‘Urgently, I think.’
‘No problem. I’ll take care of them,’ Mower said, taking the two girls gently by the arm and leading them over to an ambulance that had just arrived, blue light flashing.
Thackeray stood speechless for a moment looking at Laura, while uniformed men streamed through the gap in the fence and into Priestley House. Laura turned to him slowly, and gave a small helpless shrug, her own face drained and pale as the shock kicked in.
‘I think she would have jumped if I hadn’t got there first.’
‘Are you always going to live so dangerously?’ Thackeray asked quietly, his voice hoarse.
‘I knew she’d be spooked by anyone else,’ Laura said, suddenly shaking and overcome with intense weariness. ‘She tried to jump. Jazzy and I – we managed to stop her.’
Thackeray ran his hand lightly across Laura’s cheek, as if to wipe away tears that she had not shed yet.
‘You are impossible,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you’d be killed. Stone is a bastard.’
‘But…?’ Laura whispered.
‘But… I think you know. I can’t live without you.’ He hugged her so close to his chest for a moment that she could barely breathe, t
hen pulled away, glanced around at the frantic emergency scene around them and squared his shoulders.
‘I’ve work to do here,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘It was Stone’s car that followed you and I guess it’s Stone who’s looking for you in there now. When Kevin realised what was going on he pressed the panic button. If what we think Stone’s been up to is true, he couldn’t afford to let Elena escape alive. She’s the only witness who can link him to the murder of Grace. Go home now, Laura, and get some rest. We’ll talk later.’
In fact it was more than twenty-four hours before Laura saw Michael Thackeray again. He let himself into the flat around nine o’clock the following evening to find Laura curled up on the sofa listening to the local radio commentary on Bradfield United’s FA Cup match against Chelsea. He dumped his coat on a chair and came round behind her, running his hands down her shoulders and breasts and kissing her awkwardly on the cheek.
‘How are they doing?’ he asked, nodding at the radio.
‘Getting thrashed, five-nil,’ she said with a smile. ‘What did you expect? Come and sit down and tell me what’s happened. You look exhausted.’
They had spoken several times on the phone since Laura had taken her grandmother home the previous evening and then driven home herself, leaving Thackeray and his search team to discover Stephen Stone and his sister Angelica on the top floor of Priestley House, kicking down any door that remained standing in furious frustration at their inability to find Elena. Ever since then, Thackeray had been supervising an apparently endless series of interrogations, which gradually unravelled some of the network of cruelty and exploitation and finally murder that had entrapped the trafficked girls.
‘Have you finished?’ Laura asked, turning the radio down on United’s final humiliation as the sixth Chelsea goal was slammed home and the commentator slid into incoherent disappointment. Thackeray dropped onto the sofa beside her and closed his eyes, almost speechless with weariness.
‘We’ve charged Stone with two counts of murder, Asida with one – we think he was the second man who gave chase when Grace and Elena ran away. He was certainly responsible for supplying Nigerian girls to various networks in this country. And we’ve charged the whole lot of them with trafficking every one of the girls we found. We needed four different interpreters before we could get any sense out of their stories – Albanian, Estonian, Moldovan and something else. I’ve almost lost track, to be honest.’
‘Was Paolo Minelli involved?’ Laura asked.
‘I’ve found no evidence against him,’ Thackeray said. ‘He may have been turning a blind eye to what was going on, but no one has implicated him beyond that, in spite of his attachment to Angelica. He was probably paying Stone to supply the girls, but it will be hard to prove. He was certainly hoping to cash in on a transfer deal once United had had a good run. Angelica, on the other hand, was in it up to her neck. Several of the girls have said that the woman who came to the house was just as brutal as the men. Several have identified her beyond any doubt.’
‘What will happen to the girls?’ Laura asked.
‘They’ll go home, eventually. For the time being we’ve put most of them down as underage, so social services will take responsibility for them. We want as many of them to stay here to give evidence as possible. After that it’s up to the Home Office.’
‘And we all know they’re not overflowing with the milk of human kindness,’ Laura said. ‘Girls like Elena will be outcasts if they’re sent home. They’ll probably be back in the next shipment to someone else’s brothel.’
‘Laura,’ Thackeray said, putting an arm round her. ‘You can’t change the world single-handed.’
‘I can try,’ Laura said fiercely. ‘You have to try, don’t you?’
Thackeray thought for a moment of the long hours he had just spent piecing together a story of such depravity that it made him shudder, and he nodded slightly.
‘I suppose you do,’ he said. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Laura. I’m very proud of what you did. You saved Elena’s life, and probably Jasmin’s as well. If Stone had caught up with them he’d undoubtedly have killed them.’
‘Yes,’ Laura said, quietly. ‘I know.’ The radio, which had been murmuring in the background, suddenly caught her attention again and she turned it up to hear the commentator compounding his own misery by speculating on the news that OK Okigbo would be seeking a transfer to another club.
‘That will please his agent,’ she said.
‘And Paolo Minelli,’ Thackeray said, to her surprise. ‘My guess is that he’ll do well out of any deal like that. He’ll get – what do they call it – a bung?’
‘Poor Jenna Heywood,’ Laura said. ‘It won’t help her plans to rescue the club. She’s hanging on by her fingernails already. Still, she’s a tough cookie. Maybe she’ll find a way of saving them.’
‘I’m not sure OK Okigbo would be much use to her anyway,’ Thackeray said. ‘He may well develop Aids, we’ll certainly want him and his mates to give evidence in court, and we may still charge them all with having sex with underage girls. They must have known and I’m still going to try to prove it. I think his agent may find his value is seriously diminished by the time he comes to sell him on, and I suppose that’s a rough sort of justice.’
‘Has Jenna made a statement about what happened on the motorway?’ Laura asked.
‘She didn’t need to. We have a witness on a bridge who saw the whole thing and had the sense to take the registration numbers of the cars involved. One of them belonged to Les Hardcastle. We’ve charged him with attempted murder and we’re trying to trace the owner of the second car.’
‘Another greedy man,’ Laura said, thinking how her father would feel when he heard of his old friend and rival’s downfall. Jack was not that much different, she thought, just slightly less ruthless in pursuit of profit.
‘There is one bit of good news,’ Thackeray said, pulling her closer to him. ‘Val Ridley called Kevin Mower to tell him that she’s decided not to give evidence at the inquiry.’
‘Not at all?’ Laura said quickly.
‘Not at all. She wants no more to do with it, apparently. Which lets Jack Longley off the hook.’
‘And me,’ Laura said thankfully. She wanted no more investigations in that area.
She looked at Thackeray, whose eyes were almost closed. ‘Can we start again?’ she asked. He opened his eyes and smiled.
‘You are pig-headed, impulsive and positively dangerous to know,’ he said.
‘And you are obstinate, depressive and a bit of a bastard.’
‘We can’t possibly inflict ourselves on anyone else then, can we?’ he said.
And for the first time in many months their eyes met and they laughed.
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About the Author
PATRICIA HALL is the pen-name of journalist Maureen O’Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire, which is where she chose to set her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray. She is married, with two grown-up sons, and now lives in Oxford.
By Patricia Hall
Skeleton at the Feast
Deep Freeze
Death in Dark Waters
Dead Reckoning
False Witness
Sins of the Fathers
Death in a Far Country
By Death Divided
Devil’s Game
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2013.
Copyright © 2007 by PATRICIA HALL
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1546–6
Death in a Far Country Page 25