by Danuta Reah
‘And you haven’t…Luke, you’ve got to tell them now. Listen, those photos were on a disk in my office. How did Gemma get them if they’d been stolen?’ And she hadn’t told the police.
‘I don’t know. Think about it, Roz. They’re not going to knock themselves out looking around. I’m the perfect ready-made suspect. And the photos only make it worse. I lied to them. There’s no proof those photos were stolen. Gemma never reported that.’
Roz closed her eyes. Luke was right. It was all a mess. ‘I still don’t understand about the disk,’ she said. ‘The one with the photographs on. Why did Gemma scan them on to a disk?’
‘I don’t think she did,’ he said. ‘She behaved as though they were the only copies she had, when they were stolen.’ Luke disentangled himself and stood up, pulling on the jeans he’d discarded on the floor the night before. He was pulling away from her, as though the things he was telling her were putting the distance back between them.
‘And you haven’t told…’
‘Anyone, until now.’ He looked at her, anticipating what she was going to say. ‘I can’t tell the police, Roz. Not now. Gemma’s machine was wiped, remember? There’s nothing left.’ He ran his fingers through his hair.
‘So where did the police get them? The pictures?’ Roz was trying to sort out what he’d told her.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. They said they got them off an escort site – you know, a rent-a-shag site. I’ve been trying to find it. I’ve written a program that will do a picture search – look for a particular image on the net.’ He shook his head before she could speak. ‘All I’ve found so far have been some pretty amazing porn sites.’ He looked at her and there was a glint of humour in his eyes.
‘That was what you were doing when…’ She felt a sudden surge of relief.
‘Oh, yeah, Grey.’ He dismissed it. He looked defeated. ‘I’ve given up, more or less. Someone was messing around with that website, but what would finding the pictures prove? I don’t know if it’s worth it.’
Roz thought about what he’d told her. She thought about Friday night when she had stayed late for the meeting that Marcus Holbrook had set up. She thought about the tall figure moving away from her, just through the swing doors. Whoever it was beat her up and then strangled her. And then he posed her obscenely in a hotel bathroom. She reached for Luke’s hand as the cold of the night before washed over her.
Attendance at Mass had been as poor as it always was these days. The priest walked down the central aisle, his head bowed in recognition of the Presence on the altar before him. The sanctuary lamp burned in the darkness, the gilding of the altar shining faintly in the shadows. He walked slowly across to the side aisle, suddenly uneasy, suddenly unwilling to look. He read the inscription at the base of the statue. Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. ‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord: and may perpetual light shine upon them.’
He wasn’t surprised when he saw that the candles were there again. He had begun watching out, not knowing if this was an act of hope – the candles proclaiming a faith that the life of the soul would continue after death – or a cry of despair, a plea that one day the visitor would be reunited with some lost loved one, and that they would share the eternal bliss of Paradise. Today was Septuagesima Sunday, the day on which to consider the consequences of sin – physical and spiritual death. Maybe the mysterious visitor, the person who lit the candles, had gained some comfort from the words of the Mass.
Then he noticed that another candle had been lit. There were four candles, not three, and one of the cards where requests for prayers could be written had been slipped into the box. With a sense of quickening unease, he looked at it, but it was not illuminating.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant her rest.
Hull, Sunday morning
The cold spell had passed, taking away the bright clarity of the frosty air, and leaving behind a grey dampness. A fog came down over the city, trapping the pollution from the cars, from the chemical plants, so that the wet air stung and burned against the skin.
Lynne Jordan lingered over breakfast – fruit, yoghurt, coffee and toast. She preferred to get up an hour earlier and have her day get off to a leisurely start, than have the extra time in bed and a stress-inducing scramble. She sat in the window, watching the estuary appear and vanish through the mist. In summer, she would be able to sit on the small balcony and watch the sea birds and smell the salt water – even on tainted water like the Humber, a tainted sea like the North Sea, it was worth living so close. She remembered Friday night, with Roy, and smiled, stretching. She felt good.
The memory of the sea stayed with her through the drive in to work, and made the routine of paperwork more bearable as she went through her in-tray at eight-thirty. ‘Christ,’ she grumbled to her assistant, ‘Who thinks up all this stuff?’ Farnham had sent through a box of papers that had been collected from Gemma Wishart’s flat with a note to say that his team had found nothing relevant but that she might like to have a look. The report was in from York as well, from the expert Farnham had asked to look again at the Katya tapes. She opened the report with a sense of anticipation – she was curious about the reservations that Gemma Wishart had expressed to her colleagues. But it wasn’t illuminating. His findings supported the original ones – Katya was a Russian speaker, probably from Eastern Siberia. There were items on the tape that he couldn’t account for – brief sections, words and phrases that he didn’t recognize. He proposed that the speaker might be bilingual, and might speak one of the many languages that coexisted with Russian in that vast area, but which one he was unable to say.
She looked at the pile of papers in front of her: letters, diaries, research notebooks, articles – the miscellany of someone who collected paper she thought was important.
OK, discard the diaries from the period before Wishart’s trip to Russia. The letters had been sorted by date and sender. Lynne put all the letters dated ‘97, ‘98 and ‘99 to one side. The research notebooks related to Wishart’s travels in Russia, and they were carefully labelled: April 1998, Novosibirsk; July 1999, Dudinka. There were four notebooks. Maybe the diaries or the letters would help her to narrow her search down.
The diaries were purely a business record of appointments, deadlines, meetings – no personal notes or comments. They reminded Lynne of her own diaries, which told a story, but only to someone who knew the significance of particular names, particular places. Lynne spread out the map and pored over the areas where Gemma Wishart had worked. She checked the written notes on the transcript. YO. Could that be a place? There was a city or a town to the east of Gorky called Yoshkar Ola, but that was hundreds of miles away from anywhere that Gemma had travelled. She made a note to check, and went back to the map. Gemma had spent time in Novosibirsk and in Dudinka. Dudinka was on the Yenisei River – but that didn’t give her ‘YO’.
Was it worth trawling through the books of research notes? Lynne certainly wasn’t up to that task at this stage. She looked at the contents pages. Gemma Wishart had listed, roughly, the contents of each book. Inside, there were more detailed notes about the backgrounds of the people she had recorded, and, in some cases, transcripts of the tapes she had made. She looked at the contents page of the notebook marked Dudinka:
Male, 63. Fisherman. Russian, Nenets
Female, 19, Factory worker, Russian, Nenets, English (some)
Female, 31, Surveyor, Russian, English
Male, 16, Student, Russian, Ostyak, German (some)
Female, 18, Student, Russian, Ket, English (some)
Female, 25, Teacher, Russian, Selkup
There were two notebooks for Novosibirsk, one for Dudinka and one for Igarka. She photocopied the contents pages. Perhaps she ought to get Greenhough looking over these books, see if he could track down what Gemma Wishart had been looking for. She sent the contents pages to him as a starting point.
She went back to Gemma Wishart�
��s report and her transcript of Katya’s tape. Something wasn’t fitting together, and she didn’t know where to look. Green-hough said that Katya was probably bilingual – not unusual, apparently, in that part of Russia. Gemma Wishart seemed to think it was important to get a translation of those words – she had been searching and consulting. But what could four words tell her? Wishart’s search had taken her to someone called Marcus Hol-brook, some kind of authority in the Russian language. Farnham’s men had talked to him, but he hadn’t been able to shed any light on what she had been looking for. Lynne’s mind felt like porridge. She wasn’t finding any way through this.
She had Greenhough’s home number. He was defensive at first, thinking she was criticizing his report, but once he realized she was simply seeking information, he thawed. Academics. ‘I’m not an expert in the languages of Russia,’ he said. ‘It’s not my field at all.’
‘Who would you suggest?’ Lynne said. For Christ’s sake, he was an expert in Russian, wasn’t he? How hard could it be?
He laughed. ‘Good question. Look, Inspector Jordan, I don’t even know how many languages we’re talking about here. I can think of six without even trying – Ossetian, Yiddish, Mordvin, Tatar, Chechen, Georgian. There could be fifty, sixty, even more. I’m not sure anyone could give you an exact number. And it’s not something that’s researched much over here. You’d need to go to a Russian university, and even then you’d have trouble.’ Lynne was quiet as the implications of this sank in. ‘Inspector Jordan?’ he said.
‘Sorry. I was thinking it over. I was led to believe that Dr Wishart might have identified the language.’
‘Well,’ his voice was sceptical. ‘I spoke to one of her colleagues, Rosalind Bishop. She had been told, quite erroneously, that the problem sections were colloquial Russian. Which they most certainly were not.’
Lynne felt her mind start to focus. ‘Who told her that?’
Greenhough was silent for a moment. When he spoke, he sounded reluctant. ‘I think she’d misunderstood something she’d been told,’ he said.
‘By who, Dr Greenhough?’ Lynne tried to keep the asperity out of her voice.
‘He’s a well thought of expert in the Russian language. In this country. So he certainly wouldn’t have made that mistake.’ Lynne waited. ‘He’s based at Sheffield now, but he’s retired. Marcus Holbrook, Professor Holbrook.’
Holbrook. ‘He retired through ill health,’ Greenhough said. ‘He had a heart attack a few years ago.’
‘So what does he do now?’ Lynne wasn’t sure why she was pursuing this, but someone, possibly this Holbrook character, seemed to have been pulling the wool over someone’s eyes about this tape, and she wanted to know why.
‘Academics never stop researching,’ Greenhough said indulgently. ‘And he’s involved in student exchanges. Students come from Russian schools and universities into this country, we send ours over there, it all sets up links. Marcus has lots of contacts over there, so he set up privately once he retired.’
I bet he did, Lynne thought as she put down the phone. I just bet he did.
When she went to Roy Farnham’s office she found him poring over an atlas, a file of papers fanned out on the desk in front of him. He frowned when he saw her, but then gave her a quick smile and said, ‘I’m a bit pushed, Lynne. Can it wait?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She told him about her conversation with Greenhough, about Holbrook’s business interests.
It took him a moment to take on board what she was saying, and then the slightly distracted air he’d had as she came through the door vanished. ‘How the fuck did we miss that?’ he said.
How the fuck did I miss it, Lynne thought. She appreciated the fact that he’d said ‘we’, but she was the one who had been trying to identify Katya. She should have found it. ‘Right,’ he went on. ‘It gives us another link. This Hol-brook character is bringing students over from Russia, Wishart is looking at a tape from a Russian woman…OK. We haven’t quite got it. We need the connection. I want Holbrook’s operation under the microscope. Let’s see if there’s anything dodgy about it. I want him interviewed. I want any link between him and Hagan.’ He frowned. ‘Christ, I need those new people yesterday.’
He had turned back to his desk, and was tapping his finger on the atlas, his eyes screwed up with thought. ‘What is it?’ she said.
‘Look.’ She leaned over the map with him. ‘Wishart spent three years in Russia. In Siberia. Your Katya was Russian – from Siberia. And now we’ve got this Hol-brook character. Gemma Wishart came back to work in this country and came to Sheffield – where Holbrook has his business. There are too many connections. I don’t like coincidences.’ His finger traced a line across the page. ‘She travelled all across this part – from the Yenisei River, here, Dudinka, right?’ Lynne looked. Dudinka was a port on the mouth of the river. ‘Across to here, Beloye More, the White Sea. That’s over fifteen hundred miles.’
‘When did she do that?’ Lynne tried to relate the flat colours on the page to the reality that Farnham was describing.
‘Ninety-eight, according to her mother. She showed me some of the letters Gemma sent.’ Lynne kept her face towards the map, but glanced sideways at his face and was surprised to see lines of tension by his mouth, the downward turn of sadness and regret.
Gemma Wishart would have been just twenty-three when she went wandering that vast expanse, from the ice-bound port of Arkhangelsk to the Kara Sea. She’d travelled in a country that was undergoing turmoil and upheaval. A woman with a taste for adventure. Lynne remembered the glint of amusement in her eyes as she spoke at the meeting where they had met. She remembered the same glint in the eyes of the woman in the photographs. A woman who would pose for bondage photographs with that gleam of challenge on her face. A woman with a taste for risk? A woman who had died violently.
But Farnham was pulling her attention back to the map again. ‘Coincidences,’ he said. He waited to see if Lynne would see the connection that he had.
‘Arkhangelsk,’ Lynne said. ‘Archangel. Angel Escorts. Mr Rafael.’ She looked at him. ‘If someone is bringing women into the country, from Russia…Was Wishart involved?’
‘She’d have had the contacts,’ Farnham said. ‘But – it doesn’t feel right. She was only twenty-three when she was over there. And we’ve been over her personal stuff already. I told you, she wasn’t making any extra money – not that we’ve been able to find. If escort work would have been lucrative, what would trafficking be worth?’
‘But she would have had the contacts. Was someone else using her?’
He nodded. ‘That’s where I want to look. I was looking at Luke Hagan. Now there’s this Marcus Holbrook. This has to go to Immigration. I’ll contact Special Branch. Holbrook’s operation needs to go under the microscope.’
There was a knock on the door. DS Anderson came into the room. ‘Mrs Rafiq’s in Interview 3, sir,’ he said.
Farnham glanced quickly at Lynne and said, ‘OK, I’ll be along. Five minutes, Tom.’ The door closed. He looked at her in silence for a moment then said, ‘She’s my best line to Anna Krleza.’
Lynne felt winded. She hadn’t expected this, not without her involvement, not without consultation. ‘I thought we’d agreed about Rafiq,’ she protested.
‘We discussed it,’ he said. ‘But I want information. And I need it quickly. I know you want Rafiq to help you with the trafficking thing, Lynne, but this is murder. It has priority.’
Nasim Rafiq would know where Farnham’s information had come from. The fragile trust that Lynne had begun to establish would be shattered by the force that Farnham could bring to bear in his search for the killer of Gemma Wishart. And the ammunition he was going to use was the ammunition that Lynne had given him. Her careful work was about to be steam-rollered into the ground, and Nasim Rafiq would be the casualty. She stepped firmly on her anger – it wouldn’t help her here – and thought quickly. ‘If I’d known you were going to move so fast, I’d have put the p
ressure on, got her some guarantees.’
‘I know. You told me.’ He was looking down at her, his voice careful, professional.
Lynne had a sudden flashback to Friday night and felt herself flush. This was why she was wary of mixing work and her personal life. But it had been her decision and she had to take the consequences. ‘I want to sit in on the interview,’ she said. Rafiq was her witness.
‘I was going to ask you anyway,’ he said. ‘Once we’d got her here. But I want this fast and certain. Matthew Pearse seems to have vanished.’
Lynne felt anxiety tighten her stomach as she thought about the gently spoken man with the compelling eyes. ‘Since when?’
‘Just since last night,’ Farnham said. ‘He was supposed to be at the advice centre, but he wasn’t there when we went to look for him. He hasn’t been home, either. No one’s seen him.’ His voice was matter of fact, but the implications of what he was saying were clear in his voice.
She could understand the reason for his urgency. She couldn’t argue any more. He was looking impatient now. He wanted to get on. ‘And the advice centre?’ she said.
‘I’ve got search warrants.’
Thanks a bunch, Farnham! She was silent for a moment as she got her anger under control. ‘I thought you were keeping me informed,’ she said.
‘I’m telling you now, Lynne, that’s why we’re having this conversation. We’re searching Pearse’s place and the advice centre. Are you in on this?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’m in, of course.’ Whatever was going on at the advice centre would disappear now. She’d played her cards too close to her chest, waiting for something more definite, and now she had no ammunition to stop him.
Matthew Pearse’s face stayed in her mind as she followed Farnham down the corridor. She remembered his suppressed anger when he had spoken about the plight of the trafficked women – on the wrong side of crime and on the wrong side of the law – and the compassion in his voice. But if he had been helping them to escape, and helping other illegal immigrants to escape the debt bonds of the people who smuggled them in, then he had made some dangerous enemies. She thought about Katya and her lonely death. It didn’t matter what the post-mortem results were, or what an inquest might say. Katya had been murdered – everything in her experience told her that. But Katya, an unknown prostitute, was expendable. Matthew Pearse hadn’t thought that. She wondered if the gentle man with the twisted back and the determined eyes had any inkling of how dangerous the people he opposed could be.