by Tony Parsons
‘Why did the driver do a runner?’ Edie said.
‘Perhaps he looked in the back, realised the women were dying or already dead, and panicked,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he didn’t get paid. Perhaps there was nobody there to meet him.’
‘But why was it below freezing in the back?’ Edie said. ‘He smuggled a lorryload of girls into the country and then froze them to death. It makes no sense.’
‘The big ports see these refrigerated lorries all the time,’ Ken said. ‘Before I was in Heathrow I worked in Dover. Their refrigeration works just like your central heating – on either a timer or a thermostat. The cold air kicks in when the temperature gets above a certain level or at a specific time. My guess would be that it never crossed the driver’s tiny mind that those women could freeze to death back there. There’s no market for dead women. He didn’t turn the refrigeration on deliberately, and he didn’t know enough to turn it off until it was too late. He’s unlikely to be any kind of criminal mastermind.’
‘So he saw what had happened and he legged it,’ Edie said.
Whitestone nodded grimly. ‘The driver’s fear seems to be a major component in every possible scenario.’ I saw she was trembling with anger. ‘This is not a trafficking offence, Max. This is not smuggling illegals. We have eleven dead bodies at the morgue. I want these bastards for murder.’
‘Any leads inside the lorry?’ I said.
‘The women each had one small bag,’ Edie said. ‘That’s clearly all they were allowed. The contents are remarkably similar. They each had a little bit of make-up and they each had a phone, and the batteries were all dead by the time we found them. We’re charging the phones and calling in the relevant translators to examine text messages.’ She indicated the United Nations of passports before her. ‘It’s going to be a lot of translating. And the embassies are not going to be any help because it looks like only one of the passports is kosher. We can’t ID the dead if they’re travelling on a fake passport.’
Whitestone pulled off her gloves and went to stand before the giant map of London that covers one wall of MIR-1.
‘Are we working on the theory that Chinatown was the final destination?’ I said.
Whitestone nodded.
‘It’s unlikely those twelve young women were coming here to pick potatoes in East Anglia or collect cockles in Morecambe Bay. They were coming to London, Max. And they were coming to do one thing.’ She exhaled hard. ‘I want to put the squeeze on every pimp between Chinatown and the Watford Gap. You’ve got a CI in Chinatown, right?’
I must have looked surprised.
‘A CI?’
‘The Filipina,’ Whitestone said with a touch of irritation. ‘Ginger Gonzalez.’
‘Ginger’s not really a Criminal Informant,’ I said. ‘She’s more of a friend.’
Ginger Gonzalez ran one of the most successful prostitution rings in the city, although she preferred to call her business – Sampaguita, named after the national flower of the Philippines – a social introduction agency.
She had once helped me bust a paedophile ring wide open. She had arranged company for my colleague DC Curtis Gane when he had been paralysed in the course of duty and needed someone to hold in the last days before his death. I believed the end of his life had been made easier by Ginger.
So I had plenty of reasons to feel grateful to Ginger Gonzalez.
‘Your friend puts wealthy men in contact with beautiful young women, right?’ Whitestone said.
Ginger found Sampaguita’s clients in the swankier bars of London hotels – the Coburg at the Connaught, the American Bar at the Savoy, the Rivoli at the Ritz, and the Fumoir at Claridges – and then put them in contact with the ever-changing stable of young women who were on her books.
‘But she doesn’t think of herself as a pimp,’ I said.
Whitestone bit her bottom lip, as if I was testing her patience to the absolute limit.
‘She can call herself what she likes, Max, but I call it pimping. Do you really want to give her a pass?’
I was certain that the lorry in Chinatown was nothing to do with Ginger. There was no coercion involved in what she did. She was a businesswoman.
‘She’s a good kid,’ I said simply.
Whitestone’s face flushed with anger.
‘Those women in the back of that lorry? I bet they were all good kids, too. Your first job is interviewing Hana Novak in the hospital. But then you’re coming back here and we are going to see your friend, Max. That’s your second job.’
It wasn’t a suggestion.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.
‘Ma’am, why are you so certain they were coming here to go on the game?’ Edie asked Whitestone. ‘We don’t know that for sure, do we? They might have thought – I don’t know – they were coming here to be models, or dancers, or waitresses.’
‘But the men who brought them in knew,’ Whitestone said, looking at me. ‘Didn’t they?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The men knew.’
My phone began to vibrate.
DR PATEL CALLING, it said.
‘Hana’s not going to make it,’ he told me.
By the time I got up to the Royal Free they had moved Hana Novak from the ICU to a small private room where the lights were low and the temperature was warm and you could hear the buzz of traffic drifting up from Pond Street as they slowly climbed one of the steepest hills in London.
The nurses had tucked her up to keep her comfortable and, with only her face showing above the bedding, she looked very young.
‘I suppose there’s no point in asking about next of kin?’ Dr Patel said.
‘We’re trying,’ I said. ‘Her passport’s real. Probably the only one of the bunch that is real. We’re in touch with the Serbian embassy about next of kin.’ I looked from the young woman in the bed to the doctor who had done his best to save her. ‘We should hear soon. But I don’t know if it is going to be soon enough. How long has she got?’
‘She’ll slip away soon,’ he said. ‘She’s not in any pain.’ He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. I don’t think I had ever seen a man more tired. ‘But there was too much internal damage before we reached her.’
‘May I stay with her?’ I said.
‘Of course.’
As soon as Dr Patel was gone, I took the only chair in the tiny room and pulled it close to the bed. When I spoke, my voice was as soft as a prayer.
‘Who did this to you, Hana?’ I said.
But if she heard me, she did not speak, and if she knew I was there, then she gave no sign, and so I sat by the bedside of Hana Novak and I stayed there until she had gone.
3
Night was falling on Chinatown.
There was no sign of what we had found outside the dim sum restaurant in the freezing sunrise. It all seemed a lifetime away. The white lorry had been impounded by forensics. The police tape had all come down and been neatly disposed of. And the only clue that the dead bodies of twelve young women had been discovered on this spot was the tide of flowers that was piling up by the entrance to Gerrard Street.
DCI Whitestone glanced at the flowers as we walked through the archway to Chinatown, and I knew she was in no mood to go easy on Ginger Gonzalez, whatever favours my friend had done for us in the past.
‘Is this difficult for you?’ Whitestone said.
‘We have to talk to her,’ I said. ‘I don’t see that we have a choice.’
Halfway down Gerrard Street there was an open doorway by a duck restaurant where a long queue of stylish young Cantonese queued for a table. We went up a short flight of stairs to a white door with a simple sign.
SAMPAGUITA
Social Introduction Agency
Whitestone laughed. ‘She even advertises,’ she said bitterly.
Without knocking we went inside a small white room. It was almost nothing – just a spartan little cube of a room above a Chinese restaurant. Ginger Gonzalez was sitting behind her desk.
She was a thirty-
year-old Filipina and everything about her proclaimed that she was a high-flying London businesswoman – the giant iMac, the well-thumbed copy of that morning’s Financial Times on her desk and her black-rimmed glasses. The only thing that made her look as though her career possibly was not in the financial sector were the tattoos that I knew ran down her lower inner arms.
Ginger’s studious face broke into a smile when she saw me and then faded immediately she saw Whitestone.
‘Max,’ she said. ‘How can I help?’
There was a scented candle in a small glass holder on Ginger’s desk and it disguised the smell of Peking duck that drifted up from the restaurant below. Whitestone stared thoughtfully at the flame, leaving it to me.
‘It’s about the lorry we found this morning, Ginger,’ I said.
‘One hundred metres away from where we are now,’ Whitestone said, picking up the scented candle.
‘It’s terrible,’ Ginger said in an accent that hovered somewhere between Manila and Manhattan. ‘I left flowers.’
‘Big of you,’ Whitestone said. She put down the candle. ‘Remind me again how it works.’ She gestured towards the door. ‘You know. Your Social Introduction Agency. What would I find if I Googled Sampaguita?’
Ginger glanced at me and then back at Whitestone.
‘You will not find Sampaguita online. We leave no digital footprint.’
‘We? That’s the royal “we”, is it? Or do you mean you and your whores?’
Ginger folded her hands. ‘What I mean is that I prefer to make personal contact with clients,’ she said pleasantly.
Whitestone almost smiled. ‘In other words, you pick up men in bars and then you put them in touch with one of your girls?’
‘I introduce men to women. That’s what I do. And I pay my taxes—’
Whitestone lifted a hand to silence her.
‘Spare me the waffle about how respectable you are.’ She nodded at me. ‘I know that you and Max are friends. And I know that you have helped him – and our people – in the past. But here’s the problem. You run a prostitution ring.’ She again raised a hand. ‘You can call it what you like, but we both know that is what it comes down to.’ She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose and nodded to the window. ‘And first thing this morning a dozen young women who were being brought into the country to make a living on their backs – whether they knew it or not – were found at the end of this very street. And now they’re all dead.’
Ginger took a breath.
‘It’s a tragedy. But it’s nothing to do with me.’
Whitestone continued as if Ginger had not spoken. ‘Max here might believe whatever rubbish you tell him, but not me. See, you make it sound far too much like Pretty Woman. You make it sound almost romantic. Lonely, rich men and willing, beautiful women.’ She laughed. ‘You make it sound as though the men are all Richard Gere and the women are all Julia Roberts. And it’s not quite like that, is it?’
Ginger looked at me for help.
‘Ginger. We have no leads,’ I said. ‘We’re on a cold trail. So anything you can—’
Whitestone hurled the small glass candle against the wall. It shattered with a crack like gunshot. Without the scent of the candle, the room began to fill with the smell of roasting meat.
‘Answer my question,’ she said.
Ginger stared back at her.
‘No, it’s not always like a remake of Pretty Woman. That’s true. Sometimes the men are less than gentlemen – especially as they are all rich, privileged men who are accustomed to being obeyed and getting what they want. And – although I have a rigorous recruitment programme – my staff are constantly changing and on occasion they are not as honest or reliable as I would wish.’
Whitestone shook her head and looked at me.
‘Her staff, Max,’ she said. ‘She calls them her staff!’
I saw the first flash of anger in Ginger’s eyes. ‘None of my girls are forced into doing anything they do not want to do. There is no violence. There is no coercion. I have been out on my own since I was sixteen years old—’
‘Am I meant to feel sorry for you?’ Whitestone said.
‘I don’t care what you feel about me,’ Ginger said. ‘But I know the law, Detective. It’s illegal to buy sex from anyone who has been subjected to force – and none of the staff at Sampaguita is ever subjected to force. It is illegal to buy sex from someone under the age of eighteen – two years older than the age of consent – and none of my staff gets a job without verified photo ID. And prostitution itself is not illegal – only soliciting in a public place, running a brothel and kerb-crawling.’
‘And pimping,’ Whitestone said quietly. ‘Don’t forget pimping. That’s illegal, isn’t it?’
Ginger stared at her for a moment. Then she nodded.
Whitestone got off the desk and went to stand by the window. It was dark now and Chinatown blazed with its nighttime colours of red and gold.
‘I could shut down your little business tonight,’ Whitestone said. ‘If the judge is sufficiently senile, then he might buy your line about Sampaguita being a – what is it? – Social Introduction Society. My guess is that would be laughed out of court. My guess is that you would get done for causing or inciting prostitution for gain. And – again, this is just my opinion – I think you would serve a custodial sentence.’ She looked back at Ginger. ‘You tell me – could you do jail time?’
Ginger stared at her defiantly.
‘You would not believe what I’ve had to do to survive,’ she said quietly.
‘I doubt that,’ Whitestone said. ‘Because you see, Ginger, I’ve been clearing up the mess of commercial sex since I was in uniform. I’ve seen poor little cows who should have still been in school sold to twenty men in one night. I’ve seen girls with their front teeth knocked out because they disobeyed some evil stinking pimp. I’ve kicked down doors and found women who thought they were coming here for a better life. I’ve seen the lot.’
‘That’s not me,’ Ginger said. ‘That was never me. If that was me, Max would have busted me the first time we met.’
Whitestone nodded. ‘I know.’
Ginger looked genuinely confused.
‘Then what do you want from me?’
Whitestone suddenly seemed very tired.
‘We had to look at eleven dead women before breakfast.’ She nodded at me. ‘Max watched another one die – Hana, her name was Hana – at the Royal Free. So before I can sleep tonight, I just need to feel like I’m fighting back.’
‘Busting me is not fighting back,’ Ginger said. ‘It’s lashing out.’
‘Ginger,’ I said. ‘Where do they come from? The women who work for you?’
‘They come from everywhere, Max. Europe. Asia. South America. They come from everywhere except here.’
‘How do they get in?’
‘Student visas. Tourist visas. But of course if they’re from one of the countries in the European Union, they come in through the same immigration line as you.’
‘And what about the ones who don’t have student or tourist visas?’ I said. ‘What about the ones who don’t come from Europe?’
‘What are you asking?’
‘I’m asking if there’s one of your girls who came into this country in the back of a lorry,’ I said. ‘If there was anyone who was smuggled in. If there’s someone who works for you who came in the hard way.’
She hesitated.
‘There was one,’ she said at last. ‘Turkish. Years ago. When I was starting out. I know she came here in the back of a lorry. Her name was Asuman. She said it meant daughter of the sky. Asuman Ata. Sweet kid. Very shy. She certainly came here the hard way.’
‘And how did you meet Asuman?’ Whitestone said.
‘She had been working at some kind of lap-dancing club just off the M25. Some scuzzy joint selling blow jobs with the beer. That’s where she was taken after being smuggled into the country. She didn’t elaborate on how she got in. She talked
more about this place she worked. The Champagne Room. And how all the girls there were the same as her.’
‘You mean they were all illegals?’ Whitestone said. ‘They only used illegals at this place – the Champagne Room?’
Ginger nodded. ‘Nothing but,’ she said.
‘You’re not going to tell me you’ve lost contact with her, are you?’ Whitestone said.
Ginger’s right hand flew across her keyboard.
‘Asuman Ata,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an address for her. She’s Asuman Jenkins now. She’s married. To an Anglo.’
‘And why would that matter to me?’ Whitestone said.
Whitestone and Ginger stared at each other but I sensed that something had been resolved between them. Ginger had given us enough. She wasn’t going to be busted tonight.
‘This club,’ I said. ‘Why did they only like using illegals?’
Whitestone looked at me as if she should not have to explain these things.
Then she glanced at Ginger and let her answer my question.
‘Because illegals are easier to control,’ Ginger said.
4
It was close to midnight when I parked the old BMW X5 on Charterhouse Street. The city was closing down for the night but my neighbourhood was just coming awake.
At 77A Charterhouse Street, a former meatpacking warehouse, the clubbers were filing in to dance the night away at Fabric. Directly across the street a convoy of meat trucks was lined up outside Smithfield meat market. A roar of activity was coming from inside the majestic old building and it would not stop until dawn. On Charterhouse Street late diners lingered over coffee and dessert at Smiths of Smithfield, four floors of beautiful blasted brickwork, reluctant for the evening to be over.
But I was bushed and climbed the stairs to our top-floor loft with a bone-deep exhaustion. Mrs Murphy, who took care of us, had been asleep in an armchair but woke at the sound of my key in the lock and was getting to her feet, patting her immaculate white hair. Stan, our ruby-coloured Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, did not bother to get up but watched me with his perfectly round black eyes. Mrs Murphy waved away my apologies for the lateness of the hour.