by Tony Parsons
I kept looking at her. I was waiting.
‘Ten weeks or so,’ she said.
I nodded, winded and wordless.
For as long as I had known Edie Wren, she had been involved with a married man. I had seen him once, a good-looking man in a suit and tie, like a politician who wants your vote, no spring chicken – the far side of forty – but a handsome man who knew it and who had always known it. I had only glimpsed him in a doorway for a moment. But I saw his wedding ring. Or perhaps I imagined that I saw it. But it was there.
Edie Wren’s married man. Mr Big.
I could not, off the top of my head, even remember his real name. But I knew with total certainty that he was too old for her, and that he was too married for her and that he was nowhere near good enough for her. He did not deserve her and he did not deserve to be the father of her child. I felt an anger and grief that I could not explain. And I felt totally absurd at the depth of my feelings.
Why can’t you just wish the girl well, Max?
I looked at her, and she was fingering the small crucifix around her neck. Edie Wren was London-Irish Catholic. And nothing in the world would stop her having this baby.
‘Congratulations,’ I said, looking away. ‘I guess.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Here she comes now.’
Asuman Jenkins was perhaps thirty, but her dark face was lined with exhaustion and made her look years older. Under her black unbuttoned North Face jacket you could see the light blue uniform of an NHS staff nurse. She was fiddling with her key in the front door when we came up the concrete garden path.
‘Asuman Ata?’ Edie said.
She turned to stare at us, a look of horror on her tired face.
‘Jenkins,’ she insisted. ‘My name is Asuman Jenkins.’
Our warrant cards were in our hands.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to be alarmed, Mrs Jenkins.’
‘But we need to talk about when you were Asuman Ata,’ Edie said.
We followed her through the front door. I thought I knew these houses but inside it was more compact than I had imagined. I had been spoiled by my years in a Smithfield loft, living in more space than me or my little family would ever fill. But in the tiny box-shaped living room where the widescreen TV was exactly the same size as the sofa, three was a crowd.
Edie and I sat on the sofa and Asuman Jenkins perched uneasily on the footstool of a La-Z-Boy. It is not her chair, I thought, as her knees almost pressed against mine. As she sat there in her light blue uniform, I tried to imagine her as the young woman who had been smuggled into the country.
‘We understand that you entered this country illegally, Mrs Jenkins,’ Edie said.
She immediately stood up.
‘I have a British passport now. I’ll show you. My husband—’
I held up my hand. ‘We’re not questioning your right to residency. We wanted to ask you about how you found work after you arrived here.’
‘The travel agent arranged it,’ she said, slowly sinking on to the edge of the big black easy chair.
‘The travel agent?’ I said.
‘You mean the trafficker,’ Edie said. ‘The smuggler.’ Edie looked at me and grinned. ‘Travel agent!’
For the first time, I saw a flash of defiance in the woman’s face.
‘To you – he was a trafficker,’ Asuman said. ‘To me – he was a travel agent. I wanted to come to this country. In my home …’ She shook her head. ‘There was nothing for me. My father was very strict.’ She bit her lower lip, then shook off the memory. ‘So I went to the travel agent. And I paid him money. And he arranged my trip.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘But all this is a long time ago. You must leave before my husband comes home.’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ I said.
‘We leave when our questions have been answered,’ Edie said. ‘If you want us to be gone by the time your husband gets home, then we should get cracking.’
‘Where did you meet this travel agent?’ I said.
‘There’s an area in Istanbul called Aksaray. They call it Little Syria. That’s where the travel agents are. If you want a travel agent – you go there. Ten years ago or today. I paid £1,240.’
She looked at us with suppressed rage, as if the steep price made the journey legitimate. The sudden sound of a car outside turned her head towards the window.
‘Mrs Jenkins,’ I said quietly. ‘We’re investigating the death of the twelve young women who were found in a lorry in Chinatown. If you’ve seen the news over the last twenty-four hours, I know you will have heard about it.’
‘Terrible,’ she nodded, getting to her feet. Edie and I looked at each other. Why was she so afraid of her husband?
‘We are talking to you now because we know a little of your history,’ I said. ‘We spoke to Ginger Gonzalez.’
Her face flushed. She would not meet my eyes.
‘That was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘Another life.’
‘How did your travel agent get you here?’ Edie said. ‘Boat to a Greek island?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I caught a taxi. It was all overland. No boats to Greece in those days. Nobody drowning in the sea at that time.’ She took a breath. ‘A car from Turkey to Sofia in Bulgaria. Then a car to Niš in Serbia, then on to Belgrade in the same car. Then a different car to Zagreb and then a lorry to Stuttgart. And the same lorry all the way to England. And then on the ferry. Across the sea.’
‘The journey ended in London?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘There’s a big road from London to the north of England. The M1.’
‘Rings a bell,’ Edie said.
‘There is a place for petrol and food where the M1 meets the M25. That is where the travel agent dropped us.’
‘London Gateway service station,’ I said.
‘But all this is ten years ago!’ she protested.
‘And who found you work?’ I said.
She bit her lower lip and looked towards the window again. But there were no cars out there now.
‘There were men waiting to meet us at this place on the M1,’ she said, reluctantly sitting on the La-Z-Boy. ‘They knew we were coming. One of them gave me work. Me and another girl from – I don’t know. I think her country was Thailand.’
‘You worked at the Champagne Room,’ I said.
She drew an audible intake of breath.
‘But you ran away from the Champagne Room,’ I said. ‘You went to London. And you met Ginger Gonzalez.’
A car pulled on to the tiny driveway.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about those women.’
‘How did those men know you were coming?’ I said. ‘How did it work? Did the travel agent arrange this job for you?’
A key turned in the front door.
‘I don’t want to get into trouble,’ she said. ‘Please.’
Her husband walked into the room. He was a large and burly red-faced man, who looked as though he had played rugby twenty years ago, or at least watched a lot of it.
And he was a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police.
He came into the little living room with a smile on his ruddy face and it fell away when he saw Edie and me, standing to meet him with our warrant cards in our hand.
‘Sergeant Jenkins, I’m DC Wolfe and this is DC Wren of West End Central,’ I said. ‘We’re here—’
‘I can guess why you’re here,’ he said. ‘Ash doesn’t know anything.’
Ash was his nickname for her.
As if she was someone else now.
And perhaps she was.
‘Now get out of my house before I throw you out.’
Most people think that detectives outrank uniformed officers but it is not true. Plain clothes mean nothing to a police officer. As a sergeant, Jenkins outranked us.
Edie and I glanced at each other. I could see it in those blue eyes. We were not going to
get much more out of Asuman Jenkins unless we played rougher and brought her in for a formal interview. And I suspected that leading us to the Champagne Room was about as far as she could take us.
We made our way to the door. Asuman Jenkins stayed in the living room but Sergeant Jenkins dogged our steps. Edie slipped out the front door and I turned to look at the big sergeant.
‘One more thing,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing else. Sling your hook.’
‘Where did you meet your wife?’
His face flooded with a tearful fury.
‘Why should she have to beg to be inside this country?’ he said. ‘And in case you are fucking wondering, she wasn’t a whore. She was never a whore. She came to this country to be a nurse.’
‘But she wasn’t working as a nurse for Ginger Gonzalez, was she, Sergeant Jenkins? And she wasn’t working as a nurse in the Champagne Room.’
‘Do you want me to take you outside and punch your lights out?’ he said.
‘You could try. You might even succeed.’ I sized him up. ‘You’re bigger than me. Stronger than me. But I’m in much better shape than you and I’ve probably had a lot more training than you.’
He sneered at me.
‘What are you meant to be then? Some kind of Mixed Martial Arts bad ass?’
‘Nothing so modern.’
He looked at the bend in my nose.
‘You’re a boxer,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s born with a snout like that.’
He didn’t seem impressed. I didn’t expect him to be.
I was here to talk to his wife about her former life in prostitution and the thing that he wanted most in the world right now was to rip my throat out.
‘But you know that rolling about on the pavement with me would not make anything easier for your wife,’ I said.
‘She’s a nurse. Ash is a nurse.’
‘I know.’ I took half a step closer to him. ‘But we have twelve young women who died following pretty much the same route that your wife took into this country. That’s why we’re here today. That’s the only reason we’re digging up the past. Because we have twelve bodies and no leads. You following me, Sergeant Jenkins?’
He nodded. But he still did not answer me.
‘So I’ll ask you one last time,’ I said. ‘Where was Mrs Jenkins working when you met her? At the Champagne Room?’
No reaction.
‘Then was she working for Ginger Gonzalez?’ I said.
He looked away, and he shook his head, but somehow it was the exact opposite of a denial.
‘I would have thought that Ginger’s staff were out of your pay grade,’ I said, and I took half a step back as I watched his fists clench by his sides. But he did not raise his hands. He raised his head and I saw that finally he wanted to get it over with.
‘Janice,’ he said. ‘My first wife – her name was Janice. She died of breast cancer. I went off the rails. Alcohol mostly. But I had these fits of rage.’ He shook his head. ‘I was angry. I thought – why her? Why anybody? It made me a violent man. On the job, I mean. On our job, Detective. There was a crew of little hoodies on Lewisham High Street, mugging the old white ladies for their cat-food money. I got hold of one of these little hoodies.’ His voice became very quiet at the memory. ‘And I nearly killed him,’ he said.
Edie was waiting for me on the street. I nodded at her, afraid to move or speak in case it stopped Sergeant Jenkins from speaking.
‘One of my colleagues knew about Ginger Gonzalez. This is years back, when Ginger was fresh off the banana boat. I met her in a pub. I think her business – Sampaguita is the name of her business, right? – was not quite so upmarket back in the day. She wasn’t operating out of the big five-star hotels in those days. This is long before the Savoy and the Ritz and Claridges. She met men in pubs. Same deal – Ginger made the introductions. But she took what she could get. Even serving police officers. So a date was set up for me and one of Ginger’s girls.’
‘And that was Asuman,’ I said. ‘That was Ash.’
‘She wanted to be a nurse. She wanted a decent life. She wanted to take a different road from the one she was on.’ He looked at me and for the first time I felt that there was no possibility of us ending up punching each other. ‘I made it happen,’ he said. ‘That new life.’
‘One date and then you rescued her.’
He looked at me.
‘I’m not sneering at you,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
As I turned away I felt a powerful hand on my arm.
‘Look in the Champagne Room,’ he said. ‘I know those bastards are still out there. And look at those service stations where the motorways meet. Where London ends and the country begins. It hasn’t changed in ten years, you know. The whole rotten business just gets bigger and bigger. The whole world wants to come here. And they’ll do anything to get in.’
I thanked him and I watched him go inside his house.
Then Edie and I drove away from the street of filthy net curtains.
‘So are you and me going to check out this club?’ Edie said. ‘The Champagne Room, toast of the M25, the hottest spot north of London Gateway service station?’
She was grinning. I didn’t smile back.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s better if I go with Billy.’
Silence.
‘Why are you angry with me?’ she said. ‘Because I’m pregnant? What’s it got to do with you, Max?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Two men just works better. In fact, two men is the only thing that works. Look – the Champagne Room is somewhere between a lap-dancing club and a knocking shop. We’re not going to be kicking down doors, Edie. We’ll go in undercover as a couple of punters. And see if they’re still working from the same business model.’
Her phone was ringing. After a moment she took the call, listened, murmured assent and hung up.
‘That was DCI Whitestone,’ she said. ‘The boy has landed. Hana’s brother. Nenad Novak is sixteen years old. And later today he is going to ID his sister’s body at the Iain West.’
My stomach knotted at the thought of a sixteen-year-old boy staring at his next of kin in the mortuary.
‘Whitestone wants you to be there,’ Edie said.
‘Why me?’
Edie smiled a little sadly.
‘You’re good with children,’ she said.
7
There was a flurry of snow in the evening air as I walked from 27 Savile Row to the Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road. A man and a boy were waiting outside. They were an odd couple. The man was a tall lean figure with a briefcase, a sleek and affluent professional ready for the last of the day’s business. The boy – a young-looking sixteen – was in an unbuttoned coat that was frayed by previous owners and two sizes too big for him. His spectacles had been broken and mended more than once.
‘DC Wolfe?’ the man said, shaking my hand. ‘I’m Dejan Jovanović from the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia.’ He turned to the boy with a show of formality. ‘And this young man is Mr Nenad Novak.’
I could see his sister in his face.
I shook the boy’s hand.
‘I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances,’ I said, as his eyes behind his broken spectacles slid away from me. His second-hand coat was unbuttoned despite the temperature hovering just above zero. I felt that he had a lot of things to learn. ‘Shall we go inside?’
They followed me into the Westminster Public Mortuary. I addressed both of them. ‘Identification is necessary to establish that the person reported as having died is truly that person in order to complete the certificate of death,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ nodded Jovanović of the embassy. The boy said nothing, his face a glum mask, as if he had been brought to this country, this city and this place against his will.
I looked at him until he finally met my eye.
‘Nenad,’ I said. ‘I am afraid we believe that body is your sister, Hana.’
His mouth twi
tched with emotions that I could not read. Grief. Shock. Adolescent embarrassment. I wished there was a way around this bleak ritual.
I met her, I wanted to tell him. I found her alive. I held her hand in the hospital. I was with her when she died. And I promise you that I am going to nail the bastards who did this to your sister and all those other women.
But I said nothing. I put my arm around him, guiding him to a chair, but never quite touching him. We all remained standing.
He was very young for what he had to do today. Seeing his sister’s body would bring home the full reality of loss. I realised that it was best to ask him anything I needed to know now, before he saw her.
‘Nenad? Why was Hana coming to this country?’
‘She was a nurse,’ he said in near-perfect English.
‘Do you know what she was going to do in this country? Did she speak about her plans?’
‘To work as a nurse.’
‘But did she have a job to come to? Or was she planning to look for work?’
He shrugged, shook his head, his eyes once more avoiding my gaze.
‘Where did you learn English, Nenad?’
‘YouTube. And my sister.’
I turned to Jovanović.
‘I recommend that Nenad does not touch the body,’ I said. ‘Touching can make it all a lot worse.’
Jovanović murmured a sentence in Serbian and Nenad shrugged again, as if none of this had very much to do with him. I felt for the kid. He was a teenage boy in a situation he was not equipped to deal with. In fact, I had never yet seen a fully grown adult who was equipped to deal with this situation.
Elsa Olsen came to meet us in the lobby. I made the introductions and Elsa took us down in the lift to the Iain West Suite. Beyond the glass wall, a lone metal trolley was waiting for us, the body it held covered by a white sheet.
Elsa looked at Nenad Novak and then at me.
The boy stared off into a corner of the room. I nodded and Elsa gently pulled back the sheet to reveal the face of Hana Novak. I was still looking at her when the boy finally spoke.
‘That’s not her,’ he said.
We all looked at him.