Die Last

by Tony Parsons

  ‘That’s not Hana,’ he insisted. ‘That’s not my sister. You’re all wrong.’

  He turned on his heels and walked out.

  ‘Very irregular,’ said Jovanović.

  Elsa took a last look at the lifeless face on the trolley and then pulled back the sheet.

  ‘I’m going to have to record her as unclaimed, Max,’ she said. ‘Like all the others.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ I said.

  I thought I would find him waiting for us in the lobby. But he was already out of the door. I stepped on to the street and saw him walking into the small park on the far side of Horseferry Road. Jovanović was by my side.

  ‘Let me handle it,’ I said, and Jovanović nodded and held back.

  There is a giant chessboard in Saint John’s Gardens and I found Nenad Novak staring at it, as if contemplating his next move.

  He looked up at me.

  ‘That’s not her,’ he said, his eyes shining.

  I nodded and put my arm around his shoulder, as if I was ready to believe whatever he chose to tell me. There is a small circular fountain in the middle of the park and we took one of the benches facing it. When the tears came I patted him gently on his second-hand coat and then took my arm away.

  It was dark by this time, one of those bleak mid-winter nights that has the world hurrying for home as soon as possible, and the park was totally empty. Just us and the pigeons. But Nenad still covered his face with his hands, ashamed of his tears. He said her name, and it came out as a choke of grief.

  ‘Hana.’

  ‘That’s your sister in there,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it, Nenad?’

  He breathed out, a long slow exhalation that was at once an affirmation and an acceptance of a world that had suddenly changed forever.

  ‘I’m part of the team that wants justice for Hana,’ I said. ‘We want to find the men responsible for her death. But I need your help, Nenad. I need you to talk to me. And I need you to be totally honest with me.’

  ‘She was a nurse,’ he said angrily. ‘She was not anything else. And it doesn’t matter what anybody says about her now. My sister was coming to London to be a nurse.’

  ‘I spoke to her,’ I said.

  He looked at me.

  ‘I was the one who went into the lorry where we found her,’ I told him. ‘I went into the lorry where we found Hana and eleven other women. Hana was the only one who was still alive. And she told me her name in the ambulance. And I went with her to the hospital.’

  He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. He waited as if there was a wealth of details that he knew nothing about. But there was not much more to tell.

  ‘You stayed with my sister?’

  I felt a flood of shame. I shook my head.

  ‘I went away,’ I said. ‘To try to find the men who did this to Hana and the other women. But then I went back to the hospital. I was with her at the end. She died peacefully. In her sleep. She was not alone at the end.’

  All the comforting clichés of death, I thought.

  But it was true. Even if I had nothing else to give him.

  ‘She looked frightened,’ he said. ‘She looked so frightened.’

  For a moment I was about to mutter some desperate platitude about being at rest now, and beyond all pain, but then I realised with a jolt that he was not talking about the viewing at the mortuary.

  He meant the last time he ever saw Hana alive.

  ‘When Hana got into that truck,’ he said, wiping his nose with his hand. ‘I have never seen her so frightened. She was a brave woman! She was strong! After our parents died, she was the head of our family. It was a shock for me to see the fear on her face. I think it was because they took her passport away.’

  I let it settle for a moment.

  ‘You saw her get into the lorry?’ I said. ‘You were there?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I carried her suitcase to the meeting place. But the man – the man from the lorry – the driver – he would not permit luggage. I had to take her suitcase back home with me. And he took her passport. He had all their passports.’

  I remembered the stack of passports that Edie had found in the cab. I remembered them spread out on a workstation in West End Central. And for the first time I felt I could feel the presence of the man who put a rubber band around that stack of travel documents and tossed them inside his cab.

  ‘Nenad,’ I said. ‘Listen to me.’

  ‘Nesha,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nesha,’ he repeated. ‘In Serbian – for Nenad we say Nesha.’ He looked at me as if for the first time. ‘Nesha to our friends.’

  ‘Nesha, this is really important. Anything you can tell me about this man – his nationality, what he looked like, anything at all he said – will help us find justice for Hana and all those other women.’

  He took his cheap little phone out of his ragged coat and tapped some buttons. He handed it to me.

  There was a photograph on the cracked screen.

  Hana and Nesha Novak. Brother and sister. Standing on a frozen street in a blacked-out city that could be anywhere but I knew was Belgrade. A selfie – taken hurriedly – brother and sister holding on to each other, both smiling shyly, a souvenir of that last goodbye.

  And in the background of their selfie, I saw a man turning away, his face in profile and out of focus and obscured by the shadows of the sleeping city. But I could see the elaborate scarring that ran down one side of his face, like a parody of tribal markings.

  The driver.

  ‘What nationality was this man, Nesha? It’s very important.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe Albanian? Or Turkish?’

  ‘Did he give a name?’

  ‘No name.’

  ‘Any more photographs?’

  ‘No more. He was very quick. He was in a hurry to leave. He rushed us to finish. He wanted to go.’

  I stared at the photo on the cheap little phone, desperate for more. But there was no more. Until Nesha Novak spoke. He had stopped crying now.

  ‘One thing I can tell you,’ he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘The driver – he did this.’

  And the boy clicked his fingers.

  8

  Click-click.

  I placed my right thumb against the pad of my middle finger and pressed twice as I looked up at the wall of MIR-1 where the photograph of Hana and Nenad Novak was blown up to life-size. The driver hovered in the background. Enlarged to life-size it was clear that the scarring on his face was a jagged, asymmetrical mess.

  ‘What did they attack him with?’ Edie said. ‘A cheese grater?’

  She saw me smiling and it encouraged her.

  ‘He’s no oil painting,’ she grinned. ‘Unless it’s – what’s that one? – The Scream!’

  Edie placed her hands on her cheeks, opened her eyes and mouth, and we laughed together.

  ‘All right, settle down,’ DCI Whitestone murmured, immediately restoring order.

  ‘The Serbian embassy is flying Hana Novak’s brother back to Belgrade tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to him again, but I don’t think there’s a lot more he can give us.’

  I held Nesha’s cheap little plastic phone in my fist. I had promised to give it back to him before he left.

  ‘And the boy has no idea of the route they were taking?’ Whitestone asked. ‘No idea what the plan was at this end?’

  ‘Hana was coming here to work as a nurse,’ I said. ‘That’s what his sister told him. And that’s what he still believes.’

  Whitestone stared at the blown-up selfie, looking beyond the smiling brother and sister at the scarred man in the shadows.

  ‘The good thing about villains,’ she said, ‘is that they’re too stupid to stop before they get caught. This guy – Mr Click-Click – he is out there right now. And he’s taking the same chances with lives. I know it. I can feel it. We just have to find the bastard.’

  TDC Billy Greene was placing hard cop
ies of the photograph in front of us and I saw the old burns scarring the palms of his hands where he had rescued a woman from a basement fire when he was still in uniform. There was a little stiffness in both his hands from the injury that had not been severe enough to stop him becoming a detective. But it meant that most of Billy’s duties were behind a computer in West End Central and not out in the field. Which always struck me as ironic, as Billy Greene was probably the bravest cop in 27 Savile Row.

  ‘This image is already with the border force agencies across the south coast,’ he said. ‘If the unsub comes in or out of a major port, Customs and Immigration will be watching.’

  Whitestone nodded.

  ‘But watching and seeing are not the same thing. These border forces have got their hands full meeting and greeting returning jihadists. So smugglers are getting bumped way down the list of priorities. I have a feeling we are going to have to do our own heavy lifting. What have you got on the Champagne Room, Edie?’

  ‘The Champagne Room is an alleged lap-dancing club near the junction of the M25 and M11 motorways,’ Edie said. ‘It has been open for ten years and currently has an entertainment licence of only six months – a year’s licence is the norm for this kind of place – because of concerns about what goes on in the club. Over the years our colleagues in Essex police have investigated numerous allegations of prostitution. Nothing has stuck although, around the time that Asuman Ata was shaking her sweet little thong there, the owner was arrested for kicking a customer all the way to hospital. A charge of common assault was later dropped when the victim declined to press charges. And this is the best part of all. The owner of the Champagne Room is one Steve Warboys.’

  Warboys was one of those family names that always rang bells.

  Back when Reggie and Ronnie Kray ran the East End, and Eddie and Charlie Richardson ruled south of the river, Paul and Danny Warboys were the kings in west London. But that was fifty years ago. Paul Warboys had crossed my path – his brother Danny had died inside when they both went away for murder – but he was an old man now.

  ‘Is he any relation to Paul?’ I said.

  ‘Steve Warboys is the grandson of Paul Warboys,’ Edie said. ‘Steve’s father is Barry Warboys – Paul’s son who went straight. There had to be one in the family, right? Privately educated, MBA, runs his own company – Barry Warboys owns that big chain of retirement communities, Golden Years.’

  ‘That’s Paul’s son? Golden Years?’ I said. ‘They’re everywhere these days.’

  ‘Elderly care for every pocket,’ Whitestone said, quoting the company slogan. ‘We’re all going to get shipped off to a branch of Golden Years one day.’

  Edie said, ‘But Steve Warboys was determined to enter the family business. The problem is – Steve is strictly small-time. Unlike his dear old granddad, Steve Warboys never made it out of the minor leagues. Steve has a criminal record but it’s amateur-hour stuff – a bit of dealing in his youth, receiving stolen goods in young manhood, the assault charge that got binned, and all those allegations about what really goes on at the Champagne Room.’ She leaned closer to her screen. ‘And there was one charge of criminal damage that was dropped. Eleven years back. Second-degree arson.’

  Second-degree arson is the torching of an unoccupied building.

  ‘What did Steve Warboys burn?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘He was acquitted, ma’am.’

  ‘Sorry, Edie – what didn’t Steve Warboys burn?’

  ‘Steve had a bar in Brentwood called Studs that went up in flames. The insurance company howled but in the end it was put down to an electrical fault. So he walked and started the Champagne Room with the insurance money. This is Steve.’

  Edie hit her keyboard.

  On the big HDTV a man appeared, looking furtive and hostile as he emerged from a courthouse into blazing sunlight. He was an overweight thirty-something with fair hair, cropped close and thinning. I stared hard at Steve Warboys and tried to see his grandfather in him. Paul Warboys was a proud, lean, fit man even in his old age. Apart from the almost-albino pallor that all the Warboys clan seemed to share – although for decades old Paul had toasted his milky complexion with a Costa del Sol tan – there was little family resemblance. Steve Warboys had none of the swaggering charisma of his legendary grandfather. Steve looked like exactly what he was – a small-time thug trading on the family name.

  ‘The Warboys dynasty is scraping the bottom of the gene pool with young Steve here,’ Whitestone said. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’s not a people smuggler. In fact, I’d say it makes it quite possible. This herbert ever come up on your radar, Max?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘How long since Asuman Ata worked in the Champagne Room?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘Ten years,’ Edie said.

  ‘Who runs girls in this town?’ she said.

  ‘The Turks in the north,’ I said. ‘The Somalians in the south. The Yardies in the west. The Bangladeshis in the east. The idea of one of the old family firms being involved in prostitution sounds unlikely. But maybe I’m wrong. We don’t expect the Krays and the Richardsons and the Warboys to be anywhere these days, apart from our local cinema. And perhaps that’s a mistake. Asuman Ata – Mrs Jenkins – tells us that the girls in the Champagne Room were all illegals in her day.’

  Whitestone nodded. ‘And it’s worth checking if that is still the case. Since Mrs Jenkins jumped off the back of a lorry, this country has had the greatest wave of migration in its history. There’s certainly no shortage of new recruits and only one possible reason to stick with the illegals.’

  ‘Why would they risk prosecution by employing illegals?’ Billy said.

  ‘Because in the end a lap-dancing club is no different from a major corporation,’ Whitestone said. ‘Every boss on the planet loves a docile workforce.’

  I arrived home to find Scout already in her pyjamas, Stan out for the count and Mrs Murphy clutching a well-thumbed copy of Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin.

  She handed it to me.

  ‘This is the diary of a worm,’ I read to Scout. ‘Surprisingly, a worm not that different from you and me. Except he eats his homework. Oh, and his head looks a lot like his rear end.’

  We grinned at each other.

  After I had kissed her forehead, tucked her in and turned out the lights, I left Mrs Murphy and Stan on the sofa and I went to pick up Billy Greene from the small house where he still lived with his mother in Tottenham.

  And then we drove out to the Champagne Room.

  9

  ‘Members only.’

  He was a big man in a black coat and he stood with his legs far apart and his hands behind his back in front of the dinky red rope that guarded the entrance to the Champagne Room. Mixed race, hair in tight man braids, south London drawl in every vowel. I felt like I had seen him somewhere, perhaps fighting halfway down the undercard at York Hall.

  He had certainly been a boxer.

  He looked like a light heavyweight who had turned out to be too slow to go far in the pro game, but was vain enough to stay in shape. He wore no hat, despite the bitter temperature of the Essex midnight. Behind us there was the buzz of the boy racers on the motorway, and beyond the doorman I could see the pulsing twilight of the club. The bassline of some golden oldie from the Nineties was so loud I could feel it in my back teeth.

  The Champagne Room looked like the lap-dancing club at the end of the universe – a squat, ugly concrete building surrounded by a car park the size of a football pitch and, beyond that, the endless blackness of all those flat Essex fields. The front of the building was illuminated by a pair of red neon female lips wetly wrapping around the harsh yellow neon of a champagne flute.

  ‘We’ll join,’ I said.

  The big man flinched as if I had insulted his mother.

  ‘Two-fifty,’ he said.

  ‘Fine.’

  He looked over my shoulder at the lanky figure of young Billy Greene. We had both put on suits and wore shirts wit
h no ties, anxious not to look too formal, but buttoned up to the neck, because it was below freezing.

  We looked like junior members of the Iranian Government.

  ‘Each,’ the doorman said.

  ‘No problem,’ I said, reaching for the thick wad of petty cash that I had inside my jacket. The bouncer took a step closer to me and I could see the spiteful streak in him. He looked in my eyes and not at my money.

  ‘Membership’s closed,’ he said, waiting for me to contradict him.

  A Range Rover swung into the crowded car park that separated the Champagne Room from the howling motorway. It parked next to my BMW X5, casually, couldn’t-give-a-monkey’s sideways, as if the driver owned the place.

  Which he did.

  Steve Warboys got out of the Range Rover, a good couple of years older and five kilos heavier than the image that Edie had pulled up, and quickly made his way to the club.

  The bouncer respectfully lifted the red rope and Steve Warboys gave me a blank stare as he brushed past. He gave an almost imperceptible nod to the doorman.

  ‘All right, Steve,’ said the doorman.

  And he turned to me, thawing a little.

  ‘That’s five hundred then, brother,’ he said. ‘Enjoy your evening.’

  It took a long moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark inside the Champagne Room. When my sight came back I saw elevated stages, each one featuring a young woman in minimal pants and maximum heels winding herself around a silver fireman’s pole.

  Tattoos stained naked flesh like the symptoms of some contagious disease. There were more women lurking in the shadows, wearing diaphanous see-through clothes that were possibly nightwear, roaming the perimeter of the club, judging their next move. The place was huge – a perk of building it by the side of a motorway in the middle of all those fields rather than the middle of London.

  The men were divided into two groups. There were the loud, drunken City boys in suits and ties who had been moving money in the financial centre of the world a few hours earlier, and there were the older, solitary figures who sat alone at the bar or with a girl astride them at one of the numerous tables that lurked in every nook and cranny of that cavernous space. The groups of City boys acted as if they were having the time of their life and the men who were alone acted as if they were having root canal treatment. The only reveller who didn’t fit into either clan was a neatly bearded Middle Eastern man in a Yankees baseball cap at the bar, with a woman on each knee.