by Smith, Anna
He stepped out of the doorway, soaked to the skin, rain running down his face and into the upturned collar of his light bomber jacket.
‘Sorry to come here like this, Rosie. I was calling you, but no answer.’
‘Really?’ Rosie pulled her mobile out of her jacket and noticed a missed call on the screen. ‘It must have been the noise in the pub. Sorry, Adrian. Don’t worry. What’s the matter?’
‘I saw the girl . . . The prostitute . . .’
Rosie gave him a bewildered look as she fished her keys out of her bag and pushed them into the lock.
‘What prostitute?’
‘The other girl, who was with the one who was killed by Tam Dunn’
Rosie’s eyes widened. ‘You saw her? How?’
‘I am walking in the city today and I am thinking if she is alive she must be somewhere. I was curious. I have talk to some of my friends from Bosnia and from Poland here – people I knew when I lived here – and one girl tells me that two girls she knows was working with her in one of the factories, packing vegetables. But she said they are also working in nights . . . with an escort agency. She says they haven’t been seen for four days. She gave me the names and where they live.’
‘You’re kidding! You went looking for her?’ Rosie opened the door. ‘Come on in. It’s cold. You’re soaked through.’
She was surprised he’d gone without consulting her. If it had been anyone else working on a story with her, they would have got a sharp rebuke, but she knew Adrian would have been discreet. If the girl was out there, he’d find her. In fact, given his background, he’d probably have a better chance of making a connection with the girl than with her.
As they climbed the stairs to her flat Adrian grabbed hold of Rosie’s arm.
‘Are you angry with me, Rosie? For going to find the girl without asking? I did try to call you, and I thought it best to make a look for her soon instead of leaving it too long. I hope is okay?’
She turned to face him, and for a moment they stood in silence, the rain on his face glistening in the glow from the hall light. Their breath steamed in the cold and she fought to control the rush of desire.
‘No, I’m not angry.’ She heard her voice, weak.
‘Good. I have a lot to tell you.’
Rosie turned away from him and put the key in the lock, pushing open the door. As they stepped into the hallway, she automatically put her hand on the wall to switch on the light, but Adrian slipped his hand over hers. For a moment they stood in the darkness, Rosie’s throat so tight she couldn’t trust herself to speak. He moved closer so her back was to the wall, and she could feel her heart pounding as he leaned down and kissed her face, the chill of his wet cheek against hers. Her body shuddered as she felt him against her, and she could hear Adrian’s breath quicken as he ran his hands gently across her breasts. He pushed her hair back as he took her face in his hands, and they kissed with the same hunger as they’d done when they found each other that sultry night in Sarajevo.
Chapter Thirty
Rosie lay awake, watching the darkness give way to a pale-grey sky. Then she slipped out of bed and pulled on her bathrobe, standing for a moment to gaze at Adrian sleeping peacefully, his muscular chest rising and falling with each soft breath. The cold light of day brought with it a stab of apprehension. She had no idea where she was going with this relationship – in truth, it wasn’t even a relationship. She could have stopped Adrian at any time last night or before, and he was the kind of man who would have understood and moved on. But Rosie couldn’t stop herself. An image flashed into her mind of them last night in the throes of passion. She shook her head. The rights or wrongs of it would have to wait.
She padded quietly around the flat, brewing up coffee, preparing her breakfast of Greek yoghurt and blueberries, then switched on Sky News and kept the volume down low as she sat on the sofa, thinking over what Adrian had said about the girl.
*
Her name was Olenca. She was Polish. She and her friend Lujca had been here for over a year working, as many of the Eastern European immigrants did, in the vegetable-packing factories on the outskirts of the city. Adrian described how he’d waited until she came out of her flat at the address he’d been given, then followed her into the café downstairs, where he sat at the next table. He’d started a conversation and they chatted about living in Glasgow and the things they missed about back home. That was all. She’d spoken about working in the vegetable factory and also with the escort agency. He didn’t broach the subject, but at one point she’d told him her best friend, another girl, had gone, and that was when she suddenly burst into tears. When he asked her what had happened, had she gone back to Poland, she’d nodded her head. But Adrian said she looked like she was hiding something. He didn’t want to ask any more. He couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure, but there was too much of a coincidence for it not to be the girl. Rosie was grateful, but the girl wasn’t today’s priority. She picked up her mobile phone from the coffee table and was about to phone Ruby when it rang.
‘I was just thinking of calling you,’ Rosie said. ‘Are you okay?’
Rosie heard her puffing.
‘Yeah . . . I mean . . . Well, as okay as I can be . . . Rosie, I just had an email from that fucker. He wants me to meet him today. This afternoon.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I’ve been awake since five this morning, watching my laptop, waiting for a message. Twisted bastard.’
‘So what did he say?’
‘I’m to meet him, bring along all the paperwork, the contacts I’ve talked to at the banks, all the letters with me signing over the accounts. I spent most of yesterday talking to the people I deal with at the banks. A few of them are abroad. There were also investment fund managers I had to talk to, to tell them I was taking another job.’
‘Did that all go well?’
‘Yeah. Only this shit to get through now.’ She paused, and Rosie could hear the tension in her voice. ‘I’m a nervous wreck. What if I go and Judy’s not there? What if they’ve killed her? I can’t stop thinking about that.’
‘Don’t, Ruby. You can’t think that way today. You need to be totally focused on this. What’s the plan?’
‘No plan yet. I’m to meet him in Glasgow. He said to be ready and waiting for his call, that he’d email me in an hour or so with the location and time.’
‘Okay. I’m going to get hold of these guys – the big cop from London and that SAS guy. We need to work things out.’
‘Rosie, them guys scare me and I haven’t even met them. What if they go swinging in there like the cavalry and it all goes wrong?’
‘That’s not going to happen. This is what they do,’ Rosie said, more in hope than real belief. ‘Look, I don’t even know myself what these guys will do or how they’ll go about it. But we have to trust that they know what they’re doing. Don’t worry. I’ll talk to them, then be down to see you soon.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
The line went dead.
*
Rosie watched through her windscreen in the car park of the Grosvenor Hotel in the West End as Superintendent Boswell-Smith and the captain came through the revolving doors and out into the rain. She flashed her lights and they acknowledged her with a nod. They walked over to a black Range Rover and the captain waved at her to join them.
‘Morning, Rosie.’ Boswell-Smith turned his body around as she climbed into the back seat of their car.
‘Chaps.’ Rosie nodded to both of them.
‘So’ – the Superintendent adjusted his tie – ‘looks like this nasty bastard, Devlin, means business, eh?’
The captain pulled the sun visor down and his blue eyes met Rosie’s in the mirror.
‘Yep,’ Rosie replied.
An unexpected wave of anxiety swept over her and she suddenly felt claustrophobic. Christ! This was no time to get wobbly. Get a grip, she told herself, trying to pull in a controlled breath through her nose. She opened the window a littl
e, feeling the blast of damp air.
‘You all right?’ The superintendent searched her face.
‘Yeah.’ Rosie managed a deep breath, exhaled slowly. ‘Well . . . if I’m honest, I’m a bit edgy about all of this.’ She felt mortified admitting weakness in this kind of company.
Boswell-Smith glanced at the captain then at Rosie.
‘That’s good. Nerves are normal before going into any operation. Especially something like this.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘But then again, from what we’ve heard about you, you’re no stranger to the hazards of investigative journalism.’
The superintendent’s expression softened, and in the mirror Rosie saw the lines around the captain’s mouth crinkle a little and the corners of his lips nearly curl to a smile.
‘You didn’t expect us check up on you?’ the captain said.
Rosie smiled back, feeling a little more relaxed.
‘Oh, right. I forgot. You guys are in the spooks game.’
The superintendent and the captain didn’t answer, but the iciness was gone.
‘Okay, Rosie,’ Boswell-Smith said, ‘we’ve got a bit of a game plan here, so let’s go through it while we wait for this contact of yours to come back with some firm arrangements for the meet. You all right with that?’
She nodded.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I think it would be a good idea if you and this contact of yours could find a way so that the two of you both go to meet this character.’
Rosie felt her stomach flip. She hadn’t expected this.
‘Go together? Why? I mean, how are we going to do that?
‘Well, your contact could say you’re a friend, or someone she knows in the city that she can trust. Tell them she’s in a bit of a state about losing her sister and needed a bit of moral support. She’s in a tight corner and all that.’
‘But she doesn’t even live here . . . She’s . . . er . . . she’s hardly ever here. Lives abroad.’
‘Yes,’ the superintendent replied. ‘But you could be a friend who she’s turned to in her hour of need, as it were. Someone she knew a while ago.’
‘Maybe,’ Rosie said through gritted teeth. ‘I suppose so. I . . . I mean, would they not be suspicious?’
‘Perhaps. But it’s a reasonable scenario for them to believe. Girl here in trouble, nobody to turn to, confides in old friend for help and support . . . that kind of thing. You with me?’
‘Yeah,’ Rosie agreed, but she could see the danger signs screaming all over this. McGuire would never wear it, for a start. ‘But obviously, er . . . even if my contact agreed and this Tony character agreed, I still have to run it past my editor. I’m not sure he’d want me to do that.’
The two glanced at each other.
‘You won’t have anything to worry about, Rosie,’ the captain said. ‘We’ll have your back. You will never be out of contact with us.’ He turned away, clicked open an aluminium case on his lap. ‘We’ll get you all wired up. You don’t have to worry.’
Rosie glimpsed inside the case, all tightly-packed little compartments and what looked surveillance hardware far superior to anything she’d used undercover before. The captain dug into one of the sponge-lined compartments and plucked a tiny disc no bigger than a wristwatch battery.
‘You see this?’ He held it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘This is a tracking device. If where you meet is away from our view, which I’m sure it will be at some stage, we can pinpoint where you are when we have to come looking for you. If you go into a car and are driven elsewhere, then we can track you all the way. It’s brilliant. Never fails. You won’t disappear.’
‘Okay. But why do you need me there at all?’ Rosie swallowed. Nobody spoke for a moment and she felt the heat rising in her face. ‘Look, guys, it’s not that my bottle is crashing or anything like that. But if you’ve researched me, then you’ll know I’ve been in a few shit storms of late. So if I’m sounding a bit apprehensive . . . no, actually sounding scared, then it’s because I am. And that’s the honest truth . . . I . . .’
The superintendent put his hand up to interrupt.
‘Rosie. Listen to me.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘If you weren’t shitting yourself when we asked you to go into what will be a dangerous situation then we wouldn’t consider even asking you. Of course you’re scared.’ He glanced at the captain, who stared out of the window. ‘Everyone gets scared. Don’t worry about that. But we’ll look after you. Your contact won’t meet us, so we can’t get her wired up. And if something happens, then we have no control because we don’t know where she is. If you can get her to see us, then we’ll wire her up instead.’
Rosie shook her head.
‘That’s not going to happen. She won’t see you. But I understand what you mean. Actually, I hadn’t considered the finer points. I was thinking . . . well, I don’t really know what I was thinking . . . but I imagined that . . . maybe this would be done in an open place. I don’t think my contact will agree to go anywhere with this character and his henchmen because there is a very real possibility that once she gives him what he wants he’ll just bump her off . . .’ Rosie looked from one to the other.
‘Of course. But she may not have an option,’ the superintendent said. ‘And if we’re being honest, it’s a very real possibility that there will be some danger for both of you, if he agrees to let her bring you.’ He paused. ‘Incidentally, I think he won’t allow you to go with her to the meeting, but if he does, that tells us he’s a lot thicker than we anticipated. And that’s a good thing, from our point of view.’
Rosie nodded, not quite knowing what to do. The captain turned around again and half smiled.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll make sure nothing happens to you.’ He spoke as though this was routine for him.
‘Famous last words.’ Rosie gave a nervous smile.
She sat back and folded her arms, staring out of the side window, and seeing Matt’s car at the far end of the car park, where she’d left him and Adrian. Images flashed through her mind of being thrown into the back seat of a car when she’d been kidnapped in Belgrade, of kicking the door open and running for her life through the streets. Then her fingers automatically went to the arm that sometimes still ached from the blowtorch on the rooftop in Seville. She closed her eyes to blink away the flashback of being held over the edge of the building. During the two months she had spent in Bosnia to recover from that ordeal, Rosie had been filled with dark moments when she felt that the Seville trauma had really pushed her over the line. She couldn’t go on living like this, on the edge all the time. She’d used up most of her nine lives. She should walk away while she still could. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, clenching her fists so they wouldn’t notice her trembling hands.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Rosie drove across Jamaica Bridge, her guts churning with nerves. From the corner of her eye she saw Ruby wringing her hands as if gripping them tight would stop them trembling. Her striking features seemed to have faded into a ghostly paleness and her expression was drawn from lack of sleep. Seeing her like this, with all her defences down and jangling with nerves, made Rosie even more edgy.
‘I’m so fucking wrecked,’ Ruby sniffed and swallowed. ‘Is it okay if I smoke?’
‘Sure. You need to try to take things a minute at a time right now, Ruby. You’re tired, and I can sense your panic from here. Try not to look any further than getting through the next five minutes. That’s how you deal with panic. Try taking controlled, deep breaths and letting them out slowly.’
‘What, are you a yoga teacher now?’ Ruby snorted, and a kind of nervous chuckle came out.
Rosie smiled. The tough nut was still in there.
‘Seriously, though, I’ve been there with panic. It takes over. You feel like you can’t see any way out, and that makes the panic worse. Trust me. I sometimes feel it now and again.’
Ruby opened the window a little and blew out
a trail of smoke.
‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a bottle merchant.’
‘It’s not about bottle. It’s about shit that happens – one thing after another – and sometimes gets too much. There’s no shame in admitting that sometimes you can’t cope. You just . . . well . . . find someone to lean on and admit that you’re not Superwoman.’
‘Aye. Well, I’ve never had anyone to lean on.’ Ruby gazed out of the window disconsolately. ‘Not really. In the children’s homes, the staff weren’t big on hugs. More likely to try to get into your pants if you showed weakness. And that wasn’t just the men.’
‘Believe me,’ Rosie said, ‘that I do know.’
‘How come?’
‘I was in care. From when I was nine.’
‘What happened? Is it all right to ask?’
‘Yeah. My father went AWOL on the boats – he was a merchant seaman. My mum died, broken-hearted.’ An image flashed up and Rosie swallowed. ‘Suicide. She hanged herself.’
‘Fuck me!’
‘Yeah. Was rough. I found her when I came home from school, hanging from the staircase.’
‘Christ almighty! I’m sorry.’
Rosie nodded, the memory still catching her chest after all these years. She tightened her mouth and kept her eyes on the road as she turned off the bridge.
‘I was in one home,’ Rosie went on, ‘then I ran away. I’ll tell you about it sometime – when this shit is all over. Anyway, I ended up living with one of my aunties – my mum’s sister and her family. They were a bit mental. But by that time I already knew quite a bit about survival. Eventually, when I was sixteen, I upped sticks and ran away again. To London. Lived on the edge for a while. Not long, but at the time it seemed long.’ Rosie shook her head, recalling the lonely days and nights, the drifting in and out of menial jobs until she got her first break. ‘It’s a story for another day.’