On Laughton Moor

by On Laughton Moor (epub)

  ‘Jonathan. Do sit down.’ She gestured at the chair next to the one in which Kendrick had resettled himself. Stringer smoothed non-existent creases from her skirt, straightened a silver photograph frame that she judged to be slightly askew on her desktop and sat.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Knight sat straight, shoulders back. Like Kendrick, Jane Stringer had that effect.

  ‘Now.’ Stringer clasped long, elegant fingers in front of her. ‘How have we got on with our unexpected witness?’

  ‘I’m not sure she saw much at all, I’m afraid,’ Knight said. ‘The basic facts: she’s twenty-two, and from Serbia. Her uncle, Dimitar, was well known, important, and it was he who suggested perhaps his niece would care to try her luck earning some money in the UK. He told her she could make a fortune.’

  Stringer shook her head, and Kendrick gave a snort.

  ‘I wonder how she was going to do that?’ he said.

  ‘Well, she said her journey to Britain alerted her to the fact that the future might not be as bright as her uncle had painted it. She was stowed in the back of vans or the cabs of lorries and she still isn’t sure how she actually arrived in the country. One of the trucks she had been on must have crossed the sea by ferry. She’s sure she didn’t fly in, but…’

  ‘It’s unlikely,’ Stringer commented.

  Knight nodded in agreement, then resumed his story. ‘The last lorry, the one she must have crossed the sea in, took her to some sort of garage with a small apartment attached. A young man met her, gave her food and said she could have a shower and rest. After a few hours of rest on the bed, during which time she dozed but didn’t sleep, she heard raised voices, arguing. She heard her uncle’s name several times but didn’t understand enough English to follow the rest. After a while, she heard footsteps on the stairs. A second man came in; he looked like a wolf she said, “Vuk”, and in her mind, that was what she called him. She heard other people call him Ron afterwards.’

  Stringer opened a desk drawer and removed a smart-looking notepad and elegant fountain pen. She made a few notes, then glanced at Knight.

  ‘Go on, please.’

  ‘This man told her he told her this was usually when he would “try out” the new arrivals himself before sending them on, but as she was the “precious” niece of Dimitar Raskovic, he would control himself.’

  ‘Very good of him,’ Kendrick put in scornfully.

  Knight sat back, organising his thoughts. The Super wouldn’t want all the details, not everything Zukic had told them, but he felt it was important, essential in fact, that as much of her story was heard as possible. They had all heard very similar versions before, of course, but Zukic had given them names. She was observant and intelligent, and Knight felt they had a good chance of catching up with the traffickers using her information. He began to talk again, almost watching the events unfold in his mind as he spoke, much like Zukic must have, though his were imagined images, not painful memories as hers were. ‘This “Vuk” grabbed her, bundled her into the back of a van. She thought they drove for over an hour, closer to two, when eventually they stopped. He came to the back doors of the van, stuck his head in and told her that she needed to get out and walk with him into a house without drawing attention to herself. If she did anything stupid, he warned, even her uncle wouldn’t be able to save her.’

  ‘Did she notice anything at all that could help us?’ Stringer wanted to know.

  ‘It was a terraced street, from her description, a row of very similar houses. She could hear traffic noise and sirens, the sound of children playing nearby.’

  ‘Town then, not out in the sticks somewhere,’ Kendrick said.

  ‘Inside the house was a woman. Huge, Milica said.’

  ‘Obese?’ asked Stringer.

  ‘Yes, apparently so. They hustled Milica down the hallway, which she described as dark with a dirty red carpet, and into the kitchen. The whole house stank of perfume and cigarette smoke, she said, but the kitchen was the worst, filthy. She could describe it all in detail. The Vuk had gone and she lost it a bit, demanded to know where she was and what was going on. This woman slapped her face, yelled at her, and a huge bloke came in, picked Milica up and carried her upstairs and into a bedroom. They locked the door, left her there to calm down. Eventually, the woman came back and asked Milica if she was going to behave herself. She said she would. The woman introduced herself as Ivona, said Milica was going to live in the house, work there doing the cleaning and also go out to work in factories or wherever she was needed.’

  ‘So she just cleaned? It wasn’t a brothel?’ asked Stringer, pen poised.

  ‘Oh yes, it was a brothel,’ Knight said, grim-faced. ‘She talked about cleaning the bedrooms around the sleeping girls, said some were even younger than her seventeen-year-old sister at home in Serbia. There were rooms with hearts on the doors that she was only allowed into when she was told to clean them. The “heavy” work went on in there, Ivona told her, but she was excused as she was Dimitar Raskovic’s niece – there were other girls for that, she said. She was just the cleaner.’

  ‘Bad enough,’ Kendrick said, stretching his legs and cracking his knuckles. Stringer frowned in distaste at him.

  ‘And what about our victim, Jonathan? How did Milica come to be in the back of his van?’

  ‘She couldn’t tell us a lot. Yesterday, Ivona came in in a hurry, told Milica to pack up her stuff quickly, that they were moving out. The Vuk came, took Milica to some kind of building; smelt like a garage, she said. He locked her in, told her to wait and she’d be collected. Our victim arrived sometime later, helped Milica into the back of his van. They’d been driving along at what seemed to be a normal speed when they stopped very suddenly – she’d been dozing, she thought, but she slid along the floor of the van and hit the partition. She could hear the driver shouting, then he slammed the door and she heard nothing from him after that. She couldn’t say how long she had sat there. Hours, she thought, but they didn’t move off again. She couldn’t see anything, being in the back, and she couldn’t get out.’

  Stringer gave a curt nod. ‘So, she was able to give us some names, although who knows how much help they’ll be. Who’s following up on this? DS Bishop?’

  ‘Yes, she’s liaising with Intelligence, seeing what she can find out,’ Knight said. Kendrick glanced at him.

  ‘It would be a positive result if we could close down a gang of people traffickers as well as catch whoever killed Pollard and this new victim, Inspector,’ Stringer said pointedly.

  ‘It would,’ Knight agreed. He glanced at the clock. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ll have to leave now if I’m to make it to the PM on time.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Stringer, already turning back to her computer. ‘Keep me informed, Jonathan.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Knight said, fighting the urge to salute her.

  Chapter 18

  Knight had attended several post-mortems in his career, but this would be his first since his transfer to Lincolnshire. He’d struggled to find a parking place and was dangerously close to being late. In his experience, being late for a post-mortem was usually seen as incredibly rude by the person performing the procedure. From his brief meeting with Jo Webber earlier that morning, he doubted she would see it any differently. A minute before eleven thirty, according to his watch. Knight hurried through the door and glanced around. The room was as expected: spotless white tiles, temperature cool if not cold, white-clothed figures moving purposefully. Disinfectant and formaldehyde hung in the air, bleach too. Other smells would follow, Knight knew. As with crime scenes, it wasn’t always so much what you saw at a post-mortem, it was the smells and the sounds. You could, in theory, avert your eyes from the horror, but the smell couldn’t be avoided. It was everywhere, seeming to creep inside your nose, your body, out through your own pores to mingle again with the stench of the room or the scene. Sounds were the same. The noise a saw made as it cut through human bone was not one Knight thought he would ever forget if he walked
out of the room now, left the force and never attended another post-mortem. You would always remember certain details, and Knight supposed that was the way it should be.

  A technician bustled forward bearing a scene of crime suit for Knight. He thanked the figure, unable to determine who he was speaking to because of the hood and mask that they already wore. He stepped into the suit, pulling it up over his clothes, and was struggling with the zip when another figure approached. This one had yet to don her mask and hood, and Knight once again felt his stomach lurch at the sight of Dr Jo Webber.

  ‘Inspector Knight, you’re here. Good, we’re ready to start.’

  She indicated the stainless-steel table that stood in the middle of the room, brightly lit by overhead spotlights. The body lay waiting. He’d taken a quick phone call from Catherine just as he’d arrived at the mortuary and now knew their victim’s name was Steven Kent, age twenty-seven. Steve, the name mentioned by Mike Pollard, but the victim wasn’t the man from their CCTV footage. Back to square one with that. Officers were on their way to Kent’s home to begin their search, and though Catherine had said they were struggling to find a next of kin, they would need to be identified and informed quickly. Kent’s parents had apparently died together in a car accident a few years earlier. Kent hadn’t been married, but there was probably a girlfriend or partner. Officers would be en route to his workplace; his colleagues would surely know about his family and domestic situation.

  With a hood, face mask and gloves now in place, Knight followed Webber over to the table, and Steven Kent’s body. He gazed down at the dead man, naked under the glare of the spotlights. Knight stepped back, as far from the table as possible. Webber glanced at him, then began to speak, relaying the details she’d just been given about Kent’s identity to the others in the room, and for the benefit of the recording equipment. She also described Kent physically; his eye colour, hair colour, ethnicity and so on. Webber also noted a scar on Kent’s abdomen which seemed to indicate he’d had an appendectomy. At this point, Knight’s feeling of dread became more apparent. He knew Webber would soon make the Y-incision and the internal examination would be underway. He bit down on the inside of his lips behind his mask. Knight had never pretended autopsies didn’t affect him and distrusted any officer who claimed to be immune to the effect they had. Seeing a fellow human being cut and opened up like meat in a butcher’s shop just seemed wrong, especially with a victim of murder such as this man. It was often the final indignity of a body that had been attacked, broken, a life cut short because of anger, calculation or senselessness. There were other reasons, of course. It was a procedure that needed to be completed, however, to help Knight and his colleagues catch the person that had killed Steve Kent, and possibly Craig Pollard, and so Knight steeled himself as Dr Webber crossed the floor to the body again.

  * * *

  Knight stepped out into the corridor, glad it was over. He stood for a few seconds, breathing in the fresher air. The door behind him opened and Dr Webber appeared.

  ‘If you’d like a quick chat, Inspector, you could go up to my office – up the stairs, second on the left,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She looked at him. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Fine thanks, just…’

  ‘Catching your breath?’

  He smiled. ‘Something like that.’

  Webber nodded, understanding. ‘I’ll see you in my office.’

  She disappeared again, and Knight trudged off in the direction she’d indicated. The stairs were scuffed tiles and his footsteps echoed around him. He reached a small square landing, the walls painted a sickly green. A battered wooden door held a nameplate bearing Webber’s name, black lettering on a silver background. Knight paused outside, not sure whether to go in. It seemed a little presumptuous, so he stood outside, feeling like a naughty schoolboy waiting for the headteacher. He soon heard footsteps and the doctor appeared, now wearing black trousers and a tailored red shirt, suit jacket in one hand, paperwork in the other. No wedding ring, Knight noticed, though that meant nothing considering the procedure she’d just performed. She smiled as she saw him standing there.

  ‘You should have gone in,’ she said, pushing through the door, and then holding it open for him.

  ‘I didn’t like to. Anyway, the door might have been locked.’

  ‘It might,’ she agreed, ‘but it wasn’t. My secretary’s next door, and I don’t bother too much when she’s there. I just lock my papers away and shut down my laptop.’

  The room was fairly small; pale blue walls in here, blue carpet tiles. There were several filing cabinets, a scuffed wooden desk and a couple of chairs. Dr Webber seated herself behind her desk. Knight couldn’t help noticing her own chair was a well-padded leather number, looking much newer and more comfortable than the one he gingerly sat in. She noticed his expression and laughed.

  ‘I bought this one myself. Not that I spend that much time in here, but I like to take care of my back. It soon complains if I don’t; it likes some luxury. Now,’ she glanced at the notes she’d brought with her, ‘Steven Kent.’

  Knight nodded, and she leaned back in her chair.

  ‘Obviously I’ll be providing a full report as soon as I can, but a few things you’ll want to know now. We found no other injuries except those on the back of the skull, either inflicted by his attacker, or defence wounds. He received three blows to the back of his head with a blunt instrument. A wooden club or bat is my best guess, though there are no splinters or anything to substantiate that. I don’t think you should expect much help from the traces we removed from his body, I’m afraid. No alcohol in his system. What else? Blood group A+. Time of death: between eleven last night and three this morning. Of course, it was a cold night, he was lying outside… It’s difficult to be exact. He died where he fell. The body wasn’t moved. All in all, a very healthy young man, except…’

  ‘Except his head has been bashed in.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  There was silence for a few seconds. Knight glanced at a framed photograph on the wall just above Jo Webber’s head.

  ‘Is that your dog?’ he asked, just for something to say. Webber followed his gaze.

  ‘Yes, Jess. She’s only nine months old, still a puppy really, but she’s got so big. Anyway,’ she stood up, ‘I’m sorry, Inspector Knight, but I have a meeting in ten minutes and I need to get across to the other building. I’ll send my full report over to you as soon as I can. Later today I should think.’

  Knight also got to his feet.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘She’s a lovely dog, by the way. We always had boxers when I was growing up. I’d love one, but it wouldn’t be fair in my job.’

  ‘Call me Jo. That’s what I thought, but my neighbour has her during the day. They keep each other company.’

  Knight paused outside the door. ‘Thanks again, Jo. No doubt we’ll speak again soon.’

  She smiled. ‘No doubt.’

  Chapter 19

  Catherine sat at her desk, phone wedged under her chin, arms stretched high above her head, hands clasped together as though in prayer. She’d been on hold for what seemed like forever, and she’d had about enough. DC Sullivan hovered in front of her desk with a mug of tea.

  ‘Just put it down anywhere, it’s fine. Thanks Simon. Honestly, this is a bloody joke. He’s only in Lincoln. I could have walked there faster. Fifteen minutes I’ve been waiting for this arse— Hello? DI Foster?’ She pulled a face at Sullivan, who was laughing as he went back to his own desk. ‘That’s right, sir, a woman called Ivona. A terraced house, several women apparently being brought in from Serbia, possibly other countries, then forced to work as prostitutes… Just anything you have. We think they may have been tipped off that they’d been rumbled. The woman we have here was shipped out of the house all of a sudden, which suggests something was up. She’s linked to a couple of— Sorry, just hang on, that’s my boss calling.’

  Her mobile had started to ring. Kn
ight. She grabbed it. ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m on my way back to the station. Can we get together when I get in? Are you there now?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, just give me a second. I’m on another call.’ She went back to the receiver of her desk phone. ‘Sorry, DI Foster, I’m going to have to go, but if you could let me know about anything you have… Oh, of course. I’ll go and have a word with her.’ She quickly gabbled her phone number and email address, then snatched up her mobile again. ‘Sorry Jonathan. Yes, I’m at the station.’

  ‘About fifteen minutes then?’

  ‘Fine, see you in the conference room.’

  * * *

  An incident room was being set up, with whiteboards headed with a photograph of Craig Pollard and a space where Steve Kent’s face would appear when they had the picture. Autopsy photos, a timeline of Pollard’s last day, everything they had so far, which in truth didn’t amount to a great deal, had been summarised by the incident room manager, DS Robin Cuthbert. He was known throughout the station as ‘Monk’ on account of the bald pate surrounded by thick black hair, serene expression and rotund figure. He was standing next to the whiteboards, pen in hand, frowning in concentration as he studied some paperwork propped on the desk beside him. Catherine marched in through the door unnoticed by Cuthbert, strode up to him and clapped her hand down onto his shoulder. Cuthbert jumped towards the ceiling with a squeal.

  ‘Afternoon, Brother Cuthbert, how’s it going?’ Catherine grinned.

  Cuthbert held a hand to his chest. ‘Bloody hell, Catherine, you’ll kill me one of these days.’

  ‘Rubbish, you’re as strong as an ox. Just to let you know, DI Knight’s on his way back from the Kent PM. No doubt he’ll be in here sometime soon. I’m meeting with him first, but he’ll want to see where we are with this lot too.’