The thought of home made her panic. She had to tell them. She had to call her brother in the next hour to let him know they were in danger and he must take Mama and get away. She didn’t know where he would go and wouldn’t be able to tell him for how long. They couldn’t stay at the house. He couldn’t work outside – no chopping wood, no foraging. He mustn’t be alone in the open. She thought things had reached rock bottom before, but now saw she may take her family even lower before this was all over.
She had her Halo card in her bag. She had hidden it there inside a slit in the lining, not because she anticipated what was going to happen to her – she could never have had any idea – but because she soon saw that it was a precious link with home, if ever she had the chance to use it. She had seen a public telephone box in Dover. She recognised it from pictures she had pored over while she waited for the call to travel. She supposed that her phone card would work.
The thugs had taken her own mobile phone away from her, it was one of the first things they did. For safekeeping, they told her and later promised that it would be returned once her debts were paid. That had never happened.
She had to find some houses, some shops, somewhere with a public telephone. She moved on, walking and running in turn until there was the sound of an engine behind her. She turned to peer down the long road and could see a small van in the distance – it was white. She was frozen with fear. Instinct propelled her over a low wall beyond the narrow grass verge. She crouched in the mud and undergrowth until the vehicle, an innocent tradesman’s transport that could have taken her away, sped past and left her breathless and panicked at the situation she was in.
Briefly, she considered running back to the caravan, climbing in through the window and wedging the Perspex back in the frame. She could keep the escape route secret until she had a chance to plan, a chance to maybe warn them at home that there was trouble heading their way. Then she thought about the factory, and Emilia’s coughing, and the constant sadness and misery, and she clambered back onto the road heading in the direction the van had taken.
The sun was almost up now. There was probably about an hour before the alarm was raised and she didn’t know how soon after that they would arrange for someone to take revenge for what she had done.
Maybe Dani was right, and it wasn’t true. Maybe they didn’t have the means to harm her family. Perhaps that had just been a way of keeping them all in line and there was no danger. Hope flared briefly, and she tamped it down. She couldn’t take the risk. She must warn them and then consider her next move. Her next step was to find a way home, or maybe to London where she would find Elian and Dani. She swallowed two of her precious stock of painkillers, pulled her jacket tighter around her shivering body and rushed onwards.
Chapter 22
Peter Baker’s face was grey and drawn, his healthy tan had faded, and dark rings sagged under his eyes.
Tanya and DI Brian Finch parked in the road and walked down the wide gravel drive to Baker’s impressive, detached house.
The doorbell was answered by a young woman wearing an overall on top of jeans and sweater. They followed her across a square hallway and waited to be admitted to a bright sunroom. Tall windows overlooked the good-sized garden and everywhere spoke of money and luxury. There was a small swimming pool at the other side of a flagged patio and garden furniture grouped around the outside spaces.
Peter Baker sat on a long sofa with his back to the window. On the table in front of him was a glass of water and the remains of a cup of coffee. He stood as they came in and walked towards them like a man much older than his given age of fifty-one.
“Are you okay, Mr Baker?” Tanya asked.
“Not really, no. I’m signed off work, I’m on pills, I feel bloody awful if you must know. I can’t close my eyes, every time I do, I see that… the inside of that hut. I can’t shut it out. I’m going to see it for the rest of my life. God, how do you people deal with this? How do you un-see that stuff?”
Tanya didn’t answer. There wasn’t any way to make him feel better.
“We won’t keep you long, sir.” Finch had led the man back to his seat and now sat opposite to him on a matching sofa.
The detective spoke calmly and quietly. “We find quite often that, as the days go on, witnesses remember things that the shock at the time of an incident has blanked out. We wondered if you had thought of anything more, or whether there had been anything in the days before which had struck you as out of the ordinary?” He opened his notebook. “You had been on the golf course three times in the evenings of the week before the body was found. Did yourself or your golf partner notice anything unusual? Perhaps someone in the vicinity of the hut who shouldn’t have been there, anything like that?”
Baker shook his head and cast his eyes downward. “Not that I can remember, no. I’d met with Spencer, it’s getting late in the year, but we like to get a game in while we still can. Mostly we played a short round and then had a drink in the clubhouse, and that was that. I didn’t notice anything particularly. Now and then there’ll be a stranger playing a round but generally it’s a well-run club, nobody there that shouldn’t be. I can’t think of anyone I didn’t know, nothing that seemed odd. I’ll give it some thought though. I need something to fill my mind.” He cleared his throat and Tanya saw the glint of tears in his eyes.
She shifted on the seat and cast a glance towards DI Finch. “Thank you, sir. Look we’ll leave you for now. You have my card. If you think of anything at all just give us a call. Are you okay now, is your wife here? Can we get someone for you?”
“No, it’s fine. There’s just the girl. Tricia is at work. She’s been here as much as she can, but she had to go in for a couple of hours. I’m signed off and it leaves the office short-handed, so she’s gone in.”
“And what is it you do?” Brian Finch had his pen poised above his notebook as he spoke.
“I’m Transport Director, Tricia is Finance. It’s her family’s company. Woodbarn. Been in the family for generations. It was just a little farm back then. Much bigger now. I need to get back but…” He paused. “Right now, I can’t imagine going back to work – back to something ordinary. People will want to talk about it as well. I just can’t do that right now. I haven’t seen anything in the papers. Tricia told me not to look but I know I won’t be able to help myself. Do you know who that poor soul was?”
“Not yet, sir,” Tanya said, “it’s early days but we’re working very hard to find out who he is and what happened.
They left him with his head buried in his hands, struggling to hold himself together. As the cleaner closed the door behind them Brian Finch spoke. “He’s pretty shaken up, isn’t he? I’ve seen the pictures. It was grim. There’re always more victims than you think, isn’t there? That poor bugger will probably never get over this.”
Tanya glanced around. “It was everything though, the smell, the blue bottles, the head missing, it was really terrible for them. At the end of the day there are some people we can’t help no matter how successful the enquiry is, not really part of it, but scarred for life. Let’s go and have a word with his friend, Spencer. With luck, he’ll be more together.”
Chapter 23
By the time Ana reached the first set of houses and a short row of shops, the roads had become busier. So many people. For the past few months, she had seen nobody but the girls in the caravans, the men in the van, and then they had all been together in the big shed. They hadn’t been allowed to talk, except on the journey to and from working, and then at night when they were alone.
The hustle and bustle was disorienting, frightening, and though her English was good, she found, in the panic, that she couldn’t understand what was being said around her. There were buses, cars everywhere and so many white vans just like the one that took them to the factory. She peered at them, trying to see into the windows without walking too close to the kerb edge, trying to keep her head down and her eyes up. Trying to achieve the impossible. She bumped
into a lamppost, spun away and lurched into the side of a woman who was holding the hands of two small children. “Oy, watch where you’re going, stupid bitch.”
“Sorry, sorry. I– sorry.”
“Bloody foreigners, go back where you came from if you can’t cope with a proper country. Stupid bloody woman. You could have hurt my kids. Bloody drugs, I’ll bet you’re drunk.”
“Sorry.” She scuttled away, past the shops and the little supermarket, past the bus stops and the cafes. She needed a phone, she needed to call her brother and warn them at home.
She couldn’t see a little red phone box anywhere. She had an image in her mind of the ones in the magazines and even from the pictures on the walls of the cross-channel ferry. She had seen the one in Dover, outside the hotel, but nowhere on this busy street was there anything like that. She saw the posting boxes, but they were no help.
She stopped an elderly woman trundling along with a basket on wheels. The woman’s eyes rounded with shock. She clutched her black shoulder bag closer to her body as she backed away towards the safety of the nearest shop.
“Sorry, sorry.” Ana tried to dredge up a smile, she held up her hands in what she hoped was a gesture of submission. “Sorry, I just need a telephone. Do you know where is a telephone?”
The woman relaxed a little, glanced around her and then shook her head. “No, my dear. No, they don’t have them on this road anymore. I haven’t seen one for such a long time. We all have our mobiles now, don’t we? She pulled a small plastic handset from her pocket. So much better. Those phone boxes were nasty, smelly places. Have you not got your mobile with you?”
Ana shook her head, hope flared for a moment as the woman glanced down at her own device. “Maybe I can borrow?” She pointed at the woman’s Nokia.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m pay-as-you-go you know.”
Ana had no idea what this meant but she did understand ‘pay’ and she had no money, a few coins in her purse left from her travelling money. She held them out to the woman.
“That’s only about fifty pence dear. Where do you want to call, is it UK?”
“No, no, my brother. I need to call my brother in Bosnia.”
“Oh my word, no, no – I can’t let you do that. No.” The woman shook her head and made to move away.
“Please, please. Could I send him a text, just a text that is all?”
“No, I’m sorry I don’t know how much that would cost, I don’t think I have the balance, I can’t help you. No, you’ll have to go to the pub or something. I think they might have a phone. I can’t help you.” She turned to walk away.
Ana panicking now, reached out to lay a hand on the woman’s arm. “Please, where is pub? Please help me.”
“Let go, let go. Stop it now. Leave me alone.”
Ana didn’t mean for the woman to fall, she had never intended to cause harm. Desperation made her grip the woman’s arm tighter. As she pulled to try and escape, her feet tangled with the frame of her shopping bag, the handbag on her shoulder swung forward, and she began to lose her balance. Ana let go of her arm and reached out to steady her, but the result was just more screaming, more flurry.
“Help me, help me,” she squealed.
As she fell, her head made brief contact with the edge of the trolley. Old, weak skin split, causing more screaming and now there was blood. There appeared to be a lot of blood and the old woman clutched at her chest and fell back against the dirty paving stones.
People had turned to look, a couple of women stepped from the doorway of the little supermarket. The situation was escalating. Ana wanted to call her brother, more than anything she wanted to save her family. She reached out and pulled the phone from the old hand. Tears had started to her eyes, she had no choice. She really had no choice. “Sorry. I am sorry.”
She turned and ran, leaving a crowd gathering around the old woman. As she ran, she heard them begin to shout.
“Stop her, stop her. She’s mugged this old woman. Somebody stop that girl.”
Chapter 24
Finch offered to make Tanya a cup of coffee with the new machine. She wasn’t going to cut off her nose to spite her face, and it did smell good. “Yeah, great thanks.”
With the little white ceramic mugs in hand, they walked into the incident room. She was glad he hadn’t given her a saucer; there were some on the table – she didn’t even use them at home. She wasn’t a slob, but this guy was something else, he really was.
The team gathered around. Everyone was present, including the half a dozen civilians who had been viewing the CCTV. It didn’t go unnoticed that Sue Rollinson sidled up beside Finch. “Hmm, that coffee smells good,” she said.
Tanya cringed quietly to herself. She thought that her talk a while ago had paid dividends when the detective constable had reeled in the inappropriate interest in Charlie Lambert, but apparently, it wasn’t so. Tanya was irritated that the woman couldn’t understand what a backward step this sort of thing was for women in the force. If they were seen as flirts and giggly girls, how could those who were serious about their careers ever break the glass ceiling? Okay, relationships developed, it was inevitable, and yes, there were women in high office now, the highest offices in fact, but this woman was a lurch back in time.
She really didn’t have the time or patience for it, but it would feel disloyal to have the woman removed from the team. However, if it came to that, so be it. They all had to make their own choices and she could never say she hadn’t been warned.
“Right, anything we need to know about?” She addressed the room at large. There was a general shaking of heads until one of the civilians spoke up.
“I’m not sure if it’s anything and I don’t have much but…”
“Yes?” Tanya said.
All eyes turned to the woman standing near the back of the group.
“Well, I’ve been looking at the road outside the entrance to the golf club. The CCTV takes in the car park and part of the road in both directions. It’s a bit of a tricky junction so they like to monitor it. There have been a couple of bumps apparently. Anyway, there was a van, a white one that drove past three days before the body was discovered, late in the evening. It headed in the direction of the hut, on the other side of the hedge, you know?”
Tanya nodded. “Why were you interested, sorry I didn’t catch your name?”
“Sylvia, ma’am, Sylvia Moon.”
“Okay, so as I say, why were you alerted to this van?”
“Well, as it passed on the way towards the hut, I noticed that there was a rear light out and the number plate illumination was compromised. I couldn’t make out the letters, neither front nor rear. I noted it and less than half an hour later the same van came back. There isn’t anywhere around there that would explain such a short trip. No houses, no pub, nothing like that. So, either he was lost and had to do a u-turn or – well I suppose he could have been fly-tipping or something.”
“Have you followed that up? Any reports of dumping around there?”
“No, ma’am. None reported.”
Good work, Ms Moon. Has anyone else picked up this van? What was the make?”
“It was a VW, ma’am, transporter – white, not new.”
Tanya waited for a while but although there was a lot of muttering, no one else came up with a sighting. “Right, back to the screens, let’s see if we can find this van. Keep up with the questioning of golfers and fishermen and add a question about the VW with a rear light out, erm… right or left, Sylvia?”
“Left, ma’am.”
“We didn’t get very far with the questioning of the original witnesses today, but someone, somewhere has seen something and we need to ferret it out. Detective Constable Rollinson, you’re with me, we’ve got the manager of the golf club coming in any time and I have a feeling about him.”
Chapter 25
Ana ran from the yelling crowd and around the first corner. She tucked herself into the rear doorway of one of the shops.
&n
bsp; Poking at the little buttons on the cheap handset, she could hear the click and whistle on the line. It was taking forever; time she didn’t have. She stepped back and forth from her hiding place. Out in the road, there was more shouting and the thud of feet. She watched a group of teenagers dash across the end of the little alley, whooping and yelling.
She pressed back against the wall, her heart pounding, sick with fear. When two young men turned into the alley, pointed at her and charged to where she stood, there was nowhere to run. She dragged her bag from her shoulder, thrust it behind a rubbish skip and pulled a piece of metal in front of the gap. It was all she had in the world and she couldn’t let them take it away.
They had her, trapped in the alley, pressed against the wet wall. A PCSO was passing, trying to calm the situation and find out just what had happened. She pushed forward, taking control.
Though Ana was saved from the men, she was held, not unkindly, but firmly while transport was called for. She was taken into custody with the shouts and jeers of the shoppers, the shopworkers, and the teens – none of whom she could understand – ringing in her ears.
The PCSO had taken the phone from her and shaken her head at the old, cheap device. “Really, you caused all that fuss, for this?”
Ana didn’t answer, she was afraid to speak and afraid to let them know she was not English, though surely they could tell. She was afraid of what they would ask her. If things had been bad for her family before, then when she was with the police, things would be worse, much worse.
She tried to see how this could be a good thing. If she told them what had happened, how she had been kept, how the others were being held – locked in the old house, short of food, no proper facilities, sleeping on mattresses on the floor – maybe the British police would help them.
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