Breaking Point

by Frank Smith

  ‘I agree. And I’m still hoping for a signal when he does arrive,’ Trowbridge said worriedly. ‘But it’s beginning to look as if we’ve lost contact with our man. The last time we spoke everything was on schedule, and there was no indication that anything had changed, so I have to assume that Kellerman kept everyone in the dark until the last minute. We don’t know if our man has been cut out of the loop and doesn’t know what’s taking place, or if something has happened to him.’

  ‘A man like Kellerman wouldn’t be going ahead if he discovered a spy inside the camp,’ Paget pointed out, ‘so I don’t think you have to worry on that score.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling myself,’ Trowbridge said. ‘On the other hand, that might be why he’s brought the auction forward by a day. There’s a huge amount of money at stake, and the last thing he wants is to scare off the buyers, so he may feel he can get away with it.’

  He turned to Bell. ‘What’s happening now?’ he asked.

  ‘Not a thing. There is nothing moving on the road at all, so everyone, with the possible exception of Kellerman and the buyers, could be in place.’

  ‘So we wait,’ Trowbridge said.

  With eyes flicking to the time every few minutes, they waited.

  Bell sat beside the operator, eyes steady on the screen, but Trowbridge was restless. If the space had been big enough he would have been on his feet and pacing. Instead, he swung back and forth, back and forth in his chair as he watched the minutes tick by.

  ‘Perhaps he’s in a dead spot,’ he said suddenly, referring, Paget guessed, to his undercover man. ‘Are you sure you’re on the right frequency?’ he asked the operator.

  ‘Quite sure, sir,’ the man replied. He tapped his headset. ‘And his signals have been coming through quite clearly up till now, so I don’t think that’s the problem.’

  Trowbridge stood up to lean against the wall, folding his arms in such a way that he could keep his eyes on his watch.

  Five more minutes went by. ‘Perhaps Kellerman and the buyers did come up in one of the vans,’ Bell suggested. ‘In fact the auction could be under way right now.’

  Trowbridge shook his head. ‘I doubt that very much,’ he said. ‘Kellerman will come in separately, as will the buyers.’

  ‘Unless he’s there already,’ Paget offered.

  ‘We’d know if he was,’ Trowbridge said testily.

  ‘What do you know about the actual site itself?’ asked Paget. ‘It seems such an unlikely place to hold the auction.’

  ‘Which is why Kellerman chose it, I imagine,’ Trowbridge said. ‘The man is something of a showman, and as I told you the other day, this is supposed to be the first of several auction houses around the country, so while the place was a barn, and looks like a barn on the outside, he had the inside completely gutted. It now contains a changing room, showers, a bar, and a raised runway with overhead and side lighting similar to the sort of thing you’d see at a fashion show, except the buyers won’t be looking at clothes.’

  A shadow crossed his face. ‘It also has several cubicles,’ he concluded, ‘where customers can “sample the goods”, so to speak, if they choose to do so. Something similar has been going on in Eastern Europe for years. Kellerman picked up the idea when he was over there, and decided to improve on it.

  ‘They’ve been working on this for months,’ he continued, ‘and as cover to account for the delivery of materials and the comings and goings of the workers, Roper let it be known that he was having renovations done to the farmhouse. Kellerman sent in his own people to do the work, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that one of their carpenters had an accident and had to be rushed into hospital, we wouldn’t have had the balls-up we did with Newman.’

  He shook his head. ‘Kellerman is not an easy man to work for,’ he went on. ‘He doesn’t like excuses or delays, and when he wants something done he wants it now! So the people in charge at this end got a bit panicky and decided to take a chance on hiring Mickey Doyle to finish the job. Doyle is known locally to be a bit of a chancer, so they thought they’d be all right. Doyle must have known that there was something dodgy about the job, but they were paying good money, so he wasn’t going to ask too many questions. But then one of the electricians, who’d been sent up from London, and didn’t realize that Mickey wasn’t one of their own, talked about what was really going on.

  ‘The trouble was, Doyle just couldn’t keep his mouth shut, especially when someone was plying him with drink, and that’s where young Newman came in. He was looking for a story that would give him an in with the local paper, and Doyle couldn’t resist the opportunity to tell him that he knew something no one else knew.’

  ‘How long have you known all this?’ asked Paget.

  ‘Ever since it happened,’ Trowbridge said candidly, ‘but I’m sure you understand why we couldn’t say anything to anyone, not even to you, for fear of jeopardizing the operation.’

  Paget eyed Trowbridge narrowly. ‘I think what you’re telling me is that your man was probably present when Newman was being tortured, but kept silent in order to maintain his cover? Was he there when they killed him, Ben? Was he one of the men who picked up Doyle, then killed him, too?’

  ‘That is not what I said,’ Trowbridge snapped. ‘But even if it were true, I’m sure you can see that the future and perhaps the very lives of God knows how many women and children had to be weighed against trying to save the lives of two people who put themselves at risk.’

  ‘But there has to be some—’ Paget began, only to be interrupted by Bell.

  ‘Vehicles approaching the farm. Two of them. SUVs. Both capable of seating six or seven people, but impossible to say how many are in there.’ Bell fell silent, eyes fixed on the screen. Then: ‘They’re on their way up to the farm,’ he said quietly. ‘Unit Two should be able to see them any minute now.’

  A single row of words flicked across the screen and Bell spoke again. ‘Two says they’re continuing on to the barn. Probably the buyers, sir.’

  ‘It has to be them,’ Trowbridge muttered as he leaned forward to read the words himself.

  Diverted momentarily from what he’d been about to say, Paget found himself caught up in the moment. ‘How many are you expecting?’ he asked quietly.

  Trowbridge grimaced. ‘That’s one piece of information Kellerman kept to himself,’ he said, ‘but what we do know is that he doesn’t deal with anyone but the top men, so our estimate is somewhere between six and ten. They will almost certainly be from Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, but there could be others we don’t know about.’

  He glanced at his watch, then sat down. ‘We’ll have to give them time to get settled in,’ he said quietly, ‘so we might as well relax ourselves until it’s time to go.’

  Twenty-Seven

  George Kellerman was there to greet them at the door. He was a short, heavy-set man with a pudgy face and a Cupid’s bow for a mouth. A baby face with watchful eyes set deep in folds of skin the colour of dough. But tonight he was all smiles as he greeted his guests and offered them drinks. There were nine in all. Six men and three women, and this was his chance to impress every one of them.

  He’d been supplying them for years in one way or another, usually on contract. They would put in an order (minimum advance notice ninety days) for certain ages, certain types, and he in turn would fill the order, usually from illegals already in the pipeline. In the case of special orders, he would put the word out to his contacts in Eastern Europe, and they would make sure that a particular girl or child would be moved up to the head of the line.

  Most of the girls who ended up in Kellerman’s hands believed they were coming to a better life as waitresses or nannies, earning enough money to send back home to impoverished parents or young children of their own. They were persuaded by glib ‘selectors’, who painted a glowing picture of jobs awaiting them in the UK. But in some cases – always when young children were involved – a boy or girl who matched the special order profile
was simply kidnapped off the streets of Sarajevo, Tirana, Vilnius, or wherever he or she could be found.

  As far as the kidnappings were concerned, Kellerman liked to think that what he was doing was no different to the way the press gangs used to operate in the old days. Men and boys were literally kidnapped off the streets to go to sea for king and country, some of them never to be seen or heard from again. Whereas he would argue that his girls and boys would have a roof over their heads and three square meals a day, which was a damned sight better that the king’s sailors ever had.

  He’d recognized early on that transport was the key. No matter how good the supply; no matter how big the network, transport was always the key. Which was why he now owned or controlled several carrier companies, all of which did a lot of international business.

  None of them could be traced back to him – his battery of well-paid legal advisors had seen to that – and much of the business was both legal and profitable. But smuggling in illegals was by far the most profitable.

  He’d done well, but he’d always had his eye on the main chance, and when he’d seen the way things were organized in other countries, he decided it was time to expand. Time, in fact, to control the market throughout the UK.

  This was the first step in that expansion. With more and more merchandise coming in daily, he’d been able to build an inventory of the best of the best. And the ones he was putting up for bids tonight were the pick of the crop, and he intended to make the most of it.

  ‘Jimmy, glad you could come,’ he greeted a slight, doleful-looking man. ‘And . . .?’ He raised an eyebrow in the direction of the blonde, thirtyish woman with him. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met,’ he said.

  ‘Paula Jones,’ said Jimmy Cragg. ‘At least that’s who she is as far as you’re concerned, George. Paula is what you might call my advisor. She’s the one you have to impress, because I will be relying heavily on her recommendations tonight.’

  Kellerman nodded. ‘Happy to meet you, Paula,’ he said. ‘What would you like to drink?’

  The woman eyed him coolly. ‘Nothing, thank you, Mr Kellerman,’ she said. ‘I’d prefer to see what’s on offer and get this over with as quickly as possible, if you don’t mind.’

  Kellerman sucked in his breath. ‘Right,’ he said, rubbing his hands briskly. ‘We’ll begin in a few minutes, and I’m sure you’ll be more than happy with the merchandise. Please have a seat while I see to my other guests.’

  Only two of the others accepted his offer of drinks. In fact there was an air of edginess among the group, and it soon became apparent that no one was in the mood to make this the festive occasion Kellerman had planned.

  ‘This had better be worthwhile, George,’ the buyer from Liverpool told him. ‘And next time you’d better set up closer to where we are if you want to do business with Alfie and me.’ Alfie Morgan was his opposite number in Manchester.

  ‘We will,’ Kellerman assured him smoothly. ‘As I told you, this is a trial run, and I’ve already got my eye on a place within thirty miles of where you are.’

  He turned to face a woman who had grasped his arm to gain his attention. Grey-haired and heavily made-up, she was at least sixty, and could have passed quite easily for someone’s benign-looking grandmother, as in fact she was.

  ‘Bertha,’ he said, reaching for her hand. ‘Good to see you. I think you’ll be pleased with what I’ve brought you tonight.’

  ‘Then for Christ’s sake stop trying to make this look like a cross between a fashion show and the bloody Oscars, George, and let’s get on with it,’ she said, pulling her hand away.

  ‘But it’s an occasion,’ Kellerman protested. ‘In Kosovo they have all-night parties when they have an auction. I’ve been there. That’s where I got the idea.’

  ‘But we’re not in bloody Kosovo, are we, George?’ Bertha snapped, ‘and I want to get home tonight, so let’s get at it. How many do you have, anyway? I hope I haven’t come all this way for two or three I could have found at home.’

  ‘Seventy-one,’ Kellerman said proudly. ‘And they’re some of the best you’ll ever see. You’ll love the little ones, Bertha; we’ve got some right little beauties, but they’ll cost you. And you’ll have some competition; Fred Tobin’s here, and he’ll be bidding against you for them.’

  Bertha snorted. ‘I’m not bothered by him. But I’ll tell you this, George Kellerman: if you try to slip me any HIV positives or any with infections of any kind, you’ll be sorry. And I’ll be having them checked, so be warned.’

  ‘They’re all clean,’ Kellerman assured her as he moved away and took up a position beside the runway, ‘and they’ve all been “broken in” as you might say, so you’ve no worries there.’

  He cleared his throat and raised his voice. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention, I’d just like to say we’ll be starting with a brief parade down this runway and back so you can see everything we have on offer, and then we will bring them out one by one for bids. You know the rules about payment and delivery, so let’s begin.’

  ‘We have transport standing by to take the illegals away once we’ve cleared the area,’ Trowbridge said, ‘and we have a doctor, a nurse and a couple of female interpreters who will come in once the place is secured. We’ve circulated a picture of your man to everyone,’ he continued, anticipating Paget’s question, ‘so we’ll do our best not to shoot him if he’s in there – that’s assuming he’s still alive, of course.’

  Small comfort, Paget thought, but he knew it was the best he could hope for. ‘How many people do you have out there?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘And they’re not what I would call regular policemen, are they?’

  It was Bell who answered. ‘Special Forces,’ he said tersely, and Paget realized then why Trowbridge had made no mention of the man’s rank when he’d introduced him.

  Trowbridge might be nominally in charge, but Bell, or whatever his real name was, would be running the show from this point on.

  ‘We’ll take out the flankers down the road first and make sure they don’t have a chance to warn the others,’ Bell explained to Paget. ‘The area around the farmhouse has been swept. Two of their men are in the yard itself, and we know Roper and his wife are still there, but there could be others inside the house as well.

  ‘There are two more outside the barn – they’re the drivers who brought the buyers in – but we don’t know how many there are inside the barn. Considering the size of the vans, there could be as many as sixty or seventy women and children in there as well as the buyers. Then there is Kellerman himself, and perhaps half a dozen of his men, some of whom may be armed. So we will have to be very careful when we storm the barn. We need to take them completely by surprise, because the last thing we want is to give Kellerman and company a chance to use the illegals as hostages.’

  It looked like a soccer team’s changing room with open shower stalls at one end, and four rows of wooden benches taking up much of the rest of the room, where fifty-seven shivering young women, and fourteen children sat huddled together.

  The water from the showers had been cold, ice-cold, and there weren’t enough towels to go round. Their hair, no matter how long or beautiful it had been originally, had been cut short early in their journey across Europe. For hygienic reasons, they were told, and while there was some truth to that, the main reason was a practical one: short hair dried faster on those rare occasions when they were allowed the luxury of a hurried shower before being crammed into yet another suffocating space on the next stage of their perilous journey.

  Now they sat huddled together, bodies still damp and numb with cold, refused permission to get dressed again. Some of the smaller children clung shivering to the women who’d become their surrogate mothers, while others stood stoically apart, eyes glazed, staring blankly at nothing.

  Luka and Slater, wearing the one-piece coveralls Kellerman had insisted they wear instead of their regular clothes, stood just inside the door, w
atching as the stoutly-built, grey-haired woman and the two middle-aged men paced up and down between the benches. The two men, also dressed in coveralls, fingered cattle prods hooked to their belts, ready to use them at the first sign of trouble.

  But it was the woman who was in control. The men were simply there as back-up, and when a small bell mounted high on the wall rang sharply three times, she ceased her pacing between the rows and went to the door. Hands on hips, she turned to face the room and snapped out an order in Luka’s native language, then repeated it in Romanian and English.

  ‘You will go through that door, and you will walk down the ramp to the stage at the end, turn and come back into this room. You will hold yourself erect, keep your hands at your sides, walk properly and make no attempt to cover your body. You will not look at anyone nor say anything unless you are ordered to, and I will be there to keep an eye on you and translate if necessary. The children will go last and each one will be accompanied by one of you. Anyone who fails to observe the rules will be punished. Translate, Irena,’ she said, pointing at a tall, dark-haired girl.

  The girl repeated the instructions dully in Russian and Polish.

  Someone in the third row whispered something to her neighbour.

  The grey-haired woman moved quickly down the line to stop in front of a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen. ‘You said something?’ she asked softly.

  The girl swallowed hard and shook her head. ‘No, I—’

  ‘Don’t lie! And stand up when you speak to me!’ the woman snapped. One of the men moved forward, prod at the ready, but she waved him back.

  The girl rose to her feet, trembling, trying to hold back the tears and failing.

  ‘Now, what did you say?’

  ‘I just said, must we go out there like this?’ the girl whispered, opening her arms and looking down at her naked body. ‘Can’t we put something on? Please . . .?’