“Informers?”
“Uh-huh.”
She didn’t sound very convincing. Actually, it cheered him. Demarku wasn’t so much as eluding the cops as they weren’t exactly busting a gut to find him. It meant he was in with more of a chance of unearthing his man. “What about the guys he shared a cell with, all that kind of stuff?”
Crow cast him a withering look. “Two words—targets, clear-up rate.”
“That’s more than two.” He laughed.
“You get my drift. It’s all about moving onto the next case,” Crow said, stubbing out a cigarette and lighting another. A young woman with a child in a pushchair cast her a venomous look, but Crow either didn’t mind or wasn’t taking any notice.
“What was Demarku like?”
Her face drooped then she began to cough, eyes watering and streaming, mouth opening and closing like a struggling perch as she tried to get her breath. Beating her large chest with one hand, she grabbed at her glass with the other, taking a large swig. It seemed to do the trick. “Disturbing,” she croaked. “Came across as being very polite, quiet, thoughtful even, the type of guy who most mothers would want as their son. If only they knew.” She frowned, taking a drag of her cigarette. “Underneath the little-boy-lost facade, he was seething with fury. He’d as soon as slip a blade between your ribs as look at you. Probably smile while he was doing it.”
For the first time, Tallis registered a note of respect in Crow’s voice, not born of admiration but fear. “Another?” he said, gesturing at her empty glass.
“I’ll get them,” Crow said, making to get up.
“Stay where you are, admire the scenery.” He wanted time to collect his thoughts, think about what he was going to ask next. He ordered another pint and the same again for Crow.
“Gather Demarku had also been linked to a serious rape,” he said a few moments later, putting their glasses down on the table.
“Didn’t have the evidence to nail him.”
“No DNA?”
“No.”
“What about the victim? Couldn’t she ID him?”
Crow shook her head. “Never properly recovered.”
“Too scared to point a finger?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“Think she’d talk to me?”
Crow snorted. “You’re a charmer, but I don’t think so. She’s had a shit time since the attack. Marriage collapsed under the strain. Kids went with dad.”
“Christ.”
“Christ indeed.” Crow picked a flake of tobacco from her tongue.
“Keep in touch?”
“Yeah, I do, actually. Not on a regular basis. Just call in when I can. And no, I’m not telling you who she is and where she lives,” Crow added, giving a deep, dirty, thirty-a-day laugh.
“Fair enough. Think Demarku might try and find her?”
“Have a hard time. She’s moved twice in the last twelve years. Anyway, I don’t think that’s his game.”
“And what is his game?”
“Prostitution, and if he embraces our brand-new world and joins his brothers, people trafficking and drugs. The Albanians have cornered the market in London. Should suit you, if you’re ever out of a job.” She laughed.
Tallis eyed her over the rim of his glass. He wasn’t joining in.
“Keep your pants on.” Crow grinned. “The Albanians trust no one but, at street-distribution level, they employ Croats. Fuck knows how they understand each other.”
Tallis quietly filed the information away. Crow obviously didn’t know much about the Balkans. Croatians spoke and understood Serbo-Croat as did the Albanians, even if they didn’t like to admit to it. “Going back to the rape. Anything stick in the victim’s mind about the attack?”
“Apart from its degrading nature?”
“Thinking more along the lines of Demarku himself, about his character, the way he behaved.”
Crow’s dark eyebrows drew together. “You into all that psychological stuff?” She didn’t sound very enamoured.
“Just trying to find something original to say.”
“There was something, actually. I picked up on it too, so it’s not exactly revealing a trade secret.”
“Yeah?”
“Cologne. The guy liked to smell good. Not any old cheap rubbish either. And he liked expensive clothes. Definitely got a bit of a flash streak.” She gave her glass a mournful stare. “One for the road, I think. What’s yours?”
Tallis told her. “A half’s fine,” he added.
Crow returned with a pint for him. “No point in pissing about,” she said, grinning happily. “Thought of someone else you could talk to.” Tallis raised an eyebrow. Alcohol was definitely having the desired effect. “Guy called Peter Tremlett. He was the probation officer involved in the parole board decision to release Demarku.”
Tallis knew enough about this most secretive of breeds to know that Crow was way off the mark. Probation officers had much in common with customs and excise officers: both kept their mouths shut. “He won’t talk to me,” he scoffed.
Crow winked. “Twenty quid says he will.”
Tallis eyed her. She was definitely confident. “All right,” he said, intrigued, taking two tens from his wallet. “But, remember, I know where to come looking if you’re telling porkies.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Crow leant forward, allowing her large bosom to rest upon the table. “He’s retired and resentful. Mad sod will talk to anyone who’ll listen.” She laughed like a crazy cat, sliding the notes off the table and pocketing them.
After a night of very little sleep, Tallis got up early, went for a run then showered and dressed, but decided to stay unshaven. He took advantage of the hotel’s all-inclusive breakfast. It wasn’t a patch on the one he’d had the day before, but he was so hungry he wasn’t complaining. At nine-thirty, he phoned Peter Tremlett, dropping Crow’s name by way of an introduction.
“Christ, Micky Crow?”
“Yes, I—”
“Woman ought to be locked up.”
Tallis didn’t like to dwell on what Crow had done to the unfortunate Mr Tremlett to elicit such a forthright response. He moved swiftly on. “Thing is, it’s about the Demarku case,” he said, feeding Tremlett the same line he’d fed Crow. “Understand you were his probation officer.”
“Only in the technical sense. If you mean did I spend any time with him, the answer’s no.”
Tallis scratched his head. “But you had to work out a risk assessment for the parole board?”
“Oh, yes,” Tremlett said, voice packed with scorn. “But things aren’t as they used to be. When I first joined the probation service you spent time with your clients. Got to know them, got the measure of them. We did good work with some, prevented them from returning to a life of crime. Nowadays, we’re so swamped with paperwork the client’s the least of our problems. Know what happened in the Demarku case?” Tremlett’s voice soared. “I was given a sodding thick file to read and asked to talk to him via a video link to the prison. It’s ridiculous. Body language is often key to working out whether someone is genuine or not. You can’t pick up on a tapping foot or clenched fist if you’re staring into a screen. I mean, it’s laughable. There I was, having to make a judgement on a man without even being in the same room as him. And,” Tremlett said, anger convulsing him, “it’s not unusual. I’m just glad I’m out of it. You said you’re writing a book?”
“That’s right,” Tallis said, flinching at the slightly professorial tone.
“I’m thinking of doing the same. It will be a grand exposé.”
“Good for you,” Tallis said. “Going back to Demarku …”
“Ah, yes,” Tremlett said, in an I told you so manner. “Skipped deportation. Not that you can blame Immigration. They’re even more swamped than us.”
“Any ideas where he might be?”
“The spit of land between Hounslow and Heathrow, I dare say.”
Spit? Tallis thought. How had he come to that
conclusion? He asked him.
“My sister lives there. Says the place is full of his type of people.”
Except it wasn’t. Thirty minutes out of central London, he expected to hear foreign accents, yet to say the place was overrun with Albanians was a myth.
Hounslow reminded him of parts of Moseley but with riverside walks and open spaces. According to the guide he’d picked up, it was supposed to play host to five historic houses, not that he’d seen much evidence of deep cultural heritage. The high street looked similar to hundreds of others: unremarkable. The only place of interest was a small trashy-looking letting and estate agency off the main drag. Some of the homes on offer, Tallis thought as he studied the window, he wouldn’t want to put a dog in. He wandered inside. A large black guy sprawled in front of a computer with a nervous-looking couple caught his eye and smiled, said he wouldn’t be a moment.
“We have no references,” the woman was saying in halting English.
“No problem.”
“But without references, we cannot get a mortgage.”
“I can get you a mortgage,” the black man said confidently. “I can get you anything.”
Passports, visas too, Tallis thought, ticking off the mental list. “It’s all right, I’ll come back later,” Tallis said, walking back outside, narrowing his eyes against a bright sun and sky veined with light. From there, he made his way back to central London where he trawled the outside of two mosques. Studying the faces of the faithful leaving after Friday prayers, he was met with a wall of dark suspicion. As an antidote, he headed for Soho.
Six hours later, footsore and weary, Tallis returned to the hotel. Many years before, he’d gone out with a girl who’d worked in Great Marlborough Street, something in public relations, he thought. She’d invited him down for what he’d hoped was a dirty weekend. He’d met her at her office after work full of expectation. She’d taken him on a whistle-stop tour around Soho—maybe it was to get him in the mood. He’d been gobsmacked by the place. It had seemed like the centre of the universe, bursting with life and colour. It hadn’t been the vice trade that had captured his attention, the restaurants, or the swirl of scandal boiling in the streets, but the presence of the film and television industry, all the small independent production companies, theatrical agents, actors’ support groups. There had been people like he’d never seen them before; with attitude, daring, assertive, look at me, darling. He’d loved the smell of success and, yes, the sometimes seediness, even liked the street names—Berwick, Frith, Brewer. It had seemed dangerously intoxicating to a poor lad brought up in the sticks. But that had been then. This time he looked with fresh eyes, jaded eyes maybe. When he spotted a small cinema it was one promising adult viewings, cards in windows advertised the prospect of a good time. It made him think only of Demarku and pain and exploitation, and no amount of gawping at astonishingly priced menus in staggeringly inviting eateries was going to change all that.
The following day he visited gyms, clubs and cafés. He hung out in several bars, eavesdropped on any number of conversations, flashed Demarku’s latest mugshot to a couple of likely looking sorts and came up empty. As a devout Muslim, Demarku was unlikely to be found in a back-street boozer, but Tallis hoped that it might spark a connection, cause a chain reaction. With the aid of Google Earth, it was possible to locate a guy by the brand of condom he used. All you needed was an address in a suburb. Via a computer, you could trace a mobile-phone user, even with the phone on sleep mode, to within five hundred yards. But he had no address, no phone, no nothing, in fact. He was beginning to feel the awesome nature of the task ahead of him, wondered how he was going to get that one lucky break. Around four, he found himself in a bar full of old people and dispossessed-looking men and women on benefits, drinking their way to oblivion. The old folk had red eyes and red faces, the younger lines and heavy jaws. The talk was of soap stars and TV shows and somebody’s latest operation. Nobody spoke of politics or the state of the nation. Afterwards, he took a detour through Chinatown, eventually picking up the underground at Tottenham Court Road back to Euston. Not a very productive day.
But tomorrow would be different, he promised himself. Tomorrow he was going to a pub in Earl’s Court. According to a snippet of conversation gleaned from two unsuspecting Croats rabbiting away on the tube, the place was well known for its eclectic clientele.
CHAPTER NINE
SUNDAY morning in London, beautifully warm and sunny, with only a few wisps of cloud in a sky panelled with light. Perfect. Resisting the temptation to visit the Imperial War Museum, Tallis decided to meander down the Kings Road, and eventually found himself staring into the branch windows of some very expensive estate agents. Their business cards, he noticed from a display, were printed in both Russian and Arabic. He wondered where the average well-heeled Albanian was buying property these days.
Walking up to Sloane Square, Tallis took a tube to Earl’s Court. By one o’ clock, he was sitting in a ratty-looking pub on the corner of Earls Court Road. Two days without a shave, his clothes slightly rumpled, he blended into the scenery well. The pub was crawling with down-and-outs and those whose dissolute hue suggested that they were recovering from last night’s hangovers. Not easy, Tallis thought, when your head’s throbbing with the blast of sound from Big Screen Sky TV and three pool tables.
Tallis took his drink and sat down at a beer-stained table overrun with last night’s empties. Scouring the blunt-featured clientele, it wasn’t long before Tallis heard the sound of hrvatski, the official language of Croatia, and traced it to two men standing at the bar. They looked to be in their mid to late twenties. Both had shaved heads. Both had flat, slanted cheekbones. One had the triangular physique of a bodybuilder on anabolic steroids. The other was smaller, less pumped up. They were rattling away, joshing one another, excited about something. Tallis pushed his way through to get closer. They were talking about a VAT scam with mobile phones. After five minutes or so the conversation switched to drugs: heroin and amphetamines.
Tallis listened. From the way they were talking it was clear they were small fry, runners for someone else. Tallis wondered who their supplier was. He listened some more but no name emerged. “Oprosti!” he said, breaking into the conversation. “Excuse me.” The two men threw him slow, suspicious looks. Keeping his voice low, he asked whether they could supply him with some cocaine for personal use. He was careful to ask only for a small quantity so that he didn’t alert their suspicions. The triangular-shaped guy ignored him. The other issued a flat, ‘Ne razumijem’. I don’t understand.
“Come on, guys,” Tallis said persuasively, continuing to speak in their native tongue. “I’m off my own patch. It’s just to keep me going. Blood brothers and all that.”
Triangle shape burst out laughing.
Tallis looked him straight in the eye. “If you can get more, I’ll take it.”
The big guy stopped, stared. His sludgy-coloured eyes were unblinking. “Where are you from?”
“Vukovar.”
Both men exchanged glances. As Tallis already knew, Vukovar struck an emotional chord in the heart of every Croat. It wasn’t a place readily forgotten. A prosperous pretty little town on the Danube, Vukovar had once been the showcase for baroque architecture. No more. In the early 1990s, it had become a battleground, laid siege to by Serbian forces, a siege in which more than two thousand people had died, many more afterwards, a lot of them buried in mass graves. Tallis had visited once. The weather had been cold and damp and miserable, yet even if the sun had shone, the place would still have felt tainted. He thought of the town as a beautiful woman who’d had the misfortune to catch smallpox. Every street corner was pitted and made ugly by gunshot and mortar. Tallis remembered his grandmother weeping over its destruction.
The triangular-shaped man clapped a thick and meaty arm around Tallis’s shoulders. “Drink, my friend,” he said, ordering brandy. “A pity it isn’t slijvovica,” he added, referring to the fierce plum brandy traditionally drun
k in Croatian restaurants. “My name is Goran,” the big guy explained. “This is Janko,” he said, indicating his waxy-faced friend.
“Marko Simunic,” Tallis said.
Two hours later, they were all drunk and the best of mates. Goran and Janko were originally from Split. Both had come to the UK at the start of the hostilities in Kosovo in 1999. Lying about their ages, they’d worked as bartenders for a couple of years before getting into a more lucrative line of business. As Tallis had guessed, they were runners for someone else. In return, Tallis told them that he’d been involved in a drug smuggling operation in the South-West. At this, Goran’s flat, almost Slav features twitched into life. “All you need is a fishing boat, a dinghy and some lobster pots.” Tallis laughed. He wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t know what he was saying. “There are many small beaches, all of them accessible.”
“What about Customs?” Janko said.
“Non-existent.” Tallis grinned. “They used to run small inshore boats but they got sold off. Officers now spend most of their time patrolling Dover, the major airports, this neck of the woods.”
“So you think it would be a good way in?”
“Oh, sure.”
“And you have contacts?” Tallis decided that Janko was the smart one.
“Yes.”
“Then what are you doing here?” A cunning light in Goran’s eyes suggested that the brandy had not even begun to seep into his brain.
“Lying low.”
“From what?”
“A guy I pissed off.”
“How?”
“I wanted a slice of his action. It’s being sorted.” He’s being sorted was the implication.
Janko seemed to accept the story. Goran didn’t. “Why do you choose to do business with us?”
“I told you.”
“Why us?” Goran persisted, evil-eyed.
“Hey,” Janko said. “This is our friend, our brother.”
“More drinks,” Tallis said, standing up, feeling the heat.
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