by Iain Cameron
On the drive to Shermanbury, he listened to the last half hour of Woman’s Hour on Radio Four. It included a studio discussion debating the question: Why Aren’t More Women Business Leaders? They cited common complaints, the glass ceiling, too few women going into business, and those who were there being held back by men, worried about career breaks and child-care issues.
It wasn’t a phone-in and he wouldn’t have done so even if it was, but using the trafficking case as an example, he could have brought a different perspective to the discussion. If the way traffickers treated women was at some primeval level similar to the way many men thought, no wonder women had trouble progressing in business.
He arrived at the kennels in Shermanbury and got out of the car. He walked across the yard and rather than walk to the bunkhouse where the SOCO team were working, he headed instead for the kennels. In the daylight, it looked innocent enough, a long low building used for housing dogs, first as a commercial kennel some years before, and now a place where pit bulls were bred and kept.
Neither of the two traffickers in custody struck Henderson as dog lovers as they trotted out their well-worn mantra, ‘Vasile did it.’ Several of the incarcerated women were terrified of the beasts, and why wouldn’t they be when something they really feared was living beside them and could be heard barking most nights? The traffickers played on this fear and threated to release the dogs if they tried to escape. However, the handlers who took them away said the dogs were wild and ill-disciplined and would be just as likely to attack the traffickers as the incarcerated women.
The police dog handlers suspected they were being bred for dog-fighting, an illegal gambling activity which pitted dog against dog in a bloody fight to the death. In fact, it often led to the death of both dogs as the victor could end up so badly injured their owner would have no option but to put the dog down.
Henderson opened the door to the kennels and walked inside. Despite the warm spring sunshine outside, it felt cool in here, perhaps an asset in housing dogs as they wouldn’t overheat in the summer months. He walked along the long corridor past the cells which were head-height and about four metres square, not a bad size for a short stay as it allowed a dog or person inside to walk around a little and stretch, but they were poorly furnished and included only the essentials. A puny wall heater provided a modicum of warmth, but concrete could be a cold material and it was hard to imagine how cold it would get in here when the thermometer outside dropped below zero degrees Celsius in deep winter.
The first twelve cells were intended for human habitation and those beyond for dogs, the beasts having the benefit of a small door at the back leading to a yard outside. He didn’t like aggressive fighting dogs such as pit bulls, but the presence of so many dogs did interest him. In all the interviews, no one had given him a good reason why they were there and who owned them. The presence of one dog might suggest a stray or an impulse buy, but six dogs sounded to Henderson like someone’s unbridled love for the breed, or a commercial operation.
He walked towards the bunkhouse hoping SOCO could answer some of those outstanding questions. If not, his one last hope was the HTCU, the High-Tech Crime Unit at Haywards Heath. All the electronic kit found in the bunkhouse, and there was plenty of it, phones, iPads and laptops had been sent there for analysis. Even if protected by passwords, the techs would worm their way inside and reveal its secrets.
He knew not to get his hopes up as many criminals were not IT savvy and could barely use a Pay-As-You-Go phone. However, the traffickers were younger than many local cons and might have been using the kit for something more than watching funny videos or playing games.
He walked through the bunkhouse, the first time he’d been back since Monday night, looking for what? It couldn’t be something physical as anything of interest had been bagged and taken away for examination.
‘Hello Angus,’ Pat Davidson, Crime Scene Manager, said as he walked out of the kitchen. ‘Back to see it before we finish up?’
‘You finishing today?’
‘Yep. It was an easy one, to be truthful. The people staying here were only doing so for short periods so they didn’t have much stuff and what they had, clothes, sheets, electronic kit, we’ve bagged.’
He left Pat on the ground floor and climbed the stairs. He walked into the bunk room, the place where Stefan had met his end. Speaking later to the woman they discovered being raped by him, they learned he was at the bottom of the hierarchical ladder within the gang. He only got his hands on a woman when the other three were finished with her.
He climbed the stairs again and walked into the games room, the snooker table still upended and bearing the marks where the armed response team had tried shooting through it. He’d been told Officer Wardle would receive a commendation for his actions and the other two, both hit by Lazar’s wild shooting, were at home convalescing. It was unlikely they would suffer any long-term effects as both wounds were superficial.
Walking downstairs and outside, Henderson decided he wasn’t ready to leave the crime scene yet and headed towards the house next door to see if anyone was at home. An officer had called there on the night of the shooting and told the residents to remain indoors, but no one had spoken to them in any detail. He had no reason to suspect them of being involved and even though many referred to it as the house next door, the only one visible on either side of the kennels, it was at least a quarter of a mile distant.
The door of the house was opened by a housekeeper and after showing her his ID, she agreed to call the lady of the house. He was shown into a room overlooking the back garden and left there. The uninterrupted views were fantastic, fields rolling into the distance and no sign of any neighbours, due to a thick copse of trees on both sides. In fact, despite looking hard, he couldn’t see any indications to suggest the kennels or the bunkhouse were there.
A woman walked into the room. She looked young, perhaps mid-thirties, with wavy, shoulder-length brown hair and a face which didn’t strike him as beautiful, more distinctive, with a Roman nose, high cheek bones and piercing blue eyes.
‘Good morning, detective, she said as she approached. ‘I’m Julia Webster.’ She held out her hand which he shook. It trembled, a sign perhaps of being fearful of the police, not likely he thought, more the result of a nervous complaint or drinking too much booze the night before; the DTs as his father used to call it.
‘Please sit down.’
He took a seat on the settee, a style often seen in period dramas, a polished wooden frame with a sumptuous green velour seat. It looked elegant and fitted in perfectly with the other pieces of classical furniture in the room, but while his bottom appreciated the softness of the base, his back hated the knobbly bits in the frame.
The housekeeper walked in and he ordered coffee, so did his companion, but as the housekeeper walked away, Julia grasped her arm and said something to her. This little interchange revealed itself a few minutes later when the housekeeper returned with drinks, a coffee for him and one for Julia, with a large glass of white wine for the lady of the house on the side.
Henderson went on to explain about the previous Monday night’s activity and the arrest of the human trafficking gang. He kept quiet about the shootings, not wishing to alarm a woman in what he believed to be a fragile state.
‘Oh, it didn’t bother me,’ she said. ‘I went to bed after your officer told me something was going on and I heard nothing more until nine, nine-thirty the next morning.’
‘The men were operating a human trafficking business. They were bringing women over here from Eastern Europe and setting them to work in brothels which they owned all over Sussex.’
‘You can’t be serious?’
‘It’s true.’
‘It sounds terrible. I wasn’t aware, and for it to be happening so close to this house.’
‘Have you ever noticed people coming and going, activity late at night?’
‘No, I haven’t. It’s a quiet road outside and if they were coming and
going after about ten at night, I wouldn’t hear a thing. The walls of this place are thick and I sleep like a log.’
Henderson wasn’t surprised because if she slugged wine as she was doing now from twelve noon until well into the evening, she’d be good for nothing by ten o’clock. No wonder she slept so well. Conked-out more like.
‘Is there anyone else living in the house who might have?’
‘No, the housekeeper, she goes to bed as early as me as she’s up at the crack of dawn. Maybe my husband.’
‘Is he around?’
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘He leaves early in the morning and isn’t often back until late at night.’
No wonder, Henderson thought. A house like this, staff, his wife’s copious wine consumption, it all required a substantial income.
‘I may come back as I’d like to talk to him. How long have you lived here?’
‘About ten years, I think it is. It’s the most time I’ve stayed in any house. You see, I spent my childhood living in places where the Army chose to send my father, often in parts of the world no one’s ever heard about: Belize, Tristan da Cunha, Montserrat, to name a few.’
Henderson left Hillcrest House twenty minutes later, Julia Webster’s monologues getting longer and becoming more spiced with bile from what sounded like the effects of a difficult childhood and a domineering father. She didn’t add much to his sum of knowledge, but dispelled any notion the DI had about her owning the land where the kennels and bunkhouse were situated.
She didn’t tell him in so many words, but her lack of knowledge about what was going on there was obvious. In fact, she didn’t answer many of his direct questions, making him think she didn’t know anything or was simply blotting what she did know. It didn’t point her out as an out-and-out liar, but he knew many alcoholics and they had difficulty differentiating reality and their booze-soaked imaginations.
If he still needed more information, he would come back with details of who they believed owned the house and the land next door and see if she, or her husband, could enlighten him. He would also make sure they arrived no later than nine or ten in the morning, in the hope of finding her sober and a bit more compos mentis. He walked back to his car, resolving to treat himself to a decent lunch to make up for a frustrating morning. His phone rang.
‘DI Henderson here.’
‘Good morning DI Henderson, Dave here, HTCU. I’ve got some good news for you.’
Henderson paused. ‘I was waiting for you to add, ‘and I’ve got some bad news’. What’s the good news?’
‘We’ve cracked Nicholae Prodan’s laptop. It’s all in Romanian so I needed an interpreter by my side for most of the time, the reason it’s taken so long. We’re there now and I can tell you, sir, you’re gonna like it. It’s a gold mine of information.’
FORTY-FIVE
Henderson and Walters pulled into the car park at Regency Wines in Portslade. He’d been animated on the journey from Lewes, pleased at last to be bringing this case to a conclusion, but now in the car park, his mood darkened. He had come here often to buy beer, whisky and wine, and on his last visit the two bottles of wine he bought marked the end of his relationship with Rachel. The two of them had talked on the phone several times since she’d left, but the elephant in the room wasn’t for shifting.
Proof that he wasn’t ready for another relationship came on Wednesday night when Vicky Neal invited him up to her flat. He could see by the look on her face she intended their get-together wouldn’t end with simply a coffee or a glass of whisky. She wasn’t so drunk she was throwing caution to the wind, she knew exactly what she was doing.
He refused her invite for two reasons. One, he wasn’t ready yet to move on and still harboured hopes of a reconciliation. Two, it would be a stupid action to take with a fellow member of his team, in fact with anyone working at Sussex Police. Not only would they see each other every day, but if the hours he worked could put the boot into his relationship with Rachel, dating another officer would only multiply the problem.
Documents found on Nicholae Prodan’s laptop identified him as the leader of the trafficking operation team and the main liaison between the UK and two teams of three kidnappers, one in Hungary and another in Romania. Details had been sent to the relevant police forces in the hope they could strangle this odious trade at source. Prodan was also the main point of contact with the big boss over here, none other than a Sussex businessman by the name of Constantin Petrescu.
Henderson had talked to the owner of Regency Wines a number of times, a man he had marked out as a success after coming to this country in difficult circumstances. Little did he know about the real source of his wealth. And what wealth. The traffickers had been operating for years and raking in tens of millions from the numerous brothels they operated in Surrey and Sussex.
The money was being filtered into the banking system through a number of businesses owned by Petrescu: Regency Wines in front of him, a wine importing company, several bookmakers and a small chain of bureaux de change located in and around airports. The tainted businessman had also featured in several business magazines, the reason Cindy Longhurst first went to photograph him. Henderson believed the noise of the dogs piqued her interest and, after investigating, she hatched plans to free the kidnapped women.
Petrescu, it turned out, lived at Hillcrest House, the place where Henderson had talked to Julia Webster, a lady who preferred using her maiden name. She’d been circumspect about who owned the kennels and the bunkhouse, as they had since discovered both were the property of her husband through companies which he controlled. Henderson would talk to the CPS about prosecuting Mrs Webster. Withholding information about the ownership of the kennels didn’t stop the identification of Petrescu as its owner, but she had to know what had been going on next door and how she and her husband were benefitting.
Henderson wasn’t taking any chances with this arrest. The gang Constantin Petrescu bankrolled, organised and led, didn’t hesitate in using guns, and the DI didn’t think the traffickers’ boss would be any different. His caution didn’t stretch to an armed response team this time, the sergeant of the team of the last one deployed not happy at losing two of his men, but he and Walters had come prepared.
Two patrol cars were also in the car park. He instructed two officers from one of the cars to accompany him and DS Walters and he left the other car to block any attempt at escape.
‘Someone owns a smart car,’ Walters said, nodding at the Porsche Panamera parked at the side of the building.
‘Private reg as well, but at least it tells us he’s here.’
The small team of four approached the large building and headed inside.
Polly was standing behind the desk and looked alarmed when she saw Henderson and Walters, two uniformed cops behind them. Henderson walked behind the desk and pushed open a door marked ‘Private.’
‘You can’t go up there. It’s private. Mr Petrescu doesn’t like unexpected visitors.’
‘He’ll see us,’ Henderson said.
‘I must insist.’
‘Go back to your customers,’ he heard one of the officers say.
They walked upstairs and at the top, Henderson headed towards a door bearing the sign, ‘Big Boss Man Works Here’ and opened it. The office looked cavernous, the upper part of the back section of the warehouse. It contained a desk at the far end of the room and, close to the door, a well-worn black leather sofa and a row of filing cabinets.
Constantin Petrescu looked up, clocking the uniforms. ‘What can I do...What the hell’s this?’
Henderson walked closer. ‘Constantin Petrescu I’m arresting you for–’
He didn’t get time to finish. Petrescu pulled out a gun and started firing.
FORTY-SIX
When Henderson first saw the gun in Constantin Petrescu’s hand, he didn’t have time to unholster his own weapon. Instead he grabbed Walters and dived behind the settee. From their position, they could see one of the officers had been s
hot. The other was standing behind the door with the look of pure terror on his face.
Henderson heard rapid footsteps across the wooden floor. If Petrescu thought he was going to finish the officer off, or kill him and Walters, he had another think coming. Henderson now had his own gun ready and would have no compunction shooting Petrescu. No further shots were fired. Henderson risked a look around the side of the couch.
Seeing nothing, he crouched on his knees and looked over the settee. Petrescu wasn’t at his desk or anywhere inside the room. Looking around, he spotted the open fire door. He stood and ran over to the injured officer. He opened the man’s blood-soaked jacket. Walters knelt beside him.
The bullet had gone through his chest, close to his shoulder, but he couldn’t be sure if it had hit any vital organs.
‘Officer down, officer down,’ Walters said into the radio. She relayed the address to the operator.
‘They’re five minutes away,’ she said putting the radio down.
‘Good.’
‘Stay awake, stay with us Danny,’ he said to the injured cop. Henderson tore off a piece of the man’s shirt and folded it into a compress.
Henderson called the other officer over and told him to take hold of the material. The cop’s hands were shaking so much, he couldn’t grasp it. Henderson took his wrist, put the material in his hand and guided the make-shift compress towards his injured colleague’s wound.
‘Do this,’ he instructed, ‘and keep pressure on the wound until the ambulance arrives, understand? It’s on its way.’
‘Is he coming back? The guy with the gun?’
‘No, he’s gone, he’s not coming back.’ Henderson stood and put a hand on the officer’s back. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, all you need to do is take care of Danny, okay?’