by Chris Simms
O’Dowd sat forward. ‘Ms Bakowitz, if you could elaborate on which countries are known to be involved in …’
‘Bridenapping? Of course.’ She pushed her notes to one side and began to speak from memory.
Libby Williams lowered herself stiffly on to a chair. Once comfortable, she raised her phone back to her ear. The laptop was in front of her, positioned on a lace-work placemat to stop it from scratching the table. ‘Yes, the screens have stopped flitting about.’
Her son spoke. ‘Well done. Tell me what you can see.’
‘It’s that one with all the thingumyjigs.’
‘The icons?’
‘Yes. There’s that little waste-paper basket in the corner. And in the middle is that green dot for the music.’
‘Spotify?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. You’re on the desktop, that’s what it’s called. Now, Mum, see if you can find an icon that is a blue square with an S in the middle. I think I put it by the Spotify dot. It will have the word Skype below it.’
‘Yes, that’s right beside it. Do I move the cursor over and click on it?’
‘Get you! Clicking now, are we? Yes, click away.’
‘The desktop has now gone. It’s been replaced by a grey screen. Oh, now it’s making a noise. I can see a little photo of you. It says you’re calling.’
‘So now you just click on the green telephone at the bottom.’
‘Oh my Lord, I can see you. You’re waving!’ She couldn’t help laughing. ‘You’re waving!’
‘Mum, I’m waving at you. Close your mouth unless you want a fly to get in.’
‘And I’m there, too, in a little square in the corner. I can hear your voice so clearly!’
‘That’s the idea. You can hang up the phone now and we can talk like this.’
‘You want me to put the phone down? Will it not cut the connection?’
‘No – we’re on the internet, Mum. The phone line is completely different. Go on, put that big old lump of plastic in your hand down. Good. Still hear me loud and clear?’
‘Yes. How remarkable. I wish your father was still alive to see this. Amazing. Your picture isn’t straight, on the wall behind you.’
‘Mum! We won’t continue with this if you start using it as a way of tidying up, OK?’
‘Well, it isn’t straight. So, can you see me just as clearly?’
‘Yes. Well, no. Not if you lean to the side like that. Mum, you need to be in front of the little camera. And now my screen has gone pink. Mum, is your finger over the lens? It is, isn’t it?’
She laughed and lowered her hand.
‘Oh, you’re back again. But wait, did you feel that over in Poynton?’ He frowned theatrically. ‘I think it’s an earthquake. Oh! Oh! Everything’s shaking!’
She watched with an amused expression as the view of her son started to bounce up and down and from side to side. ‘That’s you, silly. You’re wobbling your computer about.’
The movement stopped and he grinned at her. ‘You sussed me.’
Across the street, Liam watched the man. His head and shoulders were visible through the living room window. He was chatting away to someone, having a right laugh by the look of it. Then he’d put his mobile to one side and continued to speak. The guy’s face shone faintly with reflected light. Liam guessed he was looking at a laptop’s screen. Nina’s laptop. He checked his watch: just after three. Another couple of hours and it would be completely dark. He continued along the road to check what was behind the house. A backyard or small garden, hopefully.
‘We know bridenapping goes on in at least seventeen countries, worldwide,’ Linda Bakowitz said, eyes trained on the meeting room wall where it joined the ceiling. ‘China to Mexico, Russia to South Africa. In some regions of Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country bordered by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and China, it is thought that up to eighty per cent of marriages are forced. Many regions view the practice as a tradition, not a crime. It goes on in Chechnya. Dealers operate in Vietnam, taking young girls over the border into China. The same for Somalia and Kenya. Within Europe, it’s estimated seventeen per cent of marriages in Georgia are forced, fourteen per cent in Turkey.’
She directed a finger at Euan’s laptop. ‘The entire process has been greatly facilitated by the internet – that’s kidnapping in general, not just that of girls for marriage. You’ll know better than I that things like Twitter and social networking sites make it easy for criminals to communicate. Large amounts of money can change hands online, too – going from one currency to another in the process. Foreign travel, across the EU and beyond, is easier now than ever. We know the international links are there. I recently attended a seminar with the Serious Organized Crime Unit’s team. We went over the case of a British boy kidnapped last year. The family paid a ransom to an account traced to Paris. The investigation that followed led, eventually, to arrests in Pakistan, Romania and Spain.’
O’Dowd coughed. ‘For the purposes of this investigation, we have a young girl who disappeared from a care home near Stockport—’
‘An area with one of the country’s highest concentrations of care homes,’ Margaret interjected, emotion straining her voice. ‘All those big houses at cheap prices. Local authorities in London and the south east short on space and budgets ship the children up here.’
‘So we’ve gathered,’ O’Dowd replied. ‘And one of these girls has then reappeared at a checkpoint on the Lebanese-Israeli border – with horrific consequences.’
Bakowitz interlinked her fingers. ‘Given that the girl in question was Caucasian and taken to the Middle East, I’m of the opinion she’d been trafficked originally for sex, not marriage.’
Iona took a quick glance about. Everyone’s eyes were glued to Bakowitz.
‘It is deeply disturbing,’ she added quietly. ‘And it goes beyond anything I’ve experienced before. These girls are, as I’ve said, vulnerable. Suddenly, all this attention is being lavished on them. They’re bought gifts. Nice stuff, at first. Little treats. A meal in McDonald’s, trinkets from Accessorize, often a pay-as-you-go phone. That mobile opens up a direct channel of communication. Then it’s invitations to house parties – where there are cigarettes, alcohol, drugs. They’re lured in very carefully.’ She tapped her fingers against her file. ‘But, there’s a huge difference between being exploited sexually and detonating a bomb that’s strapped to your body—’
‘If she detonated it.’ Iona realized she’d spoken her thought aloud. She looked up. O’Dowd was scrutinising her. Next to him, DCI Roebuck’s eyebrows were raised. Christ, Iona said to herself, knowing she now had to back her comment up. ‘Sorry to butt in,’ she started nervously. ‘But we don’t know she was aware of what she was carrying, do we? She may have been told it was something entirely different. In which case, someone else may have actually detonated it.’
The room remained silent.
Damn it, Iona thought. Why did I open my—
‘Good point,’ O’Dowd said, consulting his file. ‘Jade Cummings was reported missing from her care home in mid-October. She died on November eighteenth. That’s a six-week period. Long enough to indoctrinate someone to the degree they’ll commit suicide for the cause?’ He glanced at Iona. ‘I doubt it.’
She felt a surge of relief. I didn’t drop a clanger, after all.
‘Research on this tells us,’ O’Dowd carried on, ‘that, unless the bomber has lost loved ones in what they perceive as unjust circumstances – an airstrike or drone attack, for example – the process of indoctrination is long and slow. The religious argument must be accepted first; then the case for sacrificing yourself. Six weeks … I can’t see that as being sufficient.’
‘If the indoctrination only started at the point of her disappearance.’
Iona looked across the table. Martin Everington had thrown the comment in. She saw that he was slouched low in his seat while cartwheeling a green biro through the fingers of one hand. She suddenly wished he’d drop it. He
was so bloody confident.
He looked up at the senior officers. ‘What if the grooming – religious or whatever – had been going on for a while before she went missing? We’re talking like her disappearance wasn’t her choice. But – maybe – she went willingly.’
Iona saw heads nodding round the room and was acutely aware that few had reacted that way when she’d spoken. Martin’s eyes touched hers and she immediately looked away. He had a point.
O’Dowd traced his finger over his sheet. ‘Jade Cummings had been in care since the age of seven. She had one period with a foster family when she was nine, but that fell through within eight months. She’d been in a home near Reddish ever since.’ He looked at DCI Sullivan and was about to speak when his Blackberry buzzed again. Rather than pick it up, he glanced down at the screen and gave a dismissive flick of his fingers. ‘Where was I? Jade Cummings. Let’s review things from the angle of her being groomed not for sex but suicide. Re-interview staff and children from the care home, if necessary.’
DCI Sullivan immediately looked at Martin. ‘Happy to do that?’
‘With pleasure, sir.’
Iona kept her eyes on the table, smarting at the turn of events. One minute her contribution looked like it was taking priority, the next it had been swept aside by Martin’s. She could feel gloating glances settling on her from every direction.
O’Dowd was about to say something else when his Blackberry buzzed again. ‘Christ sake.’ He glanced at the screen, frowned, picked the device up and read the message more carefully. The room watched as he pressed a few keys. ‘Charles? I just got your text. What’s going on?’
As he listened to what was being said, a ping came from Sullivan’s jacket. He retrieved his phone and scanned the screen, straightening up as he did so. He turned to the superintendent, a forefinger raised.
‘Great, let me know as soon as,’ O’Dowd said, cutting his call. ‘Andy?’
DCI Sullivan spoke. ‘Word from Eamon Heslin’s apartment. Some paperwork has been recovered that lists what could be several clients. Might be whoever bought those laptops. It’s being biked over as we speak.’
O’Dowd clenched one fist in response before jabbing a finger at his mobile. ‘That was the liaison officer at the embassy in Islamabad. Khaldoon Khan and his sister have relatives in the mountains of north Pakistan. They think that’s where they headed from the airport.’
Iona stared at the super. Were they talking about the tribal areas that bordered Afghanistan? Because if they were, it was a region so hostile to America and its allies, any Westerner risked death by going there.
EIGHTEEN
Iona pulled on to the drive, coming to a halt behind a white Range Rover with personalised number plates. Turning the engine off, she reflected glumly on the latest shuffle of cards.
Gone was her leading role tracing the remaining laptop owners through the university. That had been handed to a uniformed team who’d been hastily seconded from Trafford Division.
Now she’d been tasked with interviewing some of the clients whose details had been found in Eamon Heslin’s apartment. The details had been hand-written in a small ledger and the sums of money detailed had all been cash. Probably jobs he was keeping from the taxman’s attention – a fact to be overlooked because of the slim possibility that someone at one of the companies could have purchased the two missing Dell laptops. It was a very slim possibility, in Iona’s opinion. The names were of corporate clients, mainly small businesses whose IT systems Heslin probably repaired or maintained. They wouldn’t be interested in knock-off laptops.
Worse, she thought, is who I’ve been paired with to make enquiries.
‘Impressive-looking property,’ Martin Everington said from the passenger seat beside her.
From what she could see of the house between a cluster of rhododendron bushes and squat fir trees, it stank of poor taste. New build, but with a mass of faux-classical touches. Twin pillars either side of a huge front door. A frieze of semi-nude statues set into the brickwork below the gutter. Five bedrooms, at least. ‘Depends on your taste.’
She glanced at the Range Rover’s personalised number plates. The things really got on her nerves. It didn’t bother her if vehicle owners went against DVLA regulations by manipulating the spacing between numbers and letters; for her, memorising a plate that actually spelled a word was far easier than a random sequence of letters and numbers. It was more the sheer vanity and self-importance of it all. It was a car, for crying out loud. A metal compartment with seats and a wheel at each corner. To Iona, the need to try and stand out from the crowd indicated pompousness on the owner’s part. That, or some strange form of insecurity. She wondered which one would apply to the person who drove the Range Rover.
‘Well,’ Martin announced, opening his door. ‘The sooner we get these crossed off, the sooner we can join the lot looking into Jade Cummings.’
They took the path’s left-hand fork and followed it away from the house and towards a long, thin, single-storey building. Converted stables, from the look of it, Iona thought. Through the row of windows that had been put in place of the stable doors, she could see a few women sitting at desks and talking on phones. The far wall was lined with box-laden shelves. They reached the door at the far end. Office, read the brass plaque. Before she could reach up, Martin rang the buzzer.
A second later, it opened.
‘Miss Dubianko? Detective Sergeant Everington. I called before?’ His warrant card was raised; the standard Greater Manchester Police one giving no indication of the unit he was part of. ‘This is my colleague, Detective Constable Iona Khan.’
The woman was, Iona guessed as she held up her own card, in her early thirties. Tall, pale blonde hair, gym slender and, Iona couldn’t help noticing, very large breasts. Fake? She certainly had that well-groomed sheen shared by people with the time and money for such things as personal trainers and regular beauty appointments. Iona would have written her off as typical Cheshire set if it wasn’t for the woman’s angular cheekbones, wide mouth and glacial eyes. Iona had never seen eyes such a pale shade of blue.
She glanced over their identities, eyes settling back on Martin. ‘Come in, please.’
Her warm smile revealed a perfect row of teeth. They were so white that, if they’d been in the mouth of someone thirty years older, Iona would have suspected they weren’t real.
‘Thank you,’ Iona said, stepping in before Martin. ‘We appreciate you seeing us at such short notice.’
‘That is not a problem, honestly. Can I get you both a tea or coffee?’
‘No thanks,’ Martin said from behind Iona. ‘This really won’t take long.’
Her eyes went to Iona. ‘And you?’
I think he already decided that, Iona thought. ‘Not for me, thanks anyway.’
‘Very well.’ The woman had an elegant way of moving as she walked round the desk and took the leather chair on the other side. She gestured to the chairs opposite and looked expectantly across at them.
‘The name of your company has come up as part of a wider investigation,’ Martin explained, sitting down.
‘Would you mind if I smoke?
The request took Iona by surprise. You couldn’t wait until we’re gone?
‘No, not at all,’ Martin replied.
Iona watched as she extracted a cigarette from a packet by her phone. Was this, Iona thought, some kind of displacement activity? The tactic of a nervous person? But the well-manicured fingers that lifted the lighter showed no sign of any tremors. The cigarette itself was brown and thin and with a gold filter. Foreign. A cultural thing, Iona concluded. The woman had probably come from a part of the world where smoking was as unremarkable as blinking your eyes.
‘So, this investigation?’ she said, eyes firmly on Martin.
‘Yes,’ Martin replied in a languid voice, crossing one leg. ‘We’re looking into a small IT business. Recently, it was destroyed in a fire. Some records were recovered that mentioned here.’
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‘What?’ she said. ‘My business?’
Martin wiped the air with a hand. ‘Miss Dubianko, we’re really not concerned if you had the odd dealing with this company on a cash-in-hand basis.’
Iona watched as the woman gazed at Martin. Her eyes were so pale they seemed to almost act as mirrors. Iona could get nothing from them.
‘Do you know the company I’m talking about?’ Martin asked.
As she pulled on her cigarette, the bones beneath her cheeks became even more pronounced. For a second, it was easy to picture her skull beneath that flawless skin. Iona waited for the woman to reply, but she remained silent. There was a flintiness about her that spoke to Iona of a life not always shrouded in luxury.
‘Miss Dubianko,’ Martin said, ‘the owner of the IT company, unfortunately, is dead.’
Now she blinked. ‘You’re not talking about Eamon Heslin, are you?’ Smoke trickled from her mouth and nostrils as she spoke.
Martin nodded.
‘Oh my God.’ She leaned forward and ground her cigarette out. ‘In the fire?’
‘Sorry, I cannot give you any more detail than that,’ Martin replied.
‘That’s terrible.’ Her eyes moved slowly to the side. ‘He was only here the other day …’
‘He was?’ Iona asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied in a small voice. ‘When I set up the business, he did the networking for me in the main office. Whenever there’s a glitch, he fixes it. Usually remotely. But a cable needed to be replaced, so he popped over in person. I can’t believe he’s dead.’
Iona jotted the information down. ‘There was some kind of monthly contract?’
‘Not really. I sometimes bought items from him, when he had them for sale. Printers, a couple of computers.’
Iona studied the set-up on the lady’s desk. The monitor sat on a desktop PC from which a mass of wires and cables hung. ‘Did he recently sell you a laptop?’
‘A laptop? No – I just use this computer. And I can pick up email on my Blackberry. That works fine for me.’