by Conrad Jones
“What?” Stirling grunted.
“We were watching number 2. There were punters coming and going from there all hours of the day and night. They must have been living here and working down the road. This place wasn’t even on our radar until the fire boys kicked the front door in. Watch this space, because Franklin is going to be getting a massive kick up the arse.” Williams winked and walked away to answer his mobile.
“How can an opp not have connected the two buildings?” Miranda asked incredulously. “I’m just glad that Vice was running it.”
“Every cloud,” Annie agreed. “The three women in the cellar are touch and go. They’re white Europeans. They chained them to a radiator before they torched the place.” Annie sighed. “They obviously didn’t want to leave any witnesses behind.”
“Why not take them?” Stirling mused. “Just to be sure.”
“Maybe they didn’t have room to take them?”
“Makes sense,” Miranda agreed.
“They cut their losses here and made sure that they couldn’t talk and that the drugs were safe,” Stirling added.
“We have to assume that they cleared out because the handover at the mill was compromised,” Annie said. “We have eleven girls full of cocaine and a missing reporter and the clock is ticking for them.”
Stirling nodded; his hands deep inside the pockets of his leather. “Do you think our missing man ‘Mike’ coughed to being accompanied at the mill?”
“Looking at the state of the other victims,” she nodded, “there’s no doubt in my mind,” Annie felt a cold chill touch her and she shuddered. “I can’t help but think that this is already running away from us and we’re still in the dark.” She took out her phone and dialled. “One thing is for sure, this is way beyond a Vice stakeout now. I’m calling the Area Commander’s office. We’re all on this one now.”
“Do you want me to take a crack at the pawnbrokers shop on the way back to the station?” Stirling asked as he watched the mutilated body being dive-bombed by flies. “I’m curious as to why Barrat didn’t go straight home. If her source is there then I might be able to convince them to talk.” Annie nodded and then turned to talk to the Area Commander’s secretary. As Stirling walked towards the alleyway, he took one last look at the smouldering houses and the helicopter above. Whoever they were looking for had a talent for being one step ahead of the law and they didn’t mind causing carnage in order to destroy evidence. They were also very adept at murder in order to clean up loose ends and that worried him immensely.
CHAPTER 9
Jason Greene pulled up across the street from Kayla’s emporium and took a good look around before turning the engine off. He had said that he would be there before lunchtime and he didn’t want to appear to be too keen, even though he was desperate for the cash. He liked Kayla but he was wary of her. Kayla Yates was a good looking woman but when it came to business, she was a shark and she could sense blood in the water from a mile away. If he turned up too early, her offer for the watches would be lower, much lower. She would know that he needed the money quickly and react accordingly and that would cost him dearly. For the last few years, he had sold merchandise to her a couple of times a month and each time, he felt that he had undersold his goods but she was discreet and she always paid with cash. No questions asked and no proof of purchase required. He knew that the police and insurance companies had fulltime dedicated staff that trawled the internet searching for stolen goods. Online sites like eBay were no longer an option for professional handlers. Kayla was the safer option to fence goods even if the price was lower.
Jason looked up and down the road and then opened the car door; the temperature dropped immediately. A breeze blew in from the river and carried rain with it. It was the type of drizzle that made him miserable. It was the type of drizzle that his games teacher at school didn’t deem wet enough to cancel the lesson despite all the kids looking like drowned rats within ten minutes, dithering and shivering with their hands shoved in their shorts seeking warmth. He pushed the sickening thoughts of school away as he closed the door and jogged across the road to the shop, pausing as a green bus roared past splashing his Adidas trainers with dirty water. A new pair shot straight to the top of his shopping list.
As he entered the emporium, the door alarm beeped alerting the shopkeeper that they had a customer. Pleased to be out of the rain, he closed the door and glanced at the display of watches in the window. A glass panel allowed customers inside the shop to see the window display. It was an impressive collection, although there were a few empty stands where the high-end stuff usually sat. He wondered if maybe Kayla was running low on her Rolex stock, which was good news for him. He stored that information for later but he wasn’t getting carried away with himself. It was more likely that she had been distracted from the business of setting up and overlooked putting out her expensive watches. She was too wily to run out of the most desirable brands. It just wouldn’t happen. He took a few steps inside, expecting to see her pretty face smiling at him from behind one of the counters but they were both unattended. The odour of her perfume lingered in the air beneath the unmistakeable smell of bacon but she wasn’t there. As he hadn’t eaten, he wasn’t sure which odour was the most attractive.
Certain that she would be in the secure office at the back, Jason browsed at the mobile phone cabinet, which was a veritable treasure trove of communication devices. It held a wide selection of makes and models, most of them boxed and less than a year old. Several of them were more recent than his. His eyes lingered on a smart watch with built in GPS. Talking to friends via a device on your wrist, which could tell you where you where in the world, was one of his childhood fantasies, although it didn’t really matter what other people thought about you when you are six. As an adult, talking into his watch in a city centre bar could be seen as being a knobhead. He thought about the blokes who walked around with a Bluetooth ear piece fixed to the side of their heads day and night, funny how they never seemed to get a call from anyone. The word ‘knob’ sprung back into his mind again. Smart watches may have arrived but he decided that he wasn’t cut out for one just yet. They were for the young and the crew of the Starship Enterprise. The more conventional devices were the way forward. A new mobile phone went to number two on his shopping list just below the new pair of Adidas.
There was still no sign of Kayla. The minutes ticked by and he wondered where she was. He coughed loudly as he moved across the shop to look at the display of cameras, keeping one eye on the door at the rear. There was no response so he coughed louder still. He knew that she could see the entire shop floor through the reflective glass. She was probably on the toilet or talking on the telephone negotiating another purchase. She was expecting him and she knew who he was and why he was there, so there was no rush. In fact, she was probably making him sweat on purpose to gain the upper hand before the bartering began. Maybe he was over thinking her business acumen. Would she purposely make him wait just to throw him off balance? Five minutes turned into ten and he was beginning to think that she was taking liberties with his time when he heard a muffled cry from the office. It was female and it was stifled.
His blood froze in his veins. He had never been brave. His early years had made him a victim, bullied at home and at school. He had developed a sixth sense for knowing when danger was coming his way. Avoiding the bullies at school had become an art form, navigating the alleyways and entries so as not to be seen, learning the times and the places where the predators would be had enabled him to avoid many a kicking. Even now as an adult if he sensed violence approaching, he bolted for the exit. The voices of self preservation in his head whispered ‘get out’.
“Kayla,” he called but it came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and called louder, “Kayla, are you okay?”
Silence answered.
“Kayla!”
Silence.
“Kayla, it is Jason Greene.” Nothing for a second and then he heard a muffled shriek and a thu
d. A deep dull thud followed by empty nothingness again. He could hear a buzzing noise in his ears and his throat was painfully dry. Jason backed towards the door. A brave man may have run to the office to see if he could help the damsel in distress but he wasn’t a knight in shining armour. He was a coward and that was fine by him. Cowards lived while heroes died. Didn’t nearly all heroes have to die to gain that coveted title? They could keep it. Breathing was far more important.
“Kayla!” He shouted as loud as he could but she didn’t answer. “Kayla!” He called again and then sensing that something was amiss, he ran for the door and opened it. He paused for a moment as his conscience pricked him. There could only be a few reasons that she wasn’t answering; one was that she was being robbed or she was dead or dying. He could have checked on her but if he interrupted a holdup, he may get shot. If she was dying from a heart attack or similar, he didn’t know how to give CPR so he would be of no use to her. He couldn’t telephone for an ambulance without attracting attention. Ambulance men usually called the police if there were suspicious circumstances. The knowledge that he was carrying two stolen Rolex watches burned into his mind but he couldn’t leave her. “Kayla! I am going to phone the police!” He slammed the door behind him and looked up and down the street. There was no one around. The rain was keeping people indoors. He jogged across the road back to his car and took out his mobile. Coward or not, he dialled 999.
CHAPTER 10
Raitis Girts wiped the moisture from his palms onto his jeans. Perspiration trickled down his shaven scalp across his protruding forehead and into his eyes. Rivulets of sweat ran over the three rolls of flesh at the back of his head and soaked his shirt before it trickled down his thick tattooed neck. It wasn’t particularly warm, in fact it was cool outside the van; it was the precarious nature of his business that made him sweat. Pedestrians scurried along the pavements with their coats fastened tightly but the temperature inside the Volkswagen was uncomfortable to say the least. The atmosphere in the cab was tense. Condensation on the windows made it difficult to see without having the heater on full blast, which in turn made the terrible stink worse. The stench coming from the women in the back was unbearable. He could smell their vile breath, the weeks of sweat and grime in their hair and on their skin but worst of all was the disgusting odour of excrement. His colleagues had plied them with laxatives at the house, boxes full of them. It was what they always did when a shipment of mules arrived.
They had followed the usual procedure. How could they know that they would get a frantic call to move the women and move them quickly? They couldn’t reverse the effects of the laxatives once they were ingested so they had thrown a couple of plastic buckets into the back with the women. The drugs were beginning to take effect and conditions were becoming dire. The buckets had reached overflowing within an hour of leaving. They could have brought bleach, toilet rolls and bin bags but they simply hadn’t had the time. The only compensation for Raitis as the driver, was that he didn’t have to stay in the back of the van to sift through the buckets of shit for balloons full of cocaine. For that he was truly grateful.
They had to leave the city without driving on the motorway networks where, number plate recognition cameras would pick them up quickly. He stuck to the back roads until they reached the river. As they crossed the Runcorn Bridge, he indicated left and steered the Volkswagen along a slip road that headed into an industrial area, which hugged the banks of the Mersey for miles. It was once the heart of the petrochemical industry but in the last decade the area had become a mishmash of fertilizer factories, engineering workshops, auto-body shops and engine breakers. It was a warren of lanes, access roads and disused warehouses. Their predicament was dire. They needed to dump the Volkswagen. Despite swapping the plates that morning, it was hot. Everything to do with the handover at the mill was hot. When the call had come to move the women, he wasn’t given a destination to drive to. He was ordered to drive until told otherwise, which was risky with a van full of mules, not to mention three kilos of zombie. Possession of drugs with intent to supply and human trafficking carried heavy jail terms, which were all part of the job, but that didn’t make it any easier on the nerves. If they were caught, they would be convicted and deported. Being sent back to the Latvian authorities was a death sentence.
When the call came that a switch had been arranged, he had punched the air in relief. They were to swap the Volkswagen for a white Mercedes Sprinter van at a breaker’s yard near the Mersey. He felt the pressure lift immediately. The Mercedes Sprinters were built with a sealed bulkhead between the driver and the cargo bay. He would be free of the stench and the police wouldn’t be looking for that type of vehicle, two reasons to be cheerful. All they had to do was get to the yard, swap vehicles and they could drive around for days if necessary camouflaged by the million other white vans on the roads.
Raitis slowed as the road narrowed and he took the right fork that he hoped would lead to the unit that he was looking for. He was desperate to open the window but he daren’t. Every now and again he heard a shriek of anguish from the back. They were certainly loud enough to be heard from the pavement or a passing vehicle with the windows down. He had to keep going and suffer for the cause. The mules were suffering from stomach cramps and the shortage of buckets was making tempers fray. He could hear his colleagues barking orders at them, especially Oleg. If the women protested, they were encouraged not to by a hard slap, kick or punch. He could hear Oleg shouting and then the thud of a fist or a boot against flesh followed by the sickening sound of them whimpering. Raitis had worked with some violent men but Oleg was evil.
A few minutes on and the road became a dirt track pitted with deep potholes, which made the journey even more uncomfortable. There were fewer buildings on either side now and the ones that he could see were rundown or completely derelict. Between the broken down structures, green fields spread out left and right for at least a mile. The river was on one side and the high railway viaduct was on the other. Beyond them he could make out sprawling housing estates. There was no sign of the garage that he was looking for. He checked the GPS on his phone. His battery was running low, sapped by using the route finder. He was about to give up looking when he spotted another track to the left. It traced a wide arc across one of the fields and at the end of it he could see a collection of buildings that surrounded a huge barn. The sign fixed above the barn doors was too far away for him to read but he figured that this was the place. They were about as isolated as one could be in the suburbs. He checked his mirrors, took a good look around to make sure that they were away from prying ears and eyes and opened his window. The air was the sweetest that he could remember tasting despite the tang of fertiliser that tainted it. Compared to the air in the van, it was the purest of the pure.
Raitis couldn’t get the van out of first gear as they trundled along the track. His two colleagues in the rear were cursing him, the track, the women, their boss and life in general. Under different circumstances, their profanity would have made him laugh but there was nothing funny about their situation. When they were told to chain the women to the radiator in the cellar, he had thought that they would be sent back to pick them up later on. He felt sick to the core when Oleg set the building alight. The three women that they left behind were Latvian, like him. He felt sorry for them. They had been tricked into becoming prostitutes by Ivor Markevica and his cohorts. Faced with the choice of taking a legitimate job earning two hundred Euros a month or less in Latvia, or travelling to the UK and potentially earning ten times that amount, it was easy to lure young women away with the promise of highly paid jobs. Once they were in transit, they were easy to capture and easy to control. If they didn’t do as they were told, their families in Latvia were slaughtered one by one until they capitulated. The traffickers were ruthless and brutal.
Raitis had become friendly with the three women and he had nearly intervened when the house was torched. Letting them burn knocked him sick. He had watched how brutally O
leg had dispatched the black girl once she had passed the drugs through her system. He had slit her throat in the blink of an eye, cleaned her blood from the blade with her hair and put the knife back into its sheath before she had stopped twitching. Oleg was an animal, permanently angry with the world. He was an ex-mercenary with a bitter hatred of the Russians. Many Latvians resented their country’s occupation by the Soviets but Oleg’s hatred was on a different level. Raitis wanted to help the Latvian women but he feared Oleg. Had he tried to intervene, he would be lying in the outhouse next to her with his throat cut. To stop Oleg he would have to kill him but he was too far up the food chain for that to happen. Raitis had allowed himself to get too close to the women but he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He couldn’t set out on a one man crusade to stop the trafficking of women. They were contraband, nothing more.
The van lurched violently to the left as the front wheel dropped into a pothole, it bounced out and then lurched again as the back wheel followed suit. It prompted a chorus of cries from the back of the van including several questioning his ability to drive. The world record for the number of times the word ‘fuck’ can be used in one sentence was shattered. He ignored the abuse, eager to swap vehicles as quickly as possible. The sign above the converted barn was clear now, Fletcher Bros. This was the right place. He pushed the van as fast as he could. As they neared the garage, a man wearing blue overalls and boots opened the barn doors to reveal two vehicle bays. He had heavy boots and a beanie hat pulled down over his head to just above his eyebrows. Raitis could see a white Mercedes van in the left hand bay. The man waved him towards the empty bay on the right.
Inside the barn was a modern workshop fitted with hydraulic ramps, and deep inspection pits. The walls were covered with steel spanners and wrenches of every shape and size and power tools were fixed to organised racks. It was a professional setup and Raitis was impressed. He had taken an apprentice mechanic job when he first left school, before the opportunity of earning a hundred times more as muscle arose. The garage that he had worked in was almost prehistoric in comparison. He nosed the van in as far as he could and the mechanic closed the door behind him. It was a huge relief. He turned off the engine, opened the driver’s door and jumped out. The sound of the van’s rear doors opening told him that his colleagues were as desperate to get out of the stench as he was. He could hear Oleg cursing at the top of his voice but then he suddenly went quiet.