by Sarah Flint
‘Right, gang,’ Hunter broke into their thoughts. ‘DCI O’Connor wants us to get on with the job from last night. The post-mortem has been pencilled in for Friday, so we should then know at what stage of development the foetus was. We’re still awaiting a DNA result from the blood on the baby’s head, so as yet, we have no idea of the identity of our mother.’ He turned towards Bet. ‘You mentioned you were checking local hospitals. Any possible patients attending A and E, who might fit the bill?’
Bet shook her head and glanced towards Charlie for confirmation.
Charlie sat up as Hunter fixed his gaze on her. ‘I stayed on after you left to get a few phone calls made, but nothing so far. Bet’s done a few more for me.’ She shifted in her seat again and flicked an unruly wave of hair from her forehead. ‘I was also thinking, boss, about who the mother might be. The chances are it was an unplanned pregnancy, so the mother might just be a frightened teenager or someone similar but…’ She closed her eyes momentarily and the image of the orange plastic bag in the glare of the arc lights came immediately to mind. ‘It just seemed so clinical, so callous. To my thinking, it would have to be someone who doesn’t value life, someone for whom an unwanted pregnancy would be a real problem. Maybe it would prevent them earning a living.’
‘Like a pimp, or a dealer, or someone involved in the vice trade,’ Naz interrupted. ‘Some bastard who needs his girl out working and sees any possible baby simply as a hindrance to him getting his money.’
Charlie glanced across as Naz swore silently under her breath and their eyes met. Her friend had a way with words that cut through the bullshit political correctness. She was no-nonsense and fiery and not afraid to tell it as it was, yet she spoke for them all. Sabira might be quieter; Paul more diplomatic; Bet wiser and more experienced, but, as a team, they were tuned automatically on to the same wavelength.
‘Exactly what I thought,’ she acknowledged, looking back towards Hunter. ‘So, I was thinking boss, it might be good to speak to the Source Unit. They’ve been putting out more information recently about drug dealers, vice and crack houses. They must have a new informant on the books who’s around that sort of clientele. It might be a long shot, but it’s worth a try.’
Hunter pulled a handkerchief out from his pocket and wiped it across his forehead. The central heating had kicked in and his cheeks were suffused with a rosy hue that was creeping rash-like down his neck.
‘I like your thinking. Charlie, pop up to their office and see what they have to say. In the absence of anything solid though, we’ll still need to do all the usual routine enquiries. Paul and Sab, you go to the crime scene and do house-to-house enquiries for witnesses overlooking the bin shed. Bet, you get started on CCTV. Naz, you start collating any information on the system. See if there is anything on any of our prostitutes or addicts who might be pregnant, or any reports of unusual behaviour that might indicate possible new brothels setting up in the area. It might even be worth checking with our local children’s homes for men acting suspiciously outside. We all know that dealers and pimps tend to target vulnerable girls. I’ll see if I can find out anything more from the neighbourhood policing teams.’
He stuffed his hankie back in his pocket and clapped his hands.
As one, the team rose, lifting their chairs in a solid wave over the desks and back to their various workstations. Nobody spoke as they gathered their equipment and got ready to set out.
Wednesday morning had barely started and they were already at full stretch.
*
A few minutes later, Charlie was knocking on the door of the District Source Unit, or DSU. DSU recruited CHIS, or Covert Human Intelligence Sources as they were formally titled, although better known as police informers, or narks, grasses, snouts, snitches or rats. CHIS were loved by police and hated by criminals for exactly the same reason… they could squirrel themselves into organised crime networks and gangs where even the best undercover officer feared to tread, and with far fewer restrictions. They just had to keep their heads down, commit no crime, tell no one what they did and report back regularly to their police handlers.
Charlie was interested in the source world herself, her natural curiosity at what made criminals tick driving her wish to gain an insight into life looking out from the inside, rather than always being the law-enforcer looking in. This time she had a personal interest. The increase in intelligence had occurred directly after she’d referred a local prostitute to the unit and she was itching to know if it had come from the same young woman. She would never dream of asking though; every CHIS needed the full protection of the law, not loose lips… and the less people who knew their identity the better. Even police officers talked. Secretly however, Charlie hoped she was right. The vulnerable young prostitute might get a little help and protection. She might eventually even see her way out of the lifestyle.
A head appeared around the door and a cheery voice invited her in. Five of the team were already there, discussing the daily politics and traumas of their morning commute. The office was one of the smallest in Lambeth HQ, crammed with desks, each with monitors winking and hard drives whirring, piles of paperwork and mobile phones lying across every spare inch. Each wall was plastered with photos, and whiteboards with figures and appointments. Children and teenagers stared unblinking from their custody photos, arranged together in postcode gangs: Roadside G’s, Gypset, Angell Town, SIRU, ABM, young faces bearing the scars of their street lives while hopelessness dulled their eyes. Adjacent to the youths were the haggard, hardened expressions of the burglars, drug dealers and sex offenders, battle-weary from a lifetime of crime and custody.
Charlie peered around the library of faces, committing each image to memory. As a super-recogniser, the nuances of each feature needed to be seared into her memory for when she was called upon to assist with CCTV identifications. The faces on the walls were the targets of the District Source Unit’s secret army, the small minority of repeat offenders that wreaked havoc on their local communities.
‘Hi, Charlie. Picked out any suspects recently?’ The voice of Angie, the officer who’d ushered Charlie into the room, broke through her thoughts. ‘What can we do for you?’
She turned towards Angie, a short, blonde, cockney with hair styled into a bob, a mouth shaped by a sharp wit and a turn of phrase that cut straight to the point. Charlie recognised Angie of old, knowing that she was endowed with a huge heart, battling to raise a young child single-handedly whilst juggling full-time hours.
‘I was called to the body of a pre-term baby girl thrown out in the rubbish last night in the Ramilles Close area.’ Charlie was blunt, knowing the story would bring out the bulldog spirit in Angie. She’d seen her react to a similar incident previously when her maternal instinct had kicked in.
‘Guys,’ Angie shouted. ‘Listen in. Charlie got called out to a dead kid last night.’
The room silenced immediately.
‘I need to find out who the mother is as a matter of urgency and the circumstances of how she lost her baby. I know you’ve been putting out some information around vice and drugs recently and wondered if you could task your CHIS to try and find out about any street girls or drug addicts who have been pregnant recently, or any brothels in the area.’
Angie looked towards a girl on the desk opposite and nodded. ‘I might be able to help, and you’ve got some contacts around that area too, ain’t you, Von?’
Von tossed her head, throwing her long, streaked hair over to one side, and pursed her lips. ‘Yep, mate. Certainly have.’ She checked her watch. ‘They’re probably just getting their heads down now though, after a busy night in the town centre, but I’ll wake them up quick.’ She picked up one of the phones on her desk and started to tap in a number, before stopping and placing her hand over the handset.
Angie turned back towards Charlie, picking up her own mobile. ‘We’ll give you a bell, if we get something, mate. I’ve got yer number.’ Angie stood up and pulled at the door handle. She nodded towa
rds the open door and Charlie could see by the set of her brows that she meant when, and not if. There was no way Angie Cunningham would rest until she had an answer.
Until then though, the conversations needed to be held covertly. It was time for her to leave.
*
Three hours later, Charlie was hard at work in the office with Hunter, Bet and Naz when she saw Angie’s name flash up on the screen of her phone. She smiled, realising she had been spot on with her judgement.
‘Just to let you know we’re on it. One of our CHIS has got some intel’ on a brothel set up in the back streets of Streatham High Road, but we don’t know exactly where yet. It’s being run by Eastern Europeans. Word is they like young flesh and the guy in charge is hanging round some of the local children’s homes trying to recruit more vulnerable youngsters. Our girls don’t like that. They think it’s out of order, you know, against their moral code, bless ’em. We’ve tasked ’em to get the address ASAP, mate.’
Charlie understood Angie’s words. Prostitution was tacitly accepted as a necessary evil, but forcing underage girls to submit to the whims of grown men was implicitly wrong. No prostitute in Lambeth would withhold that sort of information from police. In an occupation with few moral boundaries, it very much crossed every remaining line.
‘That’s great, Angie. It sounds like the sort of place where an unwanted pregnancy wouldn’t be welcome. Come straight back to me if you find out anything further.’
‘It might be nothin’, of course, but it’s not too far away from where the body was found and you’ve gotta’ start somewhere. I’ll give you a bell as soon as I get the venue and names.’
With that, she was gone.
Chapter 4
Dimitri stared down at the girl curled into a ball on the bed in front of him. Her skin was ashen, mottled in places and a film of sweat glistened across her whole body. Her breathing was slow, what breath there was coming in short gulps between the shaking of her limbs. Every now and again she would cry out, her eyes rolling, the sound pitiful in the small room.
Outside the window, the day was gloomy, the clouds casting shadows across the blood-speckled sheets on which Tatjana lay. They had not been changed.
Dimitri frowned. Leaning over, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard.
‘Tatjana, wake up, you lazy bitch. You’ve had three days. You need to work. Wake up.’
The girl moaned, her eyes flicking open and shut as she tried to focus. He slapped her hard across the face several times before releasing her from his grip and watching as her semi-conscious body flopped limply back across the bed.
He pulled at her grubby T-shirt, his face contorted with rage. ‘You cannot stay here if you do not work. You understand me?’
‘She is not in a fit state to leave.’ A second girl entered the room, pulling the curtains shut and switching on a lamp to one side. The girl, whose name was Hanna, was tall and slender, her hips swaying languidly with each movement. A thin cotton blouse tucked loosely into a miniskirt accentuating the curve of her breasts and the fact that she wore no bra. The light glowed pink; casting a rosy hue across one of Tatjana’s cheeks and making the comparison with the other girl even starker. ‘You need to take her to hospital. She is not well.’
Dimitri shook his head angrily. ‘You know I cannot do that. She will be fine. She is just lazy.’ He raised his foot and pushed it against Tatjana. ‘Get up!’
A third girl came in, sidling up behind the second. She was shorter than Hanna, darker skinned, with the plumpness of adolescence not yet finally gone.
‘She looks like she is dying,’ she said quietly, her eyes wide with fear.
Dimitri spun around. ‘She is not dying. She is young. She will recover, but she needs to get up and clean herself.’
He pulled the sheet completely from Tatjana, throwing it towards the door. Hanna gasped at the sight of her friend’s shrunken form, pulling a jumper out from a nearby wardrobe and laying it across the girl’s body. Tatjana stayed still, her eyes motionless; even the slight flickering behind the lids halted. Her breath became shallower, barely registering.
‘You need to get medical help for her now, before it is too late.’ Hanna spoke authoritatively. ‘I have seen this before when a child is lost. I have seen what happens when infection takes over. You should not have forced the child from her, Dimitri. She will die and then what will you do?’
The younger girl was crying, sobbing quietly behind the older.
Dimitri ran his hands over his shaven head, his finger tracing the jagged scar that ran across his scalp down to his right ear; the result of a bottle attack on the streets of St Petersburg, soon after it had changed its name in 1991 from Leningrad, the city of his birth. He had grown wiser since that time. The streets were no place to make a living. Better to earn it off the back of others, and how much easier in this quiet area of London. Now though, this stupid girl was threatening his way of life. Why had she not told him she was pregnant before he’d brought her to the country? Why leave it until she was here to show him her swollen belly? Of course he knew why… but she was still a lying bitch. And now he was trapped. Go to the hospital and he risked her blabbing about what he had done. Leave her and he risked everything.
The older girl was staring at him now, waiting to hear what he planned, but he didn’t know.
‘Get out!’ he shouted eventually, in frustration. ‘I can’t think. Get on with your business and leave me to sort out mine. I don’t want to see you in here again.’
Chapter 5
Charlie paced across the front room of her family home in Lingfield, her best friend Ben having driven them both there from his flat in Brixton earlier. The meal was over and Ben was ensconced on the big maroon family sofa, with his black Labrador, Casper, snoring contentedly at his feet and her mother Meg and two half-sisters, Lucy and Beth, talking animatedly about their plans for Christmas and the New Year.
Charlie had finally capitulated to Hunter’s order to go home and get some sleep when the DNA search of the blood on the baby’s head came back with no positive match against the police database. It was a particular blow to her, concentrating as she was on that aspect of the investigation, but messages had now been left at all the main hospitals, walk-in clinics and larger GP surgeries in the area and there was nothing further she could do. Much to their disappointment, the baby’s mother remained unidentified.
Everything else was in hand. Paul and Sab were still at the crime scene, Bet was well underway with the CCTV and Naz was now concentrating her efforts on the area in Streatham highlighted by the District Source Unit, trying to pinpoint where the brothel might be. They would need to corroborate any intelligence the DSU provided. CHIS could not be compelled to give evidence at court, so information from them could provide only a suspicion that might help point police in the correct direction or assist to obtain a warrant. And, of course, they didn’t know whether this particular brothel was connected to the baby’s body. They might not even be on the right track.
Hunter himself had insisted on dropping her off at Ben’s flat, his delight at seeing the young man plain to see in the warmth of their greeting. Ben had come to their notice after being violently robbed nearly two years before and since then had become known and loved by the whole team, but especially Charlie, whose determination and powers of recognition had brought Ben’s attacker to justice. They all admired his stoic tenacity to conquer the post-traumatic stress disorder, which had blighted his life since leaving the army, and were always keen to enquire as to his welfare or help in any way they could. Ben himself was clearly touched by this support, responding positively to every interaction, his resolve to banish his demons more evident as every day went by. It was a testament to his doggedness, and Casper’s loyal service, that Ben could now be looking with any optimism to the future, and it was as a result of his and Charlie’s growing friendship that he often found himself invited to join her and her family for dinner.
While the fo
od was being prepared, Charlie had slept, fatigue allowing her body to rest deeply and dreamlessly. Only the growing crescendo from the words to ‘Happy Birthday’ prompted her to wake, as Ben and her family brought in a cake burning brightly with thirty-one candles. It was the first time since her birthday at the end of November that they had all managed to get together and as she bent towards the cake, the heat from its flaming decoration almost singed her eyebrows, prompting laughter from them all at her mother’s creation. Meg had not only baked the cake but ensured that every candle was blazing before her handiwork was revealed, in all its fiery glory.
Now though, with dinner and the birthday celebrations having been concluded, Charlie was impatient to get away from the house. The evening would soon draw to a close and with time ebbing away she wouldn’t feel complete unless she paid her usual weekly visit.
She called across to Casper, pulling his lead off the banister in the hallway and jangling it in mid-air. The dog stirred immediately at the sound, whining his approval and slapping his tail enthusiastically against the door frame as she clipped the lead to his collar. Ben moved to stand, but she stilled him with her hand.
‘It’s Wednesday. Stay there. I’ll be back soon and I have Casper with me.’
Ben slid back, his expression momentarily pained, before nodding in obvious appreciation of the warning. Both knew better than to push the point. The location was one which brought back bad memories for him and they both knew he was not yet ready to return.
Fifteen minutes later, Charlie walked into the graveyard where her brother, Jamie, was buried, a torch lighting her path to his tombstone. Casper paced slowly at her side, his head down, as if recognising the solemnity of the setting from his own experience. Ben still took him regularly to visit his previous master’s place of rest in Balham, though these visits were becoming less frequent as time passed. The old dog panted quietly, his breath fanning out in the freezing air and Charlie breathed a sigh of relief as the hands of the church clock snapped upwards. It was almost ten o’clock. She’d got there in time.