He held the car back until the woman disappeared inside the mansion block, and then accelerated past and did a complete circuit of the square before approaching the main doors again. As they did so, an opulent-looking black car pulled up outside the entrance and a heavy-looking man who had been driving leapt out and held the doors open for the occupants, three men in dinner jackets and black ties – not out of the ordinary, Barnard knew, for Dolphin Square, but these men kept their heads down low and glanced around nervously before scuttling inside, unaware that Kate had her camera following their every move in spite of the gathering dusk.
‘The kindest interpretation would be an illegal gambling joint of some kind,’ Barnard said. ‘But I strongly suspect it’s much worse than that. Did you recognize any of them? Do you know what Terry Jordan looks like?’
‘Only from photographs,’ Kate whispered. ‘I know he’s not very tall. But the very tall man I do know. He’s called Monsignor Dominic Johnson. I met him at the cathedral in Liverpool, he’s in charge of the building work there.’ She pushed open the car door quietly. ‘I’ll go and see what floor they go to,’ she said. ‘That should indicate whether they’re heading for the same flat you went to. I won’t go inside until they’re in the lift. They won’t see me.’ Barnard grabbed her arm but she slipped free.
‘We need to know,’ she said and pushed the car door firmly closed behind her, leaving Barnard breathing hard in sheer frustration. By the time she had crossed the foyer the lift had gone. She watched until it stopped at the fourth floor. What she had not realized was that there were three lifts in a row, and on an impulse she got into the next one when its doors opened and cautiously slipped out when they opened again at the fourth floor. There was no one in sight in the stuffy empty corridor, nor was there any noise apart from the quiet hum of the heating. But when she stood outside the door of flat 461 she could hear men’s voices raised in greeting and the sound of a champagne cork popping. It sounded like any other social occasion and there was no sign that anyone behind the closed door felt in any way at risk – it could have been a family party or a celebration of a business deal concluded successfully. But then, as she turned away, cutting faintly through the jollity, came the sound of a child crying, cut short almost immediately by the sound of a slap. Breathless with anger, Kate made her way back to the lift, punched the down button furiously, and ran out of the building to the car, where she slumped into the passenger seat beside Barnard, fighting back tears, her fists clenched tight.
‘What is it, Kate?’ Barnard asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s a child in there,’ she said. ‘There were a lot of men’s voices and just for a moment a child crying, then a slap.’ She looked at Barnard and she was unnerved by the despair in his eyes.
‘I can’t do anything on my own,’ he said. ‘I have to report back. And if one of those men is your priest and one of them Terry Jordan, who’s the third man in the car? I half recognized him. Jordan’s supposed to be down here to talk to a minister. Surely a minister wouldn’t be so bloody stupid as to come to some sort of illegal joint, would he? Especially after what we think probably happened there.’
Kate shrugged, overwhelmed by what she dared not tell Barnard. There had to be a very good reason for the massive effort that was being made to protect somebody’s back. If the men in flat 461 felt safe from intrusive questions, they wouldn’t need to curb their appetite for whatever was happening there.
‘One thing’s certain,’ Barnard said. ‘If there is a minister involved, then there’s no way we are going to get anywhere at all. We are stuffed.’
Kate said nothing although she had even more reason than Harry to think he was right.
SEVENTEEN
Harry Barnard dropped Kate off at the Ken Fellows Agency just before nine the next morning. They had spent the previous evening talking round and round the problem of what he should do next and in the end decided he had no choice but to tell DCI Jackson everything he’d learned about the flat in Dolphin Square, without admitting that he had sat outside it for a large part of the previous evening. For her part, Kate had said nothing about the threats she’d received from Strachan and his friends. Nor had she any intention of telling anyone, least of all the mysterious man from Whitehall, where she had been the previous night. They had been at home, they had decided to say if anyone asked, with the TV turned up loud and a clutch of empty bottles dumped in the dustbin at breakfast time. Barnard had no reason to be uneasy about their cover story, although he could see that Kate was worried despite the fact that throughout the evening his car had been parked outside the flats.
‘No one saw us,’ he said as they set off for her office. ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘Right,’ she said, with what she hoped was the right amount of confidence, and spent the rest of the journey through the rush hour chatting about the relative merits of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
But when the phone call came, dead on time, at just a minute past nine, it set her heart racing and her hands shaking. It was not that this man made threats. He was, by the standards she had grown up with around Scotland Road, physically unthreatening and impeccably polite. But he gave the impression of being totally intractable.
‘So what have you got to report, Miss O’Donnell?’ the voice asked. The tone was the same, quiet but menacing, and it left little space for prevarication.
‘Nothing,’ Kate said. Her mouth was bone dry. She picked up a coffee cup on her desk and found it empty. ‘Absolutely nothing. Harry Barnard picked me up from work and we had a quiet evening watching TV.’
‘Did he tell you anything about what he had been doing during the day?’
‘Nothing,’ Kate said. ‘I told you, he doesn’t talk much about his work. He’s on a murder case as far as I know. Some woman found dead in Soho, a prostitute they think. That’s all. It’s not exactly what I want to talk to him about when we’re together.’
‘Well we very much hope that you can nevertheless encourage him to keep you up to date on his activities,’ the voice said. ‘We’d like to hear his take on that murder case. Remember, your brother is dependent on you, Miss O’Donnell. DCI Strachan is itching to make an example of him. So we will talk again tomorrow morning, at the same time.’ And he hung up without saying goodbye.
Kate went to the cloakroom feeling as if her legs did not belong to her and had a long drink of cold water. She looked at herself in the mirror before splashing her face, realizing that however bad she felt she had not changed much apart from an increasingly haunted look in her eyes. But however she considered her predicament, she could not work out a way to escape it and eventually she went back into the photographers’ room, resumed her seat and got her head down, spending the rest of the morning putting the finishing touches to her Liverpool project and, together with her boss, preparing it for delivery to the magazine that had commissioned it.
‘Well done,’ Ken said when he was finally satisfied with the portfolio. ‘You’ve done a really good job with this assignment. And as you worked over the weekend, you can take the rest of the day off if you like. Go and buy yourself a mini-skirt or two. You know how much the boys like them.’
‘Thanks,’ Kate said, glad of the free time, but decided almost immediately that she could spend it in an entirely different way. Harry might be constrained by the labyrinthine politics of Westminster and the Yard, and she would not encourage him to take any risks, but she wasn’t subject to any such constraints. Although she might be forced to tell the grey man from Whitehall what Barnard was doing she had not agreed to provide details of anything she undertook herself, and she was if anything even more driven than Barnard by the need to find out what was happening to the child apparently being confined in the flat in Dolphin Square.
She spent an hour in a darkroom processing the photographs she had taken from the car the previous night then, having locked them in one of the drawers of her desk for safekeeping, went out and headed for the T
ube at Tottenham Court Road. She had only the vaguest idea of what she could do if she went back to Dolphin Square, but she was determined to give it a try.
The streets around the square were quiet at lunchtime and she ate a sandwich in the gardens close to the river before doing a complete circuit of the flats that told her nothing she did not know already. The only chance of finding the woman they had seen the previous evening, she reckoned, was to venture inside and see whether or not there was anyone at home in Flat 461. As she watched the entrance to the flats, a group of people made their way in that direction and she followed them inside into the hallway and towards the lifts. She watched as they travelled to the fifth floor, where the lift stopped, before taking the next lift herself to the fourth floor and making her way along the thick carpets of the corridor to the innocent-looking door of 461.
She hesitated before ringing the bell, but decided that as she had come this far she wouldn’t back off now, knowing that there was a child involved in whatever went on behind this innocuously respectable façade. She waited impatiently but got no response to the bell. The only sound was the almost imperceptible hum of the heating system in the corridor. After five minutes of fruitless hanging about, finding it harder and harder to breathe easily in the oppressive heat, she reluctantly headed back downstairs. It was not until she stepped back into the street that she unexpectedly found herself face to face with the woman she and Barnard had followed the previous evening. Slightly scruffy in dark slacks and a waterproof jacket, she was not so smartly dressed this afternoon, but she was smoking as avidly as when she walked along the road to buy cigarettes the night before.
‘Were you able to sort your little boy out last night?’ Kate asked casually, hoping she did not look as shocked as she felt at the unexpected encounter.
The women stared at her with something close to panic in her eyes and her hand over her mouth. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I heard him crying when I was walking past your door last night. My sister’s got a young family and I know how hard it is to get kids to bed sometimes.’ She was, she thought, becoming rather good at lying but told herself it was in a good cause. At least no one would be expecting her to go to confession and say a few Hail Marys as penance.
‘Yes …’ the woman started to say, then ‘No. No, he’s not mine. You must have heard someone from another flat. Someone else’s child.’ She had a faint foreign accent, though not one Kate could identify.
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘It was your flat, without a doubt.’ The woman stared at her in confusion, and then instead of heading for the front door she spun on her heel and sprinted away down the street in the direction of the Tube station. Taken by surprise, Kate lost a couple of seconds before giving chase but, being younger and fitter, by the time they’d come level with the gardens of St George’s Square she was gaining on her quarry. The woman flung a despairing look behind her, then turned into the gates to the gardens and gave up almost as suddenly as she had run away. She hurled herself down on a bench crying uncontrollably, her head between her knees and her shoulders shaking convulsively.
‘He’s not my child,’ she said, her eyes desperate. ‘I can’t stop them doing what they do, but he’s not my child.’
‘You’d better tell me about it,’ Kate said quietly. ‘It sounds as if you need to talk to somebody. Maybe the police.’
‘No, no, no police,’ the woman said and would have run off again if Kate had not hung on to her arm and kept her firmly in her seat.
‘Will you tell me your name?’ she ventured when the woman had calmed down slightly. She shook her head fiercely.
‘No, no names,’ she said. ‘I must get away from here. No names.’
‘Then tell me what is going on. What’s been happening at that flat?’
‘Terrible things,’ she said, and lit another cigarette and lapsed into trembling silence. Kate rooted in her handbag and pulled out the drawing of the woman found dead in Soho Square.
‘Do you know this woman?’ she asked. It was obvious from the horrified reaction, tears pouring down her face again, that she did. ‘She came with three men,’ she said. ‘She talked like you do, and one of the men, the small one, was the same. A funny accent. I couldn’t understand everything they said. The woman said her name was Doreen. She seemed all right, all dressed up for a night out, nice dress, high heels, lots of make-up. She was quite happy and excited, though I couldn’t work out what she was expecting. We don’t get women there very often. The other two men were tall, very tall. They seemed to be in charge. Wanted champagne, then a bottle of Scotch. And a private room. Two private rooms, in fact. They more or less took the place over. There was no one else there.’
‘Do you know who they were?’
‘They never tell me any names,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I hear names, but not that time.’
‘So did you see what happened? Anything at all?’ Kate asked, afraid of the answer.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t see what happens behind the closed doors. My job is to keep the drink flowing, provide everything they want and take the money when they have finished.’
‘Finished what?’ Kate asked, although she did not really want to know the answer and the woman did not want to tell her. The silence lengthened and in the end the woman shrugged helplessly.
‘Will you help the children?’ she asked.
‘If I can,’ Kate said, although she had no idea whether she, or even the police, would be able to do that or not.
‘So … I tell you what happened,’ the woman said very quietly. ‘One of the men, one of the tall men, took the boy into a room and the boy never stopped crying afterwards. The other two took the woman into the other room and it didn’t sound good. They told me to stay in the kitchen and just bring them what they ordered. I am a sort of waitress. I don’t know what they do in there. I don’t want to know. They took things from me at the door. I never went inside, though I could hear the woman crying. And then screams, eventually there were lots of screams. But then they stopped and there was silence, an awful silence.’ Kate looked at the woman for a long time before she felt able to speak at all. She took a deep shuddering breath.
‘And the boy? Where is he now?’ she asked.
‘A couple of men I’d never seen before took him away this morning. Said they would take him back where he came from.’
‘Do you know where that is?’
‘Usually they come from homes, orphanages. That sort of place. Not places where there are mothers and fathers to look after them. It’s not unusual for men to want boys, is it? It happens. Mr Buxton finds them for us.’
‘Mr Buxton?’ Kate asked, with a sick feeling in her stomach.
‘He has contacts,’ she said with a weary shrug.
‘I expect he does. He’s a detective. Did you know that?’ Kate asked. The woman shook her head and began to cry again.
‘I need to get away,’ she said through her tears. ‘I need to get away. I thought this was an easy way to make a living.’
‘Tell me what happened to Doreen,’ Kate said, very much aware that the woman had not given her own name and that the more she went on the more unlikely it was she would do so. If she disappeared now, it would probably be impossible to ever find her again. The woman looked at her in despair, in such anguish that Kate was afraid that if she decided to run again she would not even be able to catch up with her. But in the end the woman sat still and seemed to be trying to decide whether to tell Kate all she knew, though whether she would ever be willing to give her name or repeat her story to anyone official Kate very much doubted.
‘One of the men came out, the tall thin man. Not the man with the accent, one of the other two, and he told me to stay in the kitchen while he made some phone calls. So I waited. Then they brought the boy to wait with me, out of the way, and they put the radio on so we couldn’t hear. To try to make the boy happy, I gave him some ice cream, but that didn’t really work. I did hear the doorbel
l in spite of the radio, and then there were more voices in the hall and some banging about. When the two tall men came back in, they paid me what they owed me – and some more, quite a lot more extra – and then they all disappeared. I saw them go, the two tall men on each side of the small man, propping him up almost. There was no sign of the woman then. If she is the woman who was found in Soho Square she must have been dead by then, mustn’t she? One of them must have killed her, and the others took her away and tried to cover it up.’
‘Someone else is dead too,’ Kate said. ‘A woman called Alicia. Do you know her?’ The woman looked at her in horror, in tears again.
‘She used to come to work with me sometimes,’ she said. ‘But when some of the men started wanting boys she left. She said she did not like that sort of thing. She decided to work on her own.’
‘Mr Buxton is investigating her death,’ Kate said. ‘Perhaps it’s not a good idea for you to see him, but will you talk to the detectives trying to find Doreen’s killer? Meet me in Soho. You don’t need to go back to the flat and you don’t have to tell me your name, but you need to tell the police what happened. Not Buxton, someone who really wants to find out the truth. Please. Meet me later and talk to my boyfriend, who’s one of the detectives investigating Doreen’s death. Meet me anywhere you like. She deserves that much, she just got caught up in all this somehow.’
The woman looked at her for a long time.
‘I’ll meet you in the French pub in Soho at six,’ she said slowly. ‘I have a friend who lives close. But if anyone else is there, I won’t stop. It’s too dangerous. This is a nightmare. I’ve got my passport and I am going to go home.’
Kate went back to the office shaken by what she had been told. She developed her hastily taken photograph of the woman from Dolphin Square, then printed more copies of the photos taken in the street the night before and made up two sets in plain brown envelopes. She felt uncertain and insecure, and decided to place one set in the office files for safekeeping and put the other in her bag to pass on to Barnard. Then she went back downstairs into Frith Street to wait for him to pick her up. When he pulled up alongside her, she slipped into the passenger seat quickly and turned to face him, not far from tears.
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