Cold Courage

by Pekka Hiltunen

  Elza continued her narrative. Four days before Daiga’s disappearance, Vanags had flown into a rage at her.

  ‘The two things must be connected. I thought Kazis forced Daiga to go somewhere else. But now I know he killed her. And in such a dreadful way.’

  Elza’s eyes filled with tears. Lia had a hard time keeping her composure too. Both leaning on the sink counter top, Lia listened as Elza went on.

  The four women of Vassall Road were all from Latvia. In London there were four brothels where the girls were Latvian, and all had come to the city the same way.

  Six men ran the brothels, most of them from Latvia as well. They also had a group of collaborators, the descendants of Eastern Europeans living in London now.

  ‘There are three lower bosses. Each one takes the profits from one house, but Vanags gets the most.’

  Vanags handled the importing, making him the de facto head of the operation. He had a large network of transportation specialists in Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Buffet food shop was a perfect front for the rest of his businesses. The real money came from weapons and prostitutes.

  ‘They don’t do drugs because the police investigate that the most.’

  Before 2004, when Latvia joined the EU, trafficking women had been more difficult. First they were all smuggled into Poland from Latvia. That had been the easiest part of the journey, since they could simply bribe the border guards. Elza had ridden across the border in the back seat of a car in broad daylight for everyone to see.

  Then they had to hide the girls. A car drove them overland to Sweden, and from there they came to Edinburgh on a passenger ferry. Some of them were given false passports and visas so they could travel more comfortably.

  But forging documents was expensive, so most girls had had to stow away. Elza had spent the two-day sea voyage in the boot of a car under a false bottom.

  ‘It was terrible. I felt like screaming my lungs out the whole time, but I couldn’t. It would have been even worse if I had been found out.’

  They had just had to cry into their hands to muffle the sound. They travelled in complete darkness in that tiny confined space. Air came from a small tube under the car. The driver gave them a couple of bottles to pee into. A little food and even less water.

  No one had told them about the journey in the car boot until right before they had to go. And there were no other options. The driver simply ordered the girl into the boot and then told her she had to stay there if she wanted to get to London. If the girl refused, he said he would shoot her on the spot.

  ‘Daiga and me and a lot of other girls had to go through that. Sit in the boot of a Volvo and look straight down the barrel of a pistol. We knew we were staying in there dead or alive. We call it a Volvo berth.’

  The car was always the same model, a Volvo S40, because it had space for a false bottom difficult to find in a superficial inspection.

  This was why Elza was sure that Vanags was the one who had killed Daiga Vītola.

  ‘Daiga tricked him on one of the transports. Kazis got so angry at her we were all afraid.’

  Bringing new prostitutes into the country was much easier now because it was all EU territory. All they needed was a Latvian passport, which was only a problem for Russian girls. Vanags sent for two or three new girls a year, and they came in a lorry. In Latvia they put the woman up front next to the driver, who ensured that she couldn’t escape or talk to anyone.

  In one particular transport, two girls were supposed to be coming from Latvia. Daiga had come up with the idea of using this to get her mother and daughter into the country. She had not seen either in years. They had only kept in contact over the phone, and she could only ring them occasionally, with the pimps monitoring her.

  Daiga had no need for her husband back in Latvia. ‘He’s a bad man,’ Elza said, and Lia felt as though she understood without elaboration.

  Daiga promised a large sum of money to an acquaintance in Latvia for substituting her mother and daughter for the prostitutes. The lorry driver wondered about a sixty-year-old woman being exported as a prostitute. The sixteen-year-old daughter was easier to believe.

  ‘But the drivers don’t ask too many questions. He brought the grandmother and daughter to London, straight to the flat on Vassall Road.’

  When Vanags discovered them, he blew his top, immediately taking the mother and daughter away. They only saw Daiga for ten minutes. Daiga went insane with regret and fear.

  She screamed at Vanags and refused to take any clients. She had really thought that after so many years of work, Vanags would have felt pity for her and allowed her family to stay. She offered Vanags money, but he was too angry to listen.

  Four days later, Daiga disappeared.

  Elza had asked about her, but in vain. She had hoped that Daiga had just been moved to a different house.

  How did Elza and the other girls not hear about it in April right when the body was found? Lia asked. ‘It was the number one story in the whole country. It was in all the papers.’

  Elza shrugged.

  ‘We don’t follow the news. We don’t have any use for it.’

  Some of the prostitutes did not even speak much English. They only knew the vocabulary they needed with customers. But they had read about Anita Klusa’s death.

  Daiga’s body was found in the same kind of Volvo used in smuggling the prostitutes, except that the car lacked a false bottom. The body was put in the boot, which was a message to them all. The Volvo berth.

  Daiga had been left on Holborn Circus and Anita on Ludgate Hill, and it was clear what that meant. Another brothel, on tiny Creed Lane, was nearby.

  ‘Two girls escaped from there last year. They tracked one down straight away and killed her. The other was Anita. They didn’t get her till now.’

  Lia understood. They had killed Anita Klusa as a sign that they always caught escapees sooner or later. Daiga was a sign not to defy the pimps.

  Lia was relieved that out in the café, just a dozen metres away, sat Paddy Moore. Then she realised something.

  ‘Elza, it’s possible that I know where Daiga’s mother and daughter are.’

  She then explained about the house in Catford where Vanags took food every night.

  ‘It could be that Vanags is keeping them hidden there.’

  Elza covered her mouth with her hand.

  ‘Oh my God! I was afraid Vanags sent them right back or something worse. Maybe they’ve been there the whole time.’

  ‘Can you go to Catford?’ Lia asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Elza said, clearly startled. ‘Just talking to you is so dangerous. What can we do if they’re locked in there?’

  ‘At least try to talk to them. Maybe they’ll be willing to risk talking to you.’

  Elza thought. Near them in the shopping centre was a beauty salon. She could get out through the back, which offered access to the loading docks and car park. No one would know about it unless they had been inside the shop.

  ‘I’ve thought that if I tried to escape someday, it might be possible through there. The boy waiting outside the café is so stupid that if the girls and me go into the beauty salon and I come out the back, he’s bound not to even notice. We could have an hour and a half. Maybe two.’

  Two hours. In London traffic! I guess that’s better than nothing.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Lia said.

  Lia opened the door a crack and watched as Elza returned to the other women and suggested that they go straight over to the beauty parlour.

  This suggestion surprised them, but no one objected. They could see that Elza had her reasons.

  There is no question who their leader is.

  The women collected their shopping bags and coats and left the café. Slipping out of the toilet, Lia saw Elza explaining something to the waiting boy. The whole group set off up the escalator to the beauty parlour.

  Paddy still gave no sign of knowing her, but Lia heard her mobile beep. The text was from Paddy.


  ‘Situation resolved?’

  Lia controlled her urge to march straight over to talk to him. Someone might still see them. Returning to the toilets, she rang him.

  ‘No, the situation is not resolved,’ she said. Quickly she summed up Elza’s story.

  ‘I have to go with her to Sangley Road. I don’t know whether you should come with us. Elza might lose her cool. Can you follow close?’

  Paddy asked about the risks of visiting the house, but since it was clear that Vanags only went there in the evenings after closing up the shop, Paddy didn’t see any specific obstacle to their visiting.

  ‘But you have to remember we don’t have any real information about who is in that house. There could be someone there who isn’t being held prisoner and they could attack us. Or someone could be surveilling the place from nearby,’ Paddy pointed out.

  ‘And this time no genius brainwaves,’ he added.

  She left the café and made her way down to car park. Paddy kept Lia just in sight as she looked for the beauty salon’s rear door near the loading docks.

  Soon Elza appeared at a door. She smiled, but Lia could also see the mixture of fear and tension in her face.

  ‘For six years I have wanted to do this and been afraid of doing it,’ Elza said.

  Quickly Lia directed Elza to the taxi rank. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Paddy head towards his own car.

  They found a queue of black taxis and no other customers waiting.

  ‘I’ve never taken a cab in London. They always take us places in their own cars,’ Elza said.

  First they navigated smaller streets to reach the Chelsea Embankment and then cross Vauxhall Bridge. Elza watched with dull eyes as the scenery passed.

  She looks more resigned than unhappy. People can get used to almost anything.

  She asked Elza about her working conditions, quietly so the cabbie couldn’t hear.

  Elza and the other women in the flat on Vassall Road had come to London to make money. An elegantly dressed woman with expensive jewellery who visited Riga from England, also a prostitute, had promised them they would. Afterwards they had realised that Vanags had hired her to lure them in.

  ‘I know there are a lot of girls in prostitution who have been forced into it, but we knew what we were coming to London to do,’ Elza said.

  What she and the other girls had not known was that they would be forced to live in a virtual prison.

  ‘Kazis likes to screw three or four nights a week. We just have to put up with it. But we don’t have to sleep with their little thugs. Kazis says we don’t have to. He wants to keep us in good shape.’

  They had a few rights, mostly based on practicality. The pimps avoided hitting them so they would look good for the customers. But there were certain clear limits. You couldn’t tell the clients about yourself. You couldn’t lock doors inside the flat, not even the toilet. You didn’t leave the flat except to visit the corner shop. You couldn’t keep in touch with anyone outside.

  ‘They have guns, but they don’t have to use them. We know what they can do.’

  The conditions for the women in the brothel on Creed Lane were worse.

  ‘It’s because they’re in the middle of the City.’

  ‘How is it possible for there to be a brothel there at all?’ Lia asked, surprised.

  Where could they maintain a flat like that in amongst all the office buildings and government agencies? And the rents in the area were so high.

  ‘There are at least a dozen, in basements and back rooms,’ Elza said.

  Creed Lane was a pedestrian precinct. Every morning a large, black van drove to one of the buildings there. From it the prostitutes were taken under careful guard to an office where they accepted male clients in two rooms in the back. Customers flowed through the place, including businessmen, lawyers and maintenance workers.

  ‘The girls’ conditions are terrible,’ Elza said. ‘They have to work like conveyor belts.’

  The women were never allowed out of the office, and all they had in addition to the back rooms was a bathroom. Breaks only came occasionally, when the offices in the Square Mile were closed.

  That was why Anita Klusa ran away, Elza said. It must have been unbearable there.

  When Lia and Elza arrived in Catford, Lia noticed Paddy’s car already parked on Sangley Road. That was when she noticed her uneasiness: the entire taxi ride she had been out of breath, and her heart was racing.

  The drive from Shepherd’s Bush had only taken forty-five minutes since it was still the middle of the afternoon. They couldn’t hope for the traffic to hold, so they could stay at the house only for perhaps twenty minutes.

  After asking the cabbie to wait, Lia showed Elza number 182.

  Elza looked at the covered windows and nodded.

  They walked around behind the end-of-terrace house. Lia had decided with Paddy that the back garden was the best way to approach whoever was living there. Lia checked that no one else was in sight as they opened the gate and stepped in.

  Slowly they walked up to the back door. Lia moved to the side, up against the wall, and motioned to Elza to do the same. This was one of Paddy’s precautionary measures: if someone discharged a weapon from inside, they would be out of the line of fire.

  The house looked completely empty. Blackout curtains covered the windows. None of them even twitched.

  Lia had thought about trying to get the attention of those inside by knocking on the door, but Elza got straight to the point.

  ‘Labdien!’ she yelled in a loud voice.

  ‘Labdien! Te Elza Berklava.’

  They waited for a moment. Nothing came from inside.

  Elza repeated the greeting as well as her own name.

  Silence. Lia looked at the other gardens in the row. The chilly December weather was not luring anyone outside. She saw Paddy standing behind a fence, a few dozen metres away.

  Elza looked at Lia and then spoke towards the door again. And although Lia did not understand anything but the name – Daiga – she realised what Elza was relaying.

  Daiga was dead.

  The silence lasted for a moment. Then suddenly from inside, directly behind the door, came a woman’s cry. Lia did not need any help to understand what was going on.

  Time stopped. All that existed was the wail of a mother, a cry of agony choked behind a hand.

  Elza placed one of her hands on the door, caressing the dark, painted surface.

  She said something in Latvian, comforting Daiga Vītola’s mother.

  From behind the door came another voice, a young woman, who said something to Elza.

  ‘Ausma?’ Elza exclaimed.

  Elza spoke feverishly, and someone replied from inside. Questions flew in both directions. Over this exchange of words floated the mother’s hoarse lamentation, which she continued to attempt to stifle with her hands.

  Elza interpreted the conversation for Lia.

  The women had been prisoners since the spring. Vanags had brought them there directly. He had told them he would kill them instantly if they attempted to escape, made a noise or did anything else that might make others notice them. Vanags had said that the doors and windows were wired with explosives that would detonate if they tried to get out.

  ‘But I don’t believe that,’ Elza pointed out.

  Lia instinctively took a step back. However, she had to admit that the explosives threat sounded unlikely.

  Elza continued the conversation. Daiga’s mother’s name was Henriete and the daughter was Ausma Vītola – Daiga had been using her maiden name in recent years because she wanted to forget her husband.

  Henriete and Ausma were not in any distress, but they were very afraid.

  Ausma believed that Vanags would force her into prostitution. He had made advances at her several times, but by screaming the women had made him back away. Vanags had announced that if the girl wasn’t any fun, he intended to get his money’s worth for her.

  Lia checked the time: al
ready twelve minutes had passed.

  She considered what to do. Could Paddy get the grandmother and daughter out of the house? That would take tools and was unlikely to go unnoticed in the neighbourhood.

  ‘The problem is that if they stay here, Vanags may realise they have been in contact with us. And if we take them away and report it to the police, Vanags could do something to you or the other women on Vassall Road,’ Lia said.

  Elza stared at the ground, her face turned white.

  ‘I don’t believe they can stay quiet about this long,’ she said, motioning at the mother and daughter behind the door.

  Henriete asked Elza with whom she was speaking.

  ‘She’s a Finnish woman, Lia, who wants to help you. She found you,’ Elza replied in English.

  Behind the door, they understood.

  ‘Thank you, Finnish Lia,’ Henriete said in English.

  ‘We need time to decide what to do,’ Lia said. ‘Tell them they have to wait a little, but we’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Nē!’ Ausma’s shout came straight away. ‘We aren’t staying here!’ she continued in English.

  Elza said something to the girl in Latvian, and she quieted down. Lia pulled Elza to the side.

  ‘Convince them to be quiet just for tonight,’ Lia said. ‘When Vanags comes to bring them food, he mustn’t notice anything. Tomorrow we’ll help them get out.’

  I have no idea how we’re going to do it. But do it we must.

  The convincing took some time. While Elza calmed Ausma down, Lia phoned Mari and reported on the situation.

  Lia looked at the clock on her mobile: twenty-one minutes. They had exceeded their time limit.

  ‘Now we have to be hard,’ she said to Elza.

  Elza nodded. She ordered the women to be quiet and wait.

  ‘We’re going to come back,’ Lia said, knowing she was saying it as much to herself as to the two women who were to remain behind the locked door.

  As they climbed back in the taxi, Elza said nothing. She simply cried.

  Lia calculated they were six minutes late already.

  ‘Please do hurry,’ she said to the cabbie as she asked him to take them back to Shepherd’s Bush. He replied that he would do his best.