by DC Brockwell
Five minutes later the door opened again, and the two girls walked out in their red jumpers and grey skirts. Farkas, wearing a beige dressing gown, came to the door with two jackets in her hands, and Nasreen heard the mother order her girls to wear their coats. Farkas seemed like any other caring mother. Maybe Lina Klugheim had it wrong; maybe Farkas wasn’t going to be a handful. Maybe she’d calmed down over time.
Nasreen waited five more minutes before getting out of her car, handbag over her shoulder. She crossed the road, walked up Farkas’ driveway, and knocked on the door.
“Yes? Who are you?”
Nasreen noticed the scar on Farkas’ neck first of all. It was an angry red line, and it looked like it had been made recently.
Petra was a tall woman with dark curly hair and deep brown eyes. She looked to be in her mid-forties.
“Ms Farkas?” asked Nasreen.
“Yes, and you are? If you’re selling something, I’m not interested…”
“Ms Farkas, I’m Detective Constable Nasreen Maqsood, from the–”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence before Farkas slammed the door in her face, and letting out an audible sigh, Nasreen bent down and opened the letterbox. “I just want to talk to you about your ex-boyfriend, Walter Gebhardt, Ms Farkas, that’s all. I’m not here for you.”
Nasreen stood up, then turned and looked across the road. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Now she knew how door-to-door salespeople felt.
“What do you want to know about him?” Petra asked eventually, her voice muffled by the door. The way Farkas had said “him” made Gebhardt sound like a monster.
Nasreen turned back to face the door.
A second later, Farkas opened the door.
“I’m looking for him in connection with several disappearances of sex workers up and down the country,” Nas explained. “I heard from someone that he was your boyfriend.”
“Huh, some boyfriend. He did this to me last year.” Petra pointed to her neck. “I called the police then, and you know what they did about it? Nothing… not a thing. A man cuts your throat, and the police can’t even be bothered to look for him.”
“I’m sure they did their bes–”
“They did nothing!”
Nasreen put her hands up in surrender. “Look, Ms Farkas, I understand you’re angry – I would be too – but I’m not here about that, I’m sorry. I’m just here to see if you know where he might be. Do you have a forwarding address for him? Or do you have any of his family’s addresses? Please, this is really important – people’s lives might depend on me finding him.”
“You’d better come in, detective.” Farkas huffed, opening the door for her.
When Nasreen was inside and Farkas had closed the door behind her, she followed the woman through to the lounge/dining room, where the dining table had been set up as a makeshift office; her laptop was parked at one end, wired to a scanner-printer. The house smelt amazing – of cooked breakfast with bacon dominant. Nasreen didn’t eat bacon, although she did love the smell.
She was offered a seat on one of the two L-shaped sofas, which was so comfortable she fell into it. “Can I ask what happened with…” Nasreen asked, gesturing at the woman’s neck.
“It was partly my fault. He dumped me, and I didn’t take it very well. I hit him, he pulled a knife on me… he went berserk and sliced my neck. He said I was lucky he was feeling charitable, lucky he didn’t slice me deeper.” She shook her head. “He’s an animal.”
Nasreen was beginning to see that. “And how long were you together for?”
“On and off for twelve years,” she admitted. “He never live with me though. He came and went when it suit him. When I ask where he’s been, he tells me to mind my own business. I was lucky if I saw him once a week; would be better maybe not to see him at all.”
“And in those twelve years, did he ever mention anything–”
“About kidnapping people? Ha!” she spat. “He wouldn’t talk business in front of me…”
Nasreen sighed. It had been worth a shot. “Did you ever meet any of his relatives?”
“He has brother, but I never meet him. He supposed to be worse than Walter; he told me stories about Conrad. I not sorry I never meet him.”
“Conrad Gebhardt? That’s Walter’s brother?”
“That’s what I just say.”
“Sorry, I’m just saying it out loud, so that it sticks in my mind. I don’t suppose you have an address for him, do you?”
“No, I don’t, I just tell you… Oh, wait…” Farkas paused. “A friend of mine went out with Conrad a couple times. Hang on, I’ll get you her phone number.”
Finally, Nasreen was getting somewhere. In all her time on the force, she had learned that families could be relied on to know the whereabouts of other family members. Even if there’d been a big rift between siblings, they generally knew where the other sibling lived. If she could find Conrad, chances were high that he would be able to point her in the right direction. “Thanks,” she said, accepting the piece of paper from Farkas.
The name on the piece of paper was Zuzanna Jankovics, and Farkas had also written down her phone number and address. Jankovics lived two towns away – Nasreen could easily drive there in less than an hour…
49
Beattie was in the mood for a big cooked breakfast. Generally, she would just have a bowl of cereal and a couple of slices of toast, but this morning she was in the mood to cook, and she would cook for the guards as well. They all sat down around the table while she prepared their breakfasts.
Alan was already at work – so she didn’t need to worry about meeting and greeting the clients – and Kimiko was upstairs, getting ready for work, and would soon be helping Alan. Beattie wasn’t really needed, so she told Alan she was taking the day off, to make up for all the time he’d had off lately. Alan had happily agreed to this.
In the refrigerator, she took out the bacon, sausages, and tomatoes. Then she went to the cupboard and took out the baked beans. The hash browns she fetched from the freezer, and the bread from the bread bin on the work surface. Then she took out all the utensils she needed and started cooking.
One of the guards offered to help. She insisted she was more than capable of making seven breakfasts. She would call Alan in when it was ready.
While everything was cooking, she looked at the bacon, and seeing how fatty it was, she went over to the block of knives, taking out the long meat knife and noticing that a smaller knife was missing. She paid it no mind, however, thinking it would be in the sink.
The kitchen smelt amazing as the bacon fried and the eggs and sausages sizzled, but there was a lot of smoke, so she opened the window in front of the sink. She waited until everything was ready, then plated up. She was famished, and couldn’t wait to start eating. Turning to the guards, she asked one of them to go and get Alan…
“Go ahead, I’ve pulled over onto the hard shoulder.” Nasreen spoke into her simple mobile. “What’ve you got for me?”
“Conrad Gebhardt, forty-three, moved to the UK five years ago. He was questioned over the death of a Russian diplomat back in 2015. He was never formally charged. He has ties with the Bavarian Brotherhood, as does his brother, Walter. The Brotherhood has a branch here, in the UK, and although it’s never been confirmed, apparently it deals in all sorts: extortion, protection racketeering, drugs, prostitution, and human trafficking. All that good stuff.”
“Have you got a last known address for him?”
“It’s a YMCA up north,” he replied. “As far as I can see on the PNC, he’s a ghost, Nas. The only reason we know anything about him is because he got picked up that one time; since then, nothing.”
“Okay, thanks.”
There was a slight pause before Terrence continued, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to say it anyway… be careful out there; this guy’s the real deal, a nasty bastard by all accounts.”
“You know me, I’m always careful. P
lus, you forget: I’ve got a friend with me.” She looked over at her bag. “She’s been looking forward to getting out, and now it looks like I’ve found the right guy to show her off to, huh?”
“Okay, just saying.”
Nasreen smiled. “Anyway, how’s everything in the office?”
“Adams is spitting acid. It was your first scheduled interview with IOPC yesterday. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you he wasn’t happy you missed it.”
Nasreen smiled again. “He’ll get over it. I’ll call you later.”
She put her phone back in her bag, pulled out onto the motorway, and accelerated to get ahead of a lorry that was rapidly catching up with her.
Her rental car had a GPS installed, so she followed the instructions to get to Zuzanna Jankovics’ flat…
The blade of the knife scraped Kimiko’s arm as she descended the stairs.
She didn’t know what to do with it.
As she left the house, closing the door behind her, she decided she would hide the knife in her trolley for now.
She walked along the paving towards the barn, passing Mr Harrison and one of the guards as she went. She was paranoid they would see the knife through her kimono. Neither of them said anything. Once clear of them, she continued into the barn and down the stairs to the bar before walking through the bar, past the bees’ rooms, and turning right, past the showers and toilets. She stopped in the storage room.
With adrenaline coursing through her veins, she slid the knife out from under her sleeve and stored it on the bottom level of her trolley. Knowing she couldn’t keep it there indefinitely, she tried to think of where else she could hide it, but after five minutes, she still couldn’t think of a safe place.
There was no point giving the knife to Danny; he was tied up permanently, with little chance of that changing. No, she had to have it within reach; it was going to be all down to her when they finally managed to escape…
“Hi, Will, I’m just checking in,” said Assistant Commissioner Peter Franks into his mobile. “Any idea when we’re doing this thing?”
Franks was sat in his study. His wife had left for work, so he had the house to himself, and he’d finalised the date for the big meeting, the big reveal. He had access to a warehouse in the Midlands; there he would gather his troops and divulge how the project would proceed. As the warehouse would be integral to it, he thought it best that his troops at least know where it was.
“I said I’ll call you when it’s time,” Rothstein snapped.
“I know what you said, but I have a timeline here, Will. It’s not only you in this, you know.”
“Look, you’ve got someone tailing him, haven’t you?”
“The NCA have, yes.”
“When the time’s right, I’ll call you, and then you can call the Director General, okay?”
“Can you be any clearer than that? If it’s in the next couple…”
“In the next few days, yes.”
“Well, all right then,” Franks said, hanging up.
He really couldn’t stand Rothstein. There were many things he had to do as part of his job that he hated, but this topped the list. When the project was finished – when they’d leaked it to the press and when they had their evidence of all the good it had done – he was going to enjoy putting Rothstein away. It was all part of the Commissioner’s big plan: use them for as long as they served a purpose, then put them down.
He had twenty-nine Police and Crime Commissioners in favour of being a part of the operation – that was twenty-nine police forces out of forty-one. He felt sorry for the few he hadn’t approached, as their crime stats would pale in comparison to those involved; when the dealers started drip-feeding their rivals it was going to be payday, and those poor few commissioners he hadn’t approached would be left out of the raids, left out of the headlines.
That was what the project was for: high-profile detentions. Before they leaked the details of it, they had to have enough media coverage of the police forces making drug seizures – and prosecuting those responsible – so that the public wouldn’t forget why they’d gone ahead with the project in the first place. It was about making the drugs, and the streets, safer for everyone.
Franks was, and always had been, a big believer in legalising drugs. It made sense to him to give people choices in life. Prohibiting the use of anything drove up the black market value and gave the criminal gangs something to offer their customers.
He didn’t understand the government’s stance on drugs and prostitution. Other countries had legalised both. Amsterdam in particular had made a lot of money.
He picked up his phone again and dialled. “Graham, it’s Peter. How’s everything going your end? Rothstein’s no nearer giving us a date.”
“We have Garvey under twenty-four-hour surveillance, as you asked. I’m getting some blowback from some of the officers, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“Good, good. Rothstein did tell me it would be in the next few days, so keep your phone handy. I’ve got a rough date in mind for the primary meeting, I’ll text it to you.”
“Okay, I’ll be expecting it.”
Franks hung up, but as soon as he’d put his mobile down, it rang.
“Peter, it’s Clive, I thought you should know that we’ve lost Nasreen Maqsood.”
“Now, how’d you manage that? I thought you told her to make herself available for the IOPC?” Franks rubbed his temple with his free hand. He had a lingering headache.
“I did. She missed her first interview yesterday. Her partner says he doesn’t know where she is. I’ve sent a couple of uniforms to her house, but her car’s gone and there’s no sign of life.”
“And you believe him?”
“Terrence isn’t going to lie for Nasreen. She’s the one who got him in trouble; there’s no love lost there. One of my admin team heard them arguing in a conference room right before I suspended her.”
Franks sighed. “Clive, is this going to be a problem for us?”
“All I can say is we’re looking for her.”
“Okay, keep me posted,” Franks said before hanging up.
He had far more pressing matters to deal with than the disappearance of Nasreen Maqsood. Hell, she might have just gone away for a while, to gather herself. She wasn’t going to be a problem, and what could she possibly do anyway? She was suspended…
50
Alan placed his knife and fork together. “That was excellent, honey.”
“Glad you enjoyed it.” Beattie received five more complimentary comments from the guards before she shooed them off to work, then she started washing up. She was looking forward to a relaxing morning.
Collecting the plates and cutlery from around the table, she stacked them up and carried them over to the sink. After a few moments, she noticed that the smaller knife wasn’t in the sink. It wasn’t on the counter, and it wasn’t in with the bits Kimiko had washed up earlier.
Beattie actively looked for it. She couldn’t have a missing knife in her house; not with the kind of work she did. Who would want to take a knife? That was too obvious to answer, but who would want to take a knife, and actually had access? Access was the key. The only people who had access to the kitchen were Alan, herself, the guards and Kimik–
Oh shit! Beattie’s face went pale, quickly draining of its blood.
She had to be sure, so she looked in all of the drawers and cupboards, and in the sink again. She turned the kitchen upside down looking for the seven-inch blade; there was nothing. Could one of the guards have taken it? She doubted it – she needed to know for definite before she confronted her top suspect. She didn’t want it to be Kimiko.
Grabbing her coat, Beattie wrapped herself up and walked along the paved path to the barn, where all five guards were stood chatting before the customers started arriving. She assumed Alan was already downstairs getting the bar ready, and Kimiko would be downstairs cleaning the rooms she’d been instructed to service. “While I have you all here, I nee
d to ask if one of you have taken a knife from the kitchen for any reason?”
She watched their heads shake, receiving five “no”s.
Shit! It was looking more and more likely that it was Kimiko, but why would she do it? What was she thinking? Did she think she could use a knife to escape? And where would she escape to? It wasn’t like she had any family in the UK. And then it dawned on her… she probably wanted to get the police involved, to have her and everyone else here arrested.
Ungrateful bitch, Beattie thought, instructing the guards to follow her downstairs…
Steven watched Garvey get into his Shogun, then looked at his dashboard clock, noting it was 08:40. “Target’s on the move,” he said into his microphone.
His shift had started forty minutes earlier. The officer he’d relieved – a friend of his – had passed the clipboard and camera to him and told him that Garvey hadn’t done much in the preceding eight hours. Steven’s friend had had a very boring shift.
Steven’s friends all thought his work was so glamorous; they didn’t realise just how dull it could be. The majority of what the NCA did was surveillance, which involved following people either in cars or on foot and setting up cameras and microphones. So, it really involved listening to, and watching people. When his agency thought it had enough intel and/or evidence of wrongdoing, they would arrest the target. It was rare that they got to catch their mark in the process of committing a crime.
“Target’s turning right onto Station Road,” Steven reported, receiving a crackly acknowledgement in return.
Garvey’s Shogun turned left and parked at the side of the road, next to a park. Steven drove on and found a space further down the road, all the while keeping an a eye on his target, walking along a path. “Target’s on foot through Bellfield Park,” he said, as he exited his car. “I’m on foot, following.”