Perfect Kill

by Helen Fields

  ‘How did you cut your foot?’ Lively asked.

  ‘Glass from door. Can I leave with you today?’

  ‘There are other police officers outside. They know about this place and what goes on here. If you’re willing to give evidence, to help us find the man who shot Gene Oldman, we can shut these flats down straight away. We’ll find this Scalp. If need be we’ll make sure you get protection before and after the trial …’

  ‘How soon you find Scalp?’ she asked.

  ‘I doubt he’ll manage to avoid us for more than a week. We’ll be able to figure out who his contacts are, where all the other women are being kept …’

  ‘You not know?’

  ‘Not yet. It was only because Finlay died that some of Gene Oldman’s contacts told me about this place. Sooner or later we’ll build up the bigger picture and then we’ll—’

  ‘But next race is tomorrow night … must stop it.’ She was raising her voice. Lively put a gentle finger over her lips, pressing his ear to the door and waiting before he responded.

  ‘What race, Elenuta? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Race girls and men. Finlay start it. Scalp do same.’

  ‘Like a running race, or something else?’

  ‘No, no! In big room … big building. Women run, men go after. If they catch, they kill. Must stop it.’ She gripped his arm. ‘More women die.’

  ‘More? When … hold on … how many women have died already? Were you there?’

  She shook her head and released her aching fingers from his forearm.

  ‘I not there. Finlay show me on computer. Three women die. One live. She race again.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to the bodies of those three women?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘I think I might,’ he said. ‘This was recently? In the last couple of weeks?’

  ‘Yes. Scalp was there. Other men watch.’

  ‘How many men do you think?’

  ‘Maybe one hundred. Not sure, but many. All bad.’

  ‘All bad,’ he agreed. ‘Were all the women in that race taken from the flats in this building?’

  ‘No, from different places. I never seen those women before. You must find others before race.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We must.’ Lively folded his arms and stared at his feet.

  Elenuta watched him struggling for words and realised what the issue was.

  ‘Arrest men today, Scalp will hear and maybe you not find all women,’ she said calmly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘We have to get you out of here. What you’re going through …’

  ‘Scalp will be at race. All bad men and guards. They tell where all women are. Many women, I think.’

  A fist hammered the door. Elenuta shrieked, jumping towards the safety of Lively’s arms.

  ‘Nearly finished,’ he shouted.

  ‘Time’s up, pal,’ Paddy, the guard, replied.

  ‘Then I’ll fucking pay for a bit more, now would you sod off while I do what I’m here for.’ Lively had his hand on the doorknob, his weight pressed against it for good measure. Elenuta held her breath.

  ‘All right, but it’ll be another twenty for the extra minutes. You good for that?’

  ‘And then some,’ Lively growled.

  Footsteps up the corridor indicated that the deal was done. Elenuta collapsed against his shoulder.

  ‘I can’t leave you here. You’re being raped, all of you. Beaten, tortured.’

  ‘One more day. You find race, this stops for everyone.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Lively said. ‘It’s too dangerous. If we could just get Finlay’s computer we’d have the evidence, maybe we’d get the other addresses he was keeping the girls at, we’d find out which men he’d invited to this race …’

  ‘Scalp …’ she tried to find the word and couldn’t, making a violent motion with her foot instead, ‘like this, on laptop.’

  ‘Stamped on it?’ She nodded. ‘Completely destroyed it?’

  ‘And take away,’ she said. ‘All papers, everything. Police watch here, tomorrow guards go to race. Only one guard stays here. You catch all bad men. No women hurt. You save us.’ She took his forearm in her hands, clutching hard.

  Lively shook his head.

  ‘There’s no guarantee of that. If we don’t find them or something goes wrong …’

  ‘Must try,’ she said simply.

  The hammering at the door began again. They both stood up.

  ‘I’ll get you out of here, one way or another. Will you be okay tonight? I need to go and brief my boss,’ he whispered.

  ‘I will,’ she said.

  Lively took an awkward half step towards her, then backed away. Elenuta covered the distance herself, reaching up to hug him, wishing he didn’t have to go. He felt so solid and real. She just wanted to cling to him.

  ‘I have to go. They’ll get suspicious. Quickly, loosen your clothing,’ he whispered. She undid her shirt and the top button of her shorts, messing her hair up for good measure. ‘I’m coming back, Elenuta. You’re not alone any more.’

  The door opened.

  ‘She giving you shit?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘Just telling her what I’m expecting next time I see her,’ Lively said. ‘You got my phone there?’

  ‘Here you go.’ He handed it over. ‘She all right, then?’

  ‘Aye, one’s the same as another once they’re on their backs, right? To be honest with you, it gets a bit boring after a while. Do you not offer anything more exciting here?’

  ‘You can have multiple girls as long as you pay. The boss doesn’t care, and he turns a blind eye to what you do to them as long as they’re fit to work the rest of the night.’

  ‘If I want to give a woman a slap, I’ll do that at home where I don’t have to pay for it.’ Lively got a bit closer to Paddy, dropping his voice and giving him a wink. ‘Gene Oldman told me Finlay used to run something a bit more exotic. He said he could never afford to go, but cash isn’t a problem for me.’

  ‘Gene was a twat with a mouth that got him killed,’ Paddy said.

  ‘Not going to disagree with you about his mouth, but his ears worked fine, and he heard stuff. Listen,’ he stuck his hand in his wallet, ‘I get it. These things only work if the people involved know how to keep their mouths shut. I appreciate your discretion as a matter of fact. But I can pay – not just whatever it costs to get in – but as a thank you to anyone good enough to help me.’ He shoved a roll of twenties into Paddy’s hand. ‘If you could help me out there’d be double that in it for you. No one else needs to know.’

  Paddy looked up and down the corridor before answering.

  ‘It’s not that easy. There’s a list. Your name’s got to be on it in advance. You have to be a client already.’

  ‘Well, I’m here, and I think what I’ve been doing for the last hour qualifies me pretty bloody impressively as a client. Ask your whore if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I believe you well enough pal, but it’s tomorrow night. I’m not sure I’ve got time to sort it, and the list might be full.’

  ‘Ah, room for a small one, though, right?’

  ‘You’re no’ a small one, you fat bastard!’ Paddy laughed.

  Lively responded with a smile and gentle fist to the upper arm.

  ‘You cheeky fucker! And there was me thinking we could be mates!’

  ‘Listen,’ Paddy whispered. ‘I’ll try to get you on the list, but I won’t know until tomorrow. Scalp’s organising the whole thing himself. The address and time go out in a text with only an hour to go, so no one gives it away. I can’t guarantee anything.’

  ‘Understood,’ Lively said.

  ‘And you can’t tell anyone you gave me money. That’d drop me properly in the shit.’

  ‘I look after anyone who looks after me. Old school.’

  ‘Right,’ Paddy said. ‘Give me your mobile number.’

  He handed Lively a pen and he scribbled the number onto an extra twenty-pou
nd note, making sure Paddy saw there was plenty left where that came from.

  ‘Watch your mobile, and be prepared to move quickly. Once the doors are locked, they don’t open them for anyone.’

  ‘You’re a pal,’ Lively said. ‘Tomorrow, then.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Elenuta watched Lively go through the tiniest crack between her door and its frame. He couldn’t have looked less like a comic book superhero, yet the effect he’d had on her was no less than if Superman had flown in through her window – once he’d broken through the boarding, of course. She realised she was hungry. She hadn’t felt properly starving like that in such a long time. The desire to eat, to make herself strong and healthy, had slowly dripped from her.

  Scalp hadn’t yet chosen the women who would race tomorrow. The rest of the women didn’t even have it on their radar, but then they hadn’t seen Finlay’s video, and she hadn’t had the heart to warn them. Why increase their fear when they were already living in terror? Release from captivity was only twenty-four hours away. All they had to do was survive until then. Close their eyes and imagine a better life while seeing to the clients. Eat a bit, sleep for a while, then it would all be over. The police would rescue them. She looked at her watch and began counting down not just the hours, but the minutes.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ‘That’s all the information I have. Time was limited and the guard was in the corridor,’ Lively explained.

  ‘Where’s Elenuta from?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Romania. I don’t know about the other women there.’

  ‘Any word on Scalp’s true identity?’ Ava asked the crowd gathered in the incident room.

  ‘Nothing, ma’am,’ Graham replied. ‘Plenty of people have heard of him, but no one knows his full name. I suspect he’s come in recently from out of the area, so I’ve issued an alert requesting information across Police Scotland, and also notified New Scotland Yard to spread the word and see if the other UK forces have any intelligence.’

  ‘Great. So do we have any idea where this race might be held? No rumours about that circulating?’

  ‘If anyone knows anything about it they’re not saying, and we can’t ask too many questions in case the fact that we’re asking gets back to Scalp and he changes the venue or moves it back by a couple of days. We don’t want him disappearing on us,’ Lively said.

  Ava looked at her watch. It was 3 a.m. Since Lively had emerged from the flats four hours earlier MIT had done nothing but get in touch with their usual sources and check databases, all to no effect.

  ‘I say we just go in and get those women safe,’ Tripp said. ‘Even twenty-four hours more of what they’re living through might mean multiple additional rapes, not to mention violence and the threat of death. What if someone gets killed in there while we’re making plans?’

  Ava sympathised. That had been her initial view, too. They’d solved two murders, even if no one was in cuffs yet, although it was fair to say few were grieving over the loss of either Gene Oldman or Finlay Wilson. The three young women whose remains had been found at the pig farm deserved justice too. Their identities weren’t yet known, but somewhere in the world they had family and friends waiting desperately to know what had happened to them. The best chance MIT had of arresting and convicting their killers, and of identifying the dead women, would be at the race. Ava stood up.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We can debate this all night. There’s never going to be an answer that keeps everyone safe, but we’ll do our best. I agree with DS Tripp that we have a serious responsibility to keep those women we already know about safe. There might be an awful lot of them in the flats at Wester Hailes. And I get it. If any of those women gets seriously hurt or, God forbid, killed, before we start making arrests, it’ll be on us. Me, in fact. While that’s a risk I don’t want to take, I can’t see a way of avoiding it. The second we go in there, the whole network will close up. Every phone, every computer, every vehicle, every witness will disappear. Worst-case scenario is that Scalp – whoever he is – hears about the first raid and decides to get rid of the other women who are too much of a liability. We might save some lives only to cause others to die.’

  There was a general murmur of consent around the room.

  ‘We’ve got a skeleton crew running surveillance at Wester Hailes now. DI Graham, increase that, please. If any female comes out of those flats – on foot, unconscious, or in a body bag – I want undercover units tailing immediately. Everyone in plainclothes and concealed. Avoid contact with the locals. Not a single marked car. No sirens or lights, whatever happens. Use your discretion, but obviously where there’s an immediate threat to life we’ll have to intervene. Other than that, we watch and wait. Get perimeters established at all major junctions in the area. We’re not expecting much movement until tomorrow evening. That’s when it seems logical that they’ll transport the chosen women to the race venue.’

  ‘What if none of the women from the Wester Hailes flats is in the race? How will we know where it is then?’ Tripp asked.

  ‘Some of Scalp’s heavies from the flats will be going. Elenuta said they only leave one guard inside the flat on race night,’ Lively said.

  ‘Sergeant Lively, we’ll need you on the inside of the race from as early as possible,’ Ava instructed.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m even going to get on the list, ma’am,’ Lively said. ‘We might just have to follow Scalp’s men, wait until everyone’s inside and raid the place.’

  ‘Not good enough. If we don’t have eyes inside, hearing and seeing what’s going on, we don’t have any evidence. Scalp could just say the women were taking part in a race and that there was no intent to harm them at the end,’ Ava said.

  ‘But there’s the last race. We can prosecute them for that …’ Tripp said.

  ‘That was down to Finlay Wilson, and he’s dead. Elenuta says the recording on Wilson’s laptop was destroyed by Scalp. Elenuta only saw it on video and without a single witness there in person and the victims’ bodies largely destroyed, we won’t get any murder convictions. You have to be inside, Sergeant. This whole case rests on you.’

  ‘No fuckin’ pressure then,’ Lively muttered.

  ‘We’ll follow Scalp’s men. Make sure you’re in the area – even if you don’t get the text you’ll have to pretend you did and blag your way in,’ Ava told him.

  ‘It’s not that easy, security on this friggin’ race is tighter than Sandringham on Christmas Day.’

  ‘Make it work!’ Ava snapped. ‘If you don’t, either more women will die, or everyone inside walks free.’

  ‘We’ll still have them on human trafficking and every assault charge you can imagine,’ DC Swift offered.

  Ava glared at him. Lively took over from her.

  ‘Aye, that’s great for us, Doesn’t Compute Swift, but it won’t be good enough for the parents of the girls who were killed for sport the last time. The chief’s right. Failure’s not a fucking option.’

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ Ava said quietly. ‘Right, let’s get this plan clear. We need to hold on until everyone is inside before we raid. A build-up of police vehicles will alert them, so we have to be cautious until we’ve got every single one of them trapped like the rats they are. We’ll be in contact with Lively inside. He’ll send us a message when everything’s about to start and that’s when we go. I’ll need multiple paramedics on standby, but notify the receiving hospitals confidentially. Same goes for the fire service. Armed units are going in up front – we can be sure there’ll be men in there with guns. This has to be a flawless operation. The second they realise what’s happening, the first response will be to use any women inside as shields. Unbroken perimeter. No one gets away. Plenty of uniformed officers ready in the station to process everyone who gets arrested, and the number should be high. Briefings of the relevant units and teams all day. I’m calling in backup from the other Police Scotland areas. Lively – you’ll have a concealed weapon, a mobile, and
a hidden communications device.’

  ‘If they find a weapon on me, I’ll be kicked straight back out and that’s the best-case scenario. It could blow the whole thing if they suspect me, then we’re back to square one.’

  ‘All right, no weapon, but you have to be able to communicate with us. See what tech can do to make sure you get through without anything being picked up. DI Graham, finding where the other women are across the city will be the priority. Brief uniformed teams on readiness to undertake further operations as soon as we start getting information from those arrested. I’ll do deals with anyone who gives us useful information the second they have the opportunity, so DS Tripp, make contact with the Procurator Fiscal this morning and have someone on standby at their office too. They need to know what we’re doing anyway. They’re about to get an awful lot of paperwork on their desks and we’ll need some legal backup when we start breaking down doors.’

  ‘In terms of getting information from the women inside, we might need translators, ma’am,’ Lively said. ‘Elenuta’s English is workable but not fluent enough that she can give complex descriptions. I’m guessing it’ll be the same for some of the others.’

  ‘Good point,’ Ava said. ‘Also, we’ll need somewhere safe to house any women we remove who don’t require hospitalisation. They’ll have to be seen by a doctor in any event, clothes, food, beds for the night. It’ll have to be somewhere secure, away both from the press and from anyone looking to help out Scalp. Contact social services, Tripp. See what they can do.’

  ‘Where will you be, ma’am?’

  ‘At the race, running point. I intend to go in with the armed units from the outset.’

  ‘Ma’am …’ Graham said.

  ‘Too busy for any more discussion,’ she said. ‘You’ve all got a week’s work to fit into twelve hours. I’ll buy all the coffee and biscuits. At lunchtime I’ll make sure you get as much fast food as you can eat. There are people depending on us, so no slip-ups. Thanks everyone.’

  She made her way out into the corridor. About halfway along she realised no one was following her. No Tripp with endless, but always vital, additional queries. No Lively having to have the last word. No DI Graham asking if she was okay. It was too big a deal for that, she realised. She checked her watch and began making a mental to-do list. It was going to be the longest day imaginable.