M. Arlidge - Pop Goes the Weasel

‘We’ve got a name, Ma’am.’

DC Sanderson was hurrying over, exaggeratedly avoiding treading on anything significant.

‘The car is owned by a Christopher Reid. He lives in Woolston with a Jessica Reid and daughter, Sally Reid.’

‘How old is the daughter?’

‘She’s a baby,’ Sanderson replied, wrong-footed by the question. ‘Eighteen months, I think.’

Helen’s heart sank further. This was her duty now – to inform the living of the dead. If the victim was Christopher Reid, she hoped against hope that he had been brought here against his will. She knew this was unlikely, but still the idea that a guy with a young wife and child would abandon them for a sweaty tussle in a car with a prostitute seemed ridiculous to Helen. Could there have been another reason why he was lured here?

‘See if you can get a picture of Christopher Reid that we can compare with our victim. If this is Christopher we need to tell his family before the press do it for us.’

Sanderson hurried off to do Helen’s bidding. Helen’s gaze flitted beyond her to the police tape fluttering in the breeze. As yet they had avoided detection, the scene undisturbed by press. Helen was surprised, particularly by the absence of Emilia Garanita. She seemed to have half the uniformed officers in her pocket and was always excited by a juicy murder. But not in this case. Helen afforded herself a small smile – Emilia must be losing her touch.

‘I had my head ripped off the last time I was in here.’

Emilia Garanita leaned back in her chair, enjoying the rare luxury of being in the nerve centre of Southampton Central. It wasn’t often you were personally summoned to the Detective Superintendent’s office.

‘I don’t think I was Detective Superintendent Whittaker’s favourite person. How is he doing these days?’ she continued, failing to hide the gleeful malice that lay behind her enquiry.

‘You’ll find I’m a rather different character,’ Ceri Harwood responded. ‘In fact that’s why I asked you to come here.’

‘A girl-to-girl chat?’

‘I wanted to put things on a different footing. I know in the past the relationship between the press and some of my officers has been combustible. And that you have often felt cut out of things. That doesn’t help anyone, so I wanted to tell you face to face that things will be different now. We can help each other to help ourselves.’

Emilia said nothing, trying to work out if she was for real. New bosses always said this when they arrived, then got on with the job of frustrating the local press at every turn.

‘How different?’ she demanded.

‘I want to keep you informed of major developments and harness your reach to help us further our investigations. Starting with the Empress Road murder.’

Emilia raised an eyebrow – so this wasn’t going to be flannel after all.

‘I’ll have a name for you soon. And you will be given all pertinent details of the crime. Plus we are setting up a dedicated hotline, which I would like you to major on in your next edition. It’s imperative that we get any potential witnesses to come forward as soon as possible.’

‘What’s so special about this murder?’

Harwood paused a moment before answering.

‘It was a particularly brutal killing. The person who did this is highly dangerous, possibly with mental health problems. As yet we don’t have a physical description, which is why we need your eyes and ears. It could make all the difference, Emilia.’

Harwood smiled as she said her name, appearing every inch the confidential friend.

‘Have you spoken to DI Grace about this?’ Emilia countered.

‘DI Grace is on board. She knows we’re running a different ship now.’

‘No more diversions? No more lies?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Harwood replied, her broad smile breaking out once again. ‘I’ve got a feeling you and I can do business together, Emilia. I do hope I won’t be disappointed.’

The meeting was over. Emilia rose without having to be asked, impressed by what she’d seen. Harwood was a smart operator and seemed to have Grace’s measure. It felt like a sea change and perhaps it was.

Emilia had the distinct impression that she was going to have fun with this one.

‘So what are we looking at?’

DC Fortune yawned as he spoke, the noise echoing round the MIT office. He and Charlie were an island in the empty room, two lonely figures surrounded by a mass of papers.

‘Well, Brookmire Health and Wellbeing Centre is obviously a knocking shop, but it’s a classy one,’ Charlie replied. ‘I’ve never seen one that’s so well run and discreet before. It has a roster of attractive, experienced girls, all of whom are regularly health-checked. You can book an appointment online and they already have some sort of link-up with the cruise companies. They send shuttle buses down there to pick up clients the minute the boats come in. They describe the services they offer as holistic health services, but here’s the real beauty. If you pay with a credit card, it appears on your statement as stationery. So the wife will never find out and even better you can put it through on expenses. You don’t even have to pay for the girls yourself.’

‘And you found all this out from one interview?’ replied Fortune, impressed in spite of himself.

‘If you know the questions to ask, people can be surprisingly helpful.’

Charlie couldn’t help a note of smugness – the smugness of superior experience – creeping into her voice.

‘Have you got anywhere on the list I gave you?’

Edina, Charlie’s reluctant snitch at Brookmire, had furnished her with the names of all the girls currently working there.

‘Getting there. A lot of them have been bussed straight from Poland via the docks, some are students from the local universities, but several others – including our victim – seem to have been poached off the streets.’

‘Tarted up and relaunched at Brookmire?’

‘Why not? It’s safer, and by the look of Alexia’s flat well paid too.’

‘Edina suggested that Alexia was walking the streets for the Campbell family before joining Brookmire. Any of the other girls?’

‘Yup, the Campbells had lost a few to Brookmire. Anderson’s lot too.’

Charlie had a sinking feeling. Prostitution wars were never pretty and it was always the girls that suffered, not the people who ran them.

‘So did the Campbells kill Alexia to make a point?’

‘Makes sense. Not that we can prove it.’

‘Anything else?’

DC Fortune had been waiting for this, keeping his trump card up his sleeve until the appropriate moment.

‘Well, I chased Brookmire through Companies House and HMRC. Took a bit of doing, lots of shell companies and foreign-based holdings, but in the end I traced it back to Top Line Management, an “events company” owned by a certain Sandra McEwan.’

Charlie should have known. Sandra McEwan – or Lady Macbeth as she was affectionately known – had been involved in prostitution and racketeering in Southampton for over thirty years – ever since she’d allegedly killed her own husband to take over his crime empire. She was driven and fearless – she’d already survived three stabbings – but she was also smart and imaginative. Had she taken prostitution to the next stage with Brookmire, provoking her rivals into a deadly response?

‘Well done, Lloyd. Good work.’

It was the first time she’d used his Christian name and it had the desired effect. He muttered a shy thank-you and Charlie smiled. Perhaps they were going to make a good team after all.