Питер Ловси - The Finisher

“Are there people inside?”

“A lot, sir. Twenty or more crammed in, poor devils. They look done in already and they’re supposed to be working a twelve-hour day. We’ll be transferring them shortly to a minibus.”

“Foreign?”

“Trafficked.”

“Any idea where from?”

“Whichever language it is, I don’t recognise it.”

“Who’s the guy in cuffs?”

“The driver, British. Small fry, we think.”

“Is there a gangmaster?”

“If there is, we haven’t got him yet.”

“Was anyone with them when they walked out to the van?”

The constable shook his head. “It’s weird. They could have escaped, any of them, and they didn’t try.”

“That’s down to conditioning,” Diamond said. “Their brains work differently from yours and mine. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve been living in that house for days without a gangmaster.”

“I don’t get it.”

“They don’t need to be whipped into submission like slaves picking cotton. They believe working for a pittance at the waste-disposal place is better than being sent back to the hell they came from, so they go to work and return from work and eat and sleep and start the same cycle again.”

“I’d make a run for it.”

“You don’t know what it’s like where they came from.”

“That’s for sure.”

“How do you come to be involved in this? You’re not from ROCU.”

“They’re running the show, sir, but they used our armed response team. We were notified last night. Very hush-hush.”

“I can believe that. Is anyone left in the house where this lot were living?”

“I saw a team from Bristol go in. It’s a big operation. Simultaneous raids at several addresses.”

He stepped up Duke Street to the house and this time had to show his ID. “Are you from ROCU, sir?” the sergeant with the Heckler & Koch asked.

“Working with them.” A stretch of the truth, but forgivable, even if Jones might not agree. “Who’s inside?”

“The search team and one very large lady in a wheelchair. I can’t think how she fits into this.”

Diamond couldn’t think how Beattie fitted into anything. “She doesn’t know it, but she’s the respectable face of the scam, living in the first flat you come to. She’s sharp. She’ll make a key witness.”

“They’re taking her to headquarters. They’ve sent for a taxi with wheelchair access. I’m looking forward to seeing the driver’s face.”

“The small problem of getting her up the steps? Do they know they’ll need some kind of hoist?”

“Like a crane?”

“Be kind.” Diamond looked over the railings into the basement. “Will I get shot to bits if I go down there?”

“They finished their check for suspicious persons, sir. There was just the wheelchair woman. They’re waiting for the crime scene unit now. If you like, I can radio to say you’re coming down.”

“Please do.”

Steadier with his footwork than the last time, he picked his way down the steps and got the musty smell he recalled from the previous visit. Almost every bit of rubbish blown through an open-ended street in Georgian Bath ends up in basement wells. Mouldering paper and plastic anchored in dust and leaves was heaped up at either end. A few hardy weeds had sprouted from cracks in the stone. No one from this flat had cleaned up in months, even though there were three wheelie bins along one side.

After stepping through the open door he didn’t get far. Beattie was occupying most of the corridor. “Another one of them,” she said with distaste and then saw who it was and changed her tone. “Oh, it’s you. Did you arrange all this, smashing doors down and treating the place like it’s some cop show on the TV? I don’t know what the landlord’s going to say.”

“Not my doing, Beattie,” he said, which wasn’t strictly true. “You’ll get a nice taxi ride out of it.”

“What’s it all about? Has one of the tenants misbehaved?”

“Nobody knows for sure. They want your opinion.”

“I told you everything I know when you were here last time. They’re all good blokes.”

He told her he would see what else he could find out, giving him a reason to squeeze past the chair and move along the corridor to where three of the search team were in conversation outside the damaged open door of Pinto’s room.

“Found much?” he asked, eager to know whether their search had yielded more than his and Ingeborg’s.

“Sod all, really,” one said. “This was obviously the gangmaster’s drum, as you see.”

“The alleged gangmaster,” another said.

“Fuck that. He’s dead. He was killed running the half marathon. I can call him what I bloody like.”

“Pity he’s dead,” the second man said. “We’d have got a load of information from the tosser, wouldn’t we Jimmy?”

“He was smart enough not to leave his phone or wallet here.” Jimmy had a voice and believed in using it. “He must have owned a laptop or some such. Without phone records and card transactions we’ll never get a case to stick. None of that stuff was on his person when he was killed, so where is it?”

Just what Diamond was here to find out.

Jimmy’s words hadn’t been aimed directly at anyone. They were more of an appeal to the gods in general — or whichever god looks after frustrated policemen.

Diamond was no god, but he had a suggestion. “Has anyone checked with the marathon organisers?”

“What would they know about it?”

“They’re sure to have some unclaimed bags.”

“Why would he leave a bag with them when he lives so near? The runners’ village was barely a stone’s throw from here.”

“Safer,” Diamond said. “He wouldn’t trust the people here.”

“We can mention that to the boss.”

Diamond looked through the doorway at the seduction salon, as he thought of it, where Pinto had entertained the women he brought back. To his eye, it was as sexy as a car crash, but it was Pinto’s private knocking shop as well as his office, sitting room, music room, bedroom and breakfast room. The scumbag had spent a large amount of his time here. Surely it held more clues. “Mind if I step inside?”

Jimmy shrugged. “I guess one more set of shoe prints is neither here nor there.”

When Diamond had last been here, he and Ingeborg had done what the search team had done — looked for the hardware that stored the data so vital to modern evidence-gathering. Pinto must have had access to the internet to function as a gangmaster.

Try a different approach, he told himself.

Instead of searching for equipment that wasn’t here, why not look more closely at things that were?

Modern slavery was a world-wide twenty-first-century crime utilising con-tricks that had worked since Eve was persuaded to pick the forbidden fruit. The gangs recruited vulnerable people in places abroad where they had no hope of betterment and offered them jobs and places to live in more advanced countries where casual labour was in demand. The traffickers demanded a fee, of course, and the transport was basic and illegal. On arrival, the victims were taken to open a bank account to receive their wages. They were issued with debit cards that the slavers took over. As the cash flowed in, it was creamed off. Any objections were met with the answer that the rent had to be funded and the debt repaid.

All the unfortunates under Pinto’s charge would have gone through something similar. He must have controlled twenty or more bank accounts. Each came with its password, pin and security number. Remembering so many details wasn’t possible. Put them on computer and you run the risk of being hacked and losing the lot.

Diamond had trouble managing his own account data along with all the other passwords and pins he needed to function. He kept his in a notebook he was always updating.