Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

Then a woman appeared. She was short, in her mid-fifties, dressed in shell-suit trousers and wearing a blouse that revealed an acreage of cleavage. Her face, beneath a fringe of long brown hair, must have been pretty when she was younger and ten stone slimmer, Nick Nicholl thought.

‘DS Moy!’ she said in a little-girl voice. ‘Nice to see you. Always good to see you!’

‘Good evening, Joey. This is my colleague, DC Nick Nicholl,’ Bella replied curtly, a little harshly, Nick thought.

‘Nice to meet you, DC Nicholl,’ she said deferentially. ‘Nice name, Nick. I got a son called Nick, you know!’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Right.’

She led them through into a reception area that surprised Nick. He had been expecting to see, from images in books and films, a gilded, mirrored, velour-draped parlour. Instead he was in a tip of a room, with two battered sofas, a cluttered desk on which sat a steaming, opened pot-noodle carton with a plastic fork sticking out of it, an array of grimy-looking mugs and several unemptied ashtrays, overflowing with butts. An old phone sat on the desk, alongside an elderly-looking fax machine. On the wall above he saw a price list.

‘Can I offer either of you a drink? Coffee, tea, Coca-Cola?’ She sat back down, glanced at her pot-noodle meal, but left it steaming, half eaten.

‘No, we’re fine,’ Bella said stiffly, to Nicholl’s relief as he stared again at the grimy mugs.

There was an unwritten understanding between the city’s brothels and the police that, provided those running them did not use under-age or trafficked girls, they were left alone – subject to them allowing random, unannounced inspections from police officers. Most brothel owners and managers, including this woman, respected this, but Bella had learned never to let anyone confuse tolerance with friendship.

She showed the woman, Joey, the three e-fit photographs.

‘Have you seen any of these people before?’

She studied the picture of the dead girl closely, then each of the two boys and shook her head.

‘No, never.’

‘How many girls do you have here this evening?’ Bella asked.

‘Five at the moment.’

‘Any new ones?’

‘Yes, two new arrivals from Europe. A girl called Anca and one called Nusha.’

‘Where are they from?’

‘Romania,’ she said, adding, ‘Bucharest,’ as if trying to show her willingness to be helpful.

‘Are they – um – free?’ said Bella, delicately.

‘I’ve seen their ID,’ the madame said anxiously. ‘Anca’s nineteen, Nusha’s twenty.’

There was a sharp, rasping ring. The woman’s eyes went up to a wall-mounted television monitor. On the poor-quality colour screen they could see a balding, bug-eyed man in a suit and tie.

She winked at the two police officers and said, a tad awkwardly, ‘One of my regulars. Would you like to see them separately or together?’

‘Separately,’ Bella said.

She ushered them hastily down the hall and through a doorway into a small room.

‘I’ll go and fetch them.’

She closed the door. And now Nick Nicholl noticed the smell Bella meant. There was a sharp, hygienic tang of disinfectant, mixed with a potent, cheap-smelling, musky scent. He stared in shock at the small, pink-painted room they were in. There was a double bed with a leopard-skin-patterned bedspread and a folded white towel, a television monitor on which a pornographic film was playing, a bedside table with some toiletries and a roll of lavatory paper on it, a wide mirror on the wall and a pile of erotic DVDs.

‘This is so tacky,’ he said.

Bella shrugged. ‘Normal. See what I mean about the smell?’

He nodded, breathing it in, slowly, again.

A few moments later the door opened again and Joey showed in a pretty girl, with long dark hair, dressed in a flimsy, pink see-through nightdress over dark underwear. She looked sullen and nervous.

‘This is Anca – I’ll be back!’ the madame mouthed, closing the door.

‘Hello, Anca,’ Bella said. ‘Take a seat.’ She indicated the bed.

The girl sat down, her eyes darting between them. She was holding a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, as if they were stage props.

‘We are police officers, Anca,’ Bella said. ‘Do you speak English?’

She shook her head. ‘Little.’

‘OK, we are not here to cause you trouble, do you understand?’

Anca stared blankly.

‘We just want to make sure you are all right. Are you happy to be here?’

Anca had been well briefed. She had been told by Cosmescu that the police might ask questions. And she had been warned of the consequences of saying anything negative.

‘Yes, is good here,’ she replied in a guttural accent.

‘Are you sure about that? Do you want to be here?’

‘Want, yes.’

Bella shot a glance at her colleague, who appeared to not know where to put himself.

‘You just came over from Romania? Is that right?’

‘Romania. Me.’

Bella showed her the three e-fits, then watched her face closely.

‘Do you recognize any of these?’

The Romanian girl looked at them, with no glimmer of a reaction, then shook her head. ‘No.’

She appeared, to Bella, to be telling the truth.

‘OK, what I want to know is who brought you here.’

Anca shook her head and delivered a line that Cosmescu had drummed into her. ‘No understand.’

Patiently, and very slowly, gesticulating with sign language, Bella asked her, ‘Who brought you here?’

The girl shook her head blankly.

Nick suddenly flipped through the pages of his notebook for some moments, then stopped. Reading out aloud, slowly, in Romanian, he asked, ‘You have a contact here in England?’

Anca looked startled to hear her native language, however badly pronounced it was.

Bella looked equally astonished – and had no idea what he had said.

The girl shook her head.

Nick turned a page and looked at his notes. Then, harshly, he read out in Romanian, ‘If you are lying we will know. And we will send you back to Romania. Tell me the truth now!’

Startled, and looking scared, the girl said, ‘Vlad. His name.’

‘Vlad, what?’

‘Coz, er Cozma, Cozemec?’

‘Cosmescu?’ Bella suggested.

The girl was silent for some moments, looking at her with scared eyes. Then she nodded.

Twenty minutes later, after having interviewed both girls, they got back into the car.

Bella said, ‘Do you mind telling me what that was all about?’

‘I checked with the UKHTC.’

‘The what?’

‘The United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre. I wanted to establish where the girls were most likely to have come from. Romania was high on the list. And Romania was our brief.’

‘So you learned fluent Romanian in an afternoon?’

‘No, just the phrases I thought I might need.’

Bella grinned. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘Not as impressed as my wife will be – not – when she finds out where I spent my afternoon.’

‘Don’t all men visit brothels?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, fervently and indignantly. ‘Actually, no.’

‘You’ve really never been to one before?’

‘No, Bella,’ he said snarkily. ‘I really haven’t. Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘I’m not disappointed. It’s good to know there are some decent guys out there. I just don’t seem to be able to find one.’

‘Maybe that’s because my wife found the only one!’ he said.

Bella looked at him, at his thin, elongated, grinning face in the glare of the street light. ‘Then she’s a lucky woman.’

‘I’m the lucky one. What about you? You’re an attractive lady. You must have tons of opportunities.’