witness missing.'
'Right,' Ramsden said. 'And from everything we know, this Zoukas family, they're not just crooks, they're fully fledged gangsters. Bandits. Not so long back, they were shooting up the hills of northern bloody Albania like Wild Bill Hickok.' He laughed. 'So much for the benefits of the multicultural society.'
'What's that got to do with it?'
Ramsden scoffed. 'Wholesale bloody immigration. Thought the economy of this poor benighted country depended on it. Making us richer all round.'
'For God's sake, Mike!'
'Well, it's not the bloody Krays out there, is it?'
'No, but it could be.'
'Christ!' Ramsden shook his head angrily. 'You just don't see it, do you? Or rather, you do see it, but you don't want to admit it.'
Karen started to walk away.
'No, wait,' Ramsden said. 'Come on. Look at the facts.' She stopped again and turned. 'Mike, save me the lecture, okay?'
Ramsden would not be deterred. 'Who's running heroin in this country? London anyway? Turks. Turkish Kurds. Ninety percent.'
'Oh, Mike!'
'Crack cocaine, Hackney, Peckham, it's your brothers from Jamaica. Extortion, people smuggling, gambling, mostly down to the Chinese. Hong Kong Chinese. And prostitution, trafficking in girls, it's the bloody Albanians. There. That's your multicultural fucking society.'
Karen was furious, blazing. 'So what's wrong, Mike? Your poor average white British villain can't get a proper piece of it?'
'Yeah, right.'
'Bloody asylum seekers, come over here, take our houses, take our jobs and now they're preventing us from making a decent criminal living. That the picture, as you see it?'
'You got it.' Ramsden grinned broadly. 'On the button.'
Karen whirled away, through the Incident Room and into her office. A few moments later, he was there, leaning forward across her desk.
'Fuck off, Mike.'
'You've said that before.'
'And I'll say it again.'
'Just had a call from Leyton police station. Alexander Bucur, Esquire, back in residence. They think most probably since yesterday, but they're not sure.'
Karen's eyes brightened. 'You've told Anil?'
Ramsden straightened. 'He's on his way.'
Alexander Bucur opened the front door of the house nervously and then only after Khan had identified himself; he had a tube of glue in his left hand and glasses on the end of his nose, which he adjusted to examine Khan's warrant card.
'Please,' Bucur said, 'come in. Come upstairs.'
At the centre of the table was a model Bucur was in the early stages of making: the framework of a building with a long, sloping roof. Around the table edge were several cutting tools and pieces of balsa wood, with matchsticks, pipe cleaners, cellophane, and tissue paper in open boxes.
'What's all this?' Khan asked pleasantly.
Bucur smiled. 'My architecture project. It should have been finished weeks ago.'
'You've been away.'
'Yes.'
'We've been trying to find you.'
'Yes, I'm sorry. I was afraid. I-' He shook his head, as if it were difficult to explain.
'Why don't you sit down?' Khan suggested. 'Tell me what happened.'
'All right.' Bucur pulled up a chair and Khan followed suit.
'I'm not sure where to start,' Bucur said.
'Detective Inspector Kellogg,' Khan said, 'she came here on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 6.'
'Yes. I telephoned her. Two men had been to the flat looking for Andreea. Andreea Florescu. I think they were the same men who'd threatened her before. She panicked when I told her and she was going to run away without really knowing where, and that's why I called the inspector. To talk to her, make her see reason. But by the time she arrived, Andreea had gone.'
'I see.' Khan made a note. 'So DI Kellogg never got to speak to her?'
'No. But she took it seriously; I could tell. She was worried about what these men might do. She made me promise to call her if I saw them again-' Bucur broke off and looked at Khan. 'The next thing I knew, she had been killed. Shot. I was sitting there, where you are now, early the next morning, watching the television news. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to do. Andreea was missing, and the inspector was dead. I was frightened for my own life. I should have gone to college, as usual, but instead I just packed some things and left. As soon as I could.'
'Where did you go?'
Sweat was beading Bucur's forehead. 'To stay with some friends first, in north London. Kilburn. But then I went to Cornwall. Andreea has a friend there, you see, from our country, Nadia. She works in a hotel. Andreea had spoken of working there also. I thought that was where she might have gone.'
'And had she?'
'No. Nadia had heard from her, though. A phone call. The same day she left here. Saying she was coming to see her.'
'When? Did she say when?'
'Soon. She said soon. In a day or two. But she never arrived. And when Nadia tried her mobile, there was no reply.' He shrugged. 'With me it is the same ever since she left. No signal. Nothing.'
'And you've no idea where else she might have gone? No other friends?'
Bucur shook his head. 'I have asked-people at the hotel where she worked, a few others. No one knows anything.'
'Could she have gone home?'
'Home to Romania?'
'Yes.'
'I don't think so. Her mother telephoned here three, no, four days ago. Her little girl-she has a daughter, Monica-she wanted to speak to her. I said Andreea had gone away for a short while with a friend. A holiday. I did not know what else to say.'
'Her mother hadn't heard from her either?'
'Not for some time.' Bucur pushed back his chair. 'I am worried something terrible has happened to her. One of the men who came looking for her-the Serb-he had threatened to kill her. That's why she was so afraid.'
'You said 'the Serb'?'
'Yes.'
'Why do you call him that? How do you know that's what he was?'
Bucur leaned forward. 'When I was describing him to Inspector Kellogg, she knew him. I don't know where from, of course, but she knew him. I think she said he was Serbian. Lazic. Ivan Lazic. I'm sure that was the name.'
'Lazic? L-A-Z-I–C?'
'Yes. He has a beard. Dark. And scar on his face. Here.' With his finger, Bucur drew a line slowly down the left side of his face.
Khan made a quick sketch in his book.
'If we want to get in touch with you again?'
'I shall be here.' He smiled. 'Running, it is no good.'
Let's hope you're right, Khan thought. He offered Bucur his hand. 'Thank you for all your help. If Andreea does
