The indicator clicked away. The Polo lurched across a pothole as we hit a small side road. I sat back and waited for Anna.
‘They’ve come with us.’
‘Any of them talking on a phone or radio?’
‘No.’
‘Good. They’re not setting an ambush. As long as we keep moving we’re OK for now. Every time we turn, see if they communicate.’
‘Who do you think they are? Secret police? Uni security?’
‘Did you get as far as mentioning Lilian’s name in the office?’
‘No. The woman was on the phone, face like thunder. She was probably getting the good news from the guy in the sweater.’
‘Could it be the university warning us off, or trying to find out who we are? Might be police, I guess - maybe somebody saw me checking out Lilian’s picture. They may be doing the same. Whatever, we need to bin them as fast as we can.’
‘How am I going to do that? Are we going to drive around in circles until we run out of fuel?’
‘Head back towards the hotel. Remember the supermarket across the road? Drive into the car park.’
We overtook an old guy with ladders roped to his bike as she worked her way back onto the main.
‘They’re with us.’
‘Normal speed. Nothing we can do about them. We’ve got to concentrate on that lard-arse in the photo. We need to find out who he is. Maybe she’s done a runner with him. It could be something as simple as that. Falling in love and all that sort of shit.’
‘How are you going to go back and check that out, Nicholas?’ She sounded annoyed. ‘You going to disguise yourself as a normal human being or something?’
‘Give Lena a call and tell her we’re on our way.’
I pulled out her iPhone and dialled the number. She was waffling away in Russian as we approached the multi-storey.
‘We want one on the ground floor if we can. In between a couple of parked cars.’
She drove under the height bar and into the gloom.
‘There, to the right - straight in.’
Anna swung the wheel. The Beamer followed us in and rolled to a halt. They only had two options: back out, park up and come back on foot, or come past us looking for a space. They couldn’t park close by because we’d have eyes-on. With luck, they’d have to carry on up to the next floor.
Anna slipped in between two minging old Skoda-type estate cars. The Beamer’s tyres screeched on the painted concrete as it carried on up the ramp.
She turned off the engine and started to get out. I gripped her arm. ‘Bring everything. This car’s history. We’re not coming back.’
We made for the pedestrian exit. There was no point checking behind. It was all about making distance and getting as many angles between us as we could.
We’d soon find out if they were following. I hoped not. There were a lot more of them than there were of us. And they were big fuckers.
9
17.05 hrs
Irina sat behind the desk. Lena collated documents and pictures for her visit to the mother of the girl in Barcelona. She was still trying to trace her. The address they’d been given was wrong. I could barely see them. The women were all smoking their cigarettes like they were one step away from the firing squad.
Anna brought them up to speed. ‘Nicholas heard rumours about one of the traffickers in London. His source said he was moving girls to the UK and had a contact at the university.’
‘Contact?’ Irina rested her hands on the mountain of box files in front of her. ‘What is his name?’
I shrugged. ‘I wasn’t given his name, but I was shown his picture. There’s a shot of him outside the faculty office.’
Lena was still gobbing off on her mobile.
‘We got chased out before we could find his name.’
She didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I’ll go and have a look.’
‘You sure?’
Of course she was. She’d done things that were a lot more dangerous.
‘When?’
‘As soon as possible. Now?’
‘Lena can drive me.’
‘OK. He’s overweight, with big frizzy hair. In one of the photos he’s kissing a girl. She’s blonde, dyed blonde.’
Lena closed down her mobile. ‘No problem. I’ll drop you off.’ She’d been listening to every word. She pulled another cigarette from her pack and stabbed it at us. ‘You want to stay here?’
‘If that’s OK.’
‘Of course.’
They started towards the door, arm in arm. Lena’s mobile kicked off again. She dug in her bag. ‘But please don’t leave. The office must never be unattended.’
Anna and I sat back and enjoyed a moment’s silence.
Eventually I stood up and went over to the stack of files on the desk.
10
We spent nearly an hour flicking through them. There wasn’t anything to check on a PC because there wasn’t a PC.
I was feeling rough.
Anna read my mind. ‘Up the stairs, you can’t miss it.’
I followed her instructions and dry-swallowed a couple of Smarties. Fuck the water: I didn’t trust anything out of a tap in this neck of the woods.
Anna was kneeling by the fax machine when I got back, sifting through sheets of paper. ‘Maybe the police don’t want them to be online. It would make Lena’s job too easy.’
I picked up a box file labelled 2005 and discarded it. Our target wouldn’t have left school by then.
‘I bet it’s Lena who doesn’t want to be online. Cell phones are giving the police enough information already.’
Anna brought another pile of documents to the desk for me to rifle through. ‘You OK, Nicholas?’
‘Fine. I was knackered from the flight and we haven’t exactly been dossing around since then, have we?’ I paused. ‘All this smoke’s not helping.’
Anna scrutinized the desk top. ‘I’ve been thinking, Nicholas. Maybe we could go away together … Spring is so beautiful in Moscow.’
‘What about CNN?’
‘CNN can wait. Maybe I could show you the White Nights in St Petersburg.’ Her face lit up. ‘It’s such high latitude the sun doesn’t sink below the horizon. You can walk along the river in daylight, even at two in the morning.’
‘Sounds like an insomniac’s paradise.’
We sat in silence for a while. I didn’t know what more to say. Did I look that bad? Was it that obvious?
