20
Anna turned about four corners before we hit Constitution Street again. I kept a look-out for any major drama on the street.
‘I hope Irina’s OK.’
Anna swerved to avoid an old guy on an unlit bike. ‘You think they might have got to her first?’
The Skoda was where we’d left it.
She slowed down. Through the rain-slicked windows I could see the silhouette of a body in the driving seat. It wasn’t moving.
I powered down my window. Irina raised her head and wound down hers.
Anna leant across me. ‘Irina, he was a trafficker.’
She got it straight away. ‘Was?’
‘We need to split up now. I’ll keep Lena’s weapon. I’m going to dump it. Will you be OK making your own way back?’
She gave me a dazzling smile and fired up the Skoda’s engine.
‘Nobody saw us or knows about us, OK?’
Irina nodded. She came out of her space and stayed behind us until the next junction. Then she peeled off to the right.
I quizzed the Beamer’s dash. ‘Half a tank. Will that get us to the ferry?’ We had to get out of this place, but I wanted to avoid the airport. Ships are less secure and easier to get onto than planes.
‘It’s two hours maybe, not far.’
‘We’ll give the hotel a miss.’
‘I’ll call them later and they’ll bill me. What about the Polo?’
‘We just leave it.’ An oncoming vehicle’s headlights splashed across her face as she concentrated on the road. The rain was heavier now. The wipers sounded like a drumbeat.
‘And the pistol?’
‘I’m going to keep it as long as I can - at least until Odessa.’
We hit a pothole and the Beamer’s skirting scraped the tarmac.
‘What did Mr Lover Man say about Lilian?’
‘She’s gone to Copenhagen. A place called Christiania. Have
you heard of it?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a commune inside the city. Slobo said she needed to get
away for a while. She was pissed off with her father.’
‘Does that mean he knew who Tarasov is?’
Anna kept one hand on the wheel while she fished in her pockets for cigarettes. ‘I don’t think so. He just said “her father”. But he cut off her Facebook, and he moved her along with a new ID. She may think she’s taking a break in Hippie Land, but I think Slobo had other ideas.’
I powered down my window a quarter of the way as she lit
up. Spots of rain peppered my face. ‘Do we have an address?’ ‘He didn’t know it. Or if he did, he wasn’t telling me.’ I sparked up my BlackBerry. ‘What’s her new name?’
‘Nemova.’
‘How did she travel?’
She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘He didn’t say, but I didn’t ask. It wasn’t exactly coffee and chat.’
My screen lit up and showed four bars. I hit the time and date app. It took a second or two to load. I tapped in Julian’s number. There was a long tone and a short break as he began to receive the call. The green padlock icon would signal secure mode. It rang three times.
‘Nick?’
‘She’s been trafficked. She’s in Denmark. Some kind of commune, maybe. She’s got a new name. Lilian Nemova. I’ll spell: November - Echo - Mike - Oscar - Victor - Alpha. Worth checking the visa applications again?’
Julian didn’t answer immediately. He was probably still writing it all down. ‘I’ll get somebody on it. Then I need to inform Mr Tresillian.’
A deep growl cut in. ‘Already here, Julian. Now listen to me, Mr Stone. Excellent work. Go to Denmark. Find her. A contact and a safe-house will be arranged once you’ve discovered where she is.’ There was a pause. ‘A commune? A fucking commune? I didn’t even know they still existed. Do these people think the world owes them a fucking living?’
Jules and I weren’t sure who was meant to answer.
Tresillian filled in the gap. ‘Anyone got anything useful to say?’
‘I wouldn’t mind dropping out myself one day.’
The jokes still weren’t welcome. ‘Not on my watch, Mr Stone. Next time we hear from you I trust it will be good news.’
The phone went dead. Obviously Julian didn’t have anything to say. Or if he did, tough shit.
Before closing the BlackBerry down I shifted the cursor to the camera icon and clicked on ‘View Pictures’. I spent a few moments willing the minute Cyrillic script to magically translate itself into plain English and leap out at me. ‘I took these of the shipment stacked inside Tarasov’s factory. You see the stencilling on the nearest case? Can you read what it says?’
She zoomed in on each photograph in turn. ‘Just a series of numbers and letters - the product serial ID, maybe.’ She looked up. ‘Why not run them by Julian? He’ll be able to blow them up on a big screen.’
She wasn’t wrong. I thought of the one on the wall behind Tresillian’s head. And I thought of the look on Tresillian’s face when I’d asked about Lilian’s dad. ‘My orders were to steer well clear of Tarasov. And if the boss of bosses is listening in to Jules’s incoming calls …’
She squinted harder at the BlackBerry’s tiny display. ‘I can’t - no, hang on … here, in the corner …’
‘What?’
‘Some kind of shipping label.’
‘Russia?’
She zoomed in further. ‘Yes and no. It’s shipping to Moscow but it’s marked “for onward transit”. There’s an end-user company mentioned. I don’t recognize the name - but I know somebody who might.’ She pulled out her iPhone. ‘Is there anything else about Tarasov I should know?’
I couldn’t tell her. I didn’t know myself.
She pressed the speed dial. It didn’t sound like there were any pleasantries. The exchange was short. ‘He’ll call back when he’s done some digging.’
21
‘Anna?’
‘About an hour and a half, I think.’
‘No, not that. I was thinking about you, back in the flat. Those tears, the way you brought them on like that. What was that all about?’
‘It’s what I do, Nick. I get people to talk. I told him I was her sister. I told him I didn’t care what he was doing, why he was doing it, who he was doing it with. I just wanted her back.’ She flicked the stub of her latest cigarette out of the window. ‘Not that it got me far this time.’
The city was way behind us now. The arc of the BMW’s fullbeams cut into the darkness ahead.
‘How do you manage cry-on-demand? Do baby journalists have to go to acting school or something?’
‘Sort of. I learnt the trick from an American reporter in Bosnia. It came in handy sometimes at road-blocks.
