‘Like they all do. In a minibus. She and her sister who was with her, they had to pay quite a lot of money to come. She told me there was some sea on the way, the last part – she meant the Channel – and when they were in England they were taken from the minibus and were put into a trailer. She and her sister had been told by one of the other girls that they were not to be trained as models like they expected, but to become servants to rich people. They would be paid, but for a while everything they earned would be to pay the people who had brought them here. She thought she had already paid them, so she ran away. She ran away that night, but her sister was afraid to go with her. For my part, I think they were to be something else to rich men. You understand me?’
Wexford nodded. ‘When she ran away, where did she go?’
‘She had a cousin here, in London. She is married to an Englishman who found her through a – I don’t know how to say it – an agency? For dating? For looking for wives?’
‘I understand.’
‘Vladlena had no money. She hitch-hiked to London and she walked, she slept on the street, she begged. At last she found this woman, but she would let her stay only two nights. Her husband was not a nice man. He was old, forty years older than Vladlena’s cousin and this woman worked for him like a servant. It was not a happy situation. But the cousin helped her find a room and told her how she could be a cleaner.’
Such stories were not uncommon. Wexford found himself wishing that David Goldberg had obeyed his instinct, taken the plunge and offered to marry Vladlena. But he hadn’t and now it was too late. Should he advise Mrs Kataev to report Vladlena as a missing person? Probably not. Vladlena herself would be too frightened of the authorities to answer such a call.
‘Do you know the cousin’s name and address?’
‘I don’t,’ said Irina Kataev. ‘Even if I did it would be no use. Vladlena wouldn’t go back there. The husband, the old man, made a – I don’t know how to say it …’
‘An unwelcome advance to her?’
‘That is it exactly. An unwelcome advance.’
‘Can you remember her sister’s name?’
‘Vladlena called her Alyona.’
‘Would you spell that, please?’
‘A-L-Y-O-N-A.’
He walked back up the High Road, looking for a street which would cut through to West Hampstead. Someone had told him that in days gone by Irish immigrants had settled in Kilburn and in the name ‘Biddy Mulligan’s’ on a pub there was evidence of that, but now it seemed that people from the Middle East and Asia had overtaken them. Women in burkas and some in the all-obscuring
Wexford thought of the story of Tithonus, the shepherd boy whom Eos, goddess of the dawn fell in love with. She asked the gods to make him immortal and her wish was granted, but she failed to ask them to give him eternal youth. Tithonus grew old while she remained ever-young, he grew bent and wrinkled, shrivelled like the man in the poster. At last Eos took pity on him and turned him into the cicada he now so closely resembled. No reinvigorating massages in those days, Wexford reflected as he turned into Iverson Road.
At police headquarters Tom Ede suggested to him that they have lunch together. Not in the canteen, if Wexford didn’t mind, but in a small French restaurant in West End Lane. It was the first invitation as such Wexford had received from Tom and he felt gratified.
‘It won’t turn out to be La Punaise, will it?’ he said, but Tom had forgotten all about the disguised pin number.
Lunch, though French, was to be abstemious. Tom didn’t drink and though he offered Wexford a glass of wine, he made it plain that to see a companion drinking alcohol while he had to abstain put him under too much of a strain. ‘I wasn’t exactly an alcoholic,’ Tom said, ‘but I was heading that way. The quack said my liver wasn’t all it ought to be so I took the plunge and gave up altogether. I had my faith, of course, and that helped. It always does.’
Calling a doctor a quack came high on Wexford’s list of undesirable expressions, but he only smiled and said of course he wouldn’t have any wine. Tom’s faith? Like most people Wexford was made slightly embarrassed by mention of God or religion, a prejudice he struggled vainly against. Fortunately the subject was changed by his telling Tom about Mildred Jones and Vladlena and David Goldberg and Mrs Kataev. Tom nodded reflectively while pursing his lips and pushing them forward in a way which might equally mean disbelief or acceptance.
‘What evidence have you got that this Vlad – whatever is the girl in the patio tomb?’
Wexford drank some water that tasted even more insipid than usual. ‘She’s the right sort of age. She worked in the area in two places. She must have known it well. It’s possible that at some point between two and three years ago she found out what was in the tomb – that is that three bodies were in there.’
‘So blackmail, you mean?’
‘I suppose I do.’ Now it was so clearly expressed Wexford found he disliked the idea. He had come – surely unwisely – to have tender feelings for Vladlena. But the poor girl – might not anyone in her unfortunate position have recourse to obtaining money by threats, if she could?
‘So you’re saying we should try and find her?’
‘I think Lucy or Miles should come along with me or I go along with them to talk to Sophie Baird. She’s the woman who tried to find her for David Goldberg.’
Tom nodded without much enthusiasm. Suddenly Wexford thought of all the pleasant and rewarding lunches he had enjoyed with Mike Burden in the past. ‘Better be Lucy, I suppose,’ Tom said. ‘A woman to talk to a woman.’
