I leaned in to Gaishe. ‘Here’s how it’s going to play out, Eric: you’re going to tell me how you know Sam Wren, how he got involved with you two, what happened when he did and how it all ended. You’re going to tell me all that. And when we’re done with that, you’re going to tell me about the girl. The girl you killed.’
Panic in his face, and then a stark realization about what he’d done. After that, his smell hit me: sweat and dirt and cigarette smoke.
I glanced at Wellis.
There was a different expression on his face now. He couldn’t hear what I was saying to Gaishe, couldn’t see Gaishe’s face either. He had no control any more. He couldn’t order Gaishe around. He couldn’t tell him what to say. He couldn’t influence him, or threaten him, or manipulate him. He was helpless.
‘How do you two know Sam Wren, Eric?’
Gaishe glanced at me, wide-eyed and terrified. He looked like he was about to say something, but his eyes strayed to Wellis and he stopped himself. ‘I … I can’t …’
‘You can’t what?’
‘Ade will …’
‘Ade’s tied up on the other side of the room,’ I said. ‘Ade’s not in control here any more. I am.’
Gaishe swallowed. ‘I, uh …’
‘What do you want to know?’
A voice from behind me. I turned and looked back at Wellis. It was just how I’d imagined it going: by stepping in, he could control what information was revealed. Gaishe would give me everything he knew – but everything Gaishe knew wasn’t everything Wellis knew. So it was a trade-off: Gaishe would be easier to pick apart, but Wellis was the man who’d give me Sam Wren.
‘What do you want to know?’ Wellis repeated.
I left Gaishe facing the wall.
‘Start at the beginning.’
‘I went to see him.’
‘About what?’
He eyed me for a second, a natural defence mechanism kicking in. He never told his business to anyone. ‘I had some money – I thought the stock market might be a good place to start. So I went along and asked him to invest it for me.’
I smiled. ‘You’re an investor – that’s what you’re telling me?’
‘It’s true.’
‘Don’t bullshit me, Wellis.’
‘The cops were sniffing around my business,’ he said, his voice even, ‘and if they ever kicked down my door, I needed to look legit. I needed a legitimate source of income. So I went to see Wren.’
‘Why him?’
‘Someone I knew told me about him. This guy said Wren was in finance.’
‘Who was the guy?’
‘Just a guy who I do some business with.’
I looked at him.
He shrugged. ‘Believe what you want to believe.’
‘So what’s your business?’
‘Transportation.’
‘You mean trafficking?’
He shrugged again. ‘Call it whatever you like.’
‘Is that how that woman ended up in your loft? A little present to yourself?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘It doesn’t bother you?’ I asked him.
‘What?’
‘The lives you’re ruining?’
‘I don’t lose a lot of sleep over it,’ he said, his face a blank. He wasn’t even trying to coax a reaction out of me. It was just a statement of fact. ‘You can’t call up an escort agency and ask for a thirteen-year-old. There’s not a number for that in the Yellow Pages. So I run a service for people.’
‘You’re talking about paedophiles.’
He could see the disgust in my face. ‘I make sure we vet them first, if that makes you feel any better. First time someone new gets in touch, we take a look at them, we get their name, just in case there’s any blowback.’ He glanced across to where Gaishe was still sitting, facing the wall. ‘The girl was for Eric, anyway. She got off the boat from Romania, or Bulgaria, or wherever the fuck she was from, and started earning straight away. She was a right goer. Tight little body. We had a few boys who liked her. Eric was one of them.’
‘You like them young too?’
‘She was sixteen. That’s legal where I come from.’
‘So you don’t mind raping the legal ones?’
He didn’t say anything.
I could hardly bear to look at him now. ‘What about Sam?’
‘I told you. I had some money, I wanted the business to look kosher. We were earning a lot of cash and it was getting hard to hide it under the floorboards.’
‘You went to see him.’
‘Like I said.’
‘And what happened?’
‘What do you think happened? I gave him some money and he invested it. Three weeks later, he’d made me a small profit. So I gave him more, and he invested it, and so on and so forth.’ He sniffed. Rolled his face against his shoulder, trying to dislodge a chip of glass stuck to his cheekbone. ‘What, you don’t think I can carry that off? You got a good look at my house earlier, but you missed my wardrobes. In my wardrobes I’ve got expensive clothes. Good suits. Good shoes. That’s where my money goes. Not on the house, or a car, or holidays in the Bahamas. In my business, none of that shit matters. It’s all about appearances. If you look good, people will believe anything.’
‘And you had Sam fooled?’
A movement in his face. But no reply.
‘Wellis?’
He glanced at me and then away. ‘He did due diligence on me and that was fine. I’d put everything into place in the months before I went to him, so I sailed through that. I’ve been doing this a long time, so I know what to hide, and what to keep on show.’ He pursed his lips. Dispassionate. Detached. ‘But Wren was a clever boy. He had this natural suspicion. I could see that from the start.’
‘He found out about you?’
‘He found a hole in my story. A payment I’d made. He traced it forward to the recipient, and then he found out who the recipient was. And then it all fell apart.’
‘Who was the recipient?’
‘One of the guys that brings people in for me.’
‘How did Sam know who he was?’
‘He used a CRB check, I imagine.’
‘The guy had a record?’
‘Correct.’
A noise outside.
I got down off the desk and walked to the doors of the warehouse. At the far end, a homeless man was trying to get to his feet inside one of the tunnels. An oil drum had tipped over, spilling dirt and ash all over the floor. When I got back, Wellis hadn’t moved, but Gaishe was looking over his shoulder towards us. I told him to turn around, then seated myself on the desk again.
‘What are you gonna do with us, Ben?’ Wellis said.
‘Do?’
‘You gonna kill us? You don’t seem the murdering type to me.’
