Dead Tomorrow

‘You’re a police officer, Bella. We can never have too much information.’

She smiled, then said, ‘Vlad Cosmescu.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘By name. He’s a pimp. Was active a few years ago when I was on brothels. He’s a kind of gatekeeper for Romanian, Albanian and other eastern European contraband. Drugs, pirated videos, cigarettes, you name it. He’s been a Person of Interest for the drugs teams for years, but I heard he always managed to keep out of trouble himself. Interesting that he’s still around.’ She made a note on her pad, then said breezily, ‘Right! One down. There are only about twenty-eight more brothels in Brighton to cover before we’re done. How’s your stamina?’

With a baby needing feeding every few hours, around the clock, probably a lot better than my libido at this point, he thought.

‘My stamina? Terrific!’

71

It was just gone seven in Bucharest and Ian Tilling had promised Cristina that he would be home early tonight. It was their tenth wedding anniversary and for a rare treat they had booked a table at their favourite restaurant, for a feast of traditional Romanian food.

He had developed a liking for the heavy, meat-based diet of his adopted country. All except for two specialities, cold brain and cubes of lard, which Cristina loved, but he still could not stomach, and doubted he ever would.

He looked up at the useless clock hooked to the huge noticeboard on the wall in front of his desk. time is money was printed on the face, but there were no numerals, making it easy to be an hour out either way. Pinned next to it was a splayed-out woman’s fan, which had been there for so long he couldn’t remember who had put it up, or why. Below it, sandwiched between several government pamphlets for the homeless, was a sheet of paper bearing his favourite quotation, from Mahatma Gandhi: First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

That summed up his seventeen years in this strange but beautiful city, in this strange but beautiful country. He was winning. Step, by step, by step. Little victories. Kids and sometimes adults saved from the streets, and housed here in Casa Ioana. Before he left, he would do his rounds of the little dormitory rooms, as he did every night. He planned to take with him the photographs of the three teenagers Norman Potting had sent him, to see if any of the faces jogged someone’s memory. It had been good to hear from that old bugger. Really good to feel involved in a British police inquiry once more. So good, he was determined to deliver what he could.

As he stood up, the door opened and Andreea came in, with a smile on her face.

‘Do you have a moment, Mr Ian?’ the social worker asked.

‘Sure.’

‘I went to see Ileana, in Sector Four.’

Ileana was a former social worker at Casa Ioana who now worked in a placement centre in that sector, called Merlin.

‘And what did she say?’

‘She has agreed to help us, but she’s worried about being caught out. Her centre has been told not to talk to any outsider – and that includes even us.’

‘Why?’

‘The government is upset, apparently, about the bad press abroad on Romanian orphanages. There is a ban on visitors and on all photography. I had to meet her in a cafe. But she told me that one of the street kids has heard a rumour going around that if you are lucky, you can get a job in England, with an apartment. There is a smart woman you have to go and see.’

‘Can we talk to this kid? Do we have her name?’

‘Her name is Raluca. She is working as a prostitute at the Gara de Nord. She’s fifteen. I don’t know if she has a pimp. Ileana is willing to come with us. We could go tonight.’

‘Tonight, no, I can’t. How about tomorrow?’

‘I will ask her.’

Tilling thanked her, then fired off a quick email to Norman Potting, updating him on his progress today. Then he balled his fists and drummed them on his desk.

Yes! he thought. Oh yes! He was back in the saddle! He’d loved his days as a police officer and being involved now felt so damn good!

72

Lynn sat at her Harrier Hornets work station, aware it was eight at night, working through her call list, trying to make up for the time she had lost earlier today at home and then seeing Mal.

Her mother had been at the house earlier, then Luke had come over, so Caitlin had company – and, more crucially, someone to keep an eye on her. Even moronic Luke was capable of that.

Few of her colleagues were still at work. Barring a couple of stragglers, the Silver Sharks, Leaping Leopards and Denarii Demons work stations were all deserted. The COLLECTED BONUS POT sign was now reading ?1,150. No way she was going to get near it this week, the way things were progressing.

And her heart was not in it. She stared up at the photograph of Caitlin that was pinned to the red partition wall. Thinking.

One hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds would determine whether Caitlin lived or died. It was a huge sum and yet a tiny sum at the same time. That kind of money, and much more, passed through these offices every week.

A dark thought entered her mind. She dispelled it, but it returned, like the determined knock of a double-glazing salesman: People regularly stole money from their employers.

Every few days in the paper she would read about an employee in a solicitor’s office, or a hedge fund, or a bank, or any other kind of place which big sums passed through, who had been siphoning off money. Often, it had been going on for years. Millions taken, without anyone noticing.

All she needed was a lousy ?175,000. Peanuts, by Denarii’s standards.

But how could she borrow the money from here without anyone knowing? There were all kinds of controls and procedures in place.

Suddenly she saw a light flashing on her phone. Her direct line.

She answered it, thinking it might be Caitlin. But, to her dismay, it was her least favourite client of all, the ghastly Reg Okuma.

‘Lynn Beckett?’ he said, in his lugubrious voice.

‘Yes,’ she said stiffly.

‘You are working late, beautiful one. I am privileged to have connected to you.’

The pleasure’s all mine, she nearly said. But instead she answered, ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘here is the situation. I applied yesterday to buy myself a new motor car. I need wheels, you know, for my work, for my new company I am setting up, which will revolutionize the Internet.’

She said nothing.

‘Are you hearing me?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘I would still like to make beautiful sex with you. I would like to make love with you, Lynn.’

‘Do you understand that this call is being recorded for training and monitoring purposes?’

‘I understand that.’

‘Good. If you are calling to tell me you want to make a payment plan, I will listen. Otherwise I’m going to hang up, OK?’

‘No, please, listen. I was turned down, rejected, for the hire purchase yesterday. When I asked why they told me it was because Experian gave me a bad credit rating.’

‘Are you surprised?’ she retorted. Experian was one of the leading companies in the UK for providing credit ratings. All of the banks and finance houses used these companies to check out customers. ‘You don’t pay your debts – so what kind of credit rating do you expect?’

‘Well, listen, hear me out. I contacted Experian – I have rights under the Data Protection Act – and they have informed me it is your company that is responsible for this bad rating I have.’

‘There’s a simple solution, Mr Okuma. Enter into a payment plan with us and I can get that amended.’

‘Well, yes, of course, but it is not that simple.’

‘I think it is. What part of that do you not understand?’

‘Do you need to be so hostile to me?’

‘I’m very tired, Mr Okuma. If you would like to come back to me with a payment plan, then I will see what I can do with Experian. Until then, thank you and goodnight.’

She hung up.

Moments later, the light was flashing again. She ignored it and left the office to go home. But as she stepped out of the lift on the ground floor, she suddenly had the glimmer of an idea.

73

Roy Grace sat alone in his office, with the rising south-westerly wind shaking the windowpanes and rain falling. It was going to be another stormy night, he thought, with even the street lighting and the glow from the ASDA car-park lights dimmer than usual. It was cold too, as if the damp draught was blowing through the walls and into his bones. His watch told him it was five past eight.

He had excused Glenn Branson from this evening’s briefing. The DCs wife had agreed that he could come over and help bathe the kids and put them to bed – no doubt on the advice of her solicitor, he thought cynically.

He read carefully through the notes he had jotted down during the meeting, then glanced through the typed Lines of Enquiry notes. A phone line was winking, but it wasn’t his direct line so he left it for someone else to pick up – if there was anyone else in the building other than the ever-cheerful Duncan, one of the security guards downstairs on the front desk. It felt like the Marie Celeste up here, although he knew several of his team would be working long into the night in MIR One – in particular two typists and Juliet Jones, the HOLMES analyst.

Juliet was still occupied with her scoping exercise of all potentially relevant crimes, solved and unsolved, committed in the UK. It was an arduous, but essential task, comparable to fishing, Grace sometimes thought. Typing endless key words and phrases, searching for similar victims turning up elsewhere in the UK, or for any instances of organ theft. As of this evening, her trawl, which had been going on since Saturday, had yielded nothing.

During the past nine years, Grace had had many solitary hours to fill with just his own company, and he had been through one phase of educating himself on the history of detection and forensics.