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Category:
Crime
Publisher: Crooked Cat Publishing
ISBN-10: 1909841137
Type: Fiction
Pages: 291
Copyright: November 17, 2013
ISBN-13: 9781909841130
Price: $3.67 (eBook)
Another grim crime for D.I. Paolo Storey.
Crime Writers Association 2014 Ian Fleming Award Entry
Help me, Mama...
Detective Inspector Paolo Storey is determined to shut down the syndicate flooding Bradchester’s streets with young prostitutes.
When a child is murdered, Paolo becomes aware of a sinister network of abusers spread across Europe, and spanning all levels of society. But Joey, the shadowy leader of the gang, always seems to be one step ahead in the chase.
Has Paolo come up against a criminal he cannot defeat?
Excerpt
Chapter One – 6th October (early morning)
Joey held the blade against Edona’s neck. A tiny line of red trickled down, collecting on the edge of her blue sweatshirt. He didn’t want to kill her. She’d always been one of his best money earners, still looking like a schoolgirl even though she was almost twenty.
“Make the call,” he whispered. “Make the call and you can live.”
He could feel her trembling against his body as he pulled her closer.
“Make the call,” he repeated.
She nodded and dialled. Her fingers shook so much Joey wondered if she’d hit the right buttons. He’d know when the call was answered. His head was close enough to hers to hear the ringing tone and then the copper’s sleepy voice.
“Storey.”
The call had obviously woken him. Not surprising. It was five in the morning.
Joey released the knife just enough to enable Edona to speak. If she tried anything stupid, he’d put an end to her before she had chance to betray him again.
“It’s me. I …”
Joey touched the knife gently against Edona’s neck; a reminder of what they’d agreed.
“I’m listening,” Storey said. “What have you got for me?”
“Some girls, they come tonight.”
“Where? What time?”
“I not know what time, but they bring them to motorway. Change van in car park outside restaurant and shop.”
“Tell me who is bringing them in. Who are you working for? I can protect –”
Joey took the phone and ended the call.
“What a kind man! He wants to protect you. It’s a bit too late for that, Edona. I wonder what else you’ve told him. I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out. Not that it matters to you now, but I’ve always been very fond of you. What I have to do to you breaks my heart.”
“No hurt me. Please no. You say me, I make call, you forgive.”
“And you believed me? Shame on you, Edona. I could never forgive such a betrayal. You’ve been working against me for too long now. I’ve heard you telling the young ones that they’d get free, someday.” He laughed. “You’re such a fool. For girls like you, someday never comes.”
He felt her tears dripping onto his hand.
“Ah no, don’t cry. I don’t like to have my girls crying. No more tears.”
He pulled the knife across her throat. As the blood spurted, he pushed her away, smiling as her body tumbled into the foundation pit.
“Edar, Bekim!” he called to the two men waiting by the car. “Cover her up.”
They moved forward and began shovelling rubble and sand. Joey watched for a while, but soon got bored. He went and leaned against the car until Bekim signalled for him to come back and approve what they’d done.
He looked down into the pit and smiled. There was no trace of Edona. He glanced at his watch. It was now five-thirty. The concrete was due to be poured in three hours’ time. Perfect.
“That’s cleared up that loose end. I’d wondered how Storey seemed to know so much, but without you two pointing her out, I’d never have guessed it was Edona. Good work,” he said, smiling at the two men. He passed her phone to one of them. “Get rid of that, Bekim. Make sure it can’t be traced back to us. Right, let’s get everything in place for tonight’s delivery. Now that we know Storey will be on the other side of town, the transfer will be, as the Brits like to say, a piece of cake. I wonder what the fuck that means, a piece of cake.” He grinned. “Talking of cake, it’s time for breakfast.”
***
7th October (early hours)
Detective Inspector Paolo Storey’s foot had gone to sleep, but that was the least of his worries. Staying awake after spending several hours in a parked car, listening to Dave Johnson, his detective sergeant, list the reasons he was in love, was a bigger issue. The darkened car they were in, partially hidden behind bushes, faced the entrance to the car park of Bradchester Motorway Services. Paolo felt as if he’d been there half his life.
He moved about on the seat, trying to get the circulation going in his foot. It felt like a lump of dead meat on the end of his leg.
“Rebecca isn’t like any other girl I’ve known,” Dave said.
Paolo smiled in the dark. That must be the hundredth time Dave’s said that tonight, he thought. But he didn’t really mind. It was nice listening to Dave saying positive things these days. It wasn’t that long ago Paolo would have classed his DS as a misogynist.
Giving up on trying to coax his foot back to life, Paolo shifted his position again and almost screamed as pain shot the length of his spine. They should get medical compensation for stake-outs, he thought. Wear and tear on muscles forced to stay in one place for too many hours.
“I think it’s her hair I love the most,” Dave said. “Or maybe it’s her smile. Yes, that’s what it is.”
Paolo thought about the list Dave had given over the last few hours and felt as if he knew more about Rebecca than she did herself. He peered out into the night. No sign of the lorry they were waiting for. He checked his watch. It was no longer night. The time was just after five in the morning. A full twenty-four hours since the call had come in. Maybe his tip off had got the day wrong. Paolo decided to give it another couple of hours until the sun came up at and then tell the teams scattered around the car park to go home and get some sleep.
Paolo wouldn’t have that luxury. He had the joy of a meeting with his ex-wife and his daughter’s psychiatrist to look forward in only a few hours’ time. Another couple of turns of his ankle and suddenly the circulation was back in his foot. The pins and needles were agony, but at least he could feel both feet once more.
“Do you think we’ve been given duff information, sir?”
It took Paolo a moment to realise Dave had stopped talking about Rebecca and was back into police mode.
“It’s beginning to look that way, Dave, but I don’t want to give up too soon just in case the tip off was a good one. I can’t bear to think of more kids being smuggled in. If they’re being transferred here, we need to get to them before they’re handed over and put to work.”
Through the gloom, Paolo could just make out Dave’s head nodding in agreement. They settled back into silence and Paolo wondered about the series of phone calls that had led to this point. It had been the first break they’d had. Albanian girls were turning up on the Bradchester streets. Someone was smuggling them in, getting them hooked on drugs and then putting them out to work to earn enough to pay for their addiction.
They’d picked up many of these kids and placed them in social services, but not one of them could, or would, tell them who was behind the trafficking. Terrified and addicted, they all told the same story. They’d been abducted and kept prisoner in Albania, then sent here. What happened to them once they arrived remained a mystery. Paolo hadn’t been able to discover any connection to the Albanian community in Bradchester.
Then came the tip off. It seemed the girls came in elsewhere and were shipped to Bradchester in various vehicles, often hidden behind false panels. The caller, a woman, had sounded terrified and was only on the phone for a few minutes each time, but managed to give enough information for Paolo to set up this operation. Now it looked as if they’d camped out all night for nothing. There’d been a procession of various vans and cars, but none of them had done anything even remotely suspicious.
Paolo felt himself dozing off and jerked awake just as a van drove past and parked in the darkest corner of the car park, diagonally opposite their car.
“Dave, I think this might be our man. Let’s see what he does next.”
As they watched, the driver climbed out and lit a cigarette. Leaning against the van, he took out a mobile phone and made a short call. When he’d finished, he slipped the phone back in his pocket. He looked around the car park, as if searching for something, then turned and climbed back into the van.
“What do we do now, sir? It looks as if he might be pulling out again.”
“We’ll watch for a bit. If he drives off one of the teams out on the road can follow at a safe distance. At least until we’re sure this isn’t our man. But he hasn’t started the engine, so maybe he’s waiting for someone.”
Twenty minutes later a dark van swept past Paolo’s and pulled up next to the lorry. Both drivers got out of their vehicles and embraced. Then the first driver took the second man to the rear of his vehicle and unlocked it. From where they were parked, Paolo couldn’t see into the van, so signalled to Dave to wait.
The second van driver returned to his vehicle and manoeuvred it so that the two ends faced each other, blocking any view of what was being transferred between the two vans.
“Now,” Paolo said into his phone.
The car park lit up as several police vehicles switched on their lights and moved forward, blocking any chance of the vans making a getaway. The two men took off, one towards the services and the other towards the motorway.
Paolo jumped out and ran after the one aiming for the motorway. He was almost past him when Paolo threw himself at the man and brought him down with a flying rugby tackle. As the air whooshed out of Paolo’s lungs, he forced himself to hang on to the man’s legs.
Panting, he held the man down and waited for Dave to arrive. Between them, they got the man handcuffed and dragged him to his feet. They handed him over to the uniformed officers to put into a squad car. The other man was already sitting in one of the other cars.
It took Paolo a while to get his breath back and he realised how unfit he was. He’d turn forty later this month; too old to be throwing himself about the place like a kid.
“Right, let’s see what they’ve got hidden in those vans,” Paolo said when he had enough air in his lungs to be able to speak again.
He and Dave walked over to the open doors of the first van. Cartons of cigarettes filled the entrance floor to ceiling like a wall.
“Pull them all out,” Paolo ordered the uniformed officers. “There might be kids hidden behind there.”
An hour later both vans had been stripped bare. A fortune in stolen cigarettes filled the area around the vans, but there was no sign of any children. Paolo swore, but it didn’t relieve his frustration. Whoever was bringing the girls in had taken him for a mug.
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