Death in a Far Country (21 page)

‘I knew she’d be spooked by anyone else,’ Laura said, suddenly shaking and overcome with intense weariness. ‘She tried to jump. Jazzy and I – we managed to stop her.’

Thackeray ran his hand lightly across Laura’s cheek, as if to wipe away tears that she had not shed yet.

‘You are impossible,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you’d be killed. Stone is a bastard.’

‘But…?’ Laura whispered.

‘But… I think you know. I can’t live without you.’ He hugged her so close to his chest for a moment that she could barely breathe, then pulled away, glanced around at the frantic emergency scene around them and squared his shoulders.

‘I’ve work to do here,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘It was Stone’s car that followed you and I guess it’s Stone who’s looking for you in there now. When Kevin realised what was going on he pressed the panic button. If what we think Stone’s been up to is true, he couldn’t afford to let Elena escape alive. She’s the only witness who can link him to the murder of Grace. Go home now, Laura, and get some rest. We’ll talk later.’

In fact it was more than twenty-four hours before Laura saw Michael Thackeray again. He let himself into the flat around nine o’clock the following evening to find Laura curled up on the sofa listening to the local radio commentary on Bradfield United’s FA Cup match against Chelsea. He dumped his coat on a chair and came round behind her, running his hands down her shoulders and breasts and kissing her awkwardly on the cheek.

‘How are they doing?’ he asked, nodding at the radio.

‘Getting thrashed, five-nil,’ she said with a smile. ‘What did you expect? Come and sit down and tell me what’s happened. You look exhausted.’

They had spoken several times on the phone since Laura had taken her grandmother home the previous evening and then driven home herself, leaving Thackeray and his search team to discover Stephen Stone and his sister Angelica on the top floor of Priestley House, kicking down any door that remained standing in furious frustration at their inability to find Elena. Ever since then, Thackeray had been supervising an apparently endless series of interrogations, which gradually unravelled some of the network of cruelty and exploitation and finally murder that had entrapped the trafficked girls.

‘Have you finished?’ Laura asked, turning the radio down on United’s final humiliation as the sixth Chelsea goal was slammed home and the commentator slid into incoherent disappointment. Thackeray dropped onto the sofa beside her and closed his eyes, almost speechless with weariness.

‘We’ve charged Stone with two counts of murder, Asida with one – we think he was the second man who gave chase when Grace and Elena ran away. He was certainly responsible for supplying Nigerian girls to various networks in this country. And we’ve charged the whole lot of them with trafficking every one of the girls we found. We needed four different interpreters before we could get any sense out of their stories – Albanian, Estonian, Moldovan and something else. I’ve almost lost track, to be honest.’

‘Was Paolo Minelli involved?’ Laura asked.

‘I’ve found no evidence against him,’ Thackeray said. ‘He may have been turning a blind eye to what was going on, but no one has implicated him beyond that, in spite of his attachment to Angelica. He was probably paying Stone to supply the girls, but it will be hard to prove. He was certainly hoping to cash in on a transfer deal once United had had a good run. Angelica, on the other hand, was in it up to her neck. Several of the girls have said that the woman who came to the house was just as brutal as the men. Several have identified her beyond any doubt.’

‘What will happen to the girls?’ Laura asked.

‘They’ll go home, eventually. For the time being we’ve put most of them down as underage, so social services will take responsibility for them. We want as many of them to stay here to give evidence as possible. After that it’s up to the Home
Office.’

‘And we all know they’re not overflowing with the milk of human kindness,’ Laura said. ‘Girls like Elena will be outcasts if they’re sent home. They’ll probably be back in the next shipment to someone else’s brothel.’

‘Laura,’ Thackeray said, putting an arm round her. ‘You can’t change the world single-handed.’

‘I can try,’ Laura said fiercely. ‘You have to try, don’t you?’

Thackeray thought for a moment of the long hours he had just spent piecing together a story of such depravity that it made him shudder, and he nodded slightly.

‘I suppose you do,’ he said. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Laura. I’m very proud of what you did. You saved Elena’s life, and probably Jasmin’s as well. If Stone had caught up with them he’d undoubtedly have killed them.’

‘Yes,’ Laura said, quietly. ‘I know.’ The radio, which had been murmuring in the background, suddenly caught her attention again and she turned it up to hear the commentator compounding his own misery by speculating on the news that OK Okigbo would be seeking a transfer to another club.

‘That will please his agent,’ she said.

‘And Paolo Minelli,’ Thackeray said, to her surprise. ‘My guess is that he’ll do well out of any deal like that. He’ll get – what do they call it – a bung?’

‘Poor Jenna Heywood,’ Laura said. ‘It won’t help her plans to rescue the club. She’s hanging on by her fingernails already. Still, she’s a tough cookie. Maybe she’ll find a way of saving them.’

‘I’m not sure OK Okigbo would be much use to her anyway,’ Thackeray said. ‘He may well develop Aids, we’ll
certainly want him and his mates to give evidence in court, and we may still charge them all with having sex with underage girls. They must have known and I’m still going to try to prove it. I think his agent may find his value is seriously diminished by the time he comes to sell him on, and I suppose that’s a rough sort of justice.’

‘Has Jenna made a statement about what happened on the motorway?’ Laura asked.

‘She didn’t need to. We have a witness on a bridge who saw the whole thing and had the sense to take the registration numbers of the cars involved. One of them belonged to Les Hardcastle. We’ve charged him with attempted murder and we’re trying to trace the owner of the second car.’

‘Another greedy man,’ Laura said, thinking how her father would feel when he heard of his old friend and rival’s downfall. Jack was not that much different, she thought, just slightly less ruthless in pursuit of profit.

‘There is one bit of good news,’ Thackeray said, pulling her closer to him. ‘Val Ridley called Kevin Mower to tell him that she’s decided not to give evidence at the inquiry.’

‘Not at all?’ Laura said quickly.

‘Not at all. She wants no more to do with it, apparently. Which lets Jack Longley off the hook.’

‘And me,’ Laura said thankfully. She wanted no more investigations in that area.

She looked at Thackeray, whose eyes were almost closed. ‘Can we start again?’ she asked. He opened his eyes and smiled.

‘You are pig-headed, impulsive and positively dangerous to know,’ he said.

‘And you are obstinate, depressive and a bit of a bastard.’

‘We can’t possibly inflict ourselves on anyone else then, can we?’ he said.

And for the first time in many months their eyes met and they laughed.

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P
ATRICIA
H
ALL
is the pen-name of journalist Maureen O’Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire, which is where she chose to set her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray. She is married, with two grown-up sons, and now lives in Oxford.

Skeleton at the Feast

Deep Freeze

Death in Dark Waters

Dead Reckoning

False Witness

Sins of the Fathers

Death in a Far Country

By Death Divided

Devil’s Game