Over the Edge (25 page)

We could see more of the house through the railings, but nothing moved larger than a blackbird, pulling worms out of the lawn. The leaves were falling and they’d been brushed into soggy piles at intervals along the edges of the drive. The lawn had received its final cut of the year but the borders were matted with dead flowers and drooping stalks. I took hold of the gate and shook it impotently, willing the electric circuit to make contact and pull the gate back, but it didn’t.

‘Let’s have a walk round,’ Dave suggested, and I followed him.

The wall is about seven feet high and difficult to climb when you’re wearing leather shoes and it’s drizzling with rain. About halfway round we stood on the low branch of a tree that gave us a view of the rear of the building, which was about as interesting as watching cows graze. There was a covered wood store, piled high with logs, and a greenhouse that was falling into disrepair. An outside light was left burning but all the windows were tightly closed.

‘We could climb that wall if we were really determined,’ Dave declared.

‘No,’ I said. ‘When we go in it will be through the gates.’ My feet were wet and the first trickle of rain had penetrated my collar.

‘If you say so.’

‘I do.’ I was cold and frustrated and didn’t know what to suggest next. I’d have liked to climb the wall and have a good fossick around, but it would have been counter-productive. Anything we found would be inadmissible, not passing the continuity test. Getting down from the branch Dave slipped and sat down in the wet grass, which made me feel better.

We had egg, chips and beans in the canteen, next to a radiator. I was deciding between a sausage roll and a custard tart when the phone rang and the canteen manageress waved to me.

‘Are you answering the phone to women these days, Charlie?’ the desk sergeant asked when I took the handset. ‘She said it’s personal.’

‘Put her on.’

It was a voice I didn’t recognise. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,’ I said.

‘Lorraine.’

‘Lorraine what?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’d like to talk to you about something that’s going off under your noses and you don’t do anything about it.’

‘So tell me.’

‘Not on the phone.’

‘OK. Come to the police station and I’ll be happy to listen to you.’

‘I’m not sure. Can’t we meet on neutral ground?’

I said: ‘Listen, Lorraine. I’m up to my eyeballs in work. I’ve been out in the rain all morning and I’m trying to grab a bite to eat. If you want to speak to me about something that is bothering you, I am willing to listen, but not on your so-called neutral ground. If you haven’t broken the law, this is neutral ground.’

‘You sound pissed off.’

‘Got it in one.’

‘It’s like this, Mr Priest. I run a hostel for women who are at risk, and it’s necessary for me to maintain a degree of secrecy. Do you understand?’

‘Perfectly, Lorraine. So come to the station. We can talk in an interview room and then you can be on your way. If any action needs to be taken, we’ll take it. You’re Lorraine, I’m Charlie, that’s all we need to know at this stage, unless, of course, we’re talking about serious crime, then you have a duty to help us.’

‘I am talking serious crime.’

‘I think you’d better come in, don’t you?’

‘Will fifteen minutes be alright?’

‘Fine.’

I made it the custard tart and finished my mug of tea. Dave went off to commit this morning’s escapade to the computer and I put my socks back on. I was reading reports in my office when the summons to the front desk came.

At first I didn’t think it was her. There was a figure wearing motorcycle waterproofs and holding a crash helmet that I assumed was a youth bringing his papers in for inspection, but when she moved forward I realised it was a woman.

‘You must be Lorraine,’ I said. ‘I’m Charlie,’ and we shook hands.

‘Charlie Priest,’ she replied.

‘That’s right. Now you have me at a disadvantage.’

‘Let’s just say that we have a mutual acquaintance who said you were a sympathetic listener.’

More like a soft touch, I thought, but I accepted it as a compliment. The desk sergeant shrugged his shoulders when I glanced at him, telling me to take any of the interview rooms. When we were seated I said: ‘So what’s it all about, Lorraine?’

She placed the skidlid on the table and unzipped the top of her jacket. Rain glistened on her waterproofs and dripped into a dirty puddle on the floor, and a sticker on the front of the helmet said she was a member of the Women’s International Motorcycle Association.

‘Like I told you on the phone,’ she began, ‘I’m involved with a hostel for women who have abusive partners. We’ve just had this young woman come to us who has been forced into prostitution. I’ll be honest with you, Charlie: she entered the country under false pretences.’

‘An illegal immigrant?’

‘Not quite. She thought she was coming to a job, for only a few weeks, but she said it was for a holiday. Slightly illegal but her intentions were good.’

‘Where’s she from?’

‘I’d rather not say.’

‘OK. Go on.’

‘A man met her at the airport, as arranged, and took her to a flat somewhere. There, he beat her up, tortured her with an electric cattle prod, and raped her.’

I flinched at the thought of it. ‘Was this in Heckley?’ I asked.

‘Um…I’m not sure.’

‘So did she escape?’

‘There’s more. She was kept prisoner in the flat. The following night two men came and subjected her to a serious sexual assault. I believe that’s the sanitised way of putting it. The following night they came back with a group of friends and some beer and had a party. She was the entertainment. They raped her repeatedly, all through the night, and performed various acts with her. What that poor girl went through doesn’t bear thinking about. After something like that you don’t have a shred of self-respect left. The humiliation is total. Working as a prostitute after something like that is easy.’

We hear stories about these things and wonder if they are true. We’ve all read about snuff movies and
baby farms. We retreat from them, hoping that it’s another urban myth launched by the tabloid press, but there’s always a kernel of truth there. There must be. It’s like the atom bomb: once you’ve invented the genie, you can’t keep him in his box.

‘She escaped?’ I asked again.

‘Yes. She ran out of the flat and into the road. She was in a state, to put it mildly. The first shop she came to was an Asian mini-market. Fortunately for her all the menfolk were out. The owner’s wife knew about us and took her to one of our safe houses. We do a great deal of work with Asian girls who are being forced into marriages against their will.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘In a safe house. I can’t tell you where. Young girls who won’t marry the chosen husband, or who are reckless enough to have boyfriends of a different religion, are murdered for family honour, as they dare to call it, so we have to be careful.’

‘What did she tell you about the men?’ I asked.

‘Not much. They were big, with shaven heads. Typical thugs.’

‘Any names? Did any of them use anybody’s name?’

‘Just one. She pronounced it Doo-gie. I think she meant Duggie.’

‘Duggie!’ I echoed. ‘Are you sure she meant Duggie?’

‘I think so.’

‘What about a description? Did she describe this Duggie?’

‘No.’

‘And the man at the airport? Did you get a description of the man who picked her up at the airport?’

‘No. She’d been through enough without us raking everything up again. We’ve had a friendly doctor see to her and she’s under sedation. She’ll never get over this.’

‘I have to see her, Lorraine,’ I said. ‘I must insist. I don’t care how we do it, but I give you my word we won’t harass her or your organisation. If you want this stamping out we have to have your cooperation.’

‘I…I don’t know.’

‘I insist. Otherwise, there’ll be another young woman taking her place in the next few days. It’s up to you.’

‘I’ll have to speak to some people.’

‘OK. Speak to anybody you want. You know where to find me.

I didn’t tell her that Duggie, if it was the same person, was safely behind bars. Duggie had barely mastered tying his own shoelaces; it was the person who wound him up and set him off that we wanted. But there was satisfaction in knowing that adding kidnapping and rape to the charge of accessory to a
murder would keep him off the streets for another eight or ten years.

I was in the garage, seeing how the paintings had dried, when the phone rang. It was Graham Myers from Scarborough.

‘Hello, Graham,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, Charlie, but what about you?’

‘OK. Being busy helps keep your mind off things.’

‘Any nearer catching Krabbe’s killer?’

‘I suppose we must be, but we’re still baffled.’

‘I’ve had the original of the note put in the post to your home address. Thought I better tell you to expect it.’

‘Thanks. That’s thoughtful of you.’

‘And the post-mortem confirmed that it was a paracetamol overdose.’

‘Right. I had no doubt it was, but we have to do these things.’

‘We’ve had a word with her – Rosie’s, that is – Rosie’s GP. She’d been seeing him recently. He diagnosed that she was suffering from what he calls bipolar depression. Apparently there’s major depression, where you feel bad, and then there’s bipolar depression. That’s where you go through cycles of feeling low and having a high for a while. It’s a terrible illness, can strike at anyone. They don’t know if it’s biological in origin or a chemical imbalance in the brain.’

‘So I believe.’ I’d looked it up, had discussed it with the police doctor.

‘She was also worried about her mother. Apparently she’s been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and Rosie thought that she was showing the first symptoms herself. That’s probably what tipped her over the edge.’

‘I didn’t know that. Poor old Rosie.’

‘It’s a sad case, Charlie. If there’s anything else we can do, don’t be afraid to ask.’

I decided that the blue painting needed a bit more work. One of the highlights was a bit lost but it could wait. I needed two frames for them. A PC who’s a dab hand at woodwork knocks them up for me at cost price. I’d ring him in the morning. Then I’d let the gallery know that they were ready and they’d send a van for them. After that I’d have to find something else to pass away the dog hours.

I watched television until after midnight and went to bed. I ran through the case in my mind, concentrating on the women. Go where the money is, and then the women. That’s what I was taught. Krabbe knew how to pick them, that was for sure. He’d lived with Sonia Thornton for several years and then hitched up with Gabi Naylor, ex-fiancée of the man he’d possibly sent to his death. They were both still attractive women, and Sonia had been a celebrity.

I still hadn’t seen the photos that Chris Quigley said Gabi had of his brother’s body. If she still had them. She’d have sent copies to the insurance company, or to the local registrar of deaths to obtain a certificate, but she may have kept copies. Perhaps I’d ring her in the morning.

It was 30 days since Krabbe was killed. When a murder is unsolved after 30 days it starts to appear near the top of a list on the assistant chief constable’s desk. When it’s still there after another couple of days he familiarises himself with the case and suddenly appears at a briefing, asking questions, making suggestions, showing off his knowledge. I was treading water. Krabbe had enemies and one of them killed him, but I didn’t know which one. Murder is a heavy burden to bear, and not many people can carry it off. They crack under the strain, have to share it with someone. Sometimes it’s somebody close, but not too close, who notices the change in them and has a word with a friendly policeman. It’s unscientific, but I was relying on it.

My mind kept returning to Rosie. Graham Myers meant well but his call had upset me. I thought about her, how scared she must have been when she thought her mother’s illnesses were about to descend on her, how alone she must have felt. I’d opened the envelope with her note and the faintest remnant of her perfume still lingered on the paper.
I read it again and turned the page over to the final scrawled message she’d struggled to write on the back. It must have felt like the most important thing in the world to her, her life’s work.

I got out of bed and retrieved my dressing gown from the bathroom. The sky was clear outside and a half moon was riding high, white as a ghost. I watched it for several minutes until a taxi came down the street and deposited one of my neighbours outside his house. He shouted a goodnight to the driver and slammed the taxi door.

I went into the spare bedroom and sat down at the computer. When the screen was filled with soaring seagulls I double-clicked on
Internet
, and waited to go online. It was the hour of the geeks, when they all come out from under their stones, so the lines were busy. Then it was
Favorites
and
Google
. I typed
shahtoosh
into the box and clicked Go.

The search took less than half a second and found over 3,000 references. It’s going to be a long night, I thought, but it wasn’t. In fifteen minutes I knew all there was to know about shahtoosh.

I decided that Gabi Naylor was more likely to open up to me if I were alone. I rang her, just to confirm she’d be there, and headed east, squinting into the bright sun. The changeable fronts had passed, as the weatherman promised they would, and we were due for a more settled period. There was a queue of slow-moving traffic near the A1 junction, but once we were past that it was a straight blast to the Humber Bridge.

Landscapes always look better when the sun shines, and north Lincolnshire was suddenly a more inviting place. Santiago was still gazing lugubriously over the hedge and Pedro and the dogs came to greet me at the gate. Gabi herself came close behind them. We shook hands and she asked where my
colleague
was.