‘If I had to guess,’ Kiley said, ‘I’d say he got it from Adina.’
‘You gave it to her, she gave it to him.’
‘Something like that.’
‘In case of trouble, someone to contact, someone to ring.’
‘It’s plausible.’
‘He didn’t call you?’
‘No.’
Kiley wondered if they were merely following up stray leads; he wondered if the one blow with a thick-edged implement to Alen Markovic’s head had been enough to kill him. On balance, he thought both less than likely.
‘We could always try asking this Adina,’ Masters said softly, as if the suggestion had just that second occurred to him.
‘If we could find her,’ Kiley said.
‘If she isn’t still tied to a tree,’ said the second man. He really did know his Chandler backwards.
A light rain was beginning to fall. Most of the outside tables had been cleared. Kiley intercepted Irena on her way up from the Tube. Masters stood a little way off, coat collar up. Through the pale strobe of headlights climbing the hill, Kiley could see Masters’ colleague in the bookstore opposite, innocently browsing through this and that.
‘What is it?’ Irena said. ‘What’s happened?’
Kiley moved her close against one of the plane trees that lined the street. Her features were small and precise and the rain that clung to her short, spiky hair made it shine.
‘Adina,’ Kiley said. ‘Is she back in England?’
‘No, of course not.’
Kiley waited, fingers not quite touching the sleeve of her coat. Her eyes avoiding his. ‘I shall be late. For work.’ Absurdly, he wanted to run his hand across the cap of dark, wet hair.
‘Why? Why do you want to know?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Is she in trouble?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She made me promise not to tell you. She thought, after everything you did, she thought you would be angry. Upset.’ There were tears on her face or maybe it was only the rain, which had started to fall more heavily. ‘She is working at a club. I think near Leicester Square. I don’t know the name.’
‘You know where she’s living?’
Irena took a set of keys from her pocket and put them in his hand.
‘She is living with me.’
Kiley watched her walk away, head down, and then waited for Masters to join him. The dark blue Vauxhall was parked in a side road opposite.
Masters’ bibliophile friend was standing by the car, a plastic bag containing several paperbacks clutched against his coat. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said to Kiley. ‘More than decent bookshop, that close to where you work.’ The glow from the overhead light turned his skin an unhealthy shade of orange.
‘You’ve got a name?’ Kiley asked.
‘Several.’ He took off his glasses, shook them free from rain, blinked, and put them back on again.
‘How about one that matches some ID?’ Kiley said.
‘Jenkins?’
‘And you’re Special Branch too?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Let’s get in,’ Masters said. ‘We’re wasting time.’
At the lights by Chalk Farm station, Masters said, ‘All we want from your friend is a little information, clarification. We’ve no interest in her immigration status at this stage.’
Kiley trusted him like he trusted the weather.
Irena lived in two rooms off Inverness Street; actually a single room let into the roof and divided by a rickety partition. A small Velux window gave views towards the market and the canal. Kiley had been there once before, a party for Irena’s friends, enough of the Romanian diaspora to cover every available inch of floor and spread back down the stairs.
He had hardly let himself in when Adina came bounding after him, scarf tied round her raven hair, cursing. She was wearing a bustier beneath a flimsy cotton top, skin-tight emerald green trousers and what, after several visits to Cinderella at an early age, would, to Kiley, forever be Dandini boots, folded back high above the knee.
‘Oh, my God!’ she exclaimed, seeing him. ‘Oh, my God, what are you doing here?’
‘It’s all right,’ Kiley said. ‘Irena gave me a key.’
‘I am just here,’ Adina said breathlessly, ‘for visit. Holiday.’
‘Irena said you were working.’
Adina dumped her things on the floor and threw herself into a chair. ‘Work, holiday, what does it matter?’
The headline on the evening paper read ‘MINISTER’S WIFE’S MIDNIGHT ASSIGNATION’. What was an hour or so up against some nice alliteration?
‘Adina, there are some people who want to see you.’
‘I have visa,’ she said. Probably a lie.
‘It’s not about that.’ He paused, the rain persistent on the window. ‘You know someone named Alen Markovic?’
Adina jerked forward. ‘What’s happened to him?’
‘You do know him then?’
‘Something has happened.’
‘Yes.’
‘They have killed him.’
‘Who?’
She shook her head. Her hair bounced against the tops of her breasts. He thought she might be about to scream or cry, but instead she brought her forearm to her mouth and bit down hard.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘These people,’ Adina said, ‘they are police?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course they are police.’ She stood up and studied the bite mark on her arm. ‘You trust them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Okay, for Alen’s sake I will talk to them. But you must be there with me.’
Kiley nodded. ‘The cafe across the street.’
‘Portuguese or Italian?’
‘Portuguese.’
‘You go. Five minutes, I come.’
‘Don’t duck out on me.’
‘Duck out?’
‘Never mind.’
Jenkins sat reading A Short History of Europeans and the Rest of the World from Antiquity to the Present. Masters held a small espresso cup in his hand and stared at a lithograph of Lisbon on the wall. Kiley ordered coffee for himself and, believing one of those intense little Portuguese custard tarts was never quite enough, bought two; he didn’t offer to share them round.
‘When you were helping your friend out of her little difficulty,’ Masters said, ‘you ran across Sali Mejdani. Aldo Fusco, he sometimes likes to call himself.’
‘We had a conversation.’
Jenkins chuckled softly, possibly at something he’d just read.
‘He brought her into the country, your Adina?’
‘Not directly.’
‘Of course. From Romania to Albania and then to Italy, Italy to France, Belgium or Holland. Into Britain from somewhere like Zeebrugge. Fifteen or twenty people a day, seven days a week, three hundred-plus days of the year. Approximately five thousand sterling per head. Even after expenses — drivers, escorts, safe houses, backhanders…’
‘Plenty of those,’ Jenkins said, without looking up.
‘… it all adds up to a tidy sum. And the punters, what they don’t pay in advance, they pay with interest. For women and boys it’s the sex trade, for the rest it’s hard labour.’
‘Mejdani,’ Kiley said, ‘why can’t you arrest him, close him down?’
‘Ah,’ said Jenkins.
‘For the last couple of years,’ Masters said, ‘we’ve been building a case against him. Ourselves, Immigration, Customs and Excise, the National Crime Squad.’ He set down his cup at last. ‘You know when you were a kid, building sandcastles on the beach, Broadstairs or somewhere, you and your dad. You’re putting the finishing touches to this giant, intricate thing, all turrets and towers and windows and doors, and just as you turn over the bucket and tap the last piece into place, one of the bits lower down slides away, and then another, and before you know it you’re having to start all over again.’
‘Accident?’ Kiley said. ‘Over-ambition?’
Masters sat back. ‘I prefer to think the fault lies in the design.’
‘Not the workmanship?’
‘Get what you pay for, some might say.’
Jenkins laid aside his book. ‘Mejdani certainly would.’