The girls in the upstairs room at Slim’s were stunners – the prettiest girls their home country had to offer. Katya was proud of this, since part of her job was selecting the girls who got brought over. For that, she had to travel to Dagestan from time to time, and when she did she used a false passport that was given to her for the journey, then taken away. It said she was Bulgarian. The girls she recruited came to the UK in a lorry; she knew that from talking to them when they got here. The other part of her job was managing the girls once they arrived.
There was an air of menace about the man Jackson; behind his stylish clothes and cool manner she sensed a brutality that scared her. The other girls saw it too, though as far as she knew he had never hurt any of them.
There was another strange thing about him. In Katya’s experience any owner would have occasionally sampled the goods; that was a right that came with the territory. But not Jackson; he never talked to any of the girls, let alone touched them, and he only occasionally had a word with Katya, just to check that the customers were happy and that there had been no complaints. There never had been and he seemed satisfied, but she still found him frightening.
Halliday’s breezy manner had changed. His voice sounded ominous when he said, ‘Your employer is about to find himself brought down a peg or two.’
‘Oh?’ said Katya.
‘Yes. And you’re going to help me do it.’
Chapter 24
The two men sat in a dimly lit alcove on the raised dais at the back of the dining room. Slim’s, named after Joe Slim, the Manchester United footballer who’d started the club eight years earlier, was in Wilmslow, ten miles or so south of Manchester. It was said that the Aston Martin dealership in Wilmslow sold the highest number of Aston Martins in the UK, so affluent was the local lifestyle. The room was crowded this evening, loud with music and the raised voices of a group of young men and girls at a long table. One of the two men looked around and smiled in satisfaction at the packed tables.
He was the owner, a tall black man known as Jackson. No one at the club ever used his first name. Jackson had acquired the club after Joe Slim was found, early one morning, face down in the Manchester Ship Canal. It was generally assumed that he had fallen in from the towpath while he was drunk, but no one seemed to know why he was down there and no witnesses had ever come forward.
Jackson dressed as smartly as his well-heeled clients, and tonight he wore an elegant blue suit, a cream-coloured woven shirt, and a subtly patterned Hermès tie. His companion was less flashy but his suit looked equally pricey; he had the air of a successful self-made businessman – the kind of man who paid in cash from a roll of banknotes held by a silver money clip.
‘Good trip then?’ asked the man who looked like a businessman.
Jackson gave him a quizzical look, then seemed to decide the question was innocent enough. ‘Not bad. Though I had a spot of bother with the locals. I don’t know what sparked them off but they seemed to be wondering what this uppity nigger was doing over there.’ Jackson chuckled. ‘They didn’t find out though.’
‘What were you doing over there? Was it business?’
Jackson laughed sarcastically. ‘I wasn’t in Berlin for my health, man. I was chasing up a new opportunity.’
‘German girls?’
Jackson shook his head. ‘I’m getting tired of that line of work – too many hassles. I’m thinking of branching out a bit.’
When he didn’t elaborate, the other man said, ‘Well, it must have been important if you took a chance like that.’
‘What chance?’
The other man shrugged. ‘You don’t want to get European police forces on your tail. They can be a bit nasty. Just watch out if you’re up to something dodgy over there.’
Jackson said nothing at first. Then, ‘I don’t know if it was the police. I didn’t see any uniforms.’
The other man said, ‘But you got out all right?’
Jackson looked amused. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘It looks that way to me,’ said the other man. His role there was hard to place. He didn’t act like a customer; he was too self-confident to be a dependant; yet the black man didn’t seem the type to have friends.
‘Anyway,’ said Jackson, ‘when are they coming?’
The businessman looked at his watch. ‘Any time now.’
And as if in response, the maître d’ came up to their table, looking agitated. ‘Mr Jackson,’ he said breathlessly. ‘There are Immigration officers outside the back door. They’re asking for you.’
Jackson raised his eyes but didn’t seem surprised. ‘Thank you, Émile.’
The maître d’ went on, ‘They have police officers with them. They say they want to check the papers of the girls.’
Jackson looked at his companion, who also didn’t seem surprised by Émile’s news. Jackson said to him, ‘You better excuse me. I like to leave by the front door of the places I own.’ He turned to Émile. ‘This gentleman’s my guest, so put our dinner on the house tab.’
‘Of course, Mr Jackson. But what should I tell the police?’
‘Tell them if they want to see me they need to make an appointment. Like my guest here,’ he added with a smile. And then, without any show of haste, Jackson was out of the front door of the club in ten seconds, leaving Émile to deal with the officers of the law. Jackson’s guest remained seated at the table, and after a moment signalled for a waiter and calmly ordered a large cognac.
Chapter 25
She had seen Halliday twice and each time he had pumped her about the upstairs operation at Slim’s. She’d explained that she didn’t know any details of the business; once a week Khoury, the accountant, showed up, and sat in the little room next to the cloakroom, where he went through all the tabs the girls had handed in. But he didn’t talk to Katya about the business, and she certainly didn’t know the turnover figures. She only knew that none of the girls, even the desperate ones, dared to try and skim any of the money. They handed it all over. That’s how scared they were of Mr Jackson.
At their second meeting, Halliday had told her about the coming raid. ‘Not a word to anyone,’ he’d said. ‘They’ll be picking up the girls, and that’ll include you. But don’t worry – I’ll see you right.’
And he had been true to his word – too true for Katya’s liking. The police and Immigration officers had come in the back entrance, quite politely. This had seemed curious to her – she’d expected something like the movies, with armed officers breaking down the door, waving guns and shouting as they forced their way in. But instead they had waited outside, only four of them, in plain clothes, while the bouncer had called Émile, the maitre d’ of the restaurant, who had come back and let them in.
It had all been tidily done, and despite the initial panic of the upstairs customers – that early in the evening, there had only been one group of stag-night revellers and a sad-looking man who said his wife had recently died – it was soon clear that the police were only interested in the accountant’s room, where one of them had gone right away, and in the employees. None of them was English, of course, and none of them had papers as far as Katya knew – not a National Insurance card, a driving licence, or anything at all.
There had been seven girls working that night, including Katya (though her job was to supervise the goings on, not participate), and they had all been escorted out to the police van while Émile had wrung his hands and promised that he would have them out as soon as he could locate the club’s lawyer.