"Containers?"
"Yes, I think maybe so, containers, yes."
"Some kind of refuse dump."
"Refuse, yes. Rubbish. He make me get out of the car and I am sure he is going to kill me. I am certain of this. He has a knife and I think I am going to be dead like Nina; he is going to cut my throat."
Andreea stopped and in the halting light Lynn could see the sweat beading her forehead, the shaking of her hand as she held her cigarette.
"He made me tell him what I told the police, and I told him there was nothing. I had seen nothing. Except Nina on the floor. He asked me if I mention Viktor and I say no, of course not, I did not know Viktor was there. He make me get down on my knees and holds the knife against the side of my face, here." Andreea touched her cheek, a slow line from below her ear to her neck. "He say I am good girl. He say if I ever say anything different to the police, he will kill me and throw me in the rubbish. And then he make me… you know, with my mouth. And then he take me home, but I am too frightened to stay there. I come here to Meadows."
"And the sauna? You haven't been back to the sauna?"
Andreea shook her head.
"What will you do?"
"I have a good friend in London. Leyton? Leytonstone? I am not sure. Perhaps they are the same. Alexander. He comes from Constanta, like me. He is student here. He says I can stay with him. He can even get me job, he thinks, in a bar. Or if not, in hotel, cleaning I think."
"What about your own studies? These courses you're doing?"
"Alexander thinks it may be possible to transfer somehow, I don't know. But it will be safer there, in London. Yes? You think?" She grasped Lynn's arm.
"Maybe. Yes, perhaps."
They drew level with three men of indeterminate age, sitting on a bench, passing a can of cider back and forth. A short-haired mongrel dog lay curled on the ground between them and raised its head to growl and show its teeth as they walked past. One of the men held the can out towards them, good-naturedly, and Lynn smiled and said, "No, thanks."
"Despite the threats this man made, you still want to change your story about what happened?"
"Yes. Yes, I think so."
A little way farther along, there was an empty bench and they sat facing the water, the traffic at their back. Andreea fumbled for a cigarette in one of the pockets of her anorak.
"Nina," she said, "she was nice to me. One time especially I remember, she saw that I was upset. I had a letter from home, from my mother. There was drawing Monica had made of two people. Holding hands. How do you call them? Match men?"
"Matchstick men."
"Yes. Like that. One big and one small. It was Monica and me. My mother had written our names on the top." There were tears in her eyes. "Nina, she had a child, too, she told me. A boy. When she was fifteen. She had not seen him for a long time. She hold me and tell me not to cry. I will see my little girl again."
Andreea stopped and turned her face towards Lynn, the tears now running down her cheeks.
"I want to tell the truth of how she died."
Lynn smiled reassuringly. "Go on," she said. "Take your time."
Andreea flicked away ash and the end of her cigarette sparked briefly. "There was a man, the man I spoke of, a customer, he and Nina had started to fight. I don't know what about. Something, perhaps, he had asked her to do. I don't know. I am across corridor, close, I can hear them shouting and then, I think, I hear the man leave, still shouting at her, 'Fucking whore' and things like that, and I think now it will be all right. But Viktor, I hear him go into the room, and there is more shouting, and Nina she starts to scream and I know he is hitting her, hitting her bad, and I am frightened for her, so I go into the corridor and the door it is open, just a little, not all the way, but I can see she has a knife, and when Viktor hits her again, she stabs him in the shoulder, like this, here, and Viktor falls back against the wall and the knife falls to the floor and I am very frightened and I call her name, 'Nina, Nina,' and she turns to look at me and starts to come towards the door, and the next thing I see Viktor is on his feet and has the knife in his hand and he stabs Nina in the neck, from behind, and this time there is so much blood, more blood, and I run before Viktor can see me. I go running to Sally and tell her I think Nina is dead."
She stopped, drained, shaking, looking at the slowly darkening sky.
"Viktor," Lynn said, "he doesn't know what you saw?"
"No," Andreea said. "And he must never know."
Lynn rested a hand on her arm. "Thank you," she said. "You're very brave. And don't worry. He won't hurt you. Neither him nor his friend. I promise." Even as she spoke, knowing how hollow the words were. Promises are like piecrusts-wasn't that what her mother used to say?
They kept Andreea under wraps, took a statement from her in an out-of-the-way police station, questioned her some more. Andreea's name would not be used when her statement was fi- nally disclosed, as it had to be, to the defence before the trial; she would be simply Miss X, Miss Y. But from the statement, Lynn knew, it would not be too difficult for the defence team to work out her identity.
Andreea told them that a week or so before she was killed, Nina had shown her the knife. She had got it from a friend. One of the regulars, Andreea thought, she didn't know for sure. "This is for Viktor, if he hits me once more," Nina had said.
"I did not think she meant it," Andreea said. "But she did. What she said, it was true."
Steadily, they accumulated evidence of Zoukas terrorising the women who worked for him, threatening, striking, lashing out in anger. According to one of the customers, Zoukas had once pushed past him yelling, "That bitch. That fucking Nina! I fucking kill her!" And then, after a second television appeal, the police received a number of phone calls, including several from his ex-wife, identifying the tattooed man as Kelvin Pearce.
Officers found him in Sneinton, working on a building that had recently been gutted and was now being refurbished and restored; Pearce busy removing the old window frames while listening happily to Suggs on Virgin Radio, "Reasons to Be Cheerful" followed by the Dexys' "Come On Eileen."
Asked why he hadn't come forward of his own volition, he gave the officer a look of sheer incredulity. "Stick my head in a fuckin' noose, right? I'm not as stupid as I might bloody look."
Once he started telling his story, he was clear and to the point. He and the girl had started arguing. Got him all worked up, the cunt, and then asked him for another twenty quid. He'd lost it, taken a swing at her, fair enough, he'd put his hand up for that, but then she'd only pulled this knife on him and started waving it in his face. He'd been trying to get it from her when this fat bastard come in, swearing and shouting, and he'd legged it out of there as fast as he could.
Had he touched the knife?
"Yes, of course. Said so, didn't I?"
Had he at any point stabbed or cut Nina Simic with the knife?
"No. No way."
"Or Viktor Zoukas?"
"That mad bastard? You're kidding, right?"
"That's a no, then?"
"Too fucking right!"
"And once you left the room, you never went back?"
"You're kidding, yeah?"
Now that there were two witnesses placing Zoukas firmly at the scene, the CPS were happy to go ahead and he was formally charged with Nina Simic's murder. Lynn was in court, when, with a very real presumption that he might flee the country, Zoukas was refused bail. Turning away before being led down to the cells, he saw her and their eyes locked. "You!" he shouted. "You-!"
Before he could say more, the duty officers hauled him away none too gently, leaving Lynn shaken by the intensity of hatred on his face.
As the trial approached, Andreea telephoned Lynn several times in tears: she was too frightened, she said, to stand up in court.