No intention of making things easy, she held her tongue.
"I thought maybe we should meet up. Then I could fill you in. As far as I can, at least. What do you say?"
A pause, and then: "All right."
"Good. Excellent. Why don't we meet for a drink this lunchtime? Somewhere quiet."
"I don't think so."
"Oh, come on. Surely."
"They didn't give you an office?"
"Yes." A small laugh. "We have an office."
"Fine. Then let's meet there."
"Okay. Twelve o'clock? Twelve thirty?"
"How about eleven?"
"All right, eleven."
He gave her the address. One of those streets of Georgian houses off Wellington Circus that are now mostly offices for solicitors or the better class of architect, the ones for whom kitchen extensions are a thing of the past.
Lynn dressed carefully: a dark brown trouser suit that gave little concession to her shape, court shoes with a low heel, minimal makeup, her hair pulled back from her face.
Daines's office was as anonymous as a room in a Travelodge motel but better-proportioned, furniture that had come flat-packed and in need of assembly, the surface of his desk empty save for a laptop computer and mobile phone. Blue and grey files were shelved at the far side of the room. The windows were double glazed to keep out the sound of traffic and the air was somehow limp and odourless, save for the faint stink of air freshener.
"Welcome. Such as it is."
Daines was wearing grey suit trousers and a white open-necked shirt, cuffs turned back once above the wrist. Lynn accepted his handshake and sat on a metal folding chair facing the desk.
The indistinct sounds of other voices came from other rooms.
She wondered how many SOCA staff there were in the building, what size budget and how many personnel had been allocated to this part of the operation. Whatever the operation was.
"Until the machine arrives," Daines said, "the only coffee I can offer you is instant. Or I could send someone down to the Playhouse Bar."
"There's no need," Lynn said.
"Water, then, or-"
"Viktor Zoukas."
Daines smiled. "No time for pleasantries."
"You were going to explain-"
"As far as I can, yes. Some things, of necessity, I'm afraid, are still under wraps."
Lynn nodded.
"One more thing before we start. That bag"-he indicated the leather shoulder bag that was resting now on the floor beside her chair-"you wouldn't have a recorder of some kind in there?"
Lynn picked it up and held it out towards him. "You want to check?"
She was beginning to feel as if she'd wandered into an episode of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. One that she'd missed.
Daines smiled again. "It's okay. This job, it's making me slightly paranoid. But one or two things leaking out at the wrong time…" He shrugged. "Anyway, Viktor Zoukas, let me tell you a little about him you still might not know. A little background. He came over from Albania in '99, under the guise of being a Kosovar refugee, though that may not have been strictly true. He's got family here, a brother, cousins, mostly settled in north London, Wood Green. There's a whole bunch of them there, mostly from northern Albania. One or two, quite respectable. One who's a doctor, working at the Royal Free. He was the one who stood surety for Viktor's bail.
"Viktor and his cousins, though-prostitution, that's their thing. A younger brother, too. Valdemar. Brothels. Massage parlours. Trafficking women from eastern Europe and then forcing them to work in the sex trade. Girls as young as fifteen, sixteen, some of them. You probably know how that works-in principle, at least. They make a lot of false promises, charge a small fortune to bring the girls into the country, often via Italy, and then keep them as virtual prisoners while they pay back what they supposedly owe.
"Either they put them to work themselves or sell them to others. Someone like Nina Simic, the girl who was killed, she could have been bought and sold for a few thousand pounds and a hundred cartons of cigarettes."
Daines paused as someone approached the door, thought better of it, and walked away.
"Tobacco smuggling, that's how I first made contact with these people. When I was still working for Customs and Excise. It was a big thing, still is. Since then, the Albanians have moved on to cannabis, and they'd like a chunk of the heroin trade as well, but the Turks have got that pretty much sewn up and are keeping it to themselves. So now, this last year or so, they've shown every sign of adding another string to their bow. Broadening their portfolio, I guess you could say. Guns. Guns and ammunition. Big time."
"And that's what SOCA's interested in?"
"Principally, yes."
"I still don't see why it was so important to have Zoukas released on bail."
Daines sighed. "Timing. That as much as anything."
"I don't understand."
"You know those games-I think they're supposed to be for kids. Jenga, something like that. A tower made out of little strips of wood placed diagonally across one another in sets of three. The skill is to pull one out and reposition it on the top without making the whole tower fall down. That's Zoukas, one of those little pieces."
"And the tower?"
Daines drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk, a neat little pattern whose reverberations spun his mobile phone around.
"Anything else I say now, it doesn't go beyond this room. Is that understood?"
"Understood," Lynn said. If she were still a child, she might well have had her fingers crossed behind her back.
"Okay. Our information is this. Some enterprising free marketeer in Lithuania has been buying up large quantities of relatively low-powered pistols-alarm pistols, that's what they call them over there-okay for scaring off the neighbour's Doberman, but not a lot else-and remodelling the barrels so as to take regular 9mm ammo. He sells them for a few hundred quid each, and by the time they reach the UK, they're fetching upward of fifteen hundred apiece.
"We've intercepted several small consignments over the past few years, Customs and Excise that is, most usually in vehicles that have been fitted with hidden compartments, so no more than a couple of dozen at a time. But now, according to our information, a far larger consignment is on its way. As many as seven hundred weapons, maybe, fourteen thousand rounds of ammunition. We're just not sure yet when. Nor which route they're taking. But you can imagine what it would mean if they got through, that lot get into the wrong hands and out onto the streets. After what happened, you especially."
"Yes. Yes, of course," Lynn said. "But I still don't see the connection. These men, the guns, everything-you say they're Lithuanian."
"Correct. And the guys over here are shitting themselves because they think, after that last arrest especially, we've got their number. Better, then, to sell them to somebody else and take a smaller profit than run the risk of fetching up behind bars."
"Which is where Zoukas comes in."
"Absolutely. Viktor and his brother, yes, we think so. We've been watching, waiting. Liaising with the Office of Organised Crime and Corruption in Lithuania. Letting them get everything into place. Our best guess, Valdemar was set to handle the London end, Viktor anything farther north. Here, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow. Once Viktor was in custody and taken out of the equation, everything was put on hold, which made the Lithuanians jumpy. According to our information, they've been threatening to take the guns elsewhere. The Turks, maybe. Last thing Valdemar and his pals want. The whole deal's on the verge of falling to pieces and if that happens we're back to square one and left having to start all over again. Months of work, God knows how many man-hours down the drain. But if we can keep it in play and strike at the right time, we get the buyers, the sellers, the pistols, the works. Once we heard there was a chance of Zoukas being released on bail, that gave us our chance."