She tried to escape through a cafe’s toilet window when they stopped for burgers somewhere near Brasov, but Goran was waiting, a cruel smile on his face, and she was punished for that. And so they had their way with her all the way from Chişinău to Vršac. They crossed two international borders, first into Romania and from there into Serbia, and in neither case did the border guards take the slightest interest in these two men and the clearly distraught young girl they had in the car with them. No questions were asked; they were simply waved through. Often, she wondered later whether money had changed hands — it wouldn’t have surprised her — but she decided it hadn’t. It was just the way things were.
And there he was again, in the flesh, the man who had done all that to her, just walking casually into a trendy London bar in an expensive suit and gaudy shirt, cool as anything, not a care in the world, lord of all he surveyed. She relived that journey through hell as she wandered among the anonymous crowds of the London evening, not knowing where she was going, only that she had to get away, that every good thing she had built for herself since her escape felt as if it was crumbling inside her.
Zelda travelled aimlessly on the tube from line to line, stop to stop. Occasionally, someone would ask her if she was all right, and she would respond with a mechanical nod and a forced smile. What could they do? What did they know, safe in their comfortable middle-class lives with nothing more to worry about than their mortgage payments and the children’s exam results? Finally, she found herself at Waterloo and walked back to her hotel.
The rooftop bar was still open, and by then she felt she needed a drink more than she had in a long time. She ordered a large vodka and tonic instead of wine and lifted the glass to her mouth, hand shaking. She must have looked like a serious alcoholic because people stayed away from her. Then she had another drink and sat there staring out at the night skyline, the way she had stared at the dawn skyline in the morning, just a few days ago, when she woke from the bad dreams. Here, from the height of the roof, she had a different view — the Eye; the Houses of Parliament, lit up all gold; Big Ben covered in scaffolding, but always there was the river, its currents like dark sinews twisting, distorting and knotting the reflections of the city lights the way she felt twisted, distorted and knotted inside.
The music was late evening light jazz, and what few conversations there were around her were hushed. It was seduction time, and the young couples were edging closer together, a light touch of thigh to thigh here, an arm casually brushing a breast there. Zelda knew all about it. She had done the seductive sex as well as suffered the violent kind. It was how she had made her living — their living — in Paris, and how she had finally made her escape from that world.
After the dreadful car journey across Romania, Zelda remembered being left alone in a filthy room for days — she wasn’t sure exactly how many — with her meals delivered, black bread, borscht, gruel...
And then, one day, without warning, she was taken into another room, larger, cleaner, with a large bed. After a few minutes a man came in. He was old and fat, and he smelled of fried chicken. He wasn’t rough or violent — he was quite gentle, really — but he took what he wanted and left her crying. That was how she lost her virginity. She learned later that it had been auctioned off, and the fat man had won. Apparently, he always won; he was one of the wealthiest businessmen in town, the owner of a chain of fried chicken restaurants.
By the time Zelda got to bed that night, she knew one thing for certain: now that she had seen Goran Tadić again, she had to kill him.
Chapter 8
The coffee and doughnuts lay spread out on the large oval table in the boardroom on Friday morning. In addition to the core team, also present were DS Stefan Nowak, Crime Scene Manager; Vic Manson, fingerprints expert; and Dr Jasminder ‘Jazz’ Singh, their toxicology, blood and DNA specialist from the lab. Everyone present seemed tired; Thursday had been a long day.
‘You’ve got some good news for us, I hope, Stefan?’ Banks said to DS Nowak.
‘Yes,’ said Nowak. ‘We’ve been able to link the dead boy, Samir, with the Stokes house on the Hollyfield Estate. Naturally, we can’t tell you when he was there, but he definitely was there.’
‘Was he killed there?’
‘Unlikely,’ said the diminutive Jazz Singh. ‘No blood other than Howard Stokes’s turned up. And very little of that. If Samir had been killed there, you’d expect... well, you’d expect to see blood.’
‘Unless someone cleaned it up?’ Banks suggested.
‘Of course. That’s where the Luminol came in handy. We were very thorough. Believe me, nobody can do a perfect clean-up.’
‘Thanks, Jazz,’ said Banks, reaching for a doughnut. ‘So what did you find?’
‘Stefan’s team found several hairs with follicles intact on the back of one of the armchairs. They found hairs on the backs of both chairs, actually, but the other ones belonged to Howard Stokes.’
‘What about the mattresses?’
‘Howard Stokes’s hair on one, and someone else’s on the other, though it had been turned over, and the mattress itself had been stripped of sheets. It didn’t look as if it had been used recently. Not Samir’s hair, by the way. Blond and short. There were no follicles, so we couldn’t run DNA.’
‘It must belong to the boy Margery Cunningham told me about yesterday,’ said Gerry. ‘The one she thought was Stokes’s grandson. The one who came and went. He rode around on a red bicycle and had a lot of visitors.’
‘Likely,’ said Banks. ‘And if there were no traces of Samir on the mattress, the odds are that he didn’t spend a night in the house. As he was seen by several people arriving in Eastvale on Sunday evening, we have to assume that he didn’t spend very long there at all.’ He turned back to Jazz. ‘Anything more?’
‘That’s it, really,’ she said. ‘The hairs on the chair back contained DNA that matched that of Samir Boulad.’
‘And only his?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s no room for error?’
‘One in 1000 million.’
Banks smiled. ‘I’ll take that as a no. Excellent news, Jazz. And quick work. Thanks a lot. I can’t say I know what this all means yet, but it’s the best lead we’ve had so far. It gives us a solid line on inquiries to pursue around Hollyfield. Have another doughnut.’
Jazz grinned and grabbed a raspberry-centred doughnut and poured herself more coffee. ‘Obviously Samir’s body provided us with an excellent DNA sample,’ she said. ‘And the match from the hair follicle was also a good source. It made my job a lot easier.’
‘So Samir was in the same house as Stokes at some point, and he was there long enough to sit down in the armchair but not to sleep on the mattress. What we don’t know is whether they were both in the house at the same time, or when this was.’
‘I think we can assume they must have been there together at some point,’ said Annie. ‘After all, it was Stokes’s house, and he didn’t seem the type to get out and about that much. And it seems likely Samir was there after he was seen in town with his backpack and jacket.’
‘Stokes did go and sit in the park and read sometimes,’ said Gerry. ‘Apparently, he never bothered anyone, but the Elmet Hill crowd didn’t approve of his presence there. Granville Myers said he scared the kiddies.’