Banks shook his head. ‘I have no idea. I haven’t seen Zelda in a while, and Ray’s away in America. You want me to talk to her?’
‘If you would. She’s in London, but she’s been informed she can head home as soon as she likes. We need to keep this low-key, Banksy, and the impression I get from the investigating team is that she doesn’t much like cops, even though she works for them. The chief investigators, Paul Danvers and Deborah Fletcher, have interviewed her twice now, and they said she was quite bolshy on both occasions. Mind you, Danvers walks around like he’s got a stick up his arse, and as for poor Debs, well, frigid stick insect would be a compliment. But I thought this Zelda might respond better to a casual chat with a friend, rather than a police interview.’
‘I’m a cop, too, you know.’
‘I know. But you’re also a friend of hers. And I know your liberal sympathies, your soft centre. You’re exactly the right kind of sucker for a story like hers. See if you can find out what she knows that we don’t, and what she’s up to.’
‘If you think I’m going to try to trap her into—’
‘I’m not expecting you to do anything of the kind, Banksy. I know you and your sense of loyalty all too well. It’s admirable, if a tad inconvenient at times. Be as up front with her as you like. It doesn’t matter. As I said, she’s not a suspect. We just want to know why she’s so interested, and if she knows or suspects anything about Hawkins she’s not telling us. If you want to bring down Keane, my friend, whether it’s for personal revenge or whatever, you could do a lot worse than have the NCA owing you a favour.’ He held up his empty tin and waved it back and forth. Banks went into the kitchen to get another for him and refilled his own glass at the same time.
‘What do you know about this Petar Tadić character?’ he asked Burgess when he came back.
‘Not a lot,’ said Burgess. ‘He’s got a brother called Goran. Croatians. They both started out in the transportation side of the sex trafficking business quite a few years ago, based in Serbia but working all over the eastern Balkans — Romania, Moldova, even Ukraine and Belarus. Wherever the beautiful, vulnerable young girls were. And the ones they couldn’t persuade to travel overseas with fake offers of modelling careers and secretarial college, they simply snatched off the street. But they’ve worked their way up to the exploitation level now. They work more with the end-users. That’s why they’re spending so much time over here.’
‘Pimps?’
‘Sort of. Certainly no better than. But not directly. They’re more like pimps to the pimps. They supply the needs of pimps. They don’t stand at the brothel door and take the money. They do the strong-arm stuff as well, if it’s called for. In fact, they’re quite brutal. They flatten the competition if they have to, and they don’t spare the rod with the girls, either, if they step out of line. Literally.’
‘Drugs?’
Burgess shook his head. ‘Only insofar as they need to supply the girls from time to time to keep them subdued, and to give themselves the occasional snort, of course, or fuel a sex party. A little happy powder now and then. But not operationally, no. They might consort with dealers and suppliers, mind you. It’s a mixed-up world they’re in, and where you find one crime, you’re as likely as not to find a dozen more. Most of the drugs are down to the Albanian Mafia, these days, and the Calabrians, the ’Ndrangheta. And you cross them only at your peril.’
Tadić sounded like the sort of supplier Connor Clive Blaydon might be working with on his pop-up brothels, Banks thought. Neither of them exactly down on the shop floor, but pulling the strings from a distance — Blaydon as someone who had access to the properties for use and Tadić with access to the girls and drugs. And of course, Tadić might also be rubbing shoulders with the Albanians, especially Leka Gashi. ‘Do you think Zelda’s in any danger?’ he asked.
Burgess thought for a moment, then said, ‘Depends. I’m assuming she’s not stupid enough to go stirring up a hornets’ nest, so there’s no real reason why she should be. On the other hand, if she’s got some sort of crazy plan in mind, who knows...? But she, more than anyone, ought to know how dangerous these people are, what they’re capable of. I don’t imagine she’s been running around asking questions about Keane, has she?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Banks. ‘And I certainly advised her not to. Like I said, it came to nothing. Why do you think this Hawkins chap was killed, if indeed he was?’
‘Danvers believes he was, and that it was because he functioned as the traffickers’ man on the inside. These high-powered criminal enterprises don’t get very far without insiders, and they create corruption on as wide a scale as they can. One or two upper-echelon traffickers have managed to avoid capture this past year or two, and the most obvious explanation seems that they were warned in advance. Danvers thinks Hawkins was on their payroll and something went wrong. Mind you, he’s got no evidence to back this up. Hence his interest in the girl.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m not entirely convinced. Hawkins may simply have got too close to Tadić or his organisation for their comfort.’
‘And they sent Keane to kill him?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Keane’s a forger, not a hit man. Surely they’ve got people they can use for jobs like Hawkins’s?’
‘Of course. But Keane likes to set fires. Maybe they wanted a bit of variety? Maybe Keane wanted the job? Maybe it was his way of proving something to them? After all, he set fire to a narrowboat and to your house up here in Eastvale. It’s clearly a hobby of his.’
‘Maybe,’ said Banks.
‘And a fire has the advantage of pretty much destroying any evidence there might have been — paper trails, that sort of thing.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘We have the photograph of Tadić with Keane, and maybe we also have Hawkins either on Tadić’s tail or on his payroll, depending on which theory you believe. Either way, he could have become a liability. So they set the fireman on him. Maybe Tadić’s usual killer was on another job, out of the country, in jail, whatever, and he used the best means he could find to hand.’
‘Where do you think Zelda fits in with all this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Burgess. ‘Given her history, you have to assume she might have come across Tadić at some point or other. How long has she been out of the game?’
‘She wasn’t in the game,’ snapped Banks.
‘Sorry. That’s not what I meant. Wrong choice of words. Don’t be so sensitive. She’s been over here about four years, right?’
‘I think so,’ said Banks. ‘Ray met her about three years ago in London, and she went to live with him first in Cornwall, then up here. I’m not sure how long she’d been in London before they met. She had been working as a pavement artist down there and was apparently a bit of a ragamuffin back then, so maybe not so long.’
‘Let’s say she’s been free four years, then,’ said Burgess. ‘The Tadić brothers have certainly been in the business much longer than that. Where’s she from?’
‘Moldova.’
‘That’s part of the area the Tadićs operated in. Their paths could have crossed. Maybe when she saw the picture of Petar Tadić with Keane she told Hawkins you were interested in Keane for reasons of your own. I don’t know. That may have set him on a dangerous path. But look on the bright side. She’s got you to protect her. Her knight in shining armour.’