‘Cheers, then,’ Diamond said, swallowed hard and told them he was from Bath police enquiring into the death of a young woman, apparently Ukrainian, about twenty years ago. ‘She was buried on a hillside a mile or so outside the city. Her skeleton, minus the skull, was dug up last week. It’s possible she was known here in London.’
‘If she was Ukrainian, she probably was,’ the man in the baseball cap said. ‘What do you say, Andriy?’
‘This is all you know?’ Andriy said without looking at Diamond or the other man. ‘A headless skeleton?’
He told them about the zip.
Andriy wasn’t impressed. ‘Hundreds of girls come through London. I don’t know where they all end up.’
‘This one ended up in another city, dead, probably murdered.’
‘So she got in with bad company.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Diamond said, ‘were there any Ukrainian gangs with links to Bath or Bristol twenty years ago?’
Andriy shrugged and looked away.
‘She was from your country,’ Diamond said.
‘He doesn’t have an answer,’ his companion said.
Yet he was supposed to be a gossip, so why so reticent? Diamond dredged deep. ‘Another thought, then. The Cossacks come from the Ukraine, am I right?’
‘Cossacks?’ Andriy locked eyes with him again. ‘What is this talk of Cossacks? Who are you to be speaking about Cossacks?’
‘They have a fierce reputation, don’t they?’
‘What – do you think some Cossack came to Bath and killed this girl?’ He grinned at his friend, then said to Diamond, ‘Do you know anything about history? The time of the Cossacks was nearly four hundred years ago. They revolted against the Polish oppressors. Smashed them. But it was a long time ago.’
‘The 1640s,’ the other man said.
‘Well, how about that?’ Diamond said just to counter the suggestion that he was ignorant about history. ‘We had a civil war of our own going on in the 1640s.’
Andriy wasn’t impressed. ‘I’m telling you the Cossacks are in the past.’
‘What about World War Two? There were Cossack brigades fighting on the German side against the Russians.’
‘Everyone was fighting and everyone suffered,’ Andriy said. ‘Poles, Russians, Jews, Cossacks. There isn’t a family in the Ukraine without painful memories of the war. Don’t lecture me on our history.’
Diamond shook his head. ‘I’m making the point that the Cossacks never went away. You can’t dismiss them as history. Do they sometimes decapitate their enemies?’
There was a moment of silence. He was in dangerous waters here.
‘It’s not unknown,’ Andriy said finally, and added, ‘in past times.’ ‘Ancient times,’ his companion said.
‘Right,’ Andriy said. ‘A long time back. They don’t carry swords any more. If I were you, Mr Policeman, I would forget about Cossacks.’
‘Thanks for that. Any suggestions where I should look, then?’
‘Try the embassy.’
‘We already did – and drew a blank.’
‘Too bad.’
The man with the baseball cap looked at his watch and said something in Ukrainian to Andriy, and then slid off the stool, grinned at Diamond as if to say you’ll be here for ever if you think you’re going to find anything out, and left the pub.
‘Mafioso,’ Andriy said.
‘It crossed my mind,’ Diamond said. ‘Difficult to talk freely with someone like that in attendance.’
Andriy showed him an empty glass. Diamond nodded to the bar girl. She poured another double and then returned to the area behind the bar, despatched there by a flap of Andriy’s hand.
‘In the nineties, when your dead woman disappeared,’ he said to Diamond, ‘there were two big groups bringing women to this country. They still operate, and so do others now. He is attached to one such group.’
‘Understood.’
‘At that time, the competition was strong. Deadly. Two pimps were killed. One of the women, too.’
Diamond leaned forward, all ears.
‘But not your woman,’ Andriy said. ‘This one was given a funeral at the Ukrainian Church.’
‘When was this?’
‘The year of independence, 1991.’
‘Was her killer caught?’
‘No. The violence made a strong impression and some of the call girls decided to quit. I’m not sure how many, but they weren’t heard of again. If they had any sense they would have got out of London.’
‘Do you know of any names?’
He shook his head.
‘Surely,’ Diamond said, ‘if they got away, they would have been replaced. We both know there was no shortage of working girls at that time. They were coming here by the hundred.’
‘That is true.’
‘If, as you say, the quitters got out of London, would their pimps have gone to all the trouble of hounding them down? I’m thinking of some vengeful bastard following our woman to Bath and killing her and burying her.’
‘Depends if she was a danger, I guess,’ Andriy said.
‘Knew too much? You could be right.’ His thoughts were interrupted by a piercing sound from somewhere close. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Do you have a phone?’ Andriy said.
‘Christ, yes.’ He took it from his pocket. This could only be Keith Halliwell.
Urgency bordering on panic was in Keith’s voice. ‘Guv, I’m in trouble. Can you get here fast?’
Of all the team, Keith would be the last to panic.
Diamond sprinted along the street, hailed the first taxi he sighted and gave the address Olena had supplied. ‘Put your foot down,’ he added, ignoring his phobia for high speeds.
‘Man, you’ve got to be hot for it,’ the West Indian driver said.
‘What do you mean?’
He got no answer except a throaty laugh. While the taxi rattled through the backstreets, he used the mobile to ask Louis to send a response car.
‘Say that address again,’ Louis said.
‘Marchant Street, Barnes.’
‘The number.’
‘I told you. Sixteen.’
‘We know sixteen Marchant Street. It’s a knocking shop.’
‘Can’t be,’ Diamond said. ‘Olena sent him there. One of her church people lives there with her English husband.’
‘Take it from me, Peter, it’s a brothel.’
Now he understood the cabby’s mirth.
‘Is there another Marchant Street?’ he asked Louis.
The driver shouted from the front, ‘Not in Barnes, my friend.’
‘Get someone there, anyway,’ Diamond said into the phone.
They joined a tailback waiting to cross Hammersmith Bridge. ‘Isn’t there a quicker route?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, you can fly,’ the cabby told him. ‘What are you on – Viagra?’
He subsided into silence.
Across the bridge, a left turn came up soon.
‘Sixteen. Should be on the right,’ he said.
‘You’re not the first I’ve brought here,’ the cabby said. ‘It’s the one with the blinds down. Shall I wait? I reckon you’re gonna be quick.’
‘No need.’ He got out and handed across a ten pound note. The driver turned the taxi and left, still grinning.
The house was part of a shabby Victorian terrace, three storeys high. The age of smog had blackened the brickwork and this wasn’t the class of address that got steam-cleaned. Broken window-boxes spoke of a once-respectable use, but not for some time. Olena the church worker, saviour of vulnerable girls, had been badly misinformed by her protégée, Viktoriya.
The disrepair wasn’t total. His attention was caught by a movement above the door. A small video camera had shifted its angle a fraction. Someone inside had seen him coming.
The door worked on an entry-phone. He pressed the control and a woman’s voice said, ‘Yes?’
‘John Smith. May I come in?’
The door buzzed. He pushed it and got inside.
‘Upstairs,’ called the same female voice.
For all she knew, he was a punter, a new client, and he’d play along with this for as long as it suited. The stairs had a serviceable carpet in brown cord. Presumably Keith had stepped up here, but at what point had he guessed the status of the house?