‘Yesterday, yes.’
‘You got to the house and spoke to Vikki. I know that much.’
‘Vikki?’
‘The madam, at sixteen Marchant Street.’
He opened his eyes briefly again. ‘She knows, guv. Vikki knows. You’ve got to see her.’ Then he was gone again.
A hand on Keith’s free arm, a gentle squeeze, and he left.
This would not be easy considering he had Vikki’s husband in custody and 16 Marchant Street was a crime scene. Police cars would be standing outside and the house would have emptied of girls and clients. Vikki had lost her husband and her livelihood. Even if he caught up with the lady she wouldn’t be in a frame of mind to tell all.
He called at the Crimea as soon as it opened and looked for Andriy, thinking he might know where Vikki lived.
No Andriy.
‘I don’t understand,’ the barmaid said. ‘Always he is here when I open. I hope he is not ill.’
He guessed what was amiss. ‘He took some bottles home last night. Probably sleeping it off.’
His only other contact was Olena. He had to try.
He went first to the church and found her removing used candles from in front of an icon. ‘There is nothing I can tell you about Viktorya,’ she said, and contradicted herself by adding, ‘She is upset. Distress.’
‘You’ve seen her, then?’
‘I cannot speak of this in front of St Volodymyr.’
‘Shall we go outside?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Viktorya is distressed because her husband is at the police station. Did she tell you?’
Excluding him, she opened a new box of candles and set them out neatly in front of the shrine.
He said, ‘Would you light one for my friend, Keith Halliwell, who was shot yesterday? I think St Volodymyr will be sympathetic.’ She sighed and walked with him to the main door. On the steps, she said,
‘She is at my house. I don’t know what happen. You are good man, I think. Be gentle, yes?’
He walked the short distance to Meon Road. Vikki came to the door, opened it a fraction, saw him and slammed it shut. He bent down and talked through the letterbox. ‘Vikki, I’ve come from Olena. Do I have to go back and ask her to leave the church and unlock her own front door?’
After some hesitation, she opened it and glared. No bread and salt welcome this time. The blonde hair was in need of combing and the eyes were red-lidded. She turned her back on him and stepped into the front room where the photos stood on the mantelpiece, including the one of Vikki, or Viktorya, as she was known here. They sat facing each other on the two chairs, overlooked by the crucifix.
‘Olena doesn’t know what goes on in Marchant Street, does she?’ he said.
‘She thinks the best of everyone,’ Vikki said. ‘She is like a mother to me. You don’t tell your mother things that will trouble her.’
‘But she knows your husband is being held for shooting a policeman?’
‘She doesn’t know it all.’
‘Keith is going to pull through, I think. I saw him this morning. He told me you gave him information. In view of what happened I’m going to have to ask you to repeat it.’
She shrugged and looked away.
Softly, softly wasn’t going to work with Vikki. ‘We’re holding your husband on a minor rap at present. We have to decide what to charge him with. Could be evading arrest, illegal possession of a firearm, shooting with intent to kill. He’s lucky it isn’t murder. The courts take a hard line on cop killers.’
‘He never meant to kill.’
‘That’s his story. He claims he wasn’t aiming the gun, that he’s inexperienced at using it.’
‘I’ve never known him to fire it. We’ve both been under a lot of pressure.’
‘Since he took over from Sergey?’
Her eyes widened at how much he knew. She gave a nod.
He judged that she was as ready to co-operate at this moment as she ever would be. ‘I expect Keith asked you about the Ukrainian woman we found buried in Bath?’
She gave a nervous, angry sigh, registering that she’d been manoeuvred into this. ‘He thought I might know her.’
‘From so far back?’
‘I was around then. I can tell you what I told him, if you’ll leave me alone. We talked about two girls I remember who were trafficked a couple of years after independence.’
‘Which was when?’
‘Independence was 1991. This must have been 1993.’
‘What age would they have been?’
‘Late teens. No older.’
‘Did they work for you?’
‘For me?’ She shook her head. ‘I was nobody then, just a prossie. We were all trapped in the game, but we knew each other and there was a kind of team thing. I mentioned these two because they got away. It was a scary time. High summer, which is always the worst. The mob were at war for control of this part of London. Pimps were murdered and at least one girl was shot. These two seized their chance and fled. One of them got back to the Ukraine and years later I had a card from her. I don’t know how she got my address.’
‘News can travel both ways. You’re well known, I gather. And so is your address.’
‘Maybe. This girl Tatiana was asking if I knew what happened to Nadia, the other one who escaped. They split up because Nadia didn’t want to return to the Ukraine. She had no family to go back to. She’d been raised in an orphanage and left at fifteen and immediately was forced into sex work. That’s not unusual. The traffickers take the good-looking girls straight from the orphanages. They leave with just the clothes they’re wearing.’
‘Did you know Nadia personally?’
‘Not well. By sight, I would say. After they made a run for it, her plan was to get out of London. She took a train from Paddington. That’s the last anyone saw of her.’
‘Paddington? She headed west. She could have made it to Bath or Bristol. Would they have followed her there and killed her?’
‘The mob? I doubt it. They were too busy with their battles here.’
‘Later, then?’
She shook her head. ‘She wasn’t worth the trouble. Girls are just goods, like fruit machines. They get replaced.’
Callous words. He could see that in her terms they were accurate. ‘You say you knew her by sight. Can you describe her for me?’
‘About my height – average. Blue eyes widely spaced. Straight nose. Even teeth. Good legs, very good.’
He thought of the femur he’d held in his hand.
‘Hair colour?’
She smiled faintly. ‘We all changed our hair often, to reinvent ourselves. It made us feel better. She could have been any colour. It was straight and long. I know she was an orphan but I always thought she was from Cossack stock. She liked watching the racing on TV, not to bet, just to see the horses. They adore their horses, the Cossacks. And she was confident, believed in herself. If she didn’t survive, I’m surprised.’
‘Do you know her surname?’
‘I didn’t at the time. In the trade we use first names and some of them are false, but Tatiana mentioned it in her card. She was Nadia Berezan.’
‘Thanks.’ He made a note.
Nadia Berezan, call girl.
She was still a long shot, but she was Ukrainian and she’d travelled to the West Country at about the right time. And from what he had learned about her origins, no one would have reported her as a missing person.
Forced this time to do his own driving, he headed out of London in the slow lane of the M4 at a rate that required everyone else to overtake, even old ladies in rusty Minis. For much of the journey he was reflecting on the shooting of Keith, questioning his own motive in sending him to deal with Vikki whilst taking Andriy for himself. He’d let Keith talk him out of his first intention, which was to go to Marchant Road. He couldn’t even argue that it had been about dividing forces according to risk. The decision had been taken on nothing more serious than Keith’s offer to cope with another house visit, another chorni khlib and kvas welcome. Up to then, Vikki had seemed the softer option and, being the guv’nor, he would have taken it as his right – in which case, his conscience would still have plagued him. Face it, Peter Diamond, he thought, either way, you’re a selfish bastard.