He gave her an ironic glance. “Isn’t that what the Germans said?”
“This is different. What else could you do?”
Brooke shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t like the feeling, that’s all. I doubt they’d warn off your pal Banks so easily.”
Annie smiled. “DCI Banks is a law unto himself,” she said. “Partly because he doesn’t feel he has anything to lose. It’s not necessarily a position to envy.” She gestured to the SO19 officers in the street. “Anyway, for better or for worse we’re getting some action now.”
Brooke nodded. “It’s gone too far. Even the brass couldn’t justify leaving vulnerable underage girls in captivity like that for one night longer than they had to. Besides, we still don’t know if or how Lambert is connected. Maybe it’s something completely different.”
“Whatever it is, we’ll find out soon,” said Annie. “They’re going in.”
Half the men went around the back and the rest prepared to enter through the front door. Annie held her breath as one of them slammed the battering ram and the wood splintered, then they were in. She heard similar sounds from the back.
This time, in addition to the shouting and screaming, Annie heard shots. So did the neighbors farther down the street, who soon appeared at windows and in doorways, only to be kept at bay by the uniformed officers deployed on crowd duties. After an agonizing period of silence, the team leader stepped out and waved Annie and Brooke inside.
“Everybody all right?” Annie asked.
“We are,” he said. “Eddie took one on the chest but the body armor worked fine. He’s feeling a bit sore, that’s all. Look, we’re waiting for the ambulance and for the brass to get here. You know what it’s like whenever shots are fired. Forms in triplicate. Questions. You feel more like a criminal than a copper.”
Annie and Brooke followed the grumbling team leader into the front room. Four men had been sitting around playing cards at a folding table. Two of them were handcuffed and two of them were slumped against the wall with holes in their chests, covered in dark bibs of blood. Blood had also sprayed on the walls and carpeting. Annie felt a bit sick. She hadn’t seen many gunshot victims before and hadn’t been prepared for the smell of the exploded ammunition mingled with that of fresh blood in the room.
One of the dead men resembled the description she had heard of Hadeon “Happy Harry” Mazuryk, and the other one had a bodybuilder’s physique, long greasy hair tied back in a ponytail and a thick gold chain around his neck. One of the bullets must have severed the chain because it snaked in one long piece down his bloody chest.
Annie didn’t recognize the other two men. Both were looking sullen, handcuffed and guarded by SO19 officers with their Heckler and Kochs at the ready. One of the men might have been the driver of the Mondeo, but all the descriptions she had of him were vague. The more she looked at the other one, the more he seemed familiar: the spiky hair, goatee beard. Then she remembered: the photograph Banks had shown her, the one his brother apparently took just days before he died. This was the man who had been sitting with Gareth Lambert at an outdoor café. Now there was a connection, whatever it meant.
An ambulance arrived and men filled the room. Annie and Brooke followed one of the officers upstairs. There were three bedrooms, all of them occupied by beautiful young girls, who were more than a little unnerved by the shooting. SO19 officers dealt with the other two and Brooke hung back as Annie entered the room and walked over to the pregnant girl, who was lying on the bed looking frightened.
“Carmen?” she said. “Carmen Petri?”
The girl nodded, seeming surprised that Annie knew her name. She looked a little older than the girls in the King’s Cross house, perhaps as old as nineteen or twenty, and she wore much less makeup. It was difficult to tell what her figure had been like because she was about six months pregnant, but she had a beautiful face: full lips with a Bardot pout, a perfectly proportioned nose, flawless complexion – apart from a beauty spot by the side of her mouth – and deep dark blue eyes damp with tears. Annie couldn’t read her expression and guessed that Carmen was a girl who had become adept at hiding her feelings and thoughts for the purposes of self-preservation.
“What happened?” Carmen asked.
“I’ll explain it all later,” Annie said. “I’m happy to meet you at last. I’m Annie Cabot. Will you answer some questions?”
“Where’s Hadeon?”
“Dead.”
“Good. And Artyom?”
“Who’s he?”
“Big man. Ponytail.”
“He’s dead, too.”
“That is also good,” she said, shifting on the bed slightly. Annie could see an expression of discomfort cross her features as she moved. Probably the baby kicking.
“What happened to you?” Annie asked. “How did you get here?”
“Is a long story,” she said. “And a long time ago. I was taken from street when I was a young girl.”
“How young?”
“Sixteen.”
“By who?”
She shrugged. “A man.”
“Where?”
“A village near Craiova, in Romania. You will not have heard of it.”
“You went to see Dr. Lukas at the Berger-Lennox Centre?”
“Yes. She was good to me.” Carmen reached for a cigarette. “She wanted me to stop smoking, but I tell her a girl must have one vice. I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs.” Her English was remarkably good, Annie thought, and she could see what Veronika meant about her being beautiful. There was a sophistication about her beyond her years, and Carmen had the kind of class you don’t usually associate with people in her profession.
Annie wondered how on earth she could stand the life without some form of escape, but what did she know? And what could she presume to know about someone who had been through what Carmen had been through.
“Do you remember Jennifer Clewes?”
“Yes. She works with Dr. Lukas.”
“She’s dead, too, Carmen. Someone killed her.”
Carmen looked alarmed. “Why?”
“We don’t know. We think it might have to do with something you told her. Jennifer and her boyfriend seemed to know something about what was going on here. Did you say anything to her when you were talking last week?”
Carmen looked down at her swollen belly. “The doctor think we do this because we want to,” she said. “I tell her she does not know how bad things are, that none of us are here because we want. I tell Jennifer, too. Some stories of what happen to girls. I should not have said that. But I think I was feeling brave because they were treating me well, different from the others.”
“When did you tell her this?”
“Last time I go to clinic. Not long. Monday, I think.”
“Did Artyom know you’d been talking?”
“He took me back in the car and told Hadeon. They could not hurt me to make me tell them anything. I knew that. But…”
“I think I know,” said Annie. “They threatened to harm your parents back home, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” Carmen whispered.
“So you told them.”
“Yes.”
Annie nodded. “That house in King’s Cross,” she said. “We’ve just come from there. Those girls were treated terribly. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“I have been there. Hadeon always tells me I have been very lucky. For me men pay hundreds of pounds a night, for those girls they must have many men to make such money. Hadeon makes his girls work very hard. He tells me if I am not good he will send me there, too. I am happy he is dead.”
“Do you think he would have people killed who found out what he was doing?”
Carmen nodded. “Harry once killed a girl with his bare hands for refusing to have sex with him.”
“Did Artyom work for him?”
“Yes. And Boris.”
“With the cropped blond hair?”
“That is Boris.”
The driver, Annie thought. “There was another man downstairs.” Annie described him. “Do you know who he is?”