Nine
22 April
Jake Tanner paused at the door, hearing the noise of the TV from inside the flat. As he put the key in the lock, he heard Nick scrambling for the remote to turn off the set. Jake pushed open the door and glared at him suspiciously.
‘What you got, Jake?’ said Nick. Without enthusiasm, Jake brandished two tins of economy baked beans. ‘That it?’
Jake slapped down coins on the warped kitchen worktop. ‘Eighty-seven pence left,’ he said by way of explanation. He rummaged for the tin opener, then poured the contents of one can into a small pan and put it on the hob to warm. He took out the last three slices of bread from the packet, examined the crusts for mould and picked off a few spots. ‘Thought I heard the TV.’
Nick looked back at him, confusion written across his face. ‘No, Jake. Not allowed,’ he said, reciting Jake’s mantra.
‘Not if we want the light on tonight,’ said Jake wearily. ‘If the meter runs out . . .’
‘If the meter runs out, we sit in the dark,’ quoted Nick, pleased with his memory skills.
Jake depressed the toaster handle. ‘So why is the TV on standby?’
Nick’s eyes darted around briefly before he lowered them in shame. ‘I just turned it on for a minute, Jake.’ He looked up, a smile lighting his face. ‘
Shaun the Sheep
was on.’
‘How old are you, Nick?’ His younger brother concentrated hard on the question. Before he could attempt an answer, Jake relented. ‘You’re nearly twenty.’
Nick’s face lit up. ‘Is it my birthday soon?’
Jake closed his exhausted eyes. ‘Not for three months, Nick.’
‘Three months isn’t nearly.’
‘It’s nearer twenty than nineteen.’
‘Good, because I know what I want for my birthday,’ said Nick. ‘An iPad.’
‘You’ll be lucky.’
‘What?’
‘I said, the best-laid plans of mice and men . . .’
‘The what?’
Jake trudged over to the TV and switched it off at the plug to save power. ‘
Of Mice and Men
. It’s a book I studied at school.’
‘What about it?’
Jake met Nick’s eyes but decided against further explanation. It would only lead to more questions. ‘Nothing.’ He spooned hot beans over the dry toast and placed a plate on Nick’s lap. ‘Brunch is served.’
Nick took up his knife and fork to tuck in, then hesitated. ‘I’ve got more than you.’
‘I can nick some peanuts at work.’ Jake cut a corner off his unbuttered toast, then laid it on the plate uneaten to watch Nick shovelling his food down like it was a race.
‘I like your new job,’ grinned Nick, bean skins on his teeth. Jake’s smile disappeared. ‘People were nice to me.’
‘It was a bad idea.’
‘I liked Max. He was nice.’
‘Was he?’ said Jake, glaring at his brother.
‘Yeah, he . . .’ Nick stopped and pursed his lips.
‘He what?’ said Jake.
‘He was nice,’ said Nick, clearly pleased with his clever answer. He paused, composing his next utterance, but Jake was way ahead of him.
‘The answer’s no, Nick.’
‘No what?’
‘You’re not going with me to the bar again.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re just not. You stay here.’
Nick returned to his eating, sulky. He finished his plateful before eyeing Jake’s untouched meal. Jake saw him looking and pushed his plate across the table. Nick gathered it in and began devouring the untouched food with gusto.
‘You gonna lock me in again?’ Jake didn’t reply, an answer in itself. ‘What if there’s a fire?’
‘There won’t be.’
‘But what if there is?’
Jake blew out his cheeks, coming to a decision. ‘Okay, I won’t lock you in if you promise not to go out.’
‘Why would I go out?’ said Nick. ‘I got no money.’
Jake considered. He walked to the kitchenette and picked out the
50
p coin from the scraps of change. ‘For the meter. Watch some cartoons. Don’t light any matches. I won’t be too late.’
‘Can we have beans again for tea?’ grinned Nick.
‘Did you hear me, Nick?’ Jake’s eyes burned into his brother’s cherubic face. ‘Do
not
go out. Promise?’
‘I promise.’
Jake trotted down the eleven flights of crumbling concrete steps and out on to the busy road. The morning sky had darkened since his shopping trip to Lidl.
As usual, he glanced over at the ramshackle building that dominated the roundabout at the junction with Lara Croft Way. Every day since the Cream Bar had closed, Jake had looked across at it, and every day the weeds had got a little higher, the iron gate a little rustier and the paint on the brickwork a little dirtier. The place had been closed for several years and was one of many Derby hostelries in which Jake had pulled pints. In fact, he’d been working that last night, the night the police had shut the place down after a gangland fracas had turned ugly. Jake had been a keyholder, and the bar’s closure had been so sudden that no one had thought to ask for them back.
Once things had died down, he’d let himself in to see if there was anything worth taking. He was no tea leaf, but he had pay owing and saw no reason not to help himself to anything of value, not that there was anything left after the owners had stripped it. Coppers too, probably.
Shame. It had been good to hold down a full-time job knowing that Nick was only a hundred yards away, safely watching TV in the flat after he got home from school. But when the Cream Bar had closed and Nick left school with no qualifications and no skills, Jake had had little choice but to work part-time and leave his brother outside various bars until he’d finished his shift – it was either that or not work at all. And with Nick so helpless, not working was often the norm.
But now he’d landed a plum full-time job with good pay, and for the first few days he had been happy to leave his kid brother in Bar Polski’s staff cloakroom with a fun pack of sweets and a comic. Not any more. If he wanted to keep hold of his new job, he had no option but to leave Nick alone in the flat. And that was asking for trouble.
The best-laid plans
. . .
Jake dragged his thoughts back to the day ahead and how he was going to handle Max if he saw him. He didn’t want to lose his job, but something had to be done. He sprinted in front of traffic to beat the lights, then ambled along Osmaston Road towards the centre of town.
From the comfort of his van, Max watched Jake pass, sinking down into the driver’s seat at his nearest tangent. When Jake had disappeared from view, he took a hearty pull on a bottle of vodka before spinning the top back on and tossing it on the passenger seat. Grabbing a large bunch of keys from under the seat, he got out and locked the vehicle before spitting contemptuously in Jake’s direction.
He looked up at the tower block. He could make out Nick pressed up against the window, scanning the people below. Max ambled across the road, keeping his eyes on the eleventh floor. He plucked out a large packet of Haribos from his overalls and opened it, popping a handful in his mouth and eating with exaggerated pleasure. When he looked back up to the window, Nick was gone.
That afternoon Brook sat in the incident room and gazed absently at the display boards. Six missing young women now stared, smiled or laughed happily back at him. In addition to Caitlin Kinnear and Daniela Cassetti, Noble had posted brief biographies and last known movements of four other girls, three from Poland and one from the Republic of Ireland, who had travelled to England as tourists or economic migrants.
Taking a pair each, Brook and Noble had spent the morning looking separately into the four young women’s last known movements, and now Brook read through his meagre notes.
Adrianna Bakula had flown to East Midlands Airport from Gdansk in February
2014
. She had taken a cleaning job at the new Riverlights Hotel and had worked there for the best part of six months, living frugally in a nearby Catholic women’s hostel. She had quit the job, packed all her belongings and left the hostel in the middle of the night of
25
July, and hadn’t been seen since.
Unfortunately, it had been a further four months before relatives in Gdansk had begun to worry, and her mother duly reported her missing in early December, but by then it was too late for meaningful enquiries. Derby CID had been able to do little more than a cursory check, discovering that Adrianna had had a return Ryanair ticket for a flight in May. It hadn’t been used, but then it was scheduled for a time when Adrianna was known to be working at the Riverlights, so it was clear she had herself declined to use it
before
she disappeared in late July.
At the time, nobody in Derby had thought her sudden departure suspicious, because it was in the nature of economic migrants to leave jobs at a moment’s notice. Indeed, all of Adrianna’s friends and work colleagues at the time – most of them migrants – had also moved on, a function of the temporary nature of hotel work, so getting witness statements – then and now – was impossible.
One solid fact was that since her disappearance, Adrianna’s passport had not been logged at any border control exiting the UK, either by air or sea. As a result, Interpol believed she was still in Britain.
With no evidence other than a name, passport details and a photograph, her particulars had been passed along to the Missing Persons Bureau, who worked in partnership with the British Transport Police and other agencies on thousands of disappearances every year.
Neither agency had turned up anything. And unless a body was found, dead or alive, Adrianna Bakula’s final resting place would be a database entry in their files, the only thing to show that she’d ever visited the UK. No coffin, no grave, in fact nothing to mark that she had ever lived, apart from a few fading photographs clutched to the bosom of a bewildered family in Gdansk.
‘How easy it is to fall through the cracks,’ mumbled Brook, flipping a page. The second girl was Nicola Serota from Poznan, and again Brook had discovered nothing new to add to her skimpy file. Nicola had also flown into East Midlands on Ryanair, just after Christmas
2013
, to stay with her sister Veronika, a waitress in a Derby restaurant. A week later, on
3
January, she had vanished while Veronika was at work. Apparently she had packed her belongings, left her sister’s flat and walked out into the night, never to be seen again. To make matters worse, her sister hadn’t initially reported her missing because the flat’s spare key, which she’d given to Nicola, had been pushed back through the letter box.
A few weeks later, when Nicola hadn’t phoned or texted, Veronika began to worry and took the next step of reporting her sister missing, but because of the delay, little or no time was spent on such a futile enquiry. Nicola Serota could be anywhere. A foreign tourist with few ties to the community moving on. What’s to investigate?
Brook could sympathise: he’d tried to make contact with Nicola’s sister Veronika that very day, but Veronika herself had left Britain nearly a year ago.
He booted up his laptop and logged on to the PNC database to find the name of the case’s supervising officer – he could hardly use the word
investigating
– who turned out to be DC Read, a member of his own squad. He scrolled through Read’s notes on Nicola Serota, cheered to find an element of thoroughness. The detective constable had at least made the effort to follow up and check whether Nicola’s return ticket to Poland, dated a month after her arrival, had been redeemed. It hadn’t. With no further indications, Read had filled in the paperwork and sent it on to the MPB.
Brook’s mobile vibrated. It was a message from Noble.
Brook sat in Starbucks in the Intu Centre, his back to the tide of pedestrians shuffling aimlessly along the concourse. Noble arrived, ordered a coffee and spotted Brook in the corner hunched against humankind. He nodded at his empty cup.
‘Want another?’
‘I’ll pass,’ replied Brook. ‘I asked for a cup of coffee with milk and nearly started a riot.’
‘If only it were that simple,’ laughed Noble, darting back to the counter and returning with a frothy concoction in a cup the size of a soup tureen. ‘Any joy at the Rutherford?’
‘They were pretty cagey over the phone,’ said Brook. ‘They need a warrant for a patient’s medical details, but I impressed upon them that we’re looking for a missing person, and that tracing all Caitlin’s financial transactions was vital.’
‘And?’
‘She paid the lot in cash, up front – six hundred and sixty-two pounds.’
‘A clinic takes cash?’ puzzled Noble.
‘It makes sense when you think about it.’
‘I suppose,’ said Noble. ‘Doesn’t help us trace the money, though, and Caitlin definitely didn’t take that from any account we’ve seen.’
‘So we’re still looking for an extra source of income.’
‘Davison?’
Brook looked at his watch. ‘You can ask him this evening. I invited him to the station.’
‘Invited?’ exclaimed Noble. ‘That arrogant . . . He won’t come.’
‘And miss the chance to look down his nose at us?’ said Brook. ‘He’ll come.’
‘And your Polish girls?’
‘Not a thing that’s not in the files. You?’
Noble handed Brook a smaller version of one of the new photographs on the display boards – bright smile, natural blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes.
‘Valerie Gli . . .’ he stumbled over the pronunciation, ‘Gli . . . szc . . .’
‘Gliszczynska,’ said Brook, leaning over Noble’s notebook.
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
‘University education,’ said Brook, teasing Noble with his own ammunition.
Noble grunted over his coffee. ‘Valerie arrived in England in April
2012
and worked as a barista in London for a year.’
‘She’s a barrister?’
‘A barista,’ repeated Noble, rolling his eyes at their surroundings. ‘It’s someone who serves coffee – in a coffee shop.’
‘Whatever happened to waitressing?’
‘It’s because they work behind a bar . . .’ began Noble, giving up immediately. ‘Take my word for it. Anyway, she packed that in and went to Liverpool for a couple of weeks, and we know she went to the Download Festival in Castle Donington in June of
2013
because she met a man there . . .’