Screams in the Dark (26 page)

*

Rosie was walking up towards the Blue Note to meet TJ and finish the evening with him as arranged. She was close to the bar when her mobile rang. There was no number.

‘Hello?’

‘Rosie?’

‘Yeah. Who’s this?’

‘It’s Tanya.’

Rosie stopped in her tracks. Relief flooded through her. Tanya was alive.

‘Tanya! Are you okay? Where are you? I went to your house … I thought … I was worried they’d …’

‘I’m all right, Rosie. I ran away. They came for me, two men. They beat me and took me in their car, but I got out.’

‘How? What happened?’

‘Rosie.’ Tanya interrupted. ‘I have no money in my phone. Can you meet me?’

‘Of course. Where are you?’

‘I am in a cafe. The one at the start of Woodlands Road. Is open late. It’s safe here. There are always people.’

‘Okay,’ Rosie said. ‘Wait for me. I’ll be there in five minutes.’ She hailed a taxi.

*

Rosie spotted Tanya through the big window at the Grassroots cafe. She went inside, giving her a wave from the door. The place was busy, mostly student types, and one or two lonely-looking people reading books. Rosie sat down on the leather easy chair opposite Tanya. They both looked surprised when they saw each other’s bruised faces.

‘People must think it’s battered women’s night in here,’ Rosie said.

Tanya smiled through a cut lip. One eye was a little blackened, but her bruises were fading. ‘Is nothing new for me, a punched face,’ she said, resigned.

Rosie immediately regretted having made the joke.
‘Sorry, Tanya. I forgot about what happened to you. I wasn’t thinking.’

Tanya shrugged. ‘No problem, Rosie.’ She gave a long sigh. ‘Is over now. Well, no more beatings from Josef anyway.’

‘I’m so sorry, Tanya. I know he meant a lot to you at one time.’

Tanya took a cigarette from her packet and lit it. She was silent for a moment then blew out a stream of smoke and said, ‘Yes. He did. But that was a long time ago.’ She looked at Rosie. ‘They killed him because he was trying to blackmail Frank Paton. I knew he would do that. I told you. He is so stupid. I mean … was.’

‘I think you’re right.’ Rosie said.

‘I know for sure, Rosie,’ Tanya said. ‘The men said it to me when they slap me. They said, “you’ll get the same as your fucking blackmailing boyfriend.” Then they hit me. They said was I going to blackmail them too.’

Rosie ordered a latte and another black coffee for Tanya. She told her about going to her house and the man who attacked her. Then, quietly, Tanya told her what had happened to her.

The men who burst into her flat had bundled her into the car and driven her towards the city centre. She pretended to be unconscious in the back; both men were in the front seat. When they stopped at the lights outside Queen Street station, she made a run for it. She smiled, saying they must be stupid because they didn’t even lock the door. She ran past the taxi rank and up into the station, then downstairs to a platform. She had no idea
where she was going, but she just jumped on a train that was about to leave. As the train pulled away from the station, she saw one of her attackers arrive at the bottom of the steps. But he was too late.

‘You had a very lucky escape,’ Rosie said. ‘Good for you, Tanya. You are much tougher than you think.’

‘I thought maybe they would come after me, but I know they wouldn’t be able to find me. I stayed on the train for almost an hour until it went to the coast, a place called Helensburgh. I found a small guest house and stayed for a few days.’

‘Where are you staying now?’

‘In a small hotel in the city. Is okay for now.’

‘You should really talk to the police,’ Rosie said. She wanted to say the police could protect her, but she knew they couldn’t.

‘No,’ Tanya said. ‘I cannot do that. They maybe know I took the letters. I only going to stay here for a few days. I have a friend in London who will give me a room. I can go back to working with the escort agency there. It’s money.’ She stubbed her cigarette out and looked at Rosie. ‘I will survive, Rosie. I came all the way from Ukraine for a better life, and one day I will find it here. If not here, maybe Spain, maybe Italy, or Amsterdam. I will work in anything until I get enough money. But these people won’t win. They won’t kill me.’

Rosie looked at her and her mind flipped back to Mags Gillick. She wanted a better life too, but she didn’t get the chance. They sat quietly, and Rosie wondered if she was going to ask her for money.

‘Is there anything I can do to help you, Tanya?’

‘No.’ Tanya shook her head and looked at the floor. ‘I wanted to see you to say thank you … for listening to me and understanding.’ She put down her cup. ‘I hope you find them, Rosie. The men who are killing the refugees. That is what they are doing, isn’t it? That is why the refugees are gone?’

Rosie nodded slowly. ‘I think so, Tanya, I am working on it. I will get them, but it’s going to be tough.’

Tanya stood up, and Rosie walked with her out of the cafe, surprised and moved that she wanted nothing.

‘Well,’ Tanya smiled. ‘Goodbye Rosie. Maybe we can keep in touch some time.’ She took a step forward and put her arms around her.

Rosie hugged her back.

‘Of course. Good luck, Tanya. Be safe.’

They parted, and Rosie saw that Tanya’s tears had spilled onto her bruised cheek. She looked lonely, despite her defiance.

‘I must go,’ she said, sniffing and turning away.

Rosie watched until she disappeared up the road and turned off into one of the rows of tenement-lined side-streets where you could be anonymous in the melting pot of colour and cultures in the West End of the city.

CHAPTER 26

The flat where McGuire had moved Rosie to for safety was one of those fashionable minimalist jobs in the West End. Rosie sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table, looking around at the ordered, squared lines of pale wood furniture and pastel sofas – the kind of place where if you left a newspaper on a chair it would ruin the entire sterile karma. She wondered what kind of people would want to live in a place like this, and she was already missing the clutter of her own flat, where little remnants of what she’d been doing, wearing, reading were scattered around every room. But at least this felt safe – four solid bolts on the front door and double locks on every window. She’d joked to McGuire it was so secure it probably belonged to a drug dealer.

After a restless night, she had been up from the first signs of daylight, her mind buzzing with the phone call she’d taken from Mickey Kavanagh when she got home. It had answered a few questions.

Mickey told her that word had reached him from his Special Branch connections in London that there were already rumblings at government level over what was going on up in Glasgow. They’d had intelligence in the past that Raznatovic was involved with gangsters and that he may have gone to Glasgow, but the trail had gone cold some months ago and they did nothing more. He mentioned the name PD Pharmaceuticals and the deposed Environment Secretary Tim Hayman who was on the board of directors.

There was potential embarrassment for the government if anything dodgy was exposed about PD: not only because of the former Secretary of State’s current involvement with the company, but also the fact that government had given them a five million-pound grant to come to Manchester – where they’d created four hundred jobs as part of their much-vaunted industrial regeneration programme. If there was something rotten, even if it did seem far-fetched, Mickey said, they wouldn’t want it to get out. Rosie told him about Emir and how he’d been shot, but he’d already heard it on the grapevine. He told her to be careful, but the word was that Raznatovic had vanished.

Rosie was getting ready to leave the flat when her mobile rang.

‘Rosie.’

It was Adrian.

‘Adrian. Good to hear from you. You all right?’ She pictured his face, always so serious, smudges of sleeplessness under his dark eyes.

‘Yes, my friend. I can talk only for a minute. I have good information.’

‘Great. What’s happening?’

‘He is here, the Serbian. In Belgrade, my people there tell me. He is hiding. Protected.’

Rosie’s stomach tightened a little.

‘Serbians tell you this, Adrian? But they were your enemies during the war.’

‘Yes, Rosie, that is true. But before the war we were neighbours, friends. I still have contacts with some old friends who do not like what happened.’

‘Do you think we could get to him?’

‘He is a wanted man. War crimes. The authorities also will be trying to find him.’ He paused. ‘I think we can get him, Rosie, but is dangerous. I don’t know if you should come.’ He paused again. ‘But I also think you may be in danger even in Glasgow. These people have many connections that can stretch across countries.’

Silence. Rosie remembered the last time she saw Adrian, and the shoot-out in the car park in the Costa del Sol as he’d rescued his sister from the people-traffickers who had trapped her.

‘I want to come, Adrian.’

‘Then come, Rosie. We will work together. I must go now.’ The line went dead.

*

‘Right, Gilmour,’ McGuire said, as Rosie walked into his office. ‘I’ve got a plan. Sit down.’

She sat down, saying, ‘Before you start, Mick, let me tell you about a couple of phone calls I just took.’

She told him what she’d heard from Mickey Kavanagh last night, and about Adrian’s call this morning. She left out what he’d said about the danger.

‘Shower of bastards,’ McGuire said. ‘That explains a lot. They’ve obviously not been busting a gut looking for this evil bastard Raznatovic because of the potential embarrassment.’ He took his reading glasses off and tossed them on the desk. ‘How can they ever justify that? Well, fuck them, Rosie. We’re going to give them it with both barrels.’

Rosie nodded, raising a finger in warning.

‘Agreed, Mick. But if we just blast everything into the paper now, the rest of the media will be on us like flies round the proverbial,
and
the cops will be all over us.’

‘I know. I’ve already thought about that.’ McGuire got up and started pacing the room. ‘Right … The big story of the day is Emir getting shot while in police custody. That’s a live, running story and everyone is covering it because there’s an inquiry. The cops know they look inept at the very least.’

‘Yeah, at the very least,’ Rosie said.

McGuire turned and faced her, spreading his hands as he explained.

‘Everyone will be reporting the story straight. But nobody will have what we have – Emir’s own story. So what I want you to do, Rosie, is get his piece written up. We tell the inside story of the murdered refugee. How he came to us for help, his claim about him and his friend being kidnapped and taken to this slaughterhouse. That will blow it open a bit. We don’t say anything about what we did …’ He pointed to Rosie, half smiling. ‘Er … you did.

‘We don’t go in with what we know, what we saw inside the place, but we just pose the question: what happened to his friend who he never saw again? That’s all provable, because his friend would be listed with the Refugee Council. Then we can print the list of the refugees taken from Paton’s office who have also disappeared. We’ll ask the question, where are they?’ He paused. ‘That might be a bit dodgy because cops will wonder how we got the list, so we’ll just invent something for them if they ask.’ He went back behind his desk, and stood looking down at Rosie. ‘By the way, firstly we need to get you out of here, so you and Matt are off to Sarajevo in the morning. Once this hits the front page, the cops will be right in here with their jackboots on.’

‘Definitely,’ Rosie agreed.

There was a knock at McGuire’s door, and Marion came in.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Mick, but there’s two detectives at the front door.’ She looked at Rosie. ‘They want to speak to you, Rosie’

‘Fucking terrific,’ McGuire scowled. ‘With timing like that they should be on the stage. Get them to come up.’

Rosie took a deep breath. ‘They’re probably going to try to monster me.’

‘Aye, that’ll be right.’ He dialled Marion. ‘Get Hanlon down here, and give the coppers a coffee. Tell them Rosie’s busy and she’ll be with them shortly. Tossers can wait.’ He put the phone down.

*

Half an hour later, when Marion ushered the two detectives into McGuire’s office, he got up from behind his desk and greeted them, stretching out his hand. The company lawyer, Tommy Hanlon, seated with Rosie on the sofa, gave her a dig in the ribs with his elbow and they both stood up and shook hands with the cops. McGuire motioned them towards the long oak table in his office where he held his twice-daily news conferences.

The big detective introduced himself as DI William Craig, and Rosie made eye contact with the woman detective at his side, whom he introduced as DS Shirley McIntyre. She had a po-faced expression that said she’d be glad to bundle Rosie into the back of the police car by the end of the interview. Fat chance, Rosie, thought, glancing at Hanlon.

Hanlon opened a notepad, took a gold Mont Blanc fountain pen out of his inside jacket pocket and wrote on the page. Rosie smiled to herself. Who uses a fountain pen in this day and age? A maverick young QC like Tommy Hanlon, that’s who. Someone whose self-belief in his ability and swashbuckling style in the courtroom made him the most sought-after brief in the business. When Hanlon strutted into court, he already knew he had his case won even before he cross-examined the first witness. Rosie felt safe.

The DI cleared his throat, and opened a folder he’d put down on the table. He glanced around at everyone.

‘As you know, we are investigating the death of Emir Marishta, the Kosovan Albanian refugee.’

‘The murder,’ Rosie interrupted.

The DI reddened. ‘The murder.’ He nodded in Rosie’s direction. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, Miss Gilmour.’

He took a deep breath and was about to speak, when Hanlon interrupted.

‘Detective Inspector Craig. I want to point out to you that my client will be very limited in what questions she will be in a position to answer today.’