The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5) (18 page)

‘You must be thinking of something.’

‘Africa’s awash with rumours, most of them baseless.’

‘But . . . ?’

‘I don’t know . . .’ She sighed. ‘A couple of years ago people were saying arms were being smuggled around Sudan in aid cargoes, but even if it did happen, it had nothing whatever to do with Harry or AFAD.’

There was something desperate in her denial, Jenny thought. She was trying to convince herself that it couldn’t be true, that her idealist husband couldn’t have become caught up with something as distasteful as movements of illegal weapons.

‘I think you know what my next question’s going to be,’ Jenny said.

‘There’s no truth in any of it,’ Karen protested. ‘Adam would sooner have died than get involved in that sort of thing.’ It took her a moment to register the Freudian slip. ‘Look, Harry’s an old friend. I trust him. Yes, he’s an operator, but he’s an honest one. Honest to what he’s trying to achieve.’

‘Is that why you came here today, to tell me that?’

Karen stared at her, then lapsed into a conflicted silence.

Jenny patiently sipped her coffee, sensing she was about to cross a divide.

A long, pregnant moment passed before Karen found her voice. ‘Something happens when you take government money for a foreign project. You think it’s given on the terms you’ve agreed, but it never is – there’s a whole lot of other strings attached that you don’t even know about until you’re so far committed there’s no way back.’

‘Such as?’

‘It all depends what the British interest happens to be. It might be that we’re supposed to be supporting one faction against another, or trying to smooth the way for a mining company, or encouraging the locals to vote against the government. Whatever it is, we’re expected to play our part. But Harry’s always had his own agenda. If he thinks the local population need a uranium mine like a hole in the head, he’ll tell them so. He doesn’t do political bullshit. Nor did Adam.’

‘Is that what happened in Sudan?’

‘If it did, I didn’t hear about it. But Adam would have told me.’

‘I understand they had to leave early.’

‘That was tribal stuff, not politics.’

‘I can’t pretend to know how Africa works, but I do know something about how government operates. It strikes me that if Harry Thorn was considered uncooperative, attention might have shifted to your husband.’

‘I told you before – we didn’t have secrets from each other.’ Once more, she seemed to be trying to convince herself that the truth and what she wanted to believe were the same thing.

‘I could be wrong, Mrs Jordan,’ Jenny said, ‘but I think what you might be telling me is that I should speak to Harry Thorn again – if only to make sure.’

‘When? I can’t go on like this much longer. The thought of Adam stuck in some—’ She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. ‘All Adam ever wanted was to be surrounded by nature. It’s what he loved, what he lived for.’

‘Tell me,’ Jenny said. ‘I’d like to hear.’

‘He wasn’t scared of dying. He was perfectly happy with the thought that we all return to dust and begin over again. He used to say that he didn’t believe in God, he believed in life. He didn’t mean
being
alive, he meant the whole of life, the entire vast, intricate, interconnected system. He thought that it was so complete that you didn’t need a God, except as a way of trying to make yourself feel that you counted for something more than just a grain of sand in the desert . . . But I remember him saying that if you could accept that, if you could just come to terms with your tiny role in creation, it was all you needed to find peace.’

‘Do you think he managed that?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I think I do.’ There was a stillness about her, now that she had finally shared something of the truth about the man she loved. She managed to smile. ‘I’ve taken enough of your time.’

‘Oh, while I remember,’ Jenny said. ‘Someone telephoned here last Friday. My officer took the call. It was a man asking what had happened to your husband. He had a foreign accent – I’m afraid my officer couldn’t place it except to say that it didn’t sound African – if that means anything.’

Karen shook her head.

‘And do you still have no idea what he was doing in Berkshire, or why he didn’t tell you about his visit to Oxford?’

The respite was over. Karen’s face hardened in anger. ‘Nothing I can say is going to stop you, is it? You don’t care who you hurt or how much.’

‘Mrs Jordan, please—’

‘Go ahead. Do what the hell you like. I don’t care!’

She crashed out of the office, slamming the door so hard behind her the sound struck Jenny like a fist.

Alison’s inquiries at the hospital proved as difficult as Jenny had feared. The mortuary had been locked down, Dr Morley had made himself scarce, and the director of the path’ lab claimed to be too busy to talk until at least the end of the day. She had managed to pick up only the barest details from the receptionist who had booked the deceased woman into Accident and Emergency. She had been brought in by two female friends, both in their early twenties, who claimed not to speak English. One of them wrote down the girl’s name – Elena Lujan – and managed to communicate the fact that she was Spanish. As far as Alison could ascertain, nothing else was known about her.

A phone call to CID established that they were none the wiser. The hospital’s security video showed the woman being helped into the building by her two friends, one of whom was white, the other Asian. Efforts were being made to trace them. The Spanish consul had been informed. None of the local colleges or language schools had a student by that name, and a search of the social networks had drawn a blank. They were still awaiting word from the Border Agency as to when and where Elena Lujan had entered the country.

Alison could only think of a couple of good reasons why a Spanish girl would be dumped at a hospital without details, and called a former colleague, a detective sergeant in the vice team. He confirmed that hundreds of unemployed young Spanish had arrived in Bristol in the last year. Most struggled to find work and some were ending up in the sex trade. Thirty minutes later, he called back to say a contact had confirmed that a girl named Elena had been working at the Recife Sauna in Western Street, St Paul’s.

‘You’re not planning on going there yourself,’ Alison said, as Jenny grabbed her bag.

‘I’d prefer the actual truth to Dr Verma’s version of it,’ Jenny said.

‘If you’re going to catch something, you’ll certainly catch it there.’

‘I’ll be careful who I touch.’

‘You’re not going by yourself!’

Alison fetched her jacket and chased after her.

The Recife was set at the end of a run-down arcade of shops in what was still the poorest of Bristol’s inner-city districts. Walking from Alison’s car, they passed a gossiping crowd of Pakistani women dressed in brightly coloured saris, and a smiling, toothless Rastafarian sitting drinking a can of Red Stripe on the steps of a launderette.

‘Hey, pretty lady,’ he called out to Alison, patting the step at his side, ‘come and sit down.’

‘Sorry,’ Alison said, ‘we’ve got a better offer at the sauna.’

He let out a joyous whoop and threw up his hands, laughing uproariously.

‘I’m glad I’ve made someone happy,’ Alison said.

They arrived outside a blacked-out shop window bearing the words
Exotic Sauna and Video Lounge
.

‘Prepare to be turned on,’ Alison said, and led the way inside.

They entered a reception area decorated with fading posters of tropical beaches. It had the locker-room smell of steam, mildew and cheap deodorant. A girl with peroxide-blonde hair, dressed in tight, low-slung jeans and a top that stopped short of her sparkling navel stud, came through a doorway behind the desk.

She froze, as if nothing had prepared her for being confronted with two suited women at the front of house.

Alison produced her identity card, introducing herself as the Severn Vale District’s Coroner’s Officer. ‘We’re not police. Do you understand? You’re not in any trouble.’

‘Police?’ The girl spoke in a heavy Eastern European accent.

‘No. Not police. All we want to know is if you had a girl who worked here called Elena – Elena Lujan?’

The girl’s eyes moved suspiciously from Alison to Jenny, then flicked downwards to the rim of the desk.

‘We are not police,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s OK. Elena Lujan died in hospital this morning. We just need to know if she worked here. We want to trace her family.’

The girl shot out a hand, pressed what Jenny guessed was a silent panic button beneath the desk, and turned to the door.

Alison ran forward and caught her. ‘Elena. Was she here?’

The girl rounded like a cornered animal and spat into Alison’s eyes. Startled, Alison loosened her grip and the girl fled into the dingy corridor beyond.

‘The little bitch!’ Alison wiped her eyes on her sleeve and chased after her.

Jenny followed, but was immediately met with the sight of Alison being manhandled back towards her by a large, heavily muscled and tattooed young man who was unimpressed by her threats to have him arrested. Beyond them, Jenny caught glimpses of several semi-dressed young women and middle-aged men flying in panic from behind the flimsy doors of massage cubicles.

‘You can’t do that,’ Jenny protested.

He flung Alison towards her and bundled them both out through the door. ‘Get the fuck out of here!’

‘What did you think you were doing, Mrs Cooper?’ Dr Verma strode self-importantly towards the cordon that the police had strung up around the Recife, dressed in head-to-toe disposable white overalls.

‘Trying to contact the relatives of Elena Lujan; it’s fairly standard procedure.’

‘The police tell me you’ve managed to scatter all the occupants of this building to God knows where.’

Jenny was unrepentant. ‘If your agency had informed me of Miss Lujan’s death instead of trying to conceal it from me, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened this way.’

‘Has it occurred to you that we might have delayed precisely to prevent this sort of dispersal? You could have sent infected people all over the city.’

‘You told my court Sophie Freeman was an isolated case.’

‘If you would leave us to do our job we might stand a chance of containing this outbreak.’

‘So you’re admitting it’s an outbreak now? Are there any other cases I should know about, or have you decided that the coroner should be the last to know?’

Dr Verma showed no sign of backing down. ‘I suggest you follow your officer to our mobile clinic, Mrs Cooper – it might be best to take some precautionary medication.’ She nodded to the navy-blue van double-parked further along the road, lifted the police tape and stepped underneath.

Jenny could have reminded her that lying to her court was a serious act of perjury that could land her in prison, but trading words with a junior official would be futile. For Verma to have had the confidence to behave so brazenly, she must have received assurances from the highest level. Whoever it was who was deciding that the law could be trampled over, Jenny was sure of one thing: they had to be frightened they were dealing with something far out of the ordinary.

Her phone rang for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Cooper? It’s Andy Kerr.’ He sounded agitated.

‘Hi.’ She moved away from the cordon and anyone who might be tempted to listen in. ‘What’s up?’

‘I heard you tracked down the last victim’s address.’

‘Not her home – the place where she worked. A massage parlour.’

‘I heard she lived in a bedsit upstairs, with a lot of other girls.’

‘Then you know more than me.’ Jenny glanced up at the three floors above the shop front. Shabby curtains were drawn across the windows. ‘Who told you that?’

‘A guy from the path’ lab.’

‘How did they get hold of the information?’

‘He didn’t say.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got time to meet? I think we should.’

The place Andy Kerr had suggested was the Beaufort Arms, a tiny pub untouched by the previous three decades, tucked away in a narrow street off Blackboy Hill. It was an occasional weekend haunt of his, he said, somewhere you’d come to hide away with no danger of bumping into friends or colleagues. Sure enough, apart from the two old men at the bar, they were the only customers. Jenny’s throat was still sore from the antibacterial spray an HPA medic had insisted on pumping into everyone who’d been near the Recife. Andy cheered her up with the news that she’d still be tasting it in three days’ time – it was designed to stick there, and it did what it promised.

They sat at a corner table away from the ubiquitous flatscreen playing non-stop sport and exchanged apprehensive glances, each waiting for the other’s bad news.

Andy reached into his rucksack and brought out a folder containing a dozen or more photographs of a female body badly disfigured by disease.

‘Miss Lujan,’ Andy said. ‘I did the p-m straight after I came back from court. The HPA sent a Home Office pathologist called Glazier up from London to join me.’