The women’s refuge stands on a cobbled side street off Kentish Town High Street. Trying the front door and finding it locked, I move around to the back, stretching up on my tiptoes to peer over the wall.
‘Maureen?’ I see her head sticking out from behind a shrub, a pair of secateurs in hand. As she stands in response to her name, she puts a hand up to her chest.
‘Isobel, bloody hell, are you trying to give me a heart attack?’
I smile back at her. ‘Sorry, I just wanted to have a quick word about something. Can I come in?’
‘Go around the front, I’ll be there in two minutes.’
‘Cup of tea?’ she asks as we pad through the waiting room, which is stuffed with a couple of desks and filing cabinets; piles of leaflets are stacked on surfaces and there are posters on the wall, advertising helplines and health services. A couple of children play with toys on a small mat in the corner of the room while their mothers talk with one of Maureen’s colleagues.
Inside the office is dark and cool. Maureen places an affectionate hand on my wrist.
‘How are you, love? It’s been a while.’
‘I’ve been trying to call,’ I say, taking a sip of my tea.
‘Phone’s buggered. Sorry, I should have let you know.’
I can’t help but think that Maureen sees me as another one of her cases. The thought of it makes me uneasy, but then if it helps me procure the information I need, perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing.
‘I need to ask you something,’ I say, avoiding eye contact at first, but then settling into it so that by the time half an hour has passed, I’ve offloaded not just about the incident on the Heath, but about the shoes, the phone calls, about the disbelief of the police. By the time I’ve finished, I feel a stone lighter.
‘Don’t get me started on the police,’ Maureen shrugs. ‘You know what that lot are like. You’re guilty until proven innocent – and that’s just the victims.’
She pauses to refill my cup.
‘You look knackered,’ she says as she sits down again, her voice gentle. Reaching for a box of Malboro from my pocket, I sniff. Maureen pushes the ashtray towards me. ‘What are you thinking, about the girl? How can I help?’
‘I don’t know, to be honest, I just … I thought maybe you might have heard something or maybe …’
My shoulders drop. The truth is, I have no idea what I am hoping for. All I know is that I have nowhere else to turn, and Maureen is one of those people who solves problems. Not least mine.
‘You must be petrified,’ she says and I look up at her, the words taking me by surprise. I am, and yet it isn’t the fear that is driving me; the fear is superseded by the sense that I have to do something. Not like last time …
Pushing the unwanted thoughts away before they can fully take hold, I turn my attention back to Maureen.
‘I just can’t stop thinking about her. You get a lot of girls coming through here, I thought it was worth a shot … Given the number of women you support, and how small the community we’re talking about is; I mean, there just can’t be that many people from that part of the world here in North London, and she has to be from around here, right? Otherwise what the fuck would she have been doing on the Heath at 6a.m.? Presumably someone must know her – someone must have noticed that she’s gone? It’s a tight community. I wonder if any of the girls here have mentioned anything?’
‘We’ve had a few women coming in from the general area you’re talking about, over the years,’ Maureen says after a while. ‘Since the war. Obviously I can’t say for sure that this woman, girl, whoever she was, was trafficked here – she could be working in a bank for all I know – but if we’re going along with your theory, then … well, let’s just say in my experience women coming out of the chaos of war are rarely left with their free will. In the Nineties, we saw a lot of girls being brought over from afflicted areas. And once a gang establishes itself, they tend to hold onto that power, even once peace is supposedly flourishing.’
Maureen stops for a minute and lights another cigarette before continuing. ‘As for getting someone to talk …’
She shakes her head and takes another drag. ‘I don’t know. I mean, you can try, but this whole industry operates on fear. We’re talking billions of pounds, and the men who run the gangs, they’re organised. They don’t take chances. If you knew the levels they go to in order to ensure these women don’t run, and even if they were found they wouldn’t talk … It’s mind games, a lot of it.’
Maureen stops, blowing out a straight line of smoke, before she speaks again. ‘Fear, control, power. Most of these girls are groomed for months before they’re brought here. Most of them are vulnerable, through poverty or lack of family. They’re told all sorts of stories about the lives they’ll have in England, and by the time they are faced with the truth, it’s too late. They’re here, they don’t speak English, some of them, they don’t know anyone, they’ve got no papers. They’re threatened, and it’s not just threats.’
She takes another drag. ‘And another thing that might stop someone speaking out even if they are found is that they’re embarrassed.’
I make a face. ‘Really?’
‘It’s true,’ Maureen says. ‘They’re not idiots. A lot of these women can’t believe they were duped in the first place, they feel stupid. The men who operate these gangs take a lot of time befriending people from situations that leave them exposed. War is ideal because of the chaos, not least the unstable borders. These people thrive on it. And once they have their systems in place, they’re not going to give them up without a fight. Plenty of these women in other situations would have been doctors, teachers, whatever. Normal lives. That is often the premise on which they’re tricked to come to England in the first place, believing there is a better life awaiting them. A job, money to send back home.’
Maureen sighs, her eyes moving to the clock.
‘Listen, I’ll have a word with the girls, see if anyone wants to talk. I don’t know how much it’ll help, but I’ll give it a go … All right? Now you go home and bloody well rest, will you? I feel knackered just looking at you.’
By the time I leave the refuge the sky is darkening, but I’m in the mood to walk and it takes just half an hour before I find myself inside Tariq’s office, almost radiating with expectation.
‘OK, I get what you’re saying, but I don’t understand why you’re coming to me with this,’ Tariq says, once he’s invited me in and patiently listened to what I’ve just told Maureen.
‘I know it’s a bit random but, you know, I figured it was worth a shot. You’re like my oracle, there’s nothing you don’t know …’
‘Don’t give me that shit, Isobel.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do I mean? I’m Turkish. I know we might all look the same to you lot, but—’
‘Tariq, I know you’re Turkish. Chill out, don’t be so defensive. That’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is you see everything that goes on around here, you said it yourself, and according to my understanding, there’s a substantial Gorani community in this area. Haringey, specifically.’
The last bit was a punt, but what Mansfield had said had struck a chord. Given what a small community it was, how many Goranis could there be living in London? If Haringey was known as a stronghold for immigrants from the area, considering its proximity to Hampstead Heath, it was as good a place as any to start.
‘The thing is, I know you have … connections … and this girl, I think she was on the game.’
‘How the hell can you know that?’
‘I don’t. It’s just conjecture at this stage. But come on, she was with a man in a bush at 6a.m., a man who physically attacked her …’
‘What the fuck, Isobel, you said she was talking to the man in her own language. That means she probably knew him. For all you know it could have been her brother. I mean, fucking hell, bruv, talk about jumping to conclusions. Besides, what did you actually see?’
‘Oh my God, Tariq, I told you, I saw her being attacked. And since then, I’m being stalked by the man who did it. Does that sound like nothing?’ I tear at my hair with my hands. ‘I mean, Jesus Christ, will any of you actually listen to what I’m saying …’
‘All right!’ Tariq holds up his hands at me. ‘Fine, I believe you that something happened. Something fucked up. I believe you on that, alright?’
‘That’s all I’m asking for,’ I reply, my voice strained.
We are both quiet for a moment and then I say, ‘She was mixed up in something and all I need to know from you is where to look for a Kosovan girl from the Gorani region, who might have been brought here …’
Tariq’s features tense again, his voice hardening. ‘Isobel. Listen, yeah? You are a friend, and as a friend I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but truly I am not pleased by your suggestion. What you are talking about, this people trafficking, prostitution, I … Whatever it is you are insinuating …’ He watches my face for a reaction, ‘This is not my territory.’
‘Tariq, I know that and I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,’ I say, shaking my head calmly, though as I say it I wonder not for the first time how wide Tariq’s net is cast. The likelihood that he is involved in nothing more than supplying weed to middle-class fuck-ups is slim, but it suits me better not to think too deeply into what else might be motivating, and funding, the constant change of premises, the henchmen, the endless bolts on the doors.
My poker face is better than his, and I continue steadily, ‘I just wondered whether you might know more than most about what happens around here and, well, if you were to help me I might be able to return the favour …’
Tariq’s expression slips momentarily. It is conversations like this that remind me that he is certainly not the mastermind of this operation. Whatever its extent, he is little more than a frontman; it is his job to know exactly what is going on out there and to report back to whoever is truly in charge.
Fortunately for me, though, he also clearly enjoys the idea that I believe him to be higher up the echelons of power than he really is, and as a consequence has freely given up information over the years, in return for something he can feed back to his paymasters. A heads-up on a planned raid, perhaps, or a police operation that is in the pipeline. Information that is a combination of titbits prised from Oscar – before the recent breakdown of relations – press briefings and the whims of my imagination.
If enough of my information turns out to be correct, even if it is the soft stuff – the stuff that if he’d really thought about it, Tariq would realise was not that much use to him at all in isolation – then it doesn’t really matter that the rest of it has been fathomed out of nowhere. It doesn’t matter that the raid I’d warned him about had never happened.
Must have been pulled, I’d shrug the next time I saw him. But wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?
‘What have you got?’ he concedes after a moment.
I shake my head. ‘That’s not how it works, Tariq, you know that. You tell me what you know then I tell you what I know.’
I watch his hands tense, one of his eyebrows cocked. ‘Oh, really?’ he says, his eyes narrowing. ‘That’s strange as it seems to me that you’re the one who needs my help.’
There is silence, and then Tariq speaks again, without meeting my eye. ‘I’ll make a few calls. Anything else I can help you with while you’re here?’
‘Just a quarter.’ I smile at him coolly.
Reaching into the drawer beneath his desk, Tariq pulls out a small block of hash, dismissing the note in my hand.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says, turning away from me. ‘Next time.’