CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

On Friday evening, Olivia dressed in dark regulation issue trousers – looser now, as she had lost some weight over the last few days, and a matching police issue long-sleeved pullover. She didn’t go so far as to put any sludge-coloured make-up on her cheeks and forehead to enhance the camouflage, but she was feeling the first stirrings of enthusiasm she had experienced since Hal’s shattering confession, at the thought of nailing these bastards, as she left the house.

Not long after she arrived, the whole contingent from the police was assembled; a contingent of uniformed officers and as many female officers who were available, as this case involved a number of women, and would need tactful handling. Devenish had evidently been advised by a fellow senior officer to orchestrate this spread of the sexes, as he wouldn’t have had the nous to initiate it himself.

Immigration officers weren’t far behind them, joining them on the piece of wasteland screened by a row of Leylandii not too far from the Nissen hut. They included a similar percentage of females, so maybe it was the senior Immigration officer who had spoken to Devenish, so that he didn’t misunderstand what their task was this evening, and just who the targets were.

Instructions as to the spread of the officers involved, and the approaches of the target building from a number of directions, were shared in a subdued hiss, and the time was checked. The two raids were to take place simultaneously so that there could be no whistle-blower from one target to another.

‘We go in on the stroke of ten, so we’ll have to leave here about twenty minutes before, and moving in as silently as possible. I’ve synchronised my timing with that of the Immigration officer leading the raid on the brothel, and they should be getting into position shortly after us. Now, think “success”. I don’t want any of you wimping out at the last minute. We need to get the people responsible for this behind bars as quickly and as efficiently as possible.’

The other raiding party was just coming together, in unmarked cars and down dark alleyways not far from the supposedly respectable, detached Edwardian house that was their target. This had once been a main road, but had been downgraded after the building of the ring road. This would not have decreased its custom, though, as there was a sufficiently private back alley leading to an entrance through a tall wooden gate at the back of the rear garden.

The punters wouldn’t know what had hit them, and neither would the girls, probably being in too relaxed a state from the drugs they had been given. As for those who supervised this part of the business, they were in for a surprise, and the surprise included handcuffs and some fairly unsympathetic treatment.

The back entrance was being kept under discreet surveillance, and three officers had in their possession the heavy device known within the service as ‘the big, red key’, which would ensure that there was no delay in their entry.

Rather more discreetly, a small team from the Drugs squad was targeting the greenhouses of the nursery itself, hoping to find evidence, maybe, of drugs being grown here. This had been a sub-plot organised by Buller off his own bat, for he realised that this would be the ideal spot, not only to grow cannabis, but also for Kharboub to have got his seedlings from, maybe smuggling them out a few at a time, or even getting some of the girls to bring them out somehow and exchange them for a spliff to keep them going between hits.

At precisely ten o’clock, in two geographically diverse sites in Littleton, a shrill whistle sounded – a police signal so antiquated as to be more or less forgotten – quickly followed by the pounding of feet and the splintering of wood, and both teams were in.

At a third, the entrance was more sedate. The only lights on behind the sea of glass were ones that helped the plants to grow, and it was hoped that some of those plants would be mind-altering and, ultimately, deliciously profit-making.

As the teams swung into action, police vans positioned themselves to take in those who were brought in for questioning.

The brothel raid took the occupants by total surprise. A number of very relaxed, pretty girls along with the requisite number of very panic-stricken men were rounded out of beds or other little hideaways, and led from the house. None of the girls was English, and there would have to be interpreters brought in to question them, but their native tongues would have to be ascertained first.

The most sinister, and for Lauren, embarrassing room was a cellar, a space where there were whips, riding crops and canes hanging from the walls, and a number of leather articles of clothing that she didn’t want to inspect too closely, especially a full-head mask that had a zip for a mouth, and looked absolutely terrifying.

The current occupants of this space were dressed in rubber, and Lauren was absolutely horrified to recognise one of the county’s chief superintendents. This would fuck up his police career in no uncertain terms. How were the mighty about to fall!

A second transport van had arrived, and the men were put into one, the working girls into another. They were all young and pretty, but with only a few words of English between them. God knows what they’d been through, and what they would face in the future, but Lauren was sure that they would rue the day they chose to come to England for a better life, till the end of their days.

Eventually, the house was sealed until it was known what charges would be brought and against whom and by which authority, and the team made its way back to the station to sort out exactly what they had to deal with. Using the services of a prostitute was not an offence, although living off immoral earnings was, and then there was the matter that none of these young women would have visas and indefinite leave to stay and ‘work’ in the UK.

Then there were the drugs, which were presumed to be quite a large part of this set-up, not just to keep the girls compliant, but for selling on to the punters. The waiting room stank of weed, as did a lot of the working rooms, and a cursory search revealed stashes of tablets and wraps – a veritable sweetie shop for any user with a bit of cash to spare and, possibly, depraved ideas of what constituted a good night out.

Lauren left with the rest of the team, grim-faced and emotionally drained, and wondering how Olivia had got on at the Nissen hut. She was feeling bad about the way she had shunned her friend and partner, purely out of guilt over what she had on her extra-curricular agenda, and shame was also beginning to creep into her heart. Daz wasn’t just a colleague on the same team, he was a junior officer who was also much younger than her, a situation in which there was no future whatsoever. Was he worth throwing her career away for? At her age and with two children to bring up? She knew what she had to do, and she’d better get on with it pretty damned fast.

A sleepless and hag-ridden night before the raid had shown her the error of her ways, and she was determined to clean up her act, not only with regard to the amount of alcohol she consumed, but also to the body she was ‘consuming’ on a regular basis. At this point, she determined to apologise to Olivia and, although not explaining what had been on her mind, at least to open up the channels of friendship again so that, if nothing else, their joint working lives would be less fraught with tension.

Olivia, her personal problems temporarily erased from her mind by the adrenaline of the situation, hurled herself through the door of the hut with the rest of the advanced guard, most of whom were Immigration officers plus Buller, looking like the Grand Panjoram himself or, at least, like the cat who had knocked over the cream jug and was reaping the rewards of the spillage. Rounding up this complicated little scam would do his career no harm whatsoever.

As the big red key did its job, and they pounded into the dormitory, what struck the inspector most was that, with all the noise and intrusion, the girls only stirred in their sleep, and surmised that a daily grind of long hours followed by the reward – ‘wages’, if you were feeling particularly sick about the whole thing – of a hit of drugs, kept them pretty subdued and compliant.

She noticed that between each pair of triple bunks hung three baggy work overalls in an institutional grey, and surmised that these were what the girls wore for their work in the nursery.

Some of the girls were now waking and showing signs of panic, and this was where the female officers came into their own, calming them with small gestures of friendliness and soft words that hardly any of them could understand, but it worked.

It was the smell that also got to the inspector. It was a mixture of old fart, body odour and hopelessness. They had presumably all paid a large sum of money – or at least what was deemed to be so in their various countries of origin – to obtain a new life in England, with a job at the end of it, and had found only callousness and slavery as a reward for all their hopes and dreams.

What the future held for them, no one could yet determine, but it certainly wasn’t what they’d paid for, and Olivia felt tears sting her eyes at the crushed ambitions of all these poor individuals who had only wanted to live somewhere in freedom and without fear, and had been catapulted into a life that held both, and was possibly worse than what they had fled from.

Immigration had actually provided a coach to transfer the women to a holding centre, to be sorted into countries of origin and provided with interpreters to make their statements, and when the raid was over, the police van was filled only with the service’s own personnel.

Olivia sat in the back, preoccupied with how much she took for granted in her own life and how she would have fared in a similar situation to the ones that these women had found themselves in. In her heart of hearts she knew she was very lucky to live in a democracy that didn’t suppress girls and women, and knew now that she would forgive Hal. They had so much, whereas some people had nothing where they came from, and little hope of improvement in the future. The only change these women could make was the choice they had made, it had worked out even worse for them, and now they’d probably have to go back to where they came from, unless they could claim asylum.

Hal had definitely put a foot very wrong, but they had adequate income, two lovely children, a comfortable home – an enviable life, really. How could she possibly throw all that up on top of twenty years of marriage because he had made a mistake, one he was already regretting bitterly?

DCI Buller never made it back to the station, having gone to the nursery itself to see if there had been any luck there. His hunch had, indeed, been vindicated. In the most remote greenhouse with whitewashed windows was a sophisticated hydroponics system and, in a heavy-duty safe in an outhouse, was a stash of drugs that would have kept the town high for the foreseeable future.

That there had not been a regular security team was a sign of the arrogance of whoever was organising this, keeping outgoings to a minimum, as they felt under the radar and untouchable. Well, now they’d go and feel Abdul Amir’s collar, face him with what had been discovered, and see how untouchable he felt then, and whether he was willing to trade information to make his future not quite so onerous as it could be.

That he would go to prison, there was no doubt, but the length of his sentence would be determined by how helpful he might be to the police in the pursuit of their enquiries. Buller was full to bursting point with glee following this after-dark arrest, hoping that this individual might lead him further up the food chain to wherever this atrocious crime emanated from. It might not get him to the big boys, but even a rung up the ladder was a step in the right direction.

The various police officers had a loose meeting about three thirty a.m., and then were dismissed for a few hours’ sleep, until they could have a more formal de-briefing during office hours.

After the meeting, Lauren sought out Olivia and just threw her arms around her and murmured, ‘I’m so sorry I’ve been a moody and aloof bitch,’ in her ear, before disappearing off into the car park and home, from whence she sent a dismissive text to Daz Westbrook, pointing out that neither of them could risk their careers by carrying on with the reckless behaviour they had been indulging in, but thanking him for a few memorable moments. It was the only way she could phrase it without telling him that she must have been off her head to ever consider a physical relationship with him, but that the temporary madness had passed.

Five minutes later, she received a one word reply – ‘OK’.

Phew!

Everyone was bleary-eyed the next morning when they met to pool the outcomes of the previous night’s raids – with the exception of DCI Buller, who looked like a model of a man totally stuffed with Mexican jumping beans. His eyes flashed, as did his teeth, in uncharacteristic smiles, and he bounced around on his toes like a teenager.

‘You didn’t have a little sample last night, did you, guv?’ called an obviously disguised voice from the back of the room.

‘Or a wee dram or two before you came in?’

‘Didn’t need anything. I’m high on life: drunk with success. And there’s no better way of getting off your face than with results that I, although a modest man’ – a few noises from the ranks at this wild claim – ‘hope might end with a promotion for yours truly.’

‘So, what’ve we got now?’ asked Olivia, with a particularly infectious yawn.

‘Amir’s spilled his guts. We’ve got the names of the local heavies who were used to discipline the girls if they got out of line – we’ll track them down, no trouble. He knows he’s in it up to his neck, and that’s the very thing he wants to save.

‘From the translations, we’ve got a list of all of Mr Kharboub’s trips to and from the continent, and the number of “parcels” and “packets” he delivered to the nursery. We’ve got the girls’ names – unpronounceable, most of them – from the nursery’s under-the-counter records, and the same for the house of ill-repute, along with a couple of ledgers that show records of drug sales and sessions with prostitutes, along with supplements for “extras”’ – there was a chorus of leers at this description – ‘All right, keep it down, lads, you’re not in the playground now! Now, where was I? Ah, yes, and all of this, presumably, to be passed on to whoever keeps the books for this lot.

‘We’ve got a sniffer dog visiting the home of Mr Amir this morning, and then going over the whole of the nursery premises in case we missed anything last night. This is going to be a big case. Devenish is already getting measured for the feather in his cap that he thinks will surely be his after what we’ve … you’ve done. I didn’t think you had it in you.

‘We’ve had a statement from Immigration that the woman who was found in the van and whom Dr MacArthur confirmed had recently given birth, had slipped in with a larger than usual consignment, and was probably only a few weeks pregnant, but she wasn’t one of the prettier ones, so she wasn’t expected to “serve” male clients. And she was a canny one. The overalls they wore to work at the nursery were baggy, and she managed to keep her spreading middle concealed for all of the pregnancy. After all, whoever used to take any notice of staff in the old days? It’s the same now with slaves.

‘The other girls knew, but made sure that whenever any of the other nursery staff were around, she was never on her own, so that they could help conceal her steadily expanding overall.

‘Of course, there was a complete panic when she went into labour, and her yells attracted some attention from their jailers. One enterprising young thug broke its neck just as it was born, and then the body and the other yucky things that came with it were wrapped up and disposed of on the tip. Again, an act of complete arrogance and disregard for any comeback there may have been. They really thought they were untouchable.

‘But no more. Amir also spilled all the names he knew up the next rung of the ladder, so we can continue enquiries at a slightly higher level, and hopefully, given time, get to the really big boys. I’ll be concentrating on that when I get back to Drugs.’

‘You’re not leaving us, sir, and after we’d got so fond of you?’ called out Olivia, moved to smile at the imminent return to normal working life.

‘I had considered getting a transfer to you lot’ – gasps of horror and calls of ‘oh, no’ – ‘but home is home, and that’s where I’m going; back to the good old Drugs Squad.

‘Down The Locomotive, everybody, at lunchtime. We can only have one because of the drink-driving laws, but the pints are on me. We certainly have something to celebrate.’

There was a round of applause at this summing up of what they’d achieved, and this, Lauren mused, had made no mention whatsoever of Olivia and her wrapping up the Shillington baby-murder case.