An hour later the area was slowly being overrun by blue lights. Three police cars, a dog van. Ana remained in the car while Dani organised the troops and set them off on their search. The dogs were the best bet, Dani believed, though only if they were somewhere near where Ana had come from so that they’d be able to find a scent trail to follow.
With the help of a little-used OS map, which Dani had in the car, she’d identified two areas not far from where she had pulled over which she believed could be the hill Ana said she’d seen, even though there was no indication on the map of any buildings nearby – whether old or new, or even remnants of something from days gone by like mines, bunkers, quarries, whatever.
Still, Dani wasn’t giving up easily. And after travelling another mile to a spot equidistant between the two hills, where the other officers had met them, she’d now set them on their way. The officers would do their best to search in the dark. Come daylight, if they hadn’t found the trail, Dani would bring in extra bodies. As many as it took until they’d scoured all twenty-six square miles of Cannock Chase.
As soon as she was able to, she’d also set up the team back at HQ to scour CCTV to retrace Ana’s journey. The team would be back online within six hours, though Dani was more than tempted to ring them all and get them into the office in the middle of the night.
She held off for now.
With the late-night help all busy with their tasks, Dani headed back to the car where Ana was sitting shivering. Cold or scared or a combination of both?
‘We’ve got some time on our hands,’ Dani said. ‘Unless you want to go out there into the cold and dark forest, perhaps you can start telling me what’s actually going on.’
She looked over at Ana whose face twisted a little with apprehension. Perhaps Dani’s tone had been slightly harder than she’d intended, but so what? Ana needed to start talking. Not just about what had happened tonight, but about everything she knew of Victor and Alex and their dirty deeds.
‘We’ll find where they took you,’ Dani said. ‘We’ll find Alex, Victor too. What I want to know is why?’
Ana looked even more unsure now. Her shivering had turned to trembling. ‘Alex was… he would have killed me.’
‘But why, Ana?’
‘Because! Because I called the police. About Maria.’
‘Maria?’
‘She was only eighteen.’
‘She was the body we found—’
‘I made that call,’ Ana said. ‘I couldn’t sit and watch any longer.’
‘Who killed her? Silviu?’
Ana frowned. ‘Who’s Silviu?’ She paused. Looked even more scared now.
‘Ana, who killed Maria? We tried to catch the men transporting her body. One was called Silviu Grigore. We’ve arrested him now.’
‘I’m sorry. I really don’t know him. But those men… they didn’t kill her. They just…’
‘Took the bodies away?’
Ana closed her eyes and kept them closed, even as she started to speak. ‘You must know what that house is. I know the police were there. You traced the call I made.’
‘A brothel?’
Ana shook her head, not in disagreement, Dani thought, but in disgust.
‘I don’t know who killed Maria,’ Ana said. ‘A man who came to see her. She wasn’t the first, but I told myself she had to be the last.’
‘What about Clara Dunne? She wasn’t a prostitute.’
‘I don’t know anything about her.’
‘Really?’
‘I don’t! You must believe me.’
‘And Liam Dunne?’
‘I’m sorry. Victor doesn’t tell me anything. If you’re saying Victor killed them… maybe it’s true, but I don’t know anything about it. I only know what I see.’
‘Which is what?’
‘The women. They bring them into the country all the time. Force them into work. I have to…’ She trailed off and clenched her fists. ‘I have to help, make them feel comfortable and safe. Even as I’m taking away their passports, their phones, their freedom. Their lives.’
‘How many women? We need to find them. To make them safe.’
‘I don’t know. A hundred. Two hundred, since I’ve been here. But Victor and Alex send them all over the country to other handlers. It’s not just for them.’
A transport business. Dani shivered.
‘So there are other houses like the one in Wednesbury? Others that you know of?’
She hung her head. ‘Yes.’
‘I need the addresses.’
Ana flinched as Dani reached over and opened the glovebox. She dug around and found a pen and a scrap of paper.
‘Please?’
Ana hesitated but then took the pen and paper and began to scribble.
‘The place where Alex and Victor took you, did you know about it before?’
Ana stopped writing.
‘Ana?’
‘I knew there was a place. A way to… deal with problems.’
‘Problems? As in dead bodies?’ Dani said, her revulsion clear. ‘Is that what that place is? Somewhere to dispose of bodies?’
Ana nodded. Dani could hardly believe what she was hearing now.
‘How many?’
‘I have no idea!’
‘Then think. Think about what you’ve seen, what you’ve heard.’
Ana didn’t say anything for a good while. Then, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She was sobbing now, and Dani was torn as to whether she should feel sympathy or not. Could Ana have done more, sooner?
‘Where’s Victor now?’ Dani asked.
‘I don’t know.’
Dani sighed. Word from the surveillance teams was that they’d seen nothing of Victor, Alex or Ana all night. Clearly there was good reason for the last two. But what about Victor? Did he know Ana had escaped? Was he in hiding now?
Dani was at a sticking point. Yes, they’d made some headway in figuring out who Jane Doe – Maria – was, and they had Silviu Grigore in custody, but there was still so much that she didn’t know.
‘You said you saw someone on a hill, watching you. Do you think it was Victor?’
Ana closed her eyes again for a few moments. ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ she said, looking back to Dani. ‘But maybe it wasn’t a man at all. Maybe it was a…’
Dani gave her the time, but she didn’t finish the sentence. ‘A what?’
Ana looked out of her window to the dark forest beyond. ‘No, you’ll think I’m insane.’
‘What did you think it was, Ana?’
Dani jumped when there was a knock on the window. Heart racing she turned around and heaved a sigh when she saw the bright yellow jacket and a face she recognised – Michael Robinson, the sergeant she’d left in charge of the search.
She stepped from the car.
‘Anything?’ she asked, although his stoic face already indicated the answer.
‘The dogs have found nothing. Not even a whiff for them to start tracking. And we’ve gone all around the two hills you noted, and there’s literally nothing there but trees and grass. No buildings or caves or anything of the sort.’
Dani sighed and looked at her watch. They hadn’t been searching that long. She could ask them to continue looking. But was that fair when they might not even be in the right place? Perhaps it was better to call them off, and re-organise a more widespread search in the daylight.
‘What do you want to do?’ Robinson asked.
Dani thought. She slumped. ‘Call it a night,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘You’ve done what you can.’
He nodded and headed off. Dani got back into the car. Ana’s face was creased with concern.
‘They didn’t find it,’ she said.
Dani shook her head.
‘But you do believe me?’
Dani thought that was a strange question. Had she somehow suggested otherwise? Why on earth would Ana not be telling the truth?
‘Yes, I believe you,’ Dani said, despite the doubt that Ana had herself placed.
‘So what now?’
Dani thought about that for a few moments. She stared straight ahead, out of the windscreen, watching as the collection of officers, cold and sullen – though likely relieved that their night-time traipsing was over with – got themselves ready to clear out.
They were likely relieved. Dani was the opposite.
‘I really don’t know,’ Dani said.
They waited another ten minutes. Until the taillights of the last of the patrol cars, no blue lights now, had faded into the distance.
‘We aren’t going too?’ Ana said.
‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything?’ Dani said, turning to glare at Ana, who looked a little unsettled by the accusatory tone.
‘Why would I lie?’
A good question. But Dani really didn’t know what to think or to believe any more.
‘I’m not lying to you!’ Ana said, her voice raised. ‘Why would I lie about being out here? About them bringing me here. About attacking Alex?’
‘But how did you manage to attack him? How did you escape?’
Ana looked even more worried now. ‘I told you. I managed to untie my wrists. When he got close I surprised him. I got to the knife before he did. It was luck more than anything. And I didn’t even mean to… to hurt him. Not like that. My only thought was to get out of there.’
The two women stared each other out for several seconds.
‘It’s the truth!’ Ana said.
Dani said nothing. She started up the car and was about to turn around to head back the way they’d initially come, but then had an alternative thought. Yes, it was ridiculously late, she was ridiculously tired, and wanted nothing more than to crash out in bed, but a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt now. So instead she pulled onto the road and carried on going straight ahead, heading further north, before she looped west, moving even further away from home.
‘Where are we going?’ Ana said, as though picking up on the fact that they weren’t yet going back, and sounding all the more worried for it.
Dani didn’t answer. Her mind was too busy working overtime.
‘When we came off the A5, through Norton Canes, you said you recognised the pub. But you didn’t remember specifically going through that village?’
‘No… but…’
‘But you did say there were houses, not long after you’d come out of the forest in the car.’
‘Yes.’
‘And there was a hill, with a man, or something at least.’
‘Yes,’ Ana said.
Dani didn’t say anything more after that. She carried on, snaking along the edge of the Chase, several miles until they came to the western edge and the A34, deep within the territory of Staffordshire Police now. Dani wouldn’t let that deter her tonight.
Dani turned onto the A34, heading south, back towards Cannock.
She glanced over to Ana, the bemused look on her face slowly clearing.
‘Wait… I—’
‘You recognise it?’ Dani said.
‘That’s the pub,’ Ana said, pointing to the building a couple of hundred yards in the distance. ‘The same one from earlier?’
‘No. It’s not the same one. But it is a similar set-up. Dual carriageway. Roundabout. Pub.’
‘Down there. Yes, this is it!’ Ana said, more animated now. ‘I remember that building too.’ She pointed to a small industrial unit. It was pretty nondescript but Ana seemed sure enough.
‘It’s left here!’ Ana shouted.
Dani slammed the brakes and took the left. She hadn’t even seen the junction in the dark, the road was so obscured by foliage. They found themselves on a twisting country lane. Dani slowed the car, giving Ana the time to properly look around, though the featureless and unlit road could have been anywhere. They drove on for more than a mile, without any indication of life, yet Dani’s satnav showed that the town of Cannock was still only a couple of miles off to their right, and within a mile they’d be entering its outer suburban reach. The entire area off to the left of the screen was blacked out. Wilderness.
Dani slowed further. Then a flicker of movement caught her eye, somewhere up front, in the sky. She stared at the space beyond the glass but couldn’t catch it again.
Yet she was sure she’d seen something.
After another few hundred yards, with the orange glow from the ever-nearing houses continuing to build in the sky in the near distance, Dani pulled the car over into a lay by.
‘What are you doing?’ Ana said.
‘Just trust me.’
Ana looked really unsure about that, but Dani opened her door and stepped out. A moment later Ana had done the same from the passenger side.
‘What do you see?’ Dani said. ‘Anything?’
Ana looked around, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It’s so dark.’
Dani reached in through the open car door and turned off the headlights. She was sure Ana gasped in panic as she did so, as though she didn’t trust Dani’s intentions, but Dani had done it for both of their benefit. It took a while, but slowly her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She kept her eyes fixed on the spot where she was sure she’d detected movement moments earlier.
Sure enough, when the clouds above them parted, and a bluish-white light from the moon swept over the area, Dani caught a glimpse of it again.
A prominent hill, a few hundred yards in the distance. And at the top of the hill…
Dani looked to Ana, whose face said it all.
‘I was sure it was a… I thought I was being watched. You don’t even want to know what I thought was watching me.’
What had she thought? Strigoi? It’s certainly what had come to Dani’s mind.
‘It’s fine,’ Dani said.
‘It’s just a flagpole,’ Ana said, laughing as if in disbelief.
‘I think so,’ Dani said, as her eyes fell on the faraway object, the tall pole, the fabric wrapped around it flapping in the breeze.
‘We found it,’ Ana said, now sounding horrified by the fact.
‘Not yet,’ Dani said. She closed her door. ‘Come on, this way.’
Before she could talk herself out of it, she turned and headed across the ditch by the side of the road, and into the pitch-black woods.