‘Who do you work for?’
‘All I can tell you that it is an international organisation. Naturally, it has to be. The sex traffic is an international problem. Europol is involved, and many other agencies, including your own National Crime Agency. Of course, I am a mere pawn. I am not a police officer. I have no powers of arrest. Mostly I work in London, in an office, as I told you before, but sometimes they send me to airports or train stations, even to ferry docks, if they think girls and their traffickers are coming in. But I am always hidden away in a special room nobody can see into. And it is rare that I do anything more than look at photographs and videos. My job is intelligence gathering, as I said, helping expand the database. These people move around, pop up all over the place, as you say. They are smart and usually manage to stay at least one step ahead. They are constantly adapting to new and better ways of doing what they do. I just try to put names to faces, perhaps remember when and where I saw them first, then the files are passed on to someone else. There are squads that go out and arrest suspects and try to help the girls, but I never meet them. Sometimes there are meetings or conferences in the Hague, Brussels or Lyon, if something new or big is happening. But not often. It is not a glamorous job.’
‘But somebody has to do it, right?’
Zelda finished her ice cream cone. ‘Yes. At least for the moment. Nobody knows what will happen after this Brexit. We may be able to continue, but perhaps not. There is talk of losing funding.’
‘There’s always talk of losing funding. That’s pretty much par for the course with Brexit.’
‘Par for the course?’
‘The normal thing. Nobody knows.’
Zelda smiled. ‘Ah, yes. I see what you mean.’ She paused. ‘Do you know, I feel guilty because I cannot talk to Raymond about things like this. He is like a child... too quick to react, too emotional. If I tell him about my work and the bad things in my life, he treats me like I am made of plastic for days.’
‘Porcelain?’ suggested Banks.
‘Yes. Porcelain.’
‘And me? I’m cold?’
‘No.’ She touched his arm. ‘But you are a cop, Alan. You understand. I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want... what do you calling it? Cuddling?’
‘Cuddling would be nice,’ said Banks. ‘But I think you mean coddling.’
‘Yes. Coddling. Like an egg. I don’t need that.’
They admired the view in silence for a while, watching a mother walk by pushing a pram, and an elderly man in a scarf and flat cap walking his Jack Russell. It was quite warm in the sunshine, but a cold wind blew up from the water and rattled the bare branches now and again.
‘So, your man Keane?’ said Zelda.
Banks turned to face her. ‘I wanted to talk to you so that I could try to persuade you to forget about him,’ he said.
‘But?’
Banks smiled. ‘You’re very perceptive. Now I’m not so sure. Ray said you’re not the type to back down.’
‘I did try to tell you the other night, Alan. Besides, I assure you it is not dangerous for me.’
‘Danger is always relative, and with someone like Keane you always have to be aware that it’s there, or you’ll make a mistake and... well, like I did.’
‘This Keane. He was Annie’s boyfriend, am I right?’
‘Yes. He used her to keep track of our investigation. He made her feel betrayed, humiliated, a fool. He’s very charming on the surface, but if he feels cornered he’ll kill or run. Or both.’
‘I can imagine how betrayed and used she felt. But were you not... not with her at the time?’
‘No. We’d split up by then.’
‘But she still cares for you.’
‘Does she?’
Zelda nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, Keane drugged me and set fire to my cottage with me inside it. If it wasn’t for Annie and Winsome, I’d be dead.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘Because he suspected we were on to him. He was covering his tracks.’
‘And he escaped?’
‘Yes, he drove over the hills and far away.’
‘And now he turns up again in a photograph I have seen?’
‘The man he was with—’
‘Is a very bad man. Croatian. He was part of the gang that took me.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘He’s a pig.’
‘And he hasn’t been stopped yet?’
Zelda shrugged. ‘He is clever. And lucky. Just as he was in the war. And he knows who to pay. Why should he stop?’
‘So what would he be doing with Keane?’
‘As I said before, the only thing I can think of is that he would want false documents of some kind. Shipping, bills of lading, passports, even. I don’t know.’
‘For himself?’
‘Or someone else he was trying to smuggle somewhere, or place in a position of influence. They forge work backgrounds, resumés, references and so on, for customs officers, lorry drivers, that sort of thing. And they do not only snatch girls from the street. They are skilled at creating official-sounding fronts to persuade them to leave their homes — marriage and employment agencies, fake modelling agencies, fake film production studios, and fake opportunities for work and study abroad. All these things exist legitimately, so it is often impossible for the girls looking for jobs abroad to separate the fake advertisements from the real ones until it is too late. Nobody checks the authenticity of these advertisements.’
‘And the photograph you saw was definitely taken in London?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to see it.’
Zelda turned away, staring towards the hills again. A blackbird started singing in a nearby tree. ‘I’m afraid that might not be possible.’
‘The secrecy?’
‘Yes. I think my team is very much concerned with making a case against the other man in the photograph. If Keane can lead them to him, all is well and good. But to them I think Keane is just a pawn.’
‘Look,’ said Banks. ‘I want Keane. Not just for personal reasons, not just for what he did to me and to Annie, but because he’s a cold-blooded murderer.’
‘These men are all cold-blooded murderers.’
‘Well, Zelda, you’re in Yorkshire now, and you’re not entirely surrounded by cold-blooded murderers and rapists all the time any more.’
Zelda laughed. ‘There must be some, or you would not have a job.’
‘There are some. More than enough. But what I’m saying is that while Keane may not be unique in your world, he is in this one, or at least to some extent.’
Zelda frowned so Banks went on quickly.
‘All I need is a lead. An idea of where I might find him. A town, an address, a phone number, whatever. That’s all. I don’t want to interfere with your work. If you’ve got an operation going on, I’ll even wait until you’ve done what you need to do before moving in. I don’t want to interfere. But I do want to find him.’
Zelda paused before answering. ‘I will help you if I can,’ she said. ‘But you have to understand that the other night when we were all talking about how dangerous it was, you might have been worried about danger to me, but that’s not what I was thinking of.’