Anna frowned. ‘Unless.’
Mike and Harry looked at her.
‘What if she was more than just his whore? What if he really cared about her? What we need to do is try and trace anyone who knew her before she went to live with Dora; see if they can give us a clue as to who this guy was.’ She turned to Mike. ‘You have anything on record from your case?’
‘I’ll go and check; I think we did question a couple of girls.’
As Mike walked back to his desk, Harry said heavily, ‘Clutching at straws again. I mean, this is a new line of enquiry. Meanwhile we’re hovering around, looking up our own bumholes, waiting for a break.’
‘You never know, Harry, this might just be it. Do we have any trace on Camorra yet? If he’s living in Peckham, somebody must know where he is.’
‘Maybe they do, but we’ve had no tip-off. We got the locals there still doing a search.’ He turned to look back at Frank Brandon. ‘What’s he been brought in for?’
‘I’d say it was pretty obvious, wouldn’t you?’ Anna joked. ‘Clutching at straws!’
‘Making the place stink like a whore’s bedroom.’
‘You’d know about that, would you?’ Anna teased.
‘No, but he’s still wearing enough cologne to knock you dead at six feet.’
Mike Lewis returned with a report sheet. ‘I got two names. We questioned both the girls; neither had seen Carly Ann for months, but before that, they hung out together.’
‘Did she live with them?’
‘Well, she used their address the second time she was picked up for ducking and diving around Shaftesbury Avenue.’
When Anna asked for their address and said she’d like to interview them, Mike shrugged and said he doubted they would still be there. It was a valid registered squat in Kilburn.
As Langton was not in the station, Anna made sure she did nothing out of order. She told the duty manager that she was trying to contact the girls and that she would take Brandon along with her. She handed in her report of the interaction with Dora about Carly Ann and, after a quick sandwich and coffee, she and Brandon left the station.
They drove in silence for a while, then Brandon asked if she could fill him in on a few areas he had not had time to catch up on.
She told him about the Krasiniqe brothers, and the fact that they hoped to find something to help Eamon in Parkhurst; if they did, they might get some information from his brother Idris at Wakefield.
‘Bloody makes me sick,’ Frank said. ‘I mean, if this bastard is holding out…’
‘He’s terrified of voodoo,’ Anna told him.
‘That’s bullshit.’
‘Maybe it is, but if you’d seen him, then you’d think differently; he was totally freaked, like a zombie. They have been trying to force-feed him to keep him alive.’
‘For what? He killed Murphy, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, but if we can get any information out of his brother, it’s worthwhile at least trying.’
‘Both illegal immigrants?’
‘Yep.’
‘Bloody insane, isn’t it? You read the papers today: never mind the flood of illegal immigrants we’ve all ready got, we’ve got a new wave coming in from Eastern Europe. Under some ridiculous fucking law, so-called human rights, we could get more than six hundred thousand Poles and others coming in. I tell you, I’m thinking of fucking emigrating to Australia. They got the right idea — shut the gates. You know how many this bloody Government estimated would be coming in? Thirteen thousand. Well, they miscalculated, didn’t they? I tell you, the Government are guilty of blatant duplicity in trying to hide the truth: they have totally and utterly failed to control immigration and we are having to bear the brunt of it all. You know what it means: schools, hospitals, housing, welfare and wages are all going to be swamped. Fucking freeloaders! My brother lives in Peterborough and they’ve got two thousand Poles coming there. Unemployment is already high, so what the hell are they all going to be doing?’
Anna stopped the car outside a large rundown house, one side covered in graffiti. ‘This is it.’
Brandon looked out of the window. ‘Pigsty. Fucking legal squat! Would you want to buy a place in this street?’
Anna got out of the car. Brandon was starting to annoy her; he sounded more and more like the bigoted Harry Blunt.
The front door was off its hinges. A couple of guys were sitting on the steps and when Anna asked if Barbara Early lived there, they just looked at her and shrugged.
‘Do you speak English?’ Brandon snapped.
They shrugged again. He pushed his way past them and Anna followed.
The dingy hallway was full of black bin bags, a stray dog sniffing at one of them. Anna knocked on one door and got no answer, while Brandon had the same result from two more. Heading down the stairs was a skinny black girl, with a leather bomber jacket two sizes too big, a pair of tight satin shorts and stacked high heels.
‘I’m looking for Barbara Early,’ Anna said pleasantly, blocking the end of the stairs.
‘She’s not here no more,’ the girl said.
‘Okay, how about Jinny Moorcroft?’
The girl hesitated. ‘What for?’
‘Nothing to worry about; we just need to have a chat to her about someone.’
‘Two floors up at the end of the corridor.’
‘Thank you.’
Anna stepped back to allow the girl to pass, just as a scruffy white boy with his hair in dreads yelled down, ‘Hey, Jinny! Will you get some milk?’
Brandon moved fast; he gripped her arms. ‘Now that wasn’t nice, was it, Jinny?’
She wriggled and tried to get away from him.
‘Okay, Jinny, we can have a chat here, or I can take you into the police station. You are not under arrest, nothing like that; we just need to know a few things about a friend of yours.’
‘If it’s Barbara, we dunno where she is. She OD’d weeks ago and they took her away.’
‘This is not about Barbara; it’s about Carly Ann North.’
Jinny seemed to deflate; she almost toppled off her shoes.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ Anna kept her voice calm and steady.
Jinny hesitated, and then looked back up the stairs. ‘Here’s good enough.’
Anna sat beside Jinny on the filthy stairs as Brandon hovered. ‘You knew Carly Ann, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She lived here for a while. She gave this address when she was arrested.’
‘Yeah, top room with me and Barbara, but Barbara’s gone now.’
‘How long did Carly Ann live here?’
‘Dunno. She was here when I got my room; that was over a year ago.’
‘Did you share a room with her?’
‘Yeah.’ Jinny scratched at her hands and rubbed at her arms beneath the jacket. Her eyes were glazed and her nose had a red crust around it. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. She was probably on heroin, Anna thought.
‘Did you work with Carly Ann?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Did she have anyone special? A special client?’
‘No — well, not at first. She was just one of us, you know.’
‘So you worked the streets together, right?’
‘Sometimes.’ Jinny looked up the stairs and then bent her head. ‘He takes care of us, Mark upstairs.’
‘So Mark also took care of Carly Ann?’
‘Yeah, for a while, but she got into a row with him.’
‘About money?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did he kick her out?’
‘No, he got kicked in the head.’
‘Who — Mark upstairs?’
‘Yeah. This bloke come round and said he wanted to take Carly Ann. Mark said he could go fuck himself and then this bastard beat up on him.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘No, I wasn’t here.’
‘So did Carly Ann leave?’
‘Yeah. Well, after what happened, Mark didn’t want to get into any more aggro from them.’