‘Them?’
‘Yeah, there was a few of them come round. I dunno who they were, but they drove up and one man come in to get her.’
‘But you weren’t here?’
‘No, Mark was. They went up to our room and took her stuff. She was outside; she didn’t even come in.’
‘Do you know what kind of car they were in?’
‘Yeah, a white one. Big thing with black windows; it had been outside before, couple of times. Carly Ann came back home in it a few times.’
‘Did you ever see anyone in the car?’
‘No, the windows was black.’
‘Did you see anyone at all that came in with Carly Ann?’
‘No. She got very secretive, ’cos he was paying her a lot of dough; then she said she wasn’t gonna do any drugs nor nothing, and was gonna live with this guy. We reckoned it was bullshit, ’cos she could tell big lies. She said he was gonna look after her.’
Brandon asked quietly, ‘Was this the white car you saw outside?’ He showed her a photograph of a white Range Rover.
‘Yeah, it was like that.’
Anna looked to Brandon, then eased her body closer to Jinny.
‘We will need to speak to Mark,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Oh Christ, don’t have a go at him ’cos he’ll take it out on me.’
‘We just want to talk to him.’ Brandon headed up the stairs and Jinny watched him go, fearfully.
‘Did Carly Ann get some jewellery from this man she was seeing?’ Anna asked.
‘I dunno. If she had anything of value, she’d hide it. Mark would have it off her otherwise. He takes care of us, you see.’
Anna looked at the young drug-fuelled girl, no more than seventeen, and ripped a page from her notebook.
‘Jinny, if you decided to get away from this, call this lady. Her name is Dora. You can get help to get you off drugs — you know, to get yourself straightened out.’
Jinny looked at the piece of paper, and folded it over and over into a small square. ‘She’s dead, ain’t she?’
‘Carly Ann?’
‘Yeah. I read about it. They come here asking about her, but we didn’t know nothing. I suppose Barbara’s dead an’ all; she was shooting up meths mixed with Christ knows what. She was a nice kid.’ Jinny shut her eyes.
‘Carly Ann was brutally murdered, Jinny, so if there is anything you can think of that could help us, anything at all…’
‘They got the one that done it, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, but we think there are more people involved, and they got away.’
Jinny pointed with her foot in the stack-heeled shoe. ‘She left these, and some other gear; said she wouldn’t need it any more as she was gonna be looked after. Well, she was lying again, wasn’t she? Nobody looked after her. They done her in.’
‘So you liked her?’
Jinny nodded; her eyes filled with tears. ‘I know she told lies and stuff, but she was sort of different from us all — you know, clean, always washing herself, afraid she’d pick up something.’
There was a lot of banging coming from the floor above. Jinny looked up fearfully.
‘I gotta go an’ get some milk.’
‘Thank you for talking to me, Jinny. Please, if you want to get out of this, call that number. Dora seems a really nice woman and I’m sure she’d want to help you.’
Jinny teetered to her feet. ‘Yeah, I’ll call. Can I go now?’
Anna stood up, watching the fragile figure wearing the dead girl’s shoes totter out of the front door. The two guys sitting on the steps laughed; one put his hand up her skirt but she swiped it away.
Brandon came down the stairs; he was sucking his right hand.
‘Fucking piece of shit. He threw a punch at me, so I got one back at him and he tried to kick me in the nuts! He missed — but I didn’t.’
Anna walked out of the door, passing the two lounging boys; she looked at them, almost daring them to touch her, but they cowered away.
Back in the patrol car, they headed out of the rundown street, Anna at the wheel.
‘Okay, Mark identified the bloke from the white Range Rover: six feet four, black, two gold teeth, missing tooth in the front.’
‘Sounds like Rashid Burry,’ she said.
‘He told Mark to put Carly Ann’s gear into a bag, said she wouldn’t be coming round any more, and that if he tried to find her, he would wind up with his throat slit. This, I reckon, was about a year before she ended up dead. Mark was scared rigid, he said. After the bloke had gone, he looked out of the window. He said there were maybe two other men in the car, but he didn’t see clearly; she wasn’t there with them though. There was someone dressed in maybe a white tracksuit, ’cos the car door was left open, and then clothes and stuff got thrown onto the pavement, like they weren’t worth keeping. He seemed to think that Carly Ann had found some rich punter, ’cos the bloke gave him two hundred quid after kicking him around; threw it at him, and warned him not to try to look for her.’
‘So he never saw her again?’
‘Nope.’
Anna sighed, trying to calculate how long Carly Ann had to have been with the so-called rich punter before moving to Dora’s; it could only have been a matter of months. In that time, she was given a lot of jewellery and fine clothes, too much for someone just using her as a whore — unless the clients he was able to pass her on to paid big money. It made sense that if Carly Ann walked away from this person, they wouldn’t like it.
Langton had not only shipped in Frank Brandon to swell the murder team, but they now also had a mass of clerical workers and uniformed officers attached to the station. The manpower was costing a fortune. Langton’s budget was severely depleted; he had put in numerous requests for further finances. When he eventually joined the team, he looked exhausted.
He stood staring at the board, his eyes roaming over the mass of information, as everyone quietly gathered. Drawing up chairs to sit in a semicircle around him, they waited.
He gave a long sigh.
‘Okay, I tried to contact your Professor Starling about the voodoo connection, Anna, but he’s gone to Luxor on some dig or other, so Grace and I have been to various quacks, trying to get something that might help us. It seems to me that our only possible hope is to break this Idris Krasiniqe and see if he does have some information that can assist us. As you can all see, we need it. It beggars belief that, after this length of time, we are still at square one. I am not aiming fault at any one of us; we’ve all been working our butts off, but it seems we just can’t get a break. The last report in we have about the medical condition of Eamon Krasiniqe is he’s fading fast, so time is against us.’
He was about to continue when Harry Blunt raced in. Langton turned, irritated.
‘Call’s just come in from a crusher’s yard: they’ve got the Range Rover. They’ve not touched it more than to sit behind the steering wheel.’ Harry had to heave to get his breath. ‘I’ve had the squad at Scotland Yard send it over to their guys; I said to start on it straight away.’
Langton gestured to Harry for him to calm down. ‘How did it get there?’
‘Guy walked in, paid over the money, said someone had put sand in the ignition and it was screwed. He said he wanted to watch it going up the ramp to make sure they didn’t fuck around with it. They agreed and went through the deal, then had one of ’em remove the plates — got to have everything recorded. The bloke was getting real uptight, but when he sees it heading up to the crusher, he pisses off, leaving the plates behind. The boss smells something isn’t kosher, stops the machine and calls in the locals. Gov, it’s the missing Range Rover! White body, black-tinted windows and the licence plates tally!’
The buzz went round the incident room: just as they felt they were going nowhere, at last they had a break. Harry gave the description of the driver as a tall, black guy, well-dressed. He had someone waiting for him outside the yard in a red four-door Mercedes, but they didn’t see who.