Bleed a River Deep (17 page)

‘This is Sergeant Burke. I’m a PSNI officer in Omagh. We’ve arrested a woman for soliciting. She had your phone number.’

‘Who is she?’

‘We don’t know. She doesn’t seem to be able to speak English. She gave us a card with your number to phone.’

‘I’m on my way,’ I said, turning my key in the ignition.

Hendry agreed to contact Burke for me while I drove to Omagh. I had pulled out of the estate and started up the road when I realized that I had forgotten to return the Eligius envelope to Jim.

The sky was already greying with the threat of rain as I drove up the Omagh Road. It took me some time to find the PSNI station and then I had to wait for a further ten minutes for Burke to appear. I began to realize that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and the realization brought with it a craving for food.

Burke was a young sergeant, which may have explained his supercilious phone manner. His hair was long, his face darkened with designer stubble. He continually ran his hand through his hair and flicked his head to the side while we spoke. As he led me to the cell where Natalia was being held, he explained how they had come to arrest her.

They had been working on a tip-off. A local clergyman had been told by one of his congregation that foreign girls were working the street corners in one of the rougher areas of town. Cars were stopping and picking them up, then leaving them off again fifteen minutes later. It didn’t take Holmesian deduction to work out what was going on.

Burke and three other plain-clothes officers had staked out the street. There had been three girls working. Two of them had made a run for it when they saw the police coming, recognizing them for what they were, even in plain clothes. Only Natalia had been arrested.

‘She didn’t even
try
to run away,’ Burke snorted.

‘Maybe she wanted to get caught,’ I suggested.

‘Huh?’ He looked at me sceptically, one eyebrow raised, his lip curled slightly. ‘Now why would she want to do that?’

He pushed open the door of the interview room. Natalia looked significantly older than the last time I had seen her. She wore a tight white T-shirt and a frayed denim skirt that barely passed her crotch. Her arms were purple with bruises and her hair hung in straggles over her face. The yellowed remains of a bruise shadowed her left eye. She had wrapped one arm across her breasts.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said.

She looked up, her eyes flinty, her jaw set. When she saw me her expression softened for a second and her mouth twitched in recognition, as if she would smile. Then, as if remembering that I was the one who had been responsible for her fate, her expression hardened once more and she looked away.

I went over and knelt in front of her chair, placing my hands on her shoulders, though she shrugged them away. I moved my head in the hope of catching her eye, but she avoided me.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘Jesus, I’m so sorry.’

Finally she turned and looked at me. Something inside her seemed to crack. Her nose twitched suddenly and her eyes filled with tears. She spluttered something in Chechen, and hit at me with her fists, the blows glancing off my shoulders and the side of my head. I knelt in front of her and let her strike me, until her tears had subsided. Then I drew her against me and held her tight. Initially she felt rigid in my arms, but then she relaxed and returned the embrace.

‘I see now why she had your card,’ Burke said.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ I snapped, without looking at him.

Burke left and his superior came in, an inspector named Charlie Gilmore.

‘You were a bit sharp with Peter,’ he said.

‘Is that so?’

Gilmore nodded. ‘He’s young. No need to be rude with him. You’re off your turf here.’

‘This isn’t about turf; it’s about dealing with people like we’re all part of the same species.’

‘Oh, we know we’re all part of the same species, all right. What we’re a bit more confused about though is where exactly she’s from. My money’s on Russian.’ He nodded slightly, as if this piece of information might influence my response.

‘She’s Chechen. Her name’s Natalia Almurzayev,’ I said.

‘And how do you know her?’ he asked, scraping back the chair from the opposite side of the table to us and sitting down.

‘Her husband was shot in Lifford three weeks ago.’

He nodded. ‘The bank job; the guy with the plastic pistol.’

‘That’s right.’

‘The wife’s attempt at crime hasn’t been much more successful,’ he chuckled. ‘So, how do we speak to her?’

An hour later, Karol Walshyk was brought into the interview room. Someone had rustled up a plate of sandwiches and some tea. I had attempted to communicate with Natalia several times, but to little avail. She repeated the word ‘good’ as she ate, and smiled forcedly. The smile that greeted Karol’s arrival, though, was genuine, and for a second I saw a hint of the woman she must have been before setting foot in Ireland.

Karol’s reaction was one of both shock and pity. He spoke to her immediately in Chechen, ignoring the rest of us in the room. Finally, seemingly satisfied with her responses, he stood beside her, her hand in his, and faced us.

Gilmore came in with Burke. Instinctively I lifted the chair that had been left for me beside the PSNI officers and moved it to the side of the table, next to Natalia.

Gilmore inserted two fresh tapes into the tape recorder attached to the desk and turned it on. He then stated the date and time, introduced each person in the room, and commenced the interview.

‘Can you explain to us what you were doing when you were arrested?’ he asked.

On the night I had taken her from the house in Strabane she had gone to a local fast-food restaurant with Helen Gorman. Gorman had told her she had to leave her for a few moments, after I called her to assist in following Pony Tail’s car. An hour later she had not returned and Natalia had started to worry that something bad had happened. Then the waitress had approached her table to warn her that the group of young boys in the corner were looking over at her. One of them, dressed in a tracksuit, his hair dyed blond, had called something over at her, something that caused his friends to snigger. His expression left her in little doubt as to his meaning.

Frightened, she had left the restaurant, fearful that the boys would follow her. She had walked up the bypass, making her way back to the house. By the time she arrived, her friends were in a panic. Angered by her absence, the pony-tailed man had warned he would return the following night. If she didn’t have the money by then, the other people in the house would have to pay it for her.

She would think of something, she had promised them. She would ask the policeman to help.

At that point, the front door had been flung open. Pony Tail made straight for her, his mouth an angry slash. He grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face against the wall. He called her names. ‘Bitch,’ she said. ‘Bitch.’

The force of the blows shattered her nose. She screamed, while one of the other women jumped on Pony Tail’s back. He punched Natalia in the face, knocking her to the floor, then slammed his back against the wall, badly winding the woman who had helped her. As two of the men in the house rounded on Pony Tail, his accomplice entered with a baseball bat. He barked at the men in Polish, raising the bat. When they had backed off he grabbed Natalia by the hair, dragging her into the kitchen while Pony Tail dealt with the two men.

She understood some of what the man said to her. He wanted to know what she had told the police. She told him she hadn’t spoken to the police and he ripped the front of her dress. He lifted a knife from the counter and, grabbing her by the hair, pressed it against her throat. He asked her again, and again she denied involving the police. Finally he pressed the knife against her windpipe, working the tip gently until it just pierced the skin. Then he began to push it deeper. Natalia had screamed and told him she would tell him everything. It was because of her husband, she shouted. He’d died and the police had come.

The man pulled away from her. He seemed to consider something. Then Pony Tail came into the kitchen, a mobile phone in his hand. He spoke to the younger man, seeming to give him an order. The younger man looked at her, his gaze lingering on the swell of her chest, which was spattered with blood. He seemed reluctant to leave, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. Pony Tail spoke again, more sharply, and his partner stomped out of the room.

Five minutes later a white transit van pulled into the driveway. The residents were loaded into the back. Natalia stood waiting to join her countrymen, but Pony Tail gripped her upper arm and jostled her down the driveway towards their car. He opened the back door, forced her in, pushing down her head to avoid hitting the car roof.

The younger man was sitting in the driving seat. He winked at her when she got in. He spoke again in Polish. She was going to earn her rent, he said. He pushed out his cheek with his tongue. The red scar that ran down the side of his skull was livid in the car’s interior light.

She had not seen her friends since, nor, it seemed, did she know that their old house had been burnt down. She was driven somewhere in the car. They travelled for about thirty minutes before pulling into the driveway of an old red-brick house, hidden from the roadway by mature trees along the perimeter of the garden. Pony Tail and the scarred man led her inside the house. It was fairly well furnished inside, better than Natalia’s previous house. While Pony Tail made a phone call, the scarred man had taken her to an upstairs room where he tore her dress from her. Then he forced her on to the floor.

The story broke there, both because Natalia herself was so upset and because Karol Walshyk asked to be given a break. His face was drawn, his eyes wet with tears. Gilmore, though reluctant to stop the tapes, agreed to a break and sent out for a woman officer.

I stood to stretch my legs, and joined Gilmore at the door of the interview room.

‘I know who the scarred man is,’ I said.

He squinted at me slightly. ‘Who?’

‘His name’s Pol Strandmann. He sells stuff at the market outside Derry on a Sunday.’

‘That’s good to know,’ he said, turning from me again. Something about his reaction worried me.

‘You’re not going to lift him, are you?’ I asked.

‘There are other things going on here, Inspector Devlin. We’ll get to him in due course.’

‘He raped her. He can be charged with that,’ I said, placing my hand on his arm.

He looked down at my hand. ‘You’re here on a limited welcome; remember that.’

‘He raped her,’ I repeated forcefully, trying to keep my voice calm.

‘Could you step outside?’ Gilmore asked through gritted teeth, opening the door and stepping out onto the corridor.

‘Why—’ I began, but Gilmore stopped me short, stabbing a finger against my shoulder.

‘Let’s get something straight here, Devlin. You can’t come up here, mouthing off to my team, and then tell me what to do—’

‘You’re not going to arrest him, are you?’

‘One thug rapes a prostitute. So what? I’m sorry for her, really I am. You’re not the only one with feelings, you know. But there are other women involved here. We believe this guy with the pony-tail is involved in several brothels between here and Strabane, all involving eastern Europeans. If we can get him – and whoever is behind him, more importantly – we’ll achieve a hell of a lot more than picking up one rapist.’

It sickened me to the stomach, but I had to concede that Gilmore was making a sound operational judgement. That didn’t make it any less unpalatable. I would catch up with Pol down the line, of that there was no doubt.

I nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

Gilmore looked at me a moment. ‘Forget about it. We’d best get back in there.’

*

The atmosphere in the room darkened even further as the interview resumed. Gilmore asked about the man with the ponytail; had he mentioned any names, given any indication of who he worked for? Natalia listened to Karol’s translation of his questions, then shook her head.

‘What happened after you were attacked?’ he asked.

Again, Natalia watched Karol as he relayed the question to her, her gaze on his mouth, as if lip-reading. Then she began to speak, her words tumbling together.

‘She was forced to prostitute,’ Karol said, looking between Natalia and Gilmore. ‘In order to pay her debt.’

‘Did you ever see anyone you thought was in charge?’

She shook her head. ‘Only the man with the pony-tail and the one with the scar,’ Karol translated.

‘Tell her we need her to look at mug shots. To see if she can identify the pony-tailed man for us.’

Karol translated and she nodded.

‘What about Strandmann?’ I asked. ‘We have a lead on him. His car was spotted outside the house where Natalia was originally based. It’s enough to bring him in.’

‘I’ve told you already – we’ll follow it up,’ Gilmore said.

I sat in the station until past midnight, while Natalia sat flicking through several lever-arch files of photographs, but without success. Karol Walshyk sat beside me, a cup of tea, long since grown cold, untouched in his hands.

‘This is a horrible country,’ he stated.

‘Sometimes,’ I agreed. ‘Sometimes it’s not so bad.’

‘This story that Natalia told. You hear that often?’

‘We do cruel things to each other,’ I said. ‘You must have seen similar in Poland.’

‘It is so . . .’ he struggled to find the right word, ‘thoughtless.’

I nodded, without looking at him.

‘It must be hard not to become thoughtless too. To become used to it,’ Karol continued, gesturing towards where Burke stood behind Natalia. ‘Like him.’

I looked up at Burke, who was joking with the other members of his team. I missed Caroline Williams. I missed having someone I could rely on in a case. And I questioned why I was sitting in a draughty police station in Omagh in the early hours of a Friday morning, when I wasn’t even supposed to be working.

Gilmore approached us. ‘She doesn’t recognize anyone,’ he said. ‘We’ll keep an eye on this scarred fella you say works the markets, see if we can make a connection there. For now, we need to find her somewhere safe to stay. We’ve tried the Women’s Centre but it’s full. The duty social worker’s not answering his fucking phone. We can get her placed tomorrow. Somewhere safe, until we can pick up this Pony Tail guy. All we need is for her to give us a positive ID on him.’