Cold in Hand (13 page)

"And the sauna? You haven't been back to the sauna?"

Andreea shook her head.

"What will you do?"

"I have a good friend in London. Leyton? Leytonstone? I am not sure. Perhaps they are the same. Alexander. He comes
from Constanta, like me. He is student here. He says I can stay with him. He can even get me job, he thinks, in a bar. Or if not, in hotel, cleaning I think."

"What about your own studies? These courses you're doing?"

"Alexander thinks it may be possible to transfer somehow, I don't know. But it will be safer there, in London. Yes? You think?" She grasped Lynn's arm.

"Maybe. Yes, perhaps."

They drew level with three men of indeterminate age, sitting on a bench, passing a can of cider back and forth. A short-haired mongrel dog lay curled on the ground between them and raised its head to growl and show its teeth as they walked past. One of the men held the can out towards them, good-naturedly, and Lynn smiled and said, "No, thanks."

"Despite the threats this man made, you still want to change your story about what happened?"

"Yes. Yes, I think so."

A little way farther along, there was an empty bench and they sat facing the water, the traffic at their back. Andreea fumbled for a cigarette in one of the pockets of her anorak.

"Nina," she said, "she was nice to me. One time especially I remember, she saw that I was upset. I had a letter from home, from my mother. There was drawing Monica had made of two people. Holding hands. How do you call them? Match men?"

"Matchstick men."

"Yes. Like that. One big and one small. It was Monica and me. My mother had written our names on the top." There were tears in her eyes. "Nina, she had a child, too, she told me. A boy. When she was fifteen. She had not seen him for a long time. She hold me and tell me not to cry. I will see my little girl again."

Andreea stopped and turned her face towards Lynn, the tears now running down her cheeks.

"I want to tell the truth of how she died."

Lynn smiled reassuringly. "Go on," she said. "Take your time."

Andreea flicked away ash and the end of her cigarette sparked briefly. "There was a man, the man I spoke of, a customer, he and Nina had started to fight. I don't know what about. Something, perhaps, he had asked her to do. I don't know. I am across corridor, close, I can hear them shouting and then, I think, I hear the man leave, still shouting at her, 'Fucking whore' and things like that, and I think now it will be all right. But Viktor, I hear him go into the room, and there is more shouting, and Nina she starts to scream and I know he is hitting her, hitting her bad, and I am frightened for her, so I go into the corridor and the door it is open, just a little, not all the way, but I can see she has a knife, and when Viktor hits her again, she stabs him in the shoulder, like this, here, and Viktor falls back against the wall and the knife falls to the floor and I am very frightened and I call her name, 'Nina, Nina,' and she turns to look at me and starts to come towards the door, and the next thing I see Viktor is on his feet and has the knife in his hand and he stabs Nina in the neck, from behind, and this time there is so much blood, more blood, and I run before Viktor can see me. I go running to Sally and tell her I think Nina is dead."

She stopped, drained, shaking, looking at the slowly darkening sky.

"Viktor," Lynn said, "he doesn't know what you saw?"

"No," Andreea said. "And he must never know."

Lynn rested a hand on her arm. "Thank you," she said. "You're very brave. And don't worry. He won't hurt you. Neither him nor his friend. I promise." Even as she spoke, knowing how hollow the words were. Promises are like piecrusts—wasn't that what her mother used to say?

They kept Andreea under wraps, took a statement from her in an out-of-the-way police station, questioned her some more. Andreea's name would not be used when her statement was fi-
nally disclosed, as it had to be, to the defence before the trial; she would be simply Miss X, Miss Y. But from the statement, Lynn knew, it would not be too difficult for the defence team to work out her identity.

Andreea told them that a week or so before she was killed, Nina had shown her the knife. She had got it from a friend. One of the regulars, Andreea thought, she didn't know for sure. "This is for Viktor, if he hits me once more," Nina had said.

"I did not think she meant it," Andreea said. "But she did. What she said, it was true."

Steadily, they accumulated evidence of Zoukas terrorising the women who worked for him, threatening, striking, lashing out in anger. According to one of the customers, Zoukas had once pushed past him yelling, "That bitch. That fucking Nina! I fucking kill her!" And then, after a second television appeal, the police received a number of phone calls, including several from his ex-wife, identifying the tattooed man as Kelvin Pearce.

Officers found him in Sneinton, working on a building that had recently been gutted and was now being refurbished and restored; Pearce busy removing the old window frames while listening happily to Suggs on Virgin Radio, "Reasons to Be Cheerful" followed by the Dexys' "Come On Eileen."

Asked why he hadn't come forward of his own volition, he gave the officer a look of sheer incredulity. "Stick my head in a fuckin' noose, right? I'm not as stupid as I might bloody look."

Once he started telling his story, he was clear and to the point. He and the girl had started arguing. Got him all worked up, the cunt, and then asked him for another twenty quid. He'd lost it, taken a swing at her, fair enough, he'd put his hand up for that, but then she'd only pulled this knife on him and started waving it in his face. He'd been trying to get it from her when this fat bastard come in, swearing and shouting, and he'd legged it out of there as fast as he could.

Had he touched the knife?

"Yes, of course. Said so, didn't I?"

Had he at any point stabbed or cut Nina Simic with the knife?

"No. No way."

"Or Viktor Zoukas?"

"That mad bastard? You're kidding, right?"

"That's a no, then?"

"Too fucking right!"

"And once you left the room, you never went back?"

"You're kidding, yeah?"

Now that there were two witnesses placing Zoukas firmly at the scene, the CPS were happy to go ahead and he was formally charged with Nina Simic's murder. Lynn was in court, when, with a very real presumption that he might flee the country, Zoukas was refused bail. Turning away before being led down to the cells, he saw her and their eyes locked. "You!" he shouted. "You—!"

Before he could say more, the duty officers hauled him away none too gently, leaving Lynn shaken by the intensity of hatred on his face.

As the trial approached, Andreea telephoned Lynn several times in tears: she was too frightened, she said, to stand up in court.

"It's all right," Lynn said. "I've told you before. You can give your evidence from behind a screen, or not even that. A video link. You don't have to be in the courtroom at all. He won't see you. You don't have to see him. Nobody need know who you are. It will all be fine."

Lynn was doing the ironing on Monday morning when the CPS phoned, Rachel Vine's voice instantly identifiable. "I thought you ought to know. The Zoukas case, we're applying for an adjournment."

"What on earth for?"

"You haven't heard? One of your witnesses has gone AWOL."

"Andreea?"

"No, the other one. Pearce. No one's seen hide nor hair of him for two days."

The Crown Prosecution Service offices were on King Edward Street, close to the city centre; the old Palais, remodelled and renamed, was at one end, a bingo hall and mosque at the other.

Rachel Vine was taller than Lynn, with dark hair and a figure that suggested working out in the gym three nights out of five. Either that or the pool. She was bright and smart, with a reputation for staying focussed under pressure and an attitude that could, on occasion, get in the faces of friend and foe alike. When the current Chief Prosecutor moved on, she was tapped for the position.

She shook Lynn's hand and asked again how she was recovering from her injury. "I promise not to make you laugh," she said. "Don't want to set those ribs off again."

Lynn didn't think she'd be laughing.

She'd already called the DS who'd been her number two on the Zoukas investigation and given him a bollocking for not keeping her in the loop over Pearce's disappearance. So far, she'd learned, Pearce had been traced to a sister in Mansfield, where he'd stayed a night before moving on. The sister didn't know where to.

"It's unfortunate," Rachel Vine said. "Losing Pearce so close to the trial. Quite apart from him being one of our only two witnesses who can place Zoukas in the room with Nina Simic just before she died, his disappearance now only makes the defence case—that
he
was the one who killed Nina—look all the stronger."

"Someone got to him, is that what you think?"

"I really don't know. It's possible. The Care Officer said he'd been getting more and more jumpy as the trial date got closer, but, in a case like this, that's only normal. All we can hope is that it's just a bout of bad nerves and he'll calm down, come to his senses. Or that we'll find him. Presumably, every effort's being made to trace him?"

"So I believe."

"Well, I don't feel we can go ahead without him."

"But surely, with Andreea—"

"Andreea's evidence on its own isn't enough. And I worry she's going to get pulled to pieces on the stand. She comes apart, and what's left? No, we go into court like that, and I think there's a real danger of Zoukas getting acquitted."

Lynn looked away: she didn't like what she was hearing, but couldn't think of any counterarguments that were strong enough.

"I've talked it over with the Chief," Rachel Vine said, "and she's in agreement. I shall be requesting an adjournment first thing tomorrow. I imagine, in exchange for complying, the defence will do their utmost to get Zoukas released on bail."

"Leaving him free to intimidate witnesses or skip the country altogether."

"Don't worry," Rachel Vine said. "That's not going to happen." She reached out and touched Lynn's arm. "I know what this case means to you. I'm not about to let it slip away."

By early afternoon of the following day, it was all agreed: passed through with surprising speed.

Rachel Vine herself had phoned Lynn with the news.

"There's one thing we had to swallow," she said. "We've had to agree not to oppose bail."

"You're kidding!"

"No. Without it, the defence would never have agreed to an adjournment of more than a few days, five at most. The chances of Pearce being found in that time are too slim."

"I don't believe it," Lynn said, as much to herself as Rachel Vine.

"Look, we've gained a month, that's the most important thing, and as far as Zoukas is concerned, we'll be arguing for a surety of around fifty K. Passport surrendered and a residency order imposed, plus he'll have to report to the local police once a week, if not every day. Watertight as can be."

"I still don't like it," Lynn protested.

"Well, live with it like the rest of us."

"Yes, right. What was it you said? Something about not letting it slip away?"

There was a pause at the other end of the line. "Look," Rachel Vine said hesitantly, "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but we were requested not to oppose bail."

"By whom?"

"The DPP."

"But for Christ's sake—"

"Lynn, Lynn, listen, I can't say any more. If you want to push her for more details, I suggest you go and see your ACC."

When Lynn tried to push her further, the line went dead.

After some finagling and not a little persuasion, she talked her way into an appointment with the Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) in his office at Sherwood Lodge at the end of the day, still unclear in her mind where the pressure behind the DPP's request had come from.

She got her answer when, having been kept waiting a good twenty minutes, she was ushered into the ACC's office and there was Stuart Daines from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, smiling as he stepped towards her and offered his hand.

"Lynn, good to see you again." The smile broadened. "You wouldn't come and join us, so I thought we'd come and join you."

"The arrogant, self-centred bastard, standing there with that smug smile stuck on his face, as if he'd just sold me several thousand pounds' worth of double bloody glazing."

Lynn had gone straight from Sherwood Lodge to Resnick's office, interrupting a late meeting, Khan and Michaelson taking the temperature quickly and leaving.

"I thought you quite fancied him," Resnick said lightly.

"It's no bloody joke, Charlie."

"I know."

"Zoukas out on the streets, no matter what sort of conditions, it sticks in my throat."

"There must have been a reason, some kind of explanation?"

"Explanation?" She dropped her voice an octave in imitation. "'Viktor Zoukas is a small but integral part of an ongoing major investigation, and it is important for the progress of that investigation that he remains free at this time.'"

"At this time?"

"Yes."

"That's what he said?"

"Yes."

"Daines?"

"Principal Officer Daines."

"That's his rank?"

"Civil Service grades in SOCA. Tells you what you need to know."

"And he didn't give you any more details than that?"

Lynn shook her head. "The last thing he wanted, he assured me, was for me to feel shut out from what was going on."

"Good of him."

"But because the investigation was at quite a delicate stage, he couldn't say a great deal more right now, though he fully intended to bring me up to speed as soon as he possibly could."

Resnick shifted in his chair. It was a long time since he'd see Lynn so openly angry, and with such apparent cause. "What did the ACC have to say?"

"Oh, some waffle about the importance of cooperating with a national organisation. Seeing the wider picture—you can imagine. From what I could make out at the conference I went to, SOCA have had precious little to do with Forces outside London. Won't be doing the Chief Constable any harm politically if we're one of the first. Help shift attention away from kids shooting themselves on the streets."