Close Call

Chapter 23

Katya knew all about the police in her country – they were armed and violent and sometimes if you paid them enough they would go away – but she didn’t know about the British police. People said they were different, but those were normal people, people who were in the country legally, people with the right stamps in their passports, people who had genuine passports. Not people like her for whom the smallest brush with the authorities could mean disaster.

So when a young man knocked at the door of the house where she rented a room and said he was a policeman, an icy panic gripped her. He flashed an identity card so quickly that she couldn’t have seen it even if her eyes had been working properly. She’d been woken by his knock and was still half asleep as well as scared.

‘Detective Sergeant Halliday,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’ and before she could say anything he pushed past her and went into the lounge. The three other girls who lived in the house had all gone out to work. They had nine-to-five jobs, but Katya got home at four o’clock in the morning and usually slept till the early afternoon.

The lounge was in a mess. One of the girls slept there on the sofa and she’d left her clothes and underwear scattered on the floor. Halliday sat down on the one chair while Katya stood in the doorway in her nightclothes and nervously waited for him to say something.

‘I expect you know what this is about, love,’ he said with a smile that was only superficially friendly. He seemed young to be a detective; his hair was spiky and shiny with wax, like the kids she saw sometimes on her way home, coming out of the clubs.

She didn’t say anything and he laughed. ‘Come on, Katya. Speak to me.’

‘Just tell me what you want,’ she said, not that she had much doubt. He must know she was there illegally, without proper papers, and she feared the worst – deportation back to Dagestan, the country she had been so happy to leave. But if he’d come to arrest her, why was he on his own? It seemed odd.

‘I’m interested in your place of work.’

‘Slim’s?’

‘That’s right, love. You work upstairs, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Funny kind of place, Slim’s. I mean, it’s a club downstairs, full of respectable citizens having dinner and a drink or two and a dance. But if someone wants a special dessert they can get it upstairs.’

Katya said nothing, wondering what he was getting at. She didn’t know whether what went on upstairs in Slim’s was legal or not, all she knew was that neither she nor any of the girls who worked there had the right papers. But if he was inquiring into what went on in the club, why had he come to her? She didn’t run the place. Whatever he wanted, she wished he’d get on with it. But his next remark gave her a shock. ‘How well do you know Mr Jackson?’

She shrugged. ‘He is there most nights, but he doesn’t often speak to the staff.’

Halliday sneered. ‘Oh, so he’s too grand to talk to the people who help make him rich.’

She didn’t reply; the less she said the better. She must do nothing to rouse his interest and then he might go away. She knew Jackson, of course, but as a daunting presence rather than as someone you could talk to. He was the owner of the club, with the power to hire and fire. But it was more than that – he owned them, the girls, and she had no doubt that he was behind the operation that brought them into the country.

The girls in the upstairs room at Slim’s were stunners – the prettiest girls their home country had to offer. Katya was proud of this, since part of her job was selecting the girls who got brought over. For that, she had to travel to Dagestan from time to time, and when she did she used a false passport that was given to her for the journey, then taken away. It said she was Bulgarian. The girls she recruited came to the UK in a lorry; she knew that from talking to them when they got here. The other part of her job was managing the girls once they arrived.

There was an air of menace about the man Jackson; behind his stylish clothes and cool manner she sensed a brutality that scared her. The other girls saw it too, though as far as she knew he had never hurt any of them.

There was another strange thing about him. In Katya’s experience any owner would have occasionally sampled the goods; that was a right that came with the territory. But not Jackson; he never talked to any of the girls, let alone touched them, and he only occasionally had a word with Katya, just to check that the customers were happy and that there had been no complaints. There never had been and he seemed satisfied, but she still found him frightening.

Halliday’s breezy manner had changed. His voice sounded ominous when he said, ‘Your employer is about to find himself brought down a peg or two.’

‘Oh?’ said Katya.

‘Yes. And you’re going to help me do it.’