Part 23 (2/2)

'Thank you,' Steve said. 'Thank you very much.' He closed the window again. 'You can turn the camera off, Sally, and count out the money.'

'W-what?'

'You heard.'

Shakily she switched off the phone, reached down to the bag at her feet and began counting the stacks of twenties. She kept trying to see into Steve's waistband, covered now by his jacket. 'Was that what I thought it was?' she murmured.

'It's decommissioned. Don't worry, I'm not going to shoot my nuts off.'

'I can't believe this.' She glanced up at Jake, who was standing a few feet away, arms folded, bouncing his head back and forth as if he was moving to music no one else could hear. 'I can't believe any of it.'

'Neither can I. Just count the money.'

She did, and pa.s.sed it hurriedly to him.

'OK. Start filming again. When we leave, get a good shot of the jeep. The licence plate especially.'

She turned on the phone and scrunched back in the seat, holding it in front of her like a s.h.i.+eld. Steve wound down the window. Jake came forward, glowering at him. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the money and sauntered back to the jeep. He slammed his door and sat for a moment, lit by the interior light, bent over as he counted the blocks of cash. When he had finished, he didn't look at them, just reached up to switch off the light, started the jeep and roared away, narrowly missing taking their front b.u.mper with him.

'Did you get his number?'

Sally nodded. She stopped the video and sank back in the seat, breathing hard. 'G.o.d,' she muttered. 'Is this the end of it now? Is this really the end?'

's.h.i.+t. I hope so.' Steve readjusted the mirror and started the engine. 'I really, really hope so.'

18.

Captain Charlie Zhang was based temporarily in an old Victorian red-brick villa, set, incongruously, in a garrison to the east of Salisbury Plain. It might have been a military base, but when Zhang led her along the cool, carpeted corridors, Zoe decided the Military Police definitely had it better than the common-or-garden cops. There were fitted carpets and panelled walls, and the doors all closed with a rea.s.suring shush shush as if they were on the as if they were on the Stars.h.i.+p Enterprise Stars.h.i.+p Enterprise.

Zhang's commanding officer was a cool-looking woman in late middle age, Lieutenant Colonel Teresa Watling the army equivalent of a chief superintendent and fairly heavy hitting in the grand scheme of things. With her blow-dried grey hair, the gold pendant over her black turtle-neck and her black reptile-skin heels, she looked like a Manhattan businesswoman. In fact, she explained to Zoe, as they went along the pa.s.sageways, it was far more pedestrian than that. She had been born and brought up in the home counties.

'Cool.' Zoe swung the ID they'd issued her at the control gate. 'Can I ask you something?'

'Anything.'

'When I get tied to the chair, are you going to be the bad cop or the good cop?'

Lieutenant Colonel Watling ignored that. She stopped at a door and pushed it open. The room inside resembled a boardroom at an oil company, with a polished walnut table and twelve hand-carved teak chairs. There were water gla.s.ses and leather notepads at each place setting, so clearly the cutbacks that were axing thousands of backroom staff in the civilian police hadn't reached here yet. The three of them filed in. Zoe chose the seat at the head of the table, furthest from the door, and Captain Zhang sat next to her, his long, delicate hands folded one on top of the other. Six large files were placed down the centre of the table. It would have taken a long time to ama.s.s that lot, Zoe thought. A long time.

Lieutenant Colonel Watling opened a sleek black box and offered it to Zoe. At first she thought it was a humidor it seemed somehow appropriate to light up a stogie in a place like this, kick back a little and watch the sky out of the window go indigo. She wasn't going to say no if that was the way the evening was going to work. Maybe a little snifter of Talisker on the side. But it wasn't cigars in the box: it was coffee capsules, in rainbow colours. She looked at the key and chose the strongest.

'Black, please. Two sugars.'

Watling began to make the coffee. Zoe watched her, wondering how she'd got this job. It would be cool to wear Jimmy Choos to work, she thought. Maybe swap them now and again for combats and a quick, safe investigation at one of the bases in Iraq or Afghanistan. She'd heard they had a Piacetto cafe in Camp Bastion that did the best cakes. 'I know your boss,' Watling said. 'I worked with him on a couple of operations in Wilts.h.i.+re.'

'Was he into psychological profiling in those days?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Nothing. He's a nice guy. What do you want to talk about?'

'Oh, just this and that.'

'This and that?'

Watling gave Zoe her coffee and lined up her own cup next to the leather writing pad. She sat down and clasped her elegant hands on the pad. 'Zoe,' she said. 'Do you remember those good old days when the Crime Squad and the Intelligence Service combined forces and SOCA came on line? How we were told it was going to revolutionize our lives? The right hand was at last going to know what the left hand was doing?'

'Did you believe it?'

She gave a cold laugh. 'I'm a post-menopausal woman who's lived in a man's world for twenty years. A more cynical, cruel creature it's hard to find. But it's true, I thought SOCA might help. I believed that at least other agencies would check it make sure a target they were looking at didn't have a great big flag marked ”SIB” waving over it. Why didn't you check check before you started leaving messages at Mr Mooney's office?' before you started leaving messages at Mr Mooney's office?'

'You're telling me Mooney's in trouble?'

'Yes.' Watling splayed her hand out to indicate the long line of folders. 'These represent almost two years of work they're ready to go to the Service Prosecuting Authority, which is our version of the Crown Prosecution Service, and, believe me, just as a.n.a.l about procedure and-'

'Hold on, hold on. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but Mooney he's a big cheese, isn't he?'

'Extremely. Doesn't mean he can't be a naughty boy.'

Zoe stirred her coffee thoughtfully. She watched the sugar dissolve and waited for this new information to move itself into line. 'OK,' she said eventually. 'I get it now. I've stumbled into something and I apologize for that. I didn't check SOCA because it never occurred to me I just pulled Mooney's name out of a hat, from Dodspeople, because he'd done some time in Kosovo. I thought he might give me some information, point me in the right direction. I'm working on a misper on my patch, a p.o.r.nographer who had something a bit moody going on with someone connected to the UN in Pritina. I followed my nose, came up with Mooney as a starting point.'

'Look,' Watling folded her arms, 'you know, of course, because it's unspoken conventional wisdom by now, that where the United Nations goes, human trafficking goes too. That it makes a kind of hole in the ground, and all the women in the region who aren't weighted down just roll into it.'

'Yup.'

'Well, that's what happened in Pritina. The floodgates opened, the prost.i.tutes poured in. Except this time the UN got smart and set up a unit to monitor it. The Trafficking and Prost.i.tution Investigation Unit.'

'Yeah I saw that. Mooney headed it up.'

'And, as it turned out, made a few inroads into the local population himself.'

'Inroads?'

'That's a euphemism. To make what he did sound less horrible, the way he abused his position.'

'Like?'

'Oh no limits. Selling girls to the highest bidder, offering protection from criminal prosecution for s.e.x, arranging abortions some of the babies were his. The list is mind-boggling.'

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