Part 7 (1/2)

Irina sat behind the desk. Lena collated doc.u.ments and pictures for her visit to the mother of the girl in Barcelona. She was still trying to trace her. The address they'd been given was wrong. I could barely see them. The women were all smoking their cigarettes like they were one step away from the firing squad.

Anna brought them up to speed. 'Nicholas heard rumours about one of the traffickers in London. His source said he was moving girls to the UK and had a contact at the university.'

'Contact?' Irina rested her hands on the mountain of box files in front of her. 'What is his name?'

I shrugged. 'I wasn't given his name, but I was shown his picture. There's a shot of him outside the faculty office.'

Lena was still gobbing off on her mobile.

'We got chased out before we could find his name.'

She didn't bat an eyelid. 'I'll go and have a look.'

'You sure?'

Of course she was. She'd done things that were a lot more dangerous.

'When?'

'As soon as possible. Now?'

'Lena can drive me.'

'OK. He's overweight, with big frizzy hair. In one of the photos he's kissing a girl. She's blonde, dyed blonde.'

Lena closed down her mobile. 'No problem. I'll drop you off.' She'd been listening to every word. She pulled another cigarette from her pack and stabbed it at us. 'You want to stay here?'

'If that's OK.'

'Of course.'

They started towards the door, arm in arm. Lena's mobile kicked off again. She dug in her bag. 'But please don't leave. The office must never be unattended.'

Anna and I sat back and enjoyed a moment's silence.

Eventually I stood up and went over to the stack of files on the desk.

10

We spent nearly an hour flicking through them. There wasn't anything to check on a PC because there wasn't a PC.

I was feeling rough.

Anna read my mind. 'Up the stairs, you can't miss it.'

I followed her instructions and dry-swallowed a couple of Smarties. f.u.c.k the water: I didn't trust anything out of a tap in this neck of the woods.

Anna was kneeling by the fax machine when I got back, sifting through sheets of paper. 'Maybe the police don't want them to be online. It would make Lena's job too easy.'

I picked up a box file labelled 2005 and discarded it. Our target wouldn't have left school by then.

'I bet it's Lena who doesn't want to be online. Cell phones are giving the police enough information already.'

Anna brought another pile of doc.u.ments to the desk for me to rifle through. 'You OK, Nicholas?'

'Fine. I was knackered from the flight and we haven't exactly been dossing around since then, have we?' I paused. 'All this smoke's not helping.'

Anna scrutinized the desk top. 'I've been thinking, Nicholas. Maybe we could go away together ... Spring is so beautiful in Moscow.'

'What about CNN?'

'CNN can wait. Maybe I could show you the White Nights in St Petersburg.' Her face lit up. 'It's such high lat.i.tude the sun doesn't sink below the horizon. You can walk along the river in daylight, even at two in the morning.'

'Sounds like an insomniac's paradise.'

We sat in silence for a while. I didn't know what more to say. Did I look that bad? Was it that obvious?

'Nicholas ... Why are you really doing this job? You don't need to. It's not a game, you know.'

'Part of me has always tried to pretend it is a game. But not this time. I don't want to go all dewy-eyed on you, but I'm worried about this girl. I don't want to let her down. I've been there before, and I didn't like it.'

Her iPhone rang. 'h.e.l.lo, Irina.' She grabbed a pen and paper with her spare hand. I watched her write just two words.

Viku Slobozia.

They spoke a little longer, and then she closed down.

'That's him. He's a post-grad. Irina's already called Lena. Neither of them has heard of him. Lena's picking her up.'

I'd been hoping his name would ring bells. They'd know who he was and where he lived, and we'd go down to his flat and come out with Lilian. What now? I picked up a file with a photocopied picture on the cover, and a light bulb flicked on in my head. 'You know what, Anna? Lilian might not be on Facebook any more, but this boy might be.'

11

'Found him!' She held up the iPhone. 'He's quite the Mr Lover Man. At least, he seems to think so.'

She expanded the first picture with her thumb and forefinger. Viku Slobozia was giving it some in a bar, in full eighties p.o.r.n-film gear. He clearly thought he was Daniel Craig. He'd not held back on the hair gel, but the frizz remained defiant. The d.i.c.khead even had Aviators on indoors.

She scrolled down. 'Here we are.'