Part 16 (1/2)

She finished her exchange with the bald guy and crossed the road towards the taxi rank. I stopped to let her past as he powered up his window and drove off.

I dropped the BlackBerry into my lap and carried on for a couple of hundred metres before swinging round by a dark-grey stone building. It looked like an old government inst.i.tution, maybe a library or a theatre. Its big gla.s.s windows were filled with posters in Arabic. It must have been a mosque of sorts. Shoes were stacked on racks outside a side entrance.

Anna was talking to the driver of the taxi at the head of the queue. She saw me, gave the guy a thanks-but-no-thanks, and turned to walk down one of the side streets. I followed and pulled up alongside her. She looked around and jumped in. The expression on her face said she was ready for her b.o.l.l.o.c.king.

'What the f.u.c.k are you doing? I told you, didn't I? Anything spooks you, get up and walk. Didn't I say don't take any chances?'

She listened to me as she fastened her seatbelt. 'Nick, watch the road. I've found Lilian.'

'Alive?'

'I think it's her. There were twelve girls, some of them fresh off the plane. I can show you. Go back to the roundabout.' She lowered her window and lit a cigarette.

She took a drag. 'It was dark. But there's one who could definitely be her.'

'What about Baldilocks - you get his name? Anything?'

She shook her head. 'He's a Brit, but he doesn't sound like you. He's like the one in Christiania. The one who gave us the address.'

'A Scouser?'

'I don't know what that means. But he sounded the same.' She took another drag. As we turned onto the roundabout I let down my window too.

'Take the second exit - follow the signs for the docks.'

I checked the blue plate high up on the first building past the roundabout. The street was called Distelweg.

'Follow the road. It twists and turns through this housing estate, and then you cross a ca.n.a.l. After that, it's a dead straight line down the centre of the docks.' She turned her head to blow out another cloud of smoke. 'I told him I'd buy the lot, thinking that maybe I could get them all out quickly. We could find the money, couldn't we, Nicholas? Five thousand euros. Five thousand each. They're young ...'

'Brilliant. When do we have to deliver the cash?'

'We don't.' She sighed. 'Turns out they've already been sold and are due to leave this Thursday. He just wanted to show me how fresh his merchandise is.'

As we drove over the bridge and into almost total darkness I had the same feeling I'd had at the Bender border crossing into Transnistria - like I was crossing into East Berlin. In my rear-view, the ca.n.a.l s.h.i.+mmered under the street-lights. We pa.s.sed four or five ropy-looking boathouses. Just forty metres later the world was pitch black.

Anna tossed out her cigarette and climbed into the back without being told. She crouched in the foot-well as I turned onto the dead straight tarmac road that bisected the dock. Potholes lined the verge where it surrendered to the mud, and stacks of wooden pallets sat outside a parade of industrial units. Watery pools of security lighting surrounded a similar group of buildings in the distance. A few trucks and vans were parked up here and there, but there was no sign of life. This wasn't a 24/7 part of town.

All signs of habitation petered out about four hundred metres further on and were replaced by a run of steel railings. To reinforce the Checkpoint Charlie experience, it started to rain.

Anna rested her head on the baby seat. 'OK - now we're at the wasteground. The place I was taken is on its own, set back from the road. There's a tower on the left-hand side.'

The Noord 5 area was on the far side of the water. Piles of rubble and twisted steel reinforcing rods glistened in its ambient light.

We pa.s.sed a double gate secured with a s.h.i.+ny new padlock and chain.

'That's where we drove in.'

Droplets of rain bounced through the open window and onto my cheek. I studied the dark silhouette of the target: an imposing rectangular structure with a tower at the left end. I couldn't see a single light.

'I think it's a grain silo - or, at least, it used to be. There was flour over everything. It smells like a cake shop when you go in.'

I carried on for another hundred metres or so, to a point where the road turned sharp left and then almost wound back on itself. We pa.s.sed a ferry point, not much more than a slipway, too small for vehicles, just for pedestrians and cyclists. I drove back towards what I hoped was the Berlin Wall ca.n.a.l. With luck we'd be able to cross it and get back onto Distelweg via the estate.

The bay was immediately to my right. On the other side of it was the Amsterdam I remembered. Spires were silhouetted in the neon glow. Navigation lights glided up and down the waterway between us as tonight's pa.s.sengers tucked into a romantic ca.n.a.l-cruise dinner.

'Describe the building for me.'

'It has concrete floors. The door we went in through is on the right-hand side of the building. Inside is a hallway with four doors into offices, two on each side. The first on the right is where the girls are kept. They're in sleeping bags on mattresses.'

'Did you see inside the other three rooms?'

She shook her head. 'We went straight into the first on the right. There is a staircase on the left. I could hear voices coming from the first floor. Dutch voices. I didn't see them. There were definitely two captors, maybe three or four.'

We crossed the ca.n.a.l and found ourselves in another estate - narrow roads and prefab houses, painted white.

'Did they open the main door for you, or did the bald guy have a key?'

'It was locked. He made a call and they unlocked it from the inside. They locked themselves in again when we left.'

'What about the gate? Was it open when you got there?'

'I couldn't tell. The driver got out, but I don't know if it was locked. They might have unlocked it after the call. I just don't know.'

'Anything else?'

She climbed back alongside me and thought for a while. 'It all happened so fast and I didn't want to be obvious. When we met at the cafe, I told him I wanted to see what condition the girls were in. If they were good, we could do business. These guys are greedy, they always are.'

'Well done, mate. Brilliant.'

She laughed. 'But ... ?' She knew what was coming.

'Anna, you're a nightmare.' I looked at her. 'Don't do that sort of s.h.i.+t again.' I stopped the car. 'You drive back.'

We swapped seats and I checked the BlackBerry footage I'd taken earlier to make sure Anna wasn't visible. The quality was OK - a bit dark, but they'd be able to get a few decent sightings of the face.

Anna followed signs to the A10.

I hit the secure b.u.t.ton and waited for the app to do its stuff. I pressed send, then dialled Jules's number. 'I've found a possible.'

He sounded surprised. 'Is she OK?'

'I've uploaded a video for you. He has the possible. I've got three days max before she's being moved on. The lad's got a Lexus, a crimson four-by-four hybrid thing. I don't know if it's his. I don't even know the plate. All I know is that face. Can you find out who he is? The quality ain't great, but the Tefalheads should be able to sort something out. If not, fire them.'

'How difficult will it be to get to her?'

'Hard to tell. The girls are protected.' I repeated Anna's description of the target. 'All I know is, there are twelve of them, and one's a possible. I'm going to get in there and confirm.'