City of Halves (17 page)

‘I will.'

They finished the call and Lily drank her tea. There was no sign of Regan. She washed the mug and headed out.

W
alking down to Bank, Lily waited at the number seventy-six bus stop. There was a newsstand half stacked with Metros. The headline shouted at her from behind the grille. PLAGUE OUTBREAK: EXTINCT DISEASE BRINGS TRAGEDY TO WHITECHAPEL.

Lily picked up a paper and scanned the front page. Seven people, so far. More critically sick. She put the paper back, slowly.
Things are getting worse
. She bit her lip. She wondered where Regan was.
What if more plague demons got through last night . . . what if . . .
She shook the thought off.
He's fine. He just went back to work, that's all
.

The bus arrived a couple of minutes later. On the long journey up to Stoke Newington, Lily sat absorbed in her thoughts. When, finally, it pulled to a halt at the junction with Amhurst Road, she felt a little calmer. She got off and turned into the street of large Victorian houses converted into flats. Finding the address, she pushed the buzzer for the top flat. And waited.
Finally, it crackled.

‘What?' a male voice said.

‘Stedman? Harris Stedman?'

‘Christ, keep your voice down! Who's that?'

‘I got this address from Regan—'

‘Shut it,' the voice screeched, making the intercom squeal.

The door clicked. Lily pushed through it and climbed to the top floor. There on the landing, a door stood open and behind it was a brown-haired man not much taller than Lily. He was thin, with a ferret-like face. He jerked his head to the interior of the flat, looking annoyed. Lily walked past him.

The flat was not what she expected. It was neat and clean, with large white sofas and arty pictures on the walls. Through the glass doors was a roof terrace. In front of the doors was a vast desk covered in paper, scalpels, a printer and what looked like an improvised laminator.

‘Who the hell are you?'

Lily turned. ‘My name's Lily. My father is representing a client you made fake documents for.'

‘So?' His eyes skipped to the desk.

‘Those documents allowed her to stay in this country as a trafficked individual. While under the control of her traffickers, she was forced to commit various crimes, which she's being charged with. I need to find the traffickers, so we can have them prosecuted, not her.'

‘And this would be my problem how?' His eyebrows raised.

‘You know who they are. And you can't have missed the case in the news.'

He stared at her.

Lily folded her arms. ‘I just need a name, and where to
find them.'

‘And I just need my business and my neck intact, but thanks.' He opened the door again.

Lily pushed it closed. ‘Don't you care about this woman at all?'

He looked at her as if she were stupid. ‘If I
cared
about other people, lady, do you think I would be in this line of work?'

Lily shrugged. ‘But I need you to do this,' she said simply.

‘What have you got over Lupescar that he's giving my name away?' He looked her up and down. ‘Or is that too obvious a question?'

Lily put her hands on her hips. ‘Very funny.'

He folded his arms. ‘It wasn't a joke. I need to be able to trust people.'

‘You can trust me.'

‘Oh yeah. In the high court.' He snorted.

‘There's no reason for your name to come out. I'll make sure it doesn't. But if you don't give me a name, then . . . perhaps it just will. I have you down so far for sixteen fake visas, at least five passports . . .'

‘Yeah, yeah. Prove it.'

He licked his thin lips, then gnawed at the edge of one, pushing it between his teeth with his thumb. Lily set her chin, looking at him. The phone rang. He reached over and picked it up. ‘Yes? Right. Okay. I can do it but it'll cost you. Oh, and I have some very interesting merch here that you may want to take a look at. Yeah, I know, but I don't want to hang on to it. Send someone, yeah?' He put the phone down. Then he went over to the printer and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. He handed her a pen. ‘Write this down. I don't want my hand
anywhere near it.'

Lily bent over the desk, looking at the neat piles of passport photographs and watermarked paper. She listened and wrote as he dictated a name and address.

‘Don't blame me if they're not still there. They come to me, as a rule. And if you value your life, don't go there like you've just come here. They are
not
nice people.'

Lily folded the sheet and put it in her jacket pocket. She glanced at the desk again. ‘How many of these do you do in a day?'

He shrugged. ‘I'm working towards early retirement.' He looked at the iced-over decking on the roof terrace. ‘Somewhere warm.'

Lily turned for the door. ‘Thank you.'

‘I mean it – my name appears in that courtroom and I'm a dead man.'

‘It won't.'

She reached the door and turned the deadbolts, finally flipping the latch. As she opened it, he laughed and said, ‘How does it feel?'

‘What?' she asked over her shoulder, seeing him standing in the middle of the room.

‘Being one of the good guys?'

Lily never heard the man behind her. As his hand, holding a dirty white cloth, closed over her nose and mouth, she didn't even have time to react as her knees buckled.

L
ily was vaguely aware of arriving at the door of a lock-up shop with a flat above it. She stumbled, the man's arm hard beneath her armpit. Behind them, a car exhaust rattled off. The metal shutters were down and newspapers had piled up between the shutter's letterbox and the interior, spilling out in yellowing, shredded tongues. The peeling red door to the right had a cheap rusted knocker.

Inside was a foul-smelling corridor, littered with fried-chicken boxes and brittle pizza flyers. Lily stumbled and fell to one knee. On the damp doormat was an envelope with an address. She tried to commit it to her fuzzy memory.

The man, who was wearing an ugly tracksuit with purple and gold trainers and a great deal of gold jewellery, grabbed her and hustled her up the stairs, their feet bumping unevenly on the matted carpet.

They burst through a cheap plywood door into a squalid room on the first floor. At a plastic picnic table sat a hugely fat
man in a dirty white vest and a greasy leather jacket. In front of him were three old mobiles.
Burners, by the looks of them. Disposable
. Lily blinked, her brain hazy. The man's meaty head was shaved, and tattooed right over the top like a number eight pool ball. He held the same ball in his hands.

‘What's that?' he asked in a thick accent.

Tracksuit sneered. ‘Stedman tipped us off. Said he had some quality merch.'

Lily refused to wince at the pain in her arm and met the man's eyes. They were hooded, and sunken in his fat head. He wet his thick lips.

‘Very nice indeed.'

Lily said nothing, although her gut tightened with panic and her head still spun. He passed the black ball back and forth between his fingers, watching her speculatively.

‘Put her in the back room for now,' he told the boy. As Lily was pushed away, he looked over his shoulder. ‘Take her phone.'

The boy fished in Lily's pockets, finding her phone and pulling it out. He handed it to the man with the ball. ‘Billiard?' he said, raising the end of the nickname, looking for approval.

Lily's stomach dropped inside her body as if she were on a rollercoaster.
Billiard?
This was Anton Andreyev, one of the men they had been looking for in the trafficking ring, the missing piece of the puzzle from the case the year before. Not the biggest cog in the wheel, but certainly important. He had been working in London for years, but Lily and her father hadn't been able to track down anyone who'd had a face-to-face meeting with him. Or wanted to talk about it.

‘Latest model,' Billiard sneered as he looked at it, and put it on the table with the others.

Lily was stripped of her bag and shoved into a stinking room full of rubbish, broken cardboard boxes and a mattress without any sheets. The door locked behind her. She sat on the floor in the corner, where the carpet was cleanest, hugging her knees.
This was not your best move, Lily, not by a long shot
.

She got up and tried to open the window, but the metal frame was nailed shut, the rusted nails hammered in and bent over. In the other room, she could hear voices. More men now. She rubbed her aching forehead. Her grazed chin felt sore.

The day outside was too grey to see the time passing. She looked at her watch obsessively. Beyond the door she heard the telephones ringing almost constantly. Different voices came and went. After a couple of hours, the door opened and the boy was looking down at her.

‘Get up. He wants to see you.'

Lily got to her feet a little stiffly, and walked after the boy into the other room. Billiard was still sitting at the table, the phones ranged in front of him. Next to them was her phone. He was looking at it.

‘How old are you?'

‘Sixteen.'

His hooded eyes stared at her. ‘You're English. Glossy little rich girl. You don't need papers. What were you doing at Stedman's?'

‘Trying to help someone.'

‘Keep avoiding the question and I will hurt you. Do you understand?'

Lily said nothing.

‘Unlock your phone.'

‘No.'

‘Did you not hear what I just said?' He sat forward slightly, menacing her.

‘Yes, and I said no.'
The only way out of this is to buy some time . . .

‘So, if I call my guy and he unlocks your phone, what is he going to find?'

Good luck with that one. It'll take him a year to get into it
. ‘Nothing.'

He flipped through her wallet. Lily had always made a habit of keeping her travelcard unregistered and only carrying cash. She used her bank card online at home, but didn't keep it in her wallet. Nothing in there held her identity.

He closed the wallet. ‘No ID at all. Anyone would think you really were a criminal. Or a spy. Perhaps you do need papers.'

Lily said nothing.

‘So, what shall I do with you?' He sighed. ‘I can't let you go, of course. But I'd rather not waste a pretty girl.' He stared at her, making her insides writhe. She forced herself to stand still and say nothing.

Tracksuit cleared his throat, looking up from where he was watching television on a foreign network. ‘That Battersea mob still needing girls? They liked them her age.'

‘Everyone likes them her age,' Billiard said, not looking away from Lily.

‘
Da
, but their money was better than everyone else's. And they no care about the face! Can be pretty, can be ugly, all same price. Like dogs' home.' He lifted a shoulder and cocked his head to the side in international sign language: poof! ‘I not know what business they are running, maybe customers blind.'

The corners of Billiard's mouth turned down. ‘I did not like
them. Particularly the young one with the smart mouth. They all had stink of
Securitate
. I can smell officials a mile away.'

Tracksuit turned back to the screen. ‘Put her back in the room,' he snapped to one of the henchmen, who pushed Lily through the door and slammed it behind her again, the bolt on the outside ramming home.

Lily guessed about another two hours had passed. She sat, back to the door, her head resting against it, listening as much as she could. There was only the noise of the television and Billiard talking endlessly into one of the telephones, or sometimes two at once. Then the television went off and suddenly the voices were much clearer.

‘Battersea no want her. Say they have enough girls now. No matter. It will be easy to find a girl who looks like that a new home.'

Tracksuit laughed and then the television resumed its burble.

Suddenly, there was a splintering noise and a yelp. Lily's limbs tightened and she pushed herself up, backing into the corner.

‘Where is she?'

Regan's voice. Lily's knees went weak and she slumped back against the damp wallpaper.

‘Who?' Billiard asked.

‘The girl.'

‘And you are?'

‘Irrelevant. Where is she?'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about.'

There was a crashing noise, just as Lily yelled, ‘I'm here!'

The door swung open slowly, revealing Regan holding down one of the men, by his head, to Billiard's plastic table. Billiard still sat in the chair, looking unperturbed. The man struggled for breath, snorting against the white plastic. The other two men lay on the floor like discarded toys.

Lily ran out of the room. Her bag was on the floor, papers strewn about it. She gathered them up quickly and shoved them back inside, pulling the strap over her head. Regan hadn't looked at her.

Billiard's eyes were tiny inside his huge head. He was still fondling the eight ball. ‘You think you can get out of here alive?'

Regan's face was impassive as he held down the struggling man with no effort at all. ‘You think
you
can?'

‘I need my phone,' Lily said.

‘Take it, then,' Regan snapped. ‘I'm sure this gentleman won't stop you.'

Lily grabbed it from the table and sent her father a text with a description of the address and the details for his police contact. She added
Send them NOW
.

Got it
. Her father's reply was almost instant. Lily thanked her stars he wasn't in court.

‘I'm guessing the police are on their way,' Billiard said easily. ‘This, my friend, is not going to go so well for you, or your girl here. In fact, it may well go worse for her.

Regan held the man into the table until he passed out, then let him slump to the floor. He straightened up. ‘Why? Because your
boy
behind me has a gun? And he's going to shoot her?'

Billiard didn't even have time to smirk before Regan turned and the boy's hands were empty, the gun a useless, twisted lump smacked down on the flimsy table.

‘You,' Regan said over his shoulder to the boy, ‘can leave now if you want to.'

The boy lifted his chin. ‘I stay.'

Regan nodded. ‘Fair enough.' He reached over and casually cuffed the boy on the side of the head. Hard enough to send him sprawling on to the filthy carpet, unconscious. Then he turned his gaze back to Billiard, who was looking at the hunk of metal on the table.

Billiard's face broke into a broad smile. ‘My boy,
you
are just what I've been looking for.'

‘We're leaving,' Regan said.

‘Wait!' said Andreyev. ‘I am serious. I can use a man like you.'

There was the sound of cars screeching to a halt. Billiard stood up. Regan pushed Lily in front of him towards the door.

‘Remember, it was your choice,' said Billiard. He hurled the eight ball at the back of Regan's head, his hands already fumbling for the gun at his fat gut.

Regan turned and caught the ball just before it connected. He was back, pinning Andreyev into the chair by his throat in an instant, too fast for Lily to see.

‘Drop. The gun.'

It clattered to the floor and was kicked away, skittering into a rubbish-strewn corner. Regan weighed the ball in his hand for a second before closing his fingers around it. There was a distinct crack. Billiard's eyes widened.

‘Pool, not billiards,' Regan said, dropping the two halves of the ball on to the table.

Lily stared at the unconscious figures strewn across the room. She turned back. Regan was gone, and through the door
flooded half a dozen Metropolitan Police officers in navy flak jackets, large shields on their breasts and guns across their stomachs. Regan was nowhere to be seen. They halted inside the door and almost had a pile-up as they saw Lily, Billiard and the unconscious men on the floor.

It was dark outside when Lily managed to extricate herself from the scene inside the lock-up. It seemed that the line, ‘looking for a friend', wasn't going to cut it with the Met detectives either, who questioned her repeatedly as soon as they found out she was indeed Ed Hilyard's daughter. She managed to keep Harris Stedman out of the equation, but only through some very cagey answering.

The detective, a tall man with pale hair and a sharp face, kept his eyes on her. ‘Well, Miss Hilyard, you may be called as a witness, but we've been looking for Mr Andreyev for a long time. He's not the top of the tree, of course, but he's good enough for me.'

‘Just one more thing . . . what would really be great is if I weren't called as a witness? My father will be standing for the defence in the Kalhuna case,' Lily explained. The detective, called Evans, looked at her even more closely. ‘I was just trying to help,' she said a little desperately.

He reached into his jeans pocket and handed her a card. ‘These are my details. Call me if you think of anything else.' He grinned. ‘Or if you're ever considering a job on the force.'

Lily took it with a smile, reclaimed her wallet and skittered down the steps and out into the road. She looked left and right. The Met cars and a van were still parked on the pavement, but other than that, it was an ordinary London evening. She walked quickly towards the bus stop, finding her father's number in
‘recent calls' and dialling.

‘Hey, Dad.'

‘Lily.' He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I knew Detective Evans would be there, but I didn't know what else was happening. He told me he'd got you and to stay put here and wait.'

‘I found Anton Andreyev.'

‘You did what?' Her father's voice was sharp.

‘I know. I didn't mean to. Things sort of got out of hand—'

‘What sort of “out of hand”?' her father snapped.

‘I . . . it wasn't bad. They just took my stuff and put me in a room for a while.'

There was a silence. ‘Come straight home. You and I need to talk.'

The phone went dead. Lily looked at it in her hand. Her father had never hung up on her before. She couldn't even remember him ever raising his voice.

A cab pulled into the kerb, exhaust rattling. It was weighted down on the driver's side. Stanley sat clutching the wheel, eyes straight ahead. The rear door swung open.

Lily clambered inside, thumping into the seat as the cab lurched into the road. Regan sat beside her, fists clenched on his knees, jaw set.