They banged on the door of 251 Mellow Grove. And banged again. A light shone out from the hallway but the rest of the place was shrouded in darkness.
‘Try again,’ Lottie said, and walked back to the car, where two uniforms and Kirby stood sentry. ‘The enforcer, please,’ she said.
Boyd lugged the battering ram to the door.
‘Mrs Phillips? Tracy? If you don’t answer, we will have to break the door down.’
‘I’m coming. For fuck’s sake, what’s all the racket about?’
‘Ah, at last,’ Lottie said. ‘Can we come in? Why aren’t you at the hospital watching over your daughter?’
‘I rang to check on her. She’s unconscious. Not much use to her there, so I stayed home.’
‘Couldn’t leave your drink?’ Lottie leaned against the door frame as Kirby took the battering ram back to the car. Boyd looked like he was going to fall over where he stood. But Lottie was suddenly filled with adrenalin and wanted to smash her fist into Tracy Phillips’s drunken face.
‘No need to be like that now. Thanks for finding her. Can I go back to bed now?’
‘Get your coat. I’d like to ask you a few questions. Down at the station.’
‘Fuck off, you long lank of misery,’ Tracy spat.
Catching her by the shoulder, Lottie wrenched Tracy’s arm up her back.
‘Tracy Phillips, I’m arresting you on suspicion of kidnapping. You don’t have to say anything—’
‘Fuck off, bitch,’ Tracy yelled. ‘What are you talking about? Let me go.’
Lottie finished her spiel and Boyd handcuffed the woman. As he led her to the car, Lottie looked on and shook her head. Kirby opened the door and they pushed Tracy into the back seat.
The car sped off and Boyd joined Lottie as she closed the front door of the house.
‘How did she come up with that scheme?’ he asked.
‘Saw an opportunity to make her husband pay up for the years of “hardship” she’d suffered.’
‘I still don’t get how she did it.’
‘We’ll ask her in the morning.’ Lottie walked down the path, a cone of yellow from the street light leading the way.
‘It is the morning,’ Boyd said.
‘In the real morning, after we get a few hours’ sleep. Got a fag?’
* * *
Refusing Rose’s offer of her bed, Lottie lay down on the couch and fell into a fitful sleep of nightmares until she was awoken with a bowl of porridge and a mug of coffee, and her mother’s sad face. Neither said anything about Katie’s pregnancy.
Refreshed but exhausted after only three hours’ rest, Lottie escaped to work. Reaching her desk, she roused the computer from sleep mode. The email from the Kosovo prosecutor, Besim Mehmedi, was open, waiting. She read it.
‘You look like death warmed up this morning,’ Boyd said, placing a Diet Coke on her desk.
‘No coffee?’
‘You’re lucky to get that. Lucky I’m here at all.’
‘Why’s that?’ Lottie stretched into the back of her chair, only half listening to Boyd. Her mind was in overload, having read the contents of the email. She was desperately trying to keep busy, to concentrate on work. Then she wouldn’t have to think of her pregnant daughter.
Boyd said, ‘I’ve just brought McNally back. The doctors released him to my care an hour ago. My care? I wanted to smash the bastard’s face under my shoe. And jump up and down on it until—’
‘Enough. I get the picture. Where is he now?’
‘Cell Two. Beside your friend.’
‘Petrovci? Shit, Boyd, he needs to be released.’
‘And you reached that conclusion how?’
Lottie stood up and beckoned for him to sit. ‘Read that.’
Boyd sat down and looked at the screen. ‘Who is Gjergi Jashari?’
‘The son of a doctor called Gjon Jashari. Infamous illegal organ harvester and trafficker in Kosovo. Ran a clinic in Pristina. A front for his butchery. During and after the war. Look at the attached photograph.’
She tapped the mouse and waited for the penny to drop. When it did, Boyd shot up out of the chair.
‘George O’Hara? He’s this Gjergi character. I don’t get it.’
‘Use your brain.’ Lottie opened the can and drank.
‘Tell me. My head is too tired to think,’ Boyd said, rolling up his shirtsleeves to his elbows.
Lottie sat on the edge of the desk and crossed her legs at the ankle. ‘Gjergi Jashari was a qualified surgeon, like his father. From that email it is clear that Andri Petrovci was one of those who, as a child, had a kidney taken from him. What happened in the years up to the trial I don’t know. But Petrovci was the state’s key witness against Jashari senior – probably the only living witness – and then the old man keeled over and died the day the trial was due to begin.’
Boyd said, ‘But what brought the doctor’s son to Ragmullin?’
‘I believe Dan Russell was in cahoots with old man Jashari in the years after the war in Kosovo. Bastard tried to blacken Adam’s name with his own dastardly deeds.’ She cringed at the thought of what Russell had been implying. ‘When Russell took over the direct provision centre, Gjergi, who was probably in contact with Russell down through the years, saw an opportunity to continue his father’s work. I’m sure he will confirm all this when he recovers from Mimoza’s bullet.’
‘I can’t see a man like Russell agreeing to be involved in that carry-on again.’
‘There’s millions of dollars available on the black market for anything you can sell. So it was either money or fear. Maybe Gjergi threatened him with exposure for what he’d previously done in Kosovo. Or he was just a greedy bastard. Got his comeuppance either way. Can George O’Hara talk yet?’
‘He’s in intensive care, last I heard. But explain to me again how Frank Phillips is linked to all this?
‘Superintendent Corrigan tells me the Spanish police have Phillips cooperating with them. Phillips supplied girls, initially for the sex trade, and then for organ harvesting. Trafficked some of them via Melilla through Malaga. Others he moved overland from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. When the girls arrived, Russell mingled them in with genuine asylum seekers. A great cover.’
‘But what brought Gjergi O’Hara to—’
‘Gjergi Jashari,’ Lottie corrected.
‘What brought the butchering bastard to Ragmullin in the first place?’
‘Revenge.’
‘On Russell?’
‘No. I believe Gjergi was involved in trafficking Mimoza and her son to Ragmullin. She was Andri Petrovci’s girlfriend. Petrovci discovered she was in Ireland and followed but couldn’t find her. Petrovci suffers blackouts from the trauma of having his kidney removed and I don’t think he knows what’s real and what’s not half the time. I think Gjergi wanted to fuck with his mind because he’d been about to give evidence against his father at his trial. He was going to torture and kill Mimoza and set Andri up to take the blame. He’d already set him up for the other girls’ murders.’