02-A Price to Pay Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Titles by Chris Simms

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  A Selection of Titles by Chris Simms

  The Detective Inspector Jon Spicer Series

  KILLING THE BEASTS

  SHIFTING SKIN

  SAVAGE MOON

  HELL’S FIRE

  THE EDGE

  CUT ADRIFT

  The Detective Constable Iona Khan Series

  SCRATCH DEEPER*

  A PRICE TO PAY*

  *available from Severn House

  A PRICE TO PAY

  Chris Simms

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2013 by Chris Simms.

  The right of Chris Simms to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Simms, Chris, 1969

  A price to pay. – (An Iona Khan mystery; 2)

  1. Runaway teenagers–Fiction. 2. Police–England–

  Manchester–Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-050-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-470-6 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To the readers who’ve stuck with me: thanks.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My gratitude to the following for kindly helping me with my research:

  Mr E Hesling, for explaining the inner workings of computers; Mr J Alty, for guiding me through the mystery of Skype; and Mr D Lamb, for a few pointers on what a maths degree might involve.

  PROLOGUE

  They were going to kill her, the girl was now sure of that. She didn’t need to understand what they were saying; the decision showed in their eyes, betrayed itself in the tight set of their lips.

  The man who’d been raping her since she’d first arrived blanked her on the final day. Men. What a joke. She’d experienced enough of them in her short life to know what he’d been hoping when she’d first arrived. As they’d bundled her out the van, she’d seen him looking across the courtyard at her with glittering eyes.

  Later, in the room they kept her in, she could almost hear the clunk of his thoughts as they’d made their brief journey through his brain: just you wait, I’ll be so amazing you won’t be able to stop yourself from enjoying it. Each time we do it, you’ll like me a little more. In time, you’ll grow to love me. To need me.

  She hadn’t.

  Not with the men back in Birmingham and not out here, in this flat-roofed house cowering behind high walls, halfway up some wind-whipped mountain in the middle of nowhere. Instead, she’d continued to fight. So he’d lost patience after a few days, got rougher, started with the slaps and stuff. Big deal, she’d had worse. Her dad used to touch the tip of a cigarette against her inner thigh. Now that did hurt. Made her legs spring open, that did.

  But the one who was really nasty – the one who she could tell was pulling the strings, the one who listened to the family’s whining reports with a mouth that grew more and more tight with outrage – was the grandma. That face like a giant raisin, maggot holes for eyes, lips like a puckered arsehole.

  During the days, they tried to get her to teach their younger kids English. That was fun, telling the little brown-eyed dickheads that the word for tree was ‘twat’, window was ‘wank’, spoon was ‘spunk’. And grandma? She was ‘cocksucker’.

  When they eventually realized, she was certain it was the grandma who’d said to just finish it. Like the girl was one of their goats, herded into the courtyard at sundown each day. Something to take a knife to. Chuck the remains away. Burn, maybe.

  So when the door to the room they kept her in opened and some new man stepped inside, she’d been caught by surprise. Especially when he didn’t swing a leg back and boot her like the family did. This man stepped closer while sadly scratching his beard. He’d undone her ropes and spoken to her in English, not bladda-bladda. Asked if she was all right.

  On the drive back down – big car, a Mercedes – he’d said to her what a terrible mistake it had all been. She thought he was full of shit, of course. She’d seen the wedge of dirty notes he’d handed over in return for her and her passport.

  So she’d just bided her time, waiting for his hand to slide on to her knee, the finger to start gently tracing circles. But he never tried a thing.

  She fell asleep at some point. When she woke, it was dark. He’d driven her to a big town. Posh apartment, fridge full of food – proper food. Pizza, fish fingers, squeezy yoghurts. Cupboards with Pringles, Maltesers, baked beans. Heinz. Even booze. Nothing decent like vodka – some rank shit. Local. But it worked.

  Then it was the sunglasses, jeans, T-shirts and a pair of Nikes. Make-up, even bras and knickers. Still she waited for the catch. And, eventually, it came. She could go back to Britain, no problem. Just one little thing she needed to do for him.

  Oh, yeah, shall I unzip your flies now?

  But it wasn’t that. It was just a belt. Beige, canvas, with two rows of thick compartments
that had been sewn tightly shut. Full of cash, he’d said. To get his brother out of the prison in the big city nearby. A cousin would be waiting on the other side of the border fence. All she had to do was flash her passport at the soldiers. British girl like her? She’d stroll through. The cousin would take the belt off her and then drive her straight to the British embassy – and she’d be free to go home.

  She thought he was a lying twat. But the way she figured it was this: he was giving her back her passport. And he’d said that he – personally – couldn’t go too close to the checkpoint. Which meant there was no way he could stop her walking up to the first official she could find, holding her passport out, lifting her shirt up and saying she was being used as a mule. Fuck his brother and fuck his cash.

  So now here she is.

  The sun’s so hot. Stupid hot. And he got me to wear this dumb blue bib over my T-shirt. Unicef – whatever that means. Sunglasses are OK. Gucci, probably fake. He’d said to keep them on to hide my bruises, but I’d have wanted them anyway, the sand is so bastard bright. The belt’s digging under my tits, canvas sticking to my stomach and back. Feels like something was in the Coke he gave me to drink. Not speed or E. Something nice and woozy. Skag, maybe. He said not to worry, he’d be watching from somewhere out of sight. He’d shaken my hand, wished me luck and a happy life. Fucking weirdo.

  A few of the locals – the women covered from head-to-toe in those big robes – were being waved into a channel by barking soldiers. I try speaking to one but he took a quick look at my British passport and shouted me forward towards a hut. OK, OK, I hear you. No need for that attitude, no need at all. Probably best, anyway. Get inside – somewhere old beardy-weirdy can’t see – then come clean about what I’m carrying. Let them know how I’d been kidnapped back in Britain, too. Tell them everything.

  Fifteen feet from the building and the sand feels like marshmallows beneath my new trainers. Whatever was in that Coke, it was good. Three soldiers sitting on an anti-ram barrier glance up and start speaking at me. I smile. Got the urge to just sit down next to them and ask for a cigarette.

  ‘Do I look like I speak what you speak? I’m English, see? This is my passport. The care home sorted it, years ago when we all went to France. You know Paris? Eiffel Tower and that? Ooh la la.’

  One’s grinning uncertainly. He’s only a bit older than me. Quite cute. And he’s got the ciggies.

  ‘Papers? No, don’t have no papers, only this passport. Listen, mate, can you give us one of them you’re smoking?’

  They’re chuckling now. The cute one calls over to the hut. Another steps out, this one in a shirt. No helmet or gun. Fuck it, he’ll do.

  ‘Hey, you in charge? I’m carrying something. Could be cash, but it’s probably drugs. I’ve been made to. It’s here, under here, look.’

  The way they stiffen almost makes me laugh. Eyes bulging like ping-pong balls. Jesus boys, you never seen a push-up bra before? The one without the helmet is turning, diving at the open doorway—

  From the top of a building two hundred metres away, a man wearing a pale lavender shirt and designer sunglasses pressed send on a mobile phone. A hot white flash crackled along the bottom seam of the belt wrapped tightly round the girl’s abdomen. A millisecond later it was eclipsed by a booming ball of fire that obliterated the girl, the three soldiers, the side of the command post and a visiting major from the Israeli Defence Force.

  ONE

  Iona lunged for the last seat at the table.

  The detective approaching it from the other side gave an outraged gasp. ‘Look at bloody that! The Baby-Faced Assassin strikes again.’

  ‘Hey, mate,’ Iona grinned up at him, now shuffling the chair forward and placing her pen and pad on the table. ‘It’s dog-eat-dog in this world.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have liked to have played musical chairs at one of your birthday parties,’ he retorted.

  ‘Who said you’d have been invited?’ she shot back.

  A ripple of laughter passed through the people sitting closest. The officer retreated towards the chairs lining the back wall, speeding up before all of those were taken, too.

  Iona glanced left and right. They were in the main briefing room of the Counter Terrorism Unit’s operations floor in Orion House, just off the M60 on the outskirts of Manchester. The oval table sat fifteen officers, sixteen if you included the superintendent who they were now all waiting for. Several of her colleagues had mugs of coffee or tea in front of them. Low conversations rolled around. The usual stuff, last night’s telly, football, acceleration speed of the unmarked Subaru just added to the motor pool. Iona screened most of it out, ears homing in on a murmured conversation taking place at about three o’clock.

  Most men, she suspected, had no idea that most women possessed this ability. That and superior peripheral vision. If the guy two places to her left knew about the vision, he wouldn’t be glancing quite so obviously at her chest. The conversation between the two middle-aged officers at three o’clock carried on.

  ‘Worrying thing is, I bought my daughter a similar thing.’

  ‘A refurb?’

  ‘Yeah – off the internet. Ebay.’

  ‘Piss cheap?’

  ‘Absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, it’s quality; she does all her coursework on it. Skypes the wife using its built-in webcam most evenings.’

  ‘Where’s she studying?’

  ‘Down in Bristol. Medicine.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea where it came from originally?’

  ‘Nope. Some big corporation, I’d assumed.’

  ‘You assumed. Did you check the hard drive?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know how to. The place selling it said the memory of every computer is wiped clean, checked for viruses and all that—’

  The doors opened and Superintendent Graham O’Dowd made straight for the empty seat at the table’s mid-point. Conversations began to rapidly die.

  ‘I paid an extra twenty-five quid for a year’s warranty,’ the officer hurriedly whispered. ‘That was it, job done.’ He sat back and crossed his arms. Like every other person in the room, his attention was now on O’Dowd.

  The superintendent placed a laptop on the table and switched it on. A moment later, the wall-mounted screen behind him came to life. A cursor started moving about, files opened, slides flashed up and were quickly minimised. The room watched in silence, collectively trying to sneak a preview.

  O’Dowd finally looked up. ‘OK, gents – and ladies.’ His flinty eyes settled on Iona for an instant. ‘Apologies to be dragging you in at six in the afternoon.’

  Iona glanced at the row of windows: black. How she disliked mid-winter. Dark when you got up, dark when you went home. Only the promise of Christmas four weeks away lifted the gloom.

  ‘The reason is that things have started to move very fast on this. I’ll start at the beginning; apologies to those of you already up to speed. Three days ago, a final year student at the University of Manchester purchased a refurbished laptop from a seller of such things hawking his wares in the student union. This is the laptop he purchased.’

  The image on the wall above him was of a sleek-looking piece of kit. Gun-metal brushed chrome casing, embellished with silver letters: DELL. A tape measure had been placed alongside it to give a sense of scale.

  ‘Our student takes his new purchase home and – while waiting for it to boot up – has a root through the carry case it came with. Also made by Dell, black leather.’ He brought up a new slide. Like the laptop, the carry case had been photographed from directly above. As O’Dowd had said, it was made from black leather that shone at one edge where the photographer’s flash had caught it. ‘In one of the inner pockets, he finds several sheets of A4.’

  He clicked on one of the minimized slides. Iona’s glance rose above the head of her boss. It looked like a profile you might find on a dating web site, but one where all details of the match-making company had been removed. The face of an attractive blonde girl smiled out at the room. />
  ‘Meet Shandy, if that’s her real name, which I doubt it is.’ O’Dowd was now speaking more quietly, his gaze fixed on his screen. ‘As you can see, according to this, Shandy is seventeen. She has blue eyes. You’ll also see her physical measurements listed: height, weight, bust, hips, even feet. You’ll also see at the bottom a more worrying category: the fact she has her own passport.’

  The implications started branching out in Iona’s mind. Some kind of escort agency? One that specialized in overseas stuff? Why else would the form mention a passport? Surely an international angle. Trafficking. Did the girl know or had she been duped? She looked happy enough at being photographed. Proud, even.

  ‘OK, most of you – I would hope – are concluding this is sex trade stuff. You might be thinking the sex trade normally works in reverse: namely, that third-world or eastern bloc girls are trafficked into western countries. And you’d be right.’

  The cursor moved down once more and a new slide took over the screen. ‘This is Rihanna, sixteen. A print-out of her profile was also in the carry case.’

  Iona looked briefly at the new face on the wall. Pretty, again. The girl had black hair, tied tightly back like Shandy’s. Iona then focused on the final category. No British passport. She went back to the face. Was that a puncture hole in the left nostril? ‘Sir, neither girl is wearing any kind of make-up or jewellery.’

  O’Dowd’s hand paused over his keyboard. ‘True.’

  Iona felt the attention of her fellow officers shifting to her. Most faces looked at her expectantly, non-judgemental. But a few had that air of anticipation you see on the faces of people watching YouTube clips. The skateboarder going for an overly ambitious jump. The mountain biker losing control on a steep path. For those officers, the demise of their former DCI was all down to Iona. And now they waited eagerly for her to fall. She cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know if the resolution is there, but that could be a hole in her nostril – a piercing.’

  The mass of faces turned back to the image.