Night Angels. Danuta Reah

hair jumbled up under a scarf, a bag bulging under her arm. She stopped and turned round. The woman was there behind her, and in front of her as she moved faster down the aisles, and the woman twisted and turned and followed her until she came up against some railings and there was nowhere to go.

      ‘Can I help you?’ The young man wore a suit. His mouth was pulled down and his nostrils flared slightly. Yes! Help me, Anna wanted to say, then she realized that he didn’t see her. She was just garbage, a nuisance, something to be disposed of. She could smell her clothes, a sour, unwashed smell. Suddenly, her eyes were full of tears, and she battled them down. He wasn’t looking at her now; he was looking round, looking for someone to help him.

      ‘I wanted the way out.’ Anna’s voice was just a whisper. He put his hand out to steer her in the right direction, then withdrew it. He pointed instead, and she saw that the top of the escalator was just opposite where she was standing; the rails were a balustrade protecting the top of the stairwell. She felt her way round the edge, afraid she might fall, not trusting her eyes to find the way for her. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

      He followed her, and watched her on to the escalator. She saw him talking to a man in a peaked cap with epaulettes on his shirt who followed her as she went down one, two, three floors, and there was the way out in front of her. The cap and the epaulettes made her legs shake as she walked until she reached the safety of the street.

      She was going to have to go back to her room.

       6

       Hull, Monday

      The Sleeping Beauty investigation intrigued Lynne. She had no intention of stepping on to ground that belonged to others, but Roy Farnham had invited her opinions and expertise, and now he was going to get them. She enjoyed the challenge. Her work was demanding, often stressful, frequently distressing, but, above all, it was interesting, and no matter how stressful the cases, she managed to keep herself, the essential Lynne, separated from the things she saw and the things she had to do. She sometimes thought that was her main skill as a police officer. Maybe it was the same skill that made a good concentration camp guard, she didn’t know.

      She pulled the files out of her in-tray, and spread the contents across her desk. Two women: Katya, in the mud of the Humber Estuary, and the nameless woman on the rocks at Ravenscar. Was Farnham right in thinking that there might be a connection between these two deaths, and between these and the Sleeping Beauty?

      She read through the reports, slowly and carefully, making notes as a point struck her. Everything pointed to Katya having committed suicide, but…She had been seen walking in the direction of the Humber Bridge a few hours after running away from the hospital. One sighting was inconclusive – a driver coming out of Hull on the A63 had seen ‘a woman in a red coat’ walking by the side of the road. But the other witness had given more detail. He’d mentioned the woman’s dark hair and the heavy metal buttons on the coat.

      Her body had been found three days later. The pathologist had been inconclusive about the length of time she had been dead. He thought probably not more than forty-eight hours. ‘Water, mud, it makes it difficult, Inspector,’ he’d said when she had asked him if he could clarify the rather vague conclusions of his report. ‘A private guess?’ Lynne had asked, but he had refused to commit himself. The cause of death was also inconclusive. There was nothing to show that she had drowned, so the crucial question – had she been dead before she entered the water? – was unanswered.

      ‘They don’t realize,’ the pathologist had said, tiredly. ‘Jumping into water from a height, they might as well jump on to concrete.’ The head injuries were probably, but not conclusively, post-mortem. ‘You get post-mortem bleeding in head injuries when a body is in the water,’ he said. ‘And the gulls took the soft tissue. There wasn’t much to work on. I can’t be definitive in this case. Sorry. It’s possible we’re looking at vagal inhibition here – that she went into cardiac arrest as soon as she entered the water. The shock of cold water can do it.’ He shook his head again. ‘Let’s see what the lab tests show.’

      Lynne looked through the next file, the anonymous woman who had been found at Ravenscar. As with Katya, the cause of this girl’s death was undetermined, but there was a bit more information here. She had probably died no more than fifteen hours before she was found, and circumstance suggested that she had probably died within a time period between early evening and midnight. The blow that had shattered the bones of her skull would probably have been fatal, but that blow had been post-mortem. Other, ante-mortem, injuries were not sufficiently severe to have caused death, the most recent being some bruising that had not broken the skin. The pathologist had speculated that they could be looking at an accidental death here, something that had happened in the course of sex that had got a bit rough – a bondage game that had got out of hand, something like that.

      Lynne looked at the laboratory reports. There was some alcohol in the woman’s bloodstream, but no other drugs. She had clearly been a user if the track marks were anything to go by, but she hadn’t used within the forty-eight hours preceding her death. She’d eaten shortly before she died – there was bread in her stomach.

      She thought. Three women, possibly prostitutes, two of them dead from an unknown cause or causes, all anonymous, and all with severe damage to the face, sufficient to obliterate the features. All dumped in water – a good way to destroy forensic evidence – and all killed somewhere other than where their bodies had been found. She could understand Farnham’s concern, but she could also understand his circumspection. She had been involved in a high-profile investigation a couple of years before, where a man had been stalking and killing women in South Yorkshire. She knew it was easy to start crying ‘serial killer’ on the basis of very slight connections.

      Farnham had given her a photocopy of the business card found on the floor of the hotel bedroom. Angel Escorts. It wasn’t an agency she had come across locally, which suggested that it wasn’t one of the places operating under the cover of a massage parlour or sauna. A lot of escort services were internet-based these days. If the Beauty had worked for one of these agencies, then her picture would be on their website. Lynne was equally sure that once they realized what had happened, she would vanish from the site as if she had never been there.

      It might be too late already. The Beauty had died on Thursday night or Friday morning. It was now Monday – plenty of time for a website to be cleaned up or even removed completely. She logged on, checked her e-mail – all rubbish which she deleted without reading – and then started searching. There was an abundance of sites offering escorts. Some were subscription sites that you had to pay to enter. She ignored those for the moment. If Angel was a straightforward escort agency, then they presumably wouldn’t deter potential clients by charging them. They’d want them to browse.

      ‘Angel’ was a popular name. She found several listed. She made a note of contact numbers, and went on looking. She was hoping for a site with pictures, a site where you could hire a woman online; presumably, a local woman. None of the Angel Escorts she’d found mentioned the east coast. She narrowed her search to the local area. Now, the number of possible sites was much smaller. There were three she’d looked at already, and a site that said simply Escort Services Links. OK, she’d try that.

      The screen went black – a porn site cliché. Then there was the warning that the site contained adult material. Lynne pressed the ‘enter’ button, and the name, Angel Escorts, appeared in pulsating red. Pictures began to form with strategically placed lettering to encourage the browser to go further into the site. A tiny picture of a woman fellating an anonymous penis. She’s young, free and willing! Another picture: a young face, fair hair, pigtails. Her blouse was open, exposing her breasts. Fresh teens! Lynne wondered what kinds of clients might greet a woman who had advertised on this site. 100% free live anal video feed! Lynne looked for the link to the escorts. Meet our girls. OK. She clicked on the button.

      Ten small photographs of women appeared – Lily, Jasmine, Rose,