Free Pop Goes the Weasel by M. J. Arlidge Page A

difference, Emilia.’
    Harwood smiled as she said her name, appearing every inch the confidential friend.
    ‘Have you spoken to DI Grace about this?’ Emilia countered.
    ‘DI Grace is on board. She knows we’re running a different ship now.’
    ‘No more diversions? No more lies?’
    ‘Absolutely not,’ Harwood replied, her broad smilebreaking out once again. ‘I’ve got a feeling you and I can do business together, Emilia. I do hope I won’t be disappointed.’
    The meeting was over. Emilia rose without having to be asked, impressed by what she’d seen. Harwood was a smart operator and seemed to have Grace’s measure. It felt like a sea change and perhaps it was.
    Emilia had the distinct impression that she was going to have fun with this one.



25
    ‘So what are we looking at?’
    DC Fortune yawned as he spoke, the noise echoing round the MIT office. He and Charlie were an island in the empty room, two lonely figures surrounded by a mass of papers.
    ‘Well, Brookmire Health and Wellbeing Centre is obviously a knocking shop, but it’s a classy one,’ Charlie replied. ‘I’ve never seen one that’s so well run and discreet before. It has a roster of attractive, experienced girls, all of whom are regularly health-checked. You can book an appointment online and they already have some sort of link-up with the cruise companies. They send shuttle buses down there to pick up clients the minute the boats come in. They describe the services they offer as holistic health services, but here’s the real beauty. If you pay with a credit card, it appears on your statement as stationery. So the wife will never find out and even better you can put it through on expenses. You don’t even have to pay for the girls yourself.’
    ‘And you found all this out from one interview?’ replied Fortune, impressed in spite of himself.
    ‘If you know the questions to ask, people can be surprisingly helpful.’
    Charliecouldn’t help a note of smugness – the smugness of superior experience – creeping into her voice.
    ‘Have you got anywhere on the list I gave you?’
    Edina, Charlie’s reluctant snitch at Brookmire, had furnished her with the names of all the girls currently working there.
    ‘Getting there. A lot of them have been bussed straight from Poland via the docks, some are students from the local universities, but several others – including our victim – seem to have been poached off the streets.’
    ‘Tarted up and relaunched at Brookmire?’
    ‘Why not? It’s safer, and by the look of Alexia’s flat well paid too.’
    ‘Edina suggested that Alexia was walking the streets for the Campbell family before joining Brookmire. Any of the other girls?’
    ‘Yup, the Campbells had lost a few to Brookmire. Anderson’s lot too.’
    Charlie had a sinking feeling. Prostitution wars were never pretty and it was always the girls that suffered, not the people who ran them.
    ‘So did the Campbells kill Alexia to make a point?’
    ‘Makes sense. Not that we can prove it.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    DC Fortune had been waiting for this, keeping his trump card up his sleeve until the appropriate moment.
    ‘Well, I chased Brookmire through Companies House and HMRC. Took a bit of doing, lots of shell companiesand foreign-based holdings, but in the end I traced it back to Top Line Management, an “events company” owned by a certain Sandra McEwan.’
    Charlie should have known. Sandra McEwan – or Lady Macbeth as she was affectionately known – had been involved in prostitution and racketeering in Southampton for over thirty years – ever since she’d allegedly killed her own husband to take over his crime empire. She was driven and fearless – she’d already survived three stabbings – but she was also smart and imaginative. Had she taken prostitution to the next stage with Brookmire, provoking her rivals into a deadly response?
    ‘Well done, Lloyd. Good work.’
    It was the first time she’d used his Christian